Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining...
on
I, Spammer
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· Score: 1
This national database could store irreversible hashes of the addresses. This way it would not be possible to extract addresses from the database, while it would still be possible to check whether some address is present in it.
Well, the spammers would be able to use that opt-out list to validate whether an address on their own list is a valid address. Remember the sort of person we are dealing with here: spammers are liars and thieves, not reputable business people out to make an honest buck.
It won't matter to the spammers what the laws are if there is still money to be made from sending spam.
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining...
on
I, Spammer
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· Score: 5, Insightful
There should be a "national opt-out" spam list that all spam senders must check before sending a message.
If such a list existed, you can bet your bottom dollar that every spammer will pay very close attention to it. It would be a list of 100% valid email addresses! Normally they would have to pay for lists of email addresses, and here is one that is free and guaranteed to be accurate.
The spammer could then fire up the spambox which is conveniently located outside of the US, bounce the spam off of an open relay in the Far East, and
it would be business as usual.
If anyone out there believes that the spammers are honest and trustworthy, they deserve all the viagra, penis/breast enlargement/pr0n spam they get in their inbox...
Our DoD budget recently gave everyone who has CNN a spectacular display of where our tax dollars are going as it defeated an entrenched enemy within a couple of weeks. NASA has failed to do the same.
Are you saying that in order to be considered "successful", you want NASA to kick some alien ass in order to secure our access to their natural resources?
If the war against Iraq is your standard, where do you think we will find a planet that has resources we desperately require and a military that is totally inferior to our own? It's not as if the war against Iraq was a battle of equivalent military forces you know.
First off, the whole cost factor that people continue to bring up blows my mind. Any company with any knowledge of doing risk analysis will know that paying $50k a year, say, on securing your companies life-blood (trade secrets, source code, credit card numbers, etc.) is nothing.
Absolutely. Besides, the one-time cost of the hardware is trivial and can be depreciated over the course of a few years. The only issue that really matters are the on-going support costs and the headcount to maintain it.
Third, you people say 'get a smokin dell, and slap in a buncha NICs! that'll compare!' are on some serious Rock. Apples to Apples, a high end Nokia IP Series vs a high end Dell... well, lets just say it would suck to be the Dell. 8o)
Agreed. But compare the performance of your Nokia box to a killer Sun server, and it would suck to be the Nokia. As you said, it is a matter of comparing apples to apples. The advantages Nokia really has IMHO is that it is relatively cheap, and it more idiot-proof. I still think that the big shops with the skills and budgets to match will continue to run FW-1 on Sun hardware.
You seem to be arguing that majority opinion is, by definition, oppressive of those who hold other opinions.
No, I am not. I am arguing that freedom of expression means the freedom to dissent. If you want to define freedom of expression as the freedom to agree with the majority opinion, you are certainly free to do so, but don't expect very many people to agree with that faulty definition. Nobody *has* to listen to dissenting opinions of course, but everyone should be able to speak their mind and not be intimidated into silence.
And what acts of legislation have been approved to support or mandate that oppression?
You don't need legislation! The whole "political correctness" debate took place without any legislation but it still had (and continues to have) a powerful effect. For example, it is politically correct to support the war against Iraq for the sake of supporting the troops. It is still conceivable that someone can oppose an unprovoked war against a sovereign state and support the troops. Indeed, some might go so far as to say that the best way to support the troops is to bring them home and not involve them in any illegal military operations!
I made reference to the tyranny of the majority before. You really should check that out. Moral and/or ethical issues cannot be decided by a show of hands.
There is no reason to believe that any moral concept must be accepted by all in order to be accepted by any one individual.
That is a fairly good definition of an absolute moral principle and there are lots of people out there who believe in them. I think the belief you are articulating is would be termed moral relativism in which each person decides for themselves what is right and what is wrong.
To believe that requires a belief that some sort of extra-human authority exists which has created the one, true, moral standard, and then hidden it from most of humanity. (Else why are there competing standards of ethics and morality?)
I am not sure that what you suggest is necessarily true. I don't think that one has to believe in some sort of supreme being as a pre-requisite to beliefs in moral absolutes. Sure, there are many people out there who do base their beliefs on their faith, but that would be a correlation and not a causal relationship.
An individual can, and probably should, have absolute moral standards. But the fact that others will hold different, sometimes contradictory standards, shouldn't lead to an assumption that all moral standards are equivalent.
Agreed.
The only difference I can see between Saddam and Hitler and Stalin is in the number of people each murdered. A difference of scope, not nature.
Again, I find that assertion incredibly lacking. Turn off CNN and get your news from a reputable source for a change. Saddam Hussein was a creation of the CIA and was openly funded by more than one US administration all of whom turned a very blind eye to the atrocities he committed while on their payroll. No foreign power was responsible for the rise of Hitler and Stalin. The crimes of Stalin exceed those of Hitler if Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's account can be believed, and Hitler's crimes were far worse than anything Saddam Hussein did because specific ethnic and religious groups were targetted for genocide simply by virtue of their membership (real or imagined) in those groups..
