Yet another testament to the need for a more democratic story acceptance system.
Yeah, because K5's stories are really good. I really like the current offering about how to get fat, and, surprisingly enough, they currently have another story about global warming.
That argument is, of course, bullshit. Use of a modern HTML DTD such as 4.01 strict enforces consistent behavior on the client side. Javascript may still be a problem, but handicapped accessiblity guidelines will require that content be delivered without its use.
There was a time where I could not browse the web with anything but IE because of the MS incited erosion of HTML standards. But the resurgence of attention to those standards, combined with a significant and growing user population using non IE browsers, have forced most web sites to un-adapt from the defacto Microsoft standard.
As for Opera specifically, it is the only browser out there which consistently obeys pre- HTML 4.01 strict DTDs. I am a paying user of Opera, and use it on all my GUI systems.
As one of the tiny community of Christians here at Slashdot, let me point out that Jesus welcomes all, including black hat crackers and warez fiends, and that far from begrudgingly embracing the above parties as repentant sinners, His views on the morality of the mega-rich software vendors doing things such as sending goons to public schools to enforce the use of their products would probably call for those opposing said megacorps to receive the same esteem He granted to those on the fringes in His own time. (read up on some of the disciples)
On a related note, he would like us to know that Bill Gates is going to hell.(Matt 19:24)
Guillermo Gonzalez is also well known as a proponent of "Intelligent Design,"
Heretic! Off with his head!
It's not surprising that ID and Rare Earth-ism go hand in hand; if intelligent life is common in the universe, it makes it less likely that humanity is the product of a Divine Plan -- at least to the degree that the limited minds of ID'ers and other creationists seem to be able to conceive divinity.
Indeed, it is no less surprising that the cyclical universe theory enjoys what can only be described as fanatical desperation on the part of atheist scientists. We can't have the universe being a singular event in time! It's hilarious to me that the evidence in this case supports Gonzales (we haven't seen ET yet), but those who hold forth the standard of pure evidence are capable of stepping outside of the evaluation of evidence to characterize the minds of their opponents as "weak" based purely on their own belief. (again - we haven't seen ET yet.)
One of my interview questions is "What is your greatest technical achievement?" If your answer to that question has anything to do with certifications, I will throw you out into the street.
I don't recall ever being critically intersted in an applicant's certifications, and when I am, I can consult their resume. I want to know if you can do the job.
Taking charge will get your ass fired. That statement is written in blood. I know whereof I speak.
Your only course of action is thud factor.
Produce a prodigious, deliberately obfuscated, massive report of why Things Are Bad and that you need to fix them. Document actual examples of problems they have experienced as a result of their policyless approach to Internet use, and constantly reference the need for effective policies.
If this report is met with resistance, write an incident report every time something bad happens, pointing out that if policies were in effect, none of this would have happened, etc.
I am a CNE. The first five years of my professional career were spent working with Novell, including hundreds of Border Manager implementations.
BM sucks.
You can telnet to port 2000 on a BM box and abend it.
You cannot set up stateful firewall rules for UDP or ICMP traffic
Occaisonally, BM will simply go nuts. You will have to scrub out the cache to fix it.
Occaisionally, BM's NLS provided connection licences will just "go away". The only solution is to wait for them to "come back".
BM should only be used if you must implement different proxy cache user policies per user AND those users cannot be distinguished by any other factor AND you don't know how to use Squid's ACLs and LDAP.
Server firewalls should be OpenBSD. Proxy cache should be Squid, running on the OS of your choice (I usually use Linux).
Man, no doubt! As I read the article, I kept asking myself, "Is there anyone in the US government capable of a) - this level of technical understanding and b) - this level of sheer statesmanship."
I guess this means I can't rant on the US-centric whiners anymore. Ah well.
At least now I know where to go when they put cameras in my cul-de-sac and/or come to take my guns away.
I spent some time thinking about this, and I was able to come up with the "freedom" answer to the problems I posed.
The market nature of a free society is such that if I am annoyed enough about the problems I described, I can put my money where my mouth is and start my own company.
The problem is that, for a variety of reasons, it is prohibitively difficult to do this. I know the stock right-wing answer to this conundrum (deregulation), but I also happen to have been VERY close to the core of the Republican establishment, and I KNOW that what goes on behind closed doors in the Republican party is NOT what you hear on the Rush Limbaugh show, and that, to them, government regulation is a perfectly acceptable method of ensuring the financial comfort of their constituents, who really ARE the 5% and really DO run everything. The farce of grassroots Republicanism is that the core of the Republican establishment is not aligned with the "dittohead caucus", and in fact disdains the common Republican. The only real difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats have a higher regard for lying to common people about their objectives.
