Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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"Report this fuckwad to the secret service."
How short their memories. Do you think you deserve anything better?
You and all of your spiritual brothers (everyone else who thinks I should be locked up for not liking Bush) were asses, I didn't think you were worth wasting politeness on. I try to save that for people who don't go out of their way to insult me in their first message.
Btw, great way to dodge the issue. You asked when assasination was acceptable, I provided an answer. Hell, I think I showed when it's not only acceptable, but morally required to assasinate your political leader.
CNN has huge videos, but they're static. The same video served to you is served to me and hundreds of others.
CNN also doesn't have to maintain instantaneous consistency... As in, if I load the page from one server and see a certain page, and you at exactly the same instant see the older version, we're both still seeing consistent pages.
All they have to do is maintain transactional consistency.
If I loaded the new page, and got the old pictures, that'd be an issue, but as long as once the page changes to the new one, all the content is changed.
Just like a database, all or nothing, with rollbacks if it fails. And that's what they use, a remote database server.
Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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Well, I'm Canadian, but I feel much more of a link to Europe sometimes, than to the USA...
I feel the death penalty is misguided. Not that it's wrong to kill someone who killed many, but because it's often hard to know with certainty if someone is guilty.
If someone like Jeffery Dahmer confesses and shows us evidence, it's pretty clear. But there are a lot of cases where everyone is sure someone's guilty, until someone later comes along and confesses, or is caught for the next murder and we find out they were guilty all along...
If we had a crystal ball and knew with certainty, I'd have no issue. But I've seen too many people in jail for years be released later when we found they were guilty. If we'd executed them, how would we justify it?
Canada, as a country is mostly against the death penalty, but individuals vary quite widely in opinion.
Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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Why don't you believe assasination is valid?
Would you have shot Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Milosevic, Saddam, etc?
If not, why not? Do you think it's better to go to war against their armies of conscripts, killing waves of people who are only there because their families will be killed if they leave?
In any case where a leader is doing something seriously wrong by the standards of the people, I think the people have the responsibility to remove them, and few leaders would leave unless killed. Power corrupts, corrupt people don't want to leave power.
People on Slashdot are talking about how the Afghanis have a responsibility to hand over Osama, even if their leaders disagree, or they're just as good as him...
Well, if you happily pay your taxes, Dubya takes that money, and nukes someone with it, and you don't complain... YOU'RE GUILTY!
When is it ever NOT justified to kill one person to save thousands?
Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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I doubt they'll nab you in the night and take you for questioning... They'll simply label you (and me) as likely subversives, like communists in the 50s.
If you ever want to get security clearance, you'll be inspected a bit more, etc.
But it's likely fairly obvious that neither of us are likely going to pick up a gun and attempt to kill him, so it'll just go down as a political comment.
Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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Thanks. The lackwits who replied to me mostly wanted too, but seemed incapable of figuring it out. I think they needed your help.
On a similar topic... way to go. Clog up the governmental works in this emergency, when they're supposed to find the people who did this, by reporting me for disliking the US president. Just so you're happy to know you did you part in helping terrorists get away.
Here's a tip junior, the number of people who think the US president is a fuck-nut is expressed by this litle formula
It's really unpleasant knowing that someone who likely needs help to solve basic math problems is able to launch enough nuclear weapons to destroy most life on Earth.
Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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When should one threaten the presidents life, conditionally for using Nukes?
When nothing happened, when he's not likely to go off on a murderous rampage?
Silly me, I thought it'd be more appropriate at a time when he's likely to go off half-cocked and do something really really stupid.
If he uses nukes, the only red-tape I'll deal with to enter to US will be getting permission to lead an archeological team into the radioactive wastelands.
Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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Actually, only the US has a blanket law against uttering any threats towards the president (of the US).
That's like only the British commonwealth has a law against "Alarming the Queen" (a rather broad law, I might add).
You're free to threaten the queen, as long as you stay in the US, and commonwealth citizens don't face commonwealth laws for threatening Bush.
(Though, I'm sure, if I was important enough to them, they'd buy whatever court outcome they wanted, much like the MPAA does.)
But, this is a bit irrelevant because I was saying this conditional with Bush wanting to drag us into a nuclear war. At that point, I think all right-thinking people would rather get rid of Bush than follow him in a jihad.
btw, great country you have where it's illegal to express that you'd support, to the death, your beliefs that you should nuke innocent people.
Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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I think you're the only one who got it...
I'm saying that I'd much rather fight back against "our" (western world) leaders leading us into WW3 than I'd like to abdicate responsibility and let them get us killed, all in our own little holy war.