Hussein did commit crimes against humanity against the Kurdish minority, but most of his victims were people who were accused of being traitors to the regime. Paranoid? Absolutely, but a mere amateur when compared to the villainy of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, or China during the cultural revolution.
Orr, are you denying that Ghandi and King would have been murdered by any one of those three barbarians?
I expect that Dr. King and Ghandi would have been murdered. There is no question that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator with no regard for human life.
However, when compared to Hitler and Stalin, Saddam Hussein is the diet coke of evil. If you choose to believe otherwise, that is your own affair, but a more thorough reading of history would probably lead you to a different conclusion.
Yep. The poster said the U.S. is a police state. That's untrue.
Yes, it is untrue - but that does not necessarily make the statement a lie. To be a lie, there has to be an intent to deceive. I do not understand why you are failing to make the distinction in all instances.
I see no evidence that the pro-war majority has legistated unfair restictions of the antiwar minority.
If there is no legislation there can be oppression? That does not stand to reason...
The right to free speech won't do you much good if you lack the courage to open your mouth.
The whole point of free speech is not the right to agree with popular or majority opinion - it is the right to dissent! The whole issue is that if people are too afraid to speak out, the right to free speech is rather ficticious.
First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
- Martin Niemoller -
there are many moral and ethical absolutes. Everyone decides what they are for themselves.
Oh my, where to begin...
How can there possibly be any ethical/moral absolutes if everyone can decide for themselves what those absolutes are? By its very definition, if a moral principle is absolute, it is true for everyone, not just those who want to accept it. You are trying to argue a contradiction here, and that simply is not rational.
For every Ghandi and King, there is a Hitler, Stalin or Saddam.
To mention Saddam Hussein in the same breath as Hitler and Stalin reveals a shocking ignorance of history and is a real insult to the memories of those who died during WWII and the Stalinist purges.
Saddam Hussein was a petty dictator who was installed and supported by the US governments at the time - when he committed the worst of his atrocities. His crimes are great, but pale in comparison to those of Hitler and Stalin.
BTW the United States was two years late in joining WWII. The government at the time viewed it as being a European issue and did not want to get involved. Do not be so quick to trot out the example of the Second World War to prove your point.
Finally, there should not be a connection between tolerance and holding firm individual opinions.
Your argument seems to be that the majority shouldn't be allowed free speach because the minority might not be heard.
I don't think that is my argument at all. My opinion is that there is very little room for dissent (which is a vital part of free speech) in an environment where there is intense public pressure to adhere to a particular dogma.
Doesn't seem to logical to me.
That's just what *I* was thinking.
Everyone has a right to state their opinion but there isn't anything saying they shouldn't be ostracized for it.
What you consider "public pressure to fall in line" is really just the fact that most people in the U.S. do "support the troops" when they're sent to fight. If you perceive that as pressure, or feel uncomfortable, that's a problem for you, but it isn't "public pressure" to conform.
Please refer to John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty and pay particular attention to the section about the "tyranny of the majority".
GWB's "with us or against us" remarks seem fairly tame
How ironic, that such a comment should be found in a discussion thread about freedom of speech!
Gandalf "said"? Gandalf isn't real.
Undeniably true. That hardly makes the opinion expressed by Tolkien via the character Gandalf any less poignant. Too bad you missed the point by getting caught up in some trivial semantics.
I consider the original poster's assertions to be untrue, i.e. lies
Are you expressing the belief then that anything that is not 100% correct and accurate to be, by definition a lie?
Some things are absolute and not subjectt to debate.
To a very limited extent. Certainly there is no point in debating whether 2+2=4. However, I think that you will eventually learn that when it comes to moral and ethical issues, there are very few absolutes. Most sane adults would agree that it is wrong to go about killing people indiscriminately. However, in the recent war against Iraq, "collateral damage" is deemed acceptable, and quite possibly noble, given that the most recently stated purpose of the war is to free an oppressed people.
If you want to disagree with the original poster's opinions, that's great. However, neither of you have produced any facts to justify your diverse opinions.
(Unless, of course, you believe that having tolerance for other views equates to holding no opinions yourself.)
I fail to see any connection between the two. Nice bit of fallacious reasoning though.
Free speech is the right to speak freely. It is not the right to have anyone pay attention to you.
While this is technically true, there do seem to be a lot of public pressure to fall in line and not express any dissent. Consider for example the war against Iraq. Healthy and possibly crucial public debate is stifled because everyone should be "showing support for the troops".
Let us not also forget the example set by GWB who has said on several occasions that if you do not side with the US in the war on terror, then you are against the US, and apparently a supporter of the terrorists. This is hardly the sort of environment where debate and free speech will flourish.
You may disagree about the death penalty, but its existence in the U.S. doesn't make the U.S. a police state, anymore than its existence in European nations made them police states until they outlawed it. But that fact certainly seems to have given some Europeans a severe of case of unwarranted moral supremacy.
