With a UID that low, you should remember what was said about this subject when it happened.
According to Vincent Cerf, a senior vice president with MCI Worldcom who's been called the Father of the Internet, "The Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator."
The inventor of the Mosaic Browser, Marc Andreesen, credits Gore with making his work possible. He received a federal grant through Gore's High Performance Computing Act. The University of Pennsylvania's Dave Ferber says that without Gore the Internet "would not be where it is today."
Joseph E. Traub, a computer science professor at Columbia University, claims that Gore "was perhaps the first political leader to grasp the importance of networking the country. Could we perhaps see an end to cheap shots from politicians and pundits about inventing the Internet?"
And more from Mr. Cerf:
"I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator."
Cerf said: "Al Gore actually deserves a lot of credit. In about 1986, he started asking questions like, 'Why don't we take these supercomputers and these optical fiber networks and put them together. Would that do anything?' Well, guess what? That eventually turned into the National Science Foundation Network, which became a core element of the Internet."
So, not only are people misquoting him, but they are ignoring the evidence in his defense. And what's up with the mod's? How do factually incorrect posts like this get modded Informative?
Since Democrats take great pleasure in quoting every slip of the tongue every Republican ever made, I think it quite fair for Gore to be gored by the same ox.
You'd have a point if Gore was lying, but he wasn't. Perhaps you had some examples of simple "slips of the tongue" that Democrats used to railroad public sentiment with that you'd like to share?
Whether it was deliberate or a true slip, we'll never know, but he's supposed to be intelligent enough to know the difference between "create" and "fund", so the inferrence is the former. However, politicians are a little weak on differentiating between the two, and maybe he's one of them, so maybe it was a slip.
I can't take this criticism seriously from anyone who would support Bush, or half the GOP leadership. Let's go counting slips... lies... untruths. Seriously, anytime, you'll find much more factual accuracy in Democrat's speech than in Republicans. You're correct the deliberateness not being important, I've said all along that the Bush Administration is either lying or incompetent. I don't care which one, both are unacceptable.
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Providing further funding for something that has already been created is not creating, not claiming "just as responsible" is just ludicrous.
You must be new here on this Internet thingy... let me introduce you to some folks... Vincent Cerf aka Father of the Internet, Marc Andreesen aka co-founder of Netscape. Anyway, they both back Gore's claims 100%. Andreesen claims he couldn't have written Mosaic without a High Performance Computing Act Grant. That would be a Grant that Gore wrote the legislation for.
Those who claim he did not say what he certainly did say are the liars. Those who cannot differentiate between "fund" and "create" are the morons. I'm not the one trying to rewrite history.
Those who knowingly twist meaning to get their intended result are liars. Those who are pentantic about language when the evidence points the other direction are the morons. You may not be rewriting, but you're coloring it with your bias and replacing it's context with a new one based on fantasy. To which, your only defense will be to wildly claim that the other side does it too. Such rambling only points to the poverty of your political positions, not any insight into the facts of the matter.
Of course the living wage increases the incentive for business to use robots, that's the point. Automation is an increase in productivity, wage arbitration isn't. Someone will have to design, build and maintain those robots. Someone will think about how to use robots, and then people will start thinking of new efficiencies to be gained with that technology. That's how progress works.
The brain-dead argument that we need to limit wages in order to compete with other labor forces globally is stupid. It centralizes wealth at a time when it needs to be more distributed to so that more ideas will be attempted. Automation is the answer to competing globally. You here this same idiocy being repeated by the GOP with regard to illegal immigration. They say that businesses need cheap labor, that our economy needs cheap labor to grow. Never mind that this is entirely unsustainable. If a type of labor becomes too expensive due to rising wages, then we need to apply some good old American innovation and ingenuity (or steal it from someone else) to the problem and reduce the amount of labor needed.
Only with our current global telecom network, has work been this easy to ship overseas. Previously, natural barriers made this type of movement of production so expensive, Adam Smith even talked about this. Simply throwing everything to the fate of the markets, in their current form, is a faith-based program. Naturally Free Markets don't exist. Markets are a human construct and our markets are no where near perfect or free. This means there is bias in the markets that will work to concentrate power more quickly.
Institutional effectiveness, in government or private enterprise, is not measured by size. To use that as a central measurement is folly and shows institutional bigotry against public bodies over private bodies. Not to mention that a large corporation has just as much difficulty changing direction as a large government.
As for Greed, it only solves some problems, not all. The West doesn't have a problem with too little greed in it's markets. Your examples of China and the Soviet Union are bad as well. India would be a much better example, since it's economic changes have been as democratic as the US. But even that example shows that Greed only solves some problems.
You may be able to see a valid problem, but you don't understand it enough to propose a valid solution. There are far more factors at work here and many more tools needed to solve these problems than you have described.
The valid sociological observations of Marx are entirely separate from the utopian fantasy he wrongfully inflicted upon the world. Read the second half of Karl Popper's The Open Society and It's Enemies vol. II for a fair and thourough examination of Marx's contributions and mistakes.
The Big Brother attitude is impossible to avoid and is central to Communism since Communism believes it is herding in a new unavoidable destiny for humanity. One of the central features of Soviet Law was the parental component. None of the certitude or moral absolutes of Communism are needed for collectivist actions like worker owned businesses. However, without those features, it's not Communism. The problems Communism attempts to solve can be done so through Liberalism, without turning the state into your parent.
This is the best part about religion. You can make up any explanation of why something is the way it is, and nobody can show you to be wrong.
Yes and No. Yes, you can come up with a completely new theology to explain how to achieve your moral goals, but once you do explain it, you have to remain consistent and logical. Arbitrary systems are avoided by humans.
You'll find consistency and reason after base assumptions in any religion you examine. Sometimes it's difficult to find, but that usually because of a misunderstanding of the theology's basic assumptions.
