That one is easy...Because that is what Microsoft does. They push out half completed bullshit products on their base and then say "well it will probably work right by the time SP2 comes along".
Do it right the first time and don't put it out there until it is done right. Otherwise you fuck up your reputation. It is a lot harder to get the word out of "Hey, iPhone cut and paste is new and improved and actually works like it should now!" rather than "New iPhone 3.0! Now with Cut and Paste!". Most users are going to bump into the cut and paste you describe and not even begin to understand why it is so crippled.
Also...having used an iPhone...cut and paste would be nice, but I doubt I would use it much because cut and paste on a touch screen run by your finger would be a royal pain in the fucking ass. Your finger is as big as most words on the screen, you would have a god aweful time trying to accurately cut and paste.
While it does depress me seeing how ignorant my fellow countrymen often are of the world around them I have to agree with you here. The U.S. of A. is a pretty large place with a lot of people. We have a variety of cultures and even regional dialects of english in our lands. We have more states and territories than Europe has countries. I have met tons of people foreign and domestic that still think Kansas is some wildland place with no indoor plumbing and indians running wild. (By the way, I am keenly aware that they were not in fact indians, but that was what a bunch of ignorant Euros called em and the name stuck).
Also...despite the idea that all American TV is ignorant crap...I present to you some classic performances. States and Capitals Countries
So is eating and breathing and any other biological function we have. My point is flying on autopilot is bad and giving into every little impulse is a bad thing. The distinction is in controlling those instincts rather than being controlled by them.
It has been my experience that Catholocism (for the most part) is by far the best about reading beyond the literalist stuff. Catholic groups also tends to do far more of the compassionate good stuff without playing that "convert or else" strings attached crap. I still have some major disagreements with the church as a whole, and I was far more impressed with John Paul than this pope, but the Protestant varieties are almost always the most ignorant hate spewing folks. Catholics tend to be much more passive aggresive when it comes to subjects they don't like, which is at least somewhat better than the ranting and raving that goes on elsewhere. I personally am more in the Diest realm of the nonmiracle noninterference stuff. I read a really interesting piece that talked about some varieties of islamic views basically say that Jesus never died because that would represent evil triumphing over God's will. Some say that Judas was actually crucified instead, others say that it was Jesus, but since the tomb he was placed in was the tomb of a physician they say he wasn't really dead and the physician conspired to heal him.
Uhm...because our animalistic nature is to be terribly xenophobic about anyone/anything that is different from us. To kill anything that moves. To fuck anything we didn't kill. It is that part of us that makes us afraid of the dark. The part that will sacrifice others to save ourselves. The part that is pretty much responsible for all of the horrific shit that has gone on in the world. I would say that in all cases our animalistic urges are undesirable in regards to being human. Some people are quite happy being little more than hairless talking stick waving poo flinging monkeys, but I prefer to attempt to use mind over instincts when possible.
I did the same thing until I sat down one day and told myself "Look, if I am going to rail on these fundies I should at least know some of their material". What I found was "Holy shit! Even Jesus talked shit about the fundies!". The whole Bible takes on a completely different meaning when examined in the context of history, society, and psychology of human critters. Regardless of your take on the divinity of Jesus, the man said a bunch of shit that just made sense that basically boiled down to "quit being judgmental pricks to each other all the time"...so they killed him. Most of the deranged stuff quoted does not come from Jesus at all and is more often than not taken completely out of context. The whole thing about marriage being between a man and a woman was in response to a question about whether or not divorce was acceptable and had fucking squat to do with gays. But they paint it on signs and protest homosexual marriage rather than protesting divorce...makes total sense. Most scholars believe that Revelations isn't some crazy endtimes thing, but it actually referred to Nero and his psycho shit. But no, fundies and militant atheists alike grab that silly shit and run with it, like fantasy stories have never been used (over and over and over) to criticize those in power that might murder them if they realized that they were being criticized. The whole thing is really kind of depressing to watch.
I don't consider myself a Christian at all really. I have some disagreements with some of the theology of it (the real theology of it, not the crap spouted off by the ignorant followers). I think Jesus is a pretty good model for how people should behave and see no problem in looking to his advice for things beyond the religious aspect. One of the big eye openers for me as I got older was that Jesus was not shining happy coloring book Jesus that they portray in those Sunday schools. Jesus was a pissed off jew railing against the political and religious leaders of the time and otherwise being quite the subversive force. "He was sent to die for our sins" to me is a tremendously disrespectful view of things just because it grossly oversimplifies what really happened. He was brutally murdered for being a very vocal and subversive force in an area dominated by literalistic and legalistic approaches to religion where the priests of the day were at the top of the power structure. So often his life gets boiled down into the last days where he was brutally murdered (to include a 2hr snuff film that people came out of talking about how it was such a religious experience for them) and they pretty much ignore all of the teachings and travelings that got him nailed to the cross in the first place.
The Judeo-Christian god may or may not exist, the problem lies in using the definition of the most assinine of the related fanclub to define what that god may or may not be. Jesus heavily inferred that you should pay taxes "give to caeser what is caesers" because taxes and all of that are the corrupt machinations of man and have nothing to do with the great beyond. The kicking out of the temple business had more to do with the corruption of religion to support those machinations. I don't even believe in that whole zombie Jesus back from the dead nonsense, but I have no problem accepting that he and his teachings did exist. If you read the parts where Jesus was speaking he is pretty much the anti-thesis to the modern Christian. "Those who live by the sword die by the sword". "If they will not hear you shake the dust off your feet and leave their town." He was very vocal against the Pharisees (which are very much like the legalistic and literalist wackaloons these days) and ultimately that is what got him tortured to death. You are at least somewhat right about proclaiming the existence of god, even Jesus said similar things about only being heard by god when noone else can hear you. Give so that your right hand doesn't know what your left is doing, don't proclaim your good deeds to the world because they become worthless in the eyes of god, etc. It was all about integrity, doing the right thing when noone is looking. Now this focuses all on the Judeo-Christian stuff, but other religions have plenty of interesting material themselves.
