The whole basis for Christianity is in the first few chapters of Genesis.
That's a pretty startling claim. I would have thought that, er, Christ would make up the biggest part of the basis of Christianity. I don't even see Judaism really picking up speed until Moses shows up. The whole creation of the world thing is pretty generic.
By not providing any further insight to the matter, your post could just as easily be the output of a random-flamebait generator. The odd thing about this is that the lack of details seems to be very inconsistent with your typical posts.
Fair enough. The problem I had was twofold.
The first part is that I really don't know where to begin in terms of dealing with the poster's question. Infinity is problematic. Aristotle had exactly the same problem that the poster did -- for that reason, Aristotle differentiated between "infinity in extension" and "infinity in division", and disputted the existence of the former. Just as our poster did. In that sense, he's in good company. (Of course, many modern scientists don't see Aristotle as good company.)
On the other hand, I think that incommensurability -- what we call "irrational numbers" (actually, that's what Euclid called them, too) is at least as problematic as infinite extension in terms of violating common sense. The difference is that irrational numbers are indisputable. That's why the Pythagoreans kept them a secret. My point is that just because something violates common sense, doesn't make it false.
Sheesh: particle/wave duality, Heisenberg Uncertainty (properly understood), Relativity -- these all are completely in violation of common sense. Having a background in the history and philosophy of science as I do, I am somewhat sympathetic to objections that contemporary science violates common sense. That's a very interesting question to me. But the fact that this is the case can only come as a surprise to two kinds of people: someone so steeped in contemporary science that they are oblivious to its seeming "absurdities", or someone so oblivious to contemporary science that they're essentially two-thousand years behind the curve.
Both of those people are, in relative terms, unobjectionable. But our poster crosses the line when he (as an example of the second type of person from the paragraph above) asserts that this violation of his common sense indicates that modern science is wrong and that there's a big conspiracy of silence. That's ignorance coupled with arrogance, and that's inexcusable. Which brings me to my second problem.
You see this on Slashdot all the time. I mean, I know this, it's a joke about slashdot. But you get people that work in a technical field, took a few science classes in college, and watch science fiction, and they think they can comment on all sorts of things when, actually, they're just embarassing themselves. I had just had my fill of it yesterday. That's all.
Typing "infinity" and "mathematics" and perhaps
"physics" into Google isn't very hard to do. I'm not sure why I should be required to provide a link.
All in all, though, your objection was at least partially valid, and my only defense is to plead annoyance.
"The website [dontlink.com] has a number of links to places who prohibit or require permission for linking. Is the irony of this intended?"
No, the irony was completely unintentional. This guy, Prof. Sorkin, calling his site "dontlink.com", completely unwittingly chose to feature links to sites that forbid it. It was an unfortunate mixup, and it will soon be corrected.
You: "I have no idea who you're referring to here, but it'd better not be me."
Well, you could get off your lazy ass and just follow up the thread to see who it was I was originally responding to.
You: "I'm tired of explaining everything over and over in simple, easy to understand terms when it makes no difference. Sorry. I really wish someone else would carry the torch once in a while, I really do."
What have you explained? All I've been able to discern is your taking things out of context or even willfully misreading them in order to find offense; and then finishing it up with a self-pitying and grandiose comment like that last bit.
By the way, I'm a hearing person and am not a Signer, much less native or fluent. Both you and AnDarkon are jummping to conclusions about who I am and what "camp" I'm in. A hearing bigot? A Deaf bigot? A deaf anti-Deaf bigot? Surely I must be one of these, you think, right? So you look at a few sentences, focus on a few phrases, and then jump to the keyboard. After my response to your initial response to my post, you responded with:
You: "I just felt the tone was a dismissal of signing outright."
But in the post where you thought the "tone was a dismissal of signing outright", I had written in just those two paragraphs, these things:
Me: "...the key point to understand is that Sign is a complete and functional language the equal of any spoken language..."
Me: "...most people don't realize how completely functional a native signer really is..."
Me: "Signed languages develop and evolve pretty much the same way (for the purposes of this discussion) that spoken languages do."
Wow. That's some "tone" of "dismissal of signing outright". (That was sarcasm, by the way, since you're paying so little attention I feel the need to spell everything out.)
You: "A culture is a bag of things held in common and shared ideals, things that are important to the members."
That's an overly broad definition. Everything from "community" to "subculture" to "culture" has those characteristics. I specifically used capital-D "Deaf" in conjunction with "culture" and emphasized the word "culture" intentionally to draw a distinction between mere communities and cultures. There is a gay community and a physics community and a medical community, and they all are subcultures and one can talk about the "physics culture", for example. Each of these is made up of people who have values and ideals in common, shared experiences, etc. But that doesn't make any of them "cultures" in the strongest sense of the word.
In contrast, a shared native language is the single most important correlative to "culture" in the most significant sense. There is an anglophone culture, a francophone culture, and the individuals who make them up share at the deepest personal level all their cultural landmarks. This isn't equally true of gayness, physics, or medicine. But it is arguably true for native Signers. And this is why the issue of Sign as a native language is so pertinent to this discussion. Both because it gives Deaf culture an unqestionable legitimacy, and because it is also for this reason that being deaf is simply not the necessarily debilitating handicap that most hearing people assume it to be.
To conclude, I'll say that I can't tell just what cause it is, exactly, that you think you're carrying the torch for; nor how it is that you think you are doing so. But I posted my original message in order to answer the ignorance revealed in a pretty loaded question by a hearing person about the supposed "political incorrectness" of AnDarkon getting his/her implant.
"Overrated" at "4"? ("Moderation Totals: Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Overrated=1, Total=3. ") Huh. Since my point is something that is central to the discussion, and not coincidentally completely correct but not well-known, I suppose this must be one of those examples of misusing moderation as a form of argument. Ah, well.
"``A true native language'' is the language the person is born into..."
