Because what fucking good would THAT do. There are plenty of military companies with many facilities all over the nation. Figure it out genious. I think slamming a plane into the Pentagon was a blunt enough statement about their feelings about US militarism, don't you?
If all you have is a slingshot, well, sometimes that's what you have to use against a goliath. When generations of your people have been displaced and downtrodden and foreigners have just bulldozed your house, come back to me and tell me what you're going to do.
Yes, he's holding his own people hostage and using the sactions to drum up support for himself. So you think we have no obligation to hostages? Hell, let them all die, we can always blame it on him. Just hope you're never held hostage by someone the United States doesn't like.
If my knife is in your head, why don't YOU back up. You see it's all your fault for walking into my knife.
Well, according to other posts that footage was taking from the Gulf War. Be very wary of the mass media - the government has learned very well how to manipulate it for public support. And besides, Americans were just shitting their pants with giddiness during the Gulf War
Again, see other peoples' posts. People DO offer to help us out. We send aid to countries - but we expect principal plus interest, which conveniently enables us to exert a lot of political control around the world. Maybe if we didn't fuck up the rest of the world so much, we wouldn't have to keep getting involved all the time. Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and plenty of others - we hand created those monsters. Yeah, that's right, fucking ironic eh? Same goes for a lot of the problems in South America. The US doesn't like the government of a particular company, so we fund some "rebels" to revolt, but then find, like the stupid suckers we are, that they turn our own weapons against us. And then we *continue to fund them*. Brilliant, just brilliant.
I think you need your jingoistic head pulled out of your ass.
Ever notice how alot of the horrible situations around the world today are symptoms of historical colonialism? Would Jews and Arabs even be *fighting* if it weren't for the effects and aftermath of colonialism?
And I also assure that the second we give any signifant piece of land to Native Americans, previously occupied by US citizens, yes citizens would attack it (look what's happening in New York with the Oneida land claims, what happened in Wisconson, and fishing rights, on and on and on...). Everybody knows Native Americans should only come out for Holloween and baseball games.
Also note that I think in EVERY war the United States has had, Native Americans have come out in disproportionately large numbers to go to war and volunteer for a nation that has really brutalized them - it's still their homeland after all, even if it is being occupied by Europeans immigrants. It really is the saddest fucking thing to see Native Americans in traditional warrior garb marching and holding the United States flag in Veterans' day parades.
"And if we're not going to meddle for our own purposes, then what purposes should we be meddling for?"
This is the crux of the matter. You present a false choice: that between "meddling" for our own personal interests, or not "meddling" at all; when in fact, that should not be the question. We should be *participating*. We should stop acting unilaterally. We should stop blessing this nation and condemning that nation and walking around with a big stick bullying everybody. We may be "number one" but that doesn't mean we should be an asshole about it and this shows that, yes, we aren't impervious, and yes, we can be brought the same fear and terror that other nations have to humbly cope with and cooperate with each other to solve. Regardless of what the mindless jingos keep chanting, this was not an attack on "democracy" or on "freedom" - this was an attack in retaliation for a long history of actions and behaviors that have generated lots of hate toward us. But everybody wants to wrap themselves in a flag and stand on some moral high ground. There are people just like you and me, just as human as any American, which have been the butt of our policies.
...
lots of hardware
...
50 Microsoft Exchange CALs
35 Microsoft SQL CALs
50 Microsoft Office Professional licenses
15 PC Anywhere licenses
DSL lines
PDAs with wireless capacity and service
...
What?? I thought the Red Cross just handed out food and gave medical aid. I'm just curious, but why does it need to all this hardware and network equipment and crap??? Exchange? SQL? Is somebody creating a startup or something?? "Wait here sir while I just enter the data about your mortal wound into our database - clickity, clickity click"
But seriously, the new Slashdot is really fscked up. Oh Slashdot is down sorry. Oh we logged you out randomly sorry. Hold on cowboy it's been 4.5 Gazillion Jabillion years and 12345 nanoseconds since your last post! Lameness filter rejected your message - Slashdot is too lame to accept it. Please follow this broken link with arbitrary spaces in it for further assistance.
