I know you're trolling but I felt this needed a genuine answer:
So let's get this straight, if the "enlightened" leaders of Google/Facebook/Apple/Generic Social Network want to suppress speech (only by OMG NAZIS of course!)* that's cool because OMG IT'S THEIR BUSINESS!
Yes, because Social Networks have a vested interest in keeping their users happy, so they are allowed to set rules about what is acceptable to put up on their Social Network, in order to maximize their business revenues. If they decide nudity, violence, and racism are not allowed, they are allowed to do so. They may even remove posts that violate the rules and terminate the accounts of posters who repeatedly violate the rules. They are not required to host your posts.
If Google wants to remove all search query results that link to those OMG NAZIS it's OK because IT'S GOOGLE'S BUSINESS!
Pretty much. If Google chooses not to index your site because it offends their users, that is a choice they are allowed to make. They are not required to index your site in their search engine. You are also free to criticize Google for making that decision, if your repugnant behaviour hasn't already gotten you banned from all other media.
If "enightened" DNS providers want to prevent those evil OMG NAZIS from having name resolution to their own website that they pay for themselves that's totally cool because IT'S THEIR BUSINESS! Same thing goes for hosting providers who would be paid by the OMG NAZIS!
If the DNS providers find you so repugnant that they choose not to do business with you, that is their choice. Especially, if you libel them by claiming they are also Nazis because they didn't terminate your contract. They are not required to do business with you.
WHAT IF THE ISP HEROICALLY STEPS UP TO CENSOR THEM BECAUSE HOLY SHIT IT'S OK IT'S THE ISP'S BUSINESS?!?!?!?
The ISP can choose not to do business with you, like the other examples. They are not required to offer you internet service.
Oh wait, that's bad when the ISP does it because OMG NET NEUTRALITY.
However, they should not be allowed to rifle through your packets looking for bad words, ideas, or destinations, because that is not their business. So while, they are perfectly free to refuse to do business with you, they are not allowed to take your money and then censor your communications for their own reasons.
So as we can see, censorship is perfectly cool. Except for when it suddenly isn't anymore.
Censorship is always bad, it's just that sometimes the alternatives are worse.
If you believe the shit you're saying equates to freedom in any meaningful sense of the word, you're a fucking moron. This is nothing more than an utterly broken and corrupt form of capitalism which is out of control, and corrupt lawmakers stacking the deck for corporations.
He's a libertarian, that practically means he's a fucking moron, by definition.
There is nothing like an idiot who believes there is one simple solution to every complex problem.
Slavery and indentured servitude are constructs of the government and only exist and are enforced through government force.
How is slavery a construct of the government when slavery is illegal? Does it "exist and [is] enforced through government force" when criminal gangs force people into slavery in countries where it is illegal?
Environmental law amounts to a license to pollute; traditional English common law property rights are far more effective at protecting the environment.
What's distressing is how much damage phrases like 'the science is settled' does to the actual promulgation of the Scientific Method.
We've gotta wrest the mantle of Science back from these AGW witch doctors.
No what's truly distressing is how damage people like you do, because you think you can pick and choose which science is real based on your political views.
According to this article, if we ignore the modern climate change induced sea rise, there was about 24cm of sea level rise over the past 1800 years, almost all of it concentrated in the period of 1000-1400 AD.
OP's position seems perfectly philosophically valid to me. Why don't you refute his position rather than condescending on him without providing substance?
Responding in this manner makes you appear old and stupid, not wise.
Perhaps the GP's criticism was so subtle, you missed it entirely? I think you should spend more time thinking about he wrote and less time replying to things you don't understand.
The problem with Bitcoin is the fact that it growing at a rate far exceeding any sane inflation.
It has gone to stupid level. Because they are so valuable, no one will actually buy anything real with them, unless they will be the pizza guy who bought a Pizza with 20 bit coins a few years ago.
Frankly, people pointed out this problem on Slashdot when Bitcoin was new. Bitcoin is deflationary by design. Deflationary currency encourages saving and never spending because the currency will generally be worth more tomorrow than what you can buy with it today.
I came to the conclusion months ago that he can't do anything that will cause his hardcore supporters to stop supporting him.
There are a probably a few things Trump could do that would cause him to lose his hard core supporters, but they are very few. The only one that I'm reasonably sure would absolutely lose him the next election is raising taxes.
well... according to the system utilised - known to be THE weakest form of government ever invented (democracy) - the citizens of the united states *do* want him in and thus *have* trusted him to make the right decisions for the four years of his term of office and thus *do* want a dictatorship oh hang on...
