While we can discuss how much protection is warranted or needed, we don't really want to over expose the public and make the loss of a life something that's meaningless nor do we want them to quiver and pull out before the job is done.
Desensitization is definitely a bad thing, war should never be easy since it always, no matter how just, is tragic. I also agree, that squeamishness can be a bad thing, as well. The current Iraq war, in my opinion, is a decent example of this. IMO our current popular opinion to leave is due to this squeamishness (too little to late, I think, but this is merely my opinion), as is the more perplexing idea of leaving Afghanistan as it is currently. I, and probably no one else, has a good solution on what balance is good on this though.
ALL wars could have been avoided. Hindsight is, as they say, 20/20. I'm sure in a couple tens of years we might even find a way we could have avoided some of our current problems. I might disagree with our pols, but I do think they are doing their best, generally. This isn't an excuse, but... It does lend a certain empathy to their situation.
I do give the developers some credit for pulling the title, and not just weakly modifying to to be a patriotic war-game against non-descript "terrorists". The quote aren't saying there isn't such a thing, but that the media has an obsession with inventing them for pure entertainment currently. Which I also think is somewhat harmful, building the idea of "us vs. the world" is rather destructive. Yes, there is bad guys (everywhere) but painting anyone who disagrees with us, or has a different POV is generally moronic. I'm in favor of the American ideal (and all the connected dissent on what that actually means) but against the idea that people with differing views of policy are bad, like the current hatred of the French, and, oddly, Canadians.
I digress. I do think, though, that some further amount of disclosure is needed to the public. I also think that some degree of this would have prevented both Iraq and Afghanistan from becoming Vietnam-esque quagmires.
Drat, I can see your point, and you were respectful. What is/. coming to these days?
I suppose its a consequence of minor ideological disagreements. Though I do have one or two rebuttals here...
we know have laws stating that no one convicted of a crime can profit from any acts in that crime and that any profit made goes to the families of the victims
This is besides the point, since there is no crime here. If someone wanted to make a game about Iraq they could freely with no legal problems. As we see, there would be an outcry, but nothing outside of public opinion and ethics keep them from actually making it. The debate here is one of decency rather than law.
Even this must be balanced somewhat. I think our actual reporting of the wars is TERRIBLE since they don't let us see the real human toll. This, obviously, must be balanced, as we can agree, with respectful treatment of the casualties, and their families. Our wars are already too much like movies or videogames to us at home, for my taste. We get some nice action shots, a row of dry statistics, but no actual feeling for the consequences (both ours, and that of the people whose countries we're in). Yes, there are limits, and those limits should be obeyed, but some dose of the reality should be shown.
10 years may be a little too soon too. Imagine how awkwards life was in highschool when your body changes, people get superficial, and all that crap that kids have to deal with and then find out that the kid sitting next to you in math is playing a game of a battle that killed your dad which is the reason you have to work a part time job to afford your own car or cloths that are too expensive for mom to buy and that kid took the side of the enemy who killed your dad.
This is a good point. I'm not sure how to address that. I think the information should be out there. Perhaps the problem is that it IS a game still.
The problem with creating a game out of a real life experience is the value of the lives taken and the obligation to those who made it possible (if any).
We wouldn't be having this discussion if it was any other medium besides games. If I filmed a documentary, or a fictionalized movie, or even wrote a book on our current wars (including all the nasty details), no one would care. Well, some people would care a bit claiming that my bias is wrong, but no one would be flat out against me doing it.
This forces me to ask, why are games different?
If I was to profit from your parent's death, would you think you're entitled to some of that?
That depends. My parents are rather boring people, but my grandfather fought in WWII, and was among the first to liberate Auschwitz. If someone made a documentary, or biography of him I would expect nothing from it. I would actually be fascinated and somewhat honored by it. If someone made a REALISTIC depiction of Iraq, I also would have no problem with it. Seeing the circumstances our troops are in would build more respect for them, and their situation, even if it might degrade some support for the war. But then again a common theme these days is painting anyone who dissents from the cause, as not supporting the individuals who are fighting for it. Which I find tragic, and absurd.
I am strongly against the war in Iraq(or at least the original premise, I don't think we should pull out now that we own the consequences though), but I have several friends who served in it. All of them have become deeply scarred (psychologically, mostly) from the experience. I have nothing but respect for them, even if I'm against the war they fought in. The war is not the troops.
Really, wars are not about individuals. I doubt that this game would actually be 100% realistic, or name names, or actually mirror real circumstances where our youth lost their lives. Iraq is a bigger historical even than even the people who served in it. To deny talking about it (yes, even for money) just because people died is rather absurd.
I can understand your argument, I disagree with it, but I can see it. Yes, the afterlife is generally the great equalizer where all of the perceived injustices against us are rectified, and is generally a decent reward for our potentially miserable lives. This is fine and dandy for people who lack a more sophisticated moral compass (though I'd argue this is because they never had to develop one because an afterlife is an easier solution than being a genuinely decent individual on your own).
