Whilst indeed it's not a government action, as someone else has pointed out further up the comments page - what about common carrier status of the hosting company?
Having them pick and choose what content they consider acceptable basically means they forfeit such protections. Let's hope they don't have any other website that people find distasteful, as they have may just have accepted responsibility for them in the eyes of the law.
Scientology must be rubbing it's hands with glee when it sees hosting companies pull this kinda crap.
Don't get me wrong that preacher is an idiot and a bigot, but Rackspace made an error here IMHO.
Steam wont send me the confirmation email for my account.
They took my money, but since they won't send me an email, I can't do squat about support. Basically I am just ripped off.
Now you're probably already accustomed to being ripped off (being a Mac owner), but once you have your steam account here's what the future holds for you, at no charge:
* Take down your pants * Insert a (light red/light blue/light green) popsicle in your ass * Start "visiting the pope"
That's basically the exact same experience you will get if you choose to upgrade your mac so that you can run these new games that Steam isn't letting you install or run.
(Note: I am a Mac owner who enjoys his Mac under linux, where opengl is but a fair memory of happy accelerated days using university computers where it does "just work").
O crap, now with all this rambling I've gone and missed any point.
I've probably not even said anything the slightest bit relevant to what you originally said. This would explain why I don't get modpoints anymore and I am a burden on the system.
Unfortunately your "two sides to a debate" maxim more or less embodies all of the problems currently existing in American politics.
There is never _just two sides to an argument_ with only a gradual slide in between the two viewpoints.
Reality is infinitely more complex than that.
I give you props that you do suggest sensible prosecution strategies - I just don't agree that extreme viewpoints are productive to a sensible outcome.
In my ideal world, extreme viewpoints should remain that, extreme. As they don't encompass a large enough segment of the population their opinions should be drowned out through numbers.
There are plenty of road circuits (even smaller club tracks) where you can pay to have that thrill in the relative safety of an environment made for it! And it's legal!
Your other option is to go the route of one of the hyper real simulators (iRacing etc).
I'm sure you've already had the pep talk so I leave it here:-)
If your definition of spirit is U.S.A. centric, perhaps. I'm British and "spirit" doesn't have the "soul" or theistic meaning you instill in it above. It might be cultural though.
Ummm, it's only been the last couple hundred years that science and religion are diametrically opposed. Prior to that, science and religion worked together.
Also historically religion has a bad reputation as being a locked brake on the driving wheel of progress (see flat world, ptolemy planetary model).
This isn't to say that all problems in scientific progress are religions fault - but claiming the two are great bedfellows shows a shallow understanding of one or the other.
So please, keep the churches out of the testtubes (i.e. currently bological sciences + cosmology).
B.T.W. - Science does not go out of it's way to oppose religion. If trying to explain the facts about how reality works is opposing someones scripture - well - tough luck.
Etymology of the term "spirit" comes from "breath" originally (Latin Spiritus). Historically here in Europe spirit often is synonymous with "mind" (German Geist or French l'espirit)
Christian terminology seems to have moved it more towards the "soul" meaning you seem accustomed to.
Personally not having been raising in a theocratic environment the "soul" association for me is weak.
Yup, it's kind of annoying really. Thing is though, if you're talking about a creator, science just isn't a great tool for dissection. It'd be like analysing Slashdot developers based on the HTML and Javascript for this site - you might get out a bit of psychoanalysis, but you probably won't be able to determine the colour of their hair. If a god's the creator, then (s)he defined the rules. That's a bummer for finding an easy-kill argument for religious belief, but it's a sensible starting point for the discussion, rather than an argument-avoiding excuse.
Well strictly speaking since we have no evidence of said supreme being your example would be better put as:
"It'd be like analysing some ancient website developers without ever seeing the HTML website or indeed any evidence that they exist other than some rumours on reddit from a few thousand years ago". Just so we are clear:-)
Your arguement here once again falls into the smokescreen of "well we can't know". If I claim I'm the second coming of Jesus Christ do you believe me? Why not? Why is one more plausable than the other?
By the way you already know I'm sure but if you push the creation idea back on a "god" you haven't actually answered creation, you've only punted it one back up the tree (see turtles all the way down).
Having had a "religious" upbringing and been on the scene for a while, I'm not sure I've ever had anyone tell me to do the former. YMMV, but again, that's part of the point : it's not about a single "religion" or a single approach. Religions can be open and closed, questioning and scared. You can't lump them all together in this kind of a discussion
If this was true, why is it that where a person is born has such a large influence on the likelyhood of which religion they might follow?
