we have extended our life spans, if you have the money, to the point that we live much longer than we should
I don't know where you get the "should" part. There is no universal mandate on how long any one person "should" live.
Aside from which, if you want to live a 'natural' lifespan in much the way our ancestors have for the last couple of million years, that would be somewhere between 30 and 35 years of age. Our distant hunter-gatherer relatives had a hard life and rarely made it past that age. And no, this wasn't simply due to accidents and diseases; they also aged prematurely, although to them this wasn't premature at all. Human beings wear out much, much faster when you have no medical care, little protection from the elements, starvation one out of every three years, etc. In fact, you can see just this sort of thing in very poor areas of the Third World today, if you're so inclined. It's a nasty little horror show, when all is said and done.
I'm not sure near technology synthesized immortality is such a great thing.
It would be even worse if the self-appointed morally superior among us decided that we'd all be condemned to die via old age simply because they thought immortality wasn't something anyone deserved. If practical immortality were developed and certain power groups tried to keep it from the general population you'd have bloody revolution overnight. Essentially you'd be telling them "we like the status quo, we like things just the way they are, and in order to maintain the status quo we've decided to sentence you to death".
That wouldn't go over so well with the vast majority of the human race. It'd boil down to a choice between the possibility of dying during the course of a revolution to destroy all those sick egomaniacal motherfuckers who're trying to keep immortality from the rest of us, and the absolute certainty of dying if those nasty twats aren't put up against a wall and shot. That's pretty much a no-brainer.
There is benefit in the renewal that comes with the old dieing and letting young, fresh people take over.
Something only someone "young and fresh" could say with a straight face. In case you haven't noticed (and you probably haven't, if you're young), youth doesn't confer any special benefits, nor wisdom, nor insight. In fact, the phrase "young and stupid" pretty much is a defining quality for those under the age of 30, if only because it takes so bloody long for human beings (at least male human beings) to mature. The young are often foolish, arrogant, self-involved, and possessed of the idea that they're far more important than they actually are. They also seem to be compelled to announce the fact that they're alive to the entire world, time and time again, as if somehow that were a special piece of knowledge (e.g., the pricks who jack up their car stereo systems so you can hear their shitty rap music a block away).
Immortality would be a blessing, I think, because the number of young in relation to the rest of the population would decline dramatically.
Simply because the mind arises from ultimately understandable biological mechanisms doesn't make the mind mechanistic in nature. You're working from an implied assumption that has no basis in fact, nor which follows automatically from the idea that the process of thought can indeed be understood at all levels.
If choice is reducible to material mechanisms, it is not choice at all.
That's the assumption I'm talking about. B doesn't necessarily follow from A; you're just making a leap of faith as if that had to be the case, and no alternative explanation is allowed.
then in fact there is something "magical" about the brain, or at least the mind.
No magic required, any more than some mystical "spark of life" is needed in order to jump-start a living cell. The mechanisms of the cell are understandable; this doesn't mean the cell is any less 'alive' than it was before these mechanisms started yielding up their secrets to science.
The brain is certainly fully understandable, given enough time and advancement in the sciences. Understanding the brain and how conscious thought evolved doesn't make that thought mechanistic; it doesn't strip us of self-awareness or choice. It'll only show us how these things arose in the first place.
Everyone engages in a bit of escapism once in a while.
The poster didn't claim otherwise. He did, however, claim that an obsessive interest in RPGs *is* a form of escapism for people with poorly developed social skills who have difficulty conducting themselves appropriately in the real world. Their escapism is designed to temporarily disconnect them from that world, whereas the hobbies of 'normal' folks do just the opposite (e.g., gardening). And unlike other escapist hobbies they actually have assistance in the form of other folks just like them who're trying to do the same thing.
He also pointed out that almost invariably these people are looking to be more important than they actually are, or ever will be. This isn't the goal of mystery novels, or Clancy, or any popular mainstream book, which tell stories without the focus being on making the reader the fantastical hero, the "Chosen One", the person they think they would be if only they were *somewhere else*. Regular Joes and Janes who pick up a Clancy novel do indeed like the excitement that comes with it, but they have absolutely no desire whatsoever to actually live through whatever happens to be going on in the book. Reading about a spy getting shot at by the bad guys is one thing, actually getting shot at yourself is quite another, and Joe/Jane - being grounded in here-and-now reality - are well aware of that.
These are valid observations. I can't see how anyone could think otherwise, especially if you've been exposed to a plethora of RPG fans. For most of them - not all, but most - there's a common thread running through the theme which amounts to:
- in inability or unwillingness to interact with others in an appropriate fashion - an unwillingness to spend more time than necessary on real-world activities, preferring to focus on escapist fantasy - the belief that they possess an unrecognized greatness which would properly be revealed if only they could be transported to an alternate reality; and in *that* reality they wouldn't be the ignored nerd but instead the much-loved hero.
