"the commandment about not killing is pretty interesting"
Actually the commandment is "Do not commit murder."
Killing during war, self defense, and lawful execution by the government are all supported by the Bible.
I had big problems with the Bible when I was hearing and reading the english translations. It seemed innacurate and sometimes downright contradictory. I now go to a church where we not only study the Bible from the original languages, but we apply proper interpretation techniques (isagogics, exegetics, categorization), and use systematic theology to codify and reference out interpretations.
Rectifying the English translations with textual criticism is one of the most gratifying experiences I have ever had. The clarity of the Bible when studied in the original languages is amazing. Unfortunately most peopole who are in the "Church" do not take the time or thought to consider the original languages and the proper translation of the Bible. Most of them won't even study systematic theology so that they can frame their particular belief system in a logical way.
Even more ironic to me are those people who, never having studied the original languages of the Bible or translation from the most accurate manuscripts, say they are disenchanted with the Bible. It is like a person blind from birth saying they don't like the color of your shirt.
This brings up the question of whether or not everyone, specifically the pharos themselves, actually believed 100% in the religion of the day.
Did you ever wonder if there was a pharoh that was uneasy at the thought of having their body put through the embalming process? What with their brains being pulled out of their nose and their organs being put into jars I would expect that some of them were not to excited about the prospect.
The ancient Egypitans also believed that the pharohs were gods. It was central to their religion. I think that *maybe* the pharohs themselves knew whether or not they were actually gods, and this knowledge might have had some bearing on their perception of their religious beliefs.
Not to mention marrying and having sex with their sisters. I bet that some pharohs were kind of upset about that, but did it anyways because it was not only expected, but required to make sure that the power system continued to function. The believers knew that this was proper according to the religion and it would be improper to change it, possible weakening the strength of the pharoh who tried to do it. Fear of the population's reaction to violating their belief system could have been a motivator, as easily as the actual belief itself.
Also, I find it strange that with the current climate of acceptable atheism and self directed spiurituality that varys wildly from person to person as a cultural refrence point that almost everyone seems to have the impression that past cultures' populations were all 100% believers, completely succeptible to religious indoctrination.
These are the cultural archaelogy questions that may (probably will not) ever be answered. Pity too, because what REALLY caused people to act in a certain manner is infinitely more interesting to me than the plausible or probably answer.
I would think that a long dead king would be pleased by the thought of having his name and burial site discussed all over the world thousands of years after his death. Lump in the increased population, the television coverage, and newspapers and knowledge of him would likely be many orders of magnatude more now than when he was alive.
If someone had discribed the phenomena that surrounds the pyramids today to the pharos in the past I would think that the more megalomaniacal would find that sufficient reason to create the pyramids, regardless of the religious ramifications. Amazing feats of architecture and megalithic construction, secret chambers with undiscovered riches, and mysterious curses will do alot to keep your name in circulation over the ages. Putting these things into the pyramids is like serving notice on the future that you were there first and best.
You know, kind of like a inter-temporal multi-millenial easter egg.
One of the grievances that the protestors made about the first location that they agreed to was that it would be difficult/expensive to put up a PA system. They said that the city should pay for or help pay for one for them at the original location. Note that it is not impossible, just difficult and costly in the estimation of the protestors.
Another one of the grievances about the original location was the lack of water. They also wanted the city to provide them with free water.
Another thing was shade. They wanted a place that was shaded from the sun.
Note also that I have never read about a constitutionally guaranteed right to a PA system, free water, and shade. If there is I want mine right now. And I want all of my water bills refunded to me with interest.
United for Peace and Justice is a mockery of its namesake. People in the past have had to endure bullets, attack dogs, firehoses, nooses, nightskicks, spit, and curses to be able to speak out about what they believe in. These jackasses think that the government owes it to them to give them a speaker system, free water, and a friggin tent or the city should be forced to allow them to destroy, by their presence, the environmental glory that is Central Park.
I cannot express how arrogant and self centered this sounds to me. Pay for your own damned protest. I don't care if I agree 100% with your position, it is your responsibility to provide for yourself. New York (and any other city for that matter) dosen't owe you a damned thing other than to allow you a place to speak your mind.
On the other hand the protestors, as guests and citizens, owe New York quite a bit. The least of which is peaceful, controlled, LEGAL protesting. New York has paid enough in what they have endured, they don't need people leeching off of them, intentionally disrupting the transportation infrastructure of the city, and causing post tramautic stress disorder in the emergency personnel by engineering false alarms related to explosives. In addition, no matter where the "free speech zone" is I am sure that the city will have to clean up after this protest and it will cost them quite a bit of cash just for that. These people should be grateful, instead they whine about how they can't have their cake, and the cake of the people of New York city as well, and eat both too. Disgusting!
With the violent and disruptive past record of protest groups with similar ideology to United for Peace and Justice, and with certain agitators telling people to shut down the subways and confuse the police and bomb dogs with gunpowder laced clothing it is a wonder that New York is not placing 50 cal machine gun turrets around the "free speech zone" and moving it to Jersey.
And what's more important - net effect or effect for a given individual?
Under this logic it would be ok to kill half the populace and enslave the other half and dope them with chemicals that make them work twice as hard. If the net effect is zero on productivity is it ok?
Ok, less extreme example...Take away televisions from everyone. People get healthier from more activity, kids are smarter because they read, etc. This time the effect is actually positive. IS it ok to do this? I think not. You are affecting the freedom/liberty of people without their consent.
Power centric countries play this game and control the population for their own purposes, sacrificing the freedom and volition of their people. The ideology of the US is contrary to this, accepting inneficiencies and downright insanity in favor of individual freedom.
Mind mender it is not...not unless you discount human volition and only look at the end results.
That reminds me of MAlcolm X and his autobiography. While he was in jail he read through the whole dictionary.
It could be construed from his comments in his book that before his vocabulary was increased he did not have the mental capacity to have the thoughts that he had later in life. Notice that it was not a matter of want or intent, but capacity that prevented him from thinking great things.
Language is the basis for all thought. Jargon or "technical words" in a specific industry or school of thought can sometimes encompass vast concepts and interrelated thought structures that have deep meanind and are represented with a single word. The ability for two people to have these thought structures and relartionships encoded into a single term is what allows us to have the technology we have today.
This whole subject seems painfully obviouls to me. However, what the article does not talk about is the nature of language is to grow and evolve to fit the needs of the people speaking it.
