I live in Arizona, and we at least recognize that there is a problem (though we have no clue what to do with it). With the illegal immigration situation you have a large "underclass" who don't have legitimate jobs, and the jobs available don't pay well. Add to it the cultural differences;large families with a male breadwinner (in the AZ republic they had a biased piece about an illegal who was happily raising 4 dependents on 13/hr, before losing his job, I couldn't do that, nor would find it acceptable), and you have a situation that is ripe for crime.
Mexican's are a large part of our crime statistics here (and in most of CA), how is it dishonest to say so? It isn't racist to report statistics, if your a minority and offended, try to change your fellows actions for the better, and not censor facts.
At 4am, while your sleeping? Thieves (the ones not in prison) are good at their jobs. You can keep 8 guns on you at all times, but if you never notice, then there still is nothing you can do.
The real problem, though, isn't your AC unit, its transmission lines, municipal wiring, etc...
Heck, I've even heard of the theives cutting catalytic converters off of cars in long term lots because there's valuable metals inside.
This recently happened to my fathers trucks. He had two pickup trucks parked outside his house, in an upper-middle-class suburban neighborhood (all the neighbors know each other, to boot), and someone came by in the middle of the night and removed the catalytic converters from both of them. It cost him quite a penny to replace them, and the idiot thief probably only got around $60 for them.
I always wonder what excuse the buyer has when a truck pulls in with 500 catalytic converters. Obviously it isn't reputable, but the money blinds us of all sins.
if law enforcement can use metallurgic analysis to determine the exact batch of bullets a particular round came from, then i'm sure they could apply the same techniques to other metals.
Lay off the CSI. Most police labs aren't equipped for this, and even if they were it is prohibitively expensive. Real Life forensics are a far league away from what television tells us.
Melting a ton of copper from various sources would pretty much destroy any unique identifiers, even if said identifiers were known (which is doubtful, since it would vary by batch, and some reference material would have to exist). If I took 30 boxes of ammo by different manufactures, and different calibers, and melted it down into a heap of lead, I very much doubt anyone could trace it back to the original 30 batches of ammo, and even if they could the price of doing so would be very prohibitive.
PROTIP: VAC is triggered by the detection of entire known binaries. You can't trip it accidentally without having the cheating mechanism on-disk, and if you do have it on-disk... well that's your fault.
As if software can never go wrong. False positives will always exist.
Yes, there is a very slim chance of it happening, but it still is possible.
There are other ways it can happen, like hacked accounts, or such.
Also... Having a cheating program on your HDD, is not the same thing as cheating. Isn't that somewhat a "thoughcrime"? It should only ban for ACTUALLY cheating, and not just having some software sitting about.
The iTunes thing is just odd, I've never had a problem with offline play. Right now I'm using a MacMini as my jukebox, and it hardly ever is online, yet it hasn't given me any problems with iTMS purchases. As far as DRM goes, iTunes is the best, its rather convenient, and non intrusive (which doesn't go so far, its like saying "as far as dictators go, Castro is the best"). You probably found a bug, or accidentally clicked "unauthorize", or such.
My problem with DRM such as Steam, is that it is only trustworthy in the short term. I have a CD wallet of hundreds of games, most of them old, and a large amount of them from defunct publishers. I enjoy reinstalling them, from time to time, and replaying them. With Steam this activity is dependent on whether or not Valve is in business 10 years from now, and whether or not they feel like keeping their Steam/authentication servers active all that time. Neither of these propositions I trust.
Imagine if the original Fallout games (Interplay = dead) required online authorization? Or Total Annihilation (Cave Dog = REALLY dead)? Both of these games I recently installed on my computer, which I couldn't do with current Valve products. Its like buying a book you can only read if the author is still alive, which makes very little sense.
I don't trust other people to keep my keys, fully realizing that times do change, and companies (no matter how strong they seem) die. It's my $50, and I might want to reclaim my value 10 years down the road.
The only ethical solution I've found so far is buying it, then downloading a cracked ISO and burning it (replacing the original disk). Yes, its still illegal, but I take upholding my ethics (I own what I purchase) over legal technicalities.
There are lots of PC companies that probably see Windows as a bit of a stumbling block to future sales. Dell has definitely said that it would like to sell machines with OS X.
While not a fan of Windows, I don't see it as much of a stumbling block. They still have a 90% market share, which is pretty enviable, and shows that demand (or at least OS ignorance) is still pretty high. Most retailers I've been to lately still only sell Windows boxes. And, my favorite metric, my aged, computer illiterate parents still refuse to buy an Apple (or anything with OS X), and still have no clue what a Linux is, and why they might want one ("is it some sort of cat with tuffed ears?").
Another fun fact about this is that even if courts force Apple to unlock OS X, nothing can force them to support other hardware, thus it wouldn't be good for Dell in the long run to be selling an OS that may or may not actually work on their PCs. Hell, Apple could lock down their driver/support infrastructure (killing 3rd party drivers) making most of what we expect from a PC impossible.