If going to war with Iraq despite the protests of literally millions of UK citizens didn't get Blair unelected, how much impact do you think this will have on the career of some EU Commissioner who isn't even directly elected anyway?
And how, exactly, would this be a US problem? Hell, Europe is pissed off enough over the fact that we invaded a proven dictatorship with a track record of committing regular atrocities; imagine how much more pissed off they'd be if we invaded a country simply because their representatives don't care to, well, actually REPRESENT them.
At present, however, it can exert absolute control over ICANN for practical purposes; it just usually doesn't.
Which doesn't mean jack, because ICANN can't exert any practical power over the root server system. Hell, there's no law which requires even *American* root servers to recognize the authority of ICANN; they do so simply because the alternative is worse.
The US government could seize control of ICANN and proclaim world mastery of the root server system tomorrow, complete with maniacal laugh, and it would mean absolutely nothing. Twelve respected geeks with decent server systems could have an alternate root up and running in 24 hours, with anyone who chooses to do so pointing to them instead of the current root. Or the current roots could simply tell ICANN to take a long walk off a short pier, and that would be the end of that.
What's your problem with the.xxx domain?
I've already made that point abundantly clear. Everyone and their brother is going to have a different set of standards for what belongs in the.xxx domain. Those standards will vary from country to country, from community to community, from neighbor to neighbor. The only point of setting something like this up is so that idiots with poles up their asses can banish anything they think is 'pornographic' off the mainstream.
It would make far more sense to set up a.kids domain, as a previous poster pointed out. That domain would be for children, everything else is adult by default. But this wouldn't satisfy the righteous, who're only happy when they have the power to make the rest of us conform to their own narrow views on how things should be.
it's just saying that if you're going to talk about subjects only suitable for adults
We have a place for that; it's called "the internet". If you want a kiddy-safe domain, then champion.kids. The internet as a whole is NOT for children and was never developed for children. Letting kids run rampant across it is just poor parenting.
If you have a problem with that
Of course I do. I have a big problem with YOU setting moral standards for ME. Tend to your own affairs and keep your nose out of mine.
and if it tries to play the isolation/fragmentation game
Then it'll win, as 99% of the world's population doesn't know shit about this issue, nor would care about it even if it were explained to them. *Their* internet works fine, and having it fucked up because their local politicians decided to do a bit of dick-measuring is going to go down about as well as a cupful of axle grease after a meal of nachos and grits. Of course this won't matter to the dictatorships of the world, but I'm pretty sure that the members of European nations would be inclined to toss out the current idiots in office and replace them with new ones.
it's going to miss the rest of the world a lot more than the rest of the world misses it.
Close to 80% of all commercial web sites are American. More than 60% of all personal websites are American. Somehow, I think you're mistaken. If the entirety of the EU were to set up their own root servers, Europeans would notice it a hell of a lot more than Americans would.
The only constructive thing the US administration can do is try to talk/bribe them out of it diplomatically and/or hope they decide that it's not really a good idea after all and drop it.
No, the easiest way to prove the point is to tell them to go screw themselves, and build their own root server system. Then watch as their own citizenry gets righteously pissed that their "internet thingy" doesn't work because of what their politicians have done. Shake, stir, wait for new politicians to be elected, then - game over.
On general principles I think the US should be forced to relinquish absolute control
The US has no "absolute control", and anyone claiming the contrary is just plain technically ignorant. Your country can, at any time, set up its own root server system. Not that anyone else will give a shit, and I doubt you'd be able to convince even your own ISPs to point to those root servers without threatening them with force, but hey - you can do it if you want. Go right head, we Americans can't stop you - literally, we CAN'T stop you. We don't have this "absolute control" over the system you seem to think we have.
by effectively vetoing the.xxx TLD
The.xxx domain was proposed by religious fundies and other assholes who want to tell their neighbors what they can say and where they can say it. Funny, our own government - the one so many Europeans claim is devolving into a fundamentalist quagmire - though that this was a *bad idea*. Imagine that.
Ignoring and using pure force, well, you'll be given your own medicine soon that way and i bet you won't like it.
It's time you started taking your medication again, boy. The US isn't going to be invaded by your fantasy conglomeration of righteous nations, now or at any time in the future. That's nothing more than the stuff of schizophrenic delusion.
The US having absolute control of that much economic infrastructure
Which lasts as long as it takes for twelve geeks in your country to decide that they're now the root servers, and to convince everyone else to point to them. Or have your government force everyone else point to them, if your government is a dictatorship.
The only reason the U.S. has control is because other people allow it to have control. You can always decide to start your own game elsewhere. And really, sometimes I'd rather wish you would.
Apparently it's okay to topple a brutal *European* dictatorship and restore freedom to Old World powers, but the moment we try to do the same in what used to be the oppressed colonial states of those Old World powers we're somehow evil, or at the very least misguided. I guess if Britain had gone in and deposed Saddam it'd be okay, 'cuz, like, they once brutalized that region of the world, and therefore they have some nebulous claim on it.