Ha! I've been sitting on a patent on hiding patents under hats! *BLAM*! SHOW ME THE FUCKING MONEY! And don't even DARE try circumventing the ROT26 copy protection on this message!
"I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them?"
Um, yes. European countries have plenty of their own planes. Maybe you forget that the Concorde is French? And if I recall correctly, the successor to the 767 is being designed by a European company (yeah, there is an American competitor, but I think the Europeans were first).
"Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon?"
Because it is a FOOLISH WASTE OF MONEY. Other countries have better things to spend their money on then one-upping the Soviet Union.
I keep thinking about how these events could have been thwarted. We probably cannot prevent every single hijack attempt, especially not such a sophisticated one. But my mind keeps wandering back to the fact that the hijackers only had razors and knives. I can't believe fellow Americans would allow a few hijackers armed with knives to take over a whole plane, containing 60 or 70 able-bodied persons. A report on Poliglut indicates that people DID attempt to overcome the hijackers on the plane that was headed toward Camp David. The only thing I can think of is that the passangers were not told they were going to be killed, so were just going along with it. However, this is refuted by the calls the flight attendent on flight 77 (I think) made, indicating that the terrorists "put" everybody, including the pilot, at the back of the plane, and then *told* them to call their loved ones to tell them they were going to die. I don't understand how two or three terrorists can simply move the entire 60-70 people to the back of a plane (armed only with knives mind you), and *then* tell them that they were going to die, with not ONE person attempting to overcome them. I'm boggled, and hope that in a similar situation I would do my best to thwart the hijackers. Perhaps, like on the Camp David plane, the hijackers told the passengers they had a bomb and thus the passengers did not want to try anything funny. But if you're being told you are going to die anyway, who cares...might as well try...
I really hope that Americans tried to do something...
"Would you argue that, since having seatbelts in cars does not prevent everybody in a car crash from dying, we should stop putting seatbelts in cars? That's exactly the argument that's being put forward here"
No it's not! Seatbealts HAVE been proven to save people who USE them. Whereas missile defense has hardly been proven do to anything except gobble up money (oh, yeah, it hit a deliberately easy target that in no way models what a real flurry of incoming missiles would be like). Missile defense is a lark and the money should be spent on something better - better intelligence to thwart terrorist attacks, for example.
punish, punish, punish Is that the only thing you know how to do? Yes we need to catch who did this, and yes they need to face justice, hopefully put to death. But at most we will get a handful of people. Please tell me how killing a handful of people will possibly make up for thousands of deaths? You can only kill a person once you know. Lashing out at others in a blind rage is just stupid, unjust, an act of terrorism itself, and does NOTHING save making people hate us even more. Violence does not solve violence. We have to recognize that around the world people have legitimate reasons to hate us (no, it's not because they "hate democracy" or "hate freedom"). We can't just go around killing everybody we think doesn't like us. It's impossible, immature, and will just continue the vicious cycle. We DO have to re-analyze our policies and behavior. The only way to combat terrorism is to avoid generating lots of intense hate towards yourself. And no, we shouldn't do this just to "appease" terrorists, or just because some terrorist act occurred. We should do this, and we should already have done this, because it is the RIGHT thing. Terrorists will terrorize whether or not we "fight back". Violence is just not the way out of this cycle.
According to this,
Xinoehpoel has been posting via a dialup account to os1.com, an ISP named Option One Communications, in Sacramento, California.
Apparently a fan of "Sollog", a.k.a. John Ennis, a man who claims to be God and delights in making Nostradomus-esque apocalypse
predictions
He mentions here,
here, and
here,
that he has been arrested before, and then here
finally explains a recent arrest.
Email address is supposedly tesnal@psl.moc, which appears to be some sort of anagram of lanset.com, which is the web
site for LANSET Communications, which is apparently the USENET host he is posting to, as determined by the message ids of his postings. Perhaps
his real email address is along the lines of psl@lanset.com, or lsp@lanset.com?
