If the only way you know how to treat someone or something with respect is out of fear of the consequences of not doing so, I pity you. Yes, punishment and reward are the basis of the earliest form of moral reasoning. However, some of us grow out -- or are permitted to grow out -- of that phase. Is fear still a component of moral reasoning? Certainly, but it's not the only component, nor do I think it's particularly desireable.
The one thing I agree with you about is that respect isn't an emotion. However, if fear can be a motivation for respect, so can admiration.
To use a concrete example, when I'm on vacation somewhere where I'm not likely to return, I still act fairly and politely, despite the fact that I am not afraid of any consequences for doing otherwise. I do this because I would not desire to live in a society where everyone is rude and cheats you, and I think the golden rule is a good philisophical basis for moral reasoning. On the other hand, people willingly do things they are afraid of with the expectation of punishment all the time, it's called civil disobedience. I guess fear isn't the only motivating factor, huh?
Now I suppose you could argue that fear is still involved despite being covered in layers of abstract reasoning. Yes, and all human behaviour is just animal behaviour with additional layers, too. This is just reductio ad absurdum, the same sort of college stoner philosophy that has us believe that all actions are selfish. Not that I have anything against college stoner philosophy, but it's possible to lose all relevant detail in "simplification".
Besides, both game theory and animal observations strongly suggest that cooperation naturally emerges as a strategy because it maximizes long-term benefit (well, that and the "play your opponent's last move" to discourage cheating). It's hard-wired. Again, so much for fear as the sole motivation for respect.
The trap that people end up in is thinking that they need their first-pass to be as effective as a stand-along spam filter. Not true. You only need it to be effective enough to reduce the burden on your network and hardware by skimming off most of the incoming spam before it has a chance to consume those resources. If you're a VERY large ISP, then you might need to adopt additional measures (and while I despise the way AOL has done it, for example, I understand their reasons). If you're not one of the 10 largest ISPs in the world, then you are kidding yourself.
I call bullshit. That resource burden you so flippantly dismiss is neither insignificant nor irrelevant when you have to think long and hard about where every dollar goes. Maybe your company has the financial resources to just plunk down cash for a new mail server every time the spam volume gets out of hand, but most independent ISPs (like many other small businesses), don't. Once you reach a certain mail volume on a given server or cluster, you either need to implement more draconian (and less resource-intensive) filtration methods, or upgrade, and sometimes the latter isn't a possibility. Though, from your resume, it doesn't appear you have experience in this field so I'm not surprised at your misconceptions.
Or, given the lack of broadband choices in some places (comcast for me) perhaps we all need to start complaining more about the fact we can no longer find or get access to quality ISP's
Maybe if people didn't go for the least common denominator to save the dollar equivalent of a few Big Macs per month, they wouldn't have this problem. We've been an independent ISP for many years now, we still do customer service in-house and handle issues like this one, but it costs money to do so (enough money that most of our employees -- including NOC engineers -- aren't that far above minimum wage).
You want an ISP who actually pays attention to your problems and quality issues? Pay money for it, and get other people to do so as well. Or learn to love talking to a brick wall.
First, open source developers are increasingly describing their projects as user-oriented, enterprise-ready, etc. Now, I have nothing against hobby development in which users are not a concern because it's purely for enjoyment. Heck, given the choice I'd ignore users' requests and just work on projects of interest to me in my job if I could. But if you're going to do that, be honest about it. Don't describe your software as user-oriented, because it's not. Make it explicit that it's a hobby project, and you have no real interest in the desires of your user base.
Second, while ignoring users may be a lot more pleasant than listening to their concerns and addressing them, it's *very* ultimately bad engineering practice (then again, job titles aside most software developers are NOT engineers!), and reinforces a selfishness and arrogance that can bleed over into one's professional work. I've seen this happen in others, I've seen it happen in myself a few times. If you're going to open your project up to the world, you're limiting your own experience and opportunities by maintaining it as a navel-gazing exercise.
Finally, considering user requests can move development in an unexpected direction. Sometimes it's the wrong direction, and I think it's OK to answer a request with "that's a bad idea, and here's why". But sometimes after going in that direction, adding some features, maybe refactoring a bit, you look back and say "why didn't I think of that?" Any community of developers develops blind spots and biases, and sometimes these can be substantial enough for outside input to benefit everyone.
Now, of the above I think the first reason is the most compelling. You're under no obligation to do anything to improve your project or your skills or wisdom as a developer. However, I think you *are* obligated to describe your project honestly.
Free speech is free speech regardless of cost, and remember, both speaker and listener ALWAYS incur costs associated with speech in ALL forms, if only in time.
Then, were it the case that the US postal service forcibly collected postage on mail sent postage due, you would argue there is no legal basis for objection?
I run an ISP. A substantial portion of our money and time goes to maintaining mail servers due to the volume of spam we receive and filter. We have, at times, had our mail servers become completely unavailable to all our customers due to spam overload. Pardon me if I find your argument uncompelling.
While I'm quite sympathetic to the Constitutional guarantee of free speech, and I absolutely oppose restraint on it when the sender pays the costs, I do not see anywhere in this document a guarantee of an audience, nor any support for the notion that the audience should be forced to subsidize that speech. You may not force a publisher or newspaper to publish your written works. You may not come onto my property and post signs or graffiti my home. I fail to see why this is conceptually different.
I feel pity for those who need some outside agency (religious group, 2000-year-old book, cult leader, whatever) to tell them how and why to live their lives; I'm of the opinion that it's a sign of some sort of dysfunction. However, I suspect said people are unlikely to become atheists or agnostics in the first place; the latter in particular requires a certain willingness to say "I don't know, and I can live with that".
Plus, from my perspective, the feeling of meaning or purpose provided by religion is illusory (notably, it's reported by people of different, mutually exclusive religious views, which suggests that it's the belief itself, and not the content of the belief, which is responsible). Yes, it feels nice to believe in a comforting illusion, just as it feels nice as a child to believe in Santa Claus, but I'd much rather have my eyes open even if it means a little despair every now and then.
