So the priests and theologians of certain religions (which believe humans have souls but animals don't) will suddenly have to figure out what their doctrine is regarding human-nonhuman crosses. So what? Why should that be of any concern to the rest of us? If a non-human animal were somehow proven to have a soul and a belief in a god, that wouldn't threaten *my* religion a bit.
This is true, and a good observation, but the presumption is always *against* a new theory -- in archaeology as in other fields of science.
For the meteorite theory to gain any serious credence, archaeologists will need much more specific evidence, evidence that doesn't fit so well with more accepted explanations. IANAA, but at a guess, they would want:
-- evidence that these civilizations began going into decline precisely after the meteorite struck -- within a span of a hundred years, at most;
-- evidence of some effect of the meteorite strike that could have done this, such as local climate changes. I would think that pollen samples from archaeological sites would be one way of doing this;
-- evidence of a meteorite strike in paleosoil cores, such as a layer of ash or whatever.
Legends, mythologized accounts, etc., are *not* considered solid evidence of disasters in archaeology; they're too vague and subject to too many different interpretations.
As for local residents' reaction to floods, people in modern literate societies, I think, have short memories. They also move a lot more often.
When only a small elite of scribes knew how to read and write, most people still lived in a word-of-mouth culture and stayed in the same place for generations. I'll wager that they preserved accounts and legends of severe floods and other natural disasters much longer than modern rural people do.
What makes you think this will work out any better than it has with brick-and-mortar corporations?
Municipal governments have routinely offered massive financial breaks and all manner of exemptions to local regulations, only to have the businesses they've lured in stay a few months or years, then -- once they've gleefully soaked the taxpayers for all they can get -- lay off workers or even close up shop.
Maybe someone else remembers the precise date of the Time cover story on this -- I don't. But in practice these schemes don't benefit the municipalities that try them.
If you'll look a few lines below that, you'll also see that Congress has the power to "grant letters of marque and reprisal".
"A letter of marque or letter of reprisal is the means by which a government authorizes a civilian to arm a private ship in order to attack and plunder the merchant ships of an enemy nation during war.", according to Wendy McElroy -- in other words, government-sponsored piracy.
I notice that we aren't authorizing privateers to attack enemy nations' ships any more.
Whatever possibility there may be of abolishing the USPS -- and I'll agree that this article was one of the most ludicrous things I've ever read in the mainstream media -- the U.S. Constitution doesn't mandate its continued existence.
Well, I think there are those who may see certain advantages in the ugly consequences you describe. I think I know what most people want (who want military action *at all*) -- a war that is as quick and as low in civilian casualties as possible, the terrorists dead, the Taleban either dead or taught a lesson, halfway decent relations with other Muslim countries or at least not made any worse -- but I'm not sure that's what the Powers That Be want.
Consider: what would be the consequences if this were the start of a new decades-long cold war with the Islamic world in general? Like the Cold War with the Soviet Union, it could re-energize the defense industry, discourage dissent and criticism, and be the favorite excuse for expanding federal, military and corporate power while destroying the Bill of Rights. It's not hard to see who would benefit from that.
With recent bills this Administration has already launched an unprecended attack on civil rights that would hugely expand the federal government's power, an attack that's proving very hard to stop. Consider what that pressure will be like if this cold war were punctuated by freqent acts of terrorism in the U.S., keeping the public in a constant state of fear and uncertainty.
For those who don't scorn the dead-tree format,
this classic has a largish chapter devoted to
the Black Death and its effects upon medieval
society and thinking. An Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/034534957 1/ qid=1002208191/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/103-6350268-028 3007\
I haven't counted how many posters here have pointed out that it's open source and will be looked at by dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of suspicious eyes before any of this is added to the kernel -- and still posts like this are popping up.
What you're basically positing is that the NSA programmers are so superhumanly clever and cunning, with such godlike mastery of the craft, that they have deliberately devised such tricks and back doors with FULL CONFIDENCE that not one non-government open-source coder will ever, ever spot them -- until it's too late and those back doors are being exploited.
This suffers from the same flaws as hundreds of conspiracy theories about the spook agencies: it credits the government agency involved with fiendish cleverness and foresight beyond all imagination. Do you see any signs that *any* portion of the federal government, the CIA and FBI included, have that kind of genius? Are they really that competent? Look at the record.
It's like a guest speaker for my journalism course once remarked: he didn't believe in government conspiracies because most of those people aren't capable of running a conspiracy!
I'd have no problem with students doing this IF they give up their right to vote or to otherwise participate in the body politic.
