There are a number of middle-class Americans and British people who have died in this conflict. They are not poor or oppressed. In fact, in terms of US forces, they are all volunteers!
I know people with jobs and kids and house payments who volunteered to be a part of the US military, and are putting their lives on hte line for me and for my family.
Some of them would be called "extremists" by the slashdot crowd, and yet they today are half-way around the planet, willing to die.
Just because they have money and responsibilities does not mean that they won't die for something important.
You don't know that I'm *not* what you would call a Muslim extremist.:)
However, I don't disagree with you. Sociologically and philosophically when one feels that he has an understanding of absolute truth that is empowering, and can lead to abuses - even genocide.
The question that must be answered is "How can I be sure that my understanding of what I perceive to be absolute truth is actually true?"
Can you reconcile your beliefs with intellect, reason, history, human behavior, life experiences, etc?
Whether millions, nee even billions are deceived, believing their understanding of truth to be true when it is really false - is really irrelevant to the existance of absolute truth.
Absolute truth, by it's definition, is true whether enyone understands or believes it to be true.
The fact that many have been abusive in the name of every religion, is not relevant either.
The real test of a worldview is not to examine those who abuse its' teachings, but rather by those who hold tightly to the core - the main teachings of that philosophy.
Every philosophy has kooky adherents. Look for those who take seriously that which is taught by their philosophy, and live as closely to the teachings as is possible.
That will help you understand whether a philosophy is true or false.
BTW - I do not feel that I have "unfettered and totally correct access to absolute truth" - if I did, I would have to be the one who establishes truth, and I am not. That does not make truth unknowable, or non-existant. It's very easy to understand in many many areas, and very hard to understand in others.
With all due respect, I strongly disagree with your utopian view.
Increasing the education of the general populous and raising their standard of living will have little effect on stopping terrorism.
Some of the best educated people in the world have been the most terrible. Eugenics does not come from dunderheads. Chemical weapons are not created by morons.
Providing wealth is no panacea, either. John D. Rockefeller was asked once "How much is enough?" Reportedly his response was "Just a little bit more." It is the nature of man to compare himself with others, and sadly comparison is the root of discontentment.
Education and money are not problem solvers on their own.
With respect to your "extremism must be eliminated" type of approach: That view in itself is an extreme view.
The real roots of conflict within mankind are directly related to man's relationship with truth.
Absolute truth does exist, and when man's worldview and life choices contradict that, it leads to conflict within himself and with other people.
Even if a man is in sync with absolute truth in his worldview and life choices, he will be in conflict with those who reject the truth.
Conflict is inevitable in the world. The question is this: "Is your side of the conflict in sync with what is objectively true, or is it merely your opinion that you're fighting for?"
I think that you're oversimplifying the job of candidate and president.
Even if the influence gets them to the primary, they can't compel the voters to pick their candidate over others.
Sure, with money and power they can get name recognition and advertisements, but that does not mean that their candidate will win.
Having consultants, lawyers, speechwriters, beauticians can't put a candidate over the top. Look at the Nixon/Kennedy TV debate - Kennedy was more attractive, but also presented himself extremely well. Nixon had been leading the polls prior to the debate, but his appearance on TV swayed the voters' opinion to the point that he lost!
Even if you have a great support staff (and every candidate needs one because it's impossible for anyone to have a personal grasp on every issue that might come up) it's not enough.
You've got to appear strong, self-controlled, smart, winsome, smile, and have some content come out of your mouth.
WRT Florida, it's a coincidence, but I'd be willing to bet that voting irregularities occur in every state. Let's not even talk about Illinois! I can't speak to why it is that Florida was the one that was the focus this time. Perhaps it was because of his cousin's influence, but a challenge could have been made in many places. IIRC, Gore supporters were planning to file lawsuits in several jurisdictions challenging the results. I don't recall what became of those proposed suits.
Whether he "deserves" it or not, he is legally president, and deserves the respect due the holder of the office.
You're right. A politically influential family can completely override and invalidate the political process.
They have the unrestricted power to bully the voters into supporting their candidate during the primaries and can force their whims on the electorate.
They are able to manipulate the voters in the actual election so that millions of people who wanted to vote for a different candidate actually voted for the influential families' candidate.
They can subvert the elections and the courts to shove their puppet candidate into office.
They are rich and politically powerful, and cannot be overcome. Resistance is futile. We have been assimilated.
Politically influential families influence the candidate pool, and can help motivate fence-sitters and party-liners to vote for their preferred candidate, but they do not control the elections.
Morons do not get elected to the presidency.
You can like or dislike the sitting president, but don't call him a moron.
From a partisan perspective, I have no love for President Clinton or Vice-Presdent Gore. In spite of the fact that I find their policies unrealistic and in many ways diametrically opposed to my perspective, I cannot attack their intelligence.
President Clinton and View President Gore are both extremely intelligent men. It would be intellectually dishonest for me to attack them on that front. Wisdom on the other hand, is another matter.
I think that you are mistaken about President Bush. You might not like his policies, and think that his ideas are not wise, but that is an entirely different thing than his measure of intelligence. That was my point.
