I have watched a bit of CSPAN over this. It seems that local governments claim that they should be compensated for the money the lose to ecommerce.
But didn't the "founding fathers" explicitly abhor arbitrary taxation? I mean that was what the revolutionary war was supposedly about. Governments can tax citizens, but/for services rendered/. Governments cannot extract arbitrary taxes because they want to. For a brick-and-mortor storefront, the government provides the land, the streets, the legislatural and financial infrastructure to support businesses, etc. But/what/ does the government provide for ecommerce? Not much really. You could make the case that the/federal/ government helped ecommerce, because, of course, they started ARPANET, and provide funds to institutions and companies that support the backbone. So indirectly, by supporting the internet, they support ecommerce and should be paid a small tax by corporations and individuals using ecommerce. But this certainly wouldn't be a/local/ government issue. I mean, any one state shouldn't be able to dictate a different tax than another. But still that's a tenuous argument. The federal government, as it should, hasn't been innovating or supporting the internet directly for decades.
I think there is really very little to justify an internet tax.
That really stinks...I just Llewelyn in an interview with E just the other day about The World Is Not Enough.
Rather stinks that he died in a car accident on the way home after a book signing (right?). Bet the person who got into the crash with him feels like a piece of crap now.
Re:What do you mean "No debate needed"?
on
Planet Gattaca
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· Score: 2
"Eh? What are you on about? Setting the actual subject matter aside for a moment and looking at any scientific advance we have made in the past, or are making at the moment, public debate among groups such as/. is exactly what is needed."
Yes, in the coherent manner you describe. Not grabbing every religious, pseudo-religious group and asking their opinion to sensationalize it. I see this as science as usual. Did anyone ask the pope (or care for his opinion) when we harnessed invented the steam engine, harnessed electricity or developed flight?
"Perhaps we shouldn't do this, because Wacko Bob here says it will rain frogs"
Karma, Karma, Karma Chamelion' -- Boy George "Now I think the Karma Cops are after you." --Aerosmith ... "This is what you get...This is what you get...This is what you get, when you/mess/ with us..." Karma Police, Radiohead
"If we're creating life, doesn't that raise some loaded questions about history and religion?"
No. YOU raise loaded questions about history and religion and sensationalise something that should instead be approached rationally and cogently. Heated debate, or debate at all, is not what is needed, because there is no answer to the question "should". "Should" we have harnessed electricty? "Should" we practice modern medicine (the Mormans don't think so). "Should" we have invented the internet so we could have stupid heated debates on overinflated issues?
"I agree, and no, it's not all crap. But I agree with the original poster for the most part. A lot of these drugs are developed with good intentions in mind, but when they're giving them to the wrong people, what the hell are you going to do?
Remember that it's not the drug company who decides who should take the drug, often times. Usually it's some doctor who only knows what little he's read about it. And of course the drug company wants to sell it to everyone they can. They did spend a whole hell of a lot developing it. Everything is not simple in this world, bud.
Unfortunately, no, it is not irrelevant. The original posters point was that the culture looks as drugs as a "quick fix" solution, when in fact it is nothing of the kind. The real problem is that majority of diagnoses for ADD are wrong/incorrect. And this goes for a lot of mental health disorders as well. The parent/patient just wants a quick fix so they accept it. The doctor wants to make his cash, so be it. The drug company wants to sell their drugs, so be it. The whole damn system is geared towards a quick fix solution, and it's damn hard for the average man to fight against it. So, the average man doesn't try, and pretty soon he's of the same quick fix "better living thru pharmacology" mindset that everyone else is. It's a self perpetuating system and it's just wrong. "
The problem lies, not with the drugs themselves, but people (doctors, parents) being careless, and overzealous in prescribing them. I mean, plenty of these drugs work marvelously for people who actually have the diseases, they save lives or improve the quality of lives. There is nothing inherently wrong with the drugs themselves, or for their application. The problem is that everybody is so careless and overzealous and thinks they are the solution to everything. Perhaps that was what the original poster was getting at, but he was using poor examples IMO, and making it seem as if chemical medication itself was bogus and unnecessary. It is fine for what it was meant...not as a general panacea for any stray from the norm.
"Never heard of the butter one, but I got pretty nutty as a kid when I ate sugar. Of course, I was eating it straight, so maybe that would have something to do with it."
