the 9/11 guys were willfully ignoring human life for the sake of an invisible skyman. this was their intent. an examination of their intent compounds their guilt, it doesn't erase it. they most definitely were not working for the common good, they working purposefully against it
as for the relatives of 10 people killed by a guy bitten by a bee while driving, i'm sure this makes quite an impression on their anger and anguish as compared to the anger and anguish of the relatives of the guy killed by a driver who mowed him down on purpose
this is true even if what you are doing actually hurts the common good
it is the concept known as intent
this happens all the time in medical situations. the predicament is you have limited knowledge but you must propose a course of action. as long as the person's intent was to do good, they are protected under law. it is called the good samaritan law
intent mixed with limited knowledge can be fixed: it just needs to be educated
additionally, real life is always about limited knowledge. no one is omniscient. you can't find someone culpable for doing wrong when no one knows everything about about a sitaution to propse the ironclad right course of action. and taking no course of action is even worse
it is worse to do nothing than propose a solution that is unsound. those who sought to aid the environment by using ethanol instead of fossil fuels were acting in good faith. therefore, they are blameless
intent matters more than final results. someone who intends to do good, even if they wind up hurting, is someone more valuable to society than someone who benefits society, but is only looking out for themselves
if you kill 10 pedestrians because a bee bit you while you were driving, you are less wrong than someone who killed 1 pedestrian on purpose. results alone are not the final arbiter of value. intent actually matters more
if you believe that you are working for the common good, nothing can touch you in terms of culpability for doing wrong
there do exist people who work for their own good while lying about working for the common good, yes. but the existence of such people does not nullify the existence of those who actually work for the common good
then there are people like you, who through some combination of pathological distrust, inability to perceive reality versus fears, general dimwittedness, or impoverished lack of faith, sees selfish where there is actually altruism
if you do a great job and they fire you, you say you have a right to retaliate
ok
wll what about bad employees who don't do a good job, do they have a right to retaliate?
i'll let you in on a little secret: its the bad employees who do the retaliating when they are fired, not the good ones. because the good ones have enough human decency to do a good job in the first place, and therefore have enough human decency to move on and get a better job
its the lazy useless sacks of shit who want to retaliate
anyone interested in retaliating after getting fired tells you something about the lowness of that person's charcater, and therefore their unworthiness to continue holding the job anyways
going to a disproportionate response is the fault of the one doing the disproportionate response
because we are dealing with human beings
not shark attacks or lightning strikes or animals in cages
don't you think it is condescending and patronizing of you to compare the palestinians to animals in cages?
i see a human being when i look at a palestinian. as such, i expect of them responsibility for their actions, and i grant unto them the freedoms i enjoy
if those freedoms are abridged by someone, then they have a right to respond in the name of justice, but they also have a duty not to be disproportionate
a disproportionate response is never validated or acceptable. ever. to go down a path in your mind justifying a disproportionate response is to leave the path of justice yourself. to leave the path of justice, in the search for justice, is not only logically incoherenty, it is to hobble any sympathy one would have for your cause, and to doom it
if you don't know how the palestinians can have their grievances addressed other than disproportionate violence, then that is a logic failure on your part. i would direct you and them to martin luther king or mahatma gandhi for some guidance
ok, you're mad at your employer, perhaps there reasons for firing you are invalid
but taking it out on third parties, such as with locking up law enforcement documents that might decide the guilt of hardcore criminals: you're a selfish asshole for setting up that scenario
maybe you didn't deserve to be fired
but now you deserve to rot in jail for how you responded to your firing
were viacom to win, the laws would be protecting a dead status quo that will be ignored technologically anyways. were google to win, the law would suddenly be relevant again
its not possible to lose, just possible for the little guy to breathe a little easier and not worry about getting unlucky and suffering the occasional smackdown by a dying dinosaur
the laws on intellectual property are simply invalid in the age of the internet
ip laws are easily technologically circumvented. ip laws today exist solely as a means for large media corporations to take their frustrations out for becoming increasingly irrelevant by financially destroying housewives and college kids
what the internet has done to intellectual property is pit the little guys against entrenched dying large corporate machines. usually all the little guy can do is run and hide. but when its corporate machine versus corporate machine cast in the role usually occupied by the little guy, this is good because google can throw clout into a fight where the little guy can only hope to be popped like a zit. so precedents can fly out of this that can protect the little guy
My analogy is perfect: change. The internet means jobs are sent overseas. What can you do? You can't fight inevitabilty. Someone can do what you can do for much less pay. Go aheadn fight that. Fight the rise and fall of the tides while you are at it. Or go with the flow
And yes, retraining is hard, is not trivial. Absolutely. WElcome to life, it isn't easy
if someone can do what you can do for a cheaper price, the market gravitates to take advantage of that. not much protectionism will prevent that
people talk about politicians and laws fixing these things. there's not much a politician can do to stop the basic laws of supply and demand, there's not many laws that can be enforced against rules of economics without hurting the entire economy
the economy changes. protecting the jobs of steamboat captains or horseshoe blacksmith doesn't mean much when people start using trains and cars. you change with the world, adapat, and new opportunities present themselves. or you whine loud enough so that politicians protect your steamboat captain's job. which, under increasing pressur eof irrelevancy every day, loses its lustre and its income anyways, because the entire economy of steamboats is drying up
CHANGE, motherfuckers, do you speak it?
