No doubt you were one of the guys on IRC getting a kick out of blaming New Yorkers for 911.
I don't understand that statement. Blaming (any) Americans for 9/11 is the direct ideological opposite to the point of view of my original post.
And their reasons for producing waste tend to be somewhat more convincing than an "SUV just looks much cooler than a minivan";-)
Interesting. You wish to establish a hierarchy of the nobility of various energy expenditures, which will be judged arbitrarily. Certainly the inequity of the Kyoto accords could be explained by this ideology. I suppose something like yak farts would be higher up the scale than, say, automobile pollution.
I doubt all the hordes of yaks in the world could account for this.
Interesting. One wonders what would happen if this concept was applied to breathing.
It could result in a situation where you had to pay a tax for eating a cheeseburger because it's high in fat, and then pay a tax on the high carbon output when you exercise to burn it off. Could you get an exemption on the carbon tax if you already paid the fat tax to ingest it? It would hardly seem appropriate to tax overweight people for exercising.
I guess the question for us as a society is which is sillier - finding ways to do things without legislating them, or eating cheeseburgers exclusively as a tax shelter?
Can someone please look up how long ago earth was struck by a large enough meteor to turn earth in to a giant blob of lava? : )
I put my money on lets say 780 000 to one millon years ago:) (when the last revelsal was presumed to have happened.)
Interesting idea. That must be what gave the neanderthals such a hard time. Homo Sapiens' ability to walk on lava must have been the edge our kind needed to survive. How much money, by the way?
And what do you mean by "coming to mind" - whose mind, mine or yours? Are you claiming to know my mind? Extraordinary.
I can't think of a way to say this without seeming sarcastic. I generally assume people think about what they write before writing it, or at least during the process. You were the one who stated that my comment smacked of a pre-emptive yet hollow defense. If it smacked to me instead of to you, we/I have a serious personality problem which has brought about the fracture of your/my/our identity. Your efforts to shore up your argument by obfuscating into insignificance have been most entertaining, and attempting to obfuscate our identities is a debate tactic I must confess to never having seen.
And you seem to think that you can tell the difference between a statement based on "a reason" (I prefer just "reason") and one based on "bias" when that statement appears in a text-only message from someone you've never met?
Pursuant to the above point - the question of knowing your mind - are you suggesting that some form of body language or tone of voice would add further meaning and/or clarification to what you have said? Is there a substantial divorce between what you are thinking and what you are saying? If the difference is great enough to invalidate my use of your words as examples in this discussion, I can hardly imagine being biased in taking you at your word.
I fail to grasp the distinction you're making here, and the unclear and arbitrary psuedo-definition you make here suggests to me (I won't say smacks of!) that you also are unclear on the difference, but just don't realise it yet.
Priceless. You not only know my mind based only on text messages, but you actually claim to know more about it than me.
I really tried to imagine how bias can occur independent of one's point of view, and I would have to admit to the same level of confusion about your analysis of my statement as you expressed about the statement itself. How can one believe oneself to be superior without that belief being dependent on one's point of view? Unless of course, the belief is deep enough to have obscured the concept of point of view. This would elevate bias to a whole new level, and would render the individual in question perpetually ignorant to the truth of his condition.
Were I to speculate as to the actual essence of this discussion, semantics and posturing aside, I would have to say that the issue is not how I define bias and opinion, but rather how I define religion and belief. But I think any meaningful discussion of that is probably hopeless at this point, unless we can videoconference so that you can express your views through interpretive dance or something.
I have an idea. You've had an itchy finger on your flamethrower trigger for some time now. Why don't I go ahead and call bullshit on the whole condescending civility thing you've got going on so you can cut loose and get this out of your system. I'll leave you with the last word on the issue.
(1) If slashdot is anti-religion, why is that position a "bias" rather than a valid (defendable, okay to possess) opinion? It is okay to be anti-religion, right? I'm not talking hate here, just firm disagreement. Heck - I didn't even suggest that slashdot was right or that I shared their view/bias, merely that it might be an opinion rather than a bias!
Which I will take the liberty of summarizing to "What is the difference between opinion and bias?" In short, opinion has a reason behind it, bias is the practice of prejudice. Let me demonstrate:
Saw it. Disregarded it. Why? Not only did it smack of a pre-emptive yet hollow defence...
