Dude, you're suffering from some sort of neo-conservative delusion, brought on by listening too much to great pundits like Ollie and Rush.
Neo-conservatives dislike Amnesty International because those bleeding heart dingbats have in the past dared to criticize the darling little despots who were cooperating with the United States in our endless war against commies, drug lords, terrorists, flavor-of-the-week enemies, whatever. Back when Saddam was our asshole buddy and we were funneling lots of weapons and moolah to him, they had the nerve to claim he was mistreating his people. Now they have to nerve to claim that we're mistreating the Iraqis. Can't those wishy-washy liberals make up their minds?
And how dare they say that we're interfering with the Iraqis' rights to self-determination? Why, those camel jockeys can do anything they want to, except elect an Islamic fundamentalist government that's hostile to the West. Of course, that's what most of them want, which just goes to show you how screwed up those people are.
Seriously, you ought to look into the sort of things Amnesty International actually says. You might not want to take Rush and Ollie's word for it. You may not realize that they were and are strong critics of such communist tyrannies as the Soviet Union and China. You have to ask yourself, what kind of bleeding heart pinko liberal faggots would criticize the wonderful People's Republic?
I'm sure someone must have brought this up somewhere in the discussion, but reading the silly grammar war above wore me out, so I'll just ask:
Why isn't changing document exchange formats to exclude other operating systems a prosecutable anti-competitive act? This sort of thing seems a lot worse than bundling a browser with the OS.
You remind me of the people that say mandatory sentencing doesn't work. No one seems to notice that the crime rates across the US are uniformly decreasing as the criminals are taken off the street for longer periods of time.
I hate to distract you with facts, but your theory doesn't hold up. You appear to be claiming that putting more people in jail leads to lower crime rates. The obvious corollary is that putting fewer people in jail leads to higher crime rates. Unfortunately for your theory, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any Western democracy, and also the highest crime rates. Other countries whose incarceration rate is a fraction of ours also have much lower crime rates. So what's the explanation? Is it just that Americans are more criminal by nature than people from other countries? I don't think so.
The truth is that our bloated criminal justice industry is sustained mainly by its politician friends, not by any actual evidence that it's making our lives safer. The opposite is true. We're spending tens of billions of public dollars on advanced training for criminals, in the form of mandatory minimum sentences for such consensual crimes as drug selling. Crime rates have begun to rise again in many jurisdictions, and these are only the first few of the many pigeons that are coming home to roost, due to our fanatic devotion to the idea of prison as a cure for all social ills.
I almost certainly don't know what I'm talking about, but why couldn't NASA pay the Soviets to fire up a couple engineers and the necessary gear to maintain Hubble?
Then the only orbital change would be the one that brings the Soviet vehicle back to Earth.
Ah yes, a hundred years ago, all was peace and prosperity in third world countries. And since there were no antibiotics, no vaccinations, and no doctors at all, everyone was in the pink of health, as well as fat and happy.
What if someone is just too stupid to get a job?... Three solutions come to mind. Artificially create jobs for these people, give these people some sort of welfare/disability, and let these people just die.
Fourth solution: Make these idiots smarter. Think that won't be an option?
The only relevant question is this: is it right to put sick people in jail in order to prevent them from smoking pot?
Then you said:
No. But that is most certainly not the only relevant question with this issue.
It is the only legally relevant question. All else is political obfuscation. Does a just government have the moral right to arrest, fine, and/or imprison its citizens for voluntarily using a remedy that the government's agents have not approved? Dean apparently believes that this is so (despite some mealymouthing, he has not reversed his stand on this issue, and has even retreated from his vague promise to set up an inquiry if elected.) Therefore I can't support Dean. I might vote for him if it comes down to a choice between Dean and the Idiot Prince, but I hope someone else has the moral stature to come out strongly against the war on drugs, which has led to the obscene absurdity of arresting people for trying to feel better on their deathbeds.
