He is a racist, and if by "jew puppet cunt" he means that she will support Israel (or America for that matter, or any minority in America) better than Biden and/or Obama, then he is right.
So I guess his message is "if you're racist, vote democrat". For the black puppet.
That brings the question... is this true ? On the DNC's website, the entire period from 1848 to the end of the 19th century is conveniently missing. Perhaps they'd like to sanitize the fact that they were the Party of Slavery, secession, Jim Crow, lynching, Segregation, KKK terrorism, and opposition to 100 years of Republican civil rights legislation . . . but we do not forget.
Oh you want the long version. Okay, weak AI, consisting of isolating the letters followed by letter recognition by a feature-detector-based neural net single letter detector (can be expanded in various ways, but this simple setup breaks a hell of a lot of captcha systems) (this theory was invented in the 1960's btw it's "perceptron" with backpropagation training (which admittedly came later))
Current problem is the size of the neural nets necessary to do this : to get started, you need a neural net of 1600 input neurons for basic recognition, which don't even do any processing but need to be connected. So for a "full mesh" connection, the most simple type, we're talking 1600^2 processing steps per captcha at least.
Fortunately 4 months ago a paper came out how to do the same (well 900^2 processing steps) in about 10000 processing steps by using feature detector neurons, offering a nicely working way to eliminate connections that are going to end up zero'd out anyway. I don't think captcha's will survive that paper, even if they probably have a few months left.
These systems will become obsolete once it becomes possible (using GPU's ?) to actually simulate 1600^2 neural nets fast enough. If you can grow them, you'd need about (320*200)**4 neurons to solve any type of captcha better than any human possibly could.
The theory is sound, and is proven to be working beyond human capability. It's just the hardware that needs to catch up a bit. After all you can't have a cluster of computers working 2 minutes on a single captcha (never mind the training time).
A system that can simply read any possible captcha a programmer might come up with which is still "somewhat" decipherable by a human, is not long. Perhaps a few years.
Actually the emperor of Japan, in addition to being unelected, as if that difference wasn't enough, has MORE power than the president of America.
The president, for example, cannot disband government at will, nor can he replace it with a "temporary" government of his own choosing at a moment's notice.
In fact the current emperor of Japan has all the same power Hirohito had.
Oh right, but CNN doesn't complain about him (that might have something to do with that being illegal and one of the few reasons you can get kicked out of Japan as a company).
Then again illegality of criticism of the head of state is a property more countries that are favorites of progressives everywhere share : Holland, a supposedly free and progressive state, has laws (enforced laws) against criticizing the head of state (currently the queen).
She is not elected either, even if she doesn't have anywhere near the power of the Japanese emperor, she has both command of the army, and the power to disband and/or block the government. Also the executive branch, including the police, is supposed to take orders from her that can't be countermanded, not even by parliament. And if war is declared, she can disband parliament entirely.
Also she, her family, or anyone that gets her protection, cannot be held liable in a court of law, whether criminal or civil. There are tons of scandals involving this. She neglected, for example, to pay a 65.000 euro flower bill after her son's wedding. The seller tried to sue, was refused, and went into bankruptcy. In America, I doubt even the messiah (or is it back to candidate president for the big O ?) could pull that off.
by -> verizon -> cogent -> uunet... euhm... mci... oh wait... worldcom... hmmm... I give up, let's just call em "those guys" -> level3
Where are all these companies based ? Hmmm...
Only the indians have a real alternative. Egypt gave it -supposedly- a try, but they failed beyond miserably.
And Italy has some decent connectivity in the mediterranean. But that's all.
Yes traffic doesn't physically pass the US anymore. But that's been true for a LONG time. It's certainly not fully under european control. Financially and technologically it still does.
And America's been known to intercept documents that only passed by American equipment.
Not that I wish to insinuate anything but there really are 2 locations where routing equipment is made (designed) : US and Japan. Japan, the country that just recently ditched it's pacifism requirements in its constitution and instituted a nuclear program that produced it's first atomic bomb after 2 months (making a mockery out of the claim that they respected their constitution, 2 months isn't even enough time to produce the required materials, let alone design a functional circuit).
And btw if I had to choose between trustworthyness of US vs Japanese. I'd put my eggs in the American basket. Sure Americans are not fair. At least they won't use the information to try to kill me (they'll use it just to make me poor) like just every other dictatorship, whether islamic or communist, or pseudo-communist. I wouldn't trust a country with the "emperor of heaven" as it's head of state either (in case someone doesn't realise, that would be Japan), even if all else were equal.
You don't understand how some of these people think. You don't understand that people here believe all laws are "pushed upon us by the evil establishment that's killing innocent children in vietnam". A system that is in essence a system created by one Jesus Christ oh so fucking long ago. A jury has declared they believe he's guilty. Great.
But a (fair) jury would declare half of slashdot readers guilty of copyright infringement (at least), which carries (apparently) penalties in the order of 500,000 $ or more. A penalty like that would destroy the life of anyone, and certainly of most slashdot readers.
So you'll have to forgive us for not finding all that much comfort in that "the judgement was by a fair jury". That's nice and all, but judgements that destroyed the lives of quite a few geeks were made by a jury.
So slashdot doesn't like even a fair trial, for we don't like the laws the trial is based on. We don't like the part about personal responsibility, and we hate, above all, that religion that "pushes that responsability upon us". We want the nanny state. We want medicare, to be followed, as soon as possible, by what I'd like to call "gadgetcare". We don't like your science, your economy, and your religion that states this will not fly, because if we look at the budget, it could fulfill my wildest dreams a thousandfold. And yes, there's probably more than thousand geeks, but I'm sure we can tax the rich more.
And this was murder, I grant you that's obviously true, a most heinous crime, with most profound consequences. But we've never been confronted by murder, we don't really know it's consequences. Agreeing that murder is bad is basically something we do in our imagination and "because it's polite". We don't really think it's that wrong. We've always been thorougly isolated from the effects of minute violence (at worst the insurance paid for it, or the teacher or police stepped in and protected us), from the effects of the strong violently supressing the weak (we've never been outside of a democratic system). The only experience we have with violence is having lunch money stolen, to have it immediately replaced by a teacher, and perhaps a few incidents on the sport field, resolved by "coach", who was paid by the government.
So violence or murder ? What I've seen in my life, violence is more than just tolerable. It's not even a nuisance. I could live with 10 times the violence that I see around me today. Easily. What do we care if there's violence. Clearly violence can't touch us. Laws on the other hand, I've seen those. They always get between me and what I want. They're limiting, choking even. And I don't like them. Furthermore, I mostly get away with violating most of them (such as parking rules, or taking, or garbage regulations, or speeding limits, or...). So I really don't want violating the law, like Hans Reiser did, to carry any penalty at all.
