100% right. I would mod you up if I hadn't already commented. Heavy metal comforts the gifted because the gifted aren't socially adept and suffer for it. Music that taps into that alienation and is loud enough to stop the sound of their own thoughts is exactly what they need sometimes.
I don't appreciate the flamebait. It's not that difficult to express one's self civilly.
I agree that these punk/geek ethics are Liberal beliefs, as in liberalism the political theory, rather than liberalism of American politics.
My characterization of the right is based on the paleoconservative/libertarian/South Park republican wing of the right in America. And I don't think the characterization of that segment is inaccurate. It would be inaccurate for neoconservatives and social conservatives. I think most readers understood to whom I was referring.
I don't think it warrants a hysterical reply accusing me of "ignorance" and "contempt", while you conflate the multiple, easily differentiable elements among the U.S. right.
in a very warped way geeks are punks in many ways, we tend to over lap and have a usually left wing mentality
I think this may reflect you reading your own political position into punk/geek culture more than anything else. Geeks and Punks share a kind of anti-authoritarianism that doesn't map well into the (mostly bullshit) left-right political spectrum. Geek libertarianism and Punk DIY-anarchism fit parts of the left and parts of the right. Matching the left, they care about solidarity, anti-corporatism, and socio-cultural liberty. Matching the right, they care about negative freedoms (small, limited government as opposed to the nanny state) and "rugged individualism."
As you are aware, Slashdot protocol strictly regulates the form and content of user posts so as to maintain a coherent and familiar format for our readers.
Your post violates a treasured rule from our Manual of Style. All instructional lists (especially numbered lists) must follow a format in which the last two steps are as follows:
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Profit!
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I'm kinda disappointed that people are giving me only very serious responses to my post, calmly explaining the linkage between the railroad synecdoche and the rise of fascists. I had hoped at least one person would riff on the possibility of a segway-based political party, or the completely absurd assertion in my post that "the fascist constituency [are] those that passionately care about rail transport".
Oh well. You want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.
And unlike most facist governments, they can't get the trains to run on time either.
I always thought this was a rather curious statement. What is it about train system efficiency that inculcates a preference for or against fascism in the general populace? For all the people that equate Bush and Hitler, one would think that Amtrak would be in better shape. Perhaps Amtrak's worthlessness is a sign that our political system clearly retains its fundamental vibrancy.
I've never seen a political party base its platform on the railroad time schedule, but I wonder how the tradeoff is justified between transportation regularity and political or civil liberties. Ought liberal governments strive first to reform the train systems such that the fascist option is obviated? Is this our first line of defense against the black shirts?
I suppose it's no coincidence that fascism only arose after the advent and spread of railroad transport throughout the Western world. One wonders if subsequent developments in transportation technology--automobiles, airplanes, segways--have opened up new forms of political and social organization, such that the fascist constituency (those that passionately care about rail transport) have been minimized.
Is the ongoing threat of far right political parties in Europe (the BNP, Le Pen, etc) the reason why Europe's socialist governments sink so much money into subsidizing their rail systems, whereas the United States has no need, and therefore couldn't care a whit about poor Amtrak?
Are there any political theorists out there who can resolve this question?
I think the article's main thrust, however, is not that Mac OS X is the keye element making Apple ready for the enterprise, but the hardware. Since Macs can now run Windows through Boot Camp or through Parallels you can simply drop in a Mac where there once was a PC when you upgrade your machines. The point is that Macs deliver superior bang-for-the-buck. And the great majority of the article is dedicated to fawning over Apple hardware.
Certainly the author does mention some aspects of OS X that are value-ads (lack of spyware, increasing OS agnosticism in general, some administrative apps), it's principally about the hardware. As such, your point about vendor lock-in doesn't apply in all cases, because if you don't like the Macs, and you've been using Windows on them anyway, you can simply buy Dells the next time around.
Yes, it looks like the Mayans may have developed it first. But, they were not the source of the development of zero on Eurasia, since the Maya had no contact with the Old World. There were a number of independent "discoveries" of the concept of zero outside of India (Babylon as you mention), although it's hard to tell which ones caught on and which did not. It appears that the first regularized use was in India, and it was from this source that the Arabs obtained the concept of zero.
The NSA is probably smart enough not to make major attacks, but simply to discern vulnerabilities for future use. A large number of Chinese attacks on DOD computers now means that (hopefully) the DOD computers will be fortified later when it counts. Meanwhile, the Chinese systems won't be overtly tested, and they will likely be unable to patch all the potential vulnerabilities before it really counts.
