Take it easy Canadians, I am only kidding. I would never really want to bad-mouth your charming little "country", or your amusingly xenophobic culture.
Canada has a larger area than the US, for a start.
And it is funny how you accuse us here in Canada of being xenophobic. Canada is the most multicultural country in North America. Come here to Montréal any day, and see for yourself. An amazing city to live in.
If you took offense at my comments about what a silly place Canada is, I humbly apologize.
Somehow, I can't bring myself to believe in your apology.
P.P.S. I know that didn't look like much of an apology. Sorry.
That is not my website. It's a website I link in the URL field of my User Info page. Many people in/. link to pages which are not their website.
I'll put it another way. Doubtless that when David Duke was running for political office, the New York Times, a reputable and responsible, jornalistic institution, discovered, and reported on, Duke's history as a klansman.
Do you think for a second that The New York Times called Duke a "white racist bigot", despite the fact that that is what his clan membership implies?
No, because they don't consider him to be one of the bad guys. The media prints false accusations all the time, but mostly against leftists groups and persons. Check this page.
[ad hominem and appeal to emotion] immediately invalidate your arguement and cause you to lose
You are not applying this correctly. If ad hominem and appeal to emotion are all you base your argument on, then you don't have an argument. However, if one provides an otherwise valid argument, the fact that one has used these things do not invalidate it. Of course, it is not a very friendly and/or corteous thing to do. Which, since you have accussed me publicly of being a troll, I have taken the liberty of not being.
Oh... and I *DO* know what a tautology is... CompSci majors ARE required to take BOTH Digital Logic AND Discrete Structures, last I checked. I got A's in both...
Obviously, you've (a) forgotten whatever they taught you, (b) thought they taught you tons of logic, while you were only given a trifling. I repeat, I have *taught* logic. I have studied First Order Logic, Dynamic Logic, Modal Logic, Hybrid Logic, Type Theory, Model Theoretic Semantics, Substructural Logics, Feature Logics, and some more. At grad level. I'd advise you to not take my knowledge here for granted.
A tautology is any expression which will ALWAYS evaluate to 1 [...] Granted, an actual proof is much more complex than above, but that IS just sophomore level DigiLogic/DiscStructures to know that a single exception DOES disproove a tautology.
This is a completely erroneous thing to say. If you disprove a statement, then it wasn't a tautology to start with.
One counterexample is enough to disprove any statement. But if a statement is a tautology, no counterexample can exist.
If you know of a grad level DiscStructures or DigiLogic class that can demonstrate an instance where a tautology holds even when it evaluates to 0 in ANY case, I'd like to hear about it.... School AND professor, if you please, and the CS text that would print such a thing. Every prof at MY school said such a thing was impossible, that if you could proove an instance where it resolves to 0, it is NOT a tautology.
Of course I do not know of such a thing. A tatutology is a statement that holds solely in virtue of the configuration of its logical constants. A tautology does not evaluate to 1 by definition.
Let's go back to where this started. You said you had given a "counterexample to my tautology", and thus, you had proven me wrong. Well, if whatever I said could be disproven, then it was not a tautology. Since I made only failsifiable statements in my previous posts, then I said no tautologies.
And the statement you were trying to disprove had a quantifier "most". To disprove such a statement, a single counterexample is not sufficient, except in the case the domain of quantification contains 2 or less individuals.
I recall someone (I can't remember who) once said that the sign of a healthy society is one which can laugh at itself
Yeah, this is so very convenient for you, isn't it?
Suppose we have this situation:
Mexican: Hey, gringo!!! USian: (pissed) What's the matter with you? Why are you insulting me? I haven't done anything to you!!! Mexican: Gee, you need to learn to laugh at your own society!!
This is, I think we all would agree, insulting. What is the difference between what happened in this thread and what I put here?
And who moderated the parent up? This is one of the most disgusting acts I've seen in the day.
I have nothing but praise for Indians. Among my best friends I count a couple from India. Brilliant people, who have been graceful to share with me great food, minds, and culture.
You should have much more humility. Indian culture is thousands of years older than US culture, and far more varied and interesting.
Granted, it's not legal to hunt down and shoot criminals yourself, hell, I don't think it's legal to even detain them yourself until the authorities arrive... here. OTOH, I don't know what the law regarding the topic is in Arizona.
And what about conspiring to do these things?
But then again, Texas has some very... shall we say: unrestrictive... laws considering what actions you may take to defend your homestead against tresspassing criminals.
Yes. And they also apply the death penalty with insufficient evidence.
The fact that something is legal does not make it ethical.
Not to mention that the guy in Arizona who organizes this group is leasing 18k acres from the state government. He is doing this in state land.
Point is, you call these people murders, and, as far as I can tell, they haven't even been to trial, much less convicted. Guilty till prooven innocent, eh?
