But take the other side of that argument, what if the ABM stopped the single nuke that was targeting some out of the way place (like somewhere in Montana or Wyoming). Would you say it's a waste of time to try and protect at least some people? Perhaps you just want to be offed in the first round of an exchange, but there might be a few people who would actually want to live. Rather cold of you just to kill them all with numbers. Would you really rather kill everyone in the US than leave 5000 people alive?
Yer silly. ABM technology is a destabilizing influence -- by displaying the U.S.'s distrust of the rest of the world, it causes Russia, China, etc. to reciprocate that distrust. Which makes a new arms race just that much more likely, which in turn makes it more likely that a nuclear war would start in the first place. feh. you're just being silly.
and if a doomsday exchange happens, and if an ABM system just happens to save 5000 people in wyoming from direct nuclear annihilation, they'll have the pleasure of either dying of radiation poisoning, or slowly starving to death in their bunkers. Fun!
--
"HORSE."
One of the writers for Andromeda posts regularly in the television forums on Salon's "tabletalk" message boards. Rest assured that they know that the Nietzcheans are silly, and yeah, they're supposed to be that way cause it's a silly show. The writer I mentioned has never come out and openly said it, but I think the "atmosphere" they're aiming for with Andromeda is the "so cheesy it's great" feel the original Star Trek series had. --
"HORSE."
2. No Pets. Scientologists like to release the
"Thetans" in Pets. By killing them.
This comment reminds me of the hindus in India who think
Catholics are cannibals because in the sacrament of Holy
Communion you "eat the Body of Christ". [This used to be a
widespread belief many years ago, and you still find it out in
the less educated areas in India.]
The main criticism here is plain technique. FUD is best reserved
for use by the Microsofties, not someone who is supposed to be
intelligent.
You've misunderstood. There's no Scientologist religious
sacrament involving pets. It's just that one of their standard
intimidation techiniques is to kill the pets of those who they
view as enemies. This is derived from Hubbard's "Fair Game"
doctrine, which states that "Suppressive Persons" (enemies of the
CoS) are "Fair Game" for certain tactics. From hour.ca:
In 1967, Hubbard issued the fair-game policy, which said that
opponents "may be deprived of property or injured by any means,
by any Scientologist. He may be tricked, sued, lied to, or
destroyed utterly."
You can find a couple of reference to Scientologists attacking
the pets of their opponents here
(search for "pets", it's near the bottom of the page) and
here
(Search for "Duke"). You can probably find more by digging around
on google or xenu.net.
--
"HORSE."
Ah well... anyone else curious about the new Tick show?
I was able to find a copy of the pilot on gnutella a while back... it wasn't terribly impressive. Puddy from Seinfeld plays the big blue guy, and does a decent job, but the writing is, well, it's not what I expected. First of all, the Tick swears. That's... just... not... right... man. Second, they weren't able to use Die Fleidermaus or American Maid, due to some weird licensing issue. They've been replaced by Batmanuel and Captain Liberty, who have more of a love/hate relationship than the (IMO funnier) hate/hate relationship between D.F. and A.M.
I dunno, they might be able to pull a decent series out of this, but I'm not counting on it. --
"HORSE."
Re:The Eventual Downfall of Every Man
on
Coder on the Cross
·
· Score: 1
I don't buy this at all. A lion is not evil when it kills an antelope; that just the way it is. The lion is simply living according to its nature, which might be bad news for the antelopes, but moral good and evil don't even come into the picture.
In fact, the lion is living exactly as it is supposed to. If anything, that is the definition of good, from its own perspective (apologies for the anthropomorphication, but good/evil is a human concept).
Now you say that for man to live according to his nature - i.e. self-interest as motivator - is evil. But I ask you, how can it be evil? If this is how we are, how do we gain by denying it? You don't see lions trying to grow crops, do you? And you don't see lions forging weapons to fight hunters on their own term either.
Unfortunately, you've confounded "natural" and "moral." Thanks for playing, though.
Don't forget that you'd be stranding MILLIONS of licensed Windows
users, who depend on that OS and programs written for it in their
business and personal lives. Few of these people can pick up Linux or
MacOS tomorrow and make a smooth transition. Granted, the
software will be there and the company won't be... but you still need
tech support and bugfixes (lots of em), and no other company will
want to do that for the sake of charity.
Your last couple of messages have struck me (and, I assume, others) as being FUD of the worst sort, but it's this particular paragraph that I find particularly... amusing.