I agree with your first point, but I disagree with your opinion on the second. I believe that the US has executed minors who are generally not held to the same standards as adults most other places on the planet. Furthermore, while he was still a Governor, GWB refused to consider a plea for clemency in the case of a mentally retarded man who was due for execution. I believe those are the sorts of things that cause more civilized nations to claim the moral high ground when it comes to capital punishment. I believe that Gandalf said something to this effect: "Many who live deserve death just as many who die deserve life. Do not be so quick to deal out death and judgement."
Since you're apparently a guest in my country, next time you wish to air your lies in public, at least make a bit of an effort to make yourself credible.
(sigh) No attempt to suppress rational debate there. I think the reference to "lies" was just a bit unwarranted, don't you think?
But I doubt the US could forcefully remove a truly elected leader of another country without the world stepping in to stop them.
I would like to agree with you, unfortunately I don't see that happening. The US is our Rome, and we have Pax Americana for the forseeable future. There will always be at least a couple of nations looking to join the next "coalition of the willing" out of economic self-interest. (c.f John Howard in Australia) rather than any higher moral principles.
It would be preferable if GWB would just plainly state that he is going to organize the world as he sees fit, and the only guiding principle will be to do what is in the US' best interests. Then other nations could have a serious discussion about what the appropriate response is. Do you sacrifice sovereignty and independance for better access to US markets? What is in the best interests of your citizens in such cases? Can the combined moral arguments of other nations make a difference? Can multilateralism be resurrected?
Unfortunately, I think the war on terror will be a convenient disguise to mask and pre-empt any serious discussion and rhetoric will prevail.
I fear a world without those kinds of checks and balances. Just because one is elected doesn't mean they are not prone to error or just plain out deciet.
A lesson GWB and his hawks would be wise to learn. The US administration seems to have lost all interest in Afghanistan and the Taliban are starting to exert their influence again (aided by Pakistan.) I hope the US administration's attention span with respect to Iraq is not so short.
After all, Italy, Germany and Japan have it pretty well now!
Why, I bet if you were to ask anyone in Japan, they would say that having had nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nakasaki were the best things that could have happened to them!
And Dresden? It is much nicer since the fire-bombing.
the people of Iraq and the rest of the world have stated clearly that the Iraqi people WILL be in charge of this democracy regardless of the current US administration's agenda.
Well, GWB has said that he wants there to be stability and democracy in Iraq. The government of Saddam Hussein was extremely stable. There were no riots in the streets, crime was not running rampant, and the few public services (electricty, water) worked as well as could be expected, given Iraq's status as a third-world nation.
Democracy is another matter altogether. How do you suppose the US would respond if the people of Iraq gave GWB the middle finger and freely re-elected the Baath party lead by a relative of Saddam? Or what if they freely elected a militant Islamic government. Would the democratic will of the Iraqi people be respected?
We sometimes work long hours, and that will either come to an end or we'll put in lots of effort to work around that.
The people who I think are really good parents are the ones who'se priorities really changed after the baby arrived. Their family became priority #1 and the career comes second.
I hope that the repugnant notion of "quality time" is truly dead and buried. It is difficult to imagine that parents tried to justify that a couple of hours of quality time on the week-end would more than compensate for all of the extra hours spent at the office.
Speaking as the child of a workaholic, I have vivid memories of all the significant events in my life that my Dad was never able to attend because he was "busy working". He likes to remind us of all the extras our family could afford as a result, but it does not seem to have been worth it. Given the choice, I think my siblings and I would have preferred to have a Dad instead of the extended vacations (which he never had the time to take part in anyways.)
Time is the most precious commodity there is. It is the most valuable thing that you can give your children. Sure, there are bills to pay but do not let the pursuit of money interfere with the most important role in your life: being someone's Dad.
While that may be technically true, it does ship with a public domain korn shell, and I haven't had any problems with my scripts not running under it. Unless you are David Korn or have some specific insight as to why the pdksh is inadequte, this seems like a spurious complaint.
Interestingly, though, as it is the best and brightest that tend to leave, their economic impact is non-trivial.
I don't suppose you could provide some references to validate that belief? Otherwise it is just FUD.
And I, you, as long as your future does not involve living from my taxes.
Whatever...
the failure to avert it must be shared by nations other than the U.S. who proposed no other alternative to remove the threat of a provably beligerent leader of a rogue nation.
Where to begin... From what I observed, it appeared as though the UN inspectors were doing their job, and there were no traces of these mythincal weapons of mass destruction that GWB was constantly going on about. A beligerant leader? Almost certainly, but one of many around the world yet hardly the most corrupt or brutal. Rogue nation? Hardly! It is a third world nation crippled by sanctions that harm the average citizen yet do nothing to inconvenience the elites.
I suspect that there are many people on this planet who would identfy GWB as a beligerant leader of a rogue nation.