The problem comes in when you use metaphysical rewards of idiotic things. If you go strap some explosives to yourself and blow up a bunch of innocent civilians^W^W Infidels, then you go to heaven. If you fight for your nation state of choice against another equally inane nation state of choice you go to heaven. Etc... It is harder to convince someone who doesn't believe in an afterlife to sacrifice their only life for political, or purely ideological ends. This is a problem.
If, though, your going for the fact the non-religious people can't have ethics or morals, then I'm not really going to respond since it is an absurd argument.
The chances of these proteins from bird, avian flu combining with a swine retro virus that is easily transmittable is astronomical.
How many generations does a typical virus go through in a very short period of time? You forget that "evolutionary" time is vastly sped up for our bacterial and viral friends. In the amount of time it took me to type this paragraph these bugger probably went through a couple hundred generations, and spawned untold mutations. Thats why viruses are so hard to fight. This is especially true with influenza, which is why we don't have a "cure" for it yet.
Sometimes viruses win the genetic lottery too, especially when they get to go through billions of iterations each year. The odds of HIV/AIDs jumping from primates to a human form was also astronomical, as was the original swine flu, but I doubt that anyone would posit those as cases of biological weapons gone wrong.
WoW is no different, really, than people in most fraternities and sororities, which are more about social connections than academic progress. Granted your frat buddies might (maybe, possibly, but doubtfully) help you later on in life, while all your WoW freinds will probably drift off, and disappear, but the same social need is met.
When I was in college I was in a rather large social scene (er... barfly?), many of whom were not students at the college. I ended up going to out with them for lunch sometimes when I should have been in class, some evening when I really should have been studying I ended up at the bar playing pool and drinking bloody marys. I, too, wasn't addicted to illicit lunches (though the trout bagels might have been such) and drinking but to the social interactions. My situation is considered normal, but if I participated in the same activities in a virtual world, then they suddenly become abnormal.
While missing out on the extracurriculars and ability to freely interact with people who share your academic interests outside of the classroom is probably not as useful as logging on to a game, but it still falls within the normal range. Your sister, if she still completes her school tasks, has some freinds, etc... is not addicted to WoW. It does not hurt her ability to function, therefore it is not an addiction, or any other psychological ailment.
Yes, she could be doing more for her own success, but then we all could. People who care so much about success that it hurts a healthy balanced lifestyle are just as bad as people who put certain things against success, to its possible detriment.
As a tangent, I did use MUDs to slack off throughout highschool and early college. I don't view it as a bad thing though since they allowed me to cut my teeth on programming (once while in a crappy CS101 class, I was hacking the source of a mud, while the teacher was yelling at me for not listening to him telling me how to use Outlook).
Actually not. Addiction, like all other psychological disorders, only becomes a disorder when it affects your ability to function at a normal level. If you can form meaningful bonds with others, do your required tasks with a degree of compliance, etc... then whatever pathology is, you are not suffering any mental illness.
Actually it isn't much different than heroin or nicotine, since everything we derive pleasure from is chemical in nature. Thus if your brain comes to depend on the endorphins (opiates, whatnot) from that walk in the country, and you find it impossible to stop walking in the country without lapsing into some form of depression, even though those walks tore apart your marriage and cost you your job. Then yes, you ARE addicted to long walks in the country.
I'm sick of people claiming psychological disorders without accounting for the "loss of ability to function normally" clause.
Okay, if I defame you on/. (an illegal use), Sourceforge or the admins of/. are not going to get in trouble, I will. The worst that can happen to/. is that they are legally forced to remove the comment, but the further and more real consequences happen to me, the individual who actually broke the law.
We agree on this?
Now, lets say I grab some of your IP, lets say some code from one of your projects, and then I post it fully on/. Now the worst (in the US) that will happen is/. will get a DMCA take-down notice, I am still culpable for my actions legally.
We agree on this as well, right?
Now, lets tone this down. I provide a link on/. just pointing to a separate webpage with your code. Now, by this logic,/. is magically culpable for my actions.
Thats what I don't get. We're judging things by VERY different standards based on very similar behavior. Either a webpage is responsible for ALL 3rd party use of dubious legality, or none. If I sell stolen goods on Craigslist, they are in the clear, if, though, I provide a mere link to bad content, then they are not. You see my issue?
Yes, TPB is guilty of not taking things down when asked, though I'm not certain of the extent of that, since being in a foreign country DMCA doesn't apply, and I don't know if there is an equally moronic equivalent in Sweden. Even, then though, I can see their refusal as well since they don't actually HAVE or HOST any illegal content, just the directions for other people to find it. So there could be an argument that this is in the clear, especially if, as I hear, linking to dubious content isn't illegal in Sweden.
So, bringing this into the real world, with a deeply flawed analogy; You own a store will a board for posting notices. I post the address of a house of prostitution, or drug dealer, or what not. Now your store is guilty of what?
Yes, intent does come into play here, so I am being rather naive, since I really don't buy it. Name aside, it is a webpage devoted to torrents. Torrents, like all technology is completely neutral until used towards well or ill gains. There is no intent in the goal to deliver torrents, and TPB has remained agnostic by refusing to remove ANY torrents, legal or not. Checking through their webpage, we have no actual evidence of intent, outside of the silly name, no where does it say "this webpage exists to facilitate the transfer of illegal files, please keep your bloody legal Linux ISOs to yourself!", or such.
