But everything is done for a reason, and if it's not a good reason, it gets dumped.
Now that is purest nonsense. The army's policies on gays are the kindergarden level group-think of morons. They're still in place, as are any number of other bad policies such as looking the other way when recruiters lie through their teeth, encouraging superstition, using punishment on the squad to force the squad to coerce a specific squad member into line, etc.
I appreciate what our soldiers do for us when there is a legitimate job of defense to be done, I mourn for them when they are lost in the service of dubious or evil goals just as I do if they are legitimately defending our borders, but in no way am I confused into thinking that the military, as an overall organism, is either free of poor practices, or able to free itself. The evidence says otherwise, each and every day. The Peter principle is more active in the military than anywhere else, and stupidity abounds.
If the comment truley isn't flaim or ramblings of a troll, it will be worked out on meta moderating.
No. It won't. Comments modded down are permanently lost to anyone who uses the moderation system to filter the comments. Moderation is never reversed, and so harm done by moderators is never ameliorated. Quite aside from the fact that it would have to happen while the thread is "alive" for it to make a significant difference. This is one of the many serious problems with slashdot moderation. The only way you can see all of the quality comments in a thread is to read at -1. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just fooling themselves; and those of us who do read at -1 (a) resent the inability of the moderation system to raise up the majority the reasonable posts and (b) curb moderator abuse, from moderation as commentary to punitive "I hate this guy" moderation to completely unnecessary modding down of high quality posts. We have to spend a lot of time reading pure drivel because the moderation system is so poorly designed.
They're more worried about people giving away information that might be helpful to the enemy. A valid concern really.
That's fine as far as it goes. However, in a climate where it is against the rules to disagree or criticize your superiors, other issues have arisen. Soldiers aren't allowed to speak their minds about general issues that the public is; that's not a security matter, that is pure and simple manipulation and suppression of correcting influences.
Now is every base security oroficer(sic) gonna follow every Tom, Dick, and Jane down every path they take every day.
No. That's what software is for. We know they're listening to every phone conversation using speech recognition; it is even easier to read every email. You don't live in the condition of privacy you seem to think you do. Soldiers, probably less so.
Unless there's some "Why is it Illegal to Suck Cock in the Middle of the Street" stories that I don't know about.
Well, now that you've brought it up, why is it? I mean, other than blocking traffic? It seems to me that the reasonable response of a cop in a society that wasn't totally bass-ackwards about sexuality would be "get on the sidewalk or into the park or I'm gonna have to give ya a ticket", while once on the sidewalk, people walked about such an activity just the way they do some guy playing a guitar with his hat out.
There's nothing like forcing people to comply with hiding behaviors so you don't have to cope with your hangups as an example of the poisoning of the concept of personal liberty.
But if other recreational drugs were illegal, would alcohol remain as popular?
Here's two data points. I drink a little bit, most commonly a glass of wine if we're having Italian. Sometimes another glass in the jacuzzi with my lady. We have a full bar, and for parties, harder stuff comes out, but it's not of interest to me. She likes tequila (and frankly, I like that she likes tequila... inhibitions? What inhibitions?) but it isn't for me. I don't smoke pot anymore because I'm not willing to exchange the high for the potential consequences. However, if pot were legal, we would not have alcohol in the house for my use. I much prefer pot to alcohol, and aside from the aforementioned tequila, so does my lady. So call that one for switching to pot, and one who would do both.
The reasons for my choice are the far smaller price you pay the next day for having indulged yourself; the certain ability to get into a car and drive if you have to, albeit a bit slowly and probably while snacking and giggling; and the higher quality effect (entertainment by thinking, saying and observing funny things, or things funny, instead of entertainment because you're falling over or watching someone else fall over.) Indulging in the munchies is more fun than puking into the toilet, too.
I suspect a lot of other people would feel the same way. Not everyone, and certainly not those who are drinking because they are unhappy - but people with generally OK lives and a basic awareness that puking, physical and mental incapacity, and consequences like liver damage aren't really good indicators for the best choice to get high.
The liberty argument clinches it, though. It's a personal, victimless choice. As such, I believe there is no ethical basis whatsoever for legislation forbidding the use of pot.
Can you honestly tell me that no one has ever died from pot laced with something nasty?
[blank look] In that case, obviously, it wasn't the pot that killed them, it was the "something nasty" and there is no call to denigrate pot itself on that basis.
Or was so stoned they walked into traffic? Or crashed their car?
You know, pot doesn't make you stupid. It makes you silly. There's a huge difference. The effects are entirely unlike alcohol, and trying to characterize pot as alcohol-like is disingenuous. Compared to almost any other drug, pot is a very safe and reasonable choice, probably on the order of caffeine, and just as useful to achieve the desired goal.
Nothing people ingest is free of negative effects on someone with the possible exception of water. Allergies, already mostly bent out of shape minds, even poor swallowing or breathing habits can get you into a world of hurt. But none of that is a good reason to legislate away a personal, victimless choice. Liberty: It's the drug we should all take.
Riiiggghhht - let me introduce you to some of my stoner friends from high school, and see what they even remember from 2 years of 3x/day.
