Or any autocompletion that relies on a parser instead of a dictionary.
I'd toss in a heaping dose of apropos for semantic relationships as well. For example, to get from "pattern" to "grep".
If you could pull all those things together, it would be pretty wicked, I think. Tall order though, and I suspect there are people working on it (recent enhancements to context-sensitive tab completion come to mind).
The first paragraph is riddled with unfounded assumptions and grammatical mistakes
The same thing threw me at first -- he's Russian writing ESL.
screenshot of what Semantic Line Interface might look like:
Totally agree with your assessment at first glance. Reading the article explains what he's getting at, though, and it makes some sense.
Mind you, I actually find a lot of what he says to be incorrect, and I suspect a lot of it is long-trodden ground (not my area of expertise), but the quality of presentation is a poor proxy for measuring the quality of the content in this case.
Yeah, Baby! We are now only the second stupidest country on the planet regarding writing Internet laws that completely misunderstand how the Internet works. Thanks Belarus! You've shown that our politicians are not quite the most ignorant twits in positions of power on Earth!
Watch real carefully now. This is the part where the potential for blatant corruption is highest. This is when, during the tap room buildout, the federal government agreed to pay the telecoms truckloads of taxpayer money to "offset the costs."
Clearly the correct allocation is "current usage + 1", which is not all that implausible with something a simple as a lighted sign over an ultrasonic/magnetic/etc.
Love the rough concept, particularly for high value real-estate -- which is where the abstract problem is a real practical issue. The signs would be expensive, but if the real estate is high value it is a justifiable expense.
Obviously lots of implementation issues, large and small alike, but that is the kinds of answers we should be going for. Smart things to make our world better.
Unfortunately it's not allowed under the ADA rules -- you must use a static allocation
Those are changeable. It's hard, sure, but if you come up with a solution that everyone sees as a win, that sort of change actually goes pretty smoothly. Your idea seems to fit that in some cases. And it has the added advantage that some sign manufacturer is going to land the contract and make a killing, so you could get him to grease his senator (haha, only serious).
Yeah, but can you prove that the small fraking-caused quakes didn't release stress that would have caused a much more dangerous larger magnitude quake?
That is a potentially valid response to someone who wants to use the cost of the quake damage as the absolute measure of liability.
The other significant question is whether the small scale quakes are indicative of changes we are making to the Earth's crust which we do not fully understand. Six months ago there were a lot of scientists in the industry saying that fracking had no relationship with quakes. Then they said yes, but they're tiny, almost imperceptible, like under 3.0. Now it's 4.0, but maybe it's a good thing.
It seems pretty apparent that the answers are not yet in, and there are a lot of industry scientists that have been arriving at estimates that are on the low side of subsequent data, which happens to be the same side the private profit motive.
Just canaries in a coal mine, of course -- correlation does not imply causation any more than a dead canary implies toxic atmosphere.
its size was well beyond the quite small theoretical maximum that could be induced by fracking [nature.com].
Models are made by taking observed data and creating formulae that match. When new observed data comes in that does not match the model, and the cause of the mismatch is unknown, it is unknowable whether it means that the model is wrong or the event was the result of an unobserved external cause.
Choosing to assume that the model is right (or wrong), particularly when our existing data is both thin and extremely politicized, is not good science.
the earthquake aspect seems like a non-issue to me as long as they're small.
Don't think of them as harmless reductions of existing stress. Think of them as tectonic canaries in a coal mine saying, "You're twiddling with the Earth's crust on a scale that we do not yet fully understand."
True that. You got me thinking, for sure. Here is the distinction I came up with:
An ad hominem attack is a logically fallacious (or at least vacuous) debate tactic used to persuade a third party that he or she should not listen to the opponent in the debate, or to intimidate the opponent into avoiding some area within the topic. A distinguishing characteristic is continuing to assert one's position.
What I was doing was explaining to you why I don't think you and I can have a productive discussion with each other on that topic. I was not using ad hominem as a tactic to affect the course of the debate, but to explain why I would not be continuing my part in it.
>> Your knee-jerk leap to a foul-mouthed implication of an ulterior motive to his or her post is inappropriate.
> You must be new here.
I've been around long enough to get the running joke, and find it amusng.
