Well there are many contexts in which you don't want sexually explicit details of any orientation shoved in your face. If I were playing an online game I probably wouldn't want to see graphic descriptions of another players sex life appearing on my screen regardless of orientation. But your comment is misrepresenting what I said (and what this woman said in her profile, apparently). I simply referred to a statement about someone stating their orientation which is no more graphic when someone says "I'm a lesbian" than it is when someone says "I'm straight." That's very different to your objecting to someone "shoving in your face what you like to fuck or lick" as you say, which makes it sound like there is sexual content which there wasn't.
I was kind of homophobic as a kid. It was only through exposure that I eventually realised I didn't give a fuck about someone's orientation. People's minds can and do change and it happens all the time. I watched some kids who were quite racist at school lose their racism when a black kid (it was a fairly white area) joined our school and it slowly dawned on these kids that when they made anti-black comments they were actually talking about one of their friends. Exposure is the way to reduce prejudice and it works all the time. But by your arguments Rosa Parks should have bloody well known her place and gone to the back of the bus. Same logic. Although this is to a far less degree. There's a profile section that says: "Tell us about yourself..." So she did. Shouldn't be her problem that some people don't like what she is. There's nothing offensive about being a lesbian, but that's what Microsoft are saying.
That makes so little sense it's bizarre. It's not normally offensive to a gay person to say "I am straight", so why should it be offensive to a straight person to say "I am gay" ? Seriously, no-one here honestly believes that someone would have been banned for saying they had a boyfriend or girlfriend in their profile if they were a girl or boy respectively. No-one here honestly believes that someone's account would have been closed if their profile said: "I'm hetero." So it is correct to point out that this is a double standard. And as to other people being offended? Well you can be offended by people's actions and statements toward you, but if someone is offended by a personal detail about you, that's their problem and you shouldn't be punished for it. According to the article, this girl was hounded by others who kept following her into games and telling other players to "turn her in." That isn't acceptable if someone's profile says they're Black, or Indian or White or Christian or Muslim, and it isn't acceptable if someone says they're gay. Profiles are so you can learn a bit about the other person if you wish to. Being gay is a fundamental part of who someone is. At least most gay people would consider it to be and they're perfectly entitled to put that in their profile if they wish.
I'm a regular and long-term supporter of Barnardos who do a lot of great work. I'm sorry to see them on the list of signees for this charity and I shall write to them about it in due course. NSPCC I am not at all surprised to see on the list as they are an organization primarily focused on fear and shock tactics. They do little more than terrify adults from the very idea of having contact with children for fear of being suspected a child abuser.
The Roman Republic lasted from 508 BC to 27 BC (181 years), and the Roman Empire from 27 BC to AD 476 (503 years), for a total of 684 years, setting the foundation for much of Western civilization.
I think you typoed. 508 BC to 27 BC is not 181 years, but 481 years. You also picked the end date of the Western Roman Empire. Technically, the Roman Empire had ceased to exist as a single entity about a hundred years before that, having split in two, but this latter is a minor point. I just wanted to highlight the length of the Republic phase of Rome was nearly as long as the Empire phase. The circumstances might be considered different however, in that you had a lot of subject states forming part of the "Republic" that certainly weren't represented democratically. But yes, republics can and have worked.
Do not ignore the many non-partisan people who object to any wrong-doing on any party's part. Excusing every wrong by pointing out that someone else did the same wrong, does not lead to a situation with less wrong-doing, but rather more.
Hmmmm. Okay, switch "point of open formats..." to "advantage of open formats...". Usually the advantage of something is the point of something, but if there are well-established other perspectives then I'm happy to shift terminology. I'm interested in communicating my argument, rather than just argument.;)
Not according to Richard Stallman, one of the pioneering advocates of F/OSS.
We are free to disagree with Mr. Stallman.;) Though I usually find his reasoning very solid - what is it he has said on the subject that I'm contradicting? Source?
That sounds pretty bad. As with most things, there are good ways of doing things and bad ways of doing things. Just because you tell someone to do some more exercise and they then decide to go jogging through a mine-field, doesn't mean your suggestion was bad, exactly. By "in-house" I meant that the organisation should reduce reliance on outside companies and maintain control over the work they are paying for itself. Your former place of work doesn't sound like they were doing things "in-house" by my standards. It sounds like they had given up direct control over the project and gained nothing in return, along with having to pay for an extra layer of profit for the contracting company's pockets. If the project is of the scale yours sounds like, probably better to hire a decent project manager directly and the necessary staff accordingly. There are no hard and fast rules, but I repeatedly see the UK government over here hand great wads of cash to large companies for vastly overpriced software systems that don't do what was promised and without any means of come back at the outside company. If they'd managed the project themselves, it would likely have been better and almost certainly cheaper.