Should they win, those companies get a new product to sell in a market clamoring for Apple stuff.
Woe to those who clamor for modern Apple computers. Since the Intel switch all of mine have been nothing but a PitA. When I first started messing with OS X, I loved it, and even scrapped all my high-end PCs for its simplicity. But lately the quality has been going down. I tend to view Apple more as a commodity electronics company, than a computer company these days, and I think they view themselves likewise as well.
Oddly, right now I prefer Windows to OS X, since at least Vista isn't on a virtual subscription model. With OS X, you really need to buy the latest version every year to be able to run any modern software.
Death is the "permanent" cessation of brain functions. We don't know that functions have ended permanently because they may at some point be restarted.
I cede this point. I suppose we could amend this to the more nebulous; "death is the prolonged cessation of brain functions, and a the effect of a certain amount of irreparable damage to certain key areas of the brain which render renewed activities impossible."
In that case, was the person ever really "dead" since the brain function cessation wasn't permanent?
This is another can of worms. People claim to die on the operating table, who are obviously not dead currently. People can be "brain dead" (with only their more rudimentary structures functioning) and come back years later, etc... I think we use the term "dead" in many ways. We consider "lack of consciousness" to be death, which is about as vague as you can get. We die, then, every night, by this definition, and boxing is a sport of trying to temporarily "kill" others. I'd say death has to be permanent, so we must add some time, or permanent clause to it, to avoid absurdity. Thus someone in a coma is not dead, someone who drowned five minutes ago might be, and we can say with certainty that Shakespeare is quite dead.
Its amazing how unknown our own functions are. We know the inner workings of stars thousands of light years distant, but yet still can't define life and death with any degree of precision (much less more esoteric, yet banal, things such as consciousness).
Arguemnt? DO you really think I was making an argument? I was and still am saying your a fucking idiot. You are a moron, a dumbass, a spoiled little stupid bitch brat. What else is anyone expected to think of you when you make idiotic statements like that? Trust me, there was no reasoning in my statement, I wasn't attempting to convert you to anything, I would be just as happy if you killed yourself which isn't much happy at all. I was telling you how it is and how you appear to people. If you don't like it, do something about it- I would suggest pulling your head out of your ass and thinking about the shit your trying to say. If you do like it, get used to people telling you that. Judging from the calmness in your response, I think it is safe to assume that you used to hearing it.
Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?
That said, I see the difference of opinion here; I never stated we should stop fighting, but we should be mindful of our own rights more so. The odds of "the terrorists" ever taking over America is practically nill. "The terrorists" don't want to rule America, or make it into a fundamentalist Muslim state (if only the same could be said for our own homebrew Christian extremists), they want us to get the hell out of their business and let them be totalitarian theocracies in peace.
The merits of this view are a discussion for another day, but we can all agree that they have gone too far, and some level of violence is necessary to secure our Country and allies.
This argument is heavily into the discussion of "ends" and "means", in this case we have "combating terror" as the former, and "forfeiting out own rights" as the latter. You are of the the "ends justify the means" crowd, while I am on the opposite side of the spectrum. The truth, as always, probably lies someplace in the middle.
Here is your ignorance showing up again. Do you actually care about the United states or just the expanding of the right?
If by "right" you mean the religious or political right, you are wrong. I find both of them distasteful. If, though, by "right" you mean "rights", then you are correct. I don't care a damn about America as a mere fiction, I care more about what it means. If our government decides to fight against my rights, I'll fight back, just like I'd fight against "the terrorists". Please see my sig. Human rights are more important than any political body, or nationalistic fiction.
Yes, we could give them up temporarily to fight off "the terrorists", but power doesn't like forfeiting its gains. You might find that when you give up rights, gaining them back isn't as easy as you make it sound. I trust our government about as far as I can throw it, and I definitely don't trust them to ever reinstate my rights, I also don't trust voters. Here in Arizona we just passed a law by a wide margin to restrict the rights of a minority (Gays), things like this do NOT harbor trust. Rights are generally gained with a gun, and not a vote, our history has proven this again and again. Can you name a single time where we've gained rights from our government without bloodshed? This makes me very wary of power.
In conclusion, by all means resist the religious extremists (as long as you do it against our own brand of them as well). By all means protect the homeland against harmful forces. BUT... You'll pry the Constitution out of my cold dead hands, thats what matters to me, not our president, not our congress, not our flag, or our borders. If you revoke any of the Bill of Rights (even "temporarily"), I will fight back, since at the point the America ceases to be America, and our government is just another hostile foreign power.
Death is the permanent cessation of brain functions, nothing more nothing less. To imbue it with anything more than this is a waste of time, and rather pointless. After your brain stops working, you will no longer care what the definition of "death" is, since... well... you'll be dead.
