So you're saying their kid is going to be really smart, but for some reason will have a strange desire to drive a riced-up Civic?
No, I'm saying that the kid can now only get a good night's sleep in a shiny, low-riding crib with zebra-striped blankets and blue LED running lights. Other than that, he should turn out OK.
Smarty-pants couples (of the truly sharp, science-minded variety) having kids is only recently useful (or even likely), in the primate-history scheme of things. Just shows that it takes natural selection a while to catch up with the fact that we're not very far removed from small, pack-like groups living hand to mouth in primitive, hostile circumstances and not living much past 30 years old. Wait... that sounds like my neighborhood!
That being said, a close friend is an occupational therapist with a lot of experience in helping out kids experiencing the full spectrum of autistic characteristics. She's indicated that a somewhat unscientific review of those kids' parents (hundreds of which she's met and gotten to know) would completely resonate with the findings mentioned in the article. She and her husband, both sharp, analytical people, just gave birth - and not without some trepidation. Just in case, they watched re-runs of "Pimp My Ride" before conceiving.
I see now. Since the government isn't supposed to engage in entrapment, private companies will. And since private companies are now becoming increasingly indistinguishable from governments... I guess we're all fucked.
Are you so anxious to hate private businesses, and to think it's cool if people try to make $20 off of their stolen source code, that you're willing to pretend this jerk didn't advertise for the sale of the source code on his own web site? He wasn't "entrapped," he was advertising stolen stuff. Plus, he's obviously a complete moron.
As for private companies looking after their own welfare... why do you supposed that retailers are forced to have security guards? Retails stores, especially the ones selling expensive, eBay-friendly stuff, are hit constantly by shoplifters and scam artists. But most local taxpayers would scream bloody murder if they had to pay for enough police officers to have one on hand in every department store in every mall, 7 days a week. So, private security is a big and (unfortunately) completely necessary line of work.
You also seem to be forgetting about corporate/international espionage. Companies working on competitive products - especially those performing very expensive research - have to be continually vigilant against both inside and outside theft of their trade secrets, materials, financial plans, marketing campaigns, etc. If they don't use private security to help them deal with that, their only choice is to just put up with the consequences of seeing, say, a factory in China starting up production on something that the ripped-off research company just spent millions of dollars figuring out how to make, or they could... ask the government to provide trade security for every company? What would you say then, that the taxpayers are being forced to serve the coporations, blah blah blah? Exactly. So, when a company with a lot at stake has their own security people urgently tracking down people that are ripping them off (even some complete idiot advertising astoundingly sensitive stolen O/S source code for sale on his web site, and willing to take $20 for it), you can hardly bitch. Unless your position is that it's cool to steal sensitive information and sell it, in which case, let's start with yours: I can probably make $20 with your SSN and some other personal details. And that's too small to bother the police with, so I'm home free since you clearly don't think it's ethical for you to personally track down someone who rips you off.
Oh, and try one of those fancy new high-tech online dictionaries. You can immediately, and without fear of prosecution, learn what entrapment actually means.
And your favorite U.S. news outlets -- no matter which they are, because they all did -- went on and one with pictures of "shock" and "awe," both dictionary synonyms of "terror."
I know you're not serious, of course. But just in case someone else reading your comment thinks you are, a little clarification. The whole point of using overwhelming (and visually impressive) attacks against Saddam's command and control infrastructure was to shock his command and control infrastructure and his chain of command.
Do you really think that when Zarqawi sends some addled-brained young guy out to blow himself up in a crowd of families on the street that it's the same thing? If the US had wanted to target and destroy and terrorize the civilians in Iraq, they could have done so with far less effort, lower cost, and vastly more dramatic results. But of course that was not the purpose or the results.
Your average civilian-targeting suicide bomber with a trunk or backpack full of Semtex and nails is seeking to terrorize the population. The deliberate avoidance of civilian targets and the expressly command/control-focused work of the initial air attacks were designed to alter the mindset of some pretty specific people. Why do you suppose that one of the things you saw in all of those repeated playbacks on CNN was downtown Baghdad with its lights still on. Wanting to equate the dismantling of Saddam's command structure, and convincing his relative loyalists that a blow-by-blow tank battle wasn't worth the trouble is not the same as some deluded Bathist Sunni thinking that he's making Allah happy by driving his car bomb into a crowd of children. Aren't you even a little embarrased at pretending the two are the same?
Yes, they charge for it. However...
on
Buy Vista or Else
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Would you tell someone to stick with a several-flavors-ago version of your favorite distro, or to keep using Firefox 1.0? Yes, yes, free, all free blah blah blah. Believe it or not, the +/-$100 just ain't that big a deal for a lot of people, but the disruption of an upgrade (to the O/S or a significant app) is frequently the thing that puts the brakes on.
So... for most people (no, not slashdot readers), this will just happen as a new machine rotates into their life anyway. For a lot of users, "Oooh! Shiny!" is a reason to spend +/-$100. But upgrades are disruptive for people (not slashdotters) who don't actively like doing them, and the Grandma You've Talked Into Using Mandrake Who Probably Should Be Using Mandriva vX.whatever Which Means New Hardware And That Means While We're At It Let's Change Some Apps scenario is just as ugly. Never mind the dollars.
You have no proof that Al Jazeera celebrates Bin Laden other than they report on him and you dont like that.
They report on him, BBC reports on him, and so does every other network in the world. He proudly proclaims his role in supporting, blessing, or planning and executing the deliberate killings of thousands of innocent people in embassies, trains, offices, restaurants, and more. He happily associated with the Taliban, a group that turned killing women (guilty of things like having been raped, or of teaching their daughters how to work and read) in public squares into a popular lunchtime entertainment. He is proud of such things, and says so. Al Jazeera, though - beyond merely reporting on such things - actively seeks out regular guests that are, by virtue of the time they're given and the manner in which they are presented, endorsed by their editorial management as they proclaim Bin Laden a hero of Islam. Reporting that he is, to many people, a hero, and furthering that status through the routine presentation of him in pleasant on-screen graphics or the endless replay of his recordings are not the same thing.
I think you're still missing the point.
Covering newsworthy events (newsworthiness indeed being relative to the audience, which depends on region and demographics, of course) is one thing. You don't care about a car accident in my neighborhood that kills a family, but you might find it interesting if a family were to die because someone with a political or religious motive of interest to you killed them.
If we had regular road-side bombings in the US, driven by sectarian religious power struggles, you can bet that Al Jazeera would relate those events to their Arab audience. The commentators that spin the story would, like commentators everywhere, try to appeal to their audience's interest. If such roadside bombings were to happen in the US, that commentary would depend on who was doing the bombing and to whom. But it generally does not happen, so Al Jazeera's viewers don't get to see that sort of coverage and get to conclude that it's not representative or objective. What you most certainly do not get, when some idiot dies while murdering a family in the US, is a parade of pundits on CNN or Fox explaining how the killer was a hero, or acting on behalf of God, etc.
But what about when one of Zarqawi's deluded recruits drives up to a crowd of young people and shreds them with a car full of explosives and nails? That's newsworthy for a global audience because of what it says about the tension between backwards-minded religious zealots and those that want a more peaceful, democratic form of society. To the US audience, it sheds light on whether or not a place where that regularly happens will - or will not - become the next habitat for a group like the Taliban... who actively gave shelter and support to the people that blew up embassies in Africa, and then carried out the 9/11 attacks. It also sheds light on whether or not the people that conduct such attacks are getting their cash from places like Iran, or funneled through groups like Hamas (or, should I say, the Palestinian government, now).
