There is nothing inherently wrong with copyright. It's actually a great idea.
What's immoral is what has been done to that original great idea.
So what you're saying is, copyright should have been copyrighted?
Excuse me while I make a quit trip to the USPTO: "... a method for securing a method for securing the right of the original owner of an idea to reproduce said idea..."
The most useful command in *nix. It's a shell version of map() and it's awesome. Most common usecase for me recently has been something like:
svn ls | grep -v "NO" | xargs svn update
which grabs a directory listing from the Subversion server, prunes out the things I don't want, and then maps "svn update" on the remaining directories.
Also: pushd/popd. Pushd places the current directory on a directory stack and popd cds to the top directory on said stack. It's great for quickly hopping between directories.
One solution to the NOx problem for diesel engines is to treat exhaust with urea. European companies distribute an aqueous urea solution as "AdBlue"...
and we don't have an AdBlue distribution network in the US, but it does work.
It's called "the Human Body." It generates a surprising amount of urea on a daily basis, especially if you feed it caffeine. [1] Best of all, there's always (hopefully!) a human around when you're driving!
So in practice, diesels are the most efficient internal combustion engines.
But seriously, since you seem to know about such things, let me ask you: wouldn't adding a supercharger onto a normal gasoline engine increase its practical efficiency?
[1] Warning: to avoid kidney stones, flush human out with 1 cup water per two cups caffeine daily. Your mileage may vary. Do not void where prohibited.
Really? Bill Gates made it look nerdy? Like if not for Gates, the whole industry would be filled with badass cowboys and hot chicks or something?
Yes.
(Come on. This is slashdot. We blame him for everything. Current thought is that without Gates and Microsoft, we'd have invented a transporter, a holodeck, and would be out cruising the stars and picking up hot alien chicks by now.)
mandatory ignition interlock systems for all automobiles
Dude, maybe they're just overzealous Voltron fans. They want to make it so that whenever you insert your key, you get to shout out "Activate Interlocks!"
Actually, that doesn't seem like a bad idea. Now if only someone would develop dynatherms, infracells, and megathrusters for cars....
I kid, of course. Just trying to make light of the situation.
While I get your point in general, I think your examples could use a little work, especially regarding Amber Alerts and the text message thing. As I understand it, one only sees Amber Alerts while driving, and they all ask you to let someone know if you've seen a such-and-such make and model car. I don't think this generates any sort of irrational fear. Far from it; it makes people feel empowered, since they're now actively helping to catch a potential abductor. None of the alerts ever say, "Beware! Run away!". In fact, they all explicitly ask one to notify police.
You may have a better stance with the text messaging example, but even then, I think it's a good thing to let people know when something major, like a shooting (or, less maliciously, a chemical spill), happens. Letting the public know not to go near a building because it's dangerous is the responsible thing to do. What we should work on is training people not to panic when something like that occurs.
I was a student in my senior year at Georgia Tech when the Virginia Tech shooting occurred. G.T. and V.T. are sister schools, and my social psych professor, whose lecture I had on the day immediately following the shooting, had many good friends at V.T.. That lecture, he talked about how most people are being brought up as sheep -- easily terrified, quick to panic and freeze. His solution was exactly what I mentioned above; of course you should let people know what's going on, but we should actively strive to teach them not to panic (Douglas Adams would be proud) during these situations. He mentioned that hiding information from the public often caused more fear, not less, because then you were preventing people from being able to make informed decisions on anything while at the same time letting their imaginations run rampant and robbing them of a sense of control. All in all, pretty damn good advice.
(Heh. As a side note, after the lecture, I showed him the Bene Gesserit litany against fear and immediately turned him into a "Dune" fan.)
Even if I try to imagine "all the good religions have done", I view it as an oasis in the midst of the pile of all corpses, all the witches and the dead in the religious wars... Religions are only peaceful when the people are.
Right. Now compare that pile to the pile of corpses killed as a result of completely a-religious wars. Or the pile of people killed because religion was explicitly not consulted or considered. Or the pile of people killed based on different creeds entirely. I think you'll find the two piles I mention here just as large.
If your point is that war sucks, then I'm behind you all the way. If your point is that human beings are panicky, easily aroused, and fallible, then you and I pretty much agree. Heck, if your point is even that the human ego is often quite damning, you've got points from me for being so insightful. If, however, your point is that religion has killed more people than other cognitive systems (a lot of which are not mutually exclusive and can exist within the same mind), then I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken.
My apologies. I didn't meant to make that implication. I think I corrected myself in a later reply. I do believe that morality can exist outside of any given religion, but as I said in whichever post it was, it places them on shaky ground. It's too easy to someone to modify a personal moral belief system so that many things which are normally forbidden become accepted or allowed. Morality, almost by definition, is an objective system, and such modifications undermine any such system. A religion, on the other hand, is an external morality, which makes it harder to change to accommodate the forbidden things. Admittedly, that doesn't stop people from doing them anyways (sadly.... but we must remember that this is not a "religion is bad" matter, but more like a "people are fallible" matter), but at least they have a harder time rationalizing it afterwards.