In college I took a class called "The Sociology of Death" since I thought it would be an interesting survey on the cultural meaning, but instead it turned into a group coping class. The general gist of the class was pretty much what you said, that death is somehow a personally enriching experience. My take on that was; who cares it won't matter once your dead.
All of our death mumbo jumbo is only hear to comfort the living, for the dead don't need it. All that can be said of it is; you no longer exist as a self-identifying consciousness. Everything else is happy thoughts and speculation to comfort us against the steady advance of the inevitable and inconceivable.
The only "after death" experience we can be assured of is reentering the nitrogen cycle.
We use mathematics to quantify physics, but there is no "connection" between the two, except in the sense that we can count *anything* and say there's a connection. It's like saying, "How deep does the connection go between mathematics and bananas when I observe there are 10 bananas, and I add two more, and then I observe 12 bananas."
Actually it is really common to think that there is a deep connection between math and physics, so deep that they are indeed the same thing. Several of my math and physics friends in college thought that math was, indeed, the language of the universe. They did think that 1+1=2 was an objective, empirical, and a priori statement, which is as real as the laptop I'm typing this on. In short; math precedes the physical universe.
They confused the model with the fact, IMO. Math is a very useful and flexible axiomatic modeling system, nothing more nothing less. We invented it to fit the empirical universe, so we shouldn't be surprised that it does fit.
But then I can shoot you with my one bullet, get your one bullet, shoot someone else and get theirs. You just turned terrorism into some twisted MMO now.
So we must sacrifice our individual rights to protect the self-same rights?
The only thing that makes this country great is our history of expanding rights (ignoring the mentioned blemishes), and our fairly radical founding documents. Outside of that, I don't give squat about the US. To restate, I care about the US only insofar as it is a symbol for the right it represents. The second we care about a mere symbol more than what it represents, the symbol is meaningless and worthless.
Yes, "the bad guys" are bad. I think we all can agree that any extremist version of a religion is bad, and any time religion seeks to stomp on the rights of individuals is generally bad. But, I'd like to advance this a bit, and say that anytime government does so is just as bad. What is the different between a government doing it and a religion?
MAn your a fucking idiot!
And you suck at argumentation. For future reference, statements like that invalidate any point you may have had to begin with.
What context? That we have can lapse into complete paranoia from time to time? That blind nationalism can blind of more important matters of ethics and morality? That we enjoy dehumanizing people different than us?
I like the US, but I have a hard time identifying the rational of those who sit around saying we can't do any wrong, or that we are "the best country on earth". Nationalism is a proven evil, no good has ever come of it. We are just another country in the world, and someday we will be gone, just like all states. America is an arbitrary thing, a mere concept, and not worth forsaking human dignity and rights over, as they are far more important than a mere symbol.
We've made mistakes, and we refuse to learn from them. How many of the Japanese locked in camps, and deprived of their rights, were a serious threat to America? How many people in Guantanamo are a threat? Was Iraq really a threat to us? Was McCarthyism really a good thing?
We can do evil, and thus we have to be vigilant. Bush is proof of this. We let him get away with far too much in the name of faceless (and largely baseless) fear. Just like all of the things mentioned.
But then again I'd rather the terrorists "win" than compromise any individual rights, or any standard we profess to believe in.
Yes, there are countries worse than us, much worse. But, there are also countries better than us. I find it odd that we went from claiming "We're the bastion to freedom" to claiming "We're not as bad as random Muslim theocracies, and some African anarchies, and perhaps China!". We should be striving to be the most free country in the world again, and not just mediocre.
As for all of our other metrics, we're failing. Sure, we're better than Congo, but who isn't (besides the Congo)? Its like murdering someone and saying "at least I didn't rape her!".
I do find it odd that we count DRM in here, DRM is not a government mandate, its a stupid mandate from the free market. No one is forcing anyone to use DRM media, sell DRM media, or anything else like that. Companies decided to do so, we decide to buy their products. Isn't the free market grand?
This is why my idea of striving to be the freest country in the world doesn't equate with many other people's idea of freedom. I don't think corporations fall into the list of priorities, only people as individuals. Free corporations have done their share in destroying America. I'm getting sick of having to spend energy on thinking of reasons to be proud of my own country.
California? California is the dumbest place to drive truck ever. My dad is a truck driver, and used to take me on his routes sometimes (even more recently I find the experience interesting), so I got to know a fair bit of driving from the other view. The last time I rode with him he was hauling liquid sugar from Phoenix to San Fransisco, and even with baffles the nature of the load seriously messed with braking, as a ton of viscous liquid is wont to do.
People cutting 6' in front of a loaded semi deserve what they get, as do morons riding in the 400' of blind spot along the side of the trailer. People generally act suicidal in the presence of semis. They don't handle like a Civic, they handle more like a train. If you act like a moron around a loaded semi going 75mph, your the one dead, not the truck driver either, and you generally deserve it.
