Because simple minds insist on worshipping her philosophy as if it were a religion to live by. But hey, when we live in a world where the news is often taken as an absolute and anything with a grain of truth in it is believed - what can you say?
Ayn Rand was an egomaniac cult leader who could barely support herself selling her books that had one dimensional unrealistic characters to further her black and white self-fulfilling prophecy to simple minds who can barely understand the meaning of shades of gray; Of which her philosophy is conveniently named objectivism, as in, whatever my simple mind thinks and wishes must be objective reality, and subjectivity is just some bull shit concocted up by people who are against reality - as in, my view of the world *must* be objective, and the human individual is an incredible "heroic being" (duh, isn't that word subjective?), so my actions must be right....
She is a purveyor of replacement dogma with the statement that her philosophy and beliefs allow for freedom of expression, growth and evolutionary thought -- essentially, the new approach fails to take into account all of the marvelous evolution which resulted in his freedom and ability to express his disdain or concern for the state of affairs extant. Self-fulfilling prophesy is always convenient and safe. It's anything but evolutionary.
A good critique of the objectivist philosophy is at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7842/otjindex.htm. It's certainly an interesting read. Keep all this in mind when reading her books. Also keep in mind that in her time, there was paranoia of the red commie pinko threat - and she actually testified to government committee regarding all the commie pinko's in the film industry (remember McCarthy?). She has some very interesting insights into flaws in collectivism - but beyond that, there is an unforgiving dichotomy in her rigid belief system and her so called promotion of individual thought.
As an aside, I find it incredibly funny that pages such as that of the Ayn Rand society read very much like religious and racist cult web sites.
----
Now, in regard to public corporations and social contributions; I believe that there should be a separation of church and state. Any programs that don't further the company in some way are certainly questionable when considering efficiency. That doesn't mean that I'm a heartless bastard. It just means I think that if people in the company want to start such a foundation, then they can in their own free time. As for giving non-profit corporations cheaper prices -- the corporation selling to them can probably benefit through some government tax scheme anyway.
This, however, should not be a rational basis from which one would enslave workers in foreign countries or dump toxic waste into a nearby lake. Laissez-faire capitalism shouldn't be a means to institute and promote tyranny or totalitarianism, especially in foreign economies. It also doesn't mean that they can take advantage of their employee's here or at large.
In the microsoft case someone talked about above: If employee's feel that they have been duped and a certain corporation has found a loophole -- then let them take it to the courts and possibly set a precedent either way and have their reputation damaged (many foreign countries, of course, have no such rules, which makes these primarily complex ethical issues).
When it comes to branding products, they will be very interested because it will bring in more sales with less effort in actually making a decent product. When you're talking about business people on the back end of things such as middle management or b2b, they are likely to care less unless you're talking about intuitive as a means of more efficiency -- not waste of time in themeing your application.
Of course, general comments such as this usually have gaping holes in them.
Yes, the solution is to either get some human factors experience or hire some people who do, and can design a good UI.
From there, the developers should work to the standard of the customer/user requirements documents (i.e., user manuals, screenshots, prototype interfaces [you're creating them during the process, RIGHT?]) instead of the developer requirements documents and manuals.
Otherwise you may get something that seems intuitive to a group of technically minded programmers but completely misses the mark on customer requirements.
Re:Themability implemented in the wrong place
on
Suck On Skins And UI
·
· Score: 2
"On the other hand, themeable individual apps (winamp, xmms, etc) seem a bit daft to me"
The standard user interface in an OS may be counter-intuitive to the normal user when considering the ease of use paradigm in many applications. There are many examples of this for strict "everyday consumer" type applications, which use non-standard interfaces, but are more intuitive than the standard operating system interface. Of course, they often hide the power of complexity to improve ease of use.
Example of this are, Adobe PhotoDeluxe (www.adobe.com), MGI Photosuite - Videowave (www.mgisoft.com), anything from MetaCreations (www.metacreations.com), dreamweaver (www.macromedia.com), etc etc et al.
