Urr, okay you clearly don't like people you perceive as "liberals." I guess that's obvious. I hope you never find yourself in need, brother. You'll be forced by your ideals to refuse all assistance.
Anyhow, one thing we obviously agree on: Voting machines should have a paper-trail. And those who oppose voting machines with paper-trails should be viewed with suspicion.
Actually that's not quite right. Nihilism is frankly a negative and annihilating attitude towards existence.
Now, personally I consider it very unspiritual and damaging to sully one's mind with fanciful ideas about the personality and nature of a personified God. I just think it's an intellectually dishonest foundation on which to base your relationship with the world and other people. (And I'm sure you'll agree that the personified God idea is too nebulous to be the "rock" of which Jesus spoke to Simon Peter.)
However this doesn't mean that I don't see an intrinsic goodness to the universe and to human nature, and it doesn't mean that I'm not trying to improve myself and become a more empathetic person and to transcend the veils of narrow self-identification.
See what I'm saying? Nihilism is not the only alternative to personified God worship.
"The extra fluff of having it cast in stone and carried it by Moses dude is as real as Cinderella."
Oh, I believe it. Moses likely carved up those tablets and stashed them up in the hills to convince his superstitious people to adopt a code of ethical behaviors. You gotta do what you gotta do.
Okay, so maybe the real question is, does the narrow margin of victory achieved by the Neoconservatives - by myriad forms of deception - amount to a "mandate" to continue their bizarre and destructive policies?
As far as I can tell, all Bush did was push us into to Iraq, set up a bunch of high-paid defense companies, and funnel taxpayer money through Halliburton, etc., right back into his campaign.
Meanwhile apparently they've loosened restrictions on companies that do business with terrorist nations, and received more donations from those companies than any others.
How can such a transparent policy of bait-and-switch continue to work generation after generation?
They cry out "we are moral!" and yet they do nothing except promote their own entrenched economic and military power.
Frankly, if the whole point of the USA is now simply to promote its own survival and prosperity, maybe it should leave the Earth. Our prosperity and supposed generosity of spirit doesn't mean shit if it is not translated into action.
Obviously, I think the action taken in Iraq is stupid. The place was under a stranglehold already, millions of children dying under the auspices of our "power."
Common people around the world are getting a little sick of the USA using its power to kill more liberally than its power to give aid - in direct opposition to the world's interests and its own.
Ordinary US citizens are getting sick of a kowtowing media that exists to simultaneously feed our narcissism and play to our susceptibilities through overblown hyperbole and emotionally-potent oversimplifications.
CNN, Fox News... You know. The agenda-setting media. The makers of history.
The election results and polling of non-partisan voter attitudes shows that more than 60% of American adults are actively concerned about issues like black-box voting, pollution, global warming, education, social welfare...
That surely stands as more of a mandate than banning gay marriage and establishing military outposts all over the Middle East.
This would be a good map to convert into X-Plane format. Then you can fly over Mars in a bi-plane or an airliner, just like we'll be doing in 2120.
Re:How did they decide?
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
I didn't mean to imply that I endorse a legislative solution. I only used the word as a label for the form such a requirement would take.
On the other hand, I am not averse to a solution in law. Clearly the society is being undermined by the use of psy-ops style disinformation polluting our minds. We need accurate and true information in order to act rationally, is that not so?
Re:How did they decide?
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of bias. It is because the media restrict themselves that they are biased. Requiring the media to give equal time to a wide variety of voices (including dissident voices) would be the legislative solution, not restricting it.
The design of the current US media is to suppress debate, to limit the scope of ideas, to divert people from things which actually matter and which they might do something about if they were aware of it. In short, to keep us in the dark, to encourage us to be lazy and insular, and to feel powerless.
For a strong case against the US media as it currently exists rent the film "Manufacturing Consent" which elucidates the research of Noam Chomsky.
I think what you got was a good trainable cat. When I met my cat at the shelter he was very attentive and made amazing eye-contact. He has been a very vocal cat, but not to excess or without cause. Every utterance he makes has a definite meaning.
