Damn, no mod points. I went off on a mission to prove IPU wrong and discovered that "just desserts" is, indeed, improper usage.
Alert moderators are right to mod me offtopic, of course.
The word "dessert" comes from the French desservir, "to clear the table," literally "un-serve" (des + servir)and therefore refers only to the last course of a meal and has nothing to do with the French construction de "completely" + deservir, "to serve well".
I think the most powerful persuasive factor in Nixon's resignation was the perception that the people wanted to see him go down.
That's what makes Nixon's tapes unique. They were voice-activated. The other Presidents that we know who had tapes, they pushed the button, they recorded when they saw fit, and when they wanted to. They turned it off when they wanted. But Nixon's were voice activated. No doubt, he was aware of the taping system sometimes. Sometimes I think he and Haldeman had what I would consider to be contrived conversations clearly for the record. But other times, as you know, when you're being taped, sometimes you become oblivious to it, and you just go on. And he did. ~Stanley Kutler, transcriber of the tapes, on Nixon's taping setup
This may have been a hedge, though; because the bill started in the Senate, he knew there would be another chance to vote after it came back from the House.
Hmmm, hit #4 in the search is a CBS News piece dated 6/21/2008 that has him issuing a statement in support of the House's update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but said he would try to strip a provision granting immunity to telecommunication companies when the bill comes to a vote in the Senate next week.
I like the idea of an anti-corporate Senator, and I love the idea of an anti-corporate President. It's about time for another TR.
That's it, exactly. I keep forgetting this; it's just personal resentment towards telcos that reminds me where I'd rather this thing end up.
It's as though the Democrats are afraid of shaming the President. They won't do anything substantial about what he and his gang have perpetrated. This "impeachment's off the table" smacks of blackmail fear or some misplaced perception that the electorate just doesn't want another impeachment.
I want a real one. I want for soap opera broadcasts to be pre-empted, I want a parade of dozens of officials taking the Fifth, and several very damning "I don't recall" responses.
I also want the power to levitate at will and to travel through time without disrupting anything, you know, inconvenient to me.
I do believe that this administration has at least one more gut-level shocking revelation coming. I don't really think that any of them will pay for it with jail time, nor to do think that any of them will really care whether the exposure will prevent them from "serving" in government after the fact.
I think that both the Executive and the Legislative branches have something to hide here, and I suspect that the filibuster threat is an empty gambit. Either the telcos are funding all of the reelection campaigns, or the Congressional committees knew about it too and approved it.
We have become that which we resisted. Welcome, comrades!
I've given up on warrantless wiretapping. It's here to stay, and we're not going back any more than we're going to see gasoline ever dip below $4.00--without a radical change in either case.
The retroactive immunity for the telecoms is what's at stake. If we can't have warrants, e.g., records of who's been spied on, we can at least insist on something more than simple corporate compliance with the Executive branch.
That's what's most offensive, I think, that we have to watch them waddle back and forth to our Treasury with their pants unzipped (or down) and donut icing on their ties. It's as though Homer Simpson were running the joint.
Some seem so offended when it is discovered that political leaders aren't obeying the law.
I obey the law when it's convenient and when I'm aware of a threat, i.e., a cop is watching or I believe the probability of getting caught is high. And then there's opportunity: I'd like to think that I wouldn't be an embezzler, but I've never had the opportunity.
Having great responsibility does not magically convert human nature. If anything, it amplifies it by providing far more opportunity and an inversely proportional amount of deterrents. Add the pampering which accompanies members of a presidential administration, and it's miraculous that they're not all helping themselves to the buffet.
It is my opinion that his advisers are the hands in the sock puppet. He's not the most reliable puppet, e.g., he goes off message and he has this annoying habit of talking near open mics, but the agenda is 100% driven by Dick Cheney's cronies, which happen to include George H. W. Bush. GWB's father vouched for him, and even though he can be a loose cannon, he has by and large carried out the agenda of the people who put him in power. Many in his administration have proven themselves sloppy and incompetent, but in general, his presidency has served its investors very well.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this configuration. It just happens that the world has changed beyond what any of this particular cabal understands or cares about, and so it looks like everything is falling apart. Rest assured that their interests are well taken care of; it's yours and mine that are not being represented, hence the attractiveness of the "change" meme.
