Well, look, the US is in no position to demand anything. If the rest of the world wants to set up their own root servers and use them, the US is pretty screwed. The US may have invented the Internet, but that doesn't mean anything. The other countries around the world all paid for their part of it, if they want to elect someone else to take care of root DNS, they can and there isn't anything the US can do.
* It looks like you just reworded "the U.S. went to Iraq for oil." B.S. If they went there for oil, why am I still paying outrageous prices for gas?
Many people make this point, indicating that they don't understand what really happened. The US didn't go to Iraq so that you could have cheap oil. It went so that a few greedy bastards could have more control over the oil supply and profit off it even more than they are. Why shoul they care if you have cheap oil? They also went to profit off the war as they never have been able to before, what with all the no bid contracts and military outsourcing of basic services.
Even if the weapons were there and were moved, which is unlikely, whatever the Republican mouthpieces at Faux News say, you have to admit that before we went, we knew where they were, they were contained in an area far away with little chance of ever being used against us. Now, according to your logic, all we have done by going there is lose track of them. Great!
You are seriously brainwashed by the right wing media. Yeah, you heard me. The rich own the media, they are right wing, therefore, the media is right wing. No matter how many times you and people like you want to lie about the 'left wing media' there's no such thing. Just more propaganda from the rich, trying to brainwash fools like you into thinking that their interests are your interests so you spread their propaganda, fight their wars, and basically do what you are told so they can keep on profitting off of you. Chump.
Here in Albuquerque, and in many other places, government is encouragin infill by charging more taxes the further out you go from the center. Many neighborhoods could be improved through the gradual addition of multi-family homes and local services.
In San Francisco, where I used to live, you can see that with only moderate housing densities (mostly 3-5 story buildings with 3-10 units per building) you get many benefits. Public transit enters an upward spiral of cost effectiveness and useability. As costs come down due to higher ridership, it becomes easier to route busses to many more areas at many more times of day, increasing the number of riders, and so on. Also, it is economically feasible to have corner stores every block or so.
I made one trip per month to the big grocery store, most of the time I bought what I needed for that day right across the street. Within one block in any direction, there were two small corner stores, one medium sized market, a health food store, video store, six restaraunts, and lots of shops (I lived in Hayes Valley.) Most neighborhoods in the city were like that.
Here in Albuquerque, we have much sprawl, though not as bad as some places. The transit system is weak, especially at night, though improvements are being made. Traffic is beginning to be a problem here, with the average commute time freeway speed falling from 60mph to 49 mph in the last ten years or so. Surface roads are becoming congested, too. Urban infill and mass transit would help solve many of these problems, and I applaud the city government for trying to do something about it before it becomes even more of a problem.
Just couldn't resist a little progressive/vegan/environmentalist/neopagan bashing, could you? Did you just completely make that up or can you point to something written by these progressives/vegans/environmentalists/neopagans that actually proves your point? Care to provide a link? Could you explain how this reply is AT ALL germain to the grandparent poster? Nah, didn't think so.
Hmm, more like "Tool Time" with Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor.
Tim: So today we're going to overclock a Pentium 3 to over 4,000 Jigahertz using this vat of liquid nitrogen. Wough, wough, wough. Al: Careful with that, Tim. That's minus 320 degrees you know... Tim: I know that, Al, now help me here, I can't quite... reach... AAAAIIIII! My balls! My balls have frozen solid! Al: Oh no! Let me just... (CRASH! TINKLE, TINKLE.) Sorry about that, Tim.
I blame my trite opening on monday, a load of new Tyan motherboards that simply won't work with 2.4 kernels, and an installed userbase of our diskless system at Los Alamos that doesn't want to upgrade.
See, just like a leftist, not taking responsibility for his actions.;-)
So first off, I apologize for my tone. And the underhanded ad-hominem. And the sloppy, off handed debating style. Again, monday. And let me add that I don't hope to convert you to my way of thinking, and don't in fact consider your morals to be evil or even questionable. I hope that we can both gain from the discussion, refining and strengthening our own points of view, because it is obvious we are both on the same page about the important things. Namely, that it is every person's right to make for themselves a system of philosophy that works for them and that questioning oneself and one's society are noble endeavors.