I have a lot of issues with this. And I'm not even pro-piracy.
If a certain amount of kids are lazy we should not be catering to them, but to the ones who will excel. Actually, if they are just lazy then shouldn't we be asking why, and taking steps to fix it, rather than just dumbing everything down for them? Force them to adapt.
My draconian side thinks we should have OSS computers in schools, ESPECIALLY if a majority of children are lazy. Then Linux is what they will expect, and know, and thus get when they have an income of their own. Sure, they'll suffer a bit in the short term, but we all benefit in the long term.
I may or may not endorse anything in this comment.
That's the only way to settle this, because you are obviously not going to listen to anything I say.
As you obviously didn't read what I said. Who at TPB actually goes through and reads ALL of the comments, all of the file descriptions? No one probably. TPB is a DUMB service, it, as a site and a system, has no knowledge of what crosses through it. If someone had to hand enter all of the data, or TPB somehow woke up one day to find itself Skynet, then yes, it would be aware that someone typed "hey d00dz, get it before it's in the cinemas here!".
Do you think/. is aware of our current conversation? Does anyone on the staff of the site actually know that we're having this conversation? And more pertinently, would they know if I told you where to go download the crappy Comic Book Movie of the Week? Probably not, and more so they are not responsible for this discussion (or say, if I told you where to by drugs/illegal firearms/etc).
But if you link to "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", with the text "hey d00dz, get it before it's in the cinemas here!" you can't claim that you had no idea what it was.
Sure you can. How many things are listed in Pirate Bay? Millions? I doubt that anyone who works their actually knows more than a small percentage of the site, its just an automated database. Its like saying that Google "knows" that when I search for "X-Men Wolverine torrents" that its serving up copyrighted material.
Well, a more or less directions for you the user to do something illegal and not the actual content itself...
You grew into OS office software and can go back any time, if needed. Those kids won't be able to do that. You'd effectively be crippling them.
Are kids dumber now that they ever were? The first computer I had contact with through school was an Apple IIe, did this crush my ability to learn to use Windows when it finally came out? Really, that is one of the most innane arguments I have heard. If we expose our children to many different computers/OSs/software suites, it leaves them with adaptability.
Hell, it wasn't until rather late in high school that I actually found a computer, in school, using Windows, with Office on it, and all the other "standard" stuff, before that there was some nice DOS boxes, a few early Macs, a TON of Apple IIes, and I even think a lowly C64 and Amiga in there. All of these with their seporate and very different OSs, different "productivity" software, and different ways of interacting with the computer. I, for some reason, doubt that this hindered my ability to exist in society much, much less... you know... use a computer. It probably helped greatly with the second bit, since it kept me from getting locked in to any particular scheme of computing.
Children are adaptive by nature, and the more we make them experience novel situations, the smarter they get. It forces them out of the rote "click x in menu y to do z", and into the the actual basis of the experience itself into a "I want to do z, now what?" mindframe.
I know several people who can't use the GUI in Ubuntu/Gnome, just because it doesn't look exactly like Windows, even though it almost exactly the same mechanically. I would rather our children don't become this.
Read the warrant, using CLI was not the cause for the warrant, posting a false profile defaming his room mate, with a direct line of evidence pointing to him is the cause for the warrant...
Infrastructure qualifies, new cars and social cushions for the boomers, banks and anyone else looking for handouts don't.
I agree with you, for the most part, but it still is a mere opinion that these aren't important.
I personally support better health care (yes, national, you can disagree, and thats fine), and better care for those who actually need it, the working poor, the infirm, the mentally ill and homeless, and of course vets. Obviously infrastucure. But banks, the rich, and other financial industries had their free lunch, wasted it, and should learn that there is no more. This obviously won't happen...
But for the helping those in legitimate need bit, and the infrastructure, I would consider raising taxes.
Also, with the new technologies, and such, I'm sure the goal is to create markets, and thus expand industry, leading to more jobs, leading to more tax dollars. Whether this will work is completely debatable.
Nope, you got that wrong. I was being brief. If you want the nuance, I can see the left's point of view, we need to carefully weigh the human rights of ALL people, including illegals. Meaning we are morally obligated to give them the minimum of care, and basic human rights. We also are obligated to our own well-being. Of which a case can be made that illegals are not good for (as a whole, not just niche industries). Therefore we must weigh the two, and find a solution that causes the minimum to harm to both us and them.
The easiest solution I can think of (though not necessarily the best or only solution) is to remove the demand. And this would necessitate removing the jobs (which it seems we did already, thank you Banks!).
I am completely open to logical, and nonsensical arguments that do not appeal to emotion, hence me opening my somewhat fictional solution with "Hell, in my opinion", since that is just what it is, my opinion. Don't attach to much value, positive or negative, to it, since I sure as hell don't.
I'm guessing you disagree, good! I'm proud of you, its a skill we severely lack these days. Now, the more important question is; "why?".
I was using them since they are pretty far left, and if the far left hasn't drank the kool-aid, no one has.