I got wacky when I ate lollipops too. Turns out I was allergic to the/red dye/ (apparently very common in young children).
"No, but I sure as hell wouldn't say, "here's a bunch of drugs for ya, buddy! These'll fix ya right up!" Any treatment should look at the overall situation, not simply one aspect of it."
Yes, but in many cases, medication is/exactly/ what the patient needs...ignoring that can cause more damage. A change of scenery or yoga is not a solution to a psychotic or schizophrenic disorder for example. These types of diseases, predicated by chemical imbalance, need to be solved by rebalancing by chemical medication. I am the first one to say how unnecessary so many drugs are, and how our society thinks of them as food you need to get through the day (I mean, the pharmaceuticals want us to take one for/everything/ - tired? take a drug. not tired? take a drug. hungry? take a drug. Sad? take a drug. Itchy? take a drug). However there are many well-defined cases for which drugs are the best or only solution. Our culture needs to stop whining and thinking any discomfort is a disease needing to be cured with medication. It is not the medication that is inherently bad.
"Ideally, neither they nor anyone else would get special privileges from the state, but merely overseen enough to prosecute fraud or other true criminal activity."
Or better yet, sovereignty that they never gave up, but was forced away from them. Every casino, and every federal-sponsored puppet government, erodes more on their sovereignty. They managed to live for eons before europeans came over - now all of a sudden they can manage their own affairs and the money the U.S. government owes them has to be held in escrow accounts (for their good of course) never to see the light of day? I say give them back their sovereignty. Canada did this a log time ago. The U.S. should grow up, instead of trying to hide it nasty past be pretending Native Americans don't exist.
Well I don't know who was responding to who here, so I'll take on all the points:
"1) Most of the Diagnosis that attribute a illness to some chemical imbalance are speculative, and do not specify the chemical imbalance. They are more the result of a system design for the profit of your friendly neighbohood drug company."
I dare you to prove this. Is this why pharmaceuticals spend BILLIONS on research, and labs employing thousands of scientists and doctors? I'm not trying to exonerate the big fat pharmaceutical companies, but after they spend those BILLIONS, they have to make it up somehow. They're not selling sugar pills you know.
"2) With the new evidence that brains do change over a life, and are continually growing, adding and changing connections, constantly remapping, the thought of a simple diagnosis
3) thought patterns change and manipulate brain chemistry as much as altering brain chemistry can alter thought (as in drugs and drunkeness)"
Right, so we just tell patients to "think" themselves better? And how much research is going into this? As a simple matter of fact, a great amount of research has, is, and will be going into research on chemical medicine. There is just no way for a docter to tell someone to "think" themselves better. Yes, holistic and homeopathic therapies SHOULD be researched because many of them are more effective and much healthier, but that alone does not preclude or discredit chemical medications entirely.
"So the premise of ADD is looking more and more primitive.
All too often a diagnosis of ADD is a diagnosis of an adult not doing the home work.
things that have been done that corrected ADD without Drugs include:"
ADD, the disease, is not a simple matter of bad parenting or bad behavior. If it is, then the stupid doctor is misdiagnosed and/unnecessarily/ prescribed drugs. Drugs should be prescribed when and if they are necessary. The problem is in the diagnosis, NOT the drug. The drug does help the disease, but it is worthless if the kid didn't have ADD in the first place! This is also the fault of parents who think they can just "fix" their children whom they've brought up poorly by giving them pills. This is totally irrelevant to ADD.
"a) proper diet: Those chocolate covered sugar bombs for breakfast help out alot (NOT)"
This has been so totally disproven. Where were you? Sugar does not cause hyperactivity any more than butter will help a burn wound.
"b) enviroment: moving to a safe neighborhood so that you are not dodging bullets all the time lessens the stress level c) changing schools/teachers to someone who is not clueless and a system that is not clueless d) changing education goals to something beside socialization and COMPLIANCE to a factory / corporate norm e) handling home life so that the main social education is NOT jerry springer and soap operas. f) rote learning to pass a test (NOT) instead of competant understanding. ETC."
These factors are all irrelevent to the disease of ADD. Do you tell a schizophrenic to move to a better neighborhood? Or a clinically depressed person to get a better education? Or someone with OCD to watch less tv?