Once we were heading down a rather sever grade, and some idiot decided riding 6" in front of us was a great idea, not realizing that run away truck ramps exist for a very good reason.
Going to California was a pain in the ass though, both being in a truck and not. Being that they are stuck in the right-most two lanes, and going around 20 mph slower than the rest of traffic makes an interesting experience. I always felt sorry for the people merging on and off, though they might be able to handle it with a bit more finesse. In my girlfriend's Echo, I felt nothing but plain fear merging. Nothing quite like being stuck between two doubles going 55 mph, trying to merge into 70 mph traffic.
Actually there being intelligent life in the universe can have a statistical string attached, telling of a probability of its existence; Drake's equation. As far as I know, no one has quantified the possibility of the existence of a deity.
If we accept that there is alien life out there, though, odds are it is less advanced than us. There is a cap to how young in history life can exist (need the elements, meaning need solar evolution), but no cap (AFAIK) to how recent it can have developed. So statistically most life in the universe will be close to us, or lower than us in development.
Personally I call your theory shenanigans though. There is no proof that the average Slashdotter believes in ETs and UFOs. I'm guessing most of us are healthily skeptic on this. Also, for every one of us who think we're being visited by alien's daily, there are going to be two of us who believe in the Rare Earth hypothesis, that life is abundant, but advanced intelligent life is rare thanks to the statistical rarity of the succession of accidents leading to it.
Being that I don't accept your first condition ("most slashdotters believe in advanced alien civilizations"), the rest of your argument doesn't follow, nor have any persuasive power. Even accepting this, there is a fallacy: advanced intelligence != deity. We are far more advanced that we were 10,000 years ago, but we are not deities. Yes, our ancestors out of ignorance might accept this as true, but it is not true. The Christian deity is unitary, where an advanced civilization is not, it is a collection. One of us (to our early ancestors) would lack the "god-like" punch of our civilization as a whole. Also, even if we are leagues above our ancestors, we still lack the essential god-like characteristics, even as a whole. We are not omnipresent, omnipotent, benevolent, or capable of creating and maintaining a full universe, and being aware of its full contents (at the same time).
If there was an alien race suitably advanced to do this, then we wouldn't be of any interest to them. We'd be like ants are to us now, if not less so. Also being omnipresent, omnipotent (and presumably outside of time itself) and the creators of the universe, they would have no need to travel, and no will to do so.
Actually, putting ourselves into the shoes of the alien I just described, it makes me wonder why a God-like entity (included God) would care even a small bit about us, and our petty little lives. The universe is huge, unimaginably huge, both in space and time. We are so far in capability of said God/aliens to be completely inconsequential. How could he care, much less "love" us? (love is a grasping, we love to complete us, God must be complete to be perfect, therefore he would be incapable of love, no?)
That said. In the various Anonymous programs, higher power is not taken to be the Christian (or any other religions) God. The higher power is a stand-in for something to live for. You family, religion, community, job, health, or even cat, can be your higher power. Something above you, something you hold more important than yourself.
My general anecdotal impression of/. is that there is a massive libertarian front, which represents the ideology of the modern tech industry as a whole. After this there is a moderate liberal streak. The modern Religious Conservative is under represented, though. Then you have perhaps 5% of the population who exists in the pure lunatic fringe (unless you want to put the libertarians there, which I often do).
For proof, attack Ayn Rand in any random discussion, and count the liters of venom spit in your general direction.
When I visit my college friends, I let my lap top pick any of open networks floating around (they are all on nice connections they won't mind/notice), since I can't directly access the network lacking a student ID. If I were to start downloading music, the download would look like it was their IP, but they wouldn't be a party, or even knowledgeable.
When I was in college we were also little commies on my floor, if someone needed my computer I had an account for them already set up. All they had to do was walk in, and use it, the same was true with most other people on my floor, though with less security. I could walk into my neighbors room to print a paper, and instead download the complete works of Engleburt Humperdink, and this download would be on his IP, without his consent or complicity.
In the common areas of said college there is still a campus wide wifi network, and your IP varies based on what routers your close too, and what connections are open at the time.
Why would my relatives need to nose around my private data and accounts when I die? For bank accounts and such, there already is an apparatus to allow them access, and for most private/encrypted data there is no need for access.
This is doubly true of email and online sites such as Slashdot. Unless I'm missing something.
Bit didn't worry too much, since the lake wasn't actually poisoned, it had electrolytes, and thus what the plants needed recover from the mammalian warfare. Pat, the ecologist postman, continued on his founds, mindful of the small package of cheese under his arms. The cheese that would rule them all...
The raccoons then realized that Godzilla was really a raccoon powersuit, crafted to assist their race to world domination. It is theirs, if not for the opposition of the dread squirrels.
Slashdot Mirror
Why?
