The hardware configurations supported by Windows are not nearly as extensive as some people would have you believe. But lets just say for the sake of argumenta that they are. What does that mean? Well it means that they have to have a very good driver layer in their OS and work with vendors to ensure that the quality of individual drivers remains high. Bad or buggy drivers are out there, ATI comes to mind, but they are not the cause of problems in products like Word, IE, IIS, even Windows itself outside the driver layer.
Supporting lots of different hardware simply requires a sane abstraction layer and good drivers. If this was such a difficult problem then we wouldn't have Linux running on so many different platforms, not to mention NetBSD's ability to run on just about anything with hardware memory management.
Microsofts products are shoddy because that is how the company chooses to make them. That is not to say that all of them are shoddy or that every example is shoddy accross all versions of the product. But more are shoddy than not and over time some truly craptacular products have been fielded by the company. It seems to take Microsoft three major revisions before most of their stuff is passable. I don't expect Vista to be viable till at least mid 2007, though I am open to being pleasantly surprised.
I for one don't hate them either, I just recognize their mediocrity and avoid using them where other products provide a better overall solution.
The left is very very good at play word games. They'll choose a word that sounds nice, such as "social justice" or "diveristy" and they'll then redefine it to mean something very different from what its literal interpretation would suggest. This word has now become a propaganda tool in their ongoing war against....well just about everything that is good. They'll co-opt a word or term, and then use it to promote their agenda. At first people interpret this term in its literal sense, or in whatever sense it has within the culture that the leftists are now trying to get mileage out of. Over time more and more people come to associate this term with the new definition that the leftists have applied to it, decreasing its value as a propaganda tool till eventually the term is abandoned and another term is selected in its place.
This is how the term "liberal" came to be associated with leftists. Once upon a time the term described someone like Milton Friedman in economic terms, or Thomas Jefferson in political and sociological terms. Then the marxists started using it to describe their own bullshit. After a while the original meanings of the word were all but forgotten. Today the term has become very ironic. The people and ideas that are described as "liberal" are almost always anything but. Now that this term has lost its deceptive power the left has taken to calling themselves "progressives."
This scam is very effective against people who are easily taken in by how words make them feel. If I say "I'm a progressive in favor of diversity to advance the cause of social justice," just to use the three buzz-words that I've listed so far, what am I really saying? What I'm really saying is "I'm a gramscian marxist who seeks to create racial or ethnic strife and animosity for the purpose of undermining society with the ultimate goal of replacing that society with a communist one."
Welcome to leftist-newspeak 101.
Once you understand how the left co-opts language and uses it to hide their true intentions, an awful lot of their bullshit becomes painfully obvious.
Another trick they play is what I like to call the "I'm offended!!" ploy. The left has succeeded in convincing society that it is very important that we don't say anything that might offend anyone. If this were a simple matter of being polite and refraining from insulting someone's mother, then that would be fine. Unfortunately what they really mean is that no one should express ideas or beliefs that the left, or one of its designated "victim groups," does not agree with. So when muslim groups such as CAIR whine about descriptions of terrorists as murderous thugs, this is the game they're playing. It is a form of back-door censorship and unfortunately it is something that far too many people give far too much creedence to. It seems that in any issue the question of whether this point of view or that sentiment is "offensive" always comes up. It is patently irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether or not it is an honest criticism. When someone makes an honest statement of what they truly believe, the only thing in question is whether they are right or wrong. How "offensive" their beliefs or ideas are doesn't matter. The "I'm offended!" ploy is used to silence those whose ideas you cannot refute. It is an attack upon honest open debate, which isn't surprising given that the left doesn't tend to fare very well in that arena. Once their ideas are understood, and especially after they have been seen in action, their destructiveness becomes obvious and they are cast aside. Only by manipulating language and hijacking the discussion can the left avoid having their ideas tossed out.
Very very few leftists actually understand what they are doing in all of this. If they were capable of that level of introspection and intellectual honesty they wouldn't be leftists anymore. Rather this is a process that has evolved natually through simple t
You might want to quit while you're ahead because your understanding of history is profoundly flawed.
If you actually wish to understand the history of Marxism I suggest you read a book Joshua Muravchik titled "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism" ISBN # 1893554457. Amazon has used copies listed at around $12 after shipping.
Listening to leftist academics talk about Marxism is like going to stormfront.org to learn about Naziism.
An "economy of sharing" works for software because its value is not diminished when it is shared. If I create a piece of software that is useful to me, it is still just as useful if I give you a copy of it. Extend this a little further, to where any improvments either of us make is shared with the other and you've got the basis for the open source development model. Under this model value is increased by sharing, which is why people share. If the value was not increased then no one would do it. Don't be confused and assume that this is altruism because it isn't. Human beings will be charitable, but not with their mortgage payments.
The problem is that the economy of sharing doesn't apply to everything. If I make a widget and I give it to you, I don't have it anymore. Its value to me has now been reduced to zero. But what if I have a widget and you have a doo-dad and your dood-dad is worth more to me than my widget, and my widget is worth more to you than your doo-dad. Odds are we're going to trade these two items. Extend this a little further with the introduction of money as a medium of exchange and you have the basis for a market economy.
Neither of these approaches was consciously designed, but evolved naturally through human interaction. What Moglen and others like him don't seem to realize is that trying to implement the cooperative model where it has not naturally evolved, and therefore is not as effective or beneficial as the model which has naturally evolved, will always result in failure and an ultimate outcome that is far WORSE then any of the shortcomings they were originally trying to address.