rather than complain about a job leaving the usa, why not train for a job that can't be outsourced? that makes more money?
you may now pillory me into oblivion. but go ahead. i hate you. i hate the story summary. to me, it represents the worst of the usa: fat whiners with a sense of entitlement. you're the worst of this country, the lowest character
i actually think outsourcing strengthens the country. it forces people to retrain. people seem to think getting one stupid job and entrenching yourself in that position for the rest of your life is some sort of nirvana. its not. its stagnation, mentally and financially. but it is nirvana for people who want to do nothing in their lives but shuffle paper on a desk and get paid more than their worth
change has risks. and plenty of people who lose their jobs to outsourcing will never get a job that pays that well ever again. such people are usually useless overpaid dead wood anyways. they deserve to work at mcdonalds, they got the higher paying job by mistake in the first place. and outsourcing is the rational economic change that shoves them down to where they belong on the economic ladder. of course they whine about that
meanwhile, anyone with any real skill and brains moves on, makes more money. the good float to the top, the shit sinks, whining and moaning the whole time. protectionism is for the weak. you're weak if you depend upon protectionism, you're the worst of this country. risk is challenging, it works your brain like a muscle. if you are too weak to stomach that, go clean toilets
those who whine the loudest, to me, represent nothing but the worst of the united states: "if i whine loud enough i get what i deserve"
no, asshole. you rise or sink based on your abilities and challenges are GOOD for you. they build you like rsistance to a muscle. or they kill you, in which case you are a weak loser who deserves no more than to be a grave digger
you don't deserve anything in life. you aren't entitled to anything. you work, you take some risk, you shut up and play the game called life, and you eventually make your mark. or you bitch and whine and moan about this or that not being fair. because you are fucking loser
now mod me into oblivion, you flabby whiny fucking losers at life. anyone with real skill is busy shutting up and moving on to better pastures and living their fucking lives. but anyone who knows nothing better, nor will know any better, than the jobs that were outsourced are sinking in their socioeconomic status, as they fucking DESERVE
fuck you flabby whiny losers. fuck you all. the worst of this country
i'm going to dress up like a transexual and walk across town. however, as soon as i go into the privacy of my own home, no one is allowed to know i dress up like a transexual anymore
that's what you are trying to tell me
once it gets out there, its out there. it can't be taken back. sure, the law can hem and haw about what you should or shouldn't do with information that is not legally yours, but why do you think that actually protects you? if you put it out there, you've exposed yourself. beginning and ending of the story, regardless of the law
howabout this: don't expose yourself in the first place. dress up like a tranny in your bedroom, and don't go outside
don't expect an open wire to have the same philosophical and technical (regardless of legal) expectations of privacy as your bedroom
this entire issue is shortcircuited by this observation. the entire discussion of the law is simply moot
my position is: why does anyone expect communications going out on an open wire to be safe from snooping eyes? or even more absurd: why does anyone trust the government to ensure this illusion of privacy?
