The NYT should not endorse anyone. Yes, they should stop.
They should report the news ( including politics ) without regard to political slant or political consequence. The only guideline should be "is it true?".
People as individuals can and should write the paper and be published.
I am of the opinion that you understand well enough, but cant make your case without misstating mine.
Business owners and shareholders can and should represent their own individual political viewpoints each on their own. There is zero need for businesses or other organizations to participate at that level.
IBM, for example, belongs to many many shareholders. Are their political interests being well represented by IBM? I would hazard not.
No, I'm not interested in cutting anyone down. There is not real way to amplify the little people. I want to de-amplify the large. Then they wont drown out others. And ideas don't come from businesses, they come from the people within a business, and there is *nothing* preventing that from happening. Except businesses. Yes, democracies can oppress minorities. I'd rather that than oligarchy/plutarchy oppressing majorities and minorities. Again, no one is being censored. Individuals can express anything they like. The only thing lost is the ability for businesses to censor others.
And I do think your political advocacy should happen with your resources ( money, time, etc ).
Why? I can see that in your case, it makes little difference. And if that were the extent of the playing field, I would say knock yourself out. But that isn't the extent of the playing field. Large corporations have inordinate influence. I know IBM's business is impacted by political decisions. So are foreign countries. Why should they have a say? Why should the size of a wallet influence the decision making? Doesn't it make you mad that larger companies make your advocacy less meaningful? Shouldn't it be about what is good for the country, what is right, rather than who had funding?
So, yes, so as to make unnecessary a distinction between a small business and a large one, I would say no business should engage in politics. You have your say, say it. You can give yourself a large paycheck for your advocacy. Doing it thru your company, why? A minor inconvenience against actually being in control ( you, me ) of "our" government. And I can see that some business activism has gone well ( in my opinion ), The uprising against SOPA. But all that could have and should have been in *our* hands to begin with, not as a plaything of business. I would argue that SOPA would not have come into being without other business interests pushing it into being.
I disagree with the word censor, again. I don't want any real person's viewpoint censored. And the wealthy/powerful would not be censored, they would be just as able as anyone to promulgate an idea. But so would the not so wealthy/powerful. The censorship is by the wealthy/powerful by making it so that viewpoints divergent from theirs are drowned out.
I agree, completely, freedom of political speech is really fundamental. For people. Real people. I don't think foreigners should have a say in a countries politics. I don't think internal entities without a vote should have a say. The citizens and the citizens alone should have a say. That is the country. That is who should be engaged in the process.
I recognize that this is all a pipe dream. The people who would need to enact such a scheme as mine are the same ones already captured. It wont happen, you can rest easy. I really don't see how that sits easy with anyone. But that is life.
Yes, the business owners should direct the conduct of the business ( duh ). I disagree on using a business as a tool of expression. They have their own private lives, they can use that.
They should not be able to speak twice+. As an individual *and* as a business.
On unions, they should also be barred from politics. Their function is representing membership to management and negotiating. Their membership have all they need in the political arena already, again, they have their private lives, they can use that.
There is nothing about people joining together that should cause them to have additional influence. To have to ability to drown out others. They should have influence, but not more than that due anyone. I have not said that a political party should loose it's freedom of speech. I have said corporations do not deserve or need any speech to begin with. Note a distinction between corporations and owners/managers of corporations. The owners of a business already have freedom of speech. The business will only repeat their ideas, without regard for how the investors or employees feel about the position ( yes, if they feel strongly enough about it, they can quit. ) I would call that misrepresentation. There is a distinction between telling someone to let another have a moment/time to talk and telling someone to shut up. The ones you incorrectly think I want to shut up are the only ones with much of a voice right now. They should be able to talk, but not to the exclusion of others.
I really don't see where you get the "repeal the First Amendment" stuff from. I am fond of it myself, I just wish it meant more for all, rather than a select few.
We are repeating ourselves here. I don't expect to convince you, I remain unconvinced by you.
"So you do want to censor them as a company. One person putting up a political sign in his yard is OK, but two people working together to do it, and you will demand that they stop. Honey, I'm afraid that would be censorship."