I live in Arizona, and we at least recognize that there is a problem (though we have no clue what to do with it). With the illegal immigration situation you have a large "underclass" who don't have legitimate jobs, and the jobs available don't pay well. Add to it the cultural differences;large families with a male breadwinner (in the AZ republic they had a biased piece about an illegal who was happily raising 4 dependents on 13/hr, before losing his job, I couldn't do that, nor would find it acceptable), and you have a situation that is ripe for crime.
Mexican's are a large part of our crime statistics here (and in most of CA), how is it dishonest to say so? It isn't racist to report statistics, if your a minority and offended, try to change your fellows actions for the better, and not censor facts.
At 4am, while your sleeping? Thieves (the ones not in prison) are good at their jobs. You can keep 8 guns on you at all times, but if you never notice, then there still is nothing you can do.
The real problem, though, isn't your AC unit, its transmission lines, municipal wiring, etc...
Heck, I've even heard of the theives cutting catalytic converters off of cars in long term lots because there's valuable metals inside.
This recently happened to my fathers trucks. He had two pickup trucks parked outside his house, in an upper-middle-class suburban neighborhood (all the neighbors know each other, to boot), and someone came by in the middle of the night and removed the catalytic converters from both of them. It cost him quite a penny to replace them, and the idiot thief probably only got around $60 for them.
I always wonder what excuse the buyer has when a truck pulls in with 500 catalytic converters. Obviously it isn't reputable, but the money blinds us of all sins.
Bust the buyers.
if law enforcement can use metallurgic analysis to determine the exact batch of bullets a particular round came from, then i'm sure they could apply the same techniques to other metals.
Lay off the CSI. Most police labs aren't equipped for this, and even if they were it is prohibitively expensive. Real Life forensics are a far league away from what television tells us.
Melting a ton of copper from various sources would pretty much destroy any unique identifiers, even if said identifiers were known (which is doubtful, since it would vary by batch, and some reference material would have to exist). If I took 30 boxes of ammo by different manufactures, and different calibers, and melted it down into a heap of lead, I very much doubt anyone could trace it back to the original 30 batches of ammo, and even if they could the price of doing so would be very prohibitive.
PROTIP: VAC is triggered by the detection of entire known binaries. You can't trip it accidentally without having the cheating mechanism on-disk, and if you do have it on-disk... well that's your fault.
As if software can never go wrong. False positives will always exist.
Yes, there is a very slim chance of it happening, but it still is possible.
There are other ways it can happen, like hacked accounts, or such.
Also... Having a cheating program on your HDD, is not the same thing as cheating. Isn't that somewhat a "thoughcrime"? It should only ban for ACTUALLY cheating, and not just having some software sitting about.
The iTunes thing is just odd, I've never had a problem with offline play. Right now I'm using a MacMini as my jukebox, and it hardly ever is online, yet it hasn't given me any problems with iTMS purchases. As far as DRM goes, iTunes is the best, its rather convenient, and non intrusive (which doesn't go so far, its like saying "as far as dictators go, Castro is the best"). You probably found a bug, or accidentally clicked "unauthorize", or such.
My problem with DRM such as Steam, is that it is only trustworthy in the short term. I have a CD wallet of hundreds of games, most of them old, and a large amount of them from defunct publishers. I enjoy reinstalling them, from time to time, and replaying them. With Steam this activity is dependent on whether or not Valve is in business 10 years from now, and whether or not they feel like keeping their Steam/authentication servers active all that time. Neither of these propositions I trust.
Imagine if the original Fallout games (Interplay = dead) required online authorization? Or Total Annihilation (Cave Dog = REALLY dead)? Both of these games I recently installed on my computer, which I couldn't do with current Valve products. Its like buying a book you can only read if the author is still alive, which makes very little sense.
I don't trust other people to keep my keys, fully realizing that times do change, and companies (no matter how strong they seem) die. It's my $50, and I might want to reclaim my value 10 years down the road.
The only ethical solution I've found so far is buying it, then downloading a cracked ISO and burning it (replacing the original disk). Yes, its still illegal, but I take upholding my ethics (I own what I purchase) over legal technicalities.
There are lots of PC companies that probably see Windows as a bit of a stumbling block to future sales. Dell has definitely said that it would like to sell machines with OS X.
While not a fan of Windows, I don't see it as much of a stumbling block. They still have a 90% market share, which is pretty enviable, and shows that demand (or at least OS ignorance) is still pretty high. Most retailers I've been to lately still only sell Windows boxes. And, my favorite metric, my aged, computer illiterate parents still refuse to buy an Apple (or anything with OS X), and still have no clue what a Linux is, and why they might want one ("is it some sort of cat with tuffed ears?").
Another fun fact about this is that even if courts force Apple to unlock OS X, nothing can force them to support other hardware, thus it wouldn't be good for Dell in the long run to be selling an OS that may or may not actually work on their PCs. Hell, Apple could lock down their driver/support infrastructure (killing 3rd party drivers) making most of what we expect from a PC impossible.