It would suck if nobody was punished for killing the thousands of innocents in this disaster, but it will not ever be right to bomb another country full of innocents for it. If "we" attack, we need to surgically extract the guilty, try them, and then if they're guilty, punish them with all force.
If we bomb their cites and kill 5000 innocents, what's the real difference between them and us?
And yeah, the US has freedom of speech, except where it's inconvenient or unpopular. (Ditto most governments though, even though they usually don't make such a big deal of the rights that they pretend you have.)
And yes, if the SS does come and get me, they'll be dragging a foreign national into their country to stand trial for the hideous crime of not supporting a US foreign policy of nuking innocents. Hmmm, much like the Skylarov and Johansen (?) stuff. Maybe I should pack a travel bag.
(And, note that I said it as a conditional. If Dubya handles this well, then I'll support him. If he wants to nuke something, as the message I replied to suggested, then he's no better than a rabid dog and needs to be dealt with like one.)
Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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· Score: 0, Troll
You are FUCKING PATHETIC.
If you think I deserve reporting, then get off your lazy, inbred, hill-billy, twinkie-eating ass and report me yourself.
Fuck, it's people like you I'm ranting about.
You're such a fucking knee-jerk apathetic retard, that you willing to advocate any and all responsibility, regardless of what is being done in your name. All to save yourself actually having to have an opinion and do something.
If you think someone from another country, ranting about the mental midget who bought an election in your country is such a threat to national security, then get up and fucking report me yourself.
Seriously, you are freaking pathetic.
Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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You're a sheep. Seriously.
Unable to comprehend that someone may not think it's a great idea to start lobbing nukes around over the actions of a few people.
I don't doubt they'll check me out, because thousands of sheep like you no doubt reported me, on the theory that someone who doesn't suck Bush-Dick must have helped the terrorists.
I'd laugh at you if you weren't pathetic.
Would you actually support the drooler in charge if he talked about lobbing nukes? I thought you whole government was based on the idea that the people had guns and could, as a last resort, overrule leaders who were insane?
Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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Sure pissed people off, but that sort of was the idea.
Wake the sheep up and make them think. Hello, they're talking about supporting a mental deficient who's likely to start world war three.
We're talking about how the Afghanis, if they don't want to be bombed, have an obligation to overthrow their leaders and turn over Osama. So why don't we have that obligation?
I'm not actually from the US, so the chance of me going there to do that is kinda nil, but I'm NOT going to buy into the little sheep-act and support their retard of a president in his jihad.
Why does being upset about the trajedy suddenly make people willing to accept whatever someone in authority says without thinking about it?
The emperor had no clothing yesterday, now you're congragulating him on his wardrobe. Ugh.
Does CNN have any 800K pages? That is generates specifically for each viewer?
CNN had a huge problem, but it's a less interesting problem. If you simply throw enough computers at it, or a big enough one, you can fill any pipe with mostly static pages.
They are both challenges, but they're very different challenges.
Re:Pray Or Meditate Or Whatever For President Bush
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
If he decides to use a nuke, the only support he'll get from me will be full-metal jacketed, right between the eyes.
I swear, if that jingoist warmonger gets us into WW3 just so he can be like his daddy and have his own war, I'm gonna do everything I can to bring him down.
You're right, I don't have any info about what Bill is doing, other than this announcement.
Do you have any information on how much your next-door neighbor is donating? No. And that's because even if he gave, he's not going to hold a press conference to discuss it.
If Bill makes a private donation, then cool. I won't try to hack into the payment system to find out how much.
How many open source companies have made donations as generous? If you mean just by dollars, then I ask you how many open source companies make $5M a year, let alone can afford to donate it. $50 is more appropriate for them.
If you mean by licenses and stuff, then as the other reply to your post said - all of them. They give everything away to anyone who wants it.
Personally, I'd rather have donated to a charity that would help us work out race-relation difficulties. People here talk about how the Muslims in the USA are still supporting Osama, but then they drive past mosques and shoot at them... Maybe there's a reason they don't feel at home.
I am saddened to say, but I think that with a few exceptions, everyone in the tower collapse is dead. And the government is throwing its full weight behind getting them out.
What everyone is overlooking is trying to make this never happen again. Sure, if we kill Osama, he'll never do it again, but others will, as long as they hate Westerners, and they will as long as we're awful and foreign.
Listen, I'm saying two seperate things here, I'll spell them out for you.
1) Donating licenses is useless and costs MS nothing.
2) If you're going to crow about it to the news, make sure your donation is bigger, %-wise than most other people are making.