I do hope that the DOD/NSA are making extensive use of honeypots loaded with fake but authentic-looking misinformation.
Religion... is uniquely designed (and Christianity moreso that any others I'm aware of) and suited for this purpose.
Hitler, arguably a more expert opinion on the subject of rousing populations, seems to disagree pretty strongly with your assessment of Christianity and its unique utility in stirring up militancy.
It seems rather arbitrary to single out religion from the pack of nationalism, ethnopolitics, political ideology, or any other various sets of agglomerated ideas that have been used historically to justify militarism.
Moreover, it's an unsupportable generalization to argue that religion has rarely been a tool for anything other than war. This kind of statement reveals more about your own personal opinions than it reflects about the historical role of religions--roles that have been extremely diverse and at a number of times mutually exclusive.
Pointing to a religious aspect in wars throughout history, it does not follow that religion in general, or even a specific religion is responsible for militarism. One would have to willfully ignore the highly varied differences between religions, within religions, and between interpretations of religions over time in order to justify such a reductionist and essentialist claim. One need go little further than to contrast the Crusaders and the Quakers to see the absurdity of such a position.
One might as well impugne any philosophical system of thought that attempts to make ontological or teleological claims about reality--from Plato to biology to Marxism to theoretical physics. All have the potential to be used to stir up militarism in one group of people against another. You'd probably enjoy Adorno, although I find reading him to be little better than a form of punishment for one's brain--anyway, give it a shot.
A good book which discusses the extremism of early protestants (Luther, Calvin) is Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom.
Whether fascists were militantly Christian because they believed they were following Christianity or because it was a good mechanism with which to rouse the populace is still in dispute. It seems fairly clear that Hitler viewed religion opportunistically, and felt cursed to have to deal with Christianity as his country's tradition.
Albert Speer quotes Hitler thus:
You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?
Hitler's statements in private seem to contradict his public affirmations of the role of Catholicism and Protestantism in Germany's life. This leads one to the conclusion that he was far more opportunistic in his view toward religion than anything else.
This is a load of FUD and the logic falls apart pretty quickly. If Catholocism was the genesis of his desire for holocaust, why then would Catholic clergy be one of the groups selected for persecution in the concentration camps--along with Jews, homosexuals, and Roma?
Hitler was an opportunist. Using one sentence from Main Kampf--a long work of rambling drivel--is extremely misleading. While he was raised a Roman Catholic, Hitler invented his own version of Christianity in which Jesus was a fighter against the Jews, and was strongly influenced by Social Darwinism.
Goebbels wrote in a diary entry in 1939: "The Führer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay."
There are a little over a thousand admins on the English Wikipedia, and 3.5 million registered users. Admins are just far, far more active than any other given user on average. This is because admins are tasked with making sure the rules are followed and disputes settled without destroying the encyclopedia. As such, they get jaded very quickly, because they've heard every single goddamn user's opinion on why XYZ material that clearly has no place in an encyclopedia must remain in ABC article, and how totally fascist it is for someone to alter or remove it. Admin "agendas" are generally to counter whatever your agenda is, and to do so in such a manner that you'll be deterred from dragging it out into a giant protracted edit war in which you endlessly revert the page and argue that the admin is ruining Wikipedia's radical anarchic democracy of information that wants to be free.
we would pay extra for Mac OS X Server, if it were possible to run it under VMware
Now there's not a bad idea. License Mac OS X to run under VMWare, but mark it up such that it gets the same gigantic margins that Apple's hardware gets. That way a sale of virtualized Mac OS X nets the same profit that a hardware sale would have. The business case could be made, because I think Mac users tend to buy the year-and-a-half OS upgrade probably just as often if not more often than the hardware.
Now would the market pay $500+ for a virtualized Mac OS X, just so they could run it on non-Apple hardware? Doubtful.
Slashdot Mirror
100% right. I would mod you up if I hadn't already commented. Heavy metal comforts the gifted because the gifted aren't socially adept and suffer for it. Music that taps into that alienation and is loud enough to stop the sound of their own thoughts is exactly what they need sometimes.
I don't appreciate the flamebait. It's not that difficult to express one's self civilly.
I agree that these punk/geek ethics are Liberal beliefs, as in liberalism the political theory, rather than liberalism of American politics.