In summary, then, I think the (original) American system would work. The problem is, I don't see much evidence of that system in our modern American empire. Arguments to the tune of "show me a country who does it better" overlook the fact that the success we speak of only occurred since 1945, and that we were the only country to win WWII with all of our infrastructure intact.
What follows is going to seem confrontational. I am deliberately putting opposing views up to you for the purpose of refinement in the crucible of debate. I am not attacking you personally. I happen to agree with all of your criticisms of the left, particularly with regard to the Waco Massacre and gun control. You may say that I am, to large extent, playing devil's advocate.
What do you mean here -- that you were in favor of government regulation, until even more regulation, in the form of DMCA and (proposed) SSSCA/CBDTPA/whatever, you changed your mind?
Yeah, it occurred to me after I wrote this that my points about government regulation appear confused. It appears to me that government regulation is directed toward the betterment of a few at the expense of the many. I guess what I was trying to point out is that the idealism of the left and right ultimately don't matter. Power is accumulated and protected. At any cost. Another good example would be HIPPA, which is designed to so confuse the healthcare industry as to make it impossible for it to operate without increasing government control, ultimately culminating in socialized healthcare.
Rush Limbaugh, who almost constantly preaches lowering taxes, reducing regulation, celebrating the ability of people to make their own choices.
Rush Limbaugh is an unflagging sycophant of Bill Gates. He consistently compares him to the giants of industry; a pioneer of a brave new frontier who invented the Internet. In fact, finding out that Rush and those like him equate wealth with morality was one of the first things to "bust my bubble".
Does Congress focus its energy on freeing individual Americans to decide for themselves whether, how, and to what extent to invest in their own retirement, choices they had, and continue to have, when it comes to investing in corporations like Enron? Of course not, because neither activity would increase the power of the wannabe-tyrants over the people.
Yes it does, and yes it would. Ken Lay is living the high life on the money of those who invested in Enron as part of their retirement plans. Of course it would further the Ken Lays of the world to be able to tap Social Security monies in scams like Enron.
In fact, I am pretty much disenchanted with the core of the capitalist system in general. That is - capital. The stock market allows for the very rich to effectively start companies which then hire employees, but because the rich can and will immediately abandon their stake at the slightest whiff of economic trouble, their level of risk involved in the company is disproportionately small compared to those who work there. This means that the mega rich can devastate entire industries on the basis of fad, instantly devaluing countless companies and creating legions of jobless literally overnight (not that any of us have seen that recently) as money is ripped away from the working economy and clutched to the breast of the 5%.
I like the idea of personal responsibility, and I deeply respect the business owner who puts his/her heart and soul into a business and see it succeed. The problem is, based on my experience, that there seems to be no responsibility on the part of those who control capital in the American system. Ever since our capitalist system crystalized in the Industrial Revolution, it has worked toward the accumulation and protection of wealth (as opposed to the distrubition and creation of it). The system brutally failed in the 20's, and it took immense effort, on the part of the government in the form of the WWII war effort, to create enough momentum to entice the mega rich to jump back in to the economy, but their penchant toward making massive segments of the economy evaporate produces a great deal of friction against economic development. History since WWII has proven that when those things come along which will increase the ability of the economy as a whole to produce (technology), they are disdained by the megarich, who rape the economy in the form of stock selloffs and then return to waiting around for something else to get the economy moving for them.
In the late middle ages, a technology came about which allowed the exchange of ideas so profound and far reaching that it created a golden age of enlightenment and prosperity known throughout the rest of history as the Renaissance.
If a printing press can end what was known as the "Dark Ages", what incredible hope and promise could the Internet hold? The Internet is more far reaching as a social effect than was the agricultural revolution. Today's culture knows no boundaries of city wall. I can exchange ideas with a Japanese steel worker working on Kansai or a Croatian looking out his window watching my government's planes land in his country. It is more important to knowledge than was the development of writing. Even the Library of Alexandria cannot compare to the magnitude and depth of sheer human experience and knowledge obtainable on the Internet. And it is more important to culture than anything in human history. The capacity for communication, for community, and for the hope of our future can come from this new online world. And what has our proud American capitalist, bravely forging forth into a new and uncertain world, steward of our destiny, do when faced with this profound revolution? What is the character of the American dream as it surges forth into this burgeoning age of light and enrichment?