But that's just me. I don't really care what you believe, so long as you don't use those beliefs as a basis for public policy, or try to convert people against their will (whether "for their own good" or not). If it makes you happy, and being happy is that important to you, by all means go for it.
for example, there is evidence that pornographic material is more addictive than cocaine -- exposure to pornography causes a release of endorphines, and a chemcial dependency on natural endorphines happens
Bwahahaha! It never ceases to amaze me how easily people are swayed by big words and authoritatively presented pseudoscientific claims, and the depths to which certain political activists will sink in abusing this. A basic understanding of neuropharmacology and neuroscience isn't hard to acquire. Given that good resources, such as Medline, are freely available to anyone on the net via Entrez (google for "PubMed"), you'd think more people would have take advantage of them.
Yes, I know about that little bit with the religious whackos testifying before Congress; it made it to Slashdot. It was a fascinating amalgam of lies by omission, misleading claims, and outright falsehood. I'm not surprised some people took it seriously, but I am surprised that the people we elected to run the country didn't exercise a bit more skepticism and maybe consult some actual experts in the field.
Here's a clue for you. Most enjoyable experiences cause release of endorphins and/or release of dopamine in the ventral tegmental area (VTA). That's how and why we perceive them as enjoyable! Other examples may include (depending on the individual): intense exercise, sex, snuggling, sports (notably "extreme sports"), socialization, various aspects of religion, games (from the most ultra-violent video games to monopoly), food, and music.
Another claim from that abyssmal congressional incident, as I recall, was that porn images are encoded into memory and associated with pleasure. Which places them in the same category as every positive experience to which you pay attention. Thanks for playing.
It should be patently obvious that pornography is nowhere near as addictive as cocaine. The number of people who view pornography exceeds the number of people who use cocaine by an order of magnitude or two. So where are these vast hordes of porn addicts whose lives are so impaired by their addiction they cannot hold down jobs, lose pleasure in all other activities, and are willing to commit acts of violence to support their habit? Why can't we get people to kick cocaine by providing them with pornography as an alternative? The utter lack of neurophysiological evidence that pornography stimulates the VTA to anywhere near the same degree as cocaine is also telling.
Of course, "more addictive than cocaine" is just a scare tactic, dredging up the public's vague memories of poorly-conducted rodent studies and impressions from biased samples. When you hear someone say that X is "more addictive than {cocaine,crack,heroin}", keep your hand on your wallet and engage your skepticism.
However, should you desire to continue to claim a neuropharmacological support for your personal distate for pornography, you should have no trouble finding references to peer-reviewed studies in Medline. Put up or shut up.
Though orthogonal to the above, I do at least agree with you on one point: the public airwaves are a limited resource "owned" by the government, much like public land or highways, and as such I think it's appropriate they be regulated differently than private resources (e.g., cable or satellite channels). That said, I think the fact that Europe hasn't sunk into social chaos should be a hint that perhaps it is violence, not sex and naughty words, that ought to be the primary focus of regulation.
Congratulations on missing the point entirely. Different regions of the brain are specialized for different functions. In the normal brain, for example, there's are regions specialized for facial recognition and social behaviour. If you remove certain abilities, it's conceivable you could free up specialized networks for reuse, provided you could map your data into a format functionally compatible with those networks. It's *exactly* like doing mathematical operations on your graphics card.
Plus, "completely different" is just wrong. Yes, the brain differs from digital computers in many ways -- it's many, many orders of magnitude more parallel than anything we've ever built; an individual neuron is extremely sophisticated (far more so than any current simulation, possibly excepting single-neuron simulators used in neuroscience); there's no clock (with a few possible exceptions e.g. hippocampal theta); information is arguably analog and possibly coded in frequency and phase; and so on -- but it's *still* a computer.
It's a bit late to answer this, but what the hell. You have greatly misunderstood the nature of spectrum disorders.
Autism, like many neurological or psychological conditions, is a spectrum disorder -- it ranges (possibly continuously) from severe to normal, and there are probably multiple factors (perhaps most genetic, perhaps not) involved. With any spectrum disorder, people who are near the normal end of the spectrum are just a little different from the norm, and those differences present as personality quirks (the same being true for mood disorders, schizoaffective disorder, and possibly many of DSM-IV Axis II disorders). Kids show different personalities from a very early age; where do you think those come from anyway, if not differences in how we're wired up?
I also think you overestimate psychologists. Until we have some sort of physiological test -- a genetic test, brain scan, whatever -- that can objectively determine who has a particular condition and who does not, it's all subjective anyhow. While a psychologist or neurologist is certainly better educated and has more experience, and thus in a better position to say who might have Asperger's syndrome than a layperson, they're still making a judgement call, one which other psychologists may disagree with when the patient is close to the normal end of the spectrum.
Are geeks towards on the Autism/Apserger's spectrum? I certainly don't know. I don't see any reason why it couldn't be the case -- for example, discomfort with, and avoidance of, socialization is sometimes a response to innately poor ability. But my personal feeling, having known several people with Aspserger's syndrome when I was a mathematics major, is that most geeks probably aren't; the most obvious difference I noted was humor (much geek humor delights in playing with ambiguity, blurred levels of abstraction, and metaphor, and the people I knew with Asperger's syndrome were poor at those). However, I do think it's possible that if, say, genetic (or developmental, or whatever) conditions C1, C2,..., Cn are necessary for Autism spectrum disorders, some subset of these conditions, perhaps with other conditions, may contribute to geekiness.
Oh, and frankly, I'm getting sick and tired of all the "victim victimhood", myself, and I hear a lot more bleating from people whining about how we've become such a victim society than I do from any of the supposed "victims". There's nothing wrong with wanting to understand one's nature, one's strengths and weaknesses. Doing so is NOT the same thing as expecting special treatment. I'd be delighted, for example, if I could see a "road map" of my own neuropsychological development, and know where and how the elements of my personality arose, because it would make it easier for me to work on changing (or compensating for) those elements if I saw fit to do so.
For example, I'm mildly bipolar -- diagnosed as such by several gen-yoo-wine psychologists. I've never gone completely off the deep end, and I've never understood that annoying, narcissistic addiction to hypomania some bipolars have that makes them regularly go off mood stabilizers and act like fools, but it's still had profound impact on my life. I don't generally tell people about it in real life unless they ask or it's topical, and I certainly don't expect any special treatment (or a get-out-of-jail free card when I fuck up) either. From my perspective, it's just an element of my personality, and I deal with it like any other element. Does it occasionally make life difficult? Sure, but we all have burdens to bear and I know plenty of people in much worse shape than I. But knowing a major contributing factor to my behaviour and personality has been enormously useful to me, so I'd appreciate it if people would stop crying "poor me, I'm surrounded by victims" every time someone speculates about contributing factors to personality.