Bias. The very act of "smacking" in your example is the stereotype coming to mind.
but it wasn't relevant to my comments - I was commenting on your stated perception of slashdot's "anti-religous bias". There's more to religion (and to criticism of religion, surely?) than the people who run churches. Or perhaps we operate under very different definitions of "religion".
Opinion. This is reasoned analysis which has a very valid fundamental question - what distinction do I hold between religion and the religious, and how does that differ from yours? If you want to get into that further, let me know.
(2) Why is it bigotry to believe that another's religious views are in error?
Because the act of elevating a difference of belief, which is a relative state of understanding, to the condition of error, which is absolute and dependent on your own point of view is itself the threshold of bias.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - we're all skeptics of other people's religions!:-)
You don't read too carefully, do you? A good example of bias would be your having leapt into that statement without taking the time to see this:
I am considerably more critical of the pack of idiots who run my own Methodist church.
Bias is the exercise of stereotype, and since the source of your statement is clearly outside of having responded to what I said, you can only have been speaking to a stereotype rather than to me. Furthermore, your own admission of the frequency of this behavior, "I've said it before and I'll say it again", suggests the pattern of behavior resulting from bias.
I am open to any belief, but as for your suggestion that your regard for religious belief might be a transcendent truth about its very nature, your having so ingracefully tripped over a painfully obvious exception to that belief seriously undermines my ability to accept it.
I am a personally devout follower of Christ and also stridently combat the anti-religious bias that occurs on/.
I stand behind my Mormon slam because any social organization, however well intentioned, usually ends up becoming a quagmire of social strata and domination, and I have personally observed this within the LDS organization. I am considerably more critical to the pack of idiots who runs my own Methodist church.
I do take issue with the suggestion that religious ideals are inherent idiocy against which even the learned are vulnerable, because I believe that while calling into question the behavior of social organizations is more than reasonable, calling into question the way an individual believes is bigotry. (as the this post's parent so eloquently points out)
Although this position might seem conflicting, bear in mind that I follow one who disdained the religious order of his time.
Well, yeah - it's easy to make money publishing a book if you don't have to pay the author anything and all the marketing has already been done. For new books, the copyright system is the best way to ensure a publisher can recoup these costs.
I'm confused. Is copyright protection supposed to protect the marketers or the artist?
how the heck are you going to build impeller seals that will hold up to that and still hold a tight tolerance?
I don't know, but I'm sure the jet engine sound this thing will make at speed will be worth any engineering headaches the problem presents. At least until you start sucking frogs into the wheels. On a related note, the rear brakes will be very well cooled.
Okay, so we pretty much realize that the Grand Revelation(tm) of the article is basically bullshit. Any number of technologies work to accomplish what he's describing, including document management, XML, and web search engines.
The one shred of useable insight that I believe this whole situation gets across is that what is required to make information more useable is not a change in the way of conceptualizing it, but a change in the way of controlling it.
Case 1 - web design. The HTML standard is supposed to divorce document content from document presentation. Commercial web site developers, however, do everything they can to prevent this. They want to force people to see their site in exactly the way they want. If you don't believe me, see this or try running junkbuster and visiting intellicast.com. Content providers are militantly opposed to you using content other than the way they exactly specify, a reality which is well known to transcend Internet technology.
Case 2 - deliberate incompatibility. You can't import e-mail from Kmail to Evolution or vice versa. Both packages are open source projects. Is there any possible excuse or reason why this condition exists other than a ridiculous pissing match? Now, I certainly understand that Microsoft has elevated the art of breaking other people's stuff to a high art, but I raised this particular example because it IS true and money is not (ostensibly) behind it. In the case of Gnome vs. KDE, it's a simple matter of control for the sake of control. Point - the problem is not an organization, institution, or social ideology. It is human nature.
My point is this. We have moved beyond the moment where a change in the way we communicate revolutionized how, when, and were we exchange ideas. The question now is not how we organize those ideas, but if we are going to fight to protect our right to share them. As long as the shit I've described keeps happening, you can have all the 3D documents you want - it won't ultimately matter to our level of slavery to those who control information.
Ease off the throttle there, Captain Proliteriate.
