That would imply actually opening the USB drive. With auto-run you just plug it in.
Perhaps, if we were to consider the USB drive as a suitcase, which you would place in your car's trunk or back seat? Out of which there would promptly jump out a midget that was hiding among your shirts and underwear all along - and drive away with your car. Wearing your underpants and shirts. Possibly even with your wallet and various forms of ID.
Or someone, somewhere pushing an agenda of some kind. Particularly when you read the more detailed article, which comes off as a bit contradictory to itself. There's overcrowding, but there are actually three unused wards. There's a lack of staff, but it is actually a 3-hospital complex with a staff of 17.000.
Pots and pans sound hospital patient alarms Published: 4 Feb 11 12:07 CET
An overcrowded hospital in Gothenburg has resorted to giving patients in a children's ward saucepans and spoons to summon assistance in emergency situations, according to a union report.
At Östra Hospital in Gothenburg, ordinary bedside alarms are not available to every patient due to overcrowding. The saucepans and spoons were issued in the children's ward to lift their spirits. At another department, the staff shopped at hardware chain Clas Ohlsson to buy bells for their patients, the Swedish Association of Health Professionals (Vårdförbundet) reported on Friday.
The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) found that hospital overcrowding is common at all nine of western Sweden's hospitals with emergency departments. "We have long ago passed the limit of what is acceptable. This is a huge problem," a shocked Maria Tenggren of the union, who also works at Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska University Hospital, said in a statement.
At Sahlgrenska/SU Östra, Alingsås and Mölndal, the supply of hospital beds is so scarce that it creates a risk for patient safety, the board wrote in its report. "We have for years nagged about the problem of overcrowding, but nothing happens," said Tenggren.
She noted that there are currently three empty wards that are ready to open if the overcrowding becomes too much to handle and that the hospital has an action plan in place. "However, with all the restrictions and reservations that exist, the opening of these extra spaces is rare. It looks great on paper, but it means nothing in practice," said Tenggren.
In addition, the board's inspection showed that at Östra Hospital, patients were relocated to wards where staff did not have the necessary skills to care for them. In addition, they often lacked oxygen and suction equipment, as well as bells. The staff at the hospital in Mölndal could not adjust to the addition demand for care needed and had personnel who lacked the skills to care for relocated patients.
Mats Tullberg, the chief physician at SU, told newspaper Göteborgs-Posten (GP) on Friday that overcrowding is a major concern and that the relocation of patients to other departments was not a good sign. "At most, we had about 80 patients waiting," he told GP.
And those patient numbers sound a lot like the numbers in Ireland or Canada.
They do that thing they did with other corporations and their products? Like Google, Apple, Intel, Android, iOS, Facebook (both the square AND the rectangular version), SONY...
The students say they were unaware of the dodgy nature of the university and they were conned. In a petition to the secretary of homeland security and the director of ICE, the affected students said they registered in the university believing it is a "bonafide and legitimate university that had been registered with the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) database."
SEVIS is a web-based technology maintained by the US to track and monitor schools and programs, students, exchange visitors and their dependents, while they are legally enrolled in the US education system. Indeed, Tri-Valley University is among the SEVIS Approved Schools listed on the US ICE website. Authorities have since shut down the university.
On a side note, I completely understand your feelings regarding this matter. If I was a Navajo Indian, I too would be pissed off by all these immigrant "Indians" coming to my country. Fuckers don't even wear feathers.
You don't need to send men with guns when you can do the same much easier by sending one man (perhaps two) with a piece of paper. Comply or be arrested, have your equipment confiscated as evidence, your premises padlocked and your bank accounts frozen while you wait for any and all licenses you have to be examined by court.
They'll probably even let you defend yourself from "outside" - your trial won't be up for a couple of months/years anyway. Have fun feeding yourself and your family with no money, no job and no free time as you are too busy with your court case.
The whole "This is geek, but that is not..." or "Nerd is that, that and that but certainly not THAT" results from all those being labels imposed by others. Geek, nerd, dork, four-eyes... those were all insults thrown at those who were... well... different.
Those who were "barking" them didn't bother to clearly define them no more than they would define how exactly to accommodate the suggestion to "go fuck yourself". I mean, couple of ideas do come to mind, but is that really what they were suggesting? And where would I get that much strawberry jello?
It was a fucking insult. With time it got turned into a badge of distinction. Even honor to some. There was no "7th council of nerd, geeks, dorks and other rejects". No rules were defined. Whoever wants to define themselves as any of those labels is fine by me - as long as they don't expect of me to like everything else they like because we share one or two points of mutual preference.
And as long as we are listing preferences - I to build and fix computers (and other stuff) and love science. Any preference I had for chemistry was killed by my high-school teacher. Never was any good at sports. I like some anime (mostly on the SF side), some comic books (actually, I prefer some comic books writers), most sci-fi, some fantasy and I too haven't ever played D&D (no local players).
Does all that make me more or less of a nerd than you? Don't know, don't really care. But I do have a lower Slashdot ID. And more importantly, mine is prettier.
It demonizes the entire religions and cultures. For the lack of a better word - it's not nice to do that.
Because that's not the established idiom in English?