That out of the way, let's procede. I said that capitalism rewards the lazy and stupid, to which you replied that many poor people are lazy and stupid. While that is true, it does not negate my point, and it's corallary, that capitalism does not reward the intelligent and hard working.
Now hold on! you might be saying, that doesn't sound like the capitalism I know. Well, okay. In many cases capitalism does reward the intelligent and hard working, and not reward the lazy and stupid. But we shouldn't judge a system by the ways it works, but the ways it fails. And capitalism fails often.
What works is being part of the dominant culture. One is fairly consistently rewarded for being born rich, white and male, regardless of intelligence or hard work. One of the key perks of being born in the dominant class is that nothing will ever force one to confront one's cultural myths. The cultural myth of the dominant class is that capitalism is a meritocracy, and those in the dominant class are there through merit, not luck.
You will find many lazy and stupid members of the dominant class who have inordinate amounts of power, and conversely, you will find many members of the lower classes and ethnic minorities who are both intelligent and hard working who can not advance to the level they deserve.
True, this is not an inherent attribute of the capitalist system, but by failing to include any real checks or balances to this fact of life, it encourages a system of unfairness.
You know, I was rereading part of your post, and I just realized I skipped right over the part where you were mentioning the oppresion you face due to your sexual preference. Hmm, guess I'm not going to score too many points with my previous argument if you've already managed to reconcile your belief system to the fact that oppression happens to intelligent, hard working people despite our capitalist system.
I was being a little black and white, and surely there are more than two sides to any issue. I should have said 'all sides' because all sides of all issues love to use this trick of redefinition.
Let me say first off that in one way of looking at it, all property is theft. Someone takes something that was a public good and threatens anyone else who wants to use it. This is what Marx spoke of as primitive accumulation. If you think of taxes as theft, it is just as logical to see all property as theft.
Let me take this next bit in reverse order. First, to the social contract. This is like a EULA. Don't like it? Leave or act within it to change it. Your parents chose which social contract you would be brought up in for you, before you were able to make contracts on your own. Now you can, so if you don't like it, leave. But it wouldn't be fair to allow you to stay and reap the benefits without paying, now would it?
I know you would like to be able to pick and choose which benefits you got, but you are being somewhat shortsighted. You may not need to make use of those benefits directly now, but you may someday.
And you do benefit from such things as social securi
Gotta love the moderators here. You got modded 'troll' and I didn't, when it was obvious that I was trolling you. You responded in kind and got modded troll. Guess a low UID has it's perks.
Anyway, I wasn't really trolling, just trying to make a dramatic point about punishment. It was a bit over the top. I blame monday. If you had read what I wrote, you would see that I was not talking about corporal punishment, and that what I referenced admitted that punishment works, but is not as effective as positive reinforcement for creating new behaviors.
As a certified behavior analyst, I find it shocking you would even argue the point. It is well accepted in the field and backed up by stacks of research. Show me a reference to a legitimate scientific study that shows that punishment is more effective and I may believe you. As it stands, I provided a reference and can provide hundreds more, you have brought nothing to the discussion.
For extra credit, discuss the other two operant conditioning techniques (negative reinforcement and response cost) and how well they work as motivation for behavioral change.
Just out of curiosity, what level of schooling do you have and where did you get your degree?
And by the way, it is well known that punishment is more effective than reinforcement. Of course, you never bothered to learn about that, and would probably attempt to deny it if you had.
Although reinforcement is generally more effective and should be used most often, punishment may also be used in an effective program of behavior management. The defining feature of punishment is that it should create an unpleasant situation for the child either because adults take away something the child likes, or because adults provide something the child does not like. The classic example of punishment is spanking. Because some research suggests that frequent spanking may produce negative effects in children, many parents opt to use this technique sparingly.
There are a million more pages, on and off the web, to back this up. This isn't just conjecture, either. This is hard scientific fact. You can debate why it is true all you want, but experiment after experiement backs up the simple fact that reinforcement is generally more effective.
Dumbass. Now shut up and let the smart people talk, you idiot. Tell me where you live and I'll come shut you up, you ignorant shit-for-brains.
