Fundamentally, the argument that people keep siding with is "it's okay to nuke an ISP that harbors spammers." This argument is made on emotion -- the frustration we all share about receiving spam and it's negative impact.
They weren't exactly nuked. They violated the contract and Terms of Usage of their upstream ISP. So, their ISP voided their contract. What's wrong with that? It's well within their legal and moral rights. In fact, it's the right thing to do.
I'm not sure why non-spammers would use such an ISP in the first place. And if some innocent users do get cut off, they can easily move to another ISP, can't they? After all - they aren't spammers.
What I'm saying is that since the majority of the country voted for the candidate who wants to make the government everything for everyone the idea of using self-initiative and being self-reliant must be obsolete.
That's absolutely retarded. Where do you get the idea that Obama is against self-reliance and initiative? For Dog's sake, even his campaign slogan focused on those qualities!
Then I'm guessing you lack empathy, perhaps some sort of Asperger's like condition?
Again....it was a LONG time ago, it is time to get over it, and move on.
No, it wasn't a long time ago, and racism has continued to this day. You really think that when slavery ended, race relations were just hunky-dory? Again, it's likely that as a white person, even today, your lifestyle and status has benefited from a racist society.
How long exactly should we wallow in the past.
I never said anything about wallowing. But we also shouldn't sweep it under the rug, which is what you appear to be doing. We still need to deal with racial issues, not pretend they don't exist.
That's a pretty retarded comment. Bureaucracies can make corruption very difficult if they are working properly. Corrupt people looking to embezzle money tend to avoid bureaucracies (unless the purpose of the bureaucracy is to further corruption, but that's not that common).
Capitalism, as in free, unregulated markets with healthy competition?
That doesn't exist anywhere on the planet, so if that's your definition then you may as well come out and say that Capitalism and Communism don't exist at all. Which would actually be pretty accurate. We keep using these words, when they have very little relevance to the world we live in.
When the Microsoft executives saw Apple's ability to apply heavy-handed censorship and control over applications offered on the iPhone platform, they thought "That's Brilliant! Why the hell didn't we think of that first?"
I haven't a clue of who you might be speaking, but if such a person did not get compensated the agreed upon wage for his work, then, yes, I would have made them my slave.
I was talking about people who pay more taxes than you. Unless you pay more taxes than everybody else in the country, there is somebody else paying a higher share, and that benefits you.
For example, you get to drive on roads maintained by the taxes of those more wealthy than you. Why is it fair that they subsidize you? Likewise, you benefit from the police force, fire department, etc.
Maybe you're talking about the "working poor". I know a few of those people. They did everything they could to not pay any attention to their lessons throughout school. When they finally graduated, or got old enough not to be forced to show up anymore, they bounce from entry-level position in one company after another.
You make it sound like they deliberately wanted to be in that position. I very much doubt that's the case.
Also, your original post seems to have a fallacy about hard work. There's probably plenty of people working twice as hard as you do, who earn minimum wage. There's not really any correlation between income and how hard you work. Plenty of people pull down millions of dollars per year, and have barely worked a day in their lives.
The premise is faulty. Those who pay the most taxes are not necessarily the hardest workers.
The problem is that 'poor' is defined as "having less than the rich".
Only if you define it that way. That doesn't make any sense as a definition to me. Being poor should be defined by the opportunities one has, lifestyle, ability to survive, etc.
There's no reason that America could have zero people living in poverty. Defining poor simply as "earning less than somebody else" is nonsensical. Middle Class people earn a lot less than the wealthy. Does that make them poor? Of course not.
Living smack-dab in the middle of the "Land of Opportunity", we have plenty of people that won't get of their duffs to lift a finger for themselves.
And there are also plenty that try very hard to raise themselves, but keep running into barriers put in place by society.
Obama will do absolutely NOTHING to reduce the welfare rolls. Every program he gets his Democratic Congress to fund will expand the rolls, as more people find it easier to let the government take care of them.
That's pretty silly. Would you give up your job to go on welfare, because it is easier? I don;t think so. Anybody who thinks it is easy living on welfare is kidding themselves. The idea of welfare, when used properly, is to give people opportunities to live with dignity, and take steps to improve their situation.
What's your solution - just have people dying in the streets? Have crime run rampant and people need to steal to afford to live?
They give handouts, and claim that they're working for the common man. But that handout is money taken from someone that would have given that common man a job.
Yeah right - everybody who is not on welfare is in a position to give somebody a job, if it wasn't for taxes? That's amazingly delusional. I really don't think you have a grip on reality.
In this case, he was implying that a white man should have some guilt or shame associated with race relations...and could relieve it by voting for a black man.
I don't think so, he was responding to somebody who obviously had some kind of guilt or complex about race. Acknowledging it is the starting point to working through it.
What I find odd is that rather than acknowledge that some white people feel this way, you react in this defensive fashion, proclaiming your lack of guilt.
