Its funny that as geeks we ridicule security through obscurity while supporting the rights of individuals to hide their poor driving records because of fears about 'Big Brother'.
It's funny that you as a "geek" can't see the difference between the rights and protections due you as a human being, and application development. That is, if "funny" is a word which here means "not at all surprising".
And yet every election cycle we have candidates promise millions more $$ in police recruitment and training so we can "take by the streets", by which I guess they mean put millions more of the uneducated lower economic class in jail.
There will not be justice in the Enron/Worldcom frauds. How many of the 1980s S&L crooks are still doing time? Personally, I'd rather someone break into my car and steal the stereo while I'm at a bar in the inner city than have my job, health benefits, and retirement funding evaporate overnight.
Step One: Turn on your TV. Step Two: Holding the power button on your TiVo, unplug it from the wall. Step Three: Holding the power button on your TV, unplug it from the wall. Step Four: Stand in front of the television and then look to the side. Imagine your gaze has an infinite range which follows the curvature of Earth. Think about how right now your life, and the lives of 6.5 billion people, are ticking away one second at a time. Imagine that what you do with your temporary gift of consciousness actually matters. Step Five: Welcome back to reality.
Maybe you're just joking around too, but you do realize landoverbaptist.org is a joke site, right?
Wait, you mean attributing a whole host of ridiculous and unrelated beliefs to the original poster on the basis of one particular element of his post seems like an extreme reaction to you?
Hmm... maybe my rhetorical style just isn't sustainable in the long term. __
"LandoverBaptist.org" and "GodHatesFags.com". These two websites are flogged to death by the christofascist-agenda driven radical theocratic ngo/govt "traditional values" lobby aka as the "Focus on the Family", "Christian Coalition" and many others.
Some of you will probably shake your heads and wonder why I get so upset just because he linked to the website "LandoverBaptist.org". I have spent a lot of time on the side, researching and reading up on these people and "family values" is a word they're _extremely_ fond of using in all kinds of contexts such as promoting creation "science", opposing sex education, censoring what you read or view, etc.
Fire up Google or your favorite searchengine and see for yourself. Search for phrases like "traditional family values". Read what they put up on their sites. You will be surprised how open and candid these people are about their plans for our future: a future where enforcing their theological beliefs is far more valuable than human freedom.
__
...the URL in your sig is not fully qualified and is, hence broken. You might go to your user preferences page and make sure you've inserted the "http://" in your href parameter.
Indeed. I don't see a very high value in attempting to discuss emotion, philosophy, or psychology [the latter simply being the philosophy of emotions] in this forum, because of the sample bias inherent in the Slashdot user base. Instead, I merely try to lead people to more directly state that when they use words like "benefit" or "better standard of living" they are already defining those terms in a material/consumer sense, which circularly verifies that yes, technological efficiency does "benefit" everyone. Self-examination is always positive and, in my opinion, unerringly leads to greater humanity.
Be careful that you understand exactly what you mean by "benefit". Once you have considered the unspoken assumptions in your wording, you may have reason to re-consider my statement that there are other ways of living, prioritizing and evaluating the success of one's life than the way which makes ever-increasing efficiency its final solution.
Why should we pay someone to do a job that we can do cheaper and more efficiently some other way?
Perhaps not everyone feels life is not an organic factory in which we should be concerned with increasing production efficiency above all else. There are other ways of looking at the world than that espoused by Ms. Rand, however persuasive her fictionalized arguments sometimes seem.
Anyone who goes on record as saying "normal people have no need for [technology x]" will find themselves quoted to hilarious effect when, within ten years, "normal people" are using [technology x] as part of daily life.
> rmgdrduckk5arp@hotmail.com
Thanks alot, buddy. And it was spam free until you posted it here.
Sorry about that. In compensation, I've just created an alternate address for you as spammenot@hotmail.com. Reply to this comment by posting your main email address and I'll send you the password. Remember, your new spam-free email address will be spammenot@hotmail.com. I hope that helps!
It's well known that you can invent "unguessable" accounts at hotmail, e.g. rmgdrduckk5arp@hotmail.com, and never join any mailing list or submit your name to any website or allow MSN to list you in the Hotmail User Directory, and yet within a few days or weeks your account will miraculously begin receiving offers from mail order brides, pills, porn, and so on. I've long suspected that someone working for Hotmail is making money on the side by downloading the user list once a week and selling it to spammers. Which is why my hotmail accounts have lapsed and I mainly use my yahoo or Gmail accounts.
So, are you just going to meta-describe your shopping experience, or are you going to actually name the brand/model you bought that had such noticeably sharper contrast? I, for one, would like to know.
Tort reform isn't a loser pays system, at least in all the forms I have seen proposed.
I meant my snarky one-line comment to apply only to the concept of "...deter[ring] poor companies/individuals from suing". Upon re-reading I can see that I was not sufficiently clear in indicating the scope of my comment. I apologize for that lack of clarity.
