I agree with your posts, but what is so extreme about France? It sounds like a great plan, and this is something I have always advocated. European culture (on AND off the continent) and a big part of that is due to low birth rates. States came into being to foster and protect the family, it is only natural that they continue to do so.
Of course, since it was under Hitler programs like this were first implimented you may be referring to that... I don't know. I applaude the French effort, and I hope other European nations follow.
All you have to do with such people is discuss Plato's Phaedrus. I can accept that it is our modern culture to feel nothing but abhorance to child pornography. But I cannot accept that is human nature. If one of the greatest minds to ever live can write an entire book about loving boys, surely it is not intrinsically wrong.
One cannot condemn paedophilia without condemning Plato.
Most intelligent people have come to this conclusion as well, when I have brought it up. Read the Phaedrus, it is one of the better dialogues and one of the few to deal with love. It might just change your mind on the subject.
That doesn't change the fact what we have here is the logical fallacy of "Dicto simpliciter".
Even if we were talking about the damn marine corps, simply because one individual chooses to act in discordance with the group's stated goals doesn't at all reflect on the group.
Any attempt at making that claim is NOT an argument, but perhaps an explanation...
Do you think that because you make this claim, it automatically must be fact? I know this is parrotted on slashdot all the time, but there are tens of thousands of attorneys who disagree with you on this. There is also the problem of the legislature and chief executive.
The reality is current law both in the US and according to the UN and EU really does regarding intellectual property as property (duh, THATS why they use that term).
If copyrights were property, then they would last forever, like an other property.
You may not have exclusive right into perpetuity to that property, but it is very similar to along term lease. Are you going to tell the owner of a high rise in manhattan he doesn't own the property upon which is building sits merely because the lease is for a hundred years?
You see, what you don't realize is the entire tradition of of law regaring property goes back to a day when ALL land in England belonged to the king. He would lease it to the nobles, who would in turn sublease it to other tenants all the way down to the common man. Ownership of property FOREVER once never existed in our legal system, except for the king.
This is the other aspect of that system... property in and of itself is an unnatural construction. Property is whatever the law says it is, our only discussion should be what is the BEST way. Before there were governments, property was that which you retained possession of as long as you had the physical strength to maintain that ownership.
Anyway carry on, I hope you realize how ridiculously pointless your argument is. Please try to learn more about the history of property than what you see on this website!
chill man, you are NOT most users. The parent poster was simply making a valid point that the vast majority of internet users do not need port 25. That doesn't seem to include you but that is no excuse to call the poster a punk.
What language do you use when communicating in morse code? My understanding was that it was for roman characters only... so that eliminates many languages right there.
However, I imagine the Russians must have created a cyrllic version of morse code.
Its probably pretty smart of them. I mean, this is one of the last IBM manufacturing facilities left in the US. Everything is getting moved overseas. What are these people going to do for jobs? Especially up in Vermont... I sure wouldn't want to move away, and the only other factory up there I can think of is Ben and Jerry's.
The dollar in your hand right now is worth about half of what a dollar was worth in 1983.
CD's cost twice as much, houses cost three times as much, cars about twice as much...
You could get a decent family sedan for less than $10,000 in 1983. Now, about all you can get for that price is a Hyundai Accent.
I think its ok to say if inflation has been 100% over 20 years, it has been 50% over the past ten years... Perhaps some economist folks can enlighten me.
In 1950, only half of Americans had indoor plumbing.
This is an absolutely false statistic. Indoor plumbing was required in apartments in New York City in the 1890's. MAYBE 50% of Americans did not have access to heated water, but indoor plumbing?
What do you think people were doing? Going out to the well and dropping a bucket? Going to the local fountain?
Come on.
I won't even bother addressing your other ridiculous statistics. Did you just pull that shit out of your ass?
I hate to tell you this, but Sandman used to be a regular comic book. It was one of the first Vertigo comics.
Transmetropolitan is also a vertigo comic, and is a great story.