Not that I support the war, but that's simply because I could give a rat's ass over who's in charge in the area. Nor do I want to waste American lives toppling the other 80+ dictatorships in the world, as it seems that no one else cares to do the job and it'd be entirely up to us. Me, I'd rather return to a pre-1917 form of isolationism and let the world hash out it's own troubles, while we sell to whoever happens to be buying.
As an American, I'm damned tired of getting blamed for everything we do, then getting blamed again for everything we *don't* do. So why don't we just say "hey, fuck you all, we're going home" and let them deal with their own messes? Or at the very least let Europe take responsibility for the creation of the Third World in the first place, and give them a shot at fixing what they broke? Well, assuming they'd even try, since they weren't terribly interested in that whole Serbian Fourth Reich thing a few years back, and that was in their own back yard.
France and Belgium were evil but that was before my life time, and I suspect yours (unless you're 200).
How is this relevant? The Third World is the mess it is today because of European oppression, slavery, genocide, and centuries of brutal misrule. Are you saying that your country bears no blame whatsoever because your ancestors, who perpetrated abominations against people all over the world, are dead? You're absolved from your national sins because there aren't any living examples to point fingers at?
Great! I'll use that as an excuse for why the U.S. bears no blame for what was done to Native Americans. Why should we, since the folks who actually did the murdering and the raping and the pillaging and the forced relocations are all six feet under?
Then the US can wall off their own little Internet, and pretend the rest of the world isn't out there.
Most of the rest of the world seems to be fine with things just the way they are. The only people who object to it are a few politicians and their brain-dead supporters. In fact, I'm willing to bet that a poll conducted pretty much anywhere in the world would indicate that the vast majority of folks don't even know this "issue" exists. The internet works just fine for them, and I doubt they could see any reason for changing things, or would even care.
It will stop all the spam from mouthbreathing Comcast users
As opposed to the mouth-breathers who use other ISPs, both in the US and Europe? It's painfully obvious to anyone with a few neurons to rub together that Europe has just as many idiots as America does; stupidity isn't a specific national trait.
The US will wall itself off more and more
Riiiight. You mean a few spoiled little brats who can't have ICANN will wall themselves off from the rest of us, to the great anger of their own citizenry (excepting the Chinese, who're already doing it). Good call, that; let's see how long the English, or Danish, or Hungarians put up with politicians grandstanding when it means they can no longer reach any of their favorite sites. That'll put an end to this crap right quick.
While a good idea, you have to remember that the folks lobbying for an.xxx domain are doing so precisely so they can tell the rest of us how to think, and speak, and act. They aren't having any fun if they can't use force against the rest of us. And they're absolutely certain that their own moral superiority will qualify them, and them alone, to decide what is 'pornographic' and what isn't - which I'm sure includes a good dose of insanity, e.g., banishing any and all nudes painted by Renaissance greats as 'smut'.
if you have all the smut under.xxx it is much easier to filter stuff out.
And what exactly are you going to do. Force everyone who serves up porn to move the.xxx domain, under penalty of law? If so, then who gets to decide what's porn? The U.S. religious right? Iran? Me?
The.xxx domain solves nothing, and serves only as a potential tool to oppress others - especially the owners of sites which aren't pornographic, but which certain religious groups would like to classify as such in order to drive them off the 'mainstream'.
sounds like you have a case of the intelligent design syndrome
No, I have a case of the "common sense" syndrome. As in, I'm an omnivore and my body is made to occasionally ingest things made of meat. Which turns out to be animals, once killed and properly cooked (not to mention seasoned and served with yummy side dishes).
Your post, however, is pretty amusing. Just take a look at my sig to see why.
That's the key difference between a republic and a democracy. In a republic, you vote in reps and they, in turn, vote for you (or so that's the theory). In a democracy you vote directly on every issue that comes before the government; you have no voting representatives.
We here in the US of A have a Constitutional republic, not a democracy. And that's a damned good thing, because "democracy" is also known as "tyranny by the majority", which is only a good thing if you're one of the happy majority.
Yeah, like flying around with a piece of plywood as a parasail, or turning a vacuum cleaner into a jet engine. It's amazing the sort of garbage that people buy into, even the supposedly educated ones.
Ahh... but maybe setting ships on fire was such a common, effective strategy because the ships were so flammable?
Rather, aside from ramming it was the only realistic tactic. No effective naval artillery at the time meant you could either ram, or try to light the other guy on fire, or board. The usual method for destroying the enemy was to ram and then board (the ram keeping both ships in contact), or to ram repeatedly until the other guy sank.
