Standards aren't a matter of morality, they are a matter of consensus. A web developer develops for whatever his customer complains about the least. Occassionally, some spend a bit more devoloping for the widest market share and audience. Even more seldom, a developer develops to published standards, sometimes screwing his customer in the process, sometimes not.
If no one uses the standard, it's irrelevant. The only relevant standard is the standard that is used. It makes everyone's life easier when everyone uses the standard, but then, that is what we call concensus.
Now, for my own personal pages that I could care less about my "customer", I like to detect the browser and in the event of IE put a big sign on the page that says "We have detected that you are using a legacy browser. Much of the content on this site may not work properly. If you would like to download a modern browser capable of using sites like this one, you can download one for youre platform at http://www.mozilla.com/" But I'm just a smartass:)
I wouldn't call any of those statments "Hate Speech" and that term was probably a bad choice of words by me. I would agree that all of those statements are probably inappropriate for the workplace though, the last if being a purposeful double entendre.
Things that *I* would consider inappropriate for the workplace:
Any sexual topic or topics relating directly to some form of bodily function deemed "private" in your particular culture. Although I don't see anything particularly WRONG with such topics, most cultures simply don't discuss such things in public, and I can respect that.
Openly threatening topics. Calling a group of people "inferior" isn't threatening, although it's probably indicitive if small mindedness and not very productive in any discussion. Saying you would like to see a class of people dead is definately skirting it. Telling someone you would like to, or possibly will do something unpleasant to them is definately threatening.
That's simply a matter of definition. From dictionary definition of agnosticism and atheism, what you (and atheists.org) describe as atheism fits in more with agnosticism.
The etymology could go either way, atheist coming from the greek "without God" and agnostic coming from the greek "without knowledge" [of God presumed].
If your definition holds, then how do you define "Agnostic"? and how do you reconcile the bifurcation of Atheism camps, one having lack of belief, and one believing in the non-existance of God?
I don't think it's a moral high-ground issue if we both agree we believe (or don't rather) similarly yet disagree on what to call ourselves:)
I totally disagree. All these things are a normal part of human existance. Except for maybe the sexual preference thing, which sexual taboos being what they are, I don't really think discussing you you enjoy screwing should be brought up in any polite society. On the other hand, if sports and politics and weather can come up in conversation in the work place, why not race, religion, or any of the other miriad of topics we humans enjoy discussing. If your workplace is so dry that people don't ever talk about anything but work, then I pity you:)
IMO people are just too sensitive. I for one am curious about people's cultural and ethnic backgrounds, religious and political views, and if they disagree with me, all the better. I find I don't learn very much discussing those things with someone who believes identically to me, or came from an identical background. I absolutely detest the fact that I can be talking to someone about their country of origin or religious background in the lunchroom, and suddenly find myself in a "weird situation" when some ultra-sensitive ultra-PC person comes in earshot. It's not natural.
Now, hatred doesn't belong in the workplace, I will agree, but benign discussion? Reeks a bit of thoughtcrime to me.
You don't have to pledge your allegience to the flag either. I was raised Jehovah's Witness, a sect that believes pledging your allegiance to any human based government to be wrong. JW's have won 2 supreme court cases showing that having a compulsory pledge is unconstitutional. The pledge is completely voluntary (I never pledged as a child, only after I left the church).
Utilizing your arguement, if I said I was to carve my image from a block of marble, then, I start with a block of marble and begin carving, you would argue that I look like a block of marble, not the end product.
No, science guarantees that a viable theory will be known until proven false. Science never proves anything, it just postulates, and eventually there is so much evidence that we call something "true" for all intents.
The scientific method disproves falsehoods, but does nothing to prove truths.
It's my experience that militant atheists are the norm, and those that are not militant are generally mislabled agnostics.
I find Atheists generally more annoying than Fundamentalists. Probably because instead of "enlightened" they deem themselves "educated" and so they look down on people personally, rather than letting their God do it:)
Atheism theism is not "belief", it's "belief in God". I think anti belief would be something like aism, which is more along the lines of what Ferris Bueler is.
Athism covers those who are "anti belief in god", not those who are not believers. On the contrary, atheists are some of the most dogmatic religious people around, and one of the most annoying sects.
