I suspect that you would bend over, spread your cheeks and say, "come and get it, Mr. Bush." I mean really, where do you draw the line? How far is too far? And what do you do when the government has gone too far, and then tried to make it illegal to say, "you've gone too far?" There comes a point when you have to say, "fuck it, this is not right, and I'm going to do somethign about it, even if it means (at the least) my job."
I have the upmost respect for people like that, and the upmost contempt for apologists for the abuse of power.
Anyone know how to get that coffee taste out of your sinuses after you blow it through your nose? Damn, I'm writing that one down. No, I'm memorizing it.
To paraphrase Crocadile Dundee, "You call that a troll? This is a troll!"
As it is becoming more and more obvious that this administration leaked exactly such information, isn't it ironic that they are using phone records to find leakers? Do you think they will be the teensiest bit selective about what leakers they go after? Most leaks aren't about agents, but about government corruption. Another common type of leak is actually government propaganda, disguised as reporting.
That's the beauty of open source, no one gets to say what it is or isn't. People can do all sorts of things with it. You speak of Linux as if it were some monolithic project, which it isn't. So some companies have created less than spectacular desktop solutions. Take it up with those companies, don't blame Linux for not being what you think it should be. Don't assume there is some kind of Central Linux Administration that decides what it should be. Don't assume there is some goal that everyone can agree we all should be working towards.
There are companies that make decent Linux based Windows replacements, for those who want such a thing. No one is going to read your mind, know that's what you want, and drop one in your lap. Same here as in the rest of the world.
I don't understand why foot prints and blood spatters can't be rendered procedurally. Those would be the easiest things to do in code. Cigarette butts, candy bar wrappers and graffiti would be better off as textures, but blood spatters and footprints? Those cry out for procedural rendering, much the same way as trees and other plants do. As a bonus, if you have a procedure for rendering blood spatters and footprints, you can use it to add new blood spatters and footprints.
Christian Scientists aren't NEARLY as bad as most other christians. They aren't preachy, and they believe the bit where Christ basically says go out and learn about the world. I'm agnostic, personally, but my grandmother was a Christian Scientist.
From what I've read, the Christian Science Monitor is a very good newspaper with very little christian bias.
This is argument is a red herring put out by the telcos. It's not about better service for more money, we have that now. You can get DSL in many different speeds, and certain companies that charge more (speakeasy, I'm SO sorry I ever left you) give better service. That's not what this is about.
What this is about is that large providers are owned by huge corporations. Said corporations own many, many different companies, brands, franchises, etc. They would like to make it so that you can only get full speed when downloading things they own, or things that companies pay to have delivered without slowdowns.
Now, content providers already pay for bandwidth. Broadband subscribers already pay for bandwidth. What these companies want is to be able to charge a premium to deliver outside content to "their" customers.
They want to bring us back to the bad old days when a Compuserve customer couldn't email a GEnie customer, because the networks were seperate. They want to be big BBSs, not Internet service providers. They will of course still call themselves ISPs.
If they want to do that, fine. Just don't call yourselves and ISP if you are not providing access to the whole Internet in a neutral fashion. Don't call yourself an ISP and then deliver only your content at full speed while throttling everybody outside your network who doesn't pay your data protection money.
Put a Ford Escort engine in a Porsche 911 Turbo body and I bet 70% of the people you pull off the street would drive it and not know any better. For them, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
If you chop off a duck's feet and surgically attach sparrow feet, it will no longer walk like a duck.
But yeah, duuuuuh. People are gullible, what else is new?
More and more, Slashdot seems to be sliding towards the groupthink that "People who are interested in business are bad."
It's not slashdot groupthink, my friend. It's people, everywhere. Republicans, Democrats, athiests, religious types, everyone. And do you know why everyone everywhere is starting to think of business people as bad types? It's because of what they see. You want people to respect business types? Stop robbing us.
You say business types are necessary. Wow, under the system that business types have set up, business types are necessary, big surprise. That means nothing. It also doesn't automatically get you respect. I'll respect you when I feel you deserve it. When I feel.
