Blocking Baidu here in the U.S. is the LAST thing we should do, and I'd be terribly worried if there was any move to do such a thing. No U.S. hosted website should be taken down unless it's actually violating the law. Baidu isn't even hosted in the U.S., and while it's search results are total crap because they're censored, it's not violating any U.S. laws, and as such we have no right to block access to it. Doing so would make the U.S. government as bad as the Chinese government so far as state-mandated censorship goes; we'd be gigantic hypocrites for doing it.
Our knee-jerk reaction to this here in the U.S. is predictable: "Oh shit, there goes the 1st Amendment!". Not so simple, though: Baidu is a private company here in the U.S., even if it's blindingly obvious it's 100% driven by the Chinese government/Chinese communist party (same thing, really) and as such they can provide whatever search results they want. Same would go for Google, or Yahoo, or Bing, or whoever -- the caveat being that if, say, Google decided to start censoring search results to the extent Baidu does, then Google would be finished as the de-facto search engine here in the U.S. However:Nobody is forcing you to use Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, or any other search engine here in the U.S. Even if you're a Chinese National living here in the U.S., unless the Chinese communist party has someone standing there with a gun to your head, you're free to NOT use Baidu, just like you're free to NOT use Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other search engine, too. Don't bring me your "We don't REALLY have a choice" crap, either, because you do, even if you don't like the choices you have. Also, finally, someone else could always start up their own search-engine company if they think there's a niche to fill, and they could make a gigantic point of how they censor none of the results -- and they might even unseat everyone else in the process.
stop voting, stop sending them there, stop allowing them to be elected, stop allowing them to rule you, stop paying all taxes of-course
You anarchist types fail to recognize one very important thing: Your 'anarchy' will last a few weeks at best, until the local wanna-be warlord takes the opportunity to fill the power vacuum left by your taking a chainsaw to the government. Then everyone is worse off than they were.
Oh for fuck's sake don't be such a jerk about this. Carter may not be anywhere near the best President we've had in this country, but he was President, and as such his making statements like these publicly actually does mean something, and I for one am glad he's come out and said what he had to say. Furthermore I suspect there are other notable people who'd like to follow suit but didn't want to be the first one to do so. 'Bout damned time, I say.
Nice way to focus on the last thing I mentioned (religion) instead of the overall core message here: Willful ignorance. I don't care what the motivation for it is, ignorance is ignorance, and it's what's going to wreck us. This shit has got to stop!
Asteroid strike, nuclear war, conventional war for that matter, rampant disease, runaway GMO's, global warming, etc.. these are not what will destroy the human race. Willful ignorance is what will, along with it's partners, superstition and religion. More and more it seems people are rejecting the last thousand years or so of progress and turning back to these things. The Human race is in danger of falling in a new Dark Age if this keeps up.
Oh FFS, you're right, the government would make a hot mess of the whole thing.. It still leaves the problem unsolved though: Organized religion misuses their place in society to influence politics and government, and also (more in line with what TFA was actually about) how people view science, education, and knowledge in general. I just turned 49. The trend I've been seeing develop over the last several decades, is a turning away from science, technology, and seeking of knowledge in general, and towards ignorance, superstition, and a general rejection of all the progress we've made over the last, say, hundred years or so. My fear is we're headed towards a modern-day Dark Age. In part I understand why people might move in this direction: We are, after all, just poor cavemen still, with caveman brains, and this whole 'sentience' thing still just a relatively new trick for us as a species, literally a paper-thin patina overlaying the animal that we still very much are. As individuals, we've the potential for awesome things, and you see this awesomeness happening -- but as a species, we're still reacting like the poor caveman/animal we are underneath. I am far from being a Luddite, but I still understand why so many people are rejecting social and technological progress: It's happening too fast for many, it's overloading that paper-thin layer of convoluted grey matter, and the caveman brain underneath is reacting predictably: By pulling back, making warding signs against evil, and rejecting these things. But unfortunately Power Seeks Power, and some humans crave Power, and religion offers them a path to that, through manipulating the fears of others. How do we stop this? Is there even a way? I know that the ultimate cure for what ails Humanity in general is time: We, as a species, need more time to evolve, to get past the animal needs and desires that drive us to do stupid, destructive things, but that'll take thousands of years, not mere years or decades. Meanwhile organized religion has had thousands of years of Human history to hone it's skills at playing on the caveman fears of Humanity in order to make them docile tools of their organizations. What are we to do?