Still, though, I feel like replying:
Not only am I not new here, I have frequently succumbed to the urge to spew some vitriol at someone I disagreed with. I'm fairly confident that I will again in the future. No, I'm not new to that experience from either side of the exchange, nor as a bystander.
But I am trying to make it better. I'm trying to be better myself, and trying to find ways to communicate that message to our community, to make it stronger.
See, the thing is, I've been thinking about social networks, and about how our society is being usurped by manipulative bastards in industry and government. Same forces as have existed for thousands of years, I guess, but this is my now. It seems to me the only way we can beat them is by ganging together with other rationalists and communicating. Then it hits me that this community, Slashdot, is already a powerful force in that space. Makes me want to find ways to be a better community member, and to help others see the same thing. Even if only by tiny steps.
So we over-assign handicapped spots to try and make sure that when several truly handicapped people are at the store, they don't have to park at the back of the lot because we tried to cut the number of spots close so that some non-handicapped lard-asses didn't have to walk an extra 25 feet.
One of the early commenters was advocating a Darwinian perspective. He or she is obviously a total douchebag. But I don't think it is so clear cut when questioning the allocation ratio.
By your rationale (which I'm sure was not intended to be a bulletproof and thorough examination of the space -- I'm not trying to fault you), you could justify having half the parking lot be handicapped spaces. Clearly that would be an inefficient use of resources for all but the most handicap-focused retail centers.
This would not be a problem if retailers chose to put the right number of handicapped spaces in, but they do not (probably don't have the data to do it, even if they were so inclined, but also the profit would act as a pressure against it), so we have to legislate the number. That is the good and right thing to do, IMO. Now we have a question, though: Should it be 10% of spaces, 1% of spaces, or 50% of spaces? Some other number? More than we have now? Less?
Much like homeland security, the only politically acceptable answers are "more" and "the same amount as now." Such situations require that we rise above our immediate inclination to jump to the politically safe answer. That we resist the urge to puff up our sense of superiority by belittling those who present rational counterpoints. That we dispassionately consider the question.
As GP pointed out, causal observation -- and even a slightly more formal investigation by a couple comedians -- seems to indicate that the measurement we used was off. We seem to have substantially overestimated the right number. Lazy lard-asses may have their own flawed estimate, but being as wrong as we seem to be is also sub-optimal.
Also note that you may not see the problem that some do. Where I grew up, there was lots of cheap land, so there were never parking problems. The lazy lard-asses could always find plenty of parking even on a Saturday afternoon, and I felt exactly as you do about people who complained about the allocation ratio.
Then I moved to NYC. And some years after that, San Francisco. Different story there. Seeing a big lot, completely full of cars, with people circling, spewing toxic gas, near-missing pedestrians who appear from behind cars without looking, while half a dozen spaces sit empty, is not uncommon.
Seeing that scene replayed over and over and over never even remotely made me question the value of having handicapped parking spaces. But it did make me question the accuracy of the measurement used in estimating the allocation ratio.
Waste is waste -- even when it is for such an obviously just cause as enabling handicapped people to participate more fully in our society.
You're still a cunt for parking there if you aren't disabled
GP did not say he or she has ever parked in one. Didn't even hint that it would ever be OK for a non-handicapped person to park there. Your knee-jerk leap to a foul-mouthed implication of an ulterior motive to his or her post is inappropriate.
I looked up the numbers just now. They sold about 4 billion tracks in the last year. At $0.30 a pop, that's $1.2 billion in low-overhead revenue -- probably more than 10% of their $7.3b profit. While I agree, you are right, that is not a "close the doors" kind of thing, it is definitely enough to make them blink.
You make it out like Apple is the only one with patents, copyrights and licence agreements.
I do not. I make it out like patents, copyrights, and license agreements are indicative of a market which is not free in the libertarian sense used in the OP.
If that were the case you might have a point but they all play by the same rules.
They all play by the same set of rules that favors the incumbent with the most lawyers and power to develop exclusive relationships. That is a market which is not free due to barriers to entry.
I'm not even saying it is bad. I would not say such a thing, because I think some of the barriers from which Apple benefits can be healthy components of a non-free market economy.
