To the best of my knowledge all life on earth (at least all life that has been investigated at the DNA/RNA level) seems to have considerable similarities, which implies a relationship, perhaps a common origin point.
Which is of course what the theory of evolution tries to explain, with considerable success.
While it is certainly remarkable how flexible life on Earth is, we also have to keep in mind that it has evolved from a common, water-based origin, and the fact that archaea can adapt to living in tar with access to very little water does not mean that life could have started in such an environment.
The thing about water is that it is an altogether remarkable substance; it has a number of properties that are not found together in many other substances - I am certainly not aware of any - and there are reasons to believe that life (at least chemical life as we know it: with DNA/RNA, proteins etc) needs this constellation of properties to arise. We simply don't know if life can arise in other environments; our understanding of what life is at the deepest level is still very patchy.
I am sure many on/. regard me as an ultra-conservative, reactionary, revolutionary, communist maniac - which is true - so perhaps I am not in the best position to teach people about open-mindedness, respect for the right of other people (and businesses) to choose for themselves etc.
But... Do I care?
So, before you whip up a storm about censorship, bear in mind that Apple are in fact entitled to reject selling any specific app from their online store; they don't have to give a reason, and if they do, it doesn't really have to be reasonable. If they believe that it makes business sense to not sell the works of a satirist, that is their choice, and all we can do is take note and form our own opinion about it.
And, strictly speaking, is it really censorship? We all make choices about what we do and say every day. I think it is going too far, talking about "self-censorship", as if everybody had a moral duty to speak about certain things. Censorship is when freedom of speech is suppressed by somebody with enough power to make it virtually impossible to exercise that freedom; this guy can clearly express his views elsewhere, so this is not censorship.
Otherwise, should we demand that all news-media report opinions they don't agree with? Should Christian news-papers be forced to publish pornographic material? Should Fox News be forced to report in a fair and balanced way?
Maybe you don't understand. Toddlers have racial biases
This is just another disingenious rationalisation of racism, I think. Toddlers are old enough to have picked up the biases of their parents, as amply demonstrated when they from time to time embarass their surrounding by airing in public the shameful views that they have picked up at home. This is not limited to racism in any way either.
It is by now a well-established fact that children learn from their parents very early on in life - some studies even suggest that they begin to learn some things before birth, which is not as absurd as it sounds; the womb is not as isolated from world as one might imagine, and certainly sounds, and even a low level of of light penetrates the body walls of the mother.
The social anxiety itself is not hardwired to skin colour or anything else in particular, only to familiarity. If a child grows up in an environment with other children from many different backgrounds, they will be quite familiar with that group and have no problems ignoring a superficial thing like skin colour or clothes. This is of course also what one would expect.
I'm in full agreement with Mr. Hoelzle, and I think that anyone who truly believes in limited government would as well.
Hmm, so your opinion about this is motivated, not by reference to the practical reality, but to ideology?
Words can be very strange things at times - I don't see any ambiguity in the word prescriptive; it simply means that they don't like the government to tell them to save energy. I'm much more worried about words like "innovation" - as well as your use of the word "limited".
"Innovation": it looks like such an innocent and positive word, almost like "invention"; however, as far as I can see, where "invention" means that you have invented something that is actually new, "innovation" is much weaker - it just means that you have re-painted the tin in another colour or something. I.e. it is much closer to being simple deception.
It is the same with "limited" - what you hope it sounds like is that government should not be almighty and decide every detail in people's lives, which is of course supremely obvious to the point of triviality. But I suspect what you mean is that "all government is bad, bad, bad" and that it should be abolished as much as possible, which a completely different matter, and one that I think most people would disagree with.
"The world" also calls even the poorest pop-singer an "artist". "The world" is not exactly referring to the highest standards; what most people care about is simply entertainment, and a drunken karaoke evening will do for most; so is that a sport too - or art?
Anyway, I am not employing any logic, only uttering an opinion with a hint of a wry smile, which unfortunately didn't show up clearly in text mode.
