> Unless your government backs the stance then it can veto it.
Right. And when your government backs the stance, like they did SOPA, what happens?
SOPA went down because politicians were scared they wouldn't get reelected because of the massive outcry. People could look at the list of people that voted 'yes' and not reelect them. If it's some appointee? The politician can just say they went rogue and that they won't reappoint them. And who is that politician anyways... it's buried under time and approvals. 'well, they were my third choice; I didn't really like them but they were the only one that would stick'. Do you think that trail is going to be stronger when you can pump up issues like jobs, defense, abortion, etc?
So the problem is that instead of the responsibility being on elected representatives (who are accountable to the people), it's on an appointee (whose accountability is to the government). Sure the government is accountable to the representatives who are accountable to the people, but that's a big gap. (And, yes, the government is the representatives, but you don't elect them all, so it really is the amorphous 'government' before the politicians themselves.)
> The Berne convention passed precisely because the US government did want it, I'm failing to see how your argument eliminates the US government as still being a clear point of protection even under the ITU.
So the US wanted the Berne convention and now 165 signed on. And mind that is signed a treaty not just voted 'okay' at the ITU. So my point is that peer pressure pushed a treaty across the world. How far do you think it could push a resolution in the ITU? Especially if you say 'well this is really just part of the Berne convention to uphold copyright'.
> Great, and what about counter-examples like ICE domain seizures?
And Do you really think that, in a world where ACTA could be created, that ITU will somehow prevent domain seizures? What government would really be against that?
And then people like to go on about how churches pick and choose snippets from the bible...
The bible is a story book. It doesn't contain belief system or a morality, that is crafted from churches by interpretation. To pretend you understand a religion by reading a book is like pretending you understand the legal system by watching an episode of Law and Order. Look at Quran: that's far closer to a how-to book and they have many different sects. Does "dress modestly" mean burka? Or would just a normal T-shirt exposing no cleavage do?
And that's not even to go into the fact that the bible only contains a subset of the available material. You recall that new book they found? Not in the bible. And the translations... "camels, eyes of needles, etc." have you read the original? Do you know the historical context of that?
What you're suggesting is literally trolling: presenting people with things you know are wrong for the sole purpose of harassing them. So yeah, have fun nitpicking an old, poorly translated storybook I guess.
If that's not actually your goal, you can educate yourself: "Catholics believe that sacred scripture and sacred tradition preserved and interpreted by the Magisterium are both necessary for attaining to the fullest understanding of all of God's revelation." (emph mine)
And that veto is cast by who, exactly? No one we elected, and no one that we really know. Are you so politically naive to think that those vetos and passes aren't going to be traded for others within the UN machine? And that the people that could be held accountable (elected representatives) can't so thoroughly distance themselves from the UN proceedings to make it a literal non-issue come election time?
It's not so much as 193 point of failure so much as 193 palms to grease. The UN has way more politicking than accountability and that's never a good thing. Do you really think that this would somehow prevent the Berne Convention (165 parties) won't be used as club to beat the ITU into line? Or that free speech isn't going to be a huge issue? And that we could see concessions made on that front in exchange for some other favor within the UN?
The long and the sort of is it that moving to to the UN spreads the accountability so thin as to be non-existent. At least with the US there is enough accountability (see the defeat of SOPA) and principal (see as one of the freest speech countries around) to keep the internet what it is.
There's not really any such thing as a "legit" certificate; you're referring to a signed one. This does nothing to protect against a man-in-the-middle attack. What it does do is establish a chain of trust linking your certificate back to an authority. If that authority is trusted then your cert can be too (to the extent you trust the authority). If, and that's a big if, we trust that _all_ trusted authorities will thoroughly vet the certificates they sign then we can _trust_ that a MITM attack cannot occur, but realistically "legit" certificates do nothing more than that. If, say, the US DoD (once/often? a trusted authority) decides to MITM you, they can just sign a cert and MITM you.
The only way to actually prevent MITM is to exchange the certificate (or some verification mechanism like a hash) in some sort of trusted manner (e.g. distributing it's hash with a client app).
I addressed nearly every point you made and even provided a fully reasoned, scientific study to directly refute one. Did you read that? It's about colors. Or did you prefer to remain ignorant?
As far as twisting your words: HA! Seriously? You claimed you had morality independent of western culture and ideas. And yet I twist you words when I re-contextualize them? There are places right now that practice blame-the-victim for rape. If you eschew western tradition, how am I to know that you don't mean blame-the-victim? (And don't even pretend blame-the-victim isn't a thing here, as there are plenty of instance of legal 'scams', justifiable X, etc.) And I could go on and on along such points until the end of time.
You call it twisting words because you will not see there there are other ways of thinking in this world which do not follow the ideas that you take for granted. Ideas that you don't even realize that you take for granted because you remain ignorant of them. Tell one of the nasty places in the middle east that rape is bad and they will agree and stone a girl to death. They aren't twisting your words, they are listening from a different perspective and you are failing to bridge that gap.
If your morality is based on reason, reason. But clearly it isn't, it's just the same old school of thought, barely repainted and with even less consideration that most religions provide.
The fact that you conflate "based on" with "identical to" is pretty telling of how close minded you are. And the examples you cite... Do you even realize that there are religions fine with homosexuality? Birth control? Sex?
And faith as a virtue? I'm guessing you meant theological virtues, which it is rather by definition. Blindness isn't important, BTW, though I suppose that would depend on the sect. Also, just FYI, they distinguish those from cardinal virtues, which are also included: prudence, justice, restraint/temperance, and courage/fortitude. Forgive me if I'm not appalled that a religion has religious virtues in addition to the secular ones and one of those happens to be, like, belief.
I'm just going to poke bits here
> The concept of mixing up "rights" with what is "right" is an absurd strawman.
I could go into the philosophy and psychology of linguistics, but since you're a pure reason kind of dude, here's a study with hard numbers and everything for you.
