Until evidence is brought forth to prove a deity exists, as far as I'm concerned there are none.
Great for you, but that's merely a hypothesis. The point is, you can't collect evidence concerning deities. Hence, all religions, including atheism, are hypotheses. They fall into the same camp as string theory.
So why use the mail? Keep all your important data on devices that you physically control, and encrypt anything you consider sensitive.
So why use a security deposit box? Keep all your important data on devices that you physically control, and encrypt anything you consider sensitive.
So why use an internal hard drive? Keep all your important data on devices that you physically control, and encrypt anything you consider sensitive.
Or, I don't know, we could all be actually upset with the way things are going and actually force the government to do our bidding instead of running in fear on what new way the government will try to chip away at our freedoms. Perhaps it'll take a few [figurative] martyrs. Perhaps it'll take a [real] revolution. If you assume that the situation is futile, then there's no such thing as "devices that you physically control": it's only a matter of time for the government to make such things illegal and to punish people like you. Change should happen *now* because it'll be a lot harder and a lot bloodier if we all squat and wait on our own pile of data to protect.
3. The whole thing about capitalism and the free market is that it's an optimization algorithm. It's really a genetic algorithm, based on semi-uninformed trial and error. The "genes" (processes, ideas, products) which are closer to optimal survive and are copied by others, and the process repeats, moving it all closer to the optimum. The genes which lost, and the companies which bet on them, die. Sometimes spectacularly, leaving a bunch of people temporarily unemployed.
That's how it's supposed to work. Bit wasteful, no doubt, and stressful for those who end up looking for a new job. Scott Adams of Dilbert fame (who, I might add, is actually trained as an economist, so he might understand these things) claimed in a blog post that it's "harnessing the power of stupidity" and that at any given moment, 80% of society's resources are pushed off a cliff by idiots. But somehow it seems to work better than anything else we've tried. Trying to prevent that optimization cycle from happening, deviates from optimum very quickly, and produces even worse results.
"Bigoted (a.) - Obstinately and blindly attached to some creed, opinion practice, or ritual; unreasonably devoted to a system or party, and illiberal toward the opinions of others"
Ie, clinging to a belief and unwilling to change or accept other opinions. Personally, I'd say I'm bigoted about the evils of genocide. That doesn't mean I can't take a good genocide joke or I support stopping someone preaching about the good of genocide. But, I wouldn't likely invite them into my home or seriously listen to them.
Certainly you can be a Chrisitian, Jew, etc and not be a bigot. If that wasn't the case, Christians, Jews, etc couldn't change faiths. Some people are bigoted in their faith and derive their morals (and other things) from it. Others are bigoted in their morals and derive their faith from it. Regardless, one becomes bigoted in something. As pejoratively as it is used, being bigoted isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Oh, and I can be stubborn in believing "I'm wrong and you're right".
It's not so much the belief that God has let you down (there are plenty of excuses for that in Christianity), as a certain attitude of depression and a period in my life where everything was upside down anyway, and a combination of seeing some pretty decnt evidence for macro-evolution (species to species evolution by an organism evolving new abilities). A combination of a number of things are necessary for someone to change their beliefs without being brainwashed.
I disagree. The only thing absolutely necessary for someone to change their beliefs without being brainwashed is a willingness to change. You point out why change can be hard, and certainly people who proselytize science to counter religious arguments seem anti-religious enough to cause many to simple shirk back to their faith instead of listening and thinking. In many ways, it's like the Matrix; many people are so unwilling to listen to anything that risks their world view, that it's basically futile to bother discussing certain issues with them; at least, it's futile unless and until they want to talk about them.
Oh, and please realize when I say all of the above, I hold the same view for atheists. They too are bigoted to their beliefs. And while certainly in living it is necessary to have at least some bigoted belief (even if it's as simple as the belief to drink more and think less), it's very difficult, if not impossible, to know which belief is the right one to be bigoted to. That's the paradox of religion in general: if it's the case that anyone can lie as much as they want and make up whatever religious belief they care to, how at all is it possible for a sane person to reasonably know the right one from the false ones? It seems the answer is, it's impossible to know. That's why I have the bigoted view of agnosticism. Thankfully, not having a definitive answer about religion isn't necessary to live.
The claim is that government-level forensic analysis *might* be able to recover data with only a single overwrite, with very sensitive expensive equipment. Not terribly surprising the FBI wouldn't take them up on this challenge.
Really? It'd seem the FBI would have directly or indirectly revealed the existance of such technology by now. It falls into the same argument of how breakable AES is, I guess. The only way I could accept that to be true is if every criminal for which they could have busted with magic-AES-decrypter or magic-post-formatter-disk-reader, the loss from criminals/spies/terrorists/etc having access to that knowledge is greater. At least with criminals, that's a self-defeating mindset, since it argues that you can never prosecute the very criminals you set out to nab from their use of weak security system. So, how valuable are spies/terrorists/etc?
If you test 1% of them, you get a maximum margin of error of about 0.17%. Testing 10% would only reduce that error margin to 0.05% while increasing the cost 10x. Testing 50% would reduce the error margin to 0.02% while increasing cost by 50x.
50x what? A penny per cow? A dollar per ounce?
The only value of such testing is to trick a public which doesn't understand statistics into thinking they're getting some worthwhile value for the extra cost of that testing.
And the only value to product branding is to trick a public which doesn't understand recipes into thinking they're getting some worthwhile value for the extra cost of the brand*. So, while we're at it let's ban all, for example, cake mixes that cost more than the cheapest generic available.
If anything, I would rather we spend that extra money to teach people basic statistics as part of the required educational curriculum.
