aka, redistribution of wealth from individuals to society, including firefighters, policemen, road construction companies, and so forth. Not to mention all those who actually benefit from those services.
Honestly, anyone who can, in the same breath, claim that promoting "General Welfare" is okay, while simultaneously stating, without qualification, that "it's wrong to take what anyone earns to give it to someone else", is living with a truly remarkable level of cognitive dissonance. Frankly, I'm surprised your brain doesn't explode.
There is no action that is immoral for an individual, that becomes right when done by a collective.
So, I take it you believe that either a) I have the moral right to kill people I believe deserve it, or b) the government-imposed death penalty is immoral?
You call it "simple", I will call it "simpler". Yes, it is easier than apt-get, but it is still by no means user friendly.
How could it *possibly* be simpler? You literally select the category (say, "Sound and Video"), and then find something you like. I honestly can't conceive of a more user-friendly interface. Hell, it's *better* that the Firefox add-ons selector as it's a simple picklist ordered by category, as opposed to an interface where you have to know what to search for in order to find what you're looking for.
When a company fails, the market has shown that people don't want that organization to persist.
Well that's absurd. I can think of any number of reasons why a company may fail outside of this definition:
1) Monopoly abuse preventing a business from gaining access to the market. 2) Fraud by investors or business partners. 3) Failure of suppliers or business partners to meet their contractual obligations (eg, product delivery, quality, etc). 4) Inability to secure funding for necessary large capital outlays (say, due to a massive, system-wide banking failure).
And I'm sure I could go on. In none of these cases has the business's customers made any choice regarding the success or failure of the organization. Rather, it has fallen victim to either a) behaviours that are, today, deemed illegal thanks to government intervention (monopoly abuse, fraud, etc), or b) issues with third parties.
Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that in all these cases government intervention is appropriate. However, in just that list, three of the four failure modes are areas where the government *does* (and should) get involved: monopoly abuse, fraud, and breaking of contractual obligations.
And heck, even in the fourth case, the government is now getting involved because businesses are failing due to the excesses of the unrelated banking industry, and the government would rather keep those secondary businesses alive at the expense of keeping a broken banking system afloat, because the alternative would be even more damaging to the overall economy.
Well sure, if your "proof" is comparing centralized planning a la Russia versus regular free markets, no one will deny that free markets are better. But the idea that *unregulated*, *unfettered* free market capitalism is the solution to all our woes is deeply *deeply* misguided. The unregulated CDS market being an excellent example.
Not that that'll convince you. You libertarians are remarkably adept at taking what are clear failings of free market economics, finding some tiny way in which the government was involved, and then concluding that, yup, government was at fault. It's pretty amazing, the sheer level of intellectual gymnastics you're willing to go through. Pity you can't direct that energy into something *other* than intellectual self-delusion.
You don't. Just go into the main menu and pick "Applications..." or whatever the menu option is. It pops up a simple, user-friendly interface for installing any major applications you'd be interested in, ordered by category (the same categories as present in the main menu, actually).
Of course, if you want to get a little more advanced, you can always pop up Synaptic. But there's absolutely no reason whatsoever that an average user needs to run apt-get on the command-line.
It seems to be a fad to blame climate changes on global warming. Water use policies are probably to blame.
Oh please. The drought is due to lack of rain, plain and simple. How on earth do "water use policies" affect rainfall frequency and volume?
Honestly, if that's your attempt at a rebuttal, you need to work a little harder.
Nonsense. Five years maybe less.
Given how African's have managed to "adapt" in the last couple decades, I'd say your claim is clearly false.
And even if it were correct, many will still suffer in the meantime. Which brings me back to my original point: the current climate is optimal.
I think it'd be a disaster to attempt to fix Earth's climate in a particular regime.
Did I say we should? No. Nice strawman, though. In fact, I never addressed that idea at all.
But now that you bring it up, I think it's clear through my comments that the problem is rapidity of climate change, not climate change in and of itself. And given global warming is accelerating, rapidity of climate change is only becoming more and more of a problem.
As I see it, the toughest problem is elevating most of humanity to current Developed World living standards.
Agreed. Problem: if a large fraction of the world's arable land becomes unusable because of drought or flooding due to climate change, how can you raise the living standard of these people?