He's wrong about ASP. You can write ASP in more than just vbscript. It's also not the de-fact standard for scripting, even on IIS (see java servlets etc. What he is right about, is standardization of desktop. The backend is irrelevant as long as the front end remains consistent. Of course, skinning and themes don't necessarily change the navigation standard. Now, if you want to provide a non standard UI setup in an application, it must be very intuitive or it is worthless.
I doubt the validity of this statement. People using their computer primarily as a tool for typing documents probably don't customize their machine because they don't know how. If they did, I would bet they would. I've worked at various companies, and "regular" users who only use their computers for word processing and excel also like customizing their desktop with a background picture of their family and their favorite colors, just as they would customize the layout of their desk with personal belongings. There are probably thousands of users using the skin customization program for IE, based on the easy install through activeX and the relatively easy install of skins.
The only barrier is understanding and effort. Of course, some people like decorating their house, and some don't.
As for the number of bad themes around, I would base that on the fact that, a) it takes effort to make a nice looking theme; and, b) one man's trash is another man's treasure (within an obvious bounded range).
-- Is the default score to browse at 1 now, or is it just me?
"Indeed, the settlement agreements in both Canada and the U.S. specifically recognize that iCraveTV can again start retransmitting broadcast signals in Canada once Canadian law is clarified"
Excuse me, interpretation on the part of iCraveTV of a law was certainly ambiguous and certainly questionable. They would have ultimately lost the case either way - whether them running out of money or them being defeated in court. Secondly, this is not american broadcasting vs. canadian icravetv. There were canadian companies involved in this suit. Last, you were just deflecting the original argument I made about advertising dollars by stating that it was legal in Canada.
"If you choose to watch iCraveTV in America, you are breaking the law"
That wasn't the point. There are(were) no mechanisms in place to prevent someone from the united states from viewing iCraveTV other than having a Canadian postal code.
"Maybe so, but I wouldn't bust into America and force them to use the Metric system, so why are Americans busting into Canada and forcing their laws onto us? "
This argument makes no sense at all. The fact is, they are exploiting a law that does not work well in the internet age. You can rant and rave about how the law is the law, but it doesn't make it magically an argument that makes sense. iCraveTV would have lost the lawsuit.
The law that they claimed allowed them to do so was ambiguous and certainly not framed in relation to the possibilities that the internet gives rebroadcasters such as iCraveTV.
Would you dismiss problems such as:
a) broadcasters not knowing how much to charge advertisers because some company is rebroadcasting their station all over america b) taking control of IP away from the original owners?
Stating that it's canadian law is dogma at best. The companies involved in this case definitely have a good argument regarding this law and the practices of iCraveTV and when future cases come where there is not a settlement there will surely be a precedent set in favor of these companies.
The only good point I saw was about anonymity on the internet damaging or altering identity as well as expression of emotion. Nothing new though.
If you hadn't already seen it, The Journal of Computer Mediated communication is at http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/ -- It has some fairly decent articles on developing a sense of self online as well as many others.
"Therefore, most govt solutions are not terribly attractive and are not necessarily superior to the market outcome."
This line is an illogical conclusion given that the trust department and the legislative government are separated entities. Why do you think Microsoft lobbies in the legislative government to reduce funding for the trust department?
First, you take measures to deny lobbyists favors (brought on by campaign contributions and gifts) from the government. The legislators then do not have clouded judgment through greed and may regulate the trust and criminal departments properly. This top down approach would then bring an incentive to other departments that may be corruptible to actually bend to the will of democracy because the legislators would not have that incentive to break the law or make up the law as they go along.
The above is, of course, a normative statement. Considering the factors involved, it is something to work towards, but not necessarily meet because we're talking about reality here.
Hey arguing assholes. What have YOU done in YOUR life that makes you feel proud? Have you accomplished anything? Why must you dwell on the accomplishments of others? I realize that as a citizen of your nation, you partially stand for its actions, but give me a break.
What the fuck does Much Music or MTV have to do with your accomplishments? Are you unable to define yourself except for the entertainment and products you consume?