My characterization of the right is based on the paleoconservative/libertarian/South Park republican wing of the right in America. And I don't think the characterization of that segment is inaccurate. It would be inaccurate for neoconservatives and social conservatives. I think most readers understood to whom I was referring.
I don't think it warrants a hysterical reply accusing me of "ignorance" and "contempt", while you conflate the multiple, easily differentiable elements among the U.S. right.
I think this may reflect you reading your own political position into punk/geek culture more than anything else. Geeks and Punks share a kind of anti-authoritarianism that doesn't map well into the (mostly bullshit) left-right political spectrum. Geek libertarianism and Punk DIY-anarchism fit parts of the left and parts of the right. Matching the left, they care about solidarity, anti-corporatism, and socio-cultural liberty. Matching the right, they care about negative freedoms (small, limited government as opposed to the nanny state) and "rugged individualism."
Are these lyrics to a song in particular (if so which one), or are they just something he said?
Whatever. Edgy Eft? Fiesty Fawn? Wake me up when Xanthic Xenu is released. Then it'll be ready for the desktop, running Operating Thetan VI software.
Dear User:lordofthechia,
As you are aware, Slashdot protocol strictly regulates the form and content of user posts so as to maintain a coherent and familiar format for our readers.
Your post violates a treasured rule from our Manual of Style. All instructional lists (especially numbered lists) must follow a format in which the last two steps are as follows:
This message is a warning. You would have received a harsher first-time violator penalty if it were not for your mitigating footnote referencing the preparation ritual for our beloved food source, ramen noodle. Any future infractions will result in an automatic +100000 to your UID.
HAND,
Anae
I'm kinda disappointed that people are giving me only very serious responses to my post, calmly explaining the linkage between the railroad synecdoche and the rise of fascists. I had hoped at least one person would riff on the possibility of a segway-based political party, or the completely absurd assertion in my post that "the fascist constituency [are] those that passionately care about rail transport".
Oh well. You want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.
I recognized the Mussolini reference. I apologize for not making the facetiousness of my original post more apparent.
I always thought this was a rather curious statement. What is it about train system efficiency that inculcates a preference for or against fascism in the general populace? For all the people that equate Bush and Hitler, one would think that Amtrak would be in better shape. Perhaps Amtrak's worthlessness is a sign that our political system clearly retains its fundamental vibrancy.
I've never seen a political party base its platform on the railroad time schedule, but I wonder how the tradeoff is justified between transportation regularity and political or civil liberties. Ought liberal governments strive first to reform the train systems such that the fascist option is obviated? Is this our first line of defense against the black shirts?
I suppose it's no coincidence that fascism only arose after the advent and spread of railroad transport throughout the Western world. One wonders if subsequent developments in transportation technology--automobiles, airplanes, segways--have opened up new forms of political and social organization, such that the fascist constituency (those that passionately care about rail transport) have been minimized.
Is the ongoing threat of far right political parties in Europe (the BNP, Le Pen, etc) the reason why Europe's socialist governments sink so much money into subsidizing their rail systems, whereas the United States has no need, and therefore couldn't care a whit about poor Amtrak?
Are there any political theorists out there who can resolve this question?
I think the article's main thrust, however, is not that Mac OS X is the keye element making Apple ready for the enterprise, but the hardware. Since Macs can now run Windows through Boot Camp or through Parallels you can simply drop in a Mac where there once was a PC when you upgrade your machines. The point is that Macs deliver superior bang-for-the-buck. And the great majority of the article is dedicated to fawning over Apple hardware.
Certainly the author does mention some aspects of OS X that are value-ads (lack of spyware, increasing OS agnosticism in general, some administrative apps), it's principally about the hardware. As such, your point about vendor lock-in doesn't apply in all cases, because if you don't like the Macs, and you've been using Windows on them anyway, you can simply buy Dells the next time around.
Is this an example of the fabled neuroscientist humor?
Your really pushing it with that comment, buddy.
Their couldn't be any other explanation!
I love how the first five comments in a row to this article were about the typo. Four Anonymous Cowards beat me to it... damn!
Grammar Nazis seem to be "loosing" the war against spelling idiocy. To bad Slashdot isn't edited.