The optimal configuration is a person presiding over the republic whose sponsors ("advisers") have interests more closely aligned with the electorate. This is a very rare combination; not impossible, but highly improbable.
War and politics are about money. Period. Full stop. End of sentence. Ideological discussion is simply window dressing, elaboration, accompaniment to the melody. Cosmic forces make the world go 'round, but money motivates human beings more consistently than any other stimulus.
Yes. You are correct. This is exactly why it's foolish--no, idiotic to suppress them.
Sure, there are events and circumstances which are important enough to swear about which can also be communicated intelligibly. There are also many more which, in the moment, cannot be communicated in any other way. Your approach purports that we suppress ourselves in favor of honoring proper behavior, and suggests that it's OK with you if we act to suppress one another based on our own perspectives and beliefs.
The problem with your approach is that it is bound to temporal mores, and requires revision. I notice that organizations whose goals include the control of others' natural inclinations tend to break down after a few hundred years or so, mainly because their value systems become completely out of touch with the zeitgeist.
It is my opinion that many of our cultural problems have their roots in the denial of our humanity. Yes, we all have moments where we transcend the state of human being. These are known as art, sports, meditation, and love. However, we spend the overwhelming majority of our time living in fear of past unpleasurable events repeating, or past pleasurable events never repeating.
Nothing wrong with that; it's the default state of human being. Many of us go through our entire lives like this and manage to achieve great things--swearing all the while.
If you are ever able to fully control yourself in the way you describe, please do contact me. I would very much like to know what it feels like to have permanently transcended human being without dying first.
I don't know what world you're living in, but you're a fool if you think anything in the government has gotten better.
The comments of Master Tubesteak did not in any way imply the bettering of any institution. He asserts change, which in and of itself is quite a feat for the behemoth we know as the Federal Government.
The thing about revolution, Master Coward (what an annoying pseudonym you have chosen, and you post so much--do you do anything besides wag your wattle here?) is that the rebels do not know whether their efforts will effect any change at all, much less in which direction the change will take things. Consider just how frustrated the architects of the 9/11 attacks would have been to see their efforts cause world peace, as unlikely as that would have been.
And with very little responsibility in the matter. They continue to succeed in placing the onus of accuracy on the consumer's back. Note that you are not the credit company's customer; you are the consumer. The identity of a given credit firm's customer is left as an exercise to the reader.
And then there's the matter of how they treat the sensitive information that they demand up front and without compromise.
... apparently, news does not. It would appear that the objective perspective is ultimately swallowed by self-interest.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it's part of human nature. The problem is that we keep trying to see news outlets as objective, when they most very clearly cannot be neutral.
Ehhh, salary surveys are highly overrated IMHO. They seem to be pretty damn low. My experience is that you get the best results by holding off the money talk as long as possible, and by killing in the interview.
I highly recommend Dorothy Leeds' work, either the original Smart Questions book's chapter on interviewing, or the book spawned from that chapter. It's a lot to remember, but take notes and refer to them when they say, "Do you have any questions." You'll look prepared (hmm, you will be prepared) and you'll have great questions.
This administration has been a consistent innovator in the areas of government stupidity and corruption. They have gone above and beyond what anyone could have expected in the realm of demonstrable incompetence. You won't see the liberal media reporting on these achievements; they actually try to use these record-breaking results to attack our Commander in Chief and his duly appointed minions.
I'm very glad to see Jaynes' book cited, but it really has nothing at all to do with free will. You refer to the first argument of the book, which merely proves that conscious thought is for decisions and not task performance. I believe the quintessential example is of the pianist performing Flight of the Bumblebee, who will very likely make a mistake if s/he becomes aware of his/her fingers.
You do correctly cite the general argument, which is that consciousness is a trick that we have learned, rather than a default feature of the human machine. This has nothing to do with free will, e.g., I can be completely self-aware without being able to make my own choices.
It is also possible that my self-awareness is incomplete, such that I believe that I am making my own choices, but am indeed fulfilling another's orders.
