The question mark in the title is clearly a Cavuto, a type of punctuation used to make an inflammatory statement without actually being inflammatory. For further clarification, I would like to turn to Jon Stewart.
Our culture is a lifestyle of violence? The Department of Justice begs to differ. Crime is, as I said, declining steadily. Whoring? I assume you mean sexual prostitution. Provided those offering the service and those purchasing the service are consensual adults and their activities render no harm upon others, there is no problem. I agree that sex can be misused. For example, it is clearly immoral for a married man to use the services of a prostitute without the knowledge (and consent) of his wife, but because he is engaging in deception not because he is having sex. Drugs are immoral? Why? If a person chooses to use drugs, as long as they do so responsibly, there is no problem. As an aside, alcohol and nicotine are drugs, both of which may be abused with deleterious effects on the user and those around the user, and it is that harm caused which is immoral. When used properly—in moderation—they present no threat and the moral issue moot.
Now if all of this amounts to an empty lifestyle, that is entirely up to the individual. We live in a free country where each person may choose to lead a trite existence or one replete with accomplishment. I suppose we could ask ourselves: is it immoral to lead a meaningless existence? I expect it is not, but that is a discussion for another time.
Again, I would appreciate some concrete evidence or objective analysis. And I think there is a lot we could all learn about the nature of morality. You might come to the conclusion that I am a moral relativist (perhaps intended in a derogatory fashion). I assure you I am not. Just as science and mathematics present us with absolutes, morality provides a rigid framework that may be used to draw useful conclusions about proper behavior. Morality is easily modeled objectively, and it is logical how we do so, utilizing our sense of empathy and desire to maximize happiness. As such, we should evaluate human activities objectively and determine their quantifiable impacts when we go about identifying those actions as moral or immoral.
Succumbing to the moral dry-rot so rampant in contemporary America is something we have to eschew individually.
What “moral dry-rot”? You people just cannot stop dreaming up one crisis after another, can you? It is nonsense to say that American society is becoming less moral. Crime is going down, racial and gender equality is and has been increasing, workers rights are protected, and on and on.
Oh wait, do you mean we are descending into a moral abyss because people at large no longer feel guilty about engaging in perfectly natural sexual activities outside the definition and confines of marriage as endorsed by Christianity?
For any party that consistently campaigns on a platform of fear, this is excellent news. I find myself more afraid this will increase the chances of republicans getting elected in November. Following that, how republicans will react to North Korea (or any other threat, real or imagined) and what knee-jerk policies they will put in place.
It may actually be that anyone has yet to best any technology offerings Google has, hence nobody is able to challenge their dominance. Apart from that, Google is hardly a monopoly. You have a wide selection of search engines and nobody is forcing you to use any of them over the other.
... [S]ecrets can no longer be kept in the information age. There is always a technological trail, and transparency is pervasive.
That is silly.
Such a statement is analogous to declaring security dead because systems have been compromised in the past. Like security, the means to privacy must and are continuing to evolve. Adoption of these mechanisms may be a bit behind the curve, but that in no way means that privacy is “dead” for anyone or everyone. In the past, rotational cyphers, Enigma, and “security envelopes” were enough to keep your messages secure (for a while). These days, we have incredibly powerful tools for keeping our data private, we simply have to be willing to use them.
And that is happening. Who does not use strong encryption for conducting electronic commerce? Nobody. As for privacy in email and other forms of communication, eventually, after enough scandals like those recently at Hewlett-Packard, people will adapt to protect themselves. Then the baseline will be raised and those who would wish to violate privacy will resume efforts in advancing the sophistication of their tools. Then those on the privacy side will move on again. This cycle will repeat again and again.
Privacy is an arms race, in a manner of speaking, and just because privacy is behind at times in no way means that it is a lost cause.
Imagine if we never had such a format. Would YTMND even be possible? We can only speculate, but I, for one, would like to thank Unisys for this valuable contribution. Afterall, 361,984—and growing—YTMND sites can't be wrong!
You got moderated insightful, but I think that is silly, so I feel compelled to reply.
From your comments, it sounds like you have already made up your mind about visual effects in user interfaces. By the way, just because something in a user interface is attractive does not make it impractical.