It is the panicked scream over a cellphone to a stock broker: "dump the tech sector!"
I may take you up on the offer to continue this elsewhere, but I do need to take care of one thing publicly.
A common tactic of trolls is to reply quoting text the original poster never typed. The 'universe' statement stuck out like a big troll warning lamp.
My profound apologies. I quoted the statement only as a means to indicate a general concept I described in a previous post. I never intended to put those words in your mouth.
As opposed to the real assasinations that are engaged in under socialism.
I'm going to follow up with you on this, not because I necessarily want to argue the point with you, but because I have been in a process of rethinking my politics lately, and honestly want to throw some ideas in the air and see how they fall.
I have always been a strident red, white, and blue flag waving capitalist. I always riled at the scoundrel liberals who kept talking about the evils of giant corporations, insisting instead that the government was the single biggest impediment to economic development and progress.
Then I joined the workforce as a systems/network engineer. I started out working for a company much like this. Then I came to experience Microsoft. And Cisco. Then later, the whole Enron thing went down.
I tried to hold on to my views on government regulation, but then the DMCA happened. Then SSSCA, etc. etc. etc.
Basically, everything I've ever heard from liberals about the evils of big business seems to be true. Now, I don't like the idea of anyone controlling anyone else's life, so that pretty much puts me firmly at odds with people like liberals and communists.
I began to wonder if, strictly from a perspective of the way the U.S. was originally set up, we even had a dog in the capitalism vs. communism fight. It seems to be a choice between being controlled by megacorps or being controlled by the government. I thought the idea was that we would be free. I've since concluded that of all the powerful forces at odds in Washington, no one is working to maintain freedom. I've also concluded that freedom is the only legacy we have as a people that really matters, and I've tried to figure out how to translate that position into meaningful political action, but so far, I haven't decided how to do that. Comments?
I'm not quite sure how they've been so successful in the server market, though.
The answer lies in your analysis of their success in the desktop OS segment. Here's how it works:
You are a business with 50,000 users. 99% of those users use some flavor of Windows.
Microsoft shows up at your door one day, and suggests that you change all your servers to NT. If bribing the CIO into forcing the change down IT's throat doesn't work, and/or this suggestion is resisted...
Microsoft threatens to do a license audit of all your PCs. You can either:
Find 50,000 license certificates spread among 15 campuses, 10,000 of which are remote laptop users, and 1,000 of those are overseas, all within the two week preparation period Microsoft gives you before the audit
Swallow the blue pill and become a 100% Microsoft shop.
Cisco employs similar tactics, but since they don't have the license audit leverage, they engage in character assassination of IT people who resist Cisco implementations. Isn't capitalism fun?
Do you know that you can take the experience you described, add a dash of respect and awe at what you call "the mind", and you would be in keeping with most experiences of spirituality?
Look at it through the eyes of people not so prone as we westerners are at separating the physical and the spiritual. You might find a different perspective.
This gave you away as trolling. Good job feeding it though.
I understand trolling to be making a deliberately shocking and disruptive statement which 1 - is patently absurd and indefensible in debate and 2 - I know to be false in order to produce an emotional reaction for the sheer sport of doing so. I wish I were trolling.
As to forced upon others, how many times were you drug off to atheism church as a child? How many atheist have knocked on your door trying to convert you?
Atheism's primary practice is to work through the government to supress the religious life of others. I have never known of any organized atheist effort not directed toward limiting the religious freedom of other people.
Notice how I said "lack," but didn't say "disbelief." A very crucial difference between atheists and anti-theists.
Point taken, but given that, I would really like to know how you distinguish yourself from agnosticism.
As an aside, pointing fingers while claiming that something has a superiority complex while quoting one's opinions as fact hardly portrays humble intentions.
My humility extends to my recommendation that you reevaluate your standard for truth. The invincibility of your ignorance with regard to the flaws of how you think demonstrates a lack of awareness of the capacity to do that. Your faith is, for lack of a better word, blind.
Not only is atheism a belief and an idea, but it is distinguished among ideas in that its fundamental characteristic is applied to others. It is by nature, therefore, a belief which can only exist in as much as it is forced upon others.
It bears mention that the only defense you've raised outside of trying to bolster the "platform of Absolute Knowledge of the Universe" has been the emotional statement quoted above. Also, you have characterized my criticisms of the platform principle as trying to prove"a superiority complex" on the part of atheists. I thought the underpinning of atheism is the iron adherence to reason. It is interesting that someone so ostensibly dedicated to reason is capable of being so guided by emotion.