Unfortunately, present-day juries have awarded outrageous punitive awards.
"Outrageous" is an inherently unquantifiable word. I personally prefer to leave the decision of what is "outrageous" up to juries. There are injustices at every level of our justice system -- a runaway jury is hardly less rare than a runaway assistant DA, for example -- so in the final analysis I believe it best to leave power in the hands of citizens as much as possible.
Additionally, the very concept of punishment depends upon the action being of sufficient degree to motivate change on the part of the transgressing party. Just as thirty hours of picking up trash is unlikely to motivate a serial rapist to cease his/her rampage, a fine of thirty thousand dollars is unlikely to motivate change on the part of a serial toxic-waste dumper with three hundred million in annual revenues. While you can technically call both sentences examples of "punishment", in neither case could those sentences be considered by reasonable people to be "punitive".
I'm curious as to why people think this was such a great novel. It was like one of Tom Robbins' weaker stories crossed with one of Dan Simmons' more mundane horror/action works, but with more technobabble thrown in.
Now, The Diamond Age was a well-told story, but Snow Crash? I just don't see it. __
While I affirm and express solidarity with your scoffing at youth revolutions, the point remains that if the potential negative effects of youth and inexperience are the same as the current negative effects of insider experience [ethical and financial bankruptcy, mismanagement, unnecessary and unjust legislation], would you rather have evil by accident or evil by intent?
Nah, it's more like Gene Wolfe's "Long Sun" series, in which the everyday people actually perform rites to their virtual caretakers/overlords in order to receive fucntional rewards. It'd be like, if you consistently didn't bring at least a small bird to be sacrificed to the god Fanningus, he wouldn't keep your home network protect you from RIAA lawsuits, but if you bought a lamb for the priest of Billicose, your home-built DoomIII network would function smoothly and without lag.
By the way, Foundation's oft-cited status as "greatest SF series" is undeserved, in my opinion. It's somehow too... I dunno... deterministic. I suppose that's connotative code for "white, male, western, forty years dead", although I quite naturally wish to avoid the overtones of political correctness.
Forgive him. He's a product of a Texas educational system. If I could barely choke out that oxymoronic sentence without gagging in laughter, imagine how "utdpenguin" must labor under knowledge of his environment every day. Look at it this way -- compared to most Dallasites, he's Roger fucking Penrose.
Slashdot Mirror
It's funny that you as a "geek" can't see the difference between the rights and protections due you as a human being, and application development.
That is, if "funny" is a word which here means "not at all surprising".
And yet every election cycle we have candidates promise millions more $$ in police recruitment and training so we can "take by the streets", by which I guess they mean put millions more of the uneducated lower economic class in jail.
There will not be justice in the Enron/Worldcom frauds. How many of the 1980s S&L crooks are still doing time? Personally, I'd rather someone break into my car and steal the stereo while I'm at a bar in the inner city than have my job, health benefits, and retirement funding evaporate overnight.
If knowledge is power, ignorance is slavery.
Step One: Turn on your TV.
Step Two: Holding the power button on your TiVo, unplug it from the wall.
Step Three: Holding the power button on your TV, unplug it from the wall.
Step Four: Stand in front of the television and then look to the side. Imagine your gaze has an infinite range which follows the curvature of Earth. Think about how right now your life, and the lives of 6.5 billion people, are ticking away one second at a time. Imagine that what you do with your temporary gift of consciousness actually matters.
Step Five: Welcome back to reality.
You're the one that posted here again after nothing for 5 days, though, so maybe you'd know better about that :)
;-)
I prefer to think of us as equals, 'cause I'm a nice guy at heart.
You could care so much less that you continue posting to this thread, hmm?
Maybe you're just joking around too, but you do realize landoverbaptist.org is a joke site, right?
Wait, you mean attributing a whole host of ridiculous and unrelated beliefs to the original poster on the basis of one particular element of his post seems like an extreme reaction to you?
Hmm... maybe my rhetorical style just isn't sustainable in the long term.
__
I think you're a (Score:1)
by gd23ka (324741) on Friday September 03, @07:50AM (#10148077)
( http://www.landoverbaptist.org/ )
"LandoverBaptist.org" and "GodHatesFags.com". These two websites are flogged to death by the christofascist-agenda driven radical theocratic ngo/govt "traditional values" lobby aka as the "Focus on the Family", "Christian Coalition" and many others.
Some of you will probably shake your heads and wonder why I get so upset just because he linked to the website "LandoverBaptist.org". I have spent a lot of time on the side, researching and reading up on these people and "family values" is a word they're _extremely_ fond of using in all kinds of contexts such as promoting creation "science", opposing sex education, censoring what you read or view, etc.
Fire up Google or your favorite searchengine and see for yourself. Search for phrases like "traditional family values". Read what they put up on their sites. You will be surprised how open and candid these people are about their plans for our future: a future where enforcing their theological beliefs is far more valuable than human freedom.