Dearest brianvan, what remedies, exactly, did the Justice Department propose? More specifically, what was the most drastic remedy proposed? Now, unless I'm mistaken, that proposal was a proposal to split Microsoft into two companies, one inheriting the current Microsoft's apps division, the other the OS division. As far as I've heard, you're the only person, ever, anywhere, to propose a "bulldozer solution."
Under the most drastic of the remedies proposed by the Justice Department, Windows would still exist. Office would still exist. IE would still exist. And they'd still be maintained and updated.
Give me 101 plastic soldiers, and I will conquer the world.
Oh, sure, I could just give you 101 plastic soldiers, and you could conquer the world today. But if I taught you how to make plastic soldiers, you could conquer the world forever! --
"HORSE."
...until you check the system requirements: The Lance of Longinus, an affectless fourteen-year-old albino Japanese clone girl, and Your Dead Mother. C'mon, how many people have actually have that kind of setup?
--
"HORSE."
The problem with arguments based on the Electoral College preventing the candidates from campaigning in the largest 5 or so states is that they fail to explain why a citizen's geographical position should matter more than other factors. If it's rational to establish a system such that a candidate must appeal to groups of citizens in every state, why would it be any worse to establish a system where candidates must appeal to every, say, race? Or social class? Or profession? Or what have you? If it's acceptable to have a president who lost the popular vote, but won a vote of states, then why would it be unacceptable to have a president that lost the popular vote, but won millworkers, farmers, and engineers, propelling them to a majority in the Professional Electoral College? I think we'd all agree that that's ridiculous. Is a vote by the states rather than the people any less ridiculous?
(this is in reply to MoNsTeR's post, at the top of this thread)
One of the central tenets of libertarian philosophy is that all power taken away from (or not given to) the government naturally spreads throughout the populace. This is dead wrong. Power yielded by the government tends to end up concentrated in the hands of a few warlords, gangsters, what have you, as can be clearly seen in MoNsTeR's example countries of Russia and the more unstable S. American nations.
Marxists are often criticized (rightly) for their assertion that a strong state would simply "wither away" when it was no longer necessary. Libertarians (both anarchocapitalists, like MoNsTeR, and anarchosocialists) should be criticized for their assertion that devolution of power from the government to non-governmental groups will automatically ensure freedom and liberty for all people.
(this is in reply to MoNsTeR's post, at the top of this thread)
One of the central tenets of libertarian philosophy is that all power taken away from (or not given to) the government naturally spreads throughout the populace. This is dead wrong. Power yielded by the government tends to end up concentrated in the hands of a few warlords, gangsters, what have you, as can be clearly seen in MoNsTeR's example countries of Russia and the more unstable S. American nations.
Marxists are often criticized (rightfully) for their assertion that a strong state would simply "wither away" when it was no longer necessary. Libertarians (both anarchocapitalists, like MoNsTeR, and anarchosocialists) should be criticized for their assertion that devolution of power from the government to non-governmental groups will automatically ensure freedom and liberty for all people.
Humbug. If that's the game, I'm not playing. I've got no use for reshaping my life to match the preprogrammed biological impulses of any person, male or female. If it's a choice between acting in a manner totally independent of gender roles and therefore going without a mate, or going through the elaborate masquerade of presenting myself as an Ideal Male to appeal to some woman's gonads, I'd take the first option every time. Anything else would be an act of supreme intellectual dishonesty.
Personally, I doubt that it's necessary to play the Me Big Man game to impress a woman. From my (admittedly limited) experience, that's only necessary if you're trying to impress a woman not worth impressing. I find all of the extreme sexual behaviours (He-Man, Girly Girl, Bull Dyke, Flaming Fag, what have you) to be a bit dull, actually. I'm sure there exist others like me. --
"HORSE."
If you are a person with a more active imagination who prefers spending more time, reading more details and thinking critically on the ideas, the book probably does it for you. The abstract "story", independent of words or images, is more of a stepchild of them both.
Lies. The "abstract story" behind the book is an optimistic take on mankind's future progress, involving an advanced "caretaker" civilization. The "abstract story" (such as it is) behind the movie is a pessimistic musing on the overall meanness and nastiness of the human race (and possibly of the universe itself, depending on how you see the Monolith). And I take objection to your speculation on who will prefer which "version" of the "story," since IMO most people outside the/./sci-fi community think the movie's a masterpiece and the book's tripe. I propose an alternate decision procedure: If you're into escapist Clarke/Asimov period sci-fi, you'll like the book, if you're into film, and can handle vagueness and ambiguity, you'll like the movie. --
"HORSE."
The article never got around to clearing up exactly how large these "helicopters" are. Are we talking true-nanoscale (each atom individually manipulated into place) or just micro-scale? --
"HORSE."