I do not see why a corporation should have any input into the political process. The people in the corporation, of course, and they do. I don't see it as censorship, they ( the people in the corporation ) can say what they want. I do not think they should have additional influence. I don't see why the person(s) heading a corporation should get additional influence.
"What would be really nice is if some people would stop whining that others have more money than they do."
Its not about whining that others have more money. They got it, fine. Enjoy it, but using it to influence politics isnt a good thing. They are one citizen, they should not have more or less voice than any one else. Anything else just leads to to oligarchy/plutarchy.
"Because democracy doesn't mean that everybody has the same reach and visibility of their communications. You're just whining because you want to censor some other peoples' political speech. "
I really wish you would stop with the condescending stuff. I have a point of view. I believe it to be correct. That is not whining. Stop trying to paint my discourse, talk about what you think without the nonsense.
And again, they can say what they want. censor [sen-ser] Show IPA noun 1. an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds. 2.any person who supervises the manners or morality of others. 3.an adverse critic; faultfinder. 4.(in the ancient Roman republic) either of two officials who kept the register or census of the citizens, awarded public contracts, and supervised manners and morals. 5.(in early Freudian dream theory) the force that represses ideas, impulses, and feelings, and prevents them from entering consciousness in their original, undisguised forms.
4 and 5 dont apply. 3 kinda does, but on both side. I do not want to see anything suppressed or supervised, I want for all to be able to be heard. Not just the wealthy and powerful. The censor is on the other foot.
"I have no sympathy with you whatsoever in pursuing that objective, and I consider your goal fundamentally inimical to a free democratic republic. Fortunately, the Supreme Court agrees with me, at least for the present."
Making it so that everyone, rather than the few have a voice in government is inimical to a free democratic republic? Is that what you are saying?
"No it is supposed to be the people you have elected to represent the citizenry, obviously you aren't going to a referendum on every single issue.'
Yes, but they are supposed to be answerable to the citizenry in terms of getting voted out of office
"What are you selling? And to whom? And for what? If people's livelihood didn't depend on money then obviously people wouldn't care so much about it"
Democratic institutions in this Republic. Yes, people's livelihoods depend on money, in the main, and it is something to care about. But, so? If one person cares about money, they can vote on money/economic issues. If another cares about ecology, they can vote that.
"Look at it from the perspective of those running the country,"
I am in the USA, and that is supposed to be the citizenry.
"IBM and MS support the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of their employees, they contribute billions to the economy and have hundreds of thousands of shareholders which includes active traders, long term investors and retirement funds. It isn't 4 "persons" involved because corporations are not people, but they are often representative of many people"
It should not be about the money, it should be about democracy. Sustaining and maintaining and defending it. We are selling it a bit at a time.
Take the item from today's main page, IBM and MS oppose a part of a bill.
Say for the sake of argument that I and another developer friend support that bill.
4 "persons" involved, but my voice and my friend's voice is rendered inconsequential by IBM and MS's voice.
Why is that OK?
What I want is not censorship of their voice ( they should be able to voice their opinion, as individuals, not as a company ), what I want is to eliminate the censorship of *my* voice. I want their opinion and mine to be able to be evaluated on the opinion's merits, not on the contents of their wallet versus my wallet.
When my voice is drowned out by theirs, how can you argue we have democracy?
If I have a political opinion, manage to host it, I wont have advertising dollars to get word out aside from my site. I wont have much ability to cross link. Opponents of my opinion with money will likely manage to drown me out and make sure I am not cross linked much outside of small time "looks like you got quite a conspiracy going there" sites. They can also SEO my site into/dev/null And if they really dont like it, DDOS my site, buy the hosting company, or other shenanigans, and my site disappears.
Say I have a beef with a company.... I want to put up a website disparaging that company. True statements on that site will likely still see me in court. How many law suites have there been recently against people who reviewed another party's work, etc and that other party didn't want that information/opinion public?
"You can't make every YouTube video a viral hit. You can't make every citizen equally wealthy and influential. All you will do is undermine democracy by censoring some people. Communism causes more problems than it solves, news at 11."