Add to that that Hans Reiser was giving something to us. A filesystem that, granted, had it's problems (and it's fiascos), but nevertheless, it was free, and it was good.
And the loss of others... oh well. What does the method, apparently including lying, killing and kidnapping, and more lying, matter to us ? We get stuff !
So we try to be objective, it's just that your confused about the facts we're objective about, and you proceed to force your faith, your justice (not ours) upon the rest of us. Here's the cold, dark reality: -> we like the convicted. He made stuff for us, and yes he violated ethical principles that were "forced upon us by the establishment", and that we, let's be frank, dislike (a lot). Apparently in the course of satisfying his feelings. And we know we violate ethical principles that the establishment forces upon us for our personal gratification all the time. Especially the ethical compromise that is copyright law, but also stuff involving sex, abortion, sometimes even theft... (We'd for example like some say in aborting a child in
Are you seriously going to claim you don't see the difference between these 3 sentences ?
Let's try that with a few different words in place of "Buddha": "However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the prophet [as in "Muhammad"] says." "However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the christ says."
Now while these sentences look superficially similar, they obviously need to be filled in with definitions. Let's take the first one...
"However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the prophet [as in "Muhammad"] says."
This basically means using violence to bring others into compliance with islam ("military domination"), in other words, it means to conquer the world, peacefully if possible, violently "if necessary", and by any means necessary, including genocides, child-rape and worse (all of which were comitted by "the prophet" according to authorative muslim sources). Commit crimes against infidels etc (read for example quran 5:51, if e.g. a muslim judge judges in favor of a christian and against a muslim, he becomes a christian himself according to muslim law, which carries the death penalty for said judge). Muhammad, whatever else you think of him, is dead, never to be seen again ("until the end of time"), so "what muhammad said" is a constant, unlike the living, breathing person that is the buddha.
"However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the christ says."
The Christ, being God, according to Christian doctrine, has written "make yourself, bit by bit if necessary live in compliance with God's law : respect others, turn the other cheek, defend your loved ones and the weak at any cost,...". And while Christ is a living, breathing person walking around (on earth or in heaven, depending on... well I guess his mood), he was right the first time he had the bible created (the real principle of biblical inerrancy, often misdepicted as saying "every word in the bible is literal", only the muslims claim literal interpretation is the only one) : his commands do not change (this again in contrast to the muslims : they have the principle of "abrogation", depending on your faction either only by the prophet (salafi islam), who contradicted himself many times, or also by the caliphs (sunni islam) or not by the caliphs and by the line of imams (which ended with the twelfth imam, therefore the Shi'a muslims are sometimes referred to as the "twelvers"), however calling attention to this little detail is exactly why Salman Rushdie has a fatwa on his head, he called attention to the fact that the quran was changed (the "satanic verses", ordering muslims to worship the daughters of allah (who are called "the beautiful godess" (the moon godess), "the powerfull godess", and "the sun godess", were removed from the quran in the 80s and 90s, because they called into question the claim that islam is monotheistic. How exactly that change (by ayatollah khomeini, who is a total asshole who amongst other crimes raped a 3 year old girl and had about 500.000 Iranian children executed), is defended theologically is beyond me, and any muslim really, but the next time some muslim claims the quran is unchanged, you can trivially prove it's been changed in 1990, and before that in 1923)
"However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the buddha says."
The buddha is a real, living human. It's something like akin to a "president", or "general". It's an appointed position, a degree (if a very high one). A "buddha" is more like a dictator (someone who is in charge and gets to violate any rule he likes, while remaining in command), if you must compare it to the other faiths, a buddha is more like a christian "pope" (even though the pope does NOT get to violate Christian doctrine like the muslim caliph or the buddha get to) or a muslim caliph (who i
The story you speak of has to do with using a raft to cross a river, then *NOT* leaving it once you get to the other shore, which then leads into floating away, and I believe it ends in a rather nasty waterfall incident.
However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the buddha says". Whatever that is, whatever other "ethics" it may conflict with (for obviously if the buddha asks something you consider unethical, you're the one that's wrong). And let's not forget that there are 3 documented buddha's that asked to exterminate some people. 2 of them succeeded. So "whatever other ethics it conflicts with" should be taken to mean exactly what you'd say it means.
The extremes don't seem clearly defined at all. Especially at the extremes you have problems. Let me give a few examples.
Let's clearly define "murder", because in western law it's not clearly defined at all. You have "conspiracy to murder", which is the criminal act of intending to terminate someone's life. Then you have murder which requires conspiracy to murder as a prerequisite for punishment : if you didn't intend to kill, terminating a person's life is not murder. Of course there are extremely vague areas here : what about a soldier, who put himself in a position where he very well could foresee that he'd be attacked with lethal forces, then defends himself by killing the attackers. Is that murder ? Obviously not. Is it punishable... good question. What about ordering, paying, or otherwise forcing someone to kill ? Is that murder ? Western law says yes. You don't have to physically do anything at all to be convicted of murder, the mere intend is enough (as proven by, for example, attempting to hire an undercover police officer to kill)... Is this your idea of "clearly defined" ? It is not my idea of clearly defined at all.
Of course this type of law system is basically canon law, with a few footnotes added. In other words, it is "punishing what Jesus wouldn't do" (Jesus told Roman soldiers they could kill "if just", but also stated that intent to murder is a punishable act in itself. Our law system is, in the end, an attempt to put those (and other) principles in practice, which seems to have worked rather well)
However, take for example the stupidities of sharia law. They are certainly "clearly defined". "murder" in a muslim country is simply terminating a person's life. Intent has nothing to do with it. Simple, and clearly defined.
So if a cripple mother of 20 crosses the street, and causes an accident that costs the life of a driver, then she gets the death penalty (and yes there are some qualifications, such as that the family of the victim *might* (might) "forgive" her, she could pay blood money (in muslim countries, the rich get to kill), or...)
Abuses on the other end also exist, for example, hiring a hitman is not illegal in an arab country (as a name you perhaps know, Hassan Nasrallah, is notorious (and proven) to have hired quite a few hitmen, even some successfull ones. This is not considered wrong). The risk is on the hitmen. Likewise, hiring people to steal is not in itself criminal in a muslim country, even though stealing is punished absurdly severely.
You should be careful though, since the government can kill anyone for "causing mischief" (this is not a joke, this really is the case), a crime which not just undefined, but forbidden to be defined.
Simple ? It seems simplicity is wrong...
Another absolute of muslims, and absolutes are nothing if not "clearly defined", is that sex within marriage, no matter how much violence is involved (it should be "minimized", however it is, in itself okay to force sex on a woman), cannot be construed as rape. Now imagine you're an 8 year old girl who's just been married of to a 54 year old (like the prophet's bride aisha for example).
