Kraft dont even make food let alone 'good chocolate'.
This is what real chocolate looks like; and the taste, as compared to the garbage made by Hersheys, Kraft and the like is like the difference between, oh, how can we describe it to the unitiated/.rs who have never eaten real food...um, the difference between working with OS X and Windoze 1.0. There. Thats stark enough!
You are like a (very young) spreader of 'The Watchtower'; you have completely absorbed the skeptic teachings, and can clearly recite them at will. If this sort of thinking is not beneath you, then you are beneath contempt. You must be a young guy to not know what a 'dink' is in the prejorative context and to recite that very old easter bunny line...in public! Obviously you are searching for some kind of truth in the world, and the pseudo scientists / skeptics 'got to you' first. Amazing!
Again - how can you "use" something which does not have a measurable effect on the world?
You cannot, this is why useless things and ideas can be ignored. They dont need to be shot down, destroyed or fought against, and certainly not by you.
Work with what works, leave out what does not. Spend your (rather abundant) energy on things that help people do things; this and only this is what is required from you. Your heros, Randi, Houdini et al are causing you to waste your precious time.
It's possible to remedy it (peer review time!), but until then, putting stock in it is silly.
This has nothing to do with 'putting stock' into anything. This is about quietness, or the lack therof.
Thousands of people over hundreds of years have attempted to measure ESP - and failed.
This is simply a lie. Experiments have been done showing that the ESP effect is real. The reality of an effect or fact does not hinge on it being reported in a peer reviewed journal, or being observed by anyone...or any thing. You should be able to believe it without being threatened or offended, at least, if your philosophy was complete, you would be able to.
Bad scientists are like the religious crusaders. True Christianity was not enough for them - their philosophy was incomplete and had to have another layer superimposed on it; a cause to fight for. This cause, like the crusades of the skeptics and pseudo-scientists of today, produces nothing, is outside of the framework of the core philosophy and is bankrupt because of its emptyness and uselessness. Even if the ESP experimenters were wrong (which they are not) they are the true scientists because they are working towards something for the benefit of mankind, not trying to destroy to satisfy the principles of a false doctrine.
This is the fundamental flaw of dogma based science, and its adherents who only belive what they can see and nothing else. What we have just seen on Titan was there before Huygens; it did not take the eye of man gazing upon it to make it real. If ESP is there, it exists wether you can measure it or not. After accepting this, all that is left is wether you can use it or not.
This is why it is beneficial, and indeed, an aid to keeping an open mind, to separate everything into what you can use and what you cannot use. In this way, people who say that they have measured an ESP effect can cause no offense to your sensibilities, since you can either use it, or not. Wether it fits in with your philosophy or not is irrelevant; is it useful should be your only concern.
The doctors who pour scorn on Homeopathy care more about their philosophy than they do their patients when they say 'avoid Homeopathic medicine because it cannot work' when clearly it does work, and brings relief to tens of millions every day.
Bad scientists and bad doctors have alot in common, and it all boils down to treating humans as unimportant, imaginary characters in a play set on the stage of a completely random universe run soley by the rules that they are aware of.
It absolutely is a waste of both time and energy. You adhere to whatever religion you like, science, atheism, darwininsm whatever. If you produce the results in your work, then they (and you) are of use. If not, your work is as useless as any snake oil salesmans noxious poison (chemotherapy).
'More speed less haste' - apply this in a modified form to yourself. Whoever cures the disease, whoever helps people, whoever uncovers what it real is the one that is useful. No one cares wether it is Homepathy or your type of medicine. No one cares if ESP is inside the 'scientific' model of realtiy or not. 'What have you got to help us?' if the only question that matters.
No matter how loud you yell and scream about your 'fights' against this or that or anything, that is the only thing that counts; human beings.
I will make every attempt I can to fight irrationality.
Just as I suspected; you are a religious crusader. Thats why I declined to answer your post directly, its just a waste of energy, and not very interesting.
Do everything I can to disprove it. What exactly is wrong with my scientific approach?
The scientific approach is to recieve a theory, and then test to see whether it is TRUE or not, not to try and DISPROVE it, or more accurately in this case, 'Debunk' it.
True scientists are interested in finding out what is true, so that it can be of use to humanity, not running around trying to bolster an incorrect status quo. Nothing of any use came out of debunking a theory. Everything useful however has come out of the properly applied scientific method...and the lucky accidents of life.
I'm glad that you accept 'the peer review of respected scientific journals', and that you qualify this statement with the caveat that you do not have complete faith in them; that shows that you are at least completely rational.