Anyway, regarding the space programs, here is info about the Canadian Space Agency (http://www.space.gc.ca/welcomee.html). Note that much of its programs are commercial and they have much fewer accomplishments in sake of knowledge. Since Canada is a much smaller country population wise, we can't exactly scale our space program to levels similar to the US for non privatized and inddirectly economic based research. I think our country is more concerned at this time in sustaining its welfare state, with a political system that makes our conservatives look like far left socialists (*** DISCLAIMER, I pay 46% income taxes and 15% sales tax).
Anyway, I still fail to see the correlation to this and the definition of its people. If you take a hard look, Canadians and Americans are so similar the 51st state really does seem to be fitting.
Note: this is not to you, this is to the entire thread. I know you're just responding to the stupidity that ensued.
Please allow me to comment, as I have been on both sides of this (being an american currently living in Canada).
Let me first say that this is usually not an issue of logic. It is an issue of the inability of people from many countries to see in shades of gray. Example: "You're either for us or against us". I'm not going to analyze in detail the many factors such as societal indoctrination, or failure of our school systems, or mindless pride, or stupid support for the status quo.
What I will say is that many people are ignorant. They follow. They do not see error in the society they subscribe to because they do not want to. When their government brings war, many watch it like it is a sports game and their country should be the victor because of their mindless pride. They do not look at the facts or think logically.
The same goes for canadians. Calling all americans arrogant and self righteous and then going on to state that we are a better country without articulating is just as bad.
My advice: next time an obviously uninformed person tries to tell you their country is better because they can bomb you - challenge them with intellectual discource. They will quickly see the error of their ways.
Note that this means you will have to look at issues in shades of gray. You cannot make a case for example:
That our health care system is much better because everyone has access, without also looking at the bureaucracy that corrupts the system, the backlogging, the fact that competition exists in a weakened state, the fact that large government has shown time and time again that they are unable to handle this issue properly without inflating the deficit. The fact that our taxes are outrageous given what we get back from government.
You could then move on to the assumption that we have an inalienable right to health care as humans, and so should recieve care. When you look at this, you also realize that americans also assert this, but would like to do it more privately. Sorry, I went off on a glutted rant here --
but seriously; the next time someone says "my country can bomb your country to hell", appeal to logic. Show them that humans are no different because of borders. They may think differently, but they are still human. There does not have to be an adversarial relationship.
Now, if they can't get it through their narrow fucking mind, because of obviously low emotional or intellectual intelligence -- then you'll have to turn it down a notch and say something like "H-bombs are the great equalizer, so nice try".
Anyway, in case you hadn't noticed, "Blame Canada" is a song that encourages more intelligent thought about the cause of a the problem in the movie because it paints those who participate as complete idiots.
Much of the film is satire. Many of the songs (such as "Blame Canada") are obviously sarcastic and do look at real issues -- at least in a playful and non direct way.
"The same media who supported Clinton by making the whole impechment[sic] trial about "personal life" crap instead of about purjury[sic]"
It is questionable if he had to legally answer such questions about his personal life. The investigations primary purpose was to ruin him. There was no mention of him losing work because he was fucking an intern in his office - therefore I can only guess blatantly partisan politics meant to ruin the other party under the guise of betraying the moral standard.
I'd give that he has embarrassed his office, but there is absolutely no reason to throw him out of office besides a campaign by republicans to fuck the democrats over. Why do I believe this? Because many republicans and democrats have done exactly what clinton did. They do not practice what they preach.
I forgot to add: The spamming idiots are sometimes posting 40 idiotic posts that need to be moderated down which does probably screw the setup we had before this became the norm.
Please allow me to make a few comments about the slashdot moderation system:
I think it works pretty well for what it's supposed to do. The problem is a) the nature of the site being general tech news; and b) the quantity of users. We can either a) give all users random moderation points; or b) give a limited group of users moderation points based on criterion such as being moderated up themselves; or c) a mix of both. I think this is best theoretically if tweaked properly.