While I agree that by making this absurd patent and then pushing it, Amazon.com is in the heinous here, I disagree a bit with your thoughts on originality. I respect and admire Stallman for his perseverence and standing up for his beliefs, and I think more people should be applauding him than deriding him. Who else is putting themselves on the line on these issues? Certainly not the critics.
In any case, I have to differ in your perception of originality. Originality, by mere, definition is/not/ something that just happens as a natural consequence of previous steps. The _true_ original and spontaneous breakthroughs in history, you will find, did indeed often occur solely in one or a few people,/despite/ (not/due to/) outside influences. It is the one human brain which percieves something differently, that puts it over the edge. It is the one leap of inspiration. True original ideas aren't/developed/...they just/happen/. There are numerous examples throughout history. Some of the more popular ones:
Einstein's theory of relativity. His thoughts were rather absurd at the time, and many people thought he was just another armchair crackpot. In fact, he WAS just another armchair crackpot. Only AFTER presenting his ideas on relativity, physics being a mere/hobby/ for him at the time, did he enter the scientific community appropos. Einsteins thoughts ran/against/ the current of modern thought, not as a natural consequence of it. Very few people, if any, hosted ideas like his at the time, and although he was probably influenced by physicists in general, I believe relativity was of his sole inspiration.
Well, I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but the graph of scientific/technical progress is not a simple clean straight line - it is peppered with peaks of unique and radical and individual insights and ideas, of people thinking/against/ the norm.
For this reason I believe that ideas are not such common property (perhaps why some people consider Stallman a "communist" - because he believes that ideas are common property?). We are not just vats that add a certain percentage on the intellectual rating of humanity. Each one of our brains and ideas are different and unique and have their own perterbations, perceptions and insights. Because of that, I do not think it is accurate to claim that original ideas are merely an amalgam of previous ideas and as such cannot be solely attributed to one person or entity. People who do truly have good original ideas should at least be recognized for them, even if not rewarded monetarily.
I think there is a bit of a stigma present on mental disorders, perhaps evinced by Roblimo's use of the term "crazy".
Not every person with a psychological disorder is a psychotic. And there is very little distinction between normal and non-normal. Mental health is a spectrum. Every body has their own little mental foibles. Just like the bacteria that live with us, you can't reach adulthood and NOT have your own little mental abnormalities. It's part of life. Somebody bites his nails, somebody taps, somebody talks in their sleep, somebody doesn't like touching public fixtures, somebody is nervous in a crowd, somebody can't stand the noise...it's all a spectrum and few people are more-normal than others. Some people, unfortunately, have pretty extreme cases, which are/usually/ tied to a chemical imbalance and is no "fault" of their own. It is very irresponsible and 16th century to treat the mentally ill with such a stigma. They are no different than someone who has leukemia, or cancer, or any other physical disease, yet they are treated with such disrespect. Grow up.
Yes, it would be nice if we could holistically and homeopathically treat everything. But we can't, and we can't simply drop/all/ drugs for just another form of medicine. Both can coexist, and they will have to. Modern life is so woefully different from anything our body has ever evolutionarily encountered. Since we can't simply remove ourselves from modern life (well, some can), we have to have some "hard" medicine to cope. Walks in the park are fine, but as the pain-killer commercial says, I'm going to have a meeting in 5 minutes whether my headache is gone or not. Sometimes there is just no time for a walk in the park. Same for many things. We can't possibly expect to change our whole lifestyle so radically...we just have to do what we can, and supplement the rest with "reparative" (instead of "preventative") medicine.
It is being rather ignorant to ask someone with a mental disorder to simply "stop", or "act right", or "think". Overdrugging is an issue and drugs are not required for every single thing that the big fat pharmaceuticals tell us they are, HOWEVER, for many people, a significant improvement in their/life/ can be provided by drugs which counter-act their problem.
As for ADD, it is a proven and diagnosable disease, resulting from a lack of some chemical in the brain. The lack of the chemical makes patients brains feel like they need more activity and they become fidgety, distracted, inattentive, etc. You can't just say "behave!" or "act/think right!". That's just plain stupid. When they are given the chemical that restores the balance in the brain they behave "normal" and both them and people around them have better lives.