As for the religious trying to take sole credit for morality, well, here's a challenge for you: name an action which you consider to be moral which does not directly come from a religion. I think you'll find it quite difficult. Most morality came (er... or rather, comes) from religion. The fact that some people accept the moral rulings but not the spiritual rulings is not a problem.
Furthermore, I will admit the potential for morality and religion to evolve and grow separately. I believe Nietzsche mentioned such a growth. I do think, though, that any morality so divorced from religion is going to find that it's a lot less, how shall we say, objective, than one attached to a given religion.
Oh yes, I'm quite open to the idea. I think I mentioned it somewhere in one of my replies. I think I also explained why I felt that such morality was on shaky ground at best.
Looks like you've got a selection bias there: you're implicitly excluding religious people from being "normal." You're welcome to try again with a more well-argued point, though.
Religion with or without rationality veers towards superstitions & sorcery.
And called right back at you. But to discuss this I need to address another one of your points first. Namely, this one:
I actually have a very hard time even imagining what you mean by religion with rationality, as most religions involve, if not focus highly on, the supernatural (defying rationality almost by definition)
So: while, yes, most religions deal with the supernatural, that does not preclude them from trying to be rational about it. I know, I know, that statement makes little sense, but allow me to attempt an explanation, using Catholicism and Islam as examples. One of implicit tenants of Catholic belief is that the world is an inherently rational, knowable place. All Catholic scholars, all of them, from Aquinas to Chesterton, repeat this over and over. "Why must this be the case?" you might ask. Well, have you read the Bible? It says absolutely nothing about, for example, abortion, or a million other things Catholics oppose. In fact, it barely even mentions the Catholic sacraments. Now, to you, this is probably evidence that it's all bunk, and I'm betting you've probably lost interest, but have you ever thought how those things came about? Have you considered that there's actually a very logical, one might even say reasonable, reason behind them all? This is where reason comes in to religion. Catholic scholars have spend generations debating and considering these issues, using reason, and have come to a very reasoned position, based on a few assumptions: abortion is murder because they make the perfectly allowable assumption that a fertilized egg is both alive and human. Other people choose to draw the line of "alive and human" in a different place. They chose that place because that's where they reasoned, from their text and their traditions, life began.
And now for Islam. Islam says straight up that Man's intellect and ability to reason is what sets him apart from everything else. Our capacity for active, considered, rational thought is what makes us human. There are a number of Hadith (our version of Apocrypha) that state that when in doubt over an issue, and where no one is able to give you a definite answer, use your.... you guessed it! Reason. I don't doubt that there's a reason behind being commanded to pray five times a day, or to fast, or etc. (aside: please do not debase this wonderful conversation by mentioning "the terrorists"), but I also know that the reason is not readily apparent to me. But then again, quantum mechanics is also not readily apparent to me, so there you have it.
The thing you seem to miss, and I do not fault you at all for this since many a-religious people seem to miss it, is that it's not reason in a void. It's reason given a set of assumptions and indications about the world. It's reason based off of a worldview, if you will, and not a worldview based off of reason. In a sense, it's the opposite of solipsism: we assume that there are many things outside of us, and though we may never be aware of them directly, they can have a remarkable effect on us nonetheless. From that standpoint and others, worldviews and religions are built, and reason is applied to these worldviews to help people live their lives as best they can. Contrariwise, a worldview based off of reason assumes nothing exists that we cannot detect with our five senses or puzzle out through logic. You'll notice, though, that this worldview says nothing -- in fact, cannot say anything -- about how to live one's life as best as one can.
Finally, that fact is all well and good, but I think "a bit strong" is a "bit" of an understatement. My bet still stands: if he can show me that the "vast majority" of Catholics in the world are poor and uneducated, I will buy him a steak dinner, or at the very least send him enough money to pay for one at, say, Outback Steakhouse.
I hope I've answered all your statements satisfactorily. There are a lot of points I wanted to hit and I fear some things may have gotten lost.
What is it, specifically, that prevents you from performing dangerous experiments on unwilling human subjects? Or on what the IRB calls "vulnerable populations?" Morality. (As an aside, ethics can very easily have nothing to do with morals whatsoever. Doing something unethical does not imply doing something immoral. Religions say nothing of ethics, but everything of morals. But I suppose you knew that already).
No, Religions do not have a monopoly, as it were, on morality, but you'll find that most of the moral standards to which we hold ourselves emerge directly from them. Even more so, they are maintained by religion. When new technologies, new processes, and new ideas come around, it is to Religions we turn for answers as to how to use these things morally. I'm sure by now you've simplified the argument to encompass merely abortion and birth control, seeing as how those are the two examples most easy to come by, but I assure you even those questions, not to mention all the others you have not considered, are more complex than you might imagine at first.
Or perhaps you believe that Religions are now outmoded, that we've grown beyond the concepts of good and evil. If so, I ask you, how do, living beyond good and evil, tell Right from Wrong without returning back to religion?