When did I say I wanted to? Not asking for Communism, asking for actual democracy not plutocracy.
"The cool thing about a free democracy is that neither you nor the government gets to decide who "deserves amplification". If the speaker spends his own money to get his message out, then only he gets to decide whether it's a worthwhile exercise or not. Isn't freedom great?"
It would be, if we had it. Why is it better that a few ( the wealthy/powerful ) get to chose who deserves amplification? Why are they better?
"Your error is that you forgot that corporations are people, and are not owned by the government or the country at large. Of course corporations are not individual people, but they are owned by people, run by people, responsible to people, generate profits for people. It's people all the way down!"
Your error is in not questioning if corporations should be people and what privileges should come with that for them if they are. And all those people *already* have a vote and influence as the no-so-privileged, so the fact that they are run by people, etc is meaningless, except to point out that those persons get additional amplification, deserved or not.
"And once again, you don't get to decide that those people don't get a political voice."
Never said they should not get a political voice. I said they should not have a bigger voice than others. Dont put words in my mouth.
"If your 'idea' can be 'ripped off' that easily, it sure as heck doesn't deserve a government-granted monopoly"
When one side has lots of money, and the other is struggling to make payroll, the idea becomes pretty easy to rip off. See Stac Doublespace for one example.
"So what if rich companies can communicate more widely than you?"
The "so what" is that they have a darned good whack at drowning out all voices but their own. Inherently undemocratic. Money as speech seems, to me, to be taking us closer and closer to an authoritarian system.
"I have a suspicion that you want to see some rich people or corporations censored because you disagree with their message. That is not OK."
Agreement is not the issue, their message is not better than anyone else's, and does not deserve amplification. I don't think that rich people, nor corporations ( who I think should be entirely outside of politics ), nor trade unions, nor teachers unions nor any organization deserve amplification.
You start with "That's a nice little oversimplification of the issue..." then have to go with: "The definition of a liberal is someone who doesn't care what the law is, as long as it is mandatory..." ( an oversimplification )
Sigh. Is that really all there is to liberals? It is just as un-dimensional ( and inflammatory ) to say "The definition of a conservative is 'I got mine, up yours'". Which I know not to be true of all or most, only true of some subset. Here sits a liberal who detests nanny states, censors and undue controls. And I do care what the law is, but also that the law be fair and fairly applied and reasonable. ( some control seems to be required, and I would argue both sides want controls, it is just a matter of who and what is to be controlled... ) For me, liberalism is caring more about people than institutions ( corporations, powerful people's , states, etc ).
I would not have had a problem with DRDOS failing. My issue is that MS should have made DRDOS fail in the marketplace by having a better product, not by "technical measures".
I remember trying DR DOS with Windows., and the "error" messages. I also remember installing some windows variant on a machine that had OS/2, and certain "messages". If I had gone for the suggested defaults, the install would have wrecked my OS/2 installation. They had some tricky wording about the partition ( the one with OS/2 on it ) probably being empty and how I would increase available disk if I "reclaimed" it...
Sleazy is what it was. You can like MS if you want to, but don't be childish with your mod points,
"If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. " Joshua 24:15
"I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them." Deuteronomy 30:19-20
There is no forcing us. He gave us choice. Do as you will.
If, as you believe, there is no God, then there is just people acting badly. And justifying it however they do that. If, as I believe, there is a God, then he gave people free will which is what allowed people to commit atrocities, including atrocities made in his name. And all the good committed both in and not in his name. But in this case, those acting badly, including hating gay people, are doing so in spite of His direction.
Slashdot Mirror
They still retain their ability to write as private citizens.
Nothing Orwellian, nothing lost, no censorship.
The NYT should not endorse anyone. Yes, they should stop.
They should report the news ( including politics ) without regard to political slant or political consequence.
The only guideline should be "is it true?".
People as individuals can and should write the paper and be published.
I have covered all this ad nauseum, repeatedly.
I am of the opinion that you understand well enough, but cant make your case without misstating mine.