And calling secular democracies Christian IS? Come on... Besides, OP obviously can't decide whether he would like to call such states Muslim or Islamic.
Also, darkies and niggers used to be an "established idiom in English".
it does not necessarily mean that the majority of citizens are in favor of democracy - but only that the political system of that state is democratic.
Difference being that just calling a country/state Christian does not translate into a law - unless it actually does have a law that proclaims the state religion, and then you no longer have a democracy as you've just veered off towards theocracy.
Political system is defined by a law - just like everything else the state does. From shape and color of state flag to the number and length of the roads.
You can't compare hydrogen atoms to a packet of sugar in the market. Or to some compound used in a making of a medicine, but which can be poisonous in higher concentrations. Or anything else that simply needs accurate measurement in order for the reaction to work.
Well, the original IPK is compared to its copies every 10 years.
But, those copies see more action, so do copies of those copies...
The kilogram essentially "weighs" as much as everybody agrees it does, and in that sense behaves exactly like a form of currency.
Problem is, once you start using "approximate kilograms", you have to keep adjusting your calculations (related to a whole lot of other SI units) every year or so. And when you are not sure exactly by how much you are off this year (as all copies of IPK change differently over time) compared to the last one... that starts to be a serious nuisance.
It is a definition with a physical representation. Which is obviously showing changes over time. And it really shouldn't as it is the physical representation that is being actively used by our society - not the definition.
The point of this article is that they are trying to create a new definition based on a process that would produce an identical physical representation EVERY time the process is run - and the results of which wouldn't change over time. And failing.
Now, as every scale in the world is NOT calibrated to that prototype kilogram, but to a copy, of a copy, of a copy... Those errors accumulate. Until one day measurements of some toxic substance/medicinal drug/anything requiring milligram measurement start being significantly lighter/heavier than they should be in the given sample. Cause we're not talking homeopathy here.
Actually, this is a good example against posting tired.
We diverged into "Islamic state", being pushed by original poster's "Muslim"-to-"Islamic state" ignoratio elenchi substitution, with a dose of "No true Scotsman" as Turkey apparently isn't Islamic but "has Muslim population".
I don't really see a problem with it. In the term "Islamic state", both words are important, while you're just looking at the first one. "Islamic state" means "state with laws and government grounded in Islam". That usually does mean Sharia, or at least cherry-picked parts of it.
In fact, did you notice that those countries which call themselves "Islamic republics" almost always tend to be "run by Sharia laws"? On the other hand, a Muslim-majority but secular state wouldn't call itself that. I can understand why - personally, I would find the very idea of calling a country, say, "Christian Republic" abhorring. It's tantamount to boldly proclaiming religious intolerance.
Try it like this...
Sharia laws are a set of strict religious laws in Islam. State that actively enforces such laws is to be referred as "Islamic state".
Holy Inquisition is an institution that defends a set of strict religious laws in Christianity. State that actively enforces such laws is to be referred as "Christian state".
See what I mean? Taking a negative aspect of something (X), making that aspect into a representative key-aspect through generalization (X+), associating that to a much larger and more complex set (Y), and then equating that negative aspect we had at the beginning with every other set similar to Y.
What is wrong with simply calling countries that actively enforce Sharia laws as "Sharia law countries", or even "countries actively enforcing Sharia laws to XY extent"? We're gonna save a fortune on toner by using a shorter terminology? Not to mention all that time we'll save.
And if you are running a democratic country and you put such a thing to a vote (as you would need to in a democracy) - you are almost certainly going to be voted/vetoed out.
Plus, you are mixing economic system with nationalistic ideology, with a mock-religion and a one is a product of a religious belief. You could have just as well used blue, car driving, cheese eating and farming. Makes almost as much sense.
Well, I didn't get to see much of the old-old Yugoslavia as I grew up in the 80s. You know... you're a kid in a mixed urban setting. News are the "boring stuff grownups watch" etc. So, someone a bit older might have a different outlook on the whole thing. Then again, many from my generation have a different outlook on the breakup of Yugoslavia, war(s) etc.
I am not really sure what you mean by "active state promotion" (like I said - it is getting early here, dawn is about to break) but Yugoslavia used to be a federation of republics, with internal borders being simply administrative. Sure, there were ethnic minorities and majorities in each republic but if anything the notion of "super-ethnical national identity" as you put it was heavily promoted. And it wasn't really a socialist dictatorship since Tito died in 1980 as the presidency would rotate from one republic to another. And as far as dictatorships go, his was a pretty benevolent one. It was a single-party (communist) system though, until 1990.
Anyhoow... IMHO... It would most definitely have been better had Yugoslavia remained intact. Even should the price have been going the way of Ceausescu's Romania for a decade or more. I'm just throwing that in as a comparatively worse form of communist government. Yugoslavia had a very different set of problems. First of all, war brought no good to anyone. Well... except the "chosen few". Then, it is really silly to imagine that you can simply break up a country like that and just move on - when you've spent last 50 years actively making it a single country. Roads still go the same way. So do the people and goods. From food to TV it is still the same market - only now a lot more is being wasted on taxes and such, and not to mention that a whole lot of people died or went to "third countries".