I popped popcorn at Wal Mart for two years, and despite draconian loss prevention procedures, and Victorian HR practices, including being locked in the building to work off the clock, none of the bathrooms had cameras in them.
Monitoring telephone calls without the permission of at least one party of the call is illegal in all 50 states.
Even if you want to go there, you can't disprove my point. Employers are required by law to provide for your personal safety, as well as any disability you have. They also can't force you to have sex with them. Point: at will employment != slavery.
Employers already monitor staff's email etc, why is this any different?
Ease off the throttle there, Captain Capitalist. A few points to discuss:
Your employer does not assume ownership of your rights of person during business hours. You can take a non-business related phone call and use the bathroom during business hours, and it is illegal for them to monitor any of those activities.
While monitoring IM's doesn't yet fall under the protection of wiretap laws, there is something tragically ironic about a company which provides a free chat tool which will port scan your firewall to find a way out to the internet, and then sell the managers a tool to monitor its activities. If you think this is respectable business practice, I bet you can't wait to see the egress!
No matter how you slice it these bozo's broke their user agreement, illegally modified regulated communications hardware...
WTF? Regulated communications hardware? Who *the fuck* regulates how cable modems behave? If you put a linear on your CB, which is federally regulated communications equipment, the worst that can happen is that you get your gear confiscated. If the law were applied the way you seem to see it, most of our nation's trucking infrastructure would be in prison.
Or would the neighborhood committee have to force us to sign an EULA when we moved in to criminzlize that?
But you have already agreed to the supplemental EULA which your municipality enacted in order to secure continuing police coverage. By failing to appear at the public hearing, you agreed to the terms and conditions of the oxygen usage EULA.
Slashdot Mirror
No doubt you were one of the guys on IRC getting a kick out of blaming New Yorkers for 911.
I don't understand that statement. Blaming (any) Americans for 9/11 is the direct ideological opposite to the point of view of my original post.
And their reasons for producing waste tend to be somewhat more convincing than an "SUV just looks much cooler than a minivan" ;-)
Interesting. You wish to establish a hierarchy of the nobility of various energy expenditures, which will be judged arbitrarily. Certainly the inequity of the Kyoto accords could be explained by this ideology. I suppose something like yak farts would be higher up the scale than, say, automobile pollution.
I doubt all the hordes of yaks in the world could account for this.
This slashdotter thinks that disease and global war are going to obviate the population problem.
That would be a brilliant comment except that the third world has cornered the market on the problems of pollution and overbreeding.
Or do you believe that Nebraska farmers are clearing the rainforest to make Big Macs?
A carbon tax would help a lot.
Interesting. One wonders what would happen if this concept was applied to breathing.
It could result in a situation where you had to pay a tax for eating a cheeseburger because it's high in fat, and then pay a tax on the high carbon output when you exercise to burn it off. Could you get an exemption on the carbon tax if you already paid the fat tax to ingest it? It would hardly seem appropriate to tax overweight people for exercising.
I guess the question for us as a society is which is sillier - finding ways to do things without legislating them, or eating cheeseburgers exclusively as a tax shelter?
Can someone please look up how long ago earth was struck by a large enough meteor to turn earth in to a giant blob of lava? : ) I put my money on lets say 780 000 to one millon years ago :) (when the last revelsal was presumed to have happened.)
Interesting idea. That must be what gave the neanderthals such a hard time. Homo Sapiens' ability to walk on lava must have been the edge our kind needed to survive. How much money, by the way?
reality
Buy some corning stock.
\reality
Cool. Northern lights on the beach. Gimme another beer.
And what do you mean by "coming to mind" - whose mind, mine or yours? Are you claiming to know my mind? Extraordinary.
I can't think of a way to say this without seeming sarcastic. I generally assume people think about what they write before writing it, or at least during the process. You were the one who stated that my comment smacked of a pre-emptive yet hollow defense. If it smacked to me instead of to you, we/I have a serious personality problem which has brought about the fracture of your/my/our identity. Your efforts to shore up your argument by obfuscating into insignificance have been most entertaining, and attempting to obfuscate our identities is a debate tactic I must confess to never having seen.
And you seem to think that you can tell the difference between a statement based on "a reason" (I prefer just "reason") and one based on "bias" when that statement appears in a text-only message from someone you've never met?
