I've been chuckling over his comments for a few years now and I'm beginning to think that Joe The Dragon (967727) is not the Engrish-bearing Oriental comedian I originally mistook him for.
Actually Google became sentient years ago and Joe The Dragon is just an instance using Translate to fool the stupid humans for its own amusement..
Not that I disagree with you but I just cannot see how the best answer to a problem is for the government to endorse doing drugs. People die all the take from taking drugs.
not that I have any viable solutions, I just wish that the police could do a better job then criminals.
Who said anything about endorsing drug use? We're talking about society taking a reality check here and dealing with the fact that drugs are never going to go away any more than prostitution is.
Of course, as another poster said much better than I, there's too much monied interest in things staying the way they are.
Meanwhile we collectively stand around nodding in agreement (we all know that drugs are bad after all), sipping our alcoholic drinks and all the while oblivious to the hypocrisy.
And just forget about trying it in New Zealand. The US aren't even allowed to bring nuclear powered vessels into NZ waters.
Good point. Talk about missed opportunities though! We're collectively guarding our image very jealously, but I wonder how clean, green and proactive would we look on the world stage if we helped pioneer efforts into fast-breeder research?
Remember the ad: "..you said 'No,' to nuclear power.. even though you invented it.."
Please, if you have some technical skill, some time and a sense of justice, I humbly ask that you take a moment to hack this site and delete its content with DOD-7 wiping
That's more or less Deism - God as the Cosmic Engineer whose creation is in essence defining the boundary conditions of the universe. In my opinion, this is somewhat at odds with the "Personal God" idea of Christianity.
I don't know much about religion as I have not studied it, however I have 'looked into' various religions as a layperson. With my limited understanding I would say you are quite right, Christianity appears to move in the direction of a finding one's Personal God. Eastern religions seem to have this in hand but also preach the concept of God involving everyone and everything, referred to by some as a Divine Dichotomy.
I've run out of time just now but I thought your comment was quite interesting and felt it deserved a response.:)
I'm going to blatantly copy and paste an answer from Kwlest
Thanks for that, made for an interesting read.
One thing I can never get my pointy little head around is the way people think of God, almost as if God were little more than just a Big Human sitting on some throne, scowling at all the world with little more than a teenage boy's myopic worldview.
To the religious people of the world I would say, "If you're going to worship God, try and remember that fact - God isn't Human! God is God! "
To illustrate my point, consider the difference in attitude between a teenager and the same person in their seventies. The wisdom, patience and maturity that one gains in fifty or so years is clear for all to see. Given that God is meant to have a little more life experience than a seventy-year-old Human, it occurs to me there's little that could ever anger or upset or even please or satisfy a Godlike supreme being. From that perspective, the concept of Sin seems absurd, laughable even.
It's hard not to imagine that sin is a 100% man-made concept, one we came up with all on our own without any outside 'help' from whichever supreme being we were scrapping over at the time.
Maybe, but would they have had the opportunity for a better lot for themselves if not for our society? Couldn't it be argued that they have received more benefits from society and thus should give more back to it?
True, although they will have already given back more than average simply because they've earned more than average.
I guess the argument boils down to whether high-income earners should be taxed over and above the rest of us simply because they earn more. I've never really understood this because we're taxed by percentage so everyone contributes proportionally anyway.
Perhaps we could try some sort of limit, agreed by referendum, on the amount one can personally earn in a year? Say, US$20-$30M? The overflow could be given to a favourite charity. I really don't know if this is fair or not, just thinking aloud.
I don't think you're wrong and I'm not even sure my own argument is as researched as I'd like. This stuff is very difficult because every point of view needs to be studied and the best way to do that (for myself) is to imagine how it would feel to be in that position and ask myself how I see the world.
Sorry that I have little sympathy for the billionaire who wants to keep 500M dollars. He's still not poor if he only has 10 million in spending cash at the end of the year.
I agree with your sentiment but I would caution that this effectively punishes those who strive for a better lot for themselves and their families.