It wasn't particularly difficult to set a fire, but it was difficult to keep one going. Ancient crews were well trained (and *extremely* well motivated) in fire control, which is one of the reasons that most ship-to-ship battles made little use of fire except as an annoyance tactic (i.e., to keep enemy crew occupied with putting them out, rather than lobbing arrows in your general direction).
Why should he be? No one has ever managed to offer up a single shred of empirical evidence that magical powers are real. Oh, excuse me: the vogue 21st century term is "psychic", I guess so you don't sound so much like a stupid twat when you claim that magic is real and that you can, indeed, cast spells.
There's no reason to treat magic as a heretofore unexplored branch of science since no one, anywhere, has ever managed to do anything magic as evidence that the paranormal exists. People who claim to have these powers are either fooling themselves, fooling other people, or doing both.
Given the complete and utter lack of this evidence, Randi's approach is perfectly reasonable. Especially since Randi has a perfect, 100% track record of debunking this crap as what it is: delusion and con artistry.
It's also unlikely that a Roman warship would be 80 years old
It's even less likely that the Greeks had access to the same modern technology the students had to produce exceptional efficient mirrors. You want to replace the fishing boat with a replica of an ancient Roman quadrireme, then you'll also have to replace those modern mirrors with handcrafted duplicates of what the Greeks might've built.
I'm still going with "this is just another bullshit myth" for $200, Alex.
Even today, many, if not most, of the experiments are non-replicable.
If it isn't replicable it isn't science. Part and parcel of the empirical method. Which means the boys at MIT proved nothing whatsoever, and the myth of the death ray remains that: a myth.
Taken together creates a society (is that an evil word?) where no good is done, only the profitable.
What the hell are you talking about? Government is in the business of providing service WITHOUT the pursuit of profit. Corporations pursue profit uber alles, government is expressly DISinterested in profit of any sort. I can't possibly see how you could confuse the two entities, their directives, or their goals.
The software analogy is bullshit and I won't even go there. Either speak to the topic at hand or give it up. Analogies are for people who can't address the primary argument, or simply don't understand it.
Changing patent law to ensure that it gets the fuck out of the way of caring for people is not the end of freedom or democracy
Using the power of law to destroy free enterprise you don't happen to like is just plain ol' fascism, no matter which way you dress it up. I provided a mechanism that would allow a semblance of the free market to survive while using government power to keep people honest (or accomplish goals which private industry isn't interested in), and that's a damned sight better than anything you've put forward. In case you've forgotten, the US of A is at the very least pseudo-capitalist, and there isn't a chance in hell we're going to take the long, idiotic march to pseudo-socialism any time in the near future.
positing a society where principles are laughed at, and purposefully unfunded --well that is.
Your inability to comprehend basic English is astounding. Really. It's almost awe-inspiring, in a twisted sort of way. I think I'm going to call it quits before this exchange gets any more bizarre.
I get the feeling that many of these groups are in it to "fight the establishment" and for the power to meddle with people's lives.
I'll go one further. They seem to be doing their best to destroy all technological advancement, decrying every step forward as furthering some great evil against their god - Gaia. They are, for want of a better description, a sort of militant environmental Amish, willing to use whatever dirty tactic at hand to freeze all development so we'll be stuck in a state of perpetual crisis, where they can forever shrilly scream about how the rest of us heathens are doomed. I think there worst nightmare would be having the entire Earth's populatin turn 'green' overnight, because who then would they have to blame, to point fingers at, to call interdict down upon?
A further subset, characterized by the Earth First! and PETA folks, would only be happy if all but a few tens of thousands of human beings were wiped out, with the pathetic remainder returning to a hunter-gatherer existence - which would no doubt include their righteous selves as the new priests to their Mother Earth goddess. From that vantage they could spend the rest of their lives telling us what dirty little sinners we are just for daring the soil the surface of our Holy Mother with our filthy feet, and how greatful we should be that they, the priests, are there to show us The One True and Right Way(TM).
Disclaimer: I live in a university town, in Oregon. I get exposed to these crackpots on a regular basis, and college kids - supposedly the best and brightest of us - lap it up like born-agains at a tent revival. I don't know what they're teaching in college anymore, but it sure as hell isn't critical thinking.
Why is feeling that the factory killing of billions of animals annually "bat-shit insane" ?
Like a previous poster said, if we weren't meant to eat animals they wouldn't be made out of meat. Should be simple enough to grasp.
Hey, if you don't want to eat 'em, fine by me. Just don't bug the rest of us about it, especially not when we're enjoying a nice, big, fat, juicy steak. MMMMMMM!
Slashdot Mirror
we have extended our life spans, if you have the money, to the point that we live much longer than we should
I don't know where you get the "should" part. There is no universal mandate on how long any one person "should" live.