Pursuant to the above point - the question of knowing your mind - are you suggesting that some form of body language or tone of voice would add further meaning and/or clarification to what you have said? Is there a substantial divorce between what you are thinking and what you are saying? If the difference is great enough to invalidate my use of your words as examples in this discussion, I can hardly imagine being biased in taking you at your word.
I fail to grasp the distinction you're making here, and the unclear and arbitrary psuedo-definition you make here suggests to me (I won't say smacks of!) that you also are unclear on the difference, but just don't realise it yet.
Priceless. You not only know my mind based only on text messages, but you actually claim to know more about it than me.
I really tried to imagine how bias can occur independent of one's point of view, and I would have to admit to the same level of confusion about your analysis of my statement as you expressed about the statement itself. How can one believe oneself to be superior without that belief being dependent on one's point of view? Unless of course, the belief is deep enough to have obscured the concept of point of view. This would elevate bias to a whole new level, and would render the individual in question perpetually ignorant to the truth of his condition.
Were I to speculate as to the actual essence of this discussion, semantics and posturing aside, I would have to say that the issue is not how I define bias and opinion, but rather how I define religion and belief. But I think any meaningful discussion of that is probably hopeless at this point, unless we can videoconference so that you can express your views through interpretive dance or something.
I have an idea. You've had an itchy finger on your flamethrower trigger for some time now. Why don't I go ahead and call bullshit on the whole condescending civility thing you've got going on so you can cut loose and get this out of your system. I'll leave you with the last word on the issue.
(1) If slashdot is anti-religion, why is that position a "bias" rather than a valid (defendable, okay to possess) opinion? It is okay to be anti-religion, right? I'm not talking hate here, just firm disagreement. Heck - I didn't even suggest that slashdot was right or that I shared their view/bias, merely that it might be an opinion rather than a bias!
Which I will take the liberty of summarizing to "What is the difference between opinion and bias?" In short, opinion has a reason behind it, bias is the practice of prejudice. Let me demonstrate:
Saw it. Disregarded it. Why? Not only did it smack of a pre-emptive yet hollow defence...
Bias. The very act of "smacking" in your example is the stereotype coming to mind.
but it wasn't relevant to my comments - I was commenting on your stated perception of slashdot's "anti-religous bias". There's more to religion (and to criticism of religion, surely?) than the people who run churches. Or perhaps we operate under very different definitions of "religion".
Opinion. This is reasoned analysis which has a very valid fundamental question - what distinction do I hold between religion and the religious, and how does that differ from yours? If you want to get into that further, let me know.
(2) Why is it bigotry to believe that another's religious views are in error?
Because the act of elevating a difference of belief, which is a relative state of understanding, to the condition of error, which is absolute and dependent on your own point of view is itself the threshold of bias.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - we're all skeptics of other people's religions! :-)
You don't read too carefully, do you? A good example of bias would be your having leapt into that statement without taking the time to see this:
I am considerably more critical of the pack of idiots who run my own Methodist church.
Bias is the exercise of stereotype, and since the source of your statement is clearly outside of having responded to what I said, you can only have been speaking to a stereotype rather than to me. Furthermore, your own admission of the frequency of this behavior, "I've said it before and I'll say it again", suggests the pattern of behavior resulting from bias.
I am open to any belief, but as for your suggestion that your regard for religious belief might be a transcendent truth about its very nature, your having so ingracefully tripped over a painfully obvious exception to that belief seriously undermines my ability to accept it.
I am a personally devout follower of Christ and also stridently combat the anti-religious bias that occurs on /.
I stand behind my Mormon slam because any social organization, however well intentioned, usually ends up becoming a quagmire of social strata and domination, and I have personally observed this within the LDS organization. I am considerably more critical to the pack of idiots who runs my own Methodist church.
I do take issue with the suggestion that religious ideals are inherent idiocy against which even the learned are vulnerable, because I believe that while calling into question the behavior of social organizations is more than reasonable, calling into question the way an individual believes is bigotry. (as the this post's parent so eloquently points out)
Although this position might seem conflicting, bear in mind that I follow one who disdained the religious order of his time.
So as you can see, sales for this portion of the quarter, right here on the graph...