Oh, I know what libertarians think, in general. I know they aren't anarchists (though I suggest YOU go look up what anarchists actually think, and you may realize they aren't that different from libertarians. They aren't really about no government as the name suggests, just no coercive government, like libertarians.)
Most libertarian thinkers I have talked to suggest contract as the overriding principle of government. You make a contract for protection from fraud and violence, and enter a contract with a civil court for contract dispute resolution.
In mentioning public goods, you bring up a problem faced by capitalists as well. Not just public goods, but all externalities, good and bad. How do you keep a neighbor from polluting? How do you deal with natural monopolies such as power infrastructure, telecommunications or roads? Hard questions. Our current system provides some decent answers. Maybe not the best, but you'll need some extraordinary proof to convince me you have better ones.
Realize that in our democracy/republic, we do things by contract. We have a contract with our government. We pay our taxes and vote, they do what we tell them to/think best with those taxes. Don't like the contract? Work to change it, leave, or otherwise opt out (live in a cave, etc.)
You say you didn't sign anything? The contract is an implied social contract, no less valid because you didn't sign. Like a EULA. Use the roads? You agreed to the contract. In short, we have a good system though it could use some work. I agree with many libertarian (and anarchist) principles.
I just see too many hypocritical libertarians who just want something for nothing while espousing the opposite, so I like to give libertarians a hard time. But like I said, I do like arguing with libertarians, because although there are many kooks in who call themselves libertarians, there are many more intelligent, rational folks who do want to create a better system, and through the dialectic process, those kinds of libertarians and I can both strengthen and enrich our ideas. Even if we don't agree in the end, we both come out of it with something better than we went in.
Unlike arguing with fundamentalists, where afterwards I just feel like I need a shower.
You had to sit at your console and meditate for hours. The authors put in some kind of question system so you couldn't automate it. You actually had to sit there and do nothing. So I hear. I never actually "played" it.
Well, I think the potion of booze is appropriate. As well as some powder of partying. But then, he's given all that up to be a Avatar of Yawhe, hasn't he? Hilarious "Necon Nethack," by the way.
How can you call yourself a libertarian and at the same time call for the criminalization of abortion? Fetuses can't enter into contracts. Without a contract with a security company, a person can't expect society to protect him or her. Or would you steal taxes from us and use that to fund your little protection service for the unborn?
As a libertarian, I would assume that you wouldn't want the government stealing from us to fund anything. Also, as a libertarian, I would assume that you would support a person's right to do anything they wanted to themselves as long as it didn't harm others. Or do you assume that we have some inherent obligation to continue our lives for others sake?
For the record, I'm not a libertarian, don't think taxes are theft, think abortion should be legal, think the government should sponsor stem cell research, think euthanasia is a simple matter of personal choice, and don't think you sound like any kind of libertarian I've ever talked to, and I love to argue with libertarians.
You sound more like a fundamentalist, and I hate arguing with fundamentalists.
I must make the disclaimer that my father is a psychologist, so I may be a bit biased. From what I understand, experimental psychologists practice the scientific method as well as any other discipline. Falsifiable hypothesis are created, experiments are created to test these hypothesis, and theories created from the succesful predictions of the hypothesis. Some theories and experiments have to do with psychological function, and some with treatment methodology. Clinical psychologists such as my father, who specializes in the psychology of the deaf and is head of Connecticut's psychological treatment program for the deaf, keep abreast of these developments in professional journals and modify their treatment methodology based on what has been proven through experiment to work best. We may be a long way from truely understanding human psychology in any kind of complete sense, but we do know what works and what doesn't in treating many kinds of psychological issues, and this is a long way from being Snake Oil, as you call it.
It does explain what a root nameserver is (kind of) but please, mods, just because the URL includes DNS-HOWTO doesn't mean that's what it really is...
It's really more of a "Dummies Guide." For perverts. With computers that drink too much. And therefore can't remember things like IP addresses. Such as the address of the dildo store their owner browsed just the other night.
This is where you start arguing, "What do you mean capitalism doesn't reward the thuggish? Haven't you heard of Enron and Halliburton?"