Unfortunately, his regard for the democratic process seems limited by his own biases. When the Vermont legislature was considering a medical marijuana bill, he used all the leverage he had, including a veto threat, to derail the legislation. His motivation seems fairly transparent. He's a doctor. Doctors are extremely leary of home remedies that appear to work. The power to prescribe is, after all, the basis for doctors' wealth. It apparently didn't matter to Dean that a majority of people in Vermont agreed with the premise that seriously ill people ought not to go to jail for using politically incorrect vegetables.
In responding, please do not lecture me on the dire dangers and unproven benefits of pot. None of that is relevant. The only relevant question is this: is it right to put sick people in jail in order to prevent them from smoking pot? Dean says yes. Is that kind of ferocious idiocy what we really want in a president?
I read the rebuttal, and in no way did it seem a "personal attack" to me. In fact he was perhaps excessively respectful of Gold. It is hardly an "attack" to note that a published opinion has not been submitted to peer review.
a big problem when you're somewhere in space in which gravity isn't acting against you.
And where would this be, exactly? Where there's no gravity?
All a solar sail does is to change orbits, by speeding up or slowing down. But changing the orbit of an object in earth orbit to a Mars orbit might conceivably be a very useful thing to do. Next time, before theorizing, read the FAQ.
You are aware aren't you, that there is NO legal way to set up a storefront retail operation without some form of contact info being a matter of public record?
Then how come ebay won't tell the buyers who the sellers are? This wouldn't be an issue if ebay would offer the same information to buyers as it does to law enforcement.
In case you hadn't noticed, it doesn't. Why is that?
Your argument about meatworld is largely spurious, since ebay makes no effort to find out if an actual complaint has been lodged against the seller before giving up the identity of the seller. In other words, you are apparently willing for ebay to accept the word of a faxed document that a seller deserves to be investigated. This is a remarkable display of confidence. Or naivete.
According to Sullivan, "when someone uses [eBay's] site and clicks on the 'I agree' button, it is as if he agrees to let us submit all of his data to the legal authorities..."
In other words, sellers, as they enrich ebay, agree to give up any reasonable expectation of privacy. What ebay is saying is a lot worse than you realize. If a seller rips you off, why shouldn't the same rules apply to ebay as they do in other criminal situations? As it stands, ebay doesn't require even a subpoena to release information such as your name, address, and telephone number. No involvement with the justice system is required, nobody has to talk to a judge and justify invading your privacy.
For just one example of why this is a Bad Idea, consider that most private investigators cultivate a clerk in the local law enforcement structure, someone who can get him information he's not legally entitled to have. If a lunatic feels offended by something an ebay seller does, that lunatic can hire a PI, who will get his buddy to use the departmental fax machine to get the info the lunatic wants. According to the story, that's all it takes: a fax from a law enforcement agency.
When the lunatic shows up at your door with a gun, remember to say "So what?"
To review the review
on
The Bug
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
It's difficult to review fiction well. The reviewer has to tread a delicate line between failing to give enough information to engage the reader, and giving too much information, so that the reader's experience may be spoiled to some degree. In this review, the error seemed to be on the side of too much information-- the stuff about the unsatisfying ending. The reviewer might have profitably left that stuff out, and based his thumbs-down on less revealing matters.
Still, in this case, the reviewer seems hampered by what appears to be a bad case of literary fiction. Or so it appears. If that's the case, then there's not much point in criticizing the book's plot, since in literary fiction, plot is usually secondary to other concerns. No professional reviewer would ever make the mistake of criticizing an attempted literary novel on the basis of the ending, since in such a work, the plot would be subordinate to character development or the artful use of prose.
Of course literary fiction is most often judged on whether or not the thematic content appeals to the reviewer (as it apparently did in this case). Which is why so many literary novels about the angst of academic life get glowing reviews. Yuck.
You can extend the argument of the Harry Potter apologists to imply that the latest works of American Idol winner is high art.
Popularity doesn't equal quality. It never has done and it never will. Harry Potter is easy reading, a kind of a literary equivalent to Celine Dion.