To me this seems obvious, but it is clearly not obvious to everyone. Leftists have an interesting effect upon me. They make me feel very wise and intelligent. It is sad that so many seemingly intelligent and demonstrably educated people are so completely clueless about human nature and its role in the human condition. As a conservative, there are things that I've just always understood intuitively for as long as I can remember. I'm able to apply the lessons of human nature that I learned at an early age. So many others seemingly never learned these lessons, or are incapable of applying them correctly. Either way there is some sort of intellectual or emotional deficit at work. I feel sorry for people who just don't get it, but my pity does not extend to the point of allowing them to implement their destructive policies and ideas. A dog that has rabies is worthy of pity, but you still put it down.
As a card carrying member of the NRA, this issue is of course very important to me. What I don't understand is why it is important to the slashdot community. Every year there are countless news stories that slashdot does not cover, surely including ones that are more relevant to a communit defined by its interest in computer technology.
The tone of the initial post, which says in part "...the right to bear arms only applies to 'a well regulated militia'..." demonstrates the reason why this topic can be found here, which is that this site is run by leftists who have bought into the rhetoric of the left which calls for the disarmament of the people as a pre-requisite of their disempowerment and disenfrancisement.
All I can say is that I will fight the forces of evil and oppression to my last dying breath. You want my guns? You'll have to kill me first, and I'm ready and willing to take as many of you with me as I can.
After doing a cursory skimming of the posts in this thread so far I've discovered something amazing: no one has yet to call for the overthrow of China's totalitarian regime.
China's government denies its citizens their God given rights. It is therefore illegitimate. It is the duty of every man and woman who would be free to work towards its dissolution and the subsequent creation of a new government founded upon the principles of individual freedom and public accountability.
You really should be able to expect more from a history professor.
A free society is founded upon the freedom to speak one's mind. The ability of the jihadis to propagandize is irrelevant in comparison. Let them have their say, it will only make them that much easier to fight. Whenever there is talk about limiting freedom of expression for fear of the message, my first impression is that this desire is due to the lack of an effective response. You don't seek to silence your opponent when you're winning the argument.
The war of Islam against the rest of the world will last many years, if not decades. Western civilization itself will stand or fall depending on the outcome. Undermining the very principles that make us who we are and that give us our greatest strength will only help our enemies.
If undermining freedom of speech isn't the way to win, then what is? Victory will come by knowing and understanding our enemies. The problem here isn't that our enemies are free to lie and propagandize against us, but that the west has so wrapped itself up in the chains of political correctness that expressing the truth about our enemies is attacked as racism or islamophobia or any other number of convenient buzz-words. Only by casting away these lies that have ensnared us will we be able to defeat those whose only purpose is our subjugation and the destruction of our civilization.
But what is political correctness? Political correctness is censorship. It is a tool used to silence one's opponents through lies and humiliation. The best description of political correctness I've ever read comes from Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist who said:
"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to silence and humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. Ones standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
The biggest challenge we face in this war is not with our enemies in other lands, but with those enemies at home who defend and praise our enemies and attack those who dare to speak the truth about them. In a very real sense it is not the propaganda of the jihadis that is the problem, but the lies of their sympathizers here at home who undermine our ability to mount an effective response.
Hate speech is a scam. Outlawing the expression of unpopular ideas strikes at the very core of the freedom to speak one's mind freely. Nazi's and KKK racists and islamofacist jihadis etc etc etc are all very distasteful people who believe things that are even more distasteful. But to forbid and criminalize the expression of their beliefs does nothing to refute or change those beliefs. The only thing this creates is a world where unpopular ideas are suppressed and their expression is subject to official sanction.
There are many people in this world who have bought into all sorts of destructive ideologies. The only way to keep these dangerous dogmas in check is by addressing them and discussing them and refuting them. Mainstream society is the culimination and the product of open dialogue where all ideas come together to vie and compete for an audience and followers. This process is the reason why mainstream western society is NOT under the influence of dangerous and/or extremist ideologies. Mainstream society in a culture of open discussion and dialogue converges upon concusions which, while not always the absolute best, are generally among the better conclusions and almost never among the worst. When mistakes are made they are quickly corrected.
But whenever this system of open discussion of all ideas is cast aside in an attempt to avoid the worst ideas, the result is that those ideas are never examined, and therefore not held in check. The irony is that this creates the very conditions under which those ideas can come to the forefront.
The best way to fight lies is not with a gag order, but with the truth. A gag order can give the appearance of victory over lies, but at the cost of sacrificing the very process by which the truth is discovered and preseved. If you shut your eyes to lies, they won't be open to see the truth.
First of all, this is a crock. Whatever their reasons are for not wanting people to run the crippleware versions of vista in a VM, you can rest assured that "maturity" and "security" have nothing to do with it.
But in any case what difference does it make? Microsoft has already tried to tell people that they are not allowed to use VNC with windows, but last time I checked no one listened. If anyone did they're a schmuck for kowtowing to the demands of a company that is dependent upon their business.
I'm not planning on running vista until I have to. I don't trust 1.0 versions of Microsoft's stuff, and I'm not enthused about having to buy a bleeding edge computer just to run what is supposed to be a mainstream operating system.