Yes, it looks like the Mayans may have developed it first. But, they were not the source of the development of zero on Eurasia, since the Maya had no contact with the Old World. There were a number of independent "discoveries" of the concept of zero outside of India (Babylon as you mention), although it's hard to tell which ones caught on and which did not. It appears that the first regularized use was in India, and it was from this source that the Arabs obtained the concept of zero.
That dentist is no good. There's a much better one at 21st and K NW.
The Arabs got zero from the Indians through their trading contacts actually. See the Wikipedia entry: History of Zero.
The NSA is probably smart enough not to make major attacks, but simply to discern vulnerabilities for future use. A large number of Chinese attacks on DOD computers now means that (hopefully) the DOD computers will be fortified later when it counts. Meanwhile, the Chinese systems won't be overtly tested, and they will likely be unable to patch all the potential vulnerabilities before it really counts.
I do hope that the DOD/NSA are making extensive use of honeypots loaded with fake but authentic-looking misinformation.
Hitler, arguably a more expert opinion on the subject of rousing populations, seems to disagree pretty strongly with your assessment of Christianity and its unique utility in stirring up militancy.
It seems rather arbitrary to single out religion from the pack of nationalism, ethnopolitics, political ideology, or any other various sets of agglomerated ideas that have been used historically to justify militarism.
Moreover, it's an unsupportable generalization to argue that religion has rarely been a tool for anything other than war. This kind of statement reveals more about your own personal opinions than it reflects about the historical role of religions--roles that have been extremely diverse and at a number of times mutually exclusive.
Pointing to a religious aspect in wars throughout history, it does not follow that religion in general, or even a specific religion is responsible for militarism. One would have to willfully ignore the highly varied differences between religions, within religions, and between interpretations of religions over time in order to justify such a reductionist and essentialist claim. One need go little further than to contrast the Crusaders and the Quakers to see the absurdity of such a position.
One might as well impugne any philosophical system of thought that attempts to make ontological or teleological claims about reality--from Plato to biology to Marxism to theoretical physics. All have the potential to be used to stir up militarism in one group of people against another. You'd probably enjoy Adorno, although I find reading him to be little better than a form of punishment for one's brain--anyway, give it a shot.
A good book which discusses the extremism of early protestants (Luther, Calvin) is Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom.
Whether fascists were militantly Christian because they believed they were following Christianity or because it was a good mechanism with which to rouse the populace is still in dispute. It seems fairly clear that Hitler viewed religion opportunistically, and felt cursed to have to deal with Christianity as his country's tradition.
Albert Speer quotes Hitler thus:
Hitler's statements in private seem to contradict his public affirmations of the role of Catholicism and Protestantism in Germany's life. This leads one to the conclusion that he was far more opportunistic in his view toward religion than anything else.
This is a load of FUD and the logic falls apart pretty quickly. If Catholocism was the genesis of his desire for holocaust, why then would Catholic clergy be one of the groups selected for persecution in the concentration camps--along with Jews, homosexuals, and Roma?
Hitler was an opportunist. Using one sentence from Main Kampf--a long work of rambling drivel--is extremely misleading. While he was raised a Roman Catholic, Hitler invented his own version of Christianity in which Jesus was a fighter against the Jews, and was strongly influenced by Social Darwinism.
Goebbels wrote in a diary entry in 1939: "The Führer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay."
Please go troll elsewhere.
There are a little over a thousand admins on the English Wikipedia, and 3.5 million registered users. Admins are just far, far more active than any other given user on average. This is because admins are tasked with making sure the rules are followed and disputes settled without destroying the encyclopedia. As such, they get jaded very quickly, because they've heard every single goddamn user's opinion on why XYZ material that clearly has no place in an encyclopedia must remain in ABC article, and how totally fascist it is for someone to alter or remove it. Admin "agendas" are generally to counter whatever your agenda is, and to do so in such a manner that you'll be deterred from dragging it out into a giant protracted edit war in which you endlessly revert the page and argue that the admin is ruining Wikipedia's radical anarchic democracy of information that wants to be free.
Now there's not a bad idea. License Mac OS X to run under VMWare, but mark it up such that it gets the same gigantic margins that Apple's hardware gets. That way a sale of virtualized Mac OS X nets the same profit that a hardware sale would have. The business case could be made, because I think Mac users tend to buy the year-and-a-half OS upgrade probably just as often if not more often than the hardware.
Now would the market pay $500+ for a virtualized Mac OS X, just so they could run it on non-Apple hardware? Doubtful.