All new media is basically selling a view point now, except for maybe Jim Leher (who nobody watches anyway). Which, I agree, is rather sad (ooo deep pun), not just for the whole "our view of the world is only as good as the input we may have" thing, but also because we're just digesting things that agree with us, and never being challenged with potentially hostile points of view. How many people have Limbaugh, or the Nation taught something new to? No one I guess, since you already accept their view just to listen to them.
The term selection bias comes to mind, but in a more fuzzy sense.
even the NYTs and the WaPo plus others say he won no matter how you counted.
This may be true. But, I'm not pissed because of that, I'm pissed because somehow the supreme court gained the ability to elect presidents. It isn't constitutional, and is a pretty dirty tactic.
I love the immigration debate, its the only thing that ignorant ideologues on both the right and left agree with; we should allow unfettered access to our country to anyone from Latin America (and only Latin America).
The right loves it because it breaks unions, and brings down wages.
The left loves it because it brings in voters, and that whole liberal ideal that all people should be lovely and decked in flowers regardless of real world consequences.
I love Arizona, where most of our citizens are solidly against them being here at all, but our Newspapers (both the right leaning Republic, and the far-left-lunatic-fringe New Times) are all about giving them a carde blanche, as are our two lunatic-right-wing congress critters, and Phoenix' left leaning mayor, and our ex-governor (Napolitano). Her to the point of trying to bar our sheriff from enforcing the law, because illegal immigrants are being "unfairly" arrested.
I don't thing any issue brings out more ideological morons than illegal immigration.
Hell, in my opinion put anyone who knowingly employs an illegal out of business, and give any illegal who reports such a business free citizenship.
Some of us want to have social services, jobs, roads, infrastructure, etc... And don't find spending for these to be wasteful. Some of us don't find these important at all.
Some economists thing that Obamas budget will equalize, and turn into a gain after the original spending. Some don't.
All value judgments on it depend on your individual, raw, naive, ideology.
He has though done more for civil liberties than Bush, at least we're not torturing people (perhaps). At least we're not ADVOCATING torture as a great national pass time, and advocating invading harmless (to us) countries, and slaughtering their civilians because it seems politically expedient to us.
Yes, the wire tapping crap has to go, and his arguement that the government should be immune from consequences is absurd, and immoral. But, on the whole, he is still better than Bush, not that is hard.
As for Iraq, it is REALLY naive (and rather immoral) to have thought that we could just pull completely out. We can't leave a power vaccuum, it would bite us in the butt eventually. Nor can we just leave the average Iraqi to their fates, after screwing them, and removing all form of law. We hit them, now we have a responsibility to fix our mess, or they suffer.
This is one of the reasons I was against the war to begin with, which wasn't a popular opinion. And now I'm against pulling out completely, which, again, isn't popular.
Actually the even left-wing media folk have been rather critical over this decision of his, even Maddow and Olbermann.
Perhaps people have been less critical of Obama (excluding, you know, Fox, Limbaugh, my local newspaper, most of the Slashdot, etc..) because he has been more popular, and less Machivellian than Bush? Perhaps people haven't critisized him because his policy, so far, has fallen largely into the basket most Americans want? Perhaps the far right is actually (gasp) a minority in comparison to the moderates (which Obama is, jingoism aside).
When he steps out of line, i.e. when he violates American principles (not YOUR principles, or your individual political ideals), or his own promises, people will be critical. As they are of this wiretapping crap, and his stance on it currently.
I generally use Transmission, but I also, like a true geek, also have a Windows box, and most of my friends ONLY use Windows, so when I give software advice, I'd like to recommend something, you know, useful to them.
Oddly enough, I use Vista on my Winbox, and outside of Vuze, and once when I deleted a driver for fun, it has NEVER blue screened across two computers and around a year and a half.
The problem isn't homogeneity, since if the full of the big three OSs carried a 1/3rd of the market, malware devs would just pick on and stick to it, evening out the load. this would actually make defense harder, since you'd have to cover all three.
The problem is end users not knowing squat about security or safety (with a heaping helping of the main OS out there being rather patchy in security).
With an educated user, most computers are almost completely secure. Most viruses, worms, etc.. rely on the user installing them, and not some large backdoor.
Transmission, for those of us who have a spare linux/os x box.
How does bittrorrent.com like DRM? This is the first I've heard of it, please explain.
Vuze is the only bittorrent client I've used that actively crashed my PC. Why would a bittorrent client cause me to blue screen around four times in a row? I don't like the fact, as well, that its actual useful features (you know, as a bittorrent client) are somewhat hidden, and requires some clicks to actually view the information that you want to see, like what your downloading, and how fast. While I'm sure a segment of the population find its hideous UI, and spammy adverts for craptastic pop music useful, I find them a distraction from what I really want to do, download torrents. Also I've noticed it is on the whole slower than uTorrent and Transmission (actually transmission, in my experience is much faster than utorrent with like settings on the same network, for some reason).
If someone could recommend a good FOSS torrent client for Windows, I'd hop on it in a second. Vuze, though, doesn't satisfy the first requirement.
Slashdot Mirror
While we can discuss how much protection is warranted or needed, we don't really want to over expose the public and make the loss of a life something that's meaningless nor do we want them to quiver and pull out before the job is done.