What you need to do is to stop working for those religious fanatics the so called 'skeptics', and adopt a patient and less bible thumping persona when you post about things that challenge the the currently accepted boundaries. What does that sound like? It goes like this, "If these people have really discovered a repeatable mass ESP effect, this is amazing - I cant wait to read about it in a journal I trust".
There. You are not thumping the bible, you are not screeching at The Monolith; you are a completely rational scientist, mindful of all your dead colleagues who said (n) things were impossible when they actually were completely doable, who can never be put in the basket of blind and stupid sounding scientists quoted in the future when ESP is part of everyday life, on The Discovery Channel about 'The Discovery of ESP'. You will in fact, be quoted as one of the rational, REAL scientists who just wanted to get a hold on the tool so you could work with them.
either be supported by facts or not. That is how science is done.
Precisely.
One of the posts in this thread said that poster would not believe something "unless it was shown to his face". I always find this sort of unthinking shocking. The only thing he would believe is something he sees with his own eyes; if everyone followed this bankrupt 'philosophy' then learning could never pass from one person to another.
People like this cloak their ideas in words like 'science' but in fact, they are totally in opposition to Science and the human spirit itself.
Thank you for this most interesting and useful post. What people should be VERY aware about now is that Marcus Wolf, the architect of the very system you describe, has just been employed by the Department of Homeland Security to set up a similar system in the USA.
Only in the worst nightmares of the old cold warriors was such a system seen working in the continental USA, but here it is, being set up by Republicans.
What is that buzzing?
George Washington spinning in his grave at 1500rpm.
You may count me in as one of the first anniversary with Mac crowd. I switched specifically for OSX, after having used windoze since version three.
I have turned three people to the osx generation macs so far; each of them took over six months to decide to switch, all of them have more than enough cash to buy whatever computer they want.
The problem was in each case...
They were thick.
They simply could not understand simple phrases like, "all of your computer problems will be over once you buy a mac"..."you will never have to worry about viruses and worms again after you buy your mac"..."your work will never be lost again due to a crash if you buy a mac" etc etc.
Finally, each one switched, and they now scream the praises of macintosh to anyone within hearing range.
The problem with people (ordinary users) using windows is that they have little or no imagination; they cannot imagine another OS, and most of them dont even know what an os is. Most of them think a computer IS windows sitting on a 'TV' screen. These are the same sorts of people who, despite being told the contrary, persist in believin that Iraq had something to do with 911, or that they had WMD. There is no reaching these people, and never will be. They are inured to windows, to stupidity, to suffering. They think that is what using a computer is about; poor connectivity, no usability, crashes, worms and virri, and after all is said and done, why not? That has been their universal experience of computers for years.
And for the ones that wanted to try Mac, it was always a non starter because of the price. Now perhaps, we might see a change and an uptake of Macs with the new reasonably priced model, but honestly, I fear the white box is too small to impress the bumpkins.
Do people still ask these sorts of question? Well, maybe the very young or the unlearned do.
See Duchamp, his urinal, etc etc. Honestly, almost 100 years after these questions were comprehensively answered, and in the age where the internet can effortlessly point you to the text of all the answers....really.
Well guess what guys, this is why all of your analogies aren't worth they time spent typing them out, because the other side realises this also, and hence why these decisions for modern-day technologies are different when put in a traditional environment
Analogies are used to create law and set precedents, so its very much worth everyones time to type them out to try and prevent bad law from passing. Elsewhere in the comments to this story, people are using analogies to demonstrate how this law can now be used to criminalize speech which was previously not criminal. This is perfectly natural and rational.
If as you say these judges are not computer illiterates and are handing down these judgements that are deliberately illogical, then they are in the wrong, and these laws should not be obeyed.
Right and wrong do not change because a buggy whip seller doesnt like the combustion engine. Throwing up your hands and saying "its no use fighting" is also not an option.
So, now that the trackers and torrents are distributed, the first person to cobble together an aggregating site wtih categories will be shut down for what reason exactly?
You could easily build a community around them. Will bloggers be 'cease and deceased' for posting eXeem links? Will Google filter out all exeem links that it crawls?
The true root of the disagreement is that I don't see countries or cultures as having any rights beyond those of the people in them.
The problem with this is that countries that are powerful, or that have many rich and powerful citizens can, arbitrarily, dismantle another country at will. This is why the idea of a soverign country is so important; it (used to) guarantee that americans can live as americans and that iranias can live as iranians, as long each party does not engage in war.