I strongly recommend the book, but you may want to complete it before referencing it in an unrelated discussion. Other topics that Jaynes uses to demonstrate his argument are hypnosis, schizophrenia, and religious rituals. The latter is very likely the source of the confusion, as the philosophical concept of free will is often conflated with religious opinion on the subject.
Jaynes' work is not at all philosophical; it is scientific, and includes biological references to the structure of the human brain. I found the chapter on glossololia to be most interesting.
Bethinks the AC speaks of the newer, non-infringing version, and that Dan refers to the older, Tivo-like version.
I agree: it sucks to have to pay a fee ($5/month for DirecTiVo, which is crippled, blah, blah, blah), but the interface is nice, there are multiple hacks which are time-tested, and no one's coming down on the hackers. Okay, they're clobbering the hacks with software upgrades, but there are workarounds for this.
I feel the same way about the TiVo suit that I did about the 1987 Microsoft suit: It's a shame that this had to be done with law. It's the right thing to do, though.
I completely agree that Dish could/should have licensed the technology: It would have saved money, time, and trouble in the long run. I completely believe that the TiVo framework would make a very good industry standard.
I don't completely get the DRM involved, but I know of several ways to circumvent it. I used to use the analog hole, now I just snag the digital streams and convert to whatever format I prefer on that particular day.
I absolutely don't get the broadcasters' mental constipation on this issue: It's *broadcast* quality, digital or not. Even HD broadcasts are not that great because they arrive after having passed through a satellite or over miles of cable or fiber.
I think that broadcasters believe that digital means "perfection" because it costs more and because they're mostly pampered idiots surrounded by yes men. I would expect that most readers of these forums agree that digital technology is a hedge to simplify error detection and correction, and that there is no attainable perfection.
"...it turned out to suck anyway if you read the reviews of it."
Wow. Good thing I didn't read those reviews.
Wait, did you say that it sucked iff I read the reviews, or did you mean that it sucked anyway, whether or not I read the reviews, or... ?
Heyyyy. Just a minute, there. I've been re-reading your crappy as hell post, and I have concluded that I like it only because I don't understand it. Plus I think it may not have been your own work. I'm waiting for the reviews before I meta-moderate.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.
If they really wanted to foster such a climate, they'd stop wasting their time on the petty pursuits that simply increase their lawyers' billable hours.
Reminds me of a certain "war"... in fact, several current "wars" (hint: they all start with "The War On").
Yes, they represent the copyright owners. No, they have no inherent right to sue, because they do not own the copyrights. Were they to file suit on behalf of the copyright owners, the suits would be EMI v. Joseph Blow or somesuch. The whole thing is a pathetic exercise in refusing to recognize that the game has changed, like a child who tries to keep players of the new game from playing because it wants to play the old game.
Lynyrd Skynyrd (pronounced LEH-Nerd SKIN-Nerd).
"I'm taking my ball and going home!" "Go right ahead. This game doesn't use a ball." "Well... then... I'm going to get my dad to sue all of you!!!" "So?" "So you'll have to stop playing to appear in court." "Now we definitely won't go back to playing that game that needs your ball."
Excellent--no, brilliant point... blurred by your use of the word for element number 82 as the past tense of the verb "to lead."
You want "led." When pronounced with a short 'e', "lead" is heavy metal.
Of course, I apologize if what you wanted to communicate was that Google's connectivity problems weigh as heavily on it as a fishing weight. Or perhaps you wanted to highlight the subtle poisoning that such a problem causes over time for a corporation, much as the element does for mammals.
What I like about what you said is that Google is just going around the problem, instead of whining about it. Apparently they've got enough smart people on board to get it done.
[the amount of bittorrent traffic that is legal] is really the crux of the matter.
I'll buy "crux of the disagreement," but if Comcast is a common carrier, then the content doesn't matter at all.
The rationale for maintaining one's status as a common carrier is to avoid liability for what's being transmitted. Comcast seems to want to discriminate based on protocol while remaining ignorant of content. That way they can reduce bandwidth (and therefore costs), theoretically increase revenue, and avoid legal costs for allowing content like child porn and terrorist plots.
Then again, they may be waiting for the outcome of the telecom immunity question before deciding whether to snoop for content.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, no mod points. I went off on a mission to prove IPU wrong and discovered that "just desserts" is, indeed, improper usage.