> Conversely, I do believe that people should be allowed to do whatever they want in their own bedrooms
Like animals, right? I'm guessing no. And what's your independently reasoned basis for that, exactly? That it's animal abuse because it's rape because it cannot possibly be consensual? Because animals cannot consent because they're... animals? What does that mean exactly? And why can they consent to others of their species by not humans?
I'm sure you're wondering where this is going, and that's quite easy: one of the most significant ideas that the rise of Christianity brought was that humans were different from animals. They were divine; animals were beasts. This stood pretty much until Darwin, which is why he and evolution were such a big deal. But one of the things to come out of that idea is that one shouldn't lay with the beasts and defile one's divine body. (The rest of the sex taboos came from this as well, all really grouped as 'sodomy'.) Prior to that, though, bestiality was quite common. Now it's not, though it's just considered animal abuse. But riddle me this: is that based on pure reason and scientific understanding? Or is it a rationalization of existing taboos?
> why is it so hard to believe I may have chosen my own morality in things religions happen to agree with me on?
I never claimed that. I claimed that your thought processes are framed by the culture you grew up in. The language you speak. The situations you face. And that of these influenced by over a thousand years of Judeo-Christian philosophies (along with other philosophies as well). The very fact that you fight me on this demonstrates that you lack the meta-understanding to really sit back and deconstruct your thoughts.
Is this reason: "I believe murder is bad because I don't want to live in a society where anyone can run around killing people at will"? That sounds like an opinion to me. A man a private army would probably disagree, and probably so would the solders making their living murdering.
Is this reason: "I believe rape is bad because I don't want to live in a society where anyone can run around rapeing people at will"? Sounds like an argument for your gender to not be raped. Or maybe we can take a viewpoint that exists in the world and say that "Rape is indeed bad, so don't get raped or we'll punish you".
Is this reason: "I believe non-baby-making is bad because I don't want to live in a society where anyone can run around sexing people at will without making babies." Sounds like sound logic to me! Now homosexuality, birth control, and anal/oral sex are all immoral.
Oh wait, that last one isn't yours... You instead went with "I don't want to live in a society where a few people in power can tell people what they can do in their own bedrooms".
Ah, slashdot moderation! Two sentences that belie long standing philosophical topics get modded up while actually highlighting said topics doesn't... I suppose I should be glad I didn't get modded down at least.
Anyways, since I actually like to read this stuff and I'm bored, I figured I'd follow up on my post and the third link specifically:
"Fundamentally, Sartre believes mankind cannot escape responsibility by adopting an external moral system, as the adoption such is in itself a choice that we endorse, implicitly or explicitly, and for which we must take full responsibility. Sartre argues that, one cannot escape responsibility, as each attempt to part one's self from freedom of choice, is in itself a demonstration of choice." --Here
Existentialism is, as a general topic, quite interesting in that it focuses on how every action is a choice, even non-choices. A slave is a slave by choice; they could always choose to be free, but such a choice would probably result in their death. So how much of a choice is it really?
In this particular case where we are discussing religion and morality: is someone who is moral because of religious guidelines _truly_ moral? Putting aside the questions of true morality (see No true Scotsman), and its possibility (see Altruism), is being religious a choice? If it is, then by choosing to follow that religion they have chosen to be moral in that way. Perhaps, then each individual choice might not count as a free, moral decision, but in reality at every moral crossroads you may choose to denounce that religion. Thus there's really no distinction between someone religious and someone acting on a wholly independent code that is coincidentally the same, so you can cannot argue that the latter is somehow more decent for having not adopted the religious morality.
Now, if you are to argue that religion is not a choice, or more specifically that religion (specifically, here, belief in God and divine consequences) is a true belief, then I think you've departed this discussion and entered quite another. Which is not to say any of the above fundamentally changes, mind you. Mostly I'm just not interested in typing much more because I don't expect anyone will read this and I find the general consensus here is that religion is a choice anyways and that people couldn't possibly actually believe it and it they do it's rather their fault (choice) and they deserve the full consequences (like ridicule; see this whole discussion). That would entitle them to the consequences of owning their morality too, I'd say, but given the opinion here I wouldn't expect;).
I don't chastise the Romans, I just point to them as different. I don't hold up the bible, and indeed point out that it is meaningless in it's own right.
I could go on, but what's the point. To pretend that you, a product of well over two thousand years of various philosophies all impacted by religion (if not religious themselves), can even have a thought in you head that has "no basis whatsoever in any religion" is the height of ignorance. You speak a language that conflates positive social guarantees (rights) with what is proper (right). Have you ever considered how do you'd think if the word for correct was the same as the word for power? Have you ever looked that the moralities of different societies and how they correspond to their religious tradition?
You are a product of your society, and it is a product of its history. For better or worse, religion was woven all through that, and until you realize that you'll never be able to pick it out of your thoughts. (Not that anyone probably could anyways, but Kant made a pretty good show of it.)
P.S. Immoral and lying about being moral, or moral and telling the truth about being moral. I still honestly don't care. And to clarify, because you apparently do, I certainly don't know you which is part of why I'm not judging you. Though mostly it's because I really don't care about judging at all. To be clear about that. Not that you'll listen because I already explicitly said I wasn't judging you and you didn't believe me then. You do realize that it's possible for someone to discuss the philosophy of religion and society without being judgmental and/or a "religious troll" right?
Because it's nothing like those? I mean, I agree the word "neurotheology" probably makes it's way around pseudoscience discussions, but I fail to see how something that "attempts to explain religious experience and behaviour in neuroscientific terms" is so illegitimate. Maybe it's not _possible_ (i.e. there isn't an explanation to be discovered), but that doesn't make the effort invalid.
If you have any real reason why it's so outrageous, I'd like to hear it. You should probably update the Wikipedia too.
> People doing good without religion are truly good people.
Which they believe, making them feel good and therefore they are acting quite selfishly, I'd say. For more discussion you can see my reply to your sibling post, but the long and the short of it is that chasing altruism is a silly thing and it's pretty damn dumb to argue that being a decent person is defined by anything other than just acting decently.
> bible, bible, bible...