He suggests moving away from major cities and the coast, to deserted regions, due to a global warming catastrophy he predicts
to occur in 2006-2007, which he also claims will not really be due to global warming, but instead will be an act of God. This
may be related to Sollog predictions of bombings of major cities with nuclear weapons in suitcases (causing a global warming effect?).
here he requests that someone register Xinoehpoel.com at which to
publish his prophecies, and that any potential "followers" go out to the Arizona desert and build an adobe commune, which he will
later email to find the location of, and go to. He claims here
and here that he is going
away ostensibly because he is broke and is being kicked out of his house, and will not be heard from again. He mentions
here that he might read
printed newsgroups postings "on the road".
"Xinoehpoel" is probably John Ennis himself, who apparently does have some mental problems (I reserved judgement until I saw random references
to UFOs and aliens...which was a bizarre departure from the rest of his already bizarre posts; drinking urine by the way, although it sounds disgusting
is completely healthy, and understandable in cases in which clean water is not available, which probably wasn't the case in his jail episode anyway).
Also his quote about being forced to breath harmful chemicals, in light of his refusal to drink anything but filtered water might indicate some obsessive/paranoid
behavior. The events of Sept. 11 are probably completely coincidental. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if Bill Clinton dies
in November, or if some catastrophy occurs in 2006/2007.
"It's impossible to stare at the TV and not think of the horrific convergence between technology, politics, and information."
What the hell does this have to do with "technology, politics, and information"? It's impossible to stare at the TV and not think of the horrific deaths of thousands of people. Jesus, not everything revolves around the navel-gazing of us geeks.
"Technology turns planes into weapons."
Planes don't kill people, terrorists kill people. Every day we putting our trust in hundreds of strangers. I trust the bus driver doesn't drive off a cliff. I trust a hacker doesn't hack into my machine. I the mailman will deliver my mail. This is not a technological problem. It is a sociological problem. In the airplane industry, we as consumers TRUST each other enough so that we do not have to be tied in upright Hannibal-Lector restraining devices to protect each other. We TRUST each other enough not to have to undergo invasive personal searches, and have a mean security guard rip Timmy's stuffed bear to shreds because there might be a bomb in it.
"It tracks aircraft hundreds of miles away. It brings us instant and horrific images. It sends us to e-mail, telephones and cell phones to spread news, facts, rumors and stories."
And the irony of it all is that this very same technology is *distancing* us from real events, causing us to go through various levels of "proxies" for the real experience. Hardly anybody really experiences anything any more in this society of the spectacle. That's how Americans can sit at home and remain comfortable when Ted Kopple tells us, that oh, by the way we forgot to tell you, a gruesome civil war in Sudan has caused
2 million deaths.
"Technology can do all sorts of amazing things, but it can't protect us from a handful of determined people."
Not if technology itself is based on simple human trust...which it invariably is. This is the same cause for all those stupid Word macro worms, except with much more dire results. We have to realize we *cannot* stop this type of exploitation based on trust (well, short of distrusting everybody which is impractical), but instead have to foster an environment in which people don't *want* to do these things (*cough* hacker ethic *cough*).
No, it's called not fucking in other people affairs and trying to reshape them in our image so that everybody hates us and WANTS to commit these acts against us. The ONLY solution for acts of hatred against the United States is simply to have *less people hate the United States*. Duh. There is no other response to terrorism. Terrorism lives on fear and hatred.
And it is also rumored that FDR knew of the attack and *purposefully* ignored it in order to expedite the US's entry into the war. Remember, we were in a depression. (yeah, a lot of historical characters aren't as grand as the history books make out)
Doh! A mindless peurile lashing out is *exactly* what terrorists want. So then they can point at the US and say "Oh, look, nobody likes you...and then you go off and bomb a harmless grits-and-trousers factory in the middle of North Africa. How/typical/!!"