Do you make a conscious decision to use all these strawman arguments, or does it naturally come out like that? Where did I call anyone a murderer? All I said is that these people are organizing to hunt down immigrants and have wounded them. This is just public knowledge.
But that's all irrelevant. The link *IS* very biased and one-sided. The tone *IS* inflamatory, deliberately written to incite emotional, rathar than intellectual response.
Bullshit. You don't like neither what they are saying, or what I'm saying, or the way it is said, that's all.
It takes only *ONE* exception (myself, in this case, but I could easily use any number of my friends or coworkers) to disprove a tautology. So, no, actually, I don't.
I repeat: you need to review your logic. And practice your reading comprehension skills. Actually, I'll be a good logic teacher (a job I've had in real life) and give you two exercises:
Look up the meaning of the word "tautology". (It doesn't mean what you think.) Then answer the question: how could you disprove a tautology? Can a tautology be disproven at all?
Look up the meaning of the word "most". Which are the truth conditions for a sentence of the form Most(A)(B) (e.g. Most(students)(swim across the Channel))? Under which condtions, then, is the sentence Most people from the US think the US is the world> true? Conversely, under which conditions is it false?
I've seen enough of the world to know that genuinely underpriviliged people don't go around ranting about imperialism
Well, I've seen it, but I'll grant you it is very rare. You do find underprivileged people forming groups and attacking the most immediate sources of oppression in their community-- corporations, the government, etc.
But you do find many people born in underprivileged families, that by chance get a good education and/or a less miserable life, and thus a wider outlook.
I also know that the Third World people who do behave that way invariably come from rich families, had a lifestyle I've never dreamed of for myself and obsessively project their guilt onto me. Of the two of us, I'm thinking exactly one grew up with a house full of servants. And it sure wasn't me.
You are projecting your prejudices. My experience is precisely the opposite-- in Latin America, the rich are as a rule the most in favor of the status quo.
And there were no servants in my house, nor in the houses of any of my collaborators in the organizations I've been a member of.
You come off it - try speaking your mind in opposition to the government in Uganda without putting your life at risk. [...]
And then try doing the same from a nice anonymous (using cryptography) perch on the net. You can start a web page, get email, spread the word, gail allies, argue the points, and say anything you want on the net - that truly makes it the center of free speech in the world.
Why do people keep proving my points, yet thinking that they have disproven them?
There is an even simpler reason why the net can't be center of free speech in the world: Free speech is a right. Rights are guaranteed by political entities in their territories. The net is not a political entity nor a territory. Therefore, the net can't guarantee free speech. You are confusing "free speech in the net" with "free speech in countries connected to the net".
The fact that in the cases you mention people have to set up anonymous webpages and email accounts to do what they are doing proves that they don't have freedom of speech, even in the net. They still put themselves in danger by expressing their opinions.
And they are always vulnerable to having their "anonymity" treasoned by the corporations that run the "anonymous" servers. Corporations have in the past collaborated with some of the most oppressive dictatorships in the third world, to the point of providing lists of persons to be assassinated. What stops this from happening to members of actvist groups that happen to pick the wrong web or email provider?
The proper definition of a "troll" can be found in the jargon file
And where did I talk about the "proper" definition of troll? You yourself quoted me talking about something completely different:
Which
in Slashbot-speak means "I don't agree with you, but I don't have any counterarguments or moderator points".
There I clearly imply that slashbots have a wrong notion of what a troll is. Which further implies that there _is_ a right notion; but that it is not the one I'm talking about.
You have just given a strawman argument. You attack me for saying things I did not say; and even worse, the attack consists of things I implied!
Your posts are deliberately inflamatory, and obviously calculated to be as insulting and offensive as possible. The same can be also said for the site (aztlan.net) that you link to.
So now, a site denouncing paramilitary vigilantes in the US-Mexico border who hunt down Mexican peasants in the border, and have been responsible for deaths, is "insulting and offensive"?
Anyway, I don't see you scanning/. for all heated discussions, and making similar accusations. Why do you pick on me? Could it have something to do with what I argue and defend?
And your deliberately inflamatory, and in at least one case totally invented and patently incorrect ("unitedstatesian"), and blantantly raceist ("gringo") tone and word choice belies your nature, as does your complete unwillingness to brook any arguement.
Well, how do you suggest I translate "estadounidense" ("étatsunisdien"), "América" ("Amerique"), "americano/a" ("américain(e)"), etc? I'm trying to improve on the terminology. so as to be able to express in English distinctions you can trivially express in Spanish or French.
And how frequently can I expect you to come to my defense when I get called a "wetback" or a "spik", or when my wife gets called a "chink"? I've had enough. If you fully buy into the stupid ideology of the US, I'll call you by the g-word. (And note that, by what I've just said above, this makes it an ideological insult, not a racial insult.)