Then what do you consider to be "Christianity"? Seriously, I've asked this question of every Christian I know, and I've never received a consistent answer. What does one have to do to be a "Christian"?
At the risk of biting a troll, I'll assume your question is asked in a state of intellectual honesty. I must also disclaim my response by pointing out that Christians have very wide differences of belief, and my answer will constitute my own beliefs. I do not claim that the author of the original post nor anyone else holds these particular beliefs, but I will try to be as broad as possible.
Christianity is the state of acceptance of a proposal God puts forth. No action is actually required. To understand this proposal, certian precepts must exist. My statement of these precepts does not constitute a demand on my part that you accept them, but that you must in order to accept the proposal:
God exists, and that the nature of God is such that He created the universe and everything in it. The Christian God is distinguished among deities in that this creation was deliberate, which means that the Christian God is defined by will.
Humans were created unique in the universe in that they had the capacity for self-determination. This freedom is total, and therefore has two profound effects. This means humans have will, which, IMHO, is what "created in his image" means. It also creates the possibility for humans to do wrong. That second point answers a most important question about God. If a benevolent God exists, how can the world be so terrible? Answer - so that your freedom to choose shall be preserved. That means that all the suffering of the world is permitted just so you can have freedom. Use it well.
It is God's intention that humans enter into a relationship with God based on the following:
The humans will trust God.
The humans will obey God.
God's contribution to this relationship is to grant humans fellowship and goodwill on the part of their creator, and to imbue them with the blessings of life as God intended it to be, that is: joyous.
The problem: Humans generally truly fuck up their lives and the lives of others. This creates incredible pain and an atmosphere of angst which makes obeying God impossible to actually do. The end result is that people don't live the way God intended.
solution 1: Take away the pain. God's omnipotent, right? Can't he take away the pain? Yes, he can, but he has an overriding priority. What might that priority be? What could be more important to God than millions of suffering souls writhing in torment? Freedom. Your freedom to wear a nose ring, stamp kittens, think, sing, love, and kill is more important to God than the horrors of hell. No shit. If God takes away the tears of the pain of a bad breakup, for example, you never really had the chance to freely love in the first place, and have the chance to fuck that love up and bring about the tears. If God were to simply pluck away the failure of human experience, The success becomes meaningless. This meaning that every moment of our lives has is more valuable to God than literally anything else. There is no price too high for even one millisecond of free human experience.
solution 2:Take the pain. This is what the whole Jesus thing is all about. How do you pluck the pain out of the human heart without diminishing the human experience? The answer is God living as a man and being innocently executed. I kept pointing out that there is no price God is not willing to pay for our freedom. He proved that with the expense of his own life. He didn't die to bring about guilt. He died to bring about change. This brings us to the new plan:
Trust God
So where did obey go? Are the laws still there? Yes, they are. Then why is obedience not part of the plan anymore? Because trusting God means believing that you can be a noble, beautiful, honorable, loving, joyous individual if your life wasn't so filled with pain. Obedience was always a means to an end. If you truly understand, for yourself, not what televangelists, anti-evolution protesters, and abortion clinic bombers tell you, what God did in the life of Jesus, all that will be left is nobility, purity, beauty, love, etc. etc. Obedience is obviated by the relationship of "friends"(Jesus' words) that takes place when you trust God in Christ.
Caveat. I'm going to break my general rule of no direct urging on this and one other point. The second plan looks easy, doesn't it? Be careful. Having that which holds you back stripped suddenly away may leave you a different person that you ever imagined could exist. If the idea of a change in your life so far reaching that it will challenge your view of the world, yourself, and the decisions you make every day scares you, then Christianity is not for you. If you do actually take God's hand, you will not be the same. You have been warned.
My final admonition: When you find what you think is the truth, demand everything of it. If it fails you in the slightest way, cast it aside immediately. Truth is too hard to come by for you to waste any of your time in falsehood.
FAQ
What in the hell do you mean pushing your dogmatic, mythological, theist bullshit in this forum?!
I was asked for my dogmatic, mythological, theist bullshit by the author of the parent post.
What about (insert your favorite bible verse about God telling the Israelites to kill whoever here)?
