I replied to a poster above who was the exact opposite of you. I'd just like to say that where he made religious people sound very bad, you've presented a much better (and I believe more accurate) picture of those with religious beliefs. I agree that religion has a lot to offer the world, though I'm not part of any organised religion.
That's a shame. I could quite easily believe you were a motivated anti-religious type being sneaky by making religious people look like bigots, because that is what you have done. Saying 'I already know the answer and I don't have to listen to your argument' is the attitude that alienates people.
You say that you've never threatened to punish a child if they question a belief, but that doesn't obviate the posters argument in the slightest... because many many religious people do exactly that. He's not talking about 'grammar_fascist' in particular (nice nick, btw), but of religious types in general.
That said, I question whether your denial of threating of punishment is compatible with you telling a child not to do things that are against God's will. After all, whether you threaten someone directly or by telling them "God" will punish them, it is still a threat. And questioning a belief wont necessary take the form of an idle thought, but of experimentation... does gay sex really feel like a sin, did fiddling my taxes really result in retribution, etc. When you say you allow beliefs to be questioned without threat, you mean to say that you allow beliefs to be questioned on the understanding that the conclusion is that the belief is right.
It's been said that all we can do morally, is to live our lives in such a way as would bring about a universal improvement if other people did the same. Following that, I say, good for you and your attitude. Control of the population depends on fear because it's not possible to punish everyone. If everyone had your attitude then there would be no chilling effects. Keep spreading it, mate. You never know who you might have persuaded to believe the same.
Thing is, you'll never really find security doing that. You'd have to climb mighty high to get any real protection from the Authorities, and I suspect it gets pretty nasty up there too.
Best solution is trying to empower your community and those around you in general. The two big threats to your safety are pissing off the powerful (political, police, etc), and violence within your community. The former is best resisted as a motivated and informed community and the latter is fueled by disempowerment and exclusion. Work on raising the level for everyone, rather than trying to escape to the top, and you'll find more security that way. Not least because you'll have made better friends too.
Oh, and if properly implemented, brands fighting holy wars could probably cancel each other out.
I don't think you could implement a system in such a way. The important ratio isn't Brand A Promoters to Brand B Promoters; the important ratio is Brand Promoters to Valid Opinions. If the ratio is too much in favour of brand promoters then you'll either get two sets of results from your queries which are just extreme contradictions or you will get a smeared out average that tells you nothing because the minority valid opinions are drowned in the noise.
Only a system in which you can start attributing 'trust' to the participants opinions is going to give you useful results.
Thanks for this. That second link might turn out to be very helpful. The Motorola i530 seems just what I'm looking for if I can get it in the UK.
I have to say that the first link made me laugh, though. The Nokia 5100 also features fashlight, calorie counter, stereo FM radio, sound meter, thermometer, and stopwatch.
That's a terrible analogy but a very good point (assuming you mean encryption wont conceal 'who' I am calling). Still, even if there isn't a convenient way of hiding who I'm calling yet, concealing the contents still has a lot of merit.
Correction - I would upgrade for one other feature: A phone where I can put in the public key for a friend's phone and vice versa, thus having an encrypted conversation with them. Now surely that wouldn't be so complicated, but what a selling point! Great for big business, great for government and police work; and great for people like me who are fed up being spied on all the time.
I too just want my phone to be a phone and I have an old Siemans model. I will upgrade my phone for one feature and one feature only - when they produce a mobile that I can throw at a wall and drop in the bath without it getting damaged.
I got hassled by a phone salesman last month as I walked down the street and his face visibly fell when I pulled out my phone and showed him what I used. I despise the [UK] marketing campaign that asks: "Ashamed of your mobile?" No, actually.
Yes, because if the existing player vacate the market, then it will with absolute certainty be filled by others that are willing to play by the new rules. This is France, that's a very large pot of money that isn't going to be overlooked.
Go France! Let's hope it spreads.
Of course, that said, I quite happily purchase iTunes music on my Linux box and listen to them howsoever I like.;)
"large pulsing triple-breasted oysters" and "quivering picushions bearing as many as twenty chicken legs and thighs."