I'm all for that. Tax the luxury beef and the luxury cake mix to teach people, young and old, how advertisers strive to mislead you into buying their product, be it through gimmicks, sweepstakes, carefully crafted homely fantasies, preying on a misunderstanding of statistics, or slapping some celebrity's face on the box. None of that requires outright banning, though.
*Yes, that's a bit of an idealistic stretch. But assuming that (a) the USDA works and everything sold is reasonably edible and (b) the FTC/USDA prevents mislead products, then "chocolate cake" is chocolate cake. If you don't like the idealism, consider that your claimed basis for banning is based on the USDA working to ensure that the product is reasonably edible, and the USDA is simply preventing the sale of a misleading product.
Criminals don't seek to destroy a government or a people - as they ultimately are a sort of parasite that needs its host to live. Terrorists want to destroy the state and take over.
Um, no. Terrorism is "the practise of coercing governments to accede to political demands by committing violence on civilian targets; any similar use of violence to achieve goals." Now, one could argue that you're being metaphorical about "destroy the state and take over". But, plenty of criminals metaphorically "destroy the state and take over". The mob is renowned for bribery and corruption in government.
You and your kind keep intimidating that the best course for the USA is to cut some sort of a deal with radical Islam. Perhaps we should reason with them. Well, maybe you should have spared everyone 50 million dead and not guaranteed Polish neutrality in 1939 or perhaps just handed Singapore over to the Imperial Japanese Army.
No. "Our" kind wish that government wouldn't change, period. Terrorism is carried out when a group is so outnumbered and incapable of forcing change that they are resort to attempts to persuade people through other means. To that end, terrorism is a form of bullying.
But unlike bullying on the schoolground, you can't merely bloody one bully's nose to show all the other bullies "you mean business". Least of which, terrorists lurk in the shadows. That means to bloody the nose of sufficient terrorists you must engage in the mass murder of innocents. Even if that were somehow acceptable, there are always bullies/terrorists who are desperate enough to attack regardless of the odds of their success.
The real lessons to take are two fold. One, terrorist acts will happen. So long as the USA remains a powerful nation with the ability to influence the world, there are those from inside and outside the US who will be desperate enough to engage the US. No amount of restrictions on liberties will be enough to stop terrorism because anyone can be a terrorist.
Two, the best course of action is to ignore terrorism. This doesn't mean bowing to terrorists. It means following the hundreds of laws already in place to catch terrorists. The first terrorist act in the US didn't happen on 9/11. Nor will 9/11 at all likely be the last. Improving those laws that catch terrorists may be wise, but to do so at the expense of our existing liberties and our existing moral code is to cut off our nose to spite our face; or in this case, cut off our liberties that could potentially allow terrorism and our moral respect for human life and dignity to spite terrorists. It is an act of pathetic desperation, not well reasoning, to act to end terrorism. But, then, there are those who believe one can actually end terrorism, and I believe that that's the crux of the problem.
You're right. A better example would be something like Subspace, where a good 90% of a game was considering one's own momentum and the ballistic tragectories of bouncing bombs/shots. I've personally never played Portal and while I assume it's a fun game, I'm still quite perplexed on why so many people seem so awed by its concept.
Q: Steam's great in that it's kind of foolproof but it also allows you to drill down a bit.
Todd Hollenshead: Yeah, and I know there's some guys out there that don't particularly care for Steam, but if you don't like it there's always other avenues to get stuff. It's not that everybody has to buy their stuff on Steam - I don't think even Valve says that. For people who like that sort of convenience and that method of content-delivery, I think it's the best thing that's out there.
Q: Do you think systems like Steam could save the PC platform long-term as digital distribution becomes a more popular avenue for consumers to access content?
Todd Hollenshead: I know that if you go out in the forums that people claim Steam doesn't stop piracy....
Ah, so people don't have to use Steam. But, if they do, then the only thing stopping it from being the salvation of the PC platform in the long-term is whether piracy is possible with it.
Here's a clue. The reason the PC platform is questionable in the long-term is because the PC as a platform is fickle. All platforms are, mind you. It used to be that there were tons of computers to market towards. Then DOS tended to dominate the PC gaming scene (with Amiga and Macs on the side). Then Windows even further dominated the PC gaming scene with one platform. The future, though, indicates that fracturing of the PC market is likely to happen.
Fracturing means more large percentages of people using multiple platforms. And since most game developers aren't willing to write for multiple platforms (hence the reason why the heavy Windows monopoly has been so good for PC gaming companies), the future is rather bleak that there will ever be the same sort of unity of PC gaming as there was in the past.
Now, one could use dosbox or flash or some new cross-platform VM to get around that in theory. But, VMs eat into gaming performance. Sure, people might be content on buying old games for nostalga sake. And people might even be willing to buy smaller arcade-ish games (certainly that's working well for MS and Nintendo). But, they can't surplant the main reason for buying PC games over other consoles games*: PCs can be more bleeding edge because they don't have to rely on a reference platform that stays the same, processing power wise, for 3+ years. Ie, the very reason that PC gamers exist would be squashed heavily by having VM overhead.
Even if MS maintains its Windows monopoly, I still see the PC gaming industry as mostly doomed. Consoles keep getting closer and closer to the power of PCs while remaining a lot cheaper than cutting-edge PCs. Consoles are moving further into the PC games turf (MS's push with the XBox and DirectX might have a lot to do with that). And consoles avoid having to fuck around with setup; regardless of the claims of how foolproof Steam is, I really won't buy that until a lot of old games that are still being sold are packaged under Steam. Enough bad experiences with supposedly compatible games is enough to turn a lot of people off from even bothering with PC games. As much as Microsoft tries to work its magic with compatbility modes, it's still not enough to maintain 100% compatibility.