Right. And a person who learns Sign natively is a native Signer. Being deaf is only a compelling entree into that culture - but it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to being part of that culture.
2.
"The ``Denied his rightful place'' in the [...] community comment smacks of bigotry. It is the self's sole right to be wherever he wants to be. Getting the cochlear implant was a decision that only I was the utmost qualified to make..."
If you were born fully deaf, and were not allowed to learn Sigh natively, then you were denied your place in what would have been your natural community - since Sign is the only language that a deaf infant is able to acquire as readily as a hearing infant acquires a spoken language. (This matters a great deal because there is mountains of evidence that indicate that there is a fairly small window of opportunity for the developing brain to natively acquire a language.) You didn't make that decision to not learn Sign natively - you were an infant. Someone else made that decision. My comment clearly referred to that long-ago decision, and not at all to your recent one.
3.
"There are two major views on deafness; 1) Deafness is a cultural trait and, 2) Deafness is a disability to be overcome through, but not limited to, social and technological means."
Which is what I had just written in a previous post. And you'll notice that the point I made in reference to this is that the two viewpoints are not logically mutually exclusive - but, politically, they unfortunately seem to be. Clearly, there is some degree of an actual physical disability involved in being deaf. How truly significant that is has been a matter of debate. And, just as obviously, Deaf culture is real. I would disagree with you slightly, however, in directly and deterministicaly linking the physical trait of being deaf and deaf culture. The culture of Deaf culture has arisen from and been supported by the fact that there are a few actual human languages - signed languages - associated with being deaf. There are hearing people who are part of Deaf culture, just as there are deaf people who are not. (There are hearing babies in deaf families who are native signers.) The key thing is to be native or fluent in Sign, and to participate in the culture.
And this is why I think this discussion, for the most part, doesn't really apply to you at all. You're not a native Signer. Perhaps you became very fluent in Sign as a second language - but it's not quite the same, and that's why you were something of an outsider. Your decision to get an implant has nothing near the significance or controversy that this operation has on a baby. The original poster clearly didn't understand this, because he only knows what little he heard from someone probably ridiculing the Deaf community's unease about cochlear implants in babies.
4.
"Getting a cochlear implant does not, in any way, diminish my stature within society in any way. It does send out the message that I'm less of a person without the cochlear implant."
Well, I'm not sure exactly in what context you're saying this. By "society" in your first sentence, do you mean hearing or deaf society? At any rate, as you say more gently, screw whatever society thinks. Do what you think is right for yourself; and, as a personal example, combat whatever prejudices other people may have about either/both being deaf and having an implant.
5.
" While I was in the Deaf community, I was very lonely since there was not many people within, who could relate to the world the way I do. When I was in the hearing world, I was lonely in a different way, but that was the way I was accustomed to. Having the cochlear implant alleviated this loneliness somewhat, but not wholly."
Your experience is not unusual, and it alone (aside from the more fundamental issue of the window of opportunity for language acquisition) is a good argument that raising a deaf child in a hearing family without allowing them to become native signers is unfair to the child. This is because the child will never truly be at home in any community.
My aunt is a reasonably well-known member of the Deaf community. But she is not a native signer. Growing up in a hearing family, she didn't have the opportunity to learn Sign natively at the appropriate age; and then a bit later, she unfortunately was sent, briefly, to one of the notorious speaking-only schools. I believe she learned ASL probably at around the age of six to eight. Later, since she was not completely deaf, she was able to gain some hearing with the aid of hearing aids. So she's long functioned in the hearing community. She basically has two lives, in a sense.
But my point is that, even though she's well-liked, and very active in Deaf issues and politics, she's still always been somewhat of an outsider. That's not her fault. Also, in spite of (I believe) being the first deaf woman in the US to get an MBA, her language skills, particularly writing, are not very good. This is pretty typical for people with her history.
I'm well aware of the bigotry within the Deaf community against non-native Signers and partially deaf people et al. It's abhorrent, but typical of many similar communities. It's human nature. I'm not saying it's right.
Given your history, your decision to get your implant makes a lot of sense and will probably help you find a more comfortable place in hearing culture than you'd likely achieve elsewhere and in any other possible way. I hope it works out well for you.
6.
"Your opinion, somewhat bigoted, about the Deaf community..."
"Bigoted" indicates an unreasoning, negative prejudicial opinion. I don't see how that can accurately describe my attitudes about Deaf culture, or my attitudes about hearing culture from a Deaf culture perspective - which is what I can only guess you must have meant by this comment.
It's a sign of how emotional and highly politicized these issues are that both you and my other interlocuter misread and misunderstood me to be saying offensive and provocative things that I actually wasn't.
You'll notice that I used the expression "all things considered". Whether Sign is a superior form of communication for human beings -- something certainly quite debatable[1], but a provocative idea -- plays only a small role in that determination. A very, very large factor is the fact that 99.99% of the world is hostile to deafness. As long is this is true, being deaf is a huge disadvantage for a person. I specifically was trying to avoid the argument of whether being deaf is inherently a severe disability. All I was saying is that I am somewhat reluctantly in favor of cochlear implants for infants. Surely you can tell from the rest of my post that I am both informed about deafness, and am something of an advocate of Deaf culture.
You might notice that a similar argument could be made justifying some procedure that changes skin color of infants from black to white in infancy. That's a very disturbing idea. But since deafness necessarily means being disabled in a very real, though perhaps minimal sense, I don't think it can be compared directly to being a racial minority. It is people's bigotry against racial minorities that is the sole disadvantage faced by them -- deaf people face that and the simple reality that they have one less sense than most everyone else. Eliminating bigotry will completely solve what is a problem for racial minorities; but doing so will only solve part of the problem for deaf people. In this context, changing skin color is an absurd way to "correct" a disadvantage that is real, but not inherent. The bigotry is 100% of the problem.
