This is why politicians can get away with calling themselves Christians. Who's to say they aren't? You? Me? The Pope? Jimmy Swaggart? The President?
True... and since there are no standards, the term has little or no meaning. The real problems arise because too many people make the assumption "he calls himself Christian, and so do I, therefore his morals/ethics must be like mine". Well-meaning people get fooled over and over again this way, and much harm is done because they end up giving their (considerable) political support to people whose policies they would abhor if they took the time to think about them.
There's really no solution to this other than making decisions based on an individual's actions rather than on their professed beliefs. Sadly, most Americans believe whatever they're told and ignore the facts, because finding out the facts might require effort.
Yes, but why do these facts require so much effort to find out? I'd argue it's partly because people are so afraid of offending someone's religious beliefs that they are afraid to point out religious hypocrisy when they see it. Corruption thrives in darkness, and this kind of self-censorship is way to prevalent because so many people are uncomfortable criticizing religion (and by extension, the people who claim to ally themselves with religion). Dishonest people know about this discomfort and take full advantage of it.
If you have no military experience, you shouldn't say that "soldiers are trained and required to follow orders without question". This is simply untrue. Soldiers are trained to perform specific actions as a response to specific actions, but they are also trained to THINK.
Oh, I agree. I'm sure our soldiers do very well at ethical problems within their scope ("should I shoot at that house if I think there are civilians inside?") But what they don't do, and can't do, is make decisions about larger ethical issues ("should we even be in Iraq?"). A soldier making his own decisions at that level would get thrown in prison, if not shot for treason/desertion. That's what I meant by soldiers not being moral actors, but only agents of their commanders.
It's not my place to call their decisions right or wrong, because in questions of religon there is no right or wrong, only your beliefs.
IMO the "Christian" thing to do when faced with this sort of two-faced hypocrisy is to turn the other cheek, make a decision based on your own beliefs, ethics and morals, and act accordingly.
But isn't that a dangerously irresponsible way to behave? If I found out that my brain surgeon didn't actually have any medical knowledge at all, and was going nevertheless calling himself an MD and going around performing ad-hoc brain surgeries without any training, wouldn't it be my ethical duty to let everyone know about his dishonesty, so that he wouldn't be allowed to maim/kill more people? And of course the difference between an incompetent surgeon and an immoral politician is that a politician can cause the deaths of many many more people....
God doesn't care what religion you are, so long as you are a good person
I prefer Vonnegut's vision of God: God has no idea that you (or anyone, or even Earth) exists, and wouldn't care in the least if he was told. You might as well ask me to care about a microscopic colony of bacteria growing under one of the floorboards in my basement. God may have created the universe, but humanity is a vanishingly insignificant sliver of the whole, and His attentions are taken up by more important things.
Maybe not a "feel-good message", but you have to admit it explains the state of things nicely...
I'm glad you think killing innocent people has all the moral weight of urinating.
I think you misunderstood the phrase. I said nothing about the moral weight of killing people. What I meant was, a "my religion is better than yours because mine only killed 10 million people while yours killed 50 million" type of argument is pointless, because all murder is unacceptable. Having killed "only" 10 million doesn't justify anything -- killing one person was already too many.
I doubt it. How do we measure the number of people who are absolutely convinced that they are right and the rest of the world is populated by idiots, and go along on their merry way, never killing a single idiot they come across?
We don't need to measure "how many", we need to understand why mass murder happens -- at least if the goal is to prevent it in the future. If you don't like my theory, fine... maybe you can come up with your own. What is it that allows people to say "I know mass murder is wrong in general, but it's okay for me to do it in this instance, because of X, Y, and Z". How are people able to circumvent their society's most basic moral codes, and what could be done to make that less likely to happen? Which ethical frameworks are more prone to circumvention, and which are less so, and why?
Again, you're not telling us how many people have held that attitude and have never killed anyone. I suspect we can't know the number.
I suspect you're right. But not all reasoning is based on statistics. Lots of people carry the genes that allow for cancer too, but never actually come down with the disease. That doesn't mean that somehow neutering those genes couldn't eliminate cancer, even if we didn't know in advance precisely how many people we were "saving".
I'm no theologian [...] but I seem to recall that that judgement was between you, your conscience, and God.
That's all well and good to say, but it drains the word "Christian" of all possible meaning. If I can believe literally anything and still validly call myself a Christian, then the word Christian is redefined to mean only: "please vote for me because I know how to pander to your faith". It no longer has anything to do with Christ, or even the Christian religion.