Not an effective leader? You might not like where he's taking us, but you cannot deny that he is leading us and the world somewhere.
Please don't attack his person because you don't like his ideas. If he was really a moron, he never would have made the presidency - or even the nomination.
With respect to lies about Gore and the Internet, he did actually say that. It was blown out of proportion, but it was completely ridiculous for him to assert that he was the creator of the internet as we know it.
However, if you don't like that, how about these:
"A zebra does not change its spots." - Al Gore, attacking President George Bush in 1992.
"We can build a collective civic space large enough for all our separate identities, that we can be e pluribus unum -- out of one, many." E Pluribus Unum is the motto on the Great Seal of the United States of America, and is Latin for "out of many, one," not "out of one, many." (Source: January 1994. From a Milwaukee speech to the Institute of World Affairs as quoted in Investor's Business Daily, October 25, 1996.)
"When my sister and I were growing up," Mr. Gore told a small audience made up mostly of women, "there was never any doubt in our minds that men and women were equal, if not more so." (Source: NY Times, 08/12/00)
Milwaukee, WI - "I'm very familiar with the importance of dairy farming in Wisconsin. I've spent the night on a dairy farm here in Wisconsin. If I'm entrusted with the presidency, you'll have someone who is very familiar with what the Wisconsin dairy industry is all about." (Sources: Sunday, June 18, Atlanta Journal Constitution and The Washington Post, June 14, 2000)
Can you see that smart people can say dumb things? If you disagree with our president, say so. If you think his policies are unwise, say so - that is your right as an American.
To personally attack him is not reasonable. You may not like his policies, but he is consistently applying his world view to his office. I believe that he is a man of his convictions - a man of integrity to his views. That is more than can be said of many of his predecessors.
Regardless, he is entitled to respect because of the office that he holds. Please show him that respect.
When every word you say is recorded, it's not hard to find stupid things that were said by leaders.
"I created the Internet"
"I may not have been the greatest president, but I've had the most fun eight years."
"Just try to imagine what it would be like to be 300 million years old." -- President Clinton in Ashe County, N.C. He was speaking on the banks of the New River, which scientists say is the oldest river in the United States.
I think that we have a lot in common here, but we differ on the proper approach. I know that people hang around on the 'net to see if they can find and exploit systems. I took precautions against being hacked.
In my case, I run an oddball operating system on all my home computers (various flavours of Linux.) This is in general more secure than most Windows machines because of the implementation of the concept of user IDs.
As you well know, on the MS platform, it is difficult to provide services to users that are not the super user. On Linux, the majority of applications are not designed to be run by the superuser, so most users are not granted unrestricted access to system resources.
In addition to that, I was running a gateway box that was providing firewall and NAT services to the PCs on my home network. I did evaluate threats to this box, and had turned off a great deal of services that might make the box at risk.
In addition to disabling services that might provide an entry point, I had set up the system to drop inbound connection requests, and I had evaluated the effectiveness of the solution.
It is completely true that I left a weak padlock on the door, but it was an unusual brand that was more secure than the garden-variety padlocks at the DIY store, and behind a couple of other locks to boot!
This is entirely different from leaving a Windows system sans firewall permanently attached to the Internet.
I had taken what I believe were reasonable precautions. I did make a mistake when configuring the lock system, but I did more than the average person would do in that situation.
As a result, considering the value of the information in the vault, and the relative safety of the vault, I think it is unreasonable to suggest that I was negligent in this situation.
What standard of care must an individual meet in order to provide protection to his home computer? At some point you must blame the hacker and not the victim, no?
This post is more sociolical than philosophical. I wanted to take a minute to point out that we agree on some points, and to clarify some others.
WRT the "Dark Ages" The history if organized religion has shown the darkness of the human heart. Much evil has been done in the name of religion. However, the best way to evaluate the validity of a philosophy is to examine closely those who adhere with integrity to the teachings of that worldview. There are kooks who claim to follow every worldview. Test it by the ones who live out specifically what it teaches. The Roman Catholic church was as subject to corruption as any other religious structure. I won't defend it.
I agree with you that the Roman empire was dying. It was dying for the same reason that western culture as lived in the US is dying today. We have become so wealthy and have surrounded ourselves with tremendous entertainment and the idea that each of us is the most important person alive. We are rejecting "traditional moral values" in the same way that they were rejected by the Romans. Every perversion is not only tolerated, but is also celebrated in our culture.
The combination of ready wealth, combined with an inculcated narcissism, and in conjunction with the celebration of perversion and rejection of cultural absolutes opens the door to to an eventual societal collapse.
Cultures are built on shared values and shared struggle to succeed. Without struggle and common values, any culture will disintegrate. This, and dozens of other factors combined to cause the fall of Rome. BTW - I believe that we are only a few generations from the fall of western culture, too.
The fact that Constantine politically abused the Christian movement to extend his power and influence is not an impeachment of Christianity per se, but an impeachment of the distortion that Constantine brought.
As I said in a prior post, I'm not a scholar of Nietzsche. Please correct me if I've misunderstood this in the reading that I have done - wasn't his quote about God's demise related to his belief that god was no loger relevant?
