I didn't say we don't have patriotism, just that it doesn't generate blind trust in Canadians. The other half of the shot was at our complete complacency, where we reward those who should be held responsible for misdeeds in politics and business.
As an example, look to our new prime minister. We have no less than 2 financial scandals in the year or two before the last election, a strong indicator that our then-financial minister is either corrupt or incompetent. Yet there he is, leading the country, and blaming everything on his predecessor.
So again, they don't have to use the patriotism card to push this through in Canada. Just tell us some bald-faced lie, and we'll all grumble about it while we pay our bills.
Claiming patriotism in Canada won't get you very far. Just tell us the government or big business is shafting us again, and we'll complacently go along with it.
Just think of us as honest Americans. We're still grabbing our ankles, but the guy shafting us doesn't mind telling us what's happening...
What if I'm against software patents, or other patent/copyright/IP law abuse, yet am still in favour of upholding the law while it is the law? Then it's not hypocritical to feel that MS should feel the full impact of the law. This has a double effect. It may show the burden software patents place on society, and it shows the possible hypocrisy of corporate giants supporting software patents when even they can't operte without knowingly or unknowingly violating them.
So, while I'm in support of some serious software patent reform (or abolition), I'm still in favour of upholding those laws until such time as they are changed.
P.S. There are, of course, some reasons that a law should be violated. There are some laws that are immoral, or violate basic human rights (which may functionally be the same thing). Then it's time to pull a Ghandi, and do something about it.
There's one difference: when a rocket screws up, it can kill you (or someone else). Rarely does this happen in the software world, especially after testing. Hmm, maybe I should change fields...
I imagine you could do the same with any magnetic card and a little fine iron sawdust that you could make yourself with a grinder.
You're working too hard. www.sci-toys.com mentions that the easiest way for a person to get iron filings is to drag a magnet through the sand at a beach...what am I talking about? This is/.! Grind away!
Privately, though, he hints that the loss of revenue due to unpaid for photon use may eventually destroy the giant, causing it to go red and eventually fade into a much smaller, more dense star.
Of course, the sun's owner expects his property's volume to increase before this occurs, placing an additional burden on both the legitimate and illegitimate users of solar radiation. Although it is noted that this will a great negative impact on legitimate users, it will also reduce the number of illegitimate users to virtually zero. The sun's owner claims this is best for everyone, and a triumph for property rights.
I personally don't like being treated in a manner that until recently was reserved for criminals. It gives the government, mine or theirs, information about me that I feel they have no need or right to, unless they think I'm a threat risk (in which case, why are they letting me into the country?). I don't think it serves the purpose it was put in place for, and I resent being lied to (or having to be inconvenienced with knee-jerk reactions)). And I feel that it will lead to the general populace becoming complacent about what the government chooses to subject them to. And those are the reasons I don't agree with being fingerprinted when entering a country.
Well, see, Brazil isn't violating my privacy at all. I'm not American. I have nothing against tit-for-tat laws (within reason). If the U.S feels that fingerprinting and mug-shooting me for the crime of legally entering their country is okay, maybe a little wake-up call for their wealthier citizens (not so many welfare, working poor, or even middle-class people will be going to Brazil that much) about how abhorrent the laws their country is passing really are.
And it's also quite easy for the U.S. to get Brazil to stop fingerprinting U.S. citizens - stop doing the same to Brazilian citizens.
There are two ways (probably more, ain't English fun?) to take Andi's statement "using PHP to make a living". One is how you took it, to imply that the GPL can't be used to make a living. Another is that the users of PHP are more concerned with making a living than they are in joining a cause (Free Software). If you look at the rest of his statements, they seem to bear out the second option more. More business-friendly (and any restriction is unfriendly as far as most businesses are concerned), more options for packaging with products, differing political views. In fact, with the possible exception of this statement (if taken in your context), I didn't see any other comments against the GPL, RMS, and the FSF that weren't political.
We also don't have property (land) rights. We have the privilege to use the land (or some part of it) as long as we pay our property tax and the government doesn't want it for something else (which can include forcing you to sell it to a construction company that wants to make a mall).
