Unless you live alone in the wilderness, you live in a community, and that community has every right to deny you any and all benefits of membership in the community, including the right to title to land, the right to trade with members of the community, and the right to use community property like roads. If you don't like it, go build your own community and stop trying to tell others how to live their lives. If people want to set a limit, say, no public nudity, and then you go around in the nude, those people have the right to remove you from their community, by force if necessary. Are you trying to say that people aren't even allowed to talk about what is decent and what isn't?!?
I've noticed that people who say they should have the right to do whatever they want with their lives without hurting others always seem to reserve the right to define for themselves what "hurting others" means. That kind of selfishness needn't be tolerated by any civilized society.
Screw Ayn Rand and her whole twisted philosophy. No man is an island, and we are all our brother's keepers. Meaning, we do not create ourselves, our personality, it is created by the world, by other people that influence us. Using your influence to harm others is wrong. For instance, I could raise a bunch of my kids to be serial killers if I wanted to. Is that right? No. Should society have a say in the way someone raises their kids, say, to prevent people from raising a whole brood of deranged maniacs? I say so.
Now, I'm not saying the games industry is raising a bunch of maniacs. Thought I would explicitly state that to stave of the likely horde of idiots wielding straw men. I'm just saying, people have a right to determine what is decent and what isn't for their community. I may not like what my society says is decent, and I may want to practice what they say is indecent, but it is their right to set standards that others have to meet in order to be a part of that community. Don't like it? Don't live in that community.
The dumbest thing you can do when your community is discussing standards is to tell them that you don't give a fuck what they think and you are just going to do whatever the hell you want to. They are perfectly justified in not taking your opinion into consideration. This is exactly what the gaming industry has done, and it is a sign of immaturity. The smart thing to do is to get involved and address people's concerns. The more you interact, the easier it is to reach a mutually satisfactory compromise.
Even from a purely mercenary, capitalist, objectivist (what a crock!) point of view, it's in one's own self interest not to alienate large segements of one's potential market.
Nice theory. If true, why are so many citizebns and our Federal government so deeply in debt? Why are we consuming over 1/4 the world's resources with about 5% of the world's population? Just because you choose not to look at the intricacies of our socio-economic system does not make it black and white. I'm not denying that there are incentives not to over spend. I'm talking about the subtle incentives that keep people striving for more and more material things when research shows that human connections, not material things, increase happiness. These social incentives benefit the owning class.
You have called what I wrote a deranged rant, but you haven't refuted any of my points. Why the ad hominems? Does discussion of these types of issues cause you cognitive dissonance? Is it hard to hear theories that contradict your world view? Perhaps you identify strongly with the owning class and hate to see their favored paradigm called into question?
I did computer security for one of the best clubs in San Francisco. We had city supervisors and official from the Department of Public Health visit our club to see a model of how it should be done right. We also had a federally funded critical care hospital contract with us to deliver cannabis to their AIDS patients. We gave away free food, had free counselling services and support groups for people with HIV, cancer, and hep-c as well as groups for people trying to get off harder drugs.
We taught harm reduction techniques, and in fact everyone that worked there had to take a class in harm reduction. Everything Mr. Slippery is saying is true. Smoking is the problem, not cannabis. We sold many varieties of baked goods and tinctures. We also sold several brands of vaporizers, and every new member was told of the dangers and options during their hour long orientation.
You can not smoke enough cannabis to kill yourself. You would pass out first. You would have to eat several kilos of high grade hash to do the job. Cannabis is mildly physically addicting, having withdrawal symptoms ranging in severity from coffee withdrawal to nicotine withdrawal (only without the intense cravings.)
The main danger of cannabis is demotivation, which generally only happens with people who smoke it to escape anyway. People who smoke it as a medicine for pain or appetite stimulation do not generally suffer from amotivational syndrome. But if you are smoking pot as an escape, as with any other escapist behavior, a lot of life can pass you by while you are engaging in that behavior.