if you have anything of secrecy, encrypt it, or keep it off the net
i'm not excusing the governments behavior, but what i am saying is that the entire subject matter of privacy on the internet is absurd. at every node someone can snoop, not just the government. isps, criminal interests, corporate interests, just plain random goofballs
its NOT like the government coming into your home and ramsacking your stuff behind a locked door. its you piling your stuff out in the middle of main street and expecting the local police to ensure no one looks at it or takes it, and then crying bloody murder when a cop looks at it. you put it out there, why do you expect privacy? i don't get it, i never understood why this subject matter works people up into such a lather
to me, as soon as i hit send in my email box, if i haven't encrypted it, i EXPECT it to be seen by someone else
its not like i've cynically given up on government, its rather that i recognize the technology is not securable, regardless of whether the government ensists on absolute privacy in electronic communications or is a fascist state who insists on looking at your every word. either way, i don't see how the technology of the internet confirms a position of privacy. its just better to assume someone else is going to see it, right?
so i'm either totally crazy or way ahead of the curve, i don't know
everyone gets so emotional about this issue, and i just don't understand the panic and hysteria over losing a protection that never existed in the first place, or ever could possibly exist, regardless of the law being ultrafascist or ultraprotectionist
every year in this country, hundreds and hundreds of people are injured, maimed, and even killed by rattlesnakes, copperheads, coral snakes, cottonomouths, and the like
what i do is i take specially trained teams into the places these vermin hide, and for free, for free, i take the snakes to a special pressing plant, where i press the snakes and turn them into a fuel you can use in your car!
in a democracy, you never get a president who appeals to you greatly, you always get a president who appeals to you weakly (if at all). the reason for this is that someone only appeals to you greatly if they have a lot of affinity for your own values
but being that your set of values are a small tiny subset of the range of value sets out there, then if someone appeals to you greatly, that means they only appeal to a small number of people, and therefore are never going to be elected. get it yet?
so the job of a presidential candidate, to appeal to as many people as possible, is to pick a mixture of values that appeals to as many people as possible. but by covering all of these bets, this naturally means you weaken your appeal to any one given small subset of values, in order to cover as many subsets as possible
this is the inevitable truth of democracy: you will always, forever, only get a president who appeals to you very weakly, because it is the job of the candidate to appeal to as many people as possible in order to win the presidency. therefore, EVERY eection, FOREVER, consists of picking the lesser of two evils. this is mathematically inevitable. pleae, get used to it
this is why morons who vote for fringe candidates only weaken whatever cause they care about. in their blindness to embrace a cnadidate who appeals to them greatly, but can never win (because any candidate who appeals to anyone greatly naturally only appeals to a small subset of a population), they therefore are wasting a vote that would otherwise go to the candidate who appeals to them weakly, and ensure that the candidate who appeals to them least wins! morons. you always ALWAYS vote strategically in an election. you never, NEVER get your golden candidate. your golden candidate can NEVER win. it is simple mathematical inevitability
the question is simply then: why are you so stupid not to know this, and why do you take it so personally?
why are you so stupid as to expect that you will ever get a president who appeals to you greatly? why do you waste your vote on fringe candidates? why are you so shocked that your golden boy obama is proving to be SMART as well as charismatic (hint: his smarts is why he tracking to the center, appealing to you WEAKLY, instead of strongly like he used to. waaaah)
everyone takes it so personally. its politics you morons, not a romance
this is the way it has always been, and always will be in a democracy, forever. get used to it. grow a brain. don't take it so personally, it just means you're blind, dumb and selfish about the unmoveable absolute rules of politics
and yet you morons are always part of the process. wasting your vote on perot (ensuring clinton won), wasting your vote on nader (ensuring bush won), wasting your vote on kucinich and ron paul, etc.