Business owners and shareholders can and should represent their own individual political viewpoints each on their own.
There is zero need for businesses or other organizations to participate at that level.
I see what you are saying, but none of that applies.
You are adding something to what I am saying that I do not intend to be there.
Your business belongs to you.
IBM, for example, belongs to many many shareholders. Are their political interests being well represented by IBM?
I would hazard not.
No, I'm not interested in cutting anyone down.
There is not real way to amplify the little people. I want to de-amplify the large. Then they wont drown out others.
And ideas don't come from businesses, they come from the people within a business, and there is *nothing* preventing that from happening.
Except businesses.
Yes, democracies can oppress minorities. I'd rather that than oligarchy/plutarchy oppressing majorities and minorities.
Again, no one is being censored. Individuals can express anything they like. The only thing lost is the ability for businesses to censor others.
I can see where you are coming from.
And I do think your political advocacy should happen with your resources ( money, time, etc ).
Why? I can see that in your case, it makes little difference.
And if that were the extent of the playing field, I would say knock yourself out.
But that isn't the extent of the playing field. Large corporations have inordinate influence.
I know IBM's business is impacted by political decisions. So are foreign countries.
Why should they have a say?
Why should the size of a wallet influence the decision making?
Doesn't it make you mad that larger companies make your advocacy less meaningful?
Shouldn't it be about what is good for the country, what is right, rather than who had funding?
So, yes, so as to make unnecessary a distinction between a small business and a large one,
I would say no business should engage in politics. You have your say, say it. You can give yourself a large paycheck for your advocacy.
Doing it thru your company, why? A minor inconvenience against actually being in control ( you, me ) of "our" government.
And I can see that some business activism has gone well ( in my opinion ), The uprising against SOPA.
But all that could have and should have been in *our* hands to begin with, not as a plaything of business.
I would argue that SOPA would not have come into being without other business interests pushing it into being.
I disagree with the word censor, again. I don't want any real person's viewpoint censored.
And the wealthy/powerful would not be censored, they would be just as able as anyone to promulgate an idea.
But so would the not so wealthy/powerful.
The censorship is by the wealthy/powerful by making it so that viewpoints divergent from theirs are drowned out.
I agree, completely, freedom of political speech is really fundamental. For people. Real people.
I don't think foreigners should have a say in a countries politics.
I don't think internal entities without a vote should have a say.
The citizens and the citizens alone should have a say. That is the country. That is who should be engaged in the process.
I recognize that this is all a pipe dream. The people who would need to enact such a scheme as mine are the same ones already captured. It wont happen, you can rest easy. I really don't see how that sits easy with anyone. But that is life.
Yes, the business owners should direct the conduct of the business ( duh ).
I disagree on using a business as a tool of expression. They have their own private lives, they can use that.
They should not be able to speak twice+. As an individual *and* as a business.
On unions, they should also be barred from politics. Their function is representing membership to management and negotiating.
Their membership have all they need in the political arena already, again, they have their private lives, they can use that.
There is nothing about people joining together that should cause them to have additional influence. To have to ability to drown out others.
They should have influence, but not more than that due anyone.
I have not said that a political party should loose it's freedom of speech.
I have said corporations do not deserve or need any speech to begin with.
Note a distinction between corporations and owners/managers of corporations.
The owners of a business already have freedom of speech. The business will only repeat their ideas, without regard for how the investors or employees feel about the position ( yes, if they feel strongly enough about it, they can quit. ) I would call that misrepresentation.
There is a distinction between telling someone to let another have a moment/time to talk and telling someone to shut up.
The ones you incorrectly think I want to shut up are the only ones with much of a voice right now.
They should be able to talk, but not to the exclusion of others.
I really don't see where you get the "repeal the First Amendment" stuff from.
I am fond of it myself, I just wish it meant more for all, rather than a select few.
We are repeating ourselves here. I don't expect to convince you, I remain unconvinced by you.
"So you do want to censor them as a company. One person putting up a political sign in his yard is OK, but two people working together to do it, and you will demand that they stop. Honey, I'm afraid that would be censorship."