You certainly do like to deal in absolute, but I have never met any brand of fundamentalist that didn't be it militant atheist or some other religious variant. What kills me is that in the same breathe you speak against the hate and intolerance of many religious fundamentalists and then spout off your own intolerance. So, while dealing with a subject that can't possibly proven or disproven you grab your banner and tell everyone else how stupid and wrong they are for not agreeing with you...that sounds a hell of a lot like the same wackaloon fundies that grab their banners and tell everyone how stupid and wrong they are for not agreeing with them.
The point with the squid is that the evil sea monster squid depicted in ancient stories is terribly different than the real giant squids we have found. I mean really, no one said anything about Christianity being correct, just that God could exist. The nonsense that militant atheists thump their chests about inherently relies on them considering that the modern Christianity has the inherently correct definition of God and thus needs to be refuted. For fucks sake there are a million little splinter factions of Christianity...they use the same damned book and stories and still can't agree on damn near anything. Factor in all of the other major religions and their views on spirituality and I am left wondering why in the hell militant atheists would be so keen to pick probably one of the most deranged versions of the story to hold up as the true definition of God.
Now...owning a penis also encourages a lot of bad behavior. I think our right to own penises far outweighs any perceived right to not have to deal with penis owning assholes.
Not at all, I just ignore your group because you are more arrogant, clueless, and hypocritical than even most fundies. You deliberately find the most obtuse arguments for the existance of God, presume they are correct, and then attempt to refute them. Atheist or Theologan alike with even a modicum of understanding of logic would easily deduce that the true existance or non existence cannot be touched by the realm of science. Nope, you are just as bad as the fundies. You refuse to accept any possible definition of God beyond the one in the Bible that you cling to as hard as any fundie. While neither of your groups tend to use rational thought when reading, at least they tend to read it. Giant squids cannot exist because the ancient stories aren't 100% accurate right?
Actually it is don't eat meat during the week, but you can eat fish on friday. That specific piece is more related to fasting and overriding your bodies natural desires. Which religious or not, our bodies natural desires are frequently pretty animalistic so any practice devoded to temporarily overriding those desires is admirable. (Christianity is hardly the only group to do that for those reasons). The specific foods thing in this case is symbolism and the knowledge that if you don't get the right foods you will still die or do bad damage to your body.
That said, your point is exactly what drives me totally batshit about fundamentalists. If you examine almost any of "God's rules" in a historical context they are pretty simple. The majority of them are involved in health and wellness and the proper functioning of society. Don't steal, don't murder, don't be a dick were the jist of the big ones on the stone tablet story. Most of the rest like "don't eat these things, homo's are bad, etc" are nothing more than ancient medicine. Disease was punishment by God for offending him, so things that you did that were likely to get you diseased were clearly against God's will. Not properly preparing food (namely piggies) made you sick. Playing around the back door of other people and animals was a really good way to get E.Coli and a whole variety of other nasty bacteria and the like. God's "purpose" in these cases was to serve as the superstition that would keep us alive until we found ways to combat those things naturally. Cook your fucking meat, wear a rubber, wash your damned hands, get your shots, etc. Most of the sexual rules regarding monogamy and the like were there because spouse swapping/stealing and uncertain lineage would undermine the fabric of their society. So even back then the whole "Will of God" business was nothing more than science with a funny name. The laws came from direct observation of the evidence presented. And lo and behold, most of them were correct. We eventually found the causes for those diseases, we have learned how societies structure themselves and interact, and so on.
Oh it is far better than that. Go read it...Cain got f'ing married when the only people on the planet should have been Adam, Eve, Cain, and the rotting corpse of his brother. It does say that there were other people around, but depending on the version you are looking at it isn't clear at all where the hell these other mysterious groups of people came from. There is some extreme screwyness in that story that gets left out most of the time.
Just to be fair to everyone here, there will be a variety of Christian-minded skepticism. To lump them all into one bunch is pretty dishonest.
We have group #1 that is going to claim the literalist nonsense. These are the folks that built the creationist fantasy tourist trap where children frolick with dinos in the displays.
We have group #2 that is probably going to take the approach you mentioned to various degrees. Some may say it could have been spontaneously created, but that is no reason to not investigate, we don't have a lot of good information yet. The other end will lean towards the idea that we haven't found any information yet and thus it must be spontaneously created. This is the realm of curable ignorance on one side and pseudoscience nonsense on the other.
Then we will have the final group, that thankfully has gained at least some traction. The group that will say "Sure God created it...and a runaway nuclear reaction or massive impact are two possible methods that the universe played out that caused it to be created...let's go figure it out." Despite the common slashdot groupthink on this subject, there are indeed quite a few very intelligent people that also hold religious beliefs and don't let those religious beliefs muddy up the science. Francis Collins and Ken Miller are two examples that jump to mind. (In fact, if you haven't seen Ken Miller's video on the ID/Dover trial business, it's about 2hrs, but it is an amazing lecture.)
Yeah, because that is totally the same thing isn't it! Even trying to compare being upset at an organization over the quality of the product you recieve for your payment (In this case university/education/tuition) belittles the struggle for human rights you mention there in a rather disturbing way.
About coursework? So all of the other emails that come across the univeristy email systems are unauthorized. Boy, I bet admissions, registrations, or all of the various student aid groups are in deep trouble now! That is nonsense. Additionally, she was part of the student government. The email is professional, it was not just "soapboxing" it was student government representing the students. You know, what they are supposed to be doing, the whole reason student governments exist. That complaint only lists a few people. I suspect the vast majority of the faculty were not paranoid luddites freaked out by getting an email from a student that wasn't theirs (now, I could be making a leap, but in my experience I have only run into a few of these types in my experiences with colleges.) Having worked in places (to include a university) that had this "superior" type of employee (doctors, professors, whatever) they are very used to just getting their way when they throw tantrums. That looks exactly like what happened here, some whiney faculty member threw a fit to the IT staff. The IT staff in these organizations are usually always a hair away from being downsized, funding cut, or whatever because as important as the computers are, the IT staff never seems to be, and a phone call from a bitchy member to the dean will likely bring hate and discontent down on the IT staff. These organizations are frequently more than happy to implement braindead policy to try and keep their (doctors, professors, etc) happy and in place rather than making any rational attempt at explaining things.