It's just a book. It tells stories, not how you should act. And it's very old and translated. You literally cannot glean anything at all from it without some form of interpretation. So what's your point, that deriving a system of belief/behavior from the good ideas of a book is wrong because that book also has bad ideas? Because their should have taken the bad ideas and hate too? Aside from how silly that is as a criticism, it's horribly ironic: you go on to claim that your weren't influenced. Well, odd coincidence, then, that the ideas they left our are 'bad' and the ones they kept are 'good', don't you think? (Admittedly you quote "good", I'm assuming to indicate that you don't necessarily agree, but you don't quote "bad", so my point still stands even if you don't agree with them on every line-item of "good".)
> My morality has no basis whatsoever in any religion. My moral code is derived 100% from what form of society I want to live in
So you grew up on an isolated island and just learned English then? Because I'm pretty sure you are from a society that built it's moral compass on nearly 2000 years of Christian thought. And are speaking a language with a similar history. The Romans built a pretty interesting society prior Christianity... They were pretty okay with forced fights to the death and mass rapes in the coliseum; that was the morality then. Even in the modern day, you can look at such different notions in places that didn't build on the Christian Roman empire, like Africa, China, various islanders, etc. It's incredibly ignorant to think that your ideas are not strongly influenced by your culture, and that that culture not strongly influenced by religion (and Christianity especially in the west).
(And regarding whether you have morals: I simply do not care. After all, you could just be lying if you were immoral:p. So don't take this to be judging your character in that way.)
At the end of the day what does it matter? If someone acts perfectly moral their whole life, what difference does it make if it's for fear of God, or just because they want to? And, if it's the latter, how do I know it's _really_ just because they want to / feel it's right and not because they think it'll benefit them too or make them happier / satisfied / less guilty? (See first link for more on that.) And while I'm posting links I might as well point out that it's pretty bold to claim that someone who isn't decent would have a framework that forces them to be decent.
Would you next like to argue that people that don't write byte code aren't programmers because they rely on compilers to write code? Or that people on the Atkins (or similar) diet are _really_ dieters because they're using a rigid framework and aren't just tracking nutrients/calories? (Hrm, already used that link...). Point is, sometimes people use frameworks to make things easier for them to follow or understand, it doesn't make their intent any different.
> they STILL somehow believe that "goodness" can only come from religion. That's nonsense.
Have you ever considered, though, that for some people that is the truth though? That maybe these are people whose only motivation for good comes from religion and therefore cannot understand those who don't need religion to be decent? People are generally bad at extrapolating beyond themselves like that.;)
> But the fact that your presumption that it was Christians and therefore Christianity which was responsible > for creating the constitutional government of the US only serves to prove my point. Was the government > of England not ALSO Christian?
Indeed it was, and that's where many of the notions the built America came from. England wasn't all bad you know, had that Magna Carta thing which is probably one of the most important legal documents ever (certainly up there with the Declaration of Independence).
Anyways, Nietzsche (who was not much a fan of religion) covers this topic quite well, and hints of his ideas are in the GP. Christianity (and Judaism) inverted the natural order of 'the strong can do as they want to the weak' and created the modern ideas of ethics and rights of the masses. Not every idea would always stick completely, but in many ways the fundamental way that you think, with ideas of individual rights and collectivism, hell, even 'godless' socialism and all grounded in philosophies that were grounded in Judeo-Christian ideas. So even if American wasn't exactly founded Christian, the ideas are solidly there.
And so is much of what surrounds those other topics. To name some common stereotypes: One can be attracted to their own gender and not like musical theater. One have black skin and not be a gangsta. But, decry/mock those things, though, which are certainly as much lifestyle choices as religion, and you'll be called bigoted/etc.
Fun fact: One can be religious and not attack science or have riots over a video.
Just yesterday I was being serenaded by some African Americans playing on repeat a song featuring the word "nigger" as a prominent part of the chorus and really the rest of the song. Yet, how often is it viewed as offensive to ever use the word, even as I did, in quotes just to discuss it?
The point is, people will get upset and act hypocritical about just about anything. Race, sex, etc. Religion just gets a bit more flack because there are more religious folk and it's more cool to be down on religion than, say, race.
No, even... hell, _especially_ if your goals are to promote free software this is bad, and that's exactly my point. Nvidia will not open their source because of this. Free software spread? In the best case no. And in reality, Nvidia's drivers aren't what they could be so Linux continues to have crappier than necessary drivers which either are slower than they need to be or have a nasty hacked version of this. Does that help spread free software? I'd say not. Bad drivers are one of the big issues people have with Linux.
Now, if there were good GPL drivers and this would be their selling point, I'd agree: you could spur adoption of open source by restricting the API to the free version and letting Nvidia play catch-up. But that is simply not the case. All this does is artificially make the graphics situation on Linux worse, and that does absolutely nothing to help spread free software.
So what? Now, instead of taking the code and producing better though still closed drivers, we are left with either worse drives or a significant duplication of effort. Good job GPL?
Licensing and open sourcing are complex issues. Simply put though, I don't think there is a single significant project in the world that would become GPL for want of a GPL library. Sure, a project might go GPL and some GPL code might be part of that, but releasing source _and_ giving free, irrevocable license too it is not a simple decision. There's a reason the LGPL exists, despite RMS's ideology: no library is worth re-licensing your application over. So this is exactly why it's BAD: You come up with a solid solution to a problem that people could use, but you waste it by only letting people use it if they play by your rules. You have nothing but a hollow ideological victory. (Hollow because one of the big ideas/benefits of free/open source is to have that one solid solution to a common problem so people don't have to reinvent the wheel.)
Which isn't to say that the GPL is bad for applications or Linux, but get a little perspective here: nvidia isn't going to GPL their drivers because of this, so it becomes just another neat toy in Linux that will ultimately atrophy waiting for someone to really use it.
Where we have a "right to an adequate standard of living" ("freedom from want"). Of course, I am (because it is?) unclear whether "right to" means 'must be provided' or 'must be allowed'. Putting that aside, however, I guess it is an interesting question as to whether or not internet access can be considered an important part of an adequate standard of living. I don't really see it in there, but if you were to imagine that there was a "right to communication" somewhere in free speech, then internet access could well be seen as part of an adequate standard of living. Or if you build it up as part of a right to education you might be able to swing it.