"There is no a-priori model of the human. Humans have been evolving for thousands of years, and
our lifestyles and diets have a big part to play in that."
As far as I know, humans have been overwhelmingly genetically static for all of what we would consider "history". So, yeah, there is an a-priori model of the human. It's not like we're sprouting new limbs or migrating into the ocean or something.
But in any case, what is the rationale for "genetically engineering" humans? Is it so that we can live on fewer nutrients? Is it so that we can be more compassionate towards each other? No, it's merely to one-up a human-made technology. That's a ridiculous reason to entirely change the species (which is what the type of genetic engineering proposed by these two would entail). Should we just sacrifice our whole concept of humanity just to keep up with our own inventions? It's so aggravating...I just don't understand the point.
"Conscious manipulation of human intelligence is a scientific technology question and is morally neutral."
Ha! While I'm all for letting information free, and don't consider myself a luddite, it's just laughable that scientists don't have any moral responsibility.
"Sir, we invented a super-cool FOO technology"
"Oh, no, what are the implications of this for humanity!?"
"Sorry sir, I'm just a scientist and have no moral obligation to society, but I believe the solution is to fund me to invent a FOO-human interface so that we can maintain control over FOO technology"
"Ok, get right on it!"
"Sir, I just invented the super-cool FOO-HUMAN technology!"
"Oh, no, what are the implications of this for humanity!?"
"Sorry sir, I'm just a scientist and have no moral obligation to society, but I believe the solution is to fund me to invent a new BAR technology to combine with the FOO technology"
"What would be the point of that?"
"Sorry, I don't understand your question."
"Nevermind, you're the scientist and being morally neutral you must know what's right. Here's your lump of money, get to it! By the way, have you finished those nanobots which are supposed to sexually please us while removing tarter from our teeth and rendering crops immune to parasites?"
<a-big-configuration>
<a-section>
<a-section-name>
whoopee
</a-section-name>
<a-section-comment>
here is an irrelevant comment!
</a-section-comment>
<a-value>
<note-about-this-value>
in case you didn't know, this is a value - watch out!
</note-about-this-value>
<a-value-name>
bloatedness.factor
</a-value-name>
<a-value-value>
<a-value-value-type>
<a-value-value-type-value>
integer
</a-value-value-type-value>
<a-value-value-type-description>
an 'integer' is a whole number...ya moron...
</a-value-value-type-description>
</a-value-value-type>
<a-value-value-value>
1000000000000
</a-value-value-value>
</a-value-value>
</a-value>
</a-section>
</a-big-configuration>
I took all the images from the net and created one big image, then shrunk it down to a 1x1 pixel thumbnail, which is contained in the period at the end of this sentence. Sorry.
...following that analogy, we could build beautiful robust software, in say, a century perhaps? Sorry, but real users want real software yesterday...not beautiful 100% bug free correct software ages from now. Programming != Engineering.
Ok, this sounds like a stupid question...but considering batteries, and engine oil have to be disposed of properly (can't just throw them in the trash)...what exactly do you do with broken hardware that has all sorts of hideous heavy/rare metals and other compounds in it? Can you just toss it?
The government has done tons of wacky stuff...e.g., the CIA had (or maybe still has??) a program, to train people to psychicly detect the presence of russian submarines. The scary thing is that this was apparently really working (or else why would the spooks care?).
Slashdot Mirror
I think you need your jingoistic head pulled out of your ass.
Ever notice how alot of the horrible situations around the world today are symptoms of historical colonialism? Would Jews and Arabs even be *fighting* if it weren't for the effects and aftermath of colonialism?
And I also assure that the second we give any signifant piece of land to Native Americans, previously occupied by US citizens, yes citizens would attack it (look what's happening in New York with the Oneida land claims, what happened in Wisconson, and fishing rights, on and on and on...). Everybody knows Native Americans should only come out for Holloween and baseball games.