What I'm getting at with this - if there are "open" religions as you posit - why am I more likely to follow one "open" religion if I am born in the United States?
The best description I can give of the feeling would be of "feeling the universe" - it's a little cliched I know but it does indeed offer some zen like feeling of finding ones places in everything amongst the majesty and scale of existence.
It didn't make me feel like I had a "soul" and didn't make me jump into worship - it just made me feel more deeply seated in the 'verse.
But definitely within the definition I mentioned at wikipedia, "spiritual".
I'd be reluctant to say "supernatural" - having done LSD a number of times and had what I would definitely call a spiritual experience I'm having trouble understanding your point.
Pretending that there's one "god" portrayed differently by the various religions isn't helping your case.
I guess I badly worded it - I was talking all the "gods" portayed in the classical religions, not referring to them all being the same god (but isn't having the same god something that most religions argue is what unites them?)
"Logical challenges a scientific analysis demands" suggesting that a divine being (perhaps the source of the universe), is somehow subject to science, is a curious argument at best.
If you are advocating that somehow this being is outside of our realm of existence / laws - well you've fallen back into the classical religious defense - it's magic and you just can't know. I'm at a loss at this point. I do have a teaport orbiting jupiter, though.
There's diversity out there, which is why the conversation is worth having : how do different beliefs interact with people's way of understanding science
Sure different people convince themselves in different ways - but it doesn't change the fundamental energy mismatch between the two.
One says "we tell you it is like this and you must not disagree" the other tells you "question it all and judge for yourself".
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or immaterial reality;[1] an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of their being; or the "deepest values and meanings by which people live."
And in fact talk to any number of people who have taken hallucinogens - a spiritual journey is a common ingredient.
This common misconception that religion harbors "unique experiences" is bunkum.
I just want you know your post is deserving of mod points.
I don't get mod points anymore because in this sort of situation previously I'd look for a funny comment involving poo and other body functions and mod that up.
That's why I don't get mod points anymore.
But if I had points and there were no poo posts, you'd get it dude.
I mean, if you've already subscribed to the scientific process, it's opening yourself up for ridicule if you confess to the classical theological beliefs. Why?
I'll tell you why - the magical mystical god of the various books is hugely inconsistent and fails the basic logical challenges a scientific analysis demands.
Science and religion are diametrically opposed in one specific thing - religion insists on telling us "it is so", while science will treat us like adults and tell us "we don't know - here is our best guess so far".
If it's any consolation for the "but but" squad - I am unhappy with Dawkins et als representation of science. Scientific laws and theories are not _de facto_ rules of the universe, and portraying them as fact does science a disservice.
It's quite tricky when you have your head up your ass.
The thing that impressed me is that we're hearing about it - one of them worked out how to get a USB keyboard and mouse far enough up there to write their letter of displeasure.
I gave up building web front ends about five years ago - I didn't want to move over to the newer techs like flash and ajax as I found them clunky and messy solutions.
The romance went out of the "web" for me at that point and it became just another ad platform.
I do purely the back end tier now and let someone else make the front end choices (sometimes JSP/Servlets, has been XML/RPC to.Net apps too).
I recently left a Bank who were transitioning their WCMS and client facing interface onto FLEX. Its a disaster waiting to happen frankly and I said so (gently mind, I've got a heart).
To answer your question - at a push, I'd advise someone to put their videos up on youtube and link / use that. Bandwidth can be easily scaled and when this current video mess is sorted out, youtube will have resolved it for me:-)
Personally I feel the internet has to be based around free non-patent encumbered standards. Yes it's currently a lofty goal and we can't do it overnight (we should never have let it get this far, but people like shiny toys, don't they.)
This does means that Flash and the MPEG-LA just smell wrong. I couldn't care less about demonising them - the techs wrong, plain and simple.
Adobe is busy wetting themselves over someone else monopolising important tech toys. Don't disturb them.
It'd be entertaining if it hasn't been holding back the free web for so long. Look how much energy people have put into "flashifying" the web. Sad really.
Incredible job. If I forward my landlords address any chance you can get him to look into the sperm/hairball blocking the shower pipes?
Mr Dopely Lazy Reluctant Owner Street Wankingstone Spermorton England
For anonymity, please only call me "Dave", and the sperm and hair were from some big guy who broke in one night and went all "pope cleansing" in there.
It's got nothing to do with "being bullied" but everything to do with the individual asserting themselves and having confidence.