It's becoming more and more obvious to everyon, based on evidence we all see evry day, that it's not just "a few bad apples" in business ruining it for all the upstanding CEOs. The good ones are the exception. People are angry, and rightly so. We've been told that what's good for business is good for society, but all we are seeing is CEOs getting richer and the rest of us getting screwed. We've given you the benefit of the doubt for a long time, because we want to believe that you are good people, that you'll do right by us.
We certainly don't want to believe that a group of people with as much power as corporate CEOs wield are for the most part sociopathic con artists, because that would necessitate doing something about the problem, and that is scary to most people.
You are leaving us with little choice, though. Whine about it all you want, claim it's groupthink, whatever. But there is a reason people are feeling this way, and it won't go away just because you tell us we're being silly. You CEOs want the respect that people gave CEOs in your father's generation? Stop making excuses for all the sociopathic thieves in your midst, bring back job security, pay a decent wage, don't give yourself $6 mil a year, act like decent fucking citizens and you will get that respect.
Yes, exactly. It's a dumb ass argument. Both parties are made up of con-men and thieves. If you bring up the issue of corruption and lobbyists, I will say, "Damn straight, lets do something about it." Not, "Republicans do it too! I can't hear anything bad about the party I voted for." Yeah I support the Democrats because they are marginally less fucked than the Republicans. Whatever. Both parties suck and if someone has a legitimate complaint about either one, the mature response is, "What can we do to fix that?" not "Yeah, well, so and so does it too!" Like that makes it okay. Or does it mean that I have no right to complain, because the party I supported did it too? That's bullshit.
I have noticed, and maybe this is just my bias talking, but I have noticed that Republican fanboys use this kind of argument far more often than Democrat fanboys.
The value of the Internet is a direct result of the fact that it is a means of two-way communication.
That's its value to us. It is exactly the opposite of what politicians and media corporations want. How dare we voice our opinions about politicians? How dare we steal from the media corporations by providing free content? I think this bill is more about limiting the radical opportunites presented by the Internet than it is about protecting anything other than the status quo.
Finding out about Kerry? Finding out what, exactly? Lies about his past, or the fact that he's more wooden than Keanu Reaves (for which we certainly didn't need blogs.)
Why do you conservatives DO this? Anyone says anything bad about yer boy, ya gotta pipe up with, "Yeah, well so and so did it too!" Were you brought up by wolves, man? 'Cause my parents never put up with that shit.
Um, chill dude, you got unfairly down modded, not suppressed. The mod system here is voluntary and modifiable. For instance, I browse at -1 with flamebait, overrated, and troll marked as +1. Your post was not suppressed as far as I'm concerned. If other people want to use slashdot's voluntary content rating system differently, that's their right.
More importanly, freedom of speach doesn't give you the right to force others to listen to or repeat your speach. I'm assuming you are not a part owner of slashdot? Then you have no inherent right to publish anything here.
Lastly, complaining about having your posts downmodded is tacky and unbecoming of a civilized poster. Everyone gets reasonable posts downmodded for inane reasons. Sometime a loon gets mod points, hopefully meta moderation will ensure that that loon won't get mod points again. But the world will never run out of loons.
The proper way to complain about bad mods is to post complaints anonymously, or use a puppet account. Just be sure to refer to yourself in the third person when doing so, so other people won't know it's you complaining.
The article is about the Chinese government, but this thread veered into a discussion of moral relativism, which is often lambasted as an excuse for evil. I'm merely trying to point out that one can believe that all things are relative and still make judgements about what is evil, from a particular point of view. This thread began with a post about relativism which tried to excuse the Chinese government and cast aspersions of cultural insensitivity upon those who would judge it. I was trying to point out that one can be culturally sensitive and understand that certain things are relative while still making value judgements about those things that are not.
You are making some very large assumptions about what I have said. You seem to think that because I am talking about the complexities of moral relativism, I am defending the Chinese. I am not, and I don't understand how you could think that I am. You seem to be defending a position that no one is attacking. I am not nit picking, merely trying to state a position on moral relativism. I'm saying it is a grey area, that some things (like what the chinese are doing) are undeniably bad, from the point of view of humanity as a whole, while other things truely are relative to a particular culture. Was I really being that unclear, or are you just in an argumentative mood?