When someone presents themselves as a Christian, people generally assume that means the person believes in Christ and his teachings, no? So to call yourself Christian and then routinely do the opposite of what Christ taught is to mislead people. Unfortunately this is quite common, perhaps because so many people are unwilling to make judgements of that sort... that sort of "politeness" makes it very easy for the unscrupulous to exploit people's faith.
There are some groups who are telling a private corporation that they do not approve of its decision to stock a game that they find offensive. They are **expressing their opinion**. But they are not asking the government to make anything illegal
Just to play Devil's Advocate (although I understand that in this game that means I have no chance of winning), doesn't a successful application of the above have the approximately the same effect as government censorship? In either case, a group of people is working to ensure that an idea they dislike is suppressed. The only difference is that the government is more effective at banning things, since it has the law on its side and not just "pressure". Although considering the influence Wal-Mart has, the difference might not be as large as you think... for many companies, being kicked out of Wal-Mart would be just as fatal as a governmental prohibition.
That's funny... I didn't realize that all the allied soldiers in Iraq (including the non-Americans, of course) are Christian!
They aren't all Christian, but that isn't what's important, because soldiers are trained and required to follow orders without question. As such, they are not independant moral actors, but rather extensions of the will of their superiors. And at the top of the US military command hierarchy there sits a Christian warrior.
I'm also having trouble finding that part of the bible that says to kill the nonbelievers wherever you find them!
Have you tried Google? A quick search turned up these:
Suppose a man or woman among you, in one of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, has done evil in the sight of the LORD your God and has violated the covenant by serving other gods or by worshiping the sun, the moon, or any of the forces of heaven, which I have strictly forbidden. When you hear about it, investigate the matter thoroughly. If it is true that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, then that man or woman must be taken to the gates of the town and stoned to death. (Deuteronomy 17:2-5 NLT)
They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman. (2 Chronicles 15:12-13 NAB)
And the obligatory reply is, who has been responsible for more mass murder? Christians or Atheists?
Comparing mass-murder high scores makes for a nice pissing contest, but not for particularly enlightening discussion. A more interesting question to ask would be, what is it that allows people to feel morally justified engaging in mass-murder? I'd say the risk factor for becoming a mass-murderer is being absolutely sure that you're right and "they" are wrong. Once you have that attitude in mind, it's easy to come up with justifications for eliminating them.
Therefore, we agnostics are the safest people to hang around with;^)
YOU don't get to decide who is and isn't a Christian.
Yes, but who does? Specifically, how should one refer to someone who professes to believe in Christ, but whose words and actions are the opposite of Christ's teachings?
No... thinking people want to get the most work done with the least amount of effort.
would you prefer an oscilloscope that has 4 buttons and knobs or 40? Would you prefer cat or vim as your text editor. Would you prefer a mouse with 1 or 3 buttons?
In all cases, I prefer the product that has just enough features for me to get my job done quickly, and no more. Of course, trying to figure out what 'just enough' means is difficult, since often even I (the user) don't know that until I've used the product for quite a while.
Now, what's your problem with me stating my opinion and analysis? In your world, should everybody other than corporate marketing just shut up?
I don't have a problem with you stating your opinion and analysis -- my problem is that your opinion and analysis are not only wrong, but (at least apparently) rather spiteful and selfish as well. When dealing with the OSS community, TrollTech could easily have kept with their original QPL license, or even gone fully closed-source -- but they didn't do either of those things. Instead, they went the extra mile and made their library available under the GPL... even the Mac and Windows versions. And instead of applauding their contribution to the open source community, you make them out to be some sort of villains. It makes me wonder, what exactly would TrollTech have to do to earn your good graces? Release Qt into the public domain and declare bankruptcy? Do you expect all the TrollTech engineers to work for free? A really well-done cross-platform GUI toolkit is not an easy thing to implement -- just look at all the failed attempts that litter the landscape.
I'm saying that if more people behaved like Troll Tech did, open source would die.
So you blame Troll Tech for wanting to run a viable company that makes money -- you think they should be writing top-quality code for the good of the Linux community alone. The thing is, you don't have that choice -- the possible alternatives to what we have now would be either a closed-source-only Qt, or Qt never being created at all. You can't always expect good code to be written for free. Troll Tech is only doing what every other software company in the world does -- writing software and selling it for money. But unlike, say, Microsoft or Electronic Arts or whomever, they have the temerity to offer you a GPL'd version. Horrors!