Then what do you do ? Well this one in Saudi Arabia got it and went for multiple suicide attempts. Clearly she was trying to make something clear.
Then when there are conflicts between law systems, such as the 2 above, the real moral problems start piling up, and pile up fast.
So here's the kicker : these 2 situations are obviously wrong. Certainly it is okay to stop these kinds of practices. If that is to be done, obviously violence will be required.
But since their "prophet" did the same to another 9-year old, using violence against people who rape minor girls clearly is preventing them from living out their religion, which involves imitating said prophet. Also it would be
... but because your brains don't function by themselves you're supposed to do what the buddha (which is a human of flesh and blood) says without question...
Buddhists aren't really nihilist (certainly not in the sense you imply). They've just been portrayed as such by western media everybody thinks they are. They do have dogma, and that dogma includes strict adherence to an equally strict hierarchy.
These are arab muslims in Dubai building this. What exactly makes you think they haven't planned exactly that ? They've used slaves ever since they started walking on 2 feet, their prophet kidnapped people into slavery (even sexual slavery) and they've been doing it openly for 14 centuries now, even proud of it.
Oh excuse me. It's not called slavery in Dubai, that's illegal you know, they cancelled it's legality in 1968. Now it's "involuntary service contracts", which are perfectly legal. Much more letters, same shit.
Normal people in Dubai ARE slaves. And not "wage slaves" or something that makes a suburban rich kid think he's got it bad, but real slaves, who get raped, beaten, executed for disobedience, terrorized, children kidnapped and worse.
That seems reasonable to me. It could indeed be that people inclined to be good are more likely to become atheists.
Or it could be that people who basically have everything, including the power to isolate themselves from the world of the poor, have no intrest in an ideology that demands they help out others.
Above all, they have NO intrest, in actually dirtying their hands while helping someone. "Do that with my taxes" is the spirit. They refuse to live in places where they might (might) be confronted with actual misery, sometimes this goes as far as actually fencing neighbourhoods.
And before you say "Christians do that too", maybe you should check out that even in mideaval fortresses one of the things that is not guarded very well at all is the entrance to the church.
What I'm "admitting" is that your (erroneous) expectations don't match my actual views. Dreaming your dreams of a Santa Claus in the sky, the impermanence of the physical world scares you.
The impermanence of the world ? You're kidding right ? What is more permanent than the world ?
Are you a postmodernist ? "Whatever I think is the truth".
I realize that for people like you things like, oh, say the laws of nature are "temporary inconvenient". You will find them, obviously, beyond merely inflexible, and more than willing to kill you if you truly misjudge them.
It does not scare me. That nothing lasts takes none of the fun out of making something good. If anything, it makes it more poignant, more beautiful. If you don't believe me, go experience some of the art of people like Andy Goldsworthy, who make some works intentionally impermanent.
I find his works to be... disappointing. In fact, compared to just about any church of the 17th century, and even compared to quite a few modern churches, comparing the work and dedication that went into creating those works of art, and, at least for some, the time that they lasted, makes these works insignificant. There are churches whose paintings are still sharing their beauty with us, after (literally) more than a millenium.
This is a fine argument from theory, with no actual data. You, some random guy, on the Internet, "guarantee" your argument. So?
Let's not forget that you don't "guarantee" any of your arguments either. But in fact I DID give some illustration of my theories: -> kids have little or no qualms with killing animals, merely to see what happens -> the general mode of operation for any kid is "go as far, irritate as many people as possible until I come face to face with a violent reaction, then back down a little bit, immediately followed by again trying to bite of more than I can chew"
Are you seriously disputing this ?
History shows that you are wrong. Buddhism started out as a godless venture, accepting the eternal flux we live in, and the Zen Buddhists carry that atheism through today. Have they turned evil? Go meet some and let me know what you think, but I'd say they're doing fine.
Buddhism is peaceful and good ? Why don't you ask the people who used to live in Southern Taiwan... oh wait... you can't. Not anymore.
Besides you don't like Buddhism. The real problem you have with Christian doctrine is that it's dogmatic, you don't really have issues with their contents. However Buddhism is much more dogmatic than Christianity. If you were to truly seek out Buddhists and attempt to become one of them, you would be disgusted with Buddhism too. It looks good from a distance, but if you thing personal input is being limited in Christianity, then you're not going to like Buddhism at all. (do you even know which avatars are alive today, and how you're to behave according to them ? Why don't you look it up)
I realize that buddhists have somehow managed (like the muslims) to "hide" the fact that their history does not just contain a few "unfortunate incidents" but is literally drenched in blood, and more blood. Of course they did not manage to hide this from serious historians, but CNN never sent out anything on their wars, especially not on how they started. These religions are not like Christianity which started as the victim of violent repression for nearly 400 years (can you imagine what the first Christians went through, and just how much trust in God such acts will require ?). Where some Christians at some point comitted atrocities, but for buddhists there were periods in history when the entire religion was comitted to the extermination of certain peoples (even happened in the 20th century). Islam has never been anything except comitted to the extermination of all others.
Science also suggests you are wrong. At least some and probably much of the human moral sense is provably an innate bi
What you see wrong is how ideology works. Ideology works by creating the tinyest of differences, and then this difference grows over time.
What is the basic difference between an atheist and a Christian, well simple: -> a Christian works to advance the glory of God ("be merry and fertile", the ten commandments, "love thy neighbour",...) -> an atheist works to advance himself, without open regard for others (this does not mean he has to be a murderer, just that he does not see the need to consider the effect on strangers before deciding on a course of action)
We can argue about the morality of the 2 approaches till the cows come home. That's because we're talking about different definitions of the word. There is NO atheist morality, and there is a dogmatic Christian morality, therefore they're fundamentally different concepts. Yes Christian morality follows (mostly) certain principles, but I've yet to see a principle that it follows completely. It is, in the end, a balanced compromise between a lot of principles, without any explanation of where the bible puts the compromise.
There is a very good reason, at least according to the bible, to put the compromise exactly where it was put by God, but in many cases we're left to guess. And while the guesses may even be interesting, they are ultimately beside the point. There is no way to verify them. And it really is a compromise. There certainly is violence, even copious use of lethal force, and a few incidents that border on genocide in the bible, so it's a compromise between violence and non-violence. Practicing non-violence in some cases, and beating the crap out of people in other cases (for example, Jesus physically beat people for selling stuff in the temple, and he told soldiers to use violence, even to kill, in defense of a just cause, if they were defending a person). Likewise Jesus refused to use violence in a whole lot of cases (most notably he refused to use violence for his own defense, therefore it is commendable for an individual to forego violence in defense of his own person. He refused to use violence to protect his posessions from desperate thieves). Likewise there's a compromise between research and respecting the bible. There certainly is room for scientific research, but some borders Christians morality will not cross (such as research on people, even dead ones, which is considered abhorrent).