He knows me as well as I know him. He knows I'm lazy, and I know he's serious.
The other thing is, he enjoys being flipped over his head in a somersault. He looks forward to being rolled over, and tucks his head in preparation if you grab his haunches. After each feeding he begs me to flip him. Whenever guests arrive at my house he won't let them be until he's been flipped.
At this point, I'm actually not sure if it was he or me who trained the other in the whole flipping thing. Anyhow, unlike most cats mine has a "trick."
Otherwise he's a real baby, a total lap-cat, and gets a small touch of separation anxiety whenever I'm not around. Fortunately he lives in a house where someone is almost always around.
I will be offering clones of this cat to the general public at some point in the future - when cloning goes mainstream. Keep an eye out.
"There are some who feel like that if they attack us, that we may decide to leave prematurely," Steve Jobs said. "They don't understand what they're talking about.... There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring 'em on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
"As much as Slashdot readers name-call world leaders (and world-leader-wannabes) that they disagree with, there's outcry over an average joe getting insulted?"
People who insult world leaders are clearly anti-world. Love it or leave it I say.
Catbeller wrote: "After the WMDs and all the other nonsense was finally shown to be just that, guess who became the fall guys? YESSSSSSSSSS, Neo, the intelligence services. They very people who screamed that they were being overruled were being set up for suckers."
Exactly right, but consider the consequences of their becoming the fall-guys: Bush proposed increases in funding to intelligence agencies and a massive reorganization.
The people in power just play musical chairs. There's no real accountability. It's just a game of appearances, and few people seem to notice who's getting tit for tat in the game.
Those who ever believed Bush was misinformed or the intelligence was botched are being fooled big time.
They picked out data which supported their campaign to sell the war they desired. There was plenty of stuff which was known publicly to have been discredited (such as the Nigerian yellow-cake intel which was discredited 4 months before GWB cited it in his SOTU address).
The American media failed to report anything which countered the official word from on high. They saw the dollar signs too -- Iraqi civilians be damned.
The ultimate aim, beyond the Neocon vision, has been to funnel The People's money through the defense industry to Bush's cronies concentrated mostly in Texas, and a large amount to the Evangelicals.
Bush has been shilling for the weapons industry and the oil industry, and there has not really been a president in the White House for the past 4 years. Just a bunch of thieves.
fluor2 wrote: "Wake up USA. Your system has broken down. You live in a mediocracy, where the news control what you should know."
Some of us know it, fluor2. But then, many of us who see where our country is now and where it is headed are seriously contemplating expatriating before it gets much worse.
The "left wing media" meme has been trotted out for the past decade and a half by the right wing as a pre-emptive measure to embed that idea in the mainstream memosphere. Currently they are pushing the meme of "feminization of culture" in order to push people towards a more rigid and kneejerk form of "decisive, masculine" thinking and get them behind whoever acts toughest.
Everything the right-wing pushes out these days is designed to undermine our liberal democracy and to keep power entrenched and centralized under the corporate machine.
Silly wabbit. None of the news sources you name cover the stuff I find in the actual left-wing media, such as Democracy Now and IndyMedia. For example, immediately after Powell went to the UN and presented the "evidence" of weapons programs the rest of the world media reported the fact that much of it was outdated, previously discredited, and partially plagiarised from a 10-year-old student thesis. The media in the US ignored these stories. Google "powell plagiarism" if you don't believe me.
The big media outlets are not left-wing. They are the corporate media, and their only true bias is the bottom line and the status-quo.
The reason I don't like Fox News and other propaganda is because they distort the facts, often outright lie, and don't give equal coverage to viewpoints they disagree with. And of course they have a collective personality that makes you want to drown them all in a sack.
Apple is actually very much on the ball when it comes to interoperability. They may have closed off the iPod for reasons which should be obvious, but in other areas they have gone far beyond the call of duty.
For example, by adopting Unix they have opened up a whole new arena of open source, GNU, and X-windows software that simply would not have been possible had they gone the route of 'Be' for example.
