'Maybe seizing a few important patents/copyrights and putting them in the public domain would change their tune a little, as monetary fines obviously do not.'
The copyrights are assets. If the EU seized all the copyrights MS Office and MS IE, and MS Windows to cover Microsoft's failure to pay their fines. I see no reason why the EU couldn't do this today since last I heard Microsoft was refusing to pony up and genuinely comply with all sanctions.
True enough. It would be much more reasonable for the EU to impose fines that are greater than the profit derived from the illicit actions (whether or not that would bankrupt Microsoft shouldn't be a consideration in Anti-Trust issues and it is a shame people consider it so).
If Microsoft attempts to strong arm the EU, the EU could then exert its right to seize assets. Microsoft's greatest assets are its IP and if the EU legally seizes Microsoft copyrights the same WWII agreements you refer to would cause the change of ownership to be recognized globally, not just in the EU.
I'm pretty sure they are the ones who developed the system that requires all web documents to reference their DTD. Last time I tried omitted such a reference and ran it through the validator, the validation failed;)
Seems to me that if they designed a system in order to allow them to change the document specification used by billions of documents by modifying a single document. If they never made use of that ability and if that design decision costs them ridiculous amounts of resources that is their own problem. I know a web developer can't omit that reference from their document without violating standards, would it also violate standards for the client application to ignore requests for the standard DTDs?
This entire story is a joke. When Linus refers to the operating system he IS talking about the kernel, which is academically speaking where the line was drawn on what the operating system consists of long ago. Take a course on operating system design and the course taught you how to write a kernel.
As for MacOS and Windows making more sense for the average user, that is fud as well. They are the more popular choice atm, that does not mean they are the right choice.
Its obvious that either you or someone close to you has had a hard time with this. Sorry about that.
In the real world both mothers and fathers skip out on children. It may be unthinkable to you, but it is also unthinkable to many that by and large when a parent murders a child (and I'm not calling abortions murder) it is the mother who does it, not the father.
Just because you happen to think enforcement is lax does not change the actual moral, ethical, and legal obligations a father has and those obligations are the same a mother has. A child should not be brought into this world unless both parents agree to assume those responsibilities. If either parent is unwilling then abortion should be mandatory. That cuts both ways, that also means no man can require a woman have a child. The argument is being made the other way only because a womans right to abort is already being recognized.
You are right that ethical people are far more rare than unethical ones (be they fathers, mothers, employers, employees, or any other role filled by humans) but the solution is not to put up barriers to taking the high road. People live longer in this day and age and yet the biological imperative that the males of the species feel for sex still comes at the same early age. The result is that our society prepares a male for fatherhood at 30 and males begin having sex at 15. Is it really so surprising that we have deadbeat dads? Allowing the men the right to say "I'm not ready" in the same manner women can will mean a drastic reduction in dead beat dads. There will be fewer younger fathers overall, but they will at least be more likely to be responsible fathers. It will be easier to enforce child support since the courts and police will not be flooded with requests.
Given your strong views on the topic you may not agree and that is fine, but consider it, consider the implications of every father choosing to have a child rather than choosing to have sex. Trust me, men are not going to stop having sex irresponsibility, that is an impossible dream.
Thats not at all offtopic, at least not in this thread. That was precisely my point. A man has moral, ethical, and legal obligations if a child is brought into this world. As long as a reasonably safe means exist to abort then either the man or the woman should have the authority to require it.
Even a waiver disclaiming the man's legal obligation isn't enough, if the child is born then the moral obligations do not magically disappear and such a waiver would only serve to make the relationship between father and child more difficult later.
'But if the man has a veto on abortion then that sets up an unacceptable scenario of women's bodies being subject to a men's will - thus we are forced to give authority to the mother herself, which although not perfect is better than the alternative.'
Agreed but you misunderstood what I meant. I am not suggesting the man be able to veto an abortion, I am saying that he should be able to require it. A man has no right to force a woman to carry a baby to term but likewise the woman has no right to bring a child into the world. After all, legally the man has obligations (although in most states few or no rights except in wedlock) both moral and legal if the woman is allowed to carry to term.
Perhaps there are some guys who are homophobic on some level and simply don't want to admit the attractiveness of other males. There are however, those of us who generally feel no attraction to males.