So, how does CNN cover an event like a car bombing in Baghdad? They report that it happened, and most of their commentators will decry it as being a calculated murder designed for stirring up more martyr-minded people. Or their analysts will point out whether or not they think that the attack was designed specifically to inflame relations between Sunni and Shia, and thus destabilize a new-born democracy... the better to create a new Taliban-era Afghanistan. At no point do commentators on CNN take equal amounts of time to mention the heroism and glorious martyrdom of the idiot that was talked into killing and maiming a crowd of mothers and children shopping for vegetables. But on Al Jazeera? The call-them-martyrs commentators are, by editorial decision of the people that run the network, given the airtime and
Actually, this is really cool. Looking forward to what the use of the new detector shows, or doesn't, as the case may be. String theory is such a mind bender for most people (including me), that anything making it more directly tangible will really help focus the conversation. Or end it. Either way is good.
Unlike the regular commentators on Al Jazeera (and here is the larger point), I'm more than happy to look at honest reporting and say, "oh - that's an urban myth - righto!" and move on. That would be, as opposed to, say, the continually repeated notion (in the Arab press, and as most stylishly presented by "guest" pundits on Al Jazeera) that 9/11 was just the US government blowing up US citizens because of they're in the thrall of Zionist baby-eaters, blah blah blah. But I'm happy to move on. You know, move onto the video that Saddam's boys shot of their own over-the-top play time. Like dangling screaming people over buildings before dropping them, chopping off hands, beating people's feet until all the bones are broken (you know, for being inferior soccer players), etc. You don't need to trot out the Evil American PsyOps Crew for that stuff - Uday and Qusay went to a lot of trouble to record some of their favorite episodes... like shooting whole families in the head, burning people with propane torches. What fine, upstanding young men, working for their fine, level-headed, bury-the-dead-villagers-with-a-backhoe Dad.
I think that puts the rest of your claims into context.
I'm not worried about creating context: it's there on tape, and being sold by street vendors on $1 CDs in Baghdad. The Hussein Boys' Greatest Hits is no concoction, not taken as a whole. And that Al Jazeera is just as happy to lend whatever creativity they have to people that would report those things, and then cut the air time over to someone who also reports that the Zionist Baby Eaters are behind events that, some weeks later, Bin Laden himself says his loyal buddies have done, is beyond the pale. This thread is about whether or not Al Jazeera's handling of the news is objective. It is not, because even the most literal presentation of actual events is bracketed by endless airplay of Martyr Myth-Making and hero worship of patently twisted people that find deliberately targeting groups of police cadets or young families in the street to be Allah's good work. That context is not up for debate.
On its own it is no more or less rational than any other ideology. It is only rational in the context of the values/beliefs held by most of those who support it. These values are not inherently correct or incorrect.
I'm sorry, but that's just indefensible. Some idealogies are inherently destructive, parasitic, corrosive to personal liberty, and so on. You can't say that a system that, for example, would kill a woman for daring to teach her daughters to read, has within it its own "rationality." It is irrational on the face of it. You can be consistent within the bounds of an irrational philosophy, but that doesn't make that philosophy any less inherently, objectively irrational (and thus less "correct").
People who base their code of human interaction on magic stories told about prophets are not using reason. Banking on validations for yourself after you die, when there is no you to experience some review of your life (let alone 70 virgins) is not using reason. People who derive laws and customs from such fantasies are not rational, and not "correct," any more than someone who grows up into an adult, seasonally adjusting his behavior around Santa Claus' Good/Bad list.
Just because some subset of the behavior such cultures want to enforce (don't steal things, etc) happens to overlap with an actually reason-based world view doesn't redeem the larger system, or equate it with one that doesn't also enclude the fatal application of medeival superstition as it relates to literacy or the playing of music in public. Rationality does not have a "context." It's simply reflective of reality. People who use reason, rather than those that simply remain consistent within their unreasoning system, are making an objectively better choice.
Any other conclusion is just an excuse for being intellectually lazy, and caving in to peer pressure and political correctness. It's also just a damn shame. You only live once, and the only thing that 70 virgins can help you with after you've blown yourself to bits in a pizza parlor is for them to assist in the mopping up. And (back to the original topic of this particular thread), any news outlet that celebrates the guy in the pizza shop, calling him a hero, is not being constructive.
part of the propaganda that you think is not a proplem
You know what? Let's just forget all of that, and rewind to the simple stuff. You know, like hanging people over buildings, burning them, chopping off their hands and feet, shooting whole families in the head, breaking all the bones in people's feet (for not winning soccer games!) and so on. You know, the stuff that we have on video tape. The stuff that's sold on $1 CDs in Baghdad convenience stores because the people that lived under that treatment for a couple of decades still have to look at it occasionally to digest the fact that it was actually real.
Do you really (really?) feel so obligated to equate a guy like Saddam or his two lovely sons with your local city council or PTA?
Are you really, actually unable to parse the difference between being celebrated (hence the word 'celebrity') and being notorious? Of course CNN makes a big deal about Bin Laden. That's because he and his movement have gone to great lengths to kill people in as graphic a way as possible in order to gain media coverage and recruit like-minded followers. He says as much. The difference between Al Jazeera (which skews heavily towards treating him as a celebrity, and not like a gloating mass murderer) and media outlets like CNN, BBC, Fox or others... is that those others call him what he is. They recognize his acts and his personally spoken delight at the death of innocents for what they are.
Al Jazeera's embrace of commentators and reporting that gloss over the deliberate targeting of innocents specifically because their deaths will make the news are not the same as "other media outlets." It's shameless tabloidism designed to stoke up an audience that appears to like watching Bin Laden's kindred spirits chop the heads off of people. The other media outlets you mention treat issues like that with the moral outrage they deserve, and Al Jazeera runs it over and over again with actual grinning narroration from regularly appearing pundits who praise Al Queda club-members like Zarqawi for their fine work. Seeking out and repeatedly presenting material of that type expressly to prop up Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi and the rest because it pleases their audience to do so... that just reinforces the idea that what guys like Bin Laden stand for is legitimate.
I hear your type calling for the 'glassing' of the middle east all the bloody time, it is exactly the same as calling for 'death to the infidels'.
What is my type? The only "type" I am, in regards to this conversation, is the type that doesn't consider Al Jazeera's coverage and editorial sensibilities to be at all like those of more objective media outlets. But it doesn't matter at all how slightly different BBC, CNN, Fox, Reuters, AP, and everyone else are in how they present their take on developments in the Middle East. None of them are used as the Al Queda press office (and conduit for every recording Al Queda wants to have aired), and none of them routinely trot out pundits that treat medieval-minded, theocratic, mysoginistic thugs like Bin Laden and his circle as some sort of enlightened Muslim intellectual heros. But you can hear that refrain over and over and over from the people to whom Al Jazeera gives air time.
Nobody said anything about 'moral relatavism' i was talking about your claim that Al Jazeer are somehow this evil news outlet, perhaps they are not, perhaps it's you who are wrong, (that is rhetorical, you are indeed wrong).