I, for one, am proud of and impressed by any French Canadian (not counting politicians) who has the guts to go on National TV and communicate in English for more than 3 minutes at a time.
Our desktops still are essentially the same as the 1984 Macintosh.
Yes, but now it's made by Microsoft! Or KDE, or Gnome! And they're in color! You don't call that innovative?!?! After all, look at all the exclamation points...
I actually think that the Nevada Gaming Commission's guidlines should be acquired, and followed, by any government that wants to use electronic voting. When you want a system where preventing cheating (and allowing auditing?) is the big requirement, why not ask the guys who bet their lives on it?
Yes, and Judeo-Christian religion requires that you love your neighbour as yourself. Yet Ireland spent years killing each other in the name of religion (Catholic and Protestant, in this case).
There are a lot of people who think they're well-informed, but accept at face value anything said by someone wearing a lab coat, in spite of the basic principal of the Scientific Method.
So now we're back to where we began. There are a minority of people who will do just about anything to promote what they believe with no concern for their fellow man, oftentimes in direct contradiction to the basic tenets of the beliefs they say they're defending.
Your security problems are worse than just border security, but it's always a good place to start. I'm interested in what can be learned from Europe, though, because they have a number of countries where you can cross the border with no checks at all. That may be due to scale, though. Most of Europe could fit into the U.S.
How is my response not rational? You say religious people are out of touch with reality, and have flawed judgement. I respond with, well what about Einstein. He proclaimed to believe in God, yet is highly regarded in the scientific/technical community. I warn against generalizations, since they're almost always false. You accuse me of belittling through smug amusement, yet you write off well over 40% of the world population as having fundamentally flawed judgement (which I'm assuming would be belittling to most of them).
As far as religion being a poisonous virus, I think you're looking at only one facet of a bigger issue (What were you saying about beliefs contradicting reality?). Is communism a religion? Millions were destroyed for that cause. How about racism? The Nazis killed their millions, and various despots try to outdo them in Africa (and elsewhere) all the time. How about democracy? How many thousands had their lives destroyed in Chile in support of democracy? How many people who claimed to be religious actually commited or supported violence against their fellow man? I'm certain that it was less than the number who were religious.
Maybe the big problem that caused people to commit these atrocities against their fellow man weren't so much about religion as they were about ideology. Not all democrats think we should kill all the commies. Not all communists think we should kill the capitalist pigs. Not all blacks think we should kill the whites, or vice versa. Not all catholics think we should kill the protestants, or vice versa. Maybe the problem isn't that someone is white, a believer in democracy, or religious. Maybe there are just some people who think they are right, and that those who don't agree with them are less than them. Maybe they also think, since these people are less than them, that they have a right to decide whether they should live or die. Maybe they use the excuse of whatever idelogy will rally the majority (or at least the majority of those with power) in conflict against those who they disagree with.
P.S. It's nice to see that you amended your generality to mention that people who have religious convictions can be "otherwise capable".
If you're rationing gas as a means to limit travel, you're violating the Constitution.
Also, you need to keep perspective. The cost of 9/11 in human lives is less than NYC pays in 5 years through murder. It was slightly higher than the number of people who die of the flu (in the U.S.) in a given year. The economic cost was fairly high, though. A few changes to toughen security and place guidelines on how to handle situations like this would have drastically reduce the chances of something like 9/11 from happening again.
It may also be easier to use those 90,000 men you mentioned to protect likely targets (transportation hubs, monuments, econimic centres) than it would be to keep out every person who tries to sneak into the country, especially considering most of them are just dying to move up to what we generally consider a poverty existence. In other words, if your real goal is to stop illegal aliens with the side benefit of stopping terrorists, then your idea isn't bad.
Generalizations are often incorrect. It's amusing hearing someone sweep aside all the opinions of religious people because they are "out of touch with reality anyway", considering Einstein believed in God...
Well put. Please note that I didn't say that I desagreed with evolution, so far as evolution is the continued development of organisms, including speciation (which is known to have occurred within the last few decades). All the arguments I brought up revolved around how life started.