Your example of Germany in WW2 is off topic. When a country comits an act of war, then the rules of war apply, and it is possible that the initiating country can loose everything, including and not limited to their soverign status.
This has absolutely nothing to do with what we were originally discussing; entering into another persons country because you dissagree with their way of life, and using force to engineer 'regime change', or 'spread freedom'.
These ideas are now being put to the test in the real world. So far, america is dismantling its way of life so that it can spread the idea of what it used to be to other people. They are failing miserably to protect their own freedom, whilst getting bogged down in other peoples problems, and spending billions doing it with no end in sight.
I wonder if it will ultimately be a 'sucess'? The only way that this could be the case is if 'freedom' spreads everywhere, and then when the job is done the american constitution is re-assembled from the shreds now stored in a cookie jar in the oval office.
I hear the white house uses pulping shredders these days.
I don't believe that any country's right to sovreignty outweighs its people's rights to opt out.
That is your opinion, and not an absolute fact, applicable across the world and to all people everywhere. Thats the point.
In China, unwanted baby girls are called "Maggots in the rice". They are dumped at orphanages, where they are put into special "Dying Rooms" to wither away by starvation. I dont think that this is correct. I therefore, do not knowingly buy Chinese goods. I will not holliday there. I tell people about this practice, so that they can make up thier own minds and decide, perhaps, to boycott Chinese goods.
In Ivory Coast, they use slaves to harvest cocoa. I only ever buy fairtraded chocolate, to make sure that I never knowingly contribute to slavery.
I try and take responsibility for what I do and buy, knowing that this has a direct effect on the world. What I will not support, and cannot ever endorse, is the use of force to try and make people be and live like me. Those slave using cocoa farmers make money because people buy the derivative products of that evil. If there is no money in slave harvested cocoa, the practice will dissapear from the face of the earth.
The same goes for the 'opresive' 'regime' in Iran. If I think that what they are doing is wrong, I will make sure that nothing that I do ends up in their economy. Their way of living is, in the final analysis their own affair, and will live or die of its own natural causes, without the 'help' of missionaries, yankee doodle philosophers and people who think that Babylon was originally a place in New York.
Tyranny is not sustainable. Tyrannical regimes always collapses eventually. Trying to force this process is dangerous and risks damaging our own way of life, as we have seen very clearly.
all you need is to give people the ability to choose for themselves if they want to be part of that culture.
It is not your job to 'give them the ability' to do anything. They already have that ability, and anyone that doesnt think this is a blinkered paternalist. I would suggest to people like that that they travel to some of these places, so that they may broaden their horizons.
The Iranians already overthrew the Shah. The Chinese already had their revolution. What is 'wrong' with the outcome of those revoluions is that you dont like what they decided upon.
Those 'poor little brown people' in Iran don't need you to tell them how to live, what is right and wrong and what rule book to abide by. They have worked it all out by themselvs already, and acted on their conclusions. If they decide to change their minds again, they are more than able to do so without any help; in fact they deeply resent people meddleing in their affairs. The same goes for China. Revolution is not just an idea for them, they have proved that they have the ability and the will to carry out that kind of dramatic change, and they too deeply resent interference from foreigners, especially americans.
Honestly, unless you have travelled, and actually understand different cultures, you cannot give advice as to how people in those cultures should organize themselvs.
Even if you have not travelled, but had read the accounts of the effect of missionary work its plain to see that trying to substitute one culture for another is just a mistake.
Now, imagine the missionary example transposed to doing it by force, with a 'liberation' - the result is....just what we have today; the 'liberators' becoming the most hated nation in the history of nations. The nation that we all love, turning into a police state to 'protect' itself from enemeies that it created with its insane foreign policy.
Even if america did not become the skunk of the world by trying to 'help' other countries with 'regime change' and influence, it is still a completely wrong thing to do, and whats more, they do it selectively, forcing regime change only on the low hanging fruit, whilst blissfully trading with the most (in terms of scale) violent, repressive and horrible governments on earth.
The civilized people on this planet deplore imperialism, colonialism and the racists that practice it. And that is precisely what all of this is about.
Anyone who gives an example of what they think is injustice in another country, like the clamping down of internet cafes) and they claims that this country needs to be overthrown by force to install a 'freedom loving government' is an imperialist-paternalist and probably a racist. Or just ignorant. Or all three.
You are not seeing the bigger picture. This company now has an algorithm that can be patented, and then sold or licensed to a third party.
In the future, cpu speed will become fast enough for this second level compression to become invisible to the user, then, every manufacturer will be clamouring for it. You can see the advertising copy now "30% More Stoage - Free!".