If you want the philosophy of "I really don't care or know" I think the term "agnostic" is what you are looking for. Atheists believe that they know for a fact that there is no God, which in my opinion is just blind faith.
The meat bag aside, I have a big problem with your problem with stem cell research:)
I agree that your #1 and 2 above are the crux of the ABORTION issue. No argument there (as to the definition of the argument. The argument as defined is a doozy.) However, stem cell research has nothing to do with those things.
The arguement for stem cell research must be:
1. Is it ok to do experiments on the human tissue when we have not yet answered the question on whether that human tissue, when viable, was it's own entity or an extention of another.
That's a non-issue. Almost universally, experimentation on cadavers is accepted, as is experimentation on disposed body parts when the entity is still living.
Stem cell research is attacked, not because anyone has a problem with stem cell research, but because they want to fire a shot over the bow of that other big argument. Personally, I think that's deplorable.
Your going to get your nerves struck though, no matter what, it's part of being human. Grow a bit of a backbone.
Some people are uncomfortable around or discussing homosexuality. Others are uncomfortable with racial issues. You have a problem with religion. Guess what? We all have to live with gay people, black people, and religious people. You denounce your fellow congregation member's previous churches for chastising people who's sexuality came up in church, and then try to explain why it's ok for someone to be chastised for bringing up religion at work?
Ideas aren't going to hurt you. If you've got religious issues bugging you as you say, get some counciling (I understand completely, I was raised Jehovah's Witness) but don't get after someone else for bringing up something completely benign because of your own hangups.
You most certainly were trying to troll a specific ideology (religious fundamentalism). His response was simply to show that a left wing liberal position was just as dangerous. He emphasized this by even using your original style.
Your objection seems to be that religious fundamentalists are crazy, but extreme liberals are not. That's a mighty bigoted opinion you have towards a large sub population. Personally, I find that religious fundamentalists are a hell of alot more logical than extreme liberals, extreme conservatives or Atheists.
If you actually knew what you were talking about, you would know that Jesus wasn't "sharing" one peice of bread with many, nor was he demonstrating his power. The lesson has nothing to do with "good will towards your fellow man."
The people were all bitching and moaning that Jesus was a bit of a windbag and they were hungry, so Jesus grabs this kid who has a loaf of bread and (miraculously) gives everyone a peice. The people stick around to hear one more dissertation because there is now free food.
The lesson he was trying to teach was that if your going to demand everyone show up at your meeting, you sure as hell better bring donuts.
In searching out other planets we will use the most viable means, not the most geocentric. Water Ice is probably a far more conveinient for fuel than methane ice, for instance. If your trekking through space, you'll likely get more kick out of the trace deutrium and tritium in the water through fusion than you ever will out of the least chemical energy containing hydrocarbon, not only that, but since it's solid, you can carry it around with you. It doesn't do you any good as a liquid or gas though (hard to contain) but as a plasma, on the other hand, it kicks butt. So the "most useful" forms of water to humans in space travel is likely solid and plasma.
Freeman Dyson has some interesting points in "Disturbing the Universe" about your last sentence. If you look at the rate of technological growth in different areas, we see a whole lot more happening in Computer Science, AI, and Biology than we do "Getting to the Stars". He postulates (and I tend to agree) that by the time it's really viable, we won't be looking for conditions similar to our own, but rather we will have adapter us to the most efficient conditions. We might have human decendants living happily in the Ort cloud with no "spacecraft" to speak of because they biologically adapted ourselves to a vacuum. We might not have any biological components at all, as redundant arrays of nanoscale circuits might be much more resilient and efficient. I don't think there is a "primary reason" for searching... it's just something we do. We don't really have a "goal" and when we do get where we are going I doubt it will be much like any of us imagined.
If you've ever been to a place where liquid water doesn't exist as I have, you very quickly take on a different viewpoint. Water is normally, even on this planet, often a sand or a gravel, undifferenciated from any other mineral at a cursory glance. "Frozen liquid" in reference to water stops having meaning at about -30C because it simply doesn't exist naturally in that state. You start thinking of gasoline and oils as "frozen" or "thawed" instead. Titan gave us a glimpse of an strangely familiar world where water was the predominant mineral and methane was the liquid that rained down and formed oceans.
