I think your parent poster has got something mixed up. What he meant was freedom of speech. And by all means, that is limited in Germany and Switzerland as far as my little swiss mind can remember. Try stating that you think jews are subhuman and see what happens (I advise you to only do that if you don't really like your life as it is all that much...).
Of course we could argue that such sentiments are stupid anyway, but that is clearly a matter of opinion. And just because our opinion (assuming you also do not believe that jews are sub-human) happens to coincide with the law doesn't mean that they couldn't just as easily apply a similar law to something we hold dear.
And what has that example got to do with censorship? Censorship is prohibiting certain people from accessing certain information. What you are stating as an example is endangering people by causing a panic. None of the people in the theater asked to have someone yell "Fire!" at them. When I want to browse to a site though I've asked for the information therein. And that's the big difference.
Censorship is never in favour of the people but only in favour of those in power. Thus, it is never a good thing. There are reasons why we are not supposed to do certain things. But an opinion has to be free. In statement and reception. See, I live in Switzerland where it's almost as forbidden to to draw a svastika as it is in Germany. Whole lot of good that does. IMO it's every man's and woman's given right to be of the opinion that jews suck. It's also their right to believe that I suck (to the point where they think mankind would be better off without me). As long as people do not get the impression it's okay to act upon their beliefs and remove any of those people it's nobody's damn business what they believe.
If we don't like it if they give a bad example to our children, well, then we ought to set a better one they can follow.
As if it was Microsoft's fault that managers came up with the idea that passwords were the culprit in our security problems. Sure, some users have quite weak passwords. That's sub-optimal. But when you make them use like 8 digit passwords with letters, special characters and at least one capital letter they will immediately start writing them down. Especially when they have to change it every month.
Happened in my company. Why? Because there's data from the italian branch of our company on our system. And they require us to have this "security".
I have to remember a shitload of passwords myself. None of them are exceptionally strong and it's hard enough to remember them. How can people expect users would be able to remember such passwords when they have trouble even comming up with them?
You know, IANAD (doctor) and I'm only telling you this from personal experience so this does not have to apply to you at all but when I was depressed (I had been in a phase of depression for about 3 years straight at that point and it was constantly getting worse) and went to a psych he said I needed to get more sunlight and he gave me Ritalin.
Didn't help much. The Ritalin made the few good times exceptionally great but the many bad times... My then girlfriend and now wife describes it in such a way that I'm asking myself whether calling Satan an asshole would have been a recreational activity compared to spending time with me.
Anyway, what helped me was my wife, just by being there, and I myself. What basically helped me was forcing myself to have a more positive outlook. Like when everything was going down the drain I relaxed my face (because when I'm in a foul mood I usually frown constantly) and put on a smile. It was very relaxing and while, at first, it was always a fake smile it soon started becoming more real. And by smiling I actually felt better. You know like a release in endorphines results in a smile it seemed that a smile also resulted in a release of endorphines.
The problem is, depression is like a dog biting his own tail. It makes itself worse the longer you have it. You need to keep a hold on the positive things in life, no matter how few and far between they might be. I know my way isn't that easy but it doesn't hurt to try it.
Please don't underestimate his appeal to the average joe. While he was certainly acting a bit clownish he was also very likable and easy to relate to. People don't want to leanr from good scientific documentaries... People, as opposed to intellectual elite, 'learn' from what they hear and find interesting. That's how tabloids work, after all.
Irving put up a show, yes, but people remember who he is. It's the 'Crikey!'-guy. You can approve of the way he did it or not but I think it is clear that he got to the people and brought his message across.
Possibly, but I for one am glad that it was neither a croc nor a snake. This way it actually was an accident since sting-rays, accoring to Wikipedia, don't even actively defend themselves...
This will not keep the media from screaming "We told you so" of course. But some of us who think beyond the tips of our noses can at least say that he always knew what he was doing. He always knew the risk he was taking. This time he took a really small risk with little chance of actually happening and bang it got him. That can happen to anyone.
It isn't heroic how he died. But at least he didn't earn himself an entry to the Darwin Awards. At least in my world he will be missed. And while I don't see the need to get on your people's nerves about the jokes, I myself do not feel like joking at all... perhaps tomorrow.
