Drug test? Is there an operating-heavy-equipment part of game testing that I haven't heard about?
One logic might be that people with uncontrollable
needs may be more likely to steal. In the case of
a game company, secrecy can be a significant
competitive necessity.
Benefit: Anything that either (1) improves the quality of life for the target (longer lifespan, more leisure time, happier life) without impacting the target's survivability or (2) improves the target's survivability without impacting its quality of life.
It's encouraging that you begin to cite
quantifiable things, like longer lifespan
and more leisure time. Unfortunately, longer
lifespan alone is not necessarily considered
beneficial. Many religions do not value long
life per se, but what you do with your time.
Leisure time is even less universally lauded.
Some cultures (including America, mind you)
regard too much leisure time as laziness.
Many cultural factors override the Darwinian
individualistic ideals you cite.
As for "happier life", I'm afraid that still
isn't independent of culture. What makes you
happy is likely very different from what makes
a Buddhist monk happy.
Are you really not going to give up the quest
for a definition of right, wrong, good, bad, benefit, and harm independent of a cultural
system of value judgement? These are, at their
basis, cultural concepts.
You're assuming that US policy "created" these people. Saddam was who he was in the early seventies.
Yes, but he became stronger partly because
of US wariness against Iran.
Read the Atlantic Monthly piece. OBL was influenced by a lot of things besides the US. For instance, if he had not been exposed to radical Islamic thought, I bet he wouldn't be a terrorist right now.
He was not just "exposed" to radical thought.
He agreed with it wholeheartedly.
I'm not blaming the US for terrorism. I'm
saying that the US can act differently
to alleviate the sympathy they get. If the
US acts with goodwill and nobility, then the
radical thoughts would not resonate as well.
Let's subtract from the detractors those who are owed billions by Iraq and those who are directly involved with selling them materials that violated the UN sanctions.
Shall we also subtract the supporters who
receive aid from the US, as well as the country
whose oil industry just might profit from the
war? If you don't want people to assume the
war was about oil, don't assume that objections
are similarly ill-motivated.
I don't view 9/11 as being an investment in Arab goodwill.
The fact is you got some. "People dancing in
the streets" do not necessarily represent
all or even majority thinking. Like all
peoples, there are hawks, doves, and moderates
even among Arabs.
The long term solution is a reformation of islamic culture. [...] I don't see any easy
solutions.
You might not mean it that way, but it sounds
like it's all their fault. How can the US
help them along?
Example: Torturing new-born babies for entertainment.
Actually, you're talking about a value judgement
(value of entertainment versus value of baby's
life and suffering) that most or all human
races will judge the same way. Evolutionarily,
human subsets that do not value babies probably
die out, so they're not here to contribute
their culture. (Good riddance to them, but
try to understand the point.)
There is never a time under any circumstances where that is acceptable. It might have happened, but in all places at all times it is wrong.
But it's not. An emperor is usually considered
to own everything, including lives, in
the empire. That is only wrong when you believe
in fundamental (absolute) human rights. Point
is, if the emperor tortures babies, the act is
only morally wrong when you reject the prevailing morality of his time and place. If you accept
his culture, then you must accept his supremacy
in determining the fate of each subject. His
"right" to torture babies is the same "right"
to own slaves and to cut off anybody's head.
And a lot of wrongs are permitted in the name of "cultural differences"
Only if you assume you can define right and
wrong independently (absolutely) of culture.
Just because there are two sides to an argument it doesn't mean each side is equally valid or that either side has any validity at all.
I agree, but that has nothing to do with what
I wrote. Not believing humans can gain
absolute truth is not the same as not making
any moral judgements.
People who believe that nothing is absolute can be made to believe absolutely anything.
This is called a false dichotomy, along the
lines of "if you're not with us, you're
against us". I believe that the earth is
round, not because I'm absolutely sure, but
because I evaluated the evidence, and
judged it to be believable. It
doesn't mean I can be made to believe in
fairies or aliens without evidence. It
does mean that if Osama bin Laden approaches
me with his "absolute truth", I will be
sufficiently skeptical.
in retrospect, maybe the US shouldn't have been playing footsie with him, but this "past guilt" theory of the left just doesn't help to solve today's problems.