I wasn't implying you might be karma whoring. PlayCleverFully is the one that sets off the radar;)
I'd have to disagree with you that the hacking(cracking) bug seldomly goes away. It did with me and everyone I knew. A hacker's life tends to be one of curious exploration where you know just enough to be dangerous. Once you get good and the mystery on that level is gone, you have reached computer science and that's where you can do anything you can dream. Hacking is messing around with people's creations whereas science is messing around with God's:) Hacking is a fleeting stage in most people.
OTOH, playing around with the artificial construct of the human creations is where we pick up alot of the concepts which will later be our computer science or engineering "gut". Since it appears the kid has already gotten his hand slapped and found an alternative (legal) medium to mess around (he has ceased being the "cracker" and is now just a hacker) I can see very little things he could be doing that are MORE productive than beating up an old windows box through ethernet, since that is where his passion lies right now. If he was more passionate about writing a video game, then THAT's where his time should be spent. In his larval stage, his time is best spent where he doesn't spend it begrudgingly. He'll learn a lot no matter where he puts his time (hell, here I am, a fully experienced computer scientist and I'm learning alot right now setting up a scanner on a headless gentoo box:) )
Let me just say, that (assuming the OP wasn't karma whoring, which My karma-dar is going off pretty strong on) here you've got a kid who is genuinely fascinated with doing something with the computer beyond playing sims and halo 2 and you are chastising him? He even here admits to setting up a sandbox for the benign exploration of his curiosity, which he must be pretty passionate about to go to all the trouble.
You have a kid with a passion and you just can't wait to knock the wind out of his sails on Slashdot? You tell him his ideas are worthless... learn the stuff that doesn't interest you (yet) instead of wasting your time poking and proding and experimenting. You need to learn solid Engineering principles.. yada yada yada. The kid LOVES what he is DOING and it he is learning alot right now and having a grand time doing it. If he sticks with it, eventually he will learn to do larger, and in your opinion "more productive" programming, but it will be with a greater appreciation for the art than if some dull logician tried to shove java down his unwilling throat. I don't chastise toddlers for whacking rubber balls with plasic hammers because they could be doing something "productive". Screw you; let a kid have a dream. If we don't squash it he'll probably end up showing us all up in 20 years.
I get about 1.5x10^14 kWh per year world consumption projected for 2010 from more official sources.
divide the available annual recieved by the usage and we get, very conservatively 4000 times the energy needed is recieved. To adjust for my original statement which was per day, we get 1 decade of energy consumption per day in sunlight on the planet. I was off by a couple orders of magnitude, unless my math is wrong.
Also, though, to not compare apples to oranges, we have to consider that since we have already accounted for energy loss from the planet in our sunlight calculations, most of the energy recieved is converted to SOME FORM for storage on the earth, be it biomass, heat, electrical, etc. My original statement was that we can afford sinks of energy converting these forms into more useful ones, which I think holds, although without quite the punch of my original statement, especially if we consider other forms of energy not provided by modern terrestrial solar that we can tap, both renewable and non-renewable, such as currently geothermal, fission and fossil and in the (hopefully) near future, extra terrestrial solar arrays, fusion, geomagnetic and non-fossil chemical.
Most MS coding from this era (and even nowdays) is a bit of a mix. It is compiled as C++, but written in a mostly C style and given external C linkage. It's a weird mix. It did allow some C++ constructs that were disallowed prior to C99, like relaxing the location of variable declarations and such, and tightens up the type saftey a bit. It also allows some other nicities like structs used internally to occassionally have private members, although these more C++ aspects are rarely used. But yes, you are correct that it is primarily C stylistically (and for linkage purposes) but in reality it is C++ written in a way that makes C++ advocates cry.
I'm not sure they gave ALL the code. In that case, I can see your point, but I'm still pretty sceptical that they would try something so easily exploited.
Slashdot Mirror
Standards aren't a matter of morality, they are a matter of consensus. A web developer develops for whatever his customer complains about the least. Occassionally, some spend a bit more devoloping for the widest market share and audience. Even more seldom, a developer develops to published standards, sometimes screwing his customer in the process, sometimes not.
