Re:There's a preventive vaccine already
on
HIV Vaccine
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· Score: 1
The knowledge you refer to would indeed be necessary to have a specific intention wrt reproducing or failing to reproduce as a consequence of a specific set of actions.
In this case, however, the assertion was that there existed intent other than reproduction (as distinct from intent not to reproduce). Intent to have fun is entirely capable of existing with or without knowledge of reproduction.
(That said, there's an underlying point which is perhaps what you were getting at -- if no animal engages in sexual activity with intent to reproduce, because of lack of knowledge of said consequence, what makes the bonobo's actions any different? I'd argue that the bonobo's activities are different because the underlying cause (referring not to the intent of the animals, but the "invisible hand" -- evolutionary forces, $DEITY, or what-have-you) behind their behaviour is obviously resulting in said behaviour occuring despite its inability to result in reproduction occurring. This is obviously not literal intent on the part of the individual bonobo, but I'd argue that it's a form of (2nd-level?) "intent" nonetheless.
Re:There's a preventive vaccine already
on
HIV Vaccine
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· Score: 1
As you said -- "they... think it's fun". If they take some action because having fun is an anticipated or expected outcome, I'd argue that that fulfills the definition of intent (using definition n1 from WordNet).
Unless you're arguing that anticipation or expectation are inherently capable of being experienced only by sentient beings (using one of the more restrictive definitions of sentience)?
Re:There's a preventive vaccine already
on
HIV Vaccine
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· Score: 1
That's a funny line also- since only human beings have the ability to reason and thus the ability to intend anything at all.
Bonobos frequently engage in sexual activity innately incapable of resulting in reproduction -- something which allows presence or lack of "intent" (in at least some sense of the word) to be inferred.
I don't know offhand of other examples, however, or care to defend any of the parent's other assertions/positions.
Re:There's a preventive vaccine already
on
HIV Vaccine
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· Score: 1
Funny how all the homophobes around here are anonymous cowards.
Re:There's a preventive vaccine already
on
HIV Vaccine
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· Score: 1
It's called having a particular set of morals and living by them. Even the more traditionally-minded people I know believe in remarriage in the event of a partner's death, for instance; the grandparent's post indicated such to be against his code. That's a fairly unusual standard to live by, and not many do.
Care to cite credible, mainstream sources for those numbers?
Re:There's a preventive vaccine already
on
HIV Vaccine
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· Score: 1
I think one can respect another's strength of will without thinking it's necessarily being applied to something worthwhile. Such is the present situation.
Re:There's a preventive vaccine already
on
HIV Vaccine
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· Score: 1
Odd, isn't it, that it only became uncommon *after* invention of the pill?
Ya' know, it's entirerly possible to have "compassion for others" in general, but suppress it when appropriate. This is not the same thing as "no compassion for others".
Arguably, removing murderers/rapists/etc. from the population is appropriate. (The obvious counterargument is that it's a slippery slope. The obvious counter-counterarguments are that if people didn't draw lines in the sand to arbitrarily decide how to make moral decisions, nothing would ever get done -- and that simply because such lines have been drawn at very bad places in the past doesn't mean that they can't be placed more responsibly as well).
Heck, you're drawing your line at "people who have no compassion for others". That's a line in the sand, indeed -- but I think it's a rather bad one, for reasons that should be obvious enough. (If they're not, email me; I'd be glad to have this debate).
Re:There's a preventive vaccine already
on
HIV Vaccine
·
· Score: 1
Well, it's fairly clear what the rationale was -- it used to be (early 80s?) that HIV was vastly more common in the gay community than the populace in general -- and I think I recall there being a substantial correlation between type of contact (oral, anal, vaginal) and transmission likelihood.
IIRC, though, that the former generalization is no longer nearly as accurate as it once was and is devolving towards urban myth status. The latter still holds as true as it ever did (presuming that one doesn't account for changes in the frequency of use of preventative measures), but is only really relevant in the case of one night stands and such.
All this is just vague recollections from a class I took over 3 years ago, so YMMV.
Re:There's a preventive vaccine already
on
HIV Vaccine
·
· Score: 1
Abstinence before having a lifelong partner- and chastity after- makes a fine barrier for STDs.
That works, yes. You have my respect for your uncommon strength of will.
If I had 2 job candidates with equivalent experience, I would take the one with the CS degree.
Agreed. 90% of what was taught when I was attending CSU Chico was things I already knew -- but the last 10% are thing that never came up in practice (hence never teaching myself) but have since made excellent background material for understanding what's going on under the hood. (Incidentally, I left after four years with my computer science and business classes completed but a full year of GE courses left undone, and consequently no degree).