Well, lessee... checking my tax bracket @ irs.gov... nope. I'm nowhere NEAR the top 1%'s income. No enormous wealth here. But I still have net access. As for the hardware, I can put together a perfectly internet capable box for under $400... not a ton of money there... and you can get net access for FREE if you care to put up with a few ads... or ISPs are available for as little as $10/month without the ads. $400 initial + 0-10 per month... seems pretty cheap to me.
Ironic. You try to debunk me by looking at income data from the richest country in the world, the US!!!
Americans "must believe the US is the world."
Easily disproven. Almost laughably so. I, personaly, [...]
Strawman. Where did I say that? You must be referring to this:
if you are like
most unitedstatesians I've met, you must believe the US is the world
I'm just speaking from my experience. If you have some reason for believing that I've had to deal with an unrepresentative sample, please say so.
I also have many friends from the US who agree with me on this.
And if your idea of "easily disproven" is to give a personal anecdote, you need to review logic, argumentation and standards of evidence.
Which in Slashbot-speak means "I don't agree with you, but I don't have any counterarguments or moderator points". Ignorant coward.
It's Estanisláo.
No, it's Estanislao. Why the fuck do you think you know my name better than I do?
Anyway, if you knew even one thing about Spanish orthography, you'd know that words with penultimate stress are only accented when they end in a consonant, except when that consonant is "s" or "n". So "Estanislao" is the standard way of writing my name. Why this 18th century Gaucho poet's name had an accent in the final "a" beats me, but it's certainly the exception.
Also, if you bother to look up my name as is written you'll find plenty of examples. Google link, since you must be too lazy to do it yourself, bastard.
No te pongas a hablar mierda de lo que no sabes. Y deja de joder con mi nombre, pendejo.
As I see it, and most of you would agree I'm sure, the internet is the last place of truly free speech.
Bullshit. The net is just another exclusive forum for a prvileged socioeconomic minority that enjoys enormous wealth produced by the labour of untold millions in the third world. The economic and political forces that built the and maintain the net (US military, major media corporations) are also accomplices in egregious violations of basic human rights elsewhere.
I'm wondering how the internet is ever going to remain the free speech center of the world.
Are you being deliberately sarcastic, or just ethnocentric when you say "free speech center of the world? I think the latter, so I apologize for the following if you meant the first.
Most of the world doesn't have net access. How the fuck can the net be the "free speech center of the world"?
You must be under the delusion that the industrialized countries are the world, while those "dirty, poor places" like Mexico, Colombia, Africa or Uganda are part of some other planet. (And this is being optimistic: if you are like most unitedstatesians I've met, you must believe the US is the world.) Come off it.
"Look, dumbass, college is four years of unlimited sex and alcohol paid for by your parents. Are you really stupid enough to NOT go?"
These, of course, must have obviously been rich gringo kids, in the good old U. S. of A., where undergrad education is bafflingly bad, yet even more bafflingly expensive. It is easy to say crap like this when you don't have to work for a living, 40 hours a week in 2 crappy part-time jobs while doing 16 units a semester, all the while accumulating debt and, worse, having to stand a few jackass rich frat boys having a 4-year paid vacation, courtesy of Poppy CEO.
I'm genuinely sorry for the couple of guys who posted that they are in debt for going to college. Nobody should have to be in that situation to study.
In most industrialized nations, college education is either very cheap or free, and the education is actually better for undergrad degrees. (Grad degrees are a different matter; here the US is better, but then at an even higher price.)
Even in many 3rd world countries (Mexico comes to mind), the state universities have a mandate to keep study costs low, so people from the whole social spectrum can go to college.
*I* recommend you re-read my post before accusing me of something I am innocent of.
Let's see what you wrote. I freely emphasize key words:
Most people don't understand how a law gets created (
even in general terms). Nor do they understand WHICH laws SHOULD BE created. Nor do they understand how a law can/should be enforced. Etc. I agree that everyone should be able to be involved, but I don't agree that this shouldn't require any education.
This is inherently undemocratic. What do you mean the woman in the street doesn't understand how laws are created even in general terms? Don't you think that they have a very good idea of what needs to be regulated, and thus the essential starting point for coming to which laws need to be created? Do you really, really think that the man in the street, who is subjected to law enforcement day in and day out, has no reasonable idea of how laws can, are, and should be enforced?
What conceivable advantage could I have over Joe Schmoe if I understand the mathematics of a process that neither of us participates in?
You can spot irregularities. However, the fact that you understand the process allows you to collude with those that, like you, understand. This is the essential point.
There are obscure and arcane (to a layman) statistical techniques that get applied to census data to figure out various facts and figures. But all the public sees is the end result, so it doesn't matter if we understand it.
You bring censi into the picture as if it reinforced your point. However, it doesn't. As a matter of fact, many countries have manipulated censi in order to undercount minorities and deny them representation. It matters mightily if the public understands or not a census.