Also note that I think in EVERY war the United States has had, Native Americans have come out in disproportionately large numbers to go to war and volunteer for a nation that has really brutalized them - it's still their homeland after all, even if it is being occupied by Europeans immigrants. It really is the saddest fucking thing to see Native Americans in traditional warrior garb marching and holding the United States flag in Veterans' day parades.
"And if we're not going to meddle for our own purposes, then what purposes should we be meddling for?"
This is the crux of the matter. You present a false choice: that between "meddling" for our own personal interests, or not "meddling" at all; when in fact, that should not be the question. We should be *participating*. We should stop acting unilaterally. We should stop blessing this nation and condemning that nation and walking around with a big stick bullying everybody. We may be "number one" but that doesn't mean we should be an asshole about it and this shows that, yes, we aren't impervious, and yes, we can be brought the same fear and terror that other nations have to humbly cope with and cooperate with each other to solve. Regardless of what the mindless jingos keep chanting, this was not an attack on "democracy" or on "freedom" - this was an attack in retaliation for a long history of actions and behaviors that have generated lots of hate toward us. But everybody wants to wrap themselves in a flag and stand on some moral high ground. There are people just like you and me, just as human as any American, which have been the butt of our policies.
...
lots of hardware
...
50 Microsoft Exchange CALs
35 Microsoft SQL CALs
50 Microsoft Office Professional licenses
15 PC Anywhere licenses
DSL lines
PDAs with wireless capacity and service
...
What?? I thought the Red Cross just handed out food and gave medical aid. I'm just curious, but why does it need to all this hardware and network equipment and crap??? Exchange? SQL? Is somebody creating a startup or something?? "Wait here sir while I just enter the data about your mortal wound into our database - clickity, clickity click"
But seriously, the new Slashdot is really fscked up. Oh Slashdot is down sorry. Oh we logged you out randomly sorry. Hold on cowboy it's been 4.5 Gazillion Jabillion years and 12345 nanoseconds since your last post! Lameness filter rejected your message - Slashdot is too lame to accept it. Please follow this broken link with arbitrary spaces in it for further assistance.
Ha! I've been sitting on a patent on hiding patents under hats! *BLAM*! SHOW ME THE FUCKING MONEY! And don't even DARE try circumventing the ROT26 copy protection on this message!
"I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them?"
Um, yes. European countries have plenty of their own planes. Maybe you forget that the Concorde is French? And if I recall correctly, the successor to the 767 is being designed by a European company (yeah, there is an American competitor, but I think the Europeans were first).
"Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon?"
Because it is a FOOLISH WASTE OF MONEY. Other countries have better things to spend their money on then one-upping the Soviet Union.
I keep thinking about how these events could have been thwarted. We probably cannot prevent every single hijack attempt, especially not such a sophisticated one. But my mind keeps wandering back to the fact that the hijackers only had razors and knives. I can't believe fellow Americans would allow a few hijackers armed with knives to take over a whole plane, containing 60 or 70 able-bodied persons. A report on Poliglut indicates that people DID attempt to overcome the hijackers on the plane that was headed toward Camp David. The only thing I can think of is that the passangers were not told they were going to be killed, so were just going along with it. However, this is refuted by the calls the flight attendent on flight 77 (I think) made, indicating that the terrorists "put" everybody, including the pilot, at the back of the plane, and then *told* them to call their loved ones to tell them they were going to die. I don't understand how two or three terrorists can simply move the entire 60-70 people to the back of a plane (armed only with knives mind you), and *then* tell them that they were going to die, with not ONE person attempting to overcome them. I'm boggled, and hope that in a similar situation I would do my best to thwart the hijackers. Perhaps, like on the Camp David plane, the hijackers told the passengers they had a bomb and thus the passengers did not want to try anything funny. But if you're being told you are going to die anyway, who cares...might as well try...
I really hope that Americans tried to do something...