Ironically, it has been only recently that the local law enforcement in the resulting countries has started officially cooperating - while criminals have never stopped. To them it is the same market. With the benefit of "spare countries" for hiding and for when they need to get rid of "undesirables".
Best part is - every single Ex-Yu country (baring Slovenia) is working on and hoping to be accepted into European Union. Slovenia is already in. Which will effectively re-create Yugoslavia, only instead of being one bigger political and economical player there will now be six much smaller and far weaker bickering nations under the EU roof. No... wait.. I keep forgetting Kosovo. Seven bickering nations. So far.
So, I am guessing that some 50 years down the road this entire "era" will be considered as "the stupid years" by our grandkids.
As for Bosnian politics, it gets even more complicated than that. Half of the country belongs to a mostly Serb "political entity" called Republika Srpska, the other half is called Federation. Each part has its own government, parliament, laws etc. but the administrative center of the entire country is in the Federation part. Federation is further divided into 10 cantons with each canton having its own parliament, ministries etc. Hijinks ensue every time any single law has to be implemented, as there are 12 different copies of each law. So, in one canton you may go into a sports store and simply purchase an air-gun, while in another you would need to do the same amount of paperwork as if you were buying a "real" hunting rifle.
And don't even get me started on education. Elementary schools where kids share the classrooms but study different languages (Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian are all valid languages - and with slight differences it is the same fucking language), different histories and are even taught about different "homelands". Meanwhile, we are fucking up the European literacy statistic with ~750.000 illiterate adults. About 20% of the GDP (officially) comes from "foreign transfers" - i.e. family members sending money home. Real numbers are probably much higher as many simply bring the cash when they come to visit family still living here. Oh, and all that with a fixed exchange rate to the Euro.
Ok.. I'm starting to rant here and I should really go get some sleep. Good morning.
That if we make the label "Islamic" based primarily on blasphemy laws, that such a level of generalization would make many western democracies appear almost as bad.
You know... Just as the OP way above generalized that "they are horrendous in one form or another" - saying that "Islamic" means "run by Sharia laws" is basically the same thing.
You know... taking a word that describes the whole culture and making it about single (and probably the most unfavorable) possible aspect of SOME of the elements of that culture.
You want to judge someone as different, you draw a circle around your own group. Then, you find reasons and logic for why those outside of your circle are not like you. Lastly, you draw another circle that includes everyone in your circle and everyone who is "close enough".
Ta-da! You have your own elite based on something that is completely unquantifiable.
But mostly, you don't even need that much. It's not like your aim is to protect someone's rights to be a part of some group - you aim to keep everyone but the people like you from yours.
So, you go with names first. Culturally relevant names are usually the first criteria. Milan and Slobodan is pretty certainly a Serb, while Tomislav and Franjo are pretty certainly Croats and Alija and Samir are pretty certainly Bosniaks. But what to do with all those names where you can't really decide? Like Ivan, Igor, Denis etc. Well... you look up their last names according to the rule above. Cause, while Scots have their Mc- and Irish their O'- in front of the name of their pater familias, most Slavic people have some form of -ich or -icz after the same thing. So, you will have your Milanovich Serbs, Tomich Croats and Alijagich Bosniaks.
Add to that information that Croats are understood (read: generalized) to be Catholic, Serbs are Eastern Orthodox Christians and Bosniaks are Muslims - and you are pretty sure who to exclude from your group.
The real fun starts when you have mixed marriages and children raised in such marriages. And there were plenty of those couple of decades back as it was all one bigger country. A bit less now cause.. well.. Ethnic cleansing DOES work. And there are seven countries now where there used to be one. Naming rules will still apply in most cases, but at times it gets to be real fun.
Like an army buddy of mine who was at one time considered unfit for an office job due to being a security risk. He had a very Slavic first name (which would probably make him a Serb) and a very Muslim last name. MP captain doing the deciding was a very strict Muslim. But, some strings were pulled and he served in an office instead of pulling guard duty. Never did ask him about his religious believes but I suspect that like the rest of us "office rats" he was an atheist.
And if you think that is funny... I mentioned earlier that Bosnia has three presidents, or three members of the presidency to be exact, one from each of its three main ethnic groups. "From" being the operative word here. Each of them is elected at the same elections, by all citizens of the country - not just by the votes of their own ethnic group. Now, Bosnia is a country where most political parties are formed around representing a certain ethnic group. So, when local social democrats (who actually have SOME kind of a political program other than "he is one of us") nominated a Croat as their representative, and he won - Croatian nationalist parties cried out saying that he was not a real Croat, demanding his resignation. Also, their reasoning is that he was not chosen by Croats, but by Bosniaks.
Forget Obama "not being American" - this is akin to if Republicans complained that only blacks voted for him. Or to be more correct, should the Republicans nominate a black candidate to face Obama for the next presidential elections, and should the Republican candidate win - someone from black community crying out that he does not represent black people because whites voted for him.
Come next elections, do those nationalist parties create a coalition and put up their own strong candidate? Nope. Each party nominates their own candidate and again they complain along the same points when social democrats win again.