Obviously, when you are talking billions of dollars your thoughts make perfect sense, so I'm not arguing with you there. However, I imagine I'm not alone in having seen the demoralizing effect that higher tax brackets can have on someone simply trying to get a few more hours overtime (or worse yet, a second job!) to help pay the mortgage or save towards that international holiday for the family.
I reckon this stuff needs to be very carefully considered or we'll end up suffering a lot of unintended consequences.
Somalia is inhabited by niggers. They aren't human and therefore don't have human nature.
Nice point troll, I'm glad you raised it. Some people continue to foster attitudes like this and in doing so they perpetuate the fucked, fucked state of the world as it exists today.
I was raised a racist, leaving me little choice as a child as to what I really believed. As an adult I re-evaluated these beliefs and found them sorely lacking. Racism (among others) is not conducive to the civilised society we profess the desire to live in.
Solving the world's problems begins with us, personally. There is no governmental, legal, or commercial alternative to rescue us from ourselves as these entities are simply manifestations of our collective personalities and our culture.
If you want the world to be a better place, take some responsibility for your attitudes towards other humans. Nothing will change until we do.
This comes as a great surprise to me, considering the NZ government is SUPPOSED to be the 2nd least corrupt government in the world:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/gov_cor-government-corruption
All this talk in the article of secretly implementing crap to filter the internet doesn't bode well for NZ. Internet there is already shiit.
Interesting point. My understanding (from a fellow Kiwi who is usually pretty reliable on these sorts of things) is that it is known that NZ government administrations under-report corruption to a criminal level.
It may interest fellow 'dotters that we don't ship out the encumbent administration when a new government takes power. That's right - unlike the US, we leave them there to undermine the incoming cabinet. This can be particularly challenging when the outgoing government has been nine consecutive years in power, leaving behind it a thoroughly indoctrinated public service to receive the incoming party..
I'm not so sure this is different from the UK system of governance (although we have no House of Lords) so I may well be off-base with this thought.
Cover your ears and yell la la la la la. It makes all the bad things go away. Idiot!
Unfortunately your advice doesn't extend to your good self it would seem.
I'm hardly surprised by your response; nobody enjoys being shown up as a hypocrite. I couldn't have anticipated the puerility of your response though - thanks for the giggle!
Universal health care is a good thing. It's not socialist. Get over it.
I respectfully disagree with your sig; Universal Health Care is most certainly socialist, but that is not mutually exclusive with being a good thing. Personally, I hate socialism almost as much as you 'merkins, but a good system of government needs to take lessons from everyone's books in the pursuit of the best system for the greatest number of people.
Universal Health Care is one example of a socialist policy that works well in the real world - America would be cheating itself if it let its phobia of socialist ideas get in the way of making things better for everyone.
In New Zealand where I live we have a system of Universal Health Care. It -- like every other governmentally-controlled mechanism -- is deeply flawed, but it does work in the majority of cases.
That said, you won't find me voting any left-leaning crowd into power any time soon.
No, for Gmail, if a mail is revived with a plus in the name, the address is stripped at the plus to determine the account in which to deposit the message.
[chuckle] Thanks for the info.. but mostly for the best typo I've seen in a while!:)
A supremely insightful comment, thanks. I think it's easy to overlook His Steveness' business acumen given his preponderance of Industrial Design abilities and his deep understanding of consumer Marketing.
I'm no fan of Apple -- rightly or wrongly I see them as another Microsoft -- but Steve Jobs has certainly proven himself to be a superb businessman.
No pure ideology works on the scale of a modern country (pop > ~1,000,000)
Pure democracy doesn't work for anything larger than Ancient Athens.
I dunno, it works pretty well over here in Switzerland, population somewhere between 7 and 8 million.
Fair enough, although from my limited understanding of Switzerland their level of internal order seems to be more the natural result of the Swiss culture and collective thinking process than an example of what a 'Pure Democracy' can achieve for a country.