In a sense though, you are right; religions do not have a monopoly on truth or morality, and it's conceivable that someone can make morally correct choices (assuming, of course, you still believe in the concept of morally right vs. morally wrong. If not, then this discussion will be somewhat less than fruitful). The problem with this one person making these judgments for himself or herself is that they're likely to fall under a self-serving bias (ex: "Well, this is not so bad, and I can rationalize my morality to fit this case," etc.). No, I don't say it will guarantee-ably happen, I'm saying that it's likely to happen, and indeed I've seen it happen time and again.
With a religion, while the impulse to follow this self-serving bias is still there, it's not nearly as easy to carry through on it. Why? Because an honest man will always go back to the book, the priest, or the sage and ask him, "hey, is this alright?"
I have a feeling, in the end, the problem people have with religion is the problem people have with all things; practitioners of a religion are human, just like practitioners of anything else, and they're going to fail and falter occasionally. We've seen this with the scientific method as well. People who are honest with themselves and with others will acknowledge their mistakes and correct them. People who are not honest with themselves will not.
But honesty is, of course, a matter of Religion and Morality. And that is why we need them.
You see, the vast majority of catholics in the world are poor, uneducated people for whom religion is a refuge from the usually harsh reality of existence.
I'm going to have to ask you to prove that one to me. I'll bet you a steak dinner that: 1) You can't (it's an unverifiable statement no matter how you slice it) and 2) you haven't met many practicing Roman Catholics.
Your bias against religion is astounding. Compare your statements "religions have a good side" and "the amount of damage [they perpetrated]... is so stunning...". One could make the same argument about, oh, our favorite topic: Technology. In fact, I think I will: "Technology has its good side, but the amount of damage (direct and indirect) that has been perpetrated on humanity in the name of progress is so stunning that few people even realize it."
Now, I should point out that I am both religious (Muslim, believe it or not) and a big fan of science and technology. I do not think they are opposite approaches to things. They are actually quite orthogonal. If you think that a world without religion would be a better place, I'm afraid you'd be as sadly mistaken as if you said a world without technology would be a better place. Think about it for a second; the two actually need each other. Religion (or, at the very least, morality) without rationality (without "science") easily veers towards superstition and sorcery. Science without religion just as easily veers towards the cruel and inhuman. Ideally, each should help guide the other.
None of this is to say that there are not some religious people out there who attempt to undermine the scientific and rational process, but I think you'll find that sort of person could just as easily be areligious. Arstechnica had an interesting article not too long ago debunking a paper on a theory of homeopathy, whose authors all had letters behind their names. On the other hand, a large portion of Western philosophical and scientific thought came from deeply religious people, a lot of whom were Catholics.
Coming back to your obvious bias against Catholicism: what I find most peculiar is that you happen to pick a religion which has, time and time again, insisted that the Universe is knowable and rational, two necessary assumptions for any scientific progress to occur. Yes, yes, some of them (just like the aforementioned homeopathic charlatans) try to ignore, disregard, or diminish the role of reason, but the stance of the religion on reason is pretty damn clear to anyone whose even bothered studying it. In short, you should spend more time actually reading about Catholicism than reading about conspiracy theories regarding the council of Cardinals, the Pope, and the Church. Its views may differ greatly from yours, but it's not the big scary monster you make it out to be.
Not only do you get a continuation of an unendingly funny joke ("hey guys/girls. Come play with my Massive Wii!"), Nintendo actually can use it as a workable pun for online play. Games would be called "MassiveWii Multiplayer Online Games."
Games could be a problem as they seem to like to release platinum editions of older games and I honest have no idea how much that brings in for the games industry
Well, they may not be as much of a problem as we imagine. Let's take a concrete, yet hypothetical example. Say the copyright on Starcraft expired and the game passes into the public domain. Any copy I found online would be a legal copy of the game etc. If Blizzard wanted to make more money off of it, their "platinum" edition would have to offer things the version floating on the 'net does not, such as upgraded graphics, new cinematics, or even something as simple as continued access to BNet. Because this platinum edition is a new work, and despite its derivation from the original, Blizzard would own the copyright.
Now, imagine how cool that would be: companies that wanted us to pay for games whose copyright has expired would have to provide an incentive to do so in the form of releasing an addition, upgrade, modification, etc. along with the original game. I know people who'd leap at the opportunity to buy a revamped version of Final Fantasy VII, if only Square would release it, but as it stands, there's no real reason for them to do so since they're still (as I understand it) making money off of the game.
Authors could do the same thing as well; those who want to make more money on their works after their copyright has expired could release a new copy of their work with, say, their notes interspersed throughout the text.
I guess I should also note that while there's nothing preventing software writers release version after version of their works right now, having copyright expire on software after five years might encourage authors to do something interesting and cool with their software instead of releasing the same ol' thing over and over again with little to no change.