The answer to 2. is that no non-thermal effects have survived double blind testing.
other than VLF suppression of dim-light melatonin onset, you mean? Radio waves of various frequences are known to affect chemical reactions -- albeit in fairly subtle ways.
Explosives are the wrong way to do it. Simply injecting high-pressure water (or seawater) into the fault through a relatively narrow borehole, for long enough time, might be sufficient. The same has triggered small earthquakes in siesmic faults before.
Being the owner of several small businesses, I have rarely found a situation in which corporate personhood helped us in a substantial way. On the other hand, competing with large corporations, who can and do take advantage of all the benefits and legal loopholes available to them, is all but impossible.
What p, q, e, d, and N mean
on
Intro to Encryption
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· Score: 3, Informative
No. They're from the RSA algorithm. In a nutshell ("number" means integer):
Generate two large prime numbers, call them p and q.
Calculate N = p*q. This is a much larger, but not prime, number.
Choose some number e coprime (i.e., relatively prime) to (p-1)*(q-1), greater than 1 and less than N. Two numbers are relatively prime if they have no common factors (e.g., 32 and 49 are relatively prime, but 32 and 48 aren't). e is, by convention, the number used to encrypt a message.
Find some number d such that d*e modulo (p-1)*(q-1) is 1. d is, by convention, the number used to decrypt a message. Of course, you can encrypt with d and decrypt with e, too.
That's it. Now, put N and e together in a file and call it your "private key", and put N and d together and call it your "public key". To use them:
Convert the message into a number n less than N. For example, if N is 40 bits long (worthless, but for the sake of argument...) you could take four bytes at a time from your message as an unsigned 32-bit integer.
Encrypt n to generate the ciphertext, c, by raising n to the power of e, and then taking the result modulo N (i.e., c = n^e mod N). Send your encrypted number c to the recipient.
The recipient then takes c and raises that to the power of d, modulo N, to get the original n (i.e., n = c^d mod N). Neat, huh?
In practice RSA takes too much time, so you make yourself a random key, encrypt that using RSA, and you and your recipient communicate using a symmetric cipher.
As to why ((n^e mod N)^d mod N) = n, that's where it helps to know some math. Mathweb or Wikipedia can help you, but having a bit of background in abstract algebra will help.
I *have* made holograms without an elaborate antivibration table. Yes, the quality suffers, and you're going to have a lot more duds, but it's certainly possible.
Actually a laser diode is more than adequate, often better than HeNe (probably because there's a lot of crappy HeNe tubes going around), but you need to test out the pointers in the store before buying. Boosting the power a bit helps (be *very* careful, it doesn't take much to burn out a diode), as does dropping some cash on a higher powered diode.
This assumes punishment is effective at stopping behaviour, and implies that prison is more effective at punishing than encouraging crime.
The latter certainly isn't true in all prisons. Nonviolent criminals sentenced along with violent criminals often commit *worse* crimes once they are released than before they were sentenced. At the very least, treating victimless crimes as social and medical problems, or isolating them from violent criminals, would probably help.
As to the former, people who receive punishment from what they consider an illegitimate authority don't respond the same as those who receive punishment from a perceived legitimate authority. The problem is that many criminals see the justice system as illegitimate. Instead of responding with shame and changing their behaviour, they respond with anger and desire for revenge against the state.
I have no desire to coddle criminals, certainly not those who have committed an act of violence against person or property. I simply want us to spend our resources wisely to reduce crime. Some prison programs are more effective at rehabilitation than others, and should be funded and replicated. Early intervention is also cheaper and more effective than prison. If all else fails, isolating criminals from the general population is necessary and I'm OK with that.
P.
But I see no reason why anyone's childish desire for revenge -- including my own, and yes I've been there -- should be indulged. I've known victims of the most heinous crimes -- rape and murder -- who have quickly recover from the "I want them hurt" phase and move on to "I want them to never do this to someone else".
Re:A fleeting thought
on
Cube Farm
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· Score: 4, Insightful
(I'm not directing this at the parent post so much as making observation on issues raised therein).
For the vast majority of people out there -- including us geeks -- all it takes to find a good partner, a good job, or most anything else in life is an understanding of primate social behaviour and courage. You can either wait around to "get lucky" (with relationships, jobs, etc.), or you can go out and put your ass on the line *every fucking day* until confidence with social skills becomes natural. You don't need to *be* the alpha primate, you just need to fake it in appropriate situations well enough to fool everyone else.
No, there's no unconditional love, at least not outside of family and pets (and you can screw up either if you try hard enough). Seriously, why would you expect any different? Would *you* stick around in a job or relationship no matter how much it sucked? People respect you more when you expect the best of them, not tolerate the worst, and once you lose people's respect in a relationship or on the job, you're shark bait.
You don't need to be "reasonably good looking" to find a relationship; even if your appearance is well below average you can more than make up for it with attitude and experience. You *do* need to act like you've got a pair. That took me a long time to figure out (damn shame Heartless Bitches International wasn't around then), even longer to put into action, mostly because I didn't want it to be true. As if the world cares what I want.
What's certainly not going to work is expecting the rules of the game to change because we want them to. People -- all people, including us geeks -- are animals first, rational second, and behave accordingly. Either play that to your advantage (ethically, one would hope) and win, ignore it and lose, or do your best to opt out completely.
For a lot of people out there, being depressed may be out of one's hands, but *staying* depressed isn't. I have great sympathy for those who cannot get medical or psychiatric treatment. I have absolutely none for those who can, but refuse to do so (or who see a shrink but won't do any of the hard work). Having been there myself I don't think I'm too far off the mark. It is my belief -- and I realize it won't be shared by all -- that some people go through periods in life where we'd sooner stay depressed and whine than get off our asses and fix things. I was there, many of my friends have been there. All the pity in the world doesn't help as much as one person saying "suck it up, everyone's got problems."