The only change is that your peers can see it when you are bullied. For most well adjusted children, they don't need to "show" it until they are pushed (fight or flight response).
Study falls into the old "correlation does not equal causation" trap.
No, I believe that all political discourse should be considered in the context of the culture it occurs in. And I believe that all proposed political solutions should be evaluated in the context of the current situation because any attempt at moving a society to some sort of "ideal state" inevitably leads to ruin.
But this rules out any scientific quantisation of the thing being discussed - since we cannot place in the larger context of all political opinion.
From a scientific viewpoint we can easily create a set of axes (personal freedom, economic freedom, moral freedom and so on) and then grade all parties within such a space. It won't be exact, but will give us a rough guide to where parties sit. See the political compass website for one such example.
I'm well aware of this fact, but I'm also not aware of any societies where political discourse doesn't occur along a 1-dimensional subspace of that multi-dimensional space. The line along which debate is organized shifts over time, but at any given time all of the mainstream factions are collinear.
If you look at countries like the Netherlands + Belgium (ones that come to mind) you have a multiplicity of parties involved in the political process - there isn't "left" or "right" labels applied to them since there are so many parties. They populate the multi-dimensional political space in different places. That's not to say the general populace in these countries don't use "left" or "right" - they have this educational issue too:-) I am merely demonstrating a counter-example to your collinear claim.
You misunderstand the problem. "Left" and "right" in America, or their counterparts in any country, are simply masks over people's emotional responses to the problems in society. I agree that the polarization is problematic and railed against it in another post. The only real way forward is to understand what people feel, change some attitudes if possible, and seek the simplest compromise between opposing emotions.
I'm not sure I agree with you here - if anything it shows how mal-educated the general populace is that they need societies complex problems boiled down into 2 choices. And it is tough luck if your political opinion doesn't fall into one of these two choices....
This is my beef with "left" vs "right". It is basically dumbing down politics and making people polarised.
This is kind of silly. The political spectra of countries with different cultures and problems are not comparable in this way.
Ah, you favour the "America is unique in the world because I say it is so" exceptionalism approach.
And the parent poster is correct - America has spent so long being "the right" that real left has been demonised (Communism and Fascism and Socialism are totally misunderstood).
The fact that in America you're either "left" or your "right" is the source of the problem. The political spectrum is not a line - it's a multi-dimensional space.
Unfortunately due to a lack of education and discussion on the topic this duality simply polarises opinion and policy. American politics has become "you're either with us or against us" and you get people tactical voting instead of really expressing their opinions.
Until the populace properly educates itself this isn't a problem that will go away. And yes, I'm looking at you for your simplification into "left" and "right".
Slashdot Mirror
Whilst indeed it's not a government action, as someone else has pointed out further up the comments page - what about common carrier status of the hosting company?
Having them pick and choose what content they consider acceptable basically means they forfeit such protections. Let's hope they don't have any other website that people find distasteful, as they have may just have accepted responsibility for them in the eyes of the law.
Scientology must be rubbing it's hands with glee when it sees hosting companies pull this kinda crap.
Don't get me wrong that preacher is an idiot and a bigot, but Rackspace made an error here IMHO.
Dude you seem to have accidentally posted to the wrong internet site.
You were probably trying to post this to a derogatory nerd story on digg.
Go hang out there with other 15 jocks who wish they were on tech salaries.
Enough already with the scaredy tactics and mentioning of terrorists.
Seriously, what happened with people's right to privacy?
I'm sick and tired of this fear culture impinging on what I can and cannot do.
And yes, I've lived through the IRA bombings in the iron mile in central London, so I am aware totally of "idiots" out there.
I couldn't give a crap if they have encryption. Boo hoo if it makes the police's job difficult.
Now you're probably already accustomed to being ripped off (being a Mac owner), but once you have your steam account here's what the future holds for you, at no charge:
* Take down your pants
* Insert a (light red/light blue/light green) popsicle in your ass
* Start "visiting the pope"
That's basically the exact same experience you will get if you choose to upgrade your mac so that you can run these new games that Steam isn't letting you install or run.
(Note: I am a Mac owner who enjoys his Mac under linux, where opengl is but a fair memory of happy accelerated days using university computers where it does "just work").
O crap, now with all this rambling I've gone and missed any point.
I've probably not even said anything the slightest bit relevant to what you originally said. This would explain why I don't get modpoints anymore and I am a burden on the system.
I love friday nights.
Unfortunately your "two sides to a debate" maxim more or less embodies all of the problems currently existing in American politics.