I'm just saying it is not rational to use the free market card to defend Apple. If we snapped our fingers and had a true free market today, Apple would become a much smaller company very quickly. If you ended copyright, Apple's iTunes Music Store revenue would be cut by more than 90%, for example. That alone might be more than they could adapt to before going out of business.
I will point out, however, that all of your replies, even the one you correctly identified as disrespectful, got +5. A great testament to the quality of moderation in Israel related discussions here
If you are so blinded by hate that you read '5' where there is a '2', I don't think this can be a productive discourse.
You know, my previous response to you was terribly disrespectful, and that was wrong. I apologize, and I'm going to try again. I am still going to strenuously disagree, but I am going to try to be more respectful about it.
How dare you spell out what so many Israel haters are trying so hard to have us believe they do not mean.
I think very few people really feel what I expressed in my first paragraph. It was meant to work on two levels. The surface level was a sarcastic and hyperbolic impression of someone opposed to Israeli nationalism. That is the one you seem to be reacting to on the surface. I suspect, however, that the passion of your response is an instinctive reaction against the deeper level.
The deeper level was probing the real problem of having a Jewish state in the midst of people with whom it has a few thousand years of pent up blood debt. Who deserves the land, which side should have to leave, is not as important (at least to me) as the fact that such a situation is bound to lead to bloodshed. I'm a Western orderly free market type -- I see bloodshed as a waste of labor resources. It's OK if Israel thinks the blood is justified -- not my culture, not my place to judge -- except they're doing it with a piece of my paycheck, and my nation's name. That part of it makes it my legitimate concern.
So, how exactly do you suggest I contribute to my country ceasing to exist,
I was not genuinely suggesting that your country must cease to exist, though I do think -- considering the tens of thousands who die every year -- it is an option that should be on the table for discussion.
If it were a viable option, the means by which you could effect the change that I would advise would be advocating separation of church and state. And since the state is not going to give up its culture-hammer, I think that change would have to start from the church side. I think Judaism should consider renouncing Israel. It's a big step, I know, that would include some serious expenditure of time and money -- but how many dollars is 10,000 people's lives per year worth? Even at a mere $100k per person, that's a billion per year. That seems like enough upside to make the matter worth serious consideration.
so those poor peaceful neighbors of mine not become raving fundamentalists by my mere existence?
Your neighbors are not peaceful innocents. That does not change the responsibilities of civilized people.
There is an obvious causal link between Israel's existence and violent Islamic fundamentalism. It may not be the root cause, but it is an enormously potent catalyst. It may not be fair that we consider removing the catalyst instead of the reactant -- if that is the case -- but we cannot lose sight of the fact that the most important thing is to stop the chain reaction.
Or, maybe not. Maybe God's promise to Abraham is more important than ending the violence. But if it is, then I want my nation to get out of the relationship. If Israel refuses to consider its role in the cycle of violence, then I do not believe they are genuinely interested in solving the problem.
I hope me shooting myself in the head will be deemed a sufficient contribution, humble though it is.
Please don't belittle me by implying that I am homicidal. You also seem to be attempting to emotionally manipulate the reader with your implied suffering, which shows a lack of respect for him or her.
I would follow your advice in the last line of your comment, but I suspect technical impossibility, and I fail to see how it would bring about the desired result anyways.
Only included to avoid making it stand out by omission. Not sufficiently substantial to warrant comment.
I actually thought you were being sarcastic at people like you by your first paragraph. Your second paragraph made your intentions clear, though.
The first paragraph was cognitive dissonance -- a layering of sarcastic criticism of anti-Israel-ists on top of a commentary on the f
So, how exactly do you suggest I contribute to my country ceasing to exist
I'd say by advocating the separation of church and state. Religious states are a really bad idea, and in my perception of your case, it isn't the religion that is the problem.
those poor peaceful neighbors of mine
Who are you talking about? Most of them seem to be to be at least as foaming at the mouth mad as Israeli nationalists -- probably worse.
I hope me shooting myself in the head will be deemed a sufficient contribution, humble though it is.
Oh, gee, I'm sorry, you obviously have a martyrdom complex so I should cease any statements that might offend the precious little glass flower. This clumsy bit of rhetorical manipulation is beneath even such an obvious nitwit as yourself.