But if and when I do get around to running vista, I'm not going to refrain from running it under VMware just because Microsoft tells me I can't. I spend money, I buy a product, I use it as I see fit. If Microsoft thinks they can stop me then they're welcome to try. The only one who is going to lose is them. I'm not a soccer mom who thinks that AOL is the internet. I don't NEED to buy or use ANYTHING that Microsoft sells.
I've heard a lot of stories about all the changes that Microsoft is making to vista that are designed to combat piracy and prevent competition from the likes of Symantec, McAfee, etc.
I for one am having in a hard time caring because I'm unlikely to run vista anytime soon, or have to support it. My primary environment is Linux, and while I do run Windows XP (at work), I do not depend on it. If they give me a new system at work with Vista on it, then I'll run it, but I won't spend my own money to buy a copy for home use. I simply don't need it.
Also I think that Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot, especially with the anti-piracy efforts. The dominant position that Windows has is in no small part due to piracy, especially in the 3rd world. The effects of piracy hurts Microsoft's bottom line, but it also maintains their market share.
In Hong Kong the price of Linux is greater than that of Windows right now. Why? Because Windows comes on one CD whereas Linux typically comes on two to three CD's. If the day comes when the price of windows is 100x the price of Linux, guess which OS people are going to start using?
This is the same mistake that Apple made back in the late 80's, maximizing profits at the expense of market share. Had they played their cards right they could have won the OS/platform wars instead of becoming the perennial also-ran that they've been for the past 20 years.
Microsoft has the dominant position in the desktop OS market, but that position is not guaranteed. In any measurable sense, Linux has technical parity if not superiority vis-a-vis windows. The only thing that Linux is lacking to be contender at this point are users, and Microsoft's anti-piracy strategy is an almost sure-fire way of creating them.
There are many groups in the US and around the world whose ideologies and agendas are driven by genuine racism. Most of these groups create literature or propaganda of some sort, and much of this is delivered through the US postal service to their followers and potential converts around the world.
Therefore the US postal service is supporting racism!
To stamp out this evil the postal service MUST begin screening letters and packages for racist content. Each letter or package must be examined and read very carefully by postal agents who have been specially trained to detect content that promotes racial dis-harmony. Those packages and letters found to encourage racism will be burned and those responsible for sending them charged with racism. Convicted racists will be placed in death-camps of tolerance.
If we don't do this then those racists will continue to be racists and spread their racism throughout the world, a crime against all humanity which cannot be allowed to stand!
Having him move here won't be trivially easy, but it isn't all that hard either. The only real issue is the wait involved.
I know because my wife is from the UK.
My sister lived in the Netherlands for a bit when she was going to school. She liked it, but then she was only there as a student. Even so she found their attitude of many dutch people towards Americans to be less than pleasant, especially if you couldn't speak dutch. I reminded her that if it wasn't for Americans they wouldn't be speaking dutch either but German or Russian instead.
At first glance, someone might assume that the taxes in a country like the UK were lower than in the US.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
You see in the UK they have what is known as VAT, or Value Added Tax. Here in the US we call it sales tax. The VAT rate for the UK is 35%. Now some people will say I'm wrong and that the VAT is only 17.5%. Some people say this because that is what the government of the UK has told them. The official story over there is that when you buy something, you pay 17.5% VAT, and the seller pays the other 17.5% VAT. Well where does the seller get the money that he uses to pay that VAT? That's right, from YOU.
What makes it worse is that this VAT is charged for EVERYTHING including things like FOOD. There are a handful of token exemptions for things like sanitary napkins and baby clothes, but not for anything that would make a significant impact to a struggling family's finances. In addition to this the minimum tax bracket applies to EVERYONE. If you're struggling to get by on minimum wage, you still have to pay income tax. I don't remember what the rate is, but its not low. My wife could tell you and I'll probably ask her and come back here with the answer.
For the sake of argument lets assume that the lowest income tax bracket is 20%. This means that 55% of the income of someone who scubs toilets for a living is being paid to the government. This is what is known as regressive taxation.
The result of this is that in the UK, at least where my wife is from (Stoke on Trent), the average person will work anywhere from 60 to 80 hours a week just to make ends meet. The prices are high, the wages are low, and the taxes are eating everyone alive.
What are these taxes going towards? Welfare money for people who won't work, and to prop up a socialized medicine program that is broken and on the verge of collapse. A lot of the laws and state policies in the UK are perfect examples of what NOT to do. People complain here in the US about illegal aliens invading the country and causing problems. Well those who complain should count their blessings. About the worst you can say about illegals here is that they MIGHT bring the root causes of Mexico's socioeconomic malaise with them when they move here. Illegal aliens in the UK bring islamic terrorism with them. The UK has become Al Qaeda's number one target, in no small part because of how many current and future terrorists have poured into the country. What attracts them to the UK? Illegal aliens there are allowed to sign up for the dole, especially if they're from the middle east. The idea being that refusal to pay non-citizens for not working is "racist." The stuff that goes on over there is nothing less than kafkaesque.
So while the top INCOME TAX bracket in the UK may be slightly lower than in the US, that does NOT tell the whole story at all. You have to look at the whole picture. When you do you'll find that while the US is not a perfect place, it is so much better than just about everywhere else that leaving here is patently insane.
Limiting the range of opinions and sentiments that people are allowed to express does nothing to change those opinions and sentiments. Instead all it does is sacrifice the rights of one person in order to protect the feelings of another. Of all the reasons for the state to forcibly abridge speech, this is one of the least justifiable.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If you want to dispell hate and bigotry then the LAST thing you want to do is encourage it to hide under a rock.
