This is really disgusting bullshit. Not only do these (most likely american teenage white males) hate gay people, they also hate black people.
This is prejudiced thinking going completely beyond the "KKK" shit line, and beyond that, this person would belong to the Spanish Inquisition or something similar.
As a white, university-educated, straight male, middle-classed westerner I would rather see this kind of a troll completely destroyed on this website. This is not funny, this is just shit that could come from the mouth of any local Hitler.
We have other things to do, such as thinking about how we should limit the damage we are causing to the ecology of this planet, or how we could slowly get over the poverty cap on this planet.
And then there is some stupid 14 year old screaming some kind of a really stupid phobic message thinking it is funny. I say that it is not funny. You definitively belong to the cronies of Adolf Hitler and all of those stupid white-male hate groups.
I tell you guys, this ain't funny. We got the better deal on this planet, and it is our duty to tell how the people who didn't get as nice a piece of the cake as us might get their slice of the cake as well. And however, how are we going to have our piece of the cake without destroying the whole planet? Tough nuts, folks.
"After the piss is already in the wine, I don't think nukes are so scary anymore. See, once somebody nukes LA, DC, NYC, and Des Moines once, and after that becomes part of our history and we move on from it, it won't seem so scary anymore (it won't be "unthinkable" anymore)."
In the end it might not matter so much whether your city is ruined with one big bomb or thousands of little bombs. You could utterly destroy a major city with world war II era bombers as well, as has been historically proven.
What I am worried about is all of the major cities being blown up at the same time, with nice side-effects such as radiation, nuclear winter and EMP. That could really hurt!
"The use of nuclear weapons in a direct military confrontation between the antagonists of World War IV (the Cold War) likely would have meant the end of our civilization, because both sides really did have the capability to annihilate the other. As such, WW III was fought through proxy states, and some of the leftovers (from both sides) left the mess that led to WW IV."
What do you mean?
There never was a world war in the sense of WW I and II.
There is no world war being fought currently. What we are seeing is that USA irresponsibly and maniacally trashing up some unsympathetic but helpless third world regimes. (And begging for the UN to bail them out after they started the whole mess... Thank you mr. Bush!)
This is not a very good situation, but it is really far from a world war, ie. most of the major powers of the world trying to literally wipe eachother out. Basically these might be similar to colonial wars.
Most likely there will never be a real world war again. If there were it most likely wouldn't mean the end of human race, it would mean that a smaller group of survivors would live a really dark and hard existence for thousands of years.
Maybe your viewpoints are understandable from the other side of the Atlantic, but from my point of view I can only say this: OMG! You ARE mad!
The point is that when you treat them that way you are not giving the world an example. After all, USA _should_ be an example of democracy for the rest of the world.
Though you haven't been after circa World War II. Sad but true. Where are the Americans who liberated Europe today?
I quess that they haven't got the basic ingredients for democracy there.
Ok, you can impose democracy on a country which has the basic ingredients for democracy, an educated public and which has been liberated from a basically totalitarian government, such as Germany after WW II.
But think about Iraq? Democracy there might really mean a theocratic government such as Iran. The majority of the people might really choose that.
And what about a place like China? With countless millions of basically uneducated people? What would it become? Who knows? Maybe a complete chaos?
Actually i think that the difference between national socialism and stalinism isn't that big. A little bit different propaganda, that's all. Basically Stalin was just a faithful apprentice taking the ideas of Lenin to a new level.
Then again we can discuss the different types of communism, possibilities for a truly democratic communism etc. Blah blah blah, then again we could think about utopias where pigs can fly and people never die.
"And those people are often (not always, as in Bill Gates, who got his through a notable lack of ethics) kids of those who were powerful before."
Actually I believe that Bill Gates is in many ways underrated in these discussions.
I could mention a couple of things:
- Bill Gates really is so rich since he is so smart. There might be a lack of ethics involved, but his intelligence should not be underestimated. Don't you just wish that you could have done the things he did? He just understood the chance did it first.
- Bill Gates has certainly boosted the social image of all types of geeks and nerds. Previously such persons were just the losers. Hey, now we have the chance of being rich and admired!
- As you mentioned, he has no old family money etc. It's all his. All from his own abilities as a capitalist.
Now, don't misunderstand me. I think that Bill Gates is a capitalist oppressor who should be overthrown. I just mean that you should never, ever underestimate your enemy. After all, he wouldn't have so much money and power without some extraordinary intelligence or some other good quality?
I can hear the prestige of China going up fast. A distant hum from other side of the globe.