If you want to blame someone for KDE using Qt, blame the KDE folks. It was their choice to use Qt, Troll Tech didn't force them to. And maybe, just maybe, it was the right choice. And as far as Qt killing Linux phones/PDAs, I have no idea how you came to that conclusion. How does offering a phone/PDA development kit that runs under Linux "kill" that area for Linux? Either the kit works well, in which case it promotes Linux phone/PDA development, or it doesn't, in which case nobody will use it and you're no worse off than you would have been otherwise. Btw, the market share of Linux-based cell phones grew dramatically in the last year, so your premise looks rather shaky as well.
Well, apparently the people who created the GPL don't believe so, since they have chosen a license that permits commercial developers to link to many of their libraries for free. They have done so because they believe such licenses to be in the best interest of open source.
The above makes me question your understanding of the GPL... or maybe you just mistyped something above. The GPL deliberately makes it impossible for commercial developers to link to GPL'd libraries for free. That (rather restrictive) condition is what lead to the creation of the LGPL.
In contrast, Troll Tech has chosen the GPL as their second license because it's in their best corporate interest, not the interest of open source.
Well, duh. Since when is TrollTech required to operate "in the interest of open source"? Just because they released something under the GPL doesn't mean they are morally beholden to uphold Richard Stallman's ideals at their own expense. Open source is not a religion, it's just a tool like anything else.
Troll Tech chose a nuisance library that effectively prohibits forking to keep control of Qt while getting the open source community to do the marketing for them.
What is this 'nuisance library' you are speaking of? As far as I know, the only thing stopping you (or anyone else) from posting up your own GPL'd OohShinyQt fork right now is that your fork wouldn
Imagine every piece of software on Linux were to adopt Troll Tech's model: $2k/developer for the commercial exception for the C library, another $2k/developer for the math library, another $1k/developer for XML libraries, another $4k/developer for the kernel. Where do you think Linux would be today?
I imagine a lot more software would be GPL'd, since a lot more developers wouldn't want to pay those fees and would therefore avoid them by GPL'ing their software.
Troll Tech is unfairly taking advantage of the situation
Troll Tech isn't unfairly taking advantage of anything. They wrote their code, and they wrote it well. They've put tens of thousands of man-hours into it. They've hired the best people. They came out with a high quality product, and they released with terms that are more liberal and OSS-friendly than just about any other commercial product in existence. You are welcome to accept their terms, or reject them -- nobody is forcing you to develop with Qt if you don't like their license. Feel free to use wxWidgets or Java or Win32 or whatever you like. Nobody owes you free software. Sheesh.
In other words, if you've written something as open source using Qt under GPL, and now want to make a commercial version of your product, you can't.
That doesn't sound right to me. Assuming you own the copyright to your code, you can do whatever you like with it -- it doesn't matter whether you previously released your code under the GPL or not, it's your code. You own it, and neither TrollTech nor anybody else can tell you what you can or can't do with it.
Now if you are merely licensing somebody else's GPL'd code, things might be a little different...
If you are paying for it out of your own pocket, then yes, it's really expensive. However, I expect most programmers get their employer to buy it for them -- a few thousand dollars isn't such a big deal for a company (even a small one... it's comparable to buying an extra developer's workstation or two), and given the amount of developer time it saves (a decent computer programmer's billable hours are not cheap!), I think the licenses usually pay for themselves fairly quickly. Which is why so many companies buy licenses, despite the price.
For example, it's not possible to fork Qt and compete with the original.
Who is stopping you? Qt is licensed under the GPL, so fork away.
(If your objection is that your forked product will have to be under the GPL also, which would make it harder for you to sell it... well, tough titties. Write your own damn GUI library if that bothers you)
I even have, thank you very much... I would not consider those to be "simple dodgy online games" either. In fact, I would call SL an advanced form of MUD. I was referring to games like Quake Arena where you're allowed to interact with other players, but not modify the shared world in any non-trivial way.
Second Life needs to be renamed to give its users a much needed message - namely, Get A Life
I submit that anybody who posts to Slashdot about the other people's need to "get a life" should spontaneously explode from sheer force of concentrated hypocrisy.