Its just like the guys that said on the fly translation would never happen, because 'its too cpu intensive', or that editing MP3s without uncompressing them to WAV was not doable, for the same reason. The smart people are looking years ahead, where all the money will eventually be.
unless someone has an honest choice about their participation in a society they can't be bound by its restrictions.
another one of your ideas, not a universal truth.
t's as if I lived near you and made it a habit to beat you
You are not a state. Dont mix up the actions of a state and an individual, or better yet, dont try and prove a point with a straw man argument.
The rest of your reply betrays an insular, untravelled mentality, demonstrating the effectiveness of complete brainwashing.
The fact is, its a safe bet you have never been to Iran, dont know (and have never met) any non-expatriate Iranians, and are simply reciting what was pumped into you in an ethics class.
Nothing wrong with that, as long as you mind your own business.
Under the laws of their land, the citizens have committed no crime and are still unable to leave.
That is not your business. If its the law of thier land that they need an exit visa, its not your problem. No american can leave the usa without a passport. Its precisely the same thing. You have to apply to your government to travel. They have to apply to theirs to travel. It is identical iin principle.
How can they be said to be consenting of anything done to them when they aren't allowed to disagree, or to leave?
What you cannot grasp is that your ideas of government, consent, right and wrong, are yours and yours alone; they are not universal, or universally applicable.
This blind spot is the cause of many of the worlds problems. There is no such thing as 'moral relativism'; this is doubletalk used to justify the imposition of one set of values over another by the strong against the weak.
Your best bet to maintain a peaceful world and preserve 'freedon' is to lead by example, absolutely shun the people who are not like you, and preserve the life and philosophy that you believe is so superior.
Personally, I highly doubt that anyone agrees to be sentenced to death for being raped, or agrees to be drafted into a war they disagree with, or agrees to genital mutilation...
You are talking about at least three different countries there, one of which is the USA. Hmmmmmmm!
Or perhaps you believe that the East-Germans who were killed in the mine field, or shot by the guards, or killed by the dog, or otherwise died trying to escape from their birth country were okay with this?
The East Germans were under occupation a totally different scenario. Iran isnt under occupation. It is run by Iranians, for Iranians and you dont like how they do it.
The real question is not what you believe is right or wrong, but wether or not you are willing to sacrifice your own life, the lives of your relatives and your way of life for these people that you know so well and are so in tune with.
Unless you are willing to risk ahnillation of yourself and everything you love, then you are just blowing hot air - nothing wrong with hot air - keeps the slashdotters fingertips warm.
Imposing your personal standards on people from a different culture to yours is an act of violation an act of war, and its consequence destroys your very existance.
The idiots who seriously talk about 'liberating' Iranians are mostly people who have never travelled, only have experience of one culture, and have certainly never been in the army, or have ever killed someone or been sent to the battlefield under orders.
You dont like Iranian culture? Dont go on holiday there, dont concume thier goods, dont send money to them - by all means, debate it into dust, but never ever suggest that your tax dollars should be used to impose your narow world view on another country, unless you are willing to personally die for these 'principles', to have your house destroyed and your own family incinerated.
Beacuse that is what it really costs, your personal life, and the systematic dismntling of the very 'freedoms' that you are trying to propagate throughout the world, as you have to suffer irrevocable 'wartime' measures like the patriot act and other constitution nullifying legislation.
In my perfectly worthless opinion, these people are absolutely fine the way that they are. If they want to live in a different way, they need to mount their own revolution, just like everyone else has. If they want to live in a country where what we consider to be injustice is the rule of law, then thats fine also; just make sure you dont travel there, dont sell your programming services there, include anti-Iran clauses in licence of your software. Block their IPs from your web services, but dont ever think you have the right to force them to live in your way by military action.
These drugs are not in fact novel; there are already drugs with the same conventration enhancing effects; Penural and Etracine are both in wide use, and are specifically designed to improve concentration and eye hand co-ordination.
There might be some utility in developing these new drugs further, since they may not interact with Intervol, which is sometimes a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Kraft make very good chocolate
/.rs who have never eaten real food...um, the difference between working with OS X and Windoze 1.0. There. Thats stark enough!
Ummmm, wtf?
Kraft dont even make food let alone 'good chocolate'.
This is what real chocolate looks like; and the taste, as compared to the garbage made by Hersheys, Kraft and the like is like the difference between, oh, how can we describe it to the unitiated
Easter Bunny
The classic 'easter bunny' attack?! ROTFL!