DOH! Ah..., hehe, one second. How did that get there?
You shouldn't have AC'd this - it's high quality trolling and you should be proud of it.
I think you could have tied the whole "evil moon" discussion up by referencing the documentary motion picture: "AI".
The Mormons were in the 19th century what scientologists are today.
But the Mormons were never a tightly controlled authoritarian cult of personality created by a madman.
Oh, uh, never mind.
Well, yeah - it's easy to make money publishing a book if you don't have to pay the author anything and all the marketing has already been done. For new books, the copyright system is the best way to ensure a publisher can recoup these costs.
I'm confused. Is copyright protection supposed to protect the marketers or the artist?
how the heck are you going to build impeller seals that will hold up to that and still hold a tight tolerance?
I don't know, but I'm sure the jet engine sound this thing will make at speed will be worth any engineering headaches the problem presents. At least until you start sucking frogs into the wheels. On a related note, the rear brakes will be very well cooled.
While publishers sell dead-tree copies still, they have no copyright over the original text contained within.
What? You mean to suggest that you have an actual example of a publisher making money without tyranny over the content?
Gasp!
Okay, so we pretty much realize that the Grand Revelation(tm) of the article is basically bullshit. Any number of technologies work to accomplish what he's describing, including document management, XML, and web search engines.
The one shred of useable insight that I believe this whole situation gets across is that what is required to make information more useable is not a change in the way of conceptualizing it, but a change in the way of controlling it.
Case 1 - web design. The HTML standard is supposed to divorce document content from document presentation. Commercial web site developers, however, do everything they can to prevent this. They want to force people to see their site in exactly the way they want. If you don't believe me, see this or try running junkbuster and visiting intellicast.com. Content providers are militantly opposed to you using content other than the way they exactly specify, a reality which is well known to transcend Internet technology.
Case 2 - deliberate incompatibility. You can't import e-mail from Kmail to Evolution or vice versa. Both packages are open source projects. Is there any possible excuse or reason why this condition exists other than a ridiculous pissing match? Now, I certainly understand that Microsoft has elevated the art of breaking other people's stuff to a high art, but I raised this particular example because it IS true and money is not (ostensibly) behind it. In the case of Gnome vs. KDE, it's a simple matter of control for the sake of control. Point - the problem is not an organization, institution, or social ideology. It is human nature.
My point is this. We have moved beyond the moment where a change in the way we communicate revolutionized how, when, and were we exchange ideas. The question now is not how we organize those ideas, but if we are going to fight to protect our right to share them. As long as the shit I've described keeps happening, you can have all the 3D documents you want - it won't ultimately matter to our level of slavery to those who control information.
Thank you. That is the funniest thing I have ever seen on /.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Don't label something silly or illogical unless you know enough about the topic to recognize a joke.
If your state is a "one party" wiretap law state, then you are in the clear and your employees are stupid.
If not, then your company is in violation of criminal law. Criminal liability cannot be waived by contract.
Ease off the throttle there, Captain Proliteriate.
I popped popcorn at Wal Mart for two years, and despite draconian loss prevention procedures, and Victorian HR practices, including being locked in the building to work off the clock, none of the bathrooms had cameras in them.
As my lawyer likes to say, "Try it and see".
Monitoring telephone calls without the permission of at least one party of the call is illegal in all 50 states.
Even if you want to go there, you can't disprove my point. Employers are required by law to provide for your personal safety, as well as any disability you have. They also can't force you to have sex with them. Point: at will employment != slavery.
Employers already monitor staff's email etc, why is this any different?
Ease off the throttle there, Captain Capitalist. A few points to discuss:
No matter how you slice it these bozo's broke their user agreement, illegally modified regulated communications hardware...
WTF? Regulated communications hardware? Who *the fuck* regulates how cable modems behave? If you put a linear on your CB, which is federally regulated communications equipment, the worst that can happen is that you get your gear confiscated. If the law were applied the way you seem to see it, most of our nation's trucking infrastructure would be in prison.
Or would the neighborhood committee have to force us to sign an EULA when we moved in to criminzlize that?
But you have already agreed to the supplemental EULA which your municipality enacted in order to secure continuing police coverage. By failing to appear at the public hearing, you agreed to the terms and conditions of the oxygen usage EULA.