Of course, the idea that it be mobile or broadband is ridiculous. But dialup on an old PC?...maybe.
As a historical note, just about every screw had was patented at some point, aside, perhaps, from slot heads. For instance, when Ford was designing the Model T, he ultimately picked Phillips head for the screws because he could more easily license the patent for that than he could the patent for the square/Robertson head which he otherwise preferred. It's also worth pointing out that the Torx patent expired about 20 years ago now, though there is a much newer Torx Plus which may covered. "Torx" is still a trademark though; "hexalobular" tends to be the generic. (That's probably why adoption seems to be increasing, and I'm glad because it's really the best head around; especially vs Phillips which is pretty much designed to be awful for general use)
> The government isn't telling you what bulb you can or can not use; they are only regulating what is manufactured at > mass scale. If you truly want to use a 200W incandescent bulb, you're welcome to figure out a means of producing > them for yourself
'The government isn't telling you what what you can can or can not say; they are only regulating what can be published. If you truly want to have free speech, you're welcome to figure out a means of sharing you message yourself'
Wiesel words about government bans doesn't justify them or change their function.
Especially when you completely make up stuff like "mass scale". The bill only says "manufactured" and does not give any exceptions to that, volume or otherwise. Of course, it doesn't seem to limit import or sale, so theoretically you can legally acquire them, but that's probably something I'm missing (like the penalty for manufacture) because the bill is written as an amendment. And I dunno, maybe somewhere in there is something about volume limits... I doubt it though.
So no, it's a ban and, frankly, quite disturbing that you seek to defend it in such a way. I can't wait to hear how 'it's not censorship, it's just a tax on controversial speech to cover the hidden costs of your speech for society '.
Firefox does this, and even has a "session only" option to allow cookies but prevent them from persisting across sessions.
I use the extension "Cookie Monster" which puts an icon in the status^W extension bar so I can just click it and set the permissions for the site I'm on. It even has the added bonus of a "Temporary Allow" which disallows after browser restart.
So work and go to school or don't work and don't go to school. I'm quite missing where the outrage is. Maybe it's that they don't have to option to go into massive debt instead of working like you can in the USA?
It's also worth pointing out that these are vocational students, which means they're learning a trade rather than a general education. So working in factory positions related to their trade is arguably quite like the education they're receiving anyways.
Now, sure, quite like the standard of living in China, the standard of working ain't great. But it is what it is, and that is quite a separate issue. Plenty of people chose to work in these factories rather than struggle with life in an impoverished village. Is it so out of line to force students to (claimed less grueling) work in exchange for an education and life outside their impoverished village?
Eh.... I wouldn't be so quick to say. Especially if one is to believe that piracy is around 93%+ like they (?) claimed the other week. I mean, sure, the lion's share will still pirate. However, if even 5% of people are pirating because got sick of having to deal with the DRM and/or crack it anyways, that would represent a relatively significant sales boost. Not to mention it may cut down on perceived piracy because less buyers would be downloading cracked versions (though this depends on how they are measuring it, of course). And it might even bring back people who just swore them off altogether. So overall, I think there's a lot of positive potential.
However, dollars to donuts, this just means they'll be using some nasty root-kit or something instead. They probably figured it'd be more effective than the online DRM and this is just PR spin.
At the end of the 19th century there were a total of about 650,000 patents granted. Now there are over 8,000,000. There's a bit of a difference. Moreover, may of those patent battles were over fairly significant innovations, or at least ones which would require a fair about of investment in terms of time and money to use. Are we seriously comparing pinch-zoom to a sewing machine? Something that requires a day of effort at best and can be rolled out in under a week to something that one builds a manufacturing facility around? It'd barely be the equivalent of using different colors on some knobs on the sewing machine, in terms of relevance to the overall device/complexity. It's something that is _only_ worth patenting to use as a part of an attack portfolio.
And while that's not to say that _never_ happened a hundred years ago (because occasionally it did), these days it's standard operating procedure. I have to side with the OP. This is a different world.
In so far as Samsung referenced the iPhone as a de facto standard of what users want and expect from a touchscreen smart phone, yes. Samsung did indeed set out to copy parts of the iPhone.
However, to claim that such behavior is "crap" and that the jury's decision was correct _requires_ you assume that the patents were entirely valid. If there was prior art, then Samsung no more copied Apple than Apple copied the prior art (and neither innovated). If the design was trivial and uninteresting, then Apple didn't achieve any significant innovation for Samsung to copy... It'd be like complaining that someone used the same typeface as you. Sure you probably spent more time thinking about it then they did to say 'eh... just do what they did', but on the other hand it's uninteresting and unimportant and you don't deserve an international monopoly on it.
So, no, I consider this case (or, the software parts of it) to be exactly software patents are bad and the results it achieved precisely why software parents are so dangerous. Yes, Samsung copied things. Stupid, trivial things. Stupid trivial things that don't benefit society to be disclosed (part of the social 'deal' of patents) nor do they deserve protection. Things that a smaller company without a patent arsenal to build would simply put in as a new feature and forget. Things for which being first to market is payment enough. And yet these things create a billion dollar verdict? I think that's way, _way_ off pace of the "right result".
(And of course, even if you accept the patents, there are cases where some device/patent combinations the jury identified as infringement are clearly incorrect. Oh, and that the jury set out to punish Samsung (by their own admission) rather than try for reasonable damages. Etc. So, actually, I think it was all around a pretty poor decision.)
It's called "freedom". You might have heard of it in history class. Basically, the idea is that things should be allowed unless there's a good reason to disallow them. An important part of that is exercising due diligence in studying those reasons.
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> Unless your government backs the stance then it can veto it.
Right. And when your government backs the stance, like they did SOPA, what happens?