When a broadcaster actively and routinely chooses to use their facilities to broadcast the nonsense of people that expressly seek to further Bin Laden's purpose, then yes, they are objectively - by any rational standard - deliberately participating in actual, real evil. You surely can't think that they're just so dumb that they don't know they're being used, or that they think they're just such good reporters that - like magic! - they always seem to be the first ones to get their hands on (and broadcast over and over) the latest mutterings and finger waggings of UBL. You didn't have to say anything about moral relativisim... your assertion that Al Jazeera news operation no different than any other is a feat of true, rudderless relativism.
Dont talk to me about the Bali nightclub, whore.
Whore? And, why not talk about it? It was big news, and AJ spent a lot of air time on it, just like so many other news outfits. The difference was their enthusiastic interviews with Jemaah Islamiah supporters afterwards.
you really that unable to think of anything except 'America vs The World'
No, I'm sticking to the topic: Al Jazeera compared to other media outlets. They know they can gr
Your government has done a good job of filling your head with nonsense about Aljazeera
No, you've done a good job of fooling yourself. Did you happen to spend some time comparing coverage of the crowd hanging contractors from the bridge in Fallujah? Or the glee with which commentators given time on AJ observed Zarqawi's handiness with beheading of hostages? I don't listen to my government on this... I just watch the damn footage. Do it yourself sometime. Al Jazeera deliberately airs things edited to be as inflamatory as possible, and happily treats people who spout nonsense about baby-eating Jews with the same credibility as the weatherman.
I'm assuming you mean "you're wrong and they're right". Assuming that's correct:
Are you really that big a fan of moral relativism? Are all points of view, actions, and forms of society equally valid to you? I think that organizing society around democracy, embracing freedom of speech, and condeming those that would actively, deliberately, and because they are children kill children gathering around soldiers or police in the street is an objectively more rational position. More rational than, say, an idealogy that condemns women to slave status, calls for the death of "infidels" as a key facet of religious life, or that would consider banning music and kite flying as an important part of child-rearing. But that latter scenario is exactly what the Taliban preached (and murderously enforced), and that's the company that Bin Laden keeps. And he is the guy that gets celebratory star treatment on Al Jazeera.
You imply that you could just swap Al Jazeera for Fox (along with their audiences), and that there would be equivalence. But that only works if you pretend that Fox likes to show images of people dancing in the street following the burning alive of a couple of hundred people in a Bali night club. Your "they're just the same" only works if you also completely swap out objective meaning, and that undoes your point. You can't tell me that someone from Baghdad watching Fox considers a commentator there preaching the benefits of elections, a free press, and celebrating the removal of a regime that dragged women into what used to be a soccer field and shot them for teaching their daughters how to read... thinks that's the same as some jihaddi wack-job getting a guest spot on Al Jazeera saying that what the world needs is a multi-continent caliphate that will properly pick up where the Taliban left off. Are those things really what you consider equivalent?
I don't give a rat's ass who is an Arab or not. It's what people do, or say they want to see done.
A network that treats the release of a new Bin Laden tape like some sort of surprise Super Bowl isn't entirely helping matters. They certainly don't want to chase away their Arab viewership, but calling every Palestinian that blows up a bus a "martyr" only makes matters worse, not better. So what if they host talk shows that provide equal access to all flavors of idealogy in the Arab world? Not all flavors are rational or would even tolerate Al Jazeera's existence on soil they would rule, given the chance. I'm all for allowing idiots to air their opinions, the better to examine their idiocy, but the celebration (through endless airplay loops, followed by masked readings of last words by the killers) of things like suicide attacks on children and police cadets is absurd, and can't be construed as "liberal" nor helping secularism.
That Al Jazeera is, by local cultural standards, independent-minded and "edgy" in their editorial policies does not make them supportive of those people that are actually striving to produce states in which freedom of expression is built into the constitution. Making heros out of people that wantonly and indiscriminantly kill the people working on such is BS. They can and should do better, if they truly want their Arab brothers and sisters to enjoy the independence and relative liberty that they, in their sponsored coziness in Qatar, already have.
yet we shortcircut their right to freedom of the press
What, not to be confused with the thoughtful, even-handed coverage from Al Jazeera? Come on. Regardless, there are over 100 independent newspapers in Baghdad alone, and people throughout that country get their news from all sorts of media outlets. If PR officers working in the country make a point of getting local journalists to also present the positive things that are going on, I can hardly find fault there. No one is suggesting that false news is being delivered, only that in a handful of outlets, there's incentive to also bother reporting on things like new electricity grid connections, newly built schools, newly graduated classes of police officers, newly built bridges, new water pumping stations, the vast influx of new personal vehicles and merchants, etc. Don't confuse it with propoganda, and don't forget the overwhelmingly negative spin that outlets like Al Jazeera employ to rile up (and keep) an audience... and which need the counterweight of some actual reporting on positive developments within the country.
But regardless, surely you're not suggesting that there was anything even remotely resembling a free press under Saddam? People were put through industrial shredders in front of their children for pointing out in a leaflet or simple conversation that Saddam's strapping young sons were doped-up, homicidal, mysoginistic rapists and thoroughly corrupt punks. Now, people can write about that all they want, they can print and distribute political cartoons all they want, and they can hop on the internet and blog to their heart's content about anything they want. The contrast is startling, and the 79% of the population that just ratified their new constitution (with far, far more of them voting per capita than in the US on any subject) spent the weeks leading up to that and other votes forming their opinions through the newly born local press as well as other channels.
Surely if a war drags on for years, then for most of that time you weren't winning, in the usual sense of the word...
Then it's a bad choice of a phrase. The "usual" sense of the word "winning," when it comes to a war, is the surrender/capitulation/removal of an organized entity against which you are opposed. This is a conflict, but it's unlike any other we've ever had to face. There's certainly no question that places like Iran and Syria are funding and encouraging the extremist groups that plan and carry out attacks in places like New York, Jordan, Madrid, Egypt, London, Bali, and so on. The conflict with these groups takes on two forms: the removal of regimes (like the Taliban) that provide safe harbor and the direct elimination of those pieces of the organization that are so desperate to set up shop again in another play pen of a country (like Iraq). To the extent that Iraqi police and armed forces are still getting up to speed, we have a vested interest in playing their role for them. To the extent that places like Iran, and groups like Hamas are taking active roles in polluting Iraq with out-of-town RPG-toting jihaddi wack jobs, we have to stick with it.
You win a war once, then you stop
Is that how you saw post-war Germany or Japan? We had a miliary-run local government in place for years, acting as police and defense until the local populations got it together. That took much, much longer than we've yet spent in Iraq. The stable form of government, Constitution and all, that we have in the U.S. was years getting hammered out. I don't think people are clear on how little time has passed. Similarly, I don't think people recall how little had to pass in taking down Saddam before Libya gave up on their little exported Pakistani-traitor-supplied nuke project, etc. This whole thing is much more complicated than a "simple" bit of business like historical war between established and recognized governments. Jihaddi/extremist crazies are a tough bunch to pin down, war-wise. It will take a generation, at least, of better-educated, election-holding, free-er-trading peace in the mideast for the crazies to stop looking for a spot to get traction and set up the next Taliban-run Afghanistan.