Once the whistle is blown, the entire public benefits (including non-statisticians). So Joe Schmoe doesn't have to understand statistics, he just needs to know that there are statisticians who don't work for the gov't.
How do you know which of the statisticians is right if you're not one?
A correctly designed crypographic protocol is immune from fudging (even from the inside), so we shouldn't have to worry about this case.
No system is immune to wetware exploits.
In any case, I think you will find that the average layman only THINKS he knows how it works with paper. But start really questioning him ("how are absentee ballots counted", "what is the procedure for handling ties", "given that with a large volume of ballots our count may be off by several votes, how do we determine when we HAVE a tie") and you'll find that he isn't so sure.
But the layperson can master the details of this in a relatively short time. The details of network transmission, cryptography, and database systems take much more to master.
1) Creating a new law is more than just marking and counting paper. Most people don't understand how a law gets created (even in general terms). Nor do they understand WHICH laws SHOULD BE created. Nor do they understand how a law can/should be enforced.
I think you underestimate the intellectual powers of normal people, and their capacity to coordinate their action to achieve very complex goals. I recommend you pick up some CDs by Alan Lomax before you ever fire off again with this "normal people can't think for themselves" argument. The Italian recordings are particularly recommended, and above all, The Trallaleri of Genoa.
Anyway, of course creating a law is more than marking paper. But I wasn't talking about creating laws, but about voting. Thus point 1 is irrelevant.
2) Why do you have to understand cryptography in order to digitally sign things? I don't understand electromagnetic theory but I am able to turn my lamp on. A good implementation will be only a little more difficult to use than clicking on the "digitally sign" button.
Again, irrelevant. Of course, everyone can understand the concept of "press button (a) to vote for bad candidate #1, bress (b) to vote for bad candidate #2". But this is not what I was talking abuot!
Voting involves a lot more than just people marking papers. It involves making sure there are no duplicate votes, making sure no votes are lost, and counting the votes. When this is done with conventional means, everyone can understand how it works; when it is done electronically, only a technological elite can understand how it works. Thus this elite gains undue power over the process.
I don't think I have to bother with point 3. Do you really want to live in a society where everybody needs to learn how cryptography works in order to be able to trust the voting process? It's a crazy idea.
What everyone keeps forgetting (or ignoring?) is that so many young people are growing up with this technology in their homes, or their friends' homes. And it is young people, historically, who often want to "change the world" but lack the tools to organize effectively, and young people who are currently so alienated they don't even bother to vote. So I think this is great!!!
Not so fast. The young people you are thinking about may be doing commendable things with the tools they have, but they are not making their own tools; they are using tools developed by others who don't share their interests.
Which means that those who create and control the tools have the power to destroy these efforts. You can see one angle of this in laws like the DMCA, which put restrictions on who can make tools to deal with information. Expect in the future more and more crippled hardware that will curb more and more the freedoms you enjoy now on the net.
Hopefully this will allow the widest possible cross-section of society a far greater chance to participate in the process of law-making
You seem to be far more hopeful than I am. I expect nothing but digital hell to rain on mi gente from this.
And unless you're a trained lawyer how are you going to be able to separate the real from the fake?
This is a major trick. One of the major principles behind the legal system is that not knowing the law is not an excuse for breaking it. The trick behind the legal profession, then, is to write the law so obtusely so as nobody can understand it-- not even them. Why do you think there's all these lawsuits about how laws are to be interpreted? It's a scam.
I don't know whether or not this will turn out for the best in the end - but in order for it to stand a chance it's going to require an educated and aware populace - something the US has a real problem with at the moment. If they can change this, then this could be the best idea in ages, otherwise it looks like it could all go horribly wrong.
It will certainly go wrong, because if this is being pushed by those in power, it is only so they can further increase their power over the voting process. Making something as essential as voting depend on high technology will only make those who create and control the high technology create and control the future means of "democratic" decision making.
Of course, since this is/., and the crowd here belongs mostly to the group that create and control the technology, expect major cheers for this.
I mean, when you allow technology like this, which the public does not understand, to become central to the democratic process, you empower a small technological elite who understands the technology and its limitations.
I say all voting processes should stay on paper. Everyone can understand marking papers and counting them, while most can't understand cryptography and digital signatures.
Obviously, the "interest" of environmentalists is to not spill oil; the opposite of this would be to indeed spill oil. Voila.
This is just one simplistic way of expressing the interest of environmentalists. Environmentalists can be said to desire to prevent damage to the environment as much as possible; the opposite of this would be not to desire to prevent damage to the environment as much as possible. Which doesn't mean to be in favor of openly damaging it.
Believe it or not, they really aren't happy with that. They lose profits even if they spill oil occasionally. If they lost it regularly, they'd go out of business.
Let's drop the distinction between "occasionally" and "regularly", since, for all we know, my regularly could even be less frequently than your occassionally.