I do not see why a corporation should have any input into the political process.
The people in the corporation, of course, and they do.
I don't see it as censorship, they ( the people in the corporation ) can say what they want.
I do not think they should have additional influence.
I don't see why the person(s) heading a corporation should get additional influence.
"What would be really nice is if some people would stop whining that others have more money than they do."
Its not about whining that others have more money.
They got it, fine. Enjoy it, but using it to influence politics isnt a good thing.
They are one citizen, they should not have more or less voice than any one else.
Anything else just leads to to oligarchy/plutarchy.
"Because democracy doesn't mean that everybody has the same reach and visibility of their communications. You're just whining because you want to censor some other peoples' political speech. "
I really wish you would stop with the condescending stuff. I have a point of view. I believe it to be correct. That is not whining. Stop trying to paint my discourse, talk about what you think without the nonsense.
And again, they can say what they want.
censor [sen-ser] Show IPA
noun
1. an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.
2.any person who supervises the manners or morality of others.
3.an adverse critic; faultfinder.
4.(in the ancient Roman republic) either of two officials who kept the register or census of the citizens, awarded public contracts, and supervised manners and morals.
5.(in early Freudian dream theory) the force that represses ideas, impulses, and feelings, and prevents them from entering consciousness in their original, undisguised forms.
4 and 5 dont apply. 3 kinda does, but on both side.
I do not want to see anything suppressed or supervised, I want for all to be able to be heard. Not just the wealthy and powerful.
The censor is on the other foot.
"I have no sympathy with you whatsoever in pursuing that objective, and I consider your goal fundamentally inimical to a free democratic republic. Fortunately, the Supreme Court agrees with me, at least for the present."
Making it so that everyone, rather than the few have a voice in government is inimical to a free democratic republic?
Is that what you are saying?
"No it is supposed to be the people you have elected to represent the citizenry, obviously you aren't going to a referendum on every single issue.'
Yes, but they are supposed to be answerable to the citizenry in terms of getting voted out of office
"What are you selling? And to whom? And for what? If people's livelihood didn't depend on money then obviously people wouldn't care so much about it"
Democratic institutions in this Republic.
Yes, people's livelihoods depend on money, in the main, and it is something to care about.
But, so? If one person cares about money, they can vote on money/economic issues. If another cares about ecology, they can vote that.
I don't believe the current patent system is the best of all possible systems.
"Look at it from the perspective of those running the country,"
I am in the USA, and that is supposed to be the citizenry.
"IBM and MS support the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of their employees, they contribute billions to the economy and have hundreds of thousands of shareholders which includes active traders, long term investors and retirement funds. It isn't 4 "persons" involved because corporations are not people, but they are often representative of many people"
It should not be about the money, it should be about democracy. Sustaining and maintaining and defending it.
We are selling it a bit at a time.
It really is not so short or sweet.
Take the item from today's main page, IBM and MS oppose a part of a bill.
Say for the sake of argument that I and another developer friend support that bill.
4 "persons" involved, but my voice and my friend's voice is rendered inconsequential by IBM and MS's voice.
Why is that OK?
What I want is not censorship of their voice ( they should be able to voice their opinion, as individuals, not as a company ), what I want is to eliminate the censorship of *my* voice. I want their opinion and mine to be able to be evaluated on the opinion's merits, not on the contents of their wallet versus my wallet.
When my voice is drowned out by theirs, how can you argue we have democracy?
I mean the way things are right now.
If I have a political opinion, manage to host it, I wont have advertising dollars to get word out aside from my site. /dev/null
I wont have much ability to cross link. Opponents of my opinion with money will likely manage to drown me out and make sure I am not cross linked much outside of small time "looks like you got quite a conspiracy going there" sites.
They can also SEO my site into
And if they really dont like it, DDOS my site, buy the hosting company, or other shenanigans, and my site disappears.
Say I have a beef with a company....
I want to put up a website disparaging that company. True statements on that site will likely still see me in court.
How many law suites have there been recently against people who reviewed another party's work, etc and that other party didn't want that information/opinion public?