You are highly disturbed and I congratulate you. That's hillarious and utterly disgusting. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if it were true, though. *shudder*
Ghandi frequently preached non-violence. It is absurd to say that he didn't. In Johannasburg he led non-violent protests in which he and his followers were severely beaten whilst refusing to retaliate, either then or at a later time. It was explicit that there should be no retaliation but only passive non co-operation. After the Amritsa massacre incensed India, Ghandi repeated and vocally denounced not only the actions of the British, but also the retaliatory strikes of the Indians.
There are many many instances where Ghandi preached non-violence but pulling my biography of Ghandi from the shelf next to me here (Rediscovering Gandhi by Yogesh Chadha), I open it at one of my favourite passages and find the following:
I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness more manly than punishment... Non-violence is the law of our species, just as violence is the law of the brute. I am not pleading for India to practice non-violence because she is weak. I want her to practice non-violence being concious of her strength and power.
-Ghandi, from an article in 'Young India,' a paper that he edited.
Non-violence was at the centre of Ghandi's beliefs and is central to his movement.
He had strong anti-government beliefs and realized MANY times that the law would not help him.
For a considerable part of his life (until the Amritsar massacre), Ghandi quite vocally wished to remain a part of the British Empire and Ghandi quite frequently argued his case in the law courts at various periods in his life. It is your own assumption that he was against law.
I've read numerous posts by you here dada21, and you have expounded your ideas about anarcho-capitalism in threads on just about every sunject imaginable. Do me a favour, if you wish to study Ghandi's beliefs and life, then I whole-heartedly encourage you to do so. He was a very great person. But please do not presume to use him name as some sort of figurehead for your own beliefs. He wont fit them and you'll dirty his name by trying to make him fit them.
Um, Ghandi was a lawyer. And not a half bad one, either. I don't think he had a problem using the law against his opponents, it was violence that he renounced, not litigation.
Have you contacted the developers? If you are making commercial use of the project then offer a financial incentive to do a release. I don't know which project you refer to, but hopefully pulling all the CVS code together to make a new release wouldn't be a unrealistic task and a little renumeration might get you that. You can but ask!
You are both completely right and I am wrong. The scary thing is that I am usually the one pointing out that Iraq is a modern state and [was until US occupation] secular. Re-reading my post I can see that I'm misguided even without your replies. Now I have to reassess just how very difficult it is to avoid picking up the prevailing misconceptions of your society.
I can't edit my comment, so I hope that lots of other people have read your rebuttals. Thanks!
I think you need to flesh out your copyright argument a bit, but yes - the free flow of information from other cultures does undermine islamic control in middle eastern countries, and would result in a collapse of regimes and religious authority out there. But there is a strong counter-acting force and that is Western aggression and oil-theft. There's no better argument for a hardline islamic who wishes to oppose free speech and democracy than pointing at the thousands of dead and the the aggressive rule of a country by foreign companies. Saying Western culture is sending mixed messages doesn't come close.
If Western governments really wanted to change things out there, they should have spent a half of the cost of the war effort so far with sponsoring Western style schools throughout the middle east. What low to middle-class parents in Saudi or U.A.E. or even Iraq wouldn't sign up their child for a modern, financially supported education. Some wouldn't, but many others would. Yes, this could even have been done in Iraq. Offer aid, lower sanctions. It would be a package that even Saddam Hussein couldn't have stopped the country from taking up.
Results of a program like this, or other similar aid schemes, would have been improved relations with the Western world, a heavy undermining of anti-western, mono-cultural leaders, a more educated and informed people with which to find yourself living next door to in ten or twenty years time; and maybe a bit less national debt on the part of the US too.;)
But instead, it was decided to conquer the country and install Western multinational companies in control. This is going to end very badly for the US.