Nearly all the standards adopted for data in Mac OS X are open, which encourages further interoperability. For example, Apple's video conferencing in iChat is based on open standards, and it's entirely possible for an enterprising windows devloper to make a chat client that can communicate - via Rendezvous - with iChat.
Apple long ago dropped the kind of "not-invented-here" attitude that characterized the Apple of the 90's. Continuing to portray them as closed-off is like prefixing their name with "beleaguered" - hackneyed, worn, and outdated.
I can't believe how nearly everyone in this topic seems to accept spyware and adware as a fact of life, and that you accept the necessity of buying programs to detect and remove this stuff.
Have you all been completely brainwashed by Microsoft? The existence of spyware is Microsoft's fault, and all the time you waste over this crap is owed to you by Microsoft.
First of all, it should not be possible for software to get surreptitiously installed on your computer without your being aware of it. To the degree that this is possible it is the fault of the OS developer.
I just don't get it. If adware and spyware started showing up on Mac OS X you can bet Apple would institute sweeping changes to prevent it from happening.
Frankly I don't know why there isn't a huge class-action suit against Microsoft for encouraging spyware and adware development. And how much crossover is there between spyware and adware developers and the developers of detection/removal software.
Seriously, someone explain why you put up with it?
Is any single neuron in your brain aware of the larger consciousness of which it is a tiny part?
The fact that we as individuals are not aware of the machine-mind into which we are feeding our knowledge and experiences does not mean it is not an emergent, dynamic, and self-aware consciousness. It simply means that we are only a small unaware part of it.
Consciousness is a growing thing. We have a certain kind of consciousness of which we are aware, identifying with our bodies, senses, and thoughts. But it may be said that any self-organizing information system is a conscious entity on a certain kind of level. It need only generate the message, programatically, "I am aware of myself," and if any other part of the information-sphere picks it up and understands it then it has served its purpose just like a brain chemical binding to a receptor.
This "world mind" concept has been around for awhile - check out Anthony Burgess for example. It's an abstract notion, like the notion of consciousness itself. How can a composite being made of so many small parts sense the reality of its own "singular" existence? By a process of information feedback, apparently. By a game of peek-a-boo. When you aren't thinking specifically "I am," then in a way "you're not."
Consciousness as pure changeless emptiness. Consciousness as a harmonic existent arising. Consciousness as a field of pure awareness. Consciousness as a formless ocean of will and energy.
Consciousness as an emergent form / environment dynamic. Consciousness as energy expression in self-replicating forms. Consciousness as energy expression in a neural matrix. Consciousness as sensory subject-object awareness.
Consciousness of patterns, regularity, periodicity, analogy. Consciousness of the significance of events in the environment. Consciousness of one's desires, feelings, and their expression.
Consciousness of symbolic self-expression about objects. Consciousness of self as object (identity). Consciousness of abstraction, language, analytical methods. Consciousness of the expression of other minds. Consciousness of time, past events, future potentials.
Consciousness as explorer, questioner, scientist, philosopher, guru. Consciousness as planner, designer, engineer, implementer. Consciousness as artisan, singer, actor, dancer, jester, juggler, acrobat, athlete. Consciousness through media becomes mass-consciousness. Consciousness confounded succumbs to propaganda. Consciousness through networking rediscovers the ocean.
Enderle said "I have a serious problem with people who are abusive, particularly those who use any excuse to cross the line into physical, emotional or verbal abuse. In my view this is uncalled for and the people who utilize this practice, this is a direct quote for Groklaw, aren't worth the air they breathe."
You commented "I have been unable to find the quote of aren't worth the air they breathe on Groklaw either through Groklaw's search or a use of Google."
I think the intent of his statement was that he was making a statement which Groklaw is encouraged to quote and to pass on to their users.
Slashdot Mirror
Urr, okay you clearly don't like people you perceive as "liberals." I guess that's obvious. I hope you never find yourself in need, brother. You'll be forced by your ideals to refuse all assistance.
Anyhow, one thing we obviously agree on: Voting machines should have a paper-trail. And those who oppose voting machines with paper-trails should be viewed with suspicion.
