I don't see a lot of Westerners converting or anything...but what's wrong with having an issue with them being repressed? Your counter-argument is that they're a bunch of wackos with "weird" beliefs...so Westerners should be OK with that "cult" being repressed? People with beliefs you disagree with NOT being repressed is pretty much the core of liberal, democratic Western beliefs. Comparing Falun Gong to Scientology may be accurate, but it's a stupid argument when you consider that Scientologists aren't being arrested for their beliefs, at least in the US.
There is no such thing as proof by anecdote. The fact that you managed to find TWO people associated with climate science (one of whom is not a researcher or scientist of any kind) who might be full of crap doesn't say ANYTHING about the facts involved, or the quality of the thousands of other scientists involved in climate science, the vast majority of whom have reached the same conclusion about the topic.
Every time I hear someone complain about universal health care meaning your health care decisions will be made by a "bureaucracy", instead of being between you and your doctor, I always wonder who they have their health care plan through. Because MINE comes from some enormous health care organization with a ridiculous bureaucracy already.
Of course that's ignoring the fact that you can keep EXACTLY the system you have now under universal health care plans. But that would sort of kill the main argument against "socialized medicine", which is why people tend to ignore that point.
What a bunch of libertarian bullshit. The "free market" by definition will almost always benefit the majority. There is no profit in catering to the minority, thus the free market results in things like slavery and discrimination until laws intervene.
You would have a point if black people and white people (or any minority group and white people) were treated equally and fairly in our nation, or if they had the exact same experiences and cultural "needs". But simply proclaiming that "color doesn't matter any more" doesn't make it so, and suggesting that black people don't need "black groups" because WHITE people don't need "white groups" is comparing apples and oranges. You want to know where the groups pushing white advancement are? Look no further than the leadership of any large company...who's working there, compared to who's working in the factory or on the loading dock? I'm not saying the imbalance of power and influence in this country is inherently racist, but the fact is that white people DO have a lot more power, influence and money compared to their black fellow citizens...even accounting for the difference in population. And as far as cultural identity goes, it's the same thing...white is the default, we don't NEED any special effort or groups made to maintain our identity, it's built in. That's what comes from being the majority...
Your argument against hate crimes carrying harsher punishments than someone committing a similar crime for a different motivation only makes sense if the impact is the same. I'd argue that history has shown that murdering someone because you hate their racial/religions/etc group has a much greater impact that if someone is murdered for a different reason. Hate crimes divide communities, and ultimately lead to more hatred and violence.
Hate crimes aren't about punishing people for what they think, it's about punishing them for what they do and the effect that has on the community around them.
Well if it was legal, why would Congress have to jump in to do anything?
And the question of whether it's torture or not is only "controversial" if you phrase the argument correctly. Supporters of "enhanced interrogation" much more frequently justify it by saying that the people being interrogated are bad people and/or if we DON'T waterboard them they won't tell us their secrets and we'll all die. The (often ridiculously Hollywood) justifications are clearly built around the idea that we're doing something wrong, but in this case it's OK. If torture wasn't really torture, the arguments in favor of it seem unnecessary...as do the assurances that we only do it rarely.
"It's not torture, but we only use it in the most extreme circumstances against the hardest cases when life and death matters are on the line...and why do you hate America anyways?" is not a terribly compelling argument in favor of what we're doing being totally fine. To paraphrase an always good observation, methinks conservatives doth protest too much.
You make a good argument, but I'm not so sure people DON'T have a reasonable expectation of privacy in terms of their travel habits. It is a fair amount of effort to track every single move someone makes 24/7, and I think most reasonable people would not expect someone to be casually tracking them. GPS trackers makes casual tracking far easier and on a far larger scale, which means practicality no longer provides any protection...so the law must.
Technology is going to make surveillance easier and easier as time goes by, and as a result the default level of privacy we all have will go down unless the law steps into the gap. 100 years ago, we didn't really NEED very many laws protecting our privacy, because the tools available to those who would invade it weren't good enough to concern most people. The laws of practicality protected you, now they don't.