The Amazon donation page says people donate an average of $35 each. Now, consider my friends make a rough average of $1100 month takehome, this is 3% of their wage, MS makes 3.2B/month, and gave 5M (real cash) which is.1% of their income.
Ok, let's look at it another way...
Let's say a kid saw this horror, so he donated six months of saved allowance, for which he'd raked leaves and done odd jobs, and that came to $300. Now, I take $350 out of my wallet, just a couple days wages, and donate that, saying "Look how great I am. I donated a large sum of money!"
Who would you think was the generous one? The one who was willing to send in the fruits of six months of labour, or the one who sent it the most money, even though it was pocket change by equivalent?
Now, if I just silently let the kid inspire me, and I donated what I felt I could, and didn't try to make everyone think I was such a great guy, when we'd both be generous and kind.
Most people (those not in the NYC area) went to Amazon, or Paypal's donation page, and quietly gave $100. They might mention it, but only to encourage others. People on Slashdot are effectively anonymous, they aren't posting "I gave $100" to make themselves look good, they're doing it to encourage others.
Now, Microsoft gave essentially sweet fuck all, and they're making a big deal of it.
I have no problem with people giving a lot, or not at all. Whatever, it's up to you. What I have a problem with is people who make a big deal about how holier than thou they are, and yet give essentially nothing.
Microsoft is giving fucking licenses, something of NO real value. And they're crowing about how wonderful they are.
Oh wow! Let me send my old OS/2 licenses, that's just as useless.
If Bill just went to the Amazon page and gave money, any ammount, and someone found out, I wouldn't care how much he gave.
It's the ulterior motive that's disgusting, they give just enough to justify notifying the press. Why did they do that? Why not send the money and not waste people's time with yet another useless press release? Because that press release and the tax write-off are the only reasons they did it.
Re:The views of a Muslim in NY
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First, it's not a troll. A troll is posting something just to incite a flame war. I honestly believe what I said to be true. Admittedly, I didn't try to cushion the blow with a bunch of weasel words, I did just say it like it is, so to speak.
You say you're rational, yet you believe in a god. What proof do you have?
"But this is a problem with the people, not religion."
No, this is a problem with something that people are supposed to take on faith, to just accept without questioning. People have flaws other than religion, but religion is always a flaw.
"You can argue the same thing about a group of hackers/programmers: they're all evil because hackers break into computers and corrupt data and steal credit card numbers, etc."
That's supposed to be rational? There's no "Church of the Hacker" that indoctrinates youngsters to grow up and hack at things. Your analogy is fatally flawed, I just had to haul it out behind the barn and put it out of it's misery.
Read this reply to my post, I'm sure you'll agree with some of what he said...
I also covered a bit in my responce to that article that is appropriate here, so check it out.
Re:The views of a Muslim in NY
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"The very fact that someone can claim to know TRUTH is just absurd."
Ok, let's look at this.
If I said there's an invisible pink unicorn, and she is god, would you believe me? Why not? Why is that any less plausible than anything else?
There are an infinite number of possible claims, but when they say "the TRUE CREATOR OF EVERYTHING is X", only one can be right.
I think this behooves the claimant to provide proof. You want me to believe in your god? Show me some proof.
Read the next paragraph carefully, I'm making a subtle point.
I'm not believing in a god. I'm *NOT* believing that a god does not exist.
One is saying that a god does not exist, the other makes no such claim.
I'm an athiest, I don't believe in a god. It's not the christian god I don't believe in, or the muslim god, or any other. I don't believe in ANY gods. I don't spare any thoughts for the christian god because he's about as likely as the invisible pink unicorn.
So I'm not claiming to know the absolute truth, instead I'm refusing to believe those who claim to know it, and that all I need to do is read this little book...
If you don't believe what you read, go back to that post and read the replies, and my replies to them. I clarify, sometimes in much detail, why I said the things that I said.
Yes, I said it in an inflamatory way, but I stand by it ALL.
btw, for reference, I didn't just make up the pink unicorn bit... here's a link.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bit/6458/pi nkunicorns.html
Watch out for the space that/. will put in the URL.
Re:The views of a Muslim in NY
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Right. People can do wrong without religion, I never said otherwise.
I did however say, that religion, being unprovable, is basically irrational, and that it spreads by people teaching impressionable people. People teach religion to children, or to desperate junkies who just want SOMEONE to love them, and if that person preaches, oh well.
If you truly were raised without religion, and came to it without any help, then you are the first I have *ever* met who did so.
Everyone else I know who is religious was told, as a young child, that it was true. Repeatedly.