Atheist morality is whatever any single atheist comes up with, therefore it isn't even possible to give a workable definition. If there is a single unrepenting atheist murderer, that means that murder is at least partially acceptable to atheism (the dogmatism of Christian morality prevents this, it is unchanging, no matter how many Christian murderers there are, the only thing that really makes a difference in dogmatic morality is the dogma itself. So for example, when Jesus saved a woman from being stoned that became dogmatic christian morality, even violently defending victims of powerful people, and when mohammed had a sword planted through a baby sleeping on top of her mother, and that mother, who had criticised him, it became dogmatically a crime to criticise islam (and it became, once and for all, a duty upon all muslims to respond violently to criticism when possible) in that dogmatic morality, and this is unchangingly still true today).
Many atheists disagree about even trivial basic parts of atheist morality. Not so for Christians and muslims. Yes there are arguments. But a lot (I'd even say most) issues are considered beyond argument, say abortion. Or sex before marriage. Or homosexuality (the problem with homosexuality is obviously not racism, not "ooh ! they're different", but the (eternal) inability of such a couple to have a natural family, "the way God intended"). Likewise there are differences in opinion about the tactics against those acts, but there is no real disagreement that they should be discouraged, in Christianity by social distancing, in islam by some form of killing (but don't
Also the bible is, to say the very, very least, a huge part of our past, present and future.
Everything we know today developed in a society that was utterly permeated by the bible in every nook and cranny.
And since people seem to have forgotten what the purpose of ideology is (you should read some ancient roman texts, or the bible for that matter. But if you've got to pick a single text either read the story of Sodom and Gomorra, and ask yourself the question "there is ONE vague reference to homosexuality in this text, what if it simply referred to something along the lines of "more attention to sex than to the world around them"), or read Cicero and you will understand the function of ideology)
But since I doubt you can be bothered to pick up a book - any book - and read, let me spell it out for you. Everything you are - your clothes, your food (clothes don't grow in the stores), your car, your very thoughts come from others, with a tiny drop of personal impact from yourself. Therefore while your own ideology only matters for that tiny drop, the ideology of people around you matters for everything else. If those people choose what economists call "Nash efficiency" as an ideology (what atheists do), improving themselves without conscious regard to others (e.g. "piracy is not a crime") that is not a problem as long as they are a tiny minority in a sea of Christians. It is not a problem for them, and neither is it a problem for the larger group of Christians.
However, if everyone around you (example... your current employer and any other possible employer) behaved atheistically, improving primarily themselves without regard to others, you'd be out of a job, out of food and out of options (even the food would disappear from the local supermarket, as it will be more in the personal intrest of the owner to simply keep it himself). You'd die (even if you are said owner, because deliveries would stop).
Now in reality people always act with a mix of egoism and altruism, never truly altruistic. But they can act purely egoistic. If you want to see that in action, find yourself a Syrian, a North-Korean and ask them about their way of life in their home country.
You'd be correct, of course, that "a little bit" of piracy doesn't matter. A litle bit of theft does not make a difference in an economy either. Neither does a little bit of murder.
The problem however, is simple. In a society of nominally altruistic people, a small group can be egoistic bastards, without consequences for either the group, or for these guys themselves (e.g. "setting fire to a building because the insurance will pay anyway"). That's currently the case with music pirates/thieves/murderers/frauds/... all criminals. However, if one of these groups is not attacked, either by the state or by their environment or by whoever, that group can only grow.
And at some point, society, the economy as a whole will buckle under the increasing stress. Don't make yourself any illusions about how glamorous this will be, it will be anything but glamorous. At some point parts of the economy will become weakened, at which point an evil, growing financial load will be put on the rest (like the vandals in the Roman empire, or the muslims in western europe, if you'd like to put this stress in a simple slogan "bread and games"), and this group will grow. At some point these savages will get their moment in the sun, and defeat the central authority, whatever that is for the respective countries. The economy will fail. Transport will block and the "glorious" victors will be...... left without food, water or even paper to write down their victory... and will die off painfully while murdering eachother for the few remaning food options... and history, IF they're lucky, might actually record the name of their leader, however mostly even that doesn't happen. And they simply disappear.
Before the vandals and visigoths started their massive
And the idea of Apple implementing the "right to read" DRM is nuts -- the head of the company has come right out against DRM, only does it because he has to in a few places, and it's the music industry that is forcing that -- why are you blaming OS makers? Microsoft is the one that has been talking about "trusted computing" that would yank control from the hands of the user into the computer. Microsoft also is all too happy to keep pushing windows-only crap like Silverlight and doesn't do much to cross-platform port their products ('we're not cool enough to run on your platform' is bullshit for "we're not going to bother to make it crossplatform because we want you to buy Windows to be able to use it")
Actually it's just the reverse. Jobs likes DRM, but realizes he needed to force the record companies to allow more freedom to the market. So he's forced himself on both sides.
iTunes has all the properties that the applications you hate so much have, but less flexibility on all sides. On ms drm you have a choice whether to buy or not, or to negotiate different parameters for the drm (which obviously has an impact on price). On iTunes you get 1 single type of very enforced drm, forced on both the copyright holders and the users.
Microsoft is not really the arbiter in a microsoft drm environment. It does not decide everything, people are free to do as they please, both copyright holders and users. Apple with iTunes forces the issue on both sides.
I mean I realize mac os x is shiny (though not nearly as shiny as I tend to make my kde desktop). But why do you like it so much ? Consider this an invitation to convince me.
You cannot - if the mp3 is too large (say a lecture or a podcast). And you can't download it to the device. You can't put it on the device and play it either.
Actually mathematica can do everything matlab can, and a hell of a lot more... If you first wriggle yourself into the corset, and become a capable theoretic mathematician (and subscribe to the latest philosophical imaginations of the author obviously, "a new kind of science" - right).
Matlab works. Even for the dumbest idiots (applied science researchers:-p). Of course applied science researchers and their trainees are the people that build... well everything.
Slashdot Mirror
To commit suicide ?
He is a racist, and if by "jew puppet cunt" he means that she will support Israel (or America for that matter, or any minority in America) better than Biden and/or Obama, then he is right.
So I guess his message is "if you're racist, vote democrat". For the black puppet.
That brings the question ... is this true ?
On the DNC's website, the entire period from 1848 to the end of the 19th century is conveniently missing. Perhaps they'd like to sanitize the fact that they were the Party of Slavery, secession, Jim Crow, lynching, Segregation, KKK terrorism, and opposition to 100 years of Republican civil rights legislation . . . but we do not forget.
