I have no problems with Clinton, or Bush for that matter (re their drug use). Policies, now that's another matter.
I have a HUGE problem with people who did the crime, didn't do the time, but think that the law is just and that other people should do their time.
I have this problem not just with elected officials, but with anyone who is guilty of a crime, evaded prosecution, but "supports" the law (as it applies to other people).
p.s. I am almost positive that the last 5 prime ministers of Canada smoked weed at some time.
No way. Chretien said he never did, but might try if it became legal. Doesn't mean he didn't actually smoke the wacky tabaccy, but he's not the type. Way too uptight. Martin either.
Are all of you people so stupid that you do not realise that all laws are codified morality ? Unless you think laws against murder and theft are not moral laws ? What are they then ? Are they simply based on the personal preferences of judges and politicians ?
Like I said in a previous post, laws against murder and theft have nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with protecting one's life and proprety.
People don't make laws against murder and theft because they believe it is wrong to murder and steal, they make these laws because they are affraid of being murdered or stolen from. That is very obvious.
Why is it that supposedly intelligent people have such incredibly poor reasoning skills ?
I don't know why people supposed you were intelligent; you clearly have very poor reasoning skills.
Maybe one day we can apply this thinking elsewhere and stop encroaching other freedoms. I look forward to the day when I don't have to look underground to find doctors who don't want to listen to the AMA
You want incompetant doctors to work on you?
people to design my buildings that don't have to suck the teet of the AIA
I hope you'll put a sign in front that says "this building ignores safety codes, approach at your own risk, may collapse at any time"!
And maybe one day, just one day, I won't need to grovel on my hands and knees to be granted the "privilege" of driving a motor vehicle, and say please and thank you to a cop who threatens to get it revoked.
There's already enough fucking morons driving like maniacs out there, I think there should be MORE restrictions there! Retake the exams every 10 years! Activate a transponder if the car is driven for a week without ever engaging a turn signal!
Lets start with welfare, it's there because people deserve a second chance (a moral decision) and people need a helping hand (again a moral decision). Now even if I agree with those sentements, it is easily my choice to decide not to help people out with my money. After all, it's my money, and I'm an adult, I can decide what I want to do with it. Yet, the government takes my money and gives it to poor people. They force me to be charitable, thus forcing a particular beleif system on me. You choose to watch porn, I choose to save my money.
Lets see. First of all, watching porn doesn't hurt anyone. Being unable to buy food does.
Secondly, the wellfare of the state is dependant on the wellfare of it's citizens. Wellfare isn't a purely moral endeavour, it's there to provide the population with bread and circuses so that they will be content and do not rise up against the government.
Every particular set of laws which forbids something that doesn't violate the rights of another person is a moral decision imposing a set of beleifs upon society. Porn, obcenity, drinking and gun ownership are all variations on the same thing.
The right to health and security is harmed by lack of food or overabundance of guns.
Gun laws aren't meant to prohibit gun ownership. They are meant to regulate gun ownership, just like cars can't be driven in public roads by anyone or medecine practised by anyone, guns shouldn't be allowed in everybody's hand. It's a matter of public safety.
Lumping gun laws in with obscenity laws is absurd. Guns injure and kill, pictures of genitalia don't.
Can't attack people on the street because it's amoral.
Actually, only #3 is a question of morality. The rest is a question of fear. People make these laws so they won't have their stuff stolen, be murdered, or be attacked in the street.
Pretty much every state in history that has had laws had these 3. The child abuse thing is a relative question of morality (not condoning it, just saying that it hasn't been universally decried).
ingest. It's none of their business what I put into my body either.
That would be why they make substances illegal to own, not to imbue.
Hence my problem with Clinton (couldn't care less if he gets blowjobs): He did not inhale. He was in possession of a certain controlled substance, but hey, it's allright, because he didn't toke.
If you had been reading entire thread for comprehension, you would have noted that the distinction being made was between civilian and military targets.
And if you had read and understood that single post to which you replied you would have seen that the WTC could be considered a military target.
Uh, the goal of your example was a technology to cause more deaths. This is a technology designed to cause fewer deaths. If anything your example actually supports my point that lower body counts does not translate to more fighting.
Fewer deaths on one side of the line. It's still equipped with a shotgun.