The reason this (correcting deafness) is such a tricky issue is because the disadvantages that deaf people face are the result of a subtle interplay between an inherent physcial limitation and all the social, neurological, and technological forces that reduce or eliminate it (or fail to do so). Partisans on both sides of the this debate want to make it wholly about either physical disability or bigotry. But it's about both, and claiming that it's not is almost certainly over-politicizing the issue to the detriment of individual human beings that are caught in the middle.
[1] I sense that this sentence will also cause you to jump to your keyboard. To clarify, I am not arguing that in some ways Sign isn't a superior for of communication -- it clearly is. But until there's more information on the question of how truly "native" to the human brain Sign really is, I'm reserving judgment. The presumption is that spoken language is native neurologically, and that Sign is a (hugely successful) example of the plasticity of the brain. On the other hand, as you know, there's good reasons to question how inherently language is tied to hearing and speech at the neurological and evolutionary level.
But I think the key point to understand is that Sign is a complete and functional language the equal of any spoken language; and that a shared native language (spoken or signed), in turn, is one of the most fundamental attributes of "culture". So, Deaf people have a culture not merely by being deaf; but by having a language. That gives their claims of cultural legitimacy complete authority.
In this person's case, he/she was apparently denied their rightful place in Deaf culture long ago. Getting a cochlear implant today doesn't aggravate that grievance so much as it, at least, mitigates part of the wrong done to him/her by being denied a true native language. (Although his/her written English is noticeably superior to that of the typical fully deaf person who didn't acquire Sign as a baby -- neurological research has demonstrated that there's a narrow window of brain development for true native language acquisition.)
My own opinion is that I have to admit that, all things considered, a person is better of being able to hear at birth and to acquire a spoken language in contrast to being deaf and acquiring Sign. Medical technology now makes this possible. But it's not as easy a judgment to make as so many people think it is, simply because most people don't realize how completely functional a native signer really is, and how much being a native signer also means being part of a distinct, vibrant, and effectively unique culture[1]. Correcting what is undeniably at least minimally a physical deficiency has the effect of stranding the Deaf culture in a wasteland of malnourishment, much like a small town withering away in the neglected countryside. On balance, maybe it's better that way -- but one should be very tactful when trying to explain this to the old folks sitting in the town square watching their town die.
[1] Signed languages parallel spoken languages in that they can run the gamut of being completely independent of each other to being dialects of each other. Signed languages develop and evolve pretty much the same way (for the purposes of this discussion) that spoken languages do. For example, American Sign Language and French Sign Language are closely related to a recent common ancestor, and so they are nearly merely dialects of each other. In contrast, UK Sign Language (or whatever it's called) has no resemblance to ASL. (And don't confuse ASL with "signed English" -- which is just transliterated English.) Anyway, Native Signers are such tiny minorities in each of the majority cultures they exist within, they are effectively "unique".
Entropy is a measurement of a microcosmic physical property. The generalized idea of "disorder" that led to the idea of information entropy is related but seperate.
This is important because it is a pernicious error to conflate the two, an error which often results in false conclusions about thermodynamics and the macrocosmic world.
She doesn't look so bad in the one where she's flashing her breasts. She looks pretty good, really. I dunno, maybe if your main familiarity with women is from your 10gigs of pr0n, then you might think that Rodona is ugly. But she's even a little bit above average, I think.
C'mon. Many of you have gilfriends that aren't that good looking.
Make fun of her for being an evil spammer/password thief/pump-and-dumper and for being such an idiot. She deserves that. She even deserves thousands of people looking at her titties (and somewhat flabby ass). It's more brutal when you fairly and accurately ridicule someone. For example, the fact that she has those stupid inspirational posters on her wall clearly indicates that she's sub-human.
Yeah, this example (a band distributed their own music) shows that something is really wrong. Basically, if it does this, it should also require that "official" watermarks be available free-of-charge for any content-creator who asks for one.
Ultimately, though, there's still the problem of stuff you already have a fair use for. As I pointed out in my post, the law doesn't apply for merely forging the watermark -- it applies only when you distribute something. But, if so, then what's going to happen is that (in terms of file sharing of mp3s) it's only increased the penalties for an already-illegal activity in a roundabout way. A big question is: why?
Personally, I think that none of these people have a clue about technology and so don't understand at all the implications of various laws and proposed laws. I do, however, think that the entertainment industry lobby knows what they're doing, and they are doing everything they can to eliminate fair-use and anything else -- even if very consumer-unfriendly -- to try to protect their profits. Eventually, I think, it's going to come back and haunt them. Right now, it's pretty much only we techno-geeks and early-adopters that are using the kinds of technology that are impacted in a very consumer-unfriendly manners by the things that these companies are pushing. But, as this moves into everyone's living rooms and cars and offices and wherever, people are going to discover that their hands are tied in ways that they will find absolutely unacceptable. Imagine: "I'm sorry, you can't record that episode of 'Seinfeld'". This is the analogy, and people will get really pissed-off. So, in a sense, although I'm quite annoyed, I have a strong sense that all this stuff will be rolled-back in a few years and the companies that are behind it will be punished by the consumer. It will be satisfying when it happens.
"Merely creating a fake watermark or digital signature would not be illegal, but 'trafficking' in it or redistributing the file would. In addition to criminal penalties, the bill permits a company whose watermark or digital signature was used to sue for damages 'of not less than $2,500 or not more than $25,000, as the court considers appropriate.'"
That's not circumventing DRM for things you already have fair use on. It's circumventing DRM and then distrubuting pirated material. That's pretty straightforward and even if it perhaps is draconian, it's still only punishing something that's already illegal and that you shouldn't be doing.
Re:People are afraid of being proven wrong
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Moron. Period.
No, you'd be the moron if you tried this in real life. The cops, the prosecuter, and the jury aren't going to give a damn about why you claim you opened my car door. It's not your car. You don't get to open the door unless you have my permission. If you don't understand this simple rule, "moron" might even be an overestimate of your mental capacity.