Now, on top of this, it was a student daring to question the authority and policy of the administration. I think she did the right thing by taking a stand against this. Every school I have been at has blasted mass mailings to every student and the like to get information out so I bet that this university is no different.
Democracy in action...rather than ignoring dissenting view points, attempt to silence them. What better message to send to the student government...do what the administration tells you or we will silence you. Talk about real world training...
In the case of software you own a license to use the software. The fact that they put physical install media in a box as well has nothing to do with it. The confusion here is apparently the belief that you own anything other than a license. I think the precedent that you get to ignore the EULA by not reading it is stupid at best. As far as I remember seeing it wasn't because they didn't read them, it was because they weren't given the ability to read it until the install was already happening. However, I also believe that not showing the EULA until it is to late is deceptive. So I think the sane outcome should have been that it is a deceptive practice to hide the EULA until after the sale and fix the source rather than a symptom. This is exactly the kind of nonsensical bullshit that keeps lawyers at the top of the economic food chain here these days. Force the companies to put the terms in plain sight, let consumers choose not to buy it if the license sucks. As it stands now many companies hide the terms of the license and then rely on the courts to enforce their ability to add terms after the sale. I personally think Apple is walking a pretty fine line for not spelling it out more clearly, but they are most certainly not deceptive about the OS X license only being valid on Apple branded hardware. They are well within their rights to do that, and it wouldn't surprise me if one of the outcomes of this debacle is for them to print it even more clearly on the future versions. The price Apple chooses to sell that license is directly related to the terms of the license. I suspect that Apple will simply change how they provide upgrades if the court forces a stupid decision on them about the consumer owning the software rather than a license. I don't see Apple giving up control of their OS since they are a hardware company and they use that unique OS to drive hardware sales. The only thing that can happen here is damage to the consumer if Apple gets ruled against.
I think protecting the validity of the license is the most important issue in the long term here because it will also stop big dogs from stealing from the little guy. Don't try to fix this with individual court decisions. This is definitely something that needs to be fixed by market forces or the market is just going to do an end run around any stupid laws put in place. I think many EULAs are horrible, but the only way to fix that is to hold consumers to them until they quit agreeing to them and buy something else. It is like the people who advocate pirating Windows because the license sucks. The only thing that does is increases MS's market share and control over the market as whole. So what if a bunch of home users don't wanna pay...it makes them the defacto standard for PC OS and then bigger fish get forced into paying bigger dollars. This is the kind of stupid bullshit that occurs when you try to use the law to fix market issues. Unless you are a lawyer this is a bad way to run an economy.
If you owned the content you would not be restricted by copyright. You own the medium and a right to use the content. You are allowed to back up and format shift that content. Which is about the same thing. There are numerous software companies that say "for an extra $5 we will send you the disk instead of download only" and then also will send you new disks on the cheap if you already have a license. Because you are just paying them for the new physical media at that point, not another license.
Yes they do imply that as a sale condition. That information is available before the purchase. It sure as hell isn't their fault people don't read. Here is the license nice and easy to read without purchasing anything before hand. Right there in section 2A it clearly states the condtion regarding Apple hardware. I have already said I completely agree with you that tacking on conditions after the fact is bullshit, but when the information is readily available it sure as hell isn't the fault of the company that people can't be bothered to read or research their purchases. I am reasonably certain that the box says you are buying a single use license and not OSX itself.
Owning the content implies distribution rights. You don't own the content, then you don't own the distribution rights, you only have whatever rights that were assigned to you as part of the purchase. This is what people do not understand. They are not buying OSX, they are buying an OSX Single Use License and Apple is kind enough to put that in a nice little box with a disk with the licensed content on it so you can go down to the store and buy it with minimal hassle. Borders is also operating with the authors permissions through the publishing companies. Psystar is not operating with Apples permission. If Psystar wanted to resell OSX licenses they have purchased they are free to do that. However, what they are doing is knowingly violating the license. Which ultimately should bring fraud lawsuits from their customers since legally their customers cannot use OS X on the hardware they were sold. Any position that allows them or their customers to violate 2A of the Single Use License also invalidates all software licensing.
I suspect that she had proper authorization by being a student there and that they are trying to manipulate the definition of proper authorization on the fly. Clearly, students should not be allowed to email the faculty without proper authorization for every email... So if you want to send emails to faculty about an issue you must first send an email to the faculty about sending the email to the faculty about that issue, however, before you do that you must also obtain permission from the IT staff to send an email to the faculty to obtain permission to send an email to the faculty about an issue.
Having done the college thing I have yet to figure out why every student isn't awarded a dual major in Bureaucratic Systems just for actually making it through. This kind of nonsense is pretty typical.
What? The violation says she was "representing a group falsly". It seems to me that what she did is perfectly inline with her job. The student government's job IS to raise these issues. As far as I can tell ONE professor bitched about it. Classifying what she did as a violation of policy is quite a bit of a stretch after reading the policies cited compared to what she did. So I think she is acting perfectly correctly when the IT department says "We are going to call this a violation of policy because a professor bitched at us, stop it" and she tells them go to hell.
The part that I don't understand is why she would fight it. I never understood that in most of these types of cases. Why would you fight your university like this? Tell them fuck off I am going elsewhere and I am going to make this as public and noisy as possible so other students know what to expect. Why would you fight to stay at a school that sucks when you can easily go to a school that doesn't suck.
You do understand that GPS can't track you right? You just use a fancy little satellite reciever to triangulate your location here on planet earth by what GPS satellites your device can "hear" at any given moment. It is a one way deal, it doesn't broadcast.