However, some problems exist such as a) the default linear setup combined with the fact that this is just a news site means lots of good comments at the end of the forum get lost; b) not enough people meta-moderate; c) people mark down comments that they do not necessarily agree with but may be valid points of view, or comments that are slightly off topic but are good extensions of the current conversation; d) people given moderation points often just want to get rid of them. This is a news site after all, and responsibility to the integrity of moderation isn't exactly a priority. Many people just scroll down a bit and moderate comments that vaguely look good. Why? Again, probably because this is just a news discussion site and expending the effort to read all the comments in a story would take many, many hours.
So, I agree with you that it might be good to increase the moderation points available. However, this must be done in a manner that will give points to those who deserve them and not to those who will moderate posts down just because they do not agree with a point or those who will just moderate because at first glance the post looks good.
In short, not enough people meta-moderate so at a macro level, increasing the amount of moderation points to everyone would be bad. It would be a bit better only increasing the amount to those who are consistently moderated up but that does not guarantee that those who moderated them up properly looked at their posts. So we either give a select group a lot of points and allow them to moderate - or we give the group at large a lot of points and hope that they use them wisely. Not enough people meta moderate so this is why such a system can seem broken. The bottom line? It's a discussion news site. Expending the effort is just too much in this situation.
Even then, meta moderation does not give you the thread. This creates a problem because the moderation might be relevant to the post and thread that it replies to. The solution? Tell everyone to quote every time what they are responding to. This is done most of the time, so this is not too much of a major problem.
There is also another improvement that I want. Randomly displayed threads. There are some very good comments that get lost in the noise because we only have an option for newest and oldest in threads or by themselves. This isn't a problem for the 100 comment stories but becomes a large problem for 250+ comment stories. The first problem with randomly displayed nested and threaded comments that comes to mind is that the flow of the discussion often comes linearly, even if not the same thread. However, I think it would be welcome to most slashdot readers. Anyway, to tie this into the moderation problems, it would probably have to be the default setting for proper moderation to occur. Either that or a the owners of the site generating a lot of noise about it.
Wading through so much information and finding signal in noise isn't much fun. I usually just ignore moderation and scroll a lot.
haha, that's funny. You know how big the market is for pseudo science herbal medicines and such? The same goes for GNC, especially for fitness related drugs. People take these drugs then change their behavior, then take the drugs for the change in fitness level when it was really the change in behavior. There are, of course, many drugs that do have an effect -- but I'm just proving the point that there are many who do not or do little in the equation.
You can't deny that religion is metaphorically just a human morality program that often has a conveniently anthropocentric god handing down absolute truth as "king of the universe" because he knows all and we must follow. It's often exploited by those who understand that they can take advantage of this routine of accepting absolute truths without logical thought and without logical thought, it is just mind control in interest of those communicating those "absolute truths" and preserving humans in general. It also conveniently creates a concept to explain everything within the unknown.
This is why I take caution in your thought that there is nothing illogical or irrational about religion. You're spoon fed absolute truths. In your case, I think you're at least partially logically thinking. However, there are many who do not think this way. They do because god said or the man who is speaking for god said. Why must you worship an all powerful entity? Why must you ask him repentance (which, again is completely anthropocentric and subjective)?
You can't deny that god is largely emotional - and to many people, magically a way to fulfill those emotional needs and wants.
**Note, this is not a flame at all or to religion. I like many routines in this religious "program" -- I just think it often hinders logical thought, and allows humans to control the minds of others because they do not develop the ability to skeptically and logically think. Absolute fact is, in my opinion, stupid.
Actually, he likely has a 10mbps interface. CMU has a t3 to to the internet and (if i remember correctly) oc3 or oc12 or something similar to vbns. Flooding a 10mbps interface would quite possibly slow his computer to a crawl. I have been smurf attacked before sitting on a 10mbps interface to a t3 network, and my mouse completely froze in x (p2 400 + 128 mb of ram) and my windowmaker network status applet showed 100% utilization. I couldn't move the mouse again until the asshole stopped 5 minutes later:).
My guess is that the attack wasn't as large as he thinks - or he or the routers setup had an elegant ICMP or SYN rate limiting and dropping scheme.
Slashdot Mirror
Because simple minds insist on worshipping her philosophy as if it were a religion to live by. But hey, when we live in a world where the news is often taken as an absolute and anything with a grain of truth in it is believed - what can you say?