I would follow your advice in the last line of your comment
Perhaps you are a little retarded. The last line was directed at the object of the post; Israel, not you. Given Israel (aside from their metaphorical identity of "dicks") does not have genitalia, it is probably safe for you to assume that it was not a literal suggestion. You could then have followed up by searching for the phrase on Google and it would have yielded some explanatory information on that cultural epithet. Hope that helps next time you are similarly confused. (Unless, of course, you were being intentionally obtuse -- in which case your rhetorical shenanigans are, again, clumsy and transparent)
I actually thought you were being sarcastic... by your first paragraph.
This was a form of commentary that I think of as, "haha, only serious" -- a blend of sarcasm and critical commentary that is used to jar one-track thinkers out of their simplistic and juvenile perspectives.
As an added bonus, it gets the really hard-line folks into a lather, and makes them fire off some truly comical screeds. Everybody wins!
people like you
Pandering to prejudice really works with you people, doesn't it? (that would be another example of blending sarcasm and critical commentary, as I demonstrated the very characteristic I was belittling, for effect)
Your second paragraph made your intentions clear, though.
Perhaps you did not notice the whipsaw change in tone from the first to the second paragraph. That jarring shift is supposed to break your puny little mind from its assumption that the post is a pure monograph. Again, in your case, I have clearly failed.
Should all Israelis shoot themselves in the head, or just the Jewish ones?
I don't care what religion they are, except to the extent that they use ancient parables to fan the flames of nationalism. Even then, I don't care which parables from what ancient fiction they use, only that they are xenophobes using cultural identity as a weapon of hate.
I also don't think they should shoot themselves in the head, you manipulative martyr.
Don't get me wrong -- I don't think the MAFIAA is justifiable. I think we would be better off going back to 7 years + 7 years (*), eliminating the DMCA and ACTA, dropping SOPA, and disbanding the RIAA and MPAA. Let me make that as clear as possible: I think we would be better as a society, and would have faster advancement of science and the useful arts, and would have a faster GDP growth rate if we radically rolled back copyright and copyright enforcement.
I was just saying my whole iPod is also legit according to the current, counterproductive, state of copyright law -- mostly as a result of almost completely ending my trade with the MAFIAA and its members. And, yes, I can produce the CDs (mostly purchased before Metallica/Napster) on demand -- I just re-ripped everything from scratch this past Summer.
* More specifically, I'd like to see: 5 years free, next 5 years cost $100, next 5 cost $10,000 ($100 * 100), next 5 cost $1m ($10k * 100) and so on -- with no limit, just exponential re-up price at base=100. IE: for each additional 5 years of cultural monopoly, you have to demonstrate that you are capitalizing on the work. You must do so in the only truly unequivocal fashion: By directly paying society, on an exponential scale, for the privilege.
My 64 gig iPod Touch is full. I have about 20 gigs of music, roughly 200 albums at 100 megs a pop, all ripped from my personal CD collection (mostly purchased prior to Metallica/Napster). I have about 20 gigs of audio podcasts, and another 15 of video podcasts. Then maybe 5 gigs of liberally licensed music. And I usually have two or three books from Podiobooks on there as well. Full, all legit. Only about 30% MAFIAA approved, but that's 'cuz the other 70% is new media that the MAFIAA has no part in.
I don't know if I'm heart of the market, but I am definitely not alone. I know a lot of people, geek and normal, who have a big chunk of their player dedicated to new media. Not everyone infringes copyright -- even those who are throwing off the chains of MAFIAA oppression.
The first half of the twentieth century was dominated by the war against fascism. The second half of the twentieth century was dominated by the war against communism. We are now engaged in a third great war: where governments try to gain total monitoring capabilities -- where everything everyone does and says is monitored.
Slashdot Mirror
Or any autocompletion that relies on a parser instead of a dictionary.
I'd toss in a heaping dose of apropos for semantic relationships as well. For example, to get from "pattern" to "grep".
If you could pull all those things together, it would be pretty wicked, I think. Tall order though, and I suspect there are people working on it (recent enhancements to context-sensitive tab completion come to mind).
The first paragraph is riddled with unfounded assumptions and grammatical mistakes
The same thing threw me at first -- he's Russian writing ESL.
screenshot of what Semantic Line Interface might look like:
Totally agree with your assessment at first glance. Reading the article explains what he's getting at, though, and it makes some sense.