Oh you want the long version. Okay, weak AI, consisting of isolating the letters followed by letter recognition by a feature-detector-based neural net single letter detector (can be expanded in various ways, but this simple setup breaks a hell of a lot of captcha systems) (this theory was invented in the 1960's btw it's "perceptron" with backpropagation training (which admittedly came later))
Current problem is the size of the neural nets necessary to do this : to get started, you need a neural net of 1600 input neurons for basic recognition, which don't even do any processing but need to be connected. So for a "full mesh" connection, the most simple type, we're talking 1600^2 processing steps per captcha at least.
Fortunately 4 months ago a paper came out how to do the same (well 900^2 processing steps) in about 10000 processing steps by using feature detector neurons, offering a nicely working way to eliminate connections that are going to end up zero'd out anyway. I don't think captcha's will survive that paper, even if they probably have a few months left.
These systems will become obsolete once it becomes possible (using GPU's ?) to actually simulate 1600^2 neural nets fast enough. If you can grow them, you'd need about (320*200)**4 neurons to solve any type of captcha better than any human possibly could.
The theory is sound, and is proven to be working beyond human capability. It's just the hardware that needs to catch up a bit. After all you can't have a cluster of computers working 2 minutes on a single captcha (never mind the training time).
A system that can simply read any possible captcha a programmer might come up with which is still "somewhat" decipherable by a human, is not long. Perhaps a few years.
Actually the emperor of Japan, in addition to being unelected, as if that difference wasn't enough, has MORE power than the president of America.
The president, for example, cannot disband government at will, nor can he replace it with a "temporary" government of his own choosing at a moment's notice.
In fact the current emperor of Japan has all the same power Hirohito had.
Oh right, but CNN doesn't complain about him (that might have something to do with that being illegal and one of the few reasons you can get kicked out of Japan as a company).
Then again illegality of criticism of the head of state is a property more countries that are favorites of progressives everywhere share : Holland, a supposedly free and progressive state, has laws (enforced laws) against criticizing the head of state (currently the queen).
She is not elected either, even if she doesn't have anywhere near the power of the Japanese emperor, she has both command of the army, and the power to disband and/or block the government. Also the executive branch, including the police, is supposed to take orders from her that can't be countermanded, not even by parliament. And if war is declared, she can disband parliament entirely.
Also she, her family, or anyone that gets her protection, cannot be held liable in a court of law, whether criminal or civil. There are tons of scandals involving this. She neglected, for example, to pay a 65.000 euro flower bill after her son's wedding. The seller tried to sue, was refused, and went into bankruptcy. In America, I doubt even the messiah (or is it back to candidate president for the big O ?) could pull that off.
Thing is ... it gets routed interregionally
by ... euhm ... mci ... oh wait ... worldcom ... hmmm ... I give up, let's just call em "those guys"
-> verizon
-> cogent
-> uunet
-> level3
Where are all these companies based ? Hmmm ...
Only the indians have a real alternative. Egypt gave it -supposedly- a try, but they failed beyond miserably.
And Italy has some decent connectivity in the mediterranean. But that's all.
Yes traffic doesn't physically pass the US anymore. But that's been true for a LONG time. It's certainly not fully under european control. Financially and technologically it still does.
And America's been known to intercept documents that only passed by American equipment.
Xerox vs the Soviets : 1-0
Not that I wish to insinuate anything but there really are 2 locations where routing equipment is made (designed) : US and Japan. Japan, the country that just recently ditched it's pacifism requirements in its constitution and instituted a nuclear program that produced it's first atomic bomb after 2 months (making a mockery out of the claim that they respected their constitution, 2 months isn't even enough time to produce the required materials, let alone design a functional circuit).
And btw if I had to choose between trustworthyness of US vs Japanese. I'd put my eggs in the American basket. Sure Americans are not fair. At least they won't use the information to try to kill me (they'll use it just to make me poor) like just every other dictatorship, whether islamic or communist, or pseudo-communist. I wouldn't trust a country with the "emperor of heaven" as it's head of state either (in case someone doesn't realise, that would be Japan), even if all else were equal.
Progressives don't want stuff like fairness and informed decisions. All they want is attention. Other people telling them how good they are.
They are on the way out.
Actually AI is both going to kill the "captcha solving community" soon enough, and solve the spam problem, but a bit later.
Unfortunately you can also bet that China (and the democrats) are going to use it to select "acceptable" viewpoints only.
You don't understand how some of these people think. You don't understand that people here believe all laws are "pushed upon us by the evil establishment that's killing innocent children in vietnam". A system that is in essence a system created by one Jesus Christ oh so fucking long ago. A jury has declared they believe he's guilty. Great.
But a (fair) jury would declare half of slashdot readers guilty of copyright infringement (at least), which carries (apparently) penalties in the order of 500,000 $ or more. A penalty like that would destroy the life of anyone, and certainly of most slashdot readers.
So you'll have to forgive us for not finding all that much comfort in that "the judgement was by a fair jury". That's nice and all, but judgements that destroyed the lives of quite a few geeks were made by a jury.
So slashdot doesn't like even a fair trial, for we don't like the laws the trial is based on. We don't like the part about personal responsibility, and we hate, above all, that religion that "pushes that responsability upon us". We want the nanny state. We want medicare, to be followed, as soon as possible, by what I'd like to call "gadgetcare". We don't like your science, your economy, and your religion that states this will not fly, because if we look at the budget, it could fulfill my wildest dreams a thousandfold. And yes, there's probably more than thousand geeks, but I'm sure we can tax the rich more.
And this was murder, I grant you that's obviously true, a most heinous crime, with most profound consequences. But we've never been confronted by murder, we don't really know it's consequences. Agreeing that murder is bad is basically something we do in our imagination and "because it's polite". We don't really think it's that wrong. We've always been thorougly isolated from the effects of minute violence (at worst the insurance paid for it, or the teacher or police stepped in and protected us), from the effects of the strong violently supressing the weak (we've never been outside of a democratic system). The only experience we have with violence is having lunch money stolen, to have it immediately replaced by a teacher, and perhaps a few incidents on the sport field, resolved by "coach", who was paid by the government.
So violence or murder ? What I've seen in my life, violence is more than just tolerable. It's not even a nuisance. I could live with 10 times the violence that I see around me today. Easily. What do we care if there's violence. Clearly violence can't touch us. Laws on the other hand, I've seen those. They always get between me and what I want. They're limiting, choking even. And I don't like them. Furthermore, I mostly get away with violating most of them (such as parking rules, or taking, or garbage regulations, or speeding limits, or ...). So I really don't want violating the law, like Hans Reiser did, to carry any penalty at all.
Add to that that Hans Reiser was giving something to us. A filesystem that, granted, had it's problems (and it's fiascos), but nevertheless, it was free, and it was good.
And the loss of others ... oh well. What does the method, apparently including lying, killing and kidnapping, and more lying, matter to us ? We get stuff !