Granted, Croats ARE a minority among the majorities, and all Croatian nationalist parties together have less members than social democrats so it may seem that social democrats are exploiting a faulty system at the expense of an ethnic minority. And that would be true
If any group should know of dangers of unenforced laws, that's Slashdot. Not because we are uniquely predisposed to those laws (well... disregarding some IP laws) but because someone will inform you of those dangers at least once a month.:P
And while there is a PRACTICAL difference between those countries, MORALLY it boils down to the same thing.
According to the 1980 amendment of the Constitution, Islamic Law (Sharia) became the principal source of legislative rules.[1] Such wording simply implies that any new law that is being enacted or considered for enactment should not be in contravention of any prevailing principles of Islamic Law (Sharia). Nevertheless, whilst all statutes regulating personal status issues (such as inheritance, marriage, divorce, alimony etc) are derived from Islamic norms, penal law rules as codified in the Penal Code are entirely western non-religious oriented rules. It is argued that the 1980 amendment operates with respect to post 1980 legislations and does not have a retroactive effect. Accordingly, any legal rules, which are inconsistent with general principles of Islamic Law (Sharia), that have been enacted prior to 1980 remain in full force and effect (such as penal law rules), unless abolished or replaced by new laws.
It is worth noting that Egypt has enacted a number of new statutes to respond to contemporary standards of global economic and business reform including: Investment Law, Anti-Money Laundering Law, Intellectual Property Rights Law, Competition Law, Consumer Protection Law, Electronic Signatures Law, Banking Law, Taxation Law etc.[2]
And even the worst aspects of such a definition of "Islamic", like blasphemy laws, can't be just generalized into being the same thing all across the board. Cause there is a pretty fucking big difference between what you may expect for such "crimes" in say... Egypt and say... Afghanistan.
Not to mention the level of labeling that implies on the entire culture. Should all "Christian" countries be labeled the same way? With crusades, inquisition, modern religious fundamentalists...
I do think a free market helps with the self-determination thing.
Then, I hope that you are a teenager using someone else's ID cause that is a highly faulty notion for a grown up to have. I mean... there are many, MANY monks and other people delving with philosophy of "being human", "being at all" etc. who would disagree with that. The ability to buy or sell possessions doesn't determine a man more than the ability to eat. And no... they are not equally vital to one's existence either.
You can't "buy" self. Or bottle it and sell it. Nor would it be possible to be regulated through taxation. Or, as I'm about to go on about the pop-culture "You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis."
As for pop-culture... I'm actually a great fan of pop-culture - and not just American. Thing is... while I am a fan... as I accumulate knowledge and experience over the years I am noticing more and more the gaping holes and triviality in the most of it. Or just plain lies and wrongness. Particularly of almost everything that is allowed on TV and theater screens in the USA. Well... at least anything aimed at anyone older that 12.
Meanwhile, adults (starting with teens) are literally indoctrinated into "us vs them", "hunter or prey", "consuming is happiness" and the above mentioned "might makes right". Rules are there to be broken and as long as you don't get caught it is A-OK, greed is celebrated continuously, fame is the highest possible thing you can achieve in life, ends justify the means and promiscuity and consumerism are main (if not ONLY) components of freedom and happiness.
THOSE are the lessons embodied in modern American pop-culture. You want actual moral lessons without the taint of consumerism you must dig down to Superhero cartoons. You want actual critique of consumerism and "might makes right" - you must dig to Sponge Bob levels.
Last two adults on American TV shows with actual moral values were Jean-Luc Picard and to some extent Jed Bartlet. Today if you go looking for moral guidance on TV your choice of role model lies between a criminal, super-scifi-cop who is never wrong, goofball man-child and someone who's life revolves around fucking. Go look up favorite TV show lists at imdb if you don't believe me. And that is WITHOUT taking in account all those "reality" shows that are frankly a cultural equivalent of a toxic spill.
Best America can hope for from all its current cultural export is to turn the rest of the world into Tucker Max clones. Which didn't even work for the "original", or so I hear.
Oh, and "upward class mobility" - another one that is not a prerequisite for democracy. In fact, existence of classes opposes democracy as it again introduces the element of economy into what is essentially continuous fight for human freedoms. Whether to maintain them or to win them back. If anything it is a necessary evil of an imperfect world - but sadly it is mostly a lie waved in front of the eyes of "lower classes". And most certainly you don't get to move up by sticking to moral rules. And if you actually (against the odds) do accomplish that quantum leap while holding on to some modicum of moral values - you will most likely find that "those are not the higher classes you were looking for".
Slashdot Mirror
That would imply actually opening the USB drive. With auto-run you just plug it in.
Perhaps, if we were to consider the USB drive as a suitcase, which you would place in your car's trunk or back seat?
Out of which there would promptly jump out a midget that was hiding among your shirts and underwear all along - and drive away with your car. Wearing your underpants and shirts.
Possibly even with your wallet and various forms of ID.
...a car that would start its engine and ran straight into traffic as soon as anyone sat into it?
It is auto-run after all...
Or someone, somewhere pushing an agenda of some kind.
Particularly when you read the more detailed article, which comes off as a bit contradictory to itself.