Unless you are incredibly think, I can't see how you can say that children are not be tought safe sex, abstinence or health risks. It is shoved down their throat every day. I think we're doing the job. The federal government even runs abstinence commercials. I don't know who you talk to, but nobody I have ever known or can think of would or has ever considered "just give them the morning after pill" a solution.
You are over-hyping a problem which doesn't exist. In fact, perhaps the other extreme is more prevelent./Psychotherapizing/ EVERYTHING.
A lot of diseases are just plain biological, and have to be treated biologically.
Unlike the internet, though, newspapers have physical control and editing responsibility for what goes into newspapers/they/ print, distribute, and sell. In contrast, nobody owns or is responsible for internet content...it goes when and where it wants upon request. The service ISPs provide is accessibility, not content. It would be like the phone company being liable for conversations held on the phone.
In the year 1000 didn't everybody hold their breaths because they thought Jesus was coming? There's always next millenium...
Besides, Christianity is not the only thing that points to funky stuff happening in the future. If you believe it (I guess as much as one would believe Nostradamus), the Pyramids have an elaborate embedded calendar that runs through 2000 that is supposed to predict some stuff.
Why waste the money? There are plenty of domestic causes that money can go to. I see no reason at this point to send humans to mars. Unless, and until, we find that there is some reason that we must send humans to mars, that there is something that probes and robots can't do, there is no reason to blow all that money. Feed some mouths with it.
Well here's a link to a critique. While verbose and technical, it doesn't quite have the same dismissal as the article by the physicist which I cannot find:
Well, I can't for the life of me find it now, but a while ago when I was looking into the Omega Point theory, and transhumanism, I came accross a pretty good critique of Tipler and Omega Point theory by another rather eminent physicist, which basically said it was bunk, and that Tipler just created it to support his own personal/religious beliefs.
I too agree that one or two of the things Buchanan has said were more truthful than misleading. However I feel that this is coincidence. If you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all...especially if you are going to piss off a lot of people. It seems he doesn't care, and in fact/wants/ to appeal to some of these radical groups. Therein is the fault, regardless of whether what he says is true.
For instance, recently our conservative (and much hated) conservative newspaper on our campus ran an article about the sillyness of our Law School's quota-like system which is trying to get more women involved in law. The author of the article rather cogently argued that basically it is not discrimination or gender pressure which is causes fewer women to take certain professions, but simply that the nature of women (just like men) makes them less inclined to some professions and more towards others. The discontent of some women therefore cannot be fixed by increasing quotas and persuading women to enter a certain field.
I agree with this, and I disagree with quotas and reverse-discrimination such as affirmitive action in general, yet I do not consider myself a conservative, and it seems that the article was written and published more for shock effect and hostility than in fostering a comfortable climate for discussing such issues.
I'm also aware that the Civil War was not a manifestation of our grand vision of all men as equal. Only late in the war did Lincoln play the card of slavery, and that was mostly to appeal to popular opinion. The history books don't always tell the most truthful story.
The difference between Buchanan, and other level-headed people who know history, is that Buchanan uses it to appeal to the most distateful portions of our populace for votes, neo-nazis, extremists, religious fundamentalists, racists.
I think his views and prejudices, regardless of his knowledge of history, are quite present and abhorrent.
I agree. Cookies are a sort of hack in the first place...what really needs to be done is some new way of supporting (preferably secure and private) sessioning over HTTP.
Some proxies will let you define rules that can mask out or mask in certain addresses, so for instance, you could deny *.*.*.* but allow slashdot's IP and whatever other sites you visit.
Netscape has 3 cookie settings, but unfortunately they don't allow one to make deny/allow rules, so the settings effect/everything/. If I'm going somewhere where I know they will try to shove cookies on me, I will usually temporarily turn off cookies.
Well, I can't find the article now, but didn't we have an interview a while ago with a guy (whose name I forget) that was doing some cool Linux clustering.../real/ pull-the-plug-and-it-fails-over clustering? I remember it was a bit different from Beowulf and it was really cool.
Slashdot Mirror
I have watched a bit of CSPAN over this. It seems that local governments claim that they should be compensated for the money the lose to ecommerce.