If you are someone who likes their trains to run on time, I'm not so sure the magic bullet lies in simply changing the country's governmental structure; the Swiss are a wonderful addition to Humanity's tapestry of life but people who prioritise the importance of societal order as high they do are somewhat in the minority, even in the west.
Ah, BTW, a country leader making stupid and dangerous comments is in no way an Iranian privilege.
I hate people who do this, but I actually had to stop and think about this sentence for a min. Perhaps "Ah, BTW, there are plenty of other country leaders making stupid and dangerous comments."
I'm not really sure your post improves on Tellarin's succinct, readable and well-worded sentence.
While I don't want to make assumptions about your own reading comprehension, I suspect Tellarin's choice of words is less responsible for your annoyance than your preconceptions of how you feel a sentence should read.
Personally, I'm glad for our present literary diversity, if the alternative is sanitised, dumbed-down language as provided by your example.
In 1995, columnist and Ethernet-inventor Bob Metcalfe was again going on about a topic that eventually had him literally eating his words (he had to chop up a column in a blender with water and chug it) - that the Internet was going to collapse from all the heavy bandwidth demands of its exponentially-expanding clientele.
..and here we have a fine example of the near-mythical 'correct-use-of-the-term-"literally"' beast, grazing in its native environment. Fellow Slashdotters are advised to learn as much as possible while the animal is so clearly visible, for typical correct-use-of-the-term-"literally"s are very rare indeed and it may be some time before we see another.
Slashdot Mirror
you're an ignorant hypocrite.
also, you're wrong.... completely and pathetically wrong.
you're an idiot.
Where would Slashdot be without you, MichaelKristopeit? You're always there, adding so much to the discussion.
You conjugation need work
I've been chuckling over his comments for a few years now and I'm beginning to think that Joe The Dragon (967727) is not the Engrish-bearing Oriental comedian I originally mistook him for.
Actually Google became sentient years ago and Joe The Dragon is just an instance using Translate to fool the stupid humans for its own amusement..
"It puts the macros in the Office or else it gets the hose again!"
+5 Coffee-Sinus-Keyboard XD
Not that I disagree with you but I just cannot see how the best answer to a problem is for the government to endorse doing drugs. People die all the take from taking drugs.
not that I have any viable solutions, I just wish that the police could do a better job then criminals.
Who said anything about endorsing drug use? We're talking about society taking a reality check here and dealing with the fact that drugs are never going to go away any more than prostitution is.
Of course, as another poster said much better than I, there's too much monied interest in things staying the way they are.
Meanwhile we collectively stand around nodding in agreement (we all know that drugs are bad after all), sipping our alcoholic drinks and all the while oblivious to the hypocrisy.
And just forget about trying it in New Zealand. The US aren't even allowed to bring nuclear powered vessels into NZ waters.
Good point. Talk about missed opportunities though! We're collectively guarding our image very jealously, but I wonder how clean, green and proactive would we look on the world stage if we helped pioneer efforts into fast-breeder research?
Remember the ad: "..you said 'No,' to nuclear power.. even though you invented it.."
Anybody here feeling vicious?
Please, if you have some technical skill, some time and a sense of justice, I humbly ask that you take a moment to hack this site and delete its content with DOD-7 wiping
Oh, and http://uggkey.com/ is another one..
That's more or less Deism - God as the Cosmic Engineer whose creation is in essence defining the boundary conditions of the universe. In my opinion, this is somewhat at odds with the "Personal God" idea of Christianity.
I don't know much about religion as I have not studied it, however I have 'looked into' various religions as a layperson. With my limited understanding I would say you are quite right, Christianity appears to move in the direction of a finding one's Personal God. Eastern religions seem to have this in hand but also preach the concept of God involving everyone and everything, referred to by some as a Divine Dichotomy.
I've run out of time just now but I thought your comment was quite interesting and felt it deserved a response. :)
I'm going to blatantly copy and paste an answer from Kwlest
Thanks for that, made for an interesting read.
One thing I can never get my pointy little head around is the way people think of God, almost as if God were little more than just a Big Human sitting on some throne, scowling at all the world with little more than a teenage boy's myopic worldview.