Also, although I can't prove God doesn't exist, I can't disprove it, either. Your hypothesis is the more valid one, but I have more hope believing there is a God. Also, I haven't found any of the Biblical laws which I consider bad. Note that this doesn't include the penalties for some of those laws, or at least not out of context.
Sheep follow any number of paths. Blind belief is always bad. Generalizations are often wrong. Leaders of all stripes have been known to abuse the truth in order to maintain power. What makes you think scientists (or their followers) are any less human?
You don't solve the terrorist problem by vowing to kill all the angry people. Long wars with vague goals make people angry (more accurately, angry, powerless, or downtrodden, but we'll say angry because it sounds easier), either because they start to feel like their government is wasting money or they worry about what they might do that will make them fall under one of these vague categories.
IMHO, the solution to terrorism is two-fold.
First, don't give more reasons than necessary for people to be angry. Sure, some people will still be angry, but maybe not as many, or not angry enough to do anything about it. When you go around toppling governments because you don't like them, people just might get angry. (And if communism is so bad, i.e., not a successful way to manage a country, the people will figure it out without you assasinating politicians, anyway.) Also, don't go against what you believe in order to stop the angry people. This never works in the end, either. For example, I have a co-worker who doesn't eat beef, while I don't eat pork. The easy solution if we're ordering a buffet meal into the office is to not get either (I have no beliefs requiring me to eat beef, after all, nor him about pork).
Second, make it difficult for the angry people to do anything serious. Don't bother trying to make it impossible - if it can be done, the price will doubtless be too high (yes, nuking the world would effectively stop terrorism). This needs to be handled in a businesslike manner, with costs (financial, as well as liberty) weighed against benefits.
So to save human life- surrender now or nuke Mecca- but make the choice, damnit.
If I'm anywhere close to right, the appropriate response is to withdraw (surrender, if you will). It's not reducing peoples' anger, and it's not making it more difficult to engage in terrorist acts.
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I didn't say we don't have patriotism, just that it doesn't generate blind trust in Canadians. The other half of the shot was at our complete complacency, where we reward those who should be held responsible for misdeeds in politics and business.
As an example, look to our new prime minister. We have no less than 2 financial scandals in the year or two before the last election, a strong indicator that our then-financial minister is either corrupt or incompetent. Yet there he is, leading the country, and blaming everything on his predecessor.
So again, they don't have to use the patriotism card to push this through in Canada. Just tell us some bald-faced lie, and we'll all grumble about it while we pay our bills.
Claiming patriotism in Canada won't get you very far. Just tell us the government or big business is shafting us again, and we'll complacently go along with it.
Just think of us as honest Americans. We're still grabbing our ankles, but the guy shafting us doesn't mind telling us what's happening...
What if I'm against software patents, or other patent/copyright/IP law abuse, yet am still in favour of upholding the law while it is the law? Then it's not hypocritical to feel that MS should feel the full impact of the law. This has a double effect. It may show the burden software patents place on society, and it shows the possible hypocrisy of corporate giants supporting software patents when even they can't operte without knowingly or unknowingly violating them.
So, while I'm in support of some serious software patent reform (or abolition), I'm still in favour of upholding those laws until such time as they are changed.
P.S. There are, of course, some reasons that a law should be violated. There are some laws that are immoral, or violate basic human rights (which may functionally be the same thing). Then it's time to pull a Ghandi, and do something about it.
I think that should be clarified. MS has only one road (or a few, depending on how you look at it), but it still leads to madness.
Who needs to imagine? Just search for dupe. :D
There's one difference: when a rocket screws up, it can kill you (or someone else). Rarely does this happen in the software world, especially after testing. Hmm, maybe I should change fields...
I imagine you could do the same with any magnetic card and a little fine iron sawdust that you could make yourself with a grinder.
/.! Grind away!
You're working too hard. www.sci-toys.com mentions that the easiest way for a person to get iron filings is to drag a magnet through the sand at a beach...what am I talking about? This is
Privately, though, he hints that the loss of revenue due to unpaid for photon use may eventually destroy the giant, causing it to go red and eventually fade into a much smaller, more dense star.