The Bible is a piece of literature. [gasp!] It should be evaluated in that context. Everything it says is designed to say something to a specific audience. For example, in the Genesis creation story, the early Earth is described as an expanse of water. What could better illustrate void to a people who live in the desert? The idea of the open sea was like the surface of Mars to them. This means that elements of historical information are told in the context of what, to someone living 5,000 years ago, would constitute a blessed nation - that is- military victory. Life was much cheaper and shorter then, and we cannot impose moral judgements which the luxury of our current way of life allows us onto texts written from oral stories intended to be understood by Middle Eastern people living thousands of years ago. This may sound like I'm knocking the Bible as an authoritative source of truth, but I don't honestly believe the people who wrote Genesis (50 chapters), having spent 2 chapters documenting two different and contradictory creation stories, expected them to be taken literally.
Aha! So you admit the Bible is flawed! You don't even believe in your own tooth fairy bullshit!
Does the Mona Lisa have value? It doesn't make good wallpaper, does it? I mean, it's pretty and all, but the only way you could get it to work as wallpaper is try to separate each strand of canvas and glue them to the walls at even intervals, right? If you did this, you'd wind up with a destroyed masterpiece and a big nasty gluey mess. This sounds bizarre, I know, but this is what you have to do if you are going to believe that the Bible's truth is contained on its words rather than in them. It is perfectly possible for me to consistently believe in the Bible if I demonstrate the slightest respect for the way the work was put together.
Well, I'm sorry this thing turned out to be so long. If anyone wants to continue this discussion offline(or play a rousing game of mailbomb the Christian), feel free to e-mail me at the_lone_marauder@yahoo.com
Oh, I see. Despite being an expression of human thought, atheism is somehow fundamentally transcendent from the rigors of debate which we normally apply to ideas.
Excerpt from the catechism, verse (hehe) 2:
Their arguments are therefore intrinsically superior and not subject to question.
Slashdot Mirror
This story's current moderation score on K5: 95
(It's been voted to the front page)
Yet another testament to the need for a more democratic story acceptance system.
Yeah, because K5's stories are really good. I really like the current offering about how to get fat, and, surprisingly enough, they currently have another story about global warming.
Ah, the ubiquitous inevitibility argument.
That argument is, of course, bullshit. Use of a modern HTML DTD such as 4.01 strict enforces consistent behavior on the client side. Javascript may still be a problem, but handicapped accessiblity guidelines will require that content be delivered without its use.
There was a time where I could not browse the web with anything but IE because of the MS incited erosion of HTML standards. But the resurgence of attention to those standards, combined with a significant and growing user population using non IE browsers, have forced most web sites to un-adapt from the defacto Microsoft standard.
As for Opera specifically, it is the only browser out there which consistently obeys pre- HTML 4.01 strict DTDs. I am a paying user of Opera, and use it on all my GUI systems.
There's one on my web site. Check it out.
(So much for security by obscurity, huh?)
Put everything you just said in the context of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
Ah, advice on posting from someone who posts at -1. Ordinarily, I wouldn't respond, but I can't resist in this case...
It looks like your karma got ran over by my dogma
har har har...
As one of the tiny community of Christians here at Slashdot, let me point out that Jesus welcomes all, including black hat crackers and warez fiends, and that far from begrudgingly embracing the above parties as repentant sinners, His views on the morality of the mega-rich software vendors doing things such as sending goons to public schools to enforce the use of their products would probably call for those opposing said megacorps to receive the same esteem He granted to those on the fringes in His own time. (read up on some of the disciples)
On a related note, he would like us to know that Bill Gates is going to hell.(Matt 19:24)
Guillermo Gonzalez is also well known as a proponent of "Intelligent Design,"
Heretic! Off with his head!
It's not surprising that ID and Rare Earth-ism go hand in hand; if intelligent life is common in the universe, it makes it less likely that humanity is the product of a Divine Plan -- at least to the degree that the limited minds of ID'ers and other creationists seem to be able to conceive divinity.
Indeed, it is no less surprising that the cyclical universe theory enjoys what can only be described as fanatical desperation on the part of atheist scientists. We can't have the universe being a singular event in time! It's hilarious to me that the evidence in this case supports Gonzales (we haven't seen ET yet), but those who hold forth the standard of pure evidence are capable of stepping outside of the evaluation of evidence to characterize the minds of their opponents as "weak" based purely on their own belief. (again - we haven't seen ET yet.)
It is wrong and illegal to monitor the online activities of minors. Unless of course, it's us.
- U.S. Federal Government.
One of my interview questions is "What is your greatest technical achievement?" If your answer to that question has anything to do with certifications, I will throw you out into the street.