To make this comment at least a little worth-while, let me see if I can answer your questions. “How efficient are these effects?” Define “efficient”. “What's the net cost of having Aqua or Aero?” Define “cost”. “Do these graphical interfaces leave sasquatch sized memory footprints?” Aero: yes, Aqua: no. “Does all this extra shit cause any more bugs than a regular operating system without them?” I offer the rhetorical question: “do graphical user interfaces cause any more bugs than a regular operating system that is command-line only?” This question is recycled from 30 years ago, and both the answers and implications are the same today. Specifically, yes, bugs tend to be proportional to the amount of code, but that does not mean we stop writing more code and inventing new features or evolving existing ones. “I want to know which of these operating systems will run on my old ass laptop with a low end P4 in it. Not all of us have the new intel core 2 duos.” Mac OS X “Tiger” runs fast on my old 533MHz G4, which is vastly inferior to your P4 laptop. I have it running on an old bondi blue G3 iMac running at 233MHz, and it is, in-fact, quite usable. Windows Vista, on the other hand, will not run on old hardware. So, this is really a question of your vendor.
Hey, now there's an idea.;) Does that mean that STR is actually trolling? (On a side note, I am glad at least one moderator saw the humor in my comment.)
It is obvious to any red-blooded, patriotic, Jesus-loving American that we are the only source of righteousness on earth and it is our God-given duty to use His power to advance our cause of spreading His holiness throughout the world and trample over the devil-worshipping heathens. Therefore, what we do is good and what all the godless nations of the world that are not America do is wrong. Thank you, and God bless.
Okay, so we use our vast and ubiquitous sources of geographic data to look up interesting data about those coordinates and then cache that. It would not be difficult to figure out that our point falls within a particular green blob in California. With virtually no effort than to actually put the pieces together, we could eliminate a big chunk of the work required to properly annotate pictures. It would almost be trivial to take these coordinates, along with the camera orientation, and determine all the interesting features. I would be able to not only find pictures in the park, but also whether or not the camera was pointed at El Capitan or Bridal Vale. Simply given a vector (the view point), the coordinates of known landmarks, and the width and height of the view field, this can all be easily computed. Suddenly we have a lot more useful and more importantly structured metadata to work with that is even future proof. It is easily improved as what we know about the scene increases. The geographic data provides us with a reference point for the context. Following that, I do not understand your remaining points.
It would appear you have been forced (possibly by your own will) by the intricacies of the language into a group who failed to identify the contradiction of the original statement by self-segregating from those who “get it.”
It is fascinating that you would make that connection, despite my original intention and written word. The relevant implications of it are interesting because we are discussing dystopian future scenarios.
Making common language unintelligible (self-contradictory statements that are taken as wholy true, for example) is essential for the world described Orwell to be possible. If people lose the skill or tools to effectively express reason (see also Fahrenheit 451), they will eventually become unable to do anything other than what they are told to do. As I am at work, I will leave it to the reader to make the connections and mental leaps between this concept and a society controlled by artificial intelligence. (A concept, incidentally, beliefly alluded to in a popular anime with a very dark vision of the future.)
By 2020, the people left behind (many by their own choice) by accelerating information and communications technologies will form a new cultural group of technology refuseniks who self-segregate from “modern” society.
Wait, which is it? The people left behind will self-segretate but not all of them do so my choice? My prediction is that in the year 2020, pulp will be written by lousy artificial intelligence. What do you think, George?
It consistently bugs me that so many companies think they can save money by taking the “not invented here” philosophy on as much as possible. I am convinced, especially after learning about the inner workings of Google, that this just does not work. So much time and effort is wasted getting third party products working for very specific tasks and when all is said and done, you can often put together a solution that meets your needs exactly in nearly the same amount of time. And then in the long run, even if you are successful at first, you will fight a larger maintenance and cost nightmare as your vendors shift and change directions and you find yourself wishing you had more specificity in the solution.
When you harvest stem cells from an embryo, you are not destroying a “life” in the same way you do not destroy a life when you trim your fingernails. An embryo, at the stage stem cells are collected, is just a small cluster of cells. No nervous system, no heart; the thing is far from human. Can we stop letting religious fundamentalists who do not have an ounce of scientific understanding (or deliberately practice ignorance) on the matter frame the debate? There is nothing magical or spiritual about fertilization and the cells which result. The transfer of genetic material does not mean the ovum is suddenly imbued with a “soul.” You might as well get upset over the deaths of the millions of sperm and monthly wasted ovum that do not result in a zygote.
Slashdot Mirror
The question mark in the title is clearly a Cavuto, a type of punctuation used to make an inflammatory statement without actually being inflammatory. For further clarification, I would like to turn to Jon Stewart.