I do agree that for the dead, it's over. But I think that it's *really* over, not just one phase of life. They're completely gone. No chance with god.
I think I feel death to be a greater trajedy than religious people do. For the religious, the people are living, just in another place. Good people with god, bad people where they belong. To the religious, death is only a temporary parting.
IM(NS)HO, death is FINAL. I won't get to see gramps when I die, I won't be reunited. It's OVER. Everything left undone is forever undone.
How can a religious person truly mourn death when they think it's just a game, a little stage in a larger existance. They're basically saying "See ya later, I'll be along in a few years!".
Re:I agree with this 100%
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Wow, you summed it up *SO* well! Dude, seriously, that's IT.
"If you want someone to die for you, you cannot pay them money."
Exactly! Only brainwashing can do that.
And yeah, religious people almost always beleive their parents religion. I don't know anyone who was raised without religion who later adopted one, this says to me that most people are perfectly capable of living without it, if they weren't brainwashed into it.
Anyways, great point.
Re:The views of a Muslim in NY
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I don't have a ton of time, so I'll keep it quick.
"Now I KNOW that there are "religions" set up out there that are designed to bilk people of their money and delude them into serving false ends -- and perhaps even into performing selfish acts or hurting other people. So what? There are businesses, political parties, books, cultural ideals, and websites all doing the same thing. Not to mention the number of absolutely naturalistic/humanistic ideaologies that do the same thing. Some people, for example, beleive in the Invisible Hand [everything2.org] as unfailingly as devout Muslims beleive in Allah, and use that as an excuse for all sorts of slights against other individuals."
Correct. People will use a lot of excuses to hurt others, to get ahead.
But... things like "the invisible hand" are supposed to require proof. People wrote books to convince others, others wrote books to counter those arguments.
The thing here is that there's rational discourse. Of course, some people buy one side, some buy the other.
With religion, there's ONE SIDE, you read *THE* bible. People with other opinions are called heretics.
There are other nasty organizations, governments, whatever, that practice mind control and brain washing. However all religions do this.
This means that religion isn't the only thing to watch out for, but all religion should be watched. By its very nature, religion is based around controlling people's thoughts.
There's a reason people take kids to Sunday school, etc, because the only way to teach the kids this is to brainwash them. I don't know ANYONE who was raised without religion, yet picked it up later.
"I believe you should give me the choice about..."
I would. I have no intention of advocating post-partum abortions.
But at the level where a baby isn't a baby, where it's just a zygote, or even earlier, a few eggs and a billion sperm cells. Why not select one over the other?
Why is it magically different right after conception?
I too have alergies, though fairly mild. I wouldn't mind not having them. If my parents had to select a different sperm cell to do it, I'd overall be okay with that. I'm here, not because I was destined to be born, but by accident. If *I* wasn't born, another baby would have been, and they'd be the one thinking about how they were here by fluke...
It's like the argument "what's the chance we'd end up in a universe that can support life?" Merely that fact that we're here, able to discuss it, means that it's 100%. A billion universes could exist, or have existed, without life, and we'd never know.
I'm 26, and I never bought into the "without ___, life is worthless" school of thought, except for intellect.
Friends of mine said they'd kill themselves if they became a parapalegic, or went blind, or whatever. I never agreed. I love to read, I could base my life around that, or if needed, talking books, or braile, etc.
What would kill me is being too dim to do everything that makes my life worthwhile now, too dim to even understand what I used to live my life for. But, smart enough to realize everything I used to love and how I was completely incapable of it.
That's the only thing (short of being a complete vegetable) that would make me want to end it.
Ok, and I didn't mean you and your experts were completely wrong, just that the story didn't ring 100% based on conflicting reports, the pictures I saw, etc.
But, of course, now I can't find anything that supports my take on it. I must say though, that I didn't say anything about *where the plane hit* mattering, so I'm not ignoring evidence towards your views.
All I could find was "The ensuing collapses may have occurred when the weight of the buildings above the points of impact exceeded the reduced load carrying capacity of the remaining structure."
Which, if you close one eye and crook your neck, seems to support my view.:)
I really think it's mainly 6 of one, a half dozen of the other...
#1 was hit at 8:40, #2 at 9:00, #2 collapsed at 10:00, #1 at 10:29, BUT, from the pictures, #2 sustained a much worse hit, so it's impossible to say if it's the severity of the hit, or the floor it was hit on, that did the most damage.
What everyone agreed with (all the experts I found online) was that the fire was the main cause of the collapse. Many thought the buildings would still be standing if they hadn't burnt. Which says, imho, that it was both and neither. The floor hit at is mostly irrelevant as long as it's not the very top (ie, nothing pressing down) or at the bottom where they could put it out.
