Police: "Please stay by your computer and we'll be around to arrest you shortly. Enjoy your 25 years in prison."
That has never happened to me. I've called the police three times over finding child porn online. The first time was in the mid-90's when I found some on a local (popular) BBS, and the police were concerned but utterly clueless on what to do. This was before they had an actual "cybercrimes" division. I don't think anything ever happened with that one. The second time I called on another complaint, they referred it up to the FBI, I don't know if anything ever happened because I never went back to the site again for obvious reasons. The third time, the local police took all my information, said thank you, and I never heard about it again. I'm guessing they handled it so nonchalantly the third time because they finally got their act together, and knew what to do.
Never once did the FBI knock on my door, or the police harp at me or treat me like a criminal.
If you see a house being burgled, ignore it and continue on. If you see somebody being raped keep walking. If you see a child in trouble, absolutely never go near them. The last one is particularly important since children are the greatest risk to your freedom in the current political climate and should never be approached under any circumstances.
Are you a sociopath? If I saw any of the above I would try to help, especially in cases of direct harm, like rape and children in trouble. It is my civic, and human duty to step in. I couldn't sleep at night if I just walked away and tried to forget it. But then again I'm the type who stop and try to help injured animals, and swerve to avoid hitting squirrels.
You called for the "destruction" of ideology with fanatical supporters. How, exactly speaking, do you think that's going to be done - you outlaw it and everyone meakly obeys
I overstated, and I apologize. I belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Hyperbole, so what do you expect? Instead of "destruction" I should have said, their beliefs have to be moderated before they get to the level where they are allowed to do harm. The US Constitution had an avenue for this, but the religious right, and other politically savvy religious groups have undermined this to the point of absurdity.
I suppose "destroy" could also mean having higher education standards, and a greater availability of higher education, which seems to neuter the religious extremists of society rather effectively. But then again I think education is the solution to every problem that afflicts modern society.
Don't like Rep X who voted for the PATRIOT ACT? Well... then your choice is to vote for Candidate Y.
There would be more alternative candidates if there were more people who would vote for them. I suppose it is a somewhat a "chicken and egg" type scenario.
In the last election we had Ron Paul, who was almost a serious contender, albeit running as a Republican. On the left there was Dennis Kuchinich, who the media treated as an absolute clown, more so than they treated Paul. Neither of these men would have voted for bailouts, or the PATRIOT act. Both of them were extremely hostile to the status quo (oddly, for their extreme ideological differences, they supported much the same agenda).
In the left there are several "alternative" canidates out there, such as Feingold, Sanders, and Kuchinich, the right seems much more unified, and somewhat more hostile to difference at the moment though (Paul is the only example I can think off).
It is your responsibility as a citizen to change other citizens mind, and thus create a demand for alternatives, and to participate in rallies and educational exercises to endorse your views. The Tea Party movement was a good example of this, though now (like most popular rebellions) has been completely taken over by the Republican establishment and status-quo.
Yes, at first any alternative will cut votes. Though I don't see this is a very meaningful thing, since there are no "sides" per se anymore. Oh no, the "pro-corporate, anti-freedom, the-rich-comes-first right won against my "pro-corporate, anti-freedom, the-rich-comes-fist left favorite!". More likely, though, would be a more coalitional government, like in much of Europe. Major parties don't have enough votes to pass their agendas, so they have to deal with the little guys.
We can see this right now, the Democrats can't pass a damn thing without having to make deals and compromise. Now imagine if they had to compromise with smaller independents rather than the Republicans.
No, they're going to demand that a religion/ideology "be destroyed". That, of course, demands torturing the adherents until they deconvert and killing those who refuse. Unless, of course, a reliable brainwashing technique to bring their beliefs closer to what you'll accept can be created.
I personally don't know any atheists who adhere to such extremist beliefs, and have only read of a handful who would advocate such things. Given any ideology, you can find a wacko who wants to torture and kill those who don't agree. Religious people, though, seem to be much more plagued by this type. Personally I think religion is like sex, as long as its consensual, and in your bedroom, no one should care what you do/believe. I'm not excusing the few atheists who verge on tyrannical extremism, I'm just offsetting them with the larger group of the faithful who have the same views. There are whole churches based on destroying us, while we only have a handful of people who would wish the same for them.
This handful are still insane, but as a whole the group is much less insane.
The correct way to treat such people is to give them freedom and demand they give it to you too. This (Finland, and presumably United States as well) is a free country, where everyone is free to worship whatever deity he wishes, or none at all. I'll defend to death your right to choose freely. I'll also defend my right to not choose whatever you want. I'll also defend the rights of people I despise, because to not do so would be to do unto others what I wouldn't want to be done to myself
This is a very sane and ideal way of handling thing. Sadly it doesn't work when people decide to interfere with schools and science, and global politics.
Oy, there is no such thing as society. You ought to be applauding this because it is good for the individual, and protects the right to enter into and enforce contracts. Negotiation and trade of your labour and creative works by mutual consent.
Huh? Society is very real, it is that huge group of people that exist outside of your mom's Ayn Rand poster studded basement.
Society is also the reason that government's exist. They exist to serve society, which is nothing more than a collection of individuals. If society was a lie, then anarchy would be a viable, and universal form of government.
This serves to maximize the rights of the whole collection of individuals, which would be the definition of "society", and not the rights of one small collection of individuals (a rich record label).
If there is no society, then why the hell should contracts even exist, outside of your own personal ability to enforce them? Really, this is a bad move for individualists, the only rights the Pink Floyd should have is to forcibly storm their old record label and slaughter everyone who doesn't uphold their part of the contract.