The point is that the maximum environment-friendliness comes at a cost that cuts into corporate profits. Period. They make more money letting the oil spill once in a while than by spending money making it as sure as possible it won't happen.
If they donate money and it helps out with the cause what do you care about their motives? Or are you just an elitist who can't stand those who donate money to something you care about for "the wrong reasons"?
Again, you are putting words in my mouth. I by complained about a guy that was saying crap about "caring about penguins", yet can't be bothered to write a letter or send a fax, and whines about some people who are doing actual work in favor of the environment not setting up an SSL server so he can donate money without leaving his couch.
If you care about something and donate money to some entity doing good work on that, great. If you care about something and donate money to some entity that doesn't do good work at all, I'll respect your motives and try to explain why I think you're mistaken. If you don't care about something, yet do donate some money to it, I'll be critical of your motives, but the money can help.
But if you say you care about something, say you'd like to give money, but don't do it and start whining about how the people who are actually doing stuff aren't making it easy enough for you, expect no pity.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent. This should be a great thing for those of us who are driven absolutely crazy by fan noise from computers.
My computer is so fscking loud I sometimes almost want to pull out my Beretta and empty my clip on it.
Canada has a larger area than the US, for a start.
And it is funny how you accuse us here in Canada of being xenophobic. Canada is the most multicultural country in North America. Come here to Montréal any day, and see for yourself. An amazing city to live in.
If you took offense at my comments about what a silly place Canada is, I humbly apologize.
Somehow, I can't bring myself to believe in your apology.
P.P.S. I know that didn't look like much of an apology. Sorry.
Ah, that must be why.
That is not my website. It's a website I link in the URL field of my User Info page. Many people in /. link to pages which are not their website.
I'll put it another way. Doubtless that when David Duke was running for political office, the New York Times, a reputable and responsible, jornalistic institution, discovered, and reported on, Duke's history as a klansman.
Do you think for a second that The New York Times called Duke a "white racist bigot", despite the fact that that is what his clan membership implies?
No, because they don't consider him to be one of the bad guys. The media prints false accusations all the time, but mostly against leftists groups and persons. Check this page.
[ad hominem and appeal to emotion] immediately invalidate your arguement and cause you to lose
You are not applying this correctly. If ad hominem and appeal to emotion are all you base your argument on, then you don't have an argument. However, if one provides an otherwise valid argument, the fact that one has used these things do not invalidate it. Of course, it is not a very friendly and/or corteous thing to do. Which, since you have accussed me publicly of being a troll, I have taken the liberty of not being.
Oh... and I *DO* know what a tautology is... CompSci majors ARE required to take BOTH Digital Logic AND Discrete Structures, last I checked. I got A's in both...
Obviously, you've (a) forgotten whatever they taught you, (b) thought they taught you tons of logic, while you were only given a trifling. I repeat, I have *taught* logic. I have studied First Order Logic, Dynamic Logic, Modal Logic, Hybrid Logic, Type Theory, Model Theoretic Semantics, Substructural Logics, Feature Logics, and some more. At grad level. I'd advise you to not take my knowledge here for granted.
A tautology is any expression which will ALWAYS evaluate to 1
[...]
Granted, an actual proof is much more complex than above, but that IS just sophomore level DigiLogic/DiscStructures to know that a single exception DOES disproove a tautology.
This is a completely erroneous thing to say. If you disprove a statement, then it wasn't a tautology to start with.
One counterexample is enough to disprove any statement. But if a statement is a tautology, no counterexample can exist.
If you know of a grad level DiscStructures or DigiLogic class that can demonstrate an instance where a tautology holds even when it evaluates to 0 in ANY case, I'd like to hear about it.... School AND professor, if you please, and the CS text that would print such a thing. Every prof at MY school said such a thing was impossible, that if you could proove an instance where it resolves to 0, it is NOT a tautology.
Of course I do not know of such a thing. A tatutology is a statement that holds solely in virtue of the configuration of its logical constants. A tautology does not evaluate to 1 by definition.
Let's go back to where this started. You said you had given a "counterexample to my tautology", and thus, you had proven me wrong. Well, if whatever I said could be disproven, then it was not a tautology. Since I made only failsifiable statements in my previous posts, then I said no tautologies.
And the statement you were trying to disprove had a quantifier "most". To disprove such a statement, a single counterexample is not sufficient, except in the case the domain of quantification contains 2 or less individuals.
You apparently happen to be a very easygoing person. Good for you.
Point where.
2) they can't take a joke at their own expense.
Point where is the joke.
Suppose I called you asshole: "Hey asshole". Where is the joke here?
Strawman arguments.
First paragraph of my post above is a quote from the person I replied to.
First of all, you mean the US, not América.
Second, can you point out precisely what the "controversy" was behind your bigoted, lame joke?
Yeah, this is so very convenient for you, isn't it?
Suppose we have this situation:
Mexican: Hey, gringo!!!