I bet that if someone were to think a few minutes with this in mind they would find a way to induce these people to learn to conceptualize numbers greater than three. All they need is some incentive, some necessity, to make it happen.
"but I paid $3/hr on weekends to get onto compuserve and move an asterick around in a dungeon at 300 baud"
I played that game too. I think it was called Hobbit or something. I have been looking for a copy of the game somewhere to play but it seems to disappeared into the Compuserve black hole.
It was pretty damn challenging compared to other D&D games of its type and I had a ton of fun playing it.
"It's ludicrous to imagine that Slashdot should pretend to be neutral, or mature, about these things"
As a self styled "thinking person" I like to see new ideas and concepts presented in a manner that is free from invective, hyperbolie, smugness, immaturity, and intense bias (a little is acceptable and expected from those who love their subject).
If I was someone who heard about linux/open source and/. and went here for information about said topics, there is a good chance that the way that windows/Bill is mischaracterized and attacked by the community here could negatively influence me towards open source and Linux.
It would be easy to say that this site is a representative of linux and open source movement and that those that support linux must all be a bunch of immature and hopelessly bitter individuals motivated by anger towards the establishment. Since I know this is not true (I HOPE!) I can easliy get past the stupid sigs that talk about murdering Bill Gates, blowing up the Redmond facilities, etc., and can take with a grain of salt the undue criticism and double standarding that Microsoft endures on this site.
I wonder though how many people have been turned off by this kind of thing and have subsequently put a big black mark in the Linux column because of this.
BTW, I think that the grand-poster was trying to make us ( the/. community) look better, not make microsoft look better, by asking that we use something more mature and appropriate to represent microsoft.
I got caught stealing a pack of gum from Target when I was a kid. It was the the first time and last time I ever tried to shoplift. My friends said it was soooo easy. I guess I am not that adept at avoiding the authorities.
Anyways, a uniformed security guard stopped me on the way out and asked my mother and I to follow him. He led me to a back room and explained to me that they had seen what I had taken and things would go better if I would just hand it over. I pulled the package of purple bubblegum out of my pocket and he proceeded to lay it out on the table and take polaroids of the gum while I watched. The effect was guilt inducing on a level I have never felt before. It is kind of freaky to me that I can still see the package of gum clearly in my mind (this was 20+ years ago), the color, the fact that it had become kind of abbraded on the edges from being in my pocket, and that you could see the outline of the segments of the gum through the outer package.
I am now convinced that the whole scene was orchestrated to induce fear and guilt and to leave a lasting impression. If that is the case I have to say that it worked, I almost never go into Target stores now.
Actually I can see them saying that they need to focus explicitly on ease of use, interoperability, and feature content to solidify their market position as the easiest to use OS. This position allows them to gather as many people into the fold as they can. They sacrifice security because it dosen't sell to grandma and grandpa or Sixpack Joe who think spam is for breakgfast, a worm goes inside of a trojan, and "rooting your box" is a dirty expression.
Then, once everyone is using the MS product they start to notice the annoyances of lack of security. Then at the opportune time they sell (not for money but in the marketing sense) them the security that they didn't think they needed until they started using our product.
This way the consumer will be able to see the value in the safety upgrade. In the future they will look for this in the next product upgrade they buy in addition to the original ease of use and feature content that brought them into the fold.
Sounds like a fantastic long term plan to maintain your stranglehold on the OS market if you ask me. A little dastardly, but they are marketing to people who do not have the same concerns as the/. crowd and are not near as savvy. Kind of like cattle you have to tell them what they want and why they want it.
"The article states that the monkeys are very good at judging just how long each task will take and then, it seems, they do it when necessary. You call it slacking, I call it a combination of good time management and gathering roses while one may"
Great point, and, if evolution is the reason why monkeys act the way that they do, then it must be the most successful method for a monkey to ensure that they continue to exist.
I wonder if a species ever died out because they didn't know how to relax?
The GREEKS are worried about terrorist attacks in this case, not the Americans. Why are the Greeks afraid? Because terrorists do not ultimately care who they kill as long as it gains them what they want.
Also, this is the Greek OLYMPICS. Who attends the olympics? I could easily say that there will be people from every country in the world at the olympics. So if the terrorists hate us because of the terrible things we have done to them, why are the Greeks so worried, and everone else in the world for that matter, that they will pull some dastardly stunt? Because terrorists do not care who they hurt or kill as long as they feel that it furthers their goal of control or capitulation through fear.
With a worldwide audience and a huge spotlight what better place to gain the attention that they think their cause deserves. And what better way to get it than to kill innocent people without any provocation?
Seriously, with that distorted a viewpoint how can you say that they only reason that they attacked the USA is because of what we did or are doing to them. Your answer is simple like a child's answer, but it is ultimately wrong.
There is no excuse for terrorists to do what they do, there is no justification for their actions, and there is no action taken by Americans or any other country that should precipitate the kind of attacks that terrorists engage in.
Unfortunately, they feel justified in the expression of their religious beliefs in that their most holy text proscribes killing unbelievers. They proclaim this by saying that "Allah is great" while driving a plane loaded with people into the ground, they proclaim this by cutting off a man's head and proclaiming how "Allah is great", they do this by torturing and killing innocent civilian workers in Iraq in a manner that is described explicitly in the Quoran as the method that Allah wants them to use to kill unbelievers. This is echoed in their willingness to kill themselves in process of murdering innocents. Why sacrifice themselves if they did not have an eternal reward for the killing of "Christians and infidels."
You want reasons why they attacked us? One, they think that they are doing Allah's work. Two, they think this because their religious leaders tell them so. Three, their religious leaders also happen to be, because of their societal structure, pretty bloodthirsty and brutal people (otherwise they would not rise to power or keep it.) Four, they do not have any systematic theology to guide them in the absence of a sane religious leader and their religious texts advocate the killing of unbelievers and the destruction of their nations. Five, as a result of a very long series of bad decisions on a national level they have almost stone age conditions in their countries for a large part of the populace. Six, destitute people with freedom restricting governmental polocies and a national religion that advocates killing unbelievers are ripe for the picking when it comes to finding someone with nothing to lose and an axe to grind.
Sure they hate us, but it is not as simple as what we do or do not do to them. Their actions are motivated by their desire for power, their willingness to kill others as a result of their religious beliefs, and the utterly destitute conditions that their national leaders have gotten them into but which they attribute to the USA.
Also, there were people of many different countries including Great Britan and Canada in the world trade center. They knew that. They picked that target because it was conspicuous and represented what they hate about America.