I see. I can't speak for Secondary Care (hospitals and the like), but Primary Care (general practice) doesn't normally use encryption for much of anything as confidential data doesn't usually leave the site, so this wouldn't have encompassed us really. What's going on at the moment is a determined push (pusch?) to centralise our patient data so that it is no longer in the hands of individual practices. Naturally, we can no longer promise confidentiality of a patient's medical history if we allow this. As I said though, fighting it is difficult.
Diabetes I is a lack of insulin production. It isn't fully understood but you're unlikely to cure it with Yoga. It does however account for only about 10% of diabetes incidences. The rest is mostly type II which is a lack of response to insulin (insulin resistant). This is also not fully understood but obesity and sedentary life-style seem to be strong contributory factors so a great big uptake of Yoga (the physical kind) on the part of the population might well have a significant effect on reducing this sort of diabetes. It would also have a very positive effect on controlling the impact of diabetes on their lives as weight is a big part of a diabetes management plan.
So don't get too hippy on us - yoga, meditation, a more careful diet will have very positive gains on diabetes at a social level, but don't tout it as a reversing genetic conditions.;)
No, I think the flaw must be in the voter's awareness and judgement because remove that, and elections no longer appear flawed. Education and accurate information is the solution, not meddling with elections (bar a few refinements that could be made to the process.
There was also a NHS patient database project in the UK that was cancelled in the 90's, due mainly to doctors refusing the governments key escrow demands.
Can you point me at more information on this? I work in the NHS now, and I can tell you that there are major privacy-infringing initiatives being rammed down our throats. There's a lot of complaining, but whatever resistance was shown in the 90's seems to have been diluted now. Money paid to general practice is being withdrawn from things of clinical importance and instead paid for uptake of the new I.T. systems, forcing practices to migrate.
I'd be really interested in hearing about any previous battles over this.
Well if no-one else answers in the time it takes to post this; it is different because you are required to hand over keys in advance without cause. This means no reasonable grounds for suspicion or judicial oversight are required. This means that you are never informed that your private emails or accounts are now being scanned. This is why it's different.
Slashdot Mirror
I replied to a poster above who was the exact opposite of you. I'd just like to say that where he made religious people sound very bad, you've presented a much better (and I believe more accurate) picture of those with religious beliefs. I agree that religion has a lot to offer the world, though I'm not part of any organised religion.
I stopped reading your post after this.
That's a shame. I could quite easily believe you were a motivated anti-religious type being sneaky by making religious people look like bigots, because that is what you have done. Saying 'I already know the answer and I don't have to listen to your argument' is the attitude that alienates people.
You say that you've never threatened to punish a child if they question a belief, but that doesn't obviate the posters argument in the slightest... because many many religious people do exactly that. He's not talking about 'grammar_fascist' in particular (nice nick, btw), but of religious types in general.
That said, I question whether your denial of threating of punishment is compatible with you telling a child not to do things that are against God's will. After all, whether you threaten someone directly or by telling them "God" will punish them, it is still a threat. And questioning a belief wont necessary take the form of an idle thought, but of experimentation... does gay sex really feel like a sin, did fiddling my taxes really result in retribution, etc. When you say you allow beliefs to be questioned without threat, you mean to say that you allow beliefs to be questioned on the understanding that the conclusion is that the belief is right.
It's been said that all we can do morally, is to live our lives in such a way as would bring about a universal improvement if other people did the same. Following that, I say, good for you and your attitude. Control of the population depends on fear because it's not possible to punish everyone. If everyone had your attitude then there would be no chilling effects. Keep spreading it, mate. You never know who you might have persuaded to believe the same.
Thing is, you'll never really find security doing that. You'd have to climb mighty high to get any real protection from the Authorities, and I suspect it gets pretty nasty up there too.
Best solution is trying to empower your community and those around you in general. The two big threats to your safety are pissing off the powerful (political, police, etc), and violence within your community. The former is best resisted as a motivated and informed community and the latter is fueled by disempowerment and exclusion. Work on raising the level for everyone, rather than trying to escape to the top, and you'll find more security that way. Not least because you'll have made better friends too.
Oh, and if properly implemented, brands fighting holy wars could probably cancel each other out.