:)
If no one uses the standard, it's irrelevant. The only relevant standard is the standard that is used. It makes everyone's life easier when everyone uses the standard, but then, that is what we call concensus.
Now, for my own personal pages that I could care less about my "customer", I like to detect the browser and in the event of IE put a big sign on the page that says "We have detected that you are using a legacy browser. Much of the content on this site may not work properly. If you would like to download a modern browser capable of using sites like this one, you can download one for youre platform at http://www.mozilla.com/" But I'm just a smartass
I wouldn't call any of those statments "Hate Speech" and that term was probably a bad choice of words by me. I would agree that all of those statements are probably inappropriate for the workplace though, the last if being a purposeful double entendre.
Things that *I* would consider inappropriate for the workplace:
Any sexual topic or topics relating directly to some form of bodily function deemed "private" in your particular culture. Although I don't see anything particularly WRONG with such topics, most cultures simply don't discuss such things in public, and I can respect that.
Openly threatening topics. Calling a group of people "inferior" isn't threatening, although it's probably indicitive if small mindedness and not very productive in any discussion. Saying you would like to see a class of people dead is definately skirting it. Telling someone you would like to, or possibly will do something unpleasant to them is definately threatening.
That's simply a matter of definition. From dictionary definition of agnosticism and atheism, what you (and atheists.org) describe as atheism fits in more with agnosticism.
:)
The etymology could go either way, atheist coming from the greek "without God" and agnostic coming from the greek "without knowledge" [of God presumed].
If your definition holds, then how do you define "Agnostic"? and how do you reconcile the bifurcation of Atheism camps, one having lack of belief, and one believing in the non-existance of God?
I don't think it's a moral high-ground issue if we both agree we believe (or don't rather) similarly yet disagree on what to call ourselves
I totally disagree. All these things are a normal part of human existance. Except for maybe the sexual preference thing, which sexual taboos being what they are, I don't really think discussing you you enjoy screwing should be brought up in any polite society. On the other hand, if sports and politics and weather can come up in conversation in the work place, why not race, religion, or any of the other miriad of topics we humans enjoy discussing. If your workplace is so dry that people don't ever talk about anything but work, then I pity you :)
IMO people are just too sensitive. I for one am curious about people's cultural and ethnic backgrounds, religious and political views, and if they disagree with me, all the better. I find I don't learn very much discussing those things with someone who believes identically to me, or came from an identical background. I absolutely detest the fact that I can be talking to someone about their country of origin or religious background in the lunchroom, and suddenly find myself in a "weird situation" when some ultra-sensitive ultra-PC person comes in earshot. It's not natural.
Now, hatred doesn't belong in the workplace, I will agree, but benign discussion? Reeks a bit of thoughtcrime to me.
You don't have to pledge your allegience to the flag either. I was raised Jehovah's Witness, a sect that believes pledging your allegiance to any human based government to be wrong. JW's have won 2 supreme court cases showing that having a compulsory pledge is unconstitutional. The pledge is completely voluntary (I never pledged as a child, only after I left the church).
It doesn't state "how" God made man though.
Utilizing your arguement, if I said I was to carve my image from a block of marble, then, I start with a block of marble and begin carving, you would argue that I look like a block of marble, not the end product.
No, science guarantees that a viable theory will be known until proven false. Science never proves anything, it just postulates, and eventually there is so much evidence that we call something "true" for all intents.
The scientific method disproves falsehoods, but does nothing to prove truths.
It's my experience that militant atheists are the norm, and those that are not militant are generally mislabled agnostics.
:)
I find Atheists generally more annoying than Fundamentalists. Probably because instead of "enlightened" they deem themselves "educated" and so they look down on people personally, rather than letting their God do it
Atheism theism is not "belief", it's "belief in God". I think anti belief would be something like aism, which is more along the lines of what Ferris Bueler is.
Athism covers those who are "anti belief in god", not those who are not believers. On the contrary, atheists are some of the most dogmatic religious people around, and one of the most annoying sects.
If you want the philosophy of "I really don't care or know" I think the term "agnostic" is what you are looking for. Atheists believe that they know for a fact that there is no God, which in my opinion is just blind faith.