*Admittedly other main reasons would be superior network play (although on the console front, that gap has significantly shrank) and better controls (that might save FPSs but that's about it).
It has the potential to be brilliant, with lots of good humorous irony potential.
I think that's the point. "Gosh, I haven't been on the air making substantial new things for a decade. But, I'm still as dependable and reliable as ever. So, why switch to the new and questionable Vista when you have good old, reliable XP?"
I think the reason perl is the centre of so many big balls of mud is that it is easy to do prototypes in it.
Perl is the center of so many big balls of mud because elegant Perl code tends to be both powerful and obtuse. Prototyping merely encourages the creation of more powerful code.
If people choose to take those prototypes and turn them into big balls of mud, then that is their own fault. If you start with a clean sheet of paper, do a good design and then decide to implement it in perl you won't end up with a big ball of mud.
Most corporations are more concerned with getting a project out and working by deadline than whether good design was carried out or that non-critical bugs persistent. In short, if you know ahead of time that you're likely never going to go back and do a clean design, you should choose a language that at least encourages good design from the start if you want to minimize the mudball that will form; that means choosing a language other than Perl (or finding the few Perl programmers who follow good design).
It's funny because I generally agree with him. Many people, young or old, think they know what is best for others. They're inclined to step in and dictate how others should run their lives, how other countries should run their governments, and generally how the world would be so much better if either (a) people would just listen to their insights or (b) people would give them the power to enforce their insights on others.
So, perhaps he had the right idea, that he himself didn't know everything. The problem is that he took that insight and, still assuming he knew everything, extrapolated that out to be an issue of age and wisdom. A wise man knows he is a fool. He does not force his foolishness on others. Instead, it is in his wisdom that he only answers the questions of those who seek him out. For even if he gives a foolish answer, he is merely provided what is asked of him. Such is the paradox of politics and having wise men as leaders in a democracy.
Thanks for the generic anti-Christian rant, but you missed the point. I'm agnostic, not Christian. There's a difference between being unwilling to accept something because it's impossible and being unwilling to worship something because you find it morally reprehensible. The fact is, if there does exist a deity (and by deity, I mean an all-powerful being), then no amount of "does *SOMETHING* for me" should matter to you if you're moral. To willingly go along and benefit from an indifferent/evil deity (as I've already pointed out there can't be a good deity) is to accept, acknowledge, and encourage that indifferent/evil deity in their actions/inactions; this, ironically enough, goes right against your claim that to accept an indifferent/evil deity is a "reprehensible thought".
Put another way, if I willing state I can't prove the devil exists, why would I claim the devil made me do something? And if a good god can't exist and it's morally repugnant to pray for aid from an indifferent/evil god, why would I pray? There's a lot of things you can rationalize. But you can't rationally expunge the existance of a supreme being. You can only rationalize what the supreme being might be like and what responses you, given the ability and opportunity, would carry out. For example, the supreme being clearly can't be one to remove atheistic thoughts at all times. And assuming a supreme being does offer me a choice of "heaven", I can tell him to fuck off.
This supports the atheist understanding of the world. We are born as we are, mostly accidental, or luck of the draw regarding genetics. There is no deity responsible for this. What a reprehensible thought that an all powerful and all knowing deity would do this to people?
And this is the ironic part of atheism: on the one hand, willing to accept that "we are born as we are", but on the other hand, unwilling to accept an evil or indifferent deity. Being agnostic lets you accept that an evil deity could exist, just that it's not (yet) provable. And if one has to accept what is understandable of the world, that best fits the current situation.
insulting pictures of mohammed, for example. yes, a sound understanding of free speech means that insulting pictures of mohammed should be tolerated. however, a legal, societal understanding of tolerance on this issue does not protect you from the anger of religious fundamentalists who could care less about tolerance
I would hope the government would still protect someone from violence if they drew an insulting picture of mohammed. It shouldn't try to stop people from being angry, but it should still offer him some level of protection. But more to the point, it should protect someone from *legal* consequences of speaking (assuming the speech is legal).
I'd take it a step further and say that the government is *required* to protect you. Having said that:
remember that about free speech: it has consequences. if you get upset about that idea, or expect government to somehow protect you from the consequences of what you say, you really don't understand the whole notion that with freedom comes responsibility
You know, I used to think that way. I wondered why the police were so willing to protect the KKK in their rallies when it was clear that the people disliked them and, as you put it, the government shouldn't interfer with such vigilante justice. But, then I realized, the cops aren't there to pick sides. They're there to maintain social order. That means letting every asshole in the world speak his mind, even if that means protecting him.
Now, the police have every right to inform the person they can't reasonably protect them, and that's just a fact of reality, not of some underlying policy (well, assuming funding isn't being cut to stop free speech being protected). And in that, yes, there are consequences. But, the police are there specifically to circumvent the natural consequences of many actions (murder, theft, etc). And that minimally means that if a free speech asshole is beaten, then the police are just as obligated to track down those vigilantes as any other situation of battery.
PS - Sorry if this feels like I've hijacked this comment to respond more to the GP than to you, the P. But, I felt that what you said was very close to correct, just not as strongly argued as it should have been. I didn't want to pretend like I was the first person to notice the hypocracy.
PSS - This is precisely why tolerance is so necessary. The internet opens people to others who will challenge their beliefs, some just for the point of angering them. And the expert troll will argue for days against someone just to argue and anger their victim. Tolerance doesn't mean just holding one's fist back from punching another person. It means recognizing when one is angry and being mature enough to simply stop a pointless relationship. Eventually, the anger will disappear, and only then can actual communication occur. Only then, the trolls will be at best boring comedy to toy with, and one will be better overall for it.