There's overcrowding, but there are actually three unused wards. There's a lack of staff, but it is actually a 3-hospital complex with a staff of 17.000.
http://www.thelocal.se/31842/20110204/
Pots and pans sound hospital patient alarms
Published: 4 Feb 11 12:07 CET
An overcrowded hospital in Gothenburg has resorted to giving patients in a children's ward saucepans and spoons to summon assistance in emergency situations, according to a union report.
At Östra Hospital in Gothenburg, ordinary bedside alarms are not available to every patient due to overcrowding. The saucepans and spoons were issued in the children's ward to lift their spirits.
At another department, the staff shopped at hardware chain Clas Ohlsson to buy bells for their patients, the Swedish Association of Health Professionals (Vårdförbundet) reported on Friday.
The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) found that hospital overcrowding is common at all nine of western Sweden's hospitals with emergency departments.
"We have long ago passed the limit of what is acceptable. This is a huge problem," a shocked Maria Tenggren of the union, who also works at Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska University Hospital, said in a statement.
At Sahlgrenska/SU Östra, Alingsås and Mölndal, the supply of hospital beds is so scarce that it creates a risk for patient safety, the board wrote in its report.
"We have for years nagged about the problem of overcrowding, but nothing happens," said Tenggren.
She noted that there are currently three empty wards that are ready to open if the overcrowding becomes too much to handle and that the hospital has an action plan in place.
"However, with all the restrictions and reservations that exist, the opening of these extra spaces is rare. It looks great on paper, but it means nothing in practice," said Tenggren.
In addition, the board's inspection showed that at Östra Hospital, patients were relocated to wards where staff did not have the necessary skills to care for them. In addition, they often lacked oxygen and suction equipment, as well as bells.
The staff at the hospital in Mölndal could not adjust to the addition demand for care needed and had personnel who lacked the skills to care for relocated patients.
Mats Tullberg, the chief physician at SU, told newspaper Göteborgs-Posten (GP) on Friday that overcrowding is a major concern and that the relocation of patients to other departments was not a good sign.
"At most, we had about 80 patients waiting," he told GP.
And those patient numbers sound a lot like the numbers in Ireland or Canada.
This will only encourage those who blame Mossad for shark attacks
Confusing "Jaws" with Jews and all...
They do that thing they did with other corporations and their products?
Like Google, Apple, Intel, Android, iOS, Facebook (both the square AND the rectangular version), SONY...
I would add the abacus
No kindergarten-aged children or relatives I presume? Or friends/relatives who teach kindergarten children?
Abacus is a very simple and useful tool when teaching basic number concepts and operations. Also, it is a very useful tool for the blind.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's thing to be precise.
Like when they issue them a student visa...
The students say they were unaware of the dodgy nature of the university and they were conned. In a petition to the secretary of homeland security and the director of ICE, the affected students said they registered in the university believing it is a "bonafide and legitimate university that had been registered with the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) database."
SEVIS is a web-based technology maintained by the US to track and monitor schools and programs, students, exchange visitors and their dependents, while they are legally enrolled in the US education system. Indeed, Tri-Valley University is among the SEVIS Approved Schools listed on the US ICE website. Authorities have since shut down the university.
And when TFA says "among the SEVIS Approved Schools listed on the US ICE website", it means IT IS STILL AMONG THE APPROVED SCHOOLS.
On a side note, I completely understand your feelings regarding this matter.
If I was a Navajo Indian, I too would be pissed off by all these immigrant "Indians" coming to my country. Fuckers don't even wear feathers.
Or a meat popsicle. Or both.
You don't need to send men with guns when you can do the same much easier by sending one man (perhaps two) with a piece of paper.
Comply or be arrested, have your equipment confiscated as evidence, your premises padlocked and your bank accounts frozen while you wait for any and all licenses you have to be examined by court.
They'll probably even let you defend yourself from "outside" - your trial won't be up for a couple of months/years anyway.
Have fun feeding yourself and your family with no money, no job and no free time as you are too busy with your court case.
The whole "This is geek, but that is not..." or "Nerd is that, that and that but certainly not THAT" results from all those being labels imposed by others.
Geek, nerd, dork, four-eyes... those were all insults thrown at those who were... well... different.
Those who were "barking" them didn't bother to clearly define them no more than they would define how exactly to accommodate the suggestion to "go fuck yourself". I mean, couple of ideas do come to mind, but is that really what they were suggesting? And where would I get that much strawberry jello?
It was a fucking insult. With time it got turned into a badge of distinction. Even honor to some.
There was no "7th council of nerd, geeks, dorks and other rejects". No rules were defined.
Whoever wants to define themselves as any of those labels is fine by me - as long as they don't expect of me to like everything else they like because we share one or two points of mutual preference.
And as long as we are listing preferences - I to build and fix computers (and other stuff) and love science. Any preference I had for chemistry was killed by my high-school teacher.
Never was any good at sports. I like some anime (mostly on the SF side), some comic books (actually, I prefer some comic books writers), most sci-fi, some fantasy and I too haven't ever played D&D (no local players).
Does all that make me more or less of a nerd than you? Don't know, don't really care.
But I do have a lower Slashdot ID. And more importantly, mine is prettier.
I still don't see an issue here, to be honest.
It demonizes the entire religions and cultures. For the lack of a better word - it's not nice to do that.
Because that's not the established idiom in English?