So we try to be objective, it's just that your confused about the facts we're objective about, and you proceed to force your faith, your justice (not ours) upon the rest of us. Here's the cold, dark reality : ... (We'd for example like some say in aborting a child in
-> we like the convicted. He made stuff for us, and yes he violated ethical principles that were "forced upon us by the establishment", and that we, let's be frank, dislike (a lot). Apparently in the course of satisfying his feelings. And we know we violate ethical principles that the establishment forces upon us for our personal gratification all the time. Especially the ethical compromise that is copyright law, but also stuff involving sex, abortion, sometimes even theft
As to your second claim that peace is more important than buddhism, you should not forget that "peace" is a word which buddhism redefines.
It means "a Buddhist land". It most certainly does not mean an absense of violence, though that is certainly considered positive.
Are you seriously going to claim you don't see the difference between these 3 sentences ?
Let's try that with a few different words in place of "Buddha":
"However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the prophet [as in "Muhammad"] says."
"However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the christ says."
Now while these sentences look superficially similar, they obviously need to be filled in with definitions. Let's take the first one ...
"However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the prophet [as in "Muhammad"] says."
This basically means using violence to bring others into compliance with islam ("military domination"), in other words, it means to conquer the world, peacefully if possible, violently "if necessary", and by any means necessary, including genocides, child-rape and worse (all of which were comitted by "the prophet" according to authorative muslim sources). Commit crimes against infidels etc (read for example quran 5:51, if e.g. a muslim judge judges in favor of a christian and against a muslim, he becomes a christian himself according to muslim law, which carries the death penalty for said judge). Muhammad, whatever else you think of him, is dead, never to be seen again ("until the end of time"), so "what muhammad said" is a constant, unlike the living, breathing person that is the buddha.
"However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the christ says."
The Christ, being God, according to Christian doctrine, has written "make yourself, bit by bit if necessary live in compliance with God's law : respect others, turn the other cheek, defend your loved ones and the weak at any cost, ...". And while Christ is a living, breathing person walking around (on earth or in heaven, depending on ... well I guess his mood), he was right the first time he had the bible created (the real principle of biblical inerrancy, often misdepicted as saying "every word in the bible is literal", only the muslims claim literal interpretation is the only one) : his commands do not change (this again in contrast to the muslims : they have the principle of "abrogation", depending on your faction either only by the prophet (salafi islam), who contradicted himself many times, or also by the caliphs (sunni islam) or not by the caliphs and by the line of imams (which ended with the twelfth imam, therefore the Shi'a muslims are sometimes referred to as the "twelvers"), however calling attention to this little detail is exactly why Salman Rushdie has a fatwa on his head, he called attention to the fact that the quran was changed (the "satanic verses", ordering muslims to worship the daughters of allah (who are called "the beautiful godess" (the moon godess), "the powerfull godess", and "the sun godess", were removed from the quran in the 80s and 90s, because they called into question the claim that islam is monotheistic. How exactly that change (by ayatollah khomeini, who is a total asshole who amongst other crimes raped a 3 year old girl and had about 500.000 Iranian children executed), is defended theologically is beyond me, and any muslim really, but the next time some muslim claims the quran is unchanged, you can trivially prove it's been changed in 1990, and before that in 1923)
"However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the buddha says."
The buddha is a real, living human. It's something like akin to a "president", or "general". It's an appointed position, a degree (if a very high one). A "buddha" is more like a dictator (someone who is in charge and gets to violate any rule he likes, while remaining in command), if you must compare it to the other faiths, a buddha is more like a christian "pope" (even though the pope does NOT get to violate Christian doctrine like the muslim caliph or the buddha get to) or a muslim caliph (who i
The story you speak of has to do with using a raft to cross a river, then *NOT* leaving it once you get to the other shore, which then leads into floating away, and I believe it ends in a rather nasty waterfall incident.
However, there is one piece of dogma that doesn't change, which is "do whatever the buddha says". Whatever that is, whatever other "ethics" it may conflict with (for obviously if the buddha asks something you consider unethical, you're the one that's wrong). And let's not forget that there are 3 documented buddha's that asked to exterminate some people. 2 of them succeeded. So "whatever other ethics it conflicts with" should be taken to mean exactly what you'd say it means.
The extremes don't seem clearly defined at all. Especially at the extremes you have problems. Let me give a few examples.
Let's clearly define "murder", because in western law it's not clearly defined at all. You have "conspiracy to murder", which is the criminal act of intending to terminate someone's life. Then you have murder which requires conspiracy to murder as a prerequisite for punishment : if you didn't intend to kill, terminating a person's life is not murder. Of course there are extremely vague areas here : what about a soldier, who put himself in a position where he very well could foresee that he'd be attacked with lethal forces, then defends himself by killing the attackers. Is that murder ? Obviously not. Is it punishable ... good question. What about ordering, paying, or otherwise forcing someone to kill ? Is that murder ? Western law says yes. You don't have to physically do anything at all to be convicted of murder, the mere intend is enough (as proven by, for example, attempting to hire an undercover police officer to kill) ... Is this your idea of "clearly defined" ? It is not my idea of clearly defined at all.
Of course this type of law system is basically canon law, with a few footnotes added. In other words, it is "punishing what Jesus wouldn't do" (Jesus told Roman soldiers they could kill "if just", but also stated that intent to murder is a punishable act in itself. Our law system is, in the end, an attempt to put those (and other) principles in practice, which seems to have worked rather well)
However, take for example the stupidities of sharia law. They are certainly "clearly defined". "murder" in a muslim country is simply terminating a person's life. Intent has nothing to do with it. Simple, and clearly defined.
So if a cripple mother of 20 crosses the street, and causes an accident that costs the life of a driver, then she gets the death penalty (and yes there are some qualifications, such as that the family of the victim *might* (might) "forgive" her, she could pay blood money (in muslim countries, the rich get to kill), or ...)
Abuses on the other end also exist, for example, hiring a hitman is not illegal in an arab country (as a name you perhaps know, Hassan Nasrallah, is notorious (and proven) to have hired quite a few hitmen, even some successfull ones. This is not considered wrong). The risk is on the hitmen. Likewise, hiring people to steal is not in itself criminal in a muslim country, even though stealing is punished absurdly severely.
You should be careful though, since the government can kill anyone for "causing mischief" (this is not a joke, this really is the case), a crime which not just undefined, but forbidden to be defined.
Simple ? It seems simplicity is wrong ...
Another absolute of muslims, and absolutes are nothing if not "clearly defined", is that sex within marriage, no matter how much violence is involved (it should be "minimized", however it is, in itself okay to force sex on a woman), cannot be construed as rape. Now imagine you're an 8 year old girl who's just been married of to a 54 year old (like the prophet's bride aisha for example).