Think about it -- should someone who has no education in Computer Science be a sysadmin or an IT? Of course not. They'll end up doing damage to valuable systems or to their employers in general.
Ignorant, uninformed people with no knowledge of history or culture do damage to the nation and the world. Without knowledge of American history and government, let alone knowledge of the rest of the world, you will have no basis to resist any of the propaganda fed you by television and even newspapers and newsmagazines -- you'll just choose your opinions based on whether you're "liberal" or "conservative". You won't understand the issues, even the ones that affect you. You will vote foolishly and self-destructively and in general be a detriment to society, no matter what your technical gifts.
If you're thinking that this describes the majority of people, you're right. The educational system already is slipping into a habit of teaching its victims no more than they need to learn to be good little consumers, employeers and soldiers. But there's no need to encourage that, which is what you are doing here.
Do I sound like I'm advocating bringing back voter qualification testing? Well, I think there's a lot to be said for it, if we could keep it a fair system without questions like "How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?" But you don't know what I'm talking about, do you?
Actually, the Luddites had good reason to feel threatened by their employers' policies, which in fact left them unemployed and starving. The Luddite phenomenon wasn't based on a simple-minded fear of machines -- this is a legend. Read Kirkland Sale's "Rebels Against the Future" for an in-depth account.
The true Luddites don't bear comparison with the various governments, the RIAA and other such entities in power -- or the general public. These people are not defending jobs but acting on their technophobia, their instinctive, irrational panic response to the way computers and the Net are changing everything -- *including power relationships*.
Particularly with John Q. Public, it boils down to the belief that computers and software are insidious, somehow sinister, creating evils that common people can't understand and which therefore are impossible to fight except by banning or at least controlling this newfangled technology. Thus, it's encryption, not boxcutters, that draws their ire.
This has happened before:
"The Lynds quoted the judge of the juvenile court in 'Middletown' as declaring that the automobile had become a 'house of prostitution on wheels,' and cited the fact that of thirty girls brought before his court in a year on charges of sex crimes, for whom the place where the offense had occurred was recorded, nineteen were listed as having committed it in an automobile." -- Frederick Lewis Allen, "Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s".
Animals that fell into tar "pits" were NOT "preserved in pristine condition". Their remains were reduced to bones with no soft tissue.
You're probably thinking of those "frozen" mammoths and other critters from Siberia and Alaska. And even they aren't "pristine" -- they had time to begin to decompose, then were both dried and frozen, becoming mummified (like the "Ice Man"). Read R. Dale Guthrie's "Frozen Fauna: the Story of Blue Babe" for the details.
This argument, and Katz' argument would be legitimate if, in fact, the problem was that federal authorities didn't have enough access to that information.
In fact, they already are awash with information, so much so that they can't make use of all of it. I'll leave to others whose knowledge is more current the exact statistics for how much data Echelon rakes in and how many wiretaps are authorized by federal judges, etc.
I think a certain percentage of the./ readership has a knee-jerk reaction to Katz himself, and that's at the root of the problem. If you're among that percentage, in order to prove to yourself that you are cool, with the "in" crowd, and a brave warrior against liberalism and political correctness, you have to produce a flame whenever another Katz article comes out.
Not to defend the hypocrisy involved, but I think the significant factor here may be that this was a DOS attack. Many consider DOS's the most contemptible form of vandalism -- something like throwing a big pile of rubble in the middle of a busy freeway for the fun of it, as opposed to spraypainting your name on a wall.
Is what happens when the North Slope oil runs out -- as it will eventually. Fossil fuels are by definition a non-renewable resource.
Then they'll be stuck with the problem of energy supply. It'll be like building a server farm on the surface of the moon -- everything has to be transported great distances at enormous expense.
Believe it or not, people *do* strive to do things for reasons other than money.
While I'm no socialist (contrary to popular belief), I can't resist pointing out this big, fat, juicy fallacy.
No one would choose to be a musician if money were the only reward. The chances of covering costs, let alone getting rich by making music, are too small to make it a worthwhile investment for even the most reckless gambler.
Problem with that is, spammers either use
faked email addresses OR addresses belonging
to innocent third parties. Even addresses
belonging to spam-fighters, sometimes, to
get revenge.
This cannot be recommended, unless you've
taken great care to ensure the address
you spam really does belong to the spammer
and that the account won't simply be
trashed tomorrow when the inevitable
complaints to the ISP pour in. It would
probably work well only against spammers
who own their own servers.
