Ahhh yes... Religion needs to be put down hard because it's the root of so much evil.
Atheist regimes, on the other hand, have been proven over and over again to be the very framework of some of the grandest utopias ever seen on this earth.
Take the perfect equality forged by Lenin and Stalin for instance. With no God and no wacky religion in their mix they were able to construct a society filled with peace, respect and equality. Everyone was happy and free of the tyranny of churches and religious folk. Oh yes, and the great Mao Zedong who purified his people of the evils of religion and faith and built a new order that...
Religion, like everything else in the hands of humans is as good or as bad as an individual or group of individuals chooses to make it. I know plenty of soup kitchens and charity organizations built purely as a matter of faith. There's no denying the good impact of that. I've seen religion help rebuild people at rock bottom and I've seen it trap them in a prison of narrow-minded hatred. It is what it is. I knife can be used to prepare a meal or it can be used to murder something.
The arrogance of atheists on this site is laughable. You people act as if you're the be all end all of enlightenment and that people who share your beliefs have never caused ill to this planet. And who cares what people believe? After all, if you atheists are right then yes, a belief in astrology or reading tea leaves or God or whatever is delusional and absurd. So is a belief in anything because existence as a whole for us is absurd. It is meaningless and on a long enough time line nothing that happens will be remembered or recorded so why deny people their indulgences here that give them happiness—even if those indulgences are absurd?
Well, with all due respect, go fuck yourself. (And citing Christopher Hitchens only demonstrates that you're a douche.)
When it came time to put up or shut up they put their lives on the line. Real change never comes until people start putting their real name with it. Anonymity is fine to start brushfires in the minds of the people but there comes a point where, when if you want change to come, you have to be prepared to sacrifice for it.
Had the Founders stayed anonymous forever nothing would have happened. I don't deny the need for anonymity in free speech. I fully support it.
However, there is a HUGE difference between:
1. Writing a paper or pamphlet and...
2. Signing a document that has the potential to carry legal force.
You HAVE to be a registered voter everywhere I know of to sign an initiative petition. Those signatures need PUBLIC scrutiny because there are plenty of initiatives designed to LIMIT the local government who, as I've learned through my own participation, will complicate your lives.
The public needs to have access to this info in order to verify it BOTH ways.
Anyway, let me emphasize, I am not opposed to anonymity at all. However, I also have no respect for people who will ONLY work toward a political goal behind the veil of anonymity. That IS being a coward.
I really don't even see how bringing the Founders in was relevant considering many of them fought and died (or worse) for the cause of liberty. They won precisely because they ceased their anonymity and fought back, pledging their "lives, fortunes and sacred honor" for the cause.
At the end of the day... you can't have a free society without an educated and dedicated population that actually cares. That's the root of the problem.
Of course, I don't believe in a lot of voting either. With populations as large as ours I favor a more tiered republic. No individual should ever vote for the president. If you could ONLY vote for, say, your state assemblymen you might actually pay attention to those races. They, in turn, elect the next level and so on.
I'm just rambling though. There's no singular fix to any of this. In a vacuum though, I don't care for the concept of the secret ballot but I'm also understand why it is used.
Frankly, I think ballots shouldn't be secret either.
I do think that the penalties for buying votes and threatening people to vote a particular way should monstrous because, personally, I find that those kinds of crimes are worse for a society than common murder.
When I was contested a petition someone had actually signed "Roger Rabbit" to the initiative. The best part was that it turned out to be a completely legitimate signature!
I'm actually getting "married" next Saturday. However, we opted to get no license and are having what is, really, just a glorified ceremony. It has no legal value at all. Everything else is handled through contract and our living wills.
None of that matters. The fact is, the signatures on any petition should be made available for public scrutiny and so they can be verified. I was part of a campaign that stopped a petition in my home state when we caught them doing a lot of underhanded things that the local bureaucrats turned a blind eye too.