Actually, Communism is evil. Not evil in the trying to kill you way, evil in the I know what's right better than you way. Communism is just leftist morality stepping on the individual's liberty of conscience, whereas fascism is right-wing morality stepping on the same said liberties. Communism is also a utopian fantasy, which makes it completely disingenuous. Anyone selling communism is lying to your face, even if they don't realize it.
Anyway, OSS is communalism, I wouldn't even classify it as socialism. The fear your describing in the US is a misguided fear of communalism, which demagogues have been equivocating with communism for decades. It's really just a tool of class warfare, but they've been so successful, you can't talk about class warfare without being called a commie. Talk about a rock and a hard place...
Oh, there you go, bringing class into it again!
OSS competes with proprietary software in an open market. The balance is achieved in the market if it's regulation (primarily IP law) is properly written and enforced. These attacks are really just "class warfare", if you consider types of institutions and associations as "classes". You could look at the proprietary industry as the investor class, the ones with the capital and the open source groups as unions, NGOs and charities. They all compete with each other to provide specific services more efficiently than other "classes" in the market. OSS happens to be successful at certain types of services, mainly revolving around infrastructure (especially Open Standards like RFC's). Proprietary software is good at other stuff (high-end expensive enterprise stuff, domain specific niche markets).
Essentially, these proprietary types of institutions don't like to compete fairly, they want an unfair advantage and intend to use lawsuits (or buying politicians) to achieve it. It's just like Bush talking about how we can't afford 8% of GDP to insure the old and disabled don't starve in poverty while giving the wealthiest 1% hundreds of billions in tax cuts. If you look at the numbers and facts in either case, it's the wealthy getting wealthier while the little guy foots the bill. Some days, I'm not sure why we don't just shoot the wealthy, the idea that they earned their money fair and square is ludicrous. If the wealth is older than 40 years, it was most likely stolen from black and native Americans anyway. Of course, that's a leftist totalitarian fantasy... don't go mixing that up with communism either;-P
The original sin exists without Adam and Eve. The story of Adam and Eve is an allegory of why we need a relationship with God and the nature of that relationship. There isn't a cause-effect situation here, God was always there and a relationship to God was always important. Man would still need salvation and still be guilty of original sin without Adam and Eve.
You're probably right about some sects, but these are outside mainstream Christian theology. I'd probably argue that they're cults that have broken off, their basic theology is heresy from the perspective of traditional Christian theology and has historically been persecuted as such. At the very least, they represent a schism like Catholocism and Protestantism, or Catholocism and Eastern Orthodox.
First of all, there is something wrong with using public tax dollars to teach kids in public schools that your religious viewpoint is more valid. Your entire attack on the separation of church and state, which your assertions are based on is bunk. It's sheer fantasy, your conjecture about the Constitution is nothing but ignorance of the founding of this country. You should really be ashamed of yourself, claiming to be an American, but knowing so little about your own country.
Here's a pop quiz, how is teaching that God kicked off evolution in public schools with public tax dollars not a government endorsement of a religious view? It seems that Jefferson, architect of our public schools, would have seen it that way. He argued for the separation of church and state in the Anti-Federalist papers. The term "separation of church and state" is used throughout the writings of the Founding Fathers in reference to the First Ammendment. What, do you think a bunch of heathens pulled this shit out of thin air?
How is it that John Adams, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers signed the treaty of Tripoli as President (which was ratified unanimously by the Senate), when it contained the following statement (no 11 of 12) "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."?
The entire thing is a page long, it's not like they missed this part. If you had any freaking clue about the factual history of the United States of America, you'd see what a load of crap your argument is. You'd respond with shock and horror anytime you saw it espoused. Your position is a slander upon the history of the US and what it means to be an American.
Bad reasoning. One could recreate the shape of a beer glass inside a generic cylinder. One would not know how the inside of each cylinder is shaped. Secondly, taste and aroma are linked chemically to substances. If people described a certain beer as having a certain flavor, one could then chemically analyze the beer to find the concentration of that "flavor" or "smell". You could then test differently shaped glasses and measure the chemical composition of vapors and the liquid over time.
You are correct that there is a problem with experimentation in sociology due to the participents knowledge of the experiment, but that doesn't apply to beer testing. However, neither area falls outside of science, it just means the epistimology is more difficult to describe.
If you haven't yet, read Popper's Open Society and It's Enemies, The Poverty of Historicism and Bartley's The Retreat to Commitment. The answers against justificationalism and the description of making rational choices between models that Bartley lays out answer many of the problems of infinate regress that you've alluded to.
To acknowledge that there might not be one single true view of science would open pandora's box in regards to the teaching of science. There isn't though. There is only one correct view of science, that is the scientific method. How people use the scientific method has been the subject of a number of debates including the one between Feyerabend and Popper, but everyone still agrees that it is the scientific method which is operating. In other words, no one really disputes Popper's falsification, but there is some dispute over how hypotheses are preferentially selected for testing, etc. I believe Barley, and to some extent Popper, found many important discoveries attempting to answer this question. I think that Bartley's rational choices between models defeats Feyerabend's dabbling with anarcho-empiricism. I haven't read enough of either to make a definative statement on that, but as far as I can tell, this seems to be the situation. Also I see this as a bit of an esoteric question, I find the usefulness of Bartley and Popper's discoveries to be much more useful in sociology and political science.
I may be restating Bartley (I haven't read enough to be certain, this could be my contribution or someone elses) but, I assert that: The truth is the most efficient means for reaching ones moral goals. That moral goals are as individual as DNA and that laws are definitions of rights which provide demarcation in a model of normalized moral goals. Theologies and Legal systems are models which normalize sets of common moral goals.
My assertions allow both relativism and absolutism to coexist inside working models and thus answers Feyerabend. I've been trying to write more of it down and attempting to falsify it through thought experiments, but I haven't found a problem yet.
I don't think most people's time should be wasted covering the last 2000 years of philisophical development. Only certain parts will be useful for critical thinking. That's why I'll emphasize Popper and Bartley first and foremost, some like any Hegel and Plato's Republic should be avoided and are counter-productive.