I agree, there is some rabid, extremist atheists. Though their theist counterparts FAR out number them, and have far more influence on the world. I find the religious fundamentalists a far larger threat than any degree of atheist.
I'm a pretty firm atheist, and I generally have no problem with religion, or any other ideology. Until they start trying to control people's lives, or start harming people. At that point the ideology in question should be destroyed. Just because your a Christian (or Muslim, or whatnot) doesn't mean EVERYONE should have to follow your silly arbitrary rules.
Atheists, for the most part, are immune to this tyrannical craziness. What are they going to do, stand on street corners screaming "THINK FOR YOURSELF!", or trying to force all children to learn science. The horror.
Yes, there are some unambiguous parts that we seem to ignore now. But there are some ambiguous ones as well, these ambiguous ones are bigger points of contention, and thus people get more worked up over them. I'm looking directly at the Second Amendment here.
I didn't mean to say all points of view are valid. Obviously if you think the first Amendment means that you have the right to run around peeing on walls, or punching people in the face, you are obviously completely wrong. But if you claim that libel and slander covered by the first Amendment, and I claim otherwise, then we have a valid debate, and neither of our views have much a chance of being proven objectively valid.
Not to sound snarky, but please use paragraph breaks. Getting through your reply severely taxed the limited amount of coffee I got this morning.
WE are not a problem. we are people, we are human beings. we are Americans.
In regards to the bailout, I agree, the government did that behind our back, and mostly against our collective wishes. But we still are the problem, as we will vote these people into office next time. We voted all the clowns back in after the PATRIOT ACT debacle as well.
We get the government we deserve.
As I stated before, if the American people overthrew their government, the same government would be voted in immediately after the revolution.
I don't mean to shuffle all of our problems to the people, there is a lot of reform that our current government could bear.
You do realize that the voters will has already been subverted in the United States, right? Our elected officials choose their voters, not the other way around. There are also times when the will of the voters DESERVES to be overturned. Or do you think that Jim Crow was justifiable because it happened to command popular support?
This is a complicated one. Jim Crow deserved to die, undoubtedly, regardless of the will of the people. But some people have the same feeling about less obvious things. This is sticky ground, and needs some SERIOUS thought before people go and shoot elected officials. Where is the line?
Jim Crow was repealed without a revolution. Jim Crow died the way it was supposed to. See also the Suffragette movement, see also most of the social libertarian progress we have made in the last 100 or so years.
Some people would feel that violence would be called for if the government legalized gay marriage, or abortion, or instituted public health care (the real stuff, not the Obama stuff). Where is this line?
I hope you appreciate the irony of choosing that as your signature line while condemning the notion of revolution against an oppressive government.
Defense is the least amount of force needed to protect yourself. Most of the time it is a couple words and a smile. Sometimes its pissing off those in power, and spending the night in jail. And only when everything else fails, and you are left with no other options do you go and start shooting people.
I agree with your formulation of the problem, but it doesn't move the onus of guilt away from the electorate. Everyone knows the problem, but everyone still votes for the incumbent, everyone still votes for corrupt party A or corrupt party B (though the difference in results for each is negligible, only the rhetoric differs).
Education, or lack thereof, can take some blame. I find it troubling that there is a direct, and very strong, correlation between amount of money spent on advertising, and political success. Hinting that most people are the antithesis of informed voters, either that or most voters are highly susceptible to cheap psychological advertising gimmicks (which also is an education problem).
The media can also take some blame, for setting up a false "us vs. them" dichotomy. Democrats are not the enemies of freedom, nor are Republicans. Democrats aren't socialists who want to repress religion, and Republicans aren't fascists who want us to live in a theocracy. The media likes the fear of "the other", it is one of the most primal human triggers, and serves VERY well to get people to watch your content, and hence your sponsors. The media used to be more responsible, but it has become nothing more than a souless, amoral, corporate monolith looking out for nothing but profit. (Yes, Rupert Murdoch would be selling Liberal propaganda if he could make as much money from it).
The corporations have pretty much taken over government, as well as the media. With the amount of money they are able to spend on promoting their interests, even if they are completely contrary to our interests, their voice is much louder (and important, since being reelected costs huge amounts of money, because advertising=election) than us "real" people could ever hope to compete with.
So I'd say the real problems are education (the media would be toothless with a decent eduction being common), to much access for non-people individuals versus access for the people who government supposedly exists for, and the blind greed of politicians who worry more about sticking around than actually helping us.
Granted the politicians involved in this all have good intentions, and ideological premises to claim how ethical they are. Think the Reagan era "what is good for corporations is good for America" line of rhetoric.
The thing is, EVERYONE recognizes exactly what I just said. Find the most partisan drone that you can, and they will agree with me, but continue to act in a way that allows this system to exist. This is the mystery.
Some problems with the idea of overthrowing the American government;
1) The government has more force to throw at you than any dissenting group could hope to match. The government has pretty much a monopoly of force.
2) Armed revolutions generally don't have possitive results. Name a single revolution after the French Revolution that saw generally positive results.
3) It is the low road, and pretty much says that you completely given up on the American people, or on any chance of fixing the American discourse.
4) It is the lazy way.
5) People will get hurt. Innocent people will get hurt. Your personal political ideology generally never trumps the lives of others. And if you go into it with an "us vs. them" motive, your ideology is probably flawed and tyrannical.
I personally dread the day when people take up guns against their elected government. First because the term "elected", by picking up guns your saying that you know better than the voters, which to me, is tyrannical. Its part of the stupid modern "tea party" line of bullshit, democracy is fine until people vote for people I don't like.