To the religious people of the world I would say, "If you're going to worship God, try and remember that fact - God isn't Human! God is God! "
To illustrate my point, consider the difference in attitude between a teenager and the same person in their seventies. The wisdom, patience and maturity that one gains in fifty or so years is clear for all to see. Given that God is meant to have a little more life experience than a seventy-year-old Human, it occurs to me there's little that could ever anger or upset or even please or satisfy a Godlike supreme being. From that perspective, the concept of Sin seems absurd, laughable even.
It's hard not to imagine that sin is a 100% man-made concept, one we came up with all on our own without any outside 'help' from whichever supreme being we were scrapping over at the time.
Maybe, but would they have had the opportunity for a better lot for themselves if not for our society? Couldn't it be argued that they have received more benefits from society and thus should give more back to it?
True, although they will have already given back more than average simply because they've earned more than average.
I guess the argument boils down to whether high-income earners should be taxed over and above the rest of us simply because they earn more. I've never really understood this because we're taxed by percentage so everyone contributes proportionally anyway.
Perhaps we could try some sort of limit, agreed by referendum, on the amount one can personally earn in a year? Say, US$20-$30M? The overflow could be given to a favourite charity. I really don't know if this is fair or not, just thinking aloud.
I don't think you're wrong and I'm not even sure my own argument is as researched as I'd like. This stuff is very difficult because every point of view needs to be studied and the best way to do that (for myself) is to imagine how it would feel to be in that position and ask myself how I see the world.
Sorry that I have little sympathy for the billionaire who wants to keep 500M dollars. He's still not poor if he only has 10 million in spending cash at the end of the year.
I agree with your sentiment but I would caution that this effectively punishes those who strive for a better lot for themselves and their families.
Obviously, when you are talking billions of dollars your thoughts make perfect sense, so I'm not arguing with you there. However, I imagine I'm not alone in having seen the demoralizing effect that higher tax brackets can have on someone simply trying to get a few more hours overtime (or worse yet, a second job!) to help pay the mortgage or save towards that international holiday for the family.
I reckon this stuff needs to be very carefully considered or we'll end up suffering a lot of unintended consequences.
Somalia is inhabited by niggers. They aren't human and therefore don't have human nature.
Nice point troll, I'm glad you raised it. Some people continue to foster attitudes like this and in doing so they perpetuate the fucked, fucked state of the world as it exists today.
I was raised a racist, leaving me little choice as a child as to what I really believed. As an adult I re-evaluated these beliefs and found them sorely lacking. Racism (among others) is not conducive to the civilised society we profess the desire to live in.
Solving the world's problems begins with us, personally. There is no governmental, legal, or commercial alternative to rescue us from ourselves as these entities are simply manifestations of our collective personalities and our culture.
If you want the world to be a better place, take some responsibility for your attitudes towards other humans. Nothing will change until we do.
This comes as a great surprise to me, considering the NZ government is SUPPOSED to be the 2nd least corrupt government in the world: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/gov_cor-government-corruption All this talk in the article of secretly implementing crap to filter the internet doesn't bode well for NZ. Internet there is already shiit.
Interesting point. My understanding (from a fellow Kiwi who is usually pretty reliable on these sorts of things) is that it is known that NZ government administrations under-report corruption to a criminal level.
It may interest fellow 'dotters that we don't ship out the encumbent administration when a new government takes power. That's right - unlike the US, we leave them there to undermine the incoming cabinet. This can be particularly challenging when the outgoing government has been nine consecutive years in power, leaving behind it a thoroughly indoctrinated public service to receive the incoming party..
I'm not so sure this is different from the UK system of governance (although we have no House of Lords) so I may well be off-base with this thought.
Cover your ears and yell la la la la la. It makes all the bad things go away. Idiot!
Unfortunately your advice doesn't extend to your good self it would seem.
I'm hardly surprised by your response; nobody enjoys being shown up as a hypocrite. I couldn't have anticipated the puerility of your response though - thanks for the giggle!
He hired other monkey to use the computers.