Ayn Rand was an egomaniac cult leader who could barely support herself selling her books that had one dimensional unrealistic characters to further her black and white self-fulfilling prophecy to simple minds who can barely understand the meaning of shades of gray; Of which her philosophy is conveniently named objectivism, as in, whatever my simple mind thinks and wishes must be objective reality, and subjectivity is just some bull shit concocted up by people who are against reality - as in, my view of the world *must* be objective, and the human individual is an incredible "heroic being" (duh, isn't that word subjective?), so my actions must be right....
. It's certainly an interesting read. Keep all this in mind when reading her books. Also keep in mind that in her time, there was paranoia of the red commie pinko threat - and she actually testified to government committee regarding all the commie pinko's in the film industry (remember McCarthy?). She has some very interesting insights into flaws in collectivism - but beyond that, there is an unforgiving dichotomy in her rigid belief system and her so called promotion of individual thought.
She is a purveyor of replacement dogma with the statement that her philosophy and beliefs allow for freedom of expression, growth and evolutionary thought -- essentially, the new approach fails to take into account all of the marvelous evolution which resulted in his freedom and ability to express his disdain or concern for the state of affairs extant. Self-fulfilling prophesy is always convenient and safe. It's anything but evolutionary.
A good critique of the objectivist philosophy is at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7842/otjindex.htm
As an aside, I find it incredibly funny that pages such as that of the Ayn Rand society read very much like religious and racist cult web sites.
----
Now, in regard to public corporations and social contributions; I believe that there should be a separation of church and state. Any programs that don't further the company in some way are certainly questionable when considering efficiency. That doesn't mean that I'm a heartless bastard. It just means I think that if people in the company want to start such a foundation, then they can in their own free time. As for giving non-profit corporations cheaper prices -- the corporation selling to them can probably benefit through some government tax scheme anyway.
This, however, should not be a rational basis from which one would enslave workers in foreign countries or dump toxic waste into a nearby lake. Laissez-faire capitalism shouldn't be a means to institute and promote tyranny or totalitarianism, especially in foreign economies. It also doesn't mean that they can take advantage of their employee's here or at large.
In the microsoft case someone talked about above: If employee's feel that they have been duped and a certain corporation has found a loophole -- then let them take it to the courts and possibly set a precedent either way and have their reputation damaged (many foreign countries, of course, have no such rules, which makes these primarily complex ethical issues).
When it comes to branding products, they will be very interested because it will bring in more sales with less effort in actually making a decent product. When you're talking about business people on the back end of things such as middle management or b2b, they are likely to care less unless you're talking about intuitive as a means of more efficiency -- not waste of time in themeing your application.
Of course, general comments such as this usually have gaping holes in them.
Yes, the solution is to either get some human factors experience or hire some people who do, and can design a good UI.
From there, the developers should work to the standard of the customer/user requirements documents (i.e., user manuals, screenshots, prototype interfaces [you're creating them during the process, RIGHT?]) instead of the developer requirements documents and manuals.
Otherwise you may get something that seems intuitive to a group of technically minded programmers but completely misses the mark on customer requirements.
"On the other hand, themeable individual apps (winamp, xmms, etc) seem a bit daft to me"
The standard user interface in an OS may be counter-intuitive to the normal user when considering the ease of use paradigm in many applications. There are many examples of this for strict "everyday consumer" type applications, which use non-standard interfaces, but are more intuitive than the standard operating system interface. Of course, they often hide the power of complexity to improve ease of use.
Example of this are, Adobe PhotoDeluxe (www.adobe.com), MGI Photosuite - Videowave (www.mgisoft.com), anything from MetaCreations (www.metacreations.com), dreamweaver (www.macromedia.com), etc etc et al.
I have to agree here. The real problem is un-intuitive GUI's (or UI's for that matter).
He's wrong about ASP. You can write ASP in more than just vbscript. It's also not the de-fact standard for scripting, even on IIS (see java servlets etc. What he is right about, is standardization of desktop. The backend is irrelevant as long as the front end remains consistent. Of course, skinning and themes don't necessarily change the navigation standard. Now, if you want to provide a non standard UI setup in an application, it must be very intuitive or it is worthless.