"1) Support of corrupt arab dictators such as the saudi family, shah of iraq, saddam hussein"
And they were sooo happy when we changed our mind about Saddam that they....blew up the world trade center. And they were sooooo happy when we deposed Saddam that they....decided that they should attack those people who are in Iraq building schools, water treatment facilities, civil buildings, electrical production and transmission infrastrucure for the Iraquis at no cost to them. Oh, and by the way, Osama is part of the Saudi family as well so the demands are bogus IMHO.
"2) Unconditional support of Israel, protection of israel from international law, funding israel in their support of the occupation of palestine"
The US has restricted the aggressively defensive nature of the Israelis more times that anyone can count. If it was not for the US tempering the actions of the Israelis the Israelis might have already done to the Palestinians and the other Arab nations close to them what theose nations want to do to Israel.
As for international law, I call bullshit. International law condemned Sadaam and no one did a thing except the US. Furthermore, international law is a violation of sovrenty and invalidates the basis by which a country operates. If a country cannot make laws and enforce them withtout intervention or interdiction by a international committee then they are just a puppet. Furthermore, if a country lets an international body dictate what laws they make and how they act, they are most likely not acting in their own best interests and the interests of their people. THAT is sufficient reason for revolution in my opinion.
"P.S the crusades were initiated by the christians."
And the USA ia a nation of Christians according to Muslims. As if that was not enough to make us the object of their hatred, we have freedom of religion as well. As long as we have a large number of Christians in this country we will, by their very presence, incur the anger of most Muslim countries.
Anyways, by your account, changing our policies would make no difference. According to you we have angered the whole world at us and have been doing so for a long time, and now the chickens have come home to roost. Fair enough, so if we can't go back then we must go forward. The only survivable path available to us is the one that we are on, ie. dominate, decimate, and confuse the enemy and keep them so occupied in their own backyard that they have no time to jump our fences.
...and the damned thing took forever to load the test questions. I literaly wasted 15 miutes trying to load the pages while I multitasked.
The big kicker? When I hit "Score" it wiped my answers and started me over. I wanted to see the results and did not want to retake the thing because it took so long so I marked the first one as ok and the rest as false because I was in a hurry and pissed at this point.
I got an 80% score as a result, and then I wondered if anyone else had the same problem and if it skewed the results.
If so it would be a good way to sell their service:
1: Fake the results at a high failure rate 2: Induce widespread panic 3: Profit.
"During his first run for office he billed himself as a compassionate conservative. If the last 4 years have shown anything, it's that his definition of 'compassionate' is seriously flawed. "
I hear this claim alot from people, stated in these accusative terms or in general terms.
Never once have I heard someone tell what criteria they have judged his compassion on.
Could you respond with some examples of what compassion in your definition is and how Bush is not compassionate.
I am not being a smartass by the way, it is just that I have heard this claim over and over and over again with zero substantiation, only that he has not been compassionate because someone says he is not.
In the same vein I have thought that as our computers become more interconnected they become more interdependent. Because of this there has to be someone or something to take up the slack for the, well, slackers.
Your model for an oversight body is counter-intuitive to me in the analogy. In the human body the reason that the immune system works is because it is distributed, not centralized. Each area has the ability to respond to localized threats, and can contribute to combating holistic problems as well.
The idea that the communication between body cells and immune cells is somehow privileged is misleading. Viruses use the same "authorization" system to gain access to cells and destroy them. The body's response is to immunize itself by releasing antibodies that block the attempts of viruses to penetrate the body cells once they are recognized.
There is a constant barrage of viruses, worms, trojans, etc. and the only thing stopping them is the attentiveness and prowess of the person who owns the computer/network, and we know how fallible they are. This screams to me the need for "white hat worms" if you will use the term. Another way to state it is that there are individuals who are willing to contribute to the health of the system and the individual computers around them and spend their energy and resources protecting them. However you put it, I think the system will benefit from an infusion of antibodies.
In the same analogy, sometimes cells go crazy, reproducing out of control (cancer). Like cancer, zombified boxes spitting out worms, spammers, etc. menace the system, reduce its efficiency, cost other parts of the system resources, and generally degrade the performance of the whole. In the analogy to a biological organism/immune system we need a method to deal with cancerous/gangrenous/toxic parts of the body.
Concentrated gamma rays work well to destroy cancer; I don't see why they won't work on spammers. Har har har! Seriously though, a method to remove those agents from the system, wall them off, or patch them remotely would also be beneficial.
The only reason that this is not more common IMHO is because of a skewed view of property rights emphasizing those of the malignant entity and ignoring those affected because the effects are diluted between millions of people, and lack of respect for "virtual community property."
For justification of my views I will propose some analogous scenarios.
If you left your front door open and went to work, would you be upset if the mailman closed it? What if you left your door open and there were thieves making off with your furniture, would you be upset if someone scared them off and locked your house? That is how I see patching a security hole remotely only it is simplified to only reflect the damage done to the owner of the unpatched computer.
How about if your rent house was run down, dirty, had broken windows and was full of crack dealers. Would you be upset if your neighbors called the cops on the crack heads, and refurbished the home at no cost to you? This is how I see damage done to the "community property" of the internet infrastructure being bogged down by worms or enslaved spam boxes and the shows the individual cost to computer owners.
So what we have here, if I am not mistaken, is not science but a new religion.
In other words, the people at SETI who believe like Shostak does are assuming the existence of something for which there is no proof.
Sure, they use scientific tools in their work; they couldn't get by without them. They may apply the scientific method to problems that they encounter but their core motivation is the search for something that they already believe exists. They are using faith in something (without a shred of proof) as justification to spend millions of dollars, countless man hours, and TONS of processor time (SETI@home).
Seems like a total waste of time to me. (That is unless they find some!)/devil's advocate
We refer to this as a fix for a nonexistant problem.
I don't know if anyone remembers the Honda Prelude with 4 wheel steering back in the 80's, but it was a really neat technology. The car would handle like mad at low and high speeds and was incredibly stable. However, the option cost about $4k and was not widely used. The reason? No one needed it that bad, the Prelude had great handling as it was.
Now we see a system the is almost exactly the same used on large American trucks. This makes alot of sense and will sell. It helps people park these land barges in parking lots without squishing the VWs and can help you get your trailer out of or into a tight spot. Definitely a better application of the technology from a sales and marketing point of view.
IMHO the only reason other than 3d development for a 3d mouse is for games that have a 3d environment (credit the other posters for bringing up Descent). But when has a game ever caused people to upgrade their computers or perephrials? Huh?