Worse, as I mentioned in my previous post, climate change disproportionately damages the very poor you'd wish to elevate. As such, arresting global warming is an extremely important component in the elevation of international living standards.
If that means a modest amount of global warming or other climate change, then so be it. It is a reasonable tradeoff.
From straw men to false dichotomies. Keep it up, you're doing well! Hint: raising living standards does not necessarily require "modest [amounts] of global warming".
Of course I did. I explicitly said the current climate is optimal. Here, let me quote myself:
Anything other than the current climate is non-optimal for the current crop of human beings
Okay, technically I *implicitly* said the current climate is optimal.
Nevertheless, I then provided a reasoned explanation of why I believe that's the case. Since you missed it, I'll reiterate: the current climate is optimal because it's what the current human population is adapted to. Changes to that climate will result in hardship for many as they are no longer adapted to the new climate. I then provided Africa's drought-striken regions as an example of that.
Honestly, did you simply choose not to read my post? Or are your reading comprehension skills just a little weak? I mean, I get that you might disagree with my reasoning, but if that's the case, feel free to rebut. But flat out ignoring the very core point I made is a pretty weak debating tactic.
I see you ignored my African drought example. The current theory is that this is a direct result of global warming causing the rain belt to move south, and it occurred in mere decades, a blink of an eye on geological timescales. The result is vast swaths of previously arable land going dry, and millions of people dying or being displaced.
This is just one single example of climate change wreaking havoc on humanity. Take into account potentially increased odds of coastal flooding, extreme storm weather, and so forth, and you can see how climate change could be disastrous for many.
Second, humans have a long history of quick adaptation to changes
Of course. Given, say, three or four generations, I'm sure people would adapt. Meanwhile, the existing populations, particularly the poor who don't have the resources to move or adapt, will suffer.
Which is why I say the existing climate is, by definition, optimal, and why Mr. Griffin's statements are, at best, naive.
Actually, I take it back. I hadn't really noticed this bit:
"If anything the comments of the those who didn't like his remark were more akin to the right wing religious nuts. It is a religion now and will always be one because anything which is brought up to disprove it is immediately derided regardless of merit. If anything the whole GW document is nothing more than a new age Bible"
*That* is undoubtedly trollish. Pity people can't have an honest debate without throwing in this kind of ridiculous rhetoric...
Normally I wouldn't reply to a post like this, but I just want to be clear, the OP is *not* a troll. In fact, that interpretation of Griffin's comments is quite common, and I think quite reasonable. I just disagree (or rather, believe said comments reflect a certainly amount of naivete regarding the climate change issue).
Slashdot has become a place where the troll, overrated, and flamebait mods are used to downmod things people simply disagree with, and that's just wrong. This case is no different. In fact, I would argue the OP should be modded up, as it's certainly a valid viewpoint. It's just wrong.;)
Anything other than the current climate is non-optimal for the current crop of human beings, as the places we live, the technology we utilize, and our very ways of life are a direct response to the local environments we populate. Change that environment, and a *lot* of people will suffer (African drought, anyone?), as they will be maladapted to the new climate.
Of course, humans can change. But when climate change is happening very rapidly (as is the case now), neither we, nor other species, will be able to compensate fast enough, and the results can be devastating.
As such, Griffin's statement is, at best, extremely naive, bordering on ignorant.
Yeah, but it wasn't designed to be flat out incompetent, which seems to be the primary complaint of many a conservative who desires for small government.
Produce any evidence that the 'MySQL guys' faked benchmark results
FYI, cooking benchmarks doesn't require faking results. In this case, I think the OP just means the benchmarks used to test MySQL just happen to focus on areas MySQL is particularly strong in. Alternatively, it may be an accusation that MySQL was deliberately tuned to favour the specific benchmarks in question (can we say 3dmark cheating?).
Wait, what? Most of Obama's appointments are Clinton retreads or Chicagoland pols.
Yeah, but if they're clear thinking individuals who believe in fact-based reasoning and practicality over partisanship, who the hell cares where they came from?
'course, whether these people fit that definition is a separate topic. But the general consensus seems to be that Obama is selecting excellent people who very much fit this mold.
Actually, interestingly enough, RSA is about as simple a cryptosystem as they come (next to OTP, that is). Really. The complexity is actually in the key generation (and even that is pretty simple once you've got a couple large primes). But once you have them, the actual encryption algorithm is dead simple.