You are like a (very young) spreader of 'The Watchtower'; you have completely absorbed the skeptic teachings, and can clearly recite them at will. If this sort of thinking is not beneath you, then you are beneath contempt. You must be a young guy to not know what a 'dink' is in the prejorative context and to recite that very old easter bunny line...in public! Obviously you are searching for some kind of truth in the world, and the pseudo scientists / skeptics 'got to you' first. Amazing!
Again - how can you "use" something which does not have a measurable effect on the world?
You cannot, this is why useless things and ideas can be ignored. They dont need to be shot down, destroyed or fought against, and certainly not by you.
Work with what works, leave out what does not. Spend your (rather abundant) energy on things that help people do things; this and only this is what is required from you. Your heros, Randi, Houdini et al are causing you to waste your precious time.
Its your time to waste of course.
It's possible to remedy it (peer review time!), but until then, putting stock in it is silly.
This has nothing to do with 'putting stock' into anything. This is about quietness, or the lack therof.
Thousands of people over hundreds of years have attempted to measure ESP - and failed.
This is simply a lie. Experiments have been done showing that the ESP effect is real. The reality of an effect or fact does not hinge on it being reported in a peer reviewed journal, or being observed by anyone...or any thing. You should be able to believe it without being threatened or offended, at least, if your philosophy was complete, you would be able to.
Bad scientists are like the religious crusaders. True Christianity was not enough for them - their philosophy was incomplete and had to have another layer superimposed on it; a cause to fight for. This cause, like the crusades of the skeptics and pseudo-scientists of today, produces nothing, is outside of the framework of the core philosophy and is bankrupt because of its emptyness and uselessness. Even if the ESP experimenters were wrong (which they are not) they are the true scientists because they are working towards something for the benefit of mankind, not trying to destroy to satisfy the principles of a false doctrine.
This is the fundamental flaw of dogma based science, and its adherents who only belive what they can see and nothing else. What we have just seen on Titan was there before Huygens; it did not take the eye of man gazing upon it to make it real. If ESP is there, it exists wether you can measure it or not. After accepting this, all that is left is wether you can use it or not.
This is why it is beneficial, and indeed, an aid to keeping an open mind, to separate everything into what you can use and what you cannot use. In this way, people who say that they have measured an ESP effect can cause no offense to your sensibilities, since you can either use it, or not. Wether it fits in with your philosophy or not is irrelevant; is it useful should be your only concern.
The doctors who pour scorn on Homeopathy care more about their philosophy than they do their patients when they say 'avoid Homeopathic medicine because it cannot work' when clearly it does work, and brings relief to tens of millions every day.
Bad scientists and bad doctors have alot in common, and it all boils down to treating humans as unimportant, imaginary characters in a play set on the stage of a completely random universe run soley by the rules that they are aware of.
That is the very deinition of arrogance.
Why? Will you defend irrationality?
Irrationality is irrelevant; the only thing that matters is results, not the cause or the belief system in which they may be rooted
And Im an atheist you dink
An atheiest and a racist quite a combination.
It's not a "waste of energy"
It absolutely is a waste of both time and energy. You adhere to whatever religion you like, science, atheism, darwininsm whatever. If you produce the results in your work, then they (and you) are of use. If not, your work is as useless as any snake oil salesmans noxious poison (chemotherapy).
'More speed less haste' - apply this in a modified form to yourself. Whoever cures the disease, whoever helps people, whoever uncovers what it real is the one that is useful. No one cares wether it is Homepathy or your type of medicine. No one cares if ESP is inside the 'scientific' model of realtiy or not. 'What have you got to help us?' if the only question that matters.
No matter how loud you yell and scream about your 'fights' against this or that or anything, that is the only thing that counts; human beings.
People from Vietnam included.
I am allowed to make predictions, am I not?
:o
Only with an RNG black box aparently
I will make every attempt I can to fight irrationality.
Just as I suspected; you are a religious crusader. Thats why I declined to answer your post directly, its just a waste of energy, and not very interesting.
Do everything I can to disprove it.
What exactly is wrong with my scientific approach?
The scientific approach is to recieve a theory, and then test to see whether it is TRUE or not, not to try and DISPROVE it, or more accurately in this case, 'Debunk' it.
True scientists are interested in finding out what is true, so that it can be of use to humanity, not running around trying to bolster an incorrect status quo. Nothing of any use came out of debunking a theory. Everything useful however has come out of the properly applied scientific method...and the lucky accidents of life.