Alert moderators are right to mod me offtopic, of course.
The word "dessert" comes from the French desservir, "to clear the table," literally "un-serve" (des + servir)and therefore refers only to the last course of a meal and has nothing to do with the French construction de "completely" + deservir, "to serve well".
Etymology from http://www.etymonline.com./ Surely these French verbal constructions are from Latin.
I think the most powerful persuasive factor in Nixon's resignation was the perception that the people wanted to see him go down.
That's what makes Nixon's tapes unique. They were voice-activated. The other Presidents that we know who had tapes, they pushed the button, they recorded when they saw fit, and when they wanted to. They turned it off when they wanted. But Nixon's were voice activated. No doubt, he was aware of the taping system sometimes. Sometimes I think he and Haldeman had what I would consider to be contrived conversations clearly for the record. But other times, as you know, when you're being taped, sometimes you become oblivious to it, and you just go on. And he did.
~Stanley Kutler, transcriber of the tapes, on Nixon's taping setup
Interesting. Googlesearch for obama+telecom+immunity reveals a Guardian article that shows that he voted (with only 30 other Democratic Senators) against the immunity.
This may have been a hedge, though; because the bill started in the Senate, he knew there would be another chance to vote after it came back from the House.
Hmmm, hit #4 in the search is a CBS News piece dated 6/21/2008 that has him issuing a statement in support of the House's update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but said he would try to strip a provision granting immunity to telecommunication companies when the bill comes to a vote in the Senate next week.
I like the idea of an anti-corporate Senator, and I love the idea of an anti-corporate President. It's about time for another TR.
That's it, exactly. I keep forgetting this; it's just personal resentment towards telcos that reminds me where I'd rather this thing end up.
It's as though the Democrats are afraid of shaming the President. They won't do anything substantial about what he and his gang have perpetrated. This "impeachment's off the table" smacks of blackmail fear or some misplaced perception that the electorate just doesn't want another impeachment.
I want a real one. I want for soap opera broadcasts to be pre-empted, I want a parade of dozens of officials taking the Fifth, and several very damning "I don't recall" responses.
I also want the power to levitate at will and to travel through time without disrupting anything, you know, inconvenient to me.
I do believe that this administration has at least one more gut-level shocking revelation coming. I don't really think that any of them will pay for it with jail time, nor to do think that any of them will really care whether the exposure will prevent them from "serving" in government after the fact.
I think that both the Executive and the Legislative branches have something to hide here, and I suspect that the filibuster threat is an empty gambit. Either the telcos are funding all of the reelection campaigns, or the Congressional committees knew about it too and approved it.
We have become that which we resisted. Welcome, comrades!
I've given up on warrantless wiretapping. It's here to stay, and we're not going back any more than we're going to see gasoline ever dip below $4.00--without a radical change in either case.
The retroactive immunity for the telecoms is what's at stake. If we can't have warrants, e.g., records of who's been spied on, we can at least insist on something more than simple corporate compliance with the Executive branch.
Exactly. They're The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. They're the most incompetent group of candy-assed thugs we've ever had to tolerate.
That's what's most offensive, I think, that we have to watch them waddle back and forth to our Treasury with their pants unzipped (or down) and donut icing on their ties. It's as though Homer Simpson were running the joint.
Some seem so offended when it is discovered that political leaders aren't obeying the law.
I obey the law when it's convenient and when I'm aware of a threat, i.e., a cop is watching or I believe the probability of getting caught is high. And then there's opportunity: I'd like to think that I wouldn't be an embezzler, but I've never had the opportunity.
Having great responsibility does not magically convert human nature. If anything, it amplifies it by providing far more opportunity and an inversely proportional amount of deterrents. Add the pampering which accompanies members of a presidential administration, and it's miraculous that they're not all helping themselves to the buffet.