And it hasn't occured to you that this shows you how most men are? I've dealt with female coworkers too who had that problem -- their husbands didn't want to do shit they didn't absolutely have to, foisting everything on their wives. The difference is, being female myself, I was able to get close enough to know that they were usually telling the truth. And the sad fact is, if your husband is like that, about the only solution is divorce.
But how is that the male coworkers (or the competent female ones for that matter) problem if women are too incompetent to chose a husband who will SUPPORT them? You know as in being partners.
All the females in IT I've met so far didn't have any real interest in IT in the first place. God knows how they got into the business but they surely didn't belong there. Some of them went so far as to drop some or most of their own workload on colleagues who were too stupid to just say no.
If a woman does a good job and shows her colleagues that she's trustworthy then she will be included in social things. To put it bluntly, males usually don't shun these strange beings nobody understands with overly large yet very inviting chest physiology. They only do so if getting into contact is a danger to them.
This is actually a good question for feminists: If all men are penis driven pigs.... how is it possible that not getting included in social activities at work could ever be a problem?
All in all a good post but I would like to mention that using the term pedophile ist not what you should be doing.
A pedophile, by definition, loves kids an wants to see them happy. Their sexuality is not based on the principle of sticking your dick into soft flesh. A lot of pedophiles 'get off' (which doesn't explicitly has to involve an orgasm of any kind) on just spending time with a kid (you know the stuff PARENTS are supposed to do. Like, play with your kid instead of parking it in front of the TV?).
The term you are looking for is pedo-criminal. Most rape situations are not based on sexual desire anyway. Keep in mind that rape mostly is about power not about sexual desire. Kids are a target for that because even weaker minded people can have the upper hand over them. A relatively small number of actual child rape situations involve a real pedophile.
So much for clarification of the term. What I'd like to say is that people can be influenced by the media. Stupid people can get stupid ideas they wouldn't have gotten without. But what the media doesn't do is turn a nice guy into a monster because he watched the wrong movies. Our goal should not be to limit everyone to the things we deem 'not that dangerous' (cause nothing is really safe if you don't want it to be) but to create an environment where the need to feel powerful isn't there. If our society didn't have such a strong pecking order I'm willing to bet we'd see much less rape happening.
No, I've just been there. I was on Ritalin a few years back because of several things (most of which where gotten out of the way by just forcing a happier mood on myself, ironically enough...)
What happened was that I didn't have depressions anymore... I wasn't constantly grey anymore... No I either saw red and was close to killing anyone who breathed wrong (and I mean I was actually planning to walk up to them and beat their head against the pavement until I could piss on their brains... on the street that is) or I was so easy going that 'stoned' doesn't even start to describe it.
So I'd have to agree with you that there is a potential for something like that. But I'd predict that it wouldn't change that much. People would still care for what happens to them if it was bad since they got used to that reaction... They just wouldn't give a flying rat's ass about others unless those peoples misery affected them (like, if it was your wife getting cancer or something as opposed to some kids you never met dying of hunger) and honestly, what would be different to what we have today?
And here you already proved that Wii makes you think about iot twice as long as GameCube does. Marketing is about getting attention. Yo uhave given it already more attention than it probably deserves (until we have specs and tests). So you little sucker actually already fell for it;).
As you might see I am not anonymous and I agree with your PP. I am sceptical as well but I also want to see a real reason why this should not work. P2P being mentioned does not qualify here, sorry.
I do not have any numbers here, but he has a point. I like Linux but For all the trouble I've had with it on my home machine I can spend a lot of time waiting for a reboot after bluescreens (which I haven't been having for years now).
It's not that Windows is better. But I'm used to it. Therefore I'm way more efficient on it than on any other OS whether you like it or not. The efficiency gain I could expect by switching to OSX cannot be that big that it would warrant the learning time, so why bother? Same goes for people like my parents. They have a Dell PC. They have a ISDN line to the net. They had the Sasser once, that's all. They can use their machine and it was fairly cheap. Why should they bother to change anything?
Sorry, but this is completely wrong in my opinion.