USian: (pissed) What's the matter with you? Why are you insulting me? I haven't done anything to you!!!
Mexican: Gee, you need to learn to laugh at your own society!!
This is, I think we all would agree, insulting. What is the difference between what happened in this thread and what I put here?
I have nothing but praise for Indians. Among my best friends I count a couple from India. Brilliant people, who have been graceful to share with me great food, minds, and culture.
You should have much more humility. Indian culture is thousands of years older than US culture, and far more varied and interesting.
In fact, I commend you for your attitude.
And what about conspiring to do these things?
But then again, Texas has some very... shall we say: unrestrictive... laws considering what actions you may take to defend your homestead against tresspassing criminals.
Yes. And they also apply the death penalty with insufficient evidence.
The fact that something is legal does not make it ethical.
Not to mention that the guy in Arizona who organizes this group is leasing 18k acres from the state government. He is doing this in state land.
Point is, you call these people murders, and, as far as I can tell, they haven't even been to trial, much less convicted. Guilty till prooven innocent, eh?
Do you make a conscious decision to use all these strawman arguments, or does it naturally come out like that? Where did I call anyone a murderer? All I said is that these people are organizing to hunt down immigrants and have wounded them. This is just public knowledge.
But that's all irrelevant. The link *IS* very biased and one-sided. The tone *IS* inflamatory, deliberately written to incite emotional, rathar than intellectual response.
Bullshit. You don't like neither what they are saying, or what I'm saying, or the way it is said, that's all.
It takes only *ONE* exception (myself, in this case, but I could easily use any number of my friends or coworkers) to disprove a tautology. So, no, actually, I don't.
I repeat: you need to review your logic. And practice your reading comprehension skills. Actually, I'll be a good logic teacher (a job I've had in real life) and give you two exercises:
Well, I've seen it, but I'll grant you it is very rare. You do find underprivileged people forming groups and attacking the most immediate sources of oppression in their community-- corporations, the government, etc.
But you do find many people born in underprivileged families, that by chance get a good education and/or a less miserable life, and thus a wider outlook.
I also know that the Third World people who do behave that way invariably come from rich families, had a lifestyle I've never dreamed of for myself and obsessively project their guilt onto me. Of the two of us, I'm thinking exactly one grew up with a house full of servants. And it sure wasn't me.
You are projecting your prejudices. My experience is precisely the opposite-- in Latin America, the rich are as a rule the most in favor of the status quo.
And there were no servants in my house, nor in the houses of any of my collaborators in the organizations I've been a member of.
You are a disgusting human being.
And then try doing the same from a nice anonymous (using cryptography) perch on the net. You can start a web page, get email, spread the word, gail allies, argue the points, and say anything you want on the net - that truly makes it the center of free speech in the world.
Why do people keep proving my points, yet thinking that they have disproven them?
There is an even simpler reason why the net can't be center of free speech in the world: Free speech is a right. Rights are guaranteed by political entities in their territories. The net is not a political entity nor a territory. Therefore, the net can't guarantee free speech. You are confusing "free speech in the net" with "free speech in countries connected to the net".
The fact that in the cases you mention people have to set up anonymous webpages and email accounts to do what they are doing proves that they don't have freedom of speech, even in the net. They still put themselves in danger by expressing their opinions.
And they are always vulnerable to having their "anonymity" treasoned by the corporations that run the "anonymous" servers. Corporations have in the past collaborated with some of the most oppressive dictatorships in the third world, to the point of providing lists of persons to be assassinated. What stops this from happening to members of actvist groups that happen to pick the wrong web or email provider?
And where did I talk about the "proper" definition of troll? You yourself quoted me talking about something completely different:
There I clearly imply that slashbots have a wrong notion of what a troll is. Which further implies that there _is_ a right notion; but that it is not the one I'm talking about.You have just given a strawman argument. You attack me for saying things I did not say; and even worse, the attack consists of things I implied!
Your posts are deliberately inflamatory, and obviously calculated to be as insulting and offensive as possible. The same can be also said for the site (aztlan.net) that you link to.
So now, a site denouncing paramilitary vigilantes in the US-Mexico border who hunt down Mexican peasants in the border, and have been responsible for deaths, is "insulting and offensive"?
Anyway, I don't see you scanning /. for all heated discussions, and making similar accusations. Why do you pick on me? Could it have something to do with what I argue and defend?
And your deliberately inflamatory, and in at least one case totally invented and patently incorrect ("unitedstatesian"), and blantantly raceist ("gringo") tone and word choice belies your nature, as does your complete unwillingness to brook any arguement.
Well, how do you suggest I translate "estadounidense" ("étatsunisdien"), "América" ("Amerique"), "americano/a" ("américain(e)"), etc? I'm trying to improve on the terminology. so as to be able to express in English distinctions you can trivially express in Spanish or French.