Okay, I'll bite. Capitalism rewards the lazy and stupid, too. What world do you live in where this isn't painfully obvious?
This is where you start arguing that any results you don't like are because people aren't practising "real" capitalism. I love how both sides resort to that.
Some other points about your painfully cliche libertarian post. "Seized taxpayer income"?!? Ever heard of the social contract? If you don't like paying taxes go live in a cave and don't use any of the things that my tax dollars paid for, you cheapskate. Or move out of the country and go found your own.
The Free Market isn't perfect. Communism isn't perfect. Hell, even Democracy isn't perfect. We would all do well to think critically even about our favored ideologies. And our least favored ideologies. There may be some truth and insight hidden in crap.
"I first became aware of this, about 10 years ago. The summer my oldest boy Bill Jr. died. You know that carnival that comes to town every year? Well that year it came with a ride called the Mixer. The man said, keep your head and arms inside the mixer at all times. But Bill Jr., he was a daredevil. Just like his old man. He was leaning out saying, "Hey everybody, look at me, look at me". Bang! he was decapitated. They found his head over by the snowcone consession." Stuart, The Dead Milkemen
Ah, now we are getting somwhere! Evolution may be random, but it has evolved something which is not. We can choose the course we take from here. Anyway, I was nit picking on a side point. Biological evolution doesn't follow a path. Pet peeve of mine, people who think biological evolution goes "up" like a ladder, with later species in some way better than preceding species, leading to some sort of pinnacle of evolution, namely, us.
Biological evolution doesn't work that way. Assuming that humans can agree on a set of criteria for what "better" means, human personal, cultural, and intellectual evolution can work that way. I agree that we are far more advanced in any rational way of looking at it than any other animal. I can still see the value of other animals for what they really are instead of having to anthropomorphasize them in some hippy-dippy fashion, "Gee they are as smart as us, they have culture and science and art and they would be driving little tiny automobiles if they weren't more spiritual and in tune with nature and stuff."
Not only are humans smart enough to see the bad stuff coming, because of us now every critter has a better chance of surviving and passing on it's genes. And when we really figure out space travel, there will be a whole galaxy worth of uninhabited planets to which the gene lines of Earth can spread. While any species wiped out by humans is a shame and a waste, if some species have to die in order to ensure that the rest get to spread out to other planets and all Mother Earth's little eggs aren't in one fragile basket anymore, that's a fair trade in my book. As Asimov said, the dinosaurs died off because they didn't have a space program.
Oh, please. I am not a scientist, I don't have any papers published myself. All I'm trying to say is that the poster I was replying to was talking out his ass without even having RTFA. Look, I get annoyed when people who don't know anything about something try to make it sound as if they do. Don't you? I'm no acedemic elitist, but peer review and the scientific method are the best systems we have available for seperating the wheat from the chaff.
Very wrong. Stimulus response is not the same as abstract reasoning. Your dog experiences a stimulus (hunger) and exhibited a response that worked in the past (nudging the bowl). Had you read TFA, you would know that careful scientific experiments by people much smarter than you have shown their is a difference. If you really care to argue, get yourself a degree in animal behaviour, get a paper published, and then we'll talk. Dumbass.
Just a nit-pick. Evolution doesn't say we are heading in the same direction. Evolution isn't heading in any direction. It's random. What counts as fit today might not count tomorrow. Big brains could be an evolutionary side track, like big bodies for the dinosaurs. We are only 'far ahead' by one way of looking at things. Did you know that ants make up ten percent of the biomass of the world? Nothing else comes close. I'd say thats pretty far ahead. Sharks haven't changed in millions of years, neither have cockroaches. They could very well be around millions of years after our big brains got us into some kind of trouble they couldn't get us out of.
Well, I'm not saying your friend didn't come up with this independently, just that it was a fairly famous net.story a while back. And it's funny enough to be worthy of mention.
This comes from a famous urban legend. The situation is true, and the user is dumb enough to warrant the line, but the tech in question never said it, they just said they wished they had said it. See here for more details and a good laugh.