And calling secular democracies Christian IS? Come on...
Besides, OP obviously can't decide whether he would like to call such states Muslim or Islamic.
Also, darkies and niggers used to be an "established idiom in English".
it does not necessarily mean that the majority of citizens are in favor of democracy - but only that the political system of that state is democratic.
Difference being that just calling a country/state Christian does not translate into a law - unless it actually does have a law that proclaims the state religion, and then you no longer have a democracy as you've just veered off towards theocracy.
Political system is defined by a law - just like everything else the state does. From shape and color of state flag to the number and length of the roads.
You measure by comparing.
You can't compare hydrogen atoms to a packet of sugar in the market.
Or to some compound used in a making of a medicine, but which can be poisonous in higher concentrations.
Or anything else that simply needs accurate measurement in order for the reaction to work.
...to count all of those atoms with.
But seriously, something similar WAS suggested. It may even be adopted by the end of the year.
Well, the original IPK is compared to its copies every 10 years.
But, those copies see more action, so do copies of those copies...
The kilogram essentially "weighs" as much as everybody agrees it does, and in that sense behaves exactly like a form of currency.
Problem is, once you start using "approximate kilograms", you have to keep adjusting your calculations (related to a whole lot of other SI units) every year or so.
And when you are not sure exactly by how much you are off this year (as all copies of IPK change differently over time) compared to the last one... that starts to be a serious nuisance.
It is a definition with a physical representation. Which is obviously showing changes over time.
And it really shouldn't as it is the physical representation that is being actively used by our society - not the definition.
The point of this article is that they are trying to create a new definition based on a process that would produce an identical physical representation EVERY time the process is run - and the results of which wouldn't change over time.
And failing.
Now, as every scale in the world is NOT calibrated to that prototype kilogram, but to a copy, of a copy, of a copy... Those errors accumulate.
Until one day measurements of some toxic substance/medicinal drug/anything requiring milligram measurement start being significantly lighter/heavier than they should be in the given sample.
Cause we're not talking homeopathy here.
Actually, this is a good example against posting tired.
We diverged into "Islamic state", being pushed by original poster's "Muslim"-to-"Islamic state" ignoratio elenchi substitution, with a dose of "No true Scotsman" as Turkey apparently isn't Islamic but "has Muslim population".
I don't really see a problem with it. In the term "Islamic state", both words are important, while you're just looking at the first one. "Islamic state" means "state with laws and government grounded in Islam". That usually does mean Sharia, or at least cherry-picked parts of it.
In fact, did you notice that those countries which call themselves "Islamic republics" almost always tend to be "run by Sharia laws"? On the other hand, a Muslim-majority but secular state wouldn't call itself that. I can understand why - personally, I would find the very idea of calling a country, say, "Christian Republic" abhorring. It's tantamount to boldly proclaiming religious intolerance.
Try it like this...
Sharia laws are a set of strict religious laws in Islam.
State that actively enforces such laws is to be referred as "Islamic state".
Holy Inquisition is an institution that defends a set of strict religious laws in Christianity.
State that actively enforces such laws is to be referred as "Christian state".
See what I mean?
Taking a negative aspect of something (X), making that aspect into a representative key-aspect through generalization (X+), associating that to a much larger and more complex set (Y), and then equating that negative aspect we had at the beginning with every other set similar to Y.
What is wrong with simply calling countries that actively enforce Sharia laws as "Sharia law countries", or even "countries actively enforcing Sharia laws to XY extent"?
We're gonna save a fortune on toner by using a shorter terminology? Not to mention all that time we'll save.
And if you are running a democratic country and you put such a thing to a vote (as you would need to in a democracy) - you are almost certainly going to be voted/vetoed out.
Plus, you are mixing economic system with nationalistic ideology, with a mock-religion and a one is a product of a religious belief.
You could have just as well used blue, car driving, cheese eating and farming. Makes almost as much sense.
...leaving traces. Over time, changes accumulate.
And when you are measuring something at 9 digits behind the point - a little can be a lot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram#Stability_of_the_International_Prototype_Kilogram
Damn... its getting early. XD
Well, I didn't get to see much of the old-old Yugoslavia as I grew up in the 80s.
You know... you're a kid in a mixed urban setting. News are the "boring stuff grownups watch" etc.
So, someone a bit older might have a different outlook on the whole thing. Then again, many from my generation have a different outlook on the breakup of Yugoslavia, war(s) etc.
I am not really sure what you mean by "active state promotion" (like I said - it is getting early here, dawn is about to break) but Yugoslavia used to be a federation of republics, with internal borders being simply administrative.
Sure, there were ethnic minorities and majorities in each republic but if anything the notion of "super-ethnical national identity" as you put it was heavily promoted.
And it wasn't really a socialist dictatorship since Tito died in 1980 as the presidency would rotate from one republic to another. And as far as dictatorships go, his was a pretty benevolent one.
It was a single-party (communist) system though, until 1990.
Anyhoow...
IMHO... It would most definitely have been better had Yugoslavia remained intact. Even should the price have been going the way of Ceausescu's Romania for a decade or more.
I'm just throwing that in as a comparatively worse form of communist government. Yugoslavia had a very different set of problems.