I find that people who dismiss popular books simply because they are popular often turn out to be the kind of folks who are going to write the Great American Novel someday, but so far haven't "made time" to do it. They're the sort of folks who come up to me at parties and propose that I write a novel using their ideas, after which they'll graciously split the royalties with me. I rarely have the heart to tell them how pathetic they are.
Rowling, of course, is not Proust. She has accomplished something far more profound than any other writer of the late 20th century-- she has persuaded millions of children to take up reading for pleasure. Any real writer-- as opposed to the many envious dilettantes who infest the field-- will be grateful to her for that service, since she has single-handedly reversed a grim trend in the number of new readers. And any person who cares about literature will care about Harry Potter, even if the books do not suit that individual's personal taste. Why? Because if you do not understand why so many people love to read about Harry Potter, you do not understand something very important about millions of your fellow human beings. This is your problem, your failure, not a problem or failure in Rowling's work.
Harry Potter is indeed "some sort of classic."
"Harry Potter apologists?" What does Rowling have to apologize for?
The police system is overtaxed, and the entire judicial system in place was built with the purpose of keeping people out of prison and free.
Excuse me? Are you an American? If so, are you not aware that America imprisons a larger percentage of its citizens than any other country in the world?
America has about 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners. This a fact, and it means that either Americans are the most criminal people in the world, or the police system is putting too many people in jail. Pick one.
Fatuous argument. Nuke the server. No machine can survive a direct nuking therefore no software can be secure.
Did you mean to say "Fatuous argument:" (Note the colon.) I would have to say that a well-nuked server would be extremely secure. Certainly the data on that server would never be used for any malicious purpose.
Why would this have a chilling effect? It just ensures the powerfull and rich people can't bash and blaim poor people, without giving them a chance to defend themselve.
And now that you have bashed and blamed rich and powerful people, you will be required to give every rich and powerful person a chance to defend himself. And unlike poor people, rich people can pay lawyers to make sure you comply. Might want to rethink this.
I don't know about the music or movie industry, but in the publishing industry it's not uncommon for an unknown author to have to pay to get their works published.
You seem to be talking about vanity publishing here, which is not really publication. The parallel in music would be those outfits that charge unknown acts some money to record a CD. And that's the end of it. The act can copy the CD and send it around in the faint hope that someone will like it.
No legitimate publisher would charge an author to publish his book. Vanity publishing victimizes the desperate and/or the incompetent. You won't see any of those books for sale at Barnes & Noble.
Your assumption is that true security is a theoretical impossibility. On what grounds?
Not to speak for the previous poster, but that's a pretty good assumption. No technological advance has ever succeeded in remaining secure for long.
(Example: plate armor probably seemed impregnable in practical terms, until the longbow came along. Yeah, okay, a stinking peasant could hamstring a warhorse and beat the knight to death with a rock while he lay helpless on the ground, but these possibilities were probably ignored with the same superstitious enthusiasm that sysadmins ignore the rarer kinds of attacks on their systems.)
I would think that the burden of proof falls on those who maintain that "true security" is attainable. And the minute you propose some system to guarantee that true security, some clever person will come along and propose a way to get around it.
Anyone designing a critical security system should probably start off with the assumption that security will eventually be breached, and make damn sure that when the breach occurs, catastrophe does not result.
This is the argument, but it's a poor one, since exactly the same argument can be made that fat people drive up the cost of care for everyone else. So are mandatory weigh stations a good idea, with tickets based on the number of pounds over ideal weight?
Now, I wear my seatbelt religiously, and my children have all been taught to fasten their belts automatically. But adults should not be forced by law to wear seatbelts, because all laws designed to protect people from their own stupidity inevitably have unforeseen negative consequences. I don't know why this is so, but it is as hard and fast a rule as you can find in human behavior.
Poorly chosen wording there. If you would have used "valid" rather than "effective", I'd have agreed to the point you were getting across.
Within the limited context of slashdot, you are, of course, entirely correct. However, this is not due to any innate limitation of anonymous writing. It's due to an entirely artificial construct-- the moderation penalty/. applies to anonymous posters.