Slashdot Mirror
"Report this fuckwad to the secret service."
How short their memories. Do you think you deserve anything better?
You and all of your spiritual brothers (everyone else who thinks I should be locked up for not liking Bush) were asses, I didn't think you were worth wasting politeness on. I try to save that for people who don't go out of their way to insult me in their first message.
Btw, great way to dodge the issue. You asked when assasination was acceptable, I provided an answer. Hell, I think I showed when it's not only acceptable, but morally required to assasinate your political leader.
CNN has huge videos, but they're static. The same video served to you is served to me and hundreds of others.
CNN also doesn't have to maintain instantaneous consistency... As in, if I load the page from one server and see a certain page, and you at exactly the same instant see the older version, we're both still seeing consistent pages.
All they have to do is maintain transactional consistency.
If I loaded the new page, and got the old pictures, that'd be an issue, but as long as once the page changes to the new one, all the content is changed.
Just like a database, all or nothing, with rollbacks if it fails. And that's what they use, a remote database server.
Well, I'm Canadian, but I feel much more of a link to Europe sometimes, than to the USA...
I feel the death penalty is misguided. Not that it's wrong to kill someone who killed many, but because it's often hard to know with certainty if someone is guilty.
If someone like Jeffery Dahmer confesses and shows us evidence, it's pretty clear. But there are a lot of cases where everyone is sure someone's guilty, until someone later comes along and confesses, or is caught for the next murder and we find out they were guilty all along...
If we had a crystal ball and knew with certainty, I'd have no issue. But I've seen too many people in jail for years be released later when we found they were guilty. If we'd executed them, how would we justify it?
Canada, as a country is mostly against the death penalty, but individuals vary quite widely in opinion.
Why don't you believe assasination is valid?
Would you have shot Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Milosevic, Saddam, etc?
If not, why not? Do you think it's better to go to war against their armies of conscripts, killing waves of people who are only there because their families will be killed if they leave?
In any case where a leader is doing something seriously wrong by the standards of the people, I think the people have the responsibility to remove them, and few leaders would leave unless killed. Power corrupts, corrupt people don't want to leave power.
People on Slashdot are talking about how the Afghanis have a responsibility to hand over Osama, even if their leaders disagree, or they're just as good as him...
Well, if you happily pay your taxes, Dubya takes that money, and nukes someone with it, and you don't complain... YOU'RE GUILTY!
When is it ever NOT justified to kill one person to save thousands?
I doubt they'll nab you in the night and take you for questioning... They'll simply label you (and me) as likely subversives, like communists in the 50s.
If you ever want to get security clearance, you'll be inspected a bit more, etc.
But it's likely fairly obvious that neither of us are likely going to pick up a gun and attempt to kill him, so it'll just go down as a political comment.
Thanks. The lackwits who replied to me mostly wanted too, but seemed incapable of figuring it out. I think they needed your help.
On a similar topic... way to go. Clog up the governmental works in this emergency, when they're supposed to find the people who did this, by reporting me for disliking the US president. Just so you're happy to know you did you part in helping terrorists get away.
Here's a tip junior, the number of people who think the US president is a fuck-nut is expressed by this litle formula
(PopulationOfWorld - PopulationOfUSA) = BushHaters
It's really unpleasant knowing that someone who likely needs help to solve basic math problems is able to launch enough nuclear weapons to destroy most life on Earth.
When should one threaten the presidents life, conditionally for using Nukes?
When nothing happened, when he's not likely to go off on a murderous rampage?
Silly me, I thought it'd be more appropriate at a time when he's likely to go off half-cocked and do something really really stupid.
If he uses nukes, the only red-tape I'll deal with to enter to US will be getting permission to lead an archeological team into the radioactive wastelands.
Actually, only the US has a blanket law against uttering any threats towards the president (of the US).
That's like only the British commonwealth has a law against "Alarming the Queen" (a rather broad law, I might add).
You're free to threaten the queen, as long as you stay in the US, and commonwealth citizens don't face commonwealth laws for threatening Bush.
(Though, I'm sure, if I was important enough to them, they'd buy whatever court outcome they wanted, much like the MPAA does.)
But, this is a bit irrelevant because I was saying this conditional with Bush wanting to drag us into a nuclear war. At that point, I think all right-thinking people would rather get rid of Bush than follow him in a jihad.
btw, great country you have where it's illegal to express that you'd support, to the death, your beliefs that you should nuke innocent people.
I think you're the only one who got it...