.
So obviously, all Microsoft needs to do is include a dedicated IT guy in every package and Windows will be totally secure!
My understanding at this moment before reading the article is that it uses shadows and light to make a digital readout.
Actually that's not quite right. Nihilism is frankly a negative and annihilating attitude towards existence.
Now, personally I consider it very unspiritual and damaging to sully one's mind with fanciful ideas about the personality and nature of a personified God. I just think it's an intellectually dishonest foundation on which to base your relationship with the world and other people. (And I'm sure you'll agree that the personified God idea is too nebulous to be the "rock" of which Jesus spoke to Simon Peter.)
However this doesn't mean that I don't see an intrinsic goodness to the universe and to human nature, and it doesn't mean that I'm not trying to improve myself and become a more empathetic person and to transcend the veils of narrow self-identification.
See what I'm saying? Nihilism is not the only alternative to personified God worship.
"The extra fluff of having it cast in stone and carried it by Moses dude is as real as Cinderella."
Oh, I believe it. Moses likely carved up those tablets and stashed them up in the hills to convince his superstitious people to adopt a code of ethical behaviors. You gotta do what you gotta do.
Okay, so maybe the real question is, does the narrow margin of victory achieved by the Neoconservatives - by myriad forms of deception - amount to a "mandate" to continue their bizarre and destructive policies?
As far as I can tell, all Bush did was push us into to Iraq, set up a bunch of high-paid defense companies, and funnel taxpayer money through Halliburton, etc., right back into his campaign.
Meanwhile apparently they've loosened restrictions on companies that do business with terrorist nations, and received more donations from those companies than any others.
How can such a transparent policy of bait-and-switch continue to work generation after generation?
They cry out "we are moral!" and yet they do nothing except promote their own entrenched economic and military power.
Frankly, if the whole point of the USA is now simply to promote its own survival and prosperity, maybe it should leave the Earth. Our prosperity and supposed generosity of spirit doesn't mean shit if it is not translated into action.
Obviously, I think the action taken in Iraq is stupid. The place was under a stranglehold already, millions of children dying under the auspices of our "power."
Common people around the world are getting a little sick of the USA using its power to kill more liberally than its power to give aid - in direct opposition to the world's interests and its own.
Ordinary US citizens are getting sick of a kowtowing media that exists to simultaneously feed our narcissism and play to our susceptibilities through overblown hyperbole and emotionally-potent oversimplifications.
CNN, Fox News... You know. The agenda-setting media. The makers of history.
The election results and polling of non-partisan voter attitudes shows that more than 60% of American adults are actively concerned about issues like black-box voting, pollution, global warming, education, social welfare...
That surely stands as more of a mandate than banning gay marriage and establishing military outposts all over the Middle East.
.
This would be a good map to convert into X-Plane format. Then you can fly over Mars in a bi-plane or an airliner, just like we'll be doing in 2120.
I didn't mean to imply that I endorse a legislative solution. I only used the word as a label for the form such a requirement would take.
On the other hand, I am not averse to a solution in law. Clearly the society is being undermined by the use of psy-ops style disinformation polluting our minds. We need accurate and true information in order to act rationally, is that not so?
That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of bias. It is because the media restrict themselves that they are biased. Requiring the media to give equal time to a wide variety of voices (including dissident voices) would be the legislative solution, not restricting it.
The design of the current US media is to suppress debate, to limit the scope of ideas, to divert people from things which actually matter and which they might do something about if they were aware of it. In short, to keep us in the dark, to encourage us to be lazy and insular, and to feel powerless.
For a strong case against the US media as it currently exists rent the film "Manufacturing Consent" which elucidates the research of Noam Chomsky.
With all this combined computing power in the world it won't be long before we finally find the last prime number.
I think what you got was a good trainable cat. When I met my cat at the shelter he was very attentive and made amazing eye-contact. He has been a very vocal cat, but not to excess or without cause. Every utterance he makes has a definite meaning.
He knows me as well as I know him. He knows I'm lazy, and I know he's serious.