Maybe I am just that ancient, but is it a "sport" to sit in a chair pushing buttons? When I grew up, apparently in the stone age, sport was something that involved not just skill, but physical excellence; even body-building wasn't considered to be a sport, and you wouldn't use the word "athlete" about them either. No wonder the world is coming to an end...
This is of course "malice aforethought", since it involves Chinese people in some way; if it had been an American ISP, then they were just unlucky, as we all know.
The Chinese aside, though, how can it be that malformed packages of any sort can just propagate? Don't the others have a natural duty to check things out a bit before they just swallow a wagonload of shite?
I'm glad to see that I am not the only one taking issue with GNOME.
It is sad, really; in the beginning it really looked very promising - I liked a lot of the philosophy, but then it became mired in this Windows aping and dumbing down that I find so condescending. Now I use KDE - definitely better in terms of practical usability. I don't have much use for intrusive gimmicks and missing functionality. Would I return to GNOME one day? I'm not sure - it is a question of trust, I think. It is so easy to break and so very hard to build up again.
... traditional media has lost the right to claim that they provide an invaluable service...
Oh, don't be so petty. I have enjoyed many a barbeque that just wouldn't have been possible without good, old-fashionable news-media. And you only have to try once to be on the loo, reading the news when you realize there is no toilet paper; an iPad, for all its qualities, just isn't as soft.
Isn't this the same clown now busy circumventing democracy to take away broadband from Britons who already have it? And what good would broadband do them if they're punished for using it (or even being suspected of using it?
Ah, I see what the problem is; the right honourable mr Stallman is American and therefore speaks about politics the American way. This is what I believe he meant to say:
"Mr Speaker, does the Prime Minister really think that..." and so on...
Apart from that - it is all very well to bash Gordon Brown; the problem is that there are no real alternatives - the Tories are going to do exactly the same, the LibDems sound very nice and sensible but won't come anywhere near government, and most of the rest are the likes of BNP and UKIP, who to be honest tend to crumble if exposed to sunlight; that leaves Plaid Cymru, I suppose, or Sinn Fein. But which one to choose, that's the question, always.
The problem with your theory, other than its premise - that all mood-altering substances must be banned...
The point, which I didn't make quite clear, is that it would be better to accept that if people want these substances, we should release the ones that, after appropriate testing, have been deemed sufficiently low-risk, and instead ban the new ones, that care potentially very dangerous.
ThunderDan's point shows that something is wrong with the law in general, though, and that is people think more and more laws need to be added to ensure that courts can't re-interpret things in a different way.
Possibly the problem lies with the basic principles behind legislation - it seems to me that in Common Law, each law each rule is formulated specifically rather than generally; this appears to be the problem with the drugs legislation in UK at the moment, where, say, Amphetamine is prohibited, but if somebody comes along and sticks a small molecule at one end of the amphetamine molecule, it is "A New Drug" and therefore legal; even though it is bleedingly obvious that it is almost identical. In this case, perhaps a better policy would be to ban all new molecules until they have been proven safe; or at least ban any molecule that can be reasonably assumed to have certain physiological effects.
However, although there is no more than anecdotal evidence to go on - it being difficult to experiment with earthquakes - it is not something that is necessarily taken out of thin air. An earthquake doesn't just happen - it is basically like when any other material under stress breaks, just scaled up. Before the big breakage occurs, a number of smaller "cracks" form in the material. This is likely to have some measurable effects - perhaps a characteristic "rumbling" can be heard, perhaps the chemstry of the local environment changes because rocks that were previously impenetrable become porous. Toads, like many other, small animals are highly sensitive to their environment, so it isn't really all that unreasonable to imagine that they react to the changes that warn about an earthquake.
We can do the same, certainly with technology - the difficulty is not to predict that a big one is probably going to hit very soon, but to predict exactly where and when. Small animals don't have to worry about being exact; it is safer to run away even if it turns out that you are wrong sometimes.
I'm an environmentalist, but I also know that if you put democracy "on hold" it's awfully hard to get it started again.
Not really - it has a nasty habit of creeping in all the time; that is why dictatorships have to keep spending resources on oppression. No, democracy is sort of the lowest energy state in human society, all considered.