"We can NOT afford, in the interest of our own species, to persue AI much further without a major realization on a philosophical level."...Or a built in explosive kill switch to blow those electronic bastards to smithereens when they start to freak out.
Our country is actually a representative democracy. This means that we elect people who are supposed to represent their geographic area and the people within that area. The system is designed to try to provide representative parity between the population and the geographically represented areas (states).
As for the "lies" in WW2, Pearl Harbor was the reason the US entered WW2. This is not a lie but a historical fact. An unprovoked surprise attack on a military facility by the Japaneese is what precipitated the US involvement in WW2, and lucky for Europe that the Japaneese did, otherwise they might have been overrun by the time the US got around to getting involved. Japan precipitated our retaliation and frankly, they got exactly what they desreved (they might have gotten off a little light actually). In the real world, the first rule of war is to decimate your opponents so badly that they can never attack you again. This preserves the lives of your populace in the future and ensures that other countries have an example of what happens to those who attack you.
I find it fascinating that you seek to condemn the US for deposing Hitler and Sadam. It is a wonderful example of arrogance on your part that you would try to show how the US is deficient in some way because we have the ability and the motivation to attack and destroy people who engage in genocide, torture (which oddly you condemn the US for), unjustified aggression (which, by your standards, there is no justification for the US to even retaliate much less engage in preemptive attacks), and "crimes against humanity"(as you put it).
Where were you when Sadam was gassing, maiming, torturing, raping, and killing his own people? Apparently those actions are ok as long as it is him doing the kiling, and as long as those being killed are innocent women and men. It is strange to me that, in your mind, as soon as the US engages in a military attack against Iraq, all of a sudden the torturers and military of Iraq, who have been subjugating and killing their own populace, become some kind of inviolate group and any reason for attacking them is not good enough. I guess it makes some kind of sense if you support the unbelievably disgusting actions of Sadam and his regiem that you would be upset about someone trying to stop him.
As for the "lies" that you speak of with regard to Iraq, the almost the whole world was under the same impression with regard to the WMDs (I can only assume that you mean the WMDs are the source of the "lies"). To say that Bush lied is disengenuous when even the UN members of the security council believed that Iraq had WMDs. In addition, there have been warheads found with sarin gas and mustard gas in them in Iraq, but we can't acknowledge the truth if it supports the US position, right?
Even then, WMDs were not the only reason to invade Iraq. There are many other justifiable reasons to do so. Some of them are strategic, some of them have to do with the non-compliance of Iraq with the UN resoultions, some of them have to do with the horrible nature of the government of Iraq and its treatment of the people of Iraq. However, since you seem to think that torture, murder, rape, etc. are ok for Sadam and that even retaliatory military action is not ok for the US, I can see why you are upset about the US military action in Iraq.
The ironies and arrogance of your mental position are pervasive. I see them in the Iraquis who attack, kidnap, and them brutally murder those people who are sent there to build their infrastructure(electrical grids, water systems, etc), and then complain that the work is taking too long. I see it in those people who shouted about the threats of Iraq and their military buildup a few years ago, and now act as if they were agains the war in Iraq from the beginning of time. I mostly see it in the people who condmen the US for the "torture"(mostly psychologically uncomfortable or distressing situations) of people who were actual torturers and murders of their own people, and
"You're(SIC) country bombed two cities full of civilians!!!"
You seem to suffer from selective history disorder. You ignore that the firebombings of Japan's cities killed more people than the two nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Those firebombings would have continued in each and every city in Japan had the Japaneese not surrendered. For those who know what was happening in the war it is obvious that this end to the war with Japan, while dramatic, was humane by comparison to the continuance of the war. Many more people would have died (Japanese mostly) than were actually killed in those nuclear blasts.
You also ignore the fact that civilians were in harms way throughout history when it came to warfare. Even in WW2 cities across Europe were carpetbombed, firebombed, and shelled mercilessly on both sides of the fight. Do you think that they were populated with only military personell?
And Japan is far from lilly white pureness when it comes to attacking civilian populace. Look up the rape of Nanking. Looks like the Japaneese hadn't hear about your "first rule of war." If they did not abide by this so called rule of war, why should their opponents be held to a higher standard?
Oh, probably because it makes it really hard to have a foundationless hatred of the US...what was I thinking?
"Seriously i doubt the humanity of America again and again when i read shit like this
Here you express what I saw as obvious from your post. You lump all Americans together as inhuman and mentally condemn us. If America were all one color and geographic heritage you would be a racist, but I think the proper term for you is bigot.
Your jaundiced mindset prevents you from seeing what really happened, regardless of the blatant facts of the history books. Do you not realize that it was Japan's actions that brought the US into the war? Do you understand that it was not the deaths of the people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima that brought Japan to surrender (because those people all would have died, and many more had conventional warfare continued) but the manner of their deaths? No, I guess you do not.
But, since you are not from the US I guess we can't expect that much from you. HAR HAR HAR!!!(I couldn't resist feeding you back some of your anti-american arrogance, have a nice day.)
At first glance I would disagree with you, but I think that I because I have some national pride and I think of your comment as a slight of some kind.
HOWEVER...
I am constantly amazed at the comments and compliments I am given by my customers. I am in a sales and service environment and have one of the best customer service ratings in my region. This shows that other people in my same industry are not getting the job done in the same consistent manner, and the customers remarks back this up.
Also, I have frequently mused about what it would be like to open a chain of stores that catered specifically to friendly people. Instead of tracking people's purchases or sale-frequenting habits, track their courtesy, friendliness, and disposition and use that data to regulate your customer base. In addition, the staff would have to be exemplary in their embodiment of the store's theme. Of course the fact that I thought about this and noticed the lack of an establishment that has these qualities supports your point.
It could be that what I am accustomed to giving my clients and what others are accustomed to giving thir clients are vastly different. Then again, many times I have heard that the people in the South (Texas espacially) are quite friendly compared to other places in the US. That could be part of the discrepancy as well.
Slashdot Mirror
"the commandment about not killing is pretty interesting"
Actually the commandment is "Do not commit murder."
Killing during war, self defense, and lawful execution by the government are all supported by the Bible.
I had big problems with the Bible when I was hearing and reading the english translations. It seemed innacurate and sometimes downright contradictory. I now go to a church where we not only study the Bible from the original languages, but we apply proper interpretation techniques (isagogics, exegetics, categorization), and use systematic theology to codify and reference out interpretations.