And how frequently can I expect you to come to my defense when I get called a "wetback" or a "spik", or when my wife gets called a "chink"? I've had enough. If you fully buy into the stupid ideology of the US, I'll call you by the g-word. (And note that, by what I've just said above, this makes it an ideological insult, not a racial insult.)
Well, lessee... checking my tax bracket @ irs.gov... nope. I'm nowhere NEAR the top 1%'s income. No enormous wealth here. But I still have net access. As for the hardware, I can put together a perfectly internet capable box for under $400... not a ton of money there... and you can get net access for FREE if you care to put up with a few ads... or ISPs are available for as little as $10/month without the ads. $400 initial + 0-10 per month... seems pretty cheap to me.
Ironic. You try to debunk me by looking at income data from the richest country in the world, the US!!!
Americans "must believe the US is the world."
Easily disproven. Almost laughably so. I, personaly, [...]
Strawman. Where did I say that? You must be referring to this:
I'm just speaking from my experience. If you have some reason for believing that I've had to deal with an unrepresentative sample, please say so.I also have many friends from the US who agree with me on this.
And if your idea of "easily disproven" is to give a personal anecdote, you need to review logic, argumentation and standards of evidence.
Which in Slashbot-speak means "I don't agree with you, but I don't have any counterarguments or moderator points". Ignorant coward.
It's Estanisláo.
No, it's Estanislao. Why the fuck do you think you know my name better than I do?
Anyway, if you knew even one thing about Spanish orthography, you'd know that words with penultimate stress are only accented when they end in a consonant, except when that consonant is "s" or "n". So "Estanislao" is the standard way of writing my name. Why this 18th century Gaucho poet's name had an accent in the final "a" beats me, but it's certainly the exception.
Also, if you bother to look up my name as is written you'll find plenty of examples. Google link, since you must be too lazy to do it yourself, bastard.
No te pongas a hablar mierda de lo que no sabes. Y deja de joder con mi nombre, pendejo.
Bullshit. The net is just another exclusive forum for a prvileged socioeconomic minority that enjoys enormous wealth produced by the labour of untold millions in the third world. The economic and political forces that built the and maintain the net (US military, major media corporations) are also accomplices in egregious violations of basic human rights elsewhere.
I'm wondering how the internet is ever going to remain the free speech center of the world.
Are you being deliberately sarcastic, or just ethnocentric when you say "free speech center of the world? I think the latter, so I apologize for the following if you meant the first.
Most of the world doesn't have net access. How the fuck can the net be the "free speech center of the world"?
You must be under the delusion that the industrialized countries are the world, while those "dirty, poor places" like Mexico, Colombia, Africa or Uganda are part of some other planet. (And this is being optimistic: if you are like most unitedstatesians I've met, you must believe the US is the world.) Come off it.
These, of course, must have obviously been rich gringo kids, in the good old U. S. of A., where undergrad education is bafflingly bad, yet even more bafflingly expensive. It is easy to say crap like this when you don't have to work for a living, 40 hours a week in 2 crappy part-time jobs while doing 16 units a semester, all the while accumulating debt and, worse, having to stand a few jackass rich frat boys having a 4-year paid vacation, courtesy of Poppy CEO.
I'm genuinely sorry for the couple of guys who posted that they are in debt for going to college. Nobody should have to be in that situation to study.
In most industrialized nations, college education is either very cheap or free, and the education is actually better for undergrad degrees. (Grad degrees are a different matter; here the US is better, but then at an even higher price.)
Even in many 3rd world countries (Mexico comes to mind), the state universities have a mandate to keep study costs low, so people from the whole social spectrum can go to college.
Let's see what you wrote. I freely emphasize key words:
This is inherently undemocratic. What do you mean the woman in the street doesn't understand how laws are created even in general terms? Don't you think that they have a very good idea of what needs to be regulated, and thus the essential starting point for coming to which laws need to be created? Do you really, really think that the man in the street, who is subjected to law enforcement day in and day out, has no reasonable idea of how laws can, are, and should be enforced?
What conceivable advantage could I have over Joe Schmoe if I understand the mathematics of a process that neither of us participates in?
You can spot irregularities. However, the fact that you understand the process allows you to collude with those that, like you, understand. This is the essential point.
There are obscure and arcane (to a layman) statistical techniques that get applied to census data to figure out various facts and figures. But all the public sees is the end result, so it doesn't matter if we understand it.
You bring censi into the picture as if it reinforced your point. However, it doesn't. As a matter of fact, many countries have manipulated censi in order to undercount minorities and deny them representation. It matters mightily if the public understands or not a census.
Once the whistle is blown, the entire public benefits (including non-statisticians). So Joe Schmoe doesn't have to understand statistics, he just needs to know that there are statisticians who don't work for the gov't.
How do you know which of the statisticians is right if you're not one?
A correctly designed crypographic protocol is immune from fudging (even from the inside), so we shouldn't have to worry about this case.