'They have found that in normal females, it's smaller than it is in normal males.'
This is highly consistent with my own observation that females are able to distinguish 'attractiveness' in other females innately while straight males can only look to the reactions of females. How do you innately know what is attractive without some level of attraction?
Since the gland is smaller in females, but not non-existent females would have a certain level of attractions to other females as well.
You ignore the other side of the issue as well. Its the woman's body and she should be able to abort if she wishes, but its the man's life and obligation as well and either one of them should have the right to choose not to keep the baby.
So what does it take to qualify, does he have to be one of the tens of thousands of nazi troops, or the thousands of nazi officers? Precisely which Nazis are we allowed to count as Nazis?
Being a member of the Hitler youth, the oaths he swore, and the actions he took as a member of the Hitler youth squads ARE things he's done. People do not change, cowardly children grow into cowardly men... discipline and learning may temper the behavior they show but inside they are the same as they always were.
Perhaps that is why he grew to be an insufferable self-righteous prick peddling made up crapola to take advantage of millions of ignorant fools.
Normally I say judge the message and not the messager but in this case the message is an opinion that millions are expected to accept because of the messenger.
The man is a Nazi for god sake. Is he really entitled to a voice on the subject of ethical bioengineering?
I seem to recall asking the CEO about this when he came on to discuss the company going public. At that time he said they wouldn't be selling or allowing the company to be bought out. I always preferred mysql as my open sql database but if this is managed like Sun manages openoffice then I'll be moving to another platform.
Sorry but it is the most annoying thing in the world when people don't include the conversation in the mail. That means I have to gum the works with old emails and reference back to them in order to give your comments context.
Perhaps leaving the quoted text in hurt in the world of dialup and bbs but it helps more than it hurts now. Really, I have too much going on and your conversation really isn't that important to me. I delete your previous mails a month ago, I neither remember what I said or you said. For the love of god, include ALL the quoted text.
The only exception is those stupid chain mails. Those are the definition of bad etiquette.
'Otherwise, at least it'd be easier to find a tradesman who can get it right! (I've seen enough registered cablers get UTP wrong..)'
I have seen the same but it's really pathetic. Seriously, you could give a one page cheat sheet without any small print that explains how to install UTP and/or STP correctly.
What is interesting is the best way I found to get a dose of mGlu is to eat msg just before trying to memorize something. Perhaps we have found the secret to Asian memory eh?;) Course if it's too large a dose it will act as a neurotoxin.
'As children age, their brain matures and develops more critical thinking and abstract skills.'
The fact that a young child doesn't even grasp the material their parents think is mental poison is part of my point. Sex, drugs, and violence are no easier or more difficult for a child to grasp than cooking, cleaning, and basic procedures. Those critical thinking and abstract skills you mention do not magically develop, the brain is a learning machine and it starts as a fairly empty slate, it self programs to learn and understand more efficiently. The more input you feed a brain the more efficiently it will be able to process input, in the beginning the functions being improved may be more primitive. Censoring your child will cause the brain to develop more slowly to be able to understand and cope with abstract concepts later than an uncensored child.
The point is not merely that you should explain "adult" topics to your child when they are old enough to understand. The point is that introducing your child to as many real adult experiences and facts of the adult world and repeatedly and continually exposing them to those experiences will cause their brains to configure themselves to handle real adult life in the best and most efficient manner possible.
When they are old enough to actually understand the abstract concept it is often too late to impact fundamental brain function. Their brain will be trained to efficiently handle a fantasy environment their parents have created for them. Rather than the actual world we live in. Parents are able to create and maintain this environment like never before and the teens and young adults discovering the real world for the first time are actually so unable to cope they are killing themselves!
For god sake stop retarding the development of your child. The human mind learns from input, be it media content, life, or activities. There is no such thing as bad input, ALL input is useful and the brain derives useful information from it, learns to cope with it, learns what to avoid from it, and so forth. You can't dictate how a child will interpret and store that input, nor are you bright enough to define it by regulating the input, they will get that input anyway eventually and you will only serve to have slowed their mental development.