Graphic novels were cool when they first came out in like 1989. I still cherish my copy of Batman: Digital Justice. I would prefer a regular montly comic with the quality of graphic novels, like in Transmetropolitan.
The problem is much deeper than "respect" and using the justice system is pretty much ineffective. We are talking about 5 million prisoners, 2 million prison guards, 15 million law enforcements people....
There is an entire culture of prison life which encompasses a number of people bigger than whole European nations, bigger than most states in the US. I don't know what the solution is, and there probably isn't a way to rehabilitate all of these people. WHat I do know, is prisoners and those who profit from them are the lowest of the low, and are human only in their appearances and base desires. Without some sort of guiding ethic to which our legal system adheres, it isn't surprising all of these people become wretched.
It is going to take a massive revolution in our social structure before this changes. With so much of the economy dependent upon prisons however, I don't think it will happen any time soon. All of the people involved with the criminal justice system are incapable of living in a peaceful, productive society.
I can BUILD a similar system for nearly the price of an XBOX. We are talking about a DVD drive, a celeron processor, a geforce 3, 64 megs of ram, and a 10 gig hard drive... How could Microsoft, with the means to obtain the lowest possible prices, NOT be able to put these things together for that price?
If you know for a fact the Xbox is being sold at a loss, then what is the cost of one of these units. What WOULD Microsoft have to sell them for to generate a profit?
$200 is just not at all reasonable. Have you added up the price of these components? How did you come up with this number???
The term "Big Lie" is something which is often quoted as coming from Hitler, but that is not entirely accurate. German Prapoganda (The term "Nazi" was in fact a British propaganda tool, the Germans nor the National Socialist Party members referred to themselves as such) was in many ways much more accurate than allied propoganda at the time. Hitler did write extensively about the subject of Propoganda, most importantly in his book Mein Kampf. The term "The Big Lie" was not actually used however. The discussion focused more on how the British extensively used Propoganda whereas the Germans did little more then mock their enemies as idiots. Hitler also went into some detail about how propaganda is the art of selling an idea and rightly compared it to commercial advertising. I highly doubt Arie Fleischer would admit he is nothing more than an advertiser, selling the ideas pushed by the Bush administration. Whatever else Hitler did, he did not lie to the world about his goals, propaganda included.
The real usage of the term "Big Lie" by the Germans was mostly by Joseph Goebbels, the Propoganda minister. It was mostly in reference to the primary British argument for why Germany must be stopped. The British accused the Germans of plotting to take over the world, something you hear often today. It doesn't really matter this was never a stated goal of Germany, nor that they completely lacked the means and admitted as such. What matters is Great Britain already controlled 2/3 of the world in 1940. Not only was Britains lie without any basis in fact, it was incredibly hypocritical.
Here is a speech by Goebbels regarding this topic.
The proper analogy you should be making is SCO's claim that their rights are being infringed upon by Linux are as proposterous as Britain's claim that Germany wished and was able to control the world.
It is only impossible to prove an unrestricted negative. Once could say God doesn't exist in my room right now, but one cannot say God doesn't exist. This is a common topic in theist/atheist debates.
If anything, things like the quantum mechanics seem to indicate anything is possible. There is a measurable chance that you will instantly appear right next to me when you read this post. There is also a chance a perfectly secure linux box will appear as well... It may be extraordinarily improbable, but it is still possible...
The descriptive words weak and strong apply to certain attributes of a living thing, but do not necessarily imply that living thing is entirely weak or strong.
THe point with the article, just as with Nietzsche, is that life IS struggle. Our immune system is strengthened through constant attack. Our souls are strengthened by struggling for life itself.
I concur. In fact, I have always used ATI cards since I got my first VGA card because they always worked well. Gave up the Mach8 a while back in my long lived AMD 386 DX/40, but the Mach64 still runs in a NexGen Nx586/100 box... It only runs as a firewall these days though.
Thank you. It is the ideal that matters. We may never achieve all of those things, but it is the purpose of life to strive for them. To not do so is inhuman...