SOPA went down because politicians were scared they wouldn't get reelected because of the massive outcry. People could look at the list of people that voted 'yes' and not reelect them. If it's some appointee? The politician can just say they went rogue and that they won't reappoint them. And who is that politician anyways... it's buried under time and approvals. 'well, they were my third choice; I didn't really like them but they were the only one that would stick'. Do you think that trail is going to be stronger when you can pump up issues like jobs, defense, abortion, etc?
So the problem is that instead of the responsibility being on elected representatives (who are accountable to the people), it's on an appointee (whose accountability is to the government). Sure the government is accountable to the representatives who are accountable to the people, but that's a big gap. (And, yes, the government is the representatives, but you don't elect them all, so it really is the amorphous 'government' before the politicians themselves.)
> The Berne convention passed precisely because the US government did want it, I'm failing to see how your argument eliminates the US government as still being a clear point of protection even under the ITU.
So the US wanted the Berne convention and now 165 signed on. And mind that is signed a treaty not just voted 'okay' at the ITU. So my point is that peer pressure pushed a treaty across the world. How far do you think it could push a resolution in the ITU? Especially if you say 'well this is really just part of the Berne convention to uphold copyright'.
> Great, and what about counter-examples like ICE domain seizures?
I dunno, but I see arrests and IP bans (which I view as far more serious than domain seizures, BTW) and jail time and free speech issues everywhere to follow one thread.
And Do you really think that, in a world where ACTA could be created, that ITU will somehow prevent domain seizures? What government would really be against that?
And then people like to go on about how churches pick and choose snippets from the bible...
The bible is a story book. It doesn't contain belief system or a morality, that is crafted from churches by interpretation. To pretend you understand a religion by reading a book is like pretending you understand the legal system by watching an episode of Law and Order. Look at Quran: that's far closer to a how-to book and they have many different sects. Does "dress modestly" mean burka? Or would just a normal T-shirt exposing no cleavage do?
And that's not even to go into the fact that the bible only contains a subset of the available material. You recall that new book they found? Not in the bible. And the translations... "camels, eyes of needles, etc." have you read the original? Do you know the historical context of that?
What you're suggesting is literally trolling: presenting people with things you know are wrong for the sole purpose of harassing them. So yeah, have fun nitpicking an old, poorly translated storybook I guess.
If that's not actually your goal, you can educate yourself: "Catholics believe that sacred scripture and sacred tradition preserved and interpreted by the Magisterium are both necessary for attaining to the fullest understanding of all of God's revelation." (emph mine)
And that veto is cast by who, exactly? No one we elected, and no one that we really know. Are you so politically naive to think that those vetos and passes aren't going to be traded for others within the UN machine? And that the people that could be held accountable (elected representatives) can't so thoroughly distance themselves from the UN proceedings to make it a literal non-issue come election time?
It's not so much as 193 point of failure so much as 193 palms to grease. The UN has way more politicking than accountability and that's never a good thing. Do you really think that this would somehow prevent the Berne Convention (165 parties) won't be used as club to beat the ITU into line? Or that free speech isn't going to be a huge issue? And that we could see concessions made on that front in exchange for some other favor within the UN?
The long and the sort of is it that moving to to the UN spreads the accountability so thin as to be non-existent. At least with the US there is enough accountability (see the defeat of SOPA) and principal (see as one of the freest speech countries around) to keep the internet what it is.
There's not really any such thing as a "legit" certificate; you're referring to a signed one. This does nothing to protect against a man-in-the-middle attack. What it does do is establish a chain of trust linking your certificate back to an authority. If that authority is trusted then your cert can be too (to the extent you trust the authority). If, and that's a big if, we trust that _all_ trusted authorities will thoroughly vet the certificates they sign then we can _trust_ that a MITM attack cannot occur, but realistically "legit" certificates do nothing more than that. If, say, the US DoD (once/often? a trusted authority) decides to MITM you, they can just sign a cert and MITM you.
The only way to actually prevent MITM is to exchange the certificate (or some verification mechanism like a hash) in some sort of trusted manner (e.g. distributing it's hash with a client app).
I addressed nearly every point you made and even provided a fully reasoned, scientific study to directly refute one. Did you read that? It's about colors. Or did you prefer to remain ignorant?
As far as twisting your words: HA! Seriously? You claimed you had morality independent of western culture and ideas. And yet I twist you words when I re-contextualize them? There are places right now that practice blame-the-victim for rape. If you eschew western tradition, how am I to know that you don't mean blame-the-victim? (And don't even pretend blame-the-victim isn't a thing here, as there are plenty of instance of legal 'scams', justifiable X, etc.) And I could go on and on along such points until the end of time.
You call it twisting words because you will not see there there are other ways of thinking in this world which do not follow the ideas that you take for granted. Ideas that you don't even realize that you take for granted because you remain ignorant of them. Tell one of the nasty places in the middle east that rape is bad and they will agree and stone a girl to death. They aren't twisting your words, they are listening from a different perspective and you are failing to bridge that gap.
If your morality is based on reason, reason. But clearly it isn't, it's just the same old school of thought, barely repainted and with even less consideration that most religions provide.
The fact that you conflate "based on" with "identical to" is pretty telling of how close minded you are. And the examples you cite... Do you even realize that there are religions fine with homosexuality? Birth control? Sex?
And faith as a virtue? I'm guessing you meant theological virtues, which it is rather by definition. Blindness isn't important, BTW, though I suppose that would depend on the sect. Also, just FYI, they distinguish those from cardinal virtues, which are also included: prudence, justice, restraint/temperance, and courage/fortitude. Forgive me if I'm not appalled that a religion has religious virtues in addition to the secular ones and one of those happens to be, like, belief.
I'm just going to poke bits here
> The concept of mixing up "rights" with what is "right" is an absurd strawman.
I could go into the philosophy and psychology of linguistics, but since you're a pure reason kind of dude, here's a study with hard numbers and everything for you.
> Conversely, I do believe that people should be allowed to do whatever they want in their own bedrooms
Like animals, right? I'm guessing no. And what's your independently reasoned basis for that, exactly? That it's animal abuse because it's rape because it cannot possibly be consensual? Because animals cannot consent because they're... animals? What does that mean exactly? And why can they consent to others of their species by not humans?