We have seen this happen over and over in history; the almighty ruler(s) can't do everything, so they have to rely on other people, which means that they get a say in things etc. In the end all rulers have to listen to the people - in effect, society becomes democratised. Perhaps in the same sense as the US, but then that is arguably not really democracy, because the richest 5% have by far the largest political say.
No, this is a stark reminder of the importance of washing your hands! Remember, this is Slashdot, where people are use to manage these matters on their own. Another good tip: don't confuse the superglue with the lubricant.
And? I am not talking about placing restrictions, only pointing out the disparity in your viewpoint. There is a lot of difference between killing adult seals because you need the meat and then selling the skins for a profit, and killing cubs by the thousands because you are in it for the money. As for traditions - I don't give a toss about traditions; they are all too often merely a matter of being to unwilling to improve on a situation because people are afraid they may loose their comforts.
I respect your right to your view and if you practice what you preach and don't benefit from or eat meat, well good for you. I don't equate cramming cows together in a milk factory to rape, though in a perfect world It'd be nice if it weren't necessary.
Since you raise the question - I don't eat much meat, not from idealism, but because I find that it is far too often not worth the money; and I like vegetarian food. I'm not some sort of fringe-activist; I don't equate bad animal-husbandry with rape either, but I am convinced that it simply isn't necessary - it is necessary only because there is too much focus on taking profits without delivering value.
I certainly agree with your comment about "Soylent Green" whatever that is - I take it that this is some sort vegetarian imitation of some sort of meat product? That kind of thing is always vile - vegetables can and should be enjoyed for what they are.
And I didn't list those examples as if they were equivalent - only as examples of reprehensible behaviours; after all, we don't accept theft just because it is not as bad as murder. To me the same goes for casual cruelty - I am not against killing animals for food, that is part of a natural lifestyle for humans, what I find unacceptable is when people treat animals with nothing short of barefaced contempt for their wellbeing - as when cows are fixated in a narrow space for their entire life in a milk factory, or when you have a billion chickens crammed in five to a cage in a huge factory.
And this is not even so much about the animals, primarily - it is about how I want to see myself. There is evidence in favour of the view that one of the most important steps towards becoming modern humans was the domestication of animals; for that to happen, we had to learn to empathise with other species. But the way we treat animals now is step backwards - we have less empathy, they are just things whose value is merely money. We have, in a way, sold our birthright for a mess of pottage (or a pot of message? I don't quite remember)
... allowing Steve Jobs to create the iPad.
You are right, of course - the iPad should have been designed by IBM's MVS team.
I think perhaps people are talking about two different things here; on one side is the view that the Inuit have always hunted seal and it is their way life - a very valid point if you are Inuit. On the other side are the fur hunters, who have never been in it for anything but the commercial gain.
The big difference between the two, at least traditionally, has been that the Inuit have primarily hunted for meat, and would therefore tend to stop when they had enough to eat, whereas the commercial fur hunters naturally enough have gone for the softest fur - ie the cubs, which have the further advantage of being easier to "harvest", and they don't tend to stop after a few animals either. I suppose when you are sitting far away in a comfortable sofa, it is open for discussion whether it is cruel to club an animal over the head and flay it alive; personally I find it disgusting.
This is not so much a question about seal numbers in my view, but one about what kind of people we want to be. It is basically the same question when we ask "Why is it not OK to torture a suspect?" or "Why is it wrong to rape, murder, steal...?". Why is it not OK to keep ten thousand cows crammed together in a milk factory? Or play football with a living chicken? Or crucify a cat just to show your mates how tough you are?
People like you always roll out the one about "numbers are surging and they are damaging..." - yeah, right. What that means is simply that it hurts somebody's profits. This has been the excuse over and over, and it is still as hollow as always. I am willing to listen to sensible arguments - are you willing to listen to reasonable criticism?
First off, you have passengers, including passengers of buses and so forth. I want policies that encourage multiple people to a vehicle.
Hey, we all have to make sacrifices; not long ago making a phone call would imply that you had to stop and get out of the car to find a public phone, and strange as it may seem, they managed to live full and happy lives. I am not suggesting that my idea does much than point out that there is a perfectly simple way to stop people from using mobiles while driving; crude, certainly, but perhaps one could start from there and improve on it.