Oh no. Trump was elected by the electoral college, not by the democratic will of Americans, always remember Trump lost the popular vote. In an actual Democracy, Trump would still be claiming the election was rigged.
It's the prosperity gospel. The basic premise is that there is an all-good, interventionist, God, therefore the people that good things happen to must be good people, and the people that bad things happen to must be bad people. Unless, of course, bad things are happening to you or me, then it's God testing our greatness. The corollary is, of course, that taxes on rich people are inherently unjust because rich people are doing good while taxes on the poor are just what those sick depraved perverts deserve.
It's a truly sickening perversion of Christianity.
Just ask them if they want this system in place the next time a democrat president sits in the whitehouse?
Some of them are secretly hoping that there won't be a "next time a democrat president sits in the White House", which is one potential consequence of giving the President his own secret army of spies and assassins...
Doesn't it report into the same CIA director? So not private. And we know about it? So not secret. And it's a spy agency? So not police. So, yeah, every word in "private secret police" is wrong.
Here's a hint: Secret police aren't police, they're spies. Otherwise they'd just be "police". The "secret police" part just means they have the power to make you disappear, permanently.
Well, if this is true, it's not about trusting or not trusting the CIA. It's about creating a spy organization that doesn't report to anyone but the leader. It would be about having spies, and probably assassins, that are free from oversight and regulation. It would be about creating a secure and loyal power base like the one that Putin has, that can eliminate anyone who challenges the leader's position.
Actually, Al-Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda was a terrorist organization that used propaganda and religious zealots to wage a political campaign of terrorist attacks against the United States and western democracies. It was estimated that there were between 200 and 1,000 members of Al-Qaeda. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Do you think it's right to condemn a group based on the actions of 0.0625% of it's membership?
You should also be further aware that part of the goal of Al-Qaeda and later DAESH was to incite the western world into attacking innocent Muslims, so that they could gain power in the Muslim world. Conservatives who blame all Muslims for the actions of a small group of murderous criminals play right into the hands of those same criminals.
Russians meddled in the 2016 elections with trolling that didn't kill anyone. Liberals act horrified.
The Russian government meddled in the 2016 elections and liberals are horrified at the results of that meddling. Conservatives, however, are ok with it because they won. Way to sell out your own country for a bit of fleeting power.
Exactly. And once you realize that both parties do it relentlessly, in coordinated lockstep, and that partisan idiots give their own party a complete pass when they do it, you will see how impossible it is to stop.
This is obviously and poignantly wrong. We have a huge counter-example right here. The Democratic party supports net neutrality, the Republican party does not. How is that co-ordinated lock step?
You are right that your elected officials don't (usually) hate one another but they aren't in this together, either. The Republicans and the Democrats are competing for the same positions, they may have gentlemen's agreements on what is acceptable behaviour, but they are still die-hard competitors for the same positions. I think, in general, their relationship could be summarised as frenemies, though I think with the introduction of Tea Party and Alt-Right candidates the legislature is moving away from friendships and towards partisan enemies.
This means that government can get away with anything. You don't think the parties start with what they want to achieve and work backwards from there? You don't think that they divide up the unpopular positions to push down the throats of their own supporters?
Yes, I don't think that and I don't think any sane person would. Politicians are political, they have views and beliefs and while they may compromise those beliefs for the sake of winning an election, they are not working together towards a single unified goal. Beyond that, keeping a conspiracy of that sort secret would require levels discretion that clearly the average elected official is not capable of maintaining. You can imagine that everyone running for office in America is secretly a super-villain, but I don't think that delusion is going to help you understand anything.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that elected republicans hate democrats, and vice versa. You silly child. Hate is only good for manipulating stupid people. "Our" elected officials are all in it together.
There's a middle ground between those extremes, and that's where sanity lies. Republican and Democratic officials, generally speaking, don't hate each other, but they aren't working towards the same goals either. There are consistent differences between the positions of the two parties over multiple election cycles. It is true, that there is a lot of similarity between the two parties, but that's because they operate in the same country, solicit money from the same donors and fight for the votes from the same people.
Basically you are arguing that competing tool manufacturers are secretly working together because they produce tools that look very similar. No, the tools look the same to the untrained eye because they have been produced to do the same job with similar technology and similar materials. An expert, however, will be able to tell you if one company produces a better quality tool than the other for the job you want to get done. And just like in construction, in every election you should be trying to pick the best tool for the job.