Yes, climatic change is happening. But it has happened several times in the history of this planet. "Ice Age" doesn't mean it will bi minus 20C in Africa. Ice Age means a temperature drop of a few degrees on average. It DOES have drastic consequences on weather and stuff but it WILL NOT wipe us off the planet just like that. And what are a few hundred years? AFAIK we're recording temperature for less than those "few hundred" years. This temperature problem might even be just a little fluctuation that will be over in another 50 years. We just don't know.
We should protect the environment for far more pressing reasons than climatic change. All the dirt in the air and water comes to mind. Higher UV intensity because of a thin ozone layer comes to mind. Fuck climatic change, those things can harm us long before climatic change will.
"Morally" equivalent? WHICH moral? Yours? Which one? Yours today or the one you sported a year ago? Or perhaps the morals of the southern states in America some hundred years ago where slavery was a must if you wanted to be rich?
Morals are like fashion and should have no place in judging a culture. Yeah, the way some muslim countries treat women on the outside is really not okay. But what does that say about how they are treated at home? And just because we westerners talk about equality all the time, does that really mean we treat our women or black, latin-american or asian neighbours as we should? Now come on, don't be naive.
We are so busy thinking of new ways to address black people here (mind you, calling them black because they are black while I am white is nowadays seen as racism in German speaking countries, it seems.) that we don't seem to have the time to actually treat them like humans too. Sickening, ain't it?
I am rally not trying to flame you here but... The demands of marriage? My marriage doesn't demand shit of me. It just gives me a haven of comfort, rest and peace. I'm sorry to phrase it like that but... if your marriage puts you through even more stress, why have you married in the first place?
Ever thought that perhaps your game just isn't good enough?
I'm not saying everyone out there downloading from BT is a saint who just wants to try before they buy. That would be bullshit. But there are enough people out there who doubled or even trippled the amount of money they spent on DVDs and/or CDs and/or games just because they found games they've never even heard about before.
I don't remember whether it was on heise.de or/. but there was an artivle that CD sales of the top 50 went down quite a bit while the studios still made more cash because people suddenly bought way more stuff that wasn't mainstream. So good music WILL sell. So will good movies and good games. Therefore I believe that if you're not happy with how much games you sell you might want to try and make a better one next time.
I know this might be moderated Flamebait, but you know what? I don't care... if people don't like my opinion, it's their problem entirely.
In a mall around here they use high frequency devices to repell pigeons. I can hear them and I get headaches just from a few seconds... exactely those few seconds it takes me to walk by.
I don't know about you but Lot's of people AND those irritating noises make Kokuyo go crazy! Would you like me shopping at a mall near your kids that has those devices? Jokes aside this is just a stupid idea.
PS: bonus for learning German, really hot intelligent German/Austrian/Swiss/Luxembourg women will adore you. Very few europeans even expect an American to know a tiny bit of any language other than English. Did I mention blonds? I am pretty sure I did.
Well, thanks for rubbing my nose in;). Do you realise how frustrating it is to see some American guy walk away with the hottest gals here in Switzerland because he was able to say "Ick finde dick wunderschoun"? When do we Europeans get that bonus, huh?!;). I mean, really, do I have to speak "bad English" on purpose to achieve anything, or what?
I sense a theory forming here... The phenomenon you mentioned is most probably based on women liking men who actually put some EFFORT into COMMUNICATION. Perhaps someone who spoke fluent English but putting EFFORT in making it sound faulty would achieve the same thing just for the fact that his effort was visible. Comments?;)
Man, are you lucky that there is no option like "Stupid bible quote" in the moderator drop down...;).
While I agree that these two things shouldn't be directly compared I see such mistakes more and more often. It's the will to accept such mistakes and not correct them that leads to noone caring about babelfish's quality... At least that's my guess. I haven't felt any improvement in the translated pieces from babelfish in the last few years and I do speak both English and German.
Uhhh excuse me but since when does Microsoft Office software handle really large files without making trouble? I'd like to see MS setting the mark that high before I expect another company to reach it...
Okay, I see their point... there are people out there doing business and that has to be regulated. While one might argue about that I won't.
What I don't understand is what exactely they try to accomplish with such... tremendous amounts of money... well beside killing off some hundred to thousand attempts at making a living. What exactely are they trying to regulate here? Employment numbers? Or unemployment numbers if you prefer?