"We" (Americans) work more hours than the Japanese did in the 80's.
There is some debate on this subject but lets say its true. We go to school longer than we did in the 80's, and retire earlier as well. We work hard for that period of time, but HATE IT. No one wants to start working, and once you are working you want to get out of it. In fact, we NEED people to work longer hours. Where would all the immigrants find jobs if we actually had time to mow our own lawns, raise our own kids, prepare our own food... This is what I mean by convenience being a foundation of our society.
Its not the hours of working I am talking about. Its real work, passionate work. The beautiful facade of a building, intricate pressed tin ceilings, hand made furnishings... The fruits of our labors are incredibly INHUMAN today, despite our vast technology and a planet with 5 billion people on it. Perhaps the hours we are working are greater, but the output is worse. The longer hours are just part of a game, to keep you busy, to make you crave convenience more.
If the average person lived til 125, that would indeed cause society to function a bit differently.
Current estimates are that the average 25 year old today will live to be 100. Given the rate of medical improvements over the last 50 years, I would say improving that to 125 is not a completely outlandish estimate. I am 25, so I am framing this argument from my own perspective...
I don't know, man- the average archetect is pretty motivated. At least the ones I know of. The main problem is budgets- most people don't want to pay for more than boring "box" architecture when building a new strip mall or whatever. You can be the most passionate archetect in the world, but if your clients will only pay for boring concrete slabs 99% of the time, what can you do?
You are right, most architects are motivated, at least when they are young. They become jaded eventually.
Its not the architects either, its the builders. It is pretty much impossible to find stonemasons who can produce kind of architectural ornaments that were common a century ago. If you could find one, it would cost a fortune. I live in Brooklyn, and let me tell you the incredible contrast between the hoards of artists and even architects from Cooper Union and Pratt, combined with the thousands of beautiful townhouses is SHOCKING.
Perhaps its true, the masses don't care about that shit, so people stopped training to be stonemasons, and now we have plain architecture because thats all anyone knows how to make. Perhaps however, what the masses desire shouldn't be the standard of value we use when creating or communities. I simply believe that the things that make life worth living are not easily quantified or qualified by money. Perhaps the masses would be happy with a shack, the most basic of shelter. Does that make it right?
Perhaps the standard of value isn't what the masses want. Perhaps it should not be up to them at all.
Just throwing some ideas out there... its a problem, I don't know quite what to do about it.
Perhaps you have accepted that world as being the pinnacle of human achievement, but I do not hold such a view. Your life, and those who live by the creed of convenience will produce nothing future generations will remember. It is nothing more than modern decadence.
The point of life is STRUGGLE. Just because your recent ancestors produced a plethora of new gadgets does not mean that your humanity is no longer relevent. Why hasn't this convenience brought greater prosperity? or happiness? 20% of our population on antidepressants, most people intoxicating themselves when they are not working, human reproduction turned into some sort of sick pursuit with the daycare culture... I see a shocking suicide rate in many places, the people who no longer want to live in your world.
No, I think you and I see a very different world. You see a world where the masses have everything they want, and thus they are happy. I see a world where people have everything they want, but their hearts yearn for more... something that cannot be satisfied by pure materialistic gain. I see pervasive discontent and rage, the source of which is completely unknown to most who feel it. It is the modern sickness... to have so much, except for life itself.
Someday, you won't have to work for your food, your housing, information, or anything. You will simply tell your computer to do whatever you want. That is as easy as it possibly can be. What happens when humans simply express their desires to computers, and have them satisfied. Is that life? Is that a life we should desire? Perhaps I am looking to far into this, but I have practically grown up with the GUI debate.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes.
I agree with your posts, but what is so extreme about France? It sounds like a great plan, and this is something I have always advocated. European culture (on AND off the continent) and a big part of that is due to low birth rates. States came into being to foster and protect the family, it is only natural that they continue to do so.
Of course, since it was under Hitler programs like this were first implimented you may be referring to that... I don't know. I applaude the French effort, and I hope other European nations follow.
