> It is indeed a very romantic notion, and also > an accurate one.
not much room for debate, eh?
> The content and context of any given decision > is by no means inferred by the ability to choose.
The idea that a choice is independent of its context seems to me to be a non sequitur, because I can't think of any decision that can be made without a context.
> how many options they have beyond yes or no > (which will occur regardless of circumstance > and regardless of how heavily one side may be > favoured), has nothing to do with that.
My argument in a nutshell... how many options you have has EVERYTHING to do with choice. Choice is not reducible to free will and circumstance, it IS free will and circumstance. If I manipulate your environment, then the choice no longer exists. Environment is a component of choice, QED.
Anyway, thanks for the conversation so far. You are now in my friends list.
The Trix rabbit keeps beating him out. He deserves it, in consideration of his persistently ingenious attempts to obtain the holy grail of hacks - to eat a bowl of shitty, refined sugar-laden cereal despite unwritten rules forbidding such an unnatural act as performed by an animated TV icon.
> I'm mostly bitter because this is almost the > same as when people claim to be software > developers when all they do is html... Same > word used to describe something with a > rediculous range of skill levels...
Ask yourself why you care if someone is erronously placed in your league upon cursory examination of your matching titles.
Do you place yourself in the same league as, say, Linus Torvalds or Dennis Ritchie? They are (or have been) software developers. Perhaps YOU need a different title, or perhaps they should be deified.
> A muscle doesn't have that kind of sentience. > Of course, I'm probably just nitpicking.
Nothing of interest really happens in a vacuum. Human ability certainly is more varied and complex than a muscle cell, but ultimately the outcome of any action performed by an individual unit in a system is bounded by the conditions of that system.
A person swept into a cult/conformist egomass has no more autonomy than a muscle cell, and this isn't due to any sickness and can happen in spite of the capability of humans to affect their environment.
> A human being, on the other hand, is inherently > imbued with the ability to choose its own > actions.
A very romantic notion - that there is something special about "human" sentience that allows for free will. Consider that a human also appears to be imbued with the ability to submit to authority and conform. This can happen without any choice being made (being born into a cult or as a slave, for example).
I would argue that free will isn't simply an inherent human quality any more than it is inherently illusory - it is a synthesis of individual capability and system boundaries.
That is a very libertarian attitude that not everyone shares. There exists such a thing as community responsibility - whether or not you believe in its applicability is the crux of the debate.
> If you go out and rape somebody because > somebody else told you to do it then you have a > greater sickness than any censoring can prevent
Being subject to the will of others or of a group is also a real phenomenon. Is collectivism really a sickness or just a different method of organization.
Is a single voluntarily-controlled muscle cell guilty for the actions of the person who, say, uses the muscle to commit murder or rape? Is it sick if it is functioning normally (accepting orders from the mind)? Or should we condemn it for not having its own agenda?
I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong or right, I just think it's an interesting avenue of pursuit.
or it will just mean that ms will have a valid-sounding excuse to aggressively push for upgrades. maybe some people thought maybe ms might stretch out W2K EOL support a la WIN98? forget it now that that source is out - even though 98 is 10x more vulnerable w/o a source code leak.
so instead of demanding a simpler form, you'd be willing to have them calculate something owed to them that's near impossible to double-check?
even credit card companies are not that dubious with their policies.
something tells me that the same people who are willing to accept a basically unaccountable bill from the government are the same people who don't bother to vote or pay attention to what bureaucrats are doing with our tax dollars.
So, since the state can already look at my IRS forms anyway, why not have them compute my taxes for me, and automatically send me the already-completed paperwork attached to the bill or refund
because now you're trusting turbo-tax instead of the state to correctly interpret the tax code for your situation.
doing it yourself, or having a 3rd party accountant or software do it is the way you keep the revenue service honest - true to their own convoluted, overly-complex rules.
if the tax codes were simpler, that would be fine. otherwise, the only way to double-check it would be to hire a CPA as usual. given the choice between the state and the cpa, i choose the cpa to do the work. it makes no sense to commit resources on both ends - that's just wasteful.
of course, you may simply want to trust your government and accept their calculations.
there's a phrase for that - working under the table. most employers will not do this for any appreciable amount of money. it's not a very practical solution.
a paycheck is almost always sent via a payroll dept that is very happy to file all the tax paperwork with the friendly neighborood tax bureau, so this gains yoo nothing.
the whole effort by the "commonwealth" of mass is bullshit, because the whole point of maintaining separate bureaucracies for different purposes is to compartmentalize the info in the interests if individual privacy.