/for services rendered/. Governments cannot extract arbitrary taxes because they want to. For a brick-and-mortor storefront, the government provides the land, the streets, the legislatural and financial infrastructure to support businesses, etc. But /what/ does the government provide for ecommerce? Not much really. You could make the case that the /federal/ government helped ecommerce, because, of course, they started ARPANET, and provide funds to institutions and companies that support the backbone. So indirectly, by supporting the internet, they support ecommerce and should be paid a small tax by corporations and individuals using ecommerce. But this certainly wouldn't be a /local/ government issue. I mean, any one state shouldn't be able to dictate a different tax than another. But still that's a tenuous argument. The federal government, as it should, hasn't been innovating or supporting the internet directly for decades.
But didn't the "founding fathers" explicitly abhor arbitrary taxation? I mean that was what the revolutionary war was supposedly about. Governments can tax citizens, but
I think there is really very little to justify an internet tax.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
That really stinks...I just Llewelyn in an interview with E just the other day about The World Is Not Enough.
Rather stinks that he died in a car accident on the way home after a book signing (right?). Bet the person who got into the crash with him feels like a piece of crap now.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
"Eh? What are you on about? Setting the actual subject matter aside for a moment and looking at /. is exactly what is needed."
any scientific advance we have made in the past, or are making at the moment, public debate
among groups such as
Yes, in the coherent manner you describe. Not grabbing every religious, pseudo-religious group and asking their opinion to sensationalize it. I see this as science as usual. Did anyone ask the pope (or care for his opinion) when we harnessed invented the steam engine, harnessed electricity or developed flight?
"Perhaps we shouldn't do this, because Wacko Bob here says it will rain frogs"
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
Karma, Karma, Karma Chamelion' -- Boy George /mess/ with us..." Karma Police, Radiohead
"Now I think the Karma Cops are after you." --Aerosmith
...
"This is what you get...This is what you get...This is what you get, when you
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
"If we're creating life, doesn't that raise some loaded questions about history and religion?"
No. YOU raise loaded questions about history and religion and sensationalise something that should instead be approached rationally and cogently. Heated debate, or debate at all, is not what is needed, because there is no answer to the question "should". "Should" we have harnessed electricty? "Should" we practice modern medicine (the Mormans don't think so). "Should" we have invented the internet so we could have stupid heated debates on overinflated issues?
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
I agree with you 100%
/red dye/ (apparently very common in young children).
/exactly/ what the patient needs...ignoring that can cause more damage. A change of scenery or yoga is not a solution to a psychotic or schizophrenic disorder for example. These types of diseases, predicated by chemical imbalance, need to be solved by rebalancing by chemical medication. I am the first one to say how unnecessary so many drugs are, and how our society thinks of them as food you need to get through the day (I mean, the pharmaceuticals want us to take one for /everything/ - tired? take a drug. not tired? take a drug. hungry? take a drug. Sad? take a drug. Itchy? take a drug). However there are many well-defined cases for which drugs are the best or only solution. Our culture needs to stop whining and thinking any discomfort is a disease needing to be cured with medication. It is not the medication that is inherently bad.
"I agree, and no, it's not all crap. But I agree with the original poster for the most part. A lot of these drugs are developed with good intentions in mind, but when they're giving them to the wrong people, what the hell are you going to do?
Remember that it's not the drug company who decides who should take the drug, often times. Usually it's some doctor who only knows what little he's read about it. And of course the drug company wants to sell it to everyone they can.
They did spend a whole hell of a lot developing it. Everything is not simple in this world, bud.
Unfortunately, no, it is not irrelevant. The original posters point was that the culture looks as drugs as a "quick fix" solution, when in fact it is nothing of the kind. The real problem is that majority of diagnoses for ADD are wrong/incorrect. And this goes for a lot of mental health disorders as well. The parent/patient just wants a quick fix so they accept it. The doctor wants to make his cash, so be it. The drug company wants to sell their drugs, so be it. The whole damn system is geared towards a quick fix solution, and it's damn hard for the average man to fight against it. So, the average man doesn't try, and pretty soon he's of the same quick fix "better living thru pharmacology" mindset that everyone else is. It's a self perpetuating system and it's just wrong. "
The problem lies, not with the drugs themselves, but people (doctors, parents) being careless, and overzealous in prescribing them. I mean, plenty of these drugs work marvelously for people who actually have the diseases, they save lives or improve the quality of lives. There is nothing inherently wrong with the drugs themselves, or for their application. The problem is that everybody is so careless and overzealous and thinks they are the solution to everything. Perhaps that was what the original poster was getting at, but he was using poor examples IMO, and making it seem as if chemical medication itself was bogus and unnecessary. It is fine for what it was meant...not as a general panacea for any stray from the norm.