As a specific example, I simply can't see letting anyone do database design who hasn't had formal training covering schema normalization. It's not something that comes up when a person's trying to teach themselves SQL -- but it makes a very big difference in the quality of the final design.
Re:There's a preventive vaccine already
on
HIV Vaccine
·
· Score: 1
African yes, gay no. Sexual behavior in human beings is voluntary.
Behaviour, yes; preferance, arguably no -- and expecting people to behave in a manner contrary to their preference is unreasonable.
Presuming that you're heterosexual, I doubt it would alter your sexual behaviour in practice if the relative likelihoods of contracting HIV from heterosexual vs homosexual contact were reversed.
I use OpenVPN. Whenever we've had a real bug, we've reported it and had a fix provided by upstream within days, sometimes hours. We've been able to write our own new (trivial) features and had them integrated upstream. We've never been told to fix a bug ourselves -- and if we ever need commercial support, James Yonan (the project maintainer) sells it.
We also use SLES9. When we have a problem, we have people at Novell (actual individuals, not a support line) we can call and talk to, and get it fixed. We'll be sending them money for every box we ship to a customer, but it'll be worth it.
I'm almost inclined to call such situations more the rule than the exception.
I wholeheartedly agree with your post, but would like to point out that one can still be (and effectively advertise being) quite flexible without a degree. See my resume (slightly outdated).
I've worked hard to keep my skillset limber -- I work a variety of positions inside every company that I'm at, and do assorted side projects (in my copious spare time) as well. Consequently, I'm the guy who knows a little bit of everything -- respected by the suits as a source of technical advice and considered handy to have around by the more specialized tech staff. Makes the job interesting, too.
If I write something, I'm going to publish it widely. My software is linked to from my home page, from freshmeat, and from any mailing lists it's relative to. Does that make me a bad person?
I imagine the founding fathers would have written things a bit differently if they'd forseen the horrific things that would happen in private homes after their own time.
I hope not. In either event, though, that's less than relevant to the choice of the word "war" to describe the set of law enforcement actions regarding illegal drug use.
Now you're just arguing the semantics of the word "war".
Damn straight, I am. Language the primitives people think with, so semantics are extremely important. Remember 1984?
WordNet (unlike the 1913 edition of Webster's and the 7 other sources carried by dict.org) also carries your definition (though it doesn't include the word "combat"). This definition is problematic. What kind of successful "campaign" goes on forever with no victory condition? One certainly can't "end" poverty, crime or drug use -- the only thing one can do is combat them, and applying the special powers and exceptions that people are accustomed to providing only in the time-bounded emergency situation that is conventional war (at least to the United States) is inappropriate.
Even a "prolonged" campaign has a finite beginning and end; crime and poverty have none, so that war can be a prolonged state is by no circumstances a jusification for that word being used to apply to an indefinite one.
Combatting use of hard drugs is a Good Thing. Calling it a war is a Bad Thing. Call it what it is -- a law enforcement function -- and people will be better able to make good decisions about it.
Fine, drugs are bad. That doesn't mean it's a war.
A "war" is, generally speaking, a temporary situation which warrants the application of special powers during its (finite) duration.
The "war on drugs" doesn't have a finite duration. As you acknowledge, there is no achievable victory condition where we can all go home. Temporary "war powers" make no sense in this situation. Consequently, it's not a war, just another law-enforcement function, and calling it (thinking of it as) anything else invites bad decision-making.
We don't like it if their black box needs to be connected to a zillion other application servers - e.g. database clusters, shared backup servers, email servers, etc.
Our box is runs the DB, backup system, etc. internally. It needs access to the practice management system (scheduling, patient info), but no special privileges there. Should we ever do an install that's not on hardware we own, we'd presumably be leaving out a lot of the components (backup, VPN, etc) that require root access, and using a smaller set of user accounts to run components of the software itself.
I hope that your leadership can lighten up.
Likewise. I built the security architecture because they asked for it (and it was fun to design/build), but I don't think it's a particularly good idea -- adding extra failure points, particularly intentional failure points, seems a Bad Idea for a business-critical system.
OTOH, they've indicated that they're willing to bend substantially (on other significant points, and so probably that one as well) for larger customers. The customers we have right now are anything but large, and for these small customers we're mostly going through VARs (and VARs in this field have a very bad record for selling copies they haven't paid for, giving competitors access to a company's product, etc -- and this from our employees who were/are VARs themselves).
The problem, as far as I can tell, is that vendors want root to the boxes supporting theirs - the database servers, mailservers, and backup servers that are controlled by the customer.
Yup, that's a problem. We don't do that -- if they volunteer to give us unlimited access to their practice management system (the system we integrate with to pull scheduling and such), we'll take it -- but we certainly don't require it.