Perhaps you think ignorant children playing with imaginary friends are cute. I prefer rational and logical children I can have a discussion with. Ignorance may be bliss but I don't know many adults who would choose to be ignorant or mentally retarded. Maybe you are in the other crowd who wants them to be childlike, read ignorant, for as long as possible so that they are easier to control. Unlike those other pesky teenagers who use critical thinking skills and ask authority figures, such as parents, hard questions, like "Why?"
How about you try something new. Stop censoring your children altogether, to hell with the other parents, and start advising your children on how THEY CHOOSE to interpret the input. There is nothing wrong with a child learning about the birds and the bees while a toddler. Exposure to foul language can an excellent introduction to the sensitivities of others and consequences. A video game with cars being chased by police (as mentioned in the article) is a great opener to a continuation of the discussion on consequences, being less of an establishment type I would have fun with that discussion. A three year old won't fully understand, but it all goes into that mind somewhere and who said these talks only occur once?
Worried about desensitization? Don't be. Sensitization is a bad thing, it's what happens when you are underexposed to something and you are unable to cope with the something. It may be a sad world we live in and there may be some things we don't want to have to cope with, but that is a seperate issue. Whether pleasant or unpleasant, it is never advantageous to not be able to cope with something. That leaves you less able to take rational action in the face of that something. Interestingly, the more you let yourself encounter things you are underexposed to, the better your brain becomes able to cope with not being able to cope and the more capable you are acting rationally.
I'm not saying go find the nastiest goat porn you can and start driving into your child's mind 24/7. I am merely saying don't censor what comes your way anyway.
Granted I'm a layperson and may have misunderstood what I just read but could I really be the only one googling for a readily available, safe, fast acting, and short lived mGlu inhibitor. Granted you probably don't want to pick any neuro chemicals to do without but inhibiting mGlu during short term study sessions.
By all means correct me if I am misunderstanding or better yet, if you know of that inhibitor. Scratch that, reverse it all. Otherwise I stand firmly by my statement.
Granted I'm a layperson and may have misunderstood what I just read but could I really be the only one googling for a readily available, safe, fast acting, and short lived mGlu inhibitor. Granted you probably don't want to pick any neuro chemicals to do without but inhibiting mGlu during short term study sessions.
By all means correct me if I am misunderstanding or better yet, if you know of that inhibitor.
'In addition it would be wrong to tell a representative of the people that they had to act in such a way that didn't even represent his or her constituants.'
That is the problem, the people they represent have varied religious belief systems and if their representative is acting in accord with his own religious belief system then he is failing to represent those who don't share his belief system.
'Allowing this would not take away any persons freedom of religion.'
It would violate the freedom of the people that official is supposed to represent, or at least the ones who do not share those beliefs. Government officials represent the people and the people as an aggregate do not follow an individual religion. No representative acting in an official capacity should represent a religion their people don't share.
'You cannot say that a country is free and then tell the people who act IN THEIR ROLE AS A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL OR IN AN OFFICIAL CAPACITY what to think and how to think and act and make decisions.'
Of course you can. It's the citizens who are to be free, not the public officials. The public officials are and should be heavily restricted in how they may behave when they speak not as individuals but as representatives of the nation. This is no different than a military officer who must act according to orders and within the rules of engagement and present that course of action to his subordinates regardless of his personal feelings.
'People should also be able to pray should they choose so whenever they want to if they are acting in an official capacity or not. Period.'
Absolutely not. Let's pick a name out of the hat. Senator John Doyle. If sentator doyle prays at his daughters wedding or a funeral he is doing so as John Doyle and John Doyle is free to practice any religion. However, if meeting with the head of another state John Doyle is not the man John Doyle, he is a nameless United States Senator and his words are not those of John Doyle but the words of the United States of America. He has a duty to represent the unified views of the nation or at the very least the portion of it that he is representing.
'Basically you are telling people who are of one religion and a Government official to adopt another religion which is atheism when they act in an official capacity.'
Atheism is not a religion it is the lack of a religion. Atheism is the default result of not representing any religion which is precisely the position that the United States Government is to take. Calling atheism a religion is like calling black a color or darkness a form of energy or zero a value.
'To state otherwise is to take away the Freedom of Religion; not to grant it.'
Freedom of Religion is granted to the people, not to the government. An individual in private has that freedom regardless of his position but if that individual is a public official he is not speaking as himself but as a mouthpiece for those he represents.