and so, i guess the lesson is for me: also part of politics are the committed partisans. the fools who will always vote blindly idealistically, never intelligently and strategically. and you are just damaged goods for the shrewd politician to route around
the permanently clueless. so idealistic and naive about how democracy works
btw, to preempt some of you even stupider than the idealistic and naive: 1. democracy is still a better form of government than any else. 2. also: triparty and quadparty systems have their own shortcomings, such as ridiculous coalitions between ideologically opposed parties in order to retain party. go ahead, ask any german about greens getting in bed with the far right 3. furthermore, the democrats and the republicans ARE different parties and DO represent different values. to explain it to you in parable: two peaks in the rocky mountains viewed from out on the great plains are the same. but in a mountain valley in the rockies, the two peaks couldn't be more different. in other words, if you see the republicans and the democrats as the same, you yourself are so far out on the ideological bell curve, the real issue is that you yourself are so out of touch wi
new tech is an act of creation. it is try, and fail, try , and fail. corporations are motivated by profit to try, and fail. no one, NO ONE can get out in front of this messy process of new technology creation and write standards for it, because no one is omniscient about what isn't even in existence yet
the fallout of course is competing technologies as various companies get the hang of it. once upon a time, there were competing electrical grids, competing rail tie size, competing shoe sizes, etc. now, all that is standard. because it is about who wins the war of new tech creation. but during and shortly after the acts of creation, there is a mess to deal with, a babylon, and that's just part of the process. its inevitable, and its not by design or in the control of anyone to stop it
in other words, i understand your criticism of what you think my point of view is. but you aren't actually criticizing my point of view. you think it is possible to write standards for things that don't yet exist, and think i oppose it out of indolence, or something. no, i'm saying it is inevitable, this babylon, not superior
the mess is just part of what you have to deal with for being on the trailing edge of tech creation. it sorts itself out in the end. in the meantime, there is incoherence and pain. and you can't do anything about it. its inevitable
so just accept it. not because i'm messy, but because tech creation is messy. i'm not trying to convert you to my inferior point of view. i'm trying to tell you reality is inferior to your pristine standards. you're not rejecting me, you're rejecting reality. don't shoot the messenger
Well this hasn't worked well at all. We have companies that are in the business of making money (nothing wrong with that), and one of the ways to insure a steady income is to have a captive audience. So unless a coalition of competing companies propose a standard, the successful company will have a monopoly of that particular technology. Just look at the Microsoft Word document format as a case in point.
and what is wrong with that? if i build a word processor with a proprietary format, i'm making a bet. i'm betting i will own the market, and everyone will be locked into my tech and become returning customers. if i lose the bet, i provide a greater incentive for someone not to use my product. its a dangerous and risky bet
in fact, it is why firefox exists. ie's nonstandard lack of compliance is exactly this kind of bet. and the frustration with ie led to the development and adoption of firefox. now ie's noncompliance works against them, and accelerates firefox adoption
so why do you want to fight the hubris with which greedy companies destroy themselves? why, in the desire to lock customers into proprietary formats, do you see a threat? i see an opportunity: customers hate being in a straightjacket. so shhhhhhhhhhhhhh... let the big corporations make their arrogant risky bets, and crash and burn. how many examples of sony time and time again coming out with some retarded proprietary standard and reaping nothing but venom?
so in your argument above about microsoft word, you are arguing for microsoft's continued existence. you examine a failure of theirs, and chastise them on the failure. in that failure, i see the seed of their downfall. so frankly, shut up and stop helping microsoft and sony and other big companies. let them fall on their swords. you can't stop geedy corporations from being hubristic and arrogant. nor should you if you want to see them fall!
"And yes, fusion would be great, but its military applications are probably even more destabilizing than fission is becoming, especially if it uses nonexotic feedstock and the kind of engineering that is available on the global market today. "
there are no military applications. the feedstock is hydrogen. there is no engineering for it today, it's the future
do you even know what the fuck you are talking about?
wind and solar: yeah. lots of infrastructure. LOTS OF IT. VERY EXPENSIVE. MAJOR IMPEDIMENT. HELLOOOOO???