Puritans have a strong ethic of moderation. Modern capitalism requires a different ethic, one of conspicuous consumption, in order for the rich to make lots of money. In order to reconcile the basic ethos of the country with the needs of the ultra rich to have herds of sheep-like consumers purchasing everything in sight, certain things or activities need to be defined as automatically showing overconsumption. Therefore, as long as people with this protestant ethic are not doing the prescribed things, they are practicing moderation and can feel good about themselves. Therefore, buying loads of useless crap is not overconsumption, but smoking even one joint is.
Define security roles implementing a tight security policy where there is (theoretically) no need for an ultimate root or admin role because all necessary operations are defined in the roles and can be done through, for example, sudo. Then randomize the root/admin password and print it, face down, on a sheet of paper. Fold the paper in half and put it in a safe, just in case you forgot something and really do need root/admin priveleges. Now your admins only have enough privilege to do their day to day admin jobs without, for example, the ability to read email, but if anything really is broken, you go get that paper out of the safe. Sometimes it is necessary not to trust, for example in highly classified computing.
America has a long history of facilitating industrial espianage. When the CIA needs cover overseas, they go with certain tried and true large corporations. In exchange for providing cover for agents, these companies get access to classified information about their competitors. It started with Xerox in the former Soviet Union. They put cameras in the copiers. When the camera ran out of film, it would flip a relay and the 'service needed' light would come on. A 'technician' would come out and replace the film.
I didn't say you did follow any party, I was just pointing out that that's what Libertarians always say, ignoring the failure of lassez faire capitalism. Certainly a poorly designed governmental control structure is one avenue of attack, but the free market has three major failure modes which are often exploited to the same ends. Namely, imbalance of information, natural monopoly, and externalities.
Oh, Jeebus! 34 days? I hope she prepared well, that's a long time. I've done three days, that's hard enough. Of course, that was working and going to school, too.
In a related note, I recently saw a documentary about the Tibetan Buddhist monks who starved themselves to death in times of famine to show people that hunger didn't have to turn you into an animal. They ate only bark high in tannins for several weeks before starving themselves so they turned into mummies when they died. Then they strapped themselves down in such a way that if they lost concentration for even a moment and started to nod off, the straps would tighten and cause pain. So they had to remain conscious during the whole starvation process. Of course, that's nothing compared to Quang Duc. Damn. Self immolated and never so much as twitched during the process. Now that's self control.
Skinny ass-kicking Buddha in silks. He's the real deal. Or skinny, emaciated Buddha, from when he was starving himself. The fat jolly Buddha isn't Sidhartha Gautama but rather Hotei, a chinese monk who was supposedly an incarnation of the Bodhisatva Maitreya, or future Buddha.
Cheesco makes great networking equipment, and so does 3Corn. We use MircoSoft Windows OS, and it's never let us down! I mean, Linux is good for servers and all, in fact, I only use RedCap. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Sorny DVDs I want to watch on my MagnetBox TV.
DO you think the rest of humanity cares if you or some big shot thinks they are irrelevant? They are not just going to lie down and die? Who made those fuck heads relevant? The rest of humanity, you elitist prick. The problem comes from the fact that now that they have all the power, they don't need us. Me, I'm comfortable, and relevant. But unlike some elitist assholes, I still give a damn, and I know that it wasn't just me that got me where I am. No man is an island. The sad thing is, there are far more talented, driven people who haven't had the luck or social connections to make it big than there are lazy suckers. But you keep holding on to your fantasy that you are special and that you got where you are only through hard work and skill. Must be a nice fantasy.
And if it's anything like my cat, when you know its momentum is precisely zero, its location can be damn near anywhere including right under your foot where you were sure there was no cat a moment ago.
No, it was a court decision. In even the most anarchist of Libertarian philosophies, there is still a court system and a powerful corporation like Sony would still have an unfair advantage. That's the problem with 'no government regulation' type philosophies, they gaurantee that there is no fair and equitable way to address the inevitable imbalances of power that will develop.
What's creepy is the level of concentration of wealth, power and influence. It's starting to feel like the vast majority of humanity just doesn't matter. That may give some people a stiffy, but it creeps me out. If it gets to the point where we really don't matter, and they have all the power, what do you think the outcome will be?