That aside, the guy in question here is a victim of fraud. He responded to someone who put forth that they were a woman looking for a man, except the whole thing was fraudulent, like a sting operation being conducted by someone who has no authority to do so.
So, if he were wearing a police hat and/or a reporter's hat, it'd be okay?
It doesn't matter that he was revealed to be looking for sex. What matters is that he was suckered into having his dirty laundry aired in public while those who would pass judgment on him have their skeletons comfortably locked away in the closet.
Aka reality TV shows, "To Catch a Predator", etc. One can also include congressional hearings and court stands, though that tends to be about forcing people into revealing their dirty laundry, not suckering them.
As for the malicious asshole who likes to pretend he's a woman and shame people for recreation, well, he belongs in a shallow grave. He's malicious, and a coward, and a liar, and he screws peoples lives up for sport. I'd quite happily shoot him in the head with my own hand and go back to eating my lunch.
I hope you bring a lot of bullets because you have a long list.
PS - I don't think "for the common good" is a get out of jail free card. Nor do I think "for the common good" is the only defense for something like this. Ie, I'm undecided even if things turn out to be it just being one huge trolling exercise, meant to humiliate people.
Looking over the post again, I finally notice that in his letter to the FTC does include a ridiculously speculative claim involving financial incentives to cripple Linux. You're right about the chip on his shoulder.
Having said that, the "news" was (a) at least some Foxconn motherboards having crippled BIOSs that don't work correctly under Linux, (b) Foxconn refusing to resolve the issue, mostly under a claim that ACPI was supported using as proof that Microsoft says it was okay*, and (c) pointless user speculation on what Foxconn's motives are. Including mention of (c) and talking about "come to your own conclusions" is tabloidic/yellow jouralism crap. (a) and (b) were important. I generally try to ignore (c) because (c) seems to be common in most "news" (newspaper, tv, and internet). That's one reason I was pretty blind to it (okay, and I tend to skim through forum posts and articles since lots of them are filled with useless filler). Never the less (a) and (b) were the "real news" to me, and I get the feeling that that's a major reason that it was posted. But thinking about it more, now that I see what you mean, the conspiracy angle might have been another major reason.
*It's funny, in a way, that they'd claim ACPI support, not test on Linux, and then reaffirming their ACPI support by confirming it works on Windows. But, *shrug*. To me that implies incompetence, actually.
Also, Linux users need to lose the whole chip on the shoulder attitude. You're not being oppressed, you're just using an operating system with a minority market share.
Buy a piece of hardware that's ambiguous on, though optimistically biased towards, supporting Linux.
Find out it doesn't work and bitch to the manfuacturer, with the promise that if no satisfaction is reached, you'll make it well known that said hardware doesn't work with Linux.
When you're told, "When we said it supports X, we meant it was certified by the major OS vendor to support X (which might mean dick); sucks to be you", let everyone who uses Linux know to not buy the hardware.
Watch as someone claims you've got a chip on your shoulder because you want to inform others of the minority market share that said manufacturer seems relatively uncooperative and it's not worth the bother to buy their products.
We Linux users are not oppressed. But the only way we can find out that product A doesn't work with Linux is either through things like this or through personally buying something and pushing to get it to work.
Maybe this approach will alienate the manufacturer. But the truth is, companies are in it for the money. Either they will need to grow to support Linux really consistently because it is necessary or they will find a way (it might be really easy, for all I know) to remain competitive not supporting Linux consistently--hopefully they'll support Linux consistently by actually conforming to the standard they claim they support, so any OS written to the standard will work. Foxconn or TheAlmightyCthulhu being insufferable dicks doesn't really change things. That's the beauty of the free market. No one gives a shit about you in the long term or what you said. It's all about the money.
Ah, so it was. Sorry for that mistake. Apparently Lik-Sang was closed down because it was selling PSPs in Europe before Sony's official PSP launch date. Viva la free market.
If everyone knows what's going to happen, it's really not news. News is for......new stuff, not protesting your favorite injustice.
For the cynic/pessimist, everything bad that happens is expected. But even for them, it's news when it actually happens. That is, news isn't just about telling people about new things. It's about informing people about things. Usually this is geared towards informing people about important things. And because, as unbiased as people might try to be, journalists have a certain world view about things (for example, most journalists consider the right of a child to live above the state's right to not have to be inconvenienced to avoid driving its tanks through school yards) that intrisically means that their journalism will focus on certain things when they believe an injustice is being done instead of randomly filling their available column/article space.
More to the point, one or two articles pointing out an injustice is hardly a protest. A protest is when there's consistent, propoganda-like drilling of facts and/or beliefs in an attempt to affect change. In that regard, all news is in some way a form of protest (for it wishes to change people into being informed people). And even focusing more on China/IOC than on other similar issues might be seen as a protest. But, I don't see how the argument can really be made until Reuters and the like actually suggest some course of action beyond the always generally held, "now that you're an informed citizen, you can make more informed choices".
Agreed. It's truly a fight against piracy. Just like "Serial Copy Management System" was for DAT tapes, CSS was for DVDs, etc.
The fact is, no matter how noble the intentions might be, the lawsuit and the laws that back it are as ridiculous as if floppies, hard drives, etc were legally mandated to have hardware based do-not-copy bits. The difference is, floppies and hard drives were made at a time well before there was one or a few powerful companies able to push such influence to implement such a requirement de facto or de jure. But Nintendo has maintained control over the manufacturer of DS cartridges (whether that originally had to do with piracy, as a revenue stream, or as a quality control scheme is a side point*). And regardless of the DMCA, the courts are inclined to see the current situation and maintain the status quo instead of recognizing the obvious contradictions**.