Of course, the sun's owner expects his property's volume to increase before this occurs, placing an additional burden on both the legitimate and illegitimate users of solar radiation. Although it is noted that this will a great negative impact on legitimate users, it will also reduce the number of illegitimate users to virtually zero. The sun's owner claims this is best for everyone, and a triumph for property rights.
I personally don't like being treated in a manner that until recently was reserved for criminals. It gives the government, mine or theirs, information about me that I feel they have no need or right to, unless they think I'm a threat risk (in which case, why are they letting me into the country?). I don't think it serves the purpose it was put in place for, and I resent being lied to (or having to be inconvenienced with knee-jerk reactions)). And I feel that it will lead to the general populace becoming complacent about what the government chooses to subject them to. And those are the reasons I don't agree with being fingerprinted when entering a country.
Well, see, Brazil isn't violating my privacy at all. I'm not American. I have nothing against tit-for-tat laws (within reason). If the U.S feels that fingerprinting and mug-shooting me for the crime of legally entering their country is okay, maybe a little wake-up call for their wealthier citizens (not so many welfare, working poor, or even middle-class people will be going to Brazil that much) about how abhorrent the laws their country is passing really are.
And it's also quite easy for the U.S. to get Brazil to stop fingerprinting U.S. citizens - stop doing the same to Brazilian citizens.
I was wondering how long it would take for this post to turn to porn...
There are two ways (probably more, ain't English fun?) to take Andi's statement "using PHP to make a living". One is how you took it, to imply that the GPL can't be used to make a living. Another is that the users of PHP are more concerned with making a living than they are in joining a cause (Free Software). If you look at the rest of his statements, they seem to bear out the second option more. More business-friendly (and any restriction is unfriendly as far as most businesses are concerned), more options for packaging with products, differing political views. In fact, with the possible exception of this statement (if taken in your context), I didn't see any other comments against the GPL, RMS, and the FSF that weren't political.
We also don't have property (land) rights. We have the privilege to use the land (or some part of it) as long as we pay our property tax and the government doesn't want it for something else (which can include forcing you to sell it to a construction company that wants to make a mall).
I, for one, am proud of and impressed by any French Canadian (not counting politicians) who has the guts to go on National TV and communicate in English for more than 3 minutes at a time.
On the plus side, Taco is consistent....
Our desktops still are essentially the same as the 1984 Macintosh.
Yes, but now it's made by Microsoft! Or KDE, or Gnome! And they're in color! You don't call that innovative?!?! After all, look at all the exclamation points...
I actually think that the Nevada Gaming Commission's guidlines should be acquired, and followed, by any government that wants to use electronic voting. When you want a system where preventing cheating (and allowing auditing?) is the big requirement, why not ask the guys who bet their lives on it?
Yes, and Judeo-Christian religion requires that you love your neighbour as yourself. Yet Ireland spent years killing each other in the name of religion (Catholic and Protestant, in this case).
There are a lot of people who think they're well-informed, but accept at face value anything said by someone wearing a lab coat, in spite of the basic principal of the Scientific Method.
So now we're back to where we began. There are a minority of people who will do just about anything to promote what they believe with no concern for their fellow man, oftentimes in direct contradiction to the basic tenets of the beliefs they say they're defending.
Your security problems are worse than just border security, but it's always a good place to start. I'm interested in what can be learned from Europe, though, because they have a number of countries where you can cross the border with no checks at all. That may be due to scale, though. Most of Europe could fit into the U.S.
How is my response not rational? You say religious people are out of touch with reality, and have flawed judgement. I respond with, well what about Einstein. He proclaimed to believe in God, yet is highly regarded in the scientific/technical community. I warn against generalizations, since they're almost always false. You accuse me of belittling through smug amusement, yet you write off well over 40% of the world population as having fundamentally flawed judgement (which I'm assuming would be belittling to most of them).
