thank goodness we have the democratic party to save us from ourselves. this "video game" thing has just gotten way out of hand, and it's time that somebody put a stop to it!
I'm just so happy that future generations might not have to deal with the pain and sadness violent video games, movies, tv, and other depictions of realistic events or concepts can cause.
That's what our government is here for isn't it?? Honestly who knows better what is right for all of us than those thousands of wealthy lawyers??
And as usual, the best way to ensure our safety and freedom is to make lots more widely defined and confounding laws and precedents.
Yes boys and girls, just go along and everything will be hunky-dory in the United socialist^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H states of america...
there was an article in a issue of sysadmin magazine about 1 year ago about something like this. Not quite the same scale you mentioned, but more like 70,000 users. but their solution's biggest strength was its ability to scale, so its a start.
the gist of it was they had a fibre channel SAN, which was shared by multiple headless servers at several levels -squirrelmail based webmail -postfix -LDAP on postgreSQL -cyrus IMAP/POP3 If You look back in the issues for the last year or so I bet you could find it...might be a start...
My company has high usage for the number of people we have, but its still only ~500 users, so we just got a beefy redhat enterprise box...
ok i get what's up with rogues having stealth and stuff, but why don't mages have invisibility?? I have heard that it was tried in the beta but dropped before it hit retail?? WHY!!! The effect of this is that a mage MUST be grouped past level 20 so that there is somebody to watch their back whilst they stop to drink after every 2 mobs or so... this...stinks... blink is nice and all but many mobs can run so fast that it's just not enough to get you out of danger in time, especially when one or two hits kills you.
hybrids just in general are all well and good, but something i wonder about, is why is so little money being spent on ethanol technology? i mean, we know it burns cleaner, we can produce it ourselves domestically, admittedly they dont have the process tuned yet to be cost-effective, but it seems to me that it is more promising, and less challenging than hydrogen? why is it being ignored??
i wasnt comparing it to picasso or monet, but I was saying that it's not too far a stretch to put it on the same level as a modern-ish SF film, such as "aliens" or "the abyss". I found playing HL2 just as engaging and entertaining an experience as watching those films. I don't think video games yet have reached the height of CLASSIC art, but they sure seem to touch on the realm (quality wise) of pop-art or modern film. now they even share many of the same production techniques!
not to put too fine a point on it, but as long as he keeps putting his name on utter bunk like doom3, you're certainly right.
On the other hand, some entities/games/people in the game industry do approach the celebrity status of rockers. Sid meier, Valve, final fantasy - not too hard to find people who know what they are, or have heard those names. In a way, they have become legendary, just like Lennon.
"Gamer culture" is on the grow, and its not all that unlikely that as an entertainment medium it might one day rival movies or music...
Honestly, as anyone who has played HL2 would tell you, it's DAMN good, and personally, I would call it a work of art....
how about instead, we do something to make studying science/math PROFITABLE for people again. if people could get more well-paying jobs in technical and scientific fields, I think that would go a lot further to promote them than a few movies.
these days it beginning to seem like the only way to make decent money is to ditch the science and go get your MBA!:-P
I'm a windows/Linux coder who has been forced more and more to work in an as400/RPG/CL environment. Honestly It has been hard for me to let go of OO, to just accept that 50% of the meaning of every line of code is IMPLIED, and to give up on having any kind of useful GUI tools. Not to mention giving up on having an editor where you can USE your mouse. (websphere SORTA works...) It's really a whole different universe over in mainframe land, and frankly its just not where I wanna be.
Honestly I'm pretty convinced the RPG language has a personal hatred for me, and all I can do now is hate it back, and get a better job;-)
for my part, when the mainframe way is run right, it can be efficient and slick, but without those rigid change controls, and with businesses pushing more and more for shorter devel times and more frequent changes, (at my company at least) we are rapidly finding the RPG/as400 platform unfit to our needs. The damn thing is just too hard to change and maintain...
And I suppose you know what's "actually going on" eh? Are you a US soldier stationed in Iraq, or perhaps an Iraqi citizen? Otherwise, how can you really know any more than what you hear and read on the news? Honestly, I dont get it. I put up a post saying that it's a waste to flame each other, and I get flamed in return. How can you have the rank arrogance to tell me that IM the ass?!?!