I mean really, the only "tracking" done by GPS is if said GPS enabled device has a secondary connection in it to relay that information back somewhere. In the case of the iPhone, yes, it can send GPS data back to the world somewhere via its cellular connection. But that certainly seems to be a stupid way to go about tracking people. I mean really, if people are carrying devices that actually transmit signals, you know, like cell phones, it is FAR more effective to just use their broadcasted signal to triangulate on them rather than hoping they purchase a GPS device with the capabilities of sending data somewhere. I mean really...who wants to have to worry about hacking all of those GPS enabled devices to steal their GPS positioning data when you can just find them based on their radio transmissions from the cellular piece.
You do not own the content of every CD you buy. If you owned the content of every CD/DVD you bought a DVD would cost you millions because you could then use that as a master. That is the whole point, copyright is a restriction on the content that you have a right to use. Nothing in the law says that a producer cannot add more restrictions and nothing in the law forces you to buy (and agree to) those restrictions. If Psystar is allowed to do this GPL goes tits up because then anyone can grab it and say "I downloaded it (purchase for $0) now I own it and can ignore the additional licesning attached". I agree that forcing you to agree to additional terms when you are not allowed to return the product is illegal (seems pretty straight forward violation according to law, but I have been told by a lawyer that law is "more of an art than a science" so whatever). Arguably, you don't get the terms of the GPL until after you have downloaded the software, the cost of "return" is 0 because you just delete it if you don't agree. The only apparent confusion here is that in the case of OSX you are paying for the software and then the waters get muddied with return policies. Honestly, most return policies are dictated by retail outlets, not the producers of the software anyways. Most software houses just say "don't bother us, go fix it where you bought it".
The ripoff piece is relevant because the vast majority of Windows problems come from sheisty drivers. So these guys are going to be damaging the reputation of OSX as a stable platform by putting it in an unstable/unsupported environment. Now, even beyond the Apple branded hardware piece, they are installing OSX upgrades and selling them as the full OS. Think about this...the only way you get OSX is to buy a Mac. So the OSX in a box says you must have Apple branded hardware, this also means that they must already have some previous version of OSX as well that came with their Apple branded hardware. There have been hordes of stores to get shut down and face huge fines for selling Windows upgrade installs as if they were a full OS install.
I would love it if Apple made a nice "here is OSX for the PC", but they do all of their own support (and do it damned well if you have never had the experience) and putting their OS into the world with its infinite possibilites of screwball hardware combinations would cause their support to go to shit. I completely understand why they don't support it and don't allow it. (I might add that I haven't seen them sue any hobbyists doing it at home, just these clowns trying to resell for a profit).
It just kills me to watch people sit here and defend Psystar as some hero. They are being arrogant little pricks selling other peoples work for a profit. They are violating the license and most likely the law. But, just because a bunch of people don't like Apple, or what OS X on their own terms, they start cheerleading for these pricks. This isn't about rights, this isn't about law, this is about "I do what I want". This SAME behavior that Psystar is pulling is the same shit that the companies that ripoff GPL code do, and then someone has to drag them to court to get them to stop. If people support this nonsense of "I do what I want" then the GPL and friends are all dead. If these idiots manage to set the legal precedence of "you can ignore the license, it isn't a copyright violation" then F/OSS dies. Which certainly makes me wonder if there is someone bigger involved. It certainly would be an excellent precedent to set in court if you want to fight F/OSS. The F/OSS community went berzerk when SCO attacked Linux... Yet most of them start cheerleading when someone attacks Apple... Who makes the better target to set legal precedents?
I probably didn't make it terribly clear, I just meant that the laws surrounding drugs are more likely to cause the downward spiral in someones life than the drugs themselves it seems. I have met a great deal of people on both sides of the fence, and almost all of the ones that have had some degree of disciplinarian nonsense are much worse off than the ones that never were bothered. Most people I have met also tend to grow out of it.
I mean the laws are backwards and puritanical. The US has had a long history of puritanical nonsense invading our government. Despite the assertions, our founding fathers largely Diests not Christians. We just keep getting our laws hijacked by the "moral authority". So rather than having laws geared towards minimizing social unrest we have laws designed to reshape society in their image. (The reverse of this is true in that the far left has a tendancy to do the same thing in reverse frequently justifying unethical or anti-social behavior themselves.) I am ok when laws are based on the ethics of the society because allowing gross ethical violations causes social unrest, however, things can get very fuzzy very quickly.
CD is Compact Disc. It is a physical medium. Sometimes they have music on them, sometimes it is a file system, sometimes it is both. When you purchase a CD you become bound by the laws and terms governing the content. I have already said the shrinkwrap thing is bullshit because they can't tack on provisions after you agree nor can they violate the First Sale stuff. This would be easily resolved with allowing you to return the purchase, but that is another problem entirely. In Apple's case they make no secret of the portion under question here. In fact they specifically advertise it is a Mac only thing. My point with the issues governed by other laws such as copyright is just to show that you can't just do whatever you want with your purchase. Arguably you never buy CDs or DVDs unless blank because you are paying for a right to use the content and they give you the medium for free. They make it clear up front that on Apple branded hardware is part of the terms, these terms are being violated. You don't have to like their decision to do that, but it is well within their rights to do it. Personally I am happy that they use lawyers to enforce rather than draconian call home validation BS like Windows. To MS your default status is criminal, to Apple it is customer. I would hate to see them go to draconian measures just to stop people like Psystar ripping off their stuff. Psystar is trying to profit on Apples brand name through license violation and is going to damage Apples reputation by selling subpar unsupported hardware configurations.
The worst part of your statement here is "fuck their own lives up". The vast majority of life fucking that comes out of drugs is the legal issues. If people didn't have the courts to destroy their lives for smoking a joint drugs wouldn't have anywhere near the negative impact on society. However, as it stands, get busted smoking a joint and you have a mountain of legal problems. Conviction and jail time for something like this can easily put a pretty big block on your upward movement in society. So it traps people in the shithole unable to do something better for themselves because of some stupid stigma. Like you said, those other things remain crimes that can fuck up your life and rightfully so, but losing your life because you smoked a joint is nothing short of moronic. But hey, what can you expect out of such a backwards puritanical nation that things a nipple slip is worse than daily doses of violence.
