The more we act like certain words are taboo, like calling things "gay," the more power we give them.
I'm not claiming it's taboo ("you are forbidden to say that!"), only that it makes the speaker look childish and ignorant ("you keep using that word. You do not appear to know what it means"). Politely correcting someone's incorrect word usage is not the same thing as "freaking out and screaming you can't say that", and really isn't much different from the posts that we commonly see correcting peoples' misuse of apostrophes.
I get queer, and gay... euphemisms... but how to you go from "an artificial watercourse" to a woman who likes women?
I always thought it was a reference to the story about the kid who saves the town from flooding by plugging up the leaky dyke (aka dam) with his finger. i.e. a lesbian is a woman who gets lots of fingers stuck in her.
I just simply believe a words importance comes from its context.
You're absolutely right about that, but what you are missing is that in a conversation, the context is provided by all the people participating, not just the speaker. If you're among a group of close friends, you can reasonably assume that all of them know you are not really implying "gays are bad" when you use the word "gay" to mean "bad". But when you're speaking in public or to people you don't know, you can't safely make such assumptions. Certainly in the context I (and most Americans) live in, there is enough homosexual-bashing going on that it is quite reasonable to assume that someone who uses "gay" as a derogative is indeed implying that gays are to be looked down upon (whether that was his primary intent, or not).
... but not nearly as regularly or as often as it used to. Face it, 95% of the PCs out there these days are running Office, Internet Explorer, and Outlook, and running them well. In previous years, people upgraded their PCs every few years because the new PCs did their jobs significantly better/faster than the old ones. But is that still true? For the average office drone, what will a 4GHz Vista machine do that a 1.2GHz XP machine can't?
So, you're probably right, but I wouldn't be surprised if it took 7-15 years for Vista to become ubiquitous, rather than 3-5.
Get off your high-horse and just deal with the fact that "gay" has been accepted, by a large part of the population, as a synonym for "uncool" or "lame".
Are you prepared to make the same arguments for "nigger"? i.e. That it's okay to use it in civilized conversation (yeah yeah, I know, but we'll consider Slashdot at +1 to be close enough) because some part of the population likes to use it, and because even some black people use it?
Or would it be better if people do get routinely criticized for using slurs like this, so that at some point the terms fall out of popular use and we can have a society where entire minority groups aren't automatically considered "uncool" or "lame"?
tags like "gay" and other childish things that no longer apply to post-April Fools stories?
Unless I missed something, "gay" didn't apply to the April Fools stories either. The whole "I use the word gay to mean stupid/contemptible" habit is really grating; it reminds me of the kid in my elementary school who used the word "Jewish" the exact same way (as in "dude, the 49ers are so Jewish. I can't believe they fumbled five times yesterday"). It's the same old tired prejudice, they've just moved on to a new group of persecutees.
(Note: I'm not accusing the parent poster of doing this; I'm just venting)
Well, at least in the rather open-ended realm of science fiction, there is always the possibility that P is so much more advanced than NP that P can protect itself using effective yet non-destructive means. No doubt in Star Trek this would involve inpenetrable force fields and the like, but as a more realistic example: if you get into a confrontation with a grizzly bear, you might have no choice but to shoot the bear in order to protect yourself. If your adversary is a lowly wasp, on the other hand, you have the option of capturing it under a beer mug and removing it from the room, without harming the wasp.
I'm going off topic, but I think today's as good a day as any to do so... is it possible that at some point God renounced his omnipotence? As an omnipotent being, he would certainly have the power to do so... but of course he might not be able to undo it afterward, being no longer omnipotent. Perhaps he painted himself into a corner that way.
Flying is a loooooooong way from gliding. No matter what changes you made to Rocky, he could never achieve self-powered climbing flight.
I think you aren't giving Rocky enough credit. All it would take is for some of the squirrels out there who are born with extra-large gliding-flaps (or whatever they are called) to start moving them just a little bit during flight, to give them a slightly longer glide, and presto! These squirrels can now reach more trees than their non-enhanced neighbors, and thus are more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass on the (bigflaps+tendencytowardsflappingmotions) trait to their offspring. Now fast-forward a few hundred thousand years, and you might well see "true" flying squirrels.
I don't think the (gliding->flying) adaptation is significantly different or harder than the (climbing trees->gliding) adaptation these squirrels have already made.
That's my point - valuable and significant structural changes are very very very hard to achieve incrementally, even over very long periods.
Very very very very hard for whom? Maybe hard to imagine, but then again there is no reason why they should have to be easy. They only have to be possible.
I hear reports all the time about how in Africa, many women are raped (some even by their own husbands, against their will) and contract AIDS through intercourse they didn't agree to.
Never mind rape, how about all the women who are faithful to their husband and end up contracting AIDS from him, because he's been having sex with prostitutes on the side?
