Sad that you take greed as an immutable part of human nature. It's there, it's just not all that's there, and it is influenced far more by circumstance than nature.
Look at some of the research being conducted by modern economists. Turns out the "selfish actor" theory is flawed, people value fairness and reciprocity far more than they do profit. And if the rules of the game permit punishment of free-riders, everyone cooprates and everyone wins.
Apathy also is not a big part of human nature. When's the last time you saw an apathetic four year old? No, apathy is beaten into us. Believing in greed and apathy doesn't make you more effective, it makes you a sad and lonely excuse for a human being.
Your kind of cynicism isn't based in reality, it is a defensive raction based in pain and suffering. It can't help you, it won't keep you safe, all it will do is cut you off from the only source of comfort and understanding you could hope to have, other human beings.
Gah, no the other side isn't much better. I wish it were, but the damn Democrats can't get their act together. Still, they are a little better. In the end, it's not about what party you belong to, but about whether you are a corrupt shit who would sell his grandmother into slavery for a buck.
I know he's talking nonsense, I was just being nice. He's probably thinking that because all the Linux geeks are talking about distros like Mandriva and Ubuntu that old school distros must be fading away. No, they are just growing up. Plenty of flash-in-the-pan distros have come and gone (Anyone still talking about Gentoo? Remember when people couldn't shut up about it?) yet RedHat and Debian keep on going strong.
I think he's talking about the RedHat community, which is nothing like it once was. On the corporate side of things, RedHat is stronger than ever. Here at New Mexico's Child, Youth and Family Department, we use mostly SuSE because we run a Novell network and get free licensing and support from Novell, but we also run quite a few RedHat servers because many commercial applications will refuse to install onto anything else.
No, no excuse left. And have you noticed how quiet the conservative base has gotten recently? Remember what discussions of politics on slashdot were like, even two years ago? Left wing opinions got shouted down pretty quick, and anyone criticizing Bush found themselves embroiled in a flamewar. Now even the hard core conservatives are realizing that Bush is not a conservative. He's a bandit, playing a smash and grab job on the whole country.
Saying "I told you so" brings no consolation, either. I was right, this administration is made up of liars and a thieves, and now nearly everyone knows it, but that doesn't make me happy. No one is going to learn anything from this in the long term, so even if the fascist thugs are booted out of all positions of power, they will just bide their time and do it again in ten years.
Odds are a twelve year old will know what to do with this stuff. I was into girls (in a kissing and grinding against kind of way, when they'd let me) by age six, and masturbating by nine. I think I'm a bit of an early bloomer, but not "getting it" by twelve? That's a very late start, in my opinion.
Like, well, showing your new national ID card, maybe?;) Oooh! Cool, two birds with one stone, we protect the Children from the peddy-philes and we get to tie an identity to anything browsed at public libraries.
The right to keep and bear arms is indeed an acknowledgement that a mere 200+ years ago this country was won with arms used to rise up against an oppresive government (you've gotten much better, UK;) and that the time may come again when action is necessary.
Do you really believe that some citizen's milita is going to do squat against the US military? Just out of curiosity, how many bullets do you own? How many bullets are readily available on the free market? How many people can make their own? The US military that the total number of bullets available domestically to civilians, from the market and home manufacture, is enough for about two days of serious fighting. That's not even counting the tanks, planes, mortars, and nuclear frikkin' weapons.
Yah, you and your drinking buddies are sure gonna stomp those military fools, come the revolution.
So women don't just want a "nice on the inside" type of man.
Nothing in the article says this. Where are you getting this from? The study does not judge the relative importance of different drives in a woman. Perhaps, even though she is attracted to a certain type of man on a physical level, she will pick a man who has lots of money. Or treats her nice. Or badly, who knows, women are weird that way.
My point being that you can't draw that conclusion from the evidence given.
Please, please do not go down that road. I have a good friend who got into that scene, bought that book, went to seminars, etc. Ended up spending thousands of dollars on those people only to be sued by the IRS and owe tens of thousands more. Those people are scam artists, plain and simple, and their "theories" about the IRS are the biggest load of horseshit ever. I will repeat: their theories about taxation DO NOT STAND UP IN COURT, no matter what personal anecdotes they tell you. Get out now, while you still have some money left.