I'm sure you're wondering where this is going, and that's quite easy: one of the most significant ideas that the rise of Christianity brought was that humans were different from animals. They were divine; animals were beasts. This stood pretty much until Darwin, which is why he and evolution were such a big deal. But one of the things to come out of that idea is that one shouldn't lay with the beasts and defile one's divine body. (The rest of the sex taboos came from this as well, all really grouped as 'sodomy'.) Prior to that, though, bestiality was quite common. Now it's not, though it's just considered animal abuse. But riddle me this: is that based on pure reason and scientific understanding? Or is it a rationalization of existing taboos?
> why is it so hard to believe I may have chosen my own morality in things religions happen to agree with me on?
I never claimed that. I claimed that your thought processes are framed by the culture you grew up in. The language you speak. The situations you face. And that of these influenced by over a thousand years of Judeo-Christian philosophies (along with other philosophies as well). The very fact that you fight me on this demonstrates that you lack the meta-understanding to really sit back and deconstruct your thoughts.
Is this reason: "I believe murder is bad because I don't want to live in a society where anyone can run around killing people at will"? That sounds like an opinion to me. A man a private army would probably disagree, and probably so would the solders making their living murdering.
Is this reason: "I believe rape is bad because I don't want to live in a society where anyone can run around rapeing people at will"? Sounds like an argument for your gender to not be raped. Or maybe we can take a viewpoint that exists in the world and say that "Rape is indeed bad, so don't get raped or we'll punish you".
Is this reason: "I believe non-baby-making is bad because I don't want to live in a society where anyone can run around sexing people at will without making babies." Sounds like sound logic to me! Now homosexuality, birth control, and anal/oral sex are all immoral.
Oh wait, that last one isn't yours... You instead went with "I don't want to live in a society where a few people in power can tell people what they can do in their own bedrooms".
Ah, slashdot moderation! Two sentences that belie long standing philosophical topics get modded up while actually highlighting said topics doesn't... I suppose I should be glad I didn't get modded down at least.
Anyways, since I actually like to read this stuff and I'm bored, I figured I'd follow up on my post and the third link specifically:
"Fundamentally, Sartre believes mankind cannot escape responsibility by adopting an external moral system, as the adoption such is in itself a choice that we endorse, implicitly or explicitly, and for which we must take full responsibility. Sartre argues that, one cannot escape responsibility, as each attempt to part one's self from freedom of choice, is in itself a demonstration of choice."
--Here
Existentialism is, as a general topic, quite interesting in that it focuses on how every action is a choice, even non-choices. A slave is a slave by choice; they could always choose to be free, but such a choice would probably result in their death. So how much of a choice is it really?
In this particular case where we are discussing religion and morality: is someone who is moral because of religious guidelines _truly_ moral? Putting aside the questions of true morality (see No true Scotsman), and its possibility (see Altruism), is being religious a choice? If it is, then by choosing to follow that religion they have chosen to be moral in that way. Perhaps, then each individual choice might not count as a free, moral decision, but in reality at every moral crossroads you may choose to denounce that religion. Thus there's really no distinction between someone religious and someone acting on a wholly independent code that is coincidentally the same, so you can cannot argue that the latter is somehow more decent for having not adopted the religious morality.
Now, if you are to argue that religion is not a choice, or more specifically that religion (specifically, here, belief in God and divine consequences) is a true belief, then I think you've departed this discussion and entered quite another. Which is not to say any of the above fundamentally changes, mind you. Mostly I'm just not interested in typing much more because I don't expect anyone will read this and I find the general consensus here is that religion is a choice anyways and that people couldn't possibly actually believe it and it they do it's rather their fault (choice) and they deserve the full consequences (like ridicule; see this whole discussion). That would entitle them to the consequences of owning their morality too, I'd say, but given the opinion here I wouldn't expect ;).
I don't chastise the Romans, I just point to them as different. I don't hold up the bible, and indeed point out that it is meaningless in it's own right.
I could go on, but what's the point. To pretend that you, a product of well over two thousand years of various philosophies all impacted by religion (if not religious themselves), can even have a thought in you head that has "no basis whatsoever in any religion" is the height of ignorance. You speak a language that conflates positive social guarantees (rights) with what is proper (right). Have you ever considered how do you'd think if the word for correct was the same as the word for power? Have you ever looked that the moralities of different societies and how they correspond to their religious tradition?
You are a product of your society, and it is a product of its history. For better or worse, religion was woven all through that, and until you realize that you'll never be able to pick it out of your thoughts. (Not that anyone probably could anyways, but Kant made a pretty good show of it.)
P.S.
Immoral and lying about being moral, or moral and telling the truth about being moral. I still honestly don't care. And to clarify, because you apparently do, I certainly don't know you which is part of why I'm not judging you. Though mostly it's because I really don't care about judging at all. To be clear about that. Not that you'll listen because I already explicitly said I wasn't judging you and you didn't believe me then. You do realize that it's possible for someone to discuss the philosophy of religion and society without being judgmental and/or a "religious troll" right?
Because it's nothing like those? I mean, I agree the word "neurotheology" probably makes it's way around pseudoscience discussions, but I fail to see how something that "attempts to explain religious experience and behaviour in neuroscientific terms" is so illegitimate. Maybe it's not _possible_ (i.e. there isn't an explanation to be discovered), but that doesn't make the effort invalid.
If you have any real reason why it's so outrageous, I'd like to hear it. You should probably update the Wikipedia too.
> People doing good without religion are truly good people.
Which they believe, making them feel good and therefore they are acting quite selfishly, I'd say. For more discussion you can see my reply to your sibling post, but the long and the short of it is that chasing altruism is a silly thing and it's pretty damn dumb to argue that being a decent person is defined by anything other than just acting decently.
> bible, bible, bible...