Now we have CopyBot and grey goo and it seems like SL is just another dodgy online game after all
Wow, given the same evidence, I drew exactly the opposite conclusion. A simple "dodgy online game" wouldn't give its players enough control over their world to allow this sort of shennanigans to happen. Things like viruses can only occur when people are given access to a Turing-complete programming language and allowed to do what they like with it... which is what SL does, and why it's not "just a game", but rather a platform. Granted, it may be an infant platform, still buggy and insecure, and not necessarily useful for very much yet, but then you could say the same thing about the Internet itself a few years ago.
Yes, that happened to me once, when I really needed to use VBA instead of Perl...
Hmm, that gives me an idea for a special Perl keyboard, with all the punctuation marks present on the home row, and the letters relegated to the keypad and other 'peripheral' locations....;^)
And you know that it's all relative anyway, right? 35WPM is slow for a trained touch typist, but it's still fast compared to the speed a lot of people type...
Slashdot Mirror
True... and since there are no standards, the term has little or no meaning. The real problems arise because too many people make the assumption "he calls himself Christian, and so do I, therefore his morals/ethics must be like mine". Well-meaning people get fooled over and over again this way, and much harm is done because they end up giving their (considerable) political support to people whose policies they would abhor if they took the time to think about them.
There's really no solution to this other than making decisions based on an individual's actions rather than on their professed beliefs. Sadly, most Americans believe whatever they're told and ignore the facts, because finding out the facts might require effort.
Yes, but why do these facts require so much effort to find out? I'd argue it's partly because people are so afraid of offending someone's religious beliefs that they are afraid to point out religious hypocrisy when they see it. Corruption thrives in darkness, and this kind of self-censorship is way to prevalent because so many people are uncomfortable criticizing religion (and by extension, the people who claim to ally themselves with religion). Dishonest people know about this discomfort and take full advantage of it.
Oh, I agree. I'm sure our soldiers do very well at ethical problems within their scope ("should I shoot at that house if I think there are civilians inside?") But what they don't do, and can't do, is make decisions about larger ethical issues ("should we even be in Iraq?"). A soldier making his own decisions at that level would get thrown in prison, if not shot for treason/desertion. That's what I meant by soldiers not being moral actors, but only agents of their commanders.
IMO the "Christian" thing to do when faced with this sort of two-faced hypocrisy is to turn the other cheek, make a decision based on your own beliefs, ethics and morals, and act accordingly.
But isn't that a dangerously irresponsible way to behave? If I found out that my brain surgeon didn't actually have any medical knowledge at all, and was going nevertheless calling himself an MD and going around performing ad-hoc brain surgeries without any training, wouldn't it be my ethical duty to let everyone know about his dishonesty, so that he wouldn't be allowed to maim/kill more people? And of course the difference between an incompetent surgeon and an immoral politician is that a politician can cause the deaths of many many more people....
I prefer Vonnegut's vision of God: God has no idea that you (or anyone, or even Earth) exists, and wouldn't care in the least if he was told. You might as well ask me to care about a microscopic colony of bacteria growing under one of the floorboards in my basement. God may have created the universe, but humanity is a vanishingly insignificant sliver of the whole, and His attentions are taken up by more important things.
Maybe not a "feel-good message", but you have to admit it explains the state of things nicely...
It's kind of odd to name your religion after an entity you don't believe in, no?
Then again, I imagine "kind of odd" is a good description of most Satanists
I think you misunderstood the phrase. I said nothing about the moral weight of killing people. What I meant was, a "my religion is better than yours because mine only killed 10 million people while yours killed 50 million" type of argument is pointless, because all murder is unacceptable. Having killed "only" 10 million doesn't justify anything -- killing one person was already too many.
I doubt it. How do we measure the number of people who are absolutely convinced that they are right and the rest of the world is populated by idiots, and go along on their merry way, never killing a single idiot they come across?
We don't need to measure "how many", we need to understand why mass murder happens -- at least if the goal is to prevent it in the future. If you don't like my theory, fine... maybe you can come up with your own. What is it that allows people to say "I know mass murder is wrong in general, but it's okay for me to do it in this instance, because of X, Y, and Z". How are people able to circumvent their society's most basic moral codes, and what could be done to make that less likely to happen? Which ethical frameworks are more prone to circumvention, and which are less so, and why?
Again, you're not telling us how many people have held that attitude and have never killed anyone. I suspect we can't know the number.
I suspect you're right. But not all reasoning is based on statistics. Lots of people carry the genes that allow for cancer too, but never actually come down with the disease. That doesn't mean that somehow neutering those genes couldn't eliminate cancer, even if we didn't know in advance precisely how many people we were "saving".
conscience, and God.