Re:My Question: Did it make you feel better?
on
Wil Wheaton Strikes Back
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
wow...this is SO flamebait..... although, "man-purse" DOES make me laugh.
More seriously, The proper response to this post is not to flame back as was done by others replies, but to point ou that wil has a right (like anyone else) to like/hate any political party or candidate he pleases.
I personally voted for bush, proudly, and would do it again given the chance. I realize that puts me in a minority here on/., but tough noogies. Based on my personal values bush was the best choice.
The point is, the people who replied to this original flame with allegations that bush-supporters were all "inbred" or "rednecks" are just as bad as the original flame-troll. I am tired of this constant partisan mud slinging crap on slashdot, we are better than this, and it gets us noplace.
that's right!! I suggest we immediately lobby to have ourselves censured and wiretapped by the FBI to ensure we don't get into any more terrorist mischief!! You just can't trust us!! there's no telling WHAT we "geeks" are capable of!!! It's high time that decent tech-fearing people got together and stopped us before it's too late!!!!
well yes, perhaps one piece of software can be "secure", but inevitably some other piece of software on your machine is not. In addition, no matter how secure your software is (let's say you run OpenBSD and don't use the web...), if your passwords are no good, you're boned (administrator logins with no password?? sadly very common on windows...). Or for that matter, if somebody literally breaks in and rips out your hard drive, who knows what they could do (yes, you could encrypt your filesystem, but it's sooo slow). Many of the recent rash of email virii show that while software exploits may be fixed, you can't fix the problem of dumb users. It's probably easier to fool the people than the machines anyway. Given a little luck its not hard to socially engineer your way into a lot of places you don't belong... So yes, fixing firefox, or writing secure software is a Good Thing, but it doesnt make your PC, or the internet, "safe".
I dunno, I just use firefox because I like it better. The tabbed browsing is awesome and it feels a little faster on my PC than IE. A little experience in network administration has showed me that the best security is physical security, and even that sucks. The web is not safe...nothing is really. "safe" is kind of a subjective and largely meaningless term anyway, without a qualifier of "more" or "less". eg. "Wearing a seatbelt is more safe than not wearing one." Either way, there's a good chance that if you crash bad enough you're toast;-)
SO, not to get too wierd on anyone...really, it's all probably hogwash, the whole bloody pursuit of "safety and security". Take the obvious precautions yes(update your software, use a firewall...), but don't get all surprised and indignant when somebody figures out how to break them!
If there is data which suggest that contraception would be more effective, I would support that plan, but I have not seen it, and it seems to me unlikely. You have presented no data that was solidly empirical, only what you saw as suggested by other data. This seems open to a lot of interpretation.
In any case, this is all off-topic from my initial post, because the question I strove to answer in the first place was this: Is it morally wrong to hunt animals for the purposes of controlling an unchecked population? I stated that I felt it was, and justified my point on a moral basis.
If a discussion of a moral issue is studied as a scientific one, it has no meaning. You can't answer a moral question with science, you need to make a personal choice, based on emotion. I think, It is emotion, not intelligence that makes us human.
My opinion, is that humans are omnivourous animals like any other, and as such kill other animals to eat. To deny this seems to me arrogant, like we are above the order of nature.
"is it logical to hunt" and "is it morally right to hunt" are totally different questions...both open to a lot of intepretation.
Are you implying that the deer don't breed on their own? I agree that there aren't enough doe permits issued, but doesn't that just point out how little sense it makes to over-litigate this necessary activity? How is that relevant to the fundamental issue of whether it is moral or necessary to hunt? Given that lack of natural predators, it is required. Simple as that. If you choose not to hunt, well fine that's your choice, but don't go off half-cocked and forget that any species, given a lack of natural predators, will grow to fill the food supply available, and then die of of disease and starvation. Isn't that what humans have done in basically all parts of the world?
So, if you are so hell-bent on exposing the evil corporate enterprise of hunting, how do you propose to control the population? It's the height of stupidity to tear down a working system without a ready replacement. So put your money where your mouth is, eh?