"Do I look all rancid and clotted? You look at me, Jack. Eh? Look, eh? And I talk a lot on the cell phone. I'm what you might call a cell phone man, Jack - that's what I am. And I can swear to you, my boy, swear to you, that there's nothing wrong with my bodily fluids. Not a thing, Jackie."
Oh, sorry, American IT people of all stripes have a knee-jerk anti-union attitude. Call it a guild. You need to stand up for yourself rather than pulling others down. Besides, you made $60k. How much do you think this woman made last year, working at a small repertory company and doing a few $500 dollar gigs a month? VA work is NOT steady work, my friend.
Well, that's the Libertarian Party Line, but I don't buy it. It denies the power of money to effect change on it's own. Price fixing, undercutting, hoarding, money offers so many avenues of control beyond purchasing of politicians and favorable regulations. Government regulation is like an immune system, and big corporations are like AIDS, turning the immune system against itself. The Libertarians say that the immune system is at fault so we need to get rid of it. The problem is really the concentration of wealth and control of natural resources into fewer and fewer hands. Concentration of wealth destroys the free market without any help from government regulation.
Corporate regulation, government regulation, or market regulation? Should we use government regulation to regulate corporate regulation? Because the market doesn't seem to be regulating jack shit. Free markets don't work when a small cartel of megacorporations regulate the markets and raise the barrier of entry.
I've travelled quite a bit and lived abroad for a year, and I can say that wherever I go I get along great with the locals. You know why? Because I don't have a bad attitude. I try to learn at least a few words of the local language. I take an interest in local culture. But mostly I interact with people as if we were all just, you know, people. People seem to like that. People don't like people who think they are superior.
"Mybe libips abare in mybay labap. Ibe smebel smoboke. Smoboke! Fiber! Mybe moubouth is on fiber!" Oh man, early Cosby is hilarious. Too bad about him going batshit insane, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you live alone in the wilderness, you live in a community, and that community has every right to deny you any and all benefits of membership in the community, including the right to title to land, the right to trade with members of the community, and the right to use community property like roads. If you don't like it, go build your own community and stop trying to tell others how to live their lives. If people want to set a limit, say, no public nudity, and then you go around in the nude, those people have the right to remove you from their community, by force if necessary. Are you trying to say that people aren't even allowed to talk about what is decent and what isn't?!?
I've noticed that people who say they should have the right to do whatever they want with their lives without hurting others always seem to reserve the right to define for themselves what "hurting others" means. That kind of selfishness needn't be tolerated by any civilized society.
Screw Ayn Rand and her whole twisted philosophy. No man is an island, and we are all our brother's keepers. Meaning, we do not create ourselves, our personality, it is created by the world, by other people that influence us. Using your influence to harm others is wrong. For instance, I could raise a bunch of my kids to be serial killers if I wanted to. Is that right? No. Should society have a say in the way someone raises their kids, say, to prevent people from raising a whole brood of deranged maniacs? I say so.
Now, I'm not saying the games industry is raising a bunch of maniacs. Thought I would explicitly state that to stave of the likely horde of idiots wielding straw men. I'm just saying, people have a right to determine what is decent and what isn't for their community. I may not like what my society says is decent, and I may want to practice what they say is indecent, but it is their right to set standards that others have to meet in order to be a part of that community. Don't like it? Don't live in that community.
The dumbest thing you can do when your community is discussing standards is to tell them that you don't give a fuck what they think and you are just going to do whatever the hell you want to. They are perfectly justified in not taking your opinion into consideration. This is exactly what the gaming industry has done, and it is a sign of immaturity. The smart thing to do is to get involved and address people's concerns. The more you interact, the easier it is to reach a mutually satisfactory compromise.
Even from a purely mercenary, capitalist, objectivist (what a crock!) point of view, it's in one's own self interest not to alienate large segements of one's potential market.
Nice theory. If true, why are so many citizebns and our Federal government so deeply in debt? Why are we consuming over 1/4 the world's resources with about 5% of the world's population? Just because you choose not to look at the intricacies of our socio-economic system does not make it black and white. I'm not denying that there are incentives not to over spend. I'm talking about the subtle incentives that keep people striving for more and more material things when research shows that human connections, not material things, increase happiness. These social incentives benefit the owning class.