But progress is made through experience, as ugly and costly in human lives as that may be, and the powerful will subdue the weak. We treat other humans as we treat beasts raised for food and burden, when we can.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of brutality out there and we in the West set a rather poor example. However, the lessons of 9/11 have not been learned. All the terrorists needed to destroy the world trade center and attack the pentagon were some box-cutters. To paraphrase Thomas Hobbes: the weakest of men can kill the strongest of men - even the strong must sleep. You seem to be arguing that the ends will justify the means, and that might==right, and I think that you will eventually learn that those simplistic notions are inadequate when applied to as complex a system as the world we live in. Unfortunately, the institutions we have created are not designed to consider what is in our long-term best interests and we only focus on immediate self-gratification. I regret that I see no end to the violence. Since we brutalize ourselves as we brutalize others, the short-term future seems rather bleak.
the U.N. has demonstrated it's socialist impotence by (a) not censuring the U.S. when it placed the puppet regime in place, and (b) not offering a better means of removing it.
I do not see any obvious connection between the two non-actions you have listed and socialism. Care to elaborate?
As for your two points, let me offer the following:
1) While most informed observers knew full well what was going on, the US and the Iraqi regime were not open and transparent about what was going on when the CIA assisted Saddam's ascent to power.
2) Only security council resolutions are binding on UN signatories, and the US has used their security council veto more often than the other members combined.
3) There were resolutions for continued weapons inspections and there is no evidence to suggest they were not working as intended.
BTW have you ever heard of this thing called a contradiction? For example:
Canada, mirror and puppet of this borg-like collective, also remains paralized and frozen in the status quo.
and
Peace on earth will be achieved when the strong eliminate the weak, and all exist as equal
So, on one hand you argue against borg-like confirmity, and then a few sentences later you whistfully dream of borg-like confirmity. How does that stand to reason?
Sixth best standard of living in the world? Like I said, "third world backwater". Number one or nothing, regardless of what it takes.
Whatever floats your boat, but I don't think you would be happy there either. Last time I checked, it was those notoriously socialist Scandinavian nations that typically have the higest standard of living in the world.
more than 50,000 Candians emigrate to the U.S. each year
That number represents approximately.001% of the population of Canada is statistically zero and insignificant. Of course, no Americans would ever immigrate to Canada to off-set that number either, right?
if I could exchange Canadian for American citizenship, I'd do so in a heartbeat.
Well, I wish you all the best in your future.
While their foriegn policy may be poor, at least they try to have one that has an effect on their domestic situation.
Foreign policy is a means to get other countries to act in a way that is in your best interests, not necessarily their own. I agree that there is absolutely nothing noble about the war against Iraq.
Saddam Hussein murdered millions of his own citizens in the "peace time" since the Gulf War
Millions? Documentation? What about the innocents he murdered when he was a trusted ally of the US during the 1980's? Who do you think sold him the biological and chemical weapons that he used against the Kurds and Iran?
Someone has to clean up the world's shit
Some might say that those who made the mess in the first place should be responsible for cleaining it up!
risking their lives to protect SORRY ASSES like YOU from getting bombed in your sleep.
FWIW, I didn't ask anyone to "protect" my sorry ass. Nor do I believe that any sane individual really believes that the government of Iraq poses a threat to anyone who does not live in Iraq. In case you missed it, almost all of the Al Queda people who attacked the US on 9/11 were Saudi Arabian. NONE of them were from Iraq.
How do you define "many" - you and a couple of friends?
Tell me, mister troll, if life in Canada is so terrible, why do you continue to live there? Why not emigrate to some country that is more attuned to your (ahem) philosophy? Are you so hooked on the beer and hockey that you are willing to put up with abject poverty, socialist slimeballs and commie ideas?
carrying the stigma of wishy-washy Canadian citizenship
Oh, now that _is_ funny. Canadian citizenship is such a stigma that many Americans travelling abroad claim to be Canadian rather than identify themselves as Americans...
I know that it is April Fool's Day and all, but really...
I think it is the argument used in some places to ban violent video games but the jury is still out on whether it actually has any influence.
Or not. Despite what some might want to believe, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that there is a link between exposure to violence and violent behaviour, at least as far as children are concerned. You don't have to take my word for that though, check out the American Psychological Association and see what they have to say about it.
Plus some claim that such games actually reduce violence.
Source? You cannot make claims like that without providing some evidence to back them up.
The game, which is based on the movie, is coming out the end of 2003, but the movie isn't being released until 2005? Does it really take that long to do those stop animation films?
Abolutely! In one of the interviews on the Chicken Run DVD (also by Nick Park / Aardman) it took over 18 months to film the sequence that took place inside the chiken pie making machine, and that segment was only a few minutes long.
Typically, the amount of footage an animator can generate in a day is measured in seconds...
Slashdot Mirror
This national database could store irreversible hashes of the addresses. This way it would not be possible to extract addresses from the database, while it would still be possible to check whether some address is present in it.