Mind you, I actually find a lot of what he says to be incorrect, and I suspect a lot of it is long-trodden ground (not my area of expertise), but the quality of presentation is a poor proxy for measuring the quality of the content in this case.
We're Number Two! We're Number Two!
Yeah, Baby! We are now only the second stupidest country on the planet regarding writing Internet laws that completely misunderstand how the Internet works. Thanks Belarus! You've shown that our politicians are not quite the most ignorant twits in positions of power on Earth!
Watch real carefully now. This is the part where the potential for blatant corruption is highest. This is when, during the tap room buildout, the federal government agreed to pay the telecoms truckloads of taxpayer money to "offset the costs."
Clearly the correct allocation is "current usage + 1", which is not all that implausible with something a simple as a lighted sign over an ultrasonic/magnetic/etc.
Love the rough concept, particularly for high value real-estate -- which is where the abstract problem is a real practical issue. The signs would be expensive, but if the real estate is high value it is a justifiable expense.
Obviously lots of implementation issues, large and small alike, but that is the kinds of answers we should be going for. Smart things to make our world better.
Unfortunately it's not allowed under the ADA rules -- you must use a static allocation
Those are changeable. It's hard, sure, but if you come up with a solution that everyone sees as a win, that sort of change actually goes pretty smoothly. Your idea seems to fit that in some cases. And it has the added advantage that some sign manufacturer is going to land the contract and make a killing, so you could get him to grease his senator (haha, only serious).
Yeah, but can you prove that the small fraking-caused quakes didn't release stress that would have caused a much more dangerous larger magnitude quake?
That is a potentially valid response to someone who wants to use the cost of the quake damage as the absolute measure of liability.
The other significant question is whether the small scale quakes are indicative of changes we are making to the Earth's crust which we do not fully understand. Six months ago there were a lot of scientists in the industry saying that fracking had no relationship with quakes. Then they said yes, but they're tiny, almost imperceptible, like under 3.0. Now it's 4.0, but maybe it's a good thing.
It seems pretty apparent that the answers are not yet in, and there are a lot of industry scientists that have been arriving at estimates that are on the low side of subsequent data, which happens to be the same side the private profit motive.
Just canaries in a coal mine, of course -- correlation does not imply causation any more than a dead canary implies toxic atmosphere.
its size was well beyond the quite small theoretical maximum that could be induced by fracking [nature.com].
Models are made by taking observed data and creating formulae that match. When new observed data comes in that does not match the model, and the cause of the mismatch is unknown, it is unknowable whether it means that the model is wrong or the event was the result of an unobserved external cause.
Choosing to assume that the model is right (or wrong), particularly when our existing data is both thin and extremely politicized, is not good science.
the earthquake aspect seems like a non-issue to me as long as they're small.
Don't think of them as harmless reductions of existing stress. Think of them as tectonic canaries in a coal mine saying, "You're twiddling with the Earth's crust on a scale that we do not yet fully understand."
A friend of mine has MS. On a good day he parks in a normal spot. On a bad day that 100 feet can mean all the difference in the world.
Can you explain to me why you included that in your post? Has anyone in this thread suggested that there should be no handicapped spaces?
And yet it is me who is accused of ad hominum.
True that. You got me thinking, for sure. Here is the distinction I came up with:
An ad hominem attack is a logically fallacious (or at least vacuous) debate tactic used to persuade a third party that he or she should not listen to the opponent in the debate, or to intimidate the opponent into avoiding some area within the topic. A distinguishing characteristic is continuing to assert one's position.
What I was doing was explaining to you why I don't think you and I can have a productive discussion with each other on that topic. I was not using ad hominem as a tactic to affect the course of the debate, but to explain why I would not be continuing my part in it.
$1.0B on "licenses" to the content they are selling, and $175k on severs, bandwidth, and front-end development.
4b songs sold per year -- $0.30 commission -- $4b total sales, $1.2b revenue, $2.8b to the copyright holders. The $1.2b is Apple's cut.
>> Your knee-jerk leap to a foul-mouthed implication of an ulterior motive to his or her post is inappropriate.
> You must be new here.
I've been around long enough to get the running joke, and find it amusng.