No, irony is kind of like bronzey or goldy, only with iron. Ironic is when you write a song about irony where none of the situations mentioned are in fact ironic at all.
What, are you new here? No, by your slashdot ID, I'd say you've been around long enough to know this site has an anti Microsoft bias.
But all bias aside, this is a pretty egregious sales tactic. They are basically threatening their customers. I mean, when's the last time you heard of a used car salesman saying something like, "Well, the fromitz on your car is expired and the McPhearson Valve looks like it's ready to blow. You'd better leave it in our shop so we can see what else is wrong with it. We really can't let you drive that thing outta here, you'd better buy this new Vista Cruiser."
Used car salesmen can be seedy, but this takes the cake. No amount of excuses and afronted rhetoric from Microsoft flacks and fanboys will change the fact that this is far far worse than we typically see in the sleaziest of legitimate professions. It is more on par with the tactics of organized crime.
Grey Parrots are among the smartest of birds. Alex is an African grey parrot whose use of language has been studied by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, currently at Brandeis University. Alex knows about 100 words and can understand abstract concepts like shape and color. Not only that, he has taught other parrots to speak, even going so far as to stop them when they pronounce a word wrong and saying the correct pronunciation.
Paper tape? You were lucky! When I was a lad, we woke up two hours before we went to bed, ate a breakfast of cold poison and went to work for 28 hours a day in the code mine. After we'd mined the code using a bent spoon, we'd punch it into our arms and legs, as we didn't have paper. Our boss would crush our genitals in a vice if he found any errors. Then we'd go home where our da would kill us and throw us in a hole, and we'd have to get up and do it all again.
But try telling that to kids these days!
Seriously Taco, 30 is young. Wait till you get to be my age, 35. Then you'll know what old really is.;-)
Second serious reply to my post, so I guess I have to say it: Dihydrogen Monoxide is WATER. The joke is that if you make something sound scary enough, in vague enough terms, people will believe it's a threat. I thought everyone here would get the joke, but apparently not.
Where were the servers he broke into? In the US. Therefore, he broke US law in the US. When a person breaks a law of another country, in that country, and then goes back to his country, that's what extradition treaties are for. Now, I don't think we have an extradition treaty with Iran, but if we did and someone went to Iran, insulted the government, and returned to the US, we would have to hand that person over to the Iranian government if they asked. I'm not saying any of this is necessarily right or wrong, just pointing out how it is.
Oh, just the basics, you know, that capitalism by it's nature will concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands until there's a big messy collapse and revolution. We don't know for sure there will be a big collapse, but the system does seem to promote concentration of wealth into fewer hands.
You mention Vernor Vinge, and I have to mention "True Names." For anyone that hasn't read it, it is the best cyberpunk short story ever. What with all the bot nets and MMORPGs around today, Vernor's vision of cyberspace is looking more and more realistic. Then think about all the "unlicensed" computer tech the protagonist keeps buried under his house and ask yourself, with DRM heading in the direction it is, will this be us in five years? Vernor is some kind of prophet, I tell you.
I'm no fan of Communism. Try to have a discussion with a Communist, you'll find most of them are as moon headed as Libertarians. Marx had some insight into the problems of Capitalism, but his solutions weren't workable in the real world.
Hah! I cut my teeth on a teletype hooked up to a university mainframe. I was six, my friend's dad was a comp-sci professor. He let me play lunar lander and hunt the wumpus on his uni account.
After that, it was a TRS-80 model I my dad bought in'79 or '80. We had an account with CompuServ and Genie and a 300 baud modem. Later he got the expansion interface with floppy drives, woot!
My first computer was a TI99 4/A. After that I owned a Commodore 64, and that was when I really go into the BBS scene. My friends had Apples. Later, I got some generic IBM compatible, and then an Macintosh+ with two floppies and no hard drive.
The only kind of home computer I never owned but really, really wanted was an Amiga.
It's troll tuesday. Slashcode turns all troll downmods into positive karma on tuesdays, didn't you know? Anyways, I've been here since the beginning. My karma was crazy high before the cap. It hasn't budged from "excellent" since. I make 4-5 +5 comments per week, at least. I could give a rats ass if some humor impaired mod thinks I'm a troll.
Slashdot Mirror
Sad that you take greed as an immutable part of human nature. It's there, it's just not all that's there, and it is influenced far more by circumstance than nature.