Our culture is a lifestyle of violence? The Department of Justice begs to differ. Crime is, as I said, declining steadily. Whoring? I assume you mean sexual prostitution. Provided those offering the service and those purchasing the service are consensual adults and their activities render no harm upon others, there is no problem. I agree that sex can be misused. For example, it is clearly immoral for a married man to use the services of a prostitute without the knowledge (and consent) of his wife, but because he is engaging in deception not because he is having sex. Drugs are immoral? Why? If a person chooses to use drugs, as long as they do so responsibly, there is no problem. As an aside, alcohol and nicotine are drugs, both of which may be abused with deleterious effects on the user and those around the user, and it is that harm caused which is immoral. When used properly—in moderation—they present no threat and the moral issue moot.
Now if all of this amounts to an empty lifestyle, that is entirely up to the individual. We live in a free country where each person may choose to lead a trite existence or one replete with accomplishment. I suppose we could ask ourselves: is it immoral to lead a meaningless existence? I expect it is not, but that is a discussion for another time.
Again, I would appreciate some concrete evidence or objective analysis. And I think there is a lot we could all learn about the nature of morality. You might come to the conclusion that I am a moral relativist (perhaps intended in a derogatory fashion). I assure you I am not. Just as science and mathematics present us with absolutes, morality provides a rigid framework that may be used to draw useful conclusions about proper behavior. Morality is easily modeled objectively, and it is logical how we do so, utilizing our sense of empathy and desire to maximize happiness. As such, we should evaluate human activities objectively and determine their quantifiable impacts when we go about identifying those actions as moral or immoral.
What “moral dry-rot”? You people just cannot stop dreaming up one crisis after another, can you? It is nonsense to say that American society is becoming less moral. Crime is going down, racial and gender equality is and has been increasing, workers rights are protected, and on and on.
Oh wait, do you mean we are descending into a moral abyss because people at large no longer feel guilty about engaging in perfectly natural sexual activities outside the definition and confines of marriage as endorsed by Christianity?
But, what are you talking about? I have seen some fairly incoherent ramblings on Slashdot, and this one is up there.
Nobody called it "Office", so it is in quotes.
For any party that consistently campaigns on a platform of fear, this is excellent news. I find myself more afraid this will increase the chances of republicans getting elected in November. Following that, how republicans will react to North Korea (or any other threat, real or imagined) and what knee-jerk policies they will put in place.
You misspelt “ronely”. Please do try to get it right next time.
It may actually be that anyone has yet to best any technology offerings Google has, hence nobody is able to challenge their dominance. Apart from that, Google is hardly a monopoly. You have a wide selection of search engines and nobody is forcing you to use any of them over the other.
That is silly.
Such a statement is analogous to declaring security dead because systems have been compromised in the past. Like security, the means to privacy must and are continuing to evolve. Adoption of these mechanisms may be a bit behind the curve, but that in no way means that privacy is “dead” for anyone or everyone. In the past, rotational cyphers, Enigma, and “security envelopes” were enough to keep your messages secure (for a while). These days, we have incredibly powerful tools for keeping our data private, we simply have to be willing to use them.
And that is happening. Who does not use strong encryption for conducting electronic commerce? Nobody. As for privacy in email and other forms of communication, eventually, after enough scandals like those recently at Hewlett-Packard, people will adapt to protect themselves. Then the baseline will be raised and those who would wish to violate privacy will resume efforts in advancing the sophistication of their tools. Then those on the privacy side will move on again. This cycle will repeat again and again.
Privacy is an arms race, in a manner of speaking, and just because privacy is behind at times in no way means that it is a lost cause.
No, no I don't.
There is a very good possibility that you missed the sarcastic tone of my comment.
In addition to flashing banner ads and stylish web sites, the Graphical Interchange Format has brough us another important wonder.
Your The Man Now, Dog.
Imagine if we never had such a format. Would YTMND even be possible? We can only speculate, but I, for one, would like to thank Unisys for this valuable contribution. Afterall, 361,984—and growing—YTMND sites can't be wrong!
You got moderated insightful, but I think that is silly, so I feel compelled to reply.
From your comments, it sounds like you have already made up your mind about visual effects in user interfaces. By the way, just because something in a user interface is attractive does not make it impractical.