Actually, that picture isn't purely Hubble . . .
on
Happy Birthday Hubble
·
· Score: 1
The Space article notes:
"The image has been superimposed on ground-based data acquired by the 35-inch (0.9-meter) telescope at the National Science Foundation's Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona."
BOOGITYSHOO, Iowa (Brooters): Fourteen survivors of the victims of the Boogityshoo High School mass killing have filed a lawsuit in a federal court against God, asking for $1 billion in damages.
"There's no doubt in my mind whatsoever," said Darrow Clarence, the attorney representing the bereaved parents.
"Timothy Yodelsky and Frannie Fannett's violent acts were a direct result of the images of bloodshed and mass violence described in God's infamous book, 'The Holy Bible'."
In March of 2006, Yodelsky and Fannett went on a heavily-armed rampage through the school at which they were seniors, killing 31 fellow students and injuring 25 more in what has been described as America's worst mass shooting to date before ending their own lives.
Both students were described as being obsessed with "The Holy Bible" and its vivid descriptions of bloody warfare and sexual perversion, as are a disturbing number of youth nationwide. There are even "Bible study groups" in which fans pore over its pages and discuss the author's real intentions.
"It's well-known that being exposed to excessive violence in art and literature at an early age can lead children to violent behavior later in life," Clarence said. "If 'The Holy Bible' had never been written, these two teenagers would have grown up as normal, well-adjusted human beings.
"For God to write this kind of literature and allow it to be marketed to impressionable adolescents is the height of irresponsibility. Hopefully this lawsuit will send a message that people must accept the consequences of their actions."
God has become increasingly reclusive in recent centuries, declining all requests for interviews and personal appearances. Asked for a response to Clarence's accusations, He once again refused to comment.
The average American does not need to know the
difference between communism and socialism. The
average good citizen need only know the difference
between goodsex and badsex.
Slashdot Mirror
to spare religions any dilemmas of doctrine.
So the priests and theologians of certain religions (which believe humans have souls but animals don't) will suddenly have to figure out what their doctrine is regarding human-nonhuman crosses. So what? Why should that be of any concern to the rest of us? If a non-human animal were somehow proven to have a soul and a belief in a god, that wouldn't threaten *my* religion a bit.
This is true, and a good observation, but the presumption is always *against* a new theory -- in archaeology as in other fields of science.
For the meteorite theory to gain any serious credence, archaeologists will need much more specific evidence, evidence that doesn't fit so well with more accepted explanations. IANAA, but at a guess, they would want:
-- evidence that these civilizations began going into decline precisely after the meteorite struck -- within a span of a hundred years, at most;
-- evidence of some effect of the meteorite strike that could have done this, such as local climate changes. I would think that pollen samples from archaeological sites would be one way of doing this;
-- evidence of a meteorite strike in paleosoil cores, such as a layer of ash or whatever.
Legends, mythologized accounts, etc., are *not* considered solid evidence of disasters in archaeology; they're too vague and subject to too many different interpretations.
As for local residents' reaction to floods, people in modern literate societies, I think, have short memories. They also move a lot more often.
When only a small elite of scribes knew how to read and write, most people still lived in a word-of-mouth culture and stayed in the same place for generations. I'll wager that they preserved accounts and legends of severe floods and other natural disasters much longer than modern rural people do.
It's still at:
http://www.monkeys.com/wpoison/.
What makes you think this will work out any better than it has with brick-and-mortar corporations?
Municipal governments have routinely offered massive financial breaks and all manner of exemptions to local regulations, only to have the businesses they've lured in stay a few months or years, then -- once they've gleefully soaked the taxpayers for all they can get -- lay off workers or even close up shop.
Maybe someone else remembers the precise date of the Time cover story on this -- I don't. But in practice these schemes don't benefit the municipalities that try them.
If you'll look a few lines below that, you'll also see that Congress has the power to "grant letters of marque and reprisal".
"A letter of marque or letter of reprisal is the means by which a government authorizes a civilian to arm a private ship in order to attack and plunder the merchant ships of an enemy nation during war.", according to Wendy McElroy -- in other words, government-sponsored piracy.
I notice that we aren't authorizing privateers to attack enemy nations' ships any more.
Whatever possibility there may be of abolishing the USPS -- and I'll agree that this article was one of the most ludicrous things I've ever read in the mainstream media -- the U.S. Constitution doesn't mandate its continued existence.