I don't think you could implement a system in such a way. The important ratio isn't Brand A Promoters to Brand B Promoters; the important ratio is Brand Promoters to Valid Opinions. If the ratio is too much in favour of brand promoters then you'll either get two sets of results from your queries which are just extreme contradictions or you will get a smeared out average that tells you nothing because the minority valid opinions are drowned in the noise.
Only a system in which you can start attributing 'trust' to the participants opinions is going to give you useful results.
Thanks for this. That second link might turn out to be very helpful. The Motorola i530 seems just what I'm looking for if I can get it in the UK.
I have to say that the first link made me laugh, though. The Nokia 5100 also features fashlight, calorie counter, stereo FM radio, sound meter, thermometer, and stopwatch.
I will not be getting one of the latter!
That's a terrible analogy but a very good point (assuming you mean encryption wont conceal 'who' I am calling). Still, even if there isn't a convenient way of hiding who I'm calling yet, concealing the contents still has a lot of merit.
Correction - I would upgrade for one other feature: A phone where I can put in the public key for a friend's phone and vice versa, thus having an encrypted conversation with them. Now surely that wouldn't be so complicated, but what a selling point! Great for big business, great for government and police work; and great for people like me who are fed up being spied on all the time.
I too just want my phone to be a phone and I have an old Siemans model. I will upgrade my phone for one feature and one feature only - when they produce a mobile that I can throw at a wall and drop in the bath without it getting damaged.
I got hassled by a phone salesman last month as I walked down the street and his face visibly fell when I pulled out my phone and showed him what I used. I despise the [UK] marketing campaign that asks: "Ashamed of your mobile?" No, actually.
Mod me down, if you want. That felt really good.
Same here. It's good to start the day off with a good laugh.
Yes, because if the existing player vacate the market, then it will with absolute certainty be filled by others that are willing to play by the new rules. This is France, that's a very large pot of money that isn't going to be overlooked.
Go France! Let's hope it spreads.
Of course, that said, I quite happily purchase iTunes music on my Linux box and listen to them howsoever I like.
"large pulsing triple-breasted oysters" and "quivering picushions bearing as many as twenty chicken legs and thighs."
You are highly disturbed and I congratulate you. That's hillarious and utterly disgusting. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if it were true, though. *shudder*
Which came first? I'd say neither until the cockerell did. Makes sense to me.
And yet it's the first in ages, that is actually accurate rather than misleading. How strange!
Somebody mod this AC up out of the 0's please. His is a very good post.
Gandhi did NOT preach non-violence, either.
Ghandi frequently preached non-violence. It is absurd to say that he didn't. In Johannasburg he led non-violent protests in which he and his followers were severely beaten whilst refusing to retaliate, either then or at a later time. It was explicit that there should be no retaliation but only passive non co-operation. After the Amritsa massacre incensed India, Ghandi repeated and vocally denounced not only the actions of the British, but also the retaliatory strikes of the Indians.
There are many many instances where Ghandi preached non-violence but pulling my biography of Ghandi from the shelf next to me here (Rediscovering Gandhi by Yogesh Chadha), I open it at one of my favourite passages and find the following: -Ghandi, from an article in 'Young India,' a paper that he edited.
Non-violence was at the centre of Ghandi's beliefs and is central to his movement.
He had strong anti-government beliefs and realized MANY times that the law would not help him.
For a considerable part of his life (until the Amritsar massacre), Ghandi quite vocally wished to remain a part of the British Empire and Ghandi quite frequently argued his case in the law courts at various periods in his life. It is your own assumption that he was against law.
I've read numerous posts by you here dada21, and you have expounded your ideas about anarcho-capitalism in threads on just about every sunject imaginable. Do me a favour, if you wish to study Ghandi's beliefs and life, then I whole-heartedly encourage you to do so. He was a very great person. But please do not presume to use him name as some sort of figurehead for your own beliefs. He wont fit them and you'll dirty his name by trying to make him fit them.
Um, Ghandi was a lawyer. And not a half bad one, either. I don't think he had a problem using the law against his opponents, it was violence that he renounced, not litigation.