I'm sure you have enough of a grasp of statistics to know that when you get one study that is a factor of ten larger than any other, you treat it with skepticism anyways.
Quite so. Then again, it's not like we can ever hope to have the actual numbers. Or even as if everyone would agree on who to count. I would count people who died from the consequences of destroying the drinking water supply, sewer system and hospitals while sprinkling the country with rotting corpses, and others would only count the ones with a "Made in the U.S.A." bullet in them. Different perspectives I guess.
whats funnier is that you believed a movie. There is nothing sadder than people who get their knowledge form a 2hr movie. Other people involved with the Carlyle Group are Jimmy Carter and many members of the Clintion admin,
First of all: Getting truthfull info from a documentary doesn't diminish the validity of the information. He obviously would not have gotten that knowledge by means other than a widely distributed and very popular movie. (don't give me any of that "it's not a documentary if he only documents what he's trying to tell us" crap, I take that as proof of mental retardation)
Secondly: So the military supplies manufacturer isn't dumb enough to only make friends with one of the two alternating parties in power? Who'd have thunk? Since this seems to surprise you, tell me, in the future, will you vote for Jack Johnson or John Jackson?
So you are thinking maybe its not a good thing to create technologies that lessen the horrors of war because that makes it easier to engage in war?
Gattling thought that his machine gun would reduce the number of deaths since it would mean you had to send less soldiers to shoot the same amount of bullets.
He was a great engineer, but like most engineers I know, he had very little understanding of human nature:
They don't send less people, they send as many people, each shooting more bullets. The wars following his invention were exponantially deadlier! Making killing easier cannot lead to less killing, that reasoning is insane... deluded at best.
Why would you think that THIS technological devellopment in death-delivery would be any less murderous in it's results?
during the Civil War, where over 50,000 died in one three day battle (thats around twice the total number of deaths in the entire Iraq war).
Depends on who you ask:
Iraq Body Count: 14-16,000 Brookings Inst: 10-27,000 UK foreign secretary: >10,000 People's Kifah >37,000 Lancet: >100,000
Well, if I were an Iraqi national going to the polls, I'm pretty certain that having one of these things patrolling around the voting booths instead of a couple of marines would be very welcome.
Really? You think that the guy far away with only a camera to distinguish between a friendly voter and an evil terrorist is gonna be very selective when he starts shooting? You think that a remote controlled robot, with lag, is precise in it's spray of bullets?
I am referring to the civilians in and around the World Trade Center, as well as the passengers and staff aboard the planes.
Depends on the way you look at it. If you're cynical enough, you can say that those civilians were human shields placed around the CIA offices, which were a valid military target.
I would contend that had the group chartered, leased, or purchased their own planes, and then flown them into strictly military targets (I would count the Pentagon as strictly military, despite the civilian workers), then this would not constitute a terrorist attack, but a guerilla attack.
So, to be guerilla, you need to have the financial and organisational ressorces needed to charter, lease, and fuel several jet liners? Your definition is... strict.
Let's face it, war forces one to make ugly choices. Of course, when a company decides it's cheaper to pay the liability claims for the deaths and injury than to correct the product, the same decisions are made - and there's no war.
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
We already have enough trouble with war crimes committed by human beings who ought to know better. At least "they ought to know better" is the theory.
What disturbs me is that with this technology, the "videogames turn people into soulless killers" argument suddenly becomes valid. Operating this robot will be extremely similar to training to poerate this robot, and you will be totally detached from the results of your actions. You don't get to smell the blood, or hear the bones crunching, you get to kill with a joystick and a screen, sitting comfortably at a desk. It sanitizes killing, and it will let the killers sleep better at night, but at what price?
I'd certainly think that the use of combat robots resulting in civilian deaths has to be some kind of war crime.
Guided missiles are robots as much as this. They fly instead of rolling around, and they are not expected to come back. Kamikaze robots if you will, but these have already killed a whole lot of civilians, and I don't think anyone has been on trial about it.
The words that legitimize suicide bombings. By that definition placing a bomb in a busy street corner is evil, but strapping a bomb to your back and standing in a busy street corner is good.
It's a more courageous act to go blow yourself up along with your targets than to simply send in a guided missile from the comffort of your helicopter. But it isn't any more courageous to send someone else to do it than it is to give the order to fire the missile.