It is for this reason that movements towards TPM are so scary. After all, once five or ten years pass where there's an inherent fact that on most available computers the author controls through hardware means the ability to copy something, it'll come as little surprise that the courts will agree that *any* hardware that could circumvent it is a piracy tool. Examples like Nintendo, I think, really highlight the reasonable paranoia of people against DRM laws, de jure by perceived de facto.
*This is one of the main reasons Apple gets compared to Nintendo, I think. But, in the end, Apple doesn't really have control over who can sell on the Mac. They just have more control than Microsoft. Microsoft, on the other hand, doesn't really care one way or the other if software other than theirs is pirated, so greatly encourages copying in general. Of course, that comes hand-in-hand with their various measures to protect their own software.
**Case in point, you can just as easily copy a GBA rom on a USB jump drive to play on a computer as a GBA flash cart to play on a GBA (hell, with some GBA flash carts, you can use the exact same microsd card for both). Yet, Nintendo was quite successful at shutting down Lik Sang and keeping flash carts out of the US in general for all their platforms (NES, SNES, etc). Once the DS emulators become sufficiently compatable, the analogy will apply just as well for DS roms. But, because only a handful of companies make flash carts of various designs, it's believed somehow legal to squash them while wide-spread flash cart use doesn't exist. Yet, they're not willing to squash USB jump drives because they're much too common. DVD-Rs are treated special, but Blu-ray-Rs will likely not be. So long as there's a means to legally control the supply of a medium long enough, the courts will side with your interpretation of the validity of the format for piracy or for everything.
How about a compromise? Send in an anonymous check to the company who made the product at a common US retail price. Since that cuts out the retailer, the distribution costs, and the packaging *and* the company who produce the product is being paid, is that enough to fulfill not "just leech off of honest people"? Or is it only acceptable to go through official channels where one has to pay an assload more?
Correction. Most child are self-motivated to learn. They quickly learn that school isn't about self-motivated learning; it's about roting memorization and skill training, with proficiency measured on a seemingly arbitrary scale. The only means I can think of to resolve this problem is to start treating children like people. By that, I mean, to not only teach children the rote memorization and skills, but also to make it clear to them that (a) it's only part of a greater roadmap and (b) to actually *show* them that roadmap, with their help in making that roadmap.
In short, the best way to improve a child's future prospects is to help a child forge their own future. Sometimes that means teaching them things they'd rather not have to work to learn. But, many times it means helping them find out what they desire and to use their own motivation to help them learn how they can better themselves as their prospects of doing what they already want to do.
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Great for you, but that's merely a hypothesis. The point is, you can't collect evidence concerning deities. Hence, all religions, including atheism, are hypotheses. They fall into the same camp as string theory.
So why use the mail? Keep all your important data on devices that you physically control, and encrypt anything you consider sensitive.
So why use a security deposit box? Keep all your important data on devices that you physically control, and encrypt anything you consider sensitive.
So why use an internal hard drive? Keep all your important data on devices that you physically control, and encrypt anything you consider sensitive.
Or, I don't know, we could all be actually upset with the way things are going and actually force the government to do our bidding instead of running in fear on what new way the government will try to chip away at our freedoms. Perhaps it'll take a few [figurative] martyrs. Perhaps it'll take a [real] revolution. If you assume that the situation is futile, then there's no such thing as "devices that you physically control": it's only a matter of time for the government to make such things illegal and to punish people like you. Change should happen *now* because it'll be a lot harder and a lot bloodier if we all squat and wait on our own pile of data to protect.
-- by Moraelin (679338) on Wednesday September 10, @12:56PM
Ie, clinging to a belief and unwilling to change or accept other opinions. Personally, I'd say I'm bigoted about the evils of genocide. That doesn't mean I can't take a good genocide joke or I support stopping someone preaching about the good of genocide. But, I wouldn't likely invite them into my home or seriously listen to them.
Certainly you can be a Chrisitian, Jew, etc and not be a bigot. If that wasn't the case, Christians, Jews, etc couldn't change faiths. Some people are bigoted in their faith and derive their morals (and other things) from it. Others are bigoted in their morals and derive their faith from it. Regardless, one becomes bigoted in something. As pejoratively as it is used, being bigoted isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Oh, and I can be stubborn in believing "I'm wrong and you're right".
I disagree. The only thing absolutely necessary for someone to change their beliefs without being brainwashed is a willingness to change. You point out why change can be hard, and certainly people who proselytize science to counter religious arguments seem anti-religious enough to cause many to simple shirk back to their faith instead of listening and thinking. In many ways, it's like the Matrix; many people are so unwilling to listen to anything that risks their world view, that it's basically futile to bother discussing certain issues with them; at least, it's futile unless and until they want to talk about them.
Oh, and please realize when I say all of the above, I hold the same view for atheists. They too are bigoted to their beliefs. And while certainly in living it is necessary to have at least some bigoted belief (even if it's as simple as the belief to drink more and think less), it's very difficult, if not impossible, to know which belief is the right one to be bigoted to. That's the paradox of religion in general: if it's the case that anyone can lie as much as they want and make up whatever religious belief they care to, how at all is it possible for a sane person to reasonably know the right one from the false ones? It seems the answer is, it's impossible to know. That's why I have the bigoted view of agnosticism. Thankfully, not having a definitive answer about religion isn't necessary to live.