Rectifying the English translations with textual criticism is one of the most gratifying experiences I have ever had. The clarity of the Bible when studied in the original languages is amazing. Unfortunately most peopole who are in the "Church" do not take the time or thought to consider the original languages and the proper translation of the Bible. Most of them won't even study systematic theology so that they can frame their particular belief system in a logical way.
Even more ironic to me are those people who, never having studied the original languages of the Bible or translation from the most accurate manuscripts, say they are disenchanted with the Bible. It is like a person blind from birth saying they don't like the color of your shirt.
DAMN that was spooky!
Now I am scared to death of my internet connection.
This brings up the question of whether or not everyone, specifically the pharos themselves, actually believed 100% in the religion of the day.
Did you ever wonder if there was a pharoh that was uneasy at the thought of having their body put through the embalming process? What with their brains being pulled out of their nose and their organs being put into jars I would expect that some of them were not to excited about the prospect.
The ancient Egypitans also believed that the pharohs were gods. It was central to their religion. I think that *maybe* the pharohs themselves knew whether or not they were actually gods, and this knowledge might have had some bearing on their perception of their religious beliefs.
Not to mention marrying and having sex with their sisters. I bet that some pharohs were kind of upset about that, but did it anyways because it was not only expected, but required to make sure that the power system continued to function. The believers knew that this was proper according to the religion and it would be improper to change it, possible weakening the strength of the pharoh who tried to do it. Fear of the population's reaction to violating their belief system could have been a motivator, as easily as the actual belief itself.
Also, I find it strange that with the current climate of acceptable atheism and self directed spiurituality that varys wildly from person to person as a cultural refrence point that almost everyone seems to have the impression that past cultures' populations were all 100% believers, completely succeptible to religious indoctrination.
These are the cultural archaelogy questions that may (probably will not) ever be answered. Pity too, because what REALLY caused people to act in a certain manner is infinitely more interesting to me than the plausible or probably answer.
Furthermore...
I would think that a long dead king would be pleased by the thought of having his name and burial site discussed all over the world thousands of years after his death. Lump in the increased population, the television coverage, and newspapers and knowledge of him would likely be many orders of magnatude more now than when he was alive.
If someone had discribed the phenomena that surrounds the pyramids today to the pharos in the past I would think that the more megalomaniacal would find that sufficient reason to create the pyramids, regardless of the religious ramifications. Amazing feats of architecture and megalithic construction, secret chambers with undiscovered riches, and mysterious curses will do alot to keep your name in circulation over the ages. Putting these things into the pyramids is like serving notice on the future that you were there first and best.
You know, kind of like a inter-temporal multi-millenial easter egg.
From USA Today:
The New York host committee for the 2004 Republican National Convention is spending:
$7.7 million for parties, receptions and special events.
$1.7 million on transportation for staff and delegates.
$4.5 million for temporary offices for journalists.
$5 million to rent Madison Square Garden.
$9.6 million on construction and design costs.
New Yorkers get this money. This is a direct benefit for New York and is "paying for" the convention.
Q: What is cost to rent a large tent (for shade), an Evian truck full of water , and a PA system?
A: Signifigantly less than the cost of the convention, and still not the responsibility of the city or state government.
One of the grievances that the protestors made about the first location that they agreed to was that it would be difficult/expensive to put up a PA system. They said that the city should pay for or help pay for one for them at the original location. Note that it is not impossible, just difficult and costly in the estimation of the protestors.
Another one of the grievances about the original location was the lack of water. They also wanted the city to provide them with free water.
Another thing was shade. They wanted a place that was shaded from the sun.
Note also that I have never read about a constitutionally guaranteed right to a PA system, free water, and shade. If there is I want mine right now. And I want all of my water bills refunded to me with interest.
United for Peace and Justice is a mockery of its namesake. People in the past have had to endure bullets, attack dogs, firehoses, nooses, nightskicks, spit, and curses to be able to speak out about what they believe in. These jackasses think that the government owes it to them to give them a speaker system, free water, and a friggin tent or the city should be forced to allow them to destroy, by their presence, the environmental glory that is Central Park.
I cannot express how arrogant and self centered this sounds to me. Pay for your own damned protest. I don't care if I agree 100% with your position, it is your responsibility to provide for yourself. New York (and any other city for that matter) dosen't owe you a damned thing other than to allow you a place to speak your mind.
On the other hand the protestors, as guests and citizens, owe New York quite a bit. The least of which is peaceful, controlled, LEGAL protesting. New York has paid enough in what they have endured, they don't need people leeching off of them, intentionally disrupting the transportation infrastructure of the city, and causing post tramautic stress disorder in the emergency personnel by engineering false alarms related to explosives. In addition, no matter where the "free speech zone" is I am sure that the city will have to clean up after this protest and it will cost them quite a bit of cash just for that. These people should be grateful, instead they whine about how they can't have their cake, and the cake of the people of New York city as well, and eat both too. Disgusting!
With the violent and disruptive past record of protest groups with similar ideology to United for Peace and Justice, and with certain agitators telling people to shut down the subways and confuse the police and bomb dogs with gunpowder laced clothing it is a wonder that New York is not placing 50 cal machine gun turrets around the "free speech zone" and moving it to Jersey.
And what's more important - net effect or effect for a given individual?
Under this logic it would be ok to kill half the populace and enslave the other half and dope them with chemicals that make them work twice as hard. If the net effect is zero on productivity is it ok?
Ok, less extreme example...Take away televisions from everyone. People get healthier from more activity, kids are smarter because they read, etc. This time the effect is actually positive. IS it ok to do this? I think not. You are affecting the freedom/liberty of people without their consent.
Power centric countries play this game and control the population for their own purposes, sacrificing the freedom and volition of their people. The ideology of the US is contrary to this, accepting inneficiencies and downright insanity in favor of individual freedom.
Mind mender it is not...not unless you discount human volition and only look at the end results.
That reminds me of MAlcolm X and his autobiography. While he was in jail he read through the whole dictionary.
It could be construed from his comments in his book that before his vocabulary was increased he did not have the mental capacity to have the thoughts that he had later in life. Notice that it was not a matter of want or intent, but capacity that prevented him from thinking great things.
Language is the basis for all thought. Jargon or "technical words" in a specific industry or school of thought can sometimes encompass vast concepts and interrelated thought structures that have deep meanind and are represented with a single word. The ability for two people to have these thought structures and relartionships encoded into a single term is what allows us to have the technology we have today.