No system is immune to wetware exploits.
In any case, I think you will find that the average layman only THINKS he knows how it works with paper. But start really questioning him ("how are absentee ballots counted", "what is the procedure for handling ties", "given that with a large volume of ballots our count may be off by several votes, how do we determine when we HAVE a tie") and you'll find that he isn't so sure.
But the layperson can master the details of this in a relatively short time. The details of network transmission, cryptography, and database systems take much more to master.
I think you underestimate the intellectual powers of normal people, and their capacity to coordinate their action to achieve very complex goals. I recommend you pick up some CDs by Alan Lomax before you ever fire off again with this "normal people can't think for themselves" argument. The Italian recordings are particularly recommended, and above all, The Trallaleri of Genoa.
Anyway, of course creating a law is more than marking paper. But I wasn't talking about creating laws, but about voting. Thus point 1 is irrelevant.
2) Why do you have to understand cryptography in order to digitally sign things? I don't understand electromagnetic theory but I am able to turn my lamp on. A good implementation will be only a little more difficult to use than clicking on the "digitally sign" button.
Again, irrelevant. Of course, everyone can understand the concept of "press button (a) to vote for bad candidate #1, bress (b) to vote for bad candidate #2". But this is not what I was talking abuot!
Voting involves a lot more than just people marking papers. It involves making sure there are no duplicate votes, making sure no votes are lost, and counting the votes. When this is done with conventional means, everyone can understand how it works; when it is done electronically, only a technological elite can understand how it works. Thus this elite gains undue power over the process.
I don't think I have to bother with point 3. Do you really want to live in a society where everybody needs to learn how cryptography works in order to be able to trust the voting process? It's a crazy idea.
Not so fast. The young people you are thinking about may be doing commendable things with the tools they have, but they are not making their own tools; they are using tools developed by others who don't share their interests.
Which means that those who create and control the tools have the power to destroy these efforts. You can see one angle of this in laws like the DMCA, which put restrictions on who can make tools to deal with information. Expect in the future more and more crippled hardware that will curb more and more the freedoms you enjoy now on the net.
You seem to be far more hopeful than I am. I expect nothing but digital hell to rain on mi gente from this.
And unless you're a trained lawyer how are you going to be able to separate the real from the fake?
This is a major trick. One of the major principles behind the legal system is that not knowing the law is not an excuse for breaking it. The trick behind the legal profession, then, is to write the law so obtusely so as nobody can understand it-- not even them. Why do you think there's all these lawsuits about how laws are to be interpreted? It's a scam.
I don't know whether or not this will turn out for the best in the end - but in order for it to stand a chance it's going to require an educated and aware populace - something the US has a real problem with at the moment. If they can change this, then this could be the best idea in ages, otherwise it looks like it could all go horribly wrong.
It will certainly go wrong, because if this is being pushed by those in power, it is only so they can further increase their power over the voting process. Making something as essential as voting depend on high technology will only make those who create and control the high technology create and control the future means of "democratic" decision making.
Of course, since this is /., and the crowd here belongs mostly to the group that create and control the technology, expect major cheers for this.
I say all voting processes should stay on paper. Everyone can understand marking papers and counting them, while most can't understand cryptography and digital signatures.
Probably where your discussion skills are. In hell.
If you disagree with me, come forward and say what do you disagree on, and what do you think I said wrong. Don't hide behind the moderation system.
This is just one simplistic way of expressing the interest of environmentalists. Environmentalists can be said to desire to prevent damage to the environment as much as possible; the opposite of this would be not to desire to prevent damage to the environment as much as possible. Which doesn't mean to be in favor of openly damaging it.
Believe it or not, they really aren't happy with that. They lose profits even if they spill oil occasionally. If they lost it regularly, they'd go out of business.
Let's drop the distinction between "occasionally" and "regularly", since, for all we know, my regularly could even be less frequently than your occassionally.
The point is that the maximum environment-friendliness comes at a cost that cuts into corporate profits. Period. They make more money letting the oil spill once in a while than by spending money making it as sure as possible it won't happen.
If they donate money and it helps out with the cause what do you care about their motives? Or are you just an elitist who can't stand those who donate money to something you care about for "the wrong reasons"?
Again, you are putting words in my mouth. I by complained about a guy that was saying crap about "caring about penguins", yet can't be bothered to write a letter or send a fax, and whines about some people who are doing actual work in favor of the environment not setting up an SSL server so he can donate money without leaving his couch.
If you care about something and donate money to some entity doing good work on that, great. If you care about something and donate money to some entity that doesn't do good work at all, I'll respect your motives and try to explain why I think you're mistaken. If you don't care about something, yet do donate some money to it, I'll be critical of your motives, but the money can help.
But if you say you care about something, say you'd like to give money, but don't do it and start whining about how the people who are actually doing stuff aren't making it easy enough for you, expect no pity.