The meat bag aside, I have a big problem with your problem with stem cell research :)
I agree that your #1 and 2 above are the crux of the ABORTION issue. No argument there (as to the definition of the argument. The argument as defined is a doozy.) However, stem cell research has nothing to do with those things.
The arguement for stem cell research must be:
1. Is it ok to do experiments on the human tissue when we have not yet answered the question on whether that human tissue, when viable, was it's own entity or an extention of another.
That's a non-issue. Almost universally, experimentation on cadavers is accepted, as is experimentation on disposed body parts when the entity is still living.
Stem cell research is attacked, not because anyone has a problem with stem cell research, but because they want to fire a shot over the bow of that other big argument. Personally, I think that's deplorable.
Your going to get your nerves struck though, no matter what, it's part of being human. Grow a bit of a backbone.
Some people are uncomfortable around or discussing homosexuality. Others are uncomfortable with racial issues. You have a problem with religion. Guess what? We all have to live with gay people, black people, and religious people. You denounce your fellow congregation member's previous churches for chastising people who's sexuality came up in church, and then try to explain why it's ok for someone to be chastised for bringing up religion at work?
Ideas aren't going to hurt you. If you've got religious issues bugging you as you say, get some counciling (I understand completely, I was raised Jehovah's Witness) but don't get after someone else for bringing up something completely benign because of your own hangups.
You most certainly were trying to troll a specific ideology (religious fundamentalism). His response was simply to show that a left wing liberal position was just as dangerous. He emphasized this by even using your original style.
Your objection seems to be that religious fundamentalists are crazy, but extreme liberals are not. That's a mighty bigoted opinion you have towards a large sub population. Personally, I find that religious fundamentalists are a hell of alot more logical than extreme liberals, extreme conservatives or Atheists.
Bull.
If you actually knew what you were talking about, you would know that Jesus wasn't "sharing" one peice of bread with many, nor was he demonstrating his power. The lesson has nothing to do with "good will towards your fellow man."
The people were all bitching and moaning that Jesus was a bit of a windbag and they were hungry, so Jesus grabs this kid who has a loaf of bread and (miraculously) gives everyone a peice. The people stick around to hear one more dissertation because there is now free food.
The lesson he was trying to teach was that if your going to demand everyone show up at your meeting, you sure as hell better bring donuts.
I don't want to live in a universe where life is dissimilar to Jessica Alba!
A probable class C, H, K or P, but my money is on H :)
In searching out other planets we will use the most viable means, not the most geocentric. Water Ice is probably a far more conveinient for fuel than methane ice, for instance. If your trekking through space, you'll likely get more kick out of the trace deutrium and tritium in the water through fusion than you ever will out of the least chemical energy containing hydrocarbon, not only that, but since it's solid, you can carry it around with you. It doesn't do you any good as a liquid or gas though (hard to contain) but as a plasma, on the other hand, it kicks butt. So the "most useful" forms of water to humans in space travel is likely solid and plasma.
Freeman Dyson has some interesting points in "Disturbing the Universe" about your last sentence. If you look at the rate of technological growth in different areas, we see a whole lot more happening in Computer Science, AI, and Biology than we do "Getting to the Stars". He postulates (and I tend to agree) that by the time it's really viable, we won't be looking for conditions similar to our own, but rather we will have adapter us to the most efficient conditions. We might have human decendants living happily in the Ort cloud with no "spacecraft" to speak of because they biologically adapted ourselves to a vacuum. We might not have any biological components at all, as redundant arrays of nanoscale circuits might be much more resilient and efficient. I don't think there is a "primary reason" for searching... it's just something we do. We don't really have a "goal" and when we do get where we are going I doubt it will be much like any of us imagined.
If you've ever been to a place where liquid water doesn't exist as I have, you very quickly take on a different viewpoint. Water is normally, even on this planet, often a sand or a gravel, undifferenciated from any other mineral at a cursory glance. "Frozen liquid" in reference to water stops having meaning at about -30C because it simply doesn't exist naturally in that state. You start thinking of gasoline and oils as "frozen" or "thawed" instead. Titan gave us a glimpse of an strangely familiar world where water was the predominant mineral and methane was the liquid that rained down and formed oceans.
Not exactly
I wasn't implying you might be karma whoring. PlayCleverFully is the one that sets off the radar ;)
:) Hacking is a fleeting stage in most people.