First of all, war brought no good to anyone. Well... except the "chosen few".
Then, it is really silly to imagine that you can simply break up a country like that and just move on - when you've spent last 50 years actively making it a single country.
Roads still go the same way. So do the people and goods.
From food to TV it is still the same market - only now a lot more is being wasted on taxes and such, and not to mention that a whole lot of people died or went to "third countries".
Ironically, it has been only recently that the local law enforcement in the resulting countries has started officially cooperating - while criminals have never stopped.
To them it is the same market. With the benefit of "spare countries" for hiding and for when they need to get rid of "undesirables".
Best part is - every single Ex-Yu country (baring Slovenia) is working on and hoping to be accepted into European Union. Slovenia is already in.
Which will effectively re-create Yugoslavia, only instead of being one bigger political and economical player there will now be six much smaller and far weaker bickering nations under the EU roof.
No... wait.. I keep forgetting Kosovo. Seven bickering nations. So far.
So, I am guessing that some 50 years down the road this entire "era" will be considered as "the stupid years" by our grandkids.
As for Bosnian politics, it gets even more complicated than that.
Half of the country belongs to a mostly Serb "political entity" called Republika Srpska, the other half is called Federation.
Each part has its own government, parliament, laws etc. but the administrative center of the entire country is in the Federation part.
Federation is further divided into 10 cantons with each canton having its own parliament, ministries etc.
Hijinks ensue every time any single law has to be implemented, as there are 12 different copies of each law.
So, in one canton you may go into a sports store and simply purchase an air-gun, while in another you would need to do the same amount of paperwork as if you were buying a "real" hunting rifle.
And don't even get me started on education.
Elementary schools where kids share the classrooms but study different languages (Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian are all valid languages - and with slight differences it is the same fucking language), different histories and are even taught about different "homelands".
Meanwhile, we are fucking up the European literacy statistic with ~750.000 illiterate adults.
About 20% of the GDP (officially) comes from "foreign transfers" - i.e. family members sending money home.
Real numbers are probably much higher as many simply bring the cash when they come to visit family still living here.
Oh, and all that with a fixed exchange rate to the Euro.
Ok.. I'm starting to rant here and I should really go get some sleep.
Good morning.
That if we make the label "Islamic" based primarily on blasphemy laws, that such a level of generalization would make many western democracies appear almost as bad.
You know...
Just as the OP way above generalized that "they are horrendous in one form or another" - saying that "Islamic" means "run by Sharia laws" is basically the same thing.
You know... taking a word that describes the whole culture and making it about single (and probably the most unfavorable) possible aspect of SOME of the elements of that culture.
You want to judge someone as different, you draw a circle around your own group.
Then, you find reasons and logic for why those outside of your circle are not like you.
Lastly, you draw another circle that includes everyone in your circle and everyone who is "close enough".
Ta-da! You have your own elite based on something that is completely unquantifiable.
But mostly, you don't even need that much.
It's not like your aim is to protect someone's rights to be a part of some group - you aim to keep everyone but the people like you from yours.
So, you go with names first. Culturally relevant names are usually the first criteria.
Milan and Slobodan is pretty certainly a Serb, while Tomislav and Franjo are pretty certainly Croats and Alija and Samir are pretty certainly Bosniaks.
But what to do with all those names where you can't really decide? Like Ivan, Igor, Denis etc.
Well... you look up their last names according to the rule above.
Cause, while Scots have their Mc- and Irish their O'- in front of the name of their pater familias, most Slavic people have some form of -ich or -icz after the same thing.
So, you will have your Milanovich Serbs, Tomich Croats and Alijagich Bosniaks.
Add to that information that Croats are understood (read: generalized) to be Catholic, Serbs are Eastern Orthodox Christians and Bosniaks are Muslims - and you are pretty sure who to exclude from your group.
The real fun starts when you have mixed marriages and children raised in such marriages.
And there were plenty of those couple of decades back as it was all one bigger country.
A bit less now cause.. well.. Ethnic cleansing DOES work. And there are seven countries now where there used to be one.
Naming rules will still apply in most cases, but at times it gets to be real fun.
Like an army buddy of mine who was at one time considered unfit for an office job due to being a security risk.
He had a very Slavic first name (which would probably make him a Serb) and a very Muslim last name. MP captain doing the deciding was a very strict Muslim.
But, some strings were pulled and he served in an office instead of pulling guard duty. Never did ask him about his religious believes but I suspect that like the rest of us "office rats" he was an atheist.
And if you think that is funny...
I mentioned earlier that Bosnia has three presidents, or three members of the presidency to be exact, one from each of its three main ethnic groups.
"From" being the operative word here. Each of them is elected at the same elections, by all citizens of the country - not just by the votes of their own ethnic group.
Now, Bosnia is a country where most political parties are formed around representing a certain ethnic group.
So, when local social democrats (who actually have SOME kind of a political program other than "he is one of us") nominated a Croat as their representative, and he won - Croatian nationalist parties cried out saying that he was not a real Croat, demanding his resignation.
Also, their reasoning is that he was not chosen by Croats, but by Bosniaks.
Forget Obama "not being American" - this is akin to if Republicans complained that only blacks voted for him.