"Never heard of the butter one, but I got pretty nutty as a kid when I ate sugar. Of course, I was eating it straight, so maybe that would have something to do with it."
I got wacky when I ate lollipops too. Turns out I was allergic to the
"No, but I sure as hell wouldn't say, "here's a bunch of drugs for ya, buddy! These'll fix ya right up!" Any treatment should look at the overall situation, not simply one aspect of it."
Yes, but in many cases, medication is
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
"Ideally, neither they nor anyone else would get
special privileges from the state, but merely overseen enough to prosecute fraud or other true criminal activity."
Or better yet, sovereignty that they never gave up, but was forced away from them. Every casino, and every federal-sponsored puppet government, erodes more on their sovereignty. They managed to live for eons before europeans came over - now all of a sudden they can manage their own affairs and the money the U.S. government owes them has to be held in escrow accounts (for their good of course) never to see the light of day? I say give them back their sovereignty. Canada did this a log time ago. The U.S. should grow up, instead of trying to hide it nasty past be pretending Native Americans don't exist.
Well I don't know who was responding to who here, so I'll take on all the points:
/unnecessarily/ prescribed drugs. Drugs should be prescribed when and if they are necessary. The problem is in the diagnosis, NOT the drug. The drug does help the disease, but it is worthless if the kid didn't have ADD in the first place! This is also the fault of parents who think they can just "fix" their children whom they've brought up poorly by giving them pills. This is totally irrelevant to ADD.
"1) Most of the Diagnosis that attribute a illness to some chemical imbalance are speculative, and do not specify the chemical imbalance. They are more the result of a system design for the profit of your friendly neighbohood drug company."
I dare you to prove this. Is this why pharmaceuticals spend BILLIONS on research, and labs employing thousands of scientists and doctors? I'm not trying to exonerate the big fat pharmaceutical companies, but after they spend those BILLIONS, they have to make it up somehow. They're not selling sugar pills you know.
"2) With the new evidence that brains do change over a life, and are continually growing, adding and changing connections, constantly remapping, the thought of a simple diagnosis
3) thought patterns change and manipulate brain chemistry as much as altering brain chemistry can alter thought (as in drugs and drunkeness)"
Right, so we just tell patients to "think" themselves better? And how much research is going into this? As a simple matter of fact, a great amount of research has, is, and will be going into research on chemical medicine. There is just no way for a docter to tell someone to "think" themselves better. Yes, holistic and homeopathic therapies SHOULD be researched because many of them are more effective and much healthier, but that alone does not preclude or discredit chemical medications entirely.
"So the premise of ADD is looking more and more primitive.
All too often a diagnosis of ADD is a diagnosis of an adult not doing the home work.
things that have been done that corrected ADD without Drugs include:"
ADD, the disease, is not a simple matter of bad parenting or bad behavior. If it is, then the stupid doctor is misdiagnosed and
"a) proper diet: Those chocolate covered sugar bombs for breakfast help out alot (NOT)"
This has been so totally disproven. Where were you? Sugar does not cause hyperactivity any more than butter will help a burn wound.
"b) enviroment: moving to a safe neighborhood so that you are not dodging bullets all the time lessens the stress level
c) changing schools/teachers to someone who is not clueless and a system that is not clueless
d) changing education goals to something beside socialization and COMPLIANCE to a factory / corporate norm
e) handling home life so that the main social education is NOT jerry springer and soap operas.
f) rote learning to pass a test (NOT) instead of competant understanding. ETC."
These factors are all irrelevent to the disease of ADD. Do you tell a schizophrenic to move to a better neighborhood? Or a clinically depressed person to get a better education? Or someone with OCD to watch less tv?
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
While I agree that by making this absurd patent and then pushing it, Amazon.com is in the heinous here, I disagree a bit with your thoughts on originality. I respect and admire Stallman for his perseverence and standing up for his beliefs, and I think more people should be applauding him than deriding him. Who else is putting themselves on the line on these issues? Certainly not the critics.