Well, I trust you'll forgive my minor rhetorical excesses and see my larger point (which you echo nicely). People who deliberately put their rationality aside because of the childlike comfort they get from a particular mythology really do chip away at their ability to bring reason to bear on other topics. Of course the human brain can compartmentalize very effectively (hell, otherwise the fact that we're all going to die would get in the way of all sorts of stuff, like mowing the lawn), but people who are tasked with high-level professional use of their brains when lives are at stake are the ones I'd hope would soonest walk away from such silliness. I know, the culture inertia and peer pressure is enormous, and seems to be able to overpower reason in an amazing number of otherwise bright, intellectually solid people. It's probably already too late for the undergrad in question, but I thought I'd put in my two cents' worth.
Every company should undergo a comprehensive security audit every two years
Big, public companies already have to drink a nice, big, hot cup of Sarb-Ox every year. That includes all sorts of IT/security related audits and assertions. The act is really more about disclosure, transparency, and protecting investors from Enron-ish type stuff, but lax security in IT is Not A Good Thing under this act, and the FTC/SEC troops can come in swinging when there's a screw-up.
it because your 'scientific' mind tells you that nothing can exist before the beginning of time?
Nothing that has any meaning, relative to our existence, no. Because the very nature of time is tied up in energy and mass, and no information can come forth from a state that doesn't (yet) include the interaction of those forces. The Big Bang is the point at which time starts to actually have meaning, and at which we have a framework in which the laws of physics that are at work in this universe become expressed in what we see around us. Nothing can exist before the beginning of time because time itself can't exist, decoupled from energy and mass... and energy and mass (the only things we have to work with, here) can't exist without time. The nothingness before the Big Bang is just that, and if it's not, it doesn't matter, because the Big Bang could also be thought of as the Ultimate Recycler. I'm more in the camp that sees nothingness as unstable and bubbling off all sorts of variations on our universe. We're awake in this one because this one's physical properties lend themselves to the circumstances favorable to, ultimately, self-aware sacks of protein typing on slashdot.
Point is, something existed before the beginning of time in both thoeries, so they both must be false.
Nope, that's not necessarily how cosmologists look at the Big Bang. Bad comparison, and an invalid point/comparison.
quite obvious that no person will EVER be able to explain the beginning of time
Why is that obvious? It's not to me. Asserting that, though, is a favorite way to insist that since it's all a permanent mystery, that we might as well embrace a universe that has a personality and a beard and that punishes villages with tsunamis because they're not faithful enough.
But if I'm not mistaken, these timelines were created with carbon dating, which has been shown to yield inaccurate results.
If you mean that carbon dating doesn't nail everything down to which week something happened, it's sure has hell plenty accurate to refute the people that are gambling their entire world view on the presumption that the universe is only 6,000 years old and that God is a big joker who plants fake skeletons to throw people off. Carbon dating, and countless other markers that show radioactive decay, isotope uptake, and other obvious signs (like mineral formation, tectonics, erosion, etc) all reinforce the observations made using the other techniques. Any time you use the scientific method to ask questions about this stuff, the fact that the universe is billions of years old, and that our billions-year-old planet is littered with the successes and failures of obvious evolution jump right out at you. You have to really work to close your eyes enough to make superstition a more effective way of seeing the world.
, I'm a senior in a university studying engineering. I guess that makes me somewhat educated, doesn't it?
Not yet, apparently! I hope that you won't be using your reliance on magic universal behavior or supernatural beings if you're tasked with engineering anything upon which the lives of my family might rely. You know, airplanes, traffic control devices, that sort of thing. The same science that you've surely applied to the study of materials, or optics, or friction, or fluid dynamics, etc., is the science that's used to study the age of the universe and the fundamental processes that gave rise to it (and to us). You can't have it both ways: putting science to work for you in your capacity as an engineer, but ignoring it when it takes some of the warmth and fuzzyiness out of creation mythology... and you're operating on mixed premises and deliberately constructing a world view built on contradictions. And engineers that tolerate contradictions don't build bridges over which I want to drive. You're obviously starting to think this stuff through... but treat all of like you would an engineering problem, and be willing to give up on the longer-range myths the same way that you have on the tooth fairy, or Santa.
Sorry you had to type all of that, as you've missed my (very simple) point. Would you say that AT&T or IBM are, right now, monopolies? I would argue that they are not. So, when they are entering into a new market or introducing a new service or product, should each new effort by subjected to the regulatory burdens that their (arguably larger) competition does not have to face? Considering the number of articles posted here on how entire municipal governments or whole countries are simply adopting Linux on the desktop rather than opting for Windows, I don't think that Microsoft's sale of a new OS into (say) Europe is suddenly reason for them (but not a competitor) to have to give up their trade secrets. I doubt that Nokia is too worried about AT&T, for example.
Governments would love equations that predict human behavior on a macroscopic scale.
Ironically, the less that governments get involved in individual lives, the more predictable the big picture is (since the marketplace is extremely efficient at exposing and serving human needs/desires).
Law is technicalities. I know that's a tad confusing, but it doesn't change it being so.
Yes, yes, I'm a two year old. Gosh, you're so grown up and smart and everything! Now, how about addressing my actual point? Microsoft is no an actual monopoly than AT&T or IBM are. Should those companies have to open up their new, expensively created IP?
Law is indeed technicalities, and that's why it's a good thing that juries and judges routinely look at the big (real) picture, and not only such things as a whining, less-able competitor makes a point of filing during proceedings. MS got screwed back in the 90s, but that still has no bearing whether or not, right now, you can walk into a store and choose between hardware loaded up with Windows, Mac-stuff, or some open distro. Wal-Mart is selling Linux-based machines for people who don't have much cash. Stuff is being sold now that wasn't even on the radar screen back then. It's a different period, with different players, and wildly different circumstances.
Your question is predicated on a misunderstanding of the term "monopoly" and is therefore meaningless.
No, your attempt at a put down is predicated on pretending his overall point is not valid, and sticking to a dubious court finding on technicalities. He's right, and it's that simple. People have lots of choices, and exercise those choices all the time (and more frequently every day).
You mean, except for the hardware on which it's not installed. You know, like Macs, or machines pre-sold from large retailers like Wal-Mart, who deliver boxes with Linux installed.
cost-prohibitive terms to the hardware manufacturers against installing a competitor's
How is it prohibitive? Doesn't seem to stop IBM or Dell from gladly selling you Linux-powered machines. It's a couple of mouse clicks to pick and choose your OS when you place an order. Windows? Fine. Prefer Red Hat? Click the other button. Or, I can walk into a retailer a block from my house, and while I have lunch at the place next door, they'll crank out a machine with my choice of motherboards and other pieces running my choice of several distros. For very, very cheap. Or, they'll throw an OEM copy of XP, etc., on there, if that's what I want. At no point does an Enforcer from MS get involved in the transaction.
I don't think you're wrong, but I've got a couple decades of experience in systems administration that tells me that there's no such thing as a dedicated IT professional that stops thinking about work after 5:00PM. There are all sorts of challenges that will rattle around in your brain after you punch out for the day, and any good programmer or security-type admin will tell you that flashes of insight and other valuable cognitive moments occur when and where they occur... not necessarily during business hours. If you're on the hook for operational issues, especially for a small to mid-sized company, you absolutely cannot rule out some odd-hours command performances, either. Things happen, and it's always at 2:00AM.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're saying their kid is going to be really smart, but for some reason will have a strange desire to drive a riced-up Civic?