Dad gum it!! It looked FINE when I previewed it! Is Slashcode eating my posts AGAIN?
Oh come on, don't blame Slashcode, it's easy and intuitive. Remember, 90 percent of the people here manage to close their link tags, so why should the/. crew go out of their way to satisfy people too lazy and stupid to preview their posts and close their tags correctly?
The Oregon system (where _everyone_ votes by absentee ballot) seems totally rockin', though I'm not sure how they handle homeless voters et al.
Anyway, I have no idea why states still use those idiotic punchcards when there's so many better options. Washington state (where I live) used scantron-type sheets, you know, fill in the box beside the candidate you want. _This_ is a technology that everyone has grown up with.
Switching to an electronic voting system because of those dumb punchcards is a severe case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just because one method of paper-voting sucks doesn't mean the concept of voting on paper is itself suspect. --
"HORSE."
This is without a doubt the subtlest and most entertaining troll I've ever seen on/. Not the content; that's insightful +5 if I've ever seen it. The great part is that the second half of the word "googling" (at the start of the final paragraph) links to goatse.cx, not google. I salute you Shiva Lingham as a GIANT among/.ters, and should you ever decide to run for any high political office (or if you ever decide you want someone to sit around and get high with), you can count on me to come to your support. --
"HORSE."
Note that everyone looking at the thing right now knows in advance that it's a "tricky" ballot, and is thus on their guard. The Palm Beach voters had no warning whatsoever about it (the sample ballot was different from the real thing), and further, were dealing with an internally inconsistent ballot (the first page behaved differently from the rest of them). --
"HORSE."
Here (provided Time hasn't moved things around in the meantime) you can find a picture of the ballot in question actually "in use". I can see where it'd be _very_ confusing, especially for someone who isn't forewarned that it's a "weird" ballot. First, the arrows do _not_ line up right, second, it's highly possible that someone could read the left side and not _notice_ the right side. --
"HORSE."
Slashdot Mirror
Comes out in wide(r) release on August 3, in case you'd like to see something good before your Kevin Smith movie comes out.
--
"HORSE."
and if a doomsday exchange happens, and if an ABM system just happens to save 5000 people in wyoming from direct nuclear annihilation, they'll have the pleasure of either dying of radiation poisoning, or slowly starving to death in their bunkers. Fun!
--
"HORSE."
Y'know, mono... poly...
--
"HORSE."
One of the writers for Andromeda posts regularly in the television forums on Salon's "tabletalk" message boards. Rest assured that they know that the Nietzcheans are silly, and yeah, they're supposed to be that way cause it's a silly show. The writer I mentioned has never come out and openly said it, but I think the "atmosphere" they're aiming for with Andromeda is the "so cheesy it's great" feel the original Star Trek series had.
--
"HORSE."
This comment reminds me of the hindus in India who think Catholics are cannibals because in the sacrament of Holy Communion you "eat the Body of Christ". [This used to be a widespread belief many years ago, and you still find it out in the less educated areas in India.]
The main criticism here is plain technique. FUD is best reserved for use by the Microsofties, not someone who is supposed to be intelligent.
You've misunderstood. There's no Scientologist religious sacrament involving pets. It's just that one of their standard intimidation techiniques is to kill the pets of those who they view as enemies. This is derived from Hubbard's "Fair Game" doctrine, which states that "Suppressive Persons" (enemies of the CoS) are "Fair Game" for certain tactics. From hour.ca:
You can find a couple of reference to Scientologists attacking the pets of their opponents here (search for "pets", it's near the bottom of the page) and here (Search for "Duke"). You can probably find more by digging around on google or xenu.net.--
"HORSE."
That government is fond of ass-chipping is no refutation to the statement that corporations also enjoy that activity.
--
"HORSE."
What do you think Mr. Mundie is?
--
"HORSE."
I was able to find a copy of the pilot on gnutella a while back... it wasn't terribly impressive. Puddy from Seinfeld plays the big blue guy, and does a decent job, but the writing is, well, it's not what I expected. First of all, the Tick swears. That's... just... not... right... man. Second, they weren't able to use Die Fleidermaus or American Maid, due to some weird licensing issue. They've been replaced by Batmanuel and Captain Liberty, who have more of a love/hate relationship than the (IMO funnier) hate/hate relationship between D.F. and A.M.
I dunno, they might be able to pull a decent series out of this, but I'm not counting on it.
--
"HORSE."
Unfortunately, you've confounded "natural" and "moral." Thanks for playing, though.