/not/ something that just happens as a natural consequence of previous steps. The _true_ original and spontaneous breakthroughs in history, you will find, did indeed often occur solely in one or a few people, /despite/ (not /due to/) outside influences. It is the one human brain which percieves something differently, that puts it over the edge. It is the one leap of inspiration. True original ideas aren't /developed/...they just /happen/. There are numerous examples throughout history. Some of the more popular ones:
/hobby/ for him at the time, did he enter the scientific community appropos. Einsteins thoughts ran /against/ the current of modern thought, not as a natural consequence of it. Very few people, if any, hosted ideas like his at the time, and although he was probably influenced by physicists in general, I believe relativity was of his sole inspiration.
/against/ the norm.
In any case, I have to differ in your perception of originality. Originality, by mere, definition is
Einstein's theory of relativity. His thoughts were rather absurd at the time, and many people thought he was just another armchair crackpot. In fact, he WAS just another armchair crackpot. Only AFTER presenting his ideas on relativity, physics being a mere
Well, I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but the graph of scientific/technical progress is not a simple clean straight line - it is peppered with peaks of unique and radical and individual insights and ideas, of people thinking
For this reason I believe that ideas are not such common property (perhaps why some people consider Stallman a "communist" - because he believes that ideas are common property?). We are not just vats that add a certain percentage on the intellectual rating of humanity. Each one of our brains and ideas are different and unique and have their own perterbations, perceptions and insights. Because of that, I do not think it is accurate to claim that original ideas are merely an amalgam of previous ideas and as such cannot be solely attributed to one person or entity. People who do truly have good original ideas should at least be recognized for them, even if not rewarded monetarily.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
I think there is a bit of a stigma present on mental disorders, perhaps evinced by Roblimo's use of the term "crazy".
/usually/ tied to a chemical imbalance and is no "fault" of their own. It is very irresponsible and 16th century to treat the mentally ill with such a stigma. They are no different than someone who has leukemia, or cancer, or any other physical disease, yet they are treated with such disrespect. Grow up.
Not every person with a psychological disorder is a psychotic. And there is very little distinction between normal and non-normal. Mental health is a spectrum. Every body has their own little mental foibles. Just like the bacteria that live with us, you can't reach adulthood and NOT have your own little mental abnormalities. It's part of life. Somebody bites his nails, somebody taps, somebody talks in their sleep, somebody doesn't like touching public fixtures, somebody is nervous in a crowd, somebody can't stand the noise...it's all a spectrum and few people are more-normal than others. Some people, unfortunately, have pretty extreme cases, which are
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
Yes, it would be nice if we could holistically and homeopathically treat everything. But we can't, and we can't simply drop /all/ drugs for just another form of medicine. Both can coexist, and they will have to. Modern life is so woefully different from anything our body has ever evolutionarily encountered. Since we can't simply remove ourselves from modern life (well, some can), we have to have some "hard" medicine to cope. Walks in the park are fine, but as the pain-killer commercial says, I'm going to have a meeting in 5 minutes whether my headache is gone or not. Sometimes there is just no time for a walk in the park. Same for many things. We can't possibly expect to change our whole lifestyle so radically...we just have to do what we can, and supplement the rest with "reparative" (instead of "preventative") medicine.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
umm...hello!
/life/ can be provided by drugs which counter-act their problem.
/Psychotherapizing/ EVERYTHING.
It is being rather ignorant to ask someone with a mental disorder to simply "stop", or "act right", or "think". Overdrugging is an issue and drugs are not required for every single thing that the big fat pharmaceuticals tell us they are, HOWEVER, for many people, a significant improvement in their
As for ADD, it is a proven and diagnosable disease, resulting from a lack of some chemical in the brain. The lack of the chemical makes patients brains feel like they need more activity and they become fidgety, distracted, inattentive, etc. You can't just say "behave!" or "act/think right!". That's just plain stupid. When they are given the chemical that restores the balance in the brain they behave "normal" and both them and people around them have better lives.
Unless you are incredibly think, I can't see how you can say that children are not be tought safe sex, abstinence or health risks. It is shoved down their throat every day. I think we're doing the job. The federal government even runs abstinence commercials. I don't know who you talk to, but nobody I have ever known or can think of would or has ever considered "just give them the morning after pill" a solution.