I doubt the validity of this statement. People using their computer primarily as a tool for typing documents probably don't customize their machine because they don't know how. If they did, I would bet they would. I've worked at various companies, and "regular" users who only use their computers for word processing and excel also like customizing their desktop with a background picture of their family and their favorite colors, just as they would customize the layout of their desk with personal belongings. There are probably thousands of users using the skin customization program for IE, based on the easy install through activeX and the relatively easy install of skins.
The only barrier is understanding and effort. Of course, some people like decorating their house, and some don't.
As for the number of bad themes around, I would base that on the fact that, a) it takes effort to make a nice looking theme; and, b) one man's trash is another man's treasure (within an obvious bounded range).
--
Is the default score to browse at 1 now, or is it just me?
coming directly from iCraveTV's site:
"Indeed, the settlement agreements in both Canada and the U.S. specifically recognize that iCraveTV can again start retransmitting broadcast signals in Canada once Canadian law is clarified"
Excuse me, interpretation on the part of iCraveTV of a law was certainly ambiguous and certainly questionable. They would have ultimately lost the case either way - whether them running out of money or them being defeated in court. Secondly, this is not american broadcasting vs. canadian icravetv. There were canadian companies involved in this suit. Last, you were just deflecting the original argument I made about advertising dollars by stating that it was legal in Canada.
"If you choose to watch iCraveTV in America, you are breaking the law"
That wasn't the point. There are(were) no mechanisms in place to prevent someone from the united states from viewing iCraveTV other than having a Canadian postal code.
"Maybe so, but I wouldn't bust into America and force them to use the Metric system, so why are Americans busting into Canada and forcing their laws onto us? "
This argument makes no sense at all. The fact is, they are exploiting a law that does not work well in the internet age. You can rant and rave about how the law is the law, but it doesn't make it magically an argument that makes sense. iCraveTV would have lost the lawsuit.
The law that they claimed allowed them to do so was ambiguous and certainly not framed in relation to the possibilities that the internet gives rebroadcasters such as iCraveTV.
Would you dismiss problems such as:
a) broadcasters not knowing how much to charge advertisers because some company is rebroadcasting their station all over america
b) taking control of IP away from the original owners?
Stating that it's canadian law is dogma at best. The companies involved in this case definitely have a good argument regarding this law and the practices of iCraveTV and when future cases come where there is not a settlement there will surely be a precedent set in favor of these companies.
The only good point I saw was about anonymity on the internet damaging or altering identity as well as expression of emotion. Nothing new though.
If you hadn't already seen it, The Journal of Computer Mediated communication is at http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/ -- It has some fairly decent articles on developing a sense of self online as well as many others.
"Therefore, most govt solutions are not terribly attractive and are not necessarily superior to the market outcome."
This line is an illogical conclusion given that the trust department and the legislative government are separated entities. Why do you think Microsoft lobbies in the legislative government to reduce funding for the trust department?
First, you take measures to deny lobbyists favors (brought on by campaign contributions and gifts) from the government. The legislators then do not have clouded judgment through greed and may regulate the trust and criminal departments properly. This top down approach would then bring an incentive to other departments that may be corruptible to actually bend to the will of democracy because the legislators would not have that incentive to break the law or make up the law as they go along.
The above is, of course, a normative statement. Considering the factors involved, it is something to work towards, but not necessarily meet because we're talking about reality here.
Hey arguing assholes. What have YOU done in YOUR life that makes you feel proud? Have you accomplished anything? Why must you dwell on the accomplishments of others? I realize that as a citizen of your nation, you partially stand for its actions, but give me a break.
What the fuck does Much Music or MTV have to do with your accomplishments? Are you unable to define yourself except for the entertainment and products you consume?