And "suck it up" applies to bad IT jobs as well. I like reading about peoples' shitty IT jobs, I think most of these Death March stories are funny in a sick sort of way. But if you're in that position, either get (or create) a better job, or detach yourself emotionally, slack off, and think of it as absurdist humor. Either way *try* to remember that there are people in this country getting paid minimum wage, or worse, to do things you probably wouldn't do for many times your current salary.
Well, first time (and *last* time) it happened to me I was actually surprised (yeah, I know, stupidity on my part). I even put up with that nonsense for awhile, before getting out (along with the rest of the developers) and engaging in some good old fashioned schadenfreude when the company tanked.
Say what you will about Usenet style; I learned more about how the real world works from Usenet than I did in college.
If you're doing polychlorinated biphenyls for fun, you've got some serious problems.
If you meant to say PCP (phenylcyclohexylpiperidine), well, that's different. There's a lot of myths about PCP, actually. It's largely indistinguishable from other arylcyclohexylamines and other dissociatives which don't have the negative rap. The biggest problems seem to be impurities (one of the more common synthetic routes involves a cyanide if I recall correctly), self injury, and triggering of latent mental illness.
However, the idea of PCP-crazed criminals immune to bullets is just a myth. People with violent impulses are more likely to act on those impulses on PCP, but people without violent impulses (and without serious mental illness) typically react the same way they react to ketamine: they lie on the couch and don't move a lot. Methamphetamine is much more likely to lead to violent behaviour; alcohol may even be more strongly associated with violence than PCP is.
Keep in mind though that I'm not advocating that you can go down to the corner gas station and pick up an eight-ball and a few grams of phencyclidine. I'm advocating treating drug abuse as a medical problem, and providing safe environments for recreational users of more powerful drugs.
No, it's not. Wikipedia has a decent page (and plenty of heated discussion) on left libertarianism and its relationship with anarchism. Keep in mind that anarchism doesn't mean no rules, it means no rulers. As a steady state it's probably exceedingly unstable, barring innoculation with the appropriate memes to sustain it, but self-government is still IMO a worthwhile target.
I have already considered and rejected (as less important than our economy) what you think, but I do have some empathy/sympathy for someone who expressed his view and gets heaped on by slavering masses of people who don't understand basic economics and the impact to America.
I've met few on either side of the fence who have a rigorous understanding of economics, but I think you'll find many advocates of Kyoto simply value the environment above the economy. Plus, the thread grandparent made his case poorly if at all.
More portentiously, many here WANT us to go to hell by having to pay Russia and various Third World countries 'national welfare' for the 'privelege' of having a functioning economy.
I'm not entirely happy about that part of the treaty -- show me a treaty (or law for that matter) that doesn't have some measure of suck -- but you are aware, I assume, that if they sell enough credits to us, they will be subject to the same level of limitations we are? Some argue that we have a moral obligation to help out developing countries (mind you I don't think the Kyoto treaty is the proper venue, but why should international treaties be any less susceptible to pork than US laws? Not to mention debt relief never goes anywhere either). If I recall, though, Brazil and some other developing countries have lowered, not raised, CO2 emissions under Kyoto.
If they consider the US an unfortunate partner, let it be known that many of us will shed no tears if they abandon any pretense of alliance with the US.
I think the feeling is largely mutual. I certainly wouldn't shed any tears if we cut back on the number of military bases scattered around the globe.
I do blame people in the US for being unpatriotic for supporting the undermining of their own nation.
Without knowing to what and whom, exactly, you are referring, I can only speculate. But I'd be awfully hesitant about making this claim; it's inflammatory and largely arbitrary (just use your own definition of patriotism). Most people I know on the left who are critical of this country and its policies (including environmental policies) seem to fall into three camps.
The first place the US -- its principles, economy, security, etc. -- first, but think that our actions are, at best, penny-wise and pound foolish, and at worst, damaging in both short- and long-term. If we continue to keep up CO2 emissions, for example, we will certainly pay for it in the long run, and it's arguable that we're paying for it now by artificially sustaining inefficient industries and sending oodles of money to unstable countries (and yes, I am in favor of nuke plants, so I think there's a better alternative).
The second place the principles of this country (as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) ahead of its military dominance (and in particular reject the belief that being the dominant world power is necessary to our security). While I'm not going to argue that the US is currently in the hands of an evil administration hell-bent on world domination (use your favorite Godwinian analogy here), I do think many of the supposedly unpatriotic gadflies are the ones who keep us from going in that direction.
The third group truly places the interests of humanity as a whole above the interest of any state. The best among them are fully aware of the disparity in living conditions between countries and are prepared to accept a lower standard of living in pursuit of their principles. Many think the US as a whole is aggressive and immature, and think both we and the world as a whole would benefit were we knocked down a notch or two. I think some, although by no means all, of this group are naive at best, but that's a criticism I also have for the neocons in their faith of imposed democracy.
Going back to Kyoto, I agree that our economy could suffer in the short term as a result of adoption. I have the same criticism of our current globalization strategy, incidental
I'm all for global action against kidporn. Thankfully it's already occurring, although it requires the cooperation of law enforcement in the producing country. Ukraine, for one, really needs to get its house in order. The day they line up the Ukrainian porn mafia against the wall and shoot them in the balls is the day thousands of exploited children and millions of angry spam recipients will rejoice.
But treaties against prostitution (as opposed to slavery) and drug dealing are pointless. Never in the history of mankind have we been able to effectively curtail either. We can shift the control (and profits) into the hands of mobsters, dictators, and terrorists, or we can learn to live with behaviour among consenting adults that some people consider immoral and address them from a medical and sociological perspective. Your choice, but as you're thinking about your decision, pay attention to who's raking in the profits from those poppy fields.
If you think slashdot is "radical left" you need to spend some quality time in Cambridge or Berkeley. I'd say ranging through moderate left, substantially libertarian, and occasionally (IP and corporate issues) touching on anarchist. Multilateral, in this case, I'll grant you; global warming is obviously a global problem, and addressing it will require cooperation among nations.