Aside from which, if you want to live a 'natural' lifespan in much the way our ancestors have for the last couple of million years, that would be somewhere between 30 and 35 years of age. Our distant hunter-gatherer relatives had a hard life and rarely made it past that age. And no, this wasn't simply due to accidents and diseases; they also aged prematurely, although to them this wasn't premature at all. Human beings wear out much, much faster when you have no medical care, little protection from the elements, starvation one out of every three years, etc. In fact, you can see just this sort of thing in very poor areas of the Third World today, if you're so inclined. It's a nasty little horror show, when all is said and done.
I'm not sure near technology synthesized immortality is such a great thing.
It would be even worse if the self-appointed morally superior among us decided that we'd all be condemned to die via old age simply because they thought immortality wasn't something anyone deserved. If practical immortality were developed and certain power groups tried to keep it from the general population you'd have bloody revolution overnight. Essentially you'd be telling them "we like the status quo, we like things just the way they are, and in order to maintain the status quo we've decided to sentence you to death".
That wouldn't go over so well with the vast majority of the human race. It'd boil down to a choice between the possibility of dying during the course of a revolution to destroy all those sick egomaniacal motherfuckers who're trying to keep immortality from the rest of us, and the absolute certainty of dying if those nasty twats aren't put up against a wall and shot. That's pretty much a no-brainer.
There is benefit in the renewal that comes with the old dieing and letting young, fresh people take over.
Something only someone "young and fresh" could say with a straight face. In case you haven't noticed (and you probably haven't, if you're young), youth doesn't confer any special benefits, nor wisdom, nor insight. In fact, the phrase "young and stupid" pretty much is a defining quality for those under the age of 30, if only because it takes so bloody long for human beings (at least male human beings) to mature. The young are often foolish, arrogant, self-involved, and possessed of the idea that they're far more important than they actually are. They also seem to be compelled to announce the fact that they're alive to the entire world, time and time again, as if somehow that were a special piece of knowledge (e.g., the pricks who jack up their car stereo systems so you can hear their shitty rap music a block away).
Immortality would be a blessing, I think, because the number of young in relation to the rest of the population would decline dramatically.
Max
If so, how would "choice" come about at all?
Simply because the mind arises from ultimately understandable biological mechanisms doesn't make the mind mechanistic in nature. You're working from an implied assumption that has no basis in fact, nor which follows automatically from the idea that the process of thought can indeed be understood at all levels.
If choice is reducible to material mechanisms, it is not choice at all.
That's the assumption I'm talking about. B doesn't necessarily follow from A; you're just making a leap of faith as if that had to be the case, and no alternative explanation is allowed.
then in fact there is something "magical" about the brain, or at least the mind.
No magic required, any more than some mystical "spark of life" is needed in order to jump-start a living cell. The mechanisms of the cell are understandable; this doesn't mean the cell is any less 'alive' than it was before these mechanisms started yielding up their secrets to science.
The brain is certainly fully understandable, given enough time and advancement in the sciences. Understanding the brain and how conscious thought evolved doesn't make that thought mechanistic; it doesn't strip us of self-awareness or choice. It'll only show us how these things arose in the first place.
Max
Everyone engages in a bit of escapism once in a while.
The poster didn't claim otherwise. He did, however, claim that an obsessive interest in RPGs *is* a form of escapism for people with poorly developed social skills who have difficulty conducting themselves appropriately in the real world. Their escapism is designed to temporarily disconnect them from that world, whereas the hobbies of 'normal' folks do just the opposite (e.g., gardening). And unlike other escapist hobbies they actually have assistance in the form of other folks just like them who're trying to do the same thing.
He also pointed out that almost invariably these people are looking to be more important than they actually are, or ever will be. This isn't the goal of mystery novels, or Clancy, or any popular mainstream book, which tell stories without the focus being on making the reader the fantastical hero, the "Chosen One", the person they think they would be if only they were *somewhere else*. Regular Joes and Janes who pick up a Clancy novel do indeed like the excitement that comes with it, but they have absolutely no desire whatsoever to actually live through whatever happens to be going on in the book. Reading about a spy getting shot at by the bad guys is one thing, actually getting shot at yourself is quite another, and Joe/Jane - being grounded in here-and-now reality - are well aware of that.
These are valid observations. I can't see how anyone could think otherwise, especially if you've been exposed to a plethora of RPG fans. For most of them - not all, but most - there's a common thread running through the theme which amounts to:
- in inability or unwillingness to interact with others in an appropriate fashion
- an unwillingness to spend more time than necessary on real-world activities, preferring to focus on escapist fantasy
- the belief that they possess an unrecognized greatness which would properly be revealed if only they could be transported to an alternate reality; and in *that* reality they wouldn't be the ignored nerd but instead the much-loved hero.
Max
If going to war with Iraq despite the protests of literally millions of UK citizens didn't get Blair unelected, how much impact do you think this will have on the career of some EU Commissioner who isn't even directly elected anyway?
.xxx domain?