"You can't make every YouTube video a viral hit. You can't make every citizen equally wealthy and influential. All you will do is undermine democracy by censoring some people. Communism causes more problems than it solves, news at 11."
When did I say I wanted to? Not asking for Communism, asking for actual democracy not plutocracy.
"The cool thing about a free democracy is that neither you nor the government gets to decide who "deserves amplification". If the speaker spends his own money to get his message out, then only he gets to decide whether it's a worthwhile exercise or not. Isn't freedom great?"
It would be, if we had it. Why is it better that a few ( the wealthy/powerful ) get to chose who deserves amplification? Why are they better?
"Your error is that you forgot that corporations are people, and are not owned by the government or the country at large. Of course corporations are not individual people, but they are owned by people, run by people, responsible to people, generate profits for people. It's people all the way down!"
Your error is in not questioning if corporations should be people and what privileges should come with that for them if they are.
And all those people *already* have a vote and influence as the no-so-privileged, so the fact that they are run by people, etc is meaningless, except to point out that those persons get additional amplification, deserved or not.
"And once again, you don't get to decide that those people don't get a political voice."
Never said they should not get a political voice. I said they should not have a bigger voice than others.
Dont put words in my mouth.
"If your 'idea' can be 'ripped off' that easily, it sure as heck doesn't deserve a government-granted monopoly"
When one side has lots of money, and the other is struggling to make payroll, the idea becomes pretty easy to rip off.
See Stac Doublespace for one example.
"So what if rich companies can communicate more widely than you?"
The "so what" is that they have a darned good whack at drowning out all voices but their own. Inherently undemocratic.
Money as speech seems, to me, to be taking us closer and closer to an authoritarian system.
"I have a suspicion that you want to see some rich people or corporations censored because you disagree with their message. That is not OK."
Agreement is not the issue, their message is not better than anyone else's, and does not deserve amplification.
I don't think that rich people, nor corporations ( who I think should be entirely outside of politics ), nor trade unions, nor teachers unions nor any organization deserve amplification.
You start with "That's a nice little oversimplification of the issue..." then have to go with:
"The definition of a liberal is someone who doesn't care what the law is, as long as it is mandatory..."
( an oversimplification )
Sigh. Is that really all there is to liberals? It is just as un-dimensional ( and inflammatory ) to say "The definition of a conservative is 'I got mine, up yours'".
Which I know not to be true of all or most, only true of some subset.
Here sits a liberal who detests nanny states, censors and undue controls.
And I do care what the law is, but also that the law be fair and fairly applied and reasonable.
( some control seems to be required, and I would argue both sides want controls, it is just a matter of who and what is to be controlled... )
For me, liberalism is caring more about people than institutions ( corporations, powerful people's , states, etc ).
Mine shows decades.
Good point.
Never post tired from a release.
If that is true, then you will see zero on the display for a minute or so.
Armor: limited Kevlar splinter protection in critical areas
It really isn't Armored at all.
I would not have had a problem with DRDOS failing. My issue is that MS should have made DRDOS fail in the marketplace by having a better product, not by "technical measures".
Some MS shills out there today...
I remember trying DR DOS with Windows., and the "error" messages.
I also remember installing some windows variant on a machine that had OS/2, and certain "messages".
If I had gone for the suggested defaults, the install would have wrecked my OS/2 installation.
They had some tricky wording about the partition ( the one with OS/2 on it ) probably being empty and how I would increase available disk if I "reclaimed" it...
Sleazy is what it was. You can like MS if you want to, but don't be childish with your mod points,
True. Does it really need to? Personally, I don't think so, but your mileage may vary.
From the bible:
"If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. "
Joshua 24:15
"I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them."
Deuteronomy 30:19-20
There is no forcing us. He gave us choice. Do as you will.
If, as you believe, there is no God, then there is just people acting badly. And justifying it however they do that.
If, as I believe, there is a God, then he gave people free will which is what allowed people to commit atrocities, including atrocities made in his name. And all the good committed both in and not in his name. But in this case, those acting badly, including hating gay people, are doing so in spite of His direction.