All you have to do with such people is discuss Plato's Phaedrus. I can accept that it is our modern culture to feel nothing but abhorance to child pornography. But I cannot accept that is human nature. If one of the greatest minds to ever live can write an entire book about loving boys, surely it is not intrinsically wrong.
One cannot condemn paedophilia without condemning Plato.
Most intelligent people have come to this conclusion as well, when I have brought it up. Read the Phaedrus, it is one of the better dialogues and one of the few to deal with love. It might just change your mind on the subject.
That doesn't change the fact what we have here is the logical fallacy of "Dicto simpliciter".
Even if we were talking about the damn marine corps, simply because one individual chooses to act in discordance with the group's stated goals doesn't at all reflect on the group.
Any attempt at making that claim is NOT an argument, but perhaps an explanation...
Copywritten material is not property.
Do you think that because you make this claim, it automatically must be fact? I know this is parrotted on slashdot all the time, but there are tens of thousands of attorneys who disagree with you on this. There is also the problem of the legislature and chief executive.
The reality is current law both in the US and according to the UN and EU really does regarding intellectual property as property (duh, THATS why they use that term).
If copyrights were property, then they would last forever, like an other property.
You may not have exclusive right into perpetuity
to that property, but it is very similar to along term lease. Are you going to tell the owner of a high rise in manhattan he doesn't own the property upon which is building sits merely because the lease is for a hundred years?
You see, what you don't realize is the entire tradition of of law regaring property goes back to a day when ALL land in England belonged to the king. He would lease it to the nobles, who would in turn sublease it to other tenants all the way down to the common man. Ownership of property FOREVER once never existed in our legal system, except for the king.
This is the other aspect of that system... property in and of itself is an unnatural construction. Property is whatever the law says it is, our only discussion should be what is the BEST way. Before there were governments, property was that which you retained possession of as long as you had the physical strength to maintain that ownership.
Anyway carry on, I hope you realize how ridiculously pointless your argument is. Please try to learn more about the history of property than what you see on this website!
chill man, you are NOT most users. The parent poster was simply making a valid point that the vast majority of internet users do not need port 25. That doesn't seem to include you but that is no excuse to call the poster a punk.
You had me going until I read: she closed them by using the normal technique *WHILE* jumping off her stool.
I wonder if she engages in some acrobatics in the sack. THAT would be interesting.
and it overcomes real language barriers.
What language do you use when communicating in morse code? My understanding was that it was for roman characters only... so that eliminates many languages right there.
However, I imagine the Russians must have created a cyrllic version of morse code.
I prefer the days when Franco ruled.
I think Spain needs to give up on the democracy BS and return to their roots, before their country becomes as crazy as the rest of Europe.
Its probably pretty smart of them. I mean, this is one of the last IBM manufacturing facilities left in the US. Everything is getting moved overseas. What are these people going to do for jobs? Especially up in Vermont... I sure wouldn't want to move away, and the only other factory up there I can think of is Ben and Jerry's.
Its called inflation.
The dollar in your hand right now is worth about half of what a dollar was worth in 1983.
CD's cost twice as much, houses cost three times as much, cars about twice as much...
You could get a decent family sedan for less than $10,000 in 1983. Now, about all you can get for that price is a Hyundai Accent.
I think its ok to say if inflation has been 100% over 20 years, it has been 50% over the past ten years... Perhaps some economist folks can enlighten me.
In 1950, only half of Americans had indoor plumbing.
This is an absolutely false statistic. Indoor plumbing was required in apartments in New York City in the 1890's. MAYBE 50% of Americans did not have access to heated water, but indoor plumbing?
What do you think people were doing? Going out to the well and dropping a bucket? Going to the local fountain?
Come on.
I won't even bother addressing your other ridiculous statistics. Did you just pull that shit out of your ass?
I hate to tell you this, but Sandman used to be a regular comic book. It was one of the first Vertigo comics.
Transmetropolitan is also a vertigo comic, and is a great story.