Re:People are afraid of being proven wrong
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"If the only way to determine whether the other side of a door is public or restricted space is to open the door, then making it illegal to open a door to a restricted place is essentially guilt by random lottery."
No, because the assumption is that a building is private unless explicitly marked "public". There are far more private buildings in the world than public, and the private buildings are not required to have warnings announcing that they are private and unauthorized use is trespassing. So, you don't have the option of walking into a building to "verify" that it's public or private -- you are expected to assume that it's private unless told otherwise.
It is the same thing with computing networks. You are expected to assume that a network is private unless told otherwise. Thus, you can connect insofar as you're "walking" up to the front door -- but you can't go in unless unvited.
Running an unsecured wireless network is no more an indication that it's open to the public than is leaving open the front door to your house. A passerby can notice that the door is open without entering the building. Likewise, a passerby can connect to a wireless, unsecured network without doing anything else. Browsing file shares, even utilizing network resources to access the internet, is rightly considered trespassing.
Re:People are afraid of being proven wrong
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"Is it a crime for me to open the door in order to show you it's not locked?"
Yes, unless I gave you persmission to do so beforehand. You don't get to open my car door without my permission. Period.
The details of the network configuration are not clear from the article, so it's hard to ascertain what, if anything, this guy did wrong. Note that it may not even be the case that the clerk that he demonstrated this to might have had the standing to give him permission to do so. Even so, it's clear that he connected to the network earlier. But what does that mean?
Using an analogy from cable modems/dsl and windows networking; if I go into Network Neighborhood on my 98 box and see thirty other machines (as was the case three years ago when I first got my cable modem connection), that's not hacking. The connection was not voluntary, so to speak, and I didn't make an active connection to any of them. If, however, I double-clicked on one of them and looked at the unsecured network shares, I was illegally trespassing on that computer. That's the difference between noticing an unlocked door to someone else's property, and opening the door and walking in.
I've seen reports of people's laptops automatically connecting to badly configured wireless networks. I don't think that's trespassing. But using the connection is. That's a choice you actually have to make. Yes, it seems like a natural thing to do, perhaps just to have a quick look because "the door was wide open". But that still doesn't make it right or legal. Partly this is the case because a) there's a violation of someone's property in any event; and b) it's impossible to be able to determine someone's motives. As someone else posted earlier, thieves caught just as they enter someone's house could claim that the door was left open and they were only investigating it before they alerted someone. Yeah, sure.
It's not clear to me that the original poster knows if there's a relationthip or what that relationship might be of "excluded middle" to "Principle of the Excluded Middle", or to the error of an undistributed middle term in a syllogism.
"...osteoarthritic knees - i.e. knees in older people who probably need knee replacements..."
Some of us younger people can get osteoarthritis, too. I'm 37, and the only reason I don't have two artificial hips, perhaps one artificial knee and one artificial shoulder is because I live in the US where a quarter of the population doesn't have health insurance. (Or, actually, just to really make the point for those who might rejoin that my access to expensive joint replacement might not be guaranteed in a socialized system -- I respond, "Yeah, but I could at least get some fucking anti-immflammatory and pain medicine.")
Anyway, my sister is only 27 and she's had one hip replaced for two years; and needs the other done ASAP. So it's not only old people that have osteo or need joints replaced.[1]
I don't post this for pity, or anything, but more simply to point out that one of the most difficult things for my sister and I with this disease is that no one expects people as young as we are to have such substantial problems just walking around. So I have a bit of a vested interest in pointing out that although rare, it isn't just old people that have osteoarthritis. By the way, my dad and sister have also had several arthroscopic surgeries on their knees, elbows, ankles, and shoulders. They did seem to help at least for a limited amount of time. But the joints just keeps on falling apart and making bony grit that crunches around in there; so it's temporary at best. I did read about that recent study with interest, though.
[1] I should mention that my sister actually resists the "osteoarthritis" non-professional diagnosis of our genetic disorder. It has a real, technical name that's no more descriptive, in my opinion, than "osteoarthritis" actually is; but does have the virtue, in her opinion, of being harder to fail to take seriously. She claims the actual degree of our joint deterioration is much greater than that of, say, the average 70 year-old with osteo. I have no idea. It seems bad, but these are the only joints I've ever had. Our doctors have always said that it's very, very bad.
Huh. I guess I'll take your word for it. I'm using XP Pro on my desktop here at home, and I've not seen that; although I'm almost certain it's never had what would have been a BSOD anyway. It's been completely stable for me; although I've certainly heard people saying that it hasn't for them.
You know, it's kind of a shame. Now that desktop PCs have performace to burn, really, it's too bad that MS has drilled a thousand holes (in the name of performace) in all the good stability/reliability stuff that was the original NT design philosophy of Dave Cutler's.
Still, though, XP is a huge improvement on all that old 95 code. I can't believe that it took them until 2002 to do what they said they'd have done by, what?, '97?
I'm quite happy with XP Pro for my desktop. I like it very much, actually. But as someone who supported high-profile enterprise db-driven web sites with CRM and CM stuff, I can say that at least with the MS stuff circa NT 4.0 -- that generation of IIS and SQLServer -- it seemed to me to be a self-evidently foolish decision to run one of these web sites on an MS platform as opposed to Solaris or AIX with Oracle and Apache (sorry, no Linux support for that CM/CRM product, even now). Jesus, I hated IIS.
Uh, no. How 2K and XP handle this is adjustable. I don't think that automatic rebooting was the default even for 2K Server. You can tell it to do that, though; which is a good thing in many situations on a server.