For that matter, if you were a deer, how would you rather die? Quickly, and perhaps for a reason, or painfully starving to death or rotting of disease?
"tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine."
Yeh, that was the most ignorant thing I heard all weekend. Thank god some of us actually have at least the remotest understanding of what conservationism is really about. Having killed off all the wolves and bobcats and so forth that were supposed to feed on the deer, and driven all the native americans out onto reservations, there is nobody left to hunt them, and they would starve to death rapidly were it not for hunters. I don't care what anybody says, it is not only a fine sport, but a public service, and its even better if you are that special sort of hunter that goes the extra mile to make a good use of every part of the animal you take.
nt networking is sort of a good concept, poorly executed... honestly though, with the tinyest bit of know-how using a kerberos or radius server, NFS, and TCP/IP with DNS, you could get the same sort of thing going...
Microsoft just makes it really easy to get it off the ground, and reduces that barrier to entry. Redhat goes a long way toward this with all their python tools in RHEL, but still not far enough. While Open source embraces open standards as a rule, we still have lots of things that aren't standardized...
there are several competing desktop environments for different target audiences (GNOME, KDE, XFCE, etc...) and still a lot of basic tasks which involve a command prompt, or editing a text file...too confounding for the average lUser.
as far as being ready for the beginner, linux in general seems to be like 80% there...and it's that remaining 20% that holds it back.
with a little effort, it would not be all that hard to "finish it", just time consuming;-)
frankly little in his response should be any surprise to anyone who has any idea who he is. this is what he's about, DUH. Given the way that the GPL was constructed, to pretty specifically ensure the purity and freedom of anything using it he has made his views abundantly clear. I think he makes a good point, ultimately, ANY price will exclude SOMEBODY....no matter how cheap. For GNU/Linux, that just can't work. If it's in the Kernel or the basic GNU tools, its GOT to be FREE, OPEN, and unencumbered by patents or IP. The same goes for anything you need to get AT the source, like BK. Besides, what's wrong with using something like CVS or subversion anyway??
Yeh I had already read a lot about it, but hadn't thought of it in too much detail or really digested the facts. After viewing that animation, the fundamental difference between copyrights and patents as applied to software, and what software patents would mean to the industry is very clear. Well done and informative:-)
Well, but doesn't it make sense to point out the weaknesses in an argument? Aren't they just the part that needs to be challenged? I'm just not sure I see how this is a logical "fallacy".
Also, those "better points", given the assumption that there are differing perspectives, are likely the part where there is disagreement. Both sides of any debate may have strong and weak points in their logic, and isn't the very purpose of that debate to bring them out for the world to see?
It seems to me that invoking the "strawman" accusation has become a sort of cop-out to say that the opposing party's platform is built on some kind of fundamental prejudice or bigotry (as applied to argument's I've personally witnessed).
Generally a conservative will challenge a liberal point of view based on the small details left out of the proposal. "The devil is in the details" if you will. As such, the general response will be usually along the lines that the details are either unimportant, or worth the cost based on the greater good attainable. After that, to draw out the fundamental logical flaws, a common thing to do is to try to distill an idea down to it's most blunt, simple state (to call a "spade a spade" as I termed it earlier). This is where the "strawman" things seems to come in.
I just don't feel that the apparent assumption that somehow conservatives are just dumb rednecks or something too dull and slow to grasp the fundamental perfection of a liberal argument and that they therefore simply attack or "strawman" what they don't understand.
If we conservatives are the strawman, then I suppose you would be the wizard of OZ;-) "don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain!!" It's not magic!
capitalism in emotional terms equates to selfishness. The "survival of the fittest" if you will. That is both the beauty and the tragedy of our way of life, that: 1- those with the will, luck, intellect, what-have-you to get ahead, may have almost infinite potential for wealth and power and oppurtunity. 2- The strong(ie. wealthy, influential) may (ideally within the law, and ideally only ECONOMICALLY) oppress the weak. (ie your employer determines your pay scale, whether you can live off that wage is not his concern...)