Then what do you do ? Well this one in Saudi Arabia got it and went for multiple suicide attempts. Clearly she was trying to make something clear.
Then when there are conflicts between law systems, such as the 2 above, the real moral problems start piling up, and pile up fast.
So here's the kicker : these 2 situations are obviously wrong. Certainly it is okay to stop these kinds of practices. If that is to be done, obviously violence will be required.
But since their "prophet" did the same to another 9-year old, using violence against people who rape minor girls clearly is preventing them from living out their religion, which involves imitating said prophet. Also it would be
... but because your brains don't function by themselves you're supposed to do what the buddha (which is a human of flesh and blood) says without question ...
Buddhists aren't really nihilist (certainly not in the sense you imply). They've just been portrayed as such by western media everybody thinks they are. They do have dogma, and that dogma includes strict adherence to an equally strict hierarchy.
See www.openpandora.org. Ctrl-F "how much will it cost" (middle of the page)
These are arab muslims in Dubai building this. What exactly makes you think they haven't planned exactly that ? They've used slaves ever since they started walking on 2 feet, their prophet kidnapped people into slavery (even sexual slavery) and they've been doing it openly for 14 centuries now, even proud of it.
Oh excuse me. It's not called slavery in Dubai, that's illegal you know, they cancelled it's legality in 1968. Now it's "involuntary service contracts", which are perfectly legal. Much more letters, same shit.
Normal people in Dubai ARE slaves. And not "wage slaves" or something that makes a suburban rich kid think he's got it bad, but real slaves, who get raped, beaten, executed for disobedience, terrorized, children kidnapped and worse.
And even if you managed to get them out ... what would you do with the evacuees ? 1.1 million people is a small country.
You can't possibly expect to have temporary shelter up by nightfall (and it gets FUCKING cold in Dubai, we're talking -30 at night).
If you evacuated people from a building in Dubai, and fail to provide shelter by nightfall ... congratulations ... you just killed half of them.
What, exactly, happens in this structure if the population grows ? Doesn't Dubai have like 9 kids per family or something like that ?
It's going to start looking like a balloon pretty soon.
That seems reasonable to me. It could indeed be that people inclined to be good are more likely to become atheists.
Or it could be that people who basically have everything, including the power to isolate themselves from the world of the poor, have no intrest in an ideology that demands they help out others.
Above all, they have NO intrest, in actually dirtying their hands while helping someone. "Do that with my taxes" is the spirit. They refuse to live in places where they might (might) be confronted with actual misery, sometimes this goes as far as actually fencing neighbourhoods.
And before you say "Christians do that too", maybe you should check out that even in mideaval fortresses one of the things that is not guarded very well at all is the entrance to the church.
What I'm "admitting" is that your (erroneous) expectations don't match my actual views. Dreaming your dreams of a Santa Claus in the sky, the impermanence of the physical world scares you.
The impermanence of the world ? You're kidding right ? What is more permanent than the world ?
Are you a postmodernist ? "Whatever I think is the truth".
I realize that for people like you things like, oh, say the laws of nature are "temporary inconvenient". You will find them, obviously, beyond merely inflexible, and more than willing to kill you if you truly misjudge them.
It does not scare me. That nothing lasts takes none of the fun out of making something good. If anything, it makes it more poignant, more beautiful. If you don't believe me, go experience some of the art of people like Andy Goldsworthy, who make some works intentionally impermanent.
I find his works to be ... disappointing. In fact, compared to just about any church of the 17th century, and even compared to quite a few modern churches, comparing the work and dedication that went into creating those works of art, and, at least for some, the time that they lasted, makes these works insignificant. There are churches whose paintings are still sharing their beauty with us, after (literally) more than a millenium.
This is a fine argument from theory, with no actual data. You, some random guy, on the Internet, "guarantee" your argument. So?
Let's not forget that you don't "guarantee" any of your arguments either. But in fact I DID give some illustration of my theories :
-> kids have little or no qualms with killing animals, merely to see what happens
-> the general mode of operation for any kid is "go as far, irritate as many people as possible until I come face to face with a violent reaction, then back down a little bit, immediately followed by again trying to bite of more than I can chew"
Are you seriously disputing this ?
History shows that you are wrong. Buddhism started out as a godless venture, accepting the eternal flux we live in, and the Zen Buddhists carry that atheism through today. Have they turned evil? Go meet some and let me know what you think, but I'd say they're doing fine.
Buddhism is peaceful and good ? Why don't you ask the people who used to live in Southern Taiwan ... oh wait ... you can't. Not anymore.
Besides you don't like Buddhism. The real problem you have with Christian doctrine is that it's dogmatic, you don't really have issues with their contents. However Buddhism is much more dogmatic than Christianity. If you were to truly seek out Buddhists and attempt to become one of them, you would be disgusted with Buddhism too. It looks good from a distance, but if you thing personal input is being limited in Christianity, then you're not going to like Buddhism at all. (do you even know which avatars are alive today, and how you're to behave according to them ? Why don't you look it up)
I realize that buddhists have somehow managed (like the muslims) to "hide" the fact that their history does not just contain a few "unfortunate incidents" but is literally drenched in blood, and more blood. Of course they did not manage to hide this from serious historians, but CNN never sent out anything on their wars, especially not on how they started. These religions are not like Christianity which started as the victim of violent repression for nearly 400 years (can you imagine what the first Christians went through, and just how much trust in God such acts will require ?). Where some Christians at some point comitted atrocities, but for buddhists there were periods in history when the entire religion was comitted to the extermination of certain peoples (even happened in the 20th century). Islam has never been anything except comitted to the extermination of all others.
Science also suggests you are wrong. At least some and probably much of the human moral sense is provably an innate bi
What you see wrong is how ideology works. Ideology works by creating the tinyest of differences, and then this difference grows over time.
What is the basic difference between an atheist and a Christian, well simple : ...)
-> a Christian works to advance the glory of God ("be merry and fertile", the ten commandments, "love thy neighbour",
-> an atheist works to advance himself, without open regard for others (this does not mean he has to be a murderer, just that he does not see the need to consider the effect on strangers before deciding on a course of action)
We can argue about the morality of the 2 approaches till the cows come home. That's because we're talking about different definitions of the word. There is NO atheist morality, and there is a dogmatic Christian morality, therefore they're fundamentally different concepts. Yes Christian morality follows (mostly) certain principles, but I've yet to see a principle that it follows completely. It is, in the end, a balanced compromise between a lot of principles, without any explanation of where the bible puts the compromise.