I don't put much merit in polls like that. Claiming to believe something that is a matter of faith, vs. how it impacts your life are two different things. It's like a personally religious person running for office in a secular state. They could hold all kinds of unscientific views or religious beliefs, but that doesn't change how they view their responsibility to uphold the duties of their secular office.
If you want to point out that having someone who gives the impression of supporting these minority idiots is a problem, you won't find disagreement with me. As to the US still being top dog or not, I think it's too early to go putting a demarcation point down, but the trend is clearly there for a decline in US global power.
As much as I like to bash stupidity, it's not tenable long-term. There's a good chunk of the world is below average intelligence and I don't think we can justify killing them all off, so we do have to learn how to deal with them. If these people are in fact of lower intelligence, then that shouldn't be that hard to engineer institutions that can survive their stupidity. Just because things aren't our fault, doesn't mean we don't have a responsibility to deal with what we're given.
Oh believe me, I realize it seems to be a primarily American issue with regard to Evolution. Other countries hold their own misconceptions and un-scientific prejudices, most just happen to be more subtle. Wait till the US isn't top dog anymore and you'll see the same problems rise elsewhere along with the native demagogues who seek to profit from it. Your criticisms of American culture will be equally valid for whatever new affliction gains center stage.
Also, I it's not a majority of people in America that fall for this tripe, it's a very vocal minority. Most people just don't know how to tell who is right or wrong, so they put their heads down and go back to work. You will make a grave mistake if you think this particular problem is uniquely American or if you think any other part of the world is immune to it.
The day that Popper and Bartley are assigned reading in schools is the day I've died and gone to heaven.
I would love to see these ID folks up against a bunch of kids who've read The Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery and The Retreat to Commitment. That would probably be enough fun to sell tickets to.
Regarding the creation myth in Genesis, it's completely unimportant to Judeo-Christian beliefs. It was thrown in there as an example of the omnipetence of Yaweh, not as an explanation of how the world was formed and life was created. To claim that the purpose of Genesis is to inform you of the how's and why's of creation is to completely miss the point.
You're correct about the meaning of the 5 books of Moses (Torah, Pentateuch) to Christians. It's a historical reference of the Israelites relationship with God. The point of the stories about Eden and the creation of man is to illustrate the relationship between God and the individual, not to tell you about a perfect Garden and the first man. The first man is unimportant, as is the garden of Eden, the relationship to God that they illustrate is the point.
The existence of God cannot be proven or disproven, it is a question of faith. Religion deals with questions of faith, Science deals with questions of fact. Science does not ask one to take anything on faith, as religion does not claim to prove any facts.
ID theorists are trying to mix the two and will be as unsuccessful as those who have tried before them.
These people should be flamed, shunned and generally made fun of in public. After all, they do upset small children. I think you may be alluding to the fact that generally, this is not considered good form for a debate. That's the problem, the Intelligent Design types are not interested in a debate on science, if they were, they would have dropped Intelligent Design a long time ago.
The whole ID theory is complete bunk. It doesn't work scientifically and it doesn't work theologically. These people don't even have a basic understanding of the Intelligence they are trying to prove created life. If they did have a basic grasp of Christian theology, they wouldn't be sitting around trying to prove Intelligent Design and also wouldn't give a crap what science had to say on the subject. These are the same people that claim the US is founded on Christianity and the only valid law is God's law. They are no-nothing idiots who pollute the public discourse with illogical ramblings from time to time. Right now, they happen to have a megaphone, that does not make them any more correct or give them any better grasp on science.
ID people should be given the same passing over, invisible treatment, as the scruffy guys with signs that say "Repent, The End is Near". So, to answer your observation: Yes, the summary is predisposed towards not having a good academic discussion with ID proponents. You can't have a good academic discussion with ID proponents, they've thrown academics out the window. Perhaps, give them a chance to see that they are not debating science, but after that, FLAME ON!
It is a view with which digital music player maker Creative agrees.
"I'm not sure that this represents competition for us," said a spokesman.
"It is endemic of the trend to integrate devices that you lose quality. Separate, dedicated devices are always going to be better," he said.
Does anyone else see the shear irony of these words coming from a purveyor of MP3 players? Sounds like a maker of pocket knives pooh-poohing those Swiss guys with their inferior, do-everything knives.
Look, good enough is good enough. I've seen enough Nokia phones in the hands of women, who make use of the phone's features to say that Nokia may have a hit on it's hands. More people are willing to sacrifice quality for convenience, especially in the mobile world, frequent travelers will love this. I'm with Nokia, this will be a hit, it's just a matter of the price point and what competition comes along by the time that $800 price comes down.
Creative has a lot to worry about and Apple may not stay on top.
What gets me is the usefulness of the features, it has USB and Wi-Fi. You can get data and applications on and off. It's practically a PDA in it's own right. The premium is for the 4GB drive and the cost to package all these features together. It's nice to see convergence getting useful.
Being a Northerner, I have a problem believing "God Almighty" would be a Southerner
Well, guess you need to meet more Southerners. Besides, we Charlestonians are a different breed.
As for RICO suits, it wouldn't just be the South that was laid to waste. Most of that wealth went North. There may not be as much blood on Northern hands, but their money is just as dirty.
Since when did your faith and beliefs override mine? Since when did your faith and beliefs override anyone else's?
If I am not allowed to force my faith and beliefs on you, then why should you be able to force them on me?
Isn't this America? Don't I have just as much liberty of conscience as you? No one is saying you have to marry someone of the same sex. No one is saying your church has to recognize such a marriage. Just like your church is not forced to marry Buddhists or Hindus, you're church will never be required to have any opinion on same-sex marriage. Your church is not the state. The state has NO religious or moral OPINION. None. If it did, we wouldn't have religious freedom.
If you believe same-sex marriage is a sin or morally wrong, then don't participate. No one forces your participation by applying the principle of equality under the law. Apparently you think your views are above that principle.
My childhood was subsized by taxpayers at large (black & white). My dad was in the Army and I went to schools on base. After that, I joined the Air Force and continued to survive on taxpayer money. I've never gone to college aside from a couple community college courses.