You misunderstand me: I don't want the Separation of Church and State to be erased. I sure as hell don't want "state mandated religion" or "state endorsed religion" or any such thing. For the record, in my opinion, organized religions are the ones who are trying to erase that Separation, and they're doing it by intentionally getting their sheeplike congregations to vote the way the churches want them to vote, and they're collecting monies from the same people to give to political candidates and to support ballot initiatives that further their political agendas. Meanwhile they're building extravagant churches and spending money on extravagant things and paying some of their leaders extravagant salaries, and there aren't any taxes being paid. How is this fair? If they would stay out of politics and government themselves then maybe I wouldn't care as much, or if they actually spent all that money they apparently have (based on what they're spending it on) on things like the homeless problem or feeding the poor instead of flashy church buildings etc then again I wouldn't have much to complain about. But instead of making their primary concern the health and well-being of people's "spiritual lives" (whatever that means) and actual charitable causes, they meddle in politics and government with obvious intent to try to become the ruling faction in this country. Where is your Separation of Church and State now? It's blindingly obvious that if they had their way, they'd see candidates elected to office who would begin to erase that Separation and turn the U.S. into a religion-run country.
People can have their religion and spiritual beliefs all they want, and good for them if it somehow improves the quality of their lives. But that's where the line needs to be drawn: It needs to be about the individual, and it needs to not be about Power Seeking More Power, which is the direction it's been going for a long, long time now. It has to stop.
We need to start taxing 'religious' organizations the same way we tax every other business -- because that's what they are: businesses. Have been for a long, long time now, and it's time everyone stopped sticking their heads in the sand and admitted that. "Oh but that money is to do charitable work!" some are going to say, but I call bullshit on that. Know what they do with that money? They spend it on politics, and on building extravagant churches! Enough's enough, time for them to pay up like everyone else, and time for them to get their religious noses out of politics.
It's great for the bottom line but not so good for the society.
See, that's my point. I'm no fan of Big Government, but this is a case where maybe the government should step in and intervene on behalf of American workers, because left totally unchecked this sort of shit could completely wreck the economy of the entire country but keeping U.S. citizens unemployed while simultaneously sending U.S. money overseas with these immigrant, non-citizen workers.
For the company, he argued, H-1B guest workers are a much better choice.
Sure. Why not just take us all out back, put us against the wall, and shoot us? Real responsible attitude, corporate America. What a bunch of fucking jerks. Go ahead, loot and pillage the U.S., what the hell do you care anyway?
What I'm saying is, I don't think that even if the missiles were headed this way, Obama still wouldn't have the guts to give the order for a counter-strike. I'm saying I have no confidence in him if that situation arose. He'd probably try to talk his way out of the whole thing right up to getting vaporized. In other words: I think Obama is weak. I'd take back my vote for numerous reasons if I could.
I'm fairly sure that Obama wouldn't have the balls to push the Red Button regardless of Putin wanting to, apparently, bring back the Soviet Union, and perhaps wanting to bomb the U.S. back into the stone age, however..
..yes, the U.S. could still, so far as I know, nuke Russia just as much as Russia could nuke the U.S.. However it would still be the End Of Life On Earth As We Know It, and anyone who doesn't get that is deeply and dangerously in denial. Furthermore don't forget that China (and maybe India, too) would be sitting there munching on popcorn the entire time, waiting for the show to be over so they could pick up the pieces, and I don't think anyone has forgotten that.