Should they win, those companies get a new product to sell in a market clamoring for Apple stuff.
Woe to those who clamor for modern Apple computers. Since the Intel switch all of mine have been nothing but a PitA. When I first started messing with OS X, I loved it, and even scrapped all my high-end PCs for its simplicity. But lately the quality has been going down. I tend to view Apple more as a commodity electronics company, than a computer company these days, and I think they view themselves likewise as well.
Oddly, right now I prefer Windows to OS X, since at least Vista isn't on a virtual subscription model. With OS X, you really need to buy the latest version every year to be able to run any modern software.
Death is the "permanent" cessation of brain functions. We don't know that functions have ended permanently because they may at some point be restarted.
I cede this point. I suppose we could amend this to the more nebulous; "death is the prolonged cessation of brain functions, and a the effect of a certain amount of irreparable damage to certain key areas of the brain which render renewed activities impossible."
In that case, was the person ever really "dead" since the brain function cessation wasn't permanent?
This is another can of worms. People claim to die on the operating table, who are obviously not dead currently. People can be "brain dead" (with only their more rudimentary structures functioning) and come back years later, etc... I think we use the term "dead" in many ways. We consider "lack of consciousness" to be death, which is about as vague as you can get. We die, then, every night, by this definition, and boxing is a sport of trying to temporarily "kill" others. I'd say death has to be permanent, so we must add some time, or permanent clause to it, to avoid absurdity. Thus someone in a coma is not dead, someone who drowned five minutes ago might be, and we can say with certainty that Shakespeare is quite dead.
Its amazing how unknown our own functions are. We know the inner workings of stars thousands of light years distant, but yet still can't define life and death with any degree of precision (much less more esoteric, yet banal, things such as consciousness).
Arguemnt? DO you really think I was making an argument? I was and still am saying your a fucking idiot. You are a moron, a dumbass, a spoiled little stupid bitch brat. What else is anyone expected to think of you when you make idiotic statements like that? Trust me, there was no reasoning in my statement, I wasn't attempting to convert you to anything, I would be just as happy if you killed yourself which isn't much happy at all. I was telling you how it is and how you appear to people. If you don't like it, do something about it- I would suggest pulling your head out of your ass and thinking about the shit your trying to say. If you do like it, get used to people telling you that. Judging from the calmness in your response, I think it is safe to assume that you used to hearing it.
Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?
That said, I see the difference of opinion here; I never stated we should stop fighting, but we should be mindful of our own rights more so. The odds of "the terrorists" ever taking over America is practically nill. "The terrorists" don't want to rule America, or make it into a fundamentalist Muslim state (if only the same could be said for our own homebrew Christian extremists), they want us to get the hell out of their business and let them be totalitarian theocracies in peace.
The merits of this view are a discussion for another day, but we can all agree that they have gone too far, and some level of violence is necessary to secure our Country and allies.
This argument is heavily into the discussion of "ends" and "means", in this case we have "combating terror" as the former, and "forfeiting out own rights" as the latter. You are of the the "ends justify the means" crowd, while I am on the opposite side of the spectrum. The truth, as always, probably lies someplace in the middle.
Here is your ignorance showing up again. Do you actually care about the United states or just the expanding of the right?
If by "right" you mean the religious or political right, you are wrong. I find both of them distasteful. If, though, by "right" you mean "rights", then you are correct. I don't care a damn about America as a mere fiction, I care more about what it means. If our government decides to fight against my rights, I'll fight back, just like I'd fight against "the terrorists". Please see my sig. Human rights are more important than any political body, or nationalistic fiction.
Yes, we could give them up temporarily to fight off "the terrorists", but power doesn't like forfeiting its gains. You might find that when you give up rights, gaining them back isn't as easy as you make it sound. I trust our government about as far as I can throw it, and I definitely don't trust them to ever reinstate my rights, I also don't trust voters. Here in Arizona we just passed a law by a wide margin to restrict the rights of a minority (Gays), things like this do NOT harbor trust. Rights are generally gained with a gun, and not a vote, our history has proven this again and again. Can you name a single time where we've gained rights from our government without bloodshed? This makes me very wary of power.
In conclusion, by all means resist the religious extremists (as long as you do it against our own brand of them as well). By all means protect the homeland against harmful forces. BUT... You'll pry the Constitution out of my cold dead hands, thats what matters to me, not our president, not our congress, not our flag, or our borders. If you revoke any of the Bill of Rights (even "temporarily"), I will fight back, since at the point the America ceases to be America, and our government is just another hostile foreign power.
Put down the new age books.
Death is the permanent cessation of brain functions, nothing more nothing less. To imbue it with anything more than this is a waste of time, and rather pointless. After your brain stops working, you will no longer care what the definition of "death" is, since... well... you'll be dead.