That's all well and good to say, but it drains the word "Christian" of all possible meaning. If I can believe literally anything and still validly call myself a Christian, then the word Christian is redefined to mean only: "please vote for me because I know how to pander to your faith". It no longer has anything to do with Christ, or even the Christian religion.
When someone presents themselves as a Christian, people generally assume that means the person believes in Christ and his teachings, no? So to call yourself Christian and then routinely do the opposite of what Christ taught is to mislead people. Unfortunately this is quite common, perhaps because so many people are unwilling to make judgements of that sort... that sort of "politeness" makes it very easy for the unscrupulous to exploit people's faith.
Just to play Devil's Advocate (although I understand that in this game that means I have no chance of winning), doesn't a successful application of the above have the approximately the same effect as government censorship? In either case, a group of people is working to ensure that an idea they dislike is suppressed. The only difference is that the government is more effective at banning things, since it has the law on its side and not just "pressure". Although considering the influence Wal-Mart has, the difference might not be as large as you think... for many companies, being kicked out of Wal-Mart would be just as fatal as a governmental prohibition.
They aren't all Christian, but that isn't what's important, because soldiers are trained and required to follow orders without question. As such, they are not independant moral actors, but rather extensions of the will of their superiors. And at the top of the US military command hierarchy there sits a Christian warrior.
I'm also having trouble finding that part of the bible that says to kill the nonbelievers wherever you find them!
Have you tried Google? A quick search turned up these:
Suppose a man or woman among you, in one of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, has done evil in the sight of the LORD your God and has violated the covenant by serving other gods or by worshiping the sun, the moon, or any of the forces of heaven, which I have strictly forbidden. When you hear about it, investigate the matter thoroughly. If it is true that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, then that man or woman must be taken to the gates of the town and stoned to death. (Deuteronomy 17:2-5 NLT)
They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman. (2 Chronicles 15:12-13 NAB)
Comparing mass-murder high scores makes for a nice pissing contest, but not for particularly enlightening discussion. A more interesting question to ask would be, what is it that allows people to feel morally justified engaging in mass-murder? I'd say the risk factor for becoming a mass-murderer is being absolutely sure that you're right and "they" are wrong. Once you have that attitude in mind, it's easy to come up with justifications for eliminating them.
Therefore, we agnostics are the safest people to hang around with
Yes, but who does? Specifically, how should one refer to someone who professes to believe in Christ, but whose words and actions are the opposite of Christ's teachings?
And just where do you think Mars is located?
No... thinking people want to get the most work done with the least amount of effort.
would you prefer an oscilloscope that has 4 buttons and knobs or 40? Would you prefer cat or vim as your text editor. Would you prefer a mouse with 1 or 3 buttons?
In all cases, I prefer the product that has just enough features for me to get my job done quickly, and no more. Of course, trying to figure out what 'just enough' means is difficult, since often even I (the user) don't know that until I've used the product for quite a while.
Isn't that pretty much what Lindows/Linspire tried to do? As I recall, they had technical difficulties and eventually stopped promoting that feature.
I don't have a problem with you stating your opinion and analysis -- my problem is that your opinion and analysis are not only wrong, but (at least apparently) rather spiteful and selfish as well. When dealing with the OSS community, TrollTech could easily have kept with their original QPL license, or even gone fully closed-source -- but they didn't do either of those things. Instead, they went the extra mile and made their library available under the GPL... even the Mac and Windows versions. And instead of applauding their contribution to the open source community, you make them out to be some sort of villains. It makes me wonder, what exactly would TrollTech have to do to earn your good graces? Release Qt into the public domain and declare bankruptcy? Do you expect all the TrollTech engineers to work for free? A really well-done cross-platform GUI toolkit is not an easy thing to implement -- just look at all the failed attempts that litter the landscape.
I'm saying that if more people behaved like Troll Tech did, open source would die.
So you blame Troll Tech for wanting to run a viable company that makes money -- you think they should be writing top-quality code for the good of the Linux community alone. The thing is, you don't have that choice -- the possible alternatives to what we have now would be either a closed-source-only Qt, or Qt never being created at all. You can't always expect good code to be written for free. Troll Tech is only doing what every other software company in the world does -- writing software and selling it for money. But unlike, say, Microsoft or Electronic Arts or whomever, they have the temerity to offer you a GPL'd version. Horrors!