The greatest example of the claims of the Bible is the existence of the Jew today. The Bible claims that God loves them and has protected them. The fact that the Jewish people were not destroyed millennia ago indicates to me that at a certain level that there was some sort of supernatural involvement in their persistence.
Archaeolgical evidence consistently backs the claims of the Bible, and I could list several other types of evidence. However, it seems to me from our conversation thus far that any evidence that I could provide you would dismiss as invalid.
I hope that your worldview works for you. I'm skeptical that it is, but if living your way is working, keep it up.
If you decide at some point in the future that it might not be, please email me and I will be glad to invest time explaining to you why I believe that Christianity is the only worldview that provides a satifactory explanation of the world.
I strongly believe that he does owe me compensation for the time it took me to restore the system to its prior state - even if I'm not very efficient in doing so.
The Bible is clear that God hates our pride. The religious leaders that Jesus criticized were very proud people.
Their pride came as a result of their belief that they were good enough on their own to please God. Salvation for all people who are to be saved comes through faith, not by works.
I don't completely disagree with the poster above who says that security is relative to risk. The fact that I had my system compromised was an indicator that I had not assessed the level of risk appropriately.
However, I would argue that in the process of installing a rootkit (and doing who knows what else) the cracker _did_ break my vault. I didn't feel safe trusting that firewall once it had been compromised.
Besides, even if I had simply restored from a known-good backup, that would have cost me time and effort.
In the sermon on the mount Jesus says that the teachers of the law are like tombs.
WRT the "filthy rags" - I concede that I was in error. It was the prophet Isaiah who said that our righteous acts are like filthy rags
However, Jesus warned us not to do acts of righteousness in public merely so that men would see us doing it.
Jesus also said that pleasing God is not about what we do
Paul said that we are saved by grace through faith - not of works!
I wholeheartedly agree with you that Jesus was a Jew, and that He loved and loves Jews. There's no question, about that. I must respectfully disagree with you about Christ's approach toward the Pharisees.
He called the religious leaders on the carpet again and again for their hypocrisy. They were filled with pride about how well they fulfilled the law - that their deeds made them acceptable to God. That was never the point. If this does not make sense to you, please email me and I commit to searching the scriptures with you so that we clearly understand each other.
In Hebrews 11 the heroes of the Hebrew scriptures are held up as role models because of their faith, not because of their deeds.
Of course, God created us to do good works. We do good deeds out of a thankful heart, but the work of redemption was complete on the cross. My good works don't earn me heaven. Christ did that. My good works are an evidence of the internal change that happened when God saved me from my selfishness.
Power beyond comprehension? How about the very existence of the material universe, or the strong nuclear force, or the seven biochemical reactions that take place in the process of stopping blood from flowing from a wound without stopping all of the blood in our bodies?
Christianity created by a dying empire? With all due respect, that doesn't logically follow. You appear to assert that Christianity killed a thriving society, and at the same time suggest that the thriving society invented the very thing that subsequently killed it. There's the other niggling detail that the facts don't support your argument.
You also seem to think that I am ignorant of Russell and Neitzshe. While I am far from a scholar of either's works, I do have a certain familiarity with them.
I don't doubt Russell's intellect, nor do I question Nietzsche's brilliance.
I strongly disagree with both of them. I would assert that each held true to a religion - perhaps the religion of "rejection of religion."
I guess the largest question that I would ask you, and other brilliant folks who share your life outlook is this: "Who was Jesus Christ?"
I wholeheartedly agree with you that we can have a great time here on earth.
I differ with you in this: You seem to assert salvation on the basis of a moral life.
Moral compared to what? On what do you base your Christianity? Some of the things that you suggest above don't appear to me to be consistent with what the Bible says.
The essence of the core teachings of Christianity is that we are unable to live a moral life. We are imperfect, and God's standard is perfection.
The only reason that anyone has hope of being accepted by God is because of Christ's perfect life, and his substitutionary death.
The leaders of the Jewish faith were very good people. They measured every action they took in light of what God might think about it. In spite of this overwhelming morality Christ described their moral life this way.
"Your righteousness is like filthy rags" You are like "whitewashed sepulchres" beautiful on the outside and dead on the inside!
I can be the nicest guy in the world, and do good deeds all of the time, but that's simply not enough. There's no way I could do enough good to be found acceptable before God. I can't be perfect no matter what I do.
Christianity is the only religion in the world that's not about what I can do but rather is about what God already did for me and everyone else who will take advantage of it. I for one am very thankful for that.
While I appreciate your assessment of the above discussion, I far more appreciate your service to our country.
Particularly in this time of uncertainty and rampant terrorism, I appreciate a person who is willing to stand in harm's way to defend his fellow citizens - that's a lot more important than standing up for me in this piddly web forum.
I'll play along with you in this for a bit. On what do you base your assertion that if there is a God he cares not for me?
On what do you base your assertion that my God is a fiction?
What evidence would be sufficient to prove to you that there is a God and that He loves you?
The God I worship is neither lonely nor helpless. He (for whatever reason) desires relationship with us. He doesn't need me. He doesn't need anyone. It's His grace that opens the door for us to have relationship with Him.