This second bit is the part that communism and socialism object to. The way I see it, the laws of the time (or their enforcement?) were not adequate, or were not properly enforced such that healthy, fair competition existed. The premise of capitalism is that when there is healthy competition it is ultimately the CONSUMER that wins.
I would argue that our anti-trust law (if only they would ENFORCE them) is fine, but we have other legal machinations which "break" capitalism. For example, Copyrights, patents, and some EULA's.
Copyrights provide an entity with the exclusive right to reproduce something, IE, no competition!!
Patents, same as above (over simplification maybe, but close enough dammit...)
EULA's often dictate how the purchased product may be redistributed, and how, which of course enforces HOW a given distributor may compete...not their jurisdiction I would say...
SO...If we did away with all that, everything would be a tangible, infinitely transferrable, packaged product, (commodity!) which is the only sort of goods that healthy competition may occur cleanly for.
A lot to give up, maybe, but as with all things it is but an imperfect solution for an imperfect world.
the fundamental ignorance in Mr. Langa's analysis is that: a) as mentioned before he does not account for the pertinance or danger involved in said bug reports b) he does not factor in the fact that microsoft may have simply not disclosed literally thousands of vulnerabilities because they have closed source... c) firefox is totally free, and despite is at least as good if not better in practiacally all ways as IE.
all of these add up to 2 things, 1-firefox provides the best price/performance value to the user. 2-The security comparison is (as stated before) "apples to oranges".
He is right about one thing though. All software is inherently imperfect, and subject to bugs. That is an irrefutable(sp?) fact. Just because it's non-microshaft doesnt mean its perfect and bug-free, it just means there's a LOT more technically-apt eyes looking for those bugs, or theoretically free to do so by the nature of open source.
Interesting sidenote: I hear this word "strawman" a lot lately from people (generally of a liberal ilk) who seem to be offended by the very conservative practice of "calling a spade a spade". This is the first time I've heard it applied to a non-political argument...
Slashdot Mirror
thank goodness we have the democratic party to save us from ourselves.
this "video game" thing has just gotten way out of hand, and it's time that somebody put a stop to it!
I'm just so happy that future generations might not have to deal with the pain and sadness violent video games, movies, tv, and other depictions of realistic events or concepts can cause.
That's what our government is here for isn't it?? Honestly who knows better what is right for all of us than those thousands of wealthy lawyers??
And as usual, the best way to ensure our safety and freedom is to make lots more widely defined and confounding laws and precedents.
Yes boys and girls, just go along and everything will be hunky-dory in the United socialist^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H states of america...
there was an article in a issue of sysadmin magazine about 1 year ago about something like this. Not quite the same scale you mentioned, but more like 70,000 users. but their solution's biggest strength was its ability to scale, so its a start.
the gist of it was they had a fibre channel SAN, which was shared by multiple headless servers at several levels
-squirrelmail based webmail
-postfix
-LDAP on postgreSQL
-cyrus IMAP/POP3
If You look back in the issues for the last year or so I bet you could find it...might be a start...
My company has high usage for the number of people we have, but its still only ~500 users, so we just got a beefy redhat enterprise box...
ok i get what's up with rogues having stealth and stuff, but why don't mages have invisibility??
I have heard that it was tried in the beta but dropped before it hit retail??
WHY!!!
The effect of this is that a mage MUST be grouped past level 20 so that there is somebody to watch their back whilst they stop to drink after every 2 mobs or so...
this...stinks...
blink is nice and all but many mobs can run so fast that it's just not enough to get you out of danger in time, especially when one or two hits kills you.
hybrids just in general are all well and good, but something i wonder about, is why is so little money being spent on ethanol technology?
i mean, we know it burns cleaner, we can produce it ourselves domestically, admittedly they dont have the process tuned yet to be cost-effective, but it seems to me that it is more promising, and less challenging than hydrogen?
why is it being ignored??
i wasnt comparing it to picasso or monet, but I was saying that it's not too far a stretch to put it on the same level as a modern-ish SF film, such as "aliens" or "the abyss". I found playing HL2 just as engaging and entertaining an experience as watching those films.