It is my opinion that his advisers are the hands in the sock puppet. He's not the most reliable puppet, e.g., he goes off message and he has this annoying habit of talking near open mics, but the agenda is 100% driven by Dick Cheney's cronies, which happen to include George H. W. Bush. GWB's father vouched for him, and even though he can be a loose cannon, he has by and large carried out the agenda of the people who put him in power. Many in his administration have proven themselves sloppy and incompetent, but in general, his presidency has served its investors very well.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this configuration. It just happens that the world has changed beyond what any of this particular cabal understands or cares about, and so it looks like everything is falling apart. Rest assured that their interests are well taken care of; it's yours and mine that are not being represented, hence the attractiveness of the "change" meme.
The optimal configuration is a person presiding over the republic whose sponsors ("advisers") have interests more closely aligned with the electorate. This is a very rare combination; not impossible, but highly improbable.
War and politics are about money. Period. Full stop. End of sentence. Ideological discussion is simply window dressing, elaboration, accompaniment to the melody. Cosmic forces make the world go 'round, but money motivates human beings more consistently than any other stimulus.
Yes. You are correct. This is exactly why it's foolish--no, idiotic to suppress them.
Sure, there are events and circumstances which are important enough to swear about which can also be communicated intelligibly. There are also many more which, in the moment, cannot be communicated in any other way. Your approach purports that we suppress ourselves in favor of honoring proper behavior, and suggests that it's OK with you if we act to suppress one another based on our own perspectives and beliefs.
The problem with your approach is that it is bound to temporal mores, and requires revision. I notice that organizations whose goals include the control of others' natural inclinations tend to break down after a few hundred years or so, mainly because their value systems become completely out of touch with the zeitgeist.
It is my opinion that many of our cultural problems have their roots in the denial of our humanity. Yes, we all have moments where we transcend the state of human being. These are known as art, sports, meditation, and love. However, we spend the overwhelming majority of our time living in fear of past unpleasurable events repeating, or past pleasurable events never repeating.
Nothing wrong with that; it's the default state of human being. Many of us go through our entire lives like this and manage to achieve great things--swearing all the while.
If you are ever able to fully control yourself in the way you describe, please do contact me. I would very much like to know what it feels like to have permanently transcended human being without dying first.
"Anonymous edits are disabled for this article, because it is about a foreign leader's sexual habits."
"Ward, you were a little hard on the beaver last night."
"You're right, June. Why don't you go do some shopping and relax. I'll just stay here and pack fudge with the boys."
The comments of Master Tubesteak did not in any way imply the bettering of any institution. He asserts change, which in and of itself is quite a feat for the behemoth we know as the Federal Government.
The thing about revolution, Master Coward (what an annoying pseudonym you have chosen, and you post so much--do you do anything besides wag your wattle here?) is that the rebels do not know whether their efforts will effect any change at all, much less in which direction the change will take things. Consider just how frustrated the architects of the 9/11 attacks would have been to see their efforts cause world peace, as unlikely as that would have been.
And then there's the matter of how they treat the sensitive information that they demand up front and without compromise.
I worked with a guy that who had shell aliases like "mkae","maek",etc. for "make" and other typos. A little goofy, but effective.
... apparently, news does not. It would appear that the objective perspective is ultimately swallowed by self-interest.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it's part of human nature. The problem is that we keep trying to see news outlets as objective, when they most very clearly cannot be neutral.
Ehhh, salary surveys are highly overrated IMHO. They seem to be pretty damn low. My experience is that you get the best results by holding off the money talk as long as possible, and by killing in the interview.
I highly recommend Dorothy Leeds' work, either the original Smart Questions book's chapter on interviewing, or the book spawned from that chapter. It's a lot to remember, but take notes and refer to them when they say, "Do you have any questions." You'll look prepared (hmm, you will be prepared) and you'll have great questions.
Cool, my first flamebait mod. Either the moderator didn't get the sarcasm, or doesn't like the sarcasm.
This administration has been a consistent innovator in the areas of government stupidity and corruption. They have gone above and beyond what anyone could have expected in the realm of demonstrable incompetence. You won't see the liberal media reporting on these achievements; they actually try to use these record-breaking results to attack our Commander in Chief and his duly appointed minions.
I'm very glad to see Jaynes' book cited, but it really has nothing at all to do with free will. You refer to the first argument of the book, which merely proves that conscious thought is for decisions and not task performance. I believe the quintessential example is of the pianist performing Flight of the Bumblebee, who will very likely make a mistake if s/he becomes aware of his/her fingers.