You are over-hyping a problem which doesn't exist. In fact, perhaps the other extreme is more prevelent.
A lot of diseases are just plain biological, and have to be treated biologically.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It seems that Shockwave would be ideal for South Park animation, since SouthPark is low-detail, large, solid-color geometric shapes moving around.
gotta link to tinyos? google gives nada
Um, if iCraveTV is stealing their copyrighted content, isn't that blatently illegal? I mean, can you legally record cable TV in Canada?
Unlike the internet, though, newspapers have physical control and editing responsibility for what goes into newspapers /they/ print, distribute, and sell. In contrast, nobody owns or is responsible for internet content...it goes when and where it wants upon request. The service ISPs provide is accessibility, not content. It would be like the phone company being liable for conversations held on the phone.
I hate names that have punctuation (like exclamation points, e.g., SomeExcitingCompany!) or are spelled incorrectly on purpose (Kool Aid).
In the year 1000 didn't everybody hold their breaths because they thought Jesus was coming? There's always next millenium...
Besides, Christianity is not the only thing that points to funky stuff happening in the future. If you believe it (I guess as much as one would believe Nostradamus), the Pyramids have an elaborate embedded calendar that runs through 2000 that is supposed to predict some stuff.
Why waste the money? There are plenty of domestic causes that money can go to. I see no reason at this point to send humans to mars. Unless, and until, we find that there is some reason that we must send humans to mars, that there is something that probes and robots can't do, there is no reason to blow all that money. Feed some mouths with it.
I submitted a story about FMD-ROM from OSOpinion two days ago and it wasn't posted:
C olinCordner2.html
http://www.osopinion.com/Opinions/ColinCordner/
Well here's a link to a critique. While verbose and technical, it doesn't quite have the same dismissal as the article by the physicist which I cannot find:
p py/tipler.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/graham_o
Well, I can't for the life of me find it now, but a while ago when I was looking into the Omega Point theory, and transhumanism, I came accross a pretty good critique of Tipler and Omega Point theory by another rather eminent physicist, which basically said it was bunk, and that Tipler just created it to support his own personal/religious beliefs.
I too agree that one or two of the things Buchanan has said were more truthful than misleading. However I feel that this is coincidence. If you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all...especially if you are going to piss off a lot of people. It seems he doesn't care, and in fact /wants/ to appeal to some of these radical groups. Therein is the fault, regardless of whether what he says is true.
For instance, recently our conservative (and much hated) conservative newspaper on our campus ran an article about the sillyness of our Law School's quota-like system which is trying to get more women involved in law. The author of the article rather cogently argued that basically it is not discrimination or gender pressure which is causes fewer women to take certain professions, but simply that the nature of women (just like men) makes them less inclined to some professions and more towards others. The discontent of some women therefore cannot be fixed by increasing quotas and persuading women to enter a certain field.
I agree with this, and I disagree with quotas and reverse-discrimination such as affirmitive action in general, yet I do not consider myself a conservative, and it seems that the article was written and published more for shock effect and hostility than in fostering a comfortable climate for discussing such issues.
I'm also aware that the Civil War was not a manifestation of our grand vision of all men as equal. Only late in the war did Lincoln play the card of slavery, and that was mostly to appeal to popular opinion. The history books don't always tell the most truthful story.
The difference between Buchanan, and other level-headed people who know history, is that Buchanan uses it to appeal to the most distateful portions of our populace for votes, neo-nazis, extremists, religious fundamentalists, racists.
I think his views and prejudices, regardless of his knowledge of history, are quite present and abhorrent.
I agree. Cookies are a sort of hack in the first place...what really needs to be done is some new way of supporting (preferably secure and private) sessioning over HTTP.
/everything/. If I'm going somewhere where I know they will try to shove cookies on me, I will usually temporarily turn off cookies.
Some proxies will let you define rules that can mask out or mask in certain addresses, so for instance, you could deny *.*.*.* but allow slashdot's IP and whatever other sites you visit.
Netscape has 3 cookie settings, but unfortunately they don't allow one to make deny/allow rules, so the settings effect
Well, I can't find the article now, but didn't we have an interview a while ago with a guy (whose name I forget) that was doing some cool Linux clustering.../real/ pull-the-plug-and-it-fails-over clustering? I remember it was a bit different from Beowulf and it was really cool.