This whole subject seems painfully obviouls to me. However, what the article does not talk about is the nature of language is to grow and evolve to fit the needs of the people speaking it.
I bet that if someone were to think a few minutes with this in mind they would find a way to induce these people to learn to conceptualize numbers greater than three. All they need is some incentive, some necessity, to make it happen.
"but I paid $3/hr on weekends to get onto compuserve and move an asterick around in a dungeon at 300 baud"
I played that game too. I think it was called Hobbit or something. I have been looking for a copy of the game somewhere to play but it seems to disappeared into the Compuserve black hole.
It was pretty damn challenging compared to other D&D games of its type and I had a ton of fun playing it.
"It's ludicrous to imagine that Slashdot should pretend to be neutral, or mature, about these things"
/. and went here for information about said topics, there is a good chance that the way that windows/Bill is mischaracterized and attacked by the community here could negatively influence me towards open source and Linux.
/. community) look better, not make microsoft look better, by asking that we use something more mature and appropriate to represent microsoft.
As a self styled "thinking person" I like to see new ideas and concepts presented in a manner that is free from invective, hyperbolie, smugness, immaturity, and intense bias (a little is acceptable and expected from those who love their subject).
If I was someone who heard about linux/open source and
It would be easy to say that this site is a representative of linux and open source movement and that those that support linux must all be a bunch of immature and hopelessly bitter individuals motivated by anger towards the establishment. Since I know this is not true (I HOPE!) I can easliy get past the stupid sigs that talk about murdering Bill Gates, blowing up the Redmond facilities, etc., and can take with a grain of salt the undue criticism and double standarding that Microsoft endures on this site.
I wonder though how many people have been turned off by this kind of thing and have subsequently put a big black mark in the Linux column because of this.
BTW, I think that the grand-poster was trying to make us ( the
I got caught stealing a pack of gum from Target when I was a kid. It was the the first time and last time I ever tried to shoplift. My friends said it was soooo easy. I guess I am not that adept at avoiding the authorities.
Anyways, a uniformed security guard stopped me on the way out and asked my mother and I to follow him. He led me to a back room and explained to me that they had seen what I had taken and things would go better if I would just hand it over. I pulled the package of purple bubblegum out of my pocket and he proceeded to lay it out on the table and take polaroids of the gum while I watched. The effect was guilt inducing on a level I have never felt before. It is kind of freaky to me that I can still see the package of gum clearly in my mind (this was 20+ years ago), the color, the fact that it had become kind of abbraded on the edges from being in my pocket, and that you could see the outline of the segments of the gum through the outer package.
I am now convinced that the whole scene was orchestrated to induce fear and guilt and to leave a lasting impression. If that is the case I have to say that it worked, I almost never go into Target stores now.
Actually I can see them saying that they need to focus explicitly on ease of use, interoperability, and feature content to solidify their market position as the easiest to use OS. This position allows them to gather as many people into the fold as they can. They sacrifice security because it dosen't sell to grandma and grandpa or Sixpack Joe who think spam is for breakgfast, a worm goes inside of a trojan, and "rooting your box" is a dirty expression.
/. crowd and are not near as savvy. Kind of like cattle you have to tell them what they want and why they want it.
Then, once everyone is using the MS product they start to notice the annoyances of lack of security. Then at the opportune time they sell (not for money but in the marketing sense) them the security that they didn't think they needed until they started using our product.
This way the consumer will be able to see the value in the safety upgrade. In the future they will look for this in the next product upgrade they buy in addition to the original ease of use and feature content that brought them into the fold.
Sounds like a fantastic long term plan to maintain your stranglehold on the OS market if you ask me. A little dastardly, but they are marketing to people who do not have the same concerns as the
You just unwittingly reminded me to update my sig to reflect my drunken ravings last night.
"The article states that the monkeys are very good at judging just how long each task will take and then, it seems, they do it when necessary. You call it slacking, I call it a combination of good time management and gathering roses while one may"
Great point, and, if evolution is the reason why monkeys act the way that they do, then it must be the most successful method for a monkey to ensure that they continue to exist.
I wonder if a species ever died out because they didn't know how to relax?
NEWSFLASH: This is in GREECE, not the USA.
The GREEKS are worried about terrorist attacks in this case, not the Americans. Why are the Greeks afraid? Because terrorists do not ultimately care who they kill as long as it gains them what they want.
Also, this is the Greek OLYMPICS. Who attends the olympics? I could easily say that there will be people from every country in the world at the olympics. So if the terrorists hate us because of the terrible things we have done to them, why are the Greeks so worried, and everone else in the world for that matter, that they will pull some dastardly stunt? Because terrorists do not care who they hurt or kill as long as they feel that it furthers their goal of control or capitulation through fear.
With a worldwide audience and a huge spotlight what better place to gain the attention that they think their cause deserves. And what better way to get it than to kill innocent people without any provocation?
Seriously, with that distorted a viewpoint how can you say that they only reason that they attacked the USA is because of what we did or are doing to them. Your answer is simple like a child's answer, but it is ultimately wrong.
There is no excuse for terrorists to do what they do, there is no justification for their actions, and there is no action taken by Americans or any other country that should precipitate the kind of attacks that terrorists engage in.
Unfortunately, they feel justified in the expression of their religious beliefs in that their most holy text proscribes killing unbelievers. They proclaim this by saying that "Allah is great" while driving a plane loaded with people into the ground, they proclaim this by cutting off a man's head and proclaiming how "Allah is great", they do this by torturing and killing innocent civilian workers in Iraq in a manner that is described explicitly in the Quoran as the method that Allah wants them to use to kill unbelievers. This is echoed in their willingness to kill themselves in process of murdering innocents. Why sacrifice themselves if they did not have an eternal reward for the killing of "Christians and infidels."
You want reasons why they attacked us? One, they think that they are doing Allah's work. Two, they think this because their religious leaders tell them so. Three, their religious leaders also happen to be, because of their societal structure, pretty bloodthirsty and brutal people (otherwise they would not rise to power or keep it.) Four, they do not have any systematic theology to guide them in the absence of a sane religious leader and their religious texts advocate the killing of unbelievers and the destruction of their nations. Five, as a result of a very long series of bad decisions on a national level they have almost stone age conditions in their countries for a large part of the populace. Six, destitute people with freedom restricting governmental polocies and a national religion that advocates killing unbelievers are ripe for the picking when it comes to finding someone with nothing to lose and an axe to grind.