The term "Hate Speech" itself is an attack upon our society. Our society (and by that I mean western civilization) is based upon the free exchange of ideas and opinions, regardless of how ill recieved those ideas and opinions may be. Any regulation that limits which ideas are permissible that is not based upon an immediate threat of danger, such as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, is a corruption of the principles upon which western civilization is founded.
You can either have the right to free speech, or you can have the right not to be offended. You can't have both.
I always thought that story was an urband legend intentionally created for the purpose of underscoring just how easy it would be for a malicious person to do some real damage. Now it turns out that it was real.....scary.
This happened years before 9/11 awakened the west (or at least intellectually honest westerners) to the threat posed by islamofascism.
Imagine how much damage a group of jihadis could do with a few thousand smoke detectors, some tungsten carbide, and an engine block.
Yes and some of the people that the KGB disapppeared were actually guilty of a real crime.
The problem isn't that google assisted in the pursuit of drug dealers, pedophiles and jaywalkers. The problem is that they assisted in the prosecution of "thought-crime." Had they limited their assistance to the pursuit of real criminals then I never would have said anything.
This is what happens when Political Correctness becomes a matter of law.
Political Correctness is nothing more than totalitarianism in the world of ideas. What's worse is that it is almost transparently so, making its presence in a supposedly free society all the more puzzling and maddening. Those who promote it are quite simply intellectually bankrupt.
The best discription of political correctness I know of comes from Theodore Dalyrimple:
"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
You should have emailed him back and told him to stop whining.
RMS is a perfect example of what happens when Asperger's syndrome goes untreated. He has NO idea how his words and actions are interpreted by other people. As a result, he creates opposition where none existed. He's really good at pissing off people who might otherwise admire him. I'm a perfect example of this. When he whines about the name that a particular operating system goes by in the real world, it really makes him look like a jackass to me. People are going to call things whatever they want. He can't change defacto naming conventions any more than I can edit the Oxford English Dictionary. Not only that, but it doesn't even matter.
When Linus first released his kernel, he wanted to call it Freax. Well the guy who ran his FTP server didn't like that name at all and changed the filename back to Linux. People started downloading it and the name obviously stuck. You don't hear Linus going around saying "But you should call it Freax!!" and refusing to be interviewed by anyone who doesn't play along. He doesn't do this because he understands that it doesn't matter. It's like arguing about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. The code is what matters, not what people call it.
RMS needs a press agent, a PR person, someone to help him improve how he presents himself and how he chooses his battles.
Some criminals wear badges, which is why police departments have an internal affairs divsion, to find and remove bad cops from the force. These sound like cases for IAD to me, big time.
Now maybe its just me, but there does seem to be an increase in cases of police officers getting confused and thinking they work for the gestapo. There was a case a month back or so where the daughter of a police officer was arrested for "trespassing." She and a friend were lost and had stopped to ask a police officer for directions. The officer refused to help them, stating that they would have to find their own way out. A few moments later they spotted another officer and drove over to where he was to ask for help, at which point the first officer rushed over and berated them for daring to ask her partner for help when she had already told them to get lost. So they drove up the street a ways, pulled over, and began trying to find out where they were on a map while trying to call the girl's father on a cell phone. A few minutes later these same officers arrested them for "trespassing"..... on a public street. The girl and her friend spent the night in jail. They weren't charged of course because they hadn't committed any crime.
I don't know how this case turned out for the officers involved, but it shows a serious lack of oversight when two cops are able to run wild and abuse the public in that manner.
Now I know for a fact that most cops are decent men and women who treat citizens with all due respect, despite having to be human-garbagemen and spend much of their time doing what I call "white trash patrol." Just watch a few episodes of Cops and you'll know what I mean. But even so there are a few who are bad apples, and unless they're culled from the force then you end up with situations like these, or worse.
The last thing any police department should be interested in doing is making themselves the enemy of the public. The police depend upon public goodwill to do their job, and to come home alive at the end of their shift. If the police do not have the trust of the public, then they will not have the cooperation of the public. This is already the case in urban slums where calls of "five-O!" cry out day and night warning the residents that a police car or officer is in the area. When the police become a nuisance equal to that of the criminals they are supposed to be pursuing, then the public will treat them with equal disdain.
In most parts of the world, being a police officer is met with about the same level of respect as a personal injury lawyer would be here, if not less. The police are held in contempt because in most parts of the world, particularly the 3rd world, corruption and abuse are almost part of the job. Police officers in the US are, at least among healthy segments of society, viewed with respect if not admiration. But this esteem is fragile because at the end of the day the police are armed agents of the state and that makes them difficult to love. So when officers abuse and betray the trust of the public and make false arrests, all it does is make life that much more difficult for them and and their fellow officers. Things like these are noticed, and remembered.
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The hardware configurations supported by Windows are not nearly as extensive as some people would have you believe. But lets just say for the sake of argumenta that they are. What does that mean? Well it means that they have to have a very good driver layer in their OS and work with vendors to ensure that the quality of individual drivers remains high. Bad or buggy drivers are out there, ATI comes to mind, but they are not the cause of problems in products like Word, IE, IIS, even Windows itself outside the driver layer.
Supporting lots of different hardware simply requires a sane abstraction layer and good drivers. If this was such a difficult problem then we wouldn't have Linux running on so many different platforms, not to mention NetBSD's ability to run on just about anything with hardware memory management.