Well, the spammers would be able to use that opt-out list to validate whether an address on their own list is a valid address. Remember the sort of person we are dealing with here: spammers are liars and thieves, not reputable business people out to make an honest buck.
It won't matter to the spammers what the laws are if there is still money to be made from sending spam.
There should be a "national opt-out" spam list that all spam senders must check before sending a message.
If such a list existed, you can bet your bottom dollar that every spammer will pay very close attention to it. It would be a list of 100% valid email addresses! Normally they would have to pay for lists of email addresses, and here is one that is free and guaranteed to be accurate.
The spammer could then fire up the spambox which is conveniently located outside of the US, bounce the spam off of an open relay in the Far East, and it would be business as usual.
If anyone out there believes that the spammers are honest and trustworthy, they deserve all the viagra, penis/breast enlargement/pr0n spam they get in their inbox...
Our DoD budget recently gave everyone who has CNN a spectacular display of where our tax dollars are going as it defeated an entrenched enemy within a couple of weeks. NASA has failed to do the same.
Are you saying that in order to be considered "successful", you want NASA to kick some alien ass in order to secure our access to their natural resources?
If the war against Iraq is your standard, where do you think we will find a planet that has resources we desperately require and a military that is totally inferior to our own? It's not as if the war against Iraq was a battle of equivalent military forces you know.
First off, the whole cost factor that people continue to bring up blows my mind. Any company with any knowledge of doing risk analysis will know that paying $50k a year, say, on securing your companies life-blood (trade secrets, source code, credit card numbers, etc.) is nothing.
Absolutely. Besides, the one-time cost of the hardware is trivial and can be depreciated over the course of a few years. The only issue that really matters are the on-going support costs and the headcount to maintain it.
Third, you people say 'get a smokin dell, and slap in a buncha NICs! that'll compare!' are on some serious Rock. Apples to Apples, a high end Nokia IP Series vs a high end Dell... well, lets just say it would suck to be the Dell. 8o)
Agreed. But compare the performance of your Nokia box to a killer Sun server, and it would suck to be the Nokia. As you said, it is a matter of comparing apples to apples. The advantages Nokia really has IMHO is that it is relatively cheap, and it more idiot-proof. I still think that the big shops with the skills and budgets to match will continue to run FW-1 on Sun hardware.
You seem to be arguing that majority opinion is, by definition, oppressive of those who hold other opinions.
No, I am not. I am arguing that freedom of expression means the freedom to dissent. If you want to define freedom of expression as the freedom to agree with the majority opinion, you are certainly free to do so, but don't expect very many people to agree with that faulty definition. Nobody *has* to listen to dissenting opinions of course, but everyone should be able to speak their mind and not be intimidated into silence.
And what acts of legislation have been approved to support or mandate that oppression?
You don't need legislation! The whole "political correctness" debate took place without any legislation but it still had (and continues to have) a powerful effect. For example, it is politically correct to support the war against Iraq for the sake of supporting the troops. It is still conceivable that someone can oppose an unprovoked war against a sovereign state and support the troops. Indeed, some might go so far as to say that the best way to support the troops is to bring them home and not involve them in any illegal military operations!
I made reference to the tyranny of the majority before. You really should check that out. Moral and/or ethical issues cannot be decided by a show of hands.
There is no reason to believe that any moral concept must be accepted by all in order to be accepted by any one individual.
That is a fairly good definition of an absolute moral principle and there are lots of people out there who believe in them. I think the belief you are articulating is would be termed moral relativism in which each person decides for themselves what is right and what is wrong.
To believe that requires a belief that some sort of extra-human authority exists which has created the one, true, moral standard, and then hidden it from most of humanity. (Else why are there competing standards of ethics and morality?)
I am not sure that what you suggest is necessarily true. I don't think that one has to believe in some sort of supreme being as a pre-requisite to beliefs in moral absolutes. Sure, there are many people out there who do base their beliefs on their faith, but that would be a correlation and not a causal relationship.
An individual can, and probably should, have absolute moral standards. But the fact that others will hold different, sometimes contradictory standards, shouldn't lead to an assumption that all moral standards are equivalent.
Agreed.
The only difference I can see between Saddam and Hitler and Stalin is in the number of people each murdered. A difference of scope, not nature.
Again, I find that assertion incredibly lacking. Turn off CNN and get your news from a reputable source for a change. Saddam Hussein was a creation of the CIA and was openly funded by more than one US administration all of whom turned a very blind eye to the atrocities he committed while on their payroll. No foreign power was responsible for the rise of Hitler and Stalin. The crimes of Stalin exceed those of Hitler if Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's account can be believed, and Hitler's crimes were far worse than anything Saddam Hussein did because specific ethnic and religious groups were targetted for genocide simply by virtue of their membership (real or imagined) in those groups..