No, I'm saying that the kid can now only get a good night's sleep in a shiny, low-riding crib with zebra-striped blankets and blue LED running lights. Other than that, he should turn out OK.
Smarty-pants couples (of the truly sharp, science-minded variety) having kids is only recently useful (or even likely), in the primate-history scheme of things. Just shows that it takes natural selection a while to catch up with the fact that we're not very far removed from small, pack-like groups living hand to mouth in primitive, hostile circumstances and not living much past 30 years old. Wait... that sounds like my neighborhood!
That being said, a close friend is an occupational therapist with a lot of experience in helping out kids experiencing the full spectrum of autistic characteristics. She's indicated that a somewhat unscientific review of those kids' parents (hundreds of which she's met and gotten to know) would completely resonate with the findings mentioned in the article. She and her husband, both sharp, analytical people, just gave birth - and not without some trepidation. Just in case, they watched re-runs of "Pimp My Ride" before conceiving.
I see now. Since the government isn't supposed to engage in entrapment, private companies will. And since private companies are now becoming increasingly indistinguishable from governments... I guess we're all fucked.
Are you so anxious to hate private businesses, and to think it's cool if people try to make $20 off of their stolen source code, that you're willing to pretend this jerk didn't advertise for the sale of the source code on his own web site? He wasn't "entrapped," he was advertising stolen stuff. Plus, he's obviously a complete moron.
As for private companies looking after their own welfare... why do you supposed that retailers are forced to have security guards? Retails stores, especially the ones selling expensive, eBay-friendly stuff, are hit constantly by shoplifters and scam artists. But most local taxpayers would scream bloody murder if they had to pay for enough police officers to have one on hand in every department store in every mall, 7 days a week. So, private security is a big and (unfortunately) completely necessary line of work.
You also seem to be forgetting about corporate/international espionage. Companies working on competitive products - especially those performing very expensive research - have to be continually vigilant against both inside and outside theft of their trade secrets, materials, financial plans, marketing campaigns, etc. If they don't use private security to help them deal with that, their only choice is to just put up with the consequences of seeing, say, a factory in China starting up production on something that the ripped-off research company just spent millions of dollars figuring out how to make, or they could... ask the government to provide trade security for every company? What would you say then, that the taxpayers are being forced to serve the coporations, blah blah blah? Exactly. So, when a company with a lot at stake has their own security people urgently tracking down people that are ripping them off (even some complete idiot advertising astoundingly sensitive stolen O/S source code for sale on his web site, and willing to take $20 for it), you can hardly bitch. Unless your position is that it's cool to steal sensitive information and sell it, in which case, let's start with yours: I can probably make $20 with your SSN and some other personal details. And that's too small to bother the police with, so I'm home free since you clearly don't think it's ethical for you to personally track down someone who rips you off.
Oh, and try one of those fancy new high-tech online dictionaries. You can immediately, and without fear of prosecution, learn what entrapment actually means.
And your favorite U.S. news outlets -- no matter which they are, because they all did -- went on and one with pictures of "shock" and "awe," both dictionary synonyms of "terror."
I know you're not serious, of course. But just in case someone else reading your comment thinks you are, a little clarification. The whole point of using overwhelming (and visually impressive) attacks against Saddam's command and control infrastructure was to shock his command and control infrastructure and his chain of command.
Do you really think that when Zarqawi sends some addled-brained young guy out to blow himself up in a crowd of families on the street that it's the same thing? If the US had wanted to target and destroy and terrorize the civilians in Iraq, they could have done so with far less effort, lower cost, and vastly more dramatic results. But of course that was not the purpose or the results.
Your average civilian-targeting suicide bomber with a trunk or backpack full of Semtex and nails is seeking to terrorize the population. The deliberate avoidance of civilian targets and the expressly command/control-focused work of the initial air attacks were designed to alter the mindset of some pretty specific people. Why do you suppose that one of the things you saw in all of those repeated playbacks on CNN was downtown Baghdad with its lights still on. Wanting to equate the dismantling of Saddam's command structure, and convincing his relative loyalists that a blow-by-blow tank battle wasn't worth the trouble is not the same as some deluded Bathist Sunni thinking that he's making Allah happy by driving his car bomb into a crowd of children. Aren't you even a little embarrased at pretending the two are the same?
Would you tell someone to stick with a several-flavors-ago version of your favorite distro, or to keep using Firefox 1.0? Yes, yes, free, all free blah blah blah. Believe it or not, the +/-$100 just ain't that big a deal for a lot of people, but the disruption of an upgrade (to the O/S or a significant app) is frequently the thing that puts the brakes on.
So... for most people (no, not slashdot readers), this will just happen as a new machine rotates into their life anyway. For a lot of users, "Oooh! Shiny!" is a reason to spend +/-$100. But upgrades are disruptive for people (not slashdotters) who don't actively like doing them, and the Grandma You've Talked Into Using Mandrake Who Probably Should Be Using Mandriva vX.whatever Which Means New Hardware And That Means While We're At It Let's Change Some Apps scenario is just as ugly. Never mind the dollars.
You have no proof that Al Jazeera celebrates Bin Laden other than they report on him and you dont like that.
They report on him, BBC reports on him, and so does every other network in the world. He proudly proclaims his role in supporting, blessing, or planning and executing the deliberate killings of thousands of innocent people in embassies, trains, offices, restaurants, and more. He happily associated with the Taliban, a group that turned killing women (guilty of things like having been raped, or of teaching their daughters how to work and read) in public squares into a popular lunchtime entertainment. He is proud of such things, and says so. Al Jazeera, though - beyond merely reporting on such things - actively seeks out regular guests that are, by virtue of the time they're given and the manner in which they are presented, endorsed by their editorial management as they proclaim Bin Laden a hero of Islam. Reporting that he is, to many people, a hero, and furthering that status through the routine presentation of him in pleasant on-screen graphics or the endless replay of his recordings are not the same thing. I think you're still missing the point.
Covering newsworthy events (newsworthiness indeed being relative to the audience, which depends on region and demographics, of course) is one thing. You don't care about a car accident in my neighborhood that kills a family, but you might find it interesting if a family were to die because someone with a political or religious motive of interest to you killed them.
If we had regular road-side bombings in the US, driven by sectarian religious power struggles, you can bet that Al Jazeera would relate those events to their Arab audience. The commentators that spin the story would, like commentators everywhere, try to appeal to their audience's interest. If such roadside bombings were to happen in the US, that commentary would depend on who was doing the bombing and to whom. But it generally does not happen, so Al Jazeera's viewers don't get to see that sort of coverage and get to conclude that it's not representative or objective. What you most certainly do not get, when some idiot dies while murdering a family in the US, is a parade of pundits on CNN or Fox explaining how the killer was a hero, or acting on behalf of God, etc.
But what about when one of Zarqawi's deluded recruits drives up to a crowd of young people and shreds them with a car full of explosives and nails? That's newsworthy for a global audience because of what it says about the tension between backwards-minded religious zealots and those that want a more peaceful, democratic form of society. To the US audience, it sheds light on whether or not a place where that regularly happens will - or will not - become the next habitat for a group like the Taliban... who actively gave shelter and support to the people that blew up embassies in Africa, and then carried out the 9/11 attacks. It also sheds light on whether or not the people that conduct such attacks are getting their cash from places like Iran, or funneled through groups like Hamas (or, should I say, the Palestinian government, now).