It's hard to conceptualize the transition, for example, from ground-based to airborne creatures caused by slow incremental changes - so many things need to occur, many of which are actually detrimental to the creature if it cannot actually fly...
Hey, Rocky! Want to see me pull an example out of a hat?
Re:Best customer service, or basic consumer rights
on
Why Everyone Loves Apple
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Priceless... I make a crack about Apple fanboy-ism, and immediately get modded down. Just as I thought!
This is Apple pretending to be a caring, loving company (like they always do) and you fell for it.
If Apple always "pretends to be a caring, loving company", does it matter if they are genuine or "only pretending"? Either way, the customers get good service.
Why would they stop using a successful tactic this time around?
Oh they definitely will use it... the question is, will it still be successful? From what I've been hearing lately, the bloom has largely come off that rose. Bush's approval ratings are in the mid-30s (Cheney's at 18), and a majority of Americans polled now trust the Democrats more than the Republicans on just about every issue, even (gasp!) national security. Even the conservatives have lost faith in him. But I think the most telling aspect is that Bush goes on TV about once a week to talk up the war, and nobody listens to him at all. I think people have finally figured out that there is no point paying attention to those noises that keep coming out of his mouth, since they have no relation to reality.
That said, I suppose one can never be too cynical... but I think there is some room for hope here.
It seems to me that there is plenty of transparency at the moment. It's almost a joke that everyone knows - and no one denies - the litany of judicial oversights, wiretaps, renditions - it's so well known I don't even have to go on.
Just because we know about a lot doesn't mean that there isn't a lot more that isn't public knowledge. By analogy: if you turn on the light and see several cockroaches, it's a very good bet that your house has many other unseen cockroaches in it as well.
You don't care about corruption at home (e.g. Florida vote rigging), you don't care about inaction at home (e.g. New Orleans)...
Wait for the 2006 elections... with any luck they will show that the American public doesn't remain asleep at the switch forever (or if they don't, it's not too late for me to move to Canada).
Islamist Terrorism can be defeated or marginalized too.
Perhaps, but it isn't "The War on Islamic Terrorism", it's "The War on Terrorism". Even if we pacify the Islamic terrorists, there will always be the potential that some other miscreants will get up to the same tricks. Since you can't brainwash everybody to forget that the techniques of terrorism exist, the threat of terrorism can never go away, and therefore the War on Terrorism can never be won. And I rather suspect that that is just how certain parts of our government like it.
You forgot the fourth reason: it just doesn't matter. Anyone who doesn't wear the foil hat realizes that a bunch of drones looking down on US territory doesn't matter at all to individual liberty.
You really don't mind the government watching you constantly, every time you step outside your house? You're braver than I thought...
MTV and other youth-oriented mass media are fairly blatant in their encouragement of young people to protest the G8 summit or the meeting of the World Bank by going ape shit.
Care to back that accusation up with some evidence? MTV may do many things, but (rap videos aside) inciting riots is not one I've heard them accused of doing before.
Poorly written software may not work in newer versions of Windows today, but Windows has supported the same 16-bit API for over 20 years now without any shitty "Classic" layers.
Saying that Windows doesn't have "any shitty 'Classic' layers" is just another way of saying "the shitty 'Classic' layers are haphazardly mixed together with the new stuff". Just because Microsoft didn't separate them out cleanly doesn't mean they don't exist.
Considering we (the US) were the first nuclear armed country on the planet and have been engaged in numerous conflicts where we have either lost (Vietnam) or stalemated - I'm not sure where our nuclear superiority has equaled "suicide" for the other side.
You'll note that every conflict the US has been in since the advent of its nuclear arsenal has been fought on foreign soil. There have been and very likely won't be any invasions of the U.S. by foreign countries, because if the U.S. feared for its existence it would turn to nukes.
If we stay idle, isn't that as evil as the dictator who commits this genocide?
In a word, no. As a first principle, everybody is responsible for their own actions. If a dictator commits genocide, the crime is his and nobody else's. There is certainly an argument to be made that if we are capable of stopping the crime then we have a moral duty to try and do so, but that argument only goes so far. It is limited by two things: first, are we actually capable of stopping the crime? If not, then there is little we can do. Second: at what cost to ourselves? If it turns out we are capable of stopping the crime, but only at an unacceptably large cost to ourselves, then most people would say that the situation is unfortunate but our own welfare must come first.
It's horrible that roughly 32-38,000 have died in the Iraqi war, but what is this number compared to the execution of 600,000 Iraqi civilians under Saddam? Or the 100,000 Kurds? Or the 500,000 Iranians?