Try this: turn your cell phone off and hold it against your face for a while. Your face gets hot. Why do you suppose that is?
Re:I find arguing with idealists pointless
on
"H-Prize" Announced
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People suck. Agreed. The world is an unfair, cruel and arbitrary place. I know that, and believe it only to the extent that it keeps me from being taken advantage of. At the same time, I believe that people are wonderful, loving, cooperative beings. Believing in this keeps me sane. I give people the benefit of the doubt, but I cover my ass. Call me a pessimistic optimist, planning for the worst so I can expect the best.
If you let the evil fuckers of the world change your belief in the goodness of humanity, the evil fuckers win.
All things are relative, you just have to note where you are doing your measuring from. From the point of view of humanity as a whole, killing, stealing and deception are bad because they are counterproductive for the species. Not because of any arbitrary, external moral scale. And we could say they were bad even if a majority of people thought they were okay, because we have defined our criteria and our scale.
Most moral issues are loaded issues, so it's hard to find neutral examples. Let's look at speaking distance. In some cultures it is rude to stand too far apart, in others it is rude to stand too close together. From the point of view of humanity as a whole, neither of these are good or bad on their own. But needlessly causing another distress is bad, so it is wrong in one culture to stand too far apart, and it is wrong in the other to stand too close, and those are both perfectly valid judgements to make for those cultures.
Does that help to clarify what I'm saying about cultural relativity?
Cultural relativism, and indeed moral relativism in general are tricky subjects to deal with. I start from the position that everything is relative because there is no scale external to reality by which to measure things internal to reality. All scales are internal to our universe, created by the same process that creates the things being measured, therefore all value judgements are relative.
Okay, so does that mean Hitler was an okay dude? Yes and no. In the bigger picture, there is no right and wrong, and nothing matters. But that's not a useful picture. From a Human point of view, Hitler was bad.
Okay, so something may be okay from a particular culture's perspective and still be bad from the perspective of humanity as a whole. The universal declaration of human rights is a pretty good place to start when looking for what might be good for all of humanity.
Now other things are not so clear cut. Circumcision, for instance. Valued cultural practice, or horrible genital mutilation? Who decides?
Finally, simply because something is bad from humanity's point of view, does that give humanity as a whole the right to force an individual or culture to modify their views or behavior? In the case of Hitler, most people would agree that humanity had a moral right to place a value judgement on what he did and use force to stop him. Do we also have a moral right to go into Africa and stop them from cutting off young girls clitorises? Where do we draw the line, and more importantly, what system do we use to determine where the line should be drawn?
I don't have the answers, but I'm sure the answer isn't a simple "everything is relative and we shouldn't ever place value judgements on other cultures" or an arrogant "What I believe is right, is absolutely right, and everyone else can go hang."
I know, I was poking fun at the Gentoo fanboys. I don't actually think gentoo is a flash in the pan. It's a great OS, but hearing about how some dweeb spent the week compiling an entire distro from source to increase his speed by 0.5% got a little dull after a while. Heck, it's probably better for the distro and the community that folks like that have moved on.;-)
Possibly. But the article seems to say that it is no longer socially acceptable, and when it is done, it causes turmoil. Far cry from the whole damn country doing it, which is what you imply.
You know, I read about a case of parent sexually abusing a four year old here in America, I guess that makes all us Americans paedophiles.
Here's a link containign a history of the practice. Note the last paragraph:
Indian leader Rajaram Mohan Roy, through his organization Brahmo Samaj was among the first who fought to eliminate Sati. The ritual of sati was banned by the British Government in 1829 (see a timeline of Sati). However, it took a large scale social reforms by Dayanand Saraswati(of Arya Samaj), Mahatma Gandhi and the like to actually stop the practice (see: Timeline of Sati). In the modern times, there was one instance of a Sati reported in Rajasthan (late 1980s), and another in Madhya Pradesh (in year 2002) that caused a lot of controversy and social turmoil.