Second, who would get control of the new government? Liberatarians, actual socialists, the anarchists, Christian fundamentalists? All of these sections are disenfranchised feeling currently. And some small subset of each of these groups would be willing to fight, and more problematically, enforce their ideology on others. Someone is going to mention "restoring the Constitution" or some such empty phrase, which leads to the question "whose interpretation of it?". No interpretation is an objective truth, all are equal, no matter how much you disagree with them. Its like arguing whose interpretation of the Bible is right, and we all can see how those arguments turn out.
Third, who are you going to fight? If you managed to oust the president and all of congress, people will just vote them back. The Government is only a problem on the surface, but the real problem runs much deeper. The American people are the "problem", how do you fix that? I doubt an armed revolution will work.
I'm scared of your use of "faithful", when it comes to the potential killing of people, you'd better have much more than faith.
But it isn't the British, its the rest of Europe. The British are to busy trying to bring about their Orwellian utopia to be teaching us much of anything. Right now England is pretty far behind even the US when it comes to freedom.
Later on in this topic, I stated that I have ad-blocking disabled on Slashdot, and I have unchecked the "Your awesome, disable ads?" box. I did this for two reasons, the first being that I've been visiting/. daily for years, and it is one of the few pages I would miss if it died (99% of pages are expendable crap). The second being that I'm using Chromium, and can't actually block ads, just hide them, therefore I never have to actually SEE a single ad from/., while they still get the credit for showing them. This is win-win (and perhaps a loss by the advertisers, but I don't care about them).
If I start noticing a slow down from bad ad-servers, or they try to circumvent my blocker, then the box is being checked again.
I actually un-checked that box. I'm using Chromium, so I can't actually block the ads, just hide them. I figure its a win/win situation that way,/. gets some small pittance from the ad company, and I still don't have to see the damn things./. might be the only page that I would do this for, though, since I feel somewhat obligated to it since it has been keeping me amused (and away from doing those tedious "productive" things) for god knows how long. There isn't many pages on the internet that can claim as much, though. I can live without Ars, but a life without/. would suck (though I suppose my sanity would improve).
Google is the only other site I let through, mostly because I don't even notice their ads anymore.
While I agree with you that people should recognize the need for publishers like whoever owns Ars to make some money, I also recognize the some people have declared total war on ads, I being among them. Ars is perpetrating the same behaviors that make people block ads, Flash ads, noisy ads, off-demographic ads, distracting ads, and worse, a total GLUT of ads. I am not obligated to make them money, nor should I be. Me making them money is, and should be, a voluntary act on my behalf, and should follow the principles I would willing engage in. If they want to charge for content, fine. If they want to hide all content when they detect an ad-blocker, fine. I will go elsewhere. If they want to have a limited amount of small, Google-like, text ads that are targeted to the content, then I might turn off my adblocker, but only if these ads may be useful to me, personally.
I am not obligated to give anyone money.
Though, to be completely honest, I probably won't turn off my ad-blocker, or white-list Ars if they decide to be responsible advertisers. I am sick and tired of advertising. I'm absolutely SICK of people trying to force their products down my throat, worse trying to hoist their products on me with cheap, annoying, psychological tricks, completely eschewing the only thing that matters, the actual quality of their product (and if it would actually be useful to me). I hate television, where its getting to the point where it is 1:1 ratio between ads and content (which now often is nothing but a thinly disguised ad). I hate sports (used to love baseball, at least), because they are nothing but an after-thought for advertisements, the advertising is now the content, the sport (or program, or webpage) is only to entice you in. I'm sick of constantly being attacked by distracting ads. I'm sick to the point where a scotched earth policy is the only psychologically satisfying conclusion. I'm had to alter my recreational habits to the point where completely eschewing anything that tries to force its manipulative ideas down my throat is not a sacrifice.
Now, IF the hiring and firing of teachers worked like going to work at a private company then the spend more get better results method would not only work, it would have worked already.
Yes, doing a quick glance at the state of the economy, and the free market, shows that using private sector methods always leads to boons in performance... It also shows that all pricing and pay irregularity will promptly go away (no 10,000% CEO pay, or golden parachutes for under-performing). Every time I deal with a large corporation, I leave the deal thinking "that was very efficient, dealing with 600 middle men, doing 5000 pages of superfluous paper work, and having to sign my immortal soul away to cover said companies ass, man I'm glad that the people who do the actual work are making barely minimum wage".
No, modeling anything after corporate America will not make it better.
The public teachers' union HATES vouchers though, so it's really hard to get such systems implemented.
I am not a member of a teachers union, and I hate the idea. I hate the idea because in practice my tax dollars gets to get squandered on people giving their children a religious education (which isn't really much of an education). Where I live, a significant portion of the charter and private schools are thinly veiled schools for Evangelical Christians. A lot of them are even run by the same people who run the mega-churches. As someone who likes the Establishment Clause, I have a serious problem with funding other people's religious dogma.
That and no study I have read actual says that charter schools perform better than public ones, outside of college prep academies. Until there are statistics proving that their is a significant difference, I would rather not use more of my tax money making private corporations rich.
To make it harder to accidentally close a window if all you want to do is access the menu.
In all my years of using OS X (since around 2003) I have never closed a window on accident. I am using the controls on the left scheme in Ubuntu currently, and I still haven't managed to accidently close a window. Yes, its anecdotal, but...
Considering mac users are about as far from their target demographic as you can get, I don't think they should design windows based on their similarity to that system.
Unless of course OS X's control scheme makes more sense than Windows. The game should be usability over wooing Windows users, and not visa versa. I personally like my controls on the left side, it seems to make more sense to have all the menus and controls clustered together, rather than separated.