Slashdot Mirror
That one is easy...Because that is what Microsoft does. They push out half completed bullshit products on their base and then say "well it will probably work right by the time SP2 comes along".
Do it right the first time and don't put it out there until it is done right. Otherwise you fuck up your reputation. It is a lot harder to get the word out of "Hey, iPhone cut and paste is new and improved and actually works like it should now!" rather than "New iPhone 3.0! Now with Cut and Paste!". Most users are going to bump into the cut and paste you describe and not even begin to understand why it is so crippled.
Also...having used an iPhone...cut and paste would be nice, but I doubt I would use it much because cut and paste on a touch screen run by your finger would be a royal pain in the fucking ass. Your finger is as big as most words on the screen, you would have a god aweful time trying to accurately cut and paste.
While it does depress me seeing how ignorant my fellow countrymen often are of the world around them I have to agree with you here. The U.S. of A. is a pretty large place with a lot of people. We have a variety of cultures and even regional dialects of english in our lands. We have more states and territories than Europe has countries. I have met tons of people foreign and domestic that still think Kansas is some wildland place with no indoor plumbing and indians running wild. (By the way, I am keenly aware that they were not in fact indians, but that was what a bunch of ignorant Euros called em and the name stuck).
Also...despite the idea that all American TV is ignorant crap...I present to you some classic performances.
States and Capitals
Countries
So is eating and breathing and any other biological function we have. My point is flying on autopilot is bad and giving into every little impulse is a bad thing. The distinction is in controlling those instincts rather than being controlled by them.
It has been my experience that Catholocism (for the most part) is by far the best about reading beyond the literalist stuff. Catholic groups also tends to do far more of the compassionate good stuff without playing that "convert or else" strings attached crap. I still have some major disagreements with the church as a whole, and I was far more impressed with John Paul than this pope, but the Protestant varieties are almost always the most ignorant hate spewing folks. Catholics tend to be much more passive aggresive when it comes to subjects they don't like, which is at least somewhat better than the ranting and raving that goes on elsewhere. I personally am more in the Diest realm of the nonmiracle noninterference stuff. I read a really interesting piece that talked about some varieties of islamic views basically say that Jesus never died because that would represent evil triumphing over God's will. Some say that Judas was actually crucified instead, others say that it was Jesus, but since the tomb he was placed in was the tomb of a physician they say he wasn't really dead and the physician conspired to heal him.
Uhm...because our animalistic nature is to be terribly xenophobic about anyone/anything that is different from us. To kill anything that moves. To fuck anything we didn't kill. It is that part of us that makes us afraid of the dark. The part that will sacrifice others to save ourselves. The part that is pretty much responsible for all of the horrific shit that has gone on in the world. I would say that in all cases our animalistic urges are undesirable in regards to being human. Some people are quite happy being little more than hairless talking stick waving poo flinging monkeys, but I prefer to attempt to use mind over instincts when possible.
Just billions of half lives right?
I did the same thing until I sat down one day and told myself "Look, if I am going to rail on these fundies I should at least know some of their material". What I found was "Holy shit! Even Jesus talked shit about the fundies!". The whole Bible takes on a completely different meaning when examined in the context of history, society, and psychology of human critters. Regardless of your take on the divinity of Jesus, the man said a bunch of shit that just made sense that basically boiled down to "quit being judgmental pricks to each other all the time"...so they killed him. Most of the deranged stuff quoted does not come from Jesus at all and is more often than not taken completely out of context. The whole thing about marriage being between a man and a woman was in response to a question about whether or not divorce was acceptable and had fucking squat to do with gays. But they paint it on signs and protest homosexual marriage rather than protesting divorce...makes total sense. Most scholars believe that Revelations isn't some crazy endtimes thing, but it actually referred to Nero and his psycho shit. But no, fundies and militant atheists alike grab that silly shit and run with it, like fantasy stories have never been used (over and over and over) to criticize those in power that might murder them if they realized that they were being criticized. The whole thing is really kind of depressing to watch.
I don't consider myself a Christian at all really. I have some disagreements with some of the theology of it (the real theology of it, not the crap spouted off by the ignorant followers). I think Jesus is a pretty good model for how people should behave and see no problem in looking to his advice for things beyond the religious aspect. One of the big eye openers for me as I got older was that Jesus was not shining happy coloring book Jesus that they portray in those Sunday schools. Jesus was a pissed off jew railing against the political and religious leaders of the time and otherwise being quite the subversive force. "He was sent to die for our sins" to me is a tremendously disrespectful view of things just because it grossly oversimplifies what really happened. He was brutally murdered for being a very vocal and subversive force in an area dominated by literalistic and legalistic approaches to religion where the priests of the day were at the top of the power structure. So often his life gets boiled down into the last days where he was brutally murdered (to include a 2hr snuff film that people came out of talking about how it was such a religious experience for them) and they pretty much ignore all of the teachings and travelings that got him nailed to the cross in the first place.
The Judeo-Christian god may or may not exist, the problem lies in using the definition of the most assinine of the related fanclub to define what that god may or may not be. Jesus heavily inferred that you should pay taxes "give to caeser what is caesers" because taxes and all of that are the corrupt machinations of man and have nothing to do with the great beyond. The kicking out of the temple business had more to do with the corruption of religion to support those machinations. I don't even believe in that whole zombie Jesus back from the dead nonsense, but I have no problem accepting that he and his teachings did exist. If you read the parts where Jesus was speaking he is pretty much the anti-thesis to the modern Christian. "Those who live by the sword die by the sword". "If they will not hear you shake the dust off your feet and leave their town." He was very vocal against the Pharisees (which are very much like the legalistic and literalist wackaloons these days) and ultimately that is what got him tortured to death. You are at least somewhat right about proclaiming the existence of god, even Jesus said similar things about only being heard by god when noone else can hear you. Give so that your right hand doesn't know what your left is doing, don't proclaim your good deeds to the world because they become worthless in the eyes of god, etc. It was all about integrity, doing the right thing when noone is looking. Now this focuses all on the Judeo-Christian stuff, but other religions have plenty of interesting material themselves.