It's just a book. It tells stories, not how you should act. And it's very old and translated. You literally cannot glean anything at all from it without some form of interpretation. So what's your point, that deriving a system of belief/behavior from the good ideas of a book is wrong because that book also has bad ideas? Because their should have taken the bad ideas and hate too?
Aside from how silly that is as a criticism, it's horribly ironic: you go on to claim that your weren't influenced. Well, odd coincidence, then, that the ideas they left our are 'bad' and the ones they kept are 'good', don't you think? (Admittedly you quote "good", I'm assuming to indicate that you don't necessarily agree, but you don't quote "bad", so my point still stands even if you don't agree with them on every line-item of "good".)
> My morality has no basis whatsoever in any religion. My moral code is derived 100% from what form of society I want to live in
So you grew up on an isolated island and just learned English then? Because I'm pretty sure you are from a society that built it's moral compass on nearly 2000 years of Christian thought. And are speaking a language with a similar history. The Romans built a pretty interesting society prior Christianity... They were pretty okay with forced fights to the death and mass rapes in the coliseum; that was the morality then. Even in the modern day, you can look at such different notions in places that didn't build on the Christian Roman empire, like Africa, China, various islanders, etc. It's incredibly ignorant to think that your ideas are not strongly influenced by your culture, and that that culture not strongly influenced by religion (and Christianity especially in the west).
(And regarding whether you have morals: I simply do not care. After all, you could just be lying if you were immoral :p. So don't take this to be judging your character in that way.)
> You are not a moral person if the reason that you behave that way is because you fear the repercussions if you don't.
*yawn*. Or Maybe this *yawn*.
At the end of the day what does it matter? If someone acts perfectly moral their whole life, what difference does it make if it's for fear of God, or just because they want to? And, if it's the latter, how do I know it's _really_ just because they want to / feel it's right and not because they think it'll benefit them too or make them happier / satisfied / less guilty? (See first link for more on that.) And while I'm posting links I might as well point out that it's pretty bold to claim that someone who isn't decent would have a framework that forces them to be decent.
Would you next like to argue that people that don't write byte code aren't programmers because they rely on compilers to write code? Or that people on the Atkins (or similar) diet are _really_ dieters because they're using a rigid framework and aren't just tracking nutrients/calories? (Hrm, already used that link...). Point is, sometimes people use frameworks to make things easier for them to follow or understand, it doesn't make their intent any different.
> they STILL somehow believe that "goodness" can only come from religion. That's nonsense.
Have you ever considered, though, that for some people that is the truth though? That maybe these are people whose only motivation for good comes from religion and therefore cannot understand those who don't need religion to be decent? People are generally bad at extrapolating beyond themselves like that. ;)
> But the fact that your presumption that it was Christians and therefore Christianity which was responsible
> for creating the constitutional government of the US only serves to prove my point. Was the government
> of England not ALSO Christian?
Indeed it was, and that's where many of the notions the built America came from. England wasn't all bad you know, had that Magna Carta thing which is probably one of the most important legal documents ever (certainly up there with the Declaration of Independence).
Anyways, Nietzsche (who was not much a fan of religion) covers this topic quite well, and hints of his ideas are in the GP. Christianity (and Judaism) inverted the natural order of 'the strong can do as they want to the weak' and created the modern ideas of ethics and rights of the masses. Not every idea would always stick completely, but in many ways the fundamental way that you think, with ideas of individual rights and collectivism, hell, even 'godless' socialism and all grounded in philosophies that were grounded in Judeo-Christian ideas. So even if American wasn't exactly founded Christian, the ideas are solidly there.
> Religion is a lifestyle choice.
To what extent is a rather open question
And so is much of what surrounds those other topics. To name some common stereotypes: One can be attracted to their own gender and not like musical theater. One have black skin and not be a gangsta. But, decry/mock those things, though, which are certainly as much lifestyle choices as religion, and you'll be called bigoted/etc.
Fun fact: One can be religious and not attack science or have riots over a video.
Just yesterday I was being serenaded by some African Americans playing on repeat a song featuring the word "nigger" as a prominent part of the chorus and really the rest of the song. Yet, how often is it viewed as offensive to ever use the word, even as I did, in quotes just to discuss it?
The point is, people will get upset and act hypocritical about just about anything. Race, sex, etc. Religion just gets a bit more flack because there are more religious folk and it's more cool to be down on religion than, say, race.
No, even... hell, _especially_ if your goals are to promote free software this is bad, and that's exactly my point. Nvidia will not open their source because of this. Free software spread? In the best case no. And in reality, Nvidia's drivers aren't what they could be so Linux continues to have crappier than necessary drivers which either are slower than they need to be or have a nasty hacked version of this. Does that help spread free software? I'd say not. Bad drivers are one of the big issues people have with Linux.
Now, if there were good GPL drivers and this would be their selling point, I'd agree: you could spur adoption of open source by restricting the API to the free version and letting Nvidia play catch-up. But that is simply not the case. All this does is artificially make the graphics situation on Linux worse, and that does absolutely nothing to help spread free software.
So what? Now, instead of taking the code and producing better though still closed drivers, we are left with either worse drives or a significant duplication of effort. Good job GPL?
Licensing and open sourcing are complex issues. Simply put though, I don't think there is a single significant project in the world that would become GPL for want of a GPL library. Sure, a project might go GPL and some GPL code might be part of that, but releasing source _and_ giving free, irrevocable license too it is not a simple decision. There's a reason the LGPL exists, despite RMS's ideology: no library is worth re-licensing your application over. So this is exactly why it's BAD: You come up with a solid solution to a problem that people could use, but you waste it by only letting people use it if they play by your rules. You have nothing but a hollow ideological victory. (Hollow because one of the big ideas/benefits of free/open source is to have that one solid solution to a common problem so people don't have to reinvent the wheel.)
Which isn't to say that the GPL is bad for applications or Linux, but get a little perspective here: nvidia isn't going to GPL their drivers because of this, so it becomes just another neat toy in Linux that will ultimately atrophy waiting for someone to really use it.