Desensitization is definitely a bad thing, war should never be easy since it always, no matter how just, is tragic. I also agree, that squeamishness can be a bad thing, as well. The current Iraq war, in my opinion, is a decent example of this. IMO our current popular opinion to leave is due to this squeamishness (too little to late, I think, but this is merely my opinion), as is the more perplexing idea of leaving Afghanistan as it is currently. I, and probably no one else, has a good solution on what balance is good on this though.
ALL wars could have been avoided. Hindsight is, as they say, 20/20. I'm sure in a couple tens of years we might even find a way we could have avoided some of our current problems. I might disagree with our pols, but I do think they are doing their best, generally. This isn't an excuse, but... It does lend a certain empathy to their situation.
I do give the developers some credit for pulling the title, and not just weakly modifying to to be a patriotic war-game against non-descript "terrorists". The quote aren't saying there isn't such a thing, but that the media has an obsession with inventing them for pure entertainment currently. Which I also think is somewhat harmful, building the idea of "us vs. the world" is rather destructive. Yes, there is bad guys (everywhere) but painting anyone who disagrees with us, or has a different POV is generally moronic. I'm in favor of the American ideal (and all the connected dissent on what that actually means) but against the idea that people with differing views of policy are bad, like the current hatred of the French, and, oddly, Canadians.
I digress. I do think, though, that some further amount of disclosure is needed to the public. I also think that some degree of this would have prevented both Iraq and Afghanistan from becoming Vietnam-esque quagmires.
Drat, I can see your point, and you were respectful. What is /. coming to these days?
I suppose its a consequence of minor ideological disagreements. Though I do have one or two rebuttals here...
we know have laws stating that no one convicted of a crime can profit from any acts in that crime and that any profit made goes to the families of the victims
This is besides the point, since there is no crime here. If someone wanted to make a game about Iraq they could freely with no legal problems. As we see, there would be an outcry, but nothing outside of public opinion and ethics keep them from actually making it. The debate here is one of decency rather than law.
Even this must be balanced somewhat. I think our actual reporting of the wars is TERRIBLE since they don't let us see the real human toll. This, obviously, must be balanced, as we can agree, with respectful treatment of the casualties, and their families. Our wars are already too much like movies or videogames to us at home, for my taste. We get some nice action shots, a row of dry statistics, but no actual feeling for the consequences (both ours, and that of the people whose countries we're in). Yes, there are limits, and those limits should be obeyed, but some dose of the reality should be shown.
10 years may be a little too soon too. Imagine how awkwards life was in highschool when your body changes, people get superficial, and all that crap that kids have to deal with and then find out that the kid sitting next to you in math is playing a game of a battle that killed your dad which is the reason you have to work a part time job to afford your own car or cloths that are too expensive for mom to buy and that kid took the side of the enemy who killed your dad.
This is a good point. I'm not sure how to address that. I think the information should be out there. Perhaps the problem is that it IS a game still.
Damn, I was convinced by someone on /.
The problem with creating a game out of a real life experience is the value of the lives taken and the obligation to those who made it possible (if any).
We wouldn't be having this discussion if it was any other medium besides games. If I filmed a documentary, or a fictionalized movie, or even wrote a book on our current wars (including all the nasty details), no one would care. Well, some people would care a bit claiming that my bias is wrong, but no one would be flat out against me doing it.
This forces me to ask, why are games different?
If I was to profit from your parent's death, would you think you're entitled to some of that?
That depends. My parents are rather boring people, but my grandfather fought in WWII, and was among the first to liberate Auschwitz. If someone made a documentary, or biography of him I would expect nothing from it. I would actually be fascinated and somewhat honored by it. If someone made a REALISTIC depiction of Iraq, I also would have no problem with it. Seeing the circumstances our troops are in would build more respect for them, and their situation, even if it might degrade some support for the war. But then again a common theme these days is painting anyone who dissents from the cause, as not supporting the individuals who are fighting for it. Which I find tragic, and absurd.
I am strongly against the war in Iraq(or at least the original premise, I don't think we should pull out now that we own the consequences though), but I have several friends who served in it. All of them have become deeply scarred (psychologically, mostly) from the experience. I have nothing but respect for them, even if I'm against the war they fought in. The war is not the troops.
Really, wars are not about individuals. I doubt that this game would actually be 100% realistic, or name names, or actually mirror real circumstances where our youth lost their lives. Iraq is a bigger historical even than even the people who served in it. To deny talking about it (yes, even for money) just because people died is rather absurd.
I can understand your argument, I disagree with it, but I can see it. Yes, the afterlife is generally the great equalizer where all of the perceived injustices against us are rectified, and is generally a decent reward for our potentially miserable lives. This is fine and dandy for people who lack a more sophisticated moral compass (though I'd argue this is because they never had to develop one because an afterlife is an easier solution than being a genuinely decent individual on your own).
The problem comes in when you use metaphysical rewards of idiotic things. If you go strap some explosives to yourself and blow up a bunch of innocent civilians^W^W Infidels, then you go to heaven. If you fight for your nation state of choice against another equally inane nation state of choice you go to heaven. Etc... It is harder to convince someone who doesn't believe in an afterlife to sacrifice their only life for political, or purely ideological ends. This is a problem.