Well, I think there are those who may see certain advantages in the ugly consequences you describe. I think I know what most people want (who want military action *at all*) -- a war that is as quick and as low in civilian casualties as possible, the terrorists dead, the Taleban either dead or taught a lesson, halfway decent relations with other Muslim countries or at least not made any worse -- but I'm not sure that's what the Powers That Be want.
Consider: what would be the consequences if this were the start of a new decades-long cold war with the Islamic world in general? Like the Cold War with the Soviet Union, it could re-energize the defense industry, discourage dissent and criticism, and be the favorite excuse for expanding federal, military and corporate power while destroying the Bill of Rights. It's not hard to see who would benefit from that.
With recent bills this Administration has already launched an unprecended attack on civil rights that would hugely expand the federal government's power, an attack that's proving very hard to stop. Consider what that pressure will be like if this cold war were punctuated by freqent acts of terrorism in the U.S., keeping the public in a constant state of fear and uncertainty.
For those who don't scorn the dead-tree format,
7 1/ qid=1002208191/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/103-6350268-028 3007\
this classic has a largish chapter devoted to
the Black Death and its effects upon medieval
society and thinking. An Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/03453495
I haven't counted how many posters here have pointed out that it's open source and will be looked at by dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of suspicious eyes before any of this is added to the kernel -- and still posts like this are popping up.
What you're basically positing is that the NSA programmers are so superhumanly clever and cunning, with such godlike mastery of the craft, that they have deliberately devised such tricks and back doors with FULL CONFIDENCE that not one non-government open-source coder will ever, ever spot them -- until it's too late and those back doors are being exploited.
This suffers from the same flaws as hundreds of conspiracy theories about the spook agencies: it credits the government agency involved with fiendish cleverness and foresight beyond all imagination. Do you see any signs that *any* portion of the federal government, the CIA and FBI included, have that kind of genius? Are they really that competent? Look at the record.
It's like a guest speaker for my journalism course once remarked: he didn't believe in government conspiracies because most of those people aren't capable of running a conspiracy!
I'd have no problem with students doing this IF they give up their right to vote or to otherwise participate in the body politic.
Think about it -- should someone who has no education in Computer Science be a sysadmin or an IT? Of course not. They'll end up doing damage to valuable systems or to their employers in general.
Ignorant, uninformed people with no knowledge of history or culture do damage to the nation and the world. Without knowledge of American history and government, let alone knowledge of the rest of the world, you will have no basis to resist any of the propaganda fed you by television and even newspapers and newsmagazines -- you'll just choose your opinions based on whether you're "liberal" or "conservative". You won't understand the issues, even the ones that affect you. You will vote foolishly and self-destructively and in general be a detriment to society, no matter what your technical gifts.
If you're thinking that this describes the majority of people, you're right. The educational system already is slipping into a habit of teaching its victims no more than they need to learn to be good little consumers, employeers and soldiers. But there's no need to encourage that, which is what you are doing here.
Do I sound like I'm advocating bringing back voter qualification testing? Well, I think there's a lot to be said for it, if we could keep it a fair system without questions like "How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?" But you don't know what I'm talking about, do you?
Actually, the Luddites had good reason to feel threatened by their employers' policies, which in fact left them unemployed and starving. The Luddite phenomenon wasn't based on a simple-minded fear of machines -- this is a legend. Read Kirkland Sale's "Rebels Against the Future" for an in-depth account.
The true Luddites don't bear comparison with the various governments, the RIAA and other such entities in power -- or the general public. These people are not defending jobs but acting on their technophobia, their instinctive, irrational panic response to the way computers and the Net are changing everything -- *including power relationships*.
Particularly with John Q. Public, it boils down to the belief that computers and software are insidious, somehow sinister, creating evils that common people can't understand and which therefore are impossible to fight except by banning or at least controlling this newfangled technology. Thus, it's encryption, not boxcutters, that draws their ire.
This has happened before:
"The Lynds quoted the judge of the juvenile court in 'Middletown' as declaring that the automobile had become a 'house of prostitution on wheels,' and cited the fact that of thirty girls brought before his court in a year on charges of sex crimes, for whom the place where the offense had occurred was recorded, nineteen were listed as having committed it in an automobile." -- Frederick Lewis Allen, "Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s".
Animals that fell into tar "pits" were NOT "preserved in pristine condition". Their remains were reduced to bones with no soft tissue.
You're probably thinking of those "frozen" mammoths and other critters from Siberia and Alaska. And even they aren't "pristine" -- they had time to begin to decompose, then were both dried and frozen, becoming mummified (like the "Ice Man"). Read R. Dale Guthrie's "Frozen Fauna: the Story of Blue Babe" for the details.