But then again, as long as they don't adopt the OS X quit scheme (the close button does nothing, you need to actually go to file to quit), I don't care much. One of the nice things about Linux Windows Managers is that you can customize it to your own work-flow. My current install has no remaining brown and orange, and all my controls are clustered (except for Chromium, which doesn't play nice unless it looks like a Windows app), and very minimal (Shiki-Noble with Elegant Brit borders). One of my complaints againt OS X and Windows (especially OS X) is that they force you to work a certain way, Linux escapes this.
Your comment also seems to imply that Ubuntu (and the Linux community in general) should be operating under the goal of trying to get as many people to switch as possible. With this philosophy we risk Linux becoming nothing more than a crappy Windows clone. I, also, don't understand the desire for Linux to become the "most popular kid on the block". Linux should aspire to stand on its own two feet, and primarily woo users by its unique characteristics and strengths, like OS X contra Windows. OS X doesn't woo users by being more like Windows, but by trying to have a more user friendly, and intuitive GUI.
I really don't care if Linux becomes a big player. Outside of driving Game and driver ports, I can't see any other benefit. I'd like to see the OSS model become more popular, not Linux in particular. (and if OSS became more popular, we would have the source to port games and drivers, anyway).
Though name recognition worked for Obsidian and Gas Powered games. I never would have bought a game from either of them if it wasn't for name recognition, or recognition of where the devs came from. It helped that they made decent products, too, but part of what drove my purchases was WHO made the products as well, and the other projects they were involved in (Diablo and Total Annihilation, respectively).
In America, it's just "proof", if it's used at all. Usually it ain't, as places that require labeling of ABV require a percentage measurement.
Depends on what your buying. Your correct, most beers and wines don't list proof, just ABV%. But most liquors and liqueurs still list proof on the bottle, a quick run through my liquor cabinet shows that most, if not all, spirits are still listed with proof. There isn't a single spirit in the cabinet that doesn't have a proof on it. Though most of them are now listed in the "%ABV(#Proof) format. Kind of sad, since it shows that some people are too stupid to realize that proof is just ABV/2.
I hope that proof never goes completely away. I like it, and it doesn't hurt anything. It also fits in nicely with more traditional liquors, the ones with history, like bourbons and whiskeys. People who would want to take away my proof, are as bad are the wankers who want to convert pints to metric.
Point taken, your right, I, perhaps, bandied about that fallacy rather liberally.
though I still disagree. If a significant portion of people who claim to be Christians don't act in the manner in which you would define as proper for the label then your usage of the label may be wrong.
Doctrinally, people who claim to be Christian, have very little to do with what was considered Christian in centuries immediately following the death of Christ. On a large level, we can see that most of modern Christianity (or at least the most visible portions) are not much of a fan of "not casting stones", not judging, and turning cheeks, and are a very large fan of being money changers and usurers.
Not many modern Christians really think that upon death they will sit in the ground, patiently waiting for Jesus to come again, at which point they will be judged, either.
There are deeper structural and dogmatic concerns too. Christianity has changed with the times, and so has what it takes to be called Christian. Modern Christianity is pretty different than archaic Christianity (after Jesus' death, and before John ditched all the Jewish laws and added a heaping dose of Neo-Platonism in order to sell it to the Greeks), which, in itself, was very different than the original, pre-crucifixion "Jesus cult".
Depending on your definition, we can exclude any group of self-described Christians. I'm not a fan of the Reformation, therefore I'm not a fan of all sects who aren't Catholic. I'm a fan of the Reformation, so I don't think Catholics are Christians, even though they carried the label for 1500 years exclusively.
Another consideration, though, is how fast can you sell it. With something like this, you might exclude a significant percentage of potential buyers, making it harder to unload when you want to unload it and move somewhere else.
I stated an anecdote about one of these houses I just looked at, that had high tension wires across the backyard, it was on the market for around 100 days, where the average here is only around 7-15 days. And right now there is a real estate feeding frenzy, so this might be worse in a normal market.
There isn't many things worse than sitting on a property that you can't sell.
Wasn't completely trolling, though I admit my post has troll-like qualities. I was more trying (and probably completely failed) to illustrate how stupid the idea that the government should ban all things that may be considered harmful or distasteful to someone else.
I'm really sick of people who want to force their opinions on everyone else "for their own good", or because "they know better". With some careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that all things that arise from these two sentiments are the basis of most of the evil in the world.
n estimated 440,000 smoking-related deaths [wrongdiagnosis.com] per year in the US.
Unless they changed how they calculate this number, it is probably grossly inflated. They used consider all deaths do to lung cancer, and other pulmonary diseases, by people who smoke, or ever smoked, as a "smoking related death". Obviously this leads to a grossly inflated number since it ignores the background rate of lung cancer, and other diseases. Also most of the numbers from the WHO have a worse taint, since they purposely excluded a ton of studies (at least they did in the late 90's) that found the health risks were not as bad as they wanted to say they were.
A lot of the numbers that were (and perhaps still are) bandied about over smoking deaths have had some wonky statistics involved to inflate them for pure propaganda purposes. So I remain very skeptical of these numbers.
No, I'm not claiming that smoking is healthful, or even harmless. It is bad for you. But this is not a criteria for being banned.
Alcohol has other bad effects, that don't kill you, obviously. It tears apart families, hurts productivity, and can lead to permanent mental illnesses. As a child of two alcoholics I can attest to its harmful aspects. But of purely health and mortality, you are probably right. Pardon my off the cuff arm waving.
Slashdot Mirror
Police: "Please stay by your computer and we'll be around to arrest you shortly. Enjoy your 25 years in prison."