Hussein did commit crimes against humanity against the Kurdish minority, but most of his victims were people who were accused of being traitors to the regime. Paranoid? Absolutely, but a mere amateur when compared to the villainy of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, or China during the cultural revolution.
Orr, are you denying that Ghandi and King would have been murdered by any one of those three barbarians?
I expect that Dr. King and Ghandi would have been murdered. There is no question that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator with no regard for human life.
However, when compared to Hitler and Stalin, Saddam Hussein is the diet coke of evil. If you choose to believe otherwise, that is your own affair, but a more thorough reading of history would probably lead you to a different conclusion.
Yes, it is untrue - but that does not necessarily make the statement a lie. To be a lie, there has to be an intent to deceive. I do not understand why you are failing to make the distinction in all instances.
I see no evidence that the pro-war majority has legistated unfair restictions of the antiwar minority.
If there is no legislation there can be oppression? That does not stand to reason...
The right to free speech won't do you much good if you lack the courage to open your mouth.
The whole point of free speech is not the right to agree with popular or majority opinion - it is the right to dissent! The whole issue is that if people are too afraid to speak out, the right to free speech is rather ficticious.
there are many moral and ethical absolutes. Everyone decides what they are for themselves.
Oh my, where to begin...
How can there possibly be any ethical/moral absolutes if everyone can decide for themselves what those absolutes are? By its very definition, if a moral principle is absolute, it is true for everyone, not just those who want to accept it. You are trying to argue a contradiction here, and that simply is not rational.
For every Ghandi and King, there is a Hitler, Stalin or Saddam.
To mention Saddam Hussein in the same breath as Hitler and Stalin reveals a shocking ignorance of history and is a real insult to the memories of those who died during WWII and the Stalinist purges.
Saddam Hussein was a petty dictator who was installed and supported by the US governments at the time - when he committed the worst of his atrocities. His crimes are great, but pale in comparison to those of Hitler and Stalin.
BTW the United States was two years late in joining WWII. The government at the time viewed it as being a European issue and did not want to get involved. Do not be so quick to trot out the example of the Second World War to prove your point.
Finally, there should not be a connection between tolerance and holding firm individual opinions.
Agreed!
Your argument seems to be that the majority shouldn't be allowed free speach because the minority might not be heard.
I don't think that is my argument at all. My opinion is that there is very little room for dissent (which is a vital part of free speech) in an environment where there is intense public pressure to adhere to a particular dogma.
Doesn't seem to logical to me.
That's just what *I* was thinking.
Everyone has a right to state their opinion but there isn't anything saying they shouldn't be ostracized for it.
Oh, the irony...
What you consider "public pressure to fall in line" is really just the fact that most people in the U.S. do "support the troops" when they're sent to fight. If you perceive that as pressure, or feel uncomfortable, that's a problem for you, but it isn't "public pressure" to conform.
Please refer to John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty and pay particular attention to the section about the "tyranny of the majority".
GWB's "with us or against us" remarks seem fairly tame
How ironic, that such a comment should be found in a discussion thread about freedom of speech!
Gandalf "said"? Gandalf isn't real.
Undeniably true. That hardly makes the opinion expressed by Tolkien via the character Gandalf any less poignant. Too bad you missed the point by getting caught up in some trivial semantics.
I consider the original poster's assertions to be untrue, i.e. lies
Are you expressing the belief then that anything that is not 100% correct and accurate to be, by definition a lie?
Some things are absolute and not subjectt to debate.
To a very limited extent. Certainly there is no point in debating whether 2+2=4. However, I think that you will eventually learn that when it comes to moral and ethical issues, there are very few absolutes. Most sane adults would agree that it is wrong to go about killing people indiscriminately. However, in the recent war against Iraq, "collateral damage" is deemed acceptable, and quite possibly noble, given that the most recently stated purpose of the war is to free an oppressed people.
If you want to disagree with the original poster's opinions, that's great. However, neither of you have produced any facts to justify your diverse opinions.
(Unless, of course, you believe that having tolerance for other views equates to holding no opinions yourself.)
I fail to see any connection between the two. Nice bit of fallacious reasoning though.
Free speech is the right to speak freely. It is not the right to have anyone pay attention to you.
While this is technically true, there do seem to be a lot of public pressure to fall in line and not express any dissent. Consider for example the war against Iraq. Healthy and possibly crucial public debate is stifled because everyone should be "showing support for the troops".
Let us not also forget the example set by GWB who has said on several occasions that if you do not side with the US in the war on terror, then you are against the US, and apparently a supporter of the terrorists. This is hardly the sort of environment where debate and free speech will flourish.
You may disagree about the death penalty, but its existence in the U.S. doesn't make the U.S. a police state, anymore than its existence in European nations made them police states until they outlawed it. But that fact certainly seems to have given some Europeans a severe of case of unwarranted moral supremacy.