I know you were trolling, but I still want to help put an end to the myth that Indian women commit suicide by jumping on funeral pyres. They did, but they don't anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Facts have a well known liberal bias.
Yes, let us not forget video game history, for is it not said, "He who forgets history is doomed to repeat it?"
I for one really don't need to waste any more quarters on pac-man.
I suspect that you would bend over, spread your cheeks and say, "come and get it, Mr. Bush." I mean really, where do you draw the line? How far is too far? And what do you do when the government has gone too far, and then tried to make it illegal to say, "you've gone too far?" There comes a point when you have to say, "fuck it, this is not right, and I'm going to do somethign about it, even if it means (at the least) my job."
I have the upmost respect for people like that, and the upmost contempt for apologists for the abuse of power.
Anyone know how to get that coffee taste out of your sinuses after you blow it through your nose? Damn, I'm writing that one down. No, I'm memorizing it.
To paraphrase Crocadile Dundee, "You call that a troll? This is a troll!"
As it is becoming more and more obvious that this administration leaked exactly such information, isn't it ironic that they are using phone records to find leakers? Do you think they will be the teensiest bit selective about what leakers they go after? Most leaks aren't about agents, but about government corruption. Another common type of leak is actually government propaganda, disguised as reporting.
That's the beauty of open source, no one gets to say what it is or isn't. People can do all sorts of things with it. You speak of Linux as if it were some monolithic project, which it isn't. So some companies have created less than spectacular desktop solutions. Take it up with those companies, don't blame Linux for not being what you think it should be. Don't assume there is some kind of Central Linux Administration that decides what it should be. Don't assume there is some goal that everyone can agree we all should be working towards.
There are companies that make decent Linux based Windows replacements, for those who want such a thing. No one is going to read your mind, know that's what you want, and drop one in your lap. Same here as in the rest of the world.
I don't understand why foot prints and blood spatters can't be rendered procedurally. Those would be the easiest things to do in code. Cigarette butts, candy bar wrappers and graffiti would be better off as textures, but blood spatters and footprints? Those cry out for procedural rendering, much the same way as trees and other plants do. As a bonus, if you have a procedure for rendering blood spatters and footprints, you can use it to add new blood spatters and footprints.
Christian Scientists aren't NEARLY as bad as most other christians. They aren't preachy, and they believe the bit where Christ basically says go out and learn about the world. I'm agnostic, personally, but my grandmother was a Christian Scientist.
From what I've read, the Christian Science Monitor is a very good newspaper with very little christian bias.
This is argument is a red herring put out by the telcos. It's not about better service for more money, we have that now. You can get DSL in many different speeds, and certain companies that charge more (speakeasy, I'm SO sorry I ever left you) give better service. That's not what this is about.
What this is about is that large providers are owned by huge corporations. Said corporations own many, many different companies, brands, franchises, etc. They would like to make it so that you can only get full speed when downloading things they own, or things that companies pay to have delivered without slowdowns.
Now, content providers already pay for bandwidth. Broadband subscribers already pay for bandwidth. What these companies want is to be able to charge a premium to deliver outside content to "their" customers.
They want to bring us back to the bad old days when a Compuserve customer couldn't email a GEnie customer, because the networks were seperate. They want to be big BBSs, not Internet service providers. They will of course still call themselves ISPs.
If they want to do that, fine. Just don't call yourselves and ISP if you are not providing access to the whole Internet in a neutral fashion. Don't call yourself an ISP and then deliver only your content at full speed while throttling everybody outside your network who doesn't pay your data protection money.
Put a Ford Escort engine in a Porsche 911 Turbo body and I bet 70% of the people you pull off the street would drive it and not know any better. For them, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
If you chop off a duck's feet and surgically attach sparrow feet, it will no longer walk like a duck.
But yeah, duuuuuh. People are gullible, what else is new?
More and more, Slashdot seems to be sliding towards the groupthink that "People who are interested in business are bad."
It's not slashdot groupthink, my friend. It's people, everywhere. Republicans, Democrats, athiests, religious types, everyone. And do you know why everyone everywhere is starting to think of business people as bad types? It's because of what they see. You want people to respect business types? Stop robbing us.