I'd like an animal with wheels that I can drive to work, with chlorophyll in its skin so I don't have to feed it. Maybe it can sun itself on the roof while I'm at meetings, and ooze a delicious health drink from a special orifice so I can catch dinner on the way home. (Don't spit up your milk laughing, it's quite possible.) A creature like that would go extinct pretty quickly but it would sure be convenient to have one, and no law of nature prevents such a thing from existing.
I think you're describing something akin to Chairdogs.
What's frightening is seeing SciFi beat us to this conclusion thirty years ago. Makes me wonder if we actually will discover Spice out there somewhere....
In light of this article, I'd recommend going back and re-reading Dune. Herbert speaks with an almost prophetic voice about a large number of almost-present-day things.
So, in a vain attempt to stay on topic and not discuss RP et. al., I've been giving some thought to the idea of internet privacy and anonymity. Specifically, I've been trying to think of it as compared to my privacy and anonymity as I'm walking on the street. I'd like to get other people's (considered) opinions on the matter as well.
As I am walking about in public, as determined by the courts in the U.S., I have no expectation of privacy, but I have some degree of anonymity. It's quite concievable that no one will recognize me or name me, though they may be able to describe me, and that is, by definition, anonymous. If I start talking on the phone about the hit I'm about to place on Bob, my neighbor and the police overhear me, they can concievably arrest me (the charges may be dropped for a variety of other reasons, but the point here is that the conversation was not "private" because in an open field, I have no reasonable expectation of privacy.) Legal shenanigans aside, this setup seems reasonable to me: private conversations held outside where everyone can hear are not private. Private conversations held where I reasonably expect that no one else should be able to hear are private. In either case, if I'm out on some arbitrary street corner or park, I am pretty anonymous (unless of course, I'm a celebrity or what-have-you, but let's just deal with the general case here): no one knows my name, where I live, where I came from, or where I'm going next unless they actively start gathering information on me, at which point they can only gather as much information as is provided by my public activities, since once I get to a place where I can reasonably expect privacy, the privacy laws kick in.
I think I'd like the internet, and consequently the laws governing the internet, to work in a somewhat similar fashion, and to a certain extent they do. When I go online, I'm effectively "leaving" my home (*cough* 127.0.0.1) and wandering the far world. Each page I visit should not be able to know who I am, where I live, where I came from, and where I'm going unless I actively start broadcasting this information. They can, however, "describe me" through my I.P. address just in case I do something untoward or illegal.
The problem, as people will probably point out, is in implementing certain portions of this and enforcing all of it. I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume privacy when I've established an SSL connection with a web page. Anyone listening in is now listening in on a private conversation and is violating several federal wiretapping laws. It's infernally harder to prove that the people on either end of the conversation are who they say they are, though. So what happens when someone I think is my banker but who is in reality a very well dressed theif (yes, yes, the response from Slashdot will probably be, "all bankers are well dressed thieves." There. Beat you to it.) convinces me to leave my money and information with him? We can make that illegal, certainly, but we can't prevent it from happening, short of a massive education drive.
Beyond that, the "anonymity" portion of this is also tricky; third-party cookies, referrer tags, and other tricks used to introduce state into HTTP allow sites to track people across pages. It's like being on film as you walk from park to park (my sympathis to my friends across the pond. I recommend performing some sort of jig every time one of those CCTV cameras gets you in its sights. Pretty soon they'll start ignoring you. Or they'll arrest you. One of the two), which while not eliminating anonymity, degrades it somewhat. I'm not sure what can be done about it, to be honest.
Sonic.net here in Santa Rosa is starting to roll out its own take on Muni Wifi, but not in the sense that I feel most people here are talking about. It works like this: any interested customer can request from Sonic a wireless mesh router. The cost of the router is split between him or her and Sonic. Anyone connecting through this router has to go through Sonic's portal, which has some adds some discrete-but-visible advertisements to whatever website one is viewing, which in theory would go into paying for the connection. As an incentive to get people to do this, Sonic says they'll share some of the ad revenue with the owners of the routers.
It's a little too early to say how it'll work out. I've only just recieved and set everything up, but I have to say, I like the idea of having your own customers help spread a wireless mesh network. Granted, it'll succeed or fail based entirely on the effort put in by said customers, but in light of Sonic's desire to share the ad revenue I don't see why people wouldn't be willing to at least give it a shot. Santa Rosa's both small enough that Sonic won't lose that much money if it fails, but large enough to provide a good idea of the challenges of doing it in a city. I'm curious to see what the next few months will bring.
Dammit, I've heard just about enough of these arguments. About 150 years ago, this man called Charles Tomlinson published a paper regarding how the mechanical workings of all locks should be public knowledge because, he reasoned, if the public knew about the weaknesses and strengths of each lock, they could 1) force the lockmaker into making a better lock, and 2) choose the one that suited them the best.
Below are two excerpts from the paper, found, interestingly enough, using the "fortune" program. Yes, I know that the making of locks isn't exactly like the creation of software, but the principle remains the same. Security through obscurity is no security at all; however, if the standards and techniques are open and available to the public, we, the "experts" in the field, will actually be hold companies accountable for problems and shortcomings in their software.