Still, though, I feel like replying:
Not only am I not new here, I have frequently succumbed to the urge to spew some vitriol at someone I disagreed with. I'm fairly confident that I will again in the future. No, I'm not new to that experience from either side of the exchange, nor as a bystander.
But I am trying to make it better. I'm trying to be better myself, and trying to find ways to communicate that message to our community, to make it stronger.
See, the thing is, I've been thinking about social networks, and about how our society is being usurped by manipulative bastards in industry and government. Same forces as have existed for thousands of years, I guess, but this is my now. It seems to me the only way we can beat them is by ganging together with other rationalists and communicating. Then it hits me that this community, Slashdot, is already a powerful force in that space. Makes me want to find ways to be a better community member, and to help others see the same thing. Even if only by tiny steps.
So we over-assign handicapped spots to try and make sure that when several truly handicapped people are at the store, they don't have to park at the back of the lot because we tried to cut the number of spots close so that some non-handicapped lard-asses didn't have to walk an extra 25 feet.
One of the early commenters was advocating a Darwinian perspective. He or she is obviously a total douchebag. But I don't think it is so clear cut when questioning the allocation ratio.
By your rationale (which I'm sure was not intended to be a bulletproof and thorough examination of the space -- I'm not trying to fault you), you could justify having half the parking lot be handicapped spaces. Clearly that would be an inefficient use of resources for all but the most handicap-focused retail centers.
This would not be a problem if retailers chose to put the right number of handicapped spaces in, but they do not (probably don't have the data to do it, even if they were so inclined, but also the profit would act as a pressure against it), so we have to legislate the number. That is the good and right thing to do, IMO. Now we have a question, though: Should it be 10% of spaces, 1% of spaces, or 50% of spaces? Some other number? More than we have now? Less?
Much like homeland security, the only politically acceptable answers are "more" and "the same amount as now." Such situations require that we rise above our immediate inclination to jump to the politically safe answer. That we resist the urge to puff up our sense of superiority by belittling those who present rational counterpoints. That we dispassionately consider the question.
As GP pointed out, causal observation -- and even a slightly more formal investigation by a couple comedians -- seems to indicate that the measurement we used was off. We seem to have substantially overestimated the right number. Lazy lard-asses may have their own flawed estimate, but being as wrong as we seem to be is also sub-optimal.
Also note that you may not see the problem that some do. Where I grew up, there was lots of cheap land, so there were never parking problems. The lazy lard-asses could always find plenty of parking even on a Saturday afternoon, and I felt exactly as you do about people who complained about the allocation ratio.
Then I moved to NYC. And some years after that, San Francisco. Different story there. Seeing a big lot, completely full of cars, with people circling, spewing toxic gas, near-missing pedestrians who appear from behind cars without looking, while half a dozen spaces sit empty, is not uncommon.
Seeing that scene replayed over and over and over never even remotely made me question the value of having handicapped parking spaces. But it did make me question the accuracy of the measurement used in estimating the allocation ratio.
Waste is waste -- even when it is for such an obviously just cause as enabling handicapped people to participate more fully in our society.
You're still a cunt for parking there if you aren't disabled
GP did not say he or she has ever parked in one. Didn't even hint that it would ever be OK for a non-handicapped person to park there. Your knee-jerk leap to a foul-mouthed implication of an ulterior motive to his or her post is inappropriate.
I didn't read the financial report, I just looked at the numbers I mentioned. I had no idea. I don't know how you can spend $1.2b on the store.
I looked up the numbers just now. They sold about 4 billion tracks in the last year. At $0.30 a pop, that's $1.2 billion in low-overhead revenue -- probably more than 10% of their $7.3b profit. While I agree, you are right, that is not a "close the doors" kind of thing, it is definitely enough to make them blink.
You make it out like Apple is the only one with patents, copyrights and licence agreements.
I do not. I make it out like patents, copyrights, and license agreements are indicative of a market which is not free in the libertarian sense used in the OP.
If that were the case you might have a point but they all play by the same rules.
They all play by the same set of rules that favors the incumbent with the most lawyers and power to develop exclusive relationships. That is a market which is not free due to barriers to entry.
I'm not even saying it is bad. I would not say such a thing, because I think some of the barriers from which Apple benefits can be healthy components of a non-free market economy.