It doesn't. However, what other dictators is
the US flirting with right now?
The simplest and straightest way to solve this problem is to cut the Gordian knot
Why do you assume this is a Gordian Knot that
you can just cut through and solve?
I have yet to see a better solution to dealing with Saddam right now
I agree. However, I have yet to see the US
trying to act differently to avoid creating
another Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden
elsewhere. US diplomacy has failed to get
even western nations to endorse the war, and
has Arab nations almost unanimously against
it. The US has effectively thrown away most
of the compassion it gained on 9/11.
Yes, war against Saddam Hussein was probably
inevitable, but where's the long term solution
to the actual problem?
the US is absolutely right to put an end to Saddam's terror.
Beware when you hear people use words like
"absolutely". Be even more wary if you start
using it yourself. This is the language used
by fundamentalists, who tolerate no challenge,
who claim monopoly of the truth. When you are
"absolutely" certain of something, then there
is no room for argument and discussion, there
is no open mind, there is no dissent.
A lot of wrongs were committed in the name of
"absolute right".
what's the point of comparing metrics of video processing programs if Adobe's isn't crafted specifically for the nuances of OSX, and Apple's is? It's apples and oranges.
So what? Do you also complain that a particular
chip has a better compiler? If a slow processor
ships with a better compiler, and does the work
better, then it's a better platform. Nobody
should care what clock speed it runs at, or what
instruction set it uses, or how much cache it
has. This is an application benchmark, where
people who will actually use Photoshop are
told how fast it actually runs on either
platform.
If Apple successfully helps Adobe optimize
Photoshop so that a 2x1.25 GHz G4 runs
faster than a 3 GHz P4, then good for them.
If Intel then helps Adobe optimize the Windows
version to run faster than the Mac, then good
for them. Each comparison, however, remains
valid.
The integrity of the UN is based on its willingness to stand by its own decisions.
Yes. If the UN simply does nothing, its
reputation will be damaged.
However, by acting without the UN, the US and UK
are also damaging the reputation of the UN, and
their calls for Iraq to obey the UN is therefore
plain hypocrisy.
Either the UK, US, and Iraq all need to obey
the UN, or nobody has to. I cannot make it
any simpler than that, so if you still want to
deliberately ignore this, just feel free to
have the last word.
The threat of a veto on the 18th resolution doesnt negate their approval of the prior 17 resolutions.
Yeah, whatever. The important point which you
seem hell bent on sidestepping is that the UN
is opposed to the war now. The US and
UK are ignoring this opposition now.
This does not "protect the integrity of the UN",
as asserted by the initial post.
I was talking about free (beer) software, or
the rest of my post would make no sense.
If an entity was required by policy to only
use free (beer) software, that policy must be
violated when there are no free (beer) software
that are good enough to use. Such violations
will bring about more violations, even where
free (beer) software do fit the job. Worse,
they'd probably pirate the non-free (beer)
software, because they don't have a software
budget.
And the will of the UN, through 17 unanimously passed chapter 7 resolutions, is to disarm Iraq.
Unless you're deluding yourself, it is plainly
clear that use of force against Iraq will be
opposed or vetoed if the US and UK push for an
explicit resolution. The fact that everybody
wants Iraq to disarm does not give the US a
blank check to enforce it through an
unauthorized war.
Let me reiterate: the will of any state with
veto power in the UN is the will of the UN,
by design. You might not like this design,
but you must respect it if you want somebody
else to pay attention to UN resolutions.
Yes, but unfortunately it seems to be a popular
oversimplification.
When Desert Storm was about to begin, and all the US tanks were lined up on his border about to push him out of Kuwait, he was still ranting about the "Mother of all battles."
Uh, no, if he had publicly said that "gosh,
there's a lot of them coalitions, and looks
like we'll get our butts kicked this time",
then I'll really agree he's mad.
Think chemical weapons. He used them readily
against people who didn't have them. He did
not use it in Gulf War I, and he hasn't used
them yet this time. He is clearly able to
weigh the consequences of his actions.
Freeing the world from a madman with illegal weapons
I'm very curious as to where this came from.