The other thing is, he enjoys being flipped over his head in a somersault. He looks forward to being rolled over, and tucks his head in preparation if you grab his haunches. After each feeding he begs me to flip him. Whenever guests arrive at my house he won't let them be until he's been flipped.
At this point, I'm actually not sure if it was he or me who trained the other in the whole flipping thing. Anyhow, unlike most cats mine has a "trick."
Otherwise he's a real baby, a total lap-cat, and gets a small touch of separation anxiety whenever I'm not around. Fortunately he lives in a house where someone is almost always around.
I will be offering clones of this cat to the general public at some point in the future - when cloning goes mainstream. Keep an eye out.
"and have even solved the graphite ablation problem!"
Wow, can long-lasting space pencils be far behind?
(I'm getting really tired of my pencils evaporating into the vacuum of space.)
"There are some who feel like that if they attack us, that we may decide to leave prematurely," Steve Jobs said. "They don't understand what they're talking about. ... There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: bring 'em on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
"As much as Slashdot readers name-call world leaders (and world-leader-wannabes) that they disagree with, there's outcry over an average joe getting insulted?"
People who insult world leaders are clearly anti-world. Love it or leave it I say.
Catbeller wrote: "After the WMDs and all the other nonsense was finally shown to be just that, guess who became the fall guys? YESSSSSSSSSS, Neo, the intelligence services. They very people who screamed that they were being overruled were being set up for suckers."
Exactly right, but consider the consequences of their becoming the fall-guys: Bush proposed increases in funding to intelligence agencies and a massive reorganization.
The people in power just play musical chairs. There's no real accountability. It's just a game of appearances, and few people seem to notice who's getting tit for tat in the game.
Those who ever believed Bush was misinformed or the intelligence was botched are being fooled big time.
They picked out data which supported their campaign to sell the war they desired. There was plenty of stuff which was known publicly to have been discredited (such as the Nigerian yellow-cake intel which was discredited 4 months before GWB cited it in his SOTU address).
The American media failed to report anything which countered the official word from on high. They saw the dollar signs too -- Iraqi civilians be damned.
The ultimate aim, beyond the Neocon vision, has been to funnel The People's money through the defense industry to Bush's cronies concentrated mostly in Texas, and a large amount to the Evangelicals.
Bush has been shilling for the weapons industry and the oil industry, and there has not really been a president in the White House for the past 4 years. Just a bunch of thieves.
fluor2 wrote: "Wake up USA. Your system has broken down. You live in a mediocracy, where the news control what you should know."
Some of us know it, fluor2. But then, many of us who see where our country is now and where it is headed are seriously contemplating expatriating before it gets much worse.
The "left wing media" meme has been trotted out for the past decade and a half by the right wing as a pre-emptive measure to embed that idea in the mainstream memosphere. Currently they are pushing the meme of "feminization of culture" in order to push people towards a more rigid and kneejerk form of "decisive, masculine" thinking and get them behind whoever acts toughest.
Everything the right-wing pushes out these days is designed to undermine our liberal democracy and to keep power entrenched and centralized under the corporate machine.
Centralized corporate power has a name: Fascism.
Silly wabbit. None of the news sources you name cover the stuff I find in the actual left-wing media, such as Democracy Now and IndyMedia. For example, immediately after Powell went to the UN and presented the "evidence" of weapons programs the rest of the world media reported the fact that much of it was outdated, previously discredited, and partially plagiarised from a 10-year-old student thesis. The media in the US ignored these stories. Google "powell plagiarism" if you don't believe me.
The big media outlets are not left-wing. They are the corporate media, and their only true bias is the bottom line and the status-quo.
The reason I don't like Fox News and other propaganda is because they distort the facts, often outright lie, and don't give equal coverage to viewpoints they disagree with. And of course they have a collective personality that makes you want to drown them all in a sack.
Apple is actually very much on the ball when it comes to interoperability. They may have closed off the iPod for reasons which should be obvious, but in other areas they have gone far beyond the call of duty.