Democratic societies seem to abhor seeing their sons and daughters killed in war.
And all societies with different government structures don't???
It's not like wanting your offsprings to live is a basic human trait, or a basic animal instinct common to most critters on earth or anything, no no no, that's specific to democracies!
Why should our ability to find the information that is available to use be limited? If this information is public shouldn't we be able to use it how ever or as efficiently as we wish?
Then you would be watching the watchers, and they don't want that.
And yet, postulating the existence of an entire civilization based on absolutely zero evidence is kind of... pointless. At least in the God-existance debate we have spiritual texts.
IMHO this is a reaction to the announcement that no aquafied OpenOffice is planned. Apple doesn't want people to think they are locked into MS Office (hope it continues to support Mac OS X). This way, Apple can say commercial grade alternatives do exist.
Comparing Quebec French and France's French is similar to comparing British English and US English. They are based on the same language, are written very similarly, yet they sound very different because of how they are spoken.
Salutations de Montréal!
Anonymous...
Pas de username, ou t'as compris que le français fait perdre du Karma? : )
good intentions don't always amount to good effects.
So very true.
So lets spend money researching how the environment works before we go yelling how it ends.
Alarmist scenarios about the end of the world from envirnmental disasters are a good way to get financial support for scientific research in the workings of the environment. And it doesn't hurt to look at the worse case scenarios either.
Yeah, and it just so happens that no one noticed all those volcanoes erupting? Because cataclismic events are so subtle? Whoever modded that "insightfull" needs to have his moderation privileges permanently removed.
And BTW, the fact that there can be natural causes leading to global warming does not mean in any way that humanity shouldn't act resposibly. That would be like saying "I could be hit by a meteorite, so I don't need to stay sober before I drive".
If global warming isn't primarily caused by human activity, that wouldn't be an excuse to make it worse.
Slashdot Mirror
I have no problems with Clinton, or Bush for that matter (re their drug use).
Policies, now that's another matter.
I have a HUGE problem with people who did the crime, didn't do the time, but think that the law is just and that other people should do their time.
I have this problem not just with elected officials, but with anyone who is guilty of a crime, evaded prosecution, but "supports" the law (as it applies to other people).
p.s. I am almost positive that the last 5 prime ministers of Canada smoked weed at some time.
No way. Chretien said he never did, but might try if it became legal. Doesn't mean he didn't actually smoke the wacky tabaccy, but he's not the type. Way too uptight. Martin either.
Are all of you people so stupid that you do not realise that all laws are codified morality ?
Unless you think laws against murder and theft are not moral laws ?
What are they then ? Are they simply based on the personal preferences of judges and politicians ?
Like I said in a previous post, laws against murder and theft have nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with protecting one's life and proprety.
People don't make laws against murder and theft because they believe it is wrong to murder and steal, they make these laws because they are affraid of being murdered or stolen from.
That is very obvious.
Why is it that supposedly intelligent people have such incredibly poor reasoning skills ?
I don't know why people supposed you were intelligent; you clearly have very poor reasoning skills.
Maybe one day we can apply this thinking elsewhere and stop encroaching other freedoms. I look forward to the day when I don't have to look underground to find doctors who don't want to listen to the AMA
You want incompetant doctors to work on you?
people to design my buildings that don't have to suck the teet of the AIA
I hope you'll put a sign in front that says "this building ignores safety codes, approach at your own risk, may collapse at any time"!
And maybe one day, just one day, I won't need to grovel on my hands and knees to be granted the "privilege" of driving a motor vehicle, and say please and thank you to a cop who threatens to get it revoked.
There's already enough fucking morons driving like maniacs out there, I think there should be MORE restrictions there!
Retake the exams every 10 years! Activate a transponder if the car is driven for a week without ever engaging a turn signal!
Lets start with welfare, it's there because people deserve a second chance (a moral decision) and people need a helping hand (again a moral decision). Now even if I agree with those sentements, it is easily my choice to decide not to help people out with my money. After all, it's my money, and I'm an adult, I can decide what I want to do with it. Yet, the government takes my money and gives it to poor people. They force me to be charitable, thus forcing a particular beleif system on me. You choose to watch porn, I choose to save my money.
Lets see. First of all, watching porn doesn't hurt anyone. Being unable to buy food does.