You certainly do like to deal in absolute, but I have never met any brand of fundamentalist that didn't be it militant atheist or some other religious variant. What kills me is that in the same breathe you speak against the hate and intolerance of many religious fundamentalists and then spout off your own intolerance. So, while dealing with a subject that can't possibly proven or disproven you grab your banner and tell everyone else how stupid and wrong they are for not agreeing with you...that sounds a hell of a lot like the same wackaloon fundies that grab their banners and tell everyone how stupid and wrong they are for not agreeing with them.
The point with the squid is that the evil sea monster squid depicted in ancient stories is terribly different than the real giant squids we have found. I mean really, no one said anything about Christianity being correct, just that God could exist. The nonsense that militant atheists thump their chests about inherently relies on them considering that the modern Christianity has the inherently correct definition of God and thus needs to be refuted. For fucks sake there are a million little splinter factions of Christianity...they use the same damned book and stories and still can't agree on damn near anything. Factor in all of the other major religions and their views on spirituality and I am left wondering why in the hell militant atheists would be so keen to pick probably one of the most deranged versions of the story to hold up as the true definition of God.
John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
Now...owning a penis also encourages a lot of bad behavior. I think our right to own penises far outweighs any perceived right to not have to deal with penis owning assholes.
Not at all, I just ignore your group because you are more arrogant, clueless, and hypocritical than even most fundies. You deliberately find the most obtuse arguments for the existance of God, presume they are correct, and then attempt to refute them. Atheist or Theologan alike with even a modicum of understanding of logic would easily deduce that the true existance or non existence cannot be touched by the realm of science. Nope, you are just as bad as the fundies. You refuse to accept any possible definition of God beyond the one in the Bible that you cling to as hard as any fundie. While neither of your groups tend to use rational thought when reading, at least they tend to read it. Giant squids cannot exist because the ancient stories aren't 100% accurate right?
Actually it is don't eat meat during the week, but you can eat fish on friday. That specific piece is more related to fasting and overriding your bodies natural desires. Which religious or not, our bodies natural desires are frequently pretty animalistic so any practice devoded to temporarily overriding those desires is admirable. (Christianity is hardly the only group to do that for those reasons). The specific foods thing in this case is symbolism and the knowledge that if you don't get the right foods you will still die or do bad damage to your body.
That said, your point is exactly what drives me totally batshit about fundamentalists. If you examine almost any of "God's rules" in a historical context they are pretty simple. The majority of them are involved in health and wellness and the proper functioning of society. Don't steal, don't murder, don't be a dick were the jist of the big ones on the stone tablet story. Most of the rest like "don't eat these things, homo's are bad, etc" are nothing more than ancient medicine. Disease was punishment by God for offending him, so things that you did that were likely to get you diseased were clearly against God's will. Not properly preparing food (namely piggies) made you sick. Playing around the back door of other people and animals was a really good way to get E.Coli and a whole variety of other nasty bacteria and the like. God's "purpose" in these cases was to serve as the superstition that would keep us alive until we found ways to combat those things naturally. Cook your fucking meat, wear a rubber, wash your damned hands, get your shots, etc. Most of the sexual rules regarding monogamy and the like were there because spouse swapping/stealing and uncertain lineage would undermine the fabric of their society. So even back then the whole "Will of God" business was nothing more than science with a funny name. The laws came from direct observation of the evidence presented. And lo and behold, most of them were correct. We eventually found the causes for those diseases, we have learned how societies structure themselves and interact, and so on.
Oh it is far better than that. Go read it...Cain got f'ing married when the only people on the planet should have been Adam, Eve, Cain, and the rotting corpse of his brother. It does say that there were other people around, but depending on the version you are looking at it isn't clear at all where the hell these other mysterious groups of people came from. There is some extreme screwyness in that story that gets left out most of the time.
Just to be fair to everyone here, there will be a variety of Christian-minded skepticism. To lump them all into one bunch is pretty dishonest.
We have group #1 that is going to claim the literalist nonsense. These are the folks that built the creationist fantasy tourist trap where children frolick with dinos in the displays.
We have group #2 that is probably going to take the approach you mentioned to various degrees. Some may say it could have been spontaneously created, but that is no reason to not investigate, we don't have a lot of good information yet. The other end will lean towards the idea that we haven't found any information yet and thus it must be spontaneously created. This is the realm of curable ignorance on one side and pseudoscience nonsense on the other.
Then we will have the final group, that thankfully has gained at least some traction. The group that will say "Sure God created it...and a runaway nuclear reaction or massive impact are two possible methods that the universe played out that caused it to be created...let's go figure it out." Despite the common slashdot groupthink on this subject, there are indeed quite a few very intelligent people that also hold religious beliefs and don't let those religious beliefs muddy up the science. Francis Collins and Ken Miller are two examples that jump to mind. (In fact, if you haven't seen Ken Miller's video on the ID/Dover trial business, it's about 2hrs, but it is an amazing lecture.)
Yeah, because that is totally the same thing isn't it! Even trying to compare being upset at an organization over the quality of the product you recieve for your payment (In this case university/education/tuition) belittles the struggle for human rights you mention there in a rather disturbing way.
About coursework? So all of the other emails that come across the univeristy email systems are unauthorized. Boy, I bet admissions, registrations, or all of the various student aid groups are in deep trouble now! That is nonsense. Additionally, she was part of the student government. The email is professional, it was not just "soapboxing" it was student government representing the students. You know, what they are supposed to be doing, the whole reason student governments exist. That complaint only lists a few people. I suspect the vast majority of the faculty were not paranoid luddites freaked out by getting an email from a student that wasn't theirs (now, I could be making a leap, but in my experience I have only run into a few of these types in my experiences with colleges.) Having worked in places (to include a university) that had this "superior" type of employee (doctors, professors, whatever) they are very used to just getting their way when they throw tantrums. That looks exactly like what happened here, some whiney faculty member threw a fit to the IT staff. The IT staff in these organizations are usually always a hair away from being downsized, funding cut, or whatever because as important as the computers are, the IT staff never seems to be, and a phone call from a bitchy member to the dean will likely bring hate and discontent down on the IT staff. These organizations are frequently more than happy to implement braindead policy to try and keep their (doctors, professors, etc) happy and in place rather than making any rational attempt at explaining things.