Where did the wealth that was taxed to build those institutions come from? The military didn't integrate until after WWII, what about the 350 years of slavery before WWII? Are you claiming that it's moral to just say, oh well, that's the way the cookie crumbles and we'll just have to ignore that? Even if you did not participate directly in that theft, you are still in possession of those stolen goods. You benefited from another's labor dishonestly. It may not be your fault, but morally you are obligated to correct the situation, to remove your own culpability.
Everybody has the same access to said land, goods and infrastructure, black or white.
Then explain the discrepancies in the Federal numbers. Are you claiming that blacks are somehow inferior? Why are they not at the same levels of education, home and business ownership and wealth as white Americans? If people are equal, then why have they not prospered the way whites have? If they do in fact have equal access, then why don't the results show it? It can't be a matter of assimilation, these people were stripped of their culture when they got here, their familial and tribal bonds were torn apart. Most converted to Christianity in a vain hope to escape bondage, Christians aren't supposed to enslave other Christians. The only culture they have is American.
The truth is that they don't have equal access, this is a capitalist system. The inherent disadvantage they have been dealt due to legalized theft in this country has made the black community a poorly defended target of economic poachers. One cannot conscientiously ignore the inherent imbalance in power between black business attempts and white ones, as far as resources and networking goes. A poor white man or recent immigrant might face these same challenges, but they do not do so because their family has been systematically robbed over the past 400 years.
I still don't understand how the blame falls on ME. I didn't do anything! I am no more responsible for the actions of slave owners than I am the actions of Hitler and Stalin. I have no connection to these people!
You profited from stolen goods. You are responsible, regardless of whether or not you knew it. Bring up Hitler doesn't help you, Volkswagen and other German companies and Swiss banks have been successfully sued for profiting from slave labor. The current workers and management of these companies and institutions can claim as much innocence as you, but the fact of the matter is that they profited from stolen goods, as have you and every other white American.
Laws shmaws. See slavery, or the article topic. The legal stance of a topic, in and of itself, has little relevance on whether it is moral or just.
Canon law is moral law. Common law is moral law. If you understood Western legal history, you'd understand that this isn't about some arbitrary set of rules. The principles upon which I base the claim of receivership of stolen property is well rooted in the moral declarations of the West. You can't make an argument about morality as a person of Western decent and then toss aside canon and common law, it's ignoring your own moral standards.
I lived half my childhood in Germany and when I joined the service at age 18, I went to Iceland and then England, having only recently returned (about 2 years ago), not that it has a whole lot to do with this argument. I just wanted to rebuke your assumptions of me being well-to-do, college educated and always having lived in the U.S.:)
I made no assumptions about your background other than you were most likely a white American citizen. My criticisms and assertions are universal, your background is meaningless t
You didn't add to it, but your name is on there. You were raised using wealth stolen from black folks. Even after you were 18, you went to colleges that were built using this wealth, you worked for corporations built using this stolen wealth as well. The prices you pay for land, goods and infrastructure have all been subsidized by theft from black Americans.
Unless you've lived outside the US since the age of 18, you aren't as blameless as you'd like to believe. I agree that you did not add to the bill. Neither did I, but I don't deny that I've (unwittingly, unknowingly) profited from stolen goods.
Justice, any definition in use by the courts, recognizes that regardless of your knowledge, you are responsible for recieving stolen goods, caveat emptor. In fact, this principle extends back to common law and cannon law, so I'd say the morality here is pretty well established.
Look, it's not fair that our generation has to deal with this, we didn't commit the theft. But that does not release us from our responsibility when we have also profited from it.
If black people were systematically disadvantaged, which you as a white person currently profit from, then how is discrimination to re-distribute that profit, morally wrong?
I don't think you are factoring in the facts that the infrastructure and advantages you currently enjoy as a white American were built by disadvantaging black Americans. As long as you use the existing infrastructure and wealth, you are profiting from historical descrimination. Isn't that morally wrong? Either give up your inherent advantage (which is pretty much impossible) or accept a compromise like affirmative action.
Until white America no longer profits from it's historical robbery of black American's wealth (labor, land and cash), in other words, when black Americans have equal ability and oportunity to succeed (as evidenced by Census numbers), this form of descrimination will be morally wrong. Until then, not supporting affirmative action is morally wrong.
You'd only be correct if you did not currently profit from the historic criminal behavior of this country. Let me put it this way, white America is in recievership of stolen goods. Those goods were stolen from blacks in the form of codified discrimination until 1965. The bulk of the wealth of this nation was generated before 1965, and the wealth generated after that used the wealth generated previously as start-up capital. Affirmative Action is an attempt to redistribute stolen goods back to their rightful owners. Imperfect? Yes, but we've considered temporal law to be imperfect justice since the Protestant Reformation. Immoral? Not by a long shot.
Explain to me how affirmative action is immoral again?
Well on the scale of morally right, I don't think you want to try and tally white America's bill from black America. It's pretty big, a good chunk of our current wealth came from discrimination, especially if you add interest owed. So if you want to talk about moral correctness, I don't see how the current discrimination is wrong.
Legally, we have always allowed regulation of economics to support specific definitions of justice and equality. To do otherwise would be a break from precedent. Your right, though slave owners used a lot of legal and moral wrangling to support their view, much like the anti-gay marriage people today. However, I can support Affirmative Action from both a moral and legal standpoint, so sorry if I was confusing points in previous posts.
How do you reconcile that our current marriage laws give special treatment to heterosexual couples over gay couples? Aren't heterosexual couples just as sinful as homosexual couples, why are they given special treatment by state endorsement?
When you try to codify your moral views in a secular state, it is wrong and it is bad. Furthermore, I regard it as treason. You just want to legally discriminate against gays today, but what happens when you come after me because I don't look at Baptism the same way as you?