... Even so, there are apartment buildings in my city that I can clearly see on Google maps to be less than 40 feet from the edge of the freeway, and so I doubt the map data is accurate enough.
Again, it may be possible to improve on a scheme like this. If your are able to determine a mobile phone user's position, you can also tell whether they are moving at a walk or at a higher speed; so block calls from fast moving phones. Alternatively, instead of blocking calls, they could trigger an alert that would require further investigation - eventually by the police. Most of it could be done by computers - amazing stuff, this new technology.
So unless this system pulls the car over at the next save opportunity and doesn't let you start the engine until you've put the fricking phone away, this won't do squat
You are right of course; but how about this, then: Instead of making noises, why not require mobile operators to not accept calls other than to the emergency services on the motorway. They can do that, since they can already tell you position fairly accurately from the signal strengths on the local receivers. Simple and easy - nobody can natter on like idiots on the motorway, and you could extend the system to other areas as well.
When since the death of Mao and the rise of the "Gang of Seven" has anyone thought China was Communist?
I think you are misrepresenting the facts.
First of all, I don't think you can call China a totalitarian dictatorship. What is true is that their leaders are not elected in a process similar to Western democracies, but that does not in itself imply that it is unreasonable to call the country democratic - it could be that our idea about democracy is too narrow. Please note the fine distinction: I am not claiming that China is democratic, only that I am not convinced that they are not.
Secondly, what right do we have to tell the Chinese how to run their country? We like our way, but maybe they don't like it - in my own experience, the Chinese in general want none of our kind of freedom or democracy. They want accountability and equality under the law, so rich people can't pay their way out of punishment while the poor suffer random injustice.
As for the Communism part - does the idea of communism have to be static, forever frozen in a time that is rapidly getting more and more distant? Karl Marx would never himself have claimed any such thing, I'm sure, and of course it has to evolve to remain relevant. There is no such thing as "The One True Communism", only a number of attempts at implementing the idea. The Soviet way failed to the relief of most, I would say, but the Chinese have managed to keep up with the changing reality. As far as I can see, their way could well continue to be successful for a long time.
Why is that? There is nothing odious about a company choosing to move their production to the place they feel is most conductive to their main purpose: making money. The Chinese are, contrary to common misconceptions on slashdot, "idiots who are out to get you" - they are sensible people, certainly when it comes to business, and it may be a useful tactic to talk about moving one's production because something isn't as comfortable where you are. Governments are normally willing to accomodate you if they can and if what you ask for is not unreasonable.
The big problem with moving 25 G$ of investments is that most of it simply can't be moved that easily - buildings, expert employees, agreements with suppliers and partners etc etc - it makes no difference whether this is in China or the US. I can't really see Dell suddenly getting moral and ideals to the extent that they will leave it all behind, not to mention the huge cost of establishing themselves in another place.
And anyway, GTA, with its focus on wanton violence and abuse, is somewhat dated. How about a completely different approach: A game where the objective is to drive in a safe, economical, environmentally responsible and polite way through London City in the rush hour, taking into account the one-way system, the roadworks, the tens of thousands of pedestrians crossing the street in front of you, the fact that the London streetmap looks a bit like a Mandelbrot fractal and that streetnames change on average every 20 meters. Now that WOULD be extreme.
If thats all it takes then the system is broken, not the people abusing it.
That is a rather bizarre point of view; can I take it to imply that if you pop down to the corner shop quickly without locking your front door, then it is OK for me to go into your house, have a loo around and take some pictures? This analogy is perfectly valid - your house is connected to a public network of streets, and anybody passing by could go up to your door and try the handle; they could even claim that "it is for you own benefit because it is a 'security check'".
I wouldn't be surprised if you are also one the guys that take an extreme stand on the matter of privacy - funny thought, really.
Slashdot Mirror
To the best of my knowledge all life on earth (at least all life that has been investigated at the DNA/RNA level) seems to have considerable similarities, which implies a relationship, perhaps a common origin point.