Slashdot Mirror
the 9/11 guys were willfully ignoring human life for the sake of an invisible skyman. this was their intent. an examination of their intent compounds their guilt, it doesn't erase it. they most definitely were not working for the common good, they working purposefully against it
as for the relatives of 10 people killed by a guy bitten by a bee while driving, i'm sure this makes quite an impression on their anger and anguish as compared to the anger and anguish of the relatives of the guy killed by a driver who mowed him down on purpose
you are working for the common good
this is true even if what you are doing actually hurts the common good
it is the concept known as intent
this happens all the time in medical situations. the predicament is you have limited knowledge but you must propose a course of action. as long as the person's intent was to do good, they are protected under law. it is called the good samaritan law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law
intent mixed with limited knowledge can be fixed: it just needs to be educated
additionally, real life is always about limited knowledge. no one is omniscient. you can't find someone culpable for doing wrong when no one knows everything about about a sitaution to propse the ironclad right course of action. and taking no course of action is even worse
it is worse to do nothing than propose a solution that is unsound. those who sought to aid the environment by using ethanol instead of fossil fuels were acting in good faith. therefore, they are blameless
intent matters more than final results. someone who intends to do good, even if they wind up hurting, is someone more valuable to society than someone who benefits society, but is only looking out for themselves
if you kill 10 pedestrians because a bee bit you while you were driving, you are less wrong than someone who killed 1 pedestrian on purpose. results alone are not the final arbiter of value. intent actually matters more
if you believe that you are working for the common good, nothing can touch you in terms of culpability for doing wrong
and there exists people who actually work for it
there do exist people who work for their own good while lying about working for the common good, yes. but the existence of such people does not nullify the existence of those who actually work for the common good
then there are people like you, who through some combination of pathological distrust, inability to perceive reality versus fears, general dimwittedness, or impoverished lack of faith, sees selfish where there is actually altruism
rand, the bitch who perfected the philosophy of selfishness
basic altruism trumps genius
every time
a solitary selfish genius is routed by a coordinated effort of retards working for the benefit of the group, every time
rand loses. her philosophy is inadequate to survive in this world
that deserve to be screwed over?
if you do a great job and they fire you, you say you have a right to retaliate
ok
wll what about bad employees who don't do a good job, do they have a right to retaliate?
i'll let you in on a little secret: its the bad employees who do the retaliating when they are fired, not the good ones. because the good ones have enough human decency to do a good job in the first place, and therefore have enough human decency to move on and get a better job
its the lazy useless sacks of shit who want to retaliate
anyone interested in retaliating after getting fired tells you something about the lowness of that person's charcater, and therefore their unworthiness to continue holding the job anyways
going to a disproportionate response is the fault of the one doing the disproportionate response
because we are dealing with human beings
not shark attacks or lightning strikes or animals in cages
don't you think it is condescending and patronizing of you to compare the palestinians to animals in cages?
i see a human being when i look at a palestinian. as such, i expect of them responsibility for their actions, and i grant unto them the freedoms i enjoy
if those freedoms are abridged by someone, then they have a right to respond in the name of justice, but they also have a duty not to be disproportionate
a disproportionate response is never validated or acceptable. ever. to go down a path in your mind justifying a disproportionate response is to leave the path of justice yourself. to leave the path of justice, in the search for justice, is not only logically incoherenty, it is to hobble any sympathy one would have for your cause, and to doom it
if you don't know how the palestinians can have their grievances addressed other than disproportionate violence, then that is a logic failure on your part. i would direct you and them to martin luther king or mahatma gandhi for some guidance
Step 1: make bomb
Step 2: go to spice market
Step 3: asplode self and random shoppers
Step 4: Prophet
ok, you're mad at your employer, perhaps there reasons for firing you are invalid
but taking it out on third parties, such as with locking up law enforcement documents that might decide the guilt of hardcore criminals: you're a selfish asshole for setting up that scenario
maybe you didn't deserve to be fired
but now you deserve to rot in jail for how you responded to your firing
and this one ranks among the hallowed few best described as "excuse me, i just crapped my pants"
were viacom to win, the laws would be protecting a dead status quo that will be ignored technologically anyways. were google to win, the law would suddenly be relevant again
its not possible to lose, just possible for the little guy to breathe a little easier and not worry about getting unlucky and suffering the occasional smackdown by a dying dinosaur