The problem with the figures you give is that they only reflect the people who have died so far. The crisis isn't over yet, and there is certainly potential for things to get much much worse in the next few years. (BTW, the US was funding Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war, which certainly complicates your argument regarding the 500,000 Iranians)
I think at some point we have to recognize that there are limits to our own competence. The Powell Doctrine is a very wise one; starting open-ended wars without clear, simple objectives and an obvious exit strategy is not.
FAIR, who the hell wants war to be fair?!?? Anyone actually going to war wants it to be as unfair, as brutal, and as lopsided as possible. War is not a fucking soccer match.
I think the best way to put it is that everybody (with the possible exception of arms suppliers) wants there to be as little violent conflict as possible. War is a terrible waste of resources, and war against a nuclear-armed nation is likely suicidal.
In fact, when facing a country such as the US or EU which has basic respect for the rules of war (eg, the Geneva Convention), a "fair" war pretty much maximizes the number of people killed.
I agree. The question is, is fighting against such countries really the threat that we need to prepare for? Or is the era of large-scale country-to-country warfare over (due to MAD if nothing else), and the real threat these days comes from terrorism? And if that is the case, wouldn't this money be better spent on combatting terrorism, rather than on building ships for wars that won't happen?
At a cost of $100K per sailor per year, this represents savings of more than $6 billion
$6 billion is pretty good savings, but if they were to skip building the ships entirely, they would save another $12 billion on top of that, for a total of $18 billion saved. I'm sure people can think of lots of uses for $18 billion that are more valuable than deploying aircraft carriers...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not claiming it's taboo ("you are forbidden to say that!"), only that it makes the speaker look childish and ignorant ("you keep using that word. You do not appear to know what it means"). Politely correcting someone's incorrect word usage is not the same thing as "freaking out and screaming you can't say that", and really isn't much different from the posts that we commonly see correcting peoples' misuse of apostrophes.
I always thought it was a reference to the story about the kid who saves the town from flooding by plugging up the leaky dyke (aka dam) with his finger. i.e. a lesbian is a woman who gets lots of fingers stuck in her.
But I could be wrong.
You're absolutely right about that, but what you are missing is that in a conversation, the context is provided by all the people participating, not just the speaker. If you're among a group of close friends, you can reasonably assume that all of them know you are not really implying "gays are bad" when you use the word "gay" to mean "bad". But when you're speaking in public or to people you don't know, you can't safely make such assumptions. Certainly in the context I (and most Americans) live in, there is enough homosexual-bashing going on that it is quite reasonable to assume that someone who uses "gay" as a derogative is indeed implying that gays are to be looked down upon (whether that was his primary intent, or not).
So, you're probably right, but I wouldn't be surprised if it took 7-15 years for Vista to become ubiquitous, rather than 3-5.
Are you prepared to make the same arguments for "nigger"? i.e. That it's okay to use it in civilized conversation (yeah yeah, I know, but we'll consider Slashdot at +1 to be close enough) because some part of the population likes to use it, and because even some black people use it?
Or would it be better if people do get routinely criticized for using slurs like this, so that at some point the terms fall out of popular use and we can have a society where entire minority groups aren't automatically considered "uncool" or "lame"?
Unless I missed something, "gay" didn't apply to the April Fools stories either. The whole "I use the word gay to mean stupid/contemptible" habit is really grating; it reminds me of the kid in my elementary school who used the word "Jewish" the exact same way (as in "dude, the 49ers are so Jewish. I can't believe they fumbled five times yesterday"). It's the same old tired prejudice, they've just moved on to a new group of persecutees.
(Note: I'm not accusing the parent poster of doing this; I'm just venting)
Well, at least in the rather open-ended realm of science fiction, there is always the possibility that P is so much more advanced than NP that P can protect itself using effective yet non-destructive means. No doubt in Star Trek this would involve inpenetrable force fields and the like, but as a more realistic example: if you get into a confrontation with a grizzly bear, you might have no choice but to shoot the bear in order to protect yourself. If your adversary is a lowly wasp, on the other hand, you have the option of capturing it under a beer mug and removing it from the room, without harming the wasp.
I'm going off topic, but I think today's as good a day as any to do so... is it possible that at some point God renounced his omnipotence? As an omnipotent being, he would certainly have the power to do so... but of course he might not be able to undo it afterward, being no longer omnipotent. Perhaps he painted himself into a corner that way.
It would certainly explain the steep decline in the quality of miracles these days...
I think you aren't giving Rocky enough credit. All it would take is for some of the squirrels out there who are born with extra-large gliding-flaps (or whatever they are called) to start moving them just a little bit during flight, to give them a slightly longer glide, and presto! These squirrels can now reach more trees than their non-enhanced neighbors, and thus are more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass on the (bigflaps+tendencytowardsflappingmotions) trait to their offspring. Now fast-forward a few hundred thousand years, and you might well see "true" flying squirrels.