Slashdot Mirror
'Maybe seizing a few important patents/copyrights and putting them in the public domain would change their tune a little, as monetary fines obviously do not.'
The copyrights are assets. If the EU seized all the copyrights MS Office and MS IE, and MS Windows to cover Microsoft's failure to pay their fines. I see no reason why the EU couldn't do this today since last I heard Microsoft was refusing to pony up and genuinely comply with all sanctions.
True enough. It would be much more reasonable for the EU to impose fines that are greater than the profit derived from the illicit actions (whether or not that would bankrupt Microsoft shouldn't be a consideration in Anti-Trust issues and it is a shame people consider it so).
If Microsoft attempts to strong arm the EU, the EU could then exert its right to seize assets. Microsoft's greatest assets are its IP and if the EU legally seizes Microsoft copyrights the same WWII agreements you refer to would cause the change of ownership to be recognized globally, not just in the EU.
I'm pretty sure they are the ones who developed the system that requires all web documents to reference their DTD. Last time I tried omitted such a reference and ran it through the validator, the validation failed ;)
Seems to me that if they designed a system in order to allow them to change the document specification used by billions of documents by modifying a single document. If they never made use of that ability and if that design decision costs them ridiculous amounts of resources that is their own problem. I know a web developer can't omit that reference from their document without violating standards, would it also violate standards for the client application to ignore requests for the standard DTDs?
This entire story is a joke. When Linus refers to the operating system he IS talking about the kernel, which is academically speaking where the line was drawn on what the operating system consists of long ago. Take a course on operating system design and the course taught you how to write a kernel.
As for MacOS and Windows making more sense for the average user, that is fud as well. They are the more popular choice atm, that does not mean they are the right choice.
Its obvious that either you or someone close to you has had a hard time with this. Sorry about that.
In the real world both mothers and fathers skip out on children. It may be unthinkable to you, but it is also unthinkable to many that by and large when a parent murders a child (and I'm not calling abortions murder) it is the mother who does it, not the father.
Just because you happen to think enforcement is lax does not change the actual moral, ethical, and legal obligations a father has and those obligations are the same a mother has. A child should not be brought into this world unless both parents agree to assume those responsibilities. If either parent is unwilling then abortion should be mandatory. That cuts both ways, that also means no man can require a woman have a child. The argument is being made the other way only because a womans right to abort is already being recognized.
You are right that ethical people are far more rare than unethical ones (be they fathers, mothers, employers, employees, or any other role filled by humans) but the solution is not to put up barriers to taking the high road. People live longer in this day and age and yet the biological imperative that the males of the species feel for sex still comes at the same early age. The result is that our society prepares a male for fatherhood at 30 and males begin having sex at 15. Is it really so surprising that we have deadbeat dads? Allowing the men the right to say "I'm not ready" in the same manner women can will mean a drastic reduction in dead beat dads. There will be fewer younger fathers overall, but they will at least be more likely to be responsible fathers. It will be easier to enforce child support since the courts and police will not be flooded with requests.
Given your strong views on the topic you may not agree and that is fine, but consider it, consider the implications of every father choosing to have a child rather than choosing to have sex. Trust me, men are not going to stop having sex irresponsibility, that is an impossible dream.
Thats not at all offtopic, at least not in this thread. That was precisely my point. A man has moral, ethical, and legal obligations if a child is brought into this world. As long as a reasonably safe means exist to abort then either the man or the woman should have the authority to require it.
Even a waiver disclaiming the man's legal obligation isn't enough, if the child is born then the moral obligations do not magically disappear and such a waiver would only serve to make the relationship between father and child more difficult later.
'But if the man has a veto on abortion then that sets up an unacceptable scenario of women's bodies being subject to a men's will - thus we are forced to give authority to the mother herself, which although not perfect is better than the alternative.'
Agreed but you misunderstood what I meant. I am not suggesting the man be able to veto an abortion, I am saying that he should be able to require it. A man has no right to force a woman to carry a baby to term but likewise the woman has no right to bring a child into the world. After all, legally the man has obligations (although in most states few or no rights except in wedlock) both moral and legal if the woman is allowed to carry to term.
Perhaps there are some guys who are homophobic on some level and simply don't want to admit the attractiveness of other males. There are however, those of us who generally feel no attraction to males.