the laws on intellectual property are simply invalid in the age of the internet
ip laws are easily technologically circumvented. ip laws today exist solely as a means for large media corporations to take their frustrations out for becoming increasingly irrelevant
by financially destroying housewives and college kids
what the internet has done to intellectual property is pit the little guys against entrenched dying large corporate machines. usually all the little guy can do is run and hide. but when its corporate machine versus corporate machine cast in the role usually occupied by the little guy, this is good because google can throw clout into a fight where the little guy can only hope to be popped like a zit. so precedents can fly out of this that can protect the little guy
My analogy is perfect: change. The internet means jobs are sent overseas. What can you do? You can't fight inevitabilty. Someone can do what you can do for much less pay. Go aheadn fight that. Fight the rise and fall of the tides while you are at it. Or go with the flow
And yes, retraining is hard, is not trivial. Absolutely. WElcome to life, it isn't easy
trumps nationalism
if someone can do what you can do for a cheaper price, the market gravitates to take advantage of that. not much protectionism will prevent that
people talk about politicians and laws fixing these things. there's not much a politician can do to stop the basic laws of supply and demand, there's not many laws that can be enforced against rules of economics without hurting the entire economy
the economy changes. protecting the jobs of steamboat captains or horseshoe blacksmith doesn't mean much when people start using trains and cars. you change with the world, adapat, and new opportunities present themselves. or you whine loud enough so that politicians protect your steamboat captain's job. which, under increasing pressur eof irrelevancy every day, loses its lustre and its income anyways, because the entire economy of steamboats is drying up
CHANGE, motherfuckers, do you speak it?
rather than complain about a job leaving the usa, why not train for a job that can't be outsourced? that makes more money?
you may now pillory me into oblivion. but go ahead. i hate you. i hate the story summary. to me, it represents the worst of the usa: fat whiners with a sense of entitlement. you're the worst of this country, the lowest character
i actually think outsourcing strengthens the country. it forces people to retrain. people seem to think getting one stupid job and entrenching yourself in that position for the rest of your life is some sort of nirvana. its not. its stagnation, mentally and financially. but it is nirvana for people who want to do nothing in their lives but shuffle paper on a desk and get paid more than their worth
change has risks. and plenty of people who lose their jobs to outsourcing will never get a job that pays that well ever again. such people are usually useless overpaid dead wood anyways. they deserve to work at mcdonalds, they got the higher paying job by mistake in the first place. and outsourcing is the rational economic change that shoves them down to where they belong on the economic ladder. of course they whine about that
meanwhile, anyone with any real skill and brains moves on, makes more money. the good float to the top, the shit sinks, whining and moaning the whole time. protectionism is for the weak. you're weak if you depend upon protectionism, you're the worst of this country. risk is challenging, it works your brain like a muscle. if you are too weak to stomach that, go clean toilets
those who whine the loudest, to me, represent nothing but the worst of the united states: "if i whine loud enough i get what i deserve"
no, asshole. you rise or sink based on your abilities and challenges are GOOD for you. they build you like rsistance to a muscle. or they kill you, in which case you are a weak loser who deserves no more than to be a grave digger
you don't deserve anything in life. you aren't entitled to anything. you work, you take some risk, you shut up and play the game called life, and you eventually make your mark. or you bitch and whine and moan about this or that not being fair. because you are fucking loser
now mod me into oblivion, you flabby whiny fucking losers at life. anyone with real skill is busy shutting up and moving on to better pastures and living their fucking lives. but anyone who knows nothing better, nor will know any better, than the jobs that were outsourced are sinking in their socioeconomic status, as they fucking DESERVE
fuck you flabby whiny losers. fuck you all. the worst of this country
i'm going to dress up like a transexual and walk across town. however, as soon as i go into the privacy of my own home, no one is allowed to know i dress up like a transexual anymore
that's what you are trying to tell me
once it gets out there, its out there. it can't be taken back. sure, the law can hem and haw about what you should or shouldn't do with information that is not legally yours, but why do you think that actually protects you? if you put it out there, you've exposed yourself. beginning and ending of the story, regardless of the law
howabout this: don't expose yourself in the first place. dress up like a tranny in your bedroom, and don't go outside
don't expect an open wire to have the same philosophical and technical (regardless of legal) expectations of privacy as your bedroom
this entire issue is shortcircuited by this observation. the entire discussion of the law is simply moot
my position is: why does anyone expect communications going out on an open wire to be safe from snooping eyes? or even more absurd: why does anyone trust the government to ensure this illusion of privacy?