I'm saying that I'd much rather fight back against "our" (western world) leaders leading us into WW3 than I'd like to abdicate responsibility and let them get us killed, all in our own little holy war.
It would suck if nobody was punished for killing the thousands of innocents in this disaster, but it will not ever be right to bomb another country full of innocents for it. If "we" attack, we need to surgically extract the guilty, try them, and then if they're guilty, punish them with all force.
If we bomb their cites and kill 5000 innocents, what's the real difference between them and us?
And yeah, the US has freedom of speech, except where it's inconvenient or unpopular. (Ditto most governments though, even though they usually don't make such a big deal of the rights that they pretend you have.)
And yes, if the SS does come and get me, they'll be dragging a foreign national into their country to stand trial for the hideous crime of not supporting a US foreign policy of nuking innocents. Hmmm, much like the Skylarov and Johansen (?) stuff. Maybe I should pack a travel bag.
(And, note that I said it as a conditional. If Dubya handles this well, then I'll support him. If he wants to nuke something, as the message I replied to suggested, then he's no better than a rabid dog and needs to be dealt with like one.)
You are FUCKING PATHETIC.
If you think I deserve reporting, then get off your lazy, inbred, hill-billy, twinkie-eating ass and report me yourself.
Fuck, it's people like you I'm ranting about.
You're such a fucking knee-jerk apathetic retard, that you willing to advocate any and all responsibility, regardless of what is being done in your name. All to save yourself actually having to have an opinion and do something.
If you think someone from another country, ranting about the mental midget who bought an election in your country is such a threat to national security, then get up and fucking report me yourself.
Seriously, you are freaking pathetic.
You're a sheep. Seriously.
Unable to comprehend that someone may not think it's a great idea to start lobbing nukes around over the actions of a few people.
I don't doubt they'll check me out, because thousands of sheep like you no doubt reported me, on the theory that someone who doesn't suck Bush-Dick must have helped the terrorists.
I'd laugh at you if you weren't pathetic.
Would you actually support the drooler in charge if he talked about lobbing nukes? I thought you whole government was based on the idea that the people had guns and could, as a last resort, overrule leaders who were insane?
Sure pissed people off, but that sort of was the idea.
Wake the sheep up and make them think. Hello, they're talking about supporting a mental deficient who's likely to start world war three.
We're talking about how the Afghanis, if they don't want to be bombed, have an obligation to overthrow their leaders and turn over Osama. So why don't we have that obligation?
I'm not actually from the US, so the chance of me going there to do that is kinda nil, but I'm NOT going to buy into the little sheep-act and support their retard of a president in his jihad.
Why does being upset about the trajedy suddenly make people willing to accept whatever someone in authority says without thinking about it?
The emperor had no clothing yesterday, now you're congragulating him on his wardrobe. Ugh.
Does CNN have any 800K pages? That is generates specifically for each viewer?
CNN had a huge problem, but it's a less interesting problem. If you simply throw enough computers at it, or a big enough one, you can fill any pipe with mostly static pages.
They are both challenges, but they're very different challenges.
If he decides to use a nuke, the only support he'll get from me will be full-metal jacketed, right between the eyes.
I swear, if that jingoist warmonger gets us into WW3 just so he can be like his daddy and have his own war, I'm gonna do everything I can to bring him down.
You're right, I don't have any info about what Bill is doing, other than this announcement.
Do you have any information on how much your next-door neighbor is donating? No. And that's because even if he gave, he's not going to hold a press conference to discuss it.
If Bill makes a private donation, then cool. I won't try to hack into the payment system to find out how much.
How many open source companies have made donations as generous? If you mean just by dollars, then I ask you how many open source companies make $5M a year, let alone can afford to donate it. $50 is more appropriate for them.
If you mean by licenses and stuff, then as the other reply to your post said - all of them. They give everything away to anyone who wants it.
Personally, I'd rather have donated to a charity that would help us work out race-relation difficulties. People here talk about how the Muslims in the USA are still supporting Osama, but then they drive past mosques and shoot at them... Maybe there's a reason they don't feel at home.
I am saddened to say, but I think that with a few exceptions, everyone in the tower collapse is dead. And the government is throwing its full weight behind getting them out.
What everyone is overlooking is trying to make this never happen again. Sure, if we kill Osama, he'll never do it again, but others will, as long as they hate Westerners, and they will as long as we're awful and foreign.
Nope.
.1% of their income.
Listen, I'm saying two seperate things here, I'll spell them out for you.
1) Donating licenses is useless and costs MS nothing.
2) If you're going to crow about it to the news, make sure your donation is bigger, %-wise than most other people are making.