Really? It'd seem the FBI would have directly or indirectly revealed the existance of such technology by now. It falls into the same argument of how breakable AES is, I guess. The only way I could accept that to be true is if every criminal for which they could have busted with magic-AES-decrypter or magic-post-formatter-disk-reader, the loss from criminals/spies/terrorists/etc having access to that knowledge is greater. At least with criminals, that's a self-defeating mindset, since it argues that you can never prosecute the very criminals you set out to nab from their use of weak security system. So, how valuable are spies/terrorists/etc?
50x what? A penny per cow? A dollar per ounce?
And the only value to product branding is to trick a public which doesn't understand recipes into thinking they're getting some worthwhile value for the extra cost of the brand*. So, while we're at it let's ban all, for example, cake mixes that cost more than the cheapest generic available.
I'm all for that. Tax the luxury beef and the luxury cake mix to teach people, young and old, how advertisers strive to mislead you into buying their product, be it through gimmicks, sweepstakes, carefully crafted homely fantasies, preying on a misunderstanding of statistics, or slapping some celebrity's face on the box. None of that requires outright banning, though.
*Yes, that's a bit of an idealistic stretch. But assuming that (a) the USDA works and everything sold is reasonably edible and (b) the FTC/USDA prevents mislead products, then "chocolate cake" is chocolate cake. If you don't like the idealism, consider that your claimed basis for banning is based on the USDA working to ensure that the product is reasonably edible, and the USDA is simply preventing the sale of a misleading product.
Um, no. Terrorism is "the practise of coercing governments to accede to political demands by committing violence on civilian targets; any similar use of violence to achieve goals." Now, one could argue that you're being metaphorical about "destroy the state and take over". But, plenty of criminals metaphorically "destroy the state and take over". The mob is renowned for bribery and corruption in government.
No. "Our" kind wish that government wouldn't change, period. Terrorism is carried out when a group is so outnumbered and incapable of forcing change that they are resort to attempts to persuade people through other means. To that end, terrorism is a form of bullying.
But unlike bullying on the schoolground, you can't merely bloody one bully's nose to show all the other bullies "you mean business". Least of which, terrorists lurk in the shadows. That means to bloody the nose of sufficient terrorists you must engage in the mass murder of innocents. Even if that were somehow acceptable, there are always bullies/terrorists who are desperate enough to attack regardless of the odds of their success.
The real lessons to take are two fold. One, terrorist acts will happen. So long as the USA remains a powerful nation with the ability to influence the world, there are those from inside and outside the US who will be desperate enough to engage the US. No amount of restrictions on liberties will be enough to stop terrorism because anyone can be a terrorist.
Two, the best course of action is to ignore terrorism. This doesn't mean bowing to terrorists. It means following the hundreds of laws already in place to catch terrorists. The first terrorist act in the US didn't happen on 9/11. Nor will 9/11 at all likely be the last. Improving those laws that catch terrorists may be wise, but to do so at the expense of our existing liberties and our existing moral code is to cut off our nose to spite our face; or in this case, cut off our liberties that could potentially allow terrorism and our moral respect for human life and dignity to spite terrorists. It is an act of pathetic desperation, not well reasoning, to act to end terrorism. But, then, there are those who believe one can actually end terrorism, and I believe that that's the crux of the problem.
You're right. A better example would be something like Subspace, where a good 90% of a game was considering one's own momentum and the ballistic tragectories of bouncing bombs/shots. I've personally never played Portal and while I assume it's a fun game, I'm still quite perplexed on why so many people seem so awed by its concept.
Ah, so people don't have to use Steam. But, if they do, then the only thing stopping it from being the salvation of the PC platform in the long-term is whether piracy is possible with it.
Here's a clue. The reason the PC platform is questionable in the long-term is because the PC as a platform is fickle. All platforms are, mind you. It used to be that there were tons of computers to market towards. Then DOS tended to dominate the PC gaming scene (with Amiga and Macs on the side). Then Windows even further dominated the PC gaming scene with one platform. The future, though, indicates that fracturing of the PC market is likely to happen.
Fracturing means more large percentages of people using multiple platforms. And since most game developers aren't willing to write for multiple platforms (hence the reason why the heavy Windows monopoly has been so good for PC gaming companies), the future is rather bleak that there will ever be the same sort of unity of PC gaming as there was in the past.
Now, one could use dosbox or flash or some new cross-platform VM to get around that in theory. But, VMs eat into gaming performance. Sure, people might be content on buying old games for nostalga sake. And people might even be willing to buy smaller arcade-ish games (certainly that's working well for MS and Nintendo). But, they can't surplant the main reason for buying PC games over other consoles games*: PCs can be more bleeding edge because they don't have to rely on a reference platform that stays the same, processing power wise, for 3+ years. Ie, the very reason that PC gamers exist would be squashed heavily by having VM overhead.
Even if MS maintains its Windows monopoly, I still see the PC gaming industry as mostly doomed. Consoles keep getting closer and closer to the power of PCs while remaining a lot cheaper than cutting-edge PCs. Consoles are moving further into the PC games turf (MS's push with the XBox and DirectX might have a lot to do with that). And consoles avoid having to fuck around with setup; regardless of the claims of how foolproof Steam is, I really won't buy that until a lot of old games that are still being sold are packaged under Steam. Enough bad experiences with supposedly compatible games is enough to turn a lot of people off from even bothering with PC games. As much as Microsoft tries to work its magic with compatbility modes, it's still not enough to maintain 100% compatibility.
*Admittedly other main reasons would be superior network play (although on the console front, that gap has significantly shrank) and better controls (that might save FPSs but that's about it).