Sure they hate us, but it is not as simple as what we do or do not do to them. Their actions are motivated by their desire for power, their willingness to kill others as a result of their religious beliefs, and the utterly destitute conditions that their national leaders have gotten them into but which they attribute to the USA.
Also, there were people of many different countries including Great Britan and Canada in the world trade center. They knew that. They picked that target because it was conspicuous and represented what they hate about America.
"1) Support of corrupt arab dictators such as the saudi family, shah of iraq, saddam hussein"
And they were sooo happy when we changed our mind about Saddam that they....blew up the world trade center. And they were sooooo happy when we deposed Saddam that they....decided that they should attack those people who are in Iraq building schools, water treatment facilities, civil buildings, electrical production and transmission infrastrucure for the Iraquis at no cost to them. Oh, and by the way, Osama is part of the Saudi family as well so the demands are bogus IMHO.
"2) Unconditional support of Israel, protection of israel from international law, funding israel in their support of the occupation of palestine"
The US has restricted the aggressively defensive nature of the Israelis more times that anyone can count. If it was not for the US tempering the actions of the Israelis the Israelis might have already done to the Palestinians and the other Arab nations close to them what theose nations want to do to Israel.
As for international law, I call bullshit. International law condemned Sadaam and no one did a thing except the US. Furthermore, international law is a violation of sovrenty and invalidates the basis by which a country operates. If a country cannot make laws and enforce them withtout intervention or interdiction by a international committee then they are just a puppet. Furthermore, if a country lets an international body dictate what laws they make and how they act, they are most likely not acting in their own best interests and the interests of their people. THAT is sufficient reason for revolution in my opinion.
"P.S the crusades were initiated by the christians."
And the USA ia a nation of Christians according to Muslims. As if that was not enough to make us the object of their hatred, we have freedom of religion as well. As long as we have a large number of Christians in this country we will, by their very presence, incur the anger of most Muslim countries.
Anyways, by your account, changing our policies would make no difference. According to you we have angered the whole world at us and have been doing so for a long time, and now the chickens have come home to roost. Fair enough, so if we can't go back then we must go forward. The only survivable path available to us is the one that we are on, ie. dominate, decimate, and confuse the enemy and keep them so occupied in their own backyard that they have no time to jump our fences.
...and the damned thing took forever to load the test questions. I literaly wasted 15 miutes trying to load the pages while I multitasked.
The big kicker? When I hit "Score" it wiped my answers and started me over. I wanted to see the results and did not want to retake the thing because it took so long so I marked the first one as ok and the rest as false because I was in a hurry and pissed at this point.
I got an 80% score as a result, and then I wondered if anyone else had the same problem and if it skewed the results.
If so it would be a good way to sell their service:
1: Fake the results at a high failure rate
2: Induce widespread panic
3: Profit.
"During his first run for office he billed himself as a compassionate conservative. If the last 4 years have shown anything, it's that his definition of 'compassionate' is seriously flawed. "
I hear this claim alot from people, stated in these accusative terms or in general terms.
Never once have I heard someone tell what criteria they have judged his compassion on.
Could you respond with some examples of what compassion in your definition is and how Bush is not compassionate.
I am not being a smartass by the way, it is just that I have heard this claim over and over and over again with zero substantiation, only that he has not been compassionate because someone says he is not.
I like your analogy.
In the same vein I have thought that as our computers become more interconnected they become more interdependent. Because of this there has to be someone or something to take up the slack for the, well, slackers.
Your model for an oversight body is counter-intuitive to me in the analogy. In the human body the reason that the immune system works is because it is distributed, not centralized. Each area has the ability to respond to localized threats, and can contribute to combating holistic problems as well.
The idea that the communication between body cells and immune cells is somehow privileged is misleading. Viruses use the same "authorization" system to gain access to cells and destroy them. The body's response is to immunize itself by releasing antibodies that block the attempts of viruses to penetrate the body cells once they are recognized.
There is a constant barrage of viruses, worms, trojans, etc. and the only thing stopping them is the attentiveness and prowess of the person who owns the computer/network, and we know how fallible they are. This screams to me the need for "white hat worms" if you will use the term. Another way to state it is that there are individuals who are willing to contribute to the health of the system and the individual computers around them and spend their energy and resources protecting them. However you put it, I think the system will benefit from an infusion of antibodies.
In the same analogy, sometimes cells go crazy, reproducing out of control (cancer). Like cancer, zombified boxes spitting out worms, spammers, etc. menace the system, reduce its efficiency, cost other parts of the system resources, and generally degrade the performance of the whole. In the analogy to a biological organism/immune system we need a method to deal with cancerous/gangrenous/toxic parts of the body.
Concentrated gamma rays work well to destroy cancer; I don't see why they won't work on spammers. Har har har! Seriously though, a method to remove those agents from the system, wall them off, or patch them remotely would also be beneficial.
The only reason that this is not more common IMHO is because of a skewed view of property rights emphasizing those of the malignant entity and ignoring those affected because the effects are diluted between millions of people, and lack of respect for "virtual community property."
For justification of my views I will propose some analogous scenarios.
If you left your front door open and went to work, would you be upset if the mailman closed it? What if you left your door open and there were thieves making off with your furniture, would you be upset if someone scared them off and locked your house? That is how I see patching a security hole remotely only it is simplified to only reflect the damage done to the owner of the unpatched computer.
How about if your rent house was run down, dirty, had broken windows and was full of crack dealers. Would you be upset if your neighbors called the cops on the crack heads, and refurbished the home at no cost to you? This is how I see damage done to the "community property" of the internet infrastructure being bogged down by worms or enslaved spam boxes and the shows the individual cost to computer owners.
>devil's advocate
/devil's advocate
So what we have here, if I am not mistaken, is not science but a new religion.
In other words, the people at SETI who believe like Shostak does are assuming the existence of something for which there is no proof.
Sure, they use scientific tools in their work; they couldn't get by without them. They may apply the scientific method to problems that they encounter but their core motivation is the search for something that they already believe exists. They are using faith in something (without a shred of proof) as justification to spend millions of dollars, countless man hours, and TONS of processor time (SETI@home).
Seems like a total waste of time to me. (That is unless they find some!)
We refer to this as a fix for a nonexistant problem.
I don't know if anyone remembers the Honda Prelude with 4 wheel steering back in the 80's, but it was a really neat technology. The car would handle like mad at low and high speeds and was incredibly stable. However, the option cost about $4k and was not widely used. The reason? No one needed it that bad, the Prelude had great handling as it was.