Lyka, the compulsive armchair paleontologist
This argument, and Katz' argument would be legitimate if, in fact, the problem was that federal authorities didn't have enough access to that information.
In fact, they already are awash with information, so much so that they can't make use of all of it. I'll leave to others whose knowledge is more current the exact statistics for how much data Echelon rakes in and how many wiretaps are authorized by federal judges, etc.
It's "martial law", not "Marshall Law".
I think a certain percentage of the ./ readership has a knee-jerk reaction to Katz himself, and that's at the root of the problem. If you're among that percentage, in order to prove to yourself that you are cool, with the "in" crowd, and a brave warrior against liberalism and political correctness, you have to produce a flame whenever another Katz article comes out.
Not to defend the hypocrisy involved, but I think the significant factor here may be that this was a DOS attack. Many consider DOS's the most contemptible form of vandalism -- something like throwing a big pile of rubble in the middle of a busy freeway for the fun of it, as opposed to spraypainting your name on a wall.
Four-year-olds do not, alas, have a coalition of wealthy, powerful corporations to protect their rights. That's the logic behind it.
Is what happens when the North Slope oil runs out -- as it will eventually. Fossil fuels are by definition a non-renewable resource.
Then they'll be stuck with the problem of energy supply. It'll be like building a server farm on the surface of the moon -- everything has to be transported great distances at enormous expense.
Uh . . . BILLY Carter? No, that was Jimmy's embarassing redneck brother.
Believe it or not, people *do* strive to do things for reasons other than money.
While I'm no socialist (contrary to popular belief), I can't resist pointing out this big, fat, juicy fallacy.
No one would choose to be a musician if money were the only reward. The chances of covering costs, let alone getting rich by making music, are too small to make it a worthwhile investment for even the most reckless gambler.
Problem with that is, spammers either use
faked email addresses OR addresses belonging
to innocent third parties. Even addresses
belonging to spam-fighters, sometimes, to
get revenge.
This cannot be recommended, unless you've
taken great care to ensure the address
you spam really does belong to the spammer
and that the account won't simply be
trashed tomorrow when the inevitable
complaints to the ISP pour in. It would
probably work well only against spammers
who own their own servers.
The Space article notes:
"The image has been superimposed on ground-based data acquired by the 35-inch (0.9-meter) telescope at the National Science Foundation's Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona."
Still a magnificent picture anyway.
BOOGITYSHOO, Iowa (Brooters): Fourteen survivors of the victims of the Boogityshoo High School mass killing have filed a lawsuit in a federal court against God, asking for $1 billion in damages.
"There's no doubt in my mind whatsoever," said Darrow Clarence, the attorney representing the bereaved parents.
"Timothy Yodelsky and Frannie Fannett's violent acts were a direct result of the images of bloodshed and mass violence described in God's infamous book, 'The Holy Bible'."
In March of 2006, Yodelsky and Fannett went on a heavily-armed rampage through the school at which they were seniors, killing 31 fellow students and injuring 25 more in what has been described as America's worst mass shooting to date before ending their own lives.
Both students were described as being obsessed with "The Holy Bible" and its vivid descriptions of bloody warfare and sexual perversion, as are a disturbing number of youth nationwide. There are even "Bible study groups" in which fans pore over its pages and discuss the author's real intentions.
"It's well-known that being exposed to excessive violence in art and literature at an early age can lead children to violent behavior later in life," Clarence said. "If 'The Holy Bible' had never been written, these two teenagers would have grown up as normal, well-adjusted human beings.
"For God to write this kind of literature and allow it to be marketed to impressionable adolescents is the height of irresponsibility. Hopefully this lawsuit will send a message that people must accept the consequences of their actions."
God has become increasingly reclusive in recent centuries, declining all requests for interviews and personal appearances. Asked for a response to Clarence's accusations, He once again refused to comment.
Try WinMX. It will run through all the musiccity servers
in succession and repeat until it logs into one.
It also has all the features Napster should have but doesn't,
like resume and filter search by bitrate.
URL: http://www.winmx.com/
BullyOnline (British-based, but has some generally applicable stuff)
http://www.successunlimited.co.uk/
Safe Child Program -- Bullies
http://www.safechild.org/bullies.htm
IANAL, but maybe the Sheeleys and anyone else in a similiar situation will find the legal advice there useful.
The average American does not need to know the
difference between communism and socialism. The
average good citizen need only know the difference
between goodsex and badsex.
If you don't get it, read Orwell's 1984.