Everyone's saying this like it matters if you look at it or not.
Just because there is probably no stolen code in the linux kernel didn't stop SCO. Just the possibility of impropriety was enough to cause an uproar.
MS, as of Feb 10, has an ace in the hole against open source and free software - and they will use it whether or not you look at the source code, and whether or not your future works look anything like this tiny snippet. Just the leak will be enough for them to create more FUD.
Since you seem to be in the know... how common are these variants in the wild? I've had a snort filter listening on the mydoom 'sploit ports the last day and a half and I haven't seen any mydoom/deadhat/vesser scans at all.
The "fine print" contains the photo credits. I don't think the jargon file issue eliminates him from the list, nor do his eccentric politics. His book alone qualifies him, as well as his numerous work on important open source projects.
if you're simply hacking for recognition, then you should automatically be banned from the list
The problem with this is that it's pretty difficult to prove the intent. I would bet that ALL of the named people were seeking recognition - be it widespread attention, approval, or disdain. Such a criterion would exclude people who should be on the list despite their shameless self-promotion... like Shimomura. There's a self serving, egomaniacal prick who is totally devoted to the craft and quite good at it.
I think the list is pretty "fair and balanced." If anything, they are missing some people - Bill Gates is an obvious one, as previously mentioned.
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> It is indeed a very romantic notion, and also
> an accurate one.
not much room for debate, eh?
> The content and context of any given decision
> is by no means inferred by the ability to choose.
The idea that a choice is independent of its context seems to me to be a non sequitur, because I can't think of any decision that can be made without a context.
> how many options they have beyond yes or no
> (which will occur regardless of circumstance
> and regardless of how heavily one side may be
> favoured), has nothing to do with that.
My argument in a nutshell... how many options you have has EVERYTHING to do with choice. Choice is not reducible to free will and circumstance, it IS free will and circumstance. If I manipulate your environment, then the choice no longer exists. Environment is a component of choice, QED.
Anyway, thanks for the conversation so far. You are now in my friends list.
The Trix rabbit keeps beating him out. He deserves it, in consideration of his persistently ingenious attempts to obtain the holy grail of hacks - to eat a bowl of shitty, refined sugar-laden cereal despite unwritten rules forbidding such an unnatural act as performed by an animated TV icon.
> I'm mostly bitter because this is almost the
> same as when people claim to be software
> developers when all they do is html... Same
> word used to describe something with a
> rediculous range of skill levels...
Ask yourself why you care if someone is erronously placed in your league upon cursory examination of your matching titles.
Do you place yourself in the same league as, say, Linus Torvalds or Dennis Ritchie? They are (or have been) software developers. Perhaps YOU need a different title, or perhaps they should be deified.
> A muscle doesn't have that kind of sentience.
> Of course, I'm probably just nitpicking.
Nothing of interest really happens in a vacuum. Human ability certainly is more varied and complex than a muscle cell, but ultimately the outcome of any action performed by an individual unit in a system is bounded by the conditions of that system.
A person swept into a cult/conformist egomass has no more autonomy than a muscle cell, and this isn't due to any sickness and can happen in spite of the capability of humans to affect their environment.
> A human being, on the other hand, is inherently
> imbued with the ability to choose its own
> actions.
A very romantic notion - that there is something special about "human" sentience that allows for free will. Consider that a human also appears to be imbued with the ability to submit to authority and conform. This can happen without any choice being made (being born into a cult or as a slave, for example).
I would argue that free will isn't simply an inherent human quality any more than it is inherently illusory - it is a synthesis of individual capability and system boundaries.
That is a very libertarian attitude that not everyone shares. There exists such a thing as community responsibility - whether or not you believe in its applicability is the crux of the debate.
> If you go out and rape somebody because
> somebody else told you to do it then you have a
> greater sickness than any censoring can prevent
Being subject to the will of others or of a group is also a real phenomenon. Is collectivism really a sickness or just a different method of organization.
Is a single voluntarily-controlled muscle cell guilty for the actions of the person who, say, uses the muscle to commit murder or rape? Is it sick if it is functioning normally (accepting orders from the mind)? Or should we condemn it for not having its own agenda?
I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong or right, I just think it's an interesting avenue of pursuit.
you almost had it. here's the procedure for future reference.