The poster to whom I replied took as his thesis the idea that anonymous communication was worthless because it was anonymous. You have defended this proposition in the limited context of/. and in terms of "effectiveness," but the original poster is apparently convinced that no anonymous posting should be allowed on/., because of its worthlessness (in his view.) Is this your view?
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, you're suffering from some sort of neo-conservative delusion, brought on by listening too much to great pundits like Ollie and Rush.
Neo-conservatives dislike Amnesty International because those bleeding heart dingbats have in the past dared to criticize the darling little despots who were cooperating with the United States in our endless war against commies, drug lords, terrorists, flavor-of-the-week enemies, whatever. Back when Saddam was our asshole buddy and we were funneling lots of weapons and moolah to him, they had the nerve to claim he was mistreating his people. Now they have to nerve to claim that we're mistreating the Iraqis. Can't those wishy-washy liberals make up their minds?
And how dare they say that we're interfering with the Iraqis' rights to self-determination? Why, those camel jockeys can do anything they want to, except elect an Islamic fundamentalist government that's hostile to the West. Of course, that's what most of them want, which just goes to show you how screwed up those people are.
Seriously, you ought to look into the sort of things Amnesty International actually says. You might not want to take Rush and Ollie's word for it. You may not realize that they were and are strong critics of such communist tyrannies as the Soviet Union and China. You have to ask yourself, what kind of bleeding heart pinko liberal faggots would criticize the wonderful People's Republic?
I'm sure someone must have brought this up somewhere in the discussion, but reading the silly grammar war above wore me out, so I'll just ask:
Why isn't changing document exchange formats to exclude other operating systems a prosecutable anti-competitive act? This sort of thing seems a lot worse than bundling a browser with the OS.
You remind me of the people that say mandatory sentencing doesn't work. No one seems to notice that the crime rates across the US are uniformly decreasing as the criminals are taken off the street for longer periods of time.
I hate to distract you with facts, but your theory doesn't hold up. You appear to be claiming that putting more people in jail leads to lower crime rates. The obvious corollary is that putting fewer people in jail leads to higher crime rates. Unfortunately for your theory, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any Western democracy, and also the highest crime rates. Other countries whose incarceration rate is a fraction of ours also have much lower crime rates. So what's the explanation? Is it just that Americans are more criminal by nature than people from other countries? I don't think so.
The truth is that our bloated criminal justice industry is sustained mainly by its politician friends, not by any actual evidence that it's making our lives safer. The opposite is true. We're spending tens of billions of public dollars on advanced training for criminals, in the form of mandatory minimum sentences for such consensual crimes as drug selling. Crime rates have begun to rise again in many jurisdictions, and these are only the first few of the many pigeons that are coming home to roost, due to our fanatic devotion to the idea of prison as a cure for all social ills.
We've been stupid. We're going to pay the price.
I almost certainly don't know what I'm talking about, but why couldn't NASA pay the Soviets to fire up a couple engineers and the necessary gear to maintain Hubble?
Then the only orbital change would be the one that brings the Soviet vehicle back to Earth.
Ah yes, a hundred years ago, all was peace and prosperity in third world countries. And since there were no antibiotics, no vaccinations, and no doctors at all, everyone was in the pink of health, as well as fat and happy.
I remember it well.
Fourth solution: Make these idiots smarter. Think that won't be an option?
The only relevant question is this: is it right to put sick people in jail in order to prevent them from smoking pot? Then you said:
No. But that is most certainly not the only relevant question with this issue.
It is the only legally relevant question. All else is political obfuscation. Does a just government have the moral right to arrest, fine, and/or imprison its citizens for voluntarily using a remedy that the government's agents have not approved? Dean apparently believes that this is so (despite some mealymouthing, he has not reversed his stand on this issue, and has even retreated from his vague promise to set up an inquiry if elected.) Therefore I can't support Dean. I might vote for him if it comes down to a choice between Dean and the Idiot Prince, but I hope someone else has the moral stature to come out strongly against the war on drugs, which has led to the obscene absurdity of arresting people for trying to feel better on their deathbeds.