__
...the URL in your sig is not fully qualified and is, hence broken. You might go to your user preferences page and make sure you've inserted the "http://" in your href parameter.
Indeed.
I don't see a very high value in attempting to discuss emotion, philosophy, or psychology [the latter simply being the philosophy of emotions] in this forum, because of the sample bias inherent in the Slashdot user base. Instead, I merely try to lead people to more directly state that when they use words like "benefit" or "better standard of living" they are already defining those terms in a material/consumer sense, which circularly verifies that yes, technological efficiency does "benefit" everyone. Self-examination is always positive and, in my opinion, unerringly leads to greater humanity.
Sorry for the confusion, but I'm not clear which statement you are wanting a counterexample to.
Be careful that you understand exactly what you mean by "benefit". Once you have considered the unspoken assumptions in your wording, you may have reason to re-consider my statement that there are other ways of living, prioritizing and evaluating the success of one's life than the way which makes ever-increasing efficiency its final solution.
Kindly ignore the second "not" in the first sentence.
Why should we pay someone to do a job that we can do cheaper and more efficiently some other way?
Perhaps not everyone feels life is not an organic factory in which we should be concerned with increasing production efficiency above all else. There are other ways of looking at the world than that espoused by Ms. Rand, however persuasive her fictionalized arguments sometimes seem.
Time to read Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.
Anyone who goes on record as saying "normal people have no need for [technology x]" will find themselves quoted to hilarious effect when, within ten years, "normal people" are using [technology x] as part of daily life.
Ever heard of a dictionary containing the word "rmgdrduckk5arp"?
It's well known that you can invent "unguessable" accounts at hotmail, e.g. rmgdrduckk5arp@hotmail.com, and never join any mailing list or submit your name to any website or allow MSN to list you in the Hotmail User Directory, and yet within a few days or weeks your account will miraculously begin receiving offers from mail order brides, pills, porn, and so on. I've long suspected that someone working for Hotmail is making money on the side by downloading the user list once a week and selling it to spammers. Which is why my hotmail accounts have lapsed and I mainly use my yahoo or Gmail accounts.
So, are you just going to meta-describe your shopping experience, or are you going to actually name the brand/model you bought that had such noticeably sharper contrast?
I, for one, would like to know.
Tort reform isn't a loser pays system, at least in all the forms I have seen proposed.
I meant my snarky one-line comment to apply only to the concept of "...deter[ring] poor companies/individuals from suing". Upon re-reading I can see that I was not sufficiently clear in indicating the scope of my comment. I apologize for that lack of clarity.
Unfortunately, present-day juries have awarded outrageous punitive awards.
"Outrageous" is an inherently unquantifiable word. I personally prefer to leave the decision of what is "outrageous" up to juries. There are injustices at every level of our justice system -- a runaway jury is hardly less rare than a runaway assistant DA, for example -- so in the final analysis I believe it best to leave power in the hands of citizens as much as possible.
Additionally, the very concept of punishment depends upon the action being of sufficient degree to motivate change on the part of the transgressing party. Just as thirty hours of picking up trash is unlikely to motivate a serial rapist to cease his/her rampage, a fine of thirty thousand dollars is unlikely to motivate change on the part of a serial toxic-waste dumper with three hundred million in annual revenues. While you can technically call both sentences examples of "punishment", in neither case could those sentences be considered by reasonable people to be "punitive".
Your proposal, IMO, would simply deter poor companies/individuals from suing.
Welcome to the GOP, friend! For future reference, the preferred term for this concept is "tort reform".
I'm curious as to why people think this was such a great novel. It was like one of Tom Robbins' weaker stories crossed with one of Dan Simmons' more mundane horror/action works, but with more technobabble thrown in.
Now, The Diamond Age was a well-told story, but Snow Crash? I just don't see it.
__
While I affirm and express solidarity with your scoffing at youth revolutions, the point remains that if the potential negative effects of youth and inexperience are the same as the current negative effects of insider experience [ethical and financial bankruptcy, mismanagement, unnecessary and unjust legislation], would you rather have evil by accident or evil by intent?
Nah, it's more like Gene Wolfe's "Long Sun" series, in which the everyday people actually perform rites to their virtual caretakers/overlords in order to receive fucntional rewards. It'd be like, if you consistently didn't bring at least a small bird to be sacrificed to the god Fanningus, he wouldn't keep your home network protect you from RIAA lawsuits, but if you bought a lamb for the priest of Billicose, your home-built DoomIII network would function smoothly and without lag.
By the way, Foundation's oft-cited status as "greatest SF series" is undeserved, in my opinion. It's somehow too... I dunno... deterministic. I suppose that's connotative code for "white, male, western, forty years dead", although I quite naturally wish to avoid the overtones of political correctness.
__
Forgive him. He's a product of a Texas educational system. If I could barely choke out that oxymoronic sentence without gagging in laughter, imagine how "utdpenguin" must labor under knowledge of his environment every day. Look at it this way -- compared to most Dallasites, he's Roger fucking Penrose.
__