Secondly, the wellfare of the state is dependant on the wellfare of it's citizens. Wellfare isn't a purely moral endeavour, it's there to provide the population with bread and circuses so that they will be content and do not rise up against the government.
Every particular set of laws which forbids something that doesn't violate the rights of another person is a moral decision imposing a set of beleifs upon society. Porn, obcenity, drinking and gun ownership are all variations on the same thing.
The right to health and security is harmed by lack of food or overabundance of guns.
Gun laws aren't meant to prohibit gun ownership. They are meant to regulate gun ownership, just like cars can't be driven in public roads by anyone or medecine practised by anyone, guns shouldn't be allowed in everybody's hand. It's a matter of public safety.
Lumping gun laws in with obscenity laws is absurd. Guns injure and kill, pictures of genitalia don't.
Actually, only #3 is a question of morality. The rest is a question of fear. People make these laws so they won't have their stuff stolen, be murdered, or be attacked in the street.
Pretty much every state in history that has had laws had these 3. The child abuse thing is a relative question of morality (not condoning it, just saying that it hasn't been universally decried).
ingest. It's none of their business what I put into my body either.
That would be why they make substances illegal to own, not to imbue.
Hence my problem with Clinton (couldn't care less if he gets blowjobs): He did not inhale. He was in possession of a certain controlled substance, but hey, it's allright, because he didn't toke.
If you had been reading entire thread for comprehension, you would have noted that the distinction being made was between civilian and military targets.
And if you had read and understood that single post to which you replied you would have seen that the WTC could be considered a military target.
Uh, the goal of your example was a technology to cause more deaths. This is a technology designed to cause fewer deaths. If anything your example actually supports my point that lower body counts does not translate to more fighting.
Fewer deaths on one side of the line. It's still equipped with a shotgun.
I'm sure you have enough of a grasp of statistics to know that when you get one study that is a factor of ten larger than any other, you treat it with skepticism anyways.
Quite so.
Then again, it's not like we can ever hope to have the actual numbers. Or even as if everyone would agree on who to count. I would count people who died from the consequences of destroying the drinking water supply, sewer system and hospitals while sprinkling the country with rotting corpses, and others would only count the ones with a "Made in the U.S.A." bullet in them. Different perspectives I guess.
whats funnier is that you believed a movie. There is nothing sadder than people who get their knowledge form a 2hr movie. Other people involved with the Carlyle Group are Jimmy Carter and many members of the Clintion admin,
First of all: Getting truthfull info from a documentary doesn't diminish the validity of the information. He obviously would not have gotten that knowledge by means other than a widely distributed and very popular movie.
(don't give me any of that "it's not a documentary if he only documents what he's trying to tell us" crap, I take that as proof of mental retardation)
Secondly: So the military supplies manufacturer isn't dumb enough to only make friends with one of the two alternating parties in power? Who'd have thunk? Since this seems to surprise you, tell me, in the future, will you vote for Jack Johnson or John Jackson?
So you are thinking maybe its not a good thing to create technologies that lessen the horrors of war because that makes it easier to engage in war?
Gattling thought that his machine gun would reduce the number of deaths since it would mean you had to send less soldiers to shoot the same amount of bullets.
He was a great engineer, but like most engineers I know, he had very little understanding of human nature:
They don't send less people, they send as many people, each shooting more bullets. The wars following his invention were exponantially deadlier! Making killing easier cannot lead to less killing, that reasoning is insane... deluded at best.
Why would you think that THIS technological devellopment in death-delivery would be any less murderous in it's results?
during the Civil War, where over 50,000 died in one three day battle (thats around twice the total number of deaths in the entire Iraq war).
Depends on who you ask:
Iraq Body Count: 14-16,000
Brookings Inst: 10-27,000
UK foreign secretary: >10,000
People's Kifah >37,000
Lancet: >100,000
Well, if I were an Iraqi national going to the polls, I'm pretty certain that having one of these things patrolling around the voting booths instead of a couple of marines would be very welcome.
Really? You think that the guy far away with only a camera to distinguish between a friendly voter and an evil terrorist is gonna be very selective when he starts shooting? You think that a remote controlled robot, with lag, is precise in it's spray of bullets?