Yeah, why should some other nerd be making a buck when I'm not? Let some faceless corporation make the money. Nerds should be above such things. God knows I am.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, look, the US is in no position to demand anything. If the rest of the world wants to set up their own root servers and use them, the US is pretty screwed. The US may have invented the Internet, but that doesn't mean anything. The other countries around the world all paid for their part of it, if they want to elect someone else to take care of root DNS, they can and there isn't anything the US can do.
* It looks like you just reworded "the U.S. went to Iraq for oil." B.S. If they went there for oil, why am I still paying outrageous prices for gas?
Many people make this point, indicating that they don't understand what really happened. The US didn't go to Iraq so that you could have cheap oil. It went so that a few greedy bastards could have more control over the oil supply and profit off it even more than they are. Why shoul they care if you have cheap oil? They also went to profit off the war as they never have been able to before, what with all the no bid contracts and military outsourcing of basic services.
Even if the weapons were there and were moved, which is unlikely, whatever the Republican mouthpieces at Faux News say, you have to admit that before we went, we knew where they were, they were contained in an area far away with little chance of ever being used against us. Now, according to your logic, all we have done by going there is lose track of them. Great!
You are seriously brainwashed by the right wing media. Yeah, you heard me. The rich own the media, they are right wing, therefore, the media is right wing. No matter how many times you and people like you want to lie about the 'left wing media' there's no such thing. Just more propaganda from the rich, trying to brainwash fools like you into thinking that their interests are your interests so you spread their propaganda, fight their wars, and basically do what you are told so they can keep on profitting off of you. Chump.
Here in Albuquerque, and in many other places, government is encouragin infill by charging more taxes the further out you go from the center. Many neighborhoods could be improved through the gradual addition of multi-family homes and local services.
In San Francisco, where I used to live, you can see that with only moderate housing densities (mostly 3-5 story buildings with 3-10 units per building) you get many benefits. Public transit enters an upward spiral of cost effectiveness and useability. As costs come down due to higher ridership, it becomes easier to route busses to many more areas at many more times of day, increasing the number of riders, and so on. Also, it is economically feasible to have corner stores every block or so.
I made one trip per month to the big grocery store, most of the time I bought what I needed for that day right across the street. Within one block in any direction, there were two small corner stores, one medium sized market, a health food store, video store, six restaraunts, and lots of shops (I lived in Hayes Valley.) Most neighborhoods in the city were like that.
Here in Albuquerque, we have much sprawl, though not as bad as some places. The transit system is weak, especially at night, though improvements are being made. Traffic is beginning to be a problem here, with the average commute time freeway speed falling from 60mph to 49 mph in the last ten years or so. Surface roads are becoming congested, too. Urban infill and mass transit would help solve many of these problems, and I applaud the city government for trying to do something about it before it becomes even more of a problem.
Just couldn't resist a little progressive/vegan/environmentalist/neopagan bashing, could you? Did you just completely make that up or can you point to something written by these progressives/vegans/environmentalists/neopagans that actually proves your point? Care to provide a link? Could you explain how this reply is AT ALL germain to the grandparent poster? Nah, didn't think so.
Hmm, more like "Tool Time" with Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor.
Tim: So today we're going to overclock a Pentium 3 to over 4,000 Jigahertz using this vat of liquid nitrogen. Wough, wough, wough.
Al: Careful with that, Tim. That's minus 320 degrees you know...
Tim: I know that, Al, now help me here, I can't quite... reach... AAAAIIIII! My balls! My balls have frozen solid!
Al: Oh no! Let me just... (CRASH! TINKLE, TINKLE.) Sorry about that, Tim.
I blame my trite opening on monday, a load of new Tyan motherboards that simply won't work with 2.4 kernels, and an installed userbase of our diskless system at Los Alamos that doesn't want to upgrade.
;-)
See, just like a leftist, not taking responsibility for his actions.
So first off, I apologize for my tone. And the underhanded ad-hominem. And the sloppy, off handed debating style. Again, monday. And let me add that I don't hope to convert you to my way of thinking, and don't in fact consider your morals to be evil or even questionable. I hope that we can both gain from the discussion, refining and strengthening our own points of view, because it is obvious we are both on the same page about the important things. Namely, that it is every person's right to make for themselves a system of philosophy that works for them and that questioning oneself and one's society are noble endeavors.