Look at some of the research being conducted by modern economists. Turns out the "selfish actor" theory is flawed, people value fairness and reciprocity far more than they do profit. And if the rules of the game permit punishment of free-riders, everyone cooprates and everyone wins.
Apathy also is not a big part of human nature. When's the last time you saw an apathetic four year old? No, apathy is beaten into us. Believing in greed and apathy doesn't make you more effective, it makes you a sad and lonely excuse for a human being.
Your kind of cynicism isn't based in reality, it is a defensive raction based in pain and suffering. It can't help you, it won't keep you safe, all it will do is cut you off from the only source of comfort and understanding you could hope to have, other human beings.
Anything you lose interest in after ejaculating is pornography.
Gah, no the other side isn't much better. I wish it were, but the damn Democrats can't get their act together. Still, they are a little better. In the end, it's not about what party you belong to, but about whether you are a corrupt shit who would sell his grandmother into slavery for a buck.
I know he's talking nonsense, I was just being nice. He's probably thinking that because all the Linux geeks are talking about distros like Mandriva and Ubuntu that old school distros must be fading away. No, they are just growing up. Plenty of flash-in-the-pan distros have come and gone (Anyone still talking about Gentoo? Remember when people couldn't shut up about it?) yet RedHat and Debian keep on going strong.
I think he's talking about the RedHat community, which is nothing like it once was. On the corporate side of things, RedHat is stronger than ever. Here at New Mexico's Child, Youth and Family Department, we use mostly SuSE because we run a Novell network and get free licensing and support from Novell, but we also run quite a few RedHat servers because many commercial applications will refuse to install onto anything else.
No, no excuse left. And have you noticed how quiet the conservative base has gotten recently? Remember what discussions of politics on slashdot were like, even two years ago? Left wing opinions got shouted down pretty quick, and anyone criticizing Bush found themselves embroiled in a flamewar. Now even the hard core conservatives are realizing that Bush is not a conservative. He's a bandit, playing a smash and grab job on the whole country.
Saying "I told you so" brings no consolation, either. I was right, this administration is made up of liars and a thieves, and now nearly everyone knows it, but that doesn't make me happy. No one is going to learn anything from this in the long term, so even if the fascist thugs are booted out of all positions of power, they will just bide their time and do it again in ten years.
Odds are a twelve year old will know what to do with this stuff. I was into girls (in a kissing and grinding against kind of way, when they'd let me) by age six, and masturbating by nine. I think I'm a bit of an early bloomer, but not "getting it" by twelve? That's a very late start, in my opinion.
Like, well, showing your new national ID card, maybe? ;)
Oooh! Cool, two birds with one stone, we protect the Children from the peddy-philes and we get to tie an identity to anything browsed at public libraries.
The right to keep and bear arms is indeed an acknowledgement that a mere 200+ years ago this country was won with arms used to rise up against an oppresive government (you've gotten much better, UK ;) and that the time may come again when action is necessary.
Do you really believe that some citizen's milita is going to do squat against the US military? Just out of curiosity, how many bullets do you own? How many bullets are readily available on the free market? How many people can make their own? The US military that the total number of bullets available domestically to civilians, from the market and home manufacture, is enough for about two days of serious fighting. That's not even counting the tanks, planes, mortars, and nuclear frikkin' weapons.
Yah, you and your drinking buddies are sure gonna stomp those military fools, come the revolution.
More impressions below if you Read More.
I'm impressed with the lack of impressions below.
So women don't just want a "nice on the inside" type of man.
Nothing in the article says this. Where are you getting this from? The study does not judge the relative importance of different drives in a woman. Perhaps, even though she is attracted to a certain type of man on a physical level, she will pick a man who has lots of money. Or treats her nice. Or badly, who knows, women are weird that way.
My point being that you can't draw that conclusion from the evidence given.
Please, please do not go down that road. I have a good friend who got into that scene, bought that book, went to seminars, etc. Ended up spending thousands of dollars on those people only to be sued by the IRS and owe tens of thousands more. Those people are scam artists, plain and simple, and their "theories" about the IRS are the biggest load of horseshit ever. I will repeat: their theories about taxation DO NOT STAND UP IN COURT, no matter what personal anecdotes they tell you. Get out now, while you still have some money left.