You have called what I wrote a deranged rant, but you haven't refuted any of my points. Why the ad hominems? Does discussion of these types of issues cause you cognitive dissonance? Is it hard to hear theories that contradict your world view? Perhaps you identify strongly with the owning class and hate to see their favored paradigm called into question?
I did computer security for one of the best clubs in San Francisco. We had city supervisors and official from the Department of Public Health visit our club to see a model of how it should be done right. We also had a federally funded critical care hospital contract with us to deliver cannabis to their AIDS patients. We gave away free food, had free counselling services and support groups for people with HIV, cancer, and hep-c as well as groups for people trying to get off harder drugs.
We taught harm reduction techniques, and in fact everyone that worked there had to take a class in harm reduction. Everything Mr. Slippery is saying is true. Smoking is the problem, not cannabis. We sold many varieties of baked goods and tinctures. We also sold several brands of vaporizers, and every new member was told of the dangers and options during their hour long orientation.
You can not smoke enough cannabis to kill yourself. You would pass out first. You would have to eat several kilos of high grade hash to do the job. Cannabis is mildly physically addicting, having withdrawal symptoms ranging in severity from coffee withdrawal to nicotine withdrawal (only without the intense cravings.)
The main danger of cannabis is demotivation, which generally only happens with people who smoke it to escape anyway. People who smoke it as a medicine for pain or appetite stimulation do not generally suffer from amotivational syndrome. But if you are smoking pot as an escape, as with any other escapist behavior, a lot of life can pass you by while you are engaging in that behavior.
Puritans have a strong ethic of moderation. Modern capitalism requires a different ethic, one of conspicuous consumption, in order for the rich to make lots of money. In order to reconcile the basic ethos of the country with the needs of the ultra rich to have herds of sheep-like consumers purchasing everything in sight, certain things or activities need to be defined as automatically showing overconsumption. Therefore, as long as people with this protestant ethic are not doing the prescribed things, they are practicing moderation and can feel good about themselves. Therefore, buying loads of useless crap is not overconsumption, but smoking even one joint is.
Define security roles implementing a tight security policy where there is (theoretically) no need for an ultimate root or admin role because all necessary operations are defined in the roles and can be done through, for example, sudo. Then randomize the root/admin password and print it, face down, on a sheet of paper. Fold the paper in half and put it in a safe, just in case you forgot something and really do need root/admin priveleges. Now your admins only have enough privilege to do their day to day admin jobs without, for example, the ability to read email, but if anything really is broken, you go get that paper out of the safe. Sometimes it is necessary not to trust, for example in highly classified computing.
America has a long history of facilitating industrial espianage. When the CIA needs cover overseas, they go with certain tried and true large corporations. In exchange for providing cover for agents, these companies get access to classified information about their competitors. It started with Xerox in the former Soviet Union. They put cameras in the copiers. When the camera ran out of film, it would flip a relay and the 'service needed' light would come on. A 'technician' would come out and replace the film.
I didn't say you did follow any party, I was just pointing out that that's what Libertarians always say, ignoring the failure of lassez faire capitalism. Certainly a poorly designed governmental control structure is one avenue of attack, but the free market has three major failure modes which are often exploited to the same ends. Namely, imbalance of information, natural monopoly, and externalities.
Oh, Jeebus! 34 days? I hope she prepared well, that's a long time. I've done three days, that's hard enough. Of course, that was working and going to school, too.
In a related note, I recently saw a documentary about the Tibetan Buddhist monks who starved themselves to death in times of famine to show people that hunger didn't have to turn you into an animal. They ate only bark high in tannins for several weeks before starving themselves so they turned into mummies when they died. Then they strapped themselves down in such a way that if they lost concentration for even a moment and started to nod off, the straps would tighten and cause pain. So they had to remain conscious during the whole starvation process. Of course, that's nothing compared to Quang Duc. Damn. Self immolated and never so much as twitched during the process. Now that's self control.