In all seriousness, though: I'll never forget this girl I knew the last time around for me with religion. She was very bright, inquisitive, and creative. I spoke to her at length several times, and I could see that spark inside her slowly dying because her religion wanted her to be someone else, someone more suitable wife/mother material at some point, and to hell with what she might want to do with her life. It was one of many things that finally convinced me that I needed to get away from it myself, before it destroyed me.
I tried this whole 'religion' thing, several times. The last time I tried it? It was literally killing me from the stress that it was creating in my life. I had infections that wouldn't heal until I finally had enough of all the bullshit and got away from religion, religious people, and all the arbitrary nonsense and hipocracy it's completely full of, then my health started turning around. Come on, people, look around you: Religion is just another tool being used to control people's lives and to further political agendas.
Don't throw that "strawman" crap at me. How about I throw this at you instead: "Pissing into the wind". I'm all-for "being an example to the world" and all that crap, but China and India are not going to follow suit just because lil' 'ol USA decides to, because comparatively speaking we have money to burn, while they're still "developing nations", and therefore will go with the older, cheaper option of burning coal and other dirty methods of generating the power they want to fuel their industry. We'd have an easier time convincing tiny little African nations to use solar and wind power, because they probably don't have much if any industry in the first place, so their power needs are modest in comparison.
You want to see the coal industry die out for good? Take that $50B and build thorium reactor-based power plants with it.
The U.S. is just one country. Many other countries (China, for instance) are still using coal, and I think will more or less say the same thing: That's nice. We'll keep using coal. Want to be real heroes of the environment? Raise enough money to buy out the coal industry all over the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Blocking Baidu here in the U.S. is the LAST thing we should do, and I'd be terribly worried if there was any move to do such a thing. No U.S. hosted website should be taken down unless it's actually violating the law. Baidu isn't even hosted in the U.S., and while it's search results are total crap because they're censored, it's not violating any U.S. laws, and as such we have no right to block access to it. Doing so would make the U.S. government as bad as the Chinese government so far as state-mandated censorship goes; we'd be gigantic hypocrites for doing it.
Our knee-jerk reaction to this here in the U.S. is predictable: "Oh shit, there goes the 1st Amendment!".
Not so simple, though: Baidu is a private company here in the U.S., even if it's blindingly obvious it's 100% driven by the Chinese government/Chinese communist party (same thing, really) and as such they can provide whatever search results they want. Same would go for Google, or Yahoo, or Bing, or whoever -- the caveat being that if, say, Google decided to start censoring search results to the extent Baidu does, then Google would be finished as the de-facto search engine here in the U.S. However: Nobody is forcing you to use Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, or any other search engine here in the U.S. Even if you're a Chinese National living here in the U.S., unless the Chinese communist party has someone standing there with a gun to your head, you're free to NOT use Baidu, just like you're free to NOT use Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other search engine, too. Don't bring me your "We don't REALLY have a choice" crap, either, because you do, even if you don't like the choices you have. Also, finally, someone else could always start up their own search-engine company if they think there's a niche to fill, and they could make a gigantic point of how they censor none of the results -- and they might even unseat everyone else in the process.
I post a Troll Physics/Infinite Energy meme just to be stupid-funny and you complain about my choice of what to use for a bullet point? Seriously?
o Solar cell that also emits light
o Sandwich it with a perfect mirror
o Short the leads together
o Infinite energy!
stop voting, stop sending them there, stop allowing them to be elected, stop allowing them to rule you, stop paying all taxes of-course
You anarchist types fail to recognize one very important thing: Your 'anarchy' will last a few weeks at best, until the local wanna-be warlord takes the opportunity to fill the power vacuum left by your taking a chainsaw to the government. Then everyone is worse off than they were.
What I think is irrelevant
Yes, it very much is.
Oh for fuck's sake don't be such a jerk about this. Carter may not be anywhere near the best President we've had in this country, but he was President, and as such his making statements like these publicly actually does mean something, and I for one am glad he's come out and said what he had to say. Furthermore I suspect there are other notable people who'd like to follow suit but didn't want to be the first one to do so. 'Bout damned time, I say.