Now we see a system the is almost exactly the same used on large American trucks. This makes alot of sense and will sell. It helps people park these land barges in parking lots without squishing the VWs and can help you get your trailer out of or into a tight spot. Definitely a better application of the technology from a sales and marketing point of view.
IMHO the only reason other than 3d development for a 3d mouse is for games that have a 3d environment (credit the other posters for bringing up Descent). But when has a game ever caused people to upgrade their computers or perephrials? Huh?
"We can NOT afford, in the interest of our own species, to persue AI much further without a major realization on a philosophical level." ...Or a built in explosive kill switch to blow those electronic bastards to smithereens when they start to freak out.
Our country is actually a representative democracy. This means that we elect people who are supposed to represent their geographic area and the people within that area. The system is designed to try to provide representative parity between the population and the geographically represented areas (states).
As for the "lies" in WW2, Pearl Harbor was the reason the US entered WW2. This is not a lie but a historical fact. An unprovoked surprise attack on a military facility by the Japaneese is what precipitated the US involvement in WW2, and lucky for Europe that the Japaneese did, otherwise they might have been overrun by the time the US got around to getting involved. Japan precipitated our retaliation and frankly, they got exactly what they desreved (they might have gotten off a little light actually). In the real world, the first rule of war is to decimate your opponents so badly that they can never attack you again. This preserves the lives of your populace in the future and ensures that other countries have an example of what happens to those who attack you.
I find it fascinating that you seek to condemn the US for deposing Hitler and Sadam. It is a wonderful example of arrogance on your part that you would try to show how the US is deficient in some way because we have the ability and the motivation to attack and destroy people who engage in genocide, torture (which oddly you condemn the US for), unjustified aggression (which, by your standards, there is no justification for the US to even retaliate much less engage in preemptive attacks), and "crimes against humanity"(as you put it).
Where were you when Sadam was gassing, maiming, torturing, raping, and killing his own people? Apparently those actions are ok as long as it is him doing the kiling, and as long as those being killed are innocent women and men. It is strange to me that, in your mind, as soon as the US engages in a military attack against Iraq, all of a sudden the torturers and military of Iraq, who have been subjugating and killing their own populace, become some kind of inviolate group and any reason for attacking them is not good enough. I guess it makes some kind of sense if you support the unbelievably disgusting actions of Sadam and his regiem that you would be upset about someone trying to stop him.
As for the "lies" that you speak of with regard to Iraq, the almost the whole world was under the same impression with regard to the WMDs (I can only assume that you mean the WMDs are the source of the "lies"). To say that Bush lied is disengenuous when even the UN members of the security council believed that Iraq had WMDs. In addition, there have been warheads found with sarin gas and mustard gas in them in Iraq, but we can't acknowledge the truth if it supports the US position, right?
Even then, WMDs were not the only reason to invade Iraq. There are many other justifiable reasons to do so. Some of them are strategic, some of them have to do with the non-compliance of Iraq with the UN resoultions, some of them have to do with the horrible nature of the government of Iraq and its treatment of the people of Iraq. However, since you seem to think that torture, murder, rape, etc. are ok for Sadam and that even retaliatory military action is not ok for the US, I can see why you are upset about the US military action in Iraq.
The ironies and arrogance of your mental position are pervasive. I see them in the Iraquis who attack, kidnap, and them brutally murder those people who are sent there to build their infrastructure(electrical grids, water systems, etc), and then complain that the work is taking too long. I see it in those people who shouted about the threats of Iraq and their military buildup a few years ago, and now act as if they were agains the war in Iraq from the beginning of time. I mostly see it in the people who condmen the US for the "torture"(mostly psychologically uncomfortable or distressing situations) of people who were actual torturers and murders of their own people, and
"You're(SIC) country bombed two cities full of civilians!!!"
You seem to suffer from selective history disorder. You ignore that the firebombings of Japan's cities killed more people than the two nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Those firebombings would have continued in each and every city in Japan had the Japaneese not surrendered. For those who know what was happening in the war it is obvious that this end to the war with Japan, while dramatic, was humane by comparison to the continuance of the war. Many more people would have died (Japanese mostly) than were actually killed in those nuclear blasts.
You also ignore the fact that civilians were in harms way throughout history when it came to warfare. Even in WW2 cities across Europe were carpetbombed, firebombed, and shelled mercilessly on both sides of the fight. Do you think that they were populated with only military personell?
And Japan is far from lilly white pureness when it comes to attacking civilian populace. Look up the rape of Nanking. Looks like the Japaneese hadn't hear about your "first rule of war." If they did not abide by this so called rule of war, why should their opponents be held to a higher standard?
Oh, probably because it makes it really hard to have a foundationless hatred of the US...what was I thinking?
"Seriously i doubt the humanity of America again and again when i read shit like this
Here you express what I saw as obvious from your post. You lump all Americans together as inhuman and mentally condemn us. If America were all one color and geographic heritage you would be a racist, but I think the proper term for you is bigot.
Your jaundiced mindset prevents you from seeing what really happened, regardless of the blatant facts of the history books. Do you not realize that it was Japan's actions that brought the US into the war? Do you understand that it was not the deaths of the people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima that brought Japan to surrender (because those people all would have died, and many more had conventional warfare continued) but the manner of their deaths? No, I guess you do not.
But, since you are not from the US I guess we can't expect that much from you. HAR HAR HAR!!!(I couldn't resist feeding you back some of your anti-american arrogance, have a nice day.)
At first glance I would disagree with you, but I think that I because I have some national pride and I think of your comment as a slight of some kind.
HOWEVER...
I am constantly amazed at the comments and compliments I am given by my customers. I am in a sales and service environment and have one of the best customer service ratings in my region. This shows that other people in my same industry are not getting the job done in the same consistent manner, and the customers remarks back this up.
Also, I have frequently mused about what it would be like to open a chain of stores that catered specifically to friendly people. Instead of tracking people's purchases or sale-frequenting habits, track their courtesy, friendliness, and disposition and use that data to regulate your customer base. In addition, the staff would have to be exemplary in their embodiment of the store's theme. Of course the fact that I thought about this and noticed the lack of an establishment that has these qualities supports your point.
It could be that what I am accustomed to giving my clients and what others are accustomed to giving thir clients are vastly different. Then again, many times I have heard that the people in the South (Texas espacially) are quite friendly compared to other places in the US. That could be part of the discrepancy as well.