If, though, your going for the fact the non-religious people can't have ethics or morals, then I'm not really going to respond since it is an absurd argument.
The chances of these proteins from bird, avian flu combining with a swine retro virus that is easily transmittable is astronomical.
How many generations does a typical virus go through in a very short period of time? You forget that "evolutionary" time is vastly sped up for our bacterial and viral friends. In the amount of time it took me to type this paragraph these bugger probably went through a couple hundred generations, and spawned untold mutations. Thats why viruses are so hard to fight. This is especially true with influenza, which is why we don't have a "cure" for it yet.
Sometimes viruses win the genetic lottery too, especially when they get to go through billions of iterations each year. The odds of HIV/AIDs jumping from primates to a human form was also astronomical, as was the original swine flu, but I doubt that anyone would posit those as cases of biological weapons gone wrong.
WoW is no different, really, than people in most fraternities and sororities, which are more about social connections than academic progress. Granted your frat buddies might (maybe, possibly, but doubtfully) help you later on in life, while all your WoW freinds will probably drift off, and disappear, but the same social need is met.
When I was in college I was in a rather large social scene (er... barfly?), many of whom were not students at the college. I ended up going to out with them for lunch sometimes when I should have been in class, some evening when I really should have been studying I ended up at the bar playing pool and drinking bloody marys. I, too, wasn't addicted to illicit lunches (though the trout bagels might have been such) and drinking but to the social interactions. My situation is considered normal, but if I participated in the same activities in a virtual world, then they suddenly become abnormal.
While missing out on the extracurriculars and ability to freely interact with people who share your academic interests outside of the classroom is probably not as useful as logging on to a game, but it still falls within the normal range. Your sister, if she still completes her school tasks, has some freinds, etc... is not addicted to WoW. It does not hurt her ability to function, therefore it is not an addiction, or any other psychological ailment.
Yes, she could be doing more for her own success, but then we all could. People who care so much about success that it hurts a healthy balanced lifestyle are just as bad as people who put certain things against success, to its possible detriment.
As a tangent, I did use MUDs to slack off throughout highschool and early college. I don't view it as a bad thing though since they allowed me to cut my teeth on programming (once while in a crappy CS101 class, I was hacking the source of a mud, while the teacher was yelling at me for not listening to him telling me how to use Outlook).
Actually not. Addiction, like all other psychological disorders, only becomes a disorder when it affects your ability to function at a normal level. If you can form meaningful bonds with others, do your required tasks with a degree of compliance, etc... then whatever pathology is, you are not suffering any mental illness.
Actually it isn't much different than heroin or nicotine, since everything we derive pleasure from is chemical in nature. Thus if your brain comes to depend on the endorphins (opiates, whatnot) from that walk in the country, and you find it impossible to stop walking in the country without lapsing into some form of depression, even though those walks tore apart your marriage and cost you your job. Then yes, you ARE addicted to long walks in the country.
I'm sick of people claiming psychological disorders without accounting for the "loss of ability to function normally" clause.
Okay, if I defame you on /. (an illegal use), Sourceforge or the admins of /. are not going to get in trouble, I will. The worst that can happen to /. is that they are legally forced to remove the comment, but the further and more real consequences happen to me, the individual who actually broke the law.
We agree on this?
Now, lets say I grab some of your IP, lets say some code from one of your projects, and then I post it fully on /. Now the worst (in the US) that will happen is /. will get a DMCA take-down notice, I am still culpable for my actions legally.
We agree on this as well, right?
Now, lets tone this down. I provide a link on /. just pointing to a separate webpage with your code. Now, by this logic, /. is magically culpable for my actions.
Thats what I don't get. We're judging things by VERY different standards based on very similar behavior. Either a webpage is responsible for ALL 3rd party use of dubious legality, or none. If I sell stolen goods on Craigslist, they are in the clear, if, though, I provide a mere link to bad content, then they are not. You see my issue?
Yes, TPB is guilty of not taking things down when asked, though I'm not certain of the extent of that, since being in a foreign country DMCA doesn't apply, and I don't know if there is an equally moronic equivalent in Sweden. Even, then though, I can see their refusal as well since they don't actually HAVE or HOST any illegal content, just the directions for other people to find it. So there could be an argument that this is in the clear, especially if, as I hear, linking to dubious content isn't illegal in Sweden.
So, bringing this into the real world, with a deeply flawed analogy; You own a store will a board for posting notices. I post the address of a house of prostitution, or drug dealer, or what not. Now your store is guilty of what?
Yes, intent does come into play here, so I am being rather naive, since I really don't buy it. Name aside, it is a webpage devoted to torrents. Torrents, like all technology is completely neutral until used towards well or ill gains. There is no intent in the goal to deliver torrents, and TPB has remained agnostic by refusing to remove ANY torrents, legal or not. Checking through their webpage, we have no actual evidence of intent, outside of the silly name, no where does it say "this webpage exists to facilitate the transfer of illegal files, please keep your bloody legal Linux ISOs to yourself!", or such.