The Amazon donation page says people donate an average of $35 each. Now, consider my friends make a rough average of $1100 month takehome, this is 3% of their wage, MS makes 3.2B/month, and gave 5M (real cash) which is
Ok, let's look at it another way...
Let's say a kid saw this horror, so he donated six months of saved allowance, for which he'd raked leaves and done odd jobs, and that came to $300. Now, I take $350 out of my wallet, just a couple days wages, and donate that, saying "Look how great I am. I donated a large sum of money!"
Who would you think was the generous one? The one who was willing to send in the fruits of six months of labour, or the one who sent it the most money, even though it was pocket change by equivalent?
Now, if I just silently let the kid inspire me, and I donated what I felt I could, and didn't try to make everyone think I was such a great guy, when we'd both be generous and kind.
Nope. You're completely missing the point.
Most people (those not in the NYC area) went to Amazon, or Paypal's donation page, and quietly gave $100. They might mention it, but only to encourage others. People on Slashdot are effectively anonymous, they aren't posting "I gave $100" to make themselves look good, they're doing it to encourage others.
Now, Microsoft gave essentially sweet fuck all, and they're making a big deal of it.
I have no problem with people giving a lot, or not at all. Whatever, it's up to you. What I have a problem with is people who make a big deal about how holier than thou they are, and yet give essentially nothing.
Microsoft is giving fucking licenses, something of NO real value. And they're crowing about how wonderful they are.
Oh wow! Let me send my old OS/2 licenses, that's just as useless.
If Bill just went to the Amazon page and gave money, any ammount, and someone found out, I wouldn't care how much he gave.
It's the ulterior motive that's disgusting, they give just enough to justify notifying the press. Why did they do that? Why not send the money and not waste people's time with yet another useless press release? Because that press release and the tax write-off are the only reasons they did it.
First, it's not a troll. A troll is posting something just to incite a flame war. I honestly believe what I said to be true. Admittedly, I didn't try to cushion the blow with a bunch of weasel words, I did just say it like it is, so to speak.
2 93 719
You say you're rational, yet you believe in a god. What proof do you have?
"But this is a problem with the people, not religion."
No, this is a problem with something that people are supposed to take on faith, to just accept without questioning. People have flaws other than religion, but religion is always a flaw.
"You can argue the same thing about a group of hackers/programmers: they're all evil because hackers break into computers and corrupt data and steal credit card numbers, etc."
That's supposed to be rational? There's no "Church of the Hacker" that indoctrinates youngsters to grow up and hack at things. Your analogy is fatally flawed, I just had to haul it out behind the barn and put it out of it's misery.
Read this reply to my post, I'm sure you'll agree with some of what he said...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=21600&cid=2
I also covered a bit in my responce to that article that is appropriate here, so check it out.
"The very fact that someone can claim to know TRUTH is just absurd."
i nkunicorns.html
/. will put in the URL.
Ok, let's look at this.
If I said there's an invisible pink unicorn, and she is god, would you believe me? Why not? Why is that any less plausible than anything else?
There are an infinite number of possible claims, but when they say "the TRUE CREATOR OF EVERYTHING is X", only one can be right.
I think this behooves the claimant to provide proof. You want me to believe in your god? Show me some proof.
Read the next paragraph carefully, I'm making a subtle point.
I'm not believing in a god. I'm *NOT* believing that a god does not exist.
One is saying that a god does not exist, the other makes no such claim.
I'm an athiest, I don't believe in a god. It's not the christian god I don't believe in, or the muslim god, or any other. I don't believe in ANY gods. I don't spare any thoughts for the christian god because he's about as likely as the invisible pink unicorn.
So I'm not claiming to know the absolute truth, instead I'm refusing to believe those who claim to know it, and that all I need to do is read this little book...
If you don't believe what you read, go back to that post and read the replies, and my replies to them. I clarify, sometimes in much detail, why I said the things that I said.
Yes, I said it in an inflamatory way, but I stand by it ALL.
btw, for reference, I didn't just make up the pink unicorn bit... here's a link.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bit/6458/p
Watch out for the space that
Right. People can do wrong without religion, I never said otherwise.
I did however say, that religion, being unprovable, is basically irrational, and that it spreads by people teaching impressionable people. People teach religion to children, or to desperate junkies who just want SOMEONE to love them, and if that person preaches, oh well.
If you truly were raised without religion, and came to it without any help, then you are the first I have *ever* met who did so.
Everyone else I know who is religious was told, as a young child, that it was true. Repeatedly.
I do agree that for the dead, it's over. But I think that it's *really* over, not just one phase of life. They're completely gone. No chance with god.
