As well, reading is much too passive an activity. It encourages mental passiveness, instead of being aware and engaged in our surroundings.
Exactly. The fact that most of the great thinkers throughout history have been illiterates who never bothered with books further supports your assertion.
P.S. This post employs a literary device. Figuring out the literary device is left as an exercise for the reader.
Species lines are imposed by observers after the fact; they are not inherent in the nature of living organisms.
Not true; the test for species tends to be rather simple (as far as I know). Breed two animals; if they produce a fertile offspring, they are the same species. Some people also suggest having the same number of chromosomes, and nucleotides per chromosome as a prerequisite; however, this is not required for the first definition to hold (especially outside mammals) and is disputed by a lot of people (in amphibians and plants for example). Link
As fiat money is a poor store of value, consider this scenario: hyperinflation occurs tomorrow. In that case, $200 tomorrow might represent $0.01 in today's USD. If that is the case, Nintendo would be no more able to sell a $200 Wii tomorrow than they would be able to sell a $0.01 Wii today. Of course, this is a hypothetical and extreme scenario; however, the point stands: while Nintendo might like to sell the Wii for $200 (nominal), the decrease in the value of money caused by inflation and depreciation may not allow them to.
Nintendo has had launch prices of $200 for 20 years now, you have to be pretty fucking impressive to even have the nerve to utter that they could launch a console for an unheard-of-before price of $200
Except that due to inflation and the depreciation of the US dollar, a $200 Wii would be a lot cheaper than a $200 NES in terms of real value, during their respective launch periods.
Perhaps that is because other countries (e.g. China) employ less official as well as "more capital" methods of taking care of "prisoners" than the US. According to Wikipedia, 90% of executions world wide are carried out by China (and who knows how under-reported such matters are within China).
P.S. On the same page, you'll find that "Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen" still officially execute juveniles. "China, the most frequent user of capital punishment, does not allow for the execution of those under 18; nevertheless, child executions have taken place due to insufficient care in verifying the ages of defendants." Interesting.
To clarify, the annexation of Czechoslovakia referred to the annexation thereof by Nazi Germany, and "The Third Reich" = Nazi Germany. Forgive me for being condescending, but I simply do not have much faith in the capacity of people with mod points to know or understand these things.
China is not the United States and they not only can, but do run things differently.... I say let China do what China is going to do and lets concentrate on making things better in America first - then we can work on improving China's (online) rights.
Except that in at most 20 years, China will be a superpower, so if you don't fix them now while they might still listen to you, in 20 years they definitely won't listen to you. In 30 years, China may very well be the superpower, at which point how broken the US is affects me and the majority of the world's population a lot less than how broken China is.
I'll leave you with one though: around the annexation of Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain remarked: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!" or something to that effect. I'm sure people might have said something of a similar effect regarding the Holocaust if they had known: "[The Third Reich] is not the United States and they not only can, but do run things differently.... I say let [The Third Reich] do what [The Third Reich] is going to do and lets concentrate on making things better in America first - then we can work on improving [The Third Reich's] rights." In fact, I do believe many people did in fact say many things to that effect.
"Yahoo defends its policies in China as doing more good than harm, even as multiple dissidents have been jailed based on Yahoo Mail evidence."
Only a Yahoo would believe such a claim. In related news, has anyone read Gulliver's Travels? I take it the people who chose the name for the company didn't.
Ok, so which part of my post caused it to be modded down as "overrated" when it was not even modded up to begin with? Was it the fact that it was historically accurate? Or perhaps that part where I sourced my claims with a wikipedia link? I find it rather humorous that in a discussion where slashbots complain about the lack of civil liberties in America, one of those same slashbots would attempt to suppress my speech. Fight on, hypocritical warriors, fight on...
Big sweeping generalisation of muslims there don't you think?
Not true. From my post, all you can deduce is that I believe the proportion of Muslims who want to kill Americans, p, is greater than 0. I don't know why you would assume that p = 1. I guess they don't teach kids basic reading comprehension or logic any more. That's OK, I guess. As long as you feel good about yourself and can get offended about every stupid thing in a knee-jerk manner reminiscent of Pavlov's dog, things like basic reading comprehension and logic aren't that important.
I've got a better chance of being hit by lightning that being killed by the (boogeyman) Terrorists.
True enough, but if you open up your borders even more than that imbecile Bush is currently doing, and if law enforcement completely stopped doing its job (not that I'm convinced that they are doing a very good job at the moment), the probabilities would probably change. Furthermore, if you provided every Muslim with (even more) free weapons, (even more) money, and free airplane tickets to the US, the probabilities would change even more. The only conclusion I want you to draw from this is that a lot more people want to kill you than have the means to do so.