(as evidenced by the anti-Bush rhetoric and pro-Kerry numbers in the polls recently)
Sucks to be in the minority, doesn't it? Life isn't fair! Nobody's making you stay here; you can avoid political threads or articles, or just leave/. entirely and hang out at freerepublic. On the other hand, it's substantially more difficult for me to avoid the impact of laws and policies I find abhorrent. It's all but impossible for me, or anyone else, to avoid the impact of global warming, without the imposition of constraints on CO2 emissions. Somehow, I'm feeling less than sympathetic for your situation.
isn't going to let you live it down though.
If you take any position here you can expect a rebuttal from someone. That's kinda the point.
I'm burning karma right now, but who gives a shit
If that's a ploy to avoid being modded down for a reply that isn't relevant to the topic, I don't think it's going to work.
as if caring what this crew thought is somehow important.
which you obviously do, otherwise you wouldn't waste your time replying.
When the US won't defend your ass
If by "your" you mean other countries, it seems to me, based on conversations with many people around the world, quite a few see our "protection" as being at best misguided, and at worst in the finest tradition of the Mafia. I'm all for our allies picking up more of the tab for their own protection if they find it necessary.
If by "your" you mean those of us in the US who disagree with you, I'm quite capable of defending myself (nice thing about being a left-libertarian is you can support all the amendments). But when did agreement with a particular side become a litmus test for patriotism, anyway? I'm pretty convinced you're misguided about environmental policy, but I don't think the US should sell you down the river because of it.
Look, this may be difficult to believe, but most of us are in favor of Kyoto and other measures to address global warming because we believe it is in our long-term best interest, not because we want to hand the keys to the country over to the UN or foreign nations. We're racking up environmental debt. Sooner or later we're going to have to pay up, and there won't be a mommy and daddy to bail us out.
So are you against the treaty solely because it limits our possibilities (like every other treaty ever written), or do you have specific criticisms? If the latter, I'd like to hear them; if the former, I'm curious where I can find all these (voluntarily accepted) treaties that don't involve some restrictions on participants.
Frankly, I'd much rather accept the voluntary constraints of the treaty than the involuntary constraints that will be imposed by the effects of global warming. Admittedly, nothing on this menu is truly appetizing, but if we don't choose from column A (treaties and effective laws to reduce CO2 emissions), nature will choose for us from column B (flooding, loss of arable land, economic depression, famine, etc.).
Not that I think it, or any other effective measure to reduce CO2, has a snowball's chance in Hell in this -- or any other recent or forseeable -- administration anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
The one thing I agree with you about is that respect isn't an emotion. However, if fear can be a motivation for respect, so can admiration.
To use a concrete example, when I'm on vacation somewhere where I'm not likely to return, I still act fairly and politely, despite the fact that I am not afraid of any consequences for doing otherwise. I do this because I would not desire to live in a society where everyone is rude and cheats you, and I think the golden rule is a good philisophical basis for moral reasoning. On the other hand, people willingly do things they are afraid of with the expectation of punishment all the time, it's called civil disobedience. I guess fear isn't the only motivating factor, huh?
Now I suppose you could argue that fear is still involved despite being covered in layers of abstract reasoning. Yes, and all human behaviour is just animal behaviour with additional layers, too. This is just reductio ad absurdum, the same sort of college stoner philosophy that has us believe that all actions are selfish. Not that I have anything against college stoner philosophy, but it's possible to lose all relevant detail in "simplification".
Besides, both game theory and animal observations strongly suggest that cooperation naturally emerges as a strategy because it maximizes long-term benefit (well, that and the "play your opponent's last move" to discourage cheating). It's hard-wired. Again, so much for fear as the sole motivation for respect.
I call bullshit. That resource burden you so flippantly dismiss is neither insignificant nor irrelevant when you have to think long and hard about where every dollar goes. Maybe your company has the financial resources to just plunk down cash for a new mail server every time the spam volume gets out of hand, but most independent ISPs (like many other small businesses), don't. Once you reach a certain mail volume on a given server or cluster, you either need to implement more draconian (and less resource-intensive) filtration methods, or upgrade, and sometimes the latter isn't a possibility. Though, from your resume, it doesn't appear you have experience in this field so I'm not surprised at your misconceptions.
Maybe if people didn't go for the least common denominator to save the dollar equivalent of a few Big Macs per month, they wouldn't have this problem. We've been an independent ISP for many years now, we still do customer service in-house and handle issues like this one, but it costs money to do so (enough money that most of our employees -- including NOC engineers -- aren't that far above minimum wage).
You want an ISP who actually pays attention to your problems and quality issues? Pay money for it, and get other people to do so as well. Or learn to love talking to a brick wall.
First, open source developers are increasingly describing their projects as user-oriented, enterprise-ready, etc. Now, I have nothing against hobby development in which users are not a concern because it's purely for enjoyment. Heck, given the choice I'd ignore users' requests and just work on projects of interest to me in my job if I could. But if you're going to do that, be honest about it. Don't describe your software as user-oriented, because it's not. Make it explicit that it's a hobby project, and you have no real interest in the desires of your user base.
Second, while ignoring users may be a lot more pleasant than listening to their concerns and addressing them, it's *very* ultimately bad engineering practice (then again, job titles aside most software developers are NOT engineers!), and reinforces a selfishness and arrogance that can bleed over into one's professional work. I've seen this happen in others, I've seen it happen in myself a few times. If you're going to open your project up to the world, you're limiting your own experience and opportunities by maintaining it as a navel-gazing exercise.
Finally, considering user requests can move development in an unexpected direction. Sometimes it's the wrong direction, and I think it's OK to answer a request with "that's a bad idea, and here's why". But sometimes after going in that direction, adding some features, maybe refactoring a bit, you look back and say "why didn't I think of that?" Any community of developers develops blind spots and biases, and sometimes these can be substantial enough for outside input to benefit everyone.
Now, of the above I think the first reason is the most compelling. You're under no obligation to do anything to improve your project or your skills or wisdom as a developer. However, I think you *are* obligated to describe your project honestly.
Then, were it the case that the US postal service forcibly collected postage on mail sent postage due, you would argue there is no legal basis for objection?
I run an ISP. A substantial portion of our money and time goes to maintaining mail servers due to the volume of spam we receive and filter. We have, at times, had our mail servers become completely unavailable to all our customers due to spam overload. Pardon me if I find your argument uncompelling.