I don't think the (gliding->flying) adaptation is significantly different or harder than the (climbing trees->gliding) adaptation these squirrels have already made.
That's my point - valuable and significant structural changes are very very very hard to achieve incrementally, even over very long periods.
Very very very very hard for whom? Maybe hard to imagine, but then again there is no reason why they should have to be easy. They only have to be possible.
Hey man, asexuals are people too!
Never mind rape, how about all the women who are faithful to their husband and end up contracting AIDS from him, because he's been having sex with prostitutes on the side?
Hey, Rocky! Want to see me pull an example out of a hat?
Face it, man. Nobody wants to look at your crack.
If Apple always "pretends to be a caring, loving company", does it matter if they are genuine or "only pretending"? Either way, the customers get good service.
Oh they definitely will use it... the question is, will it still be successful? From what I've been hearing lately, the bloom has largely come off that rose. Bush's approval ratings are in the mid-30s (Cheney's at 18), and a majority of Americans polled now trust the Democrats more than the Republicans on just about every issue, even (gasp!) national security. Even the conservatives have lost faith in him. But I think the most telling aspect is that Bush goes on TV about once a week to talk up the war, and nobody listens to him at all. I think people have finally figured out that there is no point paying attention to those noises that keep coming out of his mouth, since they have no relation to reality.
That said, I suppose one can never be too cynical... but I think there is some room for hope here.
Just because we know about a lot doesn't mean that there isn't a lot more that isn't public knowledge. By analogy: if you turn on the light and see several cockroaches, it's a very good bet that your house has many other unseen cockroaches in it as well.
Wait for the 2006 elections... with any luck they will show that the American public doesn't remain asleep at the switch forever (or if they don't, it's not too late for me to move to Canada).
Perhaps, but it isn't "The War on Islamic Terrorism", it's "The War on Terrorism". Even if we pacify the Islamic terrorists, there will always be the potential that some other miscreants will get up to the same tricks. Since you can't brainwash everybody to forget that the techniques of terrorism exist, the threat of terrorism can never go away, and therefore the War on Terrorism can never be won. And I rather suspect that that is just how certain parts of our government like it.
You really don't mind the government watching you constantly, every time you step outside your house? You're braver than I thought...
Care to back that accusation up with some evidence? MTV may do many things, but (rap videos aside) inciting riots is not one I've heard them accused of doing before.
Saying that Windows doesn't have "any shitty 'Classic' layers" is just another way of saying "the shitty 'Classic' layers are haphazardly mixed together with the new stuff". Just because Microsoft didn't separate them out cleanly doesn't mean they don't exist.
You'll note that every conflict the US has been in since the advent of its nuclear arsenal has been fought on foreign soil. There have been and very likely won't be any invasions of the U.S. by foreign countries, because if the U.S. feared for its existence it would turn to nukes.
In a word, no. As a first principle, everybody is responsible for their own actions. If a dictator commits genocide, the crime is his and nobody else's. There is certainly an argument to be made that if we are capable of stopping the crime then we have a moral duty to try and do so, but that argument only goes so far. It is limited by two things: first, are we actually capable of stopping the crime? If not, then there is little we can do. Second: at what cost to ourselves? If it turns out we are capable of stopping the crime, but only at an unacceptably large cost to ourselves, then most people would say that the situation is unfortunate but our own welfare must come first.
It's horrible that roughly 32-38,000 have died in the Iraqi war, but what is this number compared to the execution of 600,000 Iraqi civilians under Saddam? Or the 100,000 Kurds? Or the 500,000 Iranians?
The problem with the figures you give is that they only reflect the people who have died so far. The crisis isn't over yet, and there is certainly potential for things to get much much worse in the next few years. (BTW, the US was funding Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war, which certainly complicates your argument regarding the 500,000 Iranians)
I think at some point we have to recognize that there are limits to our own competence. The Powell Doctrine is a very wise one; starting open-ended wars without clear, simple objectives and an obvious exit strategy is not.
I think the best way to put it is that everybody (with the possible exception of arms suppliers) wants there to be as little violent conflict as possible. War is a terrible waste of resources, and war against a nuclear-armed nation is likely suicidal.
In fact, when facing a country such as the US or EU which has basic respect for the rules of war (eg, the Geneva Convention), a "fair" war pretty much maximizes the number of people killed.
I agree. The question is, is fighting against such countries really the threat that we need to prepare for? Or is the era of large-scale country-to-country warfare over (due to MAD if nothing else), and the real threat these days comes from terrorism? And if that is the case, wouldn't this money be better spent on combatting terrorism, rather than on building ships for wars that won't happen?
$6 billion is pretty good savings, but if they were to skip building the ships entirely, they would save another $12 billion on top of that, for a total of $18 billion saved. I'm sure people can think of lots of uses for $18 billion that are more valuable than deploying aircraft carriers...