It's happened before, among Christians of European descent no less. We resolved over 200 years ago to keep religion and government separated in this country. Either get with the program or go find someone else's country to screw up. Keep your religious beliefs out of our laws. The state has NO OPINION on moral issues.
By definition, you cannot have religious freedom without a secular state.
I don't give a damn how many Christians share your view, our government isn't Christian. On the other hand, it is charged with protecting minority rights from the tyranny of the majority.
Slashdot Mirror
And more from Mr. Cerf:
So, not only are people misquoting him, but they are ignoring the evidence in his defense. And what's up with the mod's? How do factually incorrect posts like this get modded Informative?
Since Democrats take great pleasure in quoting every slip of the tongue every Republican ever made, I think it quite fair for Gore to be gored by the same ox.
You'd have a point if Gore was lying, but he wasn't. Perhaps you had some examples of simple "slips of the tongue" that Democrats used to railroad public sentiment with that you'd like to share?
Whether it was deliberate or a true slip, we'll never know, but he's supposed to be intelligent enough to know the difference between "create" and "fund", so the inferrence is the former. However, politicians are a little weak on differentiating between the two, and maybe he's one of them, so maybe it was a slip.
I can't take this criticism seriously from anyone who would support Bush, or half the GOP leadership. Let's go counting slips... lies... untruths. Seriously, anytime, you'll find much more factual accuracy in Democrat's speech than in Republicans. You're correct the deliberateness not being important, I've said all along that the Bush Administration is either lying or incompetent. I don't care which one, both are unacceptable.
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Providing further funding for something that has already been created is not creating, not claiming "just as responsible" is just ludicrous.
You must be new here on this Internet thingy... let me introduce you to some folks... Vincent Cerf aka Father of the Internet, Marc Andreesen aka co-founder of Netscape. Anyway, they both back Gore's claims 100%. Andreesen claims he couldn't have written Mosaic without a High Performance Computing Act Grant. That would be a Grant that Gore wrote the legislation for.
Those who claim he did not say what he certainly did say are the liars. Those who cannot differentiate between "fund" and "create" are the morons. I'm not the one trying to rewrite history.
Those who knowingly twist meaning to get their intended result are liars. Those who are pentantic about language when the evidence points the other direction are the morons. You may not be rewriting, but you're coloring it with your bias and replacing it's context with a new one based on fantasy. To which, your only defense will be to wildly claim that the other side does it too. Such rambling only points to the poverty of your political positions, not any insight into the facts of the matter.
Of course the living wage increases the incentive for business to use robots, that's the point. Automation is an increase in productivity, wage arbitration isn't. Someone will have to design, build and maintain those robots. Someone will think about how to use robots, and then people will start thinking of new efficiencies to be gained with that technology. That's how progress works.
The brain-dead argument that we need to limit wages in order to compete with other labor forces globally is stupid. It centralizes wealth at a time when it needs to be more distributed to so that more ideas will be attempted. Automation is the answer to competing globally. You here this same idiocy being repeated by the GOP with regard to illegal immigration. They say that businesses need cheap labor, that our economy needs cheap labor to grow. Never mind that this is entirely unsustainable. If a type of labor becomes too expensive due to rising wages, then we need to apply some good old American innovation and ingenuity (or steal it from someone else) to the problem and reduce the amount of labor needed.
Only with our current global telecom network, has work been this easy to ship overseas. Previously, natural barriers made this type of movement of production so expensive, Adam Smith even talked about this. Simply throwing everything to the fate of the markets, in their current form, is a faith-based program. Naturally Free Markets don't exist. Markets are a human construct and our markets are no where near perfect or free. This means there is bias in the markets that will work to concentrate power more quickly.
Institutional effectiveness, in government or private enterprise, is not measured by size. To use that as a central measurement is folly and shows institutional bigotry against public bodies over private bodies. Not to mention that a large corporation has just as much difficulty changing direction as a large government.
As for Greed, it only solves some problems, not all. The West doesn't have a problem with too little greed in it's markets. Your examples of China and the Soviet Union are bad as well. India would be a much better example, since it's economic changes have been as democratic as the US. But even that example shows that Greed only solves some problems.
You may be able to see a valid problem, but you don't understand it enough to propose a valid solution. There are far more factors at work here and many more tools needed to solve these problems than you have described.
The valid sociological observations of Marx are entirely separate from the utopian fantasy he wrongfully inflicted upon the world. Read the second half of Karl Popper's The Open Society and It's Enemies vol. II for a fair and thourough examination of Marx's contributions and mistakes.
The Big Brother attitude is impossible to avoid and is central to Communism since Communism believes it is herding in a new unavoidable destiny for humanity. One of the central features of Soviet Law was the parental component. None of the certitude or moral absolutes of Communism are needed for collectivist actions like worker owned businesses. However, without those features, it's not Communism. The problems Communism attempts to solve can be done so through Liberalism, without turning the state into your parent.
This is the best part about religion. You can make up any explanation of why something is the way it is, and nobody can show you to be wrong.
Yes and No. Yes, you can come up with a completely new theology to explain how to achieve your moral goals, but once you do explain it, you have to remain consistent and logical. Arbitrary systems are avoided by humans.
You'll find consistency and reason after base assumptions in any religion you examine. Sometimes it's difficult to find, but that usually because of a misunderstanding of the theology's basic assumptions.
Actually, Communism is evil. Not evil in the trying to kill you way, evil in the I know what's right better than you way. Communism is just leftist morality stepping on the individual's liberty of conscience, whereas fascism is right-wing morality stepping on the same said liberties. Communism is also a utopian fantasy, which makes it completely disingenuous. Anyone selling communism is lying to your face, even if they don't realize it.
;-P
Anyway, OSS is communalism, I wouldn't even classify it as socialism. The fear your describing in the US is a misguided fear of communalism, which demagogues have been equivocating with communism for decades. It's really just a tool of class warfare, but they've been so successful, you can't talk about class warfare without being called a commie. Talk about a rock and a hard place...
Oh, there you go, bringing class into it again!