I'm glad that you accept 'the peer review of respected scientific journals', and that you qualify this statement with the caveat that you do not have complete faith in them; that shows that you are at least completely rational.
What you need to do is to stop working for those religious fanatics the so called 'skeptics', and adopt a patient and less bible thumping persona when you post about things that challenge the the currently accepted boundaries. What does that sound like? It goes like this, "If these people have really discovered a repeatable mass ESP effect, this is amazing - I cant wait to read about it in a journal I trust".
There. You are not thumping the bible, you are not screeching at The Monolith; you are a completely rational scientist, mindful of all your dead colleagues who said (n) things were impossible when they actually were completely doable, who can never be put in the basket of blind and stupid sounding scientists quoted in the future when ESP is part of everyday life, on The Discovery Channel about 'The Discovery of ESP'. You will in fact, be quoted as one of the rational, REAL scientists who just wanted to get a hold on the tool so you could work with them.
And that is where you want to be.
either be supported by facts or not. That is how science is done.
Precisely.
One of the posts in this thread said that poster would not believe something "unless it was shown to his face". I always find this sort of unthinking shocking. The only thing he would believe is something he sees with his own eyes; if everyone followed this bankrupt 'philosophy' then learning could never pass from one person to another.
People like this cloak their ideas in words like 'science' but in fact, they are totally in opposition to Science and the human spirit itself.
Thank you for this most interesting and useful post. What people should be VERY aware about now is that Marcus Wolf, the architect of the very system you describe, has just been employed by the Department of Homeland Security to set up a similar system in the USA.
Only in the worst nightmares of the old cold warriors was such a system seen working in the continental USA, but here it is, being set up by Republicans.
What is that buzzing?
George Washington spinning in his grave at 1500rpm.
You may count me in as one of the first anniversary with Mac crowd. I switched specifically for OSX, after having used windoze since version three.
I have turned three people to the osx generation macs so far; each of them took over six months to decide to switch, all of them have more than enough cash to buy whatever computer they want.
The problem was in each case...
They were thick.
They simply could not understand simple phrases like, "all of your computer problems will be over once you buy a mac"..."you will never have to worry about viruses and worms again after you buy your mac"..."your work will never be lost again due to a crash if you buy a mac" etc etc.
Finally, each one switched, and they now scream the praises of macintosh to anyone within hearing range.
The problem with people (ordinary users) using windows is that they have little or no imagination; they cannot imagine another OS, and most of them dont even know what an os is. Most of them think a computer IS windows sitting on a 'TV' screen. These are the same sorts of people who, despite being told the contrary, persist in believin that Iraq had something to do with 911, or that they had WMD. There is no reaching these people, and never will be. They are inured to windows, to stupidity, to suffering. They think that is what using a computer is about; poor connectivity, no usability, crashes, worms and virri, and after all is said and done, why not? That has been their universal experience of computers for years.
And for the ones that wanted to try Mac, it was always a non starter because of the price. Now perhaps, we might see a change and an uptake of Macs with the new reasonably priced model, but honestly, I fear the white box is too small to impress the bumpkins.
Do people still ask these sorts of question? Well, maybe the very young or the unlearned do.
See Duchamp, his urinal, etc etc. Honestly, almost 100 years after these questions were comprehensively answered, and in the age where the internet can effortlessly point you to the text of all the answers....really.
Well guess what guys, this is why all of your analogies aren't worth they time spent typing them out, because the other side realises this also, and hence why these decisions for modern-day technologies are different when put in a traditional environment
Analogies are used to create law and set precedents, so its very much worth everyones time to type them out to try and prevent bad law from passing. Elsewhere in the comments to this story, people are using analogies to demonstrate how this law can now be used to criminalize speech which was previously not criminal. This is perfectly natural and rational.
If as you say these judges are not computer illiterates and are handing down these judgements that are deliberately illogical, then they are in the wrong, and these laws should not be obeyed.
Right and wrong do not change because a buggy whip seller doesnt like the combustion engine. Throwing up your hands and saying "its no use fighting" is also not an option.
See also Colossus: The Forbin Project.
So, now that the trackers and torrents are distributed, the first person to cobble together an aggregating site wtih categories will be shut down for what reason exactly?
The eXeem links work:
Kylie_Minogue_no_underwear_clip.mpg
You could easily build a community around them. Will bloggers be 'cease and deceased' for posting eXeem links? Will Google filter out all exeem links that it crawls?
The true root of the disagreement is that I don't see countries or cultures as having any rights beyond those of the people in them.