Microsofts products are shoddy because that is how the company chooses to make them. That is not to say that all of them are shoddy or that every example is shoddy accross all versions of the product. But more are shoddy than not and over time some truly craptacular products have been fielded by the company. It seems to take Microsoft three major revisions before most of their stuff is passable. I don't expect Vista to be viable till at least mid 2007, though I am open to being pleasantly surprised.
I for one don't hate them either, I just recognize their mediocrity and avoid using them where other products provide a better overall solution.
His grandparents were communists who were so extreme that even the bolsheviks thought they were out there.
If anyone knows anything about socialism as it actually exists, as opposed to the pie-in-the-sky proclamations of its adherents, it would be him.
Lee
Its called Marxism.
Welcome to the duplicity of the left.
The left is very very good at play word games. They'll choose a word that sounds nice, such as "social justice" or "diveristy" and they'll then redefine it to mean something very different from what its literal interpretation would suggest. This word has now become a propaganda tool in their ongoing war against....well just about everything that is good. They'll co-opt a word or term, and then use it to promote their agenda. At first people interpret this term in its literal sense, or in whatever sense it has within the culture that the leftists are now trying to get mileage out of. Over time more and more people come to associate this term with the new definition that the leftists have applied to it, decreasing its value as a propaganda tool till eventually the term is abandoned and another term is selected in its place.
This is how the term "liberal" came to be associated with leftists. Once upon a time the term described someone like Milton Friedman in economic terms, or Thomas Jefferson in political and sociological terms. Then the marxists started using it to describe their own bullshit. After a while the original meanings of the word were all but forgotten. Today the term has become very ironic. The people and ideas that are described as "liberal" are almost always anything but. Now that this term has lost its deceptive power the left has taken to calling themselves "progressives."
This scam is very effective against people who are easily taken in by how words make them feel. If I say "I'm a progressive in favor of diversity to advance the cause of social justice," just to use the three buzz-words that I've listed so far, what am I really saying? What I'm really saying is "I'm a gramscian marxist who seeks to create racial or ethnic strife and animosity for the purpose of undermining society with the ultimate goal of replacing that society with a communist one."
Welcome to leftist-newspeak 101.
Once you understand how the left co-opts language and uses it to hide their true intentions, an awful lot of their bullshit becomes painfully obvious.
Another trick they play is what I like to call the "I'm offended!!" ploy. The left has succeeded in convincing society that it is very important that we don't say anything that might offend anyone. If this were a simple matter of being polite and refraining from insulting someone's mother, then that would be fine. Unfortunately what they really mean is that no one should express ideas or beliefs that the left, or one of its designated "victim groups," does not agree with. So when muslim groups such as CAIR whine about descriptions of terrorists as murderous thugs, this is the game they're playing. It is a form of back-door censorship and unfortunately it is something that far too many people give far too much creedence to. It seems that in any issue the question of whether this point of view or that sentiment is "offensive" always comes up. It is patently irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether or not it is an honest criticism. When someone makes an honest statement of what they truly believe, the only thing in question is whether they are right or wrong. How "offensive" their beliefs or ideas are doesn't matter. The "I'm offended!" ploy is used to silence those whose ideas you cannot refute. It is an attack upon honest open debate, which isn't surprising given that the left doesn't tend to fare very well in that arena. Once their ideas are understood, and especially after they have been seen in action, their destructiveness becomes obvious and they are cast aside. Only by manipulating language and hijacking the discussion can the left avoid having their ideas tossed out.
Very very few leftists actually understand what they are doing in all of this. If they were capable of that level of introspection and intellectual honesty they wouldn't be leftists anymore. Rather this is a process that has evolved natually through simple t
You might want to quit while you're ahead because your understanding of history is profoundly flawed.
If you actually wish to understand the history of Marxism I suggest you read a book Joshua Muravchik titled "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism" ISBN # 1893554457. Amazon has used copies listed at around $12 after shipping.
Listening to leftist academics talk about Marxism is like going to stormfront.org to learn about Naziism.
An "economy of sharing" works for software because its value is not diminished when it is shared. If I create a piece of software that is useful to me, it is still just as useful if I give you a copy of it. Extend this a little further, to where any improvments either of us make is shared with the other and you've got the basis for the open source development model. Under this model value is increased by sharing, which is why people share. If the value was not increased then no one would do it. Don't be confused and assume that this is altruism because it isn't. Human beings will be charitable, but not with their mortgage payments.
The problem is that the economy of sharing doesn't apply to everything. If I make a widget and I give it to you, I don't have it anymore. Its value to me has now been reduced to zero. But what if I have a widget and you have a doo-dad and your dood-dad is worth more to me than my widget, and my widget is worth more to you than your doo-dad. Odds are we're going to trade these two items. Extend this a little further with the introduction of money as a medium of exchange and you have the basis for a market economy.
Neither of these approaches was consciously designed, but evolved naturally through human interaction. What Moglen and others like him don't seem to realize is that trying to implement the cooperative model where it has not naturally evolved, and therefore is not as effective or beneficial as the model which has naturally evolved, will always result in failure and an ultimate outcome that is far WORSE then any of the shortcomings they were originally trying to address.