It's not just the Gulag; there's no shortage of Americans calling Trump "racist" because he purposed a ban on Muslim immigration from certain countries, or because he wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico. This wanton abuse of the word "racist" is quite common.
Or maybe they're not-subtly saying that he's racist and proposing a ban on Muslim immigration because Muslims are predominantly Arab, and proposing to build an ineffectual and costly wall between the US and Mexico to tap into anti-Latino racism?
Seriously, it should be transparently obvious to everyone that Trump is racist because of the things he says and does, but it's not entirely his fault. He did grow up during the era of segregation. It's pretty likely that he was taught at an early age that blacks were inferior to white people. That type of mental damage can be hard to unlearn, and Trump doesn't like ever admitting that he was wrong, so fat chance of a sincere change of heart on his part, especially at his age.
Wait wait. You say all the evidence points out to existence of objective reality, but when I asked you for it, you admitted it's a paradox and can't be proven.
You clearly didn't follow my explanation. It can be proven, but if you're wrong and reality exist, you'll be dead.
I have then said that your claim is a metaphysical belief no more -- and no less, please read again -- based in reasoning that faith in God.
That seems like a stretch, from the belief that what we see is real, to the belief that what we do not see is real. Other than having an element of belief there seems to be little in common between those points.
herefore I have nothing to prove because I never claimed there is evidence that God "exists" (nor that such claim has meaning but that's a different story).
I didn't say you did, I asked you what you believe.
So of the two of us, you are the only one who claims there is evidence for one view in particular, that of objective reality existing independently of the observer. Care to try to show the proof again?
I asked you for your alternative to objective reality, and the evidence you have to support it. Science is, after all, at it's core about competing theories and choosing the one which the evidence supports best. It's not about being "right", it's about the struggle to always be "less wrong".
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, that's Hope and Change. Trickle down is where Trump showers all of his supporters with "gold".
So let's get this straight, if the "enlightened" leaders of Google/Facebook/Apple/Generic Social Network want to suppress speech (only by OMG NAZIS of course!)* that's cool because OMG IT'S THEIR BUSINESS!
Yes, because Social Networks have a vested interest in keeping their users happy, so they are allowed to set rules about what is acceptable to put up on their Social Network, in order to maximize their business revenues. If they decide nudity, violence, and racism are not allowed, they are allowed to do so. They may even remove posts that violate the rules and terminate the accounts of posters who repeatedly violate the rules. They are not required to host your posts.
If Google wants to remove all search query results that link to those OMG NAZIS it's OK because IT'S GOOGLE'S BUSINESS!
Pretty much. If Google chooses not to index your site because it offends their users, that is a choice they are allowed to make. They are not required to index your site in their search engine. You are also free to criticize Google for making that decision, if your repugnant behaviour hasn't already gotten you banned from all other media.
If "enightened" DNS providers want to prevent those evil OMG NAZIS from having name resolution to their own website that they pay for themselves that's totally cool because IT'S THEIR BUSINESS! Same thing goes for hosting providers who would be paid by the OMG NAZIS!
If the DNS providers find you so repugnant that they choose not to do business with you, that is their choice. Especially, if you libel them by claiming they are also Nazis because they didn't terminate your contract. They are not required to do business with you.
WHAT IF THE ISP HEROICALLY STEPS UP TO CENSOR THEM BECAUSE HOLY SHIT IT'S OK IT'S THE ISP'S BUSINESS?!?!?!?
The ISP can choose not to do business with you, like the other examples. They are not required to offer you internet service.
Oh wait, that's bad when the ISP does it because OMG NET NEUTRALITY.
However, they should not be allowed to rifle through your packets looking for bad words, ideas, or destinations, because that is not their business. So while, they are perfectly free to refuse to do business with you, they are not allowed to take your money and then censor your communications for their own reasons.
So as we can see, censorship is perfectly cool. Except for when it suddenly isn't anymore.
Censorship is always bad, it's just that sometimes the alternatives are worse.
Thank you for proving my point by linking to a long discredited story, which you cling to because it supports your political opinions.
If you weren't an anti-science political hack, you wouldn't be trying to peddle those lies here.
The fool only sees his own reflection in the water.
If you believe the shit you're saying equates to freedom in any meaningful sense of the word, you're a fucking moron. This is nothing more than an utterly broken and corrupt form of capitalism which is out of control, and corrupt lawmakers stacking the deck for corporations.