No one (or at least, no one with any sense) is saying that while you're high, you're normal. You're high. That's the point, don't you get it? Your memory is affected, your appetite is affected, your perceptions are affected, your sense of humor is affected, your willingness to be perceived as silly is affected, and more. That's not a bad point with regard to pot, it's the damned point. And of course, if you use it 2-3x a day continuously, you're going to be wrecked continuously, and that's a dumb-assed choice for a lifestyle unless you're wealthy and truly have not a responsibility in the world. Your friends made poor choices, but those choices weren't caused by the pot. I smoked plenty of weed in my teens, enjoyed it immensely, but never let it interfere with my studies or personal life; I started out poor as a beggar, but today, I own four corporations outright as well as two small businesses, live very well and have no debt. Pot didn't slow me down in the least, or make me stupid, or foul up my memory.
And what's with the "hemp will save the world" thing?
If you really want to know, just go google it. Hemp is a raw material that has a myriad of uses, and it grows easily and naturally anywhere from a clay pot to a yard to a plantation. If it were available, it could go a long way towards filling a lot of needs. Smart people see that, and they add it to the list of why the dumb-asses in Washington shouldn't have made it illegal in the first place, and why it should be legal now. Entirely aside from the drug uses of its cousins (they're really not the same plant, you know.)
See, I'm also a straight male with a more than satisfactory companion, and I feel exactly the opposite - it cheers me up to see people expressing their affection for each other, even more so to see them engaged in loving physical behavior. I even get a kick out of seeing people expressing love for their pets, rolling around on the ground and generally frolicking. PDA beats the hell out of seeing them walking down the streets, stone-faced, acting like they're robots out to deliver envelopes.
I like what I call "mating plumage", too, that means ladies and gents dressed up so they look good. It's just a nicer thing to see than someone slouching along in sneakers, jeans and a hoodie.
And no, doesn't bother me a bit if PDA involves gay, straight, multi-partner, religious or simply parenting behavior. It isn't like I'm forced in any way to do what anyone else is doing. If I can see that other people are happy, or better yet, joyful, then it's a sure thing I'm going to take a positive attitude about it.
The world is an interesting place. I'm not for suppressing any behavior unless it involves non-consensual physical impingement on another person. The second someone expects me to engage in behavior that I don't actually have an interest in, we're going to have words. And you know what? Of all of those things I mentioned, the only people who have ever done that are the religious, both indirectly, through law, and directly, to my face. Now that behavior I find repellant.
You're a Troll. A Class A Troll, and I am appalled that you've been modded so well.
With a UID of 673134, you're "appalled"? That's a long time to hold a grudge.
how the parent achieved +5 insightful is beyond me.
Come on. You know the slashdot moderation system is totally broken, with no accountability whatsoever; any bonehead can moderate (and they certainly do); moderation being used as punitive "I disagree" bludgeoning on perfectly good, high quality posts; "editors" get in there and systematically down-mod posters and subjects they disagree with (and they're proud of it); blacklisting of moderation capability when it is done as it is supposed to be done; outright banning of moderation capability on the basis of censorship (we don't like your posts, no modding for you!); and of course on top of all this, the comment point system is broken very badly, such that many high quality posts don't get modded at all. The bottom line is, if you even want to have a hope of following a thread, you have to read at -1, or one shortcoming or another of the moderation system will chop the thread into incomprehensible little chunks.
The powers that be have made it perfectly clear that they won't take suggestions; they're more interested in adding "web 2.0" grunge than they are in actually improving how the site works. So don't be appalled. Just read at -1 and ignore the moderation. That's what most of us have learned to do.
Slashdot's community has always been the thing to come to the site for. Comment moderation is a very badly designed, unfair and unaccountable clusterfuck, and the editing (I should say story selection, because I don't recall ever seeing any editing) does tend to miss stories I'd like to see posted, while some amazingly lame stories make it all the way to the front page on a tediously regular basis. And then there are the dupes.
Moderation in particular has been the subject of many people's attempts to suggest real improvements (including myself), but there is a "not-invented-here" vibe that prevents any improvement. Luckily, we do have a great community, and despite the site's failure to improve the infrastructure, the core of technical and intelligent posters continue to make it the most varied and interesting place on the net.
the problem is that for many reasons the site you are seeing may not be owned by the same person that bought the original certificate. That is why you have to trace it back to the origin, to make sure that the site I am seeing is owned by the person/organization that I trust.
You cannot trace it back. If the cert says it is for goodmerchant.com, and Leroy Trustworthy owns it, at 351 Oh-So-Honest Blvd, and that's the address on the web page, the cert and the site match. Is it really Leroy Trustworthy? Or is it the guy who SAID he was? Or is it the guy who stole Leroy's computer? Are they at Oh-So-Honest blvd, or are they really at My-Physical-Mail-Bounces-Emptylot, with a phone that answers "No one is available to take your call, but you are important to us..."? How does the certificate help, in any way, to make the distinction? Especially in such a way that the consumer can "trust" the site because it simply has such a cert? Go ahead, think those over. I'll watch the thread for a few days.
[a] If anyone can do a perfectly good self signed certificate then every certificate is as good as anyone's else and
[b] there is no way to be sure of who I am talking to on the other end.
[a] Yes they could, and [b] yes, there is no way to be sure, but the only difference between that state you imagine there and the current state is that the only "good" certificates at present are those that the browser won't trigger on and scare the consumer away. Currently, there is no way to be sure of who you are talking to on the other end *right now*. If you think otherwise, see the previous paragraph of this post.
The problem that encription alone is not enough, as you have said, anyone can do it, so if I can fool you into using my certificate instead of the original one, say I have poison your ISP DNS server for instance, I could set up a proxy (man in the middle attack) and serve the exact same page that you're expecting to see but this time I get to see everything.