As far as religion being a poisonous virus, I think you're looking at only one facet of a bigger issue (What were you saying about beliefs contradicting reality?). Is communism a religion? Millions were destroyed for that cause. How about racism? The Nazis killed their millions, and various despots try to outdo them in Africa (and elsewhere) all the time. How about democracy? How many thousands had their lives destroyed in Chile in support of democracy? How many people who claimed to be religious actually commited or supported violence against their fellow man? I'm certain that it was less than the number who were religious.
Maybe the big problem that caused people to commit these atrocities against their fellow man weren't so much about religion as they were about ideology. Not all democrats think we should kill all the commies. Not all communists think we should kill the capitalist pigs. Not all blacks think we should kill the whites, or vice versa. Not all catholics think we should kill the protestants, or vice versa. Maybe the problem isn't that someone is white, a believer in democracy, or religious. Maybe there are just some people who think they are right, and that those who don't agree with them are less than them. Maybe they also think, since these people are less than them, that they have a right to decide whether they should live or die. Maybe they use the excuse of whatever idelogy will rally the majority (or at least the majority of those with power) in conflict against those who they disagree with.
P.S. It's nice to see that you amended your generality to mention that people who have religious convictions can be "otherwise capable".
If you're rationing gas as a means to limit travel, you're violating the Constitution.
Also, you need to keep perspective. The cost of 9/11 in human lives is less than NYC pays in 5 years through murder. It was slightly higher than the number of people who die of the flu (in the U.S.) in a given year. The economic cost was fairly high, though. A few changes to toughen security and place guidelines on how to handle situations like this would have drastically reduce the chances of something like 9/11 from happening again.
It may also be easier to use those 90,000 men you mentioned to protect likely targets (transportation hubs, monuments, econimic centres) than it would be to keep out every person who tries to sneak into the country, especially considering most of them are just dying to move up to what we generally consider a poverty existence. In other words, if your real goal is to stop illegal aliens with the side benefit of stopping terrorists, then your idea isn't bad.
Generalizations are often incorrect. It's amusing hearing someone sweep aside all the opinions of religious people because they are "out of touch with reality anyway", considering Einstein believed in God...
No more e=mc^2 for you!
Well put. Please note that I didn't say that I desagreed with evolution, so far as evolution is the continued development of organisms, including speciation (which is known to have occurred within the last few decades). All the arguments I brought up revolved around how life started.
Also, although I can't prove God doesn't exist, I can't disprove it, either. Your hypothesis is the more valid one, but I have more hope believing there is a God. Also, I haven't found any of the Biblical laws which I consider bad. Note that this doesn't include the penalties for some of those laws, or at least not out of context.
Sheep follow any number of paths. Blind belief is always bad. Generalizations are often wrong. Leaders of all stripes have been known to abuse the truth in order to maintain power. What makes you think scientists (or their followers) are any less human?
You don't solve the terrorist problem by vowing to kill all the angry people. Long wars with vague goals make people angry (more accurately, angry, powerless, or downtrodden, but we'll say angry because it sounds easier), either because they start to feel like their government is wasting money or they worry about what they might do that will make them fall under one of these vague categories.
IMHO, the solution to terrorism is two-fold.
First, don't give more reasons than necessary for people to be angry. Sure, some people will still be angry, but maybe not as many, or not angry enough to do anything about it. When you go around toppling governments because you don't like them, people just might get angry. (And if communism is so bad, i.e., not a successful way to manage a country, the people will figure it out without you assasinating politicians, anyway.) Also, don't go against what you believe in order to stop the angry people. This never works in the end, either. For example, I have a co-worker who doesn't eat beef, while I don't eat pork. The easy solution if we're ordering a buffet meal into the office is to not get either (I have no beliefs requiring me to eat beef, after all, nor him about pork).
Second, make it difficult for the angry people to do anything serious. Don't bother trying to make it impossible - if it can be done, the price will doubtless be too high (yes, nuking the world would effectively stop terrorism). This needs to be handled in a businesslike manner, with costs (financial, as well as liberty) weighed against benefits.
So to save human life- surrender now or nuke Mecca- but make the choice, damnit.
If I'm anywhere close to right, the appropriate response is to withdraw (surrender, if you will). It's not reducing peoples' anger, and it's not making it more difficult to engage in terrorist acts.