I don't think video games yet have reached the height of CLASSIC art, but they sure seem to touch on the realm (quality wise) of pop-art or modern film. now they even share many of the same production techniques!
not to put too fine a point on it, but as long as he keeps putting his name on utter bunk like doom3, you're certainly right.
On the other hand, some entities/games/people in the game industry do approach the celebrity status of rockers. Sid meier, Valve, final fantasy - not too hard to find people who know what they are, or have heard those names. In a way, they have become legendary, just like Lennon.
"Gamer culture" is on the grow, and its not all that unlikely that as an entertainment medium it might one day rival movies or music...
Honestly, as anyone who has played HL2 would tell you, it's DAMN good, and personally, I would call it a work of art....
how about instead, we do something to make studying science/math PROFITABLE for people again. if people could get more well-paying jobs in technical and scientific fields, I think that would go a lot further to promote them than a few movies.
:-P
these days it beginning to seem like the only way to make decent money is to ditch the science and go get your MBA!
I'm a windows/Linux coder who has been forced more and more to work in an as400/RPG/CL environment. Honestly It has been hard for me to let go of OO, to just accept that 50% of the meaning of every line of code is IMPLIED, and to give up on having any kind of useful GUI tools. Not to mention giving up on having an editor where you can USE your mouse. (websphere SORTA works...)
;-)
It's really a whole different universe over in mainframe land, and frankly its just not where I wanna be.
Honestly I'm pretty convinced the RPG language has a personal hatred for me, and all I can do now is hate it back, and get a better job
for my part, when the mainframe way is run right, it can be efficient and slick, but without those rigid change controls, and with businesses pushing more and more for shorter devel times and more frequent changes, (at my company at least) we are rapidly finding the RPG/as400 platform unfit to our needs. The damn thing is just too hard to change and maintain...
And I suppose you know what's "actually going on" eh?
Are you a US soldier stationed in Iraq, or perhaps an Iraqi citizen? Otherwise, how can you really know any more than what you hear and read on the news?
Honestly, I dont get it. I put up a post saying that it's a waste to flame each other, and I get flamed in return. How can you have the rank arrogance to tell me that IM the ass?!?!
wow...this is SO flamebait.....
/., but tough noogies. Based on my personal values bush was the best choice.
although, "man-purse" DOES make me laugh.
More seriously, The proper response to this post is not to flame back as was done by others replies, but to point ou that wil has a right (like anyone else) to like/hate any political party or candidate he pleases.
I personally voted for bush, proudly, and would do it again given the chance. I realize that puts me in a minority here on
The point is, the people who replied to this original flame with allegations that bush-supporters were all "inbred" or "rednecks" are just as bad as the original flame-troll. I am tired of this constant partisan mud slinging crap on slashdot, we are better than this, and it gets us noplace.
Shame, shame on all of you who troll!!
that's right!! I suggest we immediately lobby to have ourselves censured and wiretapped by the FBI to ensure we don't get into any more terrorist mischief!! You just can't trust us!! there's no telling WHAT we "geeks" are capable of!!! It's high time that decent tech-fearing people got together and stopped us before it's too late!!!!
well yes, perhaps one piece of software can be "secure", but inevitably some other piece of software on your machine is not. In addition, no matter how secure your software is (let's say you run OpenBSD and don't use the web...), if your passwords are no good, you're boned (administrator logins with no password?? sadly very common on windows...). Or for that matter, if somebody literally breaks in and rips out your hard drive, who knows what they could do (yes, you could encrypt your filesystem, but it's sooo slow). Many of the recent rash of email virii show that while software exploits may be fixed, you can't fix the problem of dumb users. It's probably easier to fool the people than the machines anyway. Given a little luck its not hard to socially engineer your way into a lot of places you don't belong...
So yes, fixing firefox, or writing secure software is a Good Thing, but it doesnt make your PC, or the internet, "safe".
btw, deer contraceptives...HILARIOUS... :-)
Just imagine a buck trying to unroll a condom...I swear dude, that's comedy GOLD that is...