Saddam Hussein is not mad. He might be a
megalomaniac, and he is certainly ruthless and
cruel, but by all indications he is a cunning
and calculating opponent.
This may sound like semantics, but it matters
very much. You cannot reason with or
effectively threaten a true madman, so it
severely limits the options available.
Protecting the integrity of the UN by enforcing the 17 unanimous resolutions that France wants to ignore
You cannot pick and choose which bits of the
UN system you "protect". France has veto
power (which, by the way, is designed in part
by the US), and therefore it is free to use
it however it sees fit. If you want to defend
the UN, you must also defend the veto power of
a permanent member. They are part and parcel.
The will of one nation with veto power is
the will of the UN, by design.
Thanks for that powerful stand.
Thanks for considering the possibility that
many people who are against the war (means)
do not object to its outcome (ends). There
is no contradiction: it's an old, old
proverb.
If they require that the software must be free, no company gets excluded. There's nothing stopping MS from offering software that fits their requirements.
What would you say if NASA wanted Space Shuttle
control software to be free as well?
Yes, that's an extreme example, but the point
is, the free software/open source community
should encourage people to use software with
the best value for the job. Free software
obviously have inherent advantages in value,
but some are still in early stages of
development, and you'd really get better
results with commercial software in the
meantime. On the other hand, OpenOffice.org
may present a much better value than Microsoft
Word, and that's what we want to spread the
word on.
Blanket policies like this will simply be
subverted if there are areas where they
can't make do with free software. The
problem is, if they ignore the policy anyway,
then why not just use Word? Worse, because
there was no software budget, they'll just
pirate it, which helps neither commercial
vendors nor free software.
There is no miscarriage of justice here; no innocent being railroaded.
This Reuters report seems to suggest that at least 18 of
them were found innocent and freed, after
as many as 18 months in cages. The US government
denied them both access to US courts and
protection of the Geneva convention.
And please don't say "at least they weren't
tortured".
But others would say that it's immoral [...], and it will lead to the utter breakdown of our entire society, and thus we're all victims
These others will be operating on an invalid
logic. There are many completely legal acts
that would collectively lead to even worse
breakdowns of society.
For example, I certainly have the right to
wait on the sidewalk for a cab. However, if
two million other people decide to exercise
that right on the same curb, then the police
will likely have to disperse the crowd
somehow, or a lot of people might get hurt
or even killed.
The difference between my standing on the
sidewalk and "sodomy" is the morality of
the action, not the effects of everybody
following suit. Therefore, proponents of
such a law must necessarily argue that
morality alone is a suitable basis for law,
not what might happen if lots of people end
up doing it.
No, justice is a moral and abstract concept.
Legal action is an approximation of justice.
It is not possible, for a particular set of
circumstances, to get absolute consensus on
what constitutes justice. This is particularly
visible with juries that award multi-million
penalties that judges then slash in half.
Which one is just?
There are also many
levels of justice. For example, a black man
who murders a white man might be sentenced to
death: justice. However, if a white man
who murders a black man under similar
circumstances, and gets sentenced only to
20 years in prison, then the death sentence
is really an injustice.
Preventing criminals from doing further harm is one of the aims of punishment (others being things like to deter others).
No, there are really three components: "paying"
for the crime, preventing you from doing it
again, and deterring others from doing the same.
The original post is arguing that the payback
component should be removed from our thinking.
laws regarding same-sex sex which seem to exist from a viewpoint of it being wrong
SMS is way overrated. It has its place, but given the tariffs in the US, it will never be a big deal.
Well, in many (most) US cities, smokers have to
exit to a designated smoking area or outside the
building to puff a cigarette, as a result of a
social backlash. While somebody talking on the
phone nearby is not really a big health risk,
it is annoying, and it's possible that mobile
callers will eventually be required to go to
designated areas. If that happens, then the
convenience of silently tapping a quick message
can become more popular.
b. a decent, usable screen/browser
c. a smallish form factor
These are contradictory demands. What's more
important to you?
e. lots of third party developers and apps
f. total cost $100
As are these. Just about every phone out there
is heavily subsidized by the carrier, and that
subsidy is recovered from airtime and license
fees from developers.