Which is of course what the theory of evolution tries to explain, with considerable success.
While it is certainly remarkable how flexible life on Earth is, we also have to keep in mind that it has evolved from a common, water-based origin, and the fact that archaea can adapt to living in tar with access to very little water does not mean that life could have started in such an environment.
The thing about water is that it is an altogether remarkable substance; it has a number of properties that are not found together in many other substances - I am certainly not aware of any - and there are reasons to believe that life (at least chemical life as we know it: with DNA/RNA, proteins etc) needs this constellation of properties to arise. We simply don't know if life can arise in other environments; our understanding of what life is at the deepest level is still very patchy.
I am sure many on /. regard me as an ultra-conservative, reactionary, revolutionary, communist maniac - which is true - so perhaps I am not in the best position to teach people about open-mindedness, respect for the right of other people (and businesses) to choose for themselves etc.
But... Do I care?
So, before you whip up a storm about censorship, bear in mind that Apple are in fact entitled to reject selling any specific app from their online store; they don't have to give a reason, and if they do, it doesn't really have to be reasonable. If they believe that it makes business sense to not sell the works of a satirist, that is their choice, and all we can do is take note and form our own opinion about it.
And, strictly speaking, is it really censorship? We all make choices about what we do and say every day. I think it is going too far, talking about "self-censorship", as if everybody had a moral duty to speak about certain things. Censorship is when freedom of speech is suppressed by somebody with enough power to make it virtually impossible to exercise that freedom; this guy can clearly express his views elsewhere, so this is not censorship.
Otherwise, should we demand that all news-media report opinions they don't agree with? Should Christian news-papers be forced to publish pornographic material? Should Fox News be forced to report in a fair and balanced way?
Maybe you don't understand. Toddlers have racial biases
This is just another disingenious rationalisation of racism, I think. Toddlers are old enough to have picked up the biases of their parents, as amply demonstrated when they from time to time embarass their surrounding by airing in public the shameful views that they have picked up at home. This is not limited to racism in any way either.
It is by now a well-established fact that children learn from their parents very early on in life - some studies even suggest that they begin to learn some things before birth, which is not as absurd as it sounds; the womb is not as isolated from world as one might imagine, and certainly sounds, and even a low level of of light penetrates the body walls of the mother.
The social anxiety itself is not hardwired to skin colour or anything else in particular, only to familiarity. If a child grows up in an environment with other children from many different backgrounds, they will be quite familiar with that group and have no problems ignoring a superficial thing like skin colour or clothes. This is of course also what one would expect.
I'm in full agreement with Mr. Hoelzle, and I think that anyone who truly believes in limited government would as well.
Hmm, so your opinion about this is motivated, not by reference to the practical reality, but to ideology?
Words can be very strange things at times - I don't see any ambiguity in the word prescriptive; it simply means that they don't like the government to tell them to save energy. I'm much more worried about words like "innovation" - as well as your use of the word "limited".
"Innovation": it looks like such an innocent and positive word, almost like "invention"; however, as far as I can see, where "invention" means that you have invented something that is actually new, "innovation" is much weaker - it just means that you have re-painted the tin in another colour or something. I.e. it is much closer to being simple deception.
It is the same with "limited" - what you hope it sounds like is that government should not be almighty and decide every detail in people's lives, which is of course supremely obvious to the point of triviality. But I suspect what you mean is that "all government is bad, bad, bad" and that it should be abolished as much as possible, which a completely different matter, and one that I think most people would disagree with.
The world begs to differ, however.
"The world" also calls even the poorest pop-singer an "artist". "The world" is not exactly referring to the highest standards; what most people care about is simply entertainment, and a drunken karaoke evening will do for most; so is that a sport too - or art?
Anyway, I am not employing any logic, only uttering an opinion with a hint of a wry smile, which unfortunately didn't show up clearly in text mode.
Well, there is such a thing as chess boxing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing
Maybe I am just that ancient, but is it a "sport" to sit in a chair pushing buttons? When I grew up, apparently in the stone age, sport was something that involved not just skill, but physical excellence; even body-building wasn't considered to be a sport, and you wouldn't use the word "athlete" about them either. No wonder the world is coming to an end...