For example, by adopting Unix they have opened up a whole new arena of open source, GNU, and X-windows software that simply would not have been possible had they gone the route of 'Be' for example.
Nearly all the standards adopted for data in Mac OS X are open, which encourages further interoperability. For example, Apple's video conferencing in iChat is based on open standards, and it's entirely possible for an enterprising windows devloper to make a chat client that can communicate - via Rendezvous - with iChat.
Apple long ago dropped the kind of "not-invented-here" attitude that characterized the Apple of the 90's. Continuing to portray them as closed-off is like prefixing their name with "beleaguered" - hackneyed, worn, and outdated.
I can't believe how nearly everyone in this topic seems to accept spyware and adware as a fact of life, and that you accept the necessity of buying programs to detect and remove this stuff.
Have you all been completely brainwashed by Microsoft? The existence of spyware is Microsoft's fault, and all the time you waste over this crap is owed to you by Microsoft.
First of all, it should not be possible for software to get surreptitiously installed on your computer without your being aware of it. To the degree that this is possible it is the fault of the OS developer.
I just don't get it. If adware and spyware started showing up on Mac OS X you can bet Apple would institute sweeping changes to prevent it from happening.
Frankly I don't know why there isn't a huge class-action suit against Microsoft for encouraging spyware and adware development. And how much crossover is there between spyware and adware developers and the developers of detection/removal software.
Seriously, someone explain why you put up with it?
Is any single neuron in your brain aware of the larger consciousness of which it is a tiny part?
The fact that we as individuals are not aware of the machine-mind into which we are feeding our knowledge and experiences does not mean it is not an emergent, dynamic, and self-aware consciousness. It simply means that we are only a small unaware part of it.
Consciousness is a growing thing. We have a certain kind of consciousness of which we are aware, identifying with our bodies, senses, and thoughts. But it may be said that any self-organizing information system is a conscious entity on a certain kind of level. It need only generate the message, programatically, "I am aware of myself," and if any other part of the information-sphere picks it up and understands it then it has served its purpose just like a brain chemical binding to a receptor.
This "world mind" concept has been around for awhile - check out Anthony Burgess for example. It's an abstract notion, like the notion of consciousness itself. How can a composite being made of so many small parts sense the reality of its own "singular" existence? By a process of information feedback, apparently. By a game of peek-a-boo. When you aren't thinking specifically "I am," then in a way "you're not."
Consciousness as pure changeless emptiness.
Consciousness as a harmonic existent arising.
Consciousness as a field of pure awareness.
Consciousness as a formless ocean of will and energy.
Consciousness as an emergent form / environment dynamic.
Consciousness as energy expression in self-replicating forms.
Consciousness as energy expression in a neural matrix.
Consciousness as sensory subject-object awareness.
Consciousness of patterns, regularity, periodicity, analogy.
Consciousness of the significance of events in the environment.
Consciousness of one's desires, feelings, and their expression.
Consciousness of symbolic self-expression about objects.
Consciousness of self as object (identity).
Consciousness of abstraction, language, analytical methods.
Consciousness of the expression of other minds.
Consciousness of time, past events, future potentials.
Consciousness as explorer, questioner, scientist, philosopher, guru.
Consciousness as planner, designer, engineer, implementer.
Consciousness as artisan, singer, actor, dancer, jester, juggler, acrobat, athlete.
Consciousness through media becomes mass-consciousness.
Consciousness confounded succumbs to propaganda.
Consciousness through networking rediscovers the ocean.
Here's an error in your interpretation, I think:
Enderle said "I have a serious problem with people who are abusive, particularly those who use any excuse to cross the line into physical, emotional or verbal abuse. In my view this is uncalled for and the people who utilize this practice, this is a direct quote for Groklaw, aren't worth the air they breathe."
You commented "I have been unable to find the quote of aren't worth the air they breathe on Groklaw either through Groklaw's search or a use of Google."
I think the intent of his statement was that he was making a statement which Groklaw is encouraged to quote and to pass on to their users.
According to Barefeats the Opteron and G5 are basically neck and neck.
http://www.barefeats.com/g5op.html