A second space race would be a really good thing to have:
1) Ignorant republicans will have to think about conquering faraway places like Mars instead of scheming invasions into helpless third world countries here on Earth. Maybe it's better to spend money on spacecraft rather than cruise missiles, don't you think?
2) Perhaps this will result in a Trekkie fantasy future, with China taking the role of the Federation and USA playing faithfully the part of aggressively militaristic and uncivilized Klingons.;)
We really need a "Morpheus for dummies" -type production with Morpheus explaining the philosophy of the Matrix according to Aristotle, Buddha, Christ, Nietzsche, Marx, Baudrillard and Debord... If you yawn you just don't get it!
Laboratory experiments with whole human societies are quite disgusting, as history has shown us. As a graduate student of social sciences i have dreamed about a simulation of a whole human society. Perhaps we might soon have enough computing power?
SimSociety, a game for some, a research tool for others.
We really need a lot more convergence between social scientists, game developers and gamers. As far as i know there have not been very serious attempts at using simulations in social sciences.
And of course Karl Marx was the ultimate civic scientist.
On a more practical level i quess that Josif Stalin was the ultimate civic engineer. He used to even get into tractor production and make little changes to the blueprints. The ultimate bureaucrat. Although i couldn't really call him a scientist, just an engineer/bureaucrat.
I think that we could forget about Marx now, what we really need is a new John Maynard Keynes. If socialism doesn't work, well, corporate welfare and unregulated markets suck too.
Ha. I work for a really small business and take care of stuff like firewalls and web mastering in addition to my real job, which is supposedly international marketing. It's really fun to trace all those silly portscans and worms every day while i should be doing something more useful, such as talking on the phone to some nice nigerian businessman who is offering us money, listening to some completely insane stock broker from Hong Kong, or begging the USAID to take us into their -AHEM- "constructive" reconstruction business in Iraq.
Well, on the other hand i really believe in democracy.;)
A deranged 29-year old man was arrested somewhere in Europe yesterday evening. He was driving a reconstructed German world war two -era Panther tank and shouting "achtung achtung" madly, shooting with the tanks powerful 75mm gun and driving over every vehicle he encountered.
A special unit of the local police had to use tear gas to get the deranged man out of his panzerkampfwagen.
The man later pleaded insanity, telling that he had been playing so-called strategy games on his PC computer. He especially mentioned a game called "Combat Mission - Barbarossa to Berlin." The man said that he really believed it was 1943 and he actually was taking part in the Battle of Kursk. "There was something different, usually i'm leading whole battalions, this time i was on my own", the madman said. "It was not entirely realistic, i like the Combat Mission graphics more."
The European Commission is taking the necessary actions to prevent males aged 25-85 from playing computer strategy games based on the history of world war two.
"Actually we might also ban them from doing military service, since they get to play very realistic and very bad wargames like infantry, marines and artillery there too. Hell, ban even wars these games are based on", said an unnamed source from the EU bureaucracy. "And the makers of tanks and other armoured vehicles are to be held accountable too - this is serious! The simulations are based on real vehicles!"
"Obviously these 'strategy' games are really evil to the psyche of adult males", said a psychiatrist from the Arkham institute of mental health and cybernetics. "Most likely we should ban people from watching war news on the television too - they might get influenced and start a real war in their neighborhood!
"Actually we might also ban them from doing military service, since they get bad influence there too. Hell, ban even wars - these games are based on real history you know" said an unnamed source from some bureaucracy in Central Europe.
"The military is not to blame", said a NATO general, "when we drive around with tanks it's nice and in defence of democracy, never mind a few loonies!"
Slashdot Mirror
(FLAME WARNING=
This is really disgusting bullshit. Not only do these (most likely american teenage white males) hate gay people, they also hate black people.
This is prejudiced thinking going completely beyond the "KKK" shit line, and beyond that, this person would belong to the Spanish Inquisition or something similar.
As a white, university-educated, straight male, middle-classed westerner I would rather see this kind of a troll completely destroyed on this website. This is not funny, this is just shit that could come from the mouth of any local Hitler.
We have other things to do, such as thinking about how we should limit the damage we are causing to the ecology of this planet, or how we could slowly get over the poverty cap on this planet.
And then there is some stupid 14 year old screaming some kind of a really stupid phobic message thinking it is funny. I say that it is not funny. You definitively belong to the cronies of Adolf Hitler and all of those stupid white-male hate groups.
I tell you guys, this ain't funny. We got the better deal on this planet, and it is our duty to tell how the people who didn't get as nice a piece of the cake as us might get their slice of the cake as well. And however, how are we going to have our piece of the cake without destroying the whole planet? Tough nuts, folks.