That has never happened to me. I've called the police three times over finding child porn online. The first time was in the mid-90's when I found some on a local (popular) BBS, and the police were concerned but utterly clueless on what to do. This was before they had an actual "cybercrimes" division. I don't think anything ever happened with that one. The second time I called on another complaint, they referred it up to the FBI, I don't know if anything ever happened because I never went back to the site again for obvious reasons. The third time, the local police took all my information, said thank you, and I never heard about it again. I'm guessing they handled it so nonchalantly the third time because they finally got their act together, and knew what to do.
Never once did the FBI knock on my door, or the police harp at me or treat me like a criminal.
If you see a house being burgled, ignore it and continue on. If you see somebody being raped keep walking. If you see a child in trouble, absolutely never go near them. The last one is particularly important since children are the greatest risk to your freedom in the current political climate and should never be approached under any circumstances.
Are you a sociopath? If I saw any of the above I would try to help, especially in cases of direct harm, like rape and children in trouble. It is my civic, and human duty to step in. I couldn't sleep at night if I just walked away and tried to forget it. But then again I'm the type who stop and try to help injured animals, and swerve to avoid hitting squirrels.
You called for the "destruction" of ideology with fanatical supporters. How, exactly speaking, do you think that's going to be done - you outlaw it and everyone meakly obeys
I overstated, and I apologize. I belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Hyperbole, so what do you expect? Instead of "destruction" I should have said, their beliefs have to be moderated before they get to the level where they are allowed to do harm. The US Constitution had an avenue for this, but the religious right, and other politically savvy religious groups have undermined this to the point of absurdity.
I suppose "destroy" could also mean having higher education standards, and a greater availability of higher education, which seems to neuter the religious extremists of society rather effectively. But then again I think education is the solution to every problem that afflicts modern society.
Don't like Rep X who voted for the PATRIOT ACT? Well... then your choice is to vote for Candidate Y.
There would be more alternative candidates if there were more people who would vote for them. I suppose it is a somewhat a "chicken and egg" type scenario.
In the last election we had Ron Paul, who was almost a serious contender, albeit running as a Republican. On the left there was Dennis Kuchinich, who the media treated as an absolute clown, more so than they treated Paul. Neither of these men would have voted for bailouts, or the PATRIOT act. Both of them were extremely hostile to the status quo (oddly, for their extreme ideological differences, they supported much the same agenda).
In the left there are several "alternative" canidates out there, such as Feingold, Sanders, and Kuchinich, the right seems much more unified, and somewhat more hostile to difference at the moment though (Paul is the only example I can think off).
It is your responsibility as a citizen to change other citizens mind, and thus create a demand for alternatives, and to participate in rallies and educational exercises to endorse your views. The Tea Party movement was a good example of this, though now (like most popular rebellions) has been completely taken over by the Republican establishment and status-quo.
Yes, at first any alternative will cut votes. Though I don't see this is a very meaningful thing, since there are no "sides" per se anymore. Oh no, the "pro-corporate, anti-freedom, the-rich-comes-first right won against my "pro-corporate, anti-freedom, the-rich-comes-fist left favorite!". More likely, though, would be a more coalitional government, like in much of Europe. Major parties don't have enough votes to pass their agendas, so they have to deal with the little guys.
We can see this right now, the Democrats can't pass a damn thing without having to make deals and compromise. Now imagine if they had to compromise with smaller independents rather than the Republicans.
No, they're going to demand that a religion/ideology "be destroyed". That, of course, demands torturing the adherents until they deconvert and killing those who refuse. Unless, of course, a reliable brainwashing technique to bring their beliefs closer to what you'll accept can be created.
I personally don't know any atheists who adhere to such extremist beliefs, and have only read of a handful who would advocate such things. Given any ideology, you can find a wacko who wants to torture and kill those who don't agree. Religious people, though, seem to be much more plagued by this type. Personally I think religion is like sex, as long as its consensual, and in your bedroom, no one should care what you do/believe. I'm not excusing the few atheists who verge on tyrannical extremism, I'm just offsetting them with the larger group of the faithful who have the same views. There are whole churches based on destroying us, while we only have a handful of people who would wish the same for them.
This handful are still insane, but as a whole the group is much less insane.
The correct way to treat such people is to give them freedom and demand they give it to you too. This (Finland, and presumably United States as well) is a free country, where everyone is free to worship whatever deity he wishes, or none at all. I'll defend to death your right to choose freely. I'll also defend my right to not choose whatever you want. I'll also defend the rights of people I despise, because to not do so would be to do unto others what I wouldn't want to be done to myself
This is a very sane and ideal way of handling thing. Sadly it doesn't work when people decide to interfere with schools and science, and global politics.
Oy, there is no such thing as society. You ought to be applauding this because it is good for the individual, and protects the right to enter into and enforce contracts. Negotiation and trade of your labour and creative works by mutual consent.
Huh? Society is very real, it is that huge group of people that exist outside of your mom's Ayn Rand poster studded basement.
Society is also the reason that government's exist. They exist to serve society, which is nothing more than a collection of individuals. If society was a lie, then anarchy would be a viable, and universal form of government.
This serves to maximize the rights of the whole collection of individuals, which would be the definition of "society", and not the rights of one small collection of individuals (a rich record label).
If there is no society, then why the hell should contracts even exist, outside of your own personal ability to enforce them? Really, this is a bad move for individualists, the only rights the Pink Floyd should have is to forcibly storm their old record label and slaughter everyone who doesn't uphold their part of the contract.
I agree, there is some rabid, extremist atheists. Though their theist counterparts FAR out number them, and have far more influence on the world. I find the religious fundamentalists a far larger threat than any degree of atheist.