Anyway, regarding the space programs, here is info about the Canadian Space Agency (http://www.space.gc.ca/welcomee.html). Note that much of its programs are commercial and they have much fewer accomplishments in sake of knowledge. Since Canada is a much smaller country population wise, we can't exactly scale our space program to levels similar to the US for non privatized and inddirectly economic based research. I think our country is more concerned at this time in sustaining its welfare state, with a political system that makes our conservatives look like far left socialists (*** DISCLAIMER, I pay 46% income taxes and 15% sales tax).
Anyway, I still fail to see the correlation to this and the definition of its people. If you take a hard look, Canadians and Americans are so similar the 51st state really does seem to be fitting.
Note: this is not to you, this is to the entire thread. I know you're just responding to the stupidity that ensued.
Please allow me to comment, as I have been on both sides of this (being an american currently living in Canada).
Let me first say that this is usually not an issue of logic. It is an issue of the inability of people from many countries to see in shades of gray. Example: "You're either for us or against us". I'm not going to analyze in detail the many factors such as societal indoctrination, or failure of our school systems, or mindless pride, or stupid support for the status quo.
What I will say is that many people are ignorant. They follow. They do not see error in the society they subscribe to because they do not want to. When their government brings war, many watch it like it is a sports game and their country should be the victor because of their mindless pride. They do not look at the facts or think logically.
The same goes for canadians. Calling all americans arrogant and self righteous and then going on to state that we are a better country without articulating is just as bad.
My advice: next time an obviously uninformed person tries to tell you their country is better because they can bomb you - challenge them with intellectual discource. They will quickly see the error of their ways.
Note that this means you will have to look at issues in shades of gray. You cannot make a case for example:
That our health care system is much better because everyone has access, without also looking at the bureaucracy that corrupts the system, the backlogging, the fact that competition exists in a weakened state, the fact that large government has shown time and time again that they are unable to handle this issue properly without inflating the deficit. The fact that our taxes are outrageous given what we get back from government.
You could then move on to the assumption that we have an inalienable right to health care as humans, and so should recieve care. When you look at this, you also realize that americans also assert this, but would like to do it more privately. Sorry, I went off on a glutted rant here --
but seriously; the next time someone says "my country can bomb your country to hell", appeal to logic. Show them that humans are no different because of borders. They may think differently, but they are still human. There does not have to be an adversarial relationship.
Now, if they can't get it through their narrow fucking mind, because of obviously low emotional or intellectual intelligence -- then you'll have to turn it down a notch and say something like "H-bombs are the great equalizer, so nice try".
Anyway, in case you hadn't noticed, "Blame Canada" is a song that encourages more intelligent thought about the cause of a the problem in the movie because it paints those who participate as complete idiots.
Hello, this is SATIRE. Get it? You obviously haven't seen the movie, because you would have got this.
And of course, they just used Canada as an example of obvious stupidity of parallel situations that have occured in reality in the past.
Much of the film is satire. Many of the songs (such as "Blame Canada") are obviously sarcastic and do look at real issues -- at least in a playful and non direct way.
"The same media who supported Clinton by making the whole impechment[sic] trial about "personal life" crap instead of about purjury[sic]"
It is questionable if he had to legally answer such questions about his personal life. The investigations primary purpose was to ruin him. There was no mention of him losing work because he was fucking an intern in his office - therefore I can only guess blatantly partisan politics meant to ruin the other party under the guise of betraying the moral standard.
I'd give that he has embarrassed his office, but there is absolutely no reason to throw him out of office besides a campaign by republicans to fuck the democrats over. Why do I believe this? Because many republicans and democrats have done exactly what clinton did. They do not practice what they preach.
I forgot to add: The spamming idiots are sometimes posting 40 idiotic posts that need to be moderated down which does probably screw the setup we had before this became the norm.
Please allow me to make a few comments about the slashdot moderation system:
I think it works pretty well for what it's supposed to do. The problem is a) the nature of the site being general tech news; and b) the quantity of users. We can either a) give all users random moderation points; or b) give a limited group of users moderation points based on criterion such as being moderated up themselves; or c) a mix of both. I think this is best theoretically if tweaked properly.