Or to be more correct, should the Republicans nominate a black candidate to face Obama for the next presidential elections, and should the Republican candidate win - someone from black community crying out that he does not represent black people because whites voted for him.
Come next elections, do those nationalist parties create a coalition and put up their own strong candidate?
Nope. Each party nominates their own candidate and again they complain along the same points when social democrats win again.
Granted, Croats ARE a minority among the majorities, and all Croatian nationalist parties together have less members than social democrats so it may seem that social democrats are exploiting a faulty system at the expense of an ethnic minority.
And that would be true
Oh come on... This is Slashdot.
If any group should know of dangers of unenforced laws, that's Slashdot. :P
Not because we are uniquely predisposed to those laws (well... disregarding some IP laws) but because someone will inform you of those dangers at least once a month.
And while there is a PRACTICAL difference between those countries, MORALLY it boils down to the same thing.
According to the 1980 amendment of the Constitution, Islamic Law (Sharia) became the principal source of legislative rules.[1] Such wording simply implies that any new law that is being enacted or considered for enactment should not be in contravention of any prevailing principles of Islamic Law (Sharia). Nevertheless, whilst all statutes regulating personal status issues (such as inheritance, marriage, divorce, alimony etc) are derived from Islamic norms, penal law rules as codified in the Penal Code are entirely western non-religious oriented rules. It is argued that the 1980 amendment operates with respect to post 1980 legislations and does not have a retroactive effect. Accordingly, any legal rules, which are inconsistent with general principles of Islamic Law (Sharia), that have been enacted prior to 1980 remain in full force and effect (such as penal law rules), unless abolished or replaced by new laws.
It is worth noting that Egypt has enacted a number of new statutes to respond to contemporary standards of global economic and business reform including: Investment Law, Anti-Money Laundering Law, Intellectual Property Rights Law, Competition Law, Consumer Protection Law, Electronic Signatures Law, Banking Law, Taxation Law etc.[2]
And even the worst aspects of such a definition of "Islamic", like blasphemy laws, can't be just generalized into being the same thing all across the board.
Cause there is a pretty fucking big difference between what you may expect for such "crimes" in say... Egypt and say... Afghanistan.
Not to mention the level of labeling that implies on the entire culture.
Should all "Christian" countries be labeled the same way? With crusades, inquisition, modern religious fundamentalists...
...democracies look really silly as well, and not really all that secular.
Or democratic, if you find that religious freedoms (including freedom of and from religion) essential to democracy.
Well... glad you re-read your post there.
I do think a free market helps with the self-determination thing.
Then, I hope that you are a teenager using someone else's ID cause that is a highly faulty notion for a grown up to have.
I mean... there are many, MANY monks and other people delving with philosophy of "being human", "being at all" etc. who would disagree with that.
The ability to buy or sell possessions doesn't determine a man more than the ability to eat. And no... they are not equally vital to one's existence either.
You can't "buy" self. Or bottle it and sell it. Nor would it be possible to be regulated through taxation.
Or, as I'm about to go on about the pop-culture "You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis."
As for pop-culture... I'm actually a great fan of pop-culture - and not just American.
Thing is... while I am a fan... as I accumulate knowledge and experience over the years I am noticing more and more the gaping holes and triviality in the most of it. Or just plain lies and wrongness.
Particularly of almost everything that is allowed on TV and theater screens in the USA.
Well... at least anything aimed at anyone older that 12.
Meanwhile, adults (starting with teens) are literally indoctrinated into "us vs them", "hunter or prey", "consuming is happiness" and the above mentioned "might makes right".
Rules are there to be broken and as long as you don't get caught it is A-OK, greed is celebrated continuously, fame is the highest possible thing you can achieve in life, ends justify the means and promiscuity and consumerism are main (if not ONLY) components of freedom and happiness.
THOSE are the lessons embodied in modern American pop-culture.
You want actual moral lessons without the taint of consumerism you must dig down to Superhero cartoons.
You want actual critique of consumerism and "might makes right" - you must dig to Sponge Bob levels.
Last two adults on American TV shows with actual moral values were Jean-Luc Picard and to some extent Jed Bartlet.
Today if you go looking for moral guidance on TV your choice of role model lies between a criminal, super-scifi-cop who is never wrong, goofball man-child and someone who's life revolves around fucking.
Go look up favorite TV show lists at imdb if you don't believe me.
And that is WITHOUT taking in account all those "reality" shows that are frankly a cultural equivalent of a toxic spill.
Best America can hope for from all its current cultural export is to turn the rest of the world into Tucker Max clones.
Which didn't even work for the "original", or so I hear.
Oh, and "upward class mobility" - another one that is not a prerequisite for democracy.
In fact, existence of classes opposes democracy as it again introduces the element of economy into what is essentially continuous fight for human freedoms. Whether to maintain them or to win them back.
If anything it is a necessary evil of an imperfect world - but sadly it is mostly a lie waved in front of the eyes of "lower classes".
And most certainly you don't get to move up by sticking to moral rules.
And if you actually (against the odds) do accomplish that quantum leap while holding on to some modicum of moral values - you will most likely find that "those are not the higher classes you were looking for".