"Would you argue that, since having seatbelts in cars does not prevent everybody in a car crash from dying, we should stop putting seatbelts in cars? That's exactly the argument that's being put forward here"
No it's not! Seatbealts HAVE been proven to save people who USE them. Whereas missile defense has hardly been proven do to anything except gobble up money (oh, yeah, it hit a deliberately easy target that in no way models what a real flurry of incoming missiles would be like). Missile defense is a lark and the money should be spent on something better - better intelligence to thwart terrorist attacks, for example.
punish, punish, punish Is that the only thing you know how to do? Yes we need to catch who did this, and yes they need to face justice, hopefully put to death. But at most we will get a handful of people. Please tell me how killing a handful of people will possibly make up for thousands of deaths? You can only kill a person once you know. Lashing out at others in a blind rage is just stupid, unjust, an act of terrorism itself, and does NOTHING save making people hate us even more. Violence does not solve violence. We have to recognize that around the world people have legitimate reasons to hate us (no, it's not because they "hate democracy" or "hate freedom"). We can't just go around killing everybody we think doesn't like us. It's impossible, immature, and will just continue the vicious cycle. We DO have to re-analyze our policies and behavior. The only way to combat terrorism is to avoid generating lots of intense hate towards yourself. And no, we shouldn't do this just to "appease" terrorists, or just because some terrorist act occurred. We should do this, and we should already have done this, because it is the RIGHT thing. Terrorists will terrorize whether or not we "fight back". Violence is just not the way out of this cycle.
"Xinoehpoel" is probably John Ennis himself, who apparently does have some mental problems (I reserved judgement until I saw random references to UFOs and aliens...which was a bizarre departure from the rest of his already bizarre posts; drinking urine by the way, although it sounds disgusting is completely healthy, and understandable in cases in which clean water is not available, which probably wasn't the case in his jail episode anyway). Also his quote about being forced to breath harmful chemicals, in light of his refusal to drink anything but filtered water might indicate some obsessive/paranoid behavior. The events of Sept. 11 are probably completely coincidental. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if Bill Clinton dies in November, or if some catastrophy occurs in 2006/2007.
"It's impossible to stare at the TV and not think of the horrific convergence between technology, politics, and information."
What the hell does this have to do with "technology, politics, and information"? It's impossible to stare at the TV and not think of the horrific deaths of thousands of people. Jesus, not everything revolves around the navel-gazing of us geeks.
"Technology turns planes into weapons."
Planes don't kill people, terrorists kill people. Every day we putting our trust in hundreds of strangers. I trust the bus driver doesn't drive off a cliff. I trust a hacker doesn't hack into my machine. I the mailman will deliver my mail. This is not a technological problem. It is a sociological problem. In the airplane industry, we as consumers TRUST each other enough so that we do not have to be tied in upright Hannibal-Lector restraining devices to protect each other. We TRUST each other enough not to have to undergo invasive personal searches, and have a mean security guard rip Timmy's stuffed bear to shreds because there might be a bomb in it.
"It tracks aircraft hundreds of miles away. It brings us instant and horrific images. It sends us to e-mail, telephones and cell phones to spread news, facts, rumors and stories."
And the irony of it all is that this very same technology is *distancing* us from real events, causing us to go through various levels of "proxies" for the real experience. Hardly anybody really experiences anything any more in this society of the spectacle. That's how Americans can sit at home and remain comfortable when Ted Kopple tells us, that oh, by the way we forgot to tell you, a gruesome civil war in Sudan has caused
2 million deaths.
"Technology can do all sorts of amazing things, but it can't protect us from a handful of determined people."
Not if technology itself is based on simple human trust...which it invariably is. This is the same cause for all those stupid Word macro worms, except with much more dire results. We have to realize we *cannot* stop this type of exploitation based on trust (well, short of distrusting everybody which is impractical), but instead have to foster an environment in which people don't *want* to do these things (*cough* hacker ethic *cough*).
No, it's called not fucking in other people affairs and trying to reshape them in our image so that everybody hates us and WANTS to commit these acts against us. The ONLY solution for acts of hatred against the United States is simply to have *less people hate the United States*. Duh. There is no other response to terrorism. Terrorism lives on fear and hatred.