The problem with this is that countries that are powerful, or that have many rich and powerful citizens can, arbitrarily, dismantle another country at will. This is why the idea of a soverign country is so important; it (used to) guarantee that americans can live as americans and that iranias can live as iranians, as long each party does not engage in war.
Your example of Germany in WW2 is off topic. When a country comits an act of war, then the rules of war apply, and it is possible that the initiating country can loose everything, including and not limited to their soverign status.
This has absolutely nothing to do with what we were originally discussing; entering into another persons country because you dissagree with their way of life, and using force to engineer 'regime change', or 'spread freedom'.
These ideas are now being put to the test in the real world. So far, america is dismantling its way of life so that it can spread the idea of what it used to be to other people. They are failing miserably to protect their own freedom, whilst getting bogged down in other peoples problems, and spending billions doing it with no end in sight.
I wonder if it will ultimately be a 'sucess'? The only way that this could be the case is if 'freedom' spreads everywhere, and then when the job is done the american constitution is re-assembled from the shreds now stored in a cookie jar in the oval office.
I hear the white house uses pulping shredders these days.
I don't believe that any country's right to sovreignty outweighs its people's rights to opt out.
That is your opinion, and not an absolute fact, applicable across the world and to all people everywhere. Thats the point.
In China, unwanted baby girls are called "Maggots in the rice". They are dumped at orphanages, where they are put into special "Dying Rooms" to wither away by starvation. I dont think that this is correct. I therefore, do not knowingly buy Chinese goods. I will not holliday there. I tell people about this practice, so that they can make up thier own minds and decide, perhaps, to boycott Chinese goods.
In Ivory Coast, they use slaves to harvest cocoa. I only ever buy fairtraded chocolate, to make sure that I never knowingly contribute to slavery.
I try and take responsibility for what I do and buy, knowing that this has a direct effect on the world. What I will not support, and cannot ever endorse, is the use of force to try and make people be and live like me. Those slave using cocoa farmers make money because people buy the derivative products of that evil. If there is no money in slave harvested cocoa, the practice will dissapear from the face of the earth.
The same goes for the 'opresive' 'regime' in Iran. If I think that what they are doing is wrong, I will make sure that nothing that I do ends up in their economy. Their way of living is, in the final analysis their own affair, and will live or die of its own natural causes, without the 'help' of missionaries, yankee doodle philosophers and people who think that Babylon was originally a place in New York.
Tyranny is not sustainable. Tyrannical regimes always collapses eventually. Trying to force this process is dangerous and risks damaging our own way of life, as we have seen very clearly.
all you need is to give people the ability to choose for themselves if they want to be part of that culture.
It is not your job to 'give them the ability' to do anything. They already have that ability, and anyone that doesnt think this is a blinkered paternalist. I would suggest to people like that that they travel to some of these places, so that they may broaden their horizons.
The Iranians already overthrew the Shah. The Chinese already had their revolution. What is 'wrong' with the outcome of those revoluions is that you dont like what they decided upon.
Those 'poor little brown people' in Iran don't need you to tell them how to live, what is right and wrong and what rule book to abide by. They have worked it all out by themselvs already, and acted on their conclusions. If they decide to change their minds again, they are more than able to do so without any help; in fact they deeply resent people meddleing in their affairs. The same goes for China. Revolution is not just an idea for them, they have proved that they have the ability and the will to carry out that kind of dramatic change, and they too deeply resent interference from foreigners, especially americans.
Honestly, unless you have travelled, and actually understand different cultures, you cannot give advice as to how people in those cultures should organize themselvs.
Even if you have not travelled, but had read the accounts of the effect of missionary work its plain to see that trying to substitute one culture for another is just a mistake.
Now, imagine the missionary example transposed to doing it by force, with a 'liberation' - the result is....just what we have today; the 'liberators' becoming the most hated nation in the history of nations. The nation that we all love, turning into a police state to 'protect' itself from enemeies that it created with its insane foreign policy.
Even if america did not become the skunk of the world by trying to 'help' other countries with 'regime change' and influence, it is still a completely wrong thing to do, and whats more, they do it selectively, forcing regime change only on the low hanging fruit, whilst blissfully trading with the most (in terms of scale) violent, repressive and horrible governments on earth.
The civilized people on this planet deplore imperialism, colonialism and the racists that practice it. And that is precisely what all of this is about.
Anyone who gives an example of what they think is injustice in another country, like the clamping down of internet cafes) and they claims that this country needs to be overthrown by force to install a 'freedom loving government' is an imperialist-paternalist and probably a racist. Or just ignorant. Or all three.