I think it's a great idea to give eBay some legal ground so that it doesn't remain rip off mecca for some individuals out there but this is like killing a cockroach by dumping a nuke on it: Blatant overkill that, most probably, won't even work... at least IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, "Think of the children" will bring your argument a looooong way on /. ;)
I think your parent poster has got something mixed up. What he meant was freedom of speech. And by all means, that is limited in Germany and Switzerland as far as my little swiss mind can remember. Try stating that you think jews are subhuman and see what happens (I advise you to only do that if you don't really like your life as it is all that much...).
Of course we could argue that such sentiments are stupid anyway, but that is clearly a matter of opinion. And just because our opinion (assuming you also do not believe that jews are sub-human) happens to coincide with the law doesn't mean that they couldn't just as easily apply a similar law to something we hold dear.
And what has that example got to do with censorship? Censorship is prohibiting certain people from accessing certain information. What you are stating as an example is endangering people by causing a panic. None of the people in the theater asked to have someone yell "Fire!" at them. When I want to browse to a site though I've asked for the information therein. And that's the big difference.
Censorship is never in favour of the people but only in favour of those in power. Thus, it is never a good thing. There are reasons why we are not supposed to do certain things. But an opinion has to be free. In statement and reception. See, I live in Switzerland where it's almost as forbidden to to draw a svastika as it is in Germany. Whole lot of good that does. IMO it's every man's and woman's given right to be of the opinion that jews suck. It's also their right to believe that I suck (to the point where they think mankind would be better off without me). As long as people do not get the impression it's okay to act upon their beliefs and remove any of those people it's nobody's damn business what they believe.
If we don't like it if they give a bad example to our children, well, then we ought to set a better one they can follow.
Okay, why does this get an Interesting-Rating?
As if it was Microsoft's fault that managers came up with the idea that passwords were the culprit in our security problems. Sure, some users have quite weak passwords. That's sub-optimal. But when you make them use like 8 digit passwords with letters, special characters and at least one capital letter they will immediately start writing them down. Especially when they have to change it every month.
Happened in my company. Why? Because there's data from the italian branch of our company on our system. And they require us to have this "security".
I have to remember a shitload of passwords myself. None of them are exceptionally strong and it's hard enough to remember them. How can people expect users would be able to remember such passwords when they have trouble even comming up with them?
You know, IANAD (doctor) and I'm only telling you this from personal experience so this does not have to apply to you at all but when I was depressed (I had been in a phase of depression for about 3 years straight at that point and it was constantly getting worse) and went to a psych he said I needed to get more sunlight and he gave me Ritalin.
Didn't help much. The Ritalin made the few good times exceptionally great but the many bad times... My then girlfriend and now wife describes it in such a way that I'm asking myself whether calling Satan an asshole would have been a recreational activity compared to spending time with me.
Anyway, what helped me was my wife, just by being there, and I myself. What basically helped me was forcing myself to have a more positive outlook. Like when everything was going down the drain I relaxed my face (because when I'm in a foul mood I usually frown constantly) and put on a smile. It was very relaxing and while, at first, it was always a fake smile it soon started becoming more real. And by smiling I actually felt better. You know like a release in endorphines results in a smile it seemed that a smile also resulted in a release of endorphines.
The problem is, depression is like a dog biting his own tail. It makes itself worse the longer you have it. You need to keep a hold on the positive things in life, no matter how few and far between they might be. I know my way isn't that easy but it doesn't hurt to try it.
Please don't underestimate his appeal to the average joe. While he was certainly acting a bit clownish he was also very likable and easy to relate to. People don't want to leanr from good scientific documentaries... People, as opposed to intellectual elite, 'learn' from what they hear and find interesting. That's how tabloids work, after all.
Irving put up a show, yes, but people remember who he is. It's the 'Crikey!'-guy. You can approve of the way he did it or not but I think it is clear that he got to the people and brought his message across.
Possibly, but I for one am glad that it was neither a croc nor a snake. This way it actually was an accident since sting-rays, accoring to Wikipedia, don't even actively defend themselves...
This will not keep the media from screaming "We told you so" of course. But some of us who think beyond the tips of our noses can at least say that he always knew what he was doing. He always knew the risk he was taking. This time he took a really small risk with little chance of actually happening and bang it got him. That can happen to anyone.