.xxx domain. Those standards will vary from country to country, from community to community, from neighbor to neighbor. The only point of setting something like this up is so that idiots with poles up their asses can banish anything they think is 'pornographic' off the mainstream.
.kids domain, as a previous poster pointed out. That domain would be for children, everything else is adult by default. But this wouldn't satisfy the righteous, who're only happy when they have the power to make the rest of us conform to their own narrow views on how things should be.
.kids. The internet as a whole is NOT for children and was never developed for children. Letting kids run rampant across it is just poor parenting.
And how, exactly, would this be a US problem? Hell, Europe is pissed off enough over the fact that we invaded a proven dictatorship with a track record of committing regular atrocities; imagine how much more pissed off they'd be if we invaded a country simply because their representatives don't care to, well, actually REPRESENT them.
At present, however, it can exert absolute control over ICANN for practical purposes; it just usually doesn't.
Which doesn't mean jack, because ICANN can't exert any practical power over the root server system. Hell, there's no law which requires even *American* root servers to recognize the authority of ICANN; they do so simply because the alternative is worse.
The US government could seize control of ICANN and proclaim world mastery of the root server system tomorrow, complete with maniacal laugh, and it would mean absolutely nothing. Twelve respected geeks with decent server systems could have an alternate root up and running in 24 hours, with anyone who chooses to do so pointing to them instead of the current root. Or the current roots could simply tell ICANN to take a long walk off a short pier, and that would be the end of that.
What's your problem with the
I've already made that point abundantly clear. Everyone and their brother is going to have a different set of standards for what belongs in the
It would make far more sense to set up a
it's just saying that if you're going to talk about subjects only suitable for adults
We have a place for that; it's called "the internet". If you want a kiddy-safe domain, then champion
If you have a problem with that
Of course I do. I have a big problem with YOU setting moral standards for ME. Tend to your own affairs and keep your nose out of mine.
Max
If you believe in god though then capitalism is nothing less then the codifications of the seven deadly sins into law.
While socialism is the expression of those sins at the hands of government.
Max
and if it tries to play the isolation/fragmentation game
.xxx TLD
.xxx domain was proposed by religious fundies and other assholes who want to tell their neighbors what they can say and where they can say it. Funny, our own government - the one so many Europeans claim is devolving into a fundamentalist quagmire - though that this was a *bad idea*. Imagine that.
Then it'll win, as 99% of the world's population doesn't know shit about this issue, nor would care about it even if it were explained to them. *Their* internet works fine, and having it fucked up because their local politicians decided to do a bit of dick-measuring is going to go down about as well as a cupful of axle grease after a meal of nachos and grits. Of course this won't matter to the dictatorships of the world, but I'm pretty sure that the members of European nations would be inclined to toss out the current idiots in office and replace them with new ones.
it's going to miss the rest of the world a lot more than the rest of the world misses it.
Close to 80% of all commercial web sites are American. More than 60% of all personal websites are American. Somehow, I think you're mistaken. If the entirety of the EU were to set up their own root servers, Europeans would notice it a hell of a lot more than Americans would.
The only constructive thing the US administration can do is try to talk/bribe them out of it diplomatically and/or hope they decide that it's not really a good idea after all and drop it.
No, the easiest way to prove the point is to tell them to go screw themselves, and build their own root server system. Then watch as their own citizenry gets righteously pissed that their "internet thingy" doesn't work because of what their politicians have done. Shake, stir, wait for new politicians to be elected, then - game over.
On general principles I think the US should be forced to relinquish absolute control
The US has no "absolute control", and anyone claiming the contrary is just plain technically ignorant. Your country can, at any time, set up its own root server system. Not that anyone else will give a shit, and I doubt you'd be able to convince even your own ISPs to point to those root servers without threatening them with force, but hey - you can do it if you want. Go right head, we Americans can't stop you - literally, we CAN'T stop you. We don't have this "absolute control" over the system you seem to think we have.
by effectively vetoing the
The
Max
Ignoring and using pure force, well, you'll be given your own medicine soon that way and i bet you won't like it.
It's time you started taking your medication again, boy. The US isn't going to be invaded by your fantasy conglomeration of righteous nations, now or at any time in the future. That's nothing more than the stuff of schizophrenic delusion.
Max
The US having absolute control of that much economic infrastructure
Which lasts as long as it takes for twelve geeks in your country to decide that they're now the root servers, and to convince everyone else to point to them. Or have your government force everyone else point to them, if your government is a dictatorship.
The only reason the U.S. has control is because other people allow it to have control. You can always decide to start your own game elsewhere. And really, sometimes I'd rather wish you would.
Max
Apparently it's okay to topple a brutal *European* dictatorship and restore freedom to Old World powers, but the moment we try to do the same in what used to be the oppressed colonial states of those Old World powers we're somehow evil, or at the very least misguided. I guess if Britain had gone in and deposed Saddam it'd be okay, 'cuz, like, they once brutalized that region of the world, and therefore they have some nebulous claim on it.