I think that's the point. "Gosh, I haven't been on the air making substantial new things for a decade. But, I'm still as dependable and reliable as ever. So, why switch to the new and questionable Vista when you have good old, reliable XP?"
"Dwarven Vow #2: Never abandon someone in need."
"Dwarven Vow #18: It is better to be deceived than to deceive."
Perl is the center of so many big balls of mud because elegant Perl code tends to be both powerful and obtuse. Prototyping merely encourages the creation of more powerful code.
Most corporations are more concerned with getting a project out and working by deadline than whether good design was carried out or that non-critical bugs persistent. In short, if you know ahead of time that you're likely never going to go back and do a clean design, you should choose a language that at least encourages good design from the start if you want to minimize the mudball that will form; that means choosing a language other than Perl (or finding the few Perl programmers who follow good design).
It's funny because I generally agree with him. Many people, young or old, think they know what is best for others. They're inclined to step in and dictate how others should run their lives, how other countries should run their governments, and generally how the world would be so much better if either (a) people would just listen to their insights or (b) people would give them the power to enforce their insights on others.
So, perhaps he had the right idea, that he himself didn't know everything. The problem is that he took that insight and, still assuming he knew everything, extrapolated that out to be an issue of age and wisdom. A wise man knows he is a fool. He does not force his foolishness on others. Instead, it is in his wisdom that he only answers the questions of those who seek him out. For even if he gives a foolish answer, he is merely provided what is asked of him. Such is the paradox of politics and having wise men as leaders in a democracy.
Thanks for the generic anti-Christian rant, but you missed the point. I'm agnostic, not Christian. There's a difference between being unwilling to accept something because it's impossible and being unwilling to worship something because you find it morally reprehensible. The fact is, if there does exist a deity (and by deity, I mean an all-powerful being), then no amount of "does *SOMETHING* for me" should matter to you if you're moral. To willingly go along and benefit from an indifferent/evil deity (as I've already pointed out there can't be a good deity) is to accept, acknowledge, and encourage that indifferent/evil deity in their actions/inactions; this, ironically enough, goes right against your claim that to accept an indifferent/evil deity is a "reprehensible thought".
Put another way, if I willing state I can't prove the devil exists, why would I claim the devil made me do something? And if a good god can't exist and it's morally repugnant to pray for aid from an indifferent/evil god, why would I pray? There's a lot of things you can rationalize. But you can't rationally expunge the existance of a supreme being. You can only rationalize what the supreme being might be like and what responses you, given the ability and opportunity, would carry out. For example, the supreme being clearly can't be one to remove atheistic thoughts at all times. And assuming a supreme being does offer me a choice of "heaven", I can tell him to fuck off.
And this is the ironic part of atheism: on the one hand, willing to accept that "we are born as we are", but on the other hand, unwilling to accept an evil or indifferent deity. Being agnostic lets you accept that an evil deity could exist, just that it's not (yet) provable. And if one has to accept what is understandable of the world, that best fits the current situation.
I'd take it a step further and say that the government is *required* to protect you. Having said that:
You know, I used to think that way. I wondered why the police were so willing to protect the KKK in their rallies when it was clear that the people disliked them and, as you put it, the government shouldn't interfer with such vigilante justice. But, then I realized, the cops aren't there to pick sides. They're there to maintain social order. That means letting every asshole in the world speak his mind, even if that means protecting him.
Now, the police have every right to inform the person they can't reasonably protect them, and that's just a fact of reality, not of some underlying policy (well, assuming funding isn't being cut to stop free speech being protected). And in that, yes, there are consequences. But, the police are there specifically to circumvent the natural consequences of many actions (murder, theft, etc). And that minimally means that if a free speech asshole is beaten, then the police are just as obligated to track down those vigilantes as any other situation of battery.
PS - Sorry if this feels like I've hijacked this comment to respond more to the GP than to you, the P. But, I felt that what you said was very close to correct, just not as strongly argued as it should have been. I didn't want to pretend like I was the first person to notice the hypocracy.
PSS - This is precisely why tolerance is so necessary. The internet opens people to others who will challenge their beliefs, some just for the point of angering them. And the expert troll will argue for days against someone just to argue and anger their victim. Tolerance doesn't mean just holding one's fist back from punching another person. It means recognizing when one is angry and being mature enough to simply stop a pointless relationship. Eventually, the anger will disappear, and only then can actual communication occur. Only then, the trolls will be at best boring comedy to toy with, and one will be better overall for it.
So, if he were wearing a police hat and/or a reporter's hat, it'd be okay?
Aka reality TV shows, "To Catch a Predator", etc. One can also include congressional hearings and court stands, though that tends to be about forcing people into revealing their dirty laundry, not suckering them.
I hope you bring a lot of bullets because you have a long list.
PS - I don't think "for the common good" is a get out of jail free card. Nor do I think "for the common good" is the only defense for something like this. Ie, I'm undecided even if things turn out to be it just being one huge trolling exercise, meant to humiliate people.
Looking over the post again, I finally notice that in his letter to the FTC does include a ridiculously speculative claim involving financial incentives to cripple Linux. You're right about the chip on his shoulder.
Having said that, the "news" was (a) at least some Foxconn motherboards having crippled BIOSs that don't work correctly under Linux, (b) Foxconn refusing to resolve the issue, mostly under a claim that ACPI was supported using as proof that Microsoft says it was okay*, and (c) pointless user speculation on what Foxconn's motives are. Including mention of (c) and talking about "come to your own conclusions" is tabloidic/yellow jouralism crap. (a) and (b) were important. I generally try to ignore (c) because (c) seems to be common in most "news" (newspaper, tv, and internet). That's one reason I was pretty blind to it (okay, and I tend to skim through forum posts and articles since lots of them are filled with useless filler). Never the less (a) and (b) were the "real news" to me, and I get the feeling that that's a major reason that it was posted. But thinking about it more, now that I see what you mean, the conspiracy angle might have been another major reason.