It isn't heroic how he died. But at least he didn't earn himself an entry to the Darwin Awards. At least in my world he will be missed. And while I don't see the need to get on your people's nerves about the jokes, I myself do not feel like joking at all... perhaps tomorrow.
All the females in IT I've met so far didn't have any real interest in IT in the first place. God knows how they got into the business but they surely didn't belong there. Some of them went so far as to drop some or most of their own workload on colleagues who were too stupid to just say no.
If a woman does a good job and shows her colleagues that she's trustworthy then she will be included in social things. To put it bluntly, males usually don't shun these strange beings nobody understands with overly large yet very inviting chest physiology. They only do so if getting into contact is a danger to them.
This is actually a good question for feminists: If all men are penis driven pigs.... how is it possible that not getting included in social activities at work could ever be a problem?
All in all a good post but I would like to mention that using the term pedophile ist not what you should be doing.
A pedophile, by definition, loves kids an wants to see them happy. Their sexuality is not based on the principle of sticking your dick into soft flesh. A lot of pedophiles 'get off' (which doesn't explicitly has to involve an orgasm of any kind) on just spending time with a kid (you know the stuff PARENTS are supposed to do. Like, play with your kid instead of parking it in front of the TV?).
The term you are looking for is pedo-criminal. Most rape situations are not based on sexual desire anyway. Keep in mind that rape mostly is about power not about sexual desire. Kids are a target for that because even weaker minded people can have the upper hand over them. A relatively small number of actual child rape situations involve a real pedophile.
So much for clarification of the term. What I'd like to say is that people can be influenced by the media. Stupid people can get stupid ideas they wouldn't have gotten without. But what the media doesn't do is turn a nice guy into a monster because he watched the wrong movies. Our goal should not be to limit everyone to the things we deem 'not that dangerous' (cause nothing is really safe if you don't want it to be) but to create an environment where the need to feel powerful isn't there. If our society didn't have such a strong pecking order I'm willing to bet we'd see much less rape happening.
No, I've just been there. I was on Ritalin a few years back because of several things (most of which where gotten out of the way by just forcing a happier mood on myself, ironically enough...)
What happened was that I didn't have depressions anymore... I wasn't constantly grey anymore... No I either saw red and was close to killing anyone who breathed wrong (and I mean I was actually planning to walk up to them and beat their head against the pavement until I could piss on their brains... on the street that is) or I was so easy going that 'stoned' doesn't even start to describe it.
So I'd have to agree with you that there is a potential for something like that. But I'd predict that it wouldn't change that much. People would still care for what happens to them if it was bad since they got used to that reaction... They just wouldn't give a flying rat's ass about others unless those peoples misery affected them (like, if it was your wife getting cancer or something as opposed to some kids you never met dying of hunger) and honestly, what would be different to what we have today?
And here you already proved that Wii makes you think about iot twice as long as GameCube does. Marketing is about getting attention. Yo uhave given it already more attention than it probably deserves (until we have specs and tests). So you little sucker actually already fell for it ;).
As you might see I am not anonymous and I agree with your PP. I am sceptical as well but I also want to see a real reason why this should not work. P2P being mentioned does not qualify here, sorry.
I do not have any numbers here, but he has a point. I like Linux but For all the trouble I've had with it on my home machine I can spend a lot of time waiting for a reboot after bluescreens (which I haven't been having for years now).
It's not that Windows is better. But I'm used to it. Therefore I'm way more efficient on it than on any other OS whether you like it or not. The efficiency gain I could expect by switching to OSX cannot be that big that it would warrant the learning time, so why bother? Same goes for people like my parents. They have a Dell PC. They have a ISDN line to the net. They had the Sasser once, that's all. They can use their machine and it was fairly cheap. Why should they bother to change anything?
Sorry, but this is completely wrong in my opinion.
Yes, climatic change is happening. But it has happened several times in the history of this planet. "Ice Age" doesn't mean it will bi minus 20C in Africa. Ice Age means a temperature drop of a few degrees on average. It DOES have drastic consequences on weather and stuff but it WILL NOT wipe us off the planet just like that. And what are a few hundred years? AFAIK we're recording temperature for less than those "few hundred" years. This temperature problem might even be just a little fluctuation that will be over in another 50 years. We just don't know.