No, irony is kind of like bronzey or goldy, only with iron. Ironic is when you write a song about irony where none of the situations mentioned are in fact ironic at all.
What, are you new here? No, by your slashdot ID, I'd say you've been around long enough to know this site has an anti Microsoft bias.
But all bias aside, this is a pretty egregious sales tactic. They are basically threatening their customers. I mean, when's the last time you heard of a used car salesman saying something like, "Well, the fromitz on your car is expired and the McPhearson Valve looks like it's ready to blow. You'd better leave it in our shop so we can see what else is wrong with it. We really can't let you drive that thing outta here, you'd better buy this new Vista Cruiser."
Used car salesmen can be seedy, but this takes the cake. No amount of excuses and afronted rhetoric from Microsoft flacks and fanboys will change the fact that this is far far worse than we typically see in the sleaziest of legitimate professions. It is more on par with the tactics of organized crime.
Grey Parrots are among the smartest of birds. Alex is an African grey parrot whose use of language has been studied by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, currently at Brandeis University. Alex knows about 100 words and can understand abstract concepts like shape and color. Not only that, he has taught other parrots to speak, even going so far as to stop them when they pronounce a word wrong and saying the correct pronunciation.
Paper tape? You were lucky! When I was a lad, we woke up two hours before we went to bed, ate a breakfast of cold poison and went to work for 28 hours a day in the code mine. After we'd mined the code using a bent spoon, we'd punch it into our arms and legs, as we didn't have paper. Our boss would crush our genitals in a vice if he found any errors. Then we'd go home where our da would kill us and throw us in a hole, and we'd have to get up and do it all again.
;-)
But try telling that to kids these days!
Seriously Taco, 30 is young. Wait till you get to be my age, 35. Then you'll know what old really is.
I'm CmdrTaco, and so's my wife!
Second serious reply to my post, so I guess I have to say it: Dihydrogen Monoxide is WATER. The joke is that if you make something sound scary enough, in vague enough terms, people will believe it's a threat. I thought everyone here would get the joke, but apparently not.
Where were the servers he broke into? In the US. Therefore, he broke US law in the US. When a person breaks a law of another country, in that country, and then goes back to his country, that's what extradition treaties are for. Now, I don't think we have an extradition treaty with Iran, but if we did and someone went to Iran, insulted the government, and returned to the US, we would have to hand that person over to the Iranian government if they asked. I'm not saying any of this is necessarily right or wrong, just pointing out how it is.
Oh, just the basics, you know, that capitalism by it's nature will concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands until there's a big messy collapse and revolution. We don't know for sure there will be a big collapse, but the system does seem to promote concentration of wealth into fewer hands.
You mention Vernor Vinge, and I have to mention "True Names." For anyone that hasn't read it, it is the best cyberpunk short story ever. What with all the bot nets and MMORPGs around today, Vernor's vision of cyberspace is looking more and more realistic. Then think about all the "unlicensed" computer tech the protagonist keeps buried under his house and ask yourself, with DRM heading in the direction it is, will this be us in five years? Vernor is some kind of prophet, I tell you.
I can't believe they would be so irresponsible as to use dihydrogen monoxide for data storage. That stuff is deadly!
I'm no fan of Communism. Try to have a discussion with a Communist, you'll find most of them are as moon headed as Libertarians. Marx had some insight into the problems of Capitalism, but his solutions weren't workable in the real world.
Hah! I cut my teeth on a teletype hooked up to a university mainframe. I was six, my friend's dad was a comp-sci professor. He let me play lunar lander and hunt the wumpus on his uni account.
After that, it was a TRS-80 model I my dad bought in'79 or '80. We had an account with CompuServ and Genie and a 300 baud modem. Later he got the expansion interface with floppy drives, woot!
My first computer was a TI99 4/A. After that I owned a Commodore 64, and that was when I really go into the BBS scene. My friends had Apples. Later, I got some generic IBM compatible, and then an Macintosh+ with two floppies and no hard drive.
The only kind of home computer I never owned but really, really wanted was an Amiga.
It's troll tuesday. Slashcode turns all troll downmods into positive karma on tuesdays, didn't you know? Anyways, I've been here since the beginning. My karma was crazy high before the cap. It hasn't budged from "excellent" since. I make 4-5 +5 comments per week, at least. I could give a rats ass if some humor impaired mod thinks I'm a troll.