As someone who works with various flavors of UN*X including Linux, some other OSs, and all the MS OSs, I get really damn tired of the OS Wars on Slashdot and try to avoid them. But one thing that is definitely annoying is the FUD that Linux partisans spout about Windows -- very much like the FUD that Windowphiles spout about Linux. It's a kind of urban folklore -- everyone "knows" what's wrong with the enemy (group, OS, whatever), even when, actually, they don't.
"If this becomes more widespread, they will have many angry (and former) customers."
And probably an even larger number of happier customers who suddenly notice that they have bandwidth again.
P2P is cool in theory; but in practice people are using it merely to move around huge pirated mp3s and mpegs and as a result a small number of users are consuming a grossly disproportionate amount of bandwidth. It's a tragedy of the commons. See previous/. stories on how this has already played out at college campuses across the US (and elsewhere).
I'm in Austin, and I've actually switched away from Road Runner to SBC ADSL. Why? Because, of course, the bandwidth I saw decreased dramatically over the years since I was an early adopter; and they were charging me too damn much money, anyway. I don't get a ton of bandwidth with my ADSL connection, but the service is more reliable, and it's less expensive. And so far, I've not seen any port blocking or scanning for servers -- something I've been hearing about from the cable side of the fence.
Honestly, I'm ambivalent about a lot of these issues as my idealistic and practical sides of my personality come into conflict. Ideally, I'd like the consumer's access to the internet to be pretty much like what it meant to be hooked up to the interent in the good old days before it became commoditized -- the internet was designed for hosts to be servers, not just clients or even peers. I should be able to run my own web server, my own smtp and pop/imap server, my own nntp server, my own streaming multimedia server, share my filesystem, run distributed applications, network games, P2P apps....whatever. To me, that's part of the whole point. On the other hand, as a practical matter, there still isn't enough bandwidth available for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to use their home internet connections this way. Yeah, there's a lot of dark fiber -- but none of it is the last mile connections. And some people are consuming far more networking resources than they are paying for. That's a legitimate problem, and it certainly can't be justified on the basis of a need to share files that are illegal in the first place.
"Heisenberg stated taht you can not measure without affecting..."
No, that's my point. The math of the HUP is not concerned about distortions caused by measurement; rather, it says that the knowability of position and momentum are inversely proportional. This is a matter of principle, not measurement. The pop-science characterization of HUP as "you can't observe something without affecting it" is analogous to the "everything is relative, therefore there is no 'truth'" characterization of relativity. Both are popular misconceptions of genuinely revolutionary scientific ideas that have had far more social and cultural influence than the real science they mimic. Darwinism also comes to mind.
Slashdot Mirror
The first part is that I really don't know where to begin in terms of dealing with the poster's question. Infinity is problematic. Aristotle had exactly the same problem that the poster did -- for that reason, Aristotle differentiated between "infinity in extension" and "infinity in division", and disputted the existence of the former. Just as our poster did. In that sense, he's in good company. (Of course, many modern scientists don't see Aristotle as good company.)
On the other hand, I think that incommensurability -- what we call "irrational numbers" (actually, that's what Euclid called them, too) is at least as problematic as infinite extension in terms of violating common sense. The difference is that irrational numbers are indisputable. That's why the Pythagoreans kept them a secret. My point is that just because something violates common sense, doesn't make it false.
Sheesh: particle/wave duality, Heisenberg Uncertainty (properly understood), Relativity -- these all are completely in violation of common sense. Having a background in the history and philosophy of science as I do, I am somewhat sympathetic to objections that contemporary science violates common sense. That's a very interesting question to me. But the fact that this is the case can only come as a surprise to two kinds of people: someone so steeped in contemporary science that they are oblivious to its seeming "absurdities", or someone so oblivious to contemporary science that they're essentially two-thousand years behind the curve.
Both of those people are, in relative terms, unobjectionable. But our poster crosses the line when he (as an example of the second type of person from the paragraph above) asserts that this violation of his common sense indicates that modern science is wrong and that there's a big conspiracy of silence. That's ignorance coupled with arrogance, and that's inexcusable. Which brings me to my second problem.
You see this on Slashdot all the time. I mean, I know this, it's a joke about slashdot. But you get people that work in a technical field, took a few science classes in college, and watch science fiction, and they think they can comment on all sorts of things when, actually, they're just embarassing themselves. I had just had my fill of it yesterday. That's all.
Typing "infinity" and "mathematics" and perhaps "physics" into Google isn't very hard to do. I'm not sure why I should be required to provide a link.
All in all, though, your objection was at least partially valid, and my only defense is to plead annoyance.
Your ignorance is charming assuming that you're still in elementary or secondary school. If you're older than that, then it's not so charming.
Thank you so much for providing the payoff for reading this thread. I wish I had some mod points to mod you up.
Well, you could get off your lazy ass and just follow up the thread to see who it was I was originally responding to.
You: "I'm tired of explaining everything over and over in simple, easy to understand terms when it makes no difference. Sorry. I really wish someone else would carry the torch once in a while, I really do."
What have you explained? All I've been able to discern is your taking things out of context or even willfully misreading them in order to find offense; and then finishing it up with a self-pitying and grandiose comment like that last bit.
By the way, I'm a hearing person and am not a Signer, much less native or fluent. Both you and AnDarkon are jummping to conclusions about who I am and what "camp" I'm in. A hearing bigot? A Deaf bigot? A deaf anti-Deaf bigot? Surely I must be one of these, you think, right? So you look at a few sentences, focus on a few phrases, and then jump to the keyboard. After my response to your initial response to my post, you responded with:
You: "I just felt the tone was a dismissal of signing outright."
But in the post where you thought the "tone was a dismissal of signing outright", I had written in just those two paragraphs, these things:
Me: "...the key point to understand is that Sign is a complete and functional language the equal of any spoken language..."
Me: "...most people don't realize how completely functional a native signer really is..."
Me: "Signed languages develop and evolve pretty much the same way (for the purposes of this discussion) that spoken languages do."