In college I took a class called "The Sociology of Death" since I thought it would be an interesting survey on the cultural meaning, but instead it turned into a group coping class. The general gist of the class was pretty much what you said, that death is somehow a personally enriching experience. My take on that was; who cares it won't matter once your dead.
All of our death mumbo jumbo is only hear to comfort the living, for the dead don't need it. All that can be said of it is; you no longer exist as a self-identifying consciousness. Everything else is happy thoughts and speculation to comfort us against the steady advance of the inevitable and inconceivable.
The only "after death" experience we can be assured of is reentering the nitrogen cycle.
We use mathematics to quantify physics, but there is no "connection" between the two, except in the sense that we can count *anything* and say there's a connection. It's like saying, "How deep does the connection go between mathematics and bananas when I observe there are 10 bananas, and I add two more, and then I observe 12 bananas."
Actually it is really common to think that there is a deep connection between math and physics, so deep that they are indeed the same thing. Several of my math and physics friends in college thought that math was, indeed, the language of the universe. They did think that 1+1=2 was an objective, empirical, and a priori statement, which is as real as the laptop I'm typing this on. In short; math precedes the physical universe.
They confused the model with the fact, IMO. Math is a very useful and flexible axiomatic modeling system, nothing more nothing less. We invented it to fit the empirical universe, so we shouldn't be surprised that it does fit.
But then I can shoot you with my one bullet, get your one bullet, shoot someone else and get theirs. You just turned terrorism into some twisted MMO now.
So we must sacrifice our individual rights to protect the self-same rights?
The only thing that makes this country great is our history of expanding rights (ignoring the mentioned blemishes), and our fairly radical founding documents. Outside of that, I don't give squat about the US. To restate, I care about the US only insofar as it is a symbol for the right it represents. The second we care about a mere symbol more than what it represents, the symbol is meaningless and worthless.
Yes, "the bad guys" are bad. I think we all can agree that any extremist version of a religion is bad, and any time religion seeks to stomp on the rights of individuals is generally bad. But, I'd like to advance this a bit, and say that anytime government does so is just as bad. What is the different between a government doing it and a religion?
MAn your a fucking idiot!
And you suck at argumentation. For future reference, statements like that invalidate any point you may have had to begin with.
What context? That we have can lapse into complete paranoia from time to time? That blind nationalism can blind of more important matters of ethics and morality? That we enjoy dehumanizing people different than us?
I like the US, but I have a hard time identifying the rational of those who sit around saying we can't do any wrong, or that we are "the best country on earth". Nationalism is a proven evil, no good has ever come of it. We are just another country in the world, and someday we will be gone, just like all states. America is an arbitrary thing, a mere concept, and not worth forsaking human dignity and rights over, as they are far more important than a mere symbol.
We've made mistakes, and we refuse to learn from them. How many of the Japanese locked in camps, and deprived of their rights, were a serious threat to America? How many people in Guantanamo are a threat? Was Iraq really a threat to us? Was McCarthyism really a good thing?
We can do evil, and thus we have to be vigilant. Bush is proof of this. We let him get away with far too much in the name of faceless (and largely baseless) fear. Just like all of the things mentioned.
But then again I'd rather the terrorists "win" than compromise any individual rights, or any standard we profess to believe in.
"I am Benjamin and I approve this message" - Oscar Wilde
Yes, there are countries worse than us, much worse. But, there are also countries better than us. I find it odd that we went from claiming "We're the bastion to freedom" to claiming "We're not as bad as random Muslim theocracies, and some African anarchies, and perhaps China!". We should be striving to be the most free country in the world again, and not just mediocre.
As for all of our other metrics, we're failing. Sure, we're better than Congo, but who isn't (besides the Congo)? Its like murdering someone and saying "at least I didn't rape her!".
I do find it odd that we count DRM in here, DRM is not a government mandate, its a stupid mandate from the free market. No one is forcing anyone to use DRM media, sell DRM media, or anything else like that. Companies decided to do so, we decide to buy their products. Isn't the free market grand?
This is why my idea of striving to be the freest country in the world doesn't equate with many other people's idea of freedom. I don't think corporations fall into the list of priorities, only people as individuals. Free corporations have done their share in destroying America. I'm getting sick of having to spend energy on thinking of reasons to be proud of my own country.
California? California is the dumbest place to drive truck ever. My dad is a truck driver, and used to take me on his routes sometimes (even more recently I find the experience interesting), so I got to know a fair bit of driving from the other view. The last time I rode with him he was hauling liquid sugar from Phoenix to San Fransisco, and even with baffles the nature of the load seriously messed with braking, as a ton of viscous liquid is wont to do.
People cutting 6' in front of a loaded semi deserve what they get, as do morons riding in the 400' of blind spot along the side of the trailer. People generally act suicidal in the presence of semis. They don't handle like a Civic, they handle more like a train. If you act like a moron around a loaded semi going 75mph, your the one dead, not the truck driver either, and you generally deserve it.