Life with Christ is real life. Real life is filled with both joy and pain. I do enjoy life - very much, but I recognize its limitations as well.
I'm wondering...what has God done to you to make you so angry with Him?
Well, since you asked.... There's a popular myth that heaven will be like a philadelphia cream cheese commercial - pretty people with wings on their backs sittng on clouds doing absolutely nothing.
Heaven will not be like that. Not at all.
Think of the experience in life that gives you the greatest satisfaction.
Heaven will be better than that. The God who designed you knows what you need and what will satisfy your deepest longings. Once you are in His presence, they will be fulfilled.
We all worship something. We were created to worship God. Some of us do and others find substitutes. The substitute never satisfies, but still we tell ourselves that it will. Sugar-free soft-serve yogurt is nowhere near the same thing as real honest-to-goodness ice cream.
Sex, money, power, fame, hacking.... All promise to fill the ache inside, and they can distract you from the discomfort and uneasiness of life, but the ache returns as quickly as hunger pangs briefly quieted by a glass of water.
Why would I want to go to heaven? I was made to worship God and enjoy His presence. Here in this life I'm limited by my humanness. There I won't be. I will be unencumbered to relate to God the way that my heart desires.
The alternative to heaven is to be separated from everything that even promises to salve that ache. In terms of eternity, outside of heaven there will be nothing comparable to love, peace, joy, or even music. I guess the question is - why would you not want to go to heaven?
Using your argument.... I have a crowbar, and when I break in it's really your fault, because there are thieves everywhere, and you should have known that posting to a public forum like Slashdot would increase the level of threat to your home.
In fact, I'll really be doing you a favor by pointing out to you that anyone with a crowbar can break the doorjamb.
After I leave you should send me a thank-you note....:)
1. Your dad is not a dope. Tell him that what you want more than anything in the world is to be able to spend more time with him. He will be dead before you are thirty and it will be too late.
2. You're not as smart as you think you are. Coasting through jr high/high school will make college a LOT harder. Learn how to learn now because you will need those skills the rest of your life, and largely your ability to earn a living is directly correlated to assimilation of technical information and people skills.
3. Most importantly, being a Christian is NOT about going to church or getting a "get out of hell free card." Jesus Christ wants you to serve Him with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Your current approach of "how much can I get away with and still go to heaven" doesn't work now, and won't work for the rest of your life.
Peace, contentment, and real/deep/meaningful relationships are found when your greatest desire is to please God and serve Him.
I beg to differ. When my house is compromised I know how many systems could have been targeted (7) and where my important information resides.
If I'm a big company, I might have dozens or thousands of boxes at risk. I might not have good forensic logs to tell me when the system was compromised or where the attackers went. I might not know the extent of the damage - in fact I probably will never know what important information was taken (if any) or where the important information resides.
Depending on the size of the organization it might take me months to figure out how to protect against this type of threat in the future, and I might have to spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on software and consulting to help me be protected.
You might argue that we already have a staff of engineers, and that it's not fair to count their pay as cost for cleanup, but when they are cleaning up, they are not doing things that make my company money, just activities that might help my company to lose less money.
Millions? It's a definite possibility. You might have merely defaced my web presence, but you also might have inserted a trojan that would let you do a great deal of damage, or deface my web page again. I don't know, and figuring it out could cost a fortune.
So when the person took advantage in a weakness in the lpd I had running on my linux box hooked to my broadband connection and installed a rootkit I sustained no damage, right?
Never mind that I needed to spend a good bit of time checking to see whether the systems behind that firewall were compromised. Never mind that it took me a while to determine if the attacker had done anything else.
Respectfully, Anomaly
The time I spent determining that it was an lpd exploit (of course I should have turned that off, but I missed it.) was not important, either.
So the time that I took to build another gateway box with more up to date software and a tighter ruleset was not important.
This was just my home system - no measurable economic loss. I spent many hours figuring this out and installing a replacement that was more secure. My time is worth nothing?
Never mind that I'm pretty sure that the attacker didn't get anything important (like my financial information) from that system. I had a functional system prior to the attack, and didn't afterward.
Yeah. No harm no foul. I was harmed, and I was fouled.
You can make the argument that I made a mistake by not putting up a better firewall, but if you walked up to my front porch and jimmied the lock on my front door, you'd still be trespassing, and you'd still go to jail even if you "just looked around."
You could make the argument that I should have upgraded to a deadbolt instead of relying on the knob-lock that is 10 years old, but it wouldn't keep you out of jail.
Cracking is tresspass at the least and theft at the most. It deserves jail time. The issue is how much jail time. The guy who hacked me should face at a minimum the legal penalty for breaking into my house and rifling through my file cabinet.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a number of middle-class Americans and British people who have died in this conflict. They are not poor or oppressed. In fact, in terms of US forces, they are all volunteers!
I know people with jobs and kids and house payments who volunteered to be a part of the US military, and are putting their lives on hte line for me and for my family.
Some of them would be called "extremists" by the slashdot crowd, and yet they today are half-way around the planet, willing to die.
Just because they have money and responsibilities does not mean that they won't die for something important.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
You don't know that I'm *not* what you would call a Muslim extremist. :)
However, I don't disagree with you. Sociologically and philosophically when one feels that he has an understanding of absolute truth that is empowering, and can lead to abuses - even genocide.