Now, on top of this, it was a student daring to question the authority and policy of the administration. I think she did the right thing by taking a stand against this. Every school I have been at has blasted mass mailings to every student and the like to get information out so I bet that this university is no different.
Democracy in action...rather than ignoring dissenting view points, attempt to silence them. What better message to send to the student government...do what the administration tells you or we will silence you. Talk about real world training...
Finally, we can all sleep soundly knowing that we are indeed circling the drain...
In the case of software you own a license to use the software. The fact that they put physical install media in a box as well has nothing to do with it. The confusion here is apparently the belief that you own anything other than a license. I think the precedent that you get to ignore the EULA by not reading it is stupid at best. As far as I remember seeing it wasn't because they didn't read them, it was because they weren't given the ability to read it until the install was already happening. However, I also believe that not showing the EULA until it is to late is deceptive. So I think the sane outcome should have been that it is a deceptive practice to hide the EULA until after the sale and fix the source rather than a symptom. This is exactly the kind of nonsensical bullshit that keeps lawyers at the top of the economic food chain here these days. Force the companies to put the terms in plain sight, let consumers choose not to buy it if the license sucks. As it stands now many companies hide the terms of the license and then rely on the courts to enforce their ability to add terms after the sale. I personally think Apple is walking a pretty fine line for not spelling it out more clearly, but they are most certainly not deceptive about the OS X license only being valid on Apple branded hardware. They are well within their rights to do that, and it wouldn't surprise me if one of the outcomes of this debacle is for them to print it even more clearly on the future versions. The price Apple chooses to sell that license is directly related to the terms of the license. I suspect that Apple will simply change how they provide upgrades if the court forces a stupid decision on them about the consumer owning the software rather than a license. I don't see Apple giving up control of their OS since they are a hardware company and they use that unique OS to drive hardware sales. The only thing that can happen here is damage to the consumer if Apple gets ruled against.
I think protecting the validity of the license is the most important issue in the long term here because it will also stop big dogs from stealing from the little guy. Don't try to fix this with individual court decisions. This is definitely something that needs to be fixed by market forces or the market is just going to do an end run around any stupid laws put in place. I think many EULAs are horrible, but the only way to fix that is to hold consumers to them until they quit agreeing to them and buy something else. It is like the people who advocate pirating Windows because the license sucks. The only thing that does is increases MS's market share and control over the market as whole. So what if a bunch of home users don't wanna pay...it makes them the defacto standard for PC OS and then bigger fish get forced into paying bigger dollars. This is the kind of stupid bullshit that occurs when you try to use the law to fix market issues. Unless you are a lawyer this is a bad way to run an economy.
If you owned the content you would not be restricted by copyright. You own the medium and a right to use the content. You are allowed to back up and format shift that content. Which is about the same thing. There are numerous software companies that say "for an extra $5 we will send you the disk instead of download only" and then also will send you new disks on the cheap if you already have a license. Because you are just paying them for the new physical media at that point, not another license.
Yes they do imply that as a sale condition. That information is available before the purchase. It sure as hell isn't their fault people don't read. Here is the license nice and easy to read without purchasing anything before hand. Right there in section 2A it clearly states the condtion regarding Apple hardware. I have already said I completely agree with you that tacking on conditions after the fact is bullshit, but when the information is readily available it sure as hell isn't the fault of the company that people can't be bothered to read or research their purchases. I am reasonably certain that the box says you are buying a single use license and not OSX itself.
Owning the content implies distribution rights. You don't own the content, then you don't own the distribution rights, you only have whatever rights that were assigned to you as part of the purchase. This is what people do not understand. They are not buying OSX, they are buying an OSX Single Use License and Apple is kind enough to put that in a nice little box with a disk with the licensed content on it so you can go down to the store and buy it with minimal hassle. Borders is also operating with the authors permissions through the publishing companies. Psystar is not operating with Apples permission. If Psystar wanted to resell OSX licenses they have purchased they are free to do that. However, what they are doing is knowingly violating the license. Which ultimately should bring fraud lawsuits from their customers since legally their customers cannot use OS X on the hardware they were sold. Any position that allows them or their customers to violate 2A of the Single Use License also invalidates all software licensing.
I suspect that she had proper authorization by being a student there and that they are trying to manipulate the definition of proper authorization on the fly. Clearly, students should not be allowed to email the faculty without proper authorization for every email... So if you want to send emails to faculty about an issue you must first send an email to the faculty about sending the email to the faculty about that issue, however, before you do that you must also obtain permission from the IT staff to send an email to the faculty to obtain permission to send an email to the faculty about an issue.
Having done the college thing I have yet to figure out why every student isn't awarded a dual major in Bureaucratic Systems just for actually making it through. This kind of nonsense is pretty typical.
What? The violation says she was "representing a group falsly". It seems to me that what she did is perfectly inline with her job. The student government's job IS to raise these issues. As far as I can tell ONE professor bitched about it. Classifying what she did as a violation of policy is quite a bit of a stretch after reading the policies cited compared to what she did. So I think she is acting perfectly correctly when the IT department says "We are going to call this a violation of policy because a professor bitched at us, stop it" and she tells them go to hell.
The part that I don't understand is why she would fight it. I never understood that in most of these types of cases. Why would you fight your university like this? Tell them fuck off I am going elsewhere and I am going to make this as public and noisy as possible so other students know what to expect. Why would you fight to stay at a school that sucks when you can easily go to a school that doesn't suck.
You do understand that GPS can't track you right? You just use a fancy little satellite reciever to triangulate your location here on planet earth by what GPS satellites your device can "hear" at any given moment. It is a one way deal, it doesn't broadcast.