Unfortunately, his regard for the democratic process seems limited by his own biases. When the Vermont legislature was considering a medical marijuana bill, he used all the leverage he had, including a veto threat, to derail the legislation. His motivation seems fairly transparent. He's a doctor. Doctors are extremely leary of home remedies that appear to work. The power to prescribe is, after all, the basis for doctors' wealth. It apparently didn't matter to Dean that a majority of people in Vermont agreed with the premise that seriously ill people ought not to go to jail for using politically incorrect vegetables.
In responding, please do not lecture me on the dire dangers and unproven benefits of pot. None of that is relevant. The only relevant question is this: is it right to put sick people in jail in order to prevent them from smoking pot? Dean says yes. Is that kind of ferocious idiocy what we really want in a president?
I read the rebuttal, and in no way did it seem a "personal attack" to me. In fact he was perhaps excessively respectful of Gold. It is hardly an "attack" to note that a published opinion has not been submitted to peer review.
Also, the solar sail is not designed to work with "solar wind." See FAQ
And where would this be, exactly? Where there's no gravity?
All a solar sail does is to change orbits, by speeding up or slowing down. But changing the orbit of an object in earth orbit to a Mars orbit might conceivably be a very useful thing to do. Next time, before theorizing, read the FAQ.
Then how come ebay won't tell the buyers who the sellers are? This wouldn't be an issue if ebay would offer the same information to buyers as it does to law enforcement.
In case you hadn't noticed, it doesn't. Why is that?
Your argument about meatworld is largely spurious, since ebay makes no effort to find out if an actual complaint has been lodged against the seller before giving up the identity of the seller. In other words, you are apparently willing for ebay to accept the word of a faxed document that a seller deserves to be investigated. This is a remarkable display of confidence. Or naivete.
So what?
According to Sullivan, "when someone uses [eBay's] site and clicks on the 'I agree' button, it is as if he agrees to let us submit all of his data to the legal authorities..."
In other words, sellers, as they enrich ebay, agree to give up any reasonable expectation of privacy. What ebay is saying is a lot worse than you realize. If a seller rips you off, why shouldn't the same rules apply to ebay as they do in other criminal situations? As it stands, ebay doesn't require even a subpoena to release information such as your name, address, and telephone number. No involvement with the justice system is required, nobody has to talk to a judge and justify invading your privacy.
For just one example of why this is a Bad Idea, consider that most private investigators cultivate a clerk in the local law enforcement structure, someone who can get him information he's not legally entitled to have. If a lunatic feels offended by something an ebay seller does, that lunatic can hire a PI, who will get his buddy to use the departmental fax machine to get the info the lunatic wants. According to the story, that's all it takes: a fax from a law enforcement agency.
When the lunatic shows up at your door with a gun, remember to say "So what?"
It's difficult to review fiction well. The reviewer has to tread a delicate line between failing to give enough information to engage the reader, and giving too much information, so that the reader's experience may be spoiled to some degree. In this review, the error seemed to be on the side of too much information-- the stuff about the unsatisfying ending. The reviewer might have profitably left that stuff out, and based his thumbs-down on less revealing matters.
Still, in this case, the reviewer seems hampered by what appears to be a bad case of literary fiction. Or so it appears. If that's the case, then there's not much point in criticizing the book's plot, since in literary fiction, plot is usually secondary to other concerns. No professional reviewer would ever make the mistake of criticizing an attempted literary novel on the basis of the ending, since in such a work, the plot would be subordinate to character development or the artful use of prose.
Of course literary fiction is most often judged on whether or not the thematic content appeals to the reviewer (as it apparently did in this case). Which is why so many literary novels about the angst of academic life get glowing reviews. Yuck.
Popularity doesn't equal quality. It never has done and it never will. Harry Potter is easy reading, a kind of a literary equivalent to Celine Dion.