And I for one am getting a little pissed off at conservatives who can only manage to get outraged over civil liberties when it's huge, multi-national corporations that are involved. Illegal wiretapping? "Hey, what do you have to hide...traitor?" Stepping in to save companies that have basically begged for help from the government? "OMG, that's worse than Hitler!"
As far as I'm concerned, anyone who voted for Bush the second time, for any reason, has absolutely no ground to stand on when complaining about "shredding the Constitution". You KNEW what he was going to do, and you still decided to help put him in office. Trying to paint yourself as a defender of the constitution now just screams political convenience to me.
Except the whole point is that when it comes to raising my kids (assuming I had any), I could honestly give a damn what you think is proper child rearing. While you might think strip searching your daughter is an appropriate way to deal with suspicion of drug possession, I sure as hell don't. And while schools act with parental authority during the day, they act that way with EVERYONE'S kids...not just yours. If you think being an incredibly strict parent is the way to go, keep it at home...leave everyone else's kids out of it.
It's true, which is probably the bigger problem here. The original intent of the 2nd amendment, and the original reason people liked guns, was because they could be used to defend your life and your freedom. The NRA subsidizing gun purchases for blacks to fend off racist idiots is possibly one of the best arguments for organizations like that and laws like the 2nd amendment. Except the NRA is no longer an organization like that, and gun owners today rarely seem to have the same attitude that the framers probably intended about firearms. It's not that guns are a valuable tool in defending yourself and your fellow citizens, it's that some people like guns. Whatever larger point there might have once been is lost in a sea of people who thinks guns are fashion accessories or especially dangerous toys. Which is fine, as long as they are safe with their guns. But let's not pretend it's something else.
And maybe whoever made this decision at Blizzard just didn't think things all the way through. I don't know where you got this idea that companies are perfect decision making machines simply because it's in their best interest to perform that way...it doesn't bear a close resemblance to reality. In fact, people (and companies) making retardedly short-sighted decisions that negatively impact them down the road is probably the rule rather than the exception. I'm sure the folks at Blizzard sat down and gave this new policy some thought, but it was just people doing the thinking, not some magical Adam Smith cyborg, and people do stupid things sometimes.
What Shell is doing is reasonable and predictable...in the short term. Shell, like most modern for-profit corporations is proving to be exceedingly good at maximizing profits over the short term, and pretty bad at seeing past the end of their nose. Cheap oil isn't going to be around forever, and the technologies that will replace it aren't going to pop up overnight. Honestly the attitude that should really be demonized is the one you're displaying, that it's only philanthropists who should care about more than a few years into the future.
You have any data to back that up? It's true that young males are in a lot of accidents relative to other drivers, but you're claiming those accidents are "due to speed" without any proof. I have no doubt that a lot of young men drive like complete crap, but I'm not convinced that speeding is the main problem they have.
There are a lot of dangerous things people do on the road that cause accidents. Focusing on speed, regardless of circumstance, and totally ignoring all other factors (like you're doing) is pretty silly if the goal is to increase road safety and not just scapegoat someone. Are you REALLY going to make the argument that someone driving 70 in a 55 when there's no traffic is more dangerous than the asshole merging onto a busy highway at 35 mph?
I sympathize with your point of view, and I don't have any plans to run a click fraud script as a form of "protest"...but if I was you, I'd be pissed at Google too. As a small business owner, I'm sure you understand the value of making sure your customers are happy. Big companies like Google tend to forget that, because they can often afford to piss people off in ways that small companies can't. Sure, click fraud that costs you money isn't great, but neither is using an advertising company that invites that kind of response from your customers. So get mad at Slashdotters...fine. But get mad at Google too. And while we're at it, maybe we should be pissed at you. It's your total lack of interest in what your advertiser is doing to your customers on your behalf that gets us privacy invading bullshit like this in the first place.
What really amuses me about sites like the Pirate Bay and other less well known torrent sites is that they're basically a bunch of random guys who have developed a more comprehensive and user friendly content delivery system than the entire multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. Of course the goal of torrent sites is to deliver content to users, while the goal of media companies is to protect at all costs their existing revenue streams.