Encryption, however, is all we have. Everything else is a detriment. You can be attacked. Right now. You can get many site's certificates through straight hacking; Windows machines are pretty easy, and you can even take down an awful lot of linux servers by uploading a race hack that escalates into root privileges, and then simply running off with the certificate. The security minded here know exactly what I'm talking about. You can do it by walking up to an unsecured console on a Windows machine. You can get the certificate at gunpoint, or by bribery. Hacking a DNS might be harder, might be easier. The guy in the store you're used to going into might have killed the owner, who is lying in the back room, and is going to happily walk out with your money the minute you leave with order placed. All of this aside, someone can grab a cert that looks perfectly reasonable (amazon.ecom.merch.com), attack the DNS, redirect you to that site, and you'll happily give them your credit card. All these things are possible, and certificates don't protect against them at all. They are a scam.
Well if the system worked as designed, this would be impossible, because the certification authority would not grant me a valid certificate for a site that belongs to another person.
The certificate authority has no way to know if the customer is interacting with a legitimate merchant. Because you can BE legitimate right up until the second you get the cert, and then embark on an ecommerce rampage that lasts years, until the certificate expires. The slicker you are, the more you'll get away with, but in no case will anything the CA does slow you down, and in no case did anything the CA did help the consumer. Quite the opposite: The (completely uninformed and not related to the facts) implication that the merchant is legitimate and is located somewhere speci
Thats the whole point of those things, they're there so it doesn't matter if you can convince the voters to support a bill since the courts will strike it down anyway. Checks and balances.
That'd be fine, if that was how it actually worked. Except the courts can't be counted on. They supported the ridiculous idea that the constitution's enumerated power for congress to deal with interstate commerce could be (cough) "interpreted" to mean that it could legislate and authorize actions with regard to intrastate commerce. That's just one for-instance. The USSC has a history of absolutely absurd decisions with regard to constitutionality; I could go on about them for quite a while (and I have, elsewhere on slashdot.) Bad decisions aren't the only way they fail us. They fail us by refusing to deal with things that are controversial (like atheism) by using technicalities to avoid having to render opinion(s).
But that's so easy! All you have to do is invoke "Terrorists!" and all but Ron Paul (R/l, Texas) will be convinced. If you invoke "Pedophiles!" or "Immigrants!" instead, Ron too will fall in line.
Our representatives are pitiful. They are also the greatest threat to liberty we face.
As long as the technology relies on lip-reading, the reaction among those who don't want their lips read will be to not move their lips. Consequently, a slightly mumbly version of English will develop that doesn't require lip movement, and they'll be back to square one, using microphones. Good ones. When they go there, verbal communications will move to other forms. And all the time, resentment will be building. Welcome to the machine.
if we take the premise that god was himself incarnate in Jesus, then it only makes sense that the rules will all change... once god has his run at being human, he sympathizes with us, rather than punishes.
What you've left out of your reasoning, however, is that the Christian god is also supposed to be an all-knowing god, and so hanging out as Jesus wouldn't have taught him anything.
Aside from that, an issue for your premise itself is that Jesus, according to the story, didn't refer to himself as god; he called god his "father" (John 14:2: in my father's house are many rooms) and he addressed remarks to him as if he were a third party. One example being "Matthew 27:46: Eli, Eli, lema sabachtani?"
It's funny that you hold this high standard on dating manuscripts, when the rest of the archaeological community doesn't assume that a writing can't significantly predate its earliest extant manuscript. We have many other writings for which the earliest MS appeared a thousand years after the recorded events.
You misunderstand me. What I mean to say is that the earliest copy we have is, absolute earliest, most hand-waving estimate, from 150 AD. That's the earliest the copy was written. That means that whatever it was copied from is from 150 AD or earlier. The problem I am pointing out is that we have been unable to establish what the date of the original storytelling is, and for that reason, the copies don't meet the standard of contemporaneous evidence - quite aside from the content issues. Again, perhaps tomorrow, we'll find something stuck in a jar in a cave and we'll have something from, say, 0030 or so. That would be something one could point to and say it was contemporaneous with the story-telling it does. But right now, given the evidence we have, it appears just as likely the story was created out of the Christian's verbal traditions in 150 AD, or even in 250 AD.
One more thing: If the book were a mundane history, I'd probably be one of the first to say we should trust it first, and doubt it only when we find contradictions. But the bible has numerous problems, typically couched as describing events that are impossible (rising from the dead, feeding the many from a few scraps, water into wine and so on.) Consequently, it disqualifies itself as a history and makes it clear that it is a work of fiction by its very contents.
Because of the directly supernatural parts (meaning, actual reports of supernatural events, rather than vague, 3rd-party references to worship or gods), it doesn't rise to the standard of an historical fiction; it is more like a thriller set in the past. Considering this, taking the parts that don't seem supernatural as history isn't a very reasonable thing to do without some kind of confirmation that rises to a higher standard. So I don't unless I have those confirmations (eg, we know there were Romans, and also that Romans had a nasty tradition of crucifying people.) It isn't just that the copies are a lot more recent than the story. The story itself is what motivates me to want something more in terms of evidence. To be blunt, once someone starts directly lying to me, my trust goes south, and I tend to look for a new source.
If anyone wanted to contradict that line from Matthew, they could have. You're arguing that it didn't happen just because we have only one witness. There are many cosmological and meteorological events that could have caused that darkness.
At this point in time, there were many writers and many people recording events in the skies. They certainly would have noticed if it suddenly got dark during the day. Furthermore, for cosmological events, we can work things backwards and figure out when eclipses happened. Eclipses being the only "many" cosmological event that can be called to task for this report. For weather, "darkness all across the land"... no, sorry. They knew what clouds and storms were. They could have just said so. Aside from the reporting in the bible, there are no other reports of this, and it only seems reasonable that there would have been - Cosmological events from other times are reported in great detail and by many sources. Something like sudden darkness all across the land inconveniences many, and even more so at that point in time. Furthermore, it probably would have frightened the heck out of most people, making it all the more notable.
However: If you think that this was an eclipse, then by all means, direct me to the evidence that backs that up. If you can show that an eclipse happened scientifically, I'll be willing to accept that for some very odd reason, it wasn't reported by anyone else. Eclipses
Huh? There's four books in the Christian Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, written by four guys about Christ. Now of course, these books were written by guys born after Jesus had died, and they were retelling oral stories that were told to them by others. But that's still historic evidence, though not terribly reliable
The bible is not known to be contemporaneous with the time that Jesus is described to have lived in. The earliest codexes come from 250 AD if you take the scholarly consensus, and from about 150 AD if you buy the idea that while everyone else was using scrolls, the P52 fragment (aka "St John's fragment) just "happened" to be put into codex form. We don't have a single copy earlier than that, and so cannot establish that the books of the bible come from any earlier. The bottom line is that the bible we have cannot trace its own roots back to Christ's time, or to the time immediately afterwards - everything we have is much younger than that.
The problem with works of this nature - that arise after an event, or apparently do - is that history and historical fiction are both even easier to write later than they are when the events are occurring. So to validate the bible as a history, rather than a historical fiction, we need to trace it back further than we have been able to thus far. It cannot serve as evidence of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John any more than Tom Clancy's novels serve as evidence of John Ryan. We need evidence that shows that Jesus - not to mention the four putative authors - actually existed outside the context of the cult of the mid 0000's, and outside the context of that cult's book of the 0100's...0300's. But there isn't any, and that's the problem with saying "there is historical evidence about Jesus."
There's another problem, too. That is that the bible - the NT - reports countrywide events that go unreported by a whole slew of writers working in that period. Such as:
Matt. 27:45; Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour...
Add to that reporting of supernatural events, and we have every reason to distrust the bible as a historical document. If there is no contemporaneous evidence for Christ (and there isn't) and the bible is telling untruths (and it is) then it is clear that to bring any rational validity to this we need more than we have so far. Perhaps someone will dig it up tomorrow, but until they do... it's just one religion among many, and a book.
The existence of the cult of Christianity in Tacitus's time is more evidence, because obviously they all got their info from somewhere.
Come now. How about "The existence of the temples of the Greeks is more evidence there was a Zeus, because obviously they got their info from somewhere." or "The existence of the cult of Mormonism is more evidence there was an angel Moroni, because obviously they got their info from somewhere." or "The existence of the remains of sacrificed children in Mexico is more evidence there was a sun god, because obviously the Aztecs got their info from somewhere." You see? Religions make things up. They write them in books, they drum up popular support, they build temples, sacrifice, pray, do good deeds, burn "witches"... this is what religions do. You can't say that because a religion, in this case Christianity, exists, that this verifies their central tenet, that their god or the son of their god existed as well. It just doesn't follow. In fact, if Christ were a blurry myth, it'd be a lot easier to raise him up to the status of the son of god, because there'd be no one around to say "No, I was there, and he didn't heal the leper at all, he just gave him a loaf of bread." Reality is a pain in the neck when you're trying to create a mythology.
Completely agree, and the sad thing is, we're in no way short of space and there is no reason in the world to limit such metadata. Could be done like camera data; not in fields you'd sort in a table, but a list of qualities that might come up in a window, essentially of no limit at all. So you could have everyone's name, not just the soloist, plus the fellow who did the album art, that dapper little fellow who tuned the tympani...
There is historic evidence that a wandering priest called Jesus Christ did actually exist.
No. There isn't. The first mention of Christ occurs about 80AD, in writings by a man who was born in 55AD, to wit one "Tacitus." Only it isn't a mention of Chirst; it is a mention of a group of (to him) pests, a cult that called themselves Christians. After that, as the cult grew, there are more mentions of the cult. No mentions of Christ anywhere during the time he was supposed to have lived, or in other words, no contemporaneous historical evidence whatsoever.
That's not to say he might not have been a real person; that's still possible. But there is no evidence that is the case, and until or unless some is discovered, you should probably stop making claims like that.
Why do you say it is just as irrational to believe in the easter bunny as it is to believe in Jesus or Saint Nicholas?
I believe the usual, and sensible, use of the idiom is that it is just as irrational to believe in god as it is to believe in the Easter bunny. Or, it is just as irrational to believe in the supernatural acts and events attributed to Jesus and in the Jesus story as it is to believe in the Easter bunny. Those I can back up. The Jesus story... yeah, might have been some guy named Jesus that wandered around being a really nice fellow. Or maybe not. As for the supernatural stuff, no more likely than the Easter bunny, indeed. And for the same reasons.
but for all those people looking for DRM-free top-40-type music, dream come true, eh?
Mmm, no. Not just top 40. Apple carries all manner of classic rock, hard rock, symphonic, blues, and more. beat them up for DRM (OS or other) all you like, but let's not just lie about things, ok?
Software freedom cannot be enforced on public domain code.
You mean, "restrictions on use cannot be enforced on public domain software."
I swear, I have never seen such an Orwellian reversal of meaning than the idea that "freedom" requires that you not be free to do this, that, or the other thing. You can make any use of PD code, in any venue. This is less true of any other kind of release model. That makes PD the most free of any type of code there is. Period. End of story.
PD code is awesome. Just use it, you're done. For anything you like. Change it. Don't change it. Give credit. Don't give credit. Sell it. Give it away. Rent it. Link it statically. Link it dynamically. Incorporate it in your OS. Or driver. Or application. Or library. Or all of the above, or any combination of the above. In proprietary, secret things, and in semi-open things and in fully open things (meaning, of course, more PD.) The point is that such code is best able to help everyone who might have a use for it to get ahead. By far.
What we really have here in the theft of the concept of freedom from PD is an intent to tie code up in legal tangles, which is certainly not of as much benefit to the software community as code that does not lead to lawyers, fees, delays, pointing fingers, linking and usage limitations, and so forth.
Now mind you, I really don't care if you decide that your code is to be restricted. It's your code, after all. The thing that bothers me is this ridiculous pretense that when you restrict it, you're making it "free." That is a load of hooey, plain and simple. Free = PD. License proponents only wish they could legitimately use the word free the way PD can. Not that it stops them from trying.
Frankly, if your supposedly "free" code isn't PD, then you're just selling it using a different form of commerce — that of forcing people to act in the way you want via your license in order to obtain the privilege of using your code. That's not significantly different from a proprietary vendor requiring money.
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Agreed. Unfortunately, over-imbibing is common. In some countries (yes, I'm looking at you, England) it seems to have evolved into a sport.
informative++, interesting++
And where are the moderators?
Now that is purest nonsense. The army's policies on gays are the kindergarden level group-think of morons. They're still in place, as are any number of other bad policies such as looking the other way when recruiters lie through their teeth, encouraging superstition, using punishment on the squad to force the squad to coerce a specific squad member into line, etc.
I appreciate what our soldiers do for us when there is a legitimate job of defense to be done, I mourn for them when they are lost in the service of dubious or evil goals just as I do if they are legitimately defending our borders, but in no way am I confused into thinking that the military, as an overall organism, is either free of poor practices, or able to free itself. The evidence says otherwise, each and every day. The Peter principle is more active in the military than anywhere else, and stupidity abounds.
No. It won't. Comments modded down are permanently lost to anyone who uses the moderation system to filter the comments. Moderation is never reversed, and so harm done by moderators is never ameliorated. Quite aside from the fact that it would have to happen while the thread is "alive" for it to make a significant difference. This is one of the many serious problems with slashdot moderation. The only way you can see all of the quality comments in a thread is to read at -1. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just fooling themselves; and those of us who do read at -1 (a) resent the inability of the moderation system to raise up the majority the reasonable posts and (b) curb moderator abuse, from moderation as commentary to punitive "I hate this guy" moderation to completely unnecessary modding down of high quality posts. We have to spend a lot of time reading pure drivel because the moderation system is so poorly designed.
That's fine as far as it goes. However, in a climate where it is against the rules to disagree or criticize your superiors, other issues have arisen. Soldiers aren't allowed to speak their minds about general issues that the public is; that's not a security matter, that is pure and simple manipulation and suppression of correcting influences.
If you hate free speech so much, leave. Go to some non NATO country.
No. That's what software is for. We know they're listening to every phone conversation using speech recognition; it is even easier to read every email. You don't live in the condition of privacy you seem to think you do. Soldiers, probably less so.
Well, now that you've brought it up, why is it? I mean, other than blocking traffic? It seems to me that the reasonable response of a cop in a society that wasn't totally bass-ackwards about sexuality would be "get on the sidewalk or into the park or I'm gonna have to give ya a ticket", while once on the sidewalk, people walked about such an activity just the way they do some guy playing a guitar with his hat out.
There's nothing like forcing people to comply with hiding behaviors so you don't have to cope with your hangups as an example of the poisoning of the concept of personal liberty.
Here's two data points. I drink a little bit, most commonly a glass of wine if we're having Italian. Sometimes another glass in the jacuzzi with my lady. We have a full bar, and for parties, harder stuff comes out, but it's not of interest to me. She likes tequila (and frankly, I like that she likes tequila... inhibitions? What inhibitions?) but it isn't for me. I don't smoke pot anymore because I'm not willing to exchange the high for the potential consequences. However, if pot were legal, we would not have alcohol in the house for my use. I much prefer pot to alcohol, and aside from the aforementioned tequila, so does my lady. So call that one for switching to pot, and one who would do both.
The reasons for my choice are the far smaller price you pay the next day for having indulged yourself; the certain ability to get into a car and drive if you have to, albeit a bit slowly and probably while snacking and giggling; and the higher quality effect (entertainment by thinking, saying and observing funny things, or things funny, instead of entertainment because you're falling over or watching someone else fall over.) Indulging in the munchies is more fun than puking into the toilet, too.
I suspect a lot of other people would feel the same way. Not everyone, and certainly not those who are drinking because they are unhappy - but people with generally OK lives and a basic awareness that puking, physical and mental incapacity, and consequences like liver damage aren't really good indicators for the best choice to get high.
The liberty argument clinches it, though. It's a personal, victimless choice. As such, I believe there is no ethical basis whatsoever for legislation forbidding the use of pot.
[blank look] In that case, obviously, it wasn't the pot that killed them, it was the "something nasty" and there is no call to denigrate pot itself on that basis.
You know, pot doesn't make you stupid. It makes you silly. There's a huge difference. The effects are entirely unlike alcohol, and trying to characterize pot as alcohol-like is disingenuous. Compared to almost any other drug, pot is a very safe and reasonable choice, probably on the order of caffeine, and just as useful to achieve the desired goal.
Nothing people ingest is free of negative effects on someone with the possible exception of water. Allergies, already mostly bent out of shape minds, even poor swallowing or breathing habits can get you into a world of hurt. But none of that is a good reason to legislate away a personal, victimless choice. Liberty: It's the drug we should all take.
No one (or at least, no one with any sense) is saying that while you're high, you're normal. You're high. That's the point, don't you get it? Your memory is affected, your appetite is affected, your perceptions are affected, your sense of humor is affected, your willingness to be perceived as silly is affected, and more. That's not a bad point with regard to pot, it's the damned point. And of course, if you use it 2-3x a day continuously, you're going to be wrecked continuously, and that's a dumb-assed choice for a lifestyle unless you're wealthy and truly have not a responsibility in the world. Your friends made poor choices, but those choices weren't caused by the pot. I smoked plenty of weed in my teens, enjoyed it immensely, but never let it interfere with my studies or personal life; I started out poor as a beggar, but today, I own four corporations outright as well as two small businesses, live very well and have no debt. Pot didn't slow me down in the least, or make me stupid, or foul up my memory.
If you really want to know, just go google it. Hemp is a raw material that has a myriad of uses, and it grows easily and naturally anywhere from a clay pot to a yard to a plantation. If it were available, it could go a long way towards filling a lot of needs. Smart people see that, and they add it to the list of why the dumb-asses in Washington shouldn't have made it illegal in the first place, and why it should be legal now. Entirely aside from the drug uses of its cousins (they're really not the same plant, you know.)
See, I'm also a straight male with a more than satisfactory companion, and I feel exactly the opposite - it cheers me up to see people expressing their affection for each other, even more so to see them engaged in loving physical behavior. I even get a kick out of seeing people expressing love for their pets, rolling around on the ground and generally frolicking. PDA beats the hell out of seeing them walking down the streets, stone-faced, acting like they're robots out to deliver envelopes.
I like what I call "mating plumage", too, that means ladies and gents dressed up so they look good. It's just a nicer thing to see than someone slouching along in sneakers, jeans and a hoodie.
And no, doesn't bother me a bit if PDA involves gay, straight, multi-partner, religious or simply parenting behavior. It isn't like I'm forced in any way to do what anyone else is doing. If I can see that other people are happy, or better yet, joyful, then it's a sure thing I'm going to take a positive attitude about it.
The world is an interesting place. I'm not for suppressing any behavior unless it involves non-consensual physical impingement on another person. The second someone expects me to engage in behavior that I don't actually have an interest in, we're going to have words. And you know what? Of all of those things I mentioned, the only people who have ever done that are the religious, both indirectly, through law, and directly, to my face. Now that behavior I find repellant.
With a UID of 673134, you're "appalled"? That's a long time to hold a grudge.
Come on. You know the slashdot moderation system is totally broken, with no accountability whatsoever; any bonehead can moderate (and they certainly do); moderation being used as punitive "I disagree" bludgeoning on perfectly good, high quality posts; "editors" get in there and systematically down-mod posters and subjects they disagree with (and they're proud of it); blacklisting of moderation capability when it is done as it is supposed to be done; outright banning of moderation capability on the basis of censorship (we don't like your posts, no modding for you!); and of course on top of all this, the comment point system is broken very badly, such that many high quality posts don't get modded at all. The bottom line is, if you even want to have a hope of following a thread, you have to read at -1, or one shortcoming or another of the moderation system will chop the thread into incomprehensible little chunks.
The powers that be have made it perfectly clear that they won't take suggestions; they're more interested in adding "web 2.0" grunge than they are in actually improving how the site works. So don't be appalled. Just read at -1 and ignore the moderation. That's what most of us have learned to do.
Slashdot's community has always been the thing to come to the site for. Comment moderation is a very badly designed, unfair and unaccountable clusterfuck, and the editing (I should say story selection, because I don't recall ever seeing any editing) does tend to miss stories I'd like to see posted, while some amazingly lame stories make it all the way to the front page on a tediously regular basis. And then there are the dupes.
Moderation in particular has been the subject of many people's attempts to suggest real improvements (including myself), but there is a "not-invented-here" vibe that prevents any improvement. Luckily, we do have a great community, and despite the site's failure to improve the infrastructure, the core of technical and intelligent posters continue to make it the most varied and interesting place on the net.
You cannot trace it back. If the cert says it is for goodmerchant.com, and Leroy Trustworthy owns it, at 351 Oh-So-Honest Blvd, and that's the address on the web page, the cert and the site match. Is it really Leroy Trustworthy? Or is it the guy who SAID he was? Or is it the guy who stole Leroy's computer? Are they at Oh-So-Honest blvd, or are they really at My-Physical-Mail-Bounces-Emptylot, with a phone that answers "No one is available to take your call, but you are important to us..."? How does the certificate help, in any way, to make the distinction? Especially in such a way that the consumer can "trust" the site because it simply has such a cert? Go ahead, think those over. I'll watch the thread for a few days.
[a] Yes they could, and [b] yes, there is no way to be sure, but the only difference between that state you imagine there and the current state is that the only "good" certificates at present are those that the browser won't trigger on and scare the consumer away. Currently, there is no way to be sure of who you are talking to on the other end *right now*. If you think otherwise, see the previous paragraph of this post.
Encryption, however, is all we have. Everything else is a detriment. You can be attacked. Right now. You can get many site's certificates through straight hacking; Windows machines are pretty easy, and you can even take down an awful lot of linux servers by uploading a race hack that escalates into root privileges, and then simply running off with the certificate. The security minded here know exactly what I'm talking about. You can do it by walking up to an unsecured console on a Windows machine. You can get the certificate at gunpoint, or by bribery. Hacking a DNS might be harder, might be easier. The guy in the store you're used to going into might have killed the owner, who is lying in the back room, and is going to happily walk out with your money the minute you leave with order placed. All of this aside, someone can grab a cert that looks perfectly reasonable (amazon.ecom.merch.com), attack the DNS, redirect you to that site, and you'll happily give them your credit card. All these things are possible, and certificates don't protect against them at all. They are a scam.
The certificate authority has no way to know if the customer is interacting with a legitimate merchant. Because you can BE legitimate right up until the second you get the cert, and then embark on an ecommerce rampage that lasts years, until the certificate expires. The slicker you are, the more you'll get away with, but in no case will anything the CA does slow you down, and in no case did anything the CA did help the consumer. Quite the opposite: The (completely uninformed and not related to the facts) implication that the merchant is legitimate and is located somewhere speci
That'd be fine, if that was how it actually worked. Except the courts can't be counted on. They supported the ridiculous idea that the constitution's enumerated power for congress to deal with interstate commerce could be (cough) "interpreted" to mean that it could legislate and authorize actions with regard to intrastate commerce. That's just one for-instance. The USSC has a history of absolutely absurd decisions with regard to constitutionality; I could go on about them for quite a while (and I have, elsewhere on slashdot.) Bad decisions aren't the only way they fail us. They fail us by refusing to deal with things that are controversial (like atheism) by using technicalities to avoid having to render opinion(s).
But that's so easy! All you have to do is invoke "Terrorists!" and all but Ron Paul (R/l, Texas) will be convinced. If you invoke "Pedophiles!" or "Immigrants!" instead, Ron too will fall in line.
Our representatives are pitiful. They are also the greatest threat to liberty we face.
As long as the technology relies on lip-reading, the reaction among those who don't want their lips read will be to not move their lips. Consequently, a slightly mumbly version of English will develop that doesn't require lip movement, and they'll be back to square one, using microphones. Good ones. When they go there, verbal communications will move to other forms. And all the time, resentment will be building. Welcome to the machine.
What you've left out of your reasoning, however, is that the Christian god is also supposed to be an all-knowing god, and so hanging out as Jesus wouldn't have taught him anything.
Aside from that, an issue for your premise itself is that Jesus, according to the story, didn't refer to himself as god; he called god his "father" (John 14:2: in my father's house are many rooms) and he addressed remarks to him as if he were a third party. One example being "Matthew 27:46: Eli, Eli, lema sabachtani?"
You misunderstand me. What I mean to say is that the earliest copy we have is, absolute earliest, most hand-waving estimate, from 150 AD. That's the earliest the copy was written. That means that whatever it was copied from is from 150 AD or earlier. The problem I am pointing out is that we have been unable to establish what the date of the original storytelling is, and for that reason, the copies don't meet the standard of contemporaneous evidence - quite aside from the content issues. Again, perhaps tomorrow, we'll find something stuck in a jar in a cave and we'll have something from, say, 0030 or so. That would be something one could point to and say it was contemporaneous with the story-telling it does. But right now, given the evidence we have, it appears just as likely the story was created out of the Christian's verbal traditions in 150 AD, or even in 250 AD.
One more thing: If the book were a mundane history, I'd probably be one of the first to say we should trust it first, and doubt it only when we find contradictions. But the bible has numerous problems, typically couched as describing events that are impossible (rising from the dead, feeding the many from a few scraps, water into wine and so on.) Consequently, it disqualifies itself as a history and makes it clear that it is a work of fiction by its very contents.
Because of the directly supernatural parts (meaning, actual reports of supernatural events, rather than vague, 3rd-party references to worship or gods), it doesn't rise to the standard of an historical fiction; it is more like a thriller set in the past. Considering this, taking the parts that don't seem supernatural as history isn't a very reasonable thing to do without some kind of confirmation that rises to a higher standard. So I don't unless I have those confirmations (eg, we know there were Romans, and also that Romans had a nasty tradition of crucifying people.) It isn't just that the copies are a lot more recent than the story. The story itself is what motivates me to want something more in terms of evidence. To be blunt, once someone starts directly lying to me, my trust goes south, and I tend to look for a new source.
At this point in time, there were many writers and many people recording events in the skies. They certainly would have noticed if it suddenly got dark during the day. Furthermore, for cosmological events, we can work things backwards and figure out when eclipses happened. Eclipses being the only "many" cosmological event that can be called to task for this report. For weather, "darkness all across the land"... no, sorry. They knew what clouds and storms were. They could have just said so. Aside from the reporting in the bible, there are no other reports of this, and it only seems reasonable that there would have been - Cosmological events from other times are reported in great detail and by many sources. Something like sudden darkness all across the land inconveniences many, and even more so at that point in time. Furthermore, it probably would have frightened the heck out of most people, making it all the more notable.
However: If you think that this was an eclipse, then by all means, direct me to the evidence that backs that up. If you can show that an eclipse happened scientifically, I'll be willing to accept that for some very odd reason, it wasn't reported by anyone else. Eclipses
I like the argument. It isn't evidence, per se, but it is a very nice bit of reasoning.
The bible is not known to be contemporaneous with the time that Jesus is described to have lived in. The earliest codexes come from 250 AD if you take the scholarly consensus, and from about 150 AD if you buy the idea that while everyone else was using scrolls, the P52 fragment (aka "St John's fragment) just "happened" to be put into codex form. We don't have a single copy earlier than that, and so cannot establish that the books of the bible come from any earlier. The bottom line is that the bible we have cannot trace its own roots back to Christ's time, or to the time immediately afterwards - everything we have is much younger than that.
The problem with works of this nature - that arise after an event, or apparently do - is that history and historical fiction are both even easier to write later than they are when the events are occurring. So to validate the bible as a history, rather than a historical fiction, we need to trace it back further than we have been able to thus far. It cannot serve as evidence of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John any more than Tom Clancy's novels serve as evidence of John Ryan. We need evidence that shows that Jesus - not to mention the four putative authors - actually existed outside the context of the cult of the mid 0000's, and outside the context of that cult's book of the 0100's...0300's. But there isn't any, and that's the problem with saying "there is historical evidence about Jesus."
There's another problem, too. That is that the bible - the NT - reports countrywide events that go unreported by a whole slew of writers working in that period. Such as:
Add to that reporting of supernatural events, and we have every reason to distrust the bible as a historical document. If there is no contemporaneous evidence for Christ (and there isn't) and the bible is telling untruths (and it is) then it is clear that to bring any rational validity to this we need more than we have so far. Perhaps someone will dig it up tomorrow, but until they do... it's just one religion among many, and a book.
Come now. How about "The existence of the temples of the Greeks is more evidence there was a Zeus, because obviously they got their info from somewhere." or "The existence of the cult of Mormonism is more evidence there was an angel Moroni, because obviously they got their info from somewhere." or "The existence of the remains of sacrificed children in Mexico is more evidence there was a sun god, because obviously the Aztecs got their info from somewhere." You see? Religions make things up. They write them in books, they drum up popular support, they build temples, sacrifice, pray, do good deeds, burn "witches"... this is what religions do. You can't say that because a religion, in this case Christianity, exists, that this verifies their central tenet, that their god or the son of their god existed as well. It just doesn't follow. In fact, if Christ were a blurry myth, it'd be a lot easier to raise him up to the status of the son of god, because there'd be no one around to say "No, I was there, and he didn't heal the leper at all, he just gave him a loaf of bread." Reality is a pain in the neck when you're trying to create a mythology.
Completely agree, and the sad thing is, we're in no way short of space and there is no reason in the world to limit such metadata. Could be done like camera data; not in fields you'd sort in a table, but a list of qualities that might come up in a window, essentially of no limit at all. So you could have everyone's name, not just the soloist, plus the fellow who did the album art, that dapper little fellow who tuned the tympani...
No. There isn't. The first mention of Christ occurs about 80AD, in writings by a man who was born in 55AD, to wit one "Tacitus." Only it isn't a mention of Chirst; it is a mention of a group of (to him) pests, a cult that called themselves Christians. After that, as the cult grew, there are more mentions of the cult. No mentions of Christ anywhere during the time he was supposed to have lived, or in other words, no contemporaneous historical evidence whatsoever.
That's not to say he might not have been a real person; that's still possible. But there is no evidence that is the case, and until or unless some is discovered, you should probably stop making claims like that.
I believe the usual, and sensible, use of the idiom is that it is just as irrational to believe in god as it is to believe in the Easter bunny. Or, it is just as irrational to believe in the supernatural acts and events attributed to Jesus and in the Jesus story as it is to believe in the Easter bunny. Those I can back up. The Jesus story... yeah, might have been some guy named Jesus that wandered around being a really nice fellow. Or maybe not. As for the supernatural stuff, no more likely than the Easter bunny, indeed. And for the same reasons.
Mmm, no. Not just top 40. Apple carries all manner of classic rock, hard rock, symphonic, blues, and more. beat them up for DRM (OS or other) all you like, but let's not just lie about things, ok?
You mean, "restrictions on use cannot be enforced on public domain software."
I swear, I have never seen such an Orwellian reversal of meaning than the idea that "freedom" requires that you not be free to do this, that, or the other thing. You can make any use of PD code, in any venue. This is less true of any other kind of release model. That makes PD the most free of any type of code there is. Period. End of story.
PD code is awesome. Just use it, you're done. For anything you like. Change it. Don't change it. Give credit. Don't give credit. Sell it. Give it away. Rent it. Link it statically. Link it dynamically. Incorporate it in your OS. Or driver. Or application. Or library. Or all of the above, or any combination of the above. In proprietary, secret things, and in semi-open things and in fully open things (meaning, of course, more PD.) The point is that such code is best able to help everyone who might have a use for it to get ahead. By far.
What we really have here in the theft of the concept of freedom from PD is an intent to tie code up in legal tangles, which is certainly not of as much benefit to the software community as code that does not lead to lawyers, fees, delays, pointing fingers, linking and usage limitations, and so forth.
Now mind you, I really don't care if you decide that your code is to be restricted. It's your code, after all. The thing that bothers me is this ridiculous pretense that when you restrict it, you're making it "free." That is a load of hooey, plain and simple. Free = PD. License proponents only wish they could legitimately use the word free the way PD can. Not that it stops them from trying.
Frankly, if your supposedly "free" code isn't PD, then you're just selling it using a different form of commerce — that of forcing people to act in the way you want via your license in order to obtain the privilege of using your code. That's not significantly different from a proprietary vendor requiring money.