OSS competes with proprietary software in an open market. The balance is achieved in the market if it's regulation (primarily IP law) is properly written and enforced. These attacks are really just "class warfare", if you consider types of institutions and associations as "classes". You could look at the proprietary industry as the investor class, the ones with the capital and the open source groups as unions, NGOs and charities. They all compete with each other to provide specific services more efficiently than other "classes" in the market. OSS happens to be successful at certain types of services, mainly revolving around infrastructure (especially Open Standards like RFC's). Proprietary software is good at other stuff (high-end expensive enterprise stuff, domain specific niche markets).
Essentially, these proprietary types of institutions don't like to compete fairly, they want an unfair advantage and intend to use lawsuits (or buying politicians) to achieve it. It's just like Bush talking about how we can't afford 8% of GDP to insure the old and disabled don't starve in poverty while giving the wealthiest 1% hundreds of billions in tax cuts. If you look at the numbers and facts in either case, it's the wealthy getting wealthier while the little guy foots the bill. Some days, I'm not sure why we don't just shoot the wealthy, the idea that they earned their money fair and square is ludicrous. If the wealth is older than 40 years, it was most likely stolen from black and native Americans anyway. Of course, that's a leftist totalitarian fantasy... don't go mixing that up with communism either
The original sin exists without Adam and Eve. The story of Adam and Eve is an allegory of why we need a relationship with God and the nature of that relationship. There isn't a cause-effect situation here, God was always there and a relationship to God was always important. Man would still need salvation and still be guilty of original sin without Adam and Eve.
You're probably right about some sects, but these are outside mainstream Christian theology. I'd probably argue that they're cults that have broken off, their basic theology is heresy from the perspective of traditional Christian theology and has historically been persecuted as such. At the very least, they represent a schism like Catholocism and Protestantism, or Catholocism and Eastern Orthodox.
Why do people keep modding this crap up?
First of all, there is something wrong with using public tax dollars to teach kids in public schools that your religious viewpoint is more valid. Your entire attack on the separation of church and state, which your assertions are based on is bunk. It's sheer fantasy, your conjecture about the Constitution is nothing but ignorance of the founding of this country. You should really be ashamed of yourself, claiming to be an American, but knowing so little about your own country.
Here's a pop quiz, how is teaching that God kicked off evolution in public schools with public tax dollars not a government endorsement of a religious view? It seems that Jefferson, architect of our public schools, would have seen it that way. He argued for the separation of church and state in the Anti-Federalist papers. The term "separation of church and state" is used throughout the writings of the Founding Fathers in reference to the First Ammendment. What, do you think a bunch of heathens pulled this shit out of thin air?
How is it that John Adams, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers signed the treaty of Tripoli as President (which was ratified unanimously by the Senate), when it contained the following statement (no 11 of 12) "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."?
The entire thing is a page long, it's not like they missed this part. If you had any freaking clue about the factual history of the United States of America, you'd see what a load of crap your argument is. You'd respond with shock and horror anytime you saw it espoused. Your position is a slander upon the history of the US and what it means to be an American.
Bad reasoning. One could recreate the shape of a beer glass inside a generic cylinder. One would not know how the inside of each cylinder is shaped. Secondly, taste and aroma are linked chemically to substances. If people described a certain beer as having a certain flavor, one could then chemically analyze the beer to find the concentration of that "flavor" or "smell". You could then test differently shaped glasses and measure the chemical composition of vapors and the liquid over time.
You are correct that there is a problem with experimentation in sociology due to the participents knowledge of the experiment, but that doesn't apply to beer testing. However, neither area falls outside of science, it just means the epistimology is more difficult to describe.
If you haven't yet, read Popper's Open Society and It's Enemies, The Poverty of Historicism and Bartley's The Retreat to Commitment. The answers against justificationalism and the description of making rational choices between models that Bartley lays out answer many of the problems of infinate regress that you've alluded to.
To acknowledge that there might not be one single true view of science would open pandora's box in regards to the teaching of science.
There isn't though. There is only one correct view of science, that is the scientific method. How people use the scientific method has been the subject of a number of debates including the one between Feyerabend and Popper, but everyone still agrees that it is the scientific method which is operating. In other words, no one really disputes Popper's falsification, but there is some dispute over how hypotheses are preferentially selected for testing, etc. I believe Barley, and to some extent Popper, found many important discoveries attempting to answer this question. I think that Bartley's rational choices between models defeats Feyerabend's dabbling with anarcho-empiricism. I haven't read enough of either to make a definative statement on that, but as far as I can tell, this seems to be the situation. Also I see this as a bit of an esoteric question, I find the usefulness of Bartley and Popper's discoveries to be much more useful in sociology and political science.
I may be restating Bartley (I haven't read enough to be certain, this could be my contribution or someone elses) but, I assert that: The truth is the most efficient means for reaching ones moral goals. That moral goals are as individual as DNA and that laws are definitions of rights which provide demarcation in a model of normalized moral goals. Theologies and Legal systems are models which normalize sets of common moral goals.
My assertions allow both relativism and absolutism to coexist inside working models and thus answers Feyerabend. I've been trying to write more of it down and attempting to falsify it through thought experiments, but I haven't found a problem yet.
I don't think most people's time should be wasted covering the last 2000 years of philisophical development. Only certain parts will be useful for critical thinking. That's why I'll emphasize Popper and Bartley first and foremost, some like any Hegel and Plato's Republic should be avoided and are counter-productive.
I don't put much merit in polls like that. Claiming to believe something that is a matter of faith, vs. how it impacts your life are two different things. It's like a personally religious person running for office in a secular state. They could hold all kinds of unscientific views or religious beliefs, but that doesn't change how they view their responsibility to uphold the duties of their secular office.
If you want to point out that having someone who gives the impression of supporting these minority idiots is a problem, you won't find disagreement with me. As to the US still being top dog or not, I think it's too early to go putting a demarcation point down, but the trend is clearly there for a decline in US global power.