SUBJECT=`subject of the story`
ACTION=`change $SUBJECT is subject to`
SUBJECT=`strip_definite_article $SUBJECT`
ACTION=`third person singular case of $ACTION`
JOKE=`echo In soviet russia, $SUBJECT $ACTION you!`
or it will just mean that ms will have a valid-sounding excuse to aggressively push for upgrades. maybe some people thought maybe ms might stretch out W2K EOL support a la WIN98? forget it now that that source is out - even though 98 is 10x more vulnerable w/o a source code leak.
and in the post you responded to, i was talking about simplifying the tax code - not necessarily advocating a flat tax.
simplifying could mean taking out all of the incentives and using some other mechanism other than tax credits/deductions.
incentives don't have to be implemented as part of the tax code.
so instead of demanding a simpler form, you'd be willing to have them calculate something owed to them that's near impossible to double-check?
even credit card companies are not that dubious with their policies.
something tells me that the same people who are willing to accept a basically unaccountable bill from the government are the same people who don't bother to vote or pay attention to what bureaucrats are doing with our tax dollars.
then advocate for a simpler tax code. other countries have started from scratch and it didn't kill them.
So, since the state can already look at my IRS forms anyway, why not have them compute my taxes for me, and automatically send me the already-completed paperwork attached to the bill or refund
because now you're trusting turbo-tax instead of the state to correctly interpret the tax code for your situation.
doing it yourself, or having a 3rd party accountant or software do it is the way you keep the revenue service honest - true to their own convoluted, overly-complex rules.
if the tax codes were simpler, that would be fine. otherwise, the only way to double-check it would be to hire a CPA as usual. given the choice between the state and the cpa, i choose the cpa to do the work. it makes no sense to commit resources on both ends - that's just wasteful.
of course, you may simply want to trust your government and accept their calculations.
there's a phrase for that - working under the table. most employers will not do this for any appreciable amount of money. it's not a very practical solution.
a paycheck is almost always sent via a payroll dept that is very happy to file all the tax paperwork with the friendly neighborood tax bureau, so this gains yoo nothing.
the whole effort by the "commonwealth" of mass is bullshit, because the whole point of maintaining separate bureaucracies for different purposes is to compartmentalize the info in the interests if individual privacy.
My dad has one of these apparatus, but it works the other way. It's about 8ft tall and converts hydrogen (and some other chemicals) TO ethanol
My dad is about 6 feet tall and converts ethanol to methane.
Everyone's saying this like it matters if you look at it or not.
Just because there is probably no stolen code in the linux kernel didn't stop SCO. Just the possibility of impropriety was enough to cause an uproar.
MS, as of Feb 10, has an ace in the hole against open source and free software - and they will use it whether or not you look at the source code, and whether or not your future works look anything like this tiny snippet. Just the leak will be enough for them to create more FUD.
Since you seem to be in the know... how common are these variants in the wild? I've had a snort filter listening on the mydoom 'sploit ports the last day and a half and I haven't seen any mydoom/deadhat/vesser scans at all.
> No wonder you're stuck using an operating
> system written by out of work hacks.
way to kill your own point with a stupid non-sequitur.
the d-friendly mods are out in force today.
we definitely heard about the lunokchod - lots of video of many of the luna-series missions, at least by the mid 1980s.
It's in decline, thankfully. Check out the samba mailing list from '99. Yike$.
The "fine print" contains the photo credits. I don't think the jargon file issue eliminates him from the list, nor do his eccentric politics. His book alone qualifies him, as well as his numerous work on important open source projects.
(I thought I read somewhere that Marlon Brando was actually playing Jabba in that scene
Common misconception. Marlon Brando was actually Jabba in Return of the Jedi. A lot of people think it's a big puppet, but it's just Brando naked.
Who knows, maybe that's what motivated him to continue. In any case, who can authoritatively tell?
if you're simply hacking for recognition, then you should automatically be banned from the list
The problem with this is that it's pretty difficult to prove the intent. I would bet that ALL of the named people were seeking recognition - be it widespread attention, approval, or disdain. Such a criterion would exclude people who should be on the list despite their shameless self-promotion... like Shimomura. There's a self serving, egomaniacal prick who is totally devoted to the craft and quite good at it.
I think the list is pretty "fair and balanced." If anything, they are missing some people - Bill Gates is an obvious one, as previously mentioned.