This is of course "malice aforethought", since it involves Chinese people in some way; if it had been an American ISP, then they were just unlucky, as we all know.
The Chinese aside, though, how can it be that malformed packages of any sort can just propagate? Don't the others have a natural duty to check things out a bit before they just swallow a wagonload of shite?
I'm glad to see that I am not the only one taking issue with GNOME.
It is sad, really; in the beginning it really looked very promising - I liked a lot of the philosophy, but then it became mired in this Windows aping and dumbing down that I find so condescending. Now I use KDE - definitely better in terms of practical usability. I don't have much use for intrusive gimmicks and missing functionality. Would I return to GNOME one day? I'm not sure - it is a question of trust, I think. It is so easy to break and so very hard to build up again.
... traditional media has lost the right to claim that they provide an invaluable service...
Oh, don't be so petty. I have enjoyed many a barbeque that just wouldn't have been possible without good, old-fashionable news-media. And you only have to try once to be on the loo, reading the news when you realize there is no toilet paper; an iPad, for all its qualities, just isn't as soft.
Isn't this the same clown now busy circumventing democracy to take away broadband from Britons who already have it? And what good would broadband do them if they're punished for using it (or even being suspected of using it?
Ah, I see what the problem is; the right honourable mr Stallman is American and therefore speaks about politics the American way. This is what I believe he meant to say:
"Mr Speaker, does the Prime Minister really think that ..." and so on ...
Apart from that - it is all very well to bash Gordon Brown; the problem is that there are no real alternatives - the Tories are going to do exactly the same, the LibDems sound very nice and sensible but won't come anywhere near government, and most of the rest are the likes of BNP and UKIP, who to be honest tend to crumble if exposed to sunlight; that leaves Plaid Cymru, I suppose, or Sinn Fein. But which one to choose, that's the question, always.
The problem with your theory, other than its premise - that all mood-altering substances must be banned ...
The point, which I didn't make quite clear, is that it would be better to accept that if people want these substances, we should release the ones that, after appropriate testing, have been deemed sufficiently low-risk, and instead ban the new ones, that care potentially very dangerous.
ThunderDan's point shows that something is wrong with the law in general, though, and that is people think more and more laws need to be added to ensure that courts can't re-interpret things in a different way.
Possibly the problem lies with the basic principles behind legislation - it seems to me that in Common Law, each law each rule is formulated specifically rather than generally; this appears to be the problem with the drugs legislation in UK at the moment, where, say, Amphetamine is prohibited, but if somebody comes along and sticks a small molecule at one end of the amphetamine molecule, it is "A New Drug" and therefore legal; even though it is bleedingly obvious that it is almost identical. In this case, perhaps a better policy would be to ban all new molecules until they have been proven safe; or at least ban any molecule that can be reasonably assumed to have certain physiological effects.
The article is a load of crap, unsurprisingly.
However, although there is no more than anecdotal evidence to go on - it being difficult to experiment with earthquakes - it is not something that is necessarily taken out of thin air. An earthquake doesn't just happen - it is basically like when any other material under stress breaks, just scaled up. Before the big breakage occurs, a number of smaller "cracks" form in the material. This is likely to have some measurable effects - perhaps a characteristic "rumbling" can be heard, perhaps the chemstry of the local environment changes because rocks that were previously impenetrable become porous. Toads, like many other, small animals are highly sensitive to their environment, so it isn't really all that unreasonable to imagine that they react to the changes that warn about an earthquake.
We can do the same, certainly with technology - the difficulty is not to predict that a big one is probably going to hit very soon, but to predict exactly where and when. Small animals don't have to worry about being exact; it is safer to run away even if it turns out that you are wrong sometimes.
I'm an environmentalist, but I also know that if you put democracy "on hold" it's awfully hard to get it started again.
Not really - it has a nasty habit of creeping in all the time; that is why dictatorships have to keep spending resources on oppression. No, democracy is sort of the lowest energy state in human society, all considered.