So, how does CNN cover an event like a car bombing in Baghdad? They report that it happened, and most of their commentators will decry it as being a calculated murder designed for stirring up more martyr-minded people. Or their analysts will point out whether or not they think that the attack was designed specifically to inflame relations between Sunni and Shia, and thus destabilize a new-born democracy... the better to create a new Taliban-era Afghanistan. At no point do commentators on CNN take equal amounts of time to mention the heroism and glorious martyrdom of the idiot that was talked into killing and maiming a crowd of mothers and children shopping for vegetables. But on Al Jazeera? The call-them-martyrs commentators are, by editorial decision of the people that run the network, given the airtime and
"Strings" are just another way of describing devine, Noodly Appendages.
Actually, this is really cool. Looking forward to what the use of the new detector shows, or doesn't, as the case may be. String theory is such a mind bender for most people (including me), that anything making it more directly tangible will really help focus the conversation. Or end it. Either way is good.
Unlike the regular commentators on Al Jazeera (and here is the larger point), I'm more than happy to look at honest reporting and say, "oh - that's an urban myth - righto!" and move on. That would be, as opposed to, say, the continually repeated notion (in the Arab press, and as most stylishly presented by "guest" pundits on Al Jazeera) that 9/11 was just the US government blowing up US citizens because of they're in the thrall of Zionist baby-eaters, blah blah blah. But I'm happy to move on. You know, move onto the video that Saddam's boys shot of their own over-the-top play time. Like dangling screaming people over buildings before dropping them, chopping off hands, beating people's feet until all the bones are broken (you know, for being inferior soccer players), etc. You don't need to trot out the Evil American PsyOps Crew for that stuff - Uday and Qusay went to a lot of trouble to record some of their favorite episodes... like shooting whole families in the head, burning people with propane torches. What fine, upstanding young men, working for their fine, level-headed, bury-the-dead-villagers-with-a-backhoe Dad.
I think that puts the rest of your claims into context.
I'm not worried about creating context: it's there on tape, and being sold by street vendors on $1 CDs in Baghdad. The Hussein Boys' Greatest Hits is no concoction, not taken as a whole. And that Al Jazeera is just as happy to lend whatever creativity they have to people that would report those things, and then cut the air time over to someone who also reports that the Zionist Baby Eaters are behind events that, some weeks later, Bin Laden himself says his loyal buddies have done, is beyond the pale. This thread is about whether or not Al Jazeera's handling of the news is objective. It is not, because even the most literal presentation of actual events is bracketed by endless airplay of Martyr Myth-Making and hero worship of patently twisted people that find deliberately targeting groups of police cadets or young families in the street to be Allah's good work. That context is not up for debate.
On its own it is no more or less rational than any other ideology. It is only rational in the context of the values/beliefs held by most of those who support it. These values are not inherently correct or incorrect.
I'm sorry, but that's just indefensible. Some idealogies are inherently destructive, parasitic, corrosive to personal liberty, and so on. You can't say that a system that, for example, would kill a woman for daring to teach her daughters to read, has within it its own "rationality." It is irrational on the face of it. You can be consistent within the bounds of an irrational philosophy, but that doesn't make that philosophy any less inherently, objectively irrational (and thus less "correct").
People who base their code of human interaction on magic stories told about prophets are not using reason. Banking on validations for yourself after you die, when there is no you to experience some review of your life (let alone 70 virgins) is not using reason. People who derive laws and customs from such fantasies are not rational, and not "correct," any more than someone who grows up into an adult, seasonally adjusting his behavior around Santa Claus' Good/Bad list.
Just because some subset of the behavior such cultures want to enforce (don't steal things, etc) happens to overlap with an actually reason-based world view doesn't redeem the larger system, or equate it with one that doesn't also enclude the fatal application of medeival superstition as it relates to literacy or the playing of music in public. Rationality does not have a "context." It's simply reflective of reality. People who use reason, rather than those that simply remain consistent within their unreasoning system, are making an objectively better choice.
Any other conclusion is just an excuse for being intellectually lazy, and caving in to peer pressure and political correctness. It's also just a damn shame. You only live once, and the only thing that 70 virgins can help you with after you've blown yourself to bits in a pizza parlor is for them to assist in the mopping up. And (back to the original topic of this particular thread), any news outlet that celebrates the guy in the pizza shop, calling him a hero, is not being constructive.
part of the propaganda that you think is not a proplem
You know what? Let's just forget all of that, and rewind to the simple stuff. You know, like hanging people over buildings, burning them, chopping off their hands and feet, shooting whole families in the head, breaking all the bones in people's feet (for not winning soccer games!) and so on. You know, the stuff that we have on video tape. The stuff that's sold on $1 CDs in Baghdad convenience stores because the people that lived under that treatment for a couple of decades still have to look at it occasionally to digest the fact that it was actually real.
Do you really (really?) feel so obligated to equate a guy like Saddam or his two lovely sons with your local city council or PTA?
Are you really, actually unable to parse the difference between being celebrated (hence the word 'celebrity') and being notorious? Of course CNN makes a big deal about Bin Laden. That's because he and his movement have gone to great lengths to kill people in as graphic a way as possible in order to gain media coverage and recruit like-minded followers. He says as much. The difference between Al Jazeera (which skews heavily towards treating him as a celebrity, and not like a gloating mass murderer) and media outlets like CNN, BBC, Fox or others... is that those others call him what he is. They recognize his acts and his personally spoken delight at the death of innocents for what they are.
Al Jazeera's embrace of commentators and reporting that gloss over the deliberate targeting of innocents specifically because their deaths will make the news are not the same as "other media outlets." It's shameless tabloidism designed to stoke up an audience that appears to like watching Bin Laden's kindred spirits chop the heads off of people. The other media outlets you mention treat issues like that with the moral outrage they deserve, and Al Jazeera runs it over and over again with actual grinning narroration from regularly appearing pundits who praise Al Queda club-members like Zarqawi for their fine work. Seeking out and repeatedly presenting material of that type expressly to prop up Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi and the rest because it pleases their audience to do so... that just reinforces the idea that what guys like Bin Laden stand for is legitimate.
I hear your type calling for the 'glassing' of the middle east all the bloody time, it is exactly the same as calling for 'death to the infidels'.
What is my type? The only "type" I am, in regards to this conversation, is the type that doesn't consider Al Jazeera's coverage and editorial sensibilities to be at all like those of more objective media outlets. But it doesn't matter at all how slightly different BBC, CNN, Fox, Reuters, AP, and everyone else are in how they present their take on developments in the Middle East. None of them are used as the Al Queda press office (and conduit for every recording Al Queda wants to have aired), and none of them routinely trot out pundits that treat medieval-minded, theocratic, mysoginistic thugs like Bin Laden and his circle as some sort of enlightened Muslim intellectual heros. But you can hear that refrain over and over and over from the people to whom Al Jazeera gives air time.
Nobody said anything about 'moral relatavism' i was talking about your claim that Al Jazeer are somehow this evil news outlet, perhaps they are not, perhaps it's you who are wrong, (that is rhetorical, you are indeed wrong).