We should protect the environment for far more pressing reasons than climatic change. All the dirt in the air and water comes to mind. Higher UV intensity because of a thin ozone layer comes to mind. Fuck climatic change, those things can harm us long before climatic change will.
"Morally" equivalent? WHICH moral? Yours? Which one? Yours today or the one you sported a year ago? Or perhaps the morals of the southern states in America some hundred years ago where slavery was a must if you wanted to be rich?
Morals are like fashion and should have no place in judging a culture. Yeah, the way some muslim countries treat women on the outside is really not okay. But what does that say about how they are treated at home? And just because we westerners talk about equality all the time, does that really mean we treat our women or black, latin-american or asian neighbours as we should? Now come on, don't be naive.
We are so busy thinking of new ways to address black people here (mind you, calling them black because they are black while I am white is nowadays seen as racism in German speaking countries, it seems.) that we don't seem to have the time to actually treat them like humans too. Sickening, ain't it?
I am rally not trying to flame you here but... The demands of marriage? My marriage doesn't demand shit of me. It just gives me a haven of comfort, rest and peace. I'm sorry to phrase it like that but... if your marriage puts you through even more stress, why have you married in the first place?
I think you have either no idea about the Japanese culture or a very weird picture of the perfect wife ;).
Ever thought that perhaps your game just isn't good enough?
/. but there was an artivle that CD sales of the top 50 went down quite a bit while the studios still made more cash because people suddenly bought way more stuff that wasn't mainstream. So good music WILL sell. So will good movies and good games. Therefore I believe that if you're not happy with how much games you sell you might want to try and make a better one next time.
I'm not saying everyone out there downloading from BT is a saint who just wants to try before they buy. That would be bullshit. But there are enough people out there who doubled or even trippled the amount of money they spent on DVDs and/or CDs and/or games just because they found games they've never even heard about before.
I don't remember whether it was on heise.de or
I know this might be moderated Flamebait, but you know what? I don't care... if people don't like my opinion, it's their problem entirely.
Uhhh, isn't sign language universal? I thought it didn't depend on the spoken language. I might be wrong, of course :).
In a mall around here they use high frequency devices to repell pigeons. I can hear them and I get headaches just from a few seconds... exactely those few seconds it takes me to walk by.
I don't know about you but Lot's of people AND those irritating noises make Kokuyo go crazy! Would you like me shopping at a mall near your kids that has those devices? Jokes aside this is just a stupid idea.
Well, thanks for rubbing my nose in
I sense a theory forming here... The phenomenon you mentioned is most probably based on women liking men who actually put some EFFORT into COMMUNICATION. Perhaps someone who spoke fluent English but putting EFFORT in making it sound faulty would achieve the same thing just for the fact that his effort was visible. Comments?
Man, are you lucky that there is no option like "Stupid bible quote" in the moderator drop down... ;).
While I agree that these two things shouldn't be directly compared I see such mistakes more and more often. It's the will to accept such mistakes and not correct them that leads to noone caring about babelfish's quality... At least that's my guess. I haven't felt any improvement in the translated pieces from babelfish in the last few years and I do speak both English and German.
Uhhh excuse me but since when does Microsoft Office software handle really large files without making trouble? I'd like to see MS setting the mark that high before I expect another company to reach it...
Well at least Linus Torvalds has understood that computers are just tools which should do what they are expected to do: Help us get our work done.
I find all those OS and Hardware flamewars silly. Not that I expect them to stop now but that man sure gained some respect in my book.
Okay, I see their point... there are people out there doing business and that has to be regulated. While one might argue about that I won't.
What I don't understand is what exactely they try to accomplish with such... tremendous amounts of money... well beside killing off some hundred to thousand attempts at making a living. What exactely are they trying to regulate here? Employment numbers? Or unemployment numbers if you prefer?
I think it's a great idea to give eBay some legal ground so that it doesn't remain rip off mecca for some individuals out there but this is like killing a cockroach by dumping a nuke on it: Blatant overkill that, most probably, won't even work... at least IMHO.