'course, that's not to say it ain't still an impressive accomplishment. But it's no DES implementation.:)
However, I don't consider it child porn, otherwise I think the band would have not been allowed to release it and several people would have been arrested.
So something is child porn if you get censored or arrested for producing it?
Not all scientists agree with the human-caused global warming "community".
No. Just most of them. Well, okay, more like almost all of them. But you're right, there's a few crackpots, corporate shills, and chronic contrarians who opt to buck the trend despite the evidence.
If the prescription medicine actually cures the problem, that's fine. But if it's just pain relief, that's not okay. It's not right to turn people into junkies because the doctors don't have the balls to treat their patients properly.
Bah, this is flat out ridiculous. If taking a pill every day makes an individual functional, *who the fuck cares*? And that goes for all drugs. I don't care if it's aspirine or heroin. Drugs and their use are not in and of themselves evil. Their use is only negative if the habit results in impaired functioning. And in this case, *not using the drug* results in impaired functioning, which is precisely what we should be avoiding!
Now, I agree, if you have two options, a cure or a palliative treatment, you go for the cure. But withholding drugs because of some fear of "junkies" is simply silly and ignorant.
That statement in itself does nothing to refute what I said.
Huh? My statement completely refutes what you said. The OP said:
"They somehow manage to under price the private stores by 10% to 20%"
You replied with:
"That's because they can sell it at a loss"
And I'm telling you, government-run alcohol distribution invariably makes a profit. ie, they *don't* sell it at a loss. Period. My own experience is with the old Alberta-run distribution system, but the same is true in both British Columbia and Ontario, as far as I'm aware.
Slashdot Mirror
aka, redistribution of wealth from individuals to society, including firefighters, policemen, road construction companies, and so forth. Not to mention all those who actually benefit from those services.
Honestly, anyone who can, in the same breath, claim that promoting "General Welfare" is okay, while simultaneously stating, without qualification, that "it's wrong to take what anyone earns to give it to someone else", is living with a truly remarkable level of cognitive dissonance. Frankly, I'm surprised your brain doesn't explode.
There is no action that is immoral for an individual, that becomes right when done by a collective.
So, I take it you believe that either a) I have the moral right to kill people I believe deserve it, or b) the government-imposed death penalty is immoral?
You call it "simple", I will call it "simpler". Yes, it is easier than apt-get, but it is still by no means user friendly.
How could it *possibly* be simpler? You literally select the category (say, "Sound and Video"), and then find something you like. I honestly can't conceive of a more user-friendly interface. Hell, it's *better* that the Firefox add-ons selector as it's a simple picklist ordered by category, as opposed to an interface where you have to know what to search for in order to find what you're looking for.
When a company fails, the market has shown that people don't want that organization to persist.
Well that's absurd. I can think of any number of reasons why a company may fail outside of this definition:
1) Monopoly abuse preventing a business from gaining access to the market.
2) Fraud by investors or business partners.
3) Failure of suppliers or business partners to meet their contractual obligations (eg, product delivery, quality, etc).
4) Inability to secure funding for necessary large capital outlays (say, due to a massive, system-wide banking failure).
And I'm sure I could go on. In none of these cases has the business's customers made any choice regarding the success or failure of the organization. Rather, it has fallen victim to either a) behaviours that are, today, deemed illegal thanks to government intervention (monopoly abuse, fraud, etc), or b) issues with third parties.
Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that in all these cases government intervention is appropriate. However, in just that list, three of the four failure modes are areas where the government *does* (and should) get involved: monopoly abuse, fraud, and breaking of contractual obligations.
And heck, even in the fourth case, the government is now getting involved because businesses are failing due to the excesses of the unrelated banking industry, and the government would rather keep those secondary businesses alive at the expense of keeping a broken banking system afloat, because the alternative would be even more damaging to the overall economy.
Well sure, if your "proof" is comparing centralized planning a la Russia versus regular free markets, no one will deny that free markets are better. But the idea that *unregulated*, *unfettered* free market capitalism is the solution to all our woes is deeply *deeply* misguided. The unregulated CDS market being an excellent example.