However, some problems exist such as a) the default linear setup combined with the fact that this is just a news site means lots of good comments at the end of the forum get lost; b) not enough people meta-moderate; c) people mark down comments that they do not necessarily agree with but may be valid points of view, or comments that are slightly off topic but are good extensions of the current conversation; d) people given moderation points often just want to get rid of them. This is a news site after all, and responsibility to the integrity of moderation isn't exactly a priority. Many people just scroll down a bit and moderate comments that vaguely look good. Why? Again, probably because this is just a news discussion site and expending the effort to read all the comments in a story would take many, many hours.
So, I agree with you that it might be good to increase the moderation points available. However, this must be done in a manner that will give points to those who deserve them and not to those who will moderate posts down just because they do not agree with a point or those who will just moderate because at first glance the post looks good.
In short, not enough people meta-moderate so at a macro level, increasing the amount of moderation points to everyone would be bad. It would be a bit better only increasing the amount to those who are consistently moderated up but that does not guarantee that those who moderated them up properly looked at their posts. So we either give a select group a lot of points and allow them to moderate - or we give the group at large a lot of points and hope that they use them wisely. Not enough people meta moderate so this is why such a system can seem broken. The bottom line? It's a discussion news site. Expending the effort is just too much in this situation.
Even then, meta moderation does not give you the thread. This creates a problem because the moderation might be relevant to the post and thread that it replies to. The solution? Tell everyone to quote every time what they are responding to. This is done most of the time, so this is not too much of a major problem.
There is also another improvement that I want. Randomly displayed threads. There are some very good comments that get lost in the noise because we only have an option for newest and oldest in threads or by themselves. This isn't a problem for the 100 comment stories but becomes a large problem for 250+ comment stories. The first problem with randomly displayed nested and threaded comments that comes to mind is that the flow of the discussion often comes linearly, even if not the same thread. However, I think it would be welcome to most slashdot readers. Anyway, to tie this into the moderation problems, it would probably have to be the default setting for proper moderation to occur. Either that or a the owners of the site generating a lot of noise about it.
Wading through so much information and finding signal in noise isn't much fun. I usually just ignore moderation and scroll a lot.
haha, that's funny. You know how big the market is for pseudo science herbal medicines and such? The same goes for GNC, especially for fitness related drugs. People take these drugs then change their behavior, then take the drugs for the change in fitness level when it was really the change in behavior. There are, of course, many drugs that do have an effect -- but I'm just proving the point that there are many who do not or do little in the equation.
You can't deny that religion is metaphorically just a human morality program that often has a conveniently anthropocentric god handing down absolute truth as "king of the universe" because he knows all and we must follow. It's often exploited by those who understand that they can take advantage of this routine of accepting absolute truths without logical thought and without logical thought, it is just mind control in interest of those communicating those "absolute truths" and preserving humans in general. It also conveniently creates a concept to explain everything within the unknown.
This is why I take caution in your thought that there is nothing illogical or irrational about religion. You're spoon fed absolute truths. In your case, I think you're at least partially logically thinking. However, there are many who do not think this way. They do because god said or the man who is speaking for god said. Why must you worship an all powerful entity? Why must you ask him repentance (which, again is completely anthropocentric and subjective)?
You can't deny that god is largely emotional - and to many people, magically a way to fulfill those emotional needs and wants.
**Note, this is not a flame at all or to religion. I like many routines in this religious "program" -- I just think it often hinders logical thought, and allows humans to control the minds of others because they do not develop the ability to skeptically and logically think. Absolute fact is, in my opinion, stupid.
Actually, he likely has a 10mbps interface. CMU has a t3 to to the internet and (if i remember correctly) oc3 or oc12 or something similar to vbns. Flooding a 10mbps interface would quite possibly slow his computer to a crawl. I have been smurf attacked before sitting on a 10mbps interface to a t3 network, and my mouse completely froze in x (p2 400 + 128 mb of ram) and my windowmaker network status applet showed 100% utilization. I couldn't move the mouse again until the asshole stopped 5 minutes later :).
My guess is that the attack wasn't as large as he thinks - or he or the routers setup had an elegant ICMP or SYN rate limiting and dropping scheme.