Well, that ship already rather sailed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights
Where we have a "right to an adequate standard of living" ("freedom from want"). Of course, I am (because it is?) unclear whether "right to" means 'must be provided' or 'must be allowed'. Putting that aside, however, I guess it is an interesting question as to whether or not internet access can be considered an important part of an adequate standard of living. I don't really see it in there, but if you were to imagine that there was a "right to communication" somewhere in free speech, then internet access could well be seen as part of an adequate standard of living. Or if you build it up as part of a right to education you might be able to swing it.
Of course, the idea that it be mobile or broadband is ridiculous. But dialup on an old PC? ...maybe.
As a historical note, just about every screw had was patented at some point, aside, perhaps, from slot heads. For instance, when Ford was designing the Model T, he ultimately picked Phillips head for the screws because he could more easily license the patent for that than he could the patent for the square/Robertson head which he otherwise preferred. It's also worth pointing out that the Torx patent expired about 20 years ago now, though there is a much newer Torx Plus which may covered. "Torx" is still a trademark though; "hexalobular" tends to be the generic. (That's probably why adoption seems to be increasing, and I'm glad because it's really the best head around; especially vs Phillips which is pretty much designed to be awful for general use)
> The government isn't telling you what bulb you can or can not use; they are only regulating what is manufactured at
> mass scale. If you truly want to use a 200W incandescent bulb, you're welcome to figure out a means of producing
> them for yourself
'The government isn't telling you what what you can can or can not say; they are only regulating what can be published. If you truly want to have free speech, you're welcome to figure out a means of sharing you message yourself'
Wiesel words about government bans doesn't justify them or change their function.
Especially when you completely make up stuff like "mass scale". The bill only says "manufactured" and does not give any exceptions to that, volume or otherwise. Of course, it doesn't seem to limit import or sale, so theoretically you can legally acquire them, but that's probably something I'm missing (like the penalty for manufacture) because the bill is written as an amendment. And I dunno, maybe somewhere in there is something about volume limits... I doubt it though.
So no, it's a ban and, frankly, quite disturbing that you seek to defend it in such a way. I can't wait to hear how 'it's not censorship, it's just a tax on controversial speech to cover the hidden costs of your speech for society '.
Firefox does this, and even has a "session only" option to allow cookies but prevent them from persisting across sessions.
I use the extension "Cookie Monster" which puts an icon in the status^W extension bar so I can just click it and set the permissions for the site I'm on. It even has the added bonus of a "Temporary Allow" which disallows after browser restart.
So work and go to school or don't work and don't go to school. I'm quite missing where the outrage is. Maybe it's that they don't have to option to go into massive debt instead of working like you can in the USA?
It's also worth pointing out that these are vocational students, which means they're learning a trade rather than a general education. So working in factory positions related to their trade is arguably quite like the education they're receiving anyways.
Now, sure, quite like the standard of living in China, the standard of working ain't great. But it is what it is, and that is quite a separate issue. Plenty of people chose to work in these factories rather than struggle with life in an impoverished village. Is it so out of line to force students to (claimed less grueling) work in exchange for an education and life outside their impoverished village?
Eh.... I wouldn't be so quick to say. Especially if one is to believe that piracy is around 93%+ like they (?) claimed the other week. I mean, sure, the lion's share will still pirate. However, if even 5% of people are pirating because got sick of having to deal with the DRM and/or crack it anyways, that would represent a relatively significant sales boost. Not to mention it may cut down on perceived piracy because less buyers would be downloading cracked versions (though this depends on how they are measuring it, of course). And it might even bring back people who just swore them off altogether. So overall, I think there's a lot of positive potential.
However, dollars to donuts, this just means they'll be using some nasty root-kit or something instead. They probably figured it'd be more effective than the online DRM and this is just PR spin.
At the end of the 19th century there were a total of about 650,000 patents granted. Now there are over 8,000,000. There's a bit of a difference. Moreover, may of those patent battles were over fairly significant innovations, or at least ones which would require a fair about of investment in terms of time and money to use. Are we seriously comparing pinch-zoom to a sewing machine? Something that requires a day of effort at best and can be rolled out in under a week to something that one builds a manufacturing facility around? It'd barely be the equivalent of using different colors on some knobs on the sewing machine, in terms of relevance to the overall device/complexity. It's something that is _only_ worth patenting to use as a part of an attack portfolio.
And while that's not to say that _never_ happened a hundred years ago (because occasionally it did), these days it's standard operating procedure. I have to side with the OP. This is a different world.
In so far as Samsung referenced the iPhone as a de facto standard of what users want and expect from a touchscreen smart phone, yes. Samsung did indeed set out to copy parts of the iPhone.
However, to claim that such behavior is "crap" and that the jury's decision was correct _requires_ you assume that the patents were entirely valid. If there was prior art, then Samsung no more copied Apple than Apple copied the prior art (and neither innovated). If the design was trivial and uninteresting, then Apple didn't achieve any significant innovation for Samsung to copy... It'd be like complaining that someone used the same typeface as you. Sure you probably spent more time thinking about it then they did to say 'eh... just do what they did', but on the other hand it's uninteresting and unimportant and you don't deserve an international monopoly on it.
So, no, I consider this case (or, the software parts of it) to be exactly software patents are bad and the results it achieved precisely why software parents are so dangerous. Yes, Samsung copied things. Stupid, trivial things. Stupid trivial things that don't benefit society to be disclosed (part of the social 'deal' of patents) nor do they deserve protection. Things that a smaller company without a patent arsenal to build would simply put in as a new feature and forget. Things for which being first to market is payment enough. And yet these things create a billion dollar verdict? I think that's way, _way_ off pace of the "right result".
(And of course, even if you accept the patents, there are cases where some device/patent combinations the jury identified as infringement are clearly incorrect. Oh, and that the jury set out to punish Samsung (by their own admission) rather than try for reasonable damages. Etc. So, actually, I think it was all around a pretty poor decision.)
It's called "freedom". You might have heard of it in history class. Basically, the idea is that things should be allowed unless there's a good reason to disallow them. An important part of that is exercising due diligence in studying those reasons.