That out of the way, let's procede. I said that capitalism rewards the lazy and stupid, to which you replied that many poor people are lazy and stupid. While that is true, it does not negate my point, and it's corallary, that capitalism does not reward the intelligent and hard working.
Now hold on! you might be saying, that doesn't sound like the capitalism I know. Well, okay. In many cases capitalism does reward the intelligent and hard working, and not reward the lazy and stupid. But we shouldn't judge a system by the ways it works, but the ways it fails. And capitalism fails often.
What works is being part of the dominant culture. One is fairly consistently rewarded for being born rich, white and male, regardless of intelligence or hard work. One of the key perks of being born in the dominant class is that nothing will ever force one to confront one's cultural myths. The cultural myth of the dominant class is that capitalism is a meritocracy, and those in the dominant class are there through merit, not luck.
You will find many lazy and stupid members of the dominant class who have inordinate amounts of power, and conversely, you will find many members of the lower classes and ethnic minorities who are both intelligent and hard working who can not advance to the level they deserve.
True, this is not an inherent attribute of the capitalist system, but by failing to include any real checks or balances to this fact of life, it encourages a system of unfairness.
You know, I was rereading part of your post, and I just realized I skipped right over the part where you were mentioning the oppresion you face due to your sexual preference. Hmm, guess I'm not going to score too many points with my previous argument if you've already managed to reconcile your belief system to the fact that oppression happens to intelligent, hard working people despite our capitalist system.
I was being a little black and white, and surely there are more than two sides to any issue. I should have said 'all sides' because all sides of all issues love to use this trick of redefinition.
Let me say first off that in one way of looking at it, all property is theft. Someone takes something that was a public good and threatens anyone else who wants to use it. This is what Marx spoke of as primitive accumulation. If you think of taxes as theft, it is just as logical to see all property as theft.
Let me take this next bit in reverse order. First, to the social contract. This is like a EULA. Don't like it? Leave or act within it to change it. Your parents chose which social contract you would be brought up in for you, before you were able to make contracts on your own. Now you can, so if you don't like it, leave. But it wouldn't be fair to allow you to stay and reap the benefits without paying, now would it?
I know you would like to be able to pick and choose which benefits you got, but you are being somewhat shortsighted. You may not need to make use of those benefits directly now, but you may someday.
And you do benefit from such things as social securi
How can you nitpick over a point like that? Do you have any idea what the queers are doing to the soil?
Gotta love the moderators here. You got modded 'troll' and I didn't, when it was obvious that I was trolling you. You responded in kind and got modded troll. Guess a low UID has it's perks.
Anyway, I wasn't really trolling, just trying to make a dramatic point about punishment. It was a bit over the top. I blame monday. If you had read what I wrote, you would see that I was not talking about corporal punishment, and that what I referenced admitted that punishment works, but is not as effective as positive reinforcement for creating new behaviors.
As a certified behavior analyst, I find it shocking you would even argue the point. It is well accepted in the field and backed up by stacks of research. Show me a reference to a legitimate scientific study that shows that punishment is more effective and I may believe you. As it stands, I provided a reference and can provide hundreds more, you have brought nothing to the discussion.
For extra credit, discuss the other two operant conditioning techniques (negative reinforcement and response cost) and how well they work as motivation for behavioral change.
Just out of curiosity, what level of schooling do you have and where did you get your degree?
I'm sorry, but what is well know is exactly the reverse of what you say. Here's an excerpt from the top google page on a search for "behavior punishment reinforcement":
There are a million more pages, on and off the web, to back this up. This isn't just conjecture, either. This is hard scientific fact. You can debate why it is true all you want, but experiment after experiement backs up the simple fact that reinforcement is generally more effective.
Dumbass. Now shut up and let the smart people talk, you idiot. Tell me where you live and I'll come shut you up, you ignorant shit-for-brains.
Whoah, wait, you're right! Punishment DOES work!
Oh, I know what libertarians think, in general. I know they aren't anarchists (though I suggest YOU go look up what anarchists actually think, and you may realize they aren't that different from libertarians. They aren't really about no government as the name suggests, just no coercive government, like libertarians.)