I agree with your first point, but I disagree with your opinion on the second. I believe that the US has executed minors who are generally not held to the same standards as adults most other places on the planet. Furthermore, while he was still a Governor, GWB refused to consider a plea for clemency in the case of a mentally retarded man who was due for execution. I believe those are the sorts of things that cause more civilized nations to claim the moral high ground when it comes to capital punishment. I believe that Gandalf said something to this effect: "Many who live deserve death just as many who die deserve life. Do not be so quick to deal out death and judgement."
Since you're apparently a guest in my country, next time you wish to air your lies in public, at least make a bit of an effort to make yourself credible.
(sigh) No attempt to suppress rational debate there. I think the reference to "lies" was just a bit unwarranted, don't you think?
But I doubt the US could forcefully remove a truly elected leader of another country without the world stepping in to stop them.
I would like to agree with you, unfortunately I don't see that happening. The US is our Rome, and we have Pax Americana for the forseeable future. There will always be at least a couple of nations looking to join the next "coalition of the willing" out of economic self-interest. (c.f John Howard in Australia) rather than any higher moral principles.
It would be preferable if GWB would just plainly state that he is going to organize the world as he sees fit, and the only guiding principle will be to do what is in the US' best interests. Then other nations could have a serious discussion about what the appropriate response is. Do you sacrifice sovereignty and independance for better access to US markets? What is in the best interests of your citizens in such cases? Can the combined moral arguments of other nations make a difference? Can multilateralism be resurrected?
Unfortunately, I think the war on terror will be a convenient disguise to mask and pre-empt any serious discussion and rhetoric will prevail.
I fear a world without those kinds of checks and balances. Just because one is elected doesn't mean they are not prone to error or just plain out deciet.
A lesson GWB and his hawks would be wise to learn. The US administration seems to have lost all interest in Afghanistan and the Taliban are starting to exert their influence again (aided by Pakistan.) I hope the US administration's attention span with respect to Iraq is not so short.
After all, Italy, Germany and Japan have it pretty well now!
Why, I bet if you were to ask anyone in Japan, they would say that having had nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nakasaki were the best things that could have happened to them!
And Dresden? It is much nicer since the fire-bombing.
Yeah, so Bush's son too will have an excuse to invade Iraq: stop spam!
Why worry. It's not as if GWB needed a reason to invade Iraq.
the people of Iraq and the rest of the world have stated clearly that the Iraqi people WILL be in charge of this democracy regardless of the current US administration's agenda.
Well, GWB has said that he wants there to be stability and democracy in Iraq. The government of Saddam Hussein was extremely stable. There were no riots in the streets, crime was not running rampant, and the few public services (electricty, water) worked as well as could be expected, given Iraq's status as a third-world nation.
Democracy is another matter altogether. How do you suppose the US would respond if the people of Iraq gave GWB the middle finger and freely re-elected the Baath party lead by a relative of Saddam? Or what if they freely elected a militant Islamic government. Would the democratic will of the Iraqi people be respected?
Not a chance...
We sometimes work long hours, and that will either come to an end or we'll put in lots of effort to work around that.
The people who I think are really good parents are the ones who'se priorities really changed after the baby arrived. Their family became priority #1 and the career comes second.
I hope that the repugnant notion of "quality time" is truly dead and buried. It is difficult to imagine that parents tried to justify that a couple of hours of quality time on the week-end would more than compensate for all of the extra hours spent at the office.
Speaking as the child of a workaholic, I have vivid memories of all the significant events in my life that my Dad was never able to attend because he was "busy working". He likes to remind us of all the extras our family could afford as a result, but it does not seem to have been worth it. Given the choice, I think my siblings and I would have preferred to have a Dad instead of the extended vacations (which he never had the time to take part in anyways.)
Time is the most precious commodity there is. It is the most valuable thing that you can give your children. Sure, there are bills to pay but do not let the pursuit of money interfere with the most important role in your life: being someone's Dad.
RedHat still lacks the Korn shell.
While that may be technically true, it does ship with a public domain korn shell, and I haven't had any problems with my scripts not running under it. Unless you are David Korn or have some specific insight as to why the pdksh is inadequte, this seems like a spurious complaint.
Interestingly, though, as it is the best and brightest that tend to leave, their economic impact is non-trivial.
I don't suppose you could provide some references to validate that belief? Otherwise it is just FUD.
And I, you, as long as your future does not involve living from my taxes.
Whatever...
the failure to avert it must be shared by nations other than the U.S. who proposed no other alternative to remove the threat of a provably beligerent leader of a rogue nation.
Where to begin... From what I observed, it appeared as though the UN inspectors were doing their job, and there were no traces of these mythincal weapons of mass destruction that GWB was constantly going on about. A beligerant leader? Almost certainly, but one of many around the world yet hardly the most corrupt or brutal. Rogue nation? Hardly! It is a third world nation crippled by sanctions that harm the average citizen yet do nothing to inconvenience the elites.
I suspect that there are many people on this planet who would identfy GWB as a beligerant leader of a rogue nation.