The question that must be answered is "How can I be sure that my understanding of what I perceive to be absolute truth is actually true?"
Can you reconcile your beliefs with intellect, reason, history, human behavior, life experiences, etc?
Whether millions, nee even billions are deceived, believing their understanding of truth to be true when it is really false - is really irrelevant to the existance of absolute truth.
Absolute truth, by it's definition, is true whether enyone understands or believes it to be true.
The fact that many have been abusive in the name of every religion, is not relevant either.
The real test of a worldview is not to examine those who abuse its' teachings, but rather by those who hold tightly to the core - the main teachings of that philosophy.
Every philosophy has kooky adherents. Look for those who take seriously that which is taught by their philosophy, and live as closely to the teachings as is possible.
That will help you understand whether a philosophy is true or false.
BTW - I do not feel that I have "unfettered and totally correct access to absolute truth" - if I did, I would have to be the one who establishes truth, and I am not. That does not make truth unknowable, or non-existant. It's very easy to understand in many many areas, and very hard to understand in others.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
With all due respect, I strongly disagree with your utopian view.
Increasing the education of the general populous and raising their standard of living will have little effect on stopping terrorism.
Some of the best educated people in the world have been the most terrible. Eugenics does not come from dunderheads. Chemical weapons are not created by morons.
Providing wealth is no panacea, either. John D. Rockefeller was asked once "How much is enough?" Reportedly his response was "Just a little bit more." It is the nature of man to compare himself with others, and sadly comparison is the root of discontentment.
Education and money are not problem solvers on their own.
With respect to your "extremism must be eliminated" type of approach: That view in itself is an extreme view.
The real roots of conflict within mankind are directly related to man's relationship with truth.
Absolute truth does exist, and when man's worldview and life choices contradict that, it leads to conflict within himself and with other people.
Even if a man is in sync with absolute truth in his worldview and life choices, he will be in conflict with those who reject the truth.
Conflict is inevitable in the world. The question is this: "Is your side of the conflict in sync with what is objectively true, or is it merely your opinion that you're fighting for?"
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I think that you're oversimplifying the job of candidate and president.
Even if the influence gets them to the primary, they can't compel the voters to pick their candidate over others.
Sure, with money and power they can get name recognition and advertisements, but that does not mean that their candidate will win.
Having consultants, lawyers, speechwriters, beauticians can't put a candidate over the top. Look at the Nixon/Kennedy TV debate - Kennedy was more attractive, but also presented himself extremely well. Nixon had been leading the polls prior to the debate, but his appearance on TV swayed the voters' opinion to the point that he lost!
Even if you have a great support staff (and every candidate needs one because it's impossible for anyone to have a personal grasp on every issue that might come up) it's not enough.
You've got to appear strong, self-controlled, smart, winsome, smile, and have some content come out of your mouth.
WRT Florida, it's a coincidence, but I'd be willing to bet that voting irregularities occur in every state. Let's not even talk about Illinois! I can't speak to why it is that Florida was the one that was the focus this time. Perhaps it was because of his cousin's influence, but a challenge could have been made in many places. IIRC, Gore supporters were planning to file lawsuits in several jurisdictions challenging the results. I don't recall what became of those proposed suits.
Whether he "deserves" it or not, he is legally president, and deserves the respect due the holder of the office.
I'm responding to an AC.
You're right. A politically influential family can completely override and invalidate the political process.
They have the unrestricted power to bully the voters into supporting their candidate during the primaries and can force their whims on the electorate.
They are able to manipulate the voters in the actual election so that millions of people who wanted to vote for a different candidate actually voted for the influential families' candidate.
They can subvert the elections and the courts to shove their puppet candidate into office.
They are rich and politically powerful, and cannot be overcome. Resistance is futile. We have been assimilated.
Politically influential families influence the candidate pool, and can help motivate fence-sitters and party-liners to vote for their preferred candidate, but they do not control the elections.
Morons do not get elected to the presidency.
You can like or dislike the sitting president, but don't call him a moron.
From a partisan perspective, I have no love for President Clinton or Vice-Presdent Gore. In spite of the fact that I find their policies unrealistic and in many ways diametrically opposed to my perspective, I cannot attack their intelligence.
President Clinton and View President Gore are both extremely intelligent men. It would be intellectually dishonest for me to attack them on that front. Wisdom on the other hand, is another matter.
I think that you are mistaken about President Bush. You might not like his policies, and think that his ideas are not wise, but that is an entirely different thing than his measure of intelligence. That was my point.
Not an effective leader? You might not like where he's taking us, but you cannot deny that he is leading us and the world somewhere.
Please don't attack his person because you don't like his ideas. If he was really a moron, he never would have made the presidency - or even the nomination.
With respect to lies about Gore and the Internet, he did actually say that. It was blown out of proportion, but it was completely ridiculous for him to assert that he was the creator of the internet as we know it.
However, if you don't like that, how about these:
"A zebra does not change its spots." - Al Gore, attacking President George Bush in 1992.