If I'm going to be using an Arch branch, I'd far rather use one with an actual community around it. Last I glanced at the ML archive, ArX has so little of one as for me to consider it dead. Besides, I drink Tom's Kool-Aid wrt pika/furth/etc.
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The knowledge you refer to would indeed be necessary to have a specific intention wrt reproducing or failing to reproduce as a consequence of a specific set of actions.
In this case, however, the assertion was that there existed intent other than reproduction (as distinct from intent not to reproduce). Intent to have fun is entirely capable of existing with or without knowledge of reproduction.
(That said, there's an underlying point which is perhaps what you were getting at -- if no animal engages in sexual activity with intent to reproduce, because of lack of knowledge of said consequence, what makes the bonobo's actions any different? I'd argue that the bonobo's activities are different because the underlying cause (referring not to the intent of the animals, but the "invisible hand" -- evolutionary forces, $DEITY, or what-have-you) behind their behaviour is obviously resulting in said behaviour occuring despite its inability to result in reproduction occurring. This is obviously not literal intent on the part of the individual bonobo, but I'd argue that it's a form of (2nd-level?) "intent" nonetheless.
As you said -- "they ... think it's fun". If they take some action because having fun is an anticipated or expected outcome, I'd argue that that fulfills the definition of intent (using definition n1 from WordNet).
Unless you're arguing that anticipation or expectation are inherently capable of being experienced only by sentient beings (using one of the more restrictive definitions of sentience)?
That's a funny line also- since only human beings have the ability to reason and thus the ability to intend anything at all.
Bonobos frequently engage in sexual activity innately incapable of resulting in reproduction -- something which allows presence or lack of "intent" (in at least some sense of the word) to be inferred.
I don't know offhand of other examples, however, or care to defend any of the parent's other assertions/positions.
Funny how all the homophobes around here are anonymous cowards.
It's called having a particular set of morals and living by them. Even the more traditionally-minded people I know believe in remarriage in the event of a partner's death, for instance; the grandparent's post indicated such to be against his code. That's a fairly unusual standard to live by, and not many do.
Care to cite credible, mainstream sources for those numbers?
I think one can respect another's strength of will without thinking it's necessarily being applied to something worthwhile. Such is the present situation.
Odd, isn't it, that it only became uncommon *after* invention of the pill?
Uncommon, or openly acknowledged to be uncommon?
I'd need to see some data.
Ya' know, it's entirerly possible to have "compassion for others" in general, but suppress it when appropriate. This is not the same thing as "no compassion for others".
Arguably, removing murderers/rapists/etc. from the population is appropriate. (The obvious counterargument is that it's a slippery slope. The obvious counter-counterarguments are that if people didn't draw lines in the sand to arbitrarily decide how to make moral decisions, nothing would ever get done -- and that simply because such lines have been drawn at very bad places in the past doesn't mean that they can't be placed more responsibly as well).
Heck, you're drawing your line at "people who have no compassion for others". That's a line in the sand, indeed -- but I think it's a rather bad one, for reasons that should be obvious enough. (If they're not, email me; I'd be glad to have this debate).
Well, it's fairly clear what the rationale was -- it used to be (early 80s?) that HIV was vastly more common in the gay community than the populace in general -- and I think I recall there being a substantial correlation between type of contact (oral, anal, vaginal) and transmission likelihood.
IIRC, though, that the former generalization is no longer nearly as accurate as it once was and is devolving towards urban myth status. The latter still holds as true as it ever did (presuming that one doesn't account for changes in the frequency of use of preventative measures), but is only really relevant in the case of one night stands and such.
All this is just vague recollections from a class I took over 3 years ago, so YMMV.
Abstinence before having a lifelong partner- and chastity after- makes a fine barrier for STDs.
That works, yes. You have my respect for your uncommon strength of will.
If I had 2 job candidates with equivalent experience, I would take the one with the CS degree.
Agreed. 90% of what was taught when I was attending CSU Chico was things I already knew -- but the last 10% are thing that never came up in practice (hence never teaching myself) but have since made excellent background material for understanding what's going on under the hood. (Incidentally, I left after four years with my computer science and business classes completed but a full year of GE courses left undone, and consequently no degree).
As a specific example, I simply can't see letting anyone do database design who hasn't had formal training covering schema normalization. It's not something that comes up when a person's trying to teach themselves SQL -- but it makes a very big difference in the quality of the final design.
African yes, gay no. Sexual behavior in human beings is voluntary.
Behaviour, yes; preferance, arguably no -- and expecting people to behave in a manner contrary to their preference is unreasonable.
Presuming that you're heterosexual, I doubt it would alter your sexual behaviour in practice if the relative likelihoods of contracting HIV from heterosexual vs homosexual contact were reversed.
"fix-it-yourself"
Eh?