Once we were heading down a rather sever grade, and some idiot decided riding 6" in front of us was a great idea, not realizing that run away truck ramps exist for a very good reason.
Going to California was a pain in the ass though, both being in a truck and not. Being that they are stuck in the right-most two lanes, and going around 20 mph slower than the rest of traffic makes an interesting experience. I always felt sorry for the people merging on and off, though they might be able to handle it with a bit more finesse. In my girlfriend's Echo, I felt nothing but plain fear merging. Nothing quite like being stuck between two doubles going 55 mph, trying to merge into 70 mph traffic.
Actually there being intelligent life in the universe can have a statistical string attached, telling of a probability of its existence; Drake's equation. As far as I know, no one has quantified the possibility of the existence of a deity.
If we accept that there is alien life out there, though, odds are it is less advanced than us. There is a cap to how young in history life can exist (need the elements, meaning need solar evolution), but no cap (AFAIK) to how recent it can have developed. So statistically most life in the universe will be close to us, or lower than us in development.
Personally I call your theory shenanigans though. There is no proof that the average Slashdotter believes in ETs and UFOs. I'm guessing most of us are healthily skeptic on this. Also, for every one of us who think we're being visited by alien's daily, there are going to be two of us who believe in the Rare Earth hypothesis, that life is abundant, but advanced intelligent life is rare thanks to the statistical rarity of the succession of accidents leading to it.
Being that I don't accept your first condition ("most slashdotters believe in advanced alien civilizations"), the rest of your argument doesn't follow, nor have any persuasive power. Even accepting this, there is a fallacy: advanced intelligence != deity. We are far more advanced that we were 10,000 years ago, but we are not deities. Yes, our ancestors out of ignorance might accept this as true, but it is not true. The Christian deity is unitary, where an advanced civilization is not, it is a collection. One of us (to our early ancestors) would lack the "god-like" punch of our civilization as a whole. Also, even if we are leagues above our ancestors, we still lack the essential god-like characteristics, even as a whole. We are not omnipresent, omnipotent, benevolent, or capable of creating and maintaining a full universe, and being aware of its full contents (at the same time).
If there was an alien race suitably advanced to do this, then we wouldn't be of any interest to them. We'd be like ants are to us now, if not less so. Also being omnipresent, omnipotent (and presumably outside of time itself) and the creators of the universe, they would have no need to travel, and no will to do so.
Actually, putting ourselves into the shoes of the alien I just described, it makes me wonder why a God-like entity (included God) would care even a small bit about us, and our petty little lives. The universe is huge, unimaginably huge, both in space and time. We are so far in capability of said God/aliens to be completely inconsequential. How could he care, much less "love" us? (love is a grasping, we love to complete us, God must be complete to be perfect, therefore he would be incapable of love, no?)
That said. In the various Anonymous programs, higher power is not taken to be the Christian (or any other religions) God. The higher power is a stand-in for something to live for. You family, religion, community, job, health, or even cat, can be your higher power. Something above you, something you hold more important than yourself.
My general anecdotal impression of /. is that there is a massive libertarian front, which represents the ideology of the modern tech industry as a whole. After this there is a moderate liberal streak. The modern Religious Conservative is under represented, though. Then you have perhaps 5% of the population who exists in the pure lunatic fringe (unless you want to put the libertarians there, which I often do).
For proof, attack Ayn Rand in any random discussion, and count the liters of venom spit in your general direction.
When I visit my college friends, I let my lap top pick any of open networks floating around (they are all on nice connections they won't mind/notice), since I can't directly access the network lacking a student ID. If I were to start downloading music, the download would look like it was their IP, but they wouldn't be a party, or even knowledgeable.
When I was in college we were also little commies on my floor, if someone needed my computer I had an account for them already set up. All they had to do was walk in, and use it, the same was true with most other people on my floor, though with less security. I could walk into my neighbors room to print a paper, and instead download the complete works of Engleburt Humperdink, and this download would be on his IP, without his consent or complicity.
In the common areas of said college there is still a campus wide wifi network, and your IP varies based on what routers your close too, and what connections are open at the time.
Why would my relatives need to nose around my private data and accounts when I die? For bank accounts and such, there already is an apparatus to allow them access, and for most private/encrypted data there is no need for access.
This is doubly true of email and online sites such as Slashdot. Unless I'm missing something.
Bit didn't worry too much, since the lake wasn't actually poisoned, it had electrolytes, and thus what the plants needed recover from the mammalian warfare. Pat, the ecologist postman, continued on his founds, mindful of the small package of cheese under his arms. The cheese that would rule them all...
Probably not murder, but I'd say Wrongful Death has a chance. Unless, of course, your in Maricopa County, Arizona (Sheriff Joe Country).
The raccoons then realized that Godzilla was really a raccoon powersuit, crafted to assist their race to world domination. It is theirs, if not for the opposition of the dread squirrels.
The universe is not infinite.