Do you mean the Jihad that we are creating through our failed foreign policy?
I think he might be referring to the Jihad that conquered Syria, Armenia, Egypt, North Africa, Persia, Byzantium/Constantinopol, Alexandria, Antioch, Jersualem, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, Romania, Hungary, Spain, most of France, India, etc.
The same jihad that almost conquered Vienna and that even fought the Chinese under the Tang Dynasty, all in a time before the US was even a twinkle in some Brit's eye (in case you thought you could blame it all on the US). Here's a start. The truth is out there; pick up a history book to find out more.[melodramatic music goes here]
P.S. I'm serious (except about the melodramatic music part).
Isn't "deity worship" and "logical thought" mutually exclusive?
I take it you've never heard of Pascal's wager? I think people should spend a bit more time reading books and a bit less time flaming others on slashdot.:)
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson
Fair enough, but keep in mind that the founding fathers were more than willing to fight wars. In 1801, Thomas Jefferson (and the American people) went to war against Tripoli (in North Africa, for the historically and geographically challenged) for reasons that would confuse most Americans today (Tripolitan War). Today's society is paralized by the death of 3000
Americans in a conflict that they themselves have not come anywhere near experiencing first hand. Do you truly believe that a civil war, arguably the most brutal type of war, fought on American soil will be more pleasant than the Iraq war?
The masses almost always value security over freedom until they have so little of either a revolution is born.
Probably true, but consider this: freedom is defined as the ability to take actions that you desire without being restricted; the concept of freedom itself says nothing about preventing others from knowing what you are doing. In fact, if someone wants to know what you are doing, and you prevent them from finding out, you are restricting their freedom to information. On another note, let us consider another freedom: the freedom to kill anyone you desire; this is a freedom which has existed since time immemorial, ingrained in the very psyche of humanity. Yet, in order to get the assurance that we probably won't be the victims ourselves, we choose to forgoe the freedom to murder in exchange for the security of not being murdered ourselves. This lies at the core of social contract theory, the pillar upon which our society stands.
P.S. Whatever happened to the dream of everyone having perfect access to all information; "information wants to be free" they exclaimed, and yet, when that information is of value to themselves, they want to preserve it. They desire a monopoly upon it (a copyright which never expires), and in the process, have they not murdered the very dream of an open source society?
Corporations demand labour on the factor market; workers supply it. Unions are a monopoly on the supply of labour. If you think a monopoly on supply is such a great idea, I hope you like companies like Microsoft and the telcos.
P.S. When corporations collude, we call that a cartel (which is illegal in most countries); however, some cartels such as OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) seem to operate with impunity as nobody has the balls do do anything about them.
You're thinking of "Abu Gharib." I don't believe there to be any hard evidence that prisoners are mistreated at Guantanamo; the greatest complaint is that they are tried before a military tribunal instead of a civilian one (could be wrong, I hardly follow the issue).
From TFA: "In the first issue of Civil War, he brilliantly folds an entire dissertation on security into one succinct dialogue bubble by saying: "Don't play politics with me, lady. Superheroes need to stay above that stuff or Washington starts telling us who the supervillains are."
I would hardly call those two sentences brilliant, or even succinct for that matter. In fact, the third sentence does not even seem grammatically correct (though I could be wrong; English is my third language).
The genocide in Sudan is still going on, and the Holocaust denying leader of Iran is still making nuclear headway, but yeah, I guess if you had to mention the most important thing going on at the UN, I guess this proposed treaty that nobody has to abide by anyways (like most of the other UN treaties) is it.
"It is dangerous and inappropriate for an unelected international treaty body to undertake the task of creating entirely new rights, which currently exist in no national law, such as webcasting rights and anti-circumvention laws related to broadcasting."
So, someone has finally noticed that the UN is unelected. Quite interesting how nobody seems to mention that when they agree with what the UN is doing.
How exactly does wiretapping threaten freedom of speech? If you have freedom of speech, it doesn't matter if someone else (the gov't) hears what you're saying because they can't do anything about it. That's the point of freedom of speech, after all...
I wish people would stop confusing (or associating) freedom of speech and privacy.
Slashdot Mirror
As well, reading is much too passive an activity. It encourages mental passiveness, instead of being aware and engaged in our surroundings.
Exactly. The fact that most of the great thinkers throughout history have been illiterates who never bothered with books further supports your assertion.