He's a libertarian, that practically means he's a fucking moron, by definition.
There is nothing like an idiot who believes there is one simple solution to every complex problem.
Slavery and indentured servitude are constructs of the government and only exist and are enforced through government force.
How is slavery a construct of the government when slavery is illegal? Does it "exist and [is] enforced through government force" when criminal gangs force people into slavery in countries where it is illegal?
Environmental law amounts to a license to pollute; traditional English common law property rights are far more effective at protecting the environment.
History disagrees with your delusions.
I have been back - to help teach computer programming to children. You should try it sometime, as it helps ground you in reality.
The evidence presented so far, indicates otherwise.
Heck, the Federal Government is the reason you're allowed to own a phone at all. They used to only rent them to people.
I'm chalking it up to senility. It's time for Grampa's nap before he writes anything more to embarrass himself...
The article says it makes them worse, not that it causes them.
What's distressing is how much damage phrases like 'the science is settled' does to the actual promulgation of the Scientific Method.
We've gotta wrest the mantle of Science back from these AGW witch doctors.
No what's truly distressing is how damage people like you do, because you think you can pick and choose which science is real based on your political views.
According to this article, if we ignore the modern climate change induced sea rise, there was about 24cm of sea level rise over the past 1800 years, almost all of it concentrated in the period of 1000-1400 AD.
OP's position seems perfectly philosophically valid to me. Why don't you refute his position rather than condescending on him without providing substance?
Responding in this manner makes you appear old and stupid, not wise.
Perhaps the GP's criticism was so subtle, you missed it entirely? I think you should spend more time thinking about he wrote and less time replying to things you don't understand.
The problem with Bitcoin is the fact that it growing at a rate far exceeding any sane inflation. It has gone to stupid level. Because they are so valuable, no one will actually buy anything real with them, unless they will be the pizza guy who bought a Pizza with 20 bit coins a few years ago.
Frankly, people pointed out this problem on Slashdot when Bitcoin was new. Bitcoin is deflationary by design. Deflationary currency encourages saving and never spending because the currency will generally be worth more tomorrow than what you can buy with it today.
I came to the conclusion months ago that he can't do anything that will cause his hardcore supporters to stop supporting him.
There are a probably a few things Trump could do that would cause him to lose his hard core supporters, but they are very few. The only one that I'm reasonably sure would absolutely lose him the next election is raising taxes.
well... according to the system utilised - known to be THE weakest form of government ever invented (democracy) - the citizens of the united states *do* want him in and thus *have* trusted him to make the right decisions for the four years of his term of office and thus *do* want a dictatorship oh hang on...
Oh no. Trump was elected by the electoral college, not by the democratic will of Americans, always remember Trump lost the popular vote. In an actual Democracy, Trump would still be claiming the election was rigged.
It's the prosperity gospel. The basic premise is that there is an all-good, interventionist, God, therefore the people that good things happen to must be good people, and the people that bad things happen to must be bad people. Unless, of course, bad things are happening to you or me, then it's God testing our greatness. The corollary is, of course, that taxes on rich people are inherently unjust because rich people are doing good while taxes on the poor are just what those sick depraved perverts deserve.
It's a truly sickening perversion of Christianity.
Just ask them if they want this system in place the next time a democrat president sits in the whitehouse?
Some of them are secretly hoping that there won't be a "next time a democrat president sits in the White House", which is one potential consequence of giving the President his own secret army of spies and assassins...
Doesn't it report into the same CIA director? So not private. And we know about it? So not secret. And it's a spy agency? So not police. So, yeah, every word in "private secret police" is wrong.
Here's a hint: Secret police aren't police, they're spies. Otherwise they'd just be "police". The "secret police" part just means they have the power to make you disappear, permanently.
Well, if this is true, it's not about trusting or not trusting the CIA. It's about creating a spy organization that doesn't report to anyone but the leader. It would be about having spies, and probably assassins, that are free from oversight and regulation. It would be about creating a secure and loyal power base like the one that Putin has, that can eliminate anyone who challenges the leader's position.
Actually, Al-Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda was a terrorist organization that used propaganda and religious zealots to wage a political campaign of terrorist attacks against the United States and western democracies. It was estimated that there were between 200 and 1,000 members of Al-Qaeda. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Do you think it's right to condemn a group based on the actions of 0.0625% of it's membership?
You should also be further aware that part of the goal of Al-Qaeda and later DAESH was to incite the western world into attacking innocent Muslims, so that they could gain power in the Muslim world. Conservatives who blame all Muslims for the actions of a small group of murderous criminals play right into the hands of those same criminals.