Not that that'll convince you. You libertarians are remarkably adept at taking what are clear failings of free market economics, finding some tiny way in which the government was involved, and then concluding that, yup, government was at fault. It's pretty amazing, the sheer level of intellectual gymnastics you're willing to go through. Pity you can't direct that energy into something *other* than intellectual self-delusion.
Why should I have to type "apt-get"?
You don't. Just go into the main menu and pick "Applications..." or whatever the menu option is. It pops up a simple, user-friendly interface for installing any major applications you'd be interested in, ordered by category (the same categories as present in the main menu, actually).
Of course, if you want to get a little more advanced, you can always pop up Synaptic. But there's absolutely no reason whatsoever that an average user needs to run apt-get on the command-line.
It seems to be a fad to blame climate changes on global warming. Water use policies are probably to blame.
Oh please. The drought is due to lack of rain, plain and simple. How on earth do "water use policies" affect rainfall frequency and volume?
Honestly, if that's your attempt at a rebuttal, you need to work a little harder.
Nonsense. Five years maybe less.
Given how African's have managed to "adapt" in the last couple decades, I'd say your claim is clearly false.
And even if it were correct, many will still suffer in the meantime. Which brings me back to my original point: the current climate is optimal.
I think it'd be a disaster to attempt to fix Earth's climate in a particular regime.
Did I say we should? No. Nice strawman, though. In fact, I never addressed that idea at all.
But now that you bring it up, I think it's clear through my comments that the problem is rapidity of climate change, not climate change in and of itself. And given global warming is accelerating, rapidity of climate change is only becoming more and more of a problem.
As I see it, the toughest problem is elevating most of humanity to current Developed World living standards.
Agreed. Problem: if a large fraction of the world's arable land becomes unusable because of drought or flooding due to climate change, how can you raise the living standard of these people?
Worse, as I mentioned in my previous post, climate change disproportionately damages the very poor you'd wish to elevate. As such, arresting global warming is an extremely important component in the elevation of international living standards.
If that means a modest amount of global warming or other climate change, then so be it. It is a reasonable tradeoff.
From straw men to false dichotomies. Keep it up, you're doing well! Hint: raising living standards does not necessarily require "modest [amounts] of global warming".
You still didn't anwser if this is optimal
Of course I did. I explicitly said the current climate is optimal. Here, let me quote myself:
Okay, technically I *implicitly* said the current climate is optimal.
Nevertheless, I then provided a reasoned explanation of why I believe that's the case. Since you missed it, I'll reiterate: the current climate is optimal because it's what the current human population is adapted to. Changes to that climate will result in hardship for many as they are no longer adapted to the new climate. I then provided Africa's drought-striken regions as an example of that.
Honestly, did you simply choose not to read my post? Or are your reading comprehension skills just a little weak? I mean, I get that you might disagree with my reasoning, but if that's the case, feel free to rebut. But flat out ignoring the very core point I made is a pretty weak debating tactic.
First, climate isn't changing rapidly.
I see you ignored my African drought example. The current theory is that this is a direct result of global warming causing the rain belt to move south, and it occurred in mere decades, a blink of an eye on geological timescales. The result is vast swaths of previously arable land going dry, and millions of people dying or being displaced.
This is just one single example of climate change wreaking havoc on humanity. Take into account potentially increased odds of coastal flooding, extreme storm weather, and so forth, and you can see how climate change could be disastrous for many.
Second, humans have a long history of quick adaptation to changes
Of course. Given, say, three or four generations, I'm sure people would adapt. Meanwhile, the existing populations, particularly the poor who don't have the resources to move or adapt, will suffer.
Which is why I say the existing climate is, by definition, optimal, and why Mr. Griffin's statements are, at best, naive.
Actually, I take it back. I hadn't really noticed this bit:
"If anything the comments of the those who didn't like his remark were more akin to the right wing religious nuts. It is a religion now and will always be one because anything which is brought up to disprove it is immediately derided regardless of merit. If anything the whole GW document is nothing more than a new age Bible"
*That* is undoubtedly trollish. Pity people can't have an honest debate without throwing in this kind of ridiculous rhetoric...
Normally I wouldn't reply to a post like this, but I just want to be clear, the OP is *not* a troll. In fact, that interpretation of Griffin's comments is quite common, and I think quite reasonable. I just disagree (or rather, believe said comments reflect a certainly amount of naivete regarding the climate change issue).