It's a trade-off. It's almost 11 PM right now. If I suddenly get the urge to watch a particular movie right now, the fact that I could see it on Blu-ray with higher resolution and multiple channels of high quality sound is totally useless to me, because the Blu-ray disk is sitting on the shelf at Best Buy...which is closed. Sure, all else being equal, I'd rather get higher quality picture and sound. But all else is NOT equal, because streaming offers a convenience that a physical or broadcast medium can't possibly match. And the reason on-demand delivery is being deployed at such a glacially slow pace is because content providers KNOW how vastly superior it is for consumers, and they're absolutely terrified of the loss of control it represents for them.
Just because it has some good uses doesn't mean it's not vendor lock-in, and it doesn't mean the vendor won't effectively be holding your IT operations for ransom. You may think this is an OK trade-off for having systems that work very well together and allow you a great deal of control over clients, but not everyone would agree. You are basically putting yourself in a situation where Microsoft could raise their price 1,000% per seat and you would be forced to pay. They also can, and do, force you to upgrade, even if you don't see a need to. Now it might be that this loss of control is worth being able to push out and enforce client side Windows Update parameters...but it's definitely not as clear cut a case as you're trying to make it.
That would be a good theory if this was actually Google's idea. But if you look at the link, it's on Google Code, which is a way for ANYONE to create a project and put it online. The guy writing this probably has nothing to do with Google.
Because, like all good conspiracies, the best way to get away with it is to involve the news media. Do you REALLY think that if the building was intentionally demolished and the folks involved were going to lie about it, they would tell the BBC and a NYC radio station?
It's also worth noting that the owner said in that interview that he discussed "pulling it" with the fire department commander and that they made the decisions to do so to prevent further loss of life. Now I don't know how they do it where you all live, but the fire fighters in my area don't know how to demolish sky scrapers.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see a lot of Westerners converting or anything...but what's wrong with having an issue with them being repressed? Your counter-argument is that they're a bunch of wackos with "weird" beliefs...so Westerners should be OK with that "cult" being repressed? People with beliefs you disagree with NOT being repressed is pretty much the core of liberal, democratic Western beliefs. Comparing Falun Gong to Scientology may be accurate, but it's a stupid argument when you consider that Scientologists aren't being arrested for their beliefs, at least in the US.
There is no such thing as proof by anecdote. The fact that you managed to find TWO people associated with climate science (one of whom is not a researcher or scientist of any kind) who might be full of crap doesn't say ANYTHING about the facts involved, or the quality of the thousands of other scientists involved in climate science, the vast majority of whom have reached the same conclusion about the topic.
Every time I hear someone complain about universal health care meaning your health care decisions will be made by a "bureaucracy", instead of being between you and your doctor, I always wonder who they have their health care plan through. Because MINE comes from some enormous health care organization with a ridiculous bureaucracy already. Of course that's ignoring the fact that you can keep EXACTLY the system you have now under universal health care plans. But that would sort of kill the main argument against "socialized medicine", which is why people tend to ignore that point.
What a bunch of libertarian bullshit. The "free market" by definition will almost always benefit the majority. There is no profit in catering to the minority, thus the free market results in things like slavery and discrimination until laws intervene.
It's also probably not a good idea to make racially bigoted comments to your fellow officers, but that doesn't seem to have stopped the white cops...
You would have a point if black people and white people (or any minority group and white people) were treated equally and fairly in our nation, or if they had the exact same experiences and cultural "needs". But simply proclaiming that "color doesn't matter any more" doesn't make it so, and suggesting that black people don't need "black groups" because WHITE people don't need "white groups" is comparing apples and oranges. You want to know where the groups pushing white advancement are? Look no further than the leadership of any large company...who's working there, compared to who's working in the factory or on the loading dock? I'm not saying the imbalance of power and influence in this country is inherently racist, but the fact is that white people DO have a lot more power, influence and money compared to their black fellow citizens...even accounting for the difference in population. And as far as cultural identity goes, it's the same thing...white is the default, we don't NEED any special effort or groups made to maintain our identity, it's built in. That's what comes from being the majority...