Nor is being a snob. Too bad he didn't hired other monkey teach you English.
Who are you to question his English?
Your reply lost its credibility at this point and I read no further.
Fuck you. You are what's wrong with this profession.
I couldn't agree more. With a name like 'Joe The Dragon' the guy's obviously an Asian, probably Chinese.
Says it all, really.
Go on, do-gooders, call me a racist - and miss the point entirely. This is about culture and social norms and nothing at all to do with race.
Universal health care is a good thing. It's not socialist. Get over it.
I respectfully disagree with your sig; Universal Health Care is most certainly socialist, but that is not mutually exclusive with being a good thing. Personally, I hate socialism almost as much as you 'merkins, but a good system of government needs to take lessons from everyone's books in the pursuit of the best system for the greatest number of people.
Universal Health Care is one example of a socialist policy that works well in the real world - America would be cheating itself if it let its phobia of socialist ideas get in the way of making things better for everyone.
In New Zealand where I live we have a system of Universal Health Care. It -- like every other governmentally-controlled mechanism -- is deeply flawed, but it does work in the majority of cases.
That said, you won't find me voting any left-leaning crowd into power any time soon.
No, for Gmail, if a mail is revived with a plus in the name, the address is stripped at the plus to determine the account in which to deposit the message.
[chuckle] Thanks for the info.. but mostly for the best typo I've seen in a while! :)
A supremely insightful comment, thanks. I think it's easy to overlook His Steveness' business acumen given his preponderance of Industrial Design abilities and his deep understanding of consumer Marketing.
I'm no fan of Apple -- rightly or wrongly I see them as another Microsoft -- but Steve Jobs has certainly proven himself to be a superb businessman.
Hmmm, then you're doing it wrong.
Always with religion there is this need for there to be a right way and a wrong way.
I live for the day when we overcome; and instead, find joy in the wonderous diversity of ways people around the world practice religion.
No pure ideology works on the scale of a modern country (pop > ~1,000,000)
Pure democracy doesn't work for anything larger than Ancient Athens.
I dunno, it works pretty well over here in Switzerland, population somewhere between 7 and 8 million.
Fair enough, although from my limited understanding of Switzerland their level of internal order seems to be more the natural result of the Swiss culture and collective thinking process than an example of what a 'Pure Democracy' can achieve for a country.
If you are someone who likes their trains to run on time, I'm not so sure the magic bullet lies in simply changing the country's governmental structure; the Swiss are a wonderful addition to Humanity's tapestry of life but people who prioritise the importance of societal order as high they do are somewhat in the minority, even in the west.
Ah, BTW, a country leader making stupid and dangerous comments is in no way an Iranian privilege.
I hate people who do this, but I actually had to stop and think about this sentence for a min. Perhaps "Ah, BTW, there are plenty of other country leaders making stupid and dangerous comments."
I'm not really sure your post improves on Tellarin's succinct, readable and well-worded sentence. While I don't want to make assumptions about your own reading comprehension, I suspect Tellarin's choice of words is less responsible for your annoyance than your preconceptions of how you feel a sentence should read.
Personally, I'm glad for our present literary diversity, if the alternative is sanitised, dumbed-down language as provided by your example.
In 1995, columnist and Ethernet-inventor Bob Metcalfe was again going on about a topic that eventually had him literally eating his words (he had to chop up a column in a blender with water and chug it) - that the Internet was going to collapse from all the heavy bandwidth demands of its exponentially-expanding clientele.
An excellent, well-worded response; if I had mod points (and hadn't already added my $0.02c to the discussion) you'd get 'em towards a +5 Insightful.
That's not sustainable, as they're just more efficient, not a closed infinite loop. Entropy always increases. In this house...
No - you're right, it's not sustainable.
Fusion power - now that's sustainable. Fission, on the other hand, is there to bridge the gap from where we are now.
Sounds great - lead the way by example, fearless preserver of society's Good Living People.
Funny how it never occurs to racists or homophobes that their own diseased thinking is the real problem.