We have seen this happen over and over in history; the almighty ruler(s) can't do everything, so they have to rely on other people, which means that they get a say in things etc. In the end all rulers have to listen to the people - in effect, society becomes democratised. Perhaps in the same sense as the US, but then that is arguably not really democracy, because the richest 5% have by far the largest political say.
I've got the cure!
It's called a condom and not screwing nasty hoes!
No, this is a stark reminder of the importance of washing your hands! Remember, this is Slashdot, where people are use to manage these matters on their own. Another good tip: don't confuse the superglue with the lubricant.
... the inuit also gain commercially ...
And? I am not talking about placing restrictions, only pointing out the disparity in your viewpoint. There is a lot of difference between killing adult seals because you need the meat and then selling the skins for a profit, and killing cubs by the thousands because you are in it for the money. As for traditions - I don't give a toss about traditions; they are all too often merely a matter of being to unwilling to improve on a situation because people are afraid they may loose their comforts.
I respect your right to your view and if you practice what you preach and don't benefit from or eat meat, well good for you. I don't equate cramming cows together in a milk factory to rape, though in a perfect world It'd be nice if it weren't necessary.
Since you raise the question - I don't eat much meat, not from idealism, but because I find that it is far too often not worth the money; and I like vegetarian food. I'm not some sort of fringe-activist; I don't equate bad animal-husbandry with rape either, but I am convinced that it simply isn't necessary - it is necessary only because there is too much focus on taking profits without delivering value.
I certainly agree with your comment about "Soylent Green" whatever that is - I take it that this is some sort vegetarian imitation of some sort of meat product? That kind of thing is always vile - vegetables can and should be enjoyed for what they are.
And I didn't list those examples as if they were equivalent - only as examples of reprehensible behaviours; after all, we don't accept theft just because it is not as bad as murder. To me the same goes for casual cruelty - I am not against killing animals for food, that is part of a natural lifestyle for humans, what I find unacceptable is when people treat animals with nothing short of barefaced contempt for their wellbeing - as when cows are fixated in a narrow space for their entire life in a milk factory, or when you have a billion chickens crammed in five to a cage in a huge factory.
And this is not even so much about the animals, primarily - it is about how I want to see myself. There is evidence in favour of the view that one of the most important steps towards becoming modern humans was the domestication of animals; for that to happen, we had to learn to empathise with other species. But the way we treat animals now is step backwards - we have less empathy, they are just things whose value is merely money. We have, in a way, sold our birthright for a mess of pottage (or a pot of message? I don't quite remember)
... allowing Steve Jobs to create the iPad.
You are right, of course - the iPad should have been designed by IBM's MVS team.
I think perhaps people are talking about two different things here; on one side is the view that the Inuit have always hunted seal and it is their way life - a very valid point if you are Inuit. On the other side are the fur hunters, who have never been in it for anything but the commercial gain.
The big difference between the two, at least traditionally, has been that the Inuit have primarily hunted for meat, and would therefore tend to stop when they had enough to eat, whereas the commercial fur hunters naturally enough have gone for the softest fur - ie the cubs, which have the further advantage of being easier to "harvest", and they don't tend to stop after a few animals either. I suppose when you are sitting far away in a comfortable sofa, it is open for discussion whether it is cruel to club an animal over the head and flay it alive; personally I find it disgusting.
This is not so much a question about seal numbers in my view, but one about what kind of people we want to be. It is basically the same question when we ask "Why is it not OK to torture a suspect?" or "Why is it wrong to rape, murder, steal ...?". Why is it not OK to keep ten thousand cows crammed together in a milk factory? Or play football with a living chicken? Or crucify a cat just to show your mates how tough you are?
People like you always roll out the one about "numbers are surging and they are damaging ..." - yeah, right. What that means is simply that it hurts somebody's profits. This has been the excuse over and over, and it is still as hollow as always. I am willing to listen to sensible arguments - are you willing to listen to reasonable criticism?
First off, you have passengers, including passengers of buses and so forth. I want policies that encourage multiple people to a vehicle.