Frankly, doesn't matter what the protocol is called.
If so, why not call it something else that
doesn't risk confusion of lineage? The fact
is, name is important, which is why
trademark laws formally protect brand names.
Why did Linus Torvalds have to trademark "Linux",
even if he has no apparent intention to market
anything?
[The DMCA is intended to be] a just and good
law. But like many things, it was worded too
vaguely
There's no such thing as a vaguely worded good
law. Such a law is a bad law by definition.
For example, "thou shalt not kill" is a poor
law, because it makes no exceptions for self
defense, capital punishment, euthanasia, and
is unclear on abortion. If any of these
exceptions are vaguely defined, somebody
can, for example, kill you and explain that
you asked him to euthanise you.
The internet is great at stripping the physical characteristics of our world and leaving thought.
It's also very good at removing nuances in
speech or facial expressions that prevent
listeners from taking offense, or not
understanding the joke. It may leave thought,
but it may not be the thought you thought you
left.
Slashdot Mirror
One logic might be that people with uncontrollable needs may be more likely to steal. In the case of a game company, secrecy can be a significant competitive necessity.
It's encouraging that you begin to cite quantifiable things, like longer lifespan and more leisure time. Unfortunately, longer lifespan alone is not necessarily considered beneficial. Many religions do not value long life per se, but what you do with your time. Leisure time is even less universally lauded. Some cultures (including America, mind you) regard too much leisure time as laziness. Many cultural factors override the Darwinian individualistic ideals you cite.
As for "happier life", I'm afraid that still isn't independent of culture. What makes you happy is likely very different from what makes a Buddhist monk happy.
Are you really not going to give up the quest for a definition of right, wrong, good, bad, benefit, and harm independent of a cultural system of value judgement? These are, at their basis, cultural concepts.
Yes, but he became stronger partly because of US wariness against Iran.
Read the Atlantic Monthly piece. OBL was influenced by a lot of things besides the US. For instance, if he had not been exposed to radical Islamic thought, I bet he wouldn't be a terrorist right now.
He was not just "exposed" to radical thought. He agreed with it wholeheartedly. I'm not blaming the US for terrorism. I'm saying that the US can act differently to alleviate the sympathy they get. If the US acts with goodwill and nobility, then the radical thoughts would not resonate as well.
Let's subtract from the detractors those who are owed billions by Iraq and those who are directly involved with selling them materials that violated the UN sanctions.
Shall we also subtract the supporters who receive aid from the US, as well as the country whose oil industry just might profit from the war? If you don't want people to assume the war was about oil, don't assume that objections are similarly ill-motivated.
I don't view 9/11 as being an investment in Arab goodwill.
The fact is you got some. "People dancing in the streets" do not necessarily represent all or even majority thinking. Like all peoples, there are hawks, doves, and moderates even among Arabs.
The long term solution is a reformation of islamic culture. [...] I don't see any easy solutions.
You might not mean it that way, but it sounds like it's all their fault. How can the US help them along?
Wrong: The inverse of right; anything that harms the species as a whole, or actions that, if everyone took them, would harm the species.
Great, but can you please define "benefit" and "harm" independently of culture?
Actually, you're talking about a value judgement (value of entertainment versus value of baby's life and suffering) that most or all human races will judge the same way. Evolutionarily, human subsets that do not value babies probably die out, so they're not here to contribute their culture. (Good riddance to them, but try to understand the point.)
There is never a time under any circumstances where that is acceptable. It might have happened, but in all places at all times it is wrong.
But it's not. An emperor is usually considered to own everything, including lives, in the empire. That is only wrong when you believe in fundamental (absolute) human rights. Point is, if the emperor tortures babies, the act is only morally wrong when you reject the prevailing morality of his time and place. If you accept his culture, then you must accept his supremacy in determining the fate of each subject. His "right" to torture babies is the same "right" to own slaves and to cut off anybody's head.
Only if you assume you can define right and wrong independently (absolutely) of culture.
Just because there are two sides to an argument it doesn't mean each side is equally valid or that either side has any validity at all.