I'm a pretty firm atheist, and I generally have no problem with religion, or any other ideology. Until they start trying to control people's lives, or start harming people. At that point the ideology in question should be destroyed. Just because your a Christian (or Muslim, or whatnot) doesn't mean EVERYONE should have to follow your silly arbitrary rules.
Atheists, for the most part, are immune to this tyrannical craziness. What are they going to do, stand on street corners screaming "THINK FOR YOURSELF!", or trying to force all children to learn science. The horror.
Yes, there are some unambiguous parts that we seem to ignore now. But there are some ambiguous ones as well, these ambiguous ones are bigger points of contention, and thus people get more worked up over them. I'm looking directly at the Second Amendment here.
I didn't mean to say all points of view are valid. Obviously if you think the first Amendment means that you have the right to run around peeing on walls, or punching people in the face, you are obviously completely wrong. But if you claim that libel and slander covered by the first Amendment, and I claim otherwise, then we have a valid debate, and neither of our views have much a chance of being proven objectively valid.
Sorry for the ambiguity.
Not to sound snarky, but please use paragraph breaks. Getting through your reply severely taxed the limited amount of coffee I got this morning.
WE are not a problem. we are people, we are human beings. we are Americans.
In regards to the bailout, I agree, the government did that behind our back, and mostly against our collective wishes. But we still are the problem, as we will vote these people into office next time. We voted all the clowns back in after the PATRIOT ACT debacle as well.
We get the government we deserve.
As I stated before, if the American people overthrew their government, the same government would be voted in immediately after the revolution.
I don't mean to shuffle all of our problems to the people, there is a lot of reform that our current government could bear.
Would that be the Ubuntu Uncomfortable Unicorn, or Mythical Manticore release?
You do realize that the voters will has already been subverted in the United States, right? Our elected officials choose their voters, not the other way around. There are also times when the will of the voters DESERVES to be overturned. Or do you think that Jim Crow was justifiable because it happened to command popular support?
This is a complicated one. Jim Crow deserved to die, undoubtedly, regardless of the will of the people. But some people have the same feeling about less obvious things. This is sticky ground, and needs some SERIOUS thought before people go and shoot elected officials. Where is the line?
Jim Crow was repealed without a revolution. Jim Crow died the way it was supposed to. See also the Suffragette movement, see also most of the social libertarian progress we have made in the last 100 or so years.
Some people would feel that violence would be called for if the government legalized gay marriage, or abortion, or instituted public health care (the real stuff, not the Obama stuff). Where is this line?
I hope you appreciate the irony of choosing that as your signature line while condemning the notion of revolution against an oppressive government.
Defense is the least amount of force needed to protect yourself. Most of the time it is a couple words and a smile. Sometimes its pissing off those in power, and spending the night in jail. And only when everything else fails, and you are left with no other options do you go and start shooting people.
I agree with your formulation of the problem, but it doesn't move the onus of guilt away from the electorate. Everyone knows the problem, but everyone still votes for the incumbent, everyone still votes for corrupt party A or corrupt party B (though the difference in results for each is negligible, only the rhetoric differs).
Education, or lack thereof, can take some blame. I find it troubling that there is a direct, and very strong, correlation between amount of money spent on advertising, and political success. Hinting that most people are the antithesis of informed voters, either that or most voters are highly susceptible to cheap psychological advertising gimmicks (which also is an education problem).
The media can also take some blame, for setting up a false "us vs. them" dichotomy. Democrats are not the enemies of freedom, nor are Republicans. Democrats aren't socialists who want to repress religion, and Republicans aren't fascists who want us to live in a theocracy. The media likes the fear of "the other", it is one of the most primal human triggers, and serves VERY well to get people to watch your content, and hence your sponsors. The media used to be more responsible, but it has become nothing more than a souless, amoral, corporate monolith looking out for nothing but profit. (Yes, Rupert Murdoch would be selling Liberal propaganda if he could make as much money from it).
The corporations have pretty much taken over government, as well as the media. With the amount of money they are able to spend on promoting their interests, even if they are completely contrary to our interests, their voice is much louder (and important, since being reelected costs huge amounts of money, because advertising=election) than us "real" people could ever hope to compete with.
So I'd say the real problems are education (the media would be toothless with a decent eduction being common), to much access for non-people individuals versus access for the people who government supposedly exists for, and the blind greed of politicians who worry more about sticking around than actually helping us.
Granted the politicians involved in this all have good intentions, and ideological premises to claim how ethical they are. Think the Reagan era "what is good for corporations is good for America" line of rhetoric.
The thing is, EVERYONE recognizes exactly what I just said. Find the most partisan drone that you can, and they will agree with me, but continue to act in a way that allows this system to exist. This is the mystery.
Some problems with the idea of overthrowing the American government;
1) The government has more force to throw at you than any dissenting group could hope to match. The government has pretty much a monopoly of force.
2) Armed revolutions generally don't have possitive results. Name a single revolution after the French Revolution that saw generally positive results.
3) It is the low road, and pretty much says that you completely given up on the American people, or on any chance of fixing the American discourse.
4) It is the lazy way.
5) People will get hurt. Innocent people will get hurt. Your personal political ideology generally never trumps the lives of others. And if you go into it with an "us vs. them" motive, your ideology is probably flawed and tyrannical.
I personally dread the day when people take up guns against their elected government. First because the term "elected", by picking up guns your saying that you know better than the voters, which to me, is tyrannical. Its part of the stupid modern "tea party" line of bullshit, democracy is fine until people vote for people I don't like.