'They have found that in normal females, it's smaller than it is in normal males.'
This is highly consistent with my own observation that females are able to distinguish 'attractiveness' in other females innately while straight males can only look to the reactions of females. How do you innately know what is attractive without some level of attraction?
Since the gland is smaller in females, but not non-existent females would have a certain level of attractions to other females as well.
You ignore the other side of the issue as well. Its the woman's body and she should be able to abort if she wishes, but its the man's life and obligation as well and either one of them should have the right to choose not to keep the baby.
So what does it take to qualify, does he have to be one of the tens of thousands of nazi troops, or the thousands of nazi officers? Precisely which Nazis are we allowed to count as Nazis?
Being a member of the Hitler youth, the oaths he swore, and the actions he took as a member of the Hitler youth squads ARE things he's done. People do not change, cowardly children grow into cowardly men... discipline and learning may temper the behavior they show but inside they are the same as they always were.
Perhaps that is why he grew to be an insufferable self-righteous prick peddling made up crapola to take advantage of millions of ignorant fools.
Normally I say judge the message and not the messager but in this case the message is an opinion that millions are expected to accept because of the messenger.
The man is a Nazi for god sake. Is he really entitled to a voice on the subject of ethical bioengineering?
I seem to recall asking the CEO about this when he came on to discuss the company going public. At that time he said they wouldn't be selling or allowing the company to be bought out. I always preferred mysql as my open sql database but if this is managed like Sun manages openoffice then I'll be moving to another platform.
Sorry but it is the most annoying thing in the world when people don't include the conversation in the mail. That means I have to gum the works with old emails and reference back to them in order to give your comments context.
Perhaps leaving the quoted text in hurt in the world of dialup and bbs but it helps more than it hurts now. Really, I have too much going on and your conversation really isn't that important to me. I delete your previous mails a month ago, I neither remember what I said or you said. For the love of god, include ALL the quoted text.
The only exception is those stupid chain mails. Those are the definition of bad etiquette.
'Otherwise, at least it'd be easier to find a tradesman who can get it right! (I've seen enough registered cablers get UTP wrong..)'
I have seen the same but it's really pathetic. Seriously, you could give a one page cheat sheet without any small print that explains how to install UTP and/or STP correctly.
Fast Search And Transfer would be FSAT or FST, not FAST. Microsoft is allowed to have self-recursive acronyms if they are bugged. ;)
Now I can start a business of blocking competitors domain names, just do a netsol query every few days.
Most people only read the summary.
What is interesting is the best way I found to get a dose of mGlu is to eat msg just before trying to memorize something. Perhaps we have found the secret to Asian memory eh? ;) Course if it's too large a dose it will act as a neurotoxin.
'As children age, their brain matures and develops more critical thinking and abstract skills.'
The fact that a young child doesn't even grasp the material their parents think is mental poison is part of my point. Sex, drugs, and violence are no easier or more difficult for a child to grasp than cooking, cleaning, and basic procedures. Those critical thinking and abstract skills you mention do not magically develop, the brain is a learning machine and it starts as a fairly empty slate, it self programs to learn and understand more efficiently. The more input you feed a brain the more efficiently it will be able to process input, in the beginning the functions being improved may be more primitive. Censoring your child will cause the brain to develop more slowly to be able to understand and cope with abstract concepts later than an uncensored child.
The point is not merely that you should explain "adult" topics to your child when they are old enough to understand. The point is that introducing your child to as many real adult experiences and facts of the adult world and repeatedly and continually exposing them to those experiences will cause their brains to configure themselves to handle real adult life in the best and most efficient manner possible.
When they are old enough to actually understand the abstract concept it is often too late to impact fundamental brain function. Their brain will be trained to efficiently handle a fantasy environment their parents have created for them. Rather than the actual world we live in. Parents are able to create and maintain this environment like never before and the teens and young adults discovering the real world for the first time are actually so unable to cope they are killing themselves!
For god sake stop retarding the development of your child. The human mind learns from input, be it media content, life, or activities. There is no such thing as bad input, ALL input is useful and the brain derives useful information from it, learns to cope with it, learns what to avoid from it, and so forth. You can't dictate how a child will interpret and store that input, nor are you bright enough to define it by regulating the input, they will get that input anyway eventually and you will only serve to have slowed their mental development.