There is a very good reason, at least according to the bible, to put the compromise exactly where it was put by God, but in many cases we're left to guess. And while the guesses may even be interesting, they are ultimately beside the point. There is no way to verify them. And it really is a compromise. There certainly is violence, even copious use of lethal force, and a few incidents that border on genocide in the bible, so it's a compromise between violence and non-violence. Practicing non-violence in some cases, and beating the crap out of people in other cases (for example, Jesus physically beat people for selling stuff in the temple, and he told soldiers to use violence, even to kill, in defense of a just cause, if they were defending a person). Likewise Jesus refused to use violence in a whole lot of cases (most notably he refused to use violence for his own defense, therefore it is commendable for an individual to forego violence in defense of his own person. He refused to use violence to protect his posessions from desperate thieves). Likewise there's a compromise between research and respecting the bible. There certainly is room for scientific research, but some borders Christians morality will not cross (such as research on people, even dead ones, which is considered abhorrent).
Atheist morality is whatever any single atheist comes up with, therefore it isn't even possible to give a workable definition. If there is a single unrepenting atheist murderer, that means that murder is at least partially acceptable to atheism (the dogmatism of Christian morality prevents this, it is unchanging, no matter how many Christian murderers there are, the only thing that really makes a difference in dogmatic morality is the dogma itself. So for example, when Jesus saved a woman from being stoned that became dogmatic christian morality, even violently defending victims of powerful people, and when mohammed had a sword planted through a baby sleeping on top of her mother, and that mother, who had criticised him, it became dogmatically a crime to criticise islam (and it became, once and for all, a duty upon all muslims to respond violently to criticism when possible) in that dogmatic morality, and this is unchangingly still true today).
Many atheists disagree about even trivial basic parts of atheist morality. Not so for Christians and muslims. Yes there are arguments. But a lot (I'd even say most) issues are considered beyond argument, say abortion. Or sex before marriage. Or homosexuality (the problem with homosexuality is obviously not racism, not "ooh ! they're different", but the (eternal) inability of such a couple to have a natural family, "the way God intended"). Likewise there are differences in opinion about the tactics against those acts, but there is no real disagreement that they should be discouraged, in Christianity by social distancing, in islam by some form of killing (but don't
... among those a download virus by your hand ? Otherwise, what's the point ?
Also the bible is, to say the very, very least, a huge part of our past, present and future.
Everything we know today developed in a society that was utterly permeated by the bible in every nook and cranny.
And since people seem to have forgotten what the purpose of ideology is (you should read some ancient roman texts, or the bible for that matter. But if you've got to pick a single text either read the story of Sodom and Gomorra, and ask yourself the question "there is ONE vague reference to homosexuality in this text, what if it simply referred to something along the lines of "more attention to sex than to the world around them"), or read Cicero and you will understand the function of ideology)
But since I doubt you can be bothered to pick up a book - any book - and read, let me spell it out for you. Everything you are - your clothes, your food (clothes don't grow in the stores), your car, your very thoughts come from others, with a tiny drop of personal impact from yourself. Therefore while your own ideology only matters for that tiny drop, the ideology of people around you matters for everything else. If those people choose what economists call "Nash efficiency" as an ideology (what atheists do), improving themselves without conscious regard to others (e.g. "piracy is not a crime") that is not a problem as long as they are a tiny minority in a sea of Christians. It is not a problem for them, and neither is it a problem for the larger group of Christians.
However, if everyone around you (example ... your current employer and any other possible employer) behaved atheistically, improving primarily themselves without regard to others, you'd be out of a job, out of food and out of options (even the food would disappear from the local supermarket, as it will be more in the personal intrest of the owner to simply keep it himself). You'd die (even if you are said owner, because deliveries would stop).
Now in reality people always act with a mix of egoism and altruism, never truly altruistic. But they can act purely egoistic. If you want to see that in action, find yourself a Syrian, a North-Korean and ask them about their way of life in their home country.
You'd be correct, of course, that "a little bit" of piracy doesn't matter. A litle bit of theft does not make a difference in an economy either. Neither does a little bit of murder.
The problem however, is simple. In a society of nominally altruistic people, a small group can be egoistic bastards, without consequences for either the group, or for these guys themselves (e.g. "setting fire to a building because the insurance will pay anyway"). That's currently the case with music pirates/thieves/murderers/frauds/... all criminals. However, if one of these groups is not attacked, either by the state or by their environment or by whoever, that group can only grow.
And at some point, society, the economy as a whole will buckle under the increasing stress. Don't make yourself any illusions about how glamorous this will be, it will be anything but glamorous. At some point parts of the economy will become weakened, at which point an evil, growing financial load will be put on the rest (like the vandals in the Roman empire, or the muslims in western europe, if you'd like to put this stress in a simple slogan "bread and games"), and this group will grow. At some point these savages will get their moment in the sun, and defeat the central authority, whatever that is for the respective countries. The economy will fail. Transport will block and the "glorious" victors will be ... ... left without food, water or even paper to write down their victory ... and will die off painfully while murdering eachother for the few remaning food options ... and history, IF they're lucky, might actually record the name of their leader, however mostly even that doesn't happen. And they simply disappear.
Before the vandals and visigoths started their massive
And the idea of Apple implementing the "right to read" DRM is nuts -- the head of the company has come right out against DRM, only does it because he has to in a few places, and it's the music industry that is forcing that -- why are you blaming OS makers? Microsoft is the one that has been talking about "trusted computing" that would yank control from the hands of the user into the computer. Microsoft also is all too happy to keep pushing windows-only crap like Silverlight and doesn't do much to cross-platform port their products ('we're not cool enough to run on your platform' is bullshit for "we're not going to bother to make it crossplatform because we want you to buy Windows to be able to use it")
Actually it's just the reverse. Jobs likes DRM, but realizes he needed to force the record companies to allow more freedom to the market. So he's forced himself on both sides.
iTunes has all the properties that the applications you hate so much have, but less flexibility on all sides. On ms drm you have a choice whether to buy or not, or to negotiate different parameters for the drm (which obviously has an impact on price). On iTunes you get 1 single type of very enforced drm, forced on both the copyright holders and the users.
Microsoft is not really the arbiter in a microsoft drm environment. It does not decide everything, people are free to do as they please, both copyright holders and users. Apple with iTunes forces the issue on both sides.
I mean I realize mac os x is shiny (though not nearly as shiny as I tend to make my kde desktop). But why do you like it so much ? Consider this an invitation to convince me.
You cannot - if the mp3 is too large (say a lecture or a podcast). And you can't download it to the device. You can't put it on the device and play it either.
Actually mathematica can do everything matlab can, and a hell of a lot more ... If you first wriggle yourself into the corset, and become a capable theoretic mathematician (and subscribe to the latest philosophical imaginations of the author obviously, "a new kind of science" - right).
Matlab works. Even for the dumbest idiots (applied science researchers :-p). Of course applied science researchers and their trainees are the people that build ... well everything.