I don't recall ever being critically intersted in an applicant's certifications, and when I am, I can consult their resume. I want to know if you can do the job.
eXistenZ is definitely a great movie,
Thanks. I've been trying to get a grip on this whole "troll" thing, and I appreciate your efforts on clearing it up.
Taking charge will get your ass fired. That statement is written in blood. I know whereof I speak.
Your only course of action is thud factor.
Produce a prodigious, deliberately obfuscated, massive report of why Things Are Bad and that you need to fix them. Document actual examples of problems they have experienced as a result of their policyless approach to Internet use, and constantly reference the need for effective policies.
If this report is met with resistance, write an incident report every time something bad happens, pointing out that if policies were in effect, none of this would have happened, etc.
Even if this doesn't work, it will CYA.
Best of luck.
I am a CNE. The first five years of my professional career were spent working with Novell, including hundreds of Border Manager implementations.
BM sucks.
BM should only be used if you must implement different proxy cache user policies per user AND those users cannot be distinguished by any other factor AND you don't know how to use Squid's ACLs and LDAP.
Server firewalls should be OpenBSD. Proxy cache should be Squid, running on the OS of your choice (I usually use Linux).
Man, no doubt! As I read the article, I kept asking myself, "Is there anyone in the US government capable of a) - this level of technical understanding and b) - this level of sheer statesmanship."
I guess this means I can't rant on the US-centric whiners anymore. Ah well.
At least now I know where to go when they put cameras in my cul-de-sac and/or come to take my guns away.
I spent some time thinking about this, and I was able to come up with the "freedom" answer to the problems I posed.
The market nature of a free society is such that if I am annoyed enough about the problems I described, I can put my money where my mouth is and start my own company.
The problem is that, for a variety of reasons, it is prohibitively difficult to do this. I know the stock right-wing answer to this conundrum (deregulation), but I also happen to have been VERY close to the core of the Republican establishment, and I KNOW that what goes on behind closed doors in the Republican party is NOT what you hear on the Rush Limbaugh show, and that, to them, government regulation is a perfectly acceptable method of ensuring the financial comfort of their constituents, who really ARE the 5% and really DO run everything. The farce of grassroots Republicanism is that the core of the Republican establishment is not aligned with the "dittohead caucus", and in fact disdains the common Republican. The only real difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats have a higher regard for lying to common people about their objectives.
In summary, then, I think the (original) American system would work. The problem is, I don't see much evidence of that system in our modern American empire. Arguments to the tune of "show me a country who does it better" overlook the fact that the success we speak of only occurred since 1945, and that we were the only country to win WWII with all of our infrastructure intact.
What follows is going to seem confrontational. I am deliberately putting opposing views up to you for the purpose of refinement in the crucible of debate. I am not attacking you personally. I happen to agree with all of your criticisms of the left, particularly with regard to the Waco Massacre and gun control. You may say that I am, to large extent, playing devil's advocate.
What do you mean here -- that you were in favor of government regulation, until even more regulation, in the form of DMCA and (proposed) SSSCA/CBDTPA/whatever, you changed your mind?
Yeah, it occurred to me after I wrote this that my points about government regulation appear confused. It appears to me that government regulation is directed toward the betterment of a few at the expense of the many. I guess what I was trying to point out is that the idealism of the left and right ultimately don't matter. Power is accumulated and protected. At any cost. Another good example would be HIPPA, which is designed to so confuse the healthcare industry as to make it impossible for it to operate without increasing government control, ultimately culminating in socialized healthcare.
Rush Limbaugh, who almost constantly preaches lowering taxes, reducing regulation, celebrating the ability of people to make their own choices.
Rush Limbaugh is an unflagging sycophant of Bill Gates. He consistently compares him to the giants of industry; a pioneer of a brave new frontier who invented the Internet. In fact, finding out that Rush and those like him equate wealth with morality was one of the first things to "bust my bubble".
Does Congress focus its energy on freeing individual Americans to decide for themselves whether, how, and to what extent to invest in their own retirement, choices they had, and continue to have, when it comes to investing in corporations like Enron? Of course not, because neither activity would increase the power of the wannabe-tyrants over the people.
Yes it does, and yes it would. Ken Lay is living the high life on the money of those who invested in Enron as part of their retirement plans. Of course it would further the Ken Lays of the world to be able to tap Social Security monies in scams like Enron.