P.S. This post employs a literary device. Figuring out the literary device is left as an exercise for the reader.
Sometimes being stupid and just breed is more efficient than being intelligent.
See today's society.
Species lines are imposed by observers after the fact; they are not inherent in the nature of living organisms.
Not true; the test for species tends to be rather simple (as far as I know). Breed two animals; if they produce a fertile offspring, they are the same species. Some people also suggest having the same number of chromosomes, and nucleotides per chromosome as a prerequisite; however, this is not required for the first definition to hold (especially outside mammals) and is disputed by a lot of people (in amphibians and plants for example). Link
As fiat money is a poor store of value, consider this scenario: hyperinflation occurs tomorrow. In that case, $200 tomorrow might represent $0.01 in today's USD. If that is the case, Nintendo would be no more able to sell a $200 Wii tomorrow than they would be able to sell a $0.01 Wii today. Of course, this is a hypothetical and extreme scenario; however, the point stands: while Nintendo might like to sell the Wii for $200 (nominal), the decrease in the value of money caused by inflation and depreciation may not allow them to.
Nintendo has had launch prices of $200 for 20 years now, you have to be pretty fucking impressive to even have the nerve to utter that they could launch a console for an unheard-of-before price of $200
Except that due to inflation and the depreciation of the US dollar, a $200 Wii would be a lot cheaper than a $200 NES in terms of real value, during their respective launch periods.
When I can't tell the difference between a rendered character and a live one, then I'll start wondering if graphics are approaching "good enough".
Yeah, but would you really want to shoot or hack and slash a photo-realistic character for fun? That's pretty sick (IMO).
Perhaps that is because other countries (e.g. China) employ less official as well as "more capital" methods of taking care of "prisoners" than the US. According to Wikipedia, 90% of executions world wide are carried out by China (and who knows how under-reported such matters are within China).
P.S. On the same page, you'll find that "Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen" still officially execute juveniles. "China, the most frequent user of capital punishment, does not allow for the execution of those under 18; nevertheless, child executions have taken place due to insufficient care in verifying the ages of defendants." Interesting.
To clarify, the annexation of Czechoslovakia referred to the annexation thereof by Nazi Germany, and "The Third Reich" = Nazi Germany. Forgive me for being condescending, but I simply do not have much faith in the capacity of people with mod points to know or understand these things.
China is not the United States and they not only can, but do run things differently. ... I say let China do what China is going to do and lets concentrate on making things better in America first - then we can work on improving China's (online) rights.
... I say let [The Third Reich] do what [The Third Reich] is going to do and lets concentrate on making things better in America first - then we can work on improving [The Third Reich's] rights." In fact, I do believe many people did in fact say many things to that effect.
Except that in at most 20 years, China will be a superpower, so if you don't fix them now while they might still listen to you, in 20 years they definitely won't listen to you. In 30 years, China may very well be the superpower, at which point how broken the US is affects me and the majority of the world's population a lot less than how broken China is.
I'll leave you with one though: around the annexation of Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain remarked: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!" or something to that effect. I'm sure people might have said something of a similar effect regarding the Holocaust if they had known: "[The Third Reich] is not the United States and they not only can, but do run things differently.
"Yahoo defends its policies in China as doing more good than harm, even as multiple dissidents have been jailed based on Yahoo Mail evidence."
Only a Yahoo would believe such a claim. In related news, has anyone read Gulliver's Travels? I take it the people who chose the name for the company didn't.
Ok, so which part of my post caused it to be modded down as "overrated" when it was not even modded up to begin with? Was it the fact that it was historically accurate? Or perhaps that part where I sourced my claims with a wikipedia link? I find it rather humorous that in a discussion where slashbots complain about the lack of civil liberties in America, one of those same slashbots would attempt to suppress my speech. Fight on, hypocritical warriors, fight on...
Big sweeping generalisation of muslims there don't you think?
Not true. From my post, all you can deduce is that I believe the proportion of Muslims who want to kill Americans, p, is greater than 0. I don't know why you would assume that p = 1. I guess they don't teach kids basic reading comprehension or logic any more. That's OK, I guess. As long as you feel good about yourself and can get offended about every stupid thing in a knee-jerk manner reminiscent of Pavlov's dog, things like basic reading comprehension and logic aren't that important.
I've got a better chance of being hit by lightning that being killed by the (boogeyman) Terrorists.
True enough, but if you open up your borders even more than that imbecile Bush is currently doing, and if law enforcement completely stopped doing its job (not that I'm convinced that they are doing a very good job at the moment), the probabilities would probably change. Furthermore, if you provided every Muslim with (even more) free weapons, (even more) money, and free airplane tickets to the US, the probabilities would change even more. The only conclusion I want you to draw from this is that a lot more people want to kill you than have the means to do so.