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discussion
respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a premium
for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fallacy. Rogues
are very keen in their profession, and already know much more than we can teach
them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew a good deal about
lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among themselves, as they have
lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in whatever country, or by whatever
maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto been deemed to be, surely it is in the
interest of *honest* persons to know this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably
certain to be the first to apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge
is necessary to give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too
earnestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better for all
parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850
"In respect to lock-making, there can scarcely be such a thing as dishonesty
of intention: the inventor produces a lock which he honestly thinks will
possess such and such qualities; and he declares his belief to the world.
If others differ from him in opinion concerning those qualities, it is open
to them to say so; and the discussion, truthfully conducted, must lead to
public advantage: the discussion stimulates curiosity, and curiosity stimulates
invention. Nothing but a partial and limited view of the question could lead
to the opinion that harm can result: if there be harm, it will be much more
than counterbalanced by good."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850.
If you ever wanted to send anything defending OSS to anyone, this would be a very good thing to send.
In either case, if Mohammed and Jesus had met each other they would almost certainly have hated each other.
Er... no. Sorry. As others have mentioned, Jesus made it a point to express his love for all mankind, and for all men in it. And, by the Qur'an, Jesus is a Prophet, and a highly esteemed one at that. Prophet Mohammed would certainly have felt the same love for Jesus as Jesus would for him.
But say for a moment that one day, while walking from place to place, they encounter one another and start walking in the same direction, not knowing who the other is. Christian AND Muslim traditions maintain that you treat strangers as well as you treat yourself, so I'm certain the two of them, even as strangers, would have treated each other beautifully. And, once they were introduced to each other, I imagine they'd share a great laugh or two about how we're seriously mucking up their teachings and part as good friends.
Slashdot Mirror
There is nothing inherently wrong with copyright. It's actually a great idea.
What's immoral is what has been done to that original great idea.
So what you're saying is, copyright should have been copyrighted?
Excuse me while I make a quit trip to the USPTO: "... a method for securing a method for securing the right of the original owner of an idea to reproduce said idea..."
God is a SciFi LARPer?
A TA of mine once wanted to baggy-pants someone in a truly memorable way. He called me over to his computer and entered simply:
cat gcc | write [dude's username]
HIlarity, of course, ensued.
svn ls | grep -v "NO" | xargs svn update
which grabs a directory listing from the Subversion server, prunes out the things I don't want, and then maps "svn update" on the remaining directories.
Also: pushd/popd. Pushd places the current directory on a directory stack and popd cds to the top directory on said stack. It's great for quickly hopping between directories.
What will pedophiles turn to if you take child porn away from their browsers at home?
Dude. It's Australia. They turn to sheep. I mean, New Zealand's right there!
(J/k, of course. Please don't hurt me, Kiwis!)
One solution to the NOx problem for diesel engines is to treat exhaust with urea. European companies distribute an aqueous urea solution as "AdBlue"...
and we don't have an AdBlue distribution network in the US, but it does work.
It's called "the Human Body." It generates a surprising amount of urea on a daily basis, especially if you feed it caffeine. [1] Best of all, there's always (hopefully!) a human around when you're driving!
So in practice, diesels are the most efficient internal combustion engines.
But seriously, since you seem to know about such things, let me ask you: wouldn't adding a supercharger onto a normal gasoline engine increase its practical efficiency?
[1] Warning: to avoid kidney stones, flush human out with 1 cup water per two cups caffeine daily. Your mileage may vary. Do not void where prohibited.
Really? Bill Gates made it look nerdy? Like if not for Gates, the whole industry would be filled with badass cowboys and hot chicks or something?
Yes.(Come on. This is slashdot. We blame him for everything. Current thought is that without Gates and Microsoft, we'd have invented a transporter, a holodeck, and would be out cruising the stars and picking up hot alien chicks by now.)
mandatory ignition interlock systems for all automobiles
Dude, maybe they're just overzealous Voltron fans. They want to make it so that whenever you insert your key, you get to shout out "Activate Interlocks!"
Actually, that doesn't seem like a bad idea. Now if only someone would develop dynatherms, infracells, and megathrusters for cars....
I kid, of course. Just trying to make light of the situation.
You may have a better stance with the text messaging example, but even then, I think it's a good thing to let people know when something major, like a shooting (or, less maliciously, a chemical spill), happens. Letting the public know not to go near a building because it's dangerous is the responsible thing to do. What we should work on is training people not to panic when something like that occurs.
I was a student in my senior year at Georgia Tech when the Virginia Tech shooting occurred. G.T. and V.T. are sister schools, and my social psych professor, whose lecture I had on the day immediately following the shooting, had many good friends at V.T.. That lecture, he talked about how most people are being brought up as sheep -- easily terrified, quick to panic and freeze. His solution was exactly what I mentioned above; of course you should let people know what's going on, but we should actively strive to teach them not to panic (Douglas Adams would be proud) during these situations. He mentioned that hiding information from the public often caused more fear, not less, because then you were preventing people from being able to make informed decisions on anything while at the same time letting their imaginations run rampant and robbing them of a sense of control. All in all, pretty damn good advice.