For the last year I have been employed to work almost exclusively on customising a piece of open source software (Moodle) for my employer's needs. Many of these changes will shortly be passed back to the community. That's how much of Open Source works - the burden of development is shared by those who use it.
In this case stating "level playing field" and "mandating" don't match. If you are mandating open/free formats then you are kicking out of play any group that uses closed/pay formats. While you may be happy about this setup it negates your "level playing field"
Not exactly. The point of open formats / protocols is that anyone can use them in their software including closed, proprietary products. E.g. there is no legal reason Microsoft Word cannot include a Save to ODF option amongst their file type options. Thus it *is* a level playing field in that everyone can compete. If you're saying that Microsoft in our example could say "we don't want to play anymore and we're going home," then they could, but it is their choice. If you're arguing that OpenOffice.org or KOffice have an unfair advantage because they already support it, then I'd have to say it's less of an unfair advantage than using Word 2007 format is against non-Microsoft companies. We thus have increased the levelness of the playing field by mandating open and free formats. As to your suggestion that mandating "compatible" is a better approach, I would prefer open because the latter already enables the former plus merely mandating "compatibility" is open to a lot of abuse. E.g. OpenOffice can produce Word documents (and very well), but it will always be playing catch-up so long as Microsoft controls the format.
Probably not. The best things to do are twofold. Firstly, ensure a level playing field by mandating open and free formats, protocols and standards for all government operations. That's what Open Source really needs to compete and it's a good thing from the point of view of openness of information, maintenance and future-proofing anyway. The second thing that the government should probably do is to bloody well start doing things in-house again. None of this outsourcing to massive corporations that spend 90% of the money on managerial salaries and bonuses and
Greenpeace, much as they like to act like it, do not represent everyone who cares about the environment. Sometimes they do some good, but in my experience with them, they are mainly populated by people who wish to get even with society in some way. There are a whole world of serious environmentalists out here who will happily consider new technologies. Personally I don't know enough about the risks of transmitting energy down to Earth from space based solar collectors, or what the life-span / maintenance issues of such a system would be compared to what it would deliver. But I consider myself "green" and I think it sounds like a wonderful idea in outline. All groups have loud sub-groups that make easy targets for those that wish to disparage the entire movement.
Also, the difference between "year 11 high school students" and 1st year college/university students is a matter of about a year. Do you really think teenagers mature that much in just a year or so?
Teenagers are all over the place in terms of knowledge and experience. In your year 11 class, you'll have people perfectly capable of doing what you describe and people who aren't. Neither group may change much in a year, but one hopes that the 1st year college students are comprised by the former sub-section of the year 11 class.
Anything that blows up is probably a Chemistry experiment, not a Physics experiment
Yeah? Well you haven't seen my high school physics project yet. Man, getting hold of the Plutonium was hard, but the teacher's going to give me an 'A' for sure!
Wow! That post was extremely informative AND interesting. A pity you posted as Anonymous Coward because (a) I'd have liked you to get my thanks for posting and (b) you probably wouldn't be languishing down at 0 where fewer people will see what you've written. Great post, though.
Okay. I've mulled this all over and I think you've convinced me. Let's just clarify what you're saying. On the basis that life exists, and unable to define life as distinct from any other processes, everything is therefore alive.
You know I'm a spiritual sort. I kind of like where you've led this.:)
I'm going to come in here, rather than reply to your earlier post, because others have taken my suggestion and run with it. Firstly, fire is never a process that could accurately be described as negative entropy. It releases the energy stored in molecules and configures them into a lower energy state. If it were negative entropy, burnt fuel would have more energy stored in it than before it was burnt. That is never the case. Of course you may refer to things present in the fire that absorb some of the energy, but those are being burnt and aren't part of the fire. In fact, it's pretty misleading to talk about "fire" altogether since fire as commonly perceived is the hot carbon glowing red and flying away from the combustion itself. Fire is an abstract concept, an impression created by a human's inability to discern millions of very small, very fast moving particles. For that reason, let's talk about combustion instead. Can you say of all the previous examples that the process of combustion meets your criteria for life?