I have a lot of issues with this. And I'm not even pro-piracy.
Everyone is lazy.
If a certain amount of kids are lazy we should not be catering to them, but to the ones who will excel. Actually, if they are just lazy then shouldn't we be asking why, and taking steps to fix it, rather than just dumbing everything down for them? Force them to adapt.
My draconian side thinks we should have OSS computers in schools, ESPECIALLY if a majority of children are lazy. Then Linux is what they will expect, and know, and thus get when they have an income of their own. Sure, they'll suffer a bit in the short term, but we all benefit in the long term.
I may or may not endorse anything in this comment.
bingo.
That's the only way to settle this, because you are obviously not going to listen to anything I say.
As you obviously didn't read what I said. Who at TPB actually goes through and reads ALL of the comments, all of the file descriptions? No one probably. TPB is a DUMB service, it, as a site and a system, has no knowledge of what crosses through it. If someone had to hand enter all of the data, or TPB somehow woke up one day to find itself Skynet, then yes, it would be aware that someone typed "hey d00dz, get it before it's in the cinemas here!".
Do you think /. is aware of our current conversation? Does anyone on the staff of the site actually know that we're having this conversation? And more pertinently, would they know if I told you where to go download the crappy Comic Book Movie of the Week? Probably not, and more so they are not responsible for this discussion (or say, if I told you where to by drugs/illegal firearms/etc).
But if you link to "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", with the text "hey d00dz, get it before it's in the cinemas here!" you can't claim that you had no idea what it was.
Sure you can. How many things are listed in Pirate Bay? Millions? I doubt that anyone who works their actually knows more than a small percentage of the site, its just an automated database. Its like saying that Google "knows" that when I search for "X-Men Wolverine torrents" that its serving up copyrighted material.
Well, a more or less directions for you the user to do something illegal and not the actual content itself...
You grew into OS office software and can go back any time, if needed. Those kids won't be able to do that. You'd effectively be crippling them.
Are kids dumber now that they ever were? The first computer I had contact with through school was an Apple IIe, did this crush my ability to learn to use Windows when it finally came out? Really, that is one of the most innane arguments I have heard. If we expose our children to many different computers/OSs/software suites, it leaves them with adaptability.
Hell, it wasn't until rather late in high school that I actually found a computer, in school, using Windows, with Office on it, and all the other "standard" stuff, before that there was some nice DOS boxes, a few early Macs, a TON of Apple IIes, and I even think a lowly C64 and Amiga in there. All of these with their seporate and very different OSs, different "productivity" software, and different ways of interacting with the computer. I, for some reason, doubt that this hindered my ability to exist in society much, much less... you know... use a computer. It probably helped greatly with the second bit, since it kept me from getting locked in to any particular scheme of computing.
Children are adaptive by nature, and the more we make them experience novel situations, the smarter they get. It forces them out of the rote "click x in menu y to do z", and into the the actual basis of the experience itself into a "I want to do z, now what?" mindframe.
I know several people who can't use the GUI in Ubuntu/Gnome, just because it doesn't look exactly like Windows, even though it almost exactly the same mechanically. I would rather our children don't become this.
Read the warrant, using CLI was not the cause for the warrant, posting a false profile defaming his room mate, with a direct line of evidence pointing to him is the cause for the warrant...
Infrastructure qualifies, new cars and social cushions for the boomers, banks and anyone else looking for handouts don't.
I agree with you, for the most part, but it still is a mere opinion that these aren't important.
I personally support better health care (yes, national, you can disagree, and thats fine), and better care for those who actually need it, the working poor, the infirm, the mentally ill and homeless, and of course vets. Obviously infrastucure. But banks, the rich, and other financial industries had their free lunch, wasted it, and should learn that there is no more. This obviously won't happen...
But for the helping those in legitimate need bit, and the infrastructure, I would consider raising taxes.
Also, with the new technologies, and such, I'm sure the goal is to create markets, and thus expand industry, leading to more jobs, leading to more tax dollars. Whether this will work is completely debatable.
Nope, you got that wrong. I was being brief. If you want the nuance, I can see the left's point of view, we need to carefully weigh the human rights of ALL people, including illegals. Meaning we are morally obligated to give them the minimum of care, and basic human rights. We also are obligated to our own well-being. Of which a case can be made that illegals are not good for (as a whole, not just niche industries). Therefore we must weigh the two, and find a solution that causes the minimum to harm to both us and them.
The easiest solution I can think of (though not necessarily the best or only solution) is to remove the demand. And this would necessitate removing the jobs (which it seems we did already, thank you Banks!).
I am completely open to logical, and nonsensical arguments that do not appeal to emotion, hence me opening my somewhat fictional solution with "Hell, in my opinion", since that is just what it is, my opinion. Don't attach to much value, positive or negative, to it, since I sure as hell don't.
I'm guessing you disagree, good! I'm proud of you, its a skill we severely lack these days. Now, the more important question is; "why?".
I was using them since they are pretty far left, and if the far left hasn't drank the kool-aid, no one has.