I am referring to the civilians in and around the World Trade Center, as well as the passengers and staff aboard the planes.
Depends on the way you look at it. If you're cynical enough, you can say that those civilians were human shields placed around the CIA offices, which were a valid military target.
I would contend that had the group chartered, leased, or purchased their own planes, and then flown them into strictly military targets (I would count the Pentagon as strictly military, despite the civilian workers), then this would not constitute a terrorist attack, but a guerilla attack.
So, to be guerilla, you need to have the financial and organisational ressorces needed to charter, lease, and fuel several jet liners? Your definition is... strict.
Let's face it, war forces one to make ugly choices. Of course, when a company decides it's cheaper to pay the liability claims for the deaths and injury than to correct the product, the same decisions are made - and there's no war.
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.
We already have enough trouble with war crimes committed by human beings who ought to know better. At least "they ought to know better" is the theory.
What disturbs me is that with this technology, the "videogames turn people into soulless killers" argument suddenly becomes valid.
Operating this robot will be extremely similar to training to poerate this robot, and you will be totally detached from the results of your actions. You don't get to smell the blood, or hear the bones crunching, you get to kill with a joystick and a screen, sitting comfortably at a desk. It sanitizes killing, and it will let the killers sleep better at night, but at what price?
I'd certainly think that the use of combat robots resulting in civilian deaths has to be some kind of war crime.
Guided missiles are robots as much as this. They fly instead of rolling around, and they are not expected to come back. Kamikaze robots if you will, but these have already killed a whole lot of civilians, and I don't think anyone has been on trial about it.
Who is it that actually LIVES in nature, grows the food you eat and mines the resources for your daily living. Who breathes fresh air
Yeah, em, I've been at farms, and I wouldn't say the air is stale, but by no stretch of the imagination would I call that foul stench "fresh" either.
The words that legitimize suicide bombings. By that definition placing a bomb in a busy street corner is evil, but strapping a bomb to your back and standing in a busy street corner is good.
It's a more courageous act to go blow yourself up along with your targets than to simply send in a guided missile from the comffort of your helicopter.
But it isn't any more courageous to send someone else to do it than it is to give the order to fire the missile.
Democratic societies seem to abhor seeing their sons and daughters killed in war.
And all societies with different government structures don't???
It's not like wanting your offsprings to live is a basic human trait, or a basic animal instinct common to most critters on earth or anything, no no no, that's specific to democracies!
Why should our ability to find the information that is available to use be limited? If this information is public shouldn't we be able to use it how ever or as efficiently as we wish?
Then you would be watching the watchers, and they don't want that.
And yet, postulating the existence of an entire civilization based on absolutely zero evidence is kind of... pointless. At least in the God-existance debate we have spiritual texts.
Sure.
IMHO this is a reaction to the announcement that no aquafied OpenOffice is planned.
Apple doesn't want people to think they are locked into MS Office (hope it continues to support Mac OS X).
This way, Apple can say commercial grade alternatives do exist.
No, this is.
Comparing Quebec French and France's French is similar to comparing British English and US English. They are based on the same language, are written very similarly, yet they sound very different because of how they are spoken.
Salutations de Montréal!
Anonymous...
Pas de username, ou t'as compris que le français fait perdre du Karma? : )
good intentions don't always amount to good effects.
So very true.
So lets spend money researching how the environment works before we go yelling how it ends.
Alarmist scenarios about the end of the world from envirnmental disasters are a good way to get financial support for scientific research in the workings of the environment. And it doesn't hurt to look at the worse case scenarios either.
so maybe global warming is natural
Yeah, and it just so happens that no one noticed all those volcanoes erupting? Because cataclismic events are so subtle? Whoever modded that "insightfull" needs to have his moderation privileges permanently removed.
And BTW, the fact that there can be natural causes leading to global warming does not mean in any way that humanity shouldn't act resposibly. That would be like saying "I could be hit by a meteorite, so I don't need to stay sober before I drive".
If global warming isn't primarily caused by human activity, that wouldn't be an excuse to make it worse.
Slashdot needs a moderation choice "-1: Huge block of unformatted text".
Earth is more complex than anyone can comprehend or understand, it will outlast humans by a long shot, nothing we will do will kill it.
That sounds like a challenge!
Now, where did I hide the plans for my doomsday device...