Have you read some of the recent stuff about the Universe being a hologram? The Universe would not be God, but merely a thought of God, or the interaction of two separate beings. One becomes two. Two become many.;) At any rate, it's a beautiful idea you have and you're not the only one that thinks about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well there are many contexts in which you don't want sexually explicit details of any orientation shoved in your face. If I were playing an online game I probably wouldn't want to see graphic descriptions of another players sex life appearing on my screen regardless of orientation. But your comment is misrepresenting what I said (and what this woman said in her profile, apparently). I simply referred to a statement about someone stating their orientation which is no more graphic when someone says "I'm a lesbian" than it is when someone says "I'm straight." That's very different to your objecting to someone "shoving in your face what you like to fuck or lick" as you say, which makes it sound like there is sexual content which there wasn't.
I don't share your opinion of immorality, but I find your principle of not enforcing your opinion on others highly admirable. Good for you. :)
I was kind of homophobic as a kid. It was only through exposure that I eventually realised I didn't give a fuck about someone's orientation. People's minds can and do change and it happens all the time. I watched some kids who were quite racist at school lose their racism when a black kid (it was a fairly white area) joined our school and it slowly dawned on these kids that when they made anti-black comments they were actually talking about one of their friends. Exposure is the way to reduce prejudice and it works all the time. But by your arguments Rosa Parks should have bloody well known her place and gone to the back of the bus. Same logic. Although this is to a far less degree. There's a profile section that says: "Tell us about yourself..." So she did. Shouldn't be her problem that some people don't like what she is. There's nothing offensive about being a lesbian, but that's what Microsoft are saying.
That makes so little sense it's bizarre. It's not normally offensive to a gay person to say "I am straight", so why should it be offensive to a straight person to say "I am gay" ? Seriously, no-one here honestly believes that someone would have been banned for saying they had a boyfriend or girlfriend in their profile if they were a girl or boy respectively. No-one here honestly believes that someone's account would have been closed if their profile said: "I'm hetero." So it is correct to point out that this is a double standard. And as to other people being offended? Well you can be offended by people's actions and statements toward you, but if someone is offended by a personal detail about you, that's their problem and you shouldn't be punished for it. According to the article, this girl was hounded by others who kept following her into games and telling other players to "turn her in." That isn't acceptable if someone's profile says they're Black, or Indian or White or Christian or Muslim, and it isn't acceptable if someone says they're gay. Profiles are so you can learn a bit about the other person if you wish to. Being gay is a fundamental part of who someone is. At least most gay people would consider it to be and they're perfectly entitled to put that in their profile if they wish.
I'm a regular and long-term supporter of Barnardos who do a lot of great work. I'm sorry to see them on the list of signees for this charity and I shall write to them about it in due course. NSPCC I am not at all surprised to see on the list as they are an organization primarily focused on fear and shock tactics. They do little more than terrify adults from the very idea of having contact with children for fear of being suspected a child abuser.
I think you typoed. 508 BC to 27 BC is not 181 years, but 481 years. You also picked the end date of the Western Roman Empire. Technically, the Roman Empire had ceased to exist as a single entity about a hundred years before that, having split in two, but this latter is a minor point. I just wanted to highlight the length of the Republic phase of Rome was nearly as long as the Empire phase. The circumstances might be considered different however, in that you had a lot of subject states forming part of the "Republic" that certainly weren't represented democratically. But yes, republics can and have worked.
Do not ignore the many non-partisan people who object to any wrong-doing on any party's part. Excusing every wrong by pointing out that someone else did the same wrong, does not lead to a situation with less wrong-doing, but rather more.
Hmmmm. Okay, switch "point of open formats..." to "advantage of open formats...". Usually the advantage of something is the point of something, but if there are well-established other perspectives then I'm happy to shift terminology. I'm interested in communicating my argument, rather than just argument.
Regards,
H.
We are free to disagree with Mr. Stallman. ;) Though I usually find his reasoning very solid - what is it he has said on the subject that I'm contradicting? Source?
That sounds pretty bad. As with most things, there are good ways of doing things and bad ways of doing things. Just because you tell someone to do some more exercise and they then decide to go jogging through a mine-field, doesn't mean your suggestion was bad, exactly. By "in-house" I meant that the organisation should reduce reliance on outside companies and maintain control over the work they are paying for itself. Your former place of work doesn't sound like they were doing things "in-house" by my standards. It sounds like they had given up direct control over the project and gained nothing in return, along with having to pay for an extra layer of profit for the contracting company's pockets. If the project is of the scale yours sounds like, probably better to hire a decent project manager directly and the necessary staff accordingly. There are no hard and fast rules, but I repeatedly see the UK government over here hand great wads of cash to large companies for vastly overpriced software systems that don't do what was promised and without any means of come back at the outside company. If they'd managed the project themselves, it would likely have been better and almost certainly cheaper.