Second, who would get control of the new government? Liberatarians, actual socialists, the anarchists, Christian fundamentalists? All of these sections are disenfranchised feeling currently. And some small subset of each of these groups would be willing to fight, and more problematically, enforce their ideology on others. Someone is going to mention "restoring the Constitution" or some such empty phrase, which leads to the question "whose interpretation of it?". No interpretation is an objective truth, all are equal, no matter how much you disagree with them. Its like arguing whose interpretation of the Bible is right, and we all can see how those arguments turn out.
Third, who are you going to fight? If you managed to oust the president and all of congress, people will just vote them back. The Government is only a problem on the surface, but the real problem runs much deeper. The American people are the "problem", how do you fix that? I doubt an armed revolution will work.
I'm scared of your use of "faithful", when it comes to the potential killing of people, you'd better have much more than faith.
But it isn't the British, its the rest of Europe. The British are to busy trying to bring about their Orwellian utopia to be teaching us much of anything. Right now England is pretty far behind even the US when it comes to freedom.
Later on in this topic, I stated that I have ad-blocking disabled on Slashdot, and I have unchecked the "Your awesome, disable ads?" box. I did this for two reasons, the first being that I've been visiting /. daily for years, and it is one of the few pages I would miss if it died (99% of pages are expendable crap). The second being that I'm using Chromium, and can't actually block ads, just hide them, therefore I never have to actually SEE a single ad from /., while they still get the credit for showing them. This is win-win (and perhaps a loss by the advertisers, but I don't care about them).
If I start noticing a slow down from bad ad-servers, or they try to circumvent my blocker, then the box is being checked again.
I actually un-checked that box. I'm using Chromium, so I can't actually block the ads, just hide them. I figure its a win/win situation that way, /. gets some small pittance from the ad company, and I still don't have to see the damn things. /. might be the only page that I would do this for, though, since I feel somewhat obligated to it since it has been keeping me amused (and away from doing those tedious "productive" things) for god knows how long. There isn't many pages on the internet that can claim as much, though. I can live without Ars, but a life without /. would suck (though I suppose my sanity would improve).
Google is the only other site I let through, mostly because I don't even notice their ads anymore.
While I agree with you that people should recognize the need for publishers like whoever owns Ars to make some money, I also recognize the some people have declared total war on ads, I being among them. Ars is perpetrating the same behaviors that make people block ads, Flash ads, noisy ads, off-demographic ads, distracting ads, and worse, a total GLUT of ads. I am not obligated to make them money, nor should I be. Me making them money is, and should be, a voluntary act on my behalf, and should follow the principles I would willing engage in. If they want to charge for content, fine. If they want to hide all content when they detect an ad-blocker, fine. I will go elsewhere. If they want to have a limited amount of small, Google-like, text ads that are targeted to the content, then I might turn off my adblocker, but only if these ads may be useful to me, personally.
I am not obligated to give anyone money.
Though, to be completely honest, I probably won't turn off my ad-blocker, or white-list Ars if they decide to be responsible advertisers. I am sick and tired of advertising. I'm absolutely SICK of people trying to force their products down my throat, worse trying to hoist their products on me with cheap, annoying, psychological tricks, completely eschewing the only thing that matters, the actual quality of their product (and if it would actually be useful to me). I hate television, where its getting to the point where it is 1:1 ratio between ads and content (which now often is nothing but a thinly disguised ad). I hate sports (used to love baseball, at least), because they are nothing but an after-thought for advertisements, the advertising is now the content, the sport (or program, or webpage) is only to entice you in. I'm sick of constantly being attacked by distracting ads. I'm sick to the point where a scotched earth policy is the only psychologically satisfying conclusion. I'm had to alter my recreational habits to the point where completely eschewing anything that tries to force its manipulative ideas down my throat is not a sacrifice.
In a short; "fuck 'em!".
Now, IF the hiring and firing of teachers worked like going to work at a private company then the spend more get better results method would not only work, it would have worked already.
Yes, doing a quick glance at the state of the economy, and the free market, shows that using private sector methods always leads to boons in performance... It also shows that all pricing and pay irregularity will promptly go away (no 10,000% CEO pay, or golden parachutes for under-performing). Every time I deal with a large corporation, I leave the deal thinking "that was very efficient, dealing with 600 middle men, doing 5000 pages of superfluous paper work, and having to sign my immortal soul away to cover said companies ass, man I'm glad that the people who do the actual work are making barely minimum wage".
No, modeling anything after corporate America will not make it better.
The public teachers' union HATES vouchers though, so it's really hard to get such systems implemented.
I am not a member of a teachers union, and I hate the idea. I hate the idea because in practice my tax dollars gets to get squandered on people giving their children a religious education (which isn't really much of an education). Where I live, a significant portion of the charter and private schools are thinly veiled schools for Evangelical Christians. A lot of them are even run by the same people who run the mega-churches. As someone who likes the Establishment Clause, I have a serious problem with funding other people's religious dogma.
That and no study I have read actual says that charter schools perform better than public ones, outside of college prep academies. Until there are statistics proving that their is a significant difference, I would rather not use more of my tax money making private corporations rich.
To make it harder to accidentally close a window if all you want to do is access the menu.
In all my years of using OS X (since around 2003) I have never closed a window on accident. I am using the controls on the left scheme in Ubuntu currently, and I still haven't managed to accidently close a window. Yes, its anecdotal, but...
Considering mac users are about as far from their target demographic as you can get, I don't think they should design windows based on their similarity to that system.
Unless of course OS X's control scheme makes more sense than Windows. The game should be usability over wooing Windows users, and not visa versa. I personally like my controls on the left side, it seems to make more sense to have all the menus and controls clustered together, rather than separated.