Wow. That's some "tone" of "dismissal of signing outright". (That was sarcasm, by the way, since you're paying so little attention I feel the need to spell everything out.)
You: "A culture is a bag of things held in common and shared ideals, things that are important to the members."
That's an overly broad definition. Everything from "community" to "subculture" to "culture" has those characteristics. I specifically used capital-D "Deaf" in conjunction with "culture" and emphasized the word "culture" intentionally to draw a distinction between mere communities and cultures. There is a gay community and a physics community and a medical community, and they all are subcultures and one can talk about the "physics culture", for example. Each of these is made up of people who have values and ideals in common, shared experiences, etc. But that doesn't make any of them "cultures" in the strongest sense of the word.
In contrast, a shared native language is the single most important correlative to "culture" in the most significant sense. There is an anglophone culture, a francophone culture, and the individuals who make them up share at the deepest personal level all their cultural landmarks. This isn't equally true of gayness, physics, or medicine. But it is arguably true for native Signers. And this is why the issue of Sign as a native language is so pertinent to this discussion. Both because it gives Deaf culture an unqestionable legitimacy, and because it is also for this reason that being deaf is simply not the necessarily debilitating handicap that most hearing people assume it to be.
To conclude, I'll say that I can't tell just what cause it is, exactly, that you think you're carrying the torch for; nor how it is that you think you are doing so. But I posted my original message in order to answer the ignorance revealed in a pretty loaded question by a hearing person about the supposed "political incorrectness" of AnDarkon getting his/her implant.
"Overrated" at "4"? ("Moderation Totals: Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Overrated=1, Total=3. ") Huh. Since my point is something that is central to the discussion, and not coincidentally completely correct but not well-known, I suppose this must be one of those examples of misusing moderation as a form of argument. Ah, well.
1.
"``A true native language'' is the language the person is born into..."
Right. And a person who learns Sign natively is a native Signer. Being deaf is only a compelling entree into that culture - but it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to being part of that culture.
2.
"The ``Denied his rightful place'' in the [...] community comment smacks of bigotry. It is the self's sole right to be wherever he wants to be. Getting the cochlear implant was a decision that only I was the utmost qualified to make..."
If you were born fully deaf, and were not allowed to learn Sigh natively, then you were denied your place in what would have been your natural community - since Sign is the only language that a deaf infant is able to acquire as readily as a hearing infant acquires a spoken language. (This matters a great deal because there is mountains of evidence that indicate that there is a fairly small window of opportunity for the developing brain to natively acquire a language.) You didn't make that decision to not learn Sign natively - you were an infant. Someone else made that decision. My comment clearly referred to that long-ago decision, and not at all to your recent one.
3.
"There are two major views on deafness; 1) Deafness is a cultural trait and, 2) Deafness is a disability to be overcome through, but not limited to, social and technological means."
Which is what I had just written in a previous post. And you'll notice that the point I made in reference to this is that the two viewpoints are not logically mutually exclusive - but, politically, they unfortunately seem to be. Clearly, there is some degree of an actual physical disability involved in being deaf. How truly significant that is has been a matter of debate. And, just as obviously, Deaf culture is real. I would disagree with you slightly, however, in directly and deterministicaly linking the physical trait of being deaf and deaf culture. The culture of Deaf culture has arisen from and been supported by the fact that there are a few actual human languages - signed languages - associated with being deaf. There are hearing people who are part of Deaf culture, just as there are deaf people who are not. (There are hearing babies in deaf families who are native signers.) The key thing is to be native or fluent in Sign, and to participate in the culture.
And this is why I think this discussion, for the most part, doesn't really apply to you at all. You're not a native Signer. Perhaps you became very fluent in Sign as a second language - but it's not quite the same, and that's why you were something of an outsider. Your decision to get an implant has nothing near the significance or controversy that this operation has on a baby. The original poster clearly didn't understand this, because he only knows what little he heard from someone probably ridiculing the Deaf community's unease about cochlear implants in babies.
4.
"Getting a cochlear implant does not, in any way, diminish my stature within society in any way. It does send out the message that I'm less of a person without the cochlear implant."
Well, I'm not sure exactly in what context you're saying this. By "society" in your first sentence, do you mean hearing or deaf society? At any rate, as you say more gently, screw whatever society thinks. Do what you think is right for yourself; and, as a personal example, combat whatever prejudices other people may have about either/both being deaf and having an implant.
5.
" While I was in the Deaf community, I was very lonely since there was not many people within, who could relate to the world the way I do. When I was in the hearing world, I was lonely in a different way, but that was the way I was accustomed to. Having the cochlear implant alleviated this loneliness somewhat, but not wholly."
Your experience is not unusual, and it alone (aside from the more fundamental issue of the window of opportunity for language acquisition) is a good argument that raising a deaf child in a hearing family without allowing them to become native signers is unfair to the child. This is because the child will never truly be at home in any community.
My aunt is a reasonably well-known member of the Deaf community. But she is not a native signer. Growing up in a hearing family, she didn't have the opportunity to learn Sign natively at the appropriate age; and then a bit later, she unfortunately was sent, briefly, to one of the notorious speaking-only schools. I believe she learned ASL probably at around the age of six to eight. Later, since she was not completely deaf, she was able to gain some hearing with the aid of hearing aids. So she's long functioned in the hearing community. She basically has two lives, in a sense.
But my point is that, even though she's well-liked, and very active in Deaf issues and politics, she's still always been somewhat of an outsider. That's not her fault. Also, in spite of (I believe) being the first deaf woman in the US to get an MBA, her language skills, particularly writing, are not very good. This is pretty typical for people with her history.
I'm well aware of the bigotry within the Deaf community against non-native Signers and partially deaf people et al. It's abhorrent, but typical of many similar communities. It's human nature. I'm not saying it's right.