Nice way to focus on the last thing I mentioned (religion) instead of the overall core message here: Willful ignorance. I don't care what the motivation for it is, ignorance is ignorance, and it's what's going to wreck us. This shit has got to stop!
Asteroid strike, nuclear war, conventional war for that matter, rampant disease, runaway GMO's, global warming, etc.. these are not what will destroy the human race. Willful ignorance is what will, along with it's partners, superstition and religion. More and more it seems people are rejecting the last thousand years or so of progress and turning back to these things. The Human race is in danger of falling in a new Dark Age if this keeps up.
Oh FFS, you're right, the government would make a hot mess of the whole thing..
It still leaves the problem unsolved though: Organized religion misuses their place in society to influence politics and government, and also (more in line with what TFA was actually about) how people view science, education, and knowledge in general.
I just turned 49. The trend I've been seeing develop over the last several decades, is a turning away from science, technology, and seeking of knowledge in general, and towards ignorance, superstition, and a general rejection of all the progress we've made over the last, say, hundred years or so. My fear is we're headed towards a modern-day Dark Age. In part I understand why people might move in this direction: We are, after all, just poor cavemen still, with caveman brains, and this whole 'sentience' thing still just a relatively new trick for us as a species, literally a paper-thin patina overlaying the animal that we still very much are. As individuals, we've the potential for awesome things, and you see this awesomeness happening -- but as a species, we're still reacting like the poor caveman/animal we are underneath. I am far from being a Luddite, but I still understand why so many people are rejecting social and technological progress: It's happening too fast for many, it's overloading that paper-thin layer of convoluted grey matter, and the caveman brain underneath is reacting predictably: By pulling back, making warding signs against evil, and rejecting these things. But unfortunately Power Seeks Power, and some humans crave Power, and religion offers them a path to that, through manipulating the fears of others. How do we stop this? Is there even a way? I know that the ultimate cure for what ails Humanity in general is time: We, as a species, need more time to evolve, to get past the animal needs and desires that drive us to do stupid, destructive things, but that'll take thousands of years, not mere years or decades. Meanwhile organized religion has had thousands of years of Human history to hone it's skills at playing on the caveman fears of Humanity in order to make them docile tools of their organizations. What are we to do?
You misunderstand me: I don't want the Separation of Church and State to be erased. I sure as hell don't want "state mandated religion" or "state endorsed religion" or any such thing. For the record, in my opinion, organized religions are the ones who are trying to erase that Separation, and they're doing it by intentionally getting their sheeplike congregations to vote the way the churches want them to vote, and they're collecting monies from the same people to give to political candidates and to support ballot initiatives that further their political agendas. Meanwhile they're building extravagant churches and spending money on extravagant things and paying some of their leaders extravagant salaries, and there aren't any taxes being paid. How is this fair? If they would stay out of politics and government themselves then maybe I wouldn't care as much, or if they actually spent all that money they apparently have (based on what they're spending it on) on things like the homeless problem or feeding the poor instead of flashy church buildings etc then again I wouldn't have much to complain about. But instead of making their primary concern the health and well-being of people's "spiritual lives" (whatever that means) and actual charitable causes, they meddle in politics and government with obvious intent to try to become the ruling faction in this country. Where is your Separation of Church and State now? It's blindingly obvious that if they had their way, they'd see candidates elected to office who would begin to erase that Separation and turn the U.S. into a religion-run country.
People can have their religion and spiritual beliefs all they want, and good for them if it somehow improves the quality of their lives. But that's where the line needs to be drawn: It needs to be about the individual, and it needs to not be about Power Seeking More Power, which is the direction it's been going for a long, long time now. It has to stop.
I'd rather have equal taxation for churches.
Yes yes yes this this THIS times a million!
We need to start taxing 'religious' organizations the same way we tax every other business -- because that's what they are: businesses. Have been for a long, long time now, and it's time everyone stopped sticking their heads in the sand and admitted that. "Oh but that money is to do charitable work!" some are going to say, but I call bullshit on that. Know what they do with that money? They spend it on politics, and on building extravagant churches! Enough's enough, time for them to pay up like everyone else, and time for them to get their religious noses out of politics.