"We can build a collective civic space large enough for all our separate identities, that we can be e pluribus unum -- out of one, many." E Pluribus Unum is the motto on the Great Seal of the United States of America, and is Latin for "out of many, one," not "out of one, many."
(Source: January 1994. From a Milwaukee speech to the Institute of World Affairs as quoted in Investor's Business Daily, October 25, 1996.)
"When my sister and I were growing up," Mr. Gore told a small audience made up mostly of women, "there was never any doubt in our minds that men and women were equal, if not more so."
(Source: NY Times, 08/12/00)
Milwaukee, WI - "I'm very familiar with the importance of dairy farming in Wisconsin. I've spent the night on a dairy farm here in Wisconsin. If I'm entrusted with the presidency, you'll have someone who is very familiar with what the Wisconsin dairy industry is all about."
(Sources: Sunday, June 18, Atlanta Journal Constitution and The Washington Post, June 14, 2000)
Can you see that smart people can say dumb things? If you disagree with our president, say so. If you think his policies are unwise, say so - that is your right as an American.
To personally attack him is not reasonable. You may not like his policies, but he is consistently applying his world view to his office. I believe that he is a man of his convictions - a man of integrity to his views. That is more than can be said of many of his predecessors.
Regardless, he is entitled to respect because of the office that he holds. Please show him that respect.
Regards,
Anomaly
When every word you say is recorded, it's not hard to find stupid things that were said by leaders.
"I created the Internet"
"I may not have been the greatest president, but I've had the most fun eight years."
"Just try to imagine what it would be like to be 300 million years old." -- President Clinton in Ashe County, N.C. He was speaking on the banks of the New River, which scientists say is the oldest river in the United States.
>That's offensive to llamas!
:)
Only if llamas believe that their anus aroma is unpleasant.
Interpretation of aroma is in the nose of the smeller....
Who knows, it might be a compliment!
I think that we have a lot in common here, but we differ on the proper approach. I know that people hang around on the 'net to see if they can find and exploit systems. I took precautions against being hacked.
In my case, I run an oddball operating system on all my home computers (various flavours of Linux.) This is in general more secure than most Windows machines because of the implementation of the concept of user IDs.
As you well know, on the MS platform, it is difficult to provide services to users that are not the super user. On Linux, the majority of applications are not designed to be run by the superuser, so most users are not granted unrestricted access to system resources.
In addition to that, I was running a gateway box that was providing firewall and NAT services to the PCs on my home network. I did evaluate threats to this box, and had turned off a great deal of services that might make the box at risk.
In addition to disabling services that might provide an entry point, I had set up the system to drop inbound connection requests, and I had evaluated the effectiveness of the solution.
It is completely true that I left a weak padlock on the door, but it was an unusual brand that was more secure than the garden-variety padlocks at the DIY store, and behind a couple of other locks to boot!
This is entirely different from leaving a Windows system sans firewall permanently attached to the Internet.
I had taken what I believe were reasonable precautions. I did make a mistake when configuring the lock system, but I did more than the average person would do in that situation.
As a result, considering the value of the information in the vault, and the relative safety of the vault, I think it is unreasonable to suggest that I was negligent in this situation.
What standard of care must an individual meet in order to provide protection to his home computer? At some point you must blame the hacker and not the victim, no?
This post is more sociolical than philosophical. I wanted to take a minute to point out that we agree on some points, and to clarify some others.
WRT the "Dark Ages"
The history if organized religion has shown the darkness of the human heart. Much evil has been done in the name of religion. However, the best way to evaluate the validity of a philosophy is to examine closely those who adhere with integrity to the teachings of that worldview. There are kooks who claim to follow every worldview. Test it by the ones who live out specifically what it teaches. The Roman Catholic church was as subject to corruption as any other religious structure. I won't defend it.
I agree with you that the Roman empire was dying.
It was dying for the same reason that western culture as lived in the US is dying today. We have become so wealthy and have surrounded ourselves with tremendous entertainment and the idea that each of us is the most important person alive. We are rejecting "traditional moral values" in the same way that they were rejected by the Romans. Every perversion is not only tolerated, but is also celebrated in our culture.
The combination of ready wealth, combined with an inculcated narcissism, and in conjunction with the celebration of perversion and rejection of cultural absolutes opens the door to to an eventual societal collapse.
Cultures are built on shared values and shared struggle to succeed. Without struggle and common values, any culture will disintegrate. This, and dozens of other factors combined to cause the fall of Rome. BTW - I believe that we are only a few generations from the fall of western culture, too.
The fact that Constantine politically abused the Christian movement to extend his power and influence is not an impeachment of Christianity per se, but an impeachment of the distortion that Constantine brought.
As I said in a prior post, I'm not a scholar of Nietzsche. Please correct me if I've misunderstood this in the reading that I have done - wasn't his quote about God's demise related to his belief that god was no loger relevant?
The greatest example of the claims of the Bible is the existence of the Jew today. The Bible claims that God loves them and has protected them. The fact that the Jewish people were not destroyed millennia ago indicates to me that at a certain level that there was some sort of supernatural involvement in their persistence.