I mean really, the only "tracking" done by GPS is if said GPS enabled device has a secondary connection in it to relay that information back somewhere. In the case of the iPhone, yes, it can send GPS data back to the world somewhere via its cellular connection. But that certainly seems to be a stupid way to go about tracking people. I mean really, if people are carrying devices that actually transmit signals, you know, like cell phones, it is FAR more effective to just use their broadcasted signal to triangulate on them rather than hoping they purchase a GPS device with the capabilities of sending data somewhere. I mean really...who wants to have to worry about hacking all of those GPS enabled devices to steal their GPS positioning data when you can just find them based on their radio transmissions from the cellular piece.
You do not own the content of every CD you buy. If you owned the content of every CD/DVD you bought a DVD would cost you millions because you could then use that as a master. That is the whole point, copyright is a restriction on the content that you have a right to use. Nothing in the law says that a producer cannot add more restrictions and nothing in the law forces you to buy (and agree to) those restrictions. If Psystar is allowed to do this GPL goes tits up because then anyone can grab it and say "I downloaded it (purchase for $0) now I own it and can ignore the additional licesning attached". I agree that forcing you to agree to additional terms when you are not allowed to return the product is illegal (seems pretty straight forward violation according to law, but I have been told by a lawyer that law is "more of an art than a science" so whatever). Arguably, you don't get the terms of the GPL until after you have downloaded the software, the cost of "return" is 0 because you just delete it if you don't agree. The only apparent confusion here is that in the case of OSX you are paying for the software and then the waters get muddied with return policies. Honestly, most return policies are dictated by retail outlets, not the producers of the software anyways. Most software houses just say "don't bother us, go fix it where you bought it".
The ripoff piece is relevant because the vast majority of Windows problems come from sheisty drivers. So these guys are going to be damaging the reputation of OSX as a stable platform by putting it in an unstable/unsupported environment. Now, even beyond the Apple branded hardware piece, they are installing OSX upgrades and selling them as the full OS. Think about this...the only way you get OSX is to buy a Mac. So the OSX in a box says you must have Apple branded hardware, this also means that they must already have some previous version of OSX as well that came with their Apple branded hardware. There have been hordes of stores to get shut down and face huge fines for selling Windows upgrade installs as if they were a full OS install.
I would love it if Apple made a nice "here is OSX for the PC", but they do all of their own support (and do it damned well if you have never had the experience) and putting their OS into the world with its infinite possibilites of screwball hardware combinations would cause their support to go to shit. I completely understand why they don't support it and don't allow it. (I might add that I haven't seen them sue any hobbyists doing it at home, just these clowns trying to resell for a profit).
It just kills me to watch people sit here and defend Psystar as some hero. They are being arrogant little pricks selling other peoples work for a profit. They are violating the license and most likely the law. But, just because a bunch of people don't like Apple, or what OS X on their own terms, they start cheerleading for these pricks. This isn't about rights, this isn't about law, this is about "I do what I want". This SAME behavior that Psystar is pulling is the same shit that the companies that ripoff GPL code do, and then someone has to drag them to court to get them to stop. If people support this nonsense of "I do what I want" then the GPL and friends are all dead. If these idiots manage to set the legal precedence of "you can ignore the license, it isn't a copyright violation" then F/OSS dies. Which certainly makes me wonder if there is someone bigger involved. It certainly would be an excellent precedent to set in court if you want to fight F/OSS. The F/OSS community went berzerk when SCO attacked Linux... Yet most of them start cheerleading when someone attacks Apple... Who makes the better target to set legal precedents?
I probably didn't make it terribly clear, I just meant that the laws surrounding drugs are more likely to cause the downward spiral in someones life than the drugs themselves it seems. I have met a great deal of people on both sides of the fence, and almost all of the ones that have had some degree of disciplinarian nonsense are much worse off than the ones that never were bothered. Most people I have met also tend to grow out of it.
I mean the laws are backwards and puritanical. The US has had a long history of puritanical nonsense invading our government. Despite the assertions, our founding fathers largely Diests not Christians. We just keep getting our laws hijacked by the "moral authority". So rather than having laws geared towards minimizing social unrest we have laws designed to reshape society in their image. (The reverse of this is true in that the far left has a tendancy to do the same thing in reverse frequently justifying unethical or anti-social behavior themselves.) I am ok when laws are based on the ethics of the society because allowing gross ethical violations causes social unrest, however, things can get very fuzzy very quickly.
CD is Compact Disc. It is a physical medium. Sometimes they have music on them, sometimes it is a file system, sometimes it is both. When you purchase a CD you become bound by the laws and terms governing the content. I have already said the shrinkwrap thing is bullshit because they can't tack on provisions after you agree nor can they violate the First Sale stuff. This would be easily resolved with allowing you to return the purchase, but that is another problem entirely. In Apple's case they make no secret of the portion under question here. In fact they specifically advertise it is a Mac only thing. My point with the issues governed by other laws such as copyright is just to show that you can't just do whatever you want with your purchase. Arguably you never buy CDs or DVDs unless blank because you are paying for a right to use the content and they give you the medium for free. They make it clear up front that on Apple branded hardware is part of the terms, these terms are being violated. You don't have to like their decision to do that, but it is well within their rights to do it. Personally I am happy that they use lawyers to enforce rather than draconian call home validation BS like Windows. To MS your default status is criminal, to Apple it is customer. I would hate to see them go to draconian measures just to stop people like Psystar ripping off their stuff. Psystar is trying to profit on Apples brand name through license violation and is going to damage Apples reputation by selling subpar unsupported hardware configurations.
The worst part of your statement here is "fuck their own lives up". The vast majority of life fucking that comes out of drugs is the legal issues. If people didn't have the courts to destroy their lives for smoking a joint drugs wouldn't have anywhere near the negative impact on society. However, as it stands, get busted smoking a joint and you have a mountain of legal problems. Conviction and jail time for something like this can easily put a pretty big block on your upward movement in society. So it traps people in the shithole unable to do something better for themselves because of some stupid stigma. Like you said, those other things remain crimes that can fuck up your life and rightfully so, but losing your life because you smoked a joint is nothing short of moronic. But hey, what can you expect out of such a backwards puritanical nation that things a nipple slip is worse than daily doses of violence.