I agree, but that has nothing to do with what I wrote. Not believing humans can gain absolute truth is not the same as not making any moral judgements.
People who believe that nothing is absolute can be made to believe absolutely anything.
This is called a false dichotomy, along the lines of "if you're not with us, you're against us". I believe that the earth is round, not because I'm absolutely sure, but because I evaluated the evidence, and judged it to be believable. It doesn't mean I can be made to believe in fairies or aliens without evidence. It does mean that if Osama bin Laden approaches me with his "absolute truth", I will be sufficiently skeptical.
It doesn't. However, what other dictators is the US flirting with right now?
The simplest and straightest way to solve this problem is to cut the Gordian knot
Why do you assume this is a Gordian Knot that you can just cut through and solve?
I have yet to see a better solution to dealing with Saddam right now
I agree. However, I have yet to see the US trying to act differently to avoid creating another Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden elsewhere. US diplomacy has failed to get even western nations to endorse the war, and has Arab nations almost unanimously against it. The US has effectively thrown away most of the compassion it gained on 9/11.
Yes, war against Saddam Hussein was probably inevitable, but where's the long term solution to the actual problem?
Beware when you hear people use words like "absolutely". Be even more wary if you start using it yourself. This is the language used by fundamentalists, who tolerate no challenge, who claim monopoly of the truth. When you are "absolutely" certain of something, then there is no room for argument and discussion, there is no open mind, there is no dissent.
A lot of wrongs were committed in the name of "absolute right".
So what? Do you also complain that a particular chip has a better compiler? If a slow processor ships with a better compiler, and does the work better, then it's a better platform. Nobody should care what clock speed it runs at, or what instruction set it uses, or how much cache it has. This is an application benchmark, where people who will actually use Photoshop are told how fast it actually runs on either platform.
If Apple successfully helps Adobe optimize Photoshop so that a 2x1.25 GHz G4 runs faster than a 3 GHz P4, then good for them. If Intel then helps Adobe optimize the Windows version to run faster than the Mac, then good for them. Each comparison, however, remains valid.
Yes. If the UN simply does nothing, its reputation will be damaged.
However, by acting without the UN, the US and UK are also damaging the reputation of the UN, and their calls for Iraq to obey the UN is therefore plain hypocrisy.
Either the UK, US, and Iraq all need to obey the UN, or nobody has to. I cannot make it any simpler than that, so if you still want to deliberately ignore this, just feel free to have the last word.
Yeah, whatever. The important point which you seem hell bent on sidestepping is that the UN is opposed to the war now. The US and UK are ignoring this opposition now. This does not "protect the integrity of the UN", as asserted by the initial post.
If an entity was required by policy to only use free (beer) software, that policy must be violated when there are no free (beer) software that are good enough to use. Such violations will bring about more violations, even where free (beer) software do fit the job. Worse, they'd probably pirate the non-free (beer) software, because they don't have a software budget.
Unless you're deluding yourself, it is plainly clear that use of force against Iraq will be opposed or vetoed if the US and UK push for an explicit resolution. The fact that everybody wants Iraq to disarm does not give the US a blank check to enforce it through an unauthorized war.
Let me reiterate: the will of any state with veto power in the UN is the will of the UN, by design. You might not like this design, but you must respect it if you want somebody else to pay attention to UN resolutions.
Yes, but unfortunately it seems to be a popular oversimplification.
When Desert Storm was about to begin, and all the US tanks were lined up on his border about to push him out of Kuwait, he was still ranting about the "Mother of all battles."
Uh, no, if he had publicly said that "gosh, there's a lot of them coalitions, and looks like we'll get our butts kicked this time", then I'll really agree he's mad.
Think chemical weapons. He used them readily against people who didn't have them. He did not use it in Gulf War I, and he hasn't used them yet this time. He is clearly able to weigh the consequences of his actions.
Have you considered that some of them might "hate this administration" because of the things it does?
I'm very curious as to where this came from. Saddam Hussein is not mad. He might be a megalomaniac, and he is certainly ruthless and cruel, but by all indications he is a cunning and calculating opponent.
This may sound like semantics, but it matters very much. You cannot reason with or effectively threaten a true madman, so it severely limits the options available.