You do correctly cite the general argument, which is that consciousness is a trick that we have learned, rather than a default feature of the human machine. This has nothing to do with free will, e.g., I can be completely self-aware without being able to make my own choices.
It is also possible that my self-awareness is incomplete, such that I believe that I am making my own choices, but am indeed fulfilling another's orders.
I strongly recommend the book, but you may want to complete it before referencing it in an unrelated discussion. Other topics that Jaynes uses to demonstrate his argument are hypnosis, schizophrenia, and religious rituals. The latter is very likely the source of the confusion, as the philosophical concept of free will is often conflated with religious opinion on the subject.
Jaynes' work is not at all philosophical; it is scientific, and includes biological references to the structure of the human brain. I found the chapter on glossololia to be most interesting.
Bethinks the AC speaks of the newer, non-infringing version, and that Dan refers to the older, Tivo-like version.
I agree: it sucks to have to pay a fee ($5/month for DirecTiVo, which is crippled, blah, blah, blah), but the interface is nice, there are multiple hacks which are time-tested, and no one's coming down on the hackers. Okay, they're clobbering the hacks with software upgrades, but there are workarounds for this.
I feel the same way about the TiVo suit that I did about the 1987 Microsoft suit: It's a shame that this had to be done with law. It's the right thing to do, though.
I completely agree that Dish could/should have licensed the technology: It would have saved money, time, and trouble in the long run. I completely believe that the TiVo framework would make a very good industry standard.
I don't completely get the DRM involved, but I know of several ways to circumvent it. I used to use the analog hole, now I just snag the digital streams and convert to whatever format I prefer on that particular day.
I absolutely don't get the broadcasters' mental constipation on this issue: It's *broadcast* quality, digital or not. Even HD broadcasts are not that great because they arrive after having passed through a satellite or over miles of cable or fiber.
I think that broadcasters believe that digital means "perfection" because it costs more and because they're mostly pampered idiots surrounded by yes men. I would expect that most readers of these forums agree that digital technology is a hedge to simplify error detection and correction, and that there is no attainable perfection.
"...it turned out to suck anyway if you read the reviews of it."
... ?
... ?
Wow. Good thing I didn't read those reviews.
Wait, did you say that it sucked iff I read the reviews, or did you mean that it sucked anyway, whether or not I read the reviews, or
Heyyyy. Just a minute, there. I've been re-reading your crappy as hell post, and I have concluded that I like it only because I don't understand it. Plus I think it may not have been your own work. I'm waiting for the reviews before I meta-moderate.
Now where did I put that hash
If they really wanted to foster such a climate, they'd stop wasting their time on the petty pursuits that simply increase their lawyers' billable hours.
Reminds me of a certain "war"... in fact, several current "wars" (hint: they all start with "The War On").
"I'm taking my ball and going home!"
"Go right ahead. This game doesn't use a ball."
"Well... then... I'm going to get my dad to sue all of you!!!"
"So?"
"So you'll have to stop playing to appear in court."
"Now we definitely won't go back to playing that game that needs your ball."
Excellent--no, brilliant point... blurred by your use of the word for element number 82 as the past tense of the verb "to lead."
You want "led." When pronounced with a short 'e', "lead" is heavy metal.
Of course, I apologize if what you wanted to communicate was that Google's connectivity problems weigh as heavily on it as a fishing weight. Or perhaps you wanted to highlight the subtle poisoning that such a problem causes over time for a corporation, much as the element does for mammals.
What I like about what you said is that Google is just going around the problem, instead of whining about it. Apparently they've got enough smart people on board to get it done.
I'll buy "crux of the disagreement," but if Comcast is a common carrier, then the content doesn't matter at all.
The rationale for maintaining one's status as a common carrier is to avoid liability for what's being transmitted. Comcast seems to want to discriminate based on protocol while remaining ignorant of content. That way they can reduce bandwidth (and therefore costs), theoretically increase revenue, and avoid legal costs for allowing content like child porn and terrorist plots.
Then again, they may be waiting for the outcome of the telecom immunity question before deciding whether to snoop for content.