In fact, I am pretty much disenchanted with the core of the capitalist system in general. That is - capital. The stock market allows for the very rich to effectively start companies which then hire employees, but because the rich can and will immediately abandon their stake at the slightest whiff of economic trouble, their level of risk involved in the company is disproportionately small compared to those who work there. This means that the mega rich can devastate entire industries on the basis of fad, instantly devaluing countless companies and creating legions of jobless literally overnight (not that any of us have seen that recently) as money is ripped away from the working economy and clutched to the breast of the 5%.
I like the idea of personal responsibility, and I deeply respect the business owner who puts his/her heart and soul into a business and see it succeed. The problem is, based on my experience, that there seems to be no responsibility on the part of those who control capital in the American system. Ever since our capitalist system crystalized in the Industrial Revolution, it has worked toward the accumulation and protection of wealth (as opposed to the distrubition and creation of it). The system brutally failed in the 20's, and it took immense effort, on the part of the government in the form of the WWII war effort, to create enough momentum to entice the mega rich to jump back in to the economy, but their penchant toward making massive segments of the economy evaporate produces a great deal of friction against economic development. History since WWII has proven that when those things come along which will increase the ability of the economy as a whole to produce (technology), they are disdained by the megarich, who rape the economy in the form of stock selloffs and then return to waiting around for something else to get the economy moving for them.
In the late middle ages, a technology came about which allowed the exchange of ideas so profound and far reaching that it created a golden age of enlightenment and prosperity known throughout the rest of history as the Renaissance.
If a printing press can end what was known as the "Dark Ages", what incredible hope and promise could the Internet hold? The Internet is more far reaching as a social effect than was the agricultural revolution. Today's culture knows no boundaries of city wall. I can exchange ideas with a Japanese steel worker working on Kansai or a Croatian looking out his window watching my government's planes land in his country. It is more important to knowledge than was the development of writing. Even the Library of Alexandria cannot compare to the magnitude and depth of sheer human experience and knowledge obtainable on the Internet. And it is more important to culture than anything in human history. The capacity for communication, for community, and for the hope of our future can come from this new online world. And what has our proud American capitalist, bravely forging forth into a new and uncertain world, steward of our destiny, do when faced with this profound revolution? What is the character of the American dream as it surges forth into this burgeoning age of light and enrichment?It is the panicked scream over a cellphone to a stock broker: "dump the tech sector!"
I may take you up on the offer to continue this elsewhere, but I do need to take care of one thing publicly.
A common tactic of trolls is to reply quoting text the original poster never typed. The 'universe' statement stuck out like a big troll warning lamp.
My profound apologies. I quoted the statement only as a means to indicate a general concept I described in a previous post. I never intended to put those words in your mouth.
As opposed to the real assasinations that are engaged in under socialism.
I'm going to follow up with you on this, not because I necessarily want to argue the point with you, but because I have been in a process of rethinking my politics lately, and honestly want to throw some ideas in the air and see how they fall.
I have always been a strident red, white, and blue flag waving capitalist. I always riled at the scoundrel liberals who kept talking about the evils of giant corporations, insisting instead that the government was the single biggest impediment to economic development and progress.
Then I joined the workforce as a systems/network engineer. I started out working for a company much like this. Then I came to experience Microsoft. And Cisco. Then later, the whole Enron thing went down.
I tried to hold on to my views on government regulation, but then the DMCA happened. Then SSSCA, etc. etc. etc.
Basically, everything I've ever heard from liberals about the evils of big business seems to be true. Now, I don't like the idea of anyone controlling anyone else's life, so that pretty much puts me firmly at odds with people like liberals and communists.
I began to wonder if, strictly from a perspective of the way the U.S. was originally set up, we even had a dog in the capitalism vs. communism fight. It seems to be a choice between being controlled by megacorps or being controlled by the government. I thought the idea was that we would be free. I've since concluded that of all the powerful forces at odds in Washington, no one is working to maintain freedom. I've also concluded that freedom is the only legacy we have as a people that really matters, and I've tried to figure out how to translate that position into meaningful political action, but so far, I haven't decided how to do that. Comments?
I'm not quite sure how they've been so successful in the server market, though.
The answer lies in your analysis of their success in the desktop OS segment. Here's how it works:
Cisco employs similar tactics, but since they don't have the license audit leverage, they engage in character assassination of IT people who resist Cisco implementations. Isn't capitalism fun?
Do you know that you can take the experience you described, add a dash of respect and awe at what you call "the mind", and you would be in keeping with most experiences of spirituality?
Look at it through the eyes of people not so prone as we westerners are at separating the physical and the spiritual. You might find a different perspective.