(Heh. As a side note, after the lecture, I showed him the Bene Gesserit litany against fear and immediately turned him into a "Dune" fan.)
Right. Now compare that pile to the pile of corpses killed as a result of completely a-religious wars. Or the pile of people killed because religion was explicitly not consulted or considered. Or the pile of people killed based on different creeds entirely. I think you'll find the two piles I mention here just as large.
If your point is that war sucks, then I'm behind you all the way. If your point is that human beings are panicky, easily aroused, and fallible, then you and I pretty much agree. Heck, if your point is even that the human ego is often quite damning, you've got points from me for being so insightful. If, however, your point is that religion has killed more people than other cognitive systems (a lot of which are not mutually exclusive and can exist within the same mind), then I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken.
My apologies. I didn't meant to make that implication. I think I corrected myself in a later reply. I do believe that morality can exist outside of any given religion, but as I said in whichever post it was, it places them on shaky ground. It's too easy to someone to modify a personal moral belief system so that many things which are normally forbidden become accepted or allowed. Morality, almost by definition, is an objective system, and such modifications undermine any such system. A religion, on the other hand, is an external morality, which makes it harder to change to accommodate the forbidden things. Admittedly, that doesn't stop people from doing them anyways (sadly.... but we must remember that this is not a "religion is bad" matter, but more like a "people are fallible" matter), but at least they have a harder time rationalizing it afterwards.
As for the religious trying to take sole credit for morality, well, here's a challenge for you: name an action which you consider to be moral which does not directly come from a religion. I think you'll find it quite difficult. Most morality came (er... or rather, comes) from religion. The fact that some people accept the moral rulings but not the spiritual rulings is not a problem.
Furthermore, I will admit the potential for morality and religion to evolve and grow separately. I believe Nietzsche mentioned such a growth. I do think, though, that any morality so divorced from religion is going to find that it's a lot less, how shall we say, objective, than one attached to a given religion.
Oh yes, I'm quite open to the idea. I think I mentioned it somewhere in one of my replies. I think I also explained why I felt that such morality was on shaky ground at best.
Looks like you've got a selection bias there: you're implicitly excluding religious people from being "normal." You're welcome to try again with a more well-argued point, though.
So called.
Religion with or without rationality veers towards superstitions & sorcery.And called right back at you. But to discuss this I need to address another one of your points first. Namely, this one:
I actually have a very hard time even imagining what you mean by religion with rationality, as most religions involve, if not focus highly on, the supernatural (defying rationality almost by definition)So: while, yes, most religions deal with the supernatural, that does not preclude them from trying to be rational about it. I know, I know, that statement makes little sense, but allow me to attempt an explanation, using Catholicism and Islam as examples. One of implicit tenants of Catholic belief is that the world is an inherently rational, knowable place. All Catholic scholars, all of them, from Aquinas to Chesterton, repeat this over and over. "Why must this be the case?" you might ask. Well, have you read the Bible? It says absolutely nothing about, for example, abortion, or a million other things Catholics oppose. In fact, it barely even mentions the Catholic sacraments. Now, to you, this is probably evidence that it's all bunk, and I'm betting you've probably lost interest, but have you ever thought how those things came about? Have you considered that there's actually a very logical, one might even say reasonable, reason behind them all? This is where reason comes in to religion. Catholic scholars have spend generations debating and considering these issues, using reason, and have come to a very reasoned position, based on a few assumptions: abortion is murder because they make the perfectly allowable assumption that a fertilized egg is both alive and human. Other people choose to draw the line of "alive and human" in a different place. They chose that place because that's where they reasoned, from their text and their traditions, life began.
And now for Islam. Islam says straight up that Man's intellect and ability to reason is what sets him apart from everything else. Our capacity for active, considered, rational thought is what makes us human. There are a number of Hadith (our version of Apocrypha) that state that when in doubt over an issue, and where no one is able to give you a definite answer, use your.... you guessed it! Reason. I don't doubt that there's a reason behind being commanded to pray five times a day, or to fast, or etc. (aside: please do not debase this wonderful conversation by mentioning "the terrorists"), but I also know that the reason is not readily apparent to me. But then again, quantum mechanics is also not readily apparent to me, so there you have it.
The thing you seem to miss, and I do not fault you at all for this since many a-religious people seem to miss it, is that it's not reason in a void. It's reason given a set of assumptions and indications about the world. It's reason based off of a worldview, if you will, and not a worldview based off of reason. In a sense, it's the opposite of solipsism: we assume that there are many things outside of us, and though we may never be aware of them directly, they can have a remarkable effect on us nonetheless. From that standpoint and others, worldviews and religions are built, and reason is applied to these worldviews to help people live their lives as best they can. Contrariwise, a worldview based off of reason assumes nothing exists that we cannot detect with our five senses or puzzle out through logic. You'll notice, though, that this worldview says nothing -- in fact, cannot say anything -- about how to live one's life as best as one can.