*It's funny, in a way, that they'd claim ACPI support, not test on Linux, and then reaffirming their ACPI support by confirming it works on Windows. But, *shrug*. To me that implies incompetence, actually.
We Linux users are not oppressed. But the only way we can find out that product A doesn't work with Linux is either through things like this or through personally buying something and pushing to get it to work.
Maybe this approach will alienate the manufacturer. But the truth is, companies are in it for the money. Either they will need to grow to support Linux really consistently because it is necessary or they will find a way (it might be really easy, for all I know) to remain competitive not supporting Linux consistently--hopefully they'll support Linux consistently by actually conforming to the standard they claim they support, so any OS written to the standard will work. Foxconn or TheAlmightyCthulhu being insufferable dicks doesn't really change things. That's the beauty of the free market. No one gives a shit about you in the long term or what you said. It's all about the money.
Ah, so it was. Sorry for that mistake. Apparently Lik-Sang was closed down because it was selling PSPs in Europe before Sony's official PSP launch date. Viva la free market.
For the cynic/pessimist, everything bad that happens is expected. But even for them, it's news when it actually happens. That is, news isn't just about telling people about new things. It's about informing people about things. Usually this is geared towards informing people about important things. And because, as unbiased as people might try to be, journalists have a certain world view about things (for example, most journalists consider the right of a child to live above the state's right to not have to be inconvenienced to avoid driving its tanks through school yards) that intrisically means that their journalism will focus on certain things when they believe an injustice is being done instead of randomly filling their available column/article space.
More to the point, one or two articles pointing out an injustice is hardly a protest. A protest is when there's consistent, propoganda-like drilling of facts and/or beliefs in an attempt to affect change. In that regard, all news is in some way a form of protest (for it wishes to change people into being informed people). And even focusing more on China/IOC than on other similar issues might be seen as a protest. But, I don't see how the argument can really be made until Reuters and the like actually suggest some course of action beyond the always generally held, "now that you're an informed citizen, you can make more informed choices".
Agreed. It's truly a fight against piracy. Just like "Serial Copy Management System" was for DAT tapes, CSS was for DVDs, etc.
The fact is, no matter how noble the intentions might be, the lawsuit and the laws that back it are as ridiculous as if floppies, hard drives, etc were legally mandated to have hardware based do-not-copy bits. The difference is, floppies and hard drives were made at a time well before there was one or a few powerful companies able to push such influence to implement such a requirement de facto or de jure. But Nintendo has maintained control over the manufacturer of DS cartridges (whether that originally had to do with piracy, as a revenue stream, or as a quality control scheme is a side point*). And regardless of the DMCA, the courts are inclined to see the current situation and maintain the status quo instead of recognizing the obvious contradictions**.
It is for this reason that movements towards TPM are so scary. After all, once five or ten years pass where there's an inherent fact that on most available computers the author controls through hardware means the ability to copy something, it'll come as little surprise that the courts will agree that *any* hardware that could circumvent it is a piracy tool. Examples like Nintendo, I think, really highlight the reasonable paranoia of people against DRM laws, de jure by perceived de facto.
*This is one of the main reasons Apple gets compared to Nintendo, I think. But, in the end, Apple doesn't really have control over who can sell on the Mac. They just have more control than Microsoft. Microsoft, on the other hand, doesn't really care one way or the other if software other than theirs is pirated, so greatly encourages copying in general. Of course, that comes hand-in-hand with their various measures to protect their own software.
**Case in point, you can just as easily copy a GBA rom on a USB jump drive to play on a computer as a GBA flash cart to play on a GBA (hell, with some GBA flash carts, you can use the exact same microsd card for both). Yet, Nintendo was quite successful at shutting down Lik Sang and keeping flash carts out of the US in general for all their platforms (NES, SNES, etc). Once the DS emulators become sufficiently compatable, the analogy will apply just as well for DS roms. But, because only a handful of companies make flash carts of various designs, it's believed somehow legal to squash them while wide-spread flash cart use doesn't exist. Yet, they're not willing to squash USB jump drives because they're much too common. DVD-Rs are treated special, but Blu-ray-Rs will likely not be. So long as there's a means to legally control the supply of a medium long enough, the courts will side with your interpretation of the validity of the format for piracy or for everything.
How about a compromise? Send in an anonymous check to the company who made the product at a common US retail price. Since that cuts out the retailer, the distribution costs, and the packaging *and* the company who produce the product is being paid, is that enough to fulfill not "just leech off of honest people"? Or is it only acceptable to go through official channels where one has to pay an assload more?
Correction. Most child are self-motivated to learn. They quickly learn that school isn't about self-motivated learning; it's about roting memorization and skill training, with proficiency measured on a seemingly arbitrary scale. The only means I can think of to resolve this problem is to start treating children like people. By that, I mean, to not only teach children the rote memorization and skills, but also to make it clear to them that (a) it's only part of a greater roadmap and (b) to actually *show* them that roadmap, with their help in making that roadmap.
In short, the best way to improve a child's future prospects is to help a child forge their own future. Sometimes that means teaching them things they'd rather not have to work to learn. But, many times it means helping them find out what they desire and to use their own motivation to help them learn how they can better themselves as their prospects of doing what they already want to do.