Given your history, your decision to get your implant makes a lot of sense and will probably help you find a more comfortable place in hearing culture than you'd likely achieve elsewhere and in any other possible way. I hope it works out well for you.
6.
"Your opinion, somewhat bigoted, about the Deaf community..."
"Bigoted" indicates an unreasoning, negative prejudicial opinion. I don't see how that can accurately describe my attitudes about Deaf culture, or my attitudes about hearing culture from a Deaf culture perspective - which is what I can only guess you must have meant by this comment.
It's a sign of how emotional and highly politicized these issues are that both you and my other interlocuter misread and misunderstood me to be saying offensive and provocative things that I actually wasn't.
You might notice that a similar argument could be made justifying some procedure that changes skin color of infants from black to white in infancy. That's a very disturbing idea. But since deafness necessarily means being disabled in a very real, though perhaps minimal sense, I don't think it can be compared directly to being a racial minority. It is people's bigotry against racial minorities that is the sole disadvantage faced by them -- deaf people face that and the simple reality that they have one less sense than most everyone else. Eliminating bigotry will completely solve what is a problem for racial minorities; but doing so will only solve part of the problem for deaf people. In this context, changing skin color is an absurd way to "correct" a disadvantage that is real, but not inherent. The bigotry is 100% of the problem.
The reason this (correcting deafness) is such a tricky issue is because the disadvantages that deaf people face are the result of a subtle interplay between an inherent physcial limitation and all the social, neurological, and technological forces that reduce or eliminate it (or fail to do so). Partisans on both sides of the this debate want to make it wholly about either physical disability or bigotry. But it's about both, and claiming that it's not is almost certainly over-politicizing the issue to the detriment of individual human beings that are caught in the middle.
[1] I sense that this sentence will also cause you to jump to your keyboard. To clarify, I am not arguing that in some ways Sign isn't a superior for of communication -- it clearly is. But until there's more information on the question of how truly "native" to the human brain Sign really is, I'm reserving judgment. The presumption is that spoken language is native neurologically, and that Sign is a (hugely successful) example of the plasticity of the brain. On the other hand, as you know, there's good reasons to question how inherently language is tied to hearing and speech at the neurological and evolutionary level.
But I think the key point to understand is that Sign is a complete and functional language the equal of any spoken language; and that a shared native language (spoken or signed), in turn, is one of the most fundamental attributes of "culture". So, Deaf people have a culture not merely by being deaf; but by having a language. That gives their claims of cultural legitimacy complete authority.
In this person's case, he/she was apparently denied their rightful place in Deaf culture long ago. Getting a cochlear implant today doesn't aggravate that grievance so much as it, at least, mitigates part of the wrong done to him/her by being denied a true native language. (Although his/her written English is noticeably superior to that of the typical fully deaf person who didn't acquire Sign as a baby -- neurological research has demonstrated that there's a narrow window of brain development for true native language acquisition.)
My own opinion is that I have to admit that, all things considered, a person is better of being able to hear at birth and to acquire a spoken language in contrast to being deaf and acquiring Sign. Medical technology now makes this possible. But it's not as easy a judgment to make as so many people think it is, simply because most people don't realize how completely functional a native signer really is, and how much being a native signer also means being part of a distinct, vibrant, and effectively unique culture[1]. Correcting what is undeniably at least minimally a physical deficiency has the effect of stranding the Deaf culture in a wasteland of malnourishment, much like a small town withering away in the neglected countryside. On balance, maybe it's better that way -- but one should be very tactful when trying to explain this to the old folks sitting in the town square watching their town die.
[1] Signed languages parallel spoken languages in that they can run the gamut of being completely independent of each other to being dialects of each other. Signed languages develop and evolve pretty much the same way (for the purposes of this discussion) that spoken languages do. For example, American Sign Language and French Sign Language are closely related to a recent common ancestor, and so they are nearly merely dialects of each other. In contrast, UK Sign Language (or whatever it's called) has no resemblance to ASL. (And don't confuse ASL with "signed English" -- which is just transliterated English.) Anyway, Native Signers are such tiny minorities in each of the majority cultures they exist within, they are effectively "unique".
Entropy is a measurement of a microcosmic physical property. The generalized idea of "disorder" that led to the idea of information entropy is related but seperate.
This is important because it is a pernicious error to conflate the two, an error which often results in false conclusions about thermodynamics and the macrocosmic world.
C'mon. Many of you have gilfriends that aren't that good looking.
Make fun of her for being an evil spammer/password thief/pump-and-dumper and for being such an idiot. She deserves that. She even deserves thousands of people looking at her titties (and somewhat flabby ass). It's more brutal when you fairly and accurately ridicule someone. For example, the fact that she has those stupid inspirational posters on her wall clearly indicates that she's sub-human.
Ultimately, though, there's still the problem of stuff you already have a fair use for. As I pointed out in my post, the law doesn't apply for merely forging the watermark -- it applies only when you distribute something. But, if so, then what's going to happen is that (in terms of file sharing of mp3s) it's only increased the penalties for an already-illegal activity in a roundabout way. A big question is: why?
Personally, I think that none of these people have a clue about technology and so don't understand at all the implications of various laws and proposed laws. I do, however, think that the entertainment industry lobby knows what they're doing, and they are doing everything they can to eliminate fair-use and anything else -- even if very consumer-unfriendly -- to try to protect their profits. Eventually, I think, it's going to come back and haunt them. Right now, it's pretty much only we techno-geeks and early-adopters that are using the kinds of technology that are impacted in a very consumer-unfriendly manners by the things that these companies are pushing. But, as this moves into everyone's living rooms and cars and offices and wherever, people are going to discover that their hands are tied in ways that they will find absolutely unacceptable. Imagine: "I'm sorry, you can't record that episode of 'Seinfeld'". This is the analogy, and people will get really pissed-off. So, in a sense, although I'm quite annoyed, I have a strong sense that all this stuff will be rolled-back in a few years and the companies that are behind it will be punished by the consumer. It will be satisfying when it happens.