To me this seems obvious, but it is clearly not obvious to everyone. Leftists have an interesting effect upon me. They make me feel very wise and intelligent. It is sad that so many seemingly intelligent and demonstrably educated people are so completely clueless about human nature and its role in the human condition. As a conservative, there are things that I've just always understood intuitively for as long as I can remember. I'm able to apply the lessons of human nature that I learned at an early age. So many others seemingly never learned these lessons, or are incapable of applying them correctly. Either way there is some sort of intellectual or emotional deficit at work. I feel sorry for people who just don't get it, but my pity does not extend to the point of allowing them to implement their destructive policies and ideas. A dog that has rabies is worthy of pity, but you still put it down.
Lee
News for nerds, stuff that matters?
As a card carrying member of the NRA, this issue is of course very important to me. What I don't understand is why it is important to the slashdot community. Every year there are countless news stories that slashdot does not cover, surely including ones that are more relevant to a communit defined by its interest in computer technology.
The tone of the initial post, which says in part "...the right to bear arms only applies to 'a well regulated militia'..." demonstrates the reason why this topic can be found here, which is that this site is run by leftists who have bought into the rhetoric of the left which calls for the disarmament of the people as a pre-requisite of their disempowerment and disenfrancisement.
All I can say is that I will fight the forces of evil and oppression to my last dying breath. You want my guns? You'll have to kill me first, and I'm ready and willing to take as many of you with me as I can.
The bible was written by men, as was the constitution.
Neither is the source of man's God given rights.
After doing a cursory skimming of the posts in this thread so far I've discovered something amazing: no one has yet to call for the overthrow of China's totalitarian regime.
China's government denies its citizens their God given rights. It is therefore illegitimate. It is the duty of every man and woman who would be free to work towards its dissolution and the subsequent creation of a new government founded upon the principles of individual freedom and public accountability.
Lee
A free society is founded upon the freedom to speak one's mind. The ability of the jihadis to propagandize is irrelevant in comparison. Let them have their say, it will only make them that much easier to fight. Whenever there is talk about limiting freedom of expression for fear of the message, my first impression is that this desire is due to the lack of an effective response. You don't seek to silence your opponent when you're winning the argument.
The war of Islam against the rest of the world will last many years, if not decades. Western civilization itself will stand or fall depending on the outcome. Undermining the very principles that make us who we are and that give us our greatest strength will only help our enemies.
If undermining freedom of speech isn't the way to win, then what is? Victory will come by knowing and understanding our enemies. The problem here isn't that our enemies are free to lie and propagandize against us, but that the west has so wrapped itself up in the chains of political correctness that expressing the truth about our enemies is attacked as racism or islamophobia or any other number of convenient buzz-words. Only by casting away these lies that have ensnared us will we be able to defeat those whose only purpose is our subjugation and the destruction of our civilization.
But what is political correctness? Political correctness is censorship. It is a tool used to silence one's opponents through lies and humiliation. The best description of political correctness I've ever read comes from Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist who said:
"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to silence and humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. Ones standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
The biggest challenge we face in this war is not with our enemies in other lands, but with those enemies at home who defend and praise our enemies and attack those who dare to speak the truth about them. In a very real sense it is not the propaganda of the jihadis that is the problem, but the lies of their sympathizers here at home who undermine our ability to mount an effective response.
Hate speech is a scam. Outlawing the expression of unpopular ideas strikes at the very core of the freedom to speak one's mind freely. Nazi's and KKK racists and islamofacist jihadis etc etc etc are all very distasteful people who believe things that are even more distasteful. But to forbid and criminalize the expression of their beliefs does nothing to refute or change those beliefs. The only thing this creates is a world where unpopular ideas are suppressed and their expression is subject to official sanction.
There are many people in this world who have bought into all sorts of destructive ideologies. The only way to keep these dangerous dogmas in check is by addressing them and discussing them and refuting them. Mainstream society is the culimination and the product of open dialogue where all ideas come together to vie and compete for an audience and followers. This process is the reason why mainstream western society is NOT under the influence of dangerous and/or extremist ideologies. Mainstream society in a culture of open discussion and dialogue converges upon concusions which, while not always the absolute best, are generally among the better conclusions and almost never among the worst. When mistakes are made they are quickly corrected.
But whenever this system of open discussion of all ideas is cast aside in an attempt to avoid the worst ideas, the result is that those ideas are never examined, and therefore not held in check. The irony is that this creates the very conditions under which those ideas can come to the forefront.
The best way to fight lies is not with a gag order, but with the truth. A gag order can give the appearance of victory over lies, but at the cost of sacrificing the very process by which the truth is discovered and preseved. If you shut your eyes to lies, they won't be open to see the truth.
First of all, this is a crock. Whatever their reasons are for not wanting people to run the crippleware versions of vista in a VM, you can rest assured that "maturity" and "security" have nothing to do with it.
But in any case what difference does it make? Microsoft has already tried to tell people that they are not allowed to use VNC with windows, but last time I checked no one listened. If anyone did they're a schmuck for kowtowing to the demands of a company that is dependent upon their business.
I'm not planning on running vista until I have to. I don't trust 1.0 versions of Microsoft's stuff, and I'm not enthused about having to buy a bleeding edge computer just to run what is supposed to be a mainstream operating system.
But if and when I do get around to running vista, I'm not going to refrain from running it under VMware just because Microsoft tells me I can't. I spend money, I buy a product, I use it as I see fit. If Microsoft thinks they can stop me then they're welcome to try. The only one who is going to lose is them. I'm not a soccer mom who thinks that AOL is the internet. I don't NEED to buy or use ANYTHING that Microsoft sells.