I dunno, I just use firefox because I like it better. The tabbed browsing is awesome and it feels a little faster on my PC than IE. A little experience in network administration has showed me that the best security is physical security, and even that sucks. The web is not safe...nothing is really. "safe" is kind of a subjective and largely meaningless term anyway, without a qualifier of "more" or "less". eg. "Wearing a seatbelt is more safe than not wearing one." Either way, there's a good chance that if you crash bad enough you're toast ;-)
SO, not to get too wierd on anyone...really, it's all probably hogwash, the whole bloody pursuit of "safety and security". Take the obvious precautions yes(update your software, use a firewall...), but don't get all surprised and indignant when somebody figures out how to break them!
If there is data which suggest that contraception would be more effective, I would support that plan, but I have not seen it, and it seems to me unlikely. You have presented no data that was solidly empirical, only what you saw as suggested by other data. This seems open to a lot of interpretation.
In any case, this is all off-topic from my initial post, because the question I strove to answer in the first place was this:
Is it morally wrong to hunt animals for the purposes of controlling an unchecked population?
I stated that I felt it was, and justified my point on a moral basis.
If a discussion of a moral issue is studied as a scientific one, it has no meaning. You can't answer a moral question with science, you need to make a personal choice, based on emotion. I think, It is emotion, not intelligence that makes us human.
My opinion, is that humans are omnivourous animals like any other, and as such kill other animals to eat. To deny this seems to me arrogant, like we are above the order of nature.
"is it logical to hunt" and "is it morally right to hunt" are totally different questions...both open to a lot of intepretation.
Are you implying that the deer don't breed on their own? I agree that there aren't enough doe permits issued, but doesn't that just point out how little sense it makes to over-litigate this necessary activity? How is that relevant to the fundamental issue of whether it is moral or necessary to hunt? Given that lack of natural predators, it is required. Simple as that. If you choose not to hunt, well fine that's your choice, but don't go off half-cocked and forget that any species, given a lack of natural predators, will grow to fill the food supply available, and then die of of disease and starvation. Isn't that what humans have done in basically all parts of the world?
So, if you are so hell-bent on exposing the evil corporate enterprise of hunting, how do you propose to control the population? It's the height of stupidity to tear down a working system without a ready replacement.
So put your money where your mouth is, eh?
For that matter, if you were a deer, how would you rather die? Quickly, and perhaps for a reason, or painfully starving to death or rotting of disease?
"tracking and killing innocent animals on foot is just fine."
Yeh, that was the most ignorant thing I heard all weekend. Thank god some of us actually have at least the remotest understanding of what conservationism is really about. Having killed off all the wolves and bobcats and so forth that were supposed to feed on the deer, and driven all the native americans out onto reservations, there is nobody left to hunt them, and they would starve to death rapidly were it not for hunters. I don't care what anybody says, it is not only a fine sport, but a public service, and its even better if you are that special sort of hunter that goes the extra mile to make a good use of every part of the animal you take.
nt networking is sort of a good concept, poorly executed...
;-)
honestly though, with the tinyest bit of know-how using a kerberos or radius server, NFS, and TCP/IP with DNS, you could get the same sort of thing going...
Microsoft just makes it really easy to get it off the ground, and reduces that barrier to entry. Redhat goes a long way toward this with all their python tools in RHEL, but still not far enough. While Open source embraces open standards as a rule, we still have lots of things that aren't standardized...
there are several competing desktop environments for different target audiences (GNOME, KDE, XFCE, etc...) and still a lot of basic tasks which involve a command prompt, or editing a text file...too confounding for the average lUser.
as far as being ready for the beginner, linux in general seems to be like 80% there...and it's that remaining 20% that holds it back.
with a little effort, it would not be all that hard to "finish it", just time consuming
frankly little in his response should be any surprise to anyone who has any idea who he is. this is what he's about, DUH. Given the way that the GPL was constructed, to pretty specifically ensure the purity and freedom of anything using it he has made his views abundantly clear.
I think he makes a good point, ultimately, ANY price will exclude SOMEBODY....no matter how cheap. For GNU/Linux, that just can't work. If it's in the Kernel or the basic GNU tools, its GOT to be FREE, OPEN, and unencumbered by patents or IP. The same goes for anything you need to get AT the source, like BK. Besides, what's wrong with using something like CVS or subversion anyway??