I think I feel death to be a greater trajedy than religious people do. For the religious, the people are living, just in another place. Good people with god, bad people where they belong. To the religious, death is only a temporary parting.
IM(NS)HO, death is FINAL. I won't get to see gramps when I die, I won't be reunited. It's OVER. Everything left undone is forever undone.
How can a religious person truly mourn death when they think it's just a game, a little stage in a larger existance. They're basically saying "See ya later, I'll be along in a few years!".
Wow, you summed it up *SO* well! Dude, seriously, that's IT.
"If you want someone to die for you, you cannot pay them money."
Exactly! Only brainwashing can do that.
And yeah, religious people almost always beleive their parents religion. I don't know anyone who was raised without religion who later adopted one, this says to me that most people are perfectly capable of living without it, if they weren't brainwashed into it.
Anyways, great point.
I don't have a ton of time, so I'll keep it quick.
"Now I KNOW that there are "religions" set up out there that are designed to bilk people of their money and delude them into serving false ends -- and perhaps even into performing selfish acts or hurting other people. So what? There are businesses, political parties, books, cultural ideals, and websites all doing the same thing. Not to mention the number of absolutely naturalistic/humanistic ideaologies that do the same thing. Some people, for example, beleive in the Invisible Hand [everything2.org] as unfailingly as devout Muslims beleive in Allah, and use that as an excuse for all sorts of slights against other individuals."
Correct. People will use a lot of excuses to hurt others, to get ahead.
But... things like "the invisible hand" are supposed to require proof. People wrote books to convince others, others wrote books to counter those arguments.
The thing here is that there's rational discourse. Of course, some people buy one side, some buy the other.
With religion, there's ONE SIDE, you read *THE* bible. People with other opinions are called heretics.
There are other nasty organizations, governments, whatever, that practice mind control and brain washing. However all religions do this.
This means that religion isn't the only thing to watch out for, but all religion should be watched. By its very nature, religion is based around controlling people's thoughts.
There's a reason people take kids to Sunday school, etc, because the only way to teach the kids this is to brainwash them. I don't know ANYONE who was raised without religion, yet picked it up later.
"I believe you should give me the choice about..."
I would. I have no intention of advocating post-partum abortions.
But at the level where a baby isn't a baby, where it's just a zygote, or even earlier, a few eggs and a billion sperm cells. Why not select one over the other?
Why is it magically different right after conception?
I too have alergies, though fairly mild. I wouldn't mind not having them. If my parents had to select a different sperm cell to do it, I'd overall be okay with that. I'm here, not because I was destined to be born, but by accident. If *I* wasn't born, another baby would have been, and they'd be the one thinking about how they were here by fluke...
It's like the argument "what's the chance we'd end up in a universe that can support life?" Merely that fact that we're here, able to discuss it, means that it's 100%. A billion universes could exist, or have existed, without life, and we'd never know.
I'm 26, and I never bought into the "without ___, life is worthless" school of thought, except for intellect.
Friends of mine said they'd kill themselves if they became a parapalegic, or went blind, or whatever. I never agreed. I love to read, I could base my life around that, or if needed, talking books, or braile, etc.
What would kill me is being too dim to do everything that makes my life worthwhile now, too dim to even understand what I used to live my life for. But, smart enough to realize everything I used to love and how I was completely incapable of it.
That's the only thing (short of being a complete vegetable) that would make me want to end it.
Ok, and I didn't mean you and your experts were completely wrong, just that the story didn't ring 100% based on conflicting reports, the pictures I saw, etc.
:)
But, of course, now I can't find anything that supports my take on it. I must say though, that I didn't say anything about *where the plane hit* mattering, so I'm not ignoring evidence towards your views.
All I could find was "The ensuing collapses may have occurred when the weight of the buildings above the points of impact exceeded the reduced load carrying capacity of the remaining structure."
Which, if you close one eye and crook your neck, seems to support my view.
I really think it's mainly 6 of one, a half dozen of the other...
#1 was hit at 8:40, #2 at 9:00, #2 collapsed at 10:00, #1 at 10:29, BUT, from the pictures, #2 sustained a much worse hit, so it's impossible to say if it's the severity of the hit, or the floor it was hit on, that did the most damage.
What everyone agreed with (all the experts I found online) was that the fire was the main cause of the collapse. Many thought the buildings would still be standing if they hadn't burnt. Which says, imho, that it was both and neither. The floor hit at is mostly irrelevant as long as it's not the very top (ie, nothing pressing down) or at the bottom where they could put it out.