I'm just saying it is not rational to use the free market card to defend Apple. If we snapped our fingers and had a true free market today, Apple would become a much smaller company very quickly. If you ended copyright, Apple's iTunes Music Store revenue would be cut by more than 90%, for example. That alone might be more than they could adapt to before going out of business.
In a true free market there would be more closed solutions too and the one most people want will win
In a true free market, Apple would not enjoy so many government enforced barriers to entry in the form of license agreements, patents, and copyright.
I will point out, however, that all of your replies, even the one you correctly identified as disrespectful, got +5. A great testament to the quality of moderation in Israel related discussions here
If you are so blinded by hate that you read '5' where there is a '2', I don't think this can be a productive discourse.
Re:Israel Aids Terrorists (Score:2)
You know, my previous response to you was terribly disrespectful, and that was wrong. I apologize, and I'm going to try again. I am still going to strenuously disagree, but I am going to try to be more respectful about it.
How dare you spell out what so many Israel haters are trying so hard to have us believe they do not mean.
I think very few people really feel what I expressed in my first paragraph. It was meant to work on two levels. The surface level was a sarcastic and hyperbolic impression of someone opposed to Israeli nationalism. That is the one you seem to be reacting to on the surface. I suspect, however, that the passion of your response is an instinctive reaction against the deeper level.
The deeper level was probing the real problem of having a Jewish state in the midst of people with whom it has a few thousand years of pent up blood debt. Who deserves the land, which side should have to leave, is not as important (at least to me) as the fact that such a situation is bound to lead to bloodshed. I'm a Western orderly free market type -- I see bloodshed as a waste of labor resources. It's OK if Israel thinks the blood is justified -- not my culture, not my place to judge -- except they're doing it with a piece of my paycheck, and my nation's name. That part of it makes it my legitimate concern.
So, how exactly do you suggest I contribute to my country ceasing to exist,
I was not genuinely suggesting that your country must cease to exist, though I do think -- considering the tens of thousands who die every year -- it is an option that should be on the table for discussion.
If it were a viable option, the means by which you could effect the change that I would advise would be advocating separation of church and state. And since the state is not going to give up its culture-hammer, I think that change would have to start from the church side. I think Judaism should consider renouncing Israel. It's a big step, I know, that would include some serious expenditure of time and money -- but how many dollars is 10,000 people's lives per year worth? Even at a mere $100k per person, that's a billion per year. That seems like enough upside to make the matter worth serious consideration.
so those poor peaceful neighbors of mine not become raving fundamentalists by my mere existence?
Your neighbors are not peaceful innocents. That does not change the responsibilities of civilized people.
There is an obvious causal link between Israel's existence and violent Islamic fundamentalism. It may not be the root cause, but it is an enormously potent catalyst. It may not be fair that we consider removing the catalyst instead of the reactant -- if that is the case -- but we cannot lose sight of the fact that the most important thing is to stop the chain reaction.
Or, maybe not. Maybe God's promise to Abraham is more important than ending the violence. But if it is, then I want my nation to get out of the relationship. If Israel refuses to consider its role in the cycle of violence, then I do not believe they are genuinely interested in solving the problem.
I hope me shooting myself in the head will be deemed a sufficient contribution, humble though it is.
Please don't belittle me by implying that I am homicidal. You also seem to be attempting to emotionally manipulate the reader with your implied suffering, which shows a lack of respect for him or her.
I would follow your advice in the last line of your comment, but I suspect technical impossibility, and I fail to see how it would bring about the desired result anyways.
Only included to avoid making it stand out by omission. Not sufficiently substantial to warrant comment.
I actually thought you were being sarcastic at people like you by your first paragraph. Your second paragraph made your intentions clear, though.
The first paragraph was cognitive dissonance -- a layering of sarcastic criticism of anti-Israel-ists on top of a commentary on the f
So, how exactly do you suggest I contribute to my country ceasing to exist
I'd say by advocating the separation of church and state. Religious states are a really bad idea, and in my perception of your case, it isn't the religion that is the problem.
those poor peaceful neighbors of mine
Who are you talking about? Most of them seem to be to be at least as foaming at the mouth mad as Israeli nationalists -- probably worse.
I hope me shooting myself in the head will be deemed a sufficient contribution, humble though it is.