Dude, we're just PISSED because we've been waiting, what, like ten years for E17?
Skinny ass-kicking Buddha in silks. He's the real deal. Or skinny, emaciated Buddha, from when he was starving himself. The fat jolly Buddha isn't Sidhartha Gautama but rather Hotei, a chinese monk who was supposedly an incarnation of the Bodhisatva Maitreya, or future Buddha.
I think the second sequel is always the best in a series and then everything after that sucks ass.
Cheesco makes great networking equipment, and so does 3Corn. We use MircoSoft Windows OS, and it's never let us down! I mean, Linux is good for servers and all, in fact, I only use RedCap. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Sorny DVDs I want to watch on my MagnetBox TV.
DO you think the rest of humanity cares if you or some big shot thinks they are irrelevant? They are not just going to lie down and die? Who made those fuck heads relevant? The rest of humanity, you elitist prick. The problem comes from the fact that now that they have all the power, they don't need us. Me, I'm comfortable, and relevant. But unlike some elitist assholes, I still give a damn, and I know that it wasn't just me that got me where I am. No man is an island. The sad thing is, there are far more talented, driven people who haven't had the luck or social connections to make it big than there are lazy suckers. But you keep holding on to your fantasy that you are special and that you got where you are only through hard work and skill. Must be a nice fantasy.
And if it's anything like my cat, when you know its momentum is precisely zero, its location can be damn near anywhere including right under your foot where you were sure there was no cat a moment ago.
No, it was a court decision. In even the most anarchist of Libertarian philosophies, there is still a court system and a powerful corporation like Sony would still have an unfair advantage. That's the problem with 'no government regulation' type philosophies, they gaurantee that there is no fair and equitable way to address the inevitable imbalances of power that will develop.
What's creepy is the level of concentration of wealth, power and influence. It's starting to feel like the vast majority of humanity just doesn't matter. That may give some people a stiffy, but it creeps me out. If it gets to the point where we really don't matter, and they have all the power, what do you think the outcome will be?
"Do I look all rancid and clotted? You look at me, Jack. Eh? Look, eh? And I talk a lot on the cell phone. I'm what you might call a cell phone man, Jack - that's what I am. And I can swear to you, my boy, swear to you, that there's nothing wrong with my bodily fluids. Not a thing, Jackie."
-- With apologies to Lionel Mandrake
Oh, sorry, American IT people of all stripes have a knee-jerk anti-union attitude. Call it a guild. You need to stand up for yourself rather than pulling others down. Besides, you made $60k. How much do you think this woman made last year, working at a small repertory company and doing a few $500 dollar gigs a month? VA work is NOT steady work, my friend.
Well, that's the Libertarian Party Line, but I don't buy it. It denies the power of money to effect change on it's own. Price fixing, undercutting, hoarding, money offers so many avenues of control beyond purchasing of politicians and favorable regulations. Government regulation is like an immune system, and big corporations are like AIDS, turning the immune system against itself. The Libertarians say that the immune system is at fault so we need to get rid of it. The problem is really the concentration of wealth and control of natural resources into fewer and fewer hands. Concentration of wealth destroys the free market without any help from government regulation.
Corporate regulation, government regulation, or market regulation? Should we use government regulation to regulate corporate regulation? Because the market doesn't seem to be regulating jack shit. Free markets don't work when a small cartel of megacorporations regulate the markets and raise the barrier of entry.
Sometimes laughter lets the truth slip in when the cold hard facts would just make someone so defensive they couldn't even consider it.
I've travelled quite a bit and lived abroad for a year, and I can say that wherever I go I get along great with the locals. You know why? Because I don't have a bad attitude. I try to learn at least a few words of the local language. I take an interest in local culture. But mostly I interact with people as if we were all just, you know, people. People seem to like that. People don't like people who think they are superior.
If you see "grc.com" in the URL, you can be pretty sure it is NOT the most insightful piece on security that's ever been written...
"Mybe libips abare in mybay labap. Ibe smebel smoboke. Smoboke! Fiber! Mybe moubouth is on fiber!" Oh man, early Cosby is hilarious. Too bad about him going batshit insane, though.