I find that people who dismiss popular books simply because they are popular often turn out to be the kind of folks who are going to write the Great American Novel someday, but so far haven't "made time" to do it. They're the sort of folks who come up to me at parties and propose that I write a novel using their ideas, after which they'll graciously split the royalties with me. I rarely have the heart to tell them how pathetic they are.
Rowling, of course, is not Proust. She has accomplished something far more profound than any other writer of the late 20th century-- she has persuaded millions of children to take up reading for pleasure. Any real writer-- as opposed to the many envious dilettantes who infest the field-- will be grateful to her for that service, since she has single-handedly reversed a grim trend in the number of new readers. And any person who cares about literature will care about Harry Potter, even if the books do not suit that individual's personal taste. Why? Because if you do not understand why so many people love to read about Harry Potter, you do not understand something very important about millions of your fellow human beings. This is your problem, your failure, not a problem or failure in Rowling's work.
Harry Potter is indeed "some sort of classic."
"Harry Potter apologists?" What does Rowling have to apologize for?
The government is a group of anal-probing space aliens.
Excuse me? Are you an American? If so, are you not aware that America imprisons a larger percentage of its citizens than any other country in the world?
America has about 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners. This a fact, and it means that either Americans are the most criminal people in the world, or the police system is putting too many people in jail. Pick one.
Did you mean to say "Fatuous argument:" (Note the colon.) I would have to say that a well-nuked server would be extremely secure. Certainly the data on that server would never be used for any malicious purpose.
And now that you have bashed and blamed rich and powerful people, you will be required to give every rich and powerful person a chance to defend himself. And unlike poor people, rich people can pay lawyers to make sure you comply. Might want to rethink this.
You seem to be talking about vanity publishing here, which is not really publication. The parallel in music would be those outfits that charge unknown acts some money to record a CD. And that's the end of it. The act can copy the CD and send it around in the faint hope that someone will like it.
No legitimate publisher would charge an author to publish his book. Vanity publishing victimizes the desperate and/or the incompetent. You won't see any of those books for sale at Barnes & Noble.
I appreciate the correction.
I appreciate the correction. You learn something everyday, if you can keep the beans out of your ears.
Your assumption is that true security is a theoretical impossibility. On what grounds?
Not to speak for the previous poster, but that's a pretty good assumption. No technological advance has ever succeeded in remaining secure for long.
(Example: plate armor probably seemed impregnable in practical terms, until the longbow came along. Yeah, okay, a stinking peasant could hamstring a warhorse and beat the knight to death with a rock while he lay helpless on the ground, but these possibilities were probably ignored with the same superstitious enthusiasm that sysadmins ignore the rarer kinds of attacks on their systems.)
I would think that the burden of proof falls on those who maintain that "true security" is attainable. And the minute you propose some system to guarantee that true security, some clever person will come along and propose a way to get around it.
Anyone designing a critical security system should probably start off with the assumption that security will eventually be breached, and make damn sure that when the breach occurs, catastrophe does not result.
This is the argument, but it's a poor one, since exactly the same argument can be made that fat people drive up the cost of care for everyone else. So are mandatory weigh stations a good idea, with tickets based on the number of pounds over ideal weight?
Now, I wear my seatbelt religiously, and my children have all been taught to fasten their belts automatically. But adults should not be forced by law to wear seatbelts, because all laws designed to protect people from their own stupidity inevitably have unforeseen negative consequences. I don't know why this is so, but it is as hard and fast a rule as you can find in human behavior.
Poorly chosen wording there. If you would have used "valid" rather than "effective", I'd have agreed to the point you were getting across.
Within the limited context of slashdot, you are, of course, entirely correct. However, this is not due to any innate limitation of anonymous writing. It's due to an entirely artificial construct-- the moderation penalty /. applies to anonymous posters.
The poster to whom I replied took as his thesis the idea that anonymous communication was worthless because it was anonymous. You have defended this proposition in the limited context of /. and in terms of "effectiveness," but the original poster is apparently convinced that no anonymous posting should be allowed on /., because of its worthlessness (in his view.) Is this your view?