For the last year I have been employed to work almost exclusively on customising a piece of open source software (Moodle) for my employer's needs. Many of these changes will shortly be passed back to the community. That's how much of Open Source works - the burden of development is shared by those who use it.
Not exactly. The point of open formats / protocols is that anyone can use them in their software including closed, proprietary products. E.g. there is no legal reason Microsoft Word cannot include a Save to ODF option amongst their file type options. Thus it *is* a level playing field in that everyone can compete. If you're saying that Microsoft in our example could say "we don't want to play anymore and we're going home," then they could, but it is their choice. If you're arguing that OpenOffice.org or KOffice have an unfair advantage because they already support it, then I'd have to say it's less of an unfair advantage than using Word 2007 format is against non-Microsoft companies. We thus have increased the levelness of the playing field by mandating open and free formats. As to your suggestion that mandating "compatible" is a better approach, I would prefer open because the latter already enables the former plus merely mandating "compatibility" is open to a lot of abuse. E.g. OpenOffice can produce Word documents (and very well), but it will always be playing catch-up so long as Microsoft controls the format.
Regards,
H.
Probably not. The best things to do are twofold. Firstly, ensure a level playing field by mandating open and free formats, protocols and standards for all government operations. That's what Open Source really needs to compete and it's a good thing from the point of view of openness of information, maintenance and future-proofing anyway. The second thing that the government should probably do is to bloody well start doing things in-house again. None of this outsourcing to massive corporations that spend 90% of the money on managerial salaries and bonuses and
Greenpeace, much as they like to act like it, do not represent everyone who cares about the environment. Sometimes they do some good, but in my experience with them, they are mainly populated by people who wish to get even with society in some way. There are a whole world of serious environmentalists out here who will happily consider new technologies. Personally I don't know enough about the risks of transmitting energy down to Earth from space based solar collectors, or what the life-span / maintenance issues of such a system would be compared to what it would deliver. But I consider myself "green" and I think it sounds like a wonderful idea in outline. All groups have loud sub-groups that make easy targets for those that wish to disparage the entire movement.
Can you explain a bit more for those of us unfamiliar with the subject? Sounds interesting...
Or through it.
Teenagers are all over the place in terms of knowledge and experience. In your year 11 class, you'll have people perfectly capable of doing what you describe and people who aren't. Neither group may change much in a year, but one hopes that the 1st year college students are comprised by the former sub-section of the year 11 class.
Hmmmm... *clicks buy*
Yeah? Well you haven't seen my high school physics project yet. Man, getting hold of the Plutonium was hard, but the teacher's going to give me an 'A' for sure!
Wow! That post was extremely informative AND interesting. A pity you posted as Anonymous Coward because (a) I'd have liked you to get my thanks for posting and (b) you probably wouldn't be languishing down at 0 where fewer people will see what you've written. Great post, though.
Okay. I've mulled this all over and I think you've convinced me. Let's just clarify what you're saying. On the basis that life exists, and unable to define life as distinct from any other processes, everything is therefore alive.
You know I'm a spiritual sort. I kind of like where you've led this.
Regards,
H.
I'm going to come in here, rather than reply to your earlier post, because others have taken my suggestion and run with it. Firstly, fire is never a process that could accurately be described as negative entropy. It releases the energy stored in molecules and configures them into a lower energy state. If it were negative entropy, burnt fuel would have more energy stored in it than before it was burnt. That is never the case. Of course you may refer to things present in the fire that absorb some of the energy, but those are being burnt and aren't part of the fire. In fact, it's pretty misleading to talk about "fire" altogether since fire as commonly perceived is the hot carbon glowing red and flying away from the combustion itself. Fire is an abstract concept, an impression created by a human's inability to discern millions of very small, very fast moving particles. For that reason, let's talk about combustion instead. Can you say of all the previous examples that the process of combustion meets your criteria for life?
Funny how the US people started calling the French cowards for standing up to oppose them in the UN.
Have you read some of the recent stuff about the Universe being a hologram? The Universe would not be God, but merely a thought of God, or the interaction of two separate beings. One becomes two. Two become many.
Heh! That was fun.