While I'm quite sympathetic to the Constitutional guarantee of free speech, and I absolutely oppose restraint on it when the sender pays the costs, I do not see anywhere in this document a guarantee of an audience, nor any support for the notion that the audience should be forced to subsidize that speech. You may not force a publisher or newspaper to publish your written works. You may not come onto my property and post signs or graffiti my home. I fail to see why this is conceptually different.
Plus, from my perspective, the feeling of meaning or purpose provided by religion is illusory (notably, it's reported by people of different, mutually exclusive religious views, which suggests that it's the belief itself, and not the content of the belief, which is responsible). Yes, it feels nice to believe in a comforting illusion, just as it feels nice as a child to believe in Santa Claus, but I'd much rather have my eyes open even if it means a little despair every now and then.
But that's just me. I don't really care what you believe, so long as you don't use those beliefs as a basis for public policy, or try to convert people against their will (whether "for their own good" or not). If it makes you happy, and being happy is that important to you, by all means go for it.
Bwahahaha! It never ceases to amaze me how easily people are swayed by big words and authoritatively presented pseudoscientific claims, and the depths to which certain political activists will sink in abusing this. A basic understanding of neuropharmacology and neuroscience isn't hard to acquire. Given that good resources, such as Medline, are freely available to anyone on the net via Entrez (google for "PubMed"), you'd think more people would have take advantage of them.
Yes, I know about that little bit with the religious whackos testifying before Congress; it made it to Slashdot. It was a fascinating amalgam of lies by omission, misleading claims, and outright falsehood. I'm not surprised some people took it seriously, but I am surprised that the people we elected to run the country didn't exercise a bit more skepticism and maybe consult some actual experts in the field.
Here's a clue for you. Most enjoyable experiences cause release of endorphins and/or release of dopamine in the ventral tegmental area (VTA). That's how and why we perceive them as enjoyable! Other examples may include (depending on the individual): intense exercise, sex, snuggling, sports (notably "extreme sports"), socialization, various aspects of religion, games (from the most ultra-violent video games to monopoly), food, and music.
Another claim from that abyssmal congressional incident, as I recall, was that porn images are encoded into memory and associated with pleasure. Which places them in the same category as every positive experience to which you pay attention. Thanks for playing.
It should be patently obvious that pornography is nowhere near as addictive as cocaine. The number of people who view pornography exceeds the number of people who use cocaine by an order of magnitude or two. So where are these vast hordes of porn addicts whose lives are so impaired by their addiction they cannot hold down jobs, lose pleasure in all other activities, and are willing to commit acts of violence to support their habit? Why can't we get people to kick cocaine by providing them with pornography as an alternative? The utter lack of neurophysiological evidence that pornography stimulates the VTA to anywhere near the same degree as cocaine is also telling.
Of course, "more addictive than cocaine" is just a scare tactic, dredging up the public's vague memories of poorly-conducted rodent studies and impressions from biased samples. When you hear someone say that X is "more addictive than {cocaine,crack,heroin}", keep your hand on your wallet and engage your skepticism.
However, should you desire to continue to claim a neuropharmacological support for your personal distate for pornography, you should have no trouble finding references to peer-reviewed studies in Medline. Put up or shut up.
Though orthogonal to the above, I do at least agree with you on one point: the public airwaves are a limited resource "owned" by the government, much like public land or highways, and as such I think it's appropriate they be regulated differently than private resources (e.g., cable or satellite channels). That said, I think the fact that Europe hasn't sunk into social chaos should be a hint that perhaps it is violence, not sex and naughty words, that ought to be the primary focus of regulation.
Plus, "completely different" is just wrong. Yes, the brain differs from digital computers in many ways -- it's many, many orders of magnitude more parallel than anything we've ever built; an individual neuron is extremely sophisticated (far more so than any current simulation, possibly excepting single-neuron simulators used in neuroscience); there's no clock (with a few possible exceptions e.g. hippocampal theta); information is arguably analog and possibly coded in frequency and phase; and so on -- but it's *still* a computer.
Grrr ... forgot I'd selected HTML-formatted output. Sorry about that. Just goes to show the real cause of most fuckups -- lack of caffeine.
It's a bit late to answer this, but what the hell. You have greatly misunderstood the nature of spectrum disorders. Autism, like many neurological or psychological conditions, is a spectrum disorder -- it ranges (possibly continuously) from severe to normal, and there are probably multiple factors (perhaps most genetic, perhaps not) involved. With any spectrum disorder, people who are near the normal end of the spectrum are just a little different from the norm, and those differences present as personality quirks (the same being true for mood disorders, schizoaffective disorder, and possibly many of DSM-IV Axis II disorders). Kids show different personalities from a very early age; where do you think those come from anyway, if not differences in how we're wired up? I also think you overestimate psychologists. Until we have some sort of physiological test -- a genetic test, brain scan, whatever -- that can objectively determine who has a particular condition and who does not, it's all subjective anyhow. While a psychologist or neurologist is certainly better educated and has more experience, and thus in a better position to say who might have Asperger's syndrome than a layperson, they're still making a judgement call, one which other psychologists may disagree with when the patient is close to the normal end of the spectrum. Are geeks towards on the Autism/Apserger's spectrum? I certainly don't know. I don't see any reason why it couldn't be the case -- for example, discomfort with, and avoidance of, socialization is sometimes a response to innately poor ability. But my personal feeling, having known several people with Aspserger's syndrome when I was a mathematics major, is that most geeks probably aren't; the most obvious difference I noted was humor (much geek humor delights in playing with ambiguity, blurred levels of abstraction, and metaphor, and the people I knew with Asperger's syndrome were poor at those). However, I do think it's possible that if, say, genetic (or developmental, or whatever) conditions C1, C2, ..., Cn are necessary for Autism spectrum disorders, some subset of these conditions, perhaps with other conditions, may contribute to geekiness.
Oh, and frankly, I'm getting sick and tired of all the "victim victimhood", myself, and I hear a lot more bleating from people whining about how we've become such a victim society than I do from any of the supposed "victims". There's nothing wrong with wanting to understand one's nature, one's strengths and weaknesses. Doing so is NOT the same thing as expecting special treatment. I'd be delighted, for example, if I could see a "road map" of my own neuropsychological development, and know where and how the elements of my personality arose, because it would make it easier for me to work on changing (or compensating for) those elements if I saw fit to do so.