When a broadcaster actively and routinely chooses to use their facilities to broadcast the nonsense of people that expressly seek to further Bin Laden's purpose, then yes, they are objectively - by any rational standard - deliberately participating in actual, real evil. You surely can't think that they're just so dumb that they don't know they're being used, or that they think they're just such good reporters that - like magic! - they always seem to be the first ones to get their hands on (and broadcast over and over) the latest mutterings and finger waggings of UBL. You didn't have to say anything about moral relativisim... your assertion that Al Jazeera news operation no different than any other is a feat of true, rudderless relativism.
Dont talk to me about the Bali nightclub, whore.
Whore? And, why not talk about it? It was big news, and AJ spent a lot of air time on it, just like so many other news outfits. The difference was their enthusiastic interviews with Jemaah Islamiah supporters afterwards.
you really that unable to think of anything except 'America vs The World'
No, I'm sticking to the topic: Al Jazeera compared to other media outlets. They know they can gr
Your government has done a good job of filling your head with nonsense about Aljazeera
No, you've done a good job of fooling yourself. Did you happen to spend some time comparing coverage of the crowd hanging contractors from the bridge in Fallujah? Or the glee with which commentators given time on AJ observed Zarqawi's handiness with beheading of hostages? I don't listen to my government on this... I just watch the damn footage. Do it yourself sometime. Al Jazeera deliberately airs things edited to be as inflamatory as possible, and happily treats people who spout nonsense about baby-eating Jews with the same credibility as the weatherman.
perhaps your wrong and their right
I'm assuming you mean "you're wrong and they're right". Assuming that's correct:
Are you really that big a fan of moral relativism? Are all points of view, actions, and forms of society equally valid to you? I think that organizing society around democracy, embracing freedom of speech, and condeming those that would actively, deliberately, and because they are children kill children gathering around soldiers or police in the street is an objectively more rational position. More rational than, say, an idealogy that condemns women to slave status, calls for the death of "infidels" as a key facet of religious life, or that would consider banning music and kite flying as an important part of child-rearing. But that latter scenario is exactly what the Taliban preached (and murderously enforced), and that's the company that Bin Laden keeps. And he is the guy that gets celebratory star treatment on Al Jazeera.
You imply that you could just swap Al Jazeera for Fox (along with their audiences), and that there would be equivalence. But that only works if you pretend that Fox likes to show images of people dancing in the street following the burning alive of a couple of hundred people in a Bali night club. Your "they're just the same" only works if you also completely swap out objective meaning, and that undoes your point. You can't tell me that someone from Baghdad watching Fox considers a commentator there preaching the benefits of elections, a free press, and celebrating the removal of a regime that dragged women into what used to be a soccer field and shot them for teaching their daughters how to read... thinks that's the same as some jihaddi wack-job getting a guest spot on Al Jazeera saying that what the world needs is a multi-continent caliphate that will properly pick up where the Taliban left off. Are those things really what you consider equivalent?
I don't give a rat's ass who is an Arab or not. It's what people do, or say they want to see done.
The alternative is state-run religious content
I don't think that's the only alternative.
A network that treats the release of a new Bin Laden tape like some sort of surprise Super Bowl isn't entirely helping matters. They certainly don't want to chase away their Arab viewership, but calling every Palestinian that blows up a bus a "martyr" only makes matters worse, not better. So what if they host talk shows that provide equal access to all flavors of idealogy in the Arab world? Not all flavors are rational or would even tolerate Al Jazeera's existence on soil they would rule, given the chance. I'm all for allowing idiots to air their opinions, the better to examine their idiocy, but the celebration (through endless airplay loops, followed by masked readings of last words by the killers) of things like suicide attacks on children and police cadets is absurd, and can't be construed as "liberal" nor helping secularism.
That Al Jazeera is, by local cultural standards, independent-minded and "edgy" in their editorial policies does not make them supportive of those people that are actually striving to produce states in which freedom of expression is built into the constitution. Making heros out of people that wantonly and indiscriminantly kill the people working on such is BS. They can and should do better, if they truly want their Arab brothers and sisters to enjoy the independence and relative liberty that they, in their sponsored coziness in Qatar, already have.
yet we shortcircut their right to freedom of the press
What, not to be confused with the thoughtful, even-handed coverage from Al Jazeera? Come on. Regardless, there are over 100 independent newspapers in Baghdad alone, and people throughout that country get their news from all sorts of media outlets. If PR officers working in the country make a point of getting local journalists to also present the positive things that are going on, I can hardly find fault there. No one is suggesting that false news is being delivered, only that in a handful of outlets, there's incentive to also bother reporting on things like new electricity grid connections, newly built schools, newly graduated classes of police officers, newly built bridges, new water pumping stations, the vast influx of new personal vehicles and merchants, etc. Don't confuse it with propoganda, and don't forget the overwhelmingly negative spin that outlets like Al Jazeera employ to rile up (and keep) an audience... and which need the counterweight of some actual reporting on positive developments within the country.
But regardless, surely you're not suggesting that there was anything even remotely resembling a free press under Saddam? People were put through industrial shredders in front of their children for pointing out in a leaflet or simple conversation that Saddam's strapping young sons were doped-up, homicidal, mysoginistic rapists and thoroughly corrupt punks. Now, people can write about that all they want, they can print and distribute political cartoons all they want, and they can hop on the internet and blog to their heart's content about anything they want. The contrast is startling, and the 79% of the population that just ratified their new constitution (with far, far more of them voting per capita than in the US on any subject) spent the weeks leading up to that and other votes forming their opinions through the newly born local press as well as other channels.
Surely if a war drags on for years, then for most of that time you weren't winning, in the usual sense of the word...
Then it's a bad choice of a phrase. The "usual" sense of the word "winning," when it comes to a war, is the surrender/capitulation/removal of an organized entity against which you are opposed. This is a conflict, but it's unlike any other we've ever had to face. There's certainly no question that places like Iran and Syria are funding and encouraging the extremist groups that plan and carry out attacks in places like New York, Jordan, Madrid, Egypt, London, Bali, and so on. The conflict with these groups takes on two forms: the removal of regimes (like the Taliban) that provide safe harbor and the direct elimination of those pieces of the organization that are so desperate to set up shop again in another play pen of a country (like Iraq). To the extent that Iraqi police and armed forces are still getting up to speed, we have a vested interest in playing their role for them. To the extent that places like Iran, and groups like Hamas are taking active roles in polluting Iraq with out-of-town RPG-toting jihaddi wack jobs, we have to stick with it.
You win a war once, then you stop
Is that how you saw post-war Germany or Japan? We had a miliary-run local government in place for years, acting as police and defense until the local populations got it together. That took much, much longer than we've yet spent in Iraq. The stable form of government, Constitution and all, that we have in the U.S. was years getting hammered out. I don't think people are clear on how little time has passed. Similarly, I don't think people recall how little had to pass in taking down Saddam before Libya gave up on their little exported Pakistani-traitor-supplied nuke project, etc. This whole thing is much more complicated than a "simple" bit of business like historical war between established and recognized governments. Jihaddi/extremist crazies are a tough bunch to pin down, war-wise. It will take a generation, at least, of better-educated, election-holding, free-er-trading peace in the mideast for the crazies to stop looking for a spot to get traction and set up the next Taliban-run Afghanistan.