Lee
I've heard a lot of stories about all the changes that Microsoft is making to vista that are designed to combat piracy and prevent competition from the likes of Symantec, McAfee, etc.
I for one am having in a hard time caring because I'm unlikely to run vista anytime soon, or have to support it. My primary environment is Linux, and while I do run Windows XP (at work), I do not depend on it. If they give me a new system at work with Vista on it, then I'll run it, but I won't spend my own money to buy a copy for home use. I simply don't need it.
Also I think that Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot, especially with the anti-piracy efforts. The dominant position that Windows has is in no small part due to piracy, especially in the 3rd world. The effects of piracy hurts Microsoft's bottom line, but it also maintains their market share.
In Hong Kong the price of Linux is greater than that of Windows right now. Why? Because Windows comes on one CD whereas Linux typically comes on two to three CD's. If the day comes when the price of windows is 100x the price of Linux, guess which OS people are going to start using?
This is the same mistake that Apple made back in the late 80's, maximizing profits at the expense of market share. Had they played their cards right they could have won the OS/platform wars instead of becoming the perennial also-ran that they've been for the past 20 years.
Microsoft has the dominant position in the desktop OS market, but that position is not guaranteed. In any measurable sense, Linux has technical parity if not superiority vis-a-vis windows. The only thing that Linux is lacking to be contender at this point are users, and Microsoft's anti-piracy strategy is an almost sure-fire way of creating them.
Lee
There are many groups in the US and around the world whose ideologies and agendas are driven by genuine racism. Most of these groups create literature or propaganda of some sort, and much of this is delivered through the US postal service to their followers and potential converts around the world.
Therefore the US postal service is supporting racism!
To stamp out this evil the postal service MUST begin screening letters and packages for racist content. Each letter or package must be examined and read very carefully by postal agents who have been specially trained to detect content that promotes racial dis-harmony. Those packages and letters found to encourage racism will be burned and those responsible for sending them charged with racism. Convicted racists will be placed in death-camps of tolerance.
If we don't do this then those racists will continue to be racists and spread their racism throughout the world, a crime against all humanity which cannot be allowed to stand!
Lee
Why on EARTH are you still there then?
o m=custom&page=guides
If your relationship is as serious and devoted as you imply, why don't you get married and then you can both move back to the US.
http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?autoc
Having him move here won't be trivially easy, but it isn't all that hard either. The only real issue is the wait involved.
I know because my wife is from the UK.
My sister lived in the Netherlands for a bit when she was going to school. She liked it, but then she was only there as a student. Even so she found their attitude of many dutch people towards Americans to be less than pleasant, especially if you couldn't speak dutch. I reminded her that if it wasn't for Americans they wouldn't be speaking dutch either but German or Russian instead.
Lee
At first glance, someone might assume that the taxes in a country like the UK were lower than in the US.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
You see in the UK they have what is known as VAT, or Value Added Tax. Here in the US we call it sales tax. The VAT rate for the UK is 35%. Now some people will say I'm wrong and that the VAT is only 17.5%. Some people say this because that is what the government of the UK has told them. The official story over there is that when you buy something, you pay 17.5% VAT, and the seller pays the other 17.5% VAT. Well where does the seller get the money that he uses to pay that VAT? That's right, from YOU.
What makes it worse is that this VAT is charged for EVERYTHING including things like FOOD. There are a handful of token exemptions for things like sanitary napkins and baby clothes, but not for anything that would make a significant impact to a struggling family's finances. In addition to this the minimum tax bracket applies to EVERYONE. If you're struggling to get by on minimum wage, you still have to pay income tax. I don't remember what the rate is, but its not low. My wife could tell you and I'll probably ask her and come back here with the answer.
For the sake of argument lets assume that the lowest income tax bracket is 20%. This means that 55% of the income of someone who scubs toilets for a living is being paid to the government. This is what is known as regressive taxation.
The result of this is that in the UK, at least where my wife is from (Stoke on Trent), the average person will work anywhere from 60 to 80 hours a week just to make ends meet. The prices are high, the wages are low, and the taxes are eating everyone alive.
What are these taxes going towards? Welfare money for people who won't work, and to prop up a socialized medicine program that is broken and on the verge of collapse. A lot of the laws and state policies in the UK are perfect examples of what NOT to do. People complain here in the US about illegal aliens invading the country and causing problems. Well those who complain should count their blessings. About the worst you can say about illegals here is that they MIGHT bring the root causes of Mexico's socioeconomic malaise with them when they move here. Illegal aliens in the UK bring islamic terrorism with them. The UK has become Al Qaeda's number one target, in no small part because of how many current and future terrorists have poured into the country. What attracts them to the UK? Illegal aliens there are allowed to sign up for the dole, especially if they're from the middle east. The idea being that refusal to pay non-citizens for not working is "racist." The stuff that goes on over there is nothing less than kafkaesque.
So while the top INCOME TAX bracket in the UK may be slightly lower than in the US, that does NOT tell the whole story at all. You have to look at the whole picture. When you do you'll find that while the US is not a perfect place, it is so much better than just about everywhere else that leaving here is patently insane.
Lee
Limiting the range of opinions and sentiments that people are allowed to express does nothing to change those opinions and sentiments. Instead all it does is sacrifice the rights of one person in order to protect the feelings of another. Of all the reasons for the state to forcibly abridge speech, this is one of the least justifiable.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If you want to dispell hate and bigotry then the LAST thing you want to do is encourage it to hide under a rock.