For example, I'm mildly bipolar -- diagnosed as such by several gen-yoo-wine psychologists. I've never gone completely off the deep end, and I've never understood that annoying, narcissistic addiction to hypomania some bipolars have that makes them regularly go off mood stabilizers and act like fools, but it's still had profound impact on my life. I don't generally tell people about it in real life unless they ask or it's topical, and I certainly don't expect any special treatment (or a get-out-of-jail free card when I fuck up) either. From my perspective, it's just an element of my personality, and I deal with it like any other element. Does it occasionally make life difficult? Sure, but we all have burdens to bear and I know plenty of people in much worse shape than I. But knowing a major contributing factor to my behaviour and personality has been enormously useful to me, so I'd appreciate it if people would stop crying "poor me, I'm surrounded by victims" every time someone speculates about contributing factors to personality.
other than VLF suppression of dim-light melatonin onset, you mean? Radio waves of various frequences are known to affect chemical reactions -- albeit in fairly subtle ways.
Explosives are the wrong way to do it. Simply injecting high-pressure water (or seawater) into the fault through a relatively narrow borehole, for long enough time, might be sufficient. The same has triggered small earthquakes in siesmic faults before.
Being the owner of several small businesses, I have rarely found a situation in which corporate personhood helped us in a substantial way. On the other hand, competing with large corporations, who can and do take advantage of all the benefits and legal loopholes available to them, is all but impossible.
That's it. Now, put N and e together in a file and call it your "private key", and put N and d together and call it your "public key". To use them:
In practice RSA takes too much time, so you make yourself a random key, encrypt that using RSA, and you and your recipient communicate using a symmetric cipher.
As to why ((n^e mod N)^d mod N) = n, that's where it helps to know some math. Mathweb or Wikipedia can help you, but having a bit of background in abstract algebra will help.
I *have* made holograms without an elaborate antivibration table. Yes, the quality suffers, and you're going to have a lot more duds, but it's certainly possible.
Holoworld has a lot of info on laser diodes.
The latter certainly isn't true in all prisons. Nonviolent criminals sentenced along with violent criminals often commit *worse* crimes once they are released than before they were sentenced. At the very least, treating victimless crimes as social and medical problems, or isolating them from violent criminals, would probably help.
As to the former, people who receive punishment from what they consider an illegitimate authority don't respond the same as those who receive punishment from a perceived legitimate authority. The problem is that many criminals see the justice system as illegitimate. Instead of responding with shame and changing their behaviour, they respond with anger and desire for revenge against the state.
I have no desire to coddle criminals, certainly not those who have committed an act of violence against person or property. I simply want us to spend our resources wisely to reduce crime. Some prison programs are more effective at rehabilitation than others, and should be funded and replicated. Early intervention is also cheaper and more effective than prison. If all else fails, isolating criminals from the general population is necessary and I'm OK with that. P. But I see no reason why anyone's childish desire for revenge -- including my own, and yes I've been there -- should be indulged. I've known victims of the most heinous crimes -- rape and murder -- who have quickly recover from the "I want them hurt" phase and move on to "I want them to never do this to someone else".
For the vast majority of people out there -- including us geeks -- all it takes to find a good partner, a good job, or most anything else in life is an understanding of primate social behaviour and courage. You can either wait around to "get lucky" (with relationships, jobs, etc.), or you can go out and put your ass on the line *every fucking day* until confidence with social skills becomes natural. You don't need to *be* the alpha primate, you just need to fake it in appropriate situations well enough to fool everyone else.
No, there's no unconditional love, at least not outside of family and pets (and you can screw up either if you try hard enough). Seriously, why would you expect any different? Would *you* stick around in a job or relationship no matter how much it sucked? People respect you more when you expect the best of them, not tolerate the worst, and once you lose people's respect in a relationship or on the job, you're shark bait.
You don't need to be "reasonably good looking" to find a relationship; even if your appearance is well below average you can more than make up for it with attitude and experience. You *do* need to act like you've got a pair. That took me a long time to figure out (damn shame Heartless Bitches International wasn't around then), even longer to put into action, mostly because I didn't want it to be true. As if the world cares what I want.
What's certainly not going to work is expecting the rules of the game to change because we want them to. People -- all people, including us geeks -- are animals first, rational second, and behave accordingly. Either play that to your advantage (ethically, one would hope) and win, ignore it and lose, or do your best to opt out completely.
For a lot of people out there, being depressed may be out of one's hands, but *staying* depressed isn't. I have great sympathy for those who cannot get medical or psychiatric treatment. I have absolutely none for those who can, but refuse to do so (or who see a shrink but won't do any of the hard work). Having been there myself I don't think I'm too far off the mark. It is my belief -- and I realize it won't be shared by all -- that some people go through periods in life where we'd sooner stay depressed and whine than get off our asses and fix things. I was there, many of my friends have been there. All the pity in the world doesn't help as much as one person saying "suck it up, everyone's got problems."
And "suck it up" applies to bad IT jobs as well. I like reading about peoples' shitty IT jobs, I think most of these Death March stories are funny in a sick sort of way. But if you're in that position, either get (or create) a better job, or detach yourself emotionally, slack off, and think of it as absurdist humor. Either way *try* to remember that there are people in this country getting paid minimum wage, or worse, to do things you probably wouldn't do for many times your current salary.
Say what you will about Usenet style; I learned more about how the real world works from Usenet than I did in college.
If you're doing polychlorinated biphenyls for fun, you've got some serious problems.
If you meant to say PCP (phenylcyclohexylpiperidine), well, that's different. There's a lot of myths about PCP, actually. It's largely indistinguishable from other arylcyclohexylamines and other dissociatives which don't have the negative rap. The biggest problems seem to be impurities (one of the more common synthetic routes involves a cyanide if I recall correctly), self injury, and triggering of latent mental illness.
However, the idea of PCP-crazed criminals immune to bullets is just a myth. People with violent impulses are more likely to act on those impulses on PCP, but people without violent impulses (and without serious mental illness) typically react the same way they react to ketamine: they lie on the couch and don't move a lot. Methamphetamine is much more likely to lead to violent behaviour; alcohol may even be more strongly associated with violence than PCP is.