Yeh I had already read a lot about it, but hadn't thought of it in too much detail or really digested the facts. After viewing that animation, the fundamental difference between copyrights and patents as applied to software, and what software patents would mean to the industry is very clear. Well done and informative :-)
Ah, ok so its not just a political term. Up until now I have only heard it applied in the way I described before.
Thanks.
please forgive my atrocious english above, I really need to use that preview button...
Well, but doesn't it make sense to point out the weaknesses in an argument? Aren't they just the part that needs to be challenged?
;-)
I'm just not sure I see how this is a logical "fallacy".
Also, those "better points", given the assumption that there are differing perspectives, are likely the part where there is disagreement. Both sides of any debate may have strong and weak points in their logic, and isn't the very purpose of that debate to bring them out for the world to see?
It seems to me that invoking the "strawman" accusation has become a sort of cop-out to say that the opposing party's platform is built on some kind of fundamental prejudice or bigotry (as applied to argument's I've personally witnessed).
Generally a conservative will challenge a liberal point of view based on the small details left out of the proposal. "The devil is in the details" if you will. As such, the general response will be usually along the lines that the details are either unimportant, or worth the cost based on the greater good attainable. After that, to draw out the fundamental logical flaws, a common thing to do is to try to distill an idea down to it's most blunt, simple state (to call a "spade a spade" as I termed it earlier). This is where the "strawman" things seems to come in.
I just don't feel that the apparent assumption that somehow conservatives are just dumb rednecks or something too dull and slow to grasp the fundamental perfection of a liberal argument and that they therefore simply attack or "strawman" what they don't understand.
If we conservatives are the strawman, then I suppose you would be the wizard of OZ
"don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain!!"
It's not magic!
your observation is in many ways correct.
capitalism in emotional terms equates to selfishness. The "survival of the fittest" if you will. That is both the beauty and the tragedy of our way of life, that:
1- those with the will, luck, intellect, what-have-you to get ahead, may have almost infinite potential for wealth and power and oppurtunity.
2- The strong(ie. wealthy, influential) may (ideally within the law, and ideally only ECONOMICALLY) oppress the weak. (ie your employer determines your pay scale, whether you can live off that wage is not his concern...)
This second bit is the part that communism and socialism object to. The way I see it, the laws of the time (or their enforcement?) were not adequate, or were not properly enforced such that healthy, fair competition existed. The premise of capitalism is that when there is healthy competition it is ultimately the CONSUMER that wins.
I would argue that our anti-trust law (if only they would ENFORCE them) is fine, but we have other legal machinations which "break" capitalism.
For example, Copyrights, patents, and some EULA's.
Copyrights provide an entity with the exclusive right to reproduce something, IE, no competition!!
Patents, same as above (over simplification maybe, but close enough dammit...)
EULA's often dictate how the purchased product may be redistributed, and how, which of course enforces HOW a given distributor may compete...not their jurisdiction I would say...
SO...If we did away with all that, everything would be a tangible, infinitely transferrable, packaged product, (commodity!) which is the only sort of goods that healthy competition may occur cleanly for.
A lot to give up, maybe, but as with all things it is but an imperfect solution for an imperfect world.
the fundamental ignorance in Mr. Langa's analysis is that:
a) as mentioned before he does not account for the pertinance or danger involved in said bug reports
b) he does not factor in the fact that microsoft may have simply not disclosed literally thousands of vulnerabilities because they have closed source...
c) firefox is totally free, and despite is at least as good if not better in practiacally all ways as IE.
all of these add up to 2 things,
1-firefox provides the best price/performance value to the user.
2-The security comparison is (as stated before) "apples to oranges".
He is right about one thing though. All software is inherently imperfect, and subject to bugs. That is an irrefutable(sp?) fact. Just because it's non-microshaft doesnt mean its perfect and bug-free, it just means there's a LOT more technically-apt eyes looking for those bugs, or theoretically free to do so by the nature of open source.
Interesting sidenote: I hear this word "strawman" a lot lately from people (generally of a liberal ilk) who seem to be offended by the very conservative practice of "calling a spade a spade". This is the first time I've heard it applied to a non-political argument...