:) )
I'd have to disagree with you that the hacking(cracking) bug seldomly goes away. It did with me and everyone I knew. A hacker's life tends to be one of curious exploration where you know just enough to be dangerous. Once you get good and the mystery on that level is gone, you have reached computer science and that's where you can do anything you can dream. Hacking is messing around with people's creations whereas science is messing around with God's
OTOH, playing around with the artificial construct of the human creations is where we pick up alot of the concepts which will later be our computer science or engineering "gut". Since it appears the kid has already gotten his hand slapped and found an alternative (legal) medium to mess around (he has ceased being the "cracker" and is now just a hacker) I can see very little things he could be doing that are MORE productive than beating up an old windows box through ethernet, since that is where his passion lies right now. If he was more passionate about writing a video game, then THAT's where his time should be spent. In his larval stage, his time is best spent where he doesn't spend it begrudgingly. He'll learn a lot no matter where he puts his time (hell, here I am, a fully experienced computer scientist and I'm learning alot right now setting up a scanner on a headless gentoo box
And I thought that rule was only for serial killers!
Let me just say, that (assuming the OP wasn't karma whoring, which My karma-dar is going off pretty strong on) here you've got a kid who is genuinely fascinated with doing something with the computer beyond playing sims and halo 2 and you are chastising him? He even here admits to setting up a sandbox for the benign exploration of his curiosity, which he must be pretty passionate about to go to all the trouble.
You have a kid with a passion and you just can't wait to knock the wind out of his sails on Slashdot? You tell him his ideas are worthless... learn the stuff that doesn't interest you (yet) instead of wasting your time poking and proding and experimenting. You need to learn solid Engineering principles.. yada yada yada. The kid LOVES what he is DOING and it he is learning alot right now and having a grand time doing it. If he sticks with it, eventually he will learn to do larger, and in your opinion "more productive" programming, but it will be with a greater appreciation for the art than if some dull logician tried to shove java down his unwilling throat. I don't chastise toddlers for whacking rubber balls with plasic hammers because they could be doing something "productive". Screw you; let a kid have a dream. If we don't squash it he'll probably end up showing us all up in 20 years.
Thank you. I've never seen the actual numbers ran, and they appear to be legit within a margine of debatable error. I get:
Area of earth = 5x10^14 M^2 x (4.8 kWh/meter^2)/day = 2x10^15 kWh/day x 365 days = 7x10^17 kWh annual sunlight recieved yearly.
Your consumption numbers seem a bit high.
I get about 1.5x10^14 kWh per year world consumption projected for 2010 from more official sources.
divide the available annual recieved by the usage and we get, very conservatively 4000 times the energy needed is recieved. To adjust for my original statement which was per day, we get 1 decade of energy consumption per day in sunlight on the planet. I was off by a couple orders of magnitude, unless my math is wrong.
Also, though, to not compare apples to oranges, we have to consider that since we have already accounted for energy loss from the planet in our sunlight calculations, most of the energy recieved is converted to SOME FORM for storage on the earth, be it biomass, heat, electrical, etc. My original statement was that we can afford sinks of energy converting these forms into more useful ones, which I think holds, although without quite the punch of my original statement, especially if we consider other forms of energy not provided by modern terrestrial solar that we can tap, both renewable and non-renewable, such as currently geothermal, fission and fossil and in the (hopefully) near future, extra terrestrial solar arrays, fusion, geomagnetic and non-fossil chemical.
touche ;)
Hehe. I didn't say it was *GOOD* C++ :)
Most MS coding from this era (and even nowdays) is a bit of a mix. It is compiled as C++, but written in a mostly C style and given external C linkage. It's a weird mix. It did allow some C++ constructs that were disallowed prior to C99, like relaxing the location of variable declarations and such, and tightens up the type saftey a bit. It also allows some other nicities like structs used internally to occassionally have private members, although these more C++ aspects are rarely used. But yes, you are correct that it is primarily C stylistically (and for linkage purposes) but in reality it is C++ written in a way that makes C++ advocates cry.
I'm not sure they gave ALL the code. In that case, I can see your point, but I'm still pretty sceptical that they would try something so easily exploited.