As much as I like to bash stupidity, it's not tenable long-term. There's a good chunk of the world is below average intelligence and I don't think we can justify killing them all off, so we do have to learn how to deal with them. If these people are in fact of lower intelligence, then that shouldn't be that hard to engineer institutions that can survive their stupidity. Just because things aren't our fault, doesn't mean we don't have a responsibility to deal with what we're given.
Oh believe me, I realize it seems to be a primarily American issue with regard to Evolution. Other countries hold their own misconceptions and un-scientific prejudices, most just happen to be more subtle. Wait till the US isn't top dog anymore and you'll see the same problems rise elsewhere along with the native demagogues who seek to profit from it. Your criticisms of American culture will be equally valid for whatever new affliction gains center stage.
Also, I it's not a majority of people in America that fall for this tripe, it's a very vocal minority. Most people just don't know how to tell who is right or wrong, so they put their heads down and go back to work. You will make a grave mistake if you think this particular problem is uniquely American or if you think any other part of the world is immune to it.
The day that Popper and Bartley are assigned reading in schools is the day I've died and gone to heaven.
I would love to see these ID folks up against a bunch of kids who've read The Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery and The Retreat to Commitment. That would probably be enough fun to sell tickets to.
Regarding the creation myth in Genesis, it's completely unimportant to Judeo-Christian beliefs. It was thrown in there as an example of the omnipetence of Yaweh, not as an explanation of how the world was formed and life was created. To claim that the purpose of Genesis is to inform you of the how's and why's of creation is to completely miss the point.
You're correct about the meaning of the 5 books of Moses (Torah, Pentateuch) to Christians. It's a historical reference of the Israelites relationship with God. The point of the stories about Eden and the creation of man is to illustrate the relationship between God and the individual, not to tell you about a perfect Garden and the first man. The first man is unimportant, as is the garden of Eden, the relationship to God that they illustrate is the point.
The existence of God cannot be proven or disproven, it is a question of faith. Religion deals with questions of faith, Science deals with questions of fact. Science does not ask one to take anything on faith, as religion does not claim to prove any facts.
ID theorists are trying to mix the two and will be as unsuccessful as those who have tried before them.
These people should be flamed, shunned and generally made fun of in public. After all, they do upset small children.
I think you may be alluding to the fact that generally, this is not considered good form for a debate. That's the problem, the Intelligent Design types are not interested in a debate on science, if they were, they would have dropped Intelligent Design a long time ago.
The whole ID theory is complete bunk. It doesn't work scientifically and it doesn't work theologically. These people don't even have a basic understanding of the Intelligence they are trying to prove created life. If they did have a basic grasp of Christian theology, they wouldn't be sitting around trying to prove Intelligent Design and also wouldn't give a crap what science had to say on the subject. These are the same people that claim the US is founded on Christianity and the only valid law is God's law. They are no-nothing idiots who pollute the public discourse with illogical ramblings from time to time. Right now, they happen to have a megaphone, that does not make them any more correct or give them any better grasp on science.
ID people should be given the same passing over, invisible treatment, as the scruffy guys with signs that say "Repent, The End is Near". So, to answer your observation: Yes, the summary is predisposed towards not having a good academic discussion with ID proponents. You can't have a good academic discussion with ID proponents, they've thrown academics out the window. Perhaps, give them a chance to see that they are not debating science, but after that, FLAME ON!
It is a view with which digital music player maker Creative agrees.
"I'm not sure that this represents competition for us," said a spokesman.
"It is endemic of the trend to integrate devices that you lose quality. Separate, dedicated devices are always going to be better," he said.
Does anyone else see the shear irony of these words coming from a purveyor of MP3 players? Sounds like a maker of pocket knives pooh-poohing those Swiss guys with their inferior, do-everything knives.
Look, good enough is good enough. I've seen enough Nokia phones in the hands of women, who make use of the phone's features to say that Nokia may have a hit on it's hands. More people are willing to sacrifice quality for convenience, especially in the mobile world, frequent travelers will love this. I'm with Nokia, this will be a hit, it's just a matter of the price point and what competition comes along by the time that $800 price comes down.
Creative has a lot to worry about and Apple may not stay on top.
What gets me is the usefulness of the features, it has USB and Wi-Fi. You can get data and applications on and off. It's practically a PDA in it's own right. The premium is for the 4GB drive and the cost to package all these features together. It's nice to see convergence getting useful.
you've been waiting for the RMS "I told you so"?
You know you have. I just wonder what took so long, was GNU/Hurd not booting this week and he finally saw the poll on slashdot?
What cynical minds really want to know is: Did RMS have this one written a while ago and was just waiting to send it?
Being a Northerner, I have a problem believing "God Almighty" would be a Southerner
Well, guess you need to meet more Southerners. Besides, we Charlestonians are a different breed.
As for RICO suits, it wouldn't just be the South that was laid to waste. Most of that wealth went North. There may not be as much blood on Northern hands, but their money is just as dirty.
Since when did your faith and beliefs override mine?
Since when did your faith and beliefs override anyone else's?
If I am not allowed to force my faith and beliefs on you, then why should you be able to force them on me?
Isn't this America? Don't I have just as much liberty of conscience as you? No one is saying you have to marry someone of the same sex. No one is saying your church has to recognize such a marriage. Just like your church is not forced to marry Buddhists or Hindus, you're church will never be required to have any opinion on same-sex marriage. Your church is not the state. The state has NO religious or moral OPINION. None. If it did, we wouldn't have religious freedom.
If you believe same-sex marriage is a sin or morally wrong, then don't participate. No one forces your participation by applying the principle of equality under the law. Apparently you think your views are above that principle.
My childhood was subsized by taxpayers at large (black & white). My dad was in the Army and I went to schools on base. After that, I joined the Air Force and continued to survive on taxpayer money. I've never gone to college aside from a couple community college courses.
:)
Where did the wealth that was taxed to build those institutions come from? The military didn't integrate until after WWII, what about the 350 years of slavery before WWII? Are you claiming that it's moral to just say, oh well, that's the way the cookie crumbles and we'll just have to ignore that? Even if you did not participate directly in that theft, you are still in possession of those stolen goods. You benefited from another's labor dishonestly. It may not be your fault, but morally you are obligated to correct the situation, to remove your own culpability.