Finally, that fact is all well and good, but I think "a bit strong" is a "bit" of an understatement. My bet still stands: if he can show me that the "vast majority" of Catholics in the world are poor and uneducated, I will buy him a steak dinner, or at the very least send him enough money to pay for one at, say, Outback Steakhouse.
I hope I've answered all your statements satisfactorily. There are a lot of points I wanted to hit and I fear some things may have gotten lost.
No, Religions do not have a monopoly, as it were, on morality, but you'll find that most of the moral standards to which we hold ourselves emerge directly from them. Even more so, they are maintained by religion. When new technologies, new processes, and new ideas come around, it is to Religions we turn for answers as to how to use these things morally. I'm sure by now you've simplified the argument to encompass merely abortion and birth control, seeing as how those are the two examples most easy to come by, but I assure you even those questions, not to mention all the others you have not considered, are more complex than you might imagine at first.
Or perhaps you believe that Religions are now outmoded, that we've grown beyond the concepts of good and evil. If so, I ask you, how do, living beyond good and evil, tell Right from Wrong without returning back to religion?
In a sense though, you are right; religions do not have a monopoly on truth or morality, and it's conceivable that someone can make morally correct choices (assuming, of course, you still believe in the concept of morally right vs. morally wrong. If not, then this discussion will be somewhat less than fruitful). The problem with this one person making these judgments for himself or herself is that they're likely to fall under a self-serving bias (ex: "Well, this is not so bad, and I can rationalize my morality to fit this case," etc.). No, I don't say it will guarantee-ably happen, I'm saying that it's likely to happen, and indeed I've seen it happen time and again.
With a religion, while the impulse to follow this self-serving bias is still there, it's not nearly as easy to carry through on it. Why? Because an honest man will always go back to the book, the priest, or the sage and ask him, "hey, is this alright?"
I have a feeling, in the end, the problem people have with religion is the problem people have with all things; practitioners of a religion are human, just like practitioners of anything else, and they're going to fail and falter occasionally. We've seen this with the scientific method as well. People who are honest with themselves and with others will acknowledge their mistakes and correct them. People who are not honest with themselves will not.
But honesty is, of course, a matter of Religion and Morality. And that is why we need them.
Right. I'm calling you out on this one.
You said:
You see, the vast majority of catholics in the world are poor, uneducated people for whom religion is a refuge from the usually harsh reality of existence.I'm going to have to ask you to prove that one to me. I'll bet you a steak dinner that: 1) You can't (it's an unverifiable statement no matter how you slice it) and 2) you haven't met many practicing Roman Catholics.
Your bias against religion is astounding. Compare your statements "religions have a good side" and "the amount of damage [they perpetrated]... is so stunning...". One could make the same argument about, oh, our favorite topic: Technology. In fact, I think I will: "Technology has its good side, but the amount of damage (direct and indirect) that has been perpetrated on humanity in the name of progress is so stunning that few people even realize it."
Now, I should point out that I am both religious (Muslim, believe it or not) and a big fan of science and technology. I do not think they are opposite approaches to things. They are actually quite orthogonal. If you think that a world without religion would be a better place, I'm afraid you'd be as sadly mistaken as if you said a world without technology would be a better place. Think about it for a second; the two actually need each other. Religion (or, at the very least, morality) without rationality (without "science") easily veers towards superstition and sorcery. Science without religion just as easily veers towards the cruel and inhuman. Ideally, each should help guide the other.
None of this is to say that there are not some religious people out there who attempt to undermine the scientific and rational process, but I think you'll find that sort of person could just as easily be areligious. Arstechnica had an interesting article not too long ago debunking a paper on a theory of homeopathy, whose authors all had letters behind their names. On the other hand, a large portion of Western philosophical and scientific thought came from deeply religious people, a lot of whom were Catholics.
Coming back to your obvious bias against Catholicism: what I find most peculiar is that you happen to pick a religion which has, time and time again, insisted that the Universe is knowable and rational, two necessary assumptions for any scientific progress to occur. Yes, yes, some of them (just like the aforementioned homeopathic charlatans) try to ignore, disregard, or diminish the role of reason, but the stance of the religion on reason is pretty damn clear to anyone whose even bothered studying it. In short, you should spend more time actually reading about Catholicism than reading about conspiracy theories regarding the council of Cardinals, the Pope, and the Church. Its views may differ greatly from yours, but it's not the big scary monster you make it out to be.
"Ein yolk, ein crepe, ein juicer!"
It all makes sense, now! The man was misheard! He was clearly describing his favorite breakfast: one egg yolk, one pancake, and some juice.
Yes, I know that was a bit a stretch, but I couldn't resist.
Not only do you get a continuation of an unendingly funny joke ("hey guys/girls. Come play with my Massive Wii!"), Nintendo actually can use it as a workable pun for online play. Games would be called "MassiveWii Multiplayer Online Games."
Come on. You know it'd be brilliant.