Your argument against hate crimes carrying harsher punishments than someone committing a similar crime for a different motivation only makes sense if the impact is the same. I'd argue that history has shown that murdering someone because you hate their racial/religions/etc group has a much greater impact that if someone is murdered for a different reason. Hate crimes divide communities, and ultimately lead to more hatred and violence. Hate crimes aren't about punishing people for what they think, it's about punishing them for what they do and the effect that has on the community around them.
Moving out of a crappy area isn't racism, but blaming "black culture" for the quality of the area sure as hell is.
Well if it was legal, why would Congress have to jump in to do anything? And the question of whether it's torture or not is only "controversial" if you phrase the argument correctly. Supporters of "enhanced interrogation" much more frequently justify it by saying that the people being interrogated are bad people and/or if we DON'T waterboard them they won't tell us their secrets and we'll all die. The (often ridiculously Hollywood) justifications are clearly built around the idea that we're doing something wrong, but in this case it's OK. If torture wasn't really torture, the arguments in favor of it seem unnecessary...as do the assurances that we only do it rarely. "It's not torture, but we only use it in the most extreme circumstances against the hardest cases when life and death matters are on the line...and why do you hate America anyways?" is not a terribly compelling argument in favor of what we're doing being totally fine. To paraphrase an always good observation, methinks conservatives doth protest too much.
You make a good argument, but I'm not so sure people DON'T have a reasonable expectation of privacy in terms of their travel habits. It is a fair amount of effort to track every single move someone makes 24/7, and I think most reasonable people would not expect someone to be casually tracking them. GPS trackers makes casual tracking far easier and on a far larger scale, which means practicality no longer provides any protection...so the law must. Technology is going to make surveillance easier and easier as time goes by, and as a result the default level of privacy we all have will go down unless the law steps into the gap. 100 years ago, we didn't really NEED very many laws protecting our privacy, because the tools available to those who would invade it weren't good enough to concern most people. The laws of practicality protected you, now they don't.
And I for one am getting a little pissed off at conservatives who can only manage to get outraged over civil liberties when it's huge, multi-national corporations that are involved. Illegal wiretapping? "Hey, what do you have to hide...traitor?" Stepping in to save companies that have basically begged for help from the government? "OMG, that's worse than Hitler!"
As far as I'm concerned, anyone who voted for Bush the second time, for any reason, has absolutely no ground to stand on when complaining about "shredding the Constitution". You KNEW what he was going to do, and you still decided to help put him in office. Trying to paint yourself as a defender of the constitution now just screams political convenience to me.
Except the whole point is that when it comes to raising my kids (assuming I had any), I could honestly give a damn what you think is proper child rearing. While you might think strip searching your daughter is an appropriate way to deal with suspicion of drug possession, I sure as hell don't. And while schools act with parental authority during the day, they act that way with EVERYONE'S kids...not just yours. If you think being an incredibly strict parent is the way to go, keep it at home...leave everyone else's kids out of it.
It's true, which is probably the bigger problem here. The original intent of the 2nd amendment, and the original reason people liked guns, was because they could be used to defend your life and your freedom. The NRA subsidizing gun purchases for blacks to fend off racist idiots is possibly one of the best arguments for organizations like that and laws like the 2nd amendment. Except the NRA is no longer an organization like that, and gun owners today rarely seem to have the same attitude that the framers probably intended about firearms. It's not that guns are a valuable tool in defending yourself and your fellow citizens, it's that some people like guns. Whatever larger point there might have once been is lost in a sea of people who thinks guns are fashion accessories or especially dangerous toys. Which is fine, as long as they are safe with their guns. But let's not pretend it's something else.
And maybe whoever made this decision at Blizzard just didn't think things all the way through. I don't know where you got this idea that companies are perfect decision making machines simply because it's in their best interest to perform that way...it doesn't bear a close resemblance to reality. In fact, people (and companies) making retardedly short-sighted decisions that negatively impact them down the road is probably the rule rather than the exception. I'm sure the folks at Blizzard sat down and gave this new policy some thought, but it was just people doing the thinking, not some magical Adam Smith cyborg, and people do stupid things sometimes.