It is the same thing with computing networks. You are expected to assume that a network is private unless told otherwise. Thus, you can connect insofar as you're "walking" up to the front door -- but you can't go in unless unvited.
Running an unsecured wireless network is no more an indication that it's open to the public than is leaving open the front door to your house. A passerby can notice that the door is open without entering the building. Likewise, a passerby can connect to a wireless, unsecured network without doing anything else. Browsing file shares, even utilizing network resources to access the internet, is rightly considered trespassing.
The details of the network configuration are not clear from the article, so it's hard to ascertain what, if anything, this guy did wrong. Note that it may not even be the case that the clerk that he demonstrated this to might have had the standing to give him permission to do so. Even so, it's clear that he connected to the network earlier. But what does that mean?
Using an analogy from cable modems/dsl and windows networking; if I go into Network Neighborhood on my 98 box and see thirty other machines (as was the case three years ago when I first got my cable modem connection), that's not hacking. The connection was not voluntary, so to speak, and I didn't make an active connection to any of them. If, however, I double-clicked on one of them and looked at the unsecured network shares, I was illegally trespassing on that computer. That's the difference between noticing an unlocked door to someone else's property, and opening the door and walking in.
I've seen reports of people's laptops automatically connecting to badly configured wireless networks. I don't think that's trespassing. But using the connection is. That's a choice you actually have to make. Yes, it seems like a natural thing to do, perhaps just to have a quick look because "the door was wide open". But that still doesn't make it right or legal. Partly this is the case because a) there's a violation of someone's property in any event; and b) it's impossible to be able to determine someone's motives. As someone else posted earlier, thieves caught just as they enter someone's house could claim that the door was left open and they were only investigating it before they alerted someone. Yeah, sure.
A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing.
Anyway, my sister is only 27 and she's had one hip replaced for two years; and needs the other done ASAP. So it's not only old people that have osteo or need joints replaced.[1]
I don't post this for pity, or anything, but more simply to point out that one of the most difficult things for my sister and I with this disease is that no one expects people as young as we are to have such substantial problems just walking around. So I have a bit of a vested interest in pointing out that although rare, it isn't just old people that have osteoarthritis. By the way, my dad and sister have also had several arthroscopic surgeries on their knees, elbows, ankles, and shoulders. They did seem to help at least for a limited amount of time. But the joints just keeps on falling apart and making bony grit that crunches around in there; so it's temporary at best. I did read about that recent study with interest, though.
[1] I should mention that my sister actually resists the "osteoarthritis" non-professional diagnosis of our genetic disorder. It has a real, technical name that's no more descriptive, in my opinion, than "osteoarthritis" actually is; but does have the virtue, in her opinion, of being harder to fail to take seriously. She claims the actual degree of our joint deterioration is much greater than that of, say, the average 70 year-old with osteo. I have no idea. It seems bad, but these are the only joints I've ever had. Our doctors have always said that it's very, very bad.
You know, it's kind of a shame. Now that desktop PCs have performace to burn, really, it's too bad that MS has drilled a thousand holes (in the name of performace) in all the good stability/reliability stuff that was the original NT design philosophy of Dave Cutler's.
Still, though, XP is a huge improvement on all that old 95 code. I can't believe that it took them until 2002 to do what they said they'd have done by, what?, '97?
I'm quite happy with XP Pro for my desktop. I like it very much, actually. But as someone who supported high-profile enterprise db-driven web sites with CRM and CM stuff, I can say that at least with the MS stuff circa NT 4.0 -- that generation of IIS and SQLServer -- it seemed to me to be a self-evidently foolish decision to run one of these web sites on an MS platform as opposed to Solaris or AIX with Oracle and Apache (sorry, no Linux support for that CM/CRM product, even now). Jesus, I hated IIS.
As someone who works with various flavors of UN*X including Linux, some other OSs, and all the MS OSs, I get really damn tired of the OS Wars on Slashdot and try to avoid them. But one thing that is definitely annoying is the FUD that Linux partisans spout about Windows -- very much like the FUD that Windowphiles spout about Linux. It's a kind of urban folklore -- everyone "knows" what's wrong with the enemy (group, OS, whatever), even when, actually, they don't.
P2P is cool in theory; but in practice people are using it merely to move around huge pirated mp3s and mpegs and as a result a small number of users are consuming a grossly disproportionate amount of bandwidth. It's a tragedy of the commons. See previous /. stories on how this has already played out at college campuses across the US (and elsewhere).
I'm in Austin, and I've actually switched away from Road Runner to SBC ADSL. Why? Because, of course, the bandwidth I saw decreased dramatically over the years since I was an early adopter; and they were charging me too damn much money, anyway. I don't get a ton of bandwidth with my ADSL connection, but the service is more reliable, and it's less expensive. And so far, I've not seen any port blocking or scanning for servers -- something I've been hearing about from the cable side of the fence.
Honestly, I'm ambivalent about a lot of these issues as my idealistic and practical sides of my personality come into conflict. Ideally, I'd like the consumer's access to the internet to be pretty much like what it meant to be hooked up to the interent in the good old days before it became commoditized -- the internet was designed for hosts to be servers, not just clients or even peers. I should be able to run my own web server, my own smtp and pop/imap server, my own nntp server, my own streaming multimedia server, share my filesystem, run distributed applications, network games, P2P apps....whatever. To me, that's part of the whole point. On the other hand, as a practical matter, there still isn't enough bandwidth available for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to use their home internet connections this way. Yeah, there's a lot of dark fiber -- but none of it is the last mile connections. And some people are consuming far more networking resources than they are paying for. That's a legitimate problem, and it certainly can't be justified on the basis of a need to share files that are illegal in the first place.
Aha! You know, I only saw that movie for the first (and only) time this year.