And, on the reverse end, I had a petition I was an active member of have the same thing happen to it (we won though because we weren't dirty) but it's nice when your opposite looks at it and has to concede to the fact that you did indeed get enough legitimate signatures.
I have to be honest, as someone who has worked as a political activist and had everything from death threats to vandalism occur, I don't want to work with people who aren't willing to do the same. If a particular belief isn't worth taking grief from cowards, it's not that important to you. Stand up for what you believe or sit down, shut up and play the part of a domesticated animal. People who only get involved when it's safe are just as cowardly as the haters and will ultimately get their just deserts.
It's not just that. I have a right, as a citizen to verify the legitimacy of those signatures. (And being on the giving and receiving end of that in Nevada, it's a good thing!) Those signatures aren't just some opinion column somewhere, they have the possibility to bring legal force and KNOWING they're public record tells me that the people who did sign about thought it was important enough to be publicly aligned with it.
And... what's the problem with that? When I see all the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over Apple's policies I'm confused.
I don't have to live with the pricks in those apartments, but I really don't care that they exist. The HOA has a right to exist and people can decide that the rules set down by the HOA are worth it.
I own a Mac laptop. I love OS X and I love the hardware that goes with it. I have an Android phone because while here is a lot I like about the iPhones (particularly the newest offering) there's enough that I don't like that keeps me from buying.
The problem I see constantly with people bitching about Apple, geeks in particular, is that they WANT most of what's in that HOA controlled condominium complex. They love the pool, the location, the plumbing and even the maintenance staff. They just don't like the color of the walls or want to grow a garden on their patio but changes those things is not allowed.
Well-adjusted people simply do this: "Huh, is the tradeoff worth it?" Some say yes. Some say no. People who don't care about growing a garden or painting the walls also don't care and are happy to move in. There's NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS SCENARIO.
The problem is that people around here have a ridiculous sense of entitlement. "I should be able to move in there and do what I want." No, you shouldn't. You didn't built the condos. You don't pay for the upkeep. You might really want to live there, but you don't deserve it.
Don't like Apple's policies? Don't buy their shit. Think they're draconian? They are. It's not illegal and it SHOULDN'T be.
If FOSS breeds this ridiculous sense of entitlement, it's just as problematic as closed source crap. It's a big world with a lot of stuff and there's room for all sorts of development practices and philosophies. If Apple was a government entity and/or the only choice on the block it would be completely different--but it's not. End of line.
Their profits and success seem to imply they've looked long and hard at reality.
Mind you, I hate the price hike (although, my recent interest has been in the server and that price didn't change and I expect that, like the 1099 MacBooks, this price will drop) and think the lack of BluRay is lame for a home entertainment setup but just because the item doesn't appeal to you or me doesn't mean they missed reality.
Apple can be a lot of things: draconian, frustrating, full of marketing BS, etc. They're not stupid though and they're anything but out of touch. You can't flourish in this economy like they are and be stupid.
And like all tools, its usefulness has everything to do with the user.
I'm sure there were dickwad cavemen who wondered if the invention of the bow and arrow would make for lazy hunters and you know there were guys out there that thought nailguns were for pussies and real men should use only framing hammers.
Man, I gotta tell you, think of how far society has fallen with our "right now" attitudes as of late. I mean, if women were still spending 6 - 8 hours doing laundry by hand they wouldn't take so much for granted. But no... we had to invent washing machines and dryers and make that an instant gratification process.
This fucking internet has made me so lazy. I used to spend HOURS in law libraries. Now I just look shit up on Westlaw and have more time to, oh I don't know, actually write a brief and put all my thoughts together.
Lazy ignorant barbarians aren't going to change. They'll find the most useless means of using any given tool. Intelligent people will exploit it and use the additional time for something useful. End of line.
Settled? I dunno that I'd say that so much as I'd say "aware" of the mediocrity.