Slashdot has become a place where the troll, overrated, and flamebait mods are used to downmod things people simply disagree with, and that's just wrong. This case is no different. In fact, I would argue the OP should be modded up, as it's certainly a valid viewpoint. It's just wrong. ;)
I think a lot of the abortion debate is people confusing what they mean by "life"...
Not quite. The abortion debate is entirely about differing opinions about the definition of "life", more specifically "personhood".
why are diamonds still considered precious?
Marketing and cultural inertia. No more, no less.
we don't know what the optimal climate is.
Anything other than the current climate is non-optimal for the current crop of human beings, as the places we live, the technology we utilize, and our very ways of life are a direct response to the local environments we populate. Change that environment, and a *lot* of people will suffer (African drought, anyone?), as they will be maladapted to the new climate.
Of course, humans can change. But when climate change is happening very rapidly (as is the case now), neither we, nor other species, will be able to compensate fast enough, and the results can be devastating.
As such, Griffin's statement is, at best, extremely naive, bordering on ignorant.
Yeah, but it wasn't designed to be flat out incompetent, which seems to be the primary complaint of many a conservative who desires for small government.
Produce any evidence that the 'MySQL guys' faked benchmark results
FYI, cooking benchmarks doesn't require faking results. In this case, I think the OP just means the benchmarks used to test MySQL just happen to focus on areas MySQL is particularly strong in. Alternatively, it may be an accusation that MySQL was deliberately tuned to favour the specific benchmarks in question (can we say 3dmark cheating?).
Uhh, you only have to do that to decrypt, which is precisely what he *didn't* implement.
Wait, what? Most of Obama's appointments are Clinton retreads or Chicagoland pols.
Yeah, but if they're clear thinking individuals who believe in fact-based reasoning and practicality over partisanship, who the hell cares where they came from?
'course, whether these people fit that definition is a separate topic. But the general consensus seems to be that Obama is selecting excellent people who very much fit this mold.
Despite what you may have heard, we Americans are not as unsophisticated as you might think.
No, *you're* not as unsophisticated as we might think. But that says nothing of Americans as a group.
'course, I'm not saying the American stereotype is accurate. But your single anecdote doesn't qualify as a debunking.
Actually, interestingly enough, RSA is about as simple a cryptosystem as they come (next to OTP, that is). Really. The complexity is actually in the key generation (and even that is pretty simple once you've got a couple large primes). But once you have them, the actual encryption algorithm is dead simple.
'course, that's not to say it ain't still an impressive accomplishment. But it's no DES implementation. :)
However, I don't consider it child porn, otherwise I think the band would have not been allowed to release it and several people would have been arrested.
So something is child porn if you get censored or arrested for producing it?
Interesting metric.
Not all scientists agree with the human-caused global warming "community".
No. Just most of them. Well, okay, more like almost all of them. But you're right, there's a few crackpots, corporate shills, and chronic contrarians who opt to buck the trend despite the evidence.
Like yourself, for instance!
I consider myself a climate expert
And I consider myself a medical expert. Stupid judge didn't seem to agree after I performed surgery in my basement, though...
If the prescription medicine actually cures the problem, that's fine. But if it's just pain relief, that's not okay. It's not right to turn people into junkies because the doctors don't have the balls to treat their patients properly.
Bah, this is flat out ridiculous. If taking a pill every day makes an individual functional, *who the fuck cares*? And that goes for all drugs. I don't care if it's aspirine or heroin. Drugs and their use are not in and of themselves evil. Their use is only negative if the habit results in impaired functioning. And in this case, *not using the drug* results in impaired functioning, which is precisely what we should be avoiding!
Now, I agree, if you have two options, a cure or a palliative treatment, you go for the cure. But withholding drugs because of some fear of "junkies" is simply silly and ignorant.
That statement in itself does nothing to refute what I said.
Huh? My statement completely refutes what you said. The OP said:
"They somehow manage to under price the private stores by 10% to 20%"
You replied with:
"That's because they can sell it at a loss"
And I'm telling you, government-run alcohol distribution invariably makes a profit. ie, they *don't* sell it at a loss. Period. My own experience is with the old Alberta-run distribution system, but the same is true in both British Columbia and Ontario, as far as I'm aware.
In other words, you're wrong. Period.