Protecting the integrity of the UN by enforcing the 17 unanimous resolutions that France wants to ignore
You cannot pick and choose which bits of the UN system you "protect". France has veto power (which, by the way, is designed in part by the US), and therefore it is free to use it however it sees fit. If you want to defend the UN, you must also defend the veto power of a permanent member. They are part and parcel. The will of one nation with veto power is the will of the UN, by design.
Thanks for that powerful stand.
Thanks for considering the possibility that many people who are against the war (means) do not object to its outcome (ends). There is no contradiction: it's an old, old proverb.
What would you say if NASA wanted Space Shuttle control software to be free as well?
Yes, that's an extreme example, but the point is, the free software/open source community should encourage people to use software with the best value for the job. Free software obviously have inherent advantages in value, but some are still in early stages of development, and you'd really get better results with commercial software in the meantime. On the other hand, OpenOffice.org may present a much better value than Microsoft Word, and that's what we want to spread the word on.
Blanket policies like this will simply be subverted if there are areas where they can't make do with free software. The problem is, if they ignore the policy anyway, then why not just use Word? Worse, because there was no software budget, they'll just pirate it, which helps neither commercial vendors nor free software.
This Reuters report seems to suggest that at least 18 of them were found innocent and freed, after as many as 18 months in cages. The US government denied them both access to US courts and protection of the Geneva convention.
And please don't say "at least they weren't tortured".
These others will be operating on an invalid logic. There are many completely legal acts that would collectively lead to even worse breakdowns of society.
For example, I certainly have the right to wait on the sidewalk for a cab. However, if two million other people decide to exercise that right on the same curb, then the police will likely have to disperse the crowd somehow, or a lot of people might get hurt or even killed.
The difference between my standing on the sidewalk and "sodomy" is the morality of the action, not the effects of everybody following suit. Therefore, proponents of such a law must necessarily argue that morality alone is a suitable basis for law, not what might happen if lots of people end up doing it.
No, justice is a moral and abstract concept. Legal action is an approximation of justice. It is not possible, for a particular set of circumstances, to get absolute consensus on what constitutes justice. This is particularly visible with juries that award multi-million penalties that judges then slash in half. Which one is just?
There are also many levels of justice. For example, a black man who murders a white man might be sentenced to death: justice. However, if a white man who murders a black man under similar circumstances, and gets sentenced only to 20 years in prison, then the death sentence is really an injustice.
Preventing criminals from doing further harm is one of the aims of punishment (others being things like to deter others).
No, there are really three components: "paying" for the crime, preventing you from doing it again, and deterring others from doing the same. The original post is arguing that the payback component should be removed from our thinking.
laws regarding same-sex sex which seem to exist from a viewpoint of it being wrong
I think that's exactly the point.
Well, in many (most) US cities, smokers have to exit to a designated smoking area or outside the building to puff a cigarette, as a result of a social backlash. While somebody talking on the phone nearby is not really a big health risk, it is annoying, and it's possible that mobile callers will eventually be required to go to designated areas. If that happens, then the convenience of silently tapping a quick message can become more popular.
b. a decent, usable screen/browser
c. a smallish form factor
These are contradictory demands. What's more important to you?
e. lots of third party developers and apps
f. total cost $100
As are these. Just about every phone out there is heavily subsidized by the carrier, and that subsidy is recovered from airtime and license fees from developers.
If so, why not call it something else that doesn't risk confusion of lineage? The fact is, name is important, which is why trademark laws formally protect brand names. Why did Linus Torvalds have to trademark "Linux", even if he has no apparent intention to market anything?
There's no such thing as a vaguely worded good law. Such a law is a bad law by definition. For example, "thou shalt not kill" is a poor law, because it makes no exceptions for self defense, capital punishment, euthanasia, and is unclear on abortion. If any of these exceptions are vaguely defined, somebody can, for example, kill you and explain that you asked him to euthanise you.
You want to talk about efficient use of space to a primitive civilization that has not yet invented the seatbelt?
It's also very good at removing nuances in speech or facial expressions that prevent listeners from taking offense, or not understanding the joke. It may leave thought, but it may not be the thought you thought you left.