If you want to blame someone for KDE using Qt, blame the KDE folks. It was their choice to use Qt, Troll Tech didn't force them to. And maybe, just maybe, it was the right choice. And as far as Qt killing Linux phones/PDAs, I have no idea how you came to that conclusion. How does offering a phone/PDA development kit that runs under Linux "kill" that area for Linux? Either the kit works well, in which case it promotes Linux phone/PDA development, or it doesn't, in which case nobody will use it and you're no worse off than you would have been otherwise. Btw, the market share of Linux-based cell phones grew dramatically in the last year, so your premise looks rather shaky as well.
Well, apparently the people who created the GPL don't believe so, since they have chosen a license that permits commercial developers to link to many of their libraries for free. They have done so because they believe such licenses to be in the best interest of
open source.
The above makes me question your understanding of the GPL... or maybe you just mistyped something above. The GPL deliberately makes it impossible for commercial developers to link to GPL'd libraries for free. That (rather restrictive) condition is what lead to the creation of the LGPL.
In contrast, Troll Tech has chosen the GPL as their second license because it's in their best corporate interest, not the interest of open source.
Well, duh. Since when is TrollTech required to operate "in the interest of open source"? Just because they released something under the GPL doesn't mean they are morally beholden to uphold Richard Stallman's ideals at their own expense. Open source is not a religion, it's just a tool like anything else.
Troll Tech chose a nuisance library that effectively prohibits forking to keep control of Qt while getting the open source community to do the marketing for them.
What is this 'nuisance library' you are speaking of? As far as I know, the only thing stopping you (or anyone else) from posting up your own GPL'd OohShinyQt fork right now is that your fork wouldn
I imagine a lot more software would be GPL'd, since a lot more developers wouldn't want to pay those fees and would therefore avoid them by GPL'ing their software.
Troll Tech is unfairly taking advantage of the situation
Troll Tech isn't unfairly taking advantage of anything. They wrote their code, and they wrote it well. They've put tens of thousands of man-hours into it. They've hired the best people. They came out with a high quality product, and they released with terms that are more liberal and OSS-friendly than just about any other commercial product in existence. You are welcome to accept their terms, or reject them -- nobody is forcing you to develop with Qt if you don't like their license. Feel free to use wxWidgets or Java or Win32 or whatever you like. Nobody owes you free software. Sheesh.
That doesn't sound right to me. Assuming you own the copyright to your code, you can do whatever you like with it -- it doesn't matter whether you previously released your code under the GPL or not, it's your code. You own it, and neither TrollTech nor anybody else can tell you what you can or can't do with it.
Now if you are merely licensing somebody else's GPL'd code, things might be a little different...
If you are paying for it out of your own pocket, then yes, it's really expensive. However, I expect most programmers get their employer to buy it for them -- a few thousand dollars isn't such a big deal for a company (even a small one... it's comparable to buying an extra developer's workstation or two), and given the amount of developer time it saves (a decent computer programmer's billable hours are not cheap!), I think the licenses usually pay for themselves fairly quickly. Which is why so many companies buy licenses, despite the price.
Who is stopping you? Qt is licensed under the GPL, so fork away.
(If your objection is that your forked product will have to be under the GPL also, which would make it harder for you to sell it... well, tough titties. Write your own damn GUI library if that bothers you)
I even have, thank you very much... I would not consider those to be "simple dodgy online games" either. In fact, I would call SL an advanced form of MUD. I was referring to games like Quake Arena where you're allowed to interact with other players, but not modify the shared world in any non-trivial way.
I submit that anybody who posts to Slashdot about the other people's need to "get a life" should spontaneously explode from sheer force of concentrated hypocrisy.
Wow, given the same evidence, I drew exactly the opposite conclusion. A simple "dodgy online game" wouldn't give its players enough control over their world to allow this sort of shennanigans to happen. Things like viruses can only occur when people are given access to a Turing-complete programming language and allowed to do what they like with it... which is what SL does, and why it's not "just a game", but rather a platform. Granted, it may be an infant platform, still buggy and insecure, and not necessarily useful for very much yet, but then you could say the same thing about the Internet itself a few years ago.
Hmm, that gives me an idea for a special Perl keyboard, with all the punctuation marks present on the home row, and the letters relegated to the keypad and other 'peripheral' locations....
And you know that it's all relative anyway, right? 35WPM is slow for a trained touch typist, but it's still fast compared to the speed a lot of people type...
That's cool and all, but what I really want to know is, how does it taste? The same as regular water?