We are not monsters, right?
"After the piss is already in the wine, I don't think nukes are so scary anymore. See, once somebody nukes LA, DC, NYC, and Des Moines once, and after that becomes part of our history and we move on from it, it won't seem so scary anymore (it won't be "unthinkable" anymore)."
In the end it might not matter so much whether your city is ruined with one big bomb or thousands of little bombs. You could utterly destroy a major city with world war II era bombers as well, as has been historically proven.
What I am worried about is all of the major cities being blown up at the same time, with nice side-effects such as radiation, nuclear winter and EMP. That could really hurt!
"The use of nuclear weapons in a direct military confrontation between the antagonists of World War IV (the Cold War) likely would have meant the end of our civilization, because both sides really did have the capability to annihilate the other. As such, WW III was fought through proxy states, and some of the leftovers (from both sides) left the mess that led to WW IV."
What do you mean?
There never was a world war in the sense of WW I and II.
There is no world war being fought currently. What we are seeing is that USA irresponsibly and maniacally trashing up some unsympathetic but helpless third world regimes. (And begging for the UN to bail them out after they started the whole mess... Thank you mr. Bush!)
This is not a very good situation, but it is really far from a world war, ie. most of the major powers of the world trying to literally wipe eachother out. Basically these might be similar to colonial wars.
Most likely there will never be a real world war again. If there were it most likely wouldn't mean the end of human race, it would mean that a smaller group of survivors would live a really dark and hard existence for thousands of years.
Maybe your viewpoints are understandable from the other side of the Atlantic, but from my point of view I can only say this: OMG! You ARE mad!
I can see what you mean. I fully support this policy initiative.
There should be punishments for people who surf the web while drunk.
There should be policemen giving fines on the information superhighway.
You should get arrested for lewd behaviour when surfing porn.
Your mama should wash your mouth with soap if you post troll comments.
If there is free speech there most likely are trade unions etc.
That would mean gradually higher workforce costs.
Then you wouldn't need to export jobs to China anymore.
The whole point of moving jobs to China is that there is no free speech in China.
I just read the story about killer viruses, i thought that it meant computer viruses... I was a bit confused.
The point is that when you treat them that way you are not giving the world an example. After all, USA _should_ be an example of democracy for the rest of the world.
Though you haven't been after circa World War II. Sad but true. Where are the Americans who liberated Europe today?
"China since Mao is not as horrible as Russia was under Stalin, but they are dealing with many of the same problems in the same way."
;)
Russia was not as bad after Stalin as it was under Stalin... What is your point here?
And usually it is called Soviet Union since it included a lot more than Russia/Russians.
"Why not drop some bombs on them too for quelching freedom..."
Think about the positive sides of nuclear war. We could have another dot.com boom around year 3000, so many slashdotters could get rich!
And on the positive side after the EMP there would be no electronics, so your jobs wouldn't migrate to India after all! Isn't that great!
So, i say, let's start a war! A nuclear war! At the gay bar!
"Tiananmen square was on par with Waco."
Maybe you should start the "Invade and Liberate" (tm) with a parachute drop of several million religious right-wing nuts into China then?
This is really good. After US has invaded China we really don't have to worry about neither country anymore.
Please just try to limit the nuclear holocaust to these two countries...
I quess that they haven't got the basic ingredients for democracy there.
Ok, you can impose democracy on a country which has the basic ingredients for democracy, an educated public and which has been liberated from a basically totalitarian government, such as Germany after WW II.
But think about Iraq? Democracy there might really mean a theocratic government such as Iran. The majority of the people might really choose that.
And what about a place like China? With countless millions of basically uneducated people? What would it become? Who knows? Maybe a complete chaos?
"Lenin was a fascist."
Actually i think that the difference between national socialism and stalinism isn't that big. A little bit different propaganda, that's all. Basically Stalin was just a faithful apprentice taking the ideas of Lenin to a new level.
Then again we can discuss the different types of communism, possibilities for a truly democratic communism etc. Blah blah blah, then again we could think about utopias where pigs can fly and people never die.