Keep in mind though that I'm not advocating that you can go down to the corner gas station and pick up an eight-ball and a few grams of phencyclidine. I'm advocating treating drug abuse as a medical problem, and providing safe environments for recreational users of more powerful drugs.
No, it's not. Wikipedia has a decent page (and plenty of heated discussion) on left libertarianism and its relationship with anarchism. Keep in mind that anarchism doesn't mean no rules, it means no rulers. As a steady state it's probably exceedingly unstable, barring innoculation with the appropriate memes to sustain it, but self-government is still IMO a worthwhile target.
I've met few on either side of the fence who have a rigorous understanding of economics, but I think you'll find many advocates of Kyoto simply value the environment above the economy. Plus, the thread grandparent made his case poorly if at all.
More portentiously, many here WANT us to go to hell by having to pay Russia and various Third World countries 'national welfare' for the 'privelege' of having a functioning economy.
I'm not entirely happy about that part of the treaty -- show me a treaty (or law for that matter) that doesn't have some measure of suck -- but you are aware, I assume, that if they sell enough credits to us, they will be subject to the same level of limitations we are? Some argue that we have a moral obligation to help out developing countries (mind you I don't think the Kyoto treaty is the proper venue, but why should international treaties be any less susceptible to pork than US laws? Not to mention debt relief never goes anywhere either). If I recall, though, Brazil and some other developing countries have lowered, not raised, CO2 emissions under Kyoto.
If they consider the US an unfortunate partner, let it be known that many of us will shed no tears if they abandon any pretense of alliance with the US.
I think the feeling is largely mutual. I certainly wouldn't shed any tears if we cut back on the number of military bases scattered around the globe.
I do blame people in the US for being unpatriotic for supporting the undermining of their own nation.
Without knowing to what and whom, exactly, you are referring, I can only speculate. But I'd be awfully hesitant about making this claim; it's inflammatory and largely arbitrary (just use your own definition of patriotism). Most people I know on the left who are critical of this country and its policies (including environmental policies) seem to fall into three camps.
The first place the US -- its principles, economy, security, etc. -- first, but think that our actions are, at best, penny-wise and pound foolish, and at worst, damaging in both short- and long-term. If we continue to keep up CO2 emissions, for example, we will certainly pay for it in the long run, and it's arguable that we're paying for it now by artificially sustaining inefficient industries and sending oodles of money to unstable countries (and yes, I am in favor of nuke plants, so I think there's a better alternative).
The second place the principles of this country (as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) ahead of its military dominance (and in particular reject the belief that being the dominant world power is necessary to our security). While I'm not going to argue that the US is currently in the hands of an evil administration hell-bent on world domination (use your favorite Godwinian analogy here), I do think many of the supposedly unpatriotic gadflies are the ones who keep us from going in that direction.
The third group truly places the interests of humanity as a whole above the interest of any state. The best among them are fully aware of the disparity in living conditions between countries and are prepared to accept a lower standard of living in pursuit of their principles. Many think the US as a whole is aggressive and immature, and think both we and the world as a whole would benefit were we knocked down a notch or two. I think some, although by no means all, of this group are naive at best, but that's a criticism I also have for the neocons in their faith of imposed democracy.
Going back to Kyoto, I agree that our economy could suffer in the short term as a result of adoption. I have the same criticism of our current globalization strategy, incidental
But treaties against prostitution (as opposed to slavery) and drug dealing are pointless. Never in the history of mankind have we been able to effectively curtail either. We can shift the control (and profits) into the hands of mobsters, dictators, and terrorists, or we can learn to live with behaviour among consenting adults that some people consider immoral and address them from a medical and sociological perspective. Your choice, but as you're thinking about your decision, pay attention to who's raking in the profits from those poppy fields.
If you think slashdot is "radical left" you need to spend some quality time in Cambridge or Berkeley. I'd say ranging through moderate left, substantially libertarian, and occasionally (IP and corporate issues) touching on anarchist. Multilateral, in this case, I'll grant you; global warming is obviously a global problem, and addressing it will require cooperation among nations.
(as evidenced by the anti-Bush rhetoric and pro-Kerry numbers in the polls recently)
Sucks to be in the minority, doesn't it? Life isn't fair! Nobody's making you stay here; you can avoid political threads or articles, or just leave /. entirely and hang out at freerepublic. On the other hand, it's substantially more difficult for me to avoid the impact of laws and policies I find abhorrent. It's all but impossible for me, or anyone else, to avoid the impact of global warming, without the imposition of constraints on CO2 emissions. Somehow, I'm feeling less than sympathetic for your situation.
isn't going to let you live it down though.
If you take any position here you can expect a rebuttal from someone. That's kinda the point.
I'm burning karma right now, but who gives a shit
If that's a ploy to avoid being modded down for a reply that isn't relevant to the topic, I don't think it's going to work.
as if caring what this crew thought is somehow important.
which you obviously do, otherwise you wouldn't waste your time replying.
When the US won't defend your ass
If by "your" you mean other countries, it seems to me, based on conversations with many people around the world, quite a few see our "protection" as being at best misguided, and at worst in the finest tradition of the Mafia. I'm all for our allies picking up more of the tab for their own protection if they find it necessary.
If by "your" you mean those of us in the US who disagree with you, I'm quite capable of defending myself (nice thing about being a left-libertarian is you can support all the amendments). But when did agreement with a particular side become a litmus test for patriotism, anyway? I'm pretty convinced you're misguided about environmental policy, but I don't think the US should sell you down the river because of it.
Look, this may be difficult to believe, but most of us are in favor of Kyoto and other measures to address global warming because we believe it is in our long-term best interest, not because we want to hand the keys to the country over to the UN or foreign nations. We're racking up environmental debt. Sooner or later we're going to have to pay up, and there won't be a mommy and daddy to bail us out.
Frankly, I'd much rather accept the voluntary constraints of the treaty than the involuntary constraints that will be imposed by the effects of global warming. Admittedly, nothing on this menu is truly appetizing, but if we don't choose from column A (treaties and effective laws to reduce CO2 emissions), nature will choose for us from column B (flooding, loss of arable land, economic depression, famine, etc.).
Not that I think it, or any other effective measure to reduce CO2, has a snowball's chance in Hell in this -- or any other recent or forseeable -- administration anyway.