To make this comment at least a little worth-while, let me see if I can answer your questions. “How efficient are these effects?” Define “efficient”. “What's the net cost of having Aqua or Aero?” Define “cost”. “Do these graphical interfaces leave sasquatch sized memory footprints?” Aero: yes, Aqua: no. “Does all this extra shit cause any more bugs than a regular operating system without them?” I offer the rhetorical question: “do graphical user interfaces cause any more bugs than a regular operating system that is command-line only?” This question is recycled from 30 years ago, and both the answers and implications are the same today. Specifically, yes, bugs tend to be proportional to the amount of code, but that does not mean we stop writing more code and inventing new features or evolving existing ones. “I want to know which of these operating systems will run on my old ass laptop with a low end P4 in it. Not all of us have the new intel core 2 duos.” Mac OS X “Tiger” runs fast on my old 533MHz G4, which is vastly inferior to your P4 laptop. I have it running on an old bondi blue G3 iMac running at 233MHz, and it is, in-fact, quite usable. Windows Vista, on the other hand, will not run on old hardware. So, this is really a question of your vendor.
Hey, now there's an idea. ;) Does that mean that STR is actually trolling? (On a side note, I am glad at least one moderator saw the humor in my comment.)
It is obvious to any red-blooded, patriotic, Jesus-loving American that we are the only source of righteousness on earth and it is our God-given duty to use His power to advance our cause of spreading His holiness throughout the world and trample over the devil-worshipping heathens. Therefore, what we do is good and what all the godless nations of the world that are not America do is wrong. Thank you, and God bless.
Will my body eventually produce antibodies to everything that infests my workspace?
Okay, so we use our vast and ubiquitous sources of geographic data to look up interesting data about those coordinates and then cache that. It would not be difficult to figure out that our point falls within a particular green blob in California. With virtually no effort than to actually put the pieces together, we could eliminate a big chunk of the work required to properly annotate pictures. It would almost be trivial to take these coordinates, along with the camera orientation, and determine all the interesting features. I would be able to not only find pictures in the park, but also whether or not the camera was pointed at El Capitan or Bridal Vale. Simply given a vector (the view point), the coordinates of known landmarks, and the width and height of the view field, this can all be easily computed. Suddenly we have a lot more useful and more importantly structured metadata to work with that is even future proof. It is easily improved as what we know about the scene increases. The geographic data provides us with a reference point for the context. Following that, I do not understand your remaining points.
Maybe you want to sort photographs based on where you took them.
“Give me all the pictures I took at Yosemite National Park.”
Nah, too much of a stretch.
It would appear you have been forced (possibly by your own will) by the intricacies of the language into a group who failed to identify the contradiction of the original statement by self-segregating from those who “get it.”
It is fascinating that you would make that connection, despite my original intention and written word. The relevant implications of it are interesting because we are discussing dystopian future scenarios.
Making common language unintelligible (self-contradictory statements that are taken as wholy true, for example) is essential for the world described Orwell to be possible. If people lose the skill or tools to effectively express reason (see also Fahrenheit 451 ), they will eventually become unable to do anything other than what they are told to do. As I am at work, I will leave it to the reader to make the connections and mental leaps between this concept and a society controlled by artificial intelligence. (A concept, incidentally, beliefly alluded to in a popular anime with a very dark vision of the future.)
Wait, which is it? The people left behind will self-segretate but not all of them do so my choice? My prediction is that in the year 2020, pulp will be written by lousy artificial intelligence. What do you think, George?
Really? I was thinking about monkeys. Six one way, half-dozen the other I guess.
Oh my fucking God! Laughing out loud out loud out loud explanation point explanation point explanation point one one explanation point.
It consistently bugs me that so many companies think they can save money by taking the “not invented here” philosophy on as much as possible. I am convinced, especially after learning about the inner workings of Google, that this just does not work. So much time and effort is wasted getting third party products working for very specific tasks and when all is said and done, you can often put together a solution that meets your needs exactly in nearly the same amount of time. And then in the long run, even if you are successful at first, you will fight a larger maintenance and cost nightmare as your vendors shift and change directions and you find yourself wishing you had more specificity in the solution.
When you harvest stem cells from an embryo, you are not destroying a “life” in the same way you do not destroy a life when you trim your fingernails. An embryo, at the stage stem cells are collected, is just a small cluster of cells. No nervous system, no heart; the thing is far from human. Can we stop letting religious fundamentalists who do not have an ounce of scientific understanding (or deliberately practice ignorance) on the matter frame the debate? There is nothing magical or spiritual about fertilization and the cells which result. The transfer of genetic material does not mean the ovum is suddenly imbued with a “soul.” You might as well get upset over the deaths of the millions of sperm and monthly wasted ovum that do not result in a zygote.