But progress is made through experience, as ugly and costly in human lives as that may be, and the powerful will subdue the weak. We treat other humans as we treat beasts raised for food and burden, when we can.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of brutality out there and we in the West set a rather poor example. However, the lessons of 9/11 have not been learned. All the terrorists needed to destroy the world trade center and attack the pentagon were some box-cutters. To paraphrase Thomas Hobbes: the weakest of men can kill the strongest of men - even the strong must sleep. You seem to be arguing that the ends will justify the means, and that might==right, and I think that you will eventually learn that those simplistic notions are inadequate when applied to as complex a system as the world we live in. Unfortunately, the institutions we have created are not designed to consider what is in our long-term best interests and we only focus on immediate self-gratification. I regret that I see no end to the violence. Since we brutalize ourselves as we brutalize others, the short-term future seems rather bleak.
the U.N. has demonstrated it's socialist impotence by (a) not censuring the U.S. when it placed the puppet regime in place, and (b) not offering a better means of removing it.
I do not see any obvious connection between the two non-actions you have listed and socialism. Care to elaborate?
As for your two points, let me offer the following:
1) While most informed observers knew full well what was going on, the US and the Iraqi regime were not open and transparent about what was going on when the CIA assisted Saddam's ascent to power.
2) Only security council resolutions are binding on UN signatories, and the US has used their security council veto more often than the other members combined.
3) There were resolutions for continued weapons inspections and there is no evidence to suggest they were not working as intended.
BTW have you ever heard of this thing called a contradiction? For example:
Canada, mirror and puppet of this borg-like collective, also remains paralized and frozen in the status quo.
and
Peace on earth will be achieved when the strong eliminate the weak, and all exist as equal
So, on one hand you argue against borg-like confirmity, and then a few sentences later you whistfully dream of borg-like confirmity. How does that stand to reason?
Sixth best standard of living in the world? Like I said, "third world backwater". Number one or nothing, regardless of what it takes.
Whatever floats your boat, but I don't think you would be happy there either. Last time I checked, it was those notoriously socialist Scandinavian nations that typically have the higest standard of living in the world.
The sad and inf
more than 50,000 Candians emigrate to the U.S. each year
.001% of the population of Canada is statistically zero and insignificant. Of course, no Americans would ever immigrate to Canada to off-set that number either, right?
That number represents approximately
if I could exchange Canadian for American citizenship, I'd do so in a heartbeat.
Well, I wish you all the best in your future.
While their foriegn policy may be poor, at least they try to have one that has an effect on their domestic situation.
Foreign policy is a means to get other countries to act in a way that is in your best interests, not necessarily their own. I agree that there is absolutely nothing noble about the war against Iraq.
Saddam Hussein murdered millions of his own citizens in the "peace time" since the Gulf War
Millions? Documentation? What about the innocents he murdered when he was a trusted ally of the US during the 1980's? Who do you think sold him the biological and chemical weapons that he used against the Kurds and Iran?
Someone has to clean up the world's shit
Some might say that those who made the mess in the first place should be responsible for cleaining it up!
risking their lives to protect SORRY ASSES like YOU from getting bombed in your sleep.
FWIW, I didn't ask anyone to "protect" my sorry ass. Nor do I believe that any sane individual really believes that the government of Iraq poses a threat to anyone who does not live in Iraq. In case you missed it, almost all of the Al Queda people who attacked the US on 9/11 were Saudi Arabian. NONE of them were from Iraq.
So spare us the FUD...
Many of us detest the way things are done here
How do you define "many" - you and a couple of friends?
Tell me, mister troll, if life in Canada is so terrible, why do you continue to live there? Why not emigrate to some country that is more attuned to your (ahem) philosophy? Are you so hooked on the beer and hockey that you are willing to put up with abject poverty, socialist slimeballs and commie ideas?
carrying the stigma of wishy-washy Canadian citizenship
Oh, now that _is_ funny. Canadian citizenship is such a stigma that many Americans travelling abroad claim to be Canadian rather than identify themselves as Americans...
I know that it is April Fool's Day and all, but really...
OK, it's an obvious April 1st troll, but at least it is an improvement over those "BSD is dying" trollls...
I think it is the argument used in some places to ban violent video games but the jury is still out on whether it actually has any influence.
Or not. Despite what some might want to believe, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that there is a link between exposure to violence and violent behaviour, at least as far as children are concerned. You don't have to take my word for that though, check out the American Psychological Association and see what they have to say about it.
Plus some claim that such games actually reduce violence.
Source? You cannot make claims like that without providing some evidence to back them up.
The game, which is based on the movie, is coming out the end of 2003, but the movie isn't being released until 2005? Does it really take that long to do those stop animation films?
Abolutely! In one of the interviews on the Chicken Run DVD (also by Nick Park / Aardman) it took over 18 months to film the sequence that took place inside the chiken pie making machine, and that segment was only a few minutes long.
Typically, the amount of footage an animator can generate in a day is measured in seconds...