Well, they may not be as much of a problem as we imagine. Let's take a concrete, yet hypothetical example. Say the copyright on Starcraft expired and the game passes into the public domain. Any copy I found online would be a legal copy of the game etc. If Blizzard wanted to make more money off of it, their "platinum" edition would have to offer things the version floating on the 'net does not, such as upgraded graphics, new cinematics, or even something as simple as continued access to BNet. Because this platinum edition is a new work, and despite its derivation from the original, Blizzard would own the copyright.
Now, imagine how cool that would be: companies that wanted us to pay for games whose copyright has expired would have to provide an incentive to do so in the form of releasing an addition, upgrade, modification, etc. along with the original game. I know people who'd leap at the opportunity to buy a revamped version of Final Fantasy VII, if only Square would release it, but as it stands, there's no real reason for them to do so since they're still (as I understand it) making money off of the game.
Authors could do the same thing as well; those who want to make more money on their works after their copyright has expired could release a new copy of their work with, say, their notes interspersed throughout the text.
I guess I should also note that while there's nothing preventing software writers release version after version of their works right now, having copyright expire on software after five years might encourage authors to do something interesting and cool with their software instead of releasing the same ol' thing over and over again with little to no change.
I think you're describing something akin to Chairdogs.
What's frightening is seeing SciFi beat us to this conclusion thirty years ago. Makes me wonder if we actually will discover Spice out there somewhere....
In light of this article, I'd recommend going back and re-reading Dune. Herbert speaks with an almost prophetic voice about a large number of almost-present-day things.As I am walking about in public, as determined by the courts in the U.S., I have no expectation of privacy, but I have some degree of anonymity. It's quite concievable that no one will recognize me or name me, though they may be able to describe me, and that is, by definition, anonymous. If I start talking on the phone about the hit I'm about to place on Bob, my neighbor and the police overhear me, they can concievably arrest me (the charges may be dropped for a variety of other reasons, but the point here is that the conversation was not "private" because in an open field, I have no reasonable expectation of privacy.) Legal shenanigans aside, this setup seems reasonable to me: private conversations held outside where everyone can hear are not private. Private conversations held where I reasonably expect that no one else should be able to hear are private. In either case, if I'm out on some arbitrary street corner or park, I am pretty anonymous (unless of course, I'm a celebrity or what-have-you, but let's just deal with the general case here): no one knows my name, where I live, where I came from, or where I'm going next unless they actively start gathering information on me, at which point they can only gather as much information as is provided by my public activities, since once I get to a place where I can reasonably expect privacy, the privacy laws kick in.
I think I'd like the internet, and consequently the laws governing the internet, to work in a somewhat similar fashion, and to a certain extent they do. When I go online, I'm effectively "leaving" my home (*cough* 127.0.0.1) and wandering the far world. Each page I visit should not be able to know who I am, where I live, where I came from, and where I'm going unless I actively start broadcasting this information. They can, however, "describe me" through my I.P. address just in case I do something untoward or illegal.
The problem, as people will probably point out, is in implementing certain portions of this and enforcing all of it. I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume privacy when I've established an SSL connection with a web page. Anyone listening in is now listening in on a private conversation and is violating several federal wiretapping laws. It's infernally harder to prove that the people on either end of the conversation are who they say they are, though. So what happens when someone I think is my banker but who is in reality a very well dressed theif (yes, yes, the response from Slashdot will probably be, "all bankers are well dressed thieves." There. Beat you to it.) convinces me to leave my money and information with him? We can make that illegal, certainly, but we can't prevent it from happening, short of a massive education drive.
Beyond that, the "anonymity" portion of this is also tricky; third-party cookies, referrer tags, and other tricks used to introduce state into HTTP allow sites to track people across pages. It's like being on film as you walk from park to park (my sympathis to my friends across the pond. I recommend performing some sort of jig every time one of those CCTV cameras gets you in its sights. Pretty soon they'll start ignoring you. Or they'll arrest you. One of the two), which while not eliminating anonymity, degrades it somewhat. I'm not sure what can be done about it, to be honest.
Right. Any thoughts?
It's a little too early to say how it'll work out. I've only just recieved and set everything up, but I have to say, I like the idea of having your own customers help spread a wireless mesh network. Granted, it'll succeed or fail based entirely on the effort put in by said customers, but in light of Sonic's desire to share the ad revenue I don't see why people wouldn't be willing to at least give it a shot. Santa Rosa's both small enough that Sonic won't lose that much money if it fails, but large enough to provide a good idea of the challenges of doing it in a city. I'm curious to see what the next few months will bring.
Below are two excerpts from the paper, found, interestingly enough, using the "fortune" program. Yes, I know that the making of locks isn't exactly like the creation of software, but the principle remains the same. Security through obscurity is no security at all; however, if the standards and techniques are open and available to the public, we, the "experts" in the field, will actually be hold companies accountable for problems and shortcomings in their software.
I can imagine they'd be a pain in the ass. Or thigh. Or hand. Or practically anywhere, for that matter.
*rimshot*