Do you mean the Jihad that we are creating through our failed foreign policy?
I think he might be referring to the Jihad that conquered Syria, Armenia, Egypt, North Africa, Persia, Byzantium/Constantinopol, Alexandria, Antioch, Jersualem, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, Romania, Hungary, Spain, most of France, India, etc. The same jihad that almost conquered Vienna and that even fought the Chinese under the Tang Dynasty, all in a time before the US was even a twinkle in some Brit's eye (in case you thought you could blame it all on the US). Here's a start. The truth is out there; pick up a history book to find out more.[melodramatic music goes here]
P.S. I'm serious (except about the melodramatic music part).
Isn't "deity worship" and "logical thought" mutually exclusive?
:)
I take it you've never heard of Pascal's wager? I think people should spend a bit more time reading books and a bit less time flaming others on slashdot.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson
Fair enough, but keep in mind that the founding fathers were more than willing to fight wars. In 1801, Thomas Jefferson (and the American people) went to war against Tripoli (in North Africa, for the historically and geographically challenged) for reasons that would confuse most Americans today (Tripolitan War). Today's society is paralized by the death of 3000 Americans in a conflict that they themselves have not come anywhere near experiencing first hand. Do you truly believe that a civil war, arguably the most brutal type of war, fought on American soil will be more pleasant than the Iraq war?
The masses almost always value security over freedom until they have so little of either a revolution is born.
Probably true, but consider this: freedom is defined as the ability to take actions that you desire without being restricted; the concept of freedom itself says nothing about preventing others from knowing what you are doing. In fact, if someone wants to know what you are doing, and you prevent them from finding out, you are restricting their freedom to information. On another note, let us consider another freedom: the freedom to kill anyone you desire; this is a freedom which has existed since time immemorial, ingrained in the very psyche of humanity. Yet, in order to get the assurance that we probably won't be the victims ourselves, we choose to forgoe the freedom to murder in exchange for the security of not being murdered ourselves. This lies at the core of social contract theory, the pillar upon which our society stands.
P.S. Whatever happened to the dream of everyone having perfect access to all information; "information wants to be free" they exclaimed, and yet, when that information is of value to themselves, they want to preserve it. They desire a monopoly upon it (a copyright which never expires), and in the process, have they not murdered the very dream of an open source society?
Corporations demand labour on the factor market; workers supply it. Unions are a monopoly on the supply of labour. If you think a monopoly on supply is such a great idea, I hope you like companies like Microsoft and the telcos.
P.S. When corporations collude, we call that a cartel (which is illegal in most countries); however, some cartels such as OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) seem to operate with impunity as nobody has the balls do do anything about them.
That's a pretty good fraction. If Microsoft gets that fraction, the Xbox 360 would definitely be a success.
"So, over the years, Rob, as only true friends do, has managed to cause my inbox to explode over the years."
How long does it take to proofread a ~30 word post?
You're thinking of "Abu Gharib." I don't believe there to be any hard evidence that prisoners are mistreated at Guantanamo; the greatest complaint is that they are tried before a military tribunal instead of a civilian one (could be wrong, I hardly follow the issue).
From TFA: "In the first issue of Civil War, he brilliantly folds an entire dissertation on security into one succinct dialogue bubble by saying: "Don't play politics with me, lady. Superheroes need to stay above that stuff or Washington starts telling us who the supervillains are."
I would hardly call those two sentences brilliant, or even succinct for that matter. In fact, the third sentence does not even seem grammatically correct (though I could be wrong; English is my third language).
The genocide in Sudan is still going on, and the Holocaust denying leader of Iran is still making nuclear headway, but yeah, I guess if you had to mention the most important thing going on at the UN, I guess this proposed treaty that nobody has to abide by anyways (like most of the other UN treaties) is it.
"It is dangerous and inappropriate for an unelected international treaty body to undertake the task of creating entirely new rights, which currently exist in no national law, such as webcasting rights and anti-circumvention laws related to broadcasting."
So, someone has finally noticed that the UN is unelected. Quite interesting how nobody seems to mention that when they agree with what the UN is doing.
How exactly does wiretapping threaten freedom of speech? If you have freedom of speech, it doesn't matter if someone else (the gov't) hears what you're saying because they can't do anything about it. That's the point of freedom of speech, after all...
I wish people would stop confusing (or associating) freedom of speech and privacy.