Graphic novels were cool when they first came out in like 1989. I still cherish my copy of Batman: Digital Justice. I would prefer a regular montly comic with the quality of graphic novels, like in Transmetropolitan.
The problem is much deeper than "respect" and using the justice system is pretty much ineffective. We are talking about 5 million prisoners, 2 million prison guards, 15 million law enforcements people....
There is an entire culture of prison life which encompasses a number of people bigger than whole European nations, bigger than most states in the US. I don't know what the solution is, and there probably isn't a way to rehabilitate all of these people. WHat I do know, is prisoners and those who profit from them are the lowest of the low, and are human only in their appearances and base desires. Without some sort of guiding ethic to which our legal system adheres, it isn't surprising all of these people become wretched.
It is going to take a massive revolution in our social structure before this changes. With so much of the economy dependent upon prisons however, I don't think it will happen any time soon. All of the people involved with the criminal justice system are incapable of living in a peaceful, productive society.
I can BUILD a similar system for nearly the price of an XBOX. We are talking about a DVD drive, a celeron processor, a geforce 3, 64 megs of ram, and a 10 gig hard drive... How could Microsoft, with the means to obtain the lowest possible prices, NOT be able to put these things together for that price?
If you know for a fact the Xbox is being sold at a loss, then what is the cost of one of these units. What WOULD Microsoft have to sell them for to generate a profit?
$200 is just not at all reasonable. Have you added up the price of these components? How did you come up with this number???
The term "Big Lie" is something which is often quoted as coming from Hitler, but that is not entirely accurate. German Prapoganda (The term "Nazi" was in fact a British propaganda tool, the Germans nor the National Socialist Party members referred to themselves as such) was in many ways much more accurate than allied propoganda at the time. Hitler did write extensively about the subject of Propoganda, most importantly in his book Mein Kampf. The term "The Big Lie" was not actually used however. The discussion focused more on how the British extensively used Propoganda whereas the Germans did little more then mock their enemies as idiots. Hitler also went into some detail about how propaganda is the art of selling an idea and rightly compared it to commercial advertising. I highly doubt Arie Fleischer would admit he is nothing more than an advertiser, selling the ideas pushed by the Bush administration. Whatever else Hitler did, he did not lie to the world about his goals, propaganda included.
The real usage of the term "Big Lie" by the Germans was mostly by Joseph Goebbels, the Propoganda minister. It was mostly in reference to the primary British argument for why Germany must be stopped. The British accused the Germans of plotting to take over the world, something you hear often today. It doesn't really matter this was never a stated goal of Germany, nor that they completely lacked the means and admitted as such. What matters is Great Britain already controlled 2/3 of the world in 1940. Not only was Britains lie without any basis in fact, it was incredibly hypocritical.
Here is a speech by Goebbels regarding this topic.
The proper analogy you should be making is SCO's claim that their rights are being infringed upon by Linux are as proposterous as Britain's claim that Germany wished and was able to control the world.
I kept a dial up account with them from early 1994 until 2000... IBM sold it to AT&T.
.com suffix. The IBM Global Network was ibm.net.
That is an internal IBM nameserver as evidenced by the
It is only impossible to prove an unrestricted negative. Once could say God doesn't exist in my room right now, but one cannot say God doesn't exist. This is a common topic in theist/atheist debates.
If anything, things like the quantum mechanics seem to indicate anything is possible. There is a measurable chance that you will instantly appear right next to me when you read this post. There is also a chance a perfectly secure linux box will appear as well... It may be extraordinarily improbable, but it is still possible...
I mean, that is the only game I have ever seen an adult woman play...
The descriptive words weak and strong apply to certain attributes of a living thing, but do not necessarily imply that living thing is entirely weak or strong.
THe point with the article, just as with Nietzsche, is that life IS struggle. Our immune system is strengthened through constant attack. Our souls are strengthened by struggling for life itself.