And it is also rumored that FDR knew of the attack and *purposefully* ignored it in order to expedite the US's entry into the war. Remember, we were in a depression. (yeah, a lot of historical characters aren't as grand as the history books make out)
Doh! A mindless peurile lashing out is *exactly* what terrorists want. So then they can point at the US and say "Oh, look, nobody likes you...and then you go off and bomb a harmless grits-and-trousers factory in the middle of North Africa. How /typical/!!"
"There is no a-priori model of the human. Humans have been evolving for thousands of years, and
our lifestyles and diets have a big part to play in that."
As far as I know, humans have been overwhelmingly genetically static for all of what we would consider "history". So, yeah, there is an a-priori model of the human. It's not like we're sprouting new limbs or migrating into the ocean or something.
But in any case, what is the rationale for "genetically engineering" humans? Is it so that we can live on fewer nutrients? Is it so that we can be more compassionate towards each other? No, it's merely to one-up a human-made technology. That's a ridiculous reason to entirely change the species (which is what the type of genetic engineering proposed by these two would entail). Should we just sacrifice our whole concept of humanity just to keep up with our own inventions? It's so aggravating...I just don't understand the point.
"Conscious manipulation of human intelligence is a scientific technology question and is morally neutral."
Ha! While I'm all for letting information free, and don't consider myself a luddite, it's just laughable that scientists don't have any moral responsibility.
"Sir, we invented a super-cool FOO technology"
"Oh, no, what are the implications of this for humanity!?"
"Sorry sir, I'm just a scientist and have no moral obligation to society, but I believe the solution is to fund me to invent a FOO-human interface so that we can maintain control over FOO technology"
"Ok, get right on it!"
"Sir, I just invented the super-cool FOO-HUMAN technology!"
"Oh, no, what are the implications of this for humanity!?"
"Sorry sir, I'm just a scientist and have no moral obligation to society, but I believe the solution is to fund me to invent a new BAR technology to combine with the FOO technology"
"What would be the point of that?"
"Sorry, I don't understand your question."
"Nevermind, you're the scientist and being morally neutral you must know what's right. Here's your lump of money, get to it! By the way, have you finished those nanobots which are supposed to sexually please us while removing tarter from our teeth and rendering crops immune to parasites?"
Ditto for configuration files:
<a-big-configuration>
<a-section>
<a-section-name>
whoopee
</a-section-name>
<a-section-comment>
here is an irrelevant comment!
</a-section-comment>
<a-value>
<note-about-this-value>
in case you didn't know, this is a value - watch out!
</note-about-this-value>
<a-value-name>
bloatedness.factor
</a-value-name>
<a-value-value>
<a-value-value-type>
<a-value-value-type-value>
integer
</a-value-value-type-value>
<a-value-value-type-description>
an 'integer' is a whole number...ya moron...
</a-value-value-type-description>
</a-value-value-type>
<a-value-value-value>
1000000000000
</a-value-value-value>
</a-value-value>
</a-value>
</a-section>
</a-big-configuration>
Man...such a large amount of words to say nothing...
I took all the images from the net and created one big image, then shrunk it down to a 1x1 pixel thumbnail, which is contained in the period at the end of this sentence. Sorry.
What are you talking about? He doesn't work for Gore...
...following that analogy, we could build beautiful robust software, in say, a century perhaps? Sorry, but real users want real software yesterday...not beautiful 100% bug free correct software ages from now. Programming != Engineering.
Ok, this sounds like a stupid question...but considering batteries, and engine oil have to be disposed of properly (can't just throw them in the trash)...what exactly do you do with broken hardware that has all sorts of hideous heavy/rare metals and other compounds in it? Can you just toss it?
The government has done tons of wacky stuff...e.g., the CIA had (or maybe still has??) a program, to train people to psychicly detect the presence of russian submarines. The scary thing is that this was apparently really working (or else why would the spooks care?).