--
"HORSE."
Do you realize that it's been exactly 8 months since Taco Hell has been updated?
--
"HORSE."
4/20 is Adolf Hitler's birthday. All hippie stoners are secretly neo-nazis.
--
"HORSE."
Dearest brianvan, what remedies, exactly, did the Justice Department propose? More specifically, what was the most drastic remedy proposed? Now, unless I'm mistaken, that proposal was a proposal to split Microsoft into two companies, one inheriting the current Microsoft's apps division, the other the OS division. As far as I've heard, you're the only person, ever, anywhere, to propose a "bulldozer solution."
Under the most drastic of the remedies proposed by the Justice Department, Windows would still exist. Office would still exist. IE would still exist. And they'd still be maintained and updated.
Who, exactly, would be stranded?
--
"HORSE."
Oh, sure, I could just give you 101 plastic soldiers, and you could conquer the world today. But if I taught you how to make plastic soldiers, you could conquer the world forever!
--
"HORSE."
...until you check the system requirements: The Lance of Longinus, an affectless fourteen-year-old albino Japanese clone girl, and Your Dead Mother. C'mon, how many people have actually have that kind of setup?
--
"HORSE."
--
"HORSE."
One of the central tenets of libertarian philosophy is that all power taken away from (or not given to) the government naturally spreads throughout the populace. This is dead wrong. Power yielded by the government tends to end up concentrated in the hands of a few warlords, gangsters, what have you, as can be clearly seen in MoNsTeR's example countries of Russia and the more unstable S. American nations.
Marxists are often criticized (rightly) for their assertion that a strong state would simply "wither away" when it was no longer necessary. Libertarians (both anarchocapitalists, like MoNsTeR, and anarchosocialists) should be criticized for their assertion that devolution of power from the government to non-governmental groups will automatically ensure freedom and liberty for all people.
--
"HORSE."
One of the central tenets of libertarian philosophy is that all power taken away from (or not given to) the government naturally spreads throughout the populace. This is dead wrong. Power yielded by the government tends to end up concentrated in the hands of a few warlords, gangsters, what have you, as can be clearly seen in MoNsTeR's example countries of Russia and the more unstable S. American nations.
Marxists are often criticized (rightfully) for their assertion that a strong state would simply "wither away" when it was no longer necessary. Libertarians (both anarchocapitalists, like MoNsTeR, and anarchosocialists) should be criticized for their assertion that devolution of power from the government to non-governmental groups will automatically ensure freedom and liberty for all people.
--
"HORSE."
Personally, I doubt that it's necessary to play the Me Big Man game to impress a woman. From my (admittedly limited) experience, that's only necessary if you're trying to impress a woman not worth impressing. I find all of the extreme sexual behaviours (He-Man, Girly Girl, Bull Dyke, Flaming Fag, what have you) to be a bit dull, actually. I'm sure there exist others like me.
--
"HORSE."
--
"HORSE."
The article never got around to clearing up exactly how large these "helicopters" are. Are we talking true-nanoscale (each atom individually manipulated into place) or just micro-scale?
--
"HORSE."
--
"HORSE."
Anyway, I have no idea why states still use those idiotic punchcards when there's so many better options. Washington state (where I live) used scantron-type sheets, you know, fill in the box beside the candidate you want. _This_ is a technology that everyone has grown up with.
Switching to an electronic voting system because of those dumb punchcards is a severe case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just because one method of paper-voting sucks doesn't mean the concept of voting on paper is itself suspect.
--
"HORSE."
This is without a doubt the subtlest and most entertaining troll I've ever seen on /. Not the content; that's insightful +5 if I've ever seen it. The great part is that the second half of the word "googling" (at the start of the final paragraph) links to goatse.cx, not google. I salute you Shiva Lingham as a GIANT among /.ters, and should you ever decide to run for any high political office (or if you ever decide you want someone to sit around and get high with), you can count on me to come to your support.
--
"HORSE."
Note that everyone looking at the thing right now knows in advance that it's a "tricky" ballot, and is thus on their guard. The Palm Beach voters had no warning whatsoever about it (the sample ballot was different from the real thing), and further, were dealing with an internally inconsistent ballot (the first page behaved differently from the rest of them).
--
"HORSE."
Here (provided Time hasn't moved things around in the meantime) you can find a picture of the ballot in question actually "in use". I can see where it'd be _very_ confusing, especially for someone who isn't forewarned that it's a "weird" ballot. First, the arrows do _not_ line up right, second, it's highly possible that someone could read the left side and not _notice_ the right side.
--
"HORSE."