"And those people are often (not always, as in Bill Gates, who got his through a notable lack of ethics) kids of those who were powerful before." Actually I believe that Bill Gates is in many ways underrated in these discussions. I could mention a couple of things: - Bill Gates really is so rich since he is so smart. There might be a lack of ethics involved, but his intelligence should not be underestimated. Don't you just wish that you could have done the things he did? He just understood the chance did it first. - Bill Gates has certainly boosted the social image of all types of geeks and nerds. Previously such persons were just the losers. Hey, now we have the chance of being rich and admired! - As you mentioned, he has no old family money etc. It's all his. All from his own abilities as a capitalist. Now, don't misunderstand me. I think that Bill Gates is a capitalist oppressor who should be overthrown. I just mean that you should never, ever underestimate your enemy. After all, he wouldn't have so much money and power without some extraordinary intelligence or some other good quality?
"We have on of the highest literacy rates in the world."
Spelling rates certainly aren't as competitive. Check out the statistics, please.
With a pacifist such as G.W.Bush as the president of the USA the second cold war would turn out to be a rather hot one, i suppose?
I can hear the prestige of China going up fast. A distant hum from other side of the globe.
;)
A second space race would be a really good thing to have:
1) Ignorant republicans will have to think about conquering faraway places like Mars instead of scheming invasions into helpless third world countries here on Earth. Maybe it's better to spend money on spacecraft rather than cruise missiles, don't you think?
2) Perhaps this will result in a Trekkie fantasy future, with China taking the role of the Federation and USA playing faithfully the part of aggressively militaristic and uncivilized Klingons.
And after c64 the Amiga. You are right, it would be really nice to talk about your "amiga" that way. An "amiga" you could understand top to bottom...
We really need a "Morpheus for dummies" -type production with Morpheus explaining the philosophy of the Matrix according to Aristotle, Buddha, Christ, Nietzsche, Marx, Baudrillard and Debord... If you yawn you just don't get it!
Laboratory experiments with whole human societies are quite disgusting, as history has shown us. As a graduate student of social sciences i have dreamed about a simulation of a whole human society. Perhaps we might soon have enough computing power?
SimSociety, a game for some, a research tool for others.
We really need a lot more convergence between social scientists, game developers and gamers. As far as i know there have not been very serious attempts at using simulations in social sciences.
And of course Karl Marx was the ultimate civic scientist.
On a more practical level i quess that Josif Stalin was the ultimate civic engineer. He used to even get into tractor production and make little changes to the blueprints. The ultimate bureaucrat. Although i couldn't really call him a scientist, just an engineer/bureaucrat.
I think that we could forget about Marx now, what we really need is a new John Maynard Keynes. If socialism doesn't work, well, corporate welfare and unregulated markets suck too.
Ha. I work for a really small business and take care of stuff like firewalls and web mastering in addition to my real job, which is supposedly international marketing. It's really fun to trace all those silly portscans and worms every day while i should be doing something more useful, such as talking on the phone to some nice nigerian businessman who is offering us money, listening to some completely insane stock broker from Hong Kong, or begging the USAID to take us into their -AHEM- "constructive" reconstruction business in Iraq.
;)
Well, on the other hand i really believe in democracy.
Somewhere in Europe 1/10/2003. Reuters
A deranged 29-year old man was arrested somewhere in Europe yesterday evening. He was driving a reconstructed German world war two -era Panther tank and shouting "achtung achtung" madly, shooting with the tanks powerful 75mm gun and driving over every vehicle he encountered. A special unit of the local police had to use tear gas to get the deranged man out of his panzerkampfwagen.
The man later pleaded insanity, telling that he had been playing so-called strategy games on his PC computer. He especially mentioned a game called "Combat Mission - Barbarossa to Berlin." The man said that he really believed it was 1943 and he actually was taking part in the Battle of Kursk. "There was something different, usually i'm leading whole battalions, this time i was on my own", the madman said. "It was not entirely realistic, i like the Combat Mission graphics more."
The European Commission is taking the necessary actions to prevent males aged 25-85 from playing computer strategy games based on the history of world war two.
"Actually we might also ban them from doing military service, since they get to play very realistic and very bad wargames like infantry, marines and artillery there too. Hell, ban even wars these games are based on", said an unnamed source from the EU bureaucracy. "And the makers of tanks and other armoured vehicles are to be held accountable too - this is serious! The simulations are based on real vehicles!"
"Obviously these 'strategy' games are really evil to the psyche of adult males", said a psychiatrist from the Arkham institute of mental health and cybernetics. "Most likely we should ban people from watching war news on the television too - they might get influenced and start a real war in their neighborhood!
"Actually we might also ban them from doing military service, since they get bad influence there too. Hell, ban even wars - these games are based on real history you know" said an unnamed source from some bureaucracy in Central Europe.
"The military is not to blame", said a NATO general, "when we drive around with tanks it's nice and in defence of democracy, never mind a few loonies!"