I concur. In fact, I have always used ATI cards since I got my first VGA card because they always worked well. Gave up the Mach8 a while back in my long lived AMD 386 DX/40, but the Mach64 still runs in a NexGen Nx586/100 box... It only runs as a firewall these days though.
Thank you. It is the ideal that matters. We may never achieve all of those things, but it is the purpose of life to strive for them. To not do so is inhuman...
"We" (Americans) work more hours than the Japanese did in the 80's.
There is some debate on this subject but lets say its true. We go to school longer than we did in the 80's, and retire earlier as well. We work hard for that period of time, but HATE IT. No one wants to start working, and once you are working you want to get out of it. In fact, we NEED people to work longer hours. Where would all the immigrants find jobs if we actually had time to mow our own lawns, raise our own kids, prepare our own food... This is what I mean by convenience being a foundation of our society.
Its not the hours of working I am talking about. Its real work, passionate work. The beautiful facade of a building, intricate pressed tin ceilings, hand made furnishings... The fruits of our labors are incredibly INHUMAN today, despite our vast technology and a planet with 5 billion people on it. Perhaps the hours we are working are greater, but the output is worse. The longer hours are just part of a game, to keep you busy, to make you crave convenience more.
If the average person lived til 125, that would indeed cause society to function a bit differently.
Current estimates are that the average 25 year old today will live to be 100. Given the rate of medical improvements over the last 50 years, I would say improving that to 125 is not a completely outlandish estimate. I am 25, so I am framing this argument from my own perspective...
I don't know, man- the average archetect is pretty motivated. At least the ones I know of. The main problem is budgets- most people don't want to pay for more than boring "box" architecture when building a new strip mall or whatever. You can be the most passionate archetect in the world, but if your clients will only pay for boring concrete slabs 99% of the time, what can you do?
You are right, most architects are motivated, at least when they are young. They become jaded eventually.
Its not the architects either, its the builders. It is pretty much impossible to find stonemasons who can produce kind of architectural ornaments that were common a century ago. If you could find one, it would cost a fortune. I live in Brooklyn, and let me tell you the incredible contrast between the hoards of artists and even architects from Cooper Union and Pratt, combined with the thousands of beautiful townhouses is SHOCKING.
Perhaps its true, the masses don't care about that shit, so people stopped training to be stonemasons, and now we have plain architecture because thats all anyone knows how to make. Perhaps however, what the masses desire shouldn't be the standard of value we use when creating or communities. I simply believe that the things that make life worth living are not easily quantified or qualified by money. Perhaps the masses would be happy with a shack, the most basic of shelter. Does that make it right?
Perhaps the standard of value isn't what the masses want. Perhaps it should not be up to them at all.
Just throwing some ideas out there... its a problem, I don't know quite what to do about it.
Thats YOUR real world.
Perhaps you have accepted that world as being the pinnacle of human achievement, but I do not hold such a view. Your life, and those who live by the creed of convenience will produce nothing future generations will remember. It is nothing more than modern decadence.
The point of life is STRUGGLE. Just because your recent ancestors produced a plethora of new gadgets does not mean that your humanity is no longer relevent. Why hasn't this convenience brought greater prosperity? or happiness? 20% of our population on antidepressants, most people intoxicating themselves when they are not working, human reproduction turned into some sort of sick pursuit with the daycare culture... I see a shocking suicide rate in many places, the people who no longer want to live in your world.
No, I think you and I see a very different world. You see a world where the masses have everything they want, and thus they are happy. I see a world where people have everything they want, but their hearts yearn for more... something that cannot be satisfied by pure materialistic gain. I see pervasive discontent and rage, the source of which is completely unknown to most who feel it. It is the modern sickness... to have so much, except for life itself.
Someday, you won't have to work for your food, your housing, information, or anything. You will simply tell your computer to do whatever you want. That is as easy as it possibly can be. What happens when humans simply express their desires to computers, and have them satisfied. Is that life? Is that a life we should desire? Perhaps I am looking to far into this, but I have practically grown up with the GUI debate.