Archaeolgical evidence consistently backs the claims of the Bible, and I could list several other types of evidence. However, it seems to me from our conversation thus far that any evidence that I could provide you would dismiss as invalid.
I hope that your worldview works for you. I'm skeptical that it is, but if living your way is working, keep it up.
If you decide at some point in the future that it might not be, please email me and I will be glad to invest time explaining to you why I believe that Christianity is the only worldview that provides a satifactory explanation of the world.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
We agree that he doesn't owe me an upgrade.
I strongly believe that he does owe me compensation for the time it took me to restore the system to its prior state - even if I'm not very efficient in doing so.
If I am really a servant of Christ, I will do good deeds. Those deeds are a reflection of the inner change, and do not help me get to heaven.
With all due respect, I don't believe that I said that Jesus hated Jews.
He did say that no one could be saved without Him.
The Bible is clear that God hates our pride. The religious leaders that Jesus criticized were very proud people.
Their pride came as a result of their belief that they were good enough on their own to please God. Salvation for all people who are to be saved comes through faith, not by works.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I don't completely disagree with the poster above who says that security is relative to risk. The fact that I had my system compromised was an indicator that I had not assessed the level of risk appropriately.
However, I would argue that in the process of installing a rootkit (and doing who knows what else) the cracker _did_ break my vault. I didn't feel safe trusting that firewall once it had been compromised.
Besides, even if I had simply restored from a known-good backup, that would have cost me time and effort.
It takes a tremendous amount of faith to believe that Jesus Christ is a work of fiction. You have to reject a huge amount of evidence to the contrary.
:)
Oh well, I guess folks like you who want to closed-mindedly cling to your belief system just can't be convinced by facts.
Regards,
Anomaly
In the sermon on the mount Jesus says that the teachers of the law are like tombs.
WRT the "filthy rags" - I concede that I was in error. It was the prophet Isaiah who said that our righteous acts are like filthy rags
However, Jesus warned us not to do acts of righteousness in public merely so that men would see us doing it.
Jesus also said that pleasing God is not about what we do
Paul said that we are saved by grace through faith - not of works!
I wholeheartedly agree with you that Jesus was a Jew, and that He loved and loves Jews. There's no question, about that. I must respectfully disagree with you about Christ's approach toward the Pharisees.
He called the religious leaders on the carpet again and again for their hypocrisy. They were filled with pride about how well they fulfilled the law - that their deeds made them acceptable to God. That was never the point. If this does not make sense to you, please email me and I commit to searching the scriptures with you so that we clearly understand each other.
In Hebrews 11 the heroes of the Hebrew scriptures are held up as role models because of their faith, not because of their deeds.
Of course, God created us to do good works. We do good deeds out of a thankful heart, but the work of redemption was complete on the cross. My good works don't earn me heaven. Christ did that. My good works are an evidence of the internal change that happened when God saved me from my selfishness.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
Power beyond comprehension? How about the very existence of the material universe, or the strong nuclear force, or the seven biochemical reactions that take place in the process of stopping blood from flowing from a wound without stopping all of the blood in our bodies?
Christianity created by a dying empire? With all due respect, that doesn't logically follow. You appear to assert that Christianity killed a thriving society, and at the same time suggest that the thriving society invented the very thing that subsequently killed it. There's the other niggling detail that the facts don't support your argument.
You also seem to think that I am ignorant of Russell and Neitzshe. While I am far from a scholar of either's works, I do have a certain familiarity with them.
I don't doubt Russell's intellect, nor do I question Nietzsche's brilliance.
I strongly disagree with both of them. I would assert that each held true to a religion - perhaps the religion of "rejection of religion."
I guess the largest question that I would ask you, and other brilliant folks who share your life outlook is this: "Who was Jesus Christ?"
Was he a madman, a liar, or who He claimed to be?
I wholeheartedly agree with you that we can have a great time here on earth.
I differ with you in this: You seem to assert salvation on the basis of a moral life.
Moral compared to what? On what do you base your Christianity? Some of the things that you suggest above don't appear to me to be consistent with what the Bible says.
The essence of the core teachings of Christianity is that we are unable to live a moral life. We are imperfect, and God's standard is perfection.
The only reason that anyone has hope of being accepted by God is because of Christ's perfect life, and his substitutionary death.
The leaders of the Jewish faith were very good people. They measured every action they took in light of what God might think about it. In spite of this overwhelming morality Christ described their moral life this way.
"Your righteousness is like filthy rags"
You are like "whitewashed sepulchres" beautiful on the outside and dead on the inside!
I can be the nicest guy in the world, and do good deeds all of the time, but that's simply not enough. There's no way I could do enough good to be found acceptable before God. I can't be perfect no matter what I do.
Christianity is the only religion in the world that's not about what I can do but rather is about what God already did for me and everyone else who will take advantage of it. I for one am very thankful for that.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
more than human, less than God. ;)
*Chuckle*
While I appreciate your assessment of the above discussion, I far more appreciate your service to our country.
Particularly in this time of uncertainty and rampant terrorism, I appreciate a person who is willing to stand in harm's way to defend his fellow citizens - that's a lot more important than standing up for me in this piddly web forum.
Thanks.
Semper Fi, Marine!