Hey, we all have to make sacrifices; not long ago making a phone call would imply that you had to stop and get out of the car to find a public phone, and strange as it may seem, they managed to live full and happy lives. I am not suggesting that my idea does much than point out that there is a perfectly simple way to stop people from using mobiles while driving; crude, certainly, but perhaps one could start from there and improve on it.
... Even so, there are apartment buildings in my city that I can clearly see on Google maps to be less than 40 feet from the edge of the freeway, and so I doubt the map data is accurate enough.
Again, it may be possible to improve on a scheme like this. If your are able to determine a mobile phone user's position, you can also tell whether they are moving at a walk or at a higher speed; so block calls from fast moving phones. Alternatively, instead of blocking calls, they could trigger an alert that would require further investigation - eventually by the police. Most of it could be done by computers - amazing stuff, this new technology.
So unless this system pulls the car over at the next save opportunity and doesn't let you start the engine until you've put the fricking phone away, this won't do squat
You are right of course; but how about this, then: Instead of making noises, why not require mobile operators to not accept calls other than to the emergency services on the motorway. They can do that, since they can already tell you position fairly accurately from the signal strengths on the local receivers. Simple and easy - nobody can natter on like idiots on the motorway, and you could extend the system to other areas as well.
When since the death of Mao and the rise of the "Gang of Seven" has anyone thought China was Communist?
I think you are misrepresenting the facts.
First of all, I don't think you can call China a totalitarian dictatorship. What is true is that their leaders are not elected in a process similar to Western democracies, but that does not in itself imply that it is unreasonable to call the country democratic - it could be that our idea about democracy is too narrow. Please note the fine distinction: I am not claiming that China is democratic, only that I am not convinced that they are not.
Secondly, what right do we have to tell the Chinese how to run their country? We like our way, but maybe they don't like it - in my own experience, the Chinese in general want none of our kind of freedom or democracy. They want accountability and equality under the law, so rich people can't pay their way out of punishment while the poor suffer random injustice.
As for the Communism part - does the idea of communism have to be static, forever frozen in a time that is rapidly getting more and more distant? Karl Marx would never himself have claimed any such thing, I'm sure, and of course it has to evolve to remain relevant. There is no such thing as "The One True Communism", only a number of attempts at implementing the idea. The Soviet way failed to the relief of most, I would say, but the Chinese have managed to keep up with the changing reality. As far as I can see, their way could well continue to be successful for a long time.
Why is that? There is nothing odious about a company choosing to move their production to the place they feel is most conductive to their main purpose: making money. The Chinese are, contrary to common misconceptions on slashdot, "idiots who are out to get you" - they are sensible people, certainly when it comes to business, and it may be a useful tactic to talk about moving one's production because something isn't as comfortable where you are. Governments are normally willing to accomodate you if they can and if what you ask for is not unreasonable.
The big problem with moving 25 G$ of investments is that most of it simply can't be moved that easily - buildings, expert employees, agreements with suppliers and partners etc etc - it makes no difference whether this is in China or the US. I can't really see Dell suddenly getting moral and ideals to the extent that they will leave it all behind, not to mention the huge cost of establishing themselves in another place.
And anyway, GTA, with its focus on wanton violence and abuse, is somewhat dated. How about a completely different approach: A game where the objective is to drive in a safe, economical, environmentally responsible and polite way through London City in the rush hour, taking into account the one-way system, the roadworks, the tens of thousands of pedestrians crossing the street in front of you, the fact that the London streetmap looks a bit like a Mandelbrot fractal and that streetnames change on average every 20 meters. Now that WOULD be extreme.
If thats all it takes then the system is broken, not the people abusing it.
That is a rather bizarre point of view; can I take it to imply that if you pop down to the corner shop quickly without locking your front door, then it is OK for me to go into your house, have a loo around and take some pictures? This analogy is perfectly valid - your house is connected to a public network of streets, and anybody passing by could go up to your door and try the handle; they could even claim that "it is for you own benefit because it is a 'security check'".
I wouldn't be surprised if you are also one the guys that take an extreme stand on the matter of privacy - funny thought, really.
Or if you just need a map for driving, there is OpenStreetMap: http://www.openstreetmap.org/
Nothing very fancy, but not bad at all for what it is.