If there's one thing I learned after 12 grades in public school plus kindergarten: I will make no such mistakes with my own children. Education IS important to me and as such, public school (and frankly, most private schools anymore since the bar has been set so ow by public schools that that's what private schools shoot to simply surpass) is right out. It's a mind-numbing bureaucrat prison for the mind.
And don't even get me started with the social aspects of it all. The last thing I want is to have some intelligent kid that becomes the victim of those fucking baboons.
There's a third option: I don't enjoy it, dickhead. I hate the language and since I have no pressing need to learn it or use it (other than a mild interest in Mac programming) I haven't bothered.
It's not that I don't understand it. It's that I can bring myself to work with a language that frustrates me so much.
I have tried multiple times to get into Objective-C and Cocoa. I just can't do it and Objective-C is why. It's a shitty language with an even shittier syntax.
You would think Objective-C 2.0 would have made a greater leap in terms of usability (like adding namespaces), but it didn't. We got garbage collection... which isn't even used in iPhone programming!
As much as I tend to detest Microsoft, I would love to see C#, or a language like it, become more widespread. As far as syntax goes, it's my favorite take on OOP + C.
Ruby is my poison of choice these days. I positively love the language.
That being said, I also picked up Python a few years back and if I was teaching a younger person a language, that's where I would start. That and I find the "Learning Python" title from O'Reilly to be a fantastic introduction to programming in general, not just Python. Python's best practices are also very good for budding coders.
Also, unlike Ruby or Java, Python is pretty flexible about paradigms. You're not stuffed into OOP, for instance.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahhh yes... Religion needs to be put down hard because it's the root of so much evil.
Atheist regimes, on the other hand, have been proven over and over again to be the very framework of some of the grandest utopias ever seen on this earth.
Take the perfect equality forged by Lenin and Stalin for instance. With no God and no wacky religion in their mix they were able to construct a society filled with peace, respect and equality. Everyone was happy and free of the tyranny of churches and religious folk. Oh yes, and the great Mao Zedong who purified his people of the evils of religion and faith and built a new order that...
Religion, like everything else in the hands of humans is as good or as bad as an individual or group of individuals chooses to make it. I know plenty of soup kitchens and charity organizations built purely as a matter of faith. There's no denying the good impact of that. I've seen religion help rebuild people at rock bottom and I've seen it trap them in a prison of narrow-minded hatred. It is what it is. I knife can be used to prepare a meal or it can be used to murder something.
The arrogance of atheists on this site is laughable. You people act as if you're the be all end all of enlightenment and that people who share your beliefs have never caused ill to this planet. And who cares what people believe? After all, if you atheists are right then yes, a belief in astrology or reading tea leaves or God or whatever is delusional and absurd. So is a belief in anything because existence as a whole for us is absurd. It is meaningless and on a long enough time line nothing that happens will be remembered or recorded so why deny people their indulgences here that give them happiness—even if those indulgences are absurd?
Well, with all due respect, go fuck yourself. (And citing Christopher Hitchens only demonstrates that you're a douche.)
The difference between then and now is 3rd party integration.
My phone has a Facebook app. My photo album automatically uploads to Facebook. The list goes on.
Facebook is not MySpace and the market surrounding it is not the same as it was a few years ago.
Please tell me you beat the shit out of your semi-techie friend with something that leaves scars.
They really need a -1, Heresy mod. Or maybe even a -2 or -3.
"It bored me to tears..."
No geek card for the grandparent!
When it came time to put up or shut up they put their lives on the line. Real change never comes until people start putting their real name with it. Anonymity is fine to start brushfires in the minds of the people but there comes a point where, when if you want change to come, you have to be prepared to sacrifice for it.
Had the Founders stayed anonymous forever nothing would have happened. I don't deny the need for anonymity in free speech. I fully support it.
However, there is a HUGE difference between:
1. Writing a paper or pamphlet and...
2. Signing a document that has the potential to carry legal force.
You HAVE to be a registered voter everywhere I know of to sign an initiative petition. Those signatures need PUBLIC scrutiny because there are plenty of initiatives designed to LIMIT the local government who, as I've learned through my own participation, will complicate your lives.