This gave you away as trolling. Good job feeding it though.
I understand trolling to be making a deliberately shocking and disruptive statement which 1 - is patently absurd and indefensible in debate and 2 - I know to be false in order to produce an emotional reaction for the sheer sport of doing so. I wish I were trolling.
As to forced upon others, how many times were you drug off to atheism church as a child? How many atheist have knocked on your door trying to convert you?
Atheism's primary practice is to work through the government to supress the religious life of others. I have never known of any organized atheist effort not directed toward limiting the religious freedom of other people.
Notice how I said "lack," but didn't say "disbelief." A very crucial difference between atheists and anti-theists.
Point taken, but given that, I would really like to know how you distinguish yourself from agnosticism.
As an aside, pointing fingers while claiming that something has a superiority complex while quoting one's opinions as fact hardly portrays humble intentions.
My humility extends to my recommendation that you reevaluate your standard for truth. The invincibility of your ignorance with regard to the flaws of how you think demonstrates a lack of awareness of the capacity to do that. Your faith is, for lack of a better word, blind.
Not only is atheism a belief and an idea, but it is distinguished among ideas in that its fundamental characteristic is applied to others. It is by nature, therefore, a belief which can only exist in as much as it is forced upon others.
It bears mention that the only defense you've raised outside of trying to bolster the "platform of Absolute Knowledge of the Universe" has been the emotional statement quoted above. Also, you have characterized my criticisms of the platform principle as trying to prove"a superiority complex" on the part of atheists. I thought the underpinning of atheism is the iron adherence to reason. It is interesting that someone so ostensibly dedicated to reason is capable of being so guided by emotion.
a swarm of remote controlled rats!
Then what do you consider to be "Christianity"? Seriously, I've asked this question of every Christian I know, and I've never received a consistent answer. What does one have to do to be a "Christian"?
At the risk of biting a troll, I'll assume your question is asked in a state of intellectual honesty. I must also disclaim my response by pointing out that Christians have very wide differences of belief, and my answer will constitute my own beliefs. I do not claim that the author of the original post nor anyone else holds these particular beliefs, but I will try to be as broad as possible.
Christianity is the state of acceptance of a proposal God puts forth. No action is actually required. To understand this proposal, certian precepts must exist. My statement of these precepts does not constitute a demand on my part that you accept them, but that you must in order to accept the proposal:
FAQ
What in the hell do you mean pushing your dogmatic, mythological, theist bullshit in this forum?!
I was asked for my dogmatic, mythological, theist bullshit by the author of the parent post.
What about (insert your favorite bible verse about God telling the Israelites to kill whoever here)?
The Bible is a piece of literature. [gasp!] It should be evaluated in that context. Everything it says is designed to say something to a specific audience. For example, in the Genesis creation story, the early Earth is described as an expanse of water. What could better illustrate void to a people who live in the desert? The idea of the open sea was like the surface of Mars to them. This means that elements of historical information are told in the context of what, to someone living 5,000 years ago, would constitute a blessed nation - that is- military victory. Life was much cheaper and shorter then, and we cannot impose moral judgements which the luxury of our current way of life allows us onto texts written from oral stories intended to be understood by Middle Eastern people living thousands of years ago. This may sound like I'm knocking the Bible as an authoritative source of truth, but I don't honestly believe the people who wrote Genesis (50 chapters), having spent 2 chapters documenting two different and contradictory creation stories, expected them to be taken literally.
Aha! So you admit the Bible is flawed! You don't even believe in your own tooth fairy bullshit!
Does the Mona Lisa have value? It doesn't make good wallpaper, does it? I mean, it's pretty and all, but the only way you could get it to work as wallpaper is try to separate each strand of canvas and glue them to the walls at even intervals, right? If you did this, you'd wind up with a destroyed masterpiece and a big nasty gluey mess. This sounds bizarre, I know, but this is what you have to do if you are going to believe that the Bible's truth is contained on its words rather than in them. It is perfectly possible for me to consistently believe in the Bible if I demonstrate the slightest respect for the way the work was put together.
Well, I'm sorry this thing turned out to be so long. If anyone wants to continue this discussion offline(or play a rousing game of mailbomb the Christian), feel free to e-mail me at the_lone_marauder@yahoo.com
Atheism is not an idea.
Oh, I see. Despite being an expression of human thought, atheism is somehow fundamentally transcendent from the rigors of debate which we normally apply to ideas.
Excerpt from the catechism, verse (hehe) 2: