Unbelievable. People like you really live in a world of fantasy. 'illegal and immoral'? Do you really have this image of Bill Gates with a monocle, a tophat, and a cigar maniacally laughing and amusing himself with the cries of the poor? It's bizarre, detached-from-reality viewpoints such as yours that will keep honest, rational reform from ever happening.
But you know, I didn't even address the thrust of what you just posted. Your comment is quite telling. Your rebuttal is basically 'it's ok to go ahead and blindly hate a group of people simply because you're pissed off at 'religion'. If that's not completely counter to (what I'm assuming are) your core liberal beliefs, I don't know what is.
Ok, so.....by your logic, if I wasn't planning on buying that big 60" LCD rear projector, but just had a guy from the Sony factory run me off one on the machines on the sly, it's all good?
And what you're taking away is the money they should have received for you purchasing their product. But maybe you'd like to semanticize that to 'un-buying' things?:/
- The guy with the sig about the Patriot Act being the Republican attempt to install a theocracy is not hyperbolic.
- The guy suggesting Ashcroft thinks of himself as the Pope when inflicting himself on the country is not hyperbolic.
- The guy about 3 posts away from here 'joking' around is not symptomatic of larger attitudes.
- The fact that your post actually got modded up is also not symptomatic.
If you have even a shred of intellectual honesty, ask yourself what happens any time someone on a random internet forum (particularly geeky ones like Slashdot, or your average MMO forums) even -mentions- that they're Christian? A huge gangbang by dimwitted religion bashers ensues. Every frigging time. Maybe you were just ha-ha joking, but I'm pretty tired of the people who inevitably seem to be behind that attitude.
You know, it's people -exactly- like you who drove me far, far away from liberalism once I got out of college.
The two-facedness of you guys is just nauseating. You hate. I'll say it again, you hate. You hate hate hate. For all your ostensible devotion to multiculturalism, tolerance and all that standard stuff that comes in the Liberal Handbook, you are, nearly to the man some of the most hate filled individuals I have ever met.
You don't even try and disguise it. And I don't even think you realize it. You think 'I'm a liberal' so it never crosses your mind how over-the-top hateful you are. Christ, I was always atheistic, and I basically still am (or at the very most, agnostic), but damn you people are just freakishly insane. Your hyperbole is so far out of line with reality, it's difficult to fathom.
I'm sorry, I have to jump in on this. Your entire argument is devoid of any explanation of how they are different. And aside from that, your post is 100% pure sophistry. Wishful thinking even.
The recipe of a milkshake? I don't think so. Your analogy would be correct if you were talking about providing guitar lessons so you could make music like Metallica. Downloading an exact (please, let's not quibble on lossy compression), usable, identical version of something that you would otherwise have to pay for is stealing. You can't eat the recipe for a milkshake. You -can- listen to an illegally downloaded song precisely the same as if you bought it.
That about sums it up for me. Those bogus 'graphicsy' tarted up windows are annoying and cheap looking, and for all intents and purpose, letting Real on your machine is no different than a virus. Annoyingly hard to remove once you've got it. I had a 'flare up' recently after I caved and installed it to view something or other. As bad and annoying as ever - but like genital Herpes, you can control it with smart living:/
Seeing big powerful 'things' wielding their power impressively is a pretty intriguing thing to humans:) Fighting clearly falls in line with this. Just like top fuel dragsters, giant earth mover machines, supercomputers, jumbo jets, etc.
More succinctly, having some raw entertainment as a byproduct of actually learning things can't be all bad:) And hey, people understand explosions.
After spending several years writing code for the PS2 (with the world's smallest data cache), I kind of became sensitive to the horrors of blowing the cache.
So when I was in the market I went for the EE. Probably 70% of that decision was just 'I'm dropping big cash, which I normally don't do - let's go all the way this time', 25% was 'I've seen the horrors of small data cache firsthand and I need a security blanky to forget' and 5% was 'That additional few percentage points really matter!'.
So, yeah, it's a little on the silly side. But, I need to feel comfortable after the PS2:)
I too had a similar percussive technique on an old Commodore 1541 floppy drive. When I was a kid I had a C64 in my room, along with 800 jillion floppies full of pirated games. I had that thing for many many years and over time, my 1541 drive got old and took various beatings, and the floppies themselves lost a little 'fidelity'.
Anyway, there were certain games that simply would not work without Percussive Therapy on the floppy drive....while it was reading. It would get into these moods where it would seek (braaaaaap) and then think for awhile (chunk...whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...chunk...whi rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.........braaaaaaap). After a certain number of these, you know that it was time for therapy.
There were 2 ways to do it. Method 1 was to lift the front of the drive about 6-8 inches off the desk and drop it. The other was to give it a precise, solid fist-thwack to the left (not the right - that didn't work). This fixed things probably 95% of the time.
Ah, but "voting" on these kinds of measures is not how it's going to go down, is it? Just like any of the 50 bajillion existing insane laws and regulations that you couldn't find any non-politician to give a thumbs-up to, this will be the kind of thing implemented by the politicos with no real way for us, mere citizens to stop.
You know, you talk to your average 'brainy' fellow geek, and you're going to see a lot of incredulity if you venture into revolutionary topics like an armed citizenry, or talk of actual 'tyranny'. This is the modern age! Surely such concepts are horribly antiquated!
At the same time, we all see these broad and seemingly accelerating trends. Even now, in Canada, you can be CONVICTED OF A FELONY for simply publically stating that you think homosexuality is immoral. Not "go forth and kill gays!", or anything inflammatory. Just : "I think homosexuality is wrong". Boom, felony. In England you're a felon if you possess pepper spray. They frigging banned SWORDS in Australia this year. In Scotland, they were literally thinking about banning the sale of KNIVES (there's a hugely ironic historical parallell to this). Hate speech and hate crime laws are gaining momentum in Europe, Canada and even the US. The Patriot Act strips all kinds of rights away. The list of things is seemingly endless. And the masses smile and say "see! progress in equality/multiculturalism/blahblah!" for all of these.
20 years from now, it will be a sober thing indeed to take a pen and paper and list the things you will go to jail for that, 20 years ago were perfectly legal.
At what point is violent resistance legitimate? Unfortunately it seems that many of our enlightened bretheren these days would say "never" as they accept the yoke.
You know, I'm a libertarian. And I hold my ideals fairly sacred. Among these ideals is the idea that armed revolution is a viable, legitimate option to deal with a repressive government. I -firmly- believe that the 2nd amendment is about hunting : hunting politicians. That's an incendiary statement, but it's 100% inline with the writings and philosphy of Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Franklin, and a whole huge host of other founding brains of our country. It's not about a bunch of cracker redneck survivalists confronting the US armed forces in some kooky last stand. It's literally about putting the fear of instant retribution in some would-be tyrant's mind.
:ahem: At the same time, I'm realistic. I know that in this modern age, the practicality of this sort of thing is fading. Not gone by any means, but not quite as cut and dried as it used to be. I realize that as a single citizen in an increasingly complex world, any extremely rash action I could conceivably take under the auspices of freedom or revolution might end up being futile.
And, I may simply not have the balls if it comes right down to it.
HOWEVER. I swear upon all that is holy, sacred and worth living for : The day that RFID or any equivalent is forcibly pushed upon me or my progeny is the day that I start spraying lead. No shit. FUCK THAT NOISE.
You're the one who can't understand that I was using the multitool as an example of a potential 'offensive weapon' that one could conceivably have no immediate use for. We consider 'tool wielding' to be a pretty important thing for modern man, so carrying around tools that we might not need at any given moment is considered normal. However, in your bizarre little nerf world, this is impermissible.
Then why the hell are you carrying it around!? If I was a police officer, I'd ask you why you were carrying it. And I'd make sure I kept my eye on you if nothing else.
Well, then I'm sorry to say : you're insane. God forbid we get more petty tyrants like you in office.
Nope. Presumably you're carrying around for some reason.
And if I wasn't? Suppose I just like carrying it around, and wore a T-shirt with black letters that said "I have no use for my multitool"?
See, you're deliberately dodging the original point waaaaay back *.
This guy was carrying around pepper spray. Well, what possible reason could he have for doing this, you are asking? I'm answering - to defend himself against muggers, in a place he'd already been attacked before. You say - but there's no good reason for anyone to be legally able to carry it because it can be misused!
And then you promptly followed up with this fascinating analysis of how and when someone should be allowed to carry a stick : when he has a legit use for it.
Do you see the sophistry yet? I'll break it down further:
- People can be allowed to carrying potentially dangerous things (sticks, multitools, etc) when they have a good reason for doing so.
- There is never a good reason for carrying pepper spray because it's....drum roll....dangerous!
Boy oh boy isn't that convenient. But getting back to that asterisk near the top of my post : the original point of discussion was that self defense in the UK is incredibly devalued. And you're happily highlighting my point with your bizarre circular logic which completely precludes the likelihood that someone should think about defending themselves.
You said "The trouble is, that pepper spray could also be used as an offensive weapon for disabling a victim, and muggers are more likely to get the stuff.". So, your argument is that, if banned, only muggers are more likely to have it, so therefore it should be banned? What?
Again, what it boils down to (I think) in your mind is that : If something can be misused, despite the fact that it can be used in legitimate defense of one's own person, it is proscribed.
I admit, I'm starting to think I'm arguing with a Turing Machine that's falling apart on me.
What's fine grained? How about : insisting someone has a good reason for carrying around a stick. Or a real need for it. Once you start dictating what you can and cannot do based on need, you can take away anything you like. Today I'm carrying around my 20+ deadly-steel-tool Shrade multitool, despite the fact that I'm not doing any work. Should I be disallowed from doing that? Or maybe if I was just required to pre-file in triplicate the days I was planning on using it, along with a signed affadavit stating I was heading to my house to do some handyman work - that wouldn't be an infringement of my liberties, right?
I take it you're with the security-over-freedom crowd, given your little 'The restriction on my doing so therefore doesn't infringe my liberties' sophistry.
You're the only person I know who will go to such extreme lengths to categorize everyday items as offensive weapons, ostensibly as a reason to prohibit them.
Do you really live in that much acute fear every day that you need control on such a fine-grained level?
Here's a question I love hearing the answers to : You're in a room with your child standing behind you. You're holding a loaded.357 revolver. A guy 100 pounds heavier and 6" taller than you is walking towards you with a knife saying "I'm going to kill you and your child." Would you shoot him?
Slashdot Mirror
Unbelievable. People like you really live in a world of fantasy. 'illegal and immoral'? Do you really have this image of Bill Gates with a monocle, a tophat, and a cigar maniacally laughing and amusing himself with the cries of the poor? It's bizarre, detached-from-reality viewpoints such as yours that will keep honest, rational reform from ever happening.
Gates is to be commended for this. He's no slouch when it comes to spreading the wealth around.
Glad you decided to drop in.
And again, the instant +1.
Only on Slashdot will a "It's ok to hate people, especially those that go to church" get modded up :)
But you know, I didn't even address the thrust of what you just posted. Your comment is quite telling. Your rebuttal is basically 'it's ok to go ahead and blindly hate a group of people simply because you're pissed off at 'religion'. If that's not completely counter to (what I'm assuming are) your core liberal beliefs, I don't know what is.
So...the 2 points you had for that response, and the 2 for this one aren't positive mod points?
Ok, so.....by your logic, if I wasn't planning on buying that big 60" LCD rear projector, but just had a guy from the Sony factory run me off one on the machines on the sly, it's all good?
And what you're taking away is the money they should have received for you purchasing their product. But maybe you'd like to semanticize that to 'un-buying' things? :/
- The guy with the sig about the Patriot Act being the Republican attempt to install a theocracy is not hyperbolic.
- The guy suggesting Ashcroft thinks of himself as the Pope when inflicting himself on the country is not hyperbolic.
- The guy about 3 posts away from here 'joking' around is not symptomatic of larger attitudes.
- The fact that your post actually got modded up is also not symptomatic.
If you have even a shred of intellectual honesty, ask yourself what happens any time someone on a random internet forum (particularly geeky ones like Slashdot, or your average MMO forums) even -mentions- that they're Christian? A huge gangbang by dimwitted religion bashers ensues. Every frigging time. Maybe you were just ha-ha joking, but I'm pretty tired of the people who inevitably seem to be behind that attitude.
The two-facedness of you guys is just nauseating. You hate. I'll say it again, you hate. You hate hate hate. For all your ostensible devotion to multiculturalism, tolerance and all that standard stuff that comes in the Liberal Handbook, you are, nearly to the man some of the most hate filled individuals I have ever met.
You don't even try and disguise it. And I don't even think you realize it. You think 'I'm a liberal' so it never crosses your mind how over-the-top hateful you are. Christ, I was always atheistic, and I basically still am (or at the very most, agnostic), but damn you people are just freakishly insane. Your hyperbole is so far out of line with reality, it's difficult to fathom.
Ugh.
Word games like this are going to do nothing but make your average joe look at your side of the argument as bizarre extremism.
The recipe of a milkshake? I don't think so. Your analogy would be correct if you were talking about providing guitar lessons so you could make music like Metallica. Downloading an exact (please, let's not quibble on lossy compression), usable, identical version of something that you would otherwise have to pay for is stealing. You can't eat the recipe for a milkshake. You -can- listen to an illegally downloaded song precisely the same as if you bought it.
Your suggestion is ludicrous in the extreme.
F Real.
I kid, I kid!
Seeing big powerful 'things' wielding their power impressively is a pretty intriguing thing to humans :) Fighting clearly falls in line with this. Just like top fuel dragsters, giant earth mover machines, supercomputers, jumbo jets, etc.
More succinctly, having some raw entertainment as a byproduct of actually learning things can't be all bad :) And hey, people understand explosions.