And thats no troll, Charlie Brown.
You are not seeing the bigger picture. This company now has an algorithm that can be patented, and then sold or licensed to a third party.
In the future, cpu speed will become fast enough for this second level compression to become invisible to the user, then, every manufacturer will be clamouring for it. You can see the advertising copy now "30% More Stoage - Free!".
Its just like the guys that said on the fly translation would never happen, because 'its too cpu intensive', or that editing MP3s without uncompressing them to WAV was not doable, for the same reason. The smart people are looking years ahead, where all the money will eventually be.
More orders?
unless someone has an honest choice about their participation in a society they can't be bound by its restrictions.
another one of your ideas, not a universal truth.
t's as if I lived near you and made it a habit to beat you
You are not a state. Dont mix up the actions of a state and an individual, or better yet, dont try and prove a point with a straw man argument.
The rest of your reply betrays an insular, untravelled mentality, demonstrating the effectiveness of complete brainwashing.
The fact is, its a safe bet you have never been to Iran, dont know (and have never met) any non-expatriate Iranians, and are simply reciting what was pumped into you in an ethics class.
Nothing wrong with that, as long as you mind your own business.
Under the laws of their land, the citizens have committed no crime and are still unable to leave.
That is not your business. If its the law of thier land that they need an exit visa, its not your problem. No american can leave the usa without a passport. Its precisely the same thing. You have to apply to your government to travel. They have to apply to theirs to travel. It is identical iin principle.
How can they be said to be consenting of anything done to them when they aren't allowed to disagree, or to leave?
What you cannot grasp is that your ideas of government, consent, right and wrong, are yours and yours alone; they are not universal, or universally applicable.
This blind spot is the cause of many of the worlds problems. There is no such thing as 'moral relativism'; this is doubletalk used to justify the imposition of one set of values over another by the strong against the weak.
Your best bet to maintain a peaceful world and preserve 'freedon' is to lead by example, absolutely shun the people who are not like you, and preserve the life and philosophy that you believe is so superior.
Technically these people have committed no crime,
Under whose laws?
Personally, I highly doubt that anyone agrees to be sentenced to death for being raped, or agrees to be drafted into a war they disagree with, or agrees to genital mutilation...
You are talking about at least three different countries there, one of which is the USA. Hmmmmmmm!
Or perhaps you believe that the East-Germans who were killed in the mine field, or shot by the guards, or killed by the dog, or otherwise died trying to escape from their birth country were okay with this?
The East Germans were under occupation a totally different scenario. Iran isnt under occupation. It is run by Iranians, for Iranians and you dont like how they do it.
And thats perfectly OK.
The real question is not what you believe is right or wrong, but wether or not you are willing to sacrifice your own life, the lives of your relatives and your way of life for these people that you know so well and are so in tune with.
Unless you are willing to risk ahnillation of yourself and everything you love, then you are just blowing hot air - nothing wrong with hot air - keeps the slashdotters fingertips warm.
Imposing your personal standards on people from a different culture to yours is an act of violation an act of war, and its consequence destroys your very existance.
The idiots who seriously talk about 'liberating' Iranians are mostly people who have never travelled, only have experience of one culture, and have certainly never been in the army, or have ever killed someone or been sent to the battlefield under orders.
You dont like Iranian culture? Dont go on holiday there, dont concume thier goods, dont send money to them - by all means, debate it into dust, but never ever suggest that your tax dollars should be used to impose your narow world view on another country, unless you are willing to personally die for these 'principles', to have your house destroyed and your own family incinerated.
Beacuse that is what it really costs, your personal life, and the systematic dismntling of the very 'freedoms' that you are trying to propagate throughout the world, as you have to suffer irrevocable 'wartime' measures like the patriot act and other constitution nullifying legislation.
In my perfectly worthless opinion, these people are absolutely fine the way that they are. If they want to live in a different way, they need to mount their own revolution, just like everyone else has. If they want to live in a country where what we consider to be injustice is the rule of law, then thats fine also; just make sure you dont travel there, dont sell your programming services there, include anti-Iran clauses in licence of your software. Block their IPs from your web services, but dont ever think you have the right to force them to live in your way by military action.
you said 'rediculous'!!!!!!!
These drugs are not in fact novel; there are already drugs with the same conventration enhancing effects; Penural and Etracine are both in wide use, and are specifically designed to improve concentration and eye hand co-ordination.
There might be some utility in developing these new drugs further, since they may not interact with Intervol, which is sometimes a problem.