Everybody has the same access to said land, goods and infrastructure, black or white.
Then explain the discrepancies in the Federal numbers. Are you claiming that blacks are somehow inferior? Why are they not at the same levels of education, home and business ownership and wealth as white Americans? If people are equal, then why have they not prospered the way whites have? If they do in fact have equal access, then why don't the results show it? It can't be a matter of assimilation, these people were stripped of their culture when they got here, their familial and tribal bonds were torn apart. Most converted to Christianity in a vain hope to escape bondage, Christians aren't supposed to enslave other Christians. The only culture they have is American.
The truth is that they don't have equal access, this is a capitalist system. The inherent disadvantage they have been dealt due to legalized theft in this country has made the black community a poorly defended target of economic poachers. One cannot conscientiously ignore the inherent imbalance in power between black business attempts and white ones, as far as resources and networking goes. A poor white man or recent immigrant might face these same challenges, but they do not do so because their family has been systematically robbed over the past 400 years.
I still don't understand how the blame falls on ME. I didn't do anything! I am no more responsible for the actions of slave owners than I am the actions of Hitler and Stalin. I have no connection to these people!
You profited from stolen goods. You are responsible, regardless of whether or not you knew it. Bring up Hitler doesn't help you, Volkswagen and other German companies and Swiss banks have been successfully sued for profiting from slave labor. The current workers and management of these companies and institutions can claim as much innocence as you, but the fact of the matter is that they profited from stolen goods, as have you and every other white American.
Laws shmaws. See slavery, or the article topic. The legal stance of a topic, in and of itself, has little relevance on whether it is moral or just.
Canon law is moral law. Common law is moral law. If you understood Western legal history, you'd understand that this isn't about some arbitrary set of rules. The principles upon which I base the claim of receivership of stolen property is well rooted in the moral declarations of the West. You can't make an argument about morality as a person of Western decent and then toss aside canon and common law, it's ignoring your own moral standards.
I lived half my childhood in Germany and when I joined the service at age 18, I went to Iceland and then England, having only recently returned (about 2 years ago), not that it has a whole lot to do with this argument. I just wanted to rebuke your assumptions of me being well-to-do, college educated and always having lived in the U.S.
I made no assumptions about your background other than you were most likely a white American citizen. My criticisms and assertions are universal, your background is meaningless t
You didn't add to it, but your name is on there. You were raised using wealth stolen from black folks. Even after you were 18, you went to colleges that were built using this wealth, you worked for corporations built using this stolen wealth as well. The prices you pay for land, goods and infrastructure have all been subsidized by theft from black Americans.
Unless you've lived outside the US since the age of 18, you aren't as blameless as you'd like to believe. I agree that you did not add to the bill. Neither did I, but I don't deny that I've (unwittingly, unknowingly) profited from stolen goods.
Justice, any definition in use by the courts, recognizes that regardless of your knowledge, you are responsible for recieving stolen goods, caveat emptor. In fact, this principle extends back to common law and cannon law, so I'd say the morality here is pretty well established.
Look, it's not fair that our generation has to deal with this, we didn't commit the theft. But that does not release us from our responsibility when we have also profited from it.
If black people were systematically disadvantaged, which you as a white person currently profit from, then how is discrimination to re-distribute that profit, morally wrong?
I don't think you are factoring in the facts that the infrastructure and advantages you currently enjoy as a white American were built by disadvantaging black Americans. As long as you use the existing infrastructure and wealth, you are profiting from historical descrimination. Isn't that morally wrong? Either give up your inherent advantage (which is pretty much impossible) or accept a compromise like affirmative action.
Until white America no longer profits from it's historical robbery of black American's wealth (labor, land and cash), in other words, when black Americans have equal ability and oportunity to succeed (as evidenced by Census numbers), this form of descrimination will be morally wrong. Until then, not supporting affirmative action is morally wrong.
You'd only be correct if you did not currently profit from the historic criminal behavior of this country. Let me put it this way, white America is in recievership of stolen goods. Those goods were stolen from blacks in the form of codified discrimination until 1965. The bulk of the wealth of this nation was generated before 1965, and the wealth generated after that used the wealth generated previously as start-up capital. Affirmative Action is an attempt to redistribute stolen goods back to their rightful owners. Imperfect? Yes, but we've considered temporal law to be imperfect justice since the Protestant Reformation. Immoral? Not by a long shot.
Explain to me how affirmative action is immoral again?
Well on the scale of morally right, I don't think you want to try and tally white America's bill from black America. It's pretty big, a good chunk of our current wealth came from discrimination, especially if you add interest owed. So if you want to talk about moral correctness, I don't see how the current discrimination is wrong.
Legally, we have always allowed regulation of economics to support specific definitions of justice and equality. To do otherwise would be a break from precedent. Your right, though slave owners used a lot of legal and moral wrangling to support their view, much like the anti-gay marriage people today. However, I can support Affirmative Action from both a moral and legal standpoint, so sorry if I was confusing points in previous posts.
How do you reconcile that our current marriage laws give special treatment to heterosexual couples over gay couples? Aren't heterosexual couples just as sinful as homosexual couples, why are they given special treatment by state endorsement?
When you try to codify your moral views in a secular state, it is wrong and it is bad. Furthermore, I regard it as treason. You just want to legally discriminate against gays today, but what happens when you come after me because I don't look at Baptism the same way as you?
It's happened before, among Christians of European descent no less. We resolved over 200 years ago to keep religion and government separated in this country. Either get with the program or go find someone else's country to screw up. Keep your religious beliefs out of our laws. The state has NO OPINION on moral issues.
By definition, you cannot have religious freedom without a secular state.
I don't give a damn how many Christians share your view, our government isn't Christian. On the other hand, it is charged with protecting minority rights from the tyranny of the majority.