Well, I trust you'll forgive my minor rhetorical excesses and see my larger point (which you echo nicely). People who deliberately put their rationality aside because of the childlike comfort they get from a particular mythology really do chip away at their ability to bring reason to bear on other topics. Of course the human brain can compartmentalize very effectively (hell, otherwise the fact that we're all going to die would get in the way of all sorts of stuff, like mowing the lawn), but people who are tasked with high-level professional use of their brains when lives are at stake are the ones I'd hope would soonest walk away from such silliness. I know, the culture inertia and peer pressure is enormous, and seems to be able to overpower reason in an amazing number of otherwise bright, intellectually solid people. It's probably already too late for the undergrad in question, but I thought I'd put in my two cents' worth.
Every company should undergo a comprehensive security audit every two years
Big, public companies already have to drink a nice, big, hot cup of Sarb-Ox every year. That includes all sorts of IT/security related audits and assertions. The act is really more about disclosure, transparency, and protecting investors from Enron-ish type stuff, but lax security in IT is Not A Good Thing under this act, and the FTC/SEC troops can come in swinging when there's a screw-up.
it because your 'scientific' mind tells you that nothing can exist before the beginning of time?
Nothing that has any meaning, relative to our existence, no. Because the very nature of time is tied up in energy and mass, and no information can come forth from a state that doesn't (yet) include the interaction of those forces. The Big Bang is the point at which time starts to actually have meaning, and at which we have a framework in which the laws of physics that are at work in this universe become expressed in what we see around us. Nothing can exist before the beginning of time because time itself can't exist, decoupled from energy and mass... and energy and mass (the only things we have to work with, here) can't exist without time. The nothingness before the Big Bang is just that, and if it's not, it doesn't matter, because the Big Bang could also be thought of as the Ultimate Recycler. I'm more in the camp that sees nothingness as unstable and bubbling off all sorts of variations on our universe. We're awake in this one because this one's physical properties lend themselves to the circumstances favorable to, ultimately, self-aware sacks of protein typing on slashdot.
Point is, something existed before the beginning of time in both thoeries, so they both must be false.
Nope, that's not necessarily how cosmologists look at the Big Bang. Bad comparison, and an invalid point/comparison.
quite obvious that no person will EVER be able to explain the beginning of time
Why is that obvious? It's not to me. Asserting that, though, is a favorite way to insist that since it's all a permanent mystery, that we might as well embrace a universe that has a personality and a beard and that punishes villages with tsunamis because they're not faithful enough.
But if I'm not mistaken, these timelines were created with carbon dating, which has been shown to yield inaccurate results.
If you mean that carbon dating doesn't nail everything down to which week something happened, it's sure has hell plenty accurate to refute the people that are gambling their entire world view on the presumption that the universe is only 6,000 years old and that God is a big joker who plants fake skeletons to throw people off. Carbon dating, and countless other markers that show radioactive decay, isotope uptake, and other obvious signs (like mineral formation, tectonics, erosion, etc) all reinforce the observations made using the other techniques. Any time you use the scientific method to ask questions about this stuff, the fact that the universe is billions of years old, and that our billions-year-old planet is littered with the successes and failures of obvious evolution jump right out at you. You have to really work to close your eyes enough to make superstition a more effective way of seeing the world.
, I'm a senior in a university studying engineering. I guess that makes me somewhat educated, doesn't it?
Not yet, apparently! I hope that you won't be using your reliance on magic universal behavior or supernatural beings if you're tasked with engineering anything upon which the lives of my family might rely. You know, airplanes, traffic control devices, that sort of thing. The same science that you've surely applied to the study of materials, or optics, or friction, or fluid dynamics, etc., is the science that's used to study the age of the universe and the fundamental processes that gave rise to it (and to us). You can't have it both ways: putting science to work for you in your capacity as an engineer, but ignoring it when it takes some of the warmth and fuzzyiness out of creation mythology... and you're operating on mixed premises and deliberately constructing a world view built on contradictions. And engineers that tolerate contradictions don't build bridges over which I want to drive. You're obviously starting to think this stuff through... but treat all of like you would an engineering problem, and be willing to give up on the longer-range myths the same way that you have on the tooth fairy, or Santa.
Sorry you had to type all of that, as you've missed my (very simple) point. Would you say that AT&T or IBM are, right now, monopolies? I would argue that they are not. So, when they are entering into a new market or introducing a new service or product, should each new effort by subjected to the regulatory burdens that their (arguably larger) competition does not have to face? Considering the number of articles posted here on how entire municipal governments or whole countries are simply adopting Linux on the desktop rather than opting for Windows, I don't think that Microsoft's sale of a new OS into (say) Europe is suddenly reason for them (but not a competitor) to have to give up their trade secrets. I doubt that Nokia is too worried about AT&T, for example.
Governments would love equations that predict human behavior on a macroscopic scale.
Ironically, the less that governments get involved in individual lives, the more predictable the big picture is (since the marketplace is extremely efficient at exposing and serving human needs/desires).
Law is technicalities. I know that's a tad confusing, but it doesn't change it being so.
Yes, yes, I'm a two year old. Gosh, you're so grown up and smart and everything! Now, how about addressing my actual point? Microsoft is no an actual monopoly than AT&T or IBM are. Should those companies have to open up their new, expensively created IP?
Law is indeed technicalities, and that's why it's a good thing that juries and judges routinely look at the big (real) picture, and not only such things as a whining, less-able competitor makes a point of filing during proceedings. MS got screwed back in the 90s, but that still has no bearing whether or not, right now, you can walk into a store and choose between hardware loaded up with Windows, Mac-stuff, or some open distro. Wal-Mart is selling Linux-based machines for people who don't have much cash. Stuff is being sold now that wasn't even on the radar screen back then. It's a different period, with different players, and wildly different circumstances.
Your question is predicated on a misunderstanding of the term "monopoly" and is therefore meaningless.
No, your attempt at a put down is predicated on pretending his overall point is not valid, and sticking to a dubious court finding on technicalities. He's right, and it's that simple. People have lots of choices, and exercise those choices all the time (and more frequently every day).
comes pre-installed on all hardware
You mean, except for the hardware on which it's not installed. You know, like Macs, or machines pre-sold from large retailers like Wal-Mart, who deliver boxes with Linux installed.
cost-prohibitive terms to the hardware manufacturers against installing a competitor's
How is it prohibitive? Doesn't seem to stop IBM or Dell from gladly selling you Linux-powered machines. It's a couple of mouse clicks to pick and choose your OS when you place an order. Windows? Fine. Prefer Red Hat? Click the other button. Or, I can walk into a retailer a block from my house, and while I have lunch at the place next door, they'll crank out a machine with my choice of motherboards and other pieces running my choice of several distros. For very, very cheap. Or, they'll throw an OEM copy of XP, etc., on there, if that's what I want. At no point does an Enforcer from MS get involved in the transaction.
I don't think you're wrong, but I've got a couple decades of experience in systems administration that tells me that there's no such thing as a dedicated IT professional that stops thinking about work after 5:00PM. There are all sorts of challenges that will rattle around in your brain after you punch out for the day, and any good programmer or security-type admin will tell you that flashes of insight and other valuable cognitive moments occur when and where they occur... not necessarily during business hours. If you're on the hook for operational issues, especially for a small to mid-sized company, you absolutely cannot rule out some odd-hours command performances, either. Things happen, and it's always at 2:00AM.