I use OpenVPN. Whenever we've had a real bug, we've reported it and had a fix provided by upstream within days, sometimes hours. We've been able to write our own new (trivial) features and had them integrated upstream. We've never been told to fix a bug ourselves -- and if we ever need commercial support, James Yonan (the project maintainer) sells it.
We also use SLES9. When we have a problem, we have people at Novell (actual individuals, not a support line) we can call and talk to, and get it fixed. We'll be sending them money for every box we ship to a customer, but it'll be worth it.
I'm almost inclined to call such situations more the rule than the exception.
I wholeheartedly agree with your post, but would like to point out that one can still be (and effectively advertise being) quite flexible without a degree. See my resume (slightly outdated).
I've worked hard to keep my skillset limber -- I work a variety of positions inside every company that I'm at, and do assorted side projects (in my copious spare time) as well. Consequently, I'm the guy who knows a little bit of everything -- respected by the suits as a source of technical advice and considered handy to have around by the more specialized tech staff. Makes the job interesting, too.
s/relative/relevant/
gah.
If I write something, I'm going to publish it widely. My software is linked to from my home page, from freshmeat, and from any mailing lists it's relative to. Does that make me a bad person?
I really don't see what the problem here is.
I imagine the founding fathers would have written things a bit differently if they'd forseen the horrific things that would happen in private homes after their own time.
I hope not. In either event, though, that's less than relevant to the choice of the word "war" to describe the set of law enforcement actions regarding illegal drug use.
s/jusification/justification/
s/Language the/Language provides the/
Now you're just arguing the semantics of the word "war".
Damn straight, I am. Language the primitives people think with, so semantics are extremely important. Remember 1984?
WordNet (unlike the 1913 edition of Webster's and the 7 other sources carried by dict.org) also carries your definition (though it doesn't include the word "combat"). This definition is problematic. What kind of successful "campaign" goes on forever with no victory condition? One certainly can't "end" poverty, crime or drug use -- the only thing one can do is combat them, and applying the special powers and exceptions that people are accustomed to providing only in the time-bounded emergency situation that is conventional war (at least to the United States) is inappropriate.
Even a "prolonged" campaign has a finite beginning and end; crime and poverty have none, so that war can be a prolonged state is by no circumstances a jusification for that word being used to apply to an indefinite one.
Combatting use of hard drugs is a Good Thing. Calling it a war is a Bad Thing. Call it what it is -- a law enforcement function -- and people will be better able to make good decisions about it.
Fine, drugs are bad. That doesn't mean it's a war.
A "war" is, generally speaking, a temporary situation which warrants the application of special powers during its (finite) duration.
The "war on drugs" doesn't have a finite duration. As you acknowledge, there is no achievable victory condition where we can all go home. Temporary "war powers" make no sense in this situation. Consequently, it's not a war, just another law-enforcement function, and calling it (thinking of it as) anything else invites bad decision-making.
We don't like it if their black box needs to be connected to a zillion other application servers - e.g. database clusters, shared backup servers, email servers, etc.
Our box is runs the DB, backup system, etc. internally. It needs access to the practice management system (scheduling, patient info), but no special privileges there. Should we ever do an install that's not on hardware we own, we'd presumably be leaving out a lot of the components (backup, VPN, etc) that require root access, and using a smaller set of user accounts to run components of the software itself.
I hope that your leadership can lighten up.
Likewise. I built the security architecture because they asked for it (and it was fun to design/build), but I don't think it's a particularly good idea -- adding extra failure points, particularly intentional failure points, seems a Bad Idea for a business-critical system.
OTOH, they've indicated that they're willing to bend substantially (on other significant points, and so probably that one as well) for larger customers. The customers we have right now are anything but large, and for these small customers we're mostly going through VARs (and VARs in this field have a very bad record for selling copies they haven't paid for, giving competitors access to a company's product, etc -- and this from our employees who were/are VARs themselves).
The problem, as far as I can tell, is that vendors want root to the boxes supporting theirs - the database servers, mailservers, and backup servers that are controlled by the customer.
Yup, that's a problem. We don't do that -- if they volunteer to give us unlimited access to their practice management system (the system we integrate with to pull scheduling and such), we'll take it -- but we certainly don't require it.
Eh? How many users does ArX have?
If I'm going to be using an Arch branch, I'd far rather use one with an actual community around it. Last I glanced at the ML archive, ArX has so little of one as for me to consider it dead. Besides, I drink Tom's Kool-Aid wrt pika/furth/etc.
(Hi, Landry!)
You people need to get more on the ball.
Yes, yes we do. Some of the managerial-types kinda' dropped it, so the change only filtered down to us technical types a few weeks in advance.
That said -- it's been less than a year that we've actually had customers, so the "changes every year" thing... well, we'll get in next time 'round.