What Shell is doing is reasonable and predictable...in the short term. Shell, like most modern for-profit corporations is proving to be exceedingly good at maximizing profits over the short term, and pretty bad at seeing past the end of their nose. Cheap oil isn't going to be around forever, and the technologies that will replace it aren't going to pop up overnight. Honestly the attitude that should really be demonized is the one you're displaying, that it's only philanthropists who should care about more than a few years into the future.
You have any data to back that up? It's true that young males are in a lot of accidents relative to other drivers, but you're claiming those accidents are "due to speed" without any proof. I have no doubt that a lot of young men drive like complete crap, but I'm not convinced that speeding is the main problem they have. There are a lot of dangerous things people do on the road that cause accidents. Focusing on speed, regardless of circumstance, and totally ignoring all other factors (like you're doing) is pretty silly if the goal is to increase road safety and not just scapegoat someone. Are you REALLY going to make the argument that someone driving 70 in a 55 when there's no traffic is more dangerous than the asshole merging onto a busy highway at 35 mph?
To put my last point a simpler way, I care about your profits exactly the same amount that you care about my privacy...whatever that amount might be.
I sympathize with your point of view, and I don't have any plans to run a click fraud script as a form of "protest"...but if I was you, I'd be pissed at Google too. As a small business owner, I'm sure you understand the value of making sure your customers are happy. Big companies like Google tend to forget that, because they can often afford to piss people off in ways that small companies can't. Sure, click fraud that costs you money isn't great, but neither is using an advertising company that invites that kind of response from your customers. So get mad at Slashdotters...fine. But get mad at Google too. And while we're at it, maybe we should be pissed at you. It's your total lack of interest in what your advertiser is doing to your customers on your behalf that gets us privacy invading bullshit like this in the first place.
What really amuses me about sites like the Pirate Bay and other less well known torrent sites is that they're basically a bunch of random guys who have developed a more comprehensive and user friendly content delivery system than the entire multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. Of course the goal of torrent sites is to deliver content to users, while the goal of media companies is to protect at all costs their existing revenue streams.
It's a trade-off. It's almost 11 PM right now. If I suddenly get the urge to watch a particular movie right now, the fact that I could see it on Blu-ray with higher resolution and multiple channels of high quality sound is totally useless to me, because the Blu-ray disk is sitting on the shelf at Best Buy...which is closed. Sure, all else being equal, I'd rather get higher quality picture and sound. But all else is NOT equal, because streaming offers a convenience that a physical or broadcast medium can't possibly match. And the reason on-demand delivery is being deployed at such a glacially slow pace is because content providers KNOW how vastly superior it is for consumers, and they're absolutely terrified of the loss of control it represents for them.
Just because it has some good uses doesn't mean it's not vendor lock-in, and it doesn't mean the vendor won't effectively be holding your IT operations for ransom. You may think this is an OK trade-off for having systems that work very well together and allow you a great deal of control over clients, but not everyone would agree. You are basically putting yourself in a situation where Microsoft could raise their price 1,000% per seat and you would be forced to pay. They also can, and do, force you to upgrade, even if you don't see a need to. Now it might be that this loss of control is worth being able to push out and enforce client side Windows Update parameters...but it's definitely not as clear cut a case as you're trying to make it.
That would be a good theory if this was actually Google's idea. But if you look at the link, it's on Google Code, which is a way for ANYONE to create a project and put it online. The guy writing this probably has nothing to do with Google.
Because, like all good conspiracies, the best way to get away with it is to involve the news media. Do you REALLY think that if the building was intentionally demolished and the folks involved were going to lie about it, they would tell the BBC and a NYC radio station?
It's also worth noting that the owner said in that interview that he discussed "pulling it" with the fire department commander and that they made the decisions to do so to prevent further loss of life. Now I don't know how they do it where you all live, but the fire fighters in my area don't know how to demolish sky scrapers.