The public needs to have access to this info in order to verify it BOTH ways.
Anyway, let me emphasize, I am not opposed to anonymity at all. However, I also have no respect for people who will ONLY work toward a political goal behind the veil of anonymity. That IS being a coward.
I really don't even see how bringing the Founders in was relevant considering many of them fought and died (or worse) for the cause of liberty. They won precisely because they ceased their anonymity and fought back, pledging their "lives, fortunes and sacred honor" for the cause.
At the end of the day... you can't have a free society without an educated and dedicated population that actually cares. That's the root of the problem.
Of course, I don't believe in a lot of voting either. With populations as large as ours I favor a more tiered republic. No individual should ever vote for the president. If you could ONLY vote for, say, your state assemblymen you might actually pay attention to those races. They, in turn, elect the next level and so on.
I'm just rambling though. There's no singular fix to any of this. In a vacuum though, I don't care for the concept of the secret ballot but I'm also understand why it is used.
Frankly, I think ballots shouldn't be secret either.
I do think that the penalties for buying votes and threatening people to vote a particular way should monstrous because, personally, I find that those kinds of crimes are worse for a society than common murder.
Also, when I was able to not write like a retard... ugh.
When I was contested a petition someone had actually signed "Roger Rabbit" to the initiative. The best part was that it turned out to be a completely legitimate signature!
I'm not alone in this belief! Yay.
I'm actually getting "married" next Saturday. However, we opted to get no license and are having what is, really, just a glorified ceremony. It has no legal value at all. Everything else is handled through contract and our living wills.
Yes. I absolutely hate the secret ballot.
We need to get rid of it and make the penalties for buying votes and intimidating people into voting one way or anything significantly worse.
None of that matters. The fact is, the signatures on any petition should be made available for public scrutiny and so they can be verified. I was part of a campaign that stopped a petition in my home state when we caught them doing a lot of underhanded things that the local bureaucrats turned a blind eye too.
And, on the reverse end, I had a petition I was an active member of have the same thing happen to it (we won though because we weren't dirty) but it's nice when your opposite looks at it and has to concede to the fact that you did indeed get enough legitimate signatures.
I have to be honest, as someone who has worked as a political activist and had everything from death threats to vandalism occur, I don't want to work with people who aren't willing to do the same. If a particular belief isn't worth taking grief from cowards, it's not that important to you. Stand up for what you believe or sit down, shut up and play the part of a domesticated animal. People who only get involved when it's safe are just as cowardly as the haters and will ultimately get their just deserts.
It's not just that. I have a right, as a citizen to verify the legitimacy of those signatures. (And being on the giving and receiving end of that in Nevada, it's a good thing!) Those signatures aren't just some opinion column somewhere, they have the possibility to bring legal force and KNOWING they're public record tells me that the people who did sign about thought it was important enough to be publicly aligned with it.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. This sounds like someone who hasn't actually done OCR prior to these fancy Google docs.
OCR has always been somewhat inaccurate. It's just the nature of the beast.
And... what's the problem with that? When I see all the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over Apple's policies I'm confused.
I don't have to live with the pricks in those apartments, but I really don't care that they exist. The HOA has a right to exist and people can decide that the rules set down by the HOA are worth it.
I own a Mac laptop. I love OS X and I love the hardware that goes with it. I have an Android phone because while here is a lot I like about the iPhones (particularly the newest offering) there's enough that I don't like that keeps me from buying.
The problem I see constantly with people bitching about Apple, geeks in particular, is that they WANT most of what's in that HOA controlled condominium complex. They love the pool, the location, the plumbing and even the maintenance staff. They just don't like the color of the walls or want to grow a garden on their patio but changes those things is not allowed.
Well-adjusted people simply do this: "Huh, is the tradeoff worth it?" Some say yes. Some say no. People who don't care about growing a garden or painting the walls also don't care and are happy to move in. There's NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS SCENARIO.