There is never _just two sides to an argument_ with only a gradual slide in between the two viewpoints.
Reality is infinitely more complex than that.
I give you props that you do suggest sensible prosecution strategies - I just don't agree that extreme viewpoints are productive to a sensible outcome.
In my ideal world, extreme viewpoints should remain that, extreme. As they don't encompass a large enough segment of the population their opinions should be drowned out through numbers.
The argument that an educated few should decide for the uneducated masses was obliterated during the Renaissance.
It's a shame the mechanism wasn't annihilated, too. (See two dog race, financial status of the ruling class etc)
If you enjoy it why not do track days?
There are plenty of road circuits (even smaller club tracks) where you can pay to have that thrill in the relative safety of an environment made for it! And it's legal!
Your other option is to go the route of one of the hyper real simulators (iRacing etc).
I'm sure you've already had the pep talk so I leave it here :-)
If your definition of spirit is U.S.A. centric, perhaps. I'm British and "spirit" doesn't have the "soul" or theistic meaning you instill in it above. It might be cultural though.
Spirit.
Copernicus, heliocentrism 16th century (Galileo was in on that one).
Also historically religion has a bad reputation as being a locked brake on the driving wheel of progress (see flat world, ptolemy planetary model).
This isn't to say that all problems in scientific progress are religions fault - but claiming the two are great bedfellows shows a shallow understanding of one or the other.
So please, keep the churches out of the testtubes (i.e. currently bological sciences + cosmology).
B.T.W. - Science does not go out of it's way to oppose religion. If trying to explain the facts about how reality works is opposing someones scripture - well - tough luck.
Hmm, I'm guessing it's a cultural difference.
Etymology of the term "spirit" comes from "breath" originally (Latin Spiritus). Historically here in Europe spirit often is synonymous with "mind" (German Geist or French l'espirit)
Christian terminology seems to have moved it more towards the "soul" meaning you seem accustomed to.
Personally not having been raising in a theocratic environment the "soul" association for me is weak.
Well strictly speaking since we have no evidence of said supreme being your example would be better put as:
"It'd be like analysing some ancient website developers without ever seeing the HTML website or indeed any evidence that they exist other than some rumours on reddit from a few thousand years ago". Just so we are clear :-)
Your arguement here once again falls into the smokescreen of "well we can't know". If I claim I'm the second coming of Jesus Christ do you believe me? Why not? Why is one more plausable than the other?
By the way you already know I'm sure but if you push the creation idea back on a "god" you haven't actually answered creation, you've only punted it one back up the tree (see turtles all the way down).
If this was true, why is it that where a person is born has such a large influence on the likelyhood of which religion they might follow?
What I'm getting at with this - if there are "open" religions as you posit - why am I more likely to follow one "open" religion if I am born in the United States?
Well thanks for asking.
The best description I can give of the feeling would be of "feeling the universe" - it's a little cliched I know but it does indeed offer some zen like feeling of finding ones places in everything amongst the majesty and scale of existence.
It didn't make me feel like I had a "soul" and didn't make me jump into worship - it just made me feel more deeply seated in the 'verse.
But definitely within the definition I mentioned at wikipedia, "spiritual".
And I'm not the first to point this out .-)
I'd be reluctant to say "supernatural" - having done LSD a number of times and had what I would definitely call a spiritual experience I'm having trouble understanding your point.
I guess I badly worded it - I was talking all the "gods" portayed in the classical religions, not referring to them all being the same god (but isn't having the same god something that most religions argue is what unites them?)
Have you heard of the omnipotence paradox?
If you are advocating that somehow this being is outside of our realm of existence / laws - well you've fallen back into the classical religious defense - it's magic and you just can't know. I'm at a loss at this point. I do have a teaport orbiting jupiter, though.
Sure different people convince themselves in different ways - but it doesn't change the fundamental energy mismatch between the two.
One says "we tell you it is like this and you must not disagree" the other tells you "question it all and judge for yourself".
That's pretty different, as approaches go.
Well wikipedia disagrees with you here:
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or immaterial reality;[1] an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of their being; or the "deepest values and meanings by which people live."
And in fact talk to any number of people who have taken hallucinogens - a spiritual journey is a common ingredient.
This common misconception that religion harbors "unique experiences" is bunkum.
I just want you know your post is deserving of mod points.
I don't get mod points anymore because in this sort of situation previously I'd look for a funny comment involving poo and other body functions and mod that up.
That's why I don't get mod points anymore.
But if I had points and there were no poo posts, you'd get it dude.