Most libertarian thinkers I have talked to suggest contract as the overriding principle of government. You make a contract for protection from fraud and violence, and enter a contract with a civil court for contract dispute resolution.
In mentioning public goods, you bring up a problem faced by capitalists as well. Not just public goods, but all externalities, good and bad. How do you keep a neighbor from polluting? How do you deal with natural monopolies such as power infrastructure, telecommunications or roads? Hard questions. Our current system provides some decent answers. Maybe not the best, but you'll need some extraordinary proof to convince me you have better ones.
Realize that in our democracy/republic, we do things by contract. We have a contract with our government. We pay our taxes and vote, they do what we tell them to/think best with those taxes. Don't like the contract? Work to change it, leave, or otherwise opt out (live in a cave, etc.)
You say you didn't sign anything? The contract is an implied social contract, no less valid because you didn't sign. Like a EULA. Use the roads? You agreed to the contract. In short, we have a good system though it could use some work. I agree with many libertarian (and anarchist) principles.
I just see too many hypocritical libertarians who just want something for nothing while espousing the opposite, so I like to give libertarians a hard time. But like I said, I do like arguing with libertarians, because although there are many kooks in who call themselves libertarians, there are many more intelligent, rational folks who do want to create a better system, and through the dialectic process, those kinds of libertarians and I can both strengthen and enrich our ideas. Even if we don't agree in the end, we both come out of it with something better than we went in.
Unlike arguing with fundamentalists, where afterwards I just feel like I need a shower.
You had to sit at your console and meditate for hours. The authors put in some kind of question system so you couldn't automate it. You actually had to sit there and do nothing. So I hear. I never actually "played" it.
Well, I think the potion of booze is appropriate. As well as some powder of partying. But then, he's given all that up to be a Avatar of Yawhe, hasn't he? Hilarious "Necon Nethack," by the way.
How can you call yourself a libertarian and at the same time call for the criminalization of abortion? Fetuses can't enter into contracts. Without a contract with a security company, a person can't expect society to protect him or her. Or would you steal taxes from us and use that to fund your little protection service for the unborn?
As a libertarian, I would assume that you wouldn't want the government stealing from us to fund anything. Also, as a libertarian, I would assume that you would support a person's right to do anything they wanted to themselves as long as it didn't harm others. Or do you assume that we have some inherent obligation to continue our lives for others sake?
For the record, I'm not a libertarian, don't think taxes are theft, think abortion should be legal, think the government should sponsor stem cell research, think euthanasia is a simple matter of personal choice, and don't think you sound like any kind of libertarian I've ever talked to, and I love to argue with libertarians.
You sound more like a fundamentalist, and I hate arguing with fundamentalists.
I must make the disclaimer that my father is a psychologist, so I may be a bit biased. From what I understand, experimental psychologists practice the scientific method as well as any other discipline. Falsifiable hypothesis are created, experiments are created to test these hypothesis, and theories created from the succesful predictions of the hypothesis. Some theories and experiments have to do with psychological function, and some with treatment methodology. Clinical psychologists such as my father, who specializes in the psychology of the deaf and is head of Connecticut's psychological treatment program for the deaf, keep abreast of these developments in professional journals and modify their treatment methodology based on what has been proven through experiment to work best. We may be a long way from truely understanding human psychology in any kind of complete sense, but we do know what works and what doesn't in treating many kinds of psychological issues, and this is a long way from being Snake Oil, as you call it.
It does explain what a root nameserver is (kind of) but please, mods, just because the URL includes DNS-HOWTO doesn't mean that's what it really is...
It's really more of a "Dummies Guide." For perverts. With computers that drink too much. And therefore can't remember things like IP addresses. Such as the address of the dildo store their owner browsed just the other night.
You really have to read it. It even has pictures!
This is where you start arguing, "What do you mean capitalism doesn't reward the thuggish? Haven't you heard of Enron and Halliburton?"
Okay, I'll bite. Capitalism rewards the lazy and stupid, too. What world do you live in where this isn't painfully obvious?