But then again, as long as they don't adopt the OS X quit scheme (the close button does nothing, you need to actually go to file to quit), I don't care much. One of the nice things about Linux Windows Managers is that you can customize it to your own work-flow. My current install has no remaining brown and orange, and all my controls are clustered (except for Chromium, which doesn't play nice unless it looks like a Windows app), and very minimal (Shiki-Noble with Elegant Brit borders). One of my complaints againt OS X and Windows (especially OS X) is that they force you to work a certain way, Linux escapes this.
Your comment also seems to imply that Ubuntu (and the Linux community in general) should be operating under the goal of trying to get as many people to switch as possible. With this philosophy we risk Linux becoming nothing more than a crappy Windows clone. I, also, don't understand the desire for Linux to become the "most popular kid on the block". Linux should aspire to stand on its own two feet, and primarily woo users by its unique characteristics and strengths, like OS X contra Windows. OS X doesn't woo users by being more like Windows, but by trying to have a more user friendly, and intuitive GUI.
I really don't care if Linux becomes a big player. Outside of driving Game and driver ports, I can't see any other benefit. I'd like to see the OSS model become more popular, not Linux in particular. (and if OSS became more popular, we would have the source to port games and drivers, anyway).
Given the topic, I wish I had alcohol as an excuse...
Though name recognition worked for Obsidian and Gas Powered games. I never would have bought a game from either of them if it wasn't for name recognition, or recognition of where the devs came from. It helped that they made decent products, too, but part of what drove my purchases was WHO made the products as well, and the other projects they were involved in (Diablo and Total Annihilation, respectively).
In America, it's just "proof", if it's used at all. Usually it ain't, as places that require labeling of ABV require a percentage measurement.
Depends on what your buying. Your correct, most beers and wines don't list proof, just ABV%. But most liquors and liqueurs still list proof on the bottle, a quick run through my liquor cabinet shows that most, if not all, spirits are still listed with proof. There isn't a single spirit in the cabinet that doesn't have a proof on it. Though most of them are now listed in the "%ABV(#Proof) format. Kind of sad, since it shows that some people are too stupid to realize that proof is just ABV/2.
I hope that proof never goes completely away. I like it, and it doesn't hurt anything. It also fits in nicely with more traditional liquors, the ones with history, like bourbons and whiskeys. People who would want to take away my proof, are as bad are the wankers who want to convert pints to metric.
Point taken, your right, I, perhaps, bandied about that fallacy rather liberally.
though I still disagree. If a significant portion of people who claim to be Christians don't act in the manner in which you would define as proper for the label then your usage of the label may be wrong.
Doctrinally, people who claim to be Christian, have very little to do with what was considered Christian in centuries immediately following the death of Christ. On a large level, we can see that most of modern Christianity (or at least the most visible portions) are not much of a fan of "not casting stones", not judging, and turning cheeks, and are a very large fan of being money changers and usurers.
Not many modern Christians really think that upon death they will sit in the ground, patiently waiting for Jesus to come again, at which point they will be judged, either.
There are deeper structural and dogmatic concerns too. Christianity has changed with the times, and so has what it takes to be called Christian. Modern Christianity is pretty different than archaic Christianity (after Jesus' death, and before John ditched all the Jewish laws and added a heaping dose of Neo-Platonism in order to sell it to the Greeks), which, in itself, was very different than the original, pre-crucifixion "Jesus cult".
Depending on your definition, we can exclude any group of self-described Christians. I'm not a fan of the Reformation, therefore I'm not a fan of all sects who aren't Catholic. I'm a fan of the Reformation, so I don't think Catholics are Christians, even though they carried the label for 1500 years exclusively.
Another consideration, though, is how fast can you sell it. With something like this, you might exclude a significant percentage of potential buyers, making it harder to unload when you want to unload it and move somewhere else.
I stated an anecdote about one of these houses I just looked at, that had high tension wires across the backyard, it was on the market for around 100 days, where the average here is only around 7-15 days. And right now there is a real estate feeding frenzy, so this might be worse in a normal market.
There isn't many things worse than sitting on a property that you can't sell.
Wasn't completely trolling, though I admit my post has troll-like qualities. I was more trying (and probably completely failed) to illustrate how stupid the idea that the government should ban all things that may be considered harmful or distasteful to someone else.
I'm really sick of people who want to force their opinions on everyone else "for their own good", or because "they know better". With some careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that all things that arise from these two sentiments are the basis of most of the evil in the world.
n estimated 440,000 smoking-related deaths [wrongdiagnosis.com] per year in the US.
Unless they changed how they calculate this number, it is probably grossly inflated. They used consider all deaths do to lung cancer, and other pulmonary diseases, by people who smoke, or ever smoked, as a "smoking related death". Obviously this leads to a grossly inflated number since it ignores the background rate of lung cancer, and other diseases. Also most of the numbers from the WHO have a worse taint, since they purposely excluded a ton of studies (at least they did in the late 90's) that found the health risks were not as bad as they wanted to say they were.
A lot of the numbers that were (and perhaps still are) bandied about over smoking deaths have had some wonky statistics involved to inflate them for pure propaganda purposes. So I remain very skeptical of these numbers.
No, I'm not claiming that smoking is healthful, or even harmless. It is bad for you. But this is not a criteria for being banned.
Alcohol has other bad effects, that don't kill you, obviously. It tears apart families, hurts productivity, and can lead to permanent mental illnesses. As a child of two alcoholics I can attest to its harmful aspects. But of purely health and mortality, you are probably right. Pardon my off the cuff arm waving.