..intermediaries such as Cogent and Level 3
Calling companies like these "intermediaries" is disingenuous at best, they are backbone providers and there wouldn't BE an Internet without them.
It's great for the bottom line but not so good for the society.
See, that's my point. I'm no fan of Big Government, but this is a case where maybe the government should step in and intervene on behalf of American workers, because left totally unchecked this sort of shit could completely wreck the economy of the entire country but keeping U.S. citizens unemployed while simultaneously sending U.S. money overseas with these immigrant, non-citizen workers.
For the company, he argued, H-1B guest workers are a much better choice.
Sure. Why not just take us all out back, put us against the wall, and shoot us? Real responsible attitude, corporate America. What a bunch of fucking jerks. Go ahead, loot and pillage the U.S., what the hell do you care anyway?
Why would I want to do that? I'd sooner take a hammer to the thing and smash it to bits.
Installed the update and it didn't turn my laptop into a smoking crater on my desk; so far, so good..
That's my answer to this technology.
What I'm saying is, I don't think that even if the missiles were headed this way, Obama still wouldn't have the guts to give the order for a counter-strike. I'm saying I have no confidence in him if that situation arose. He'd probably try to talk his way out of the whole thing right up to getting vaporized. In other words: I think Obama is weak. I'd take back my vote for numerous reasons if I could.
I'm fairly sure that Obama wouldn't have the balls to push the Red Button regardless of Putin wanting to, apparently, bring back the Soviet Union, and perhaps wanting to bomb the U.S. back into the stone age, however..
..yes, the U.S. could still, so far as I know, nuke Russia just as much as Russia could nuke the U.S.. However it would still be the End Of Life On Earth As We Know It, and anyone who doesn't get that is deeply and dangerously in denial. Furthermore don't forget that China (and maybe India, too) would be sitting there munching on popcorn the entire time, waiting for the show to be over so they could pick up the pieces, and I don't think anyone has forgotten that.
Long (or unending) life is pointless if your quality of life keeps gradually decreasing over time.
You a funny guy, I kill you last. :-)
In all seriousness, though: I'll never forget this girl I knew the last time around for me with religion. She was very bright, inquisitive, and creative. I spoke to her at length several times, and I could see that spark inside her slowly dying because her religion wanted her to be someone else, someone more suitable wife/mother material at some point, and to hell with what she might want to do with her life. It was one of many things that finally convinced me that I needed to get away from it myself, before it destroyed me.
I tried this whole 'religion' thing, several times. The last time I tried it? It was literally killing me from the stress that it was creating in my life. I had infections that wouldn't heal until I finally had enough of all the bullshit and got away from religion, religious people, and all the arbitrary nonsense and hipocracy it's completely full of, then my health started turning around. Come on, people, look around you: Religion is just another tool being used to control people's lives and to further political agendas.
Don't throw that "strawman" crap at me.
How about I throw this at you instead: "Pissing into the wind". I'm all-for "being an example to the world" and all that crap, but China and India are not going to follow suit just because lil' 'ol USA decides to, because comparatively speaking we have money to burn, while they're still "developing nations", and therefore will go with the older, cheaper option of burning coal and other dirty methods of generating the power they want to fuel their industry. We'd have an easier time convincing tiny little African nations to use solar and wind power, because they probably don't have much if any industry in the first place, so their power needs are modest in comparison.
You want to see the coal industry die out for good? Take that $50B and build thorium reactor-based power plants with it.
How about this:
Build $50 billion worth of nice, safe, relatively easy-to-build and relatively easy-to-manage thorium reactor power plants.
The U.S. is just one country. Many other countries (China, for instance) are still using coal, and I think will more or less say the same thing: That's nice. We'll keep using coal. Want to be real heroes of the environment? Raise enough money to buy out the coal industry all over the world.