You say business types are necessary. Wow, under the system that business types have set up, business types are necessary, big surprise. That means nothing. It also doesn't automatically get you respect. I'll respect you when I feel you deserve it. When I feel.
It's becoming more and more obvious to everyon, based on evidence we all see evry day, that it's not just "a few bad apples" in business ruining it for all the upstanding CEOs. The good ones are the exception. People are angry, and rightly so. We've been told that what's good for business is good for society, but all we are seeing is CEOs getting richer and the rest of us getting screwed. We've given you the benefit of the doubt for a long time, because we want to believe that you are good people, that you'll do right by us.
We certainly don't want to believe that a group of people with as much power as corporate CEOs wield are for the most part sociopathic con artists, because that would necessitate doing something about the problem, and that is scary to most people.
You are leaving us with little choice, though. Whine about it all you want, claim it's groupthink, whatever. But there is a reason people are feeling this way, and it won't go away just because you tell us we're being silly. You CEOs want the respect that people gave CEOs in your father's generation? Stop making excuses for all the sociopathic thieves in your midst, bring back job security, pay a decent wage, don't give yourself $6 mil a year, act like decent fucking citizens and you will get that respect.
Yes, exactly. It's a dumb ass argument. Both parties are made up of con-men and thieves. If you bring up the issue of corruption and lobbyists, I will say, "Damn straight, lets do something about it." Not, "Republicans do it too! I can't hear anything bad about the party I voted for." Yeah I support the Democrats because they are marginally less fucked than the Republicans. Whatever. Both parties suck and if someone has a legitimate complaint about either one, the mature response is, "What can we do to fix that?" not "Yeah, well, so and so does it too!" Like that makes it okay. Or does it mean that I have no right to complain, because the party I supported did it too? That's bullshit.
I have noticed, and maybe this is just my bias talking, but I have noticed that Republican fanboys use this kind of argument far more often than Democrat fanboys.
The value of the Internet is a direct result of the fact that it is a means of two-way communication.
That's its value to us. It is exactly the opposite of what politicians and media corporations want. How dare we voice our opinions about politicians? How dare we steal from the media corporations by providing free content? I think this bill is more about limiting the radical opportunites presented by the Internet than it is about protecting anything other than the status quo.
The rest of your post is right on.
Finding out about Kerry? Finding out what, exactly? Lies about his past, or the fact that he's more wooden than Keanu Reaves (for which we certainly didn't need blogs.)
Why do you conservatives DO this? Anyone says anything bad about yer boy, ya gotta pipe up with, "Yeah, well so and so did it too!" Were you brought up by wolves, man? 'Cause my parents never put up with that shit.
Come see the violence inherent in the mod system!
Um, chill dude, you got unfairly down modded, not suppressed. The mod system here is voluntary and modifiable. For instance, I browse at -1 with flamebait, overrated, and troll marked as +1. Your post was not suppressed as far as I'm concerned. If other people want to use slashdot's voluntary content rating system differently, that's their right.
More importanly, freedom of speach doesn't give you the right to force others to listen to or repeat your speach. I'm assuming you are not a part owner of slashdot? Then you have no inherent right to publish anything here.
Lastly, complaining about having your posts downmodded is tacky and unbecoming of a civilized poster. Everyone gets reasonable posts downmodded for inane reasons. Sometime a loon gets mod points, hopefully meta moderation will ensure that that loon won't get mod points again. But the world will never run out of loons.
The proper way to complain about bad mods is to post complaints anonymously, or use a puppet account. Just be sure to refer to yourself in the third person when doing so, so other people won't know it's you complaining.
The article is about the Chinese government, but this thread veered into a discussion of moral relativism, which is often lambasted as an excuse for evil. I'm merely trying to point out that one can believe that all things are relative and still make judgements about what is evil, from a particular point of view. This thread began with a post about relativism which tried to excuse the Chinese government and cast aspersions of cultural insensitivity upon those who would judge it. I was trying to point out that one can be culturally sensitive and understand that certain things are relative while still making value judgements about those things that are not.