if you have anything of secrecy, encrypt it, or keep it off the net
i'm not excusing the governments behavior, but what i am saying is that the entire subject matter of privacy on the internet is absurd. at every node someone can snoop, not just the government. isps, criminal interests, corporate interests, just plain random goofballs
its NOT like the government coming into your home and ramsacking your stuff behind a locked door. its you piling your stuff out in the middle of main street and expecting the local police to ensure no one looks at it or takes it, and then crying bloody murder when a cop looks at it. you put it out there, why do you expect privacy? i don't get it, i never understood why this subject matter works people up into such a lather
to me, as soon as i hit send in my email box, if i haven't encrypted it, i EXPECT it to be seen by someone else
its not like i've cynically given up on government, its rather that i recognize the technology is not securable, regardless of whether the government ensists on absolute privacy in electronic communications or is a fascist state who insists on looking at your every word. either way, i don't see how the technology of the internet confirms a position of privacy. its just better to assume someone else is going to see it, right?
so i'm either totally crazy or way ahead of the curve, i don't know
everyone gets so emotional about this issue, and i just don't understand the panic and hysteria over losing a protection that never existed in the first place, or ever could possibly exist, regardless of the law being ultrafascist or ultraprotectionist
every year in this country, hundreds and hundreds of people are injured, maimed, and even killed by rattlesnakes, copperheads, coral snakes, cottonomouths, and the like
what i do is i take specially trained teams into the places these vermin hide, and for free, for free, i take the snakes to a special pressing plant, where i press the snakes and turn them into a fuel you can use in your car!
i call this amazing product...
reply:
"pirate bay has become a haven for child pronographers. shut it down"
1. anyone committed to do music piracy will commit music piracy and any software or hardware hurdles you throw up cannot stop them
2. anyone committed to not do music piracy will be irritated by the software and hardware hurdles you throw up to stop music pirates
congratulations for punishing your paying customers and doing nothing to stop music piracy
fucking retards
your business model is dead
just die already
in a democracy, you never get a president who appeals to you greatly, you always get a president who appeals to you weakly (if at all). the reason for this is that someone only appeals to you greatly if they have a lot of affinity for your own values
but being that your set of values are a small tiny subset of the range of value sets out there, then if someone appeals to you greatly, that means they only appeal to a small number of people, and therefore are never going to be elected. get it yet?
so the job of a presidential candidate, to appeal to as many people as possible, is to pick a mixture of values that appeals to as many people as possible. but by covering all of these bets, this naturally means you weaken your appeal to any one given small subset of values, in order to cover as many subsets as possible
this is the inevitable truth of democracy: you will always, forever, only get a president who appeals to you very weakly, because it is the job of the candidate to appeal to as many people as possible in order to win the presidency. therefore, EVERY eection, FOREVER, consists of picking the lesser of two evils. this is mathematically inevitable. pleae, get used to it
this is why morons who vote for fringe candidates only weaken whatever cause they care about. in their blindness to embrace a cnadidate who appeals to them greatly, but can never win (because any candidate who appeals to anyone greatly naturally only appeals to a small subset of a population), they therefore are wasting a vote that would otherwise go to the candidate who appeals to them weakly, and ensure that the candidate who appeals to them least wins! morons. you always ALWAYS vote strategically in an election. you never, NEVER get your golden candidate. your golden candidate can NEVER win. it is simple mathematical inevitability
the question is simply then: why are you so stupid not to know this, and why do you take it so personally?
why are you so stupid as to expect that you will ever get a president who appeals to you greatly? why do you waste your vote on fringe candidates? why are you so shocked that your golden boy obama is proving to be SMART as well as charismatic (hint: his smarts is why he tracking to the center, appealing to you WEAKLY, instead of strongly like he used to. waaaah)
everyone takes it so personally. its politics you morons, not a romance
this is the way it has always been, and always will be in a democracy, forever. get used to it. grow a brain. don't take it so personally, it just means you're blind, dumb and selfish about the unmoveable absolute rules of politics
and yet you morons are always part of the process. wasting your vote on perot (ensuring clinton won), wasting your vote on nader (ensuring bush won), wasting your vote on kucinich and ron paul, etc.
and so, i guess the lesson is for me: also part of politics are the committed partisans. the fools who will always vote blindly idealistically, never intelligently and strategically. and you are just damaged goods for the shrewd politician to route around
the permanently clueless. so idealistic and naive about how democracy works
btw, to preempt some of you even stupider than the idealistic and naive:
1. democracy is still a better form of government than any else.