I mean, if you've already subscribed to the scientific process, it's opening yourself up for ridicule if you confess to the classical theological beliefs. Why?
I'll tell you why - the magical mystical god of the various books is hugely inconsistent and fails the basic logical challenges a scientific analysis demands.
Science and religion are diametrically opposed in one specific thing - religion insists on telling us "it is so", while science will treat us like adults and tell us "we don't know - here is our best guess so far".
If it's any consolation for the "but but" squad - I am unhappy with Dawkins et als representation of science. Scientific laws and theories are not _de facto_ rules of the universe, and portraying them as fact does science a disservice.
Now here come the flame mods :-)
It's quite tricky when you have your head up your ass.
The thing that impressed me is that we're hearing about it - one of them worked out how to get a USB keyboard and mouse far enough up there to write their letter of displeasure.
I'd choose a new job .-)
I gave up building web front ends about five years ago - I didn't want to move over to the newer techs like flash and ajax as I found them clunky and messy solutions.
The romance went out of the "web" for me at that point and it became just another ad platform.
I do purely the back end tier now and let someone else make the front end choices (sometimes JSP/Servlets, has been XML/RPC to .Net apps too).
I recently left a Bank who were transitioning their WCMS and client facing interface onto FLEX. Its a disaster waiting to happen frankly and I said so (gently mind, I've got a heart).
To answer your question - at a push, I'd advise someone to put their videos up on youtube and link / use that. Bandwidth can be easily scaled and when this current video mess is sorted out, youtube will have resolved it for me :-)
You go ahead declaring whomever you want enemies.
Personally I feel the internet has to be based around free non-patent encumbered standards. Yes it's currently a lofty goal and we can't do it overnight (we should never have let it get this far, but people like shiny toys, don't they.)
This does means that Flash and the MPEG-LA just smell wrong. I couldn't care less about demonising them - the techs wrong, plain and simple.
You presented a false choice - I choose neither.
Shhh.
Adobe is busy wetting themselves over someone else monopolising important tech toys. Don't disturb them.
It'd be entertaining if it hasn't been holding back the free web for so long. Look how much energy people have put into "flashifying" the web. Sad really.
Incredible job. If I forward my landlords address any chance you can get him to look into the sperm/hairball blocking the shower pipes?
Mr Dopely Lazy
Reluctant Owner Street
Wankingstone
Spermorton
England
For anonymity, please only call me "Dave", and the sperm and hair were from some big guy who broke in one night and went all "pope cleansing" in there.
Yep you nailed it.
It's got nothing to do with "being bullied" but everything to do with the individual asserting themselves and having confidence.
The only change is that your peers can see it when you are bullied. For most well adjusted children, they don't need to "show" it until they are pushed (fight or flight response).
Study falls into the old "correlation does not equal causation" trap.
But this rules out any scientific quantisation of the thing being discussed - since we cannot place in the larger context of all political opinion.
From a scientific viewpoint we can easily create a set of axes (personal freedom, economic freedom, moral freedom and so on) and then grade all parties within such a space. It won't be exact, but will give us a rough guide to where parties sit. See the political compass website for one such example.
If you look at countries like the Netherlands + Belgium (ones that come to mind) you have a multiplicity of parties involved in the political process - there isn't "left" or "right" labels applied to them since there are so many parties. They populate the multi-dimensional political space in different places. That's not to say the general populace in these countries don't use "left" or "right" - they have this educational issue too :-) I am merely demonstrating a counter-example to your collinear claim.
I'm not sure I agree with you here - if anything it shows how mal-educated the general populace is that they need societies complex problems boiled down into 2 choices. And it is tough luck if your political opinion doesn't fall into one of these two choices....
This is my beef with "left" vs "right". It is basically dumbing down politics and making people polarised.
This is kind of silly. The political spectra of countries with different cultures and problems are not comparable in this way.
Ah, you favour the "America is unique in the world because I say it is so" exceptionalism approach.
And the parent poster is correct - America has spent so long being "the right" that real left has been demonised (Communism and Fascism and Socialism are totally misunderstood).
The fact that in America you're either "left" or your "right" is the source of the problem. The political spectrum is not a line - it's a multi-dimensional space.
Unfortunately due to a lack of education and discussion on the topic this duality simply polarises opinion and policy. American politics has become "you're either with us or against us" and you get people tactical voting instead of really expressing their opinions.
Until the populace properly educates itself this isn't a problem that will go away. And yes, I'm looking at you for your simplification into "left" and "right".