The term "Hate Speech" itself is an attack upon our society. Our society (and by that I mean western civilization) is based upon the free exchange of ideas and opinions, regardless of how ill recieved those ideas and opinions may be. Any regulation that limits which ideas are permissible that is not based upon an immediate threat of danger, such as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, is a corruption of the principles upon which western civilization is founded.
You can either have the right to free speech, or you can have the right not to be offended. You can't have both.
Lee
Here is the first, last and only explanation of Islamic terrorism needed to understand the problem clearly:
http://www.glumbert.com/media/koran
Lee
He was the only human being to ever break the sound barrier without being in a craft of some kind.
Unless of course you consider his pressure suit to be a "craft."
Lee
I always thought that story was an urband legend intentionally created for the purpose of underscoring just how easy it would be for a malicious person to do some real damage. Now it turns out that it was real.....scary.
This happened years before 9/11 awakened the west (or at least intellectually honest westerners) to the threat posed by islamofascism.
Imagine how much damage a group of jihadis could do with a few thousand smoke detectors, some tungsten carbide, and an engine block.
Can you say "Dirty Bomb?"
Lee
Consumers don't NEED them at all. They're there so the airlines can make a buck.
Anyone familiar with the story of flight 93 knows that cell phones work at the cruising altitude of commericial jet aircraft.
Lee
Yes and some of the people that the KGB disapppeared were actually guilty of a real crime.
The problem isn't that google assisted in the pursuit of drug dealers, pedophiles and jaywalkers. The problem is that they assisted in the prosecution of "thought-crime." Had they limited their assistance to the pursuit of real criminals then I never would have said anything.
Lee
This is what happens when Political Correctness becomes a matter of law.
Political Correctness is nothing more than totalitarianism in the world of ideas. What's worse is that it is almost transparently so, making its presence in a supposedly free society all the more puzzling and maddening. Those who promote it are quite simply intellectually bankrupt.
The best discription of political correctness I know of comes from Theodore Dalyrimple:
"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
Lee
You should have emailed him back and told him to stop whining.
RMS is a perfect example of what happens when Asperger's syndrome goes untreated. He has NO idea how his words and actions are interpreted by other people. As a result, he creates opposition where none existed. He's really good at pissing off people who might otherwise admire him. I'm a perfect example of this. When he whines about the name that a particular operating system goes by in the real world, it really makes him look like a jackass to me. People are going to call things whatever they want. He can't change defacto naming conventions any more than I can edit the Oxford English Dictionary. Not only that, but it doesn't even matter.
When Linus first released his kernel, he wanted to call it Freax. Well the guy who ran his FTP server didn't like that name at all and changed the filename back to Linux. People started downloading it and the name obviously stuck. You don't hear Linus going around saying "But you should call it Freax!!" and refusing to be interviewed by anyone who doesn't play along. He doesn't do this because he understands that it doesn't matter. It's like arguing about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. The code is what matters, not what people call it.
RMS needs a press agent, a PR person, someone to help him improve how he presents himself and how he chooses his battles.
Lee
Some criminals wear badges, which is why police departments have an internal affairs divsion, to find and remove bad cops from the force. These sound like cases for IAD to me, big time.
..... on a public street. The girl and her friend spent the night in jail. They weren't charged of course because they hadn't committed any crime.
Now maybe its just me, but there does seem to be an increase in cases of police officers getting confused and thinking they work for the gestapo. There was a case a month back or so where the daughter of a police officer was arrested for "trespassing." She and a friend were lost and had stopped to ask a police officer for directions. The officer refused to help them, stating that they would have to find their own way out. A few moments later they spotted another officer and drove over to where he was to ask for help, at which point the first officer rushed over and berated them for daring to ask her partner for help when she had already told them to get lost. So they drove up the street a ways, pulled over, and began trying to find out where they were on a map while trying to call the girl's father on a cell phone. A few minutes later these same officers arrested them for "trespassing"
I don't know how this case turned out for the officers involved, but it shows a serious lack of oversight when two cops are able to run wild and abuse the public in that manner.
Now I know for a fact that most cops are decent men and women who treat citizens with all due respect, despite having to be human-garbagemen and spend much of their time doing what I call "white trash patrol." Just watch a few episodes of Cops and you'll know what I mean. But even so there are a few who are bad apples, and unless they're culled from the force then you end up with situations like these, or worse.
The last thing any police department should be interested in doing is making themselves the enemy of the public. The police depend upon public goodwill to do their job, and to come home alive at the end of their shift. If the police do not have the trust of the public, then they will not have the cooperation of the public. This is already the case in urban slums where calls of "five-O!" cry out day and night warning the residents that a police car or officer is in the area. When the police become a nuisance equal to that of the criminals they are supposed to be pursuing, then the public will treat them with equal disdain.
In most parts of the world, being a police officer is met with about the same level of respect as a personal injury lawyer would be here, if not less. The police are held in contempt because in most parts of the world, particularly the 3rd world, corruption and abuse are almost part of the job. Police officers in the US are, at least among healthy segments of society, viewed with respect if not admiration. But this esteem is fragile because at the end of the day the police are armed agents of the state and that makes them difficult to love. So when officers abuse and betray the trust of the public and make false arrests, all it does is make life that much more difficult for them and and their fellow officers. Things like these are noticed, and remembered.
Ramdam was charged with impersonating a mime, mopery with intent to loiter, probity, nothosonomia, and one moving violation.