I'll play along with you in this for a bit.
On what do you base your assertion that if there is a God he cares not for me?
On what do you base your assertion that my God is a fiction?
What evidence would be sufficient to prove to you that there is a God and that He loves you?
The God I worship is neither lonely nor helpless. He (for whatever reason) desires relationship with us. He doesn't need me. He doesn't need anyone. It's His grace that opens the door for us to have relationship with Him.
Life with Christ is real life. Real life is filled with both joy and pain. I do enjoy life - very much, but I recognize its limitations as well.
I'm wondering...what has God done to you to make you so angry with Him?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
Well, since you asked....
There's a popular myth that heaven will be like a philadelphia cream cheese commercial - pretty people with wings on their backs sittng on clouds doing absolutely nothing.
Heaven will not be like that. Not at all.
Think of the experience in life that gives you the greatest satisfaction.
Heaven will be better than that. The God who designed you knows what you need and what will satisfy your deepest longings. Once you are in His presence, they will be fulfilled.
We all worship something. We were created to worship God. Some of us do and others find substitutes. The substitute never satisfies, but still we tell ourselves that it will. Sugar-free soft-serve yogurt is nowhere near the same thing as real honest-to-goodness ice cream.
Sex, money, power, fame, hacking....
All promise to fill the ache inside, and they can distract you from the discomfort and uneasiness of life, but the ache returns as quickly as hunger pangs briefly quieted by a glass of water.
Why would I want to go to heaven? I was made to worship God and enjoy His presence. Here in this life I'm limited by my humanness. There I won't be. I will be unencumbered to relate to God the way that my heart desires.
The alternative to heaven is to be separated from everything that even promises to salve that ache. In terms of eternity, outside of heaven there will be nothing comparable to love, peace, joy, or even music. I guess the question is - why would you not want to go to heaven?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
What's your home address?
:)
Using your argument....
I have a crowbar, and when I break in it's really your fault, because there are thieves everywhere, and you should have known that posting to a public forum like Slashdot would increase the level of threat to your home.
In fact, I'll really be doing you a favor by pointing out to you that anyone with a crowbar can break the doorjamb.
After I leave you should send me a thank-you note....
Respectfully,
Anomaly
1. Your dad is not a dope. Tell him that what you want more than anything in the world is to be able to spend more time with him. He will be dead before you are thirty and it will be too late.
2. You're not as smart as you think you are. Coasting through jr high/high school will make college a LOT harder. Learn how to learn now because you will need those skills the rest of your life, and largely your ability to earn a living is directly correlated to assimilation of technical information and people skills.
3. Most importantly, being a Christian is NOT about going to church or getting a "get out of hell free card." Jesus Christ wants you to serve Him with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Your current approach of "how much can I get away with and still go to heaven" doesn't work now, and won't work for the rest of your life.
Peace, contentment, and real/deep/meaningful relationships are found when your greatest desire is to please God and serve Him.
There is no way that cost a million dollars.
I beg to differ. When my house is compromised I know how many systems could have been targeted (7) and where my important information resides.
If I'm a big company, I might have dozens or thousands of boxes at risk. I might not have good forensic logs to tell me when the system was compromised or where the attackers went. I might not know the extent of the damage - in fact I probably will never know what important information was taken (if any) or where the important information resides.
Depending on the size of the organization it might take me months to figure out how to protect against this type of threat in the future, and I might have to spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on software and consulting to help me be protected.
You might argue that we already have a staff of engineers, and that it's not fair to count their pay as cost for cleanup, but when they are cleaning up, they are not doing things that make my company money, just activities that might help my company to lose less money.
Millions? It's a definite possibility. You might have merely defaced my web presence, but you also might have inserted a trojan that would let you do a great deal of damage, or deface my web page again. I don't know, and figuring it out could cost a fortune.
So when the person took advantage in a weakness in the lpd I had running on my linux box hooked to my broadband connection and installed a rootkit I sustained no damage, right?
Never mind that I needed to spend a good bit of time checking to see whether the systems behind that firewall were compromised. Never mind that it took me a while to determine if the attacker had done anything else.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
The time I spent determining that it was an lpd exploit (of course I should have turned that off, but I missed it.) was not important, either.
So the time that I took to build another gateway box with more up to date software and a tighter ruleset was not important.
This was just my home system - no measurable economic loss. I spent many hours figuring this out and installing a replacement that was more secure. My time is worth nothing?
Never mind that I'm pretty sure that the attacker didn't get anything important (like my financial information) from that system. I had a functional system prior to the attack, and didn't afterward.
Yeah. No harm no foul. I was harmed, and I was fouled.
You can make the argument that I made a mistake by not putting up a better firewall, but if you walked up to my front porch and jimmied the lock on my front door, you'd still be trespassing, and you'd still go to jail even if you "just looked around."
You could make the argument that I should have upgraded to a deadbolt instead of relying on the knob-lock that is 10 years old, but it wouldn't keep you out of jail.
Cracking is tresspass at the least and theft at the most. It deserves jail time. The issue is how much jail time. The guy who hacked me should face at a minimum the legal penalty for breaking into my house and rifling through my file cabinet.