Perhaps you think ignorant children playing with imaginary friends are cute. I prefer rational and logical children I can have a discussion with. Ignorance may be bliss but I don't know many adults who would choose to be ignorant or mentally retarded. Maybe you are in the other crowd who wants them to be childlike, read ignorant, for as long as possible so that they are easier to control. Unlike those other pesky teenagers who use critical thinking skills and ask authority figures, such as parents, hard questions, like "Why?"
How about you try something new. Stop censoring your children altogether, to hell with the other parents, and start advising your children on how THEY CHOOSE to interpret the input. There is nothing wrong with a child learning about the birds and the bees while a toddler. Exposure to foul language can an excellent introduction to the sensitivities of others and consequences. A video game with cars being chased by police (as mentioned in the article) is a great opener to a continuation of the discussion on consequences, being less of an establishment type I would have fun with that discussion. A three year old won't fully understand, but it all goes into that mind somewhere and who said these talks only occur once?
Worried about desensitization? Don't be. Sensitization is a bad thing, it's what happens when you are underexposed to something and you are unable to cope with the something. It may be a sad world we live in and there may be some things we don't want to have to cope with, but that is a seperate issue. Whether pleasant or unpleasant, it is never advantageous to not be able to cope with something. That leaves you less able to take rational action in the face of that something. Interestingly, the more you let yourself encounter things you are underexposed to, the better your brain becomes able to cope with not being able to cope and the more capable you are acting rationally.
I'm not saying go find the nastiest goat porn you can and start driving into your child's mind 24/7. I am merely saying don't censor what comes your way anyway.
By all means correct me if I am misunderstanding or better yet, if you know of that inhibitor. Scratch that, reverse it all. Otherwise I stand firmly by my statement.
Granted I'm a layperson and may have misunderstood what I just read but could I really be the only one googling for a readily available, safe, fast acting, and short lived mGlu inhibitor. Granted you probably don't want to pick any neuro chemicals to do without but inhibiting mGlu during short term study sessions.
By all means correct me if I am misunderstanding or better yet, if you know of that inhibitor.
'In addition it would be wrong to tell a representative of the people that they had to act in such a way that didn't even represent his or her constituants.'
That is the problem, the people they represent have varied religious belief systems and if their representative is acting in accord with his own religious belief system then he is failing to represent those who don't share his belief system.
'Allowing this would not take away any persons freedom of religion.'
It would violate the freedom of the people that official is supposed to represent, or at least the ones who do not share those beliefs. Government officials represent the people and the people as an aggregate do not follow an individual religion. No representative acting in an official capacity should represent a religion their people don't share.
'You cannot say that a country is free and then tell the people who act IN THEIR ROLE AS A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL OR IN AN OFFICIAL CAPACITY what to think and how to think and act and make decisions.'
Of course you can. It's the citizens who are to be free, not the public officials. The public officials are and should be heavily restricted in how they may behave when they speak not as individuals but as representatives of the nation. This is no different than a military officer who must act according to orders and within the rules of engagement and present that course of action to his subordinates regardless of his personal feelings.
'People should also be able to pray should they choose so whenever they want to if they are acting in an official capacity or not. Period.'
Absolutely not. Let's pick a name out of the hat. Senator John Doyle. If sentator doyle prays at his daughters wedding or a funeral he is doing so as John Doyle and John Doyle is free to practice any religion. However, if meeting with the head of another state John Doyle is not the man John Doyle, he is a nameless United States Senator and his words are not those of John Doyle but the words of the United States of America. He has a duty to represent the unified views of the nation or at the very least the portion of it that he is representing.
'Basically you are telling people who are of one religion and a Government official to adopt another religion which is atheism when they act in an official capacity.'
Atheism is not a religion it is the lack of a religion. Atheism is the default result of not representing any religion which is precisely the position that the United States Government is to take. Calling atheism a religion is like calling black a color or darkness a form of energy or zero a value.
'To state otherwise is to take away the Freedom of Religion; not to grant it.'
Freedom of Religion is granted to the people, not to the government. An individual in private has that freedom regardless of his position but if that individual is a public official he is not speaking as himself but as a mouthpiece for those he represents.