So when I was in the market I went for the EE. Probably 70% of that decision was just 'I'm dropping big cash, which I normally don't do - let's go all the way this time', 25% was 'I've seen the horrors of small data cache firsthand and I need a security blanky to forget' and 5% was 'That additional few percentage points really matter!'. So, yeah, it's a little on the silly side. But, I need to feel comfortable after the PS2 :)
Anyway, there were certain games that simply would not work without Percussive Therapy on the floppy drive....while it was reading. It would get into these moods where it would seek (braaaaaap) and then think for awhile (chunk...whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...chunk...whi rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.........braaaaaaap). After a certain number of these, you know that it was time for therapy.
There were 2 ways to do it. Method 1 was to lift the front of the drive about 6-8 inches off the desk and drop it. The other was to give it a precise, solid fist-thwack to the left (not the right - that didn't work). This fixed things probably 95% of the time.
Those suckers were -tough-
You know, you talk to your average 'brainy' fellow geek, and you're going to see a lot of incredulity if you venture into revolutionary topics like an armed citizenry, or talk of actual 'tyranny'. This is the modern age! Surely such concepts are horribly antiquated!
At the same time, we all see these broad and seemingly accelerating trends. Even now, in Canada, you can be CONVICTED OF A FELONY for simply publically stating that you think homosexuality is immoral. Not "go forth and kill gays!", or anything inflammatory. Just : "I think homosexuality is wrong". Boom, felony. In England you're a felon if you possess pepper spray. They frigging banned SWORDS in Australia this year. In Scotland, they were literally thinking about banning the sale of KNIVES (there's a hugely ironic historical parallell to this). Hate speech and hate crime laws are gaining momentum in Europe, Canada and even the US. The Patriot Act strips all kinds of rights away. The list of things is seemingly endless. And the masses smile and say "see! progress in equality/multiculturalism/blahblah!" for all of these.
20 years from now, it will be a sober thing indeed to take a pen and paper and list the things you will go to jail for that, 20 years ago were perfectly legal.
At what point is violent resistance legitimate? Unfortunately it seems that many of our enlightened bretheren these days would say "never" as they accept the yoke.
Or maybe it's just the Labatt's talking.
And, I may simply not have the balls if it comes right down to it.
HOWEVER. I swear upon all that is holy, sacred and worth living for : The day that RFID or any equivalent is forcibly pushed upon me or my progeny is the day that I start spraying lead. No shit. FUCK THAT NOISE.
And that was before the breakin was finished! Of course, it's a motorcycle :)
Take up riding. Save some gas.
You're the one who can't understand that I was using the multitool as an example of a potential 'offensive weapon' that one could conceivably have no immediate use for. We consider 'tool wielding' to be a pretty important thing for modern man, so carrying around tools that we might not need at any given moment is considered normal. However, in your bizarre little nerf world, this is impermissible.
Then why the hell are you carrying it around!? If I was a police officer, I'd ask you why you were carrying it. And I'd make sure I kept my eye on you if nothing else. Well, then I'm sorry to say : you're insane. God forbid we get more petty tyrants like you in office.
And if I wasn't? Suppose I just like carrying it around, and wore a T-shirt with black letters that said "I have no use for my multitool"?
See, you're deliberately dodging the original point waaaaay back *.
This guy was carrying around pepper spray. Well, what possible reason could he have for doing this, you are asking? I'm answering - to defend himself against muggers, in a place he'd already been attacked before. You say - but there's no good reason for anyone to be legally able to carry it because it can be misused!
And then you promptly followed up with this fascinating analysis of how and when someone should be allowed to carry a stick : when he has a legit use for it.
Do you see the sophistry yet? I'll break it down further:
- People can be allowed to carrying potentially dangerous things (sticks, multitools, etc) when they have a good reason for doing so.
- There is never a good reason for carrying pepper spray because it's ....drum roll....dangerous!
Boy oh boy isn't that convenient. But getting back to that asterisk near the top of my post : the original point of discussion was that self defense in the UK is incredibly devalued. And you're happily highlighting my point with your bizarre circular logic which completely precludes the likelihood that someone should think about defending themselves.
You said "The trouble is, that pepper spray could also be used as an offensive weapon for disabling a victim, and muggers are more likely to get the stuff.". So, your argument is that, if banned, only muggers are more likely to have it, so therefore it should be banned? What?
Again, what it boils down to (I think) in your mind is that : If something can be misused, despite the fact that it can be used in legitimate defense of one's own person, it is proscribed.
I admit, I'm starting to think I'm arguing with a Turing Machine that's falling apart on me.
I take it you're with the security-over-freedom crowd, given your little 'The restriction on my doing so therefore doesn't infringe my liberties' sophistry.
Do you really live in that much acute fear every day that you need control on such a fine-grained level?
Here's a question I love hearing the answers to : You're in a room with your child standing behind you. You're holding a loaded .357 revolver. A guy 100 pounds heavier and 6" taller than you is walking towards you with a knife saying "I'm going to kill you and your child." Would you shoot him?