Or to put it simply, relativism is relative.
You are making some very large assumptions about what I have said. You seem to think that because I am talking about the complexities of moral relativism, I am defending the Chinese. I am not, and I don't understand how you could think that I am. You seem to be defending a position that no one is attacking. I am not nit picking, merely trying to state a position on moral relativism. I'm saying it is a grey area, that some things (like what the chinese are doing) are undeniably bad, from the point of view of humanity as a whole, while other things truely are relative to a particular culture. Was I really being that unclear, or are you just in an argumentative mood?
Could be, or could be the insulating effect of holding something near your face, or both. Not radiation, anyways.
Try this: turn your cell phone off and hold it against your face for a while. Your face gets hot. Why do you suppose that is?
People suck. Agreed. The world is an unfair, cruel and arbitrary place. I know that, and believe it only to the extent that it keeps me from being taken advantage of. At the same time, I believe that people are wonderful, loving, cooperative beings. Believing in this keeps me sane. I give people the benefit of the doubt, but I cover my ass. Call me a pessimistic optimist, planning for the worst so I can expect the best.
If you let the evil fuckers of the world change your belief in the goodness of humanity, the evil fuckers win.
All things are relative, you just have to note where you are doing your measuring from. From the point of view of humanity as a whole, killing, stealing and deception are bad because they are counterproductive for the species. Not because of any arbitrary, external moral scale. And we could say they were bad even if a majority of people thought they were okay, because we have defined our criteria and our scale.
Most moral issues are loaded issues, so it's hard to find neutral examples. Let's look at speaking distance. In some cultures it is rude to stand too far apart, in others it is rude to stand too close together. From the point of view of humanity as a whole, neither of these are good or bad on their own. But needlessly causing another distress is bad, so it is wrong in one culture to stand too far apart, and it is wrong in the other to stand too close, and those are both perfectly valid judgements to make for those cultures.
Does that help to clarify what I'm saying about cultural relativity?
Cultural relativism, and indeed moral relativism in general are tricky subjects to deal with. I start from the position that everything is relative because there is no scale external to reality by which to measure things internal to reality. All scales are internal to our universe, created by the same process that creates the things being measured, therefore all value judgements are relative.
Okay, so does that mean Hitler was an okay dude? Yes and no. In the bigger picture, there is no right and wrong, and nothing matters. But that's not a useful picture. From a Human point of view, Hitler was bad.
Okay, so something may be okay from a particular culture's perspective and still be bad from the perspective of humanity as a whole. The universal declaration of human rights is a pretty good place to start when looking for what might be good for all of humanity.
Now other things are not so clear cut. Circumcision, for instance. Valued cultural practice, or horrible genital mutilation? Who decides?
Finally, simply because something is bad from humanity's point of view, does that give humanity as a whole the right to force an individual or culture to modify their views or behavior? In the case of Hitler, most people would agree that humanity had a moral right to place a value judgement on what he did and use force to stop him. Do we also have a moral right to go into Africa and stop them from cutting off young girls clitorises? Where do we draw the line, and more importantly, what system do we use to determine where the line should be drawn?
I don't have the answers, but I'm sure the answer isn't a simple "everything is relative and we shouldn't ever place value judgements on other cultures" or an arrogant "What I believe is right, is absolutely right, and everyone else can go hang."
I know, I was poking fun at the Gentoo fanboys. I don't actually think gentoo is a flash in the pan. It's a great OS, but hearing about how some dweeb spent the week compiling an entire distro from source to increase his speed by 0.5% got a little dull after a while. Heck, it's probably better for the distro and the community that folks like that have moved on. ;-)
Possibly. But the article seems to say that it is no longer socially acceptable, and when it is done, it causes turmoil. Far cry from the whole damn country doing it, which is what you imply.
You know, I read about a case of parent sexually abusing a four year old here in America, I guess that makes all us Americans paedophiles.
I know you were trolling, but I still want to help put an end to the myth that Indian women commit suicide by jumping on funeral pyres. They did, but they don't anymore.