The problem is that people around here have a ridiculous sense of entitlement. "I should be able to move in there and do what I want." No, you shouldn't. You didn't built the condos. You don't pay for the upkeep. You might really want to live there, but you don't deserve it.
Don't like Apple's policies? Don't buy their shit. Think they're draconian? They are. It's not illegal and it SHOULDN'T be.
If FOSS breeds this ridiculous sense of entitlement, it's just as problematic as closed source crap. It's a big world with a lot of stuff and there's room for all sorts of development practices and philosophies. If Apple was a government entity and/or the only choice on the block it would be completely different--but it's not. End of line.
Their profits and success seem to imply they've looked long and hard at reality.
Mind you, I hate the price hike (although, my recent interest has been in the server and that price didn't change and I expect that, like the 1099 MacBooks, this price will drop) and think the lack of BluRay is lame for a home entertainment setup but just because the item doesn't appeal to you or me doesn't mean they missed reality.
Apple can be a lot of things: draconian, frustrating, full of marketing BS, etc. They're not stupid though and they're anything but out of touch. You can't flourish in this economy like they are and be stupid.
And like all tools, its usefulness has everything to do with the user.
I'm sure there were dickwad cavemen who wondered if the invention of the bow and arrow would make for lazy hunters and you know there were guys out there that thought nailguns were for pussies and real men should use only framing hammers.
Man, I gotta tell you, think of how far society has fallen with our "right now" attitudes as of late. I mean, if women were still spending 6 - 8 hours doing laundry by hand they wouldn't take so much for granted. But no... we had to invent washing machines and dryers and make that an instant gratification process.
This fucking internet has made me so lazy. I used to spend HOURS in law libraries. Now I just look shit up on Westlaw and have more time to, oh I don't know, actually write a brief and put all my thoughts together.
Lazy ignorant barbarians aren't going to change. They'll find the most useless means of using any given tool. Intelligent people will exploit it and use the additional time for something useful. End of line.
Settled? I dunno that I'd say that so much as I'd say "aware" of the mediocrity.
If there's one thing I learned after 12 grades in public school plus kindergarten: I will make no such mistakes with my own children. Education IS important to me and as such, public school (and frankly, most private schools anymore since the bar has been set so ow by public schools that that's what private schools shoot to simply surpass) is right out. It's a mind-numbing bureaucrat prison for the mind.
And don't even get me started with the social aspects of it all. The last thing I want is to have some intelligent kid that becomes the victim of those fucking baboons.
"Windows 7 at least prepares them for the corporate world."
Which is all high school is for anyway. (And no, there is no sarcasm being used at all.)
Creepy. That appears to be the case!
Woah. Hold up right there.
There's a third option: I don't enjoy it, dickhead. I hate the language and since I have no pressing need to learn it or use it (other than a mild interest in Mac programming) I haven't bothered.
It's not that I don't understand it. It's that I can bring myself to work with a language that frustrates me so much.
Fucking slashdot pricks.
I have tried multiple times to get into Objective-C and Cocoa. I just can't do it and Objective-C is why. It's a shitty language with an even shittier syntax.
You would think Objective-C 2.0 would have made a greater leap in terms of usability (like adding namespaces), but it didn't. We got garbage collection... which isn't even used in iPhone programming!
As much as I tend to detest Microsoft, I would love to see C#, or a language like it, become more widespread. As far as syntax goes, it's my favorite take on OOP + C.
Ruby is my poison of choice these days. I positively love the language.
That being said, I also picked up Python a few years back and if I was teaching a younger person a language, that's where I would start. That and I find the "Learning Python" title from O'Reilly to be a fantastic introduction to programming in general, not just Python. Python's best practices are also very good for budding coders.
Also, unlike Ruby or Java, Python is pretty flexible about paradigms. You're not stuffed into OOP, for instance.
You must be a lot larger.
Hahahaha.
Well played sir, well played.