Russians meddled in the 2016 elections with trolling that didn't kill anyone. Liberals act horrified.
The Russian government meddled in the 2016 elections and liberals are horrified at the results of that meddling. Conservatives, however, are ok with it because they won. Way to sell out your own country for a bit of fleeting power.
Got it.
Nope.
Exactly. And once you realize that both parties do it relentlessly, in coordinated lockstep, and that partisan idiots give their own party a complete pass when they do it, you will see how impossible it is to stop.
This is obviously and poignantly wrong. We have a huge counter-example right here. The Democratic party supports net neutrality, the Republican party does not. How is that co-ordinated lock step?
You are right that your elected officials don't (usually) hate one another but they aren't in this together, either. The Republicans and the Democrats are competing for the same positions, they may have gentlemen's agreements on what is acceptable behaviour, but they are still die-hard competitors for the same positions. I think, in general, their relationship could be summarised as frenemies, though I think with the introduction of Tea Party and Alt-Right candidates the legislature is moving away from friendships and towards partisan enemies.
This means that government can get away with anything. You don't think the parties start with what they want to achieve and work backwards from there? You don't think that they divide up the unpopular positions to push down the throats of their own supporters?
Yes, I don't think that and I don't think any sane person would. Politicians are political, they have views and beliefs and while they may compromise those beliefs for the sake of winning an election, they are not working together towards a single unified goal. Beyond that, keeping a conspiracy of that sort secret would require levels discretion that clearly the average elected official is not capable of maintaining. You can imagine that everyone running for office in America is secretly a super-villain, but I don't think that delusion is going to help you understand anything.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that elected republicans hate democrats, and vice versa. You silly child. Hate is only good for manipulating stupid people. "Our" elected officials are all in it together.
There's a middle ground between those extremes, and that's where sanity lies. Republican and Democratic officials, generally speaking, don't hate each other, but they aren't working towards the same goals either. There are consistent differences between the positions of the two parties over multiple election cycles. It is true, that there is a lot of similarity between the two parties, but that's because they operate in the same country, solicit money from the same donors and fight for the votes from the same people.
Basically you are arguing that competing tool manufacturers are secretly working together because they produce tools that look very similar. No, the tools look the same to the untrained eye because they have been produced to do the same job with similar technology and similar materials. An expert, however, will be able to tell you if one company produces a better quality tool than the other for the job you want to get done. And just like in construction, in every election you should be trying to pick the best tool for the job.
It's not just the Gulag; there's no shortage of Americans calling Trump "racist" because he purposed a ban on Muslim immigration from certain countries, or because he wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico. This wanton abuse of the word "racist" is quite common.
Or maybe they're not-subtly saying that he's racist and proposing a ban on Muslim immigration because Muslims are predominantly Arab, and proposing to build an ineffectual and costly wall between the US and Mexico to tap into anti-Latino racism?
Seriously, it should be transparently obvious to everyone that Trump is racist because of the things he says and does, but it's not entirely his fault. He did grow up during the era of segregation. It's pretty likely that he was taught at an early age that blacks were inferior to white people. That type of mental damage can be hard to unlearn, and Trump doesn't like ever admitting that he was wrong, so fat chance of a sincere change of heart on his part, especially at his age.
Wait wait. You say all the evidence points out to existence of objective reality, but when I asked you for it, you admitted it's a paradox and can't be proven.
You clearly didn't follow my explanation. It can be proven, but if you're wrong and reality exist, you'll be dead.
I have then said that your claim is a metaphysical belief no more -- and no less, please read again -- based in reasoning that faith in God.
That seems like a stretch, from the belief that what we see is real, to the belief that what we do not see is real. Other than having an element of belief there seems to be little in common between those points.
herefore I have nothing to prove because I never claimed there is evidence that God "exists" (nor that such claim has meaning but that's a different story).
I didn't say you did, I asked you what you believe.
So of the two of us, you are the only one who claims there is evidence for one view in particular, that of objective reality existing independently of the observer. Care to try to show the proof again?
I asked you for your alternative to objective reality, and the evidence you have to support it. Science is, after all, at it's core about competing theories and choosing the one which the evidence supports best. It's not about being "right", it's about the struggle to always be "less wrong".
Take another look at that graph. It shows the ocean level rise as effectively 0 over the last 2000 years. That's not "rising since the last ice age".