Not that I support the war, but that's simply because I could give a rat's ass over who's in charge in the area. Nor do I want to waste American lives toppling the other 80+ dictatorships in the world, as it seems that no one else cares to do the job and it'd be entirely up to us. Me, I'd rather return to a pre-1917 form of isolationism and let the world hash out it's own troubles, while we sell to whoever happens to be buying.
As an American, I'm damned tired of getting blamed for everything we do, then getting blamed again for everything we *don't* do. So why don't we just say "hey, fuck you all, we're going home" and let them deal with their own messes? Or at the very least let Europe take responsibility for the creation of the Third World in the first place, and give them a shot at fixing what they broke? Well, assuming they'd even try, since they weren't terribly interested in that whole Serbian Fourth Reich thing a few years back, and that was in their own back yard.
Max
France and Belgium were evil but that was before my life time, and I suspect yours (unless you're 200).
How is this relevant? The Third World is the mess it is today because of European oppression, slavery, genocide, and centuries of brutal misrule. Are you saying that your country bears no blame whatsoever because your ancestors, who perpetrated abominations against people all over the world, are dead? You're absolved from your national sins because there aren't any living examples to point fingers at?
Great! I'll use that as an excuse for why the U.S. bears no blame for what was done to Native Americans. Why should we, since the folks who actually did the murdering and the raping and the pillaging and the forced relocations are all six feet under?
Max
Then the US can wall off their own little Internet, and pretend the rest of the world isn't out there.
Most of the rest of the world seems to be fine with things just the way they are. The only people who object to it are a few politicians and their brain-dead supporters. In fact, I'm willing to bet that a poll conducted pretty much anywhere in the world would indicate that the vast majority of folks don't even know this "issue" exists. The internet works just fine for them, and I doubt they could see any reason for changing things, or would even care.
It will stop all the spam from mouthbreathing Comcast users
As opposed to the mouth-breathers who use other ISPs, both in the US and Europe? It's painfully obvious to anyone with a few neurons to rub together that Europe has just as many idiots as America does; stupidity isn't a specific national trait.
The US will wall itself off more and more
Riiiight. You mean a few spoiled little brats who can't have ICANN will wall themselves off from the rest of us, to the great anger of their own citizenry (excepting the Chinese, who're already doing it). Good call, that; let's see how long the English, or Danish, or Hungarians put up with politicians grandstanding when it means they can no longer reach any of their favorite sites. That'll put an end to this crap right quick.
the UN has to come in and sort it out.
That would be a first for the UN.
Max
I'm all in favor of .kids
.xxx domain are doing so precisely so they can tell the rest of us how to think, and speak, and act. They aren't having any fun if they can't use force against the rest of us. And they're absolutely certain that their own moral superiority will qualify them, and them alone, to decide what is 'pornographic' and what isn't - which I'm sure includes a good dose of insanity, e.g., banishing any and all nudes painted by Renaissance greats as 'smut'.
While a good idea, you have to remember that the folks lobbying for an
Max
if you have all the smut under .xxx it is much easier to filter stuff out.
.xxx domain, under penalty of law? If so, then who gets to decide what's porn? The U.S. religious right? Iran? Me?
.xxx domain solves nothing, and serves only as a potential tool to oppress others - especially the owners of sites which aren't pornographic, but which certain religious groups would like to classify as such in order to drive them off the 'mainstream'.
And what exactly are you going to do. Force everyone who serves up porn to move the
The
Max
You know, this is a perfect justification for eating human flesh, too.
It would be, if humans didn't taste so bloody bad.
Max
sounds like you have a case of the intelligent design syndrome
No, I have a case of the "common sense" syndrome. As in, I'm an omnivore and my body is made to occasionally ingest things made of meat. Which turns out to be animals, once killed and properly cooked (not to mention seasoned and served with yummy side dishes).
Your post, however, is pretty amusing. Just take a look at my sig to see why.
Max
and is exercised by elected officers
That's the key difference between a republic and a democracy. In a republic, you vote in reps and they, in turn, vote for you (or so that's the theory). In a democracy you vote directly on every issue that comes before the government; you have no voting representatives.
We here in the US of A have a Constitutional republic, not a democracy. And that's a damned good thing, because "democracy" is also known as "tyranny by the majority", which is only a good thing if you're one of the happy majority.
Max
Yeah, like flying around with a piece of plywood as a parasail, or turning a vacuum cleaner into a jet engine. It's amazing the sort of garbage that people buy into, even the supposedly educated ones.
Max
It saddens me that so many people watch the show, and then consider them to be master scientists.
Sounds like someone had one of his pet myths busted.
Max
Ahh... but maybe setting ships on fire was such a common, effective strategy because the ships were so flammable?