This is where you start arguing that any results you don't like are because people aren't practising "real" capitalism. I love how both sides resort to that.
Some other points about your painfully cliche libertarian post. "Seized taxpayer income"?!? Ever heard of the social contract? If you don't like paying taxes go live in a cave and don't use any of the things that my tax dollars paid for, you cheapskate. Or move out of the country and go found your own.
The Free Market isn't perfect. Communism isn't perfect. Hell, even Democracy isn't perfect. We would all do well to think critically even about our favored ideologies. And our least favored ideologies. There may be some truth and insight hidden in crap.
How you doin' with those thetans, Tom? Give my regards to Xenu when your head finally explodes from all the mental dissonance.
"I first became aware of this, about 10 years ago. The summer my oldest boy Bill Jr. died. You know that carnival that comes to town every year? Well that year it came with a ride called the Mixer. The man said, keep your head and arms inside the mixer at all times. But Bill Jr., he was a daredevil. Just like his old man. He was leaning out saying, "Hey everybody, look at me, look at me". Bang! he was decapitated. They found his head over by the snowcone consession."
Stuart, The Dead Milkemen
Ah, now we are getting somwhere! Evolution may be random, but it has evolved something which is not. We can choose the course we take from here. Anyway, I was nit picking on a side point. Biological evolution doesn't follow a path. Pet peeve of mine, people who think biological evolution goes "up" like a ladder, with later species in some way better than preceding species, leading to some sort of pinnacle of evolution, namely, us.
Biological evolution doesn't work that way. Assuming that humans can agree on a set of criteria for what "better" means, human personal, cultural, and intellectual evolution can work that way. I agree that we are far more advanced in any rational way of looking at it than any other animal. I can still see the value of other animals for what they really are instead of having to anthropomorphasize them in some hippy-dippy fashion, "Gee they are as smart as us, they have culture and science and art and they would be driving little tiny automobiles if they weren't more spiritual and in tune with nature and stuff."
Not only are humans smart enough to see the bad stuff coming, because of us now every critter has a better chance of surviving and passing on it's genes. And when we really figure out space travel, there will be a whole galaxy worth of uninhabited planets to which the gene lines of Earth can spread. While any species wiped out by humans is a shame and a waste, if some species have to die in order to ensure that the rest get to spread out to other planets and all Mother Earth's little eggs aren't in one fragile basket anymore, that's a fair trade in my book. As Asimov said, the dinosaurs died off because they didn't have a space program.
Oh, please. I am not a scientist, I don't have any papers published myself. All I'm trying to say is that the poster I was replying to was talking out his ass without even having RTFA. Look, I get annoyed when people who don't know anything about something try to make it sound as if they do. Don't you? I'm no acedemic elitist, but peer review and the scientific method are the best systems we have available for seperating the wheat from the chaff.
Very wrong. Stimulus response is not the same as abstract reasoning. Your dog experiences a stimulus (hunger) and exhibited a response that worked in the past (nudging the bowl). Had you read TFA, you would know that careful scientific experiments by people much smarter than you have shown their is a difference. If you really care to argue, get yourself a degree in animal behaviour, get a paper published, and then we'll talk. Dumbass.
Just a nit-pick. Evolution doesn't say we are heading in the same direction. Evolution isn't heading in any direction. It's random. What counts as fit today might not count tomorrow. Big brains could be an evolutionary side track, like big bodies for the dinosaurs. We are only 'far ahead' by one way of looking at things. Did you know that ants make up ten percent of the biomass of the world? Nothing else comes close. I'd say thats pretty far ahead. Sharks haven't changed in millions of years, neither have cockroaches. They could very well be around millions of years after our big brains got us into some kind of trouble they couldn't get us out of.
Well, I'm not saying your friend didn't come up with this independently, just that it was a fairly famous net.story a while back. And it's funny enough to be worthy of mention.
This comes from a famous urban legend. The situation is true, and the user is dumb enough to warrant the line, but the tech in question never said it, they just said they wished they had said it. See here for more details and a good laugh.
Yeah, why should some other nerd be making a buck when I'm not? Let some faceless corporation make the money. Nerds should be above such things. God knows I am.