All new media is basically selling a view point now, except for maybe Jim Leher (who nobody watches anyway). Which, I agree, is rather sad (ooo deep pun), not just for the whole "our view of the world is only as good as the input we may have" thing, but also because we're just digesting things that agree with us, and never being challenged with potentially hostile points of view. How many people have Limbaugh, or the Nation taught something new to? No one I guess, since you already accept their view just to listen to them.
The term selection bias comes to mind, but in a more fuzzy sense.
even the NYTs and the WaPo plus others say he won no matter how you counted.
This may be true. But, I'm not pissed because of that, I'm pissed because somehow the supreme court gained the ability to elect presidents. It isn't constitutional, and is a pretty dirty tactic.
socialist
I don't think that means what you think it means.
Gee, that's exactly what W tried to do.
I love the immigration debate, its the only thing that ignorant ideologues on both the right and left agree with; we should allow unfettered access to our country to anyone from Latin America (and only Latin America).
The right loves it because it breaks unions, and brings down wages.
The left loves it because it brings in voters, and that whole liberal ideal that all people should be lovely and decked in flowers regardless of real world consequences.
I love Arizona, where most of our citizens are solidly against them being here at all, but our Newspapers (both the right leaning Republic, and the far-left-lunatic-fringe New Times) are all about giving them a carde blanche, as are our two lunatic-right-wing congress critters, and Phoenix' left leaning mayor, and our ex-governor (Napolitano). Her to the point of trying to bar our sheriff from enforcing the law, because illegal immigrants are being "unfairly" arrested.
I don't thing any issue brings out more ideological morons than illegal immigration.
Hell, in my opinion put anyone who knowingly employs an illegal out of business, and give any illegal who reports such a business free citizenship.
my opinion of a responsible budget
Fixed it for you.
Some of us want to have social services, jobs, roads, infrastructure, etc... And don't find spending for these to be wasteful. Some of us don't find these important at all.
Some economists thing that Obamas budget will equalize, and turn into a gain after the original spending. Some don't.
All value judgments on it depend on your individual, raw, naive, ideology.
He has though done more for civil liberties than Bush, at least we're not torturing people (perhaps). At least we're not ADVOCATING torture as a great national pass time, and advocating invading harmless (to us) countries, and slaughtering their civilians because it seems politically expedient to us.
Yes, the wire tapping crap has to go, and his arguement that the government should be immune from consequences is absurd, and immoral. But, on the whole, he is still better than Bush, not that is hard.
As for Iraq, it is REALLY naive (and rather immoral) to have thought that we could just pull completely out. We can't leave a power vaccuum, it would bite us in the butt eventually. Nor can we just leave the average Iraqi to their fates, after screwing them, and removing all form of law. We hit them, now we have a responsibility to fix our mess, or they suffer.
This is one of the reasons I was against the war to begin with, which wasn't a popular opinion. And now I'm against pulling out completely, which, again, isn't popular.
Actually the even left-wing media folk have been rather critical over this decision of his, even Maddow and Olbermann.
Perhaps people have been less critical of Obama (excluding, you know, Fox, Limbaugh, my local newspaper, most of the Slashdot, etc..) because he has been more popular, and less Machivellian than Bush? Perhaps people haven't critisized him because his policy, so far, has fallen largely into the basket most Americans want? Perhaps the far right is actually (gasp) a minority in comparison to the moderates (which Obama is, jingoism aside).
When he steps out of line, i.e. when he violates American principles (not YOUR principles, or your individual political ideals), or his own promises, people will be critical. As they are of this wiretapping crap, and his stance on it currently.
Notice the first line.
I generally use Transmission, but I also, like a true geek, also have a Windows box, and most of my friends ONLY use Windows, so when I give software advice, I'd like to recommend something, you know, useful to them.
Oddly enough, I use Vista on my Winbox, and outside of Vuze, and once when I deleted a driver for fun, it has NEVER blue screened across two computers and around a year and a half.
The problem isn't homogeneity, since if the full of the big three OSs carried a 1/3rd of the market, malware devs would just pick on and stick to it, evening out the load. this would actually make defense harder, since you'd have to cover all three.
The problem is end users not knowing squat about security or safety (with a heaping helping of the main OS out there being rather patchy in security).
With an educated user, most computers are almost completely secure. Most viruses, worms, etc.. rely on the user installing them, and not some large backdoor.
Transmission, for those of us who have a spare linux/os x box.
How does bittrorrent.com like DRM? This is the first I've heard of it, please explain.
Vuze is the only bittorrent client I've used that actively crashed my PC. Why would a bittorrent client cause me to blue screen around four times in a row? I don't like the fact, as well, that its actual useful features (you know, as a bittorrent client) are somewhat hidden, and requires some clicks to actually view the information that you want to see, like what your downloading, and how fast. While I'm sure a segment of the population find its hideous UI, and spammy adverts for craptastic pop music useful, I find them a distraction from what I really want to do, download torrents. Also I've noticed it is on the whole slower than uTorrent and Transmission (actually transmission, in my experience is much faster than utorrent with like settings on the same network, for some reason).
If someone could recommend a good FOSS torrent client for Windows, I'd hop on it in a second. Vuze, though, doesn't satisfy the first requirement.