Have you contacted the developers? If you are making commercial use of the project then offer a financial incentive to do a release. I don't know which project you refer to, but hopefully pulling all the CVS code together to make a new release wouldn't be a unrealistic task and a little renumeration might get you that. You can but ask!
You are both completely right and I am wrong. The scary thing is that I am usually the one pointing out that Iraq is a modern state and [was until US occupation] secular. Re-reading my post I can see that I'm misguided even without your replies. Now I have to reassess just how very difficult it is to avoid picking up the prevailing misconceptions of your society.
I can't edit my comment, so I hope that lots of other people have read your rebuttals. Thanks!
-H.
I think you need to flesh out your copyright argument a bit, but yes - the free flow of information from other cultures does undermine islamic control in middle eastern countries, and would result in a collapse of regimes and religious authority out there. But there is a strong counter-acting force and that is Western aggression and oil-theft. There's no better argument for a hardline islamic who wishes to oppose free speech and democracy than pointing at the thousands of dead and the the aggressive rule of a country by foreign companies. Saying Western culture is sending mixed messages doesn't come close.
If Western governments really wanted to change things out there, they should have spent a half of the cost of the war effort so far with sponsoring Western style schools throughout the middle east. What low to middle-class parents in Saudi or U.A.E. or even Iraq wouldn't sign up their child for a modern, financially supported education. Some wouldn't, but many others would. Yes, this could even have been done in Iraq. Offer aid, lower sanctions. It would be a package that even Saddam Hussein couldn't have stopped the country from taking up.
Results of a program like this, or other similar aid schemes, would have been improved relations with the Western world, a heavy undermining of anti-western, mono-cultural leaders, a more educated and informed people with which to find yourself living next door to in ten or twenty years time; and maybe a bit less national debt on the part of the US too.
But instead, it was decided to conquer the country and install Western multinational companies in control. This is going to end very badly for the US.
I see. I can't speak for Secondary Care (hospitals and the like), but Primary Care (general practice) doesn't normally use encryption for much of anything as confidential data doesn't usually leave the site, so this wouldn't have encompassed us really. What's going on at the moment is a determined push (pusch?) to centralise our patient data so that it is no longer in the hands of individual practices. Naturally, we can no longer promise confidentiality of a patient's medical history if we allow this. As I said though, fighting it is difficult.
***simplification warning***
Diabetes I is a lack of insulin production. It isn't fully understood but you're unlikely to cure it with Yoga. It does however account for only about 10% of diabetes incidences. The rest is mostly type II which is a lack of response to insulin (insulin resistant). This is also not fully understood but obesity and sedentary life-style seem to be strong contributory factors so a great big uptake of Yoga (the physical kind) on the part of the population might well have a significant effect on reducing this sort of diabetes. It would also have a very positive effect on controlling the impact of diabetes on their lives as weight is a big part of a diabetes management plan.
So don't get too hippy on us - yoga, meditation, a more careful diet will have very positive gains on diabetes at a social level, but don't tout it as a reversing genetic conditions.
No, I think the flaw must be in the voter's awareness and judgement because remove that, and elections no longer appear flawed. Education and accurate information is the solution, not meddling with elections (bar a few refinements that could be made to the process.
There was also a NHS patient database project in the UK that was cancelled in the 90's, due mainly to doctors refusing the governments key escrow demands.
Can you point me at more information on this? I work in the NHS now, and I can tell you that there are major privacy-infringing initiatives being rammed down our throats. There's a lot of complaining, but whatever resistance was shown in the 90's seems to have been diluted now. Money paid to general practice is being withdrawn from things of clinical importance and instead paid for uptake of the new I.T. systems, forcing practices to migrate.
I'd be really interested in hearing about any previous battles over this.
Well if no-one else answers in the time it takes to post this; it is different because you are required to hand over keys in advance without cause. This means no reasonable grounds for suspicion or judicial oversight are required. This means that you are never informed that your private emails or accounts are now being scanned. This is why it's different.