Rather, aside from ramming it was the only realistic tactic. No effective naval artillery at the time meant you could either ram, or try to light the other guy on fire, or board. The usual method for destroying the enemy was to ram and then board (the ram keeping both ships in contact), or to ram repeatedly until the other guy sank.
It wasn't particularly difficult to set a fire, but it was difficult to keep one going. Ancient crews were well trained (and *extremely* well motivated) in fire control, which is one of the reasons that most ship-to-ship battles made little use of fire except as an annoyance tactic (i.e., to keep enemy crew occupied with putting them out, rather than lobbing arrows in your general direction).
Max
Randi doesn't even pretend to be unbiased.
Why should he be? No one has ever managed to offer up a single shred of empirical evidence that magical powers are real. Oh, excuse me: the vogue 21st century term is "psychic", I guess so you don't sound so much like a stupid twat when you claim that magic is real and that you can, indeed, cast spells.
There's no reason to treat magic as a heretofore unexplored branch of science since no one, anywhere, has ever managed to do anything magic as evidence that the paranormal exists. People who claim to have these powers are either fooling themselves, fooling other people, or doing both.
Given the complete and utter lack of this evidence, Randi's approach is perfectly reasonable. Especially since Randi has a perfect, 100% track record of debunking this crap as what it is: delusion and con artistry.
Max
It's also unlikely that a Roman warship would be 80 years old
It's even less likely that the Greeks had access to the same modern technology the students had to produce exceptional efficient mirrors. You want to replace the fishing boat with a replica of an ancient Roman quadrireme, then you'll also have to replace those modern mirrors with handcrafted duplicates of what the Greeks might've built.
I'm still going with "this is just another bullshit myth" for $200, Alex.
Max
Even today, many, if not most, of the experiments are non-replicable.
If it isn't replicable it isn't science. Part and parcel of the empirical method. Which means the boys at MIT proved nothing whatsoever, and the myth of the death ray remains that: a myth.
Max
Taken together creates a society (is that an evil word?) where no good is done, only the profitable.
What the hell are you talking about? Government is in the business of providing service WITHOUT the pursuit of profit. Corporations pursue profit uber alles, government is expressly DISinterested in profit of any sort. I can't possibly see how you could confuse the two entities, their directives, or their goals.
The software analogy is bullshit and I won't even go there. Either speak to the topic at hand or give it up. Analogies are for people who can't address the primary argument, or simply don't understand it.
Changing patent law to ensure that it gets the fuck out of the way of caring for people is not the end of freedom or democracy
Using the power of law to destroy free enterprise you don't happen to like is just plain ol' fascism, no matter which way you dress it up. I provided a mechanism that would allow a semblance of the free market to survive while using government power to keep people honest (or accomplish goals which private industry isn't interested in), and that's a damned sight better than anything you've put forward. In case you've forgotten, the US of A is at the very least pseudo-capitalist, and there isn't a chance in hell we're going to take the long, idiotic march to pseudo-socialism any time in the near future.
positing a society where principles are laughed at, and purposefully unfunded --well that is.
Your inability to comprehend basic English is astounding. Really. It's almost awe-inspiring, in a twisted sort of way. I think I'm going to call it quits before this exchange gets any more bizarre.
Max
I get the feeling that many of these groups are in it to "fight the establishment" and for the power to meddle with people's lives.
I'll go one further. They seem to be doing their best to destroy all technological advancement, decrying every step forward as furthering some great evil against their god - Gaia. They are, for want of a better description, a sort of militant environmental Amish, willing to use whatever dirty tactic at hand to freeze all development so we'll be stuck in a state of perpetual crisis, where they can forever shrilly scream about how the rest of us heathens are doomed. I think there worst nightmare would be having the entire Earth's populatin turn 'green' overnight, because who then would they have to blame, to point fingers at, to call interdict down upon?
A further subset, characterized by the Earth First! and PETA folks, would only be happy if all but a few tens of thousands of human beings were wiped out, with the pathetic remainder returning to a hunter-gatherer existence - which would no doubt include their righteous selves as the new priests to their Mother Earth goddess. From that vantage they could spend the rest of their lives telling us what dirty little sinners we are just for daring the soil the surface of our Holy Mother with our filthy feet, and how greatful we should be that they, the priests, are there to show us The One True and Right Way(TM).
Disclaimer: I live in a university town, in Oregon. I get exposed to these crackpots on a regular basis, and college kids - supposedly the best and brightest of us - lap it up like born-agains at a tent revival. I don't know what they're teaching in college anymore, but it sure as hell isn't critical thinking.
Max
Why is feeling that the factory killing of billions of animals annually "bat-shit insane" ?
Like a previous poster said, if we weren't meant to eat animals they wouldn't be made out of meat. Should be simple enough to grasp.
Hey, if you don't want to eat 'em, fine by me. Just don't bug the rest of us about it, especially not when we're enjoying a nice, big, fat, juicy steak. MMMMMMM!
Max