Oh, gee, I'm sorry, you obviously have a martyrdom complex so I should cease any statements that might offend the precious little glass flower. This clumsy bit of rhetorical manipulation is beneath even such an obvious nitwit as yourself.
I would follow your advice in the last line of your comment
Perhaps you are a little retarded. The last line was directed at the object of the post; Israel, not you. Given Israel (aside from their metaphorical identity of "dicks") does not have genitalia, it is probably safe for you to assume that it was not a literal suggestion. You could then have followed up by searching for the phrase on Google and it would have yielded some explanatory information on that cultural epithet. Hope that helps next time you are similarly confused. (Unless, of course, you were being intentionally obtuse -- in which case your rhetorical shenanigans are, again, clumsy and transparent)
I actually thought you were being sarcastic ... by your first paragraph.
This was a form of commentary that I think of as, "haha, only serious" -- a blend of sarcasm and critical commentary that is used to jar one-track thinkers out of their simplistic and juvenile perspectives.
As an added bonus, it gets the really hard-line folks into a lather, and makes them fire off some truly comical screeds. Everybody wins!
people like you
Pandering to prejudice really works with you people, doesn't it? (that would be another example of blending sarcasm and critical commentary, as I demonstrated the very characteristic I was belittling, for effect)
Your second paragraph made your intentions clear, though.
Perhaps you did not notice the whipsaw change in tone from the first to the second paragraph. That jarring shift is supposed to break your puny little mind from its assumption that the post is a pure monograph. Again, in your case, I have clearly failed.
Should all Israelis shoot themselves in the head, or just the Jewish ones?
I don't care what religion they are, except to the extent that they use ancient parables to fan the flames of nationalism. Even then, I don't care which parables from what ancient fiction they use, only that they are xenophobes using cultural identity as a weapon of hate.
I also don't think they should shoot themselves in the head, you manipulative martyr.
Don't get me wrong -- I don't think the MAFIAA is justifiable. I think we would be better off going back to 7 years + 7 years (*), eliminating the DMCA and ACTA, dropping SOPA, and disbanding the RIAA and MPAA. Let me make that as clear as possible: I think we would be better as a society, and would have faster advancement of science and the useful arts, and would have a faster GDP growth rate if we radically rolled back copyright and copyright enforcement.
I was just saying my whole iPod is also legit according to the current, counterproductive, state of copyright law -- mostly as a result of almost completely ending my trade with the MAFIAA and its members. And, yes, I can produce the CDs (mostly purchased before Metallica/Napster) on demand -- I just re-ripped everything from scratch this past Summer.
* More specifically, I'd like to see: 5 years free, next 5 years cost $100, next 5 cost $10,000 ($100 * 100), next 5 cost $1m ($10k * 100) and so on -- with no limit, just exponential re-up price at base=100. IE: for each additional 5 years of cultural monopoly, you have to demonstrate that you are capitalizing on the work. You must do so in the only truly unequivocal fashion: By directly paying society, on an exponential scale, for the privilege.
Your post is chock full of good stuff.
I do want to address one thing, though:
My 64 gig iPod Touch is full. I have about 20 gigs of music, roughly 200 albums at 100 megs a pop, all ripped from my personal CD collection (mostly purchased prior to Metallica/Napster). I have about 20 gigs of audio podcasts, and another 15 of video podcasts. Then maybe 5 gigs of liberally licensed music. And I usually have two or three books from Podiobooks on there as well. Full, all legit. Only about 30% MAFIAA approved, but that's 'cuz the other 70% is new media that the MAFIAA has no part in.
I don't know if I'm heart of the market, but I am definitely not alone. I know a lot of people, geek and normal, who have a big chunk of their player dedicated to new media. Not everyone infringes copyright -- even those who are throwing off the chains of MAFIAA oppression.
"it doesn't make him wrong about that point, though."
Laughing out loud. Not sure why it struck me so funny. Just the shared exasperation, I guess. Thanks :)
The first half of the twentieth century was dominated by the war against fascism. The second half of the twentieth century was dominated by the war against communism. We are now engaged in a third great war: where governments try to gain total monitoring capabilities -- where everything everyone does and says is monitored.
Intriguing presentation of the issue. Thanks!