2. also: triparty and quadparty systems have their own shortcomings, such as ridiculous coalitions between ideologically opposed parties in order to retain party. go ahead, ask any german about greens getting in bed with the far right
3. furthermore, the democrats and the republicans ARE different parties and DO represent different values. to explain it to you in parable: two peaks in the rocky mountains viewed from out on the great plains are the same. but in a mountain valley in the rockies, the two peaks couldn't be more different. in other words, if you see the republicans and the democrats as the same, you yourself are so far out on the ideological bell curve, the real issue is that you yourself are so out of touch wi
NewYorkCountryLawyer: the anti-Jack Thompson
the eu is pretty good at shaking a big stick at that sort of thing
for 10% of our needs
fusion reactors produce at the worst, tritium, which has a half life of about 10 yeas, and its only a beta emitter. NO. MILITARY. APPLICATIONS. MORON
new tech is an act of creation. it is try, and fail, try , and fail. corporations are motivated by profit to try, and fail. no one, NO ONE can get out in front of this messy process of new technology creation and write standards for it, because no one is omniscient about what isn't even in existence yet
the fallout of course is competing technologies as various companies get the hang of it. once upon a time, there were competing electrical grids, competing rail tie size, competing shoe sizes, etc. now, all that is standard. because it is about who wins the war of new tech creation. but during and shortly after the acts of creation, there is a mess to deal with, a babylon, and that's just part of the process. its inevitable, and its not by design or in the control of anyone to stop it
in other words, i understand your criticism of what you think my point of view is. but you aren't actually criticizing my point of view. you think it is possible to write standards for things that don't yet exist, and think i oppose it out of indolence, or something. no, i'm saying it is inevitable, this babylon, not superior
the mess is just part of what you have to deal with for being on the trailing edge of tech creation. it sorts itself out in the end. in the meantime, there is incoherence and pain. and you can't do anything about it. its inevitable
so just accept it. not because i'm messy, but because tech creation is messy. i'm not trying to convert you to my inferior point of view. i'm trying to tell you reality is inferior to your pristine standards. you're not rejecting me, you're rejecting reality. don't shoot the messenger
and what is wrong with that? if i build a word processor with a proprietary format, i'm making a bet. i'm betting i will own the market, and everyone will be locked into my tech and become returning customers. if i lose the bet, i provide a greater incentive for someone not to use my product. its a dangerous and risky bet
in fact, it is why firefox exists. ie's nonstandard lack of compliance is exactly this kind of bet. and the frustration with ie led to the development and adoption of firefox. now ie's noncompliance works against them, and accelerates firefox adoption
so why do you want to fight the hubris with which greedy companies destroy themselves? why, in the desire to lock customers into proprietary formats, do you see a threat? i see an opportunity: customers hate being in a straightjacket. so shhhhhhhhhhhhhh... let the big corporations make their arrogant risky bets, and crash and burn. how many examples of sony time and time again coming out with some retarded proprietary standard and reaping nothing but venom?
so in your argument above about microsoft word, you are arguing for microsoft's continued existence. you examine a failure of theirs, and chastise them on the failure. in that failure, i see the seed of their downfall. so frankly, shut up and stop helping microsoft and sony and other big companies. let them fall on their swords. you can't stop geedy corporations from being hubristic and arrogant. nor should you if you want to see them fall!
"And yes, fusion would be great, but its military applications are probably even more destabilizing than fission is becoming, especially if it uses nonexotic feedstock and the kind of engineering that is available on the global market today. "
there are no military applications. the feedstock is hydrogen. there is no engineering for it today, it's the future
do you even know what the fuck you are talking about?
wind and solar: yeah. lots of infrastructure. LOTS OF IT. VERY EXPENSIVE. MAJOR IMPEDIMENT. HELLOOOOO???
zzz