I was just wondering why ANYONE today would have shame or guilt for anything like slavery that happened so long ago that anyone associated with it is dead.
What's so hard to understand about it? People who share the same social grouping and ancestry as ourselves committed atrocities. It's sort of like - what if somebody in your family murdered someone - would you not feel slightly embarrassed about having a name and bloodline in common with that person?
Or what about when when a redneck spouts ignorant racist rhetoric, or commits violence against other races? Don't you feel like some of that negative perception affects you, even if you didn't partake in the racism?
Then there's the fact that much of what white people have today (status, power, wealth) still derives from the slave-holding era, and the ongoing inequality that followed it. How can you not feel a little uneasy about that idea? If you were born black, you likely wouldn't have had the same chances. Humans are social creatures with cultures and shared experiences that go well beyond our own lifetimes.
Firstly, there are other countries besides European ones that are happy about this.
Secondly, your statement is complete bullshit. America was founded on very liberal values. The US Constitution enshrines them. Being liberal has nothing to do with being less American. If anything, it's a return to being more American after years of authoritarian rule and loss of freedom.
Well, torture is the most striking. It went from something he was absolutely opposed to, to something that "could be justified" and had a place in legislation he voted for.
He also claimed to be against pork and redistribution of wealth, then voted for the massive bail-out of banks. Also he chose Palin as a running-mate, somebody with a deep appetite for pork.
Then there was stuff about alternative energy and the environment, which later turned into "Drill Here, Drill Now!" and him encouraging hundreds of Harley riders at a motorcycle convention to wastefully rev their throttles just to make a loud noise.
McCain is emphatically opposed to torture. He formed this opinion while being subjected to it for several years.
But it turns out he doesn't really stand by that. He started carrying water for the Bush Pro-torture regime in recent years. If it's such an important principle to him, why did he turn around on it when it was politically expedient? One example here. He also voted for a pro-torture bill.
For a disgruntled Republican? I'm sure there are plenty of places where the style of government suits their ideology. Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Indonesia or Bhutan perhaps?
you've proven that you focus your attention on the majority based on a trait of that group that has no relevance to the problem.
But why do you say it has no relevance? Perhaps it does have relevance to the problem. But you just state it has nothing to do with it, without even wanting to research. If statistically, a certain group is having a much harder time than others - then that's a clue that maybe something is going on within that group which is causing the problem.
you've proven that you focus your attention on the majority based on a trait of that group that has no relevance to the problem.
So, we should have individual school classes, with one teacher per student? I don't think that's really economically viable. I also don't see where the other poster was arguing that we shouldn't also address students' needs on an individual basis where appropriate.
Apparently I hit a nerve somewhere. I mistakenly(?) used law when it could have been rule, or special circumstance. It all falls in the same boat here. There should be no reason to treat someone more favorably for any reason other than the accomplishment they achieved.
Who said anything about favoritism? You really don't seem to get it, do you? How is encouraging people to do better discriminatory or playing favorites? How is looking at possible causes of problems a bad thing?
Not a fat person, not a black person, not a square headed person. A person.
Because a black person is elected president, they suddenly aren't black any more? Would electing John McCain have made him any less of an old person? Would electing somebody fat make them any less overweight?
Your notion is pure BS. people are black, people are women, people are fat. They aren't just generic people.
Think of it like a balancing scale. If you elevate one side, you have to lower the other (or the rest.)
Of course, this is more bullshit. If you heal somebody who is sick, does that make everybody else less healthy? If you give an unemployed person a job, does that make everybody else less employed? Your logic simply makes no sense.
Slashdot Mirror
I dare you to find a low skill job anywhere in the world that comes close to that.
Huh? Computer programmers often earn way more than that.
Used Game Market Helps Keep Landfills From Filling Up With Plastic
.... sniff... E.T, we barely knew you.
Fundamentally, the argument that people keep siding with is "it's okay to nuke an ISP that harbors spammers." This argument is made on emotion -- the frustration we all share about receiving spam and it's negative impact.
They weren't exactly nuked. They violated the contract and Terms of Usage of their upstream ISP. So, their ISP voided their contract. What's wrong with that? It's well within their legal and moral rights. In fact, it's the right thing to do.
I'm not sure why non-spammers would use such an ISP in the first place. And if some innocent users do get cut off, they can easily move to another ISP, can't they? After all - they aren't spammers.
What I'm saying is that since the majority of the country voted for the candidate who wants to make the government everything for everyone the idea of using self-initiative and being self-reliant must be obsolete.
That's absolutely retarded. Where do you get the idea that Obama is against self-reliance and initiative? For Dog's sake, even his campaign slogan focused on those qualities!
There is no rule of law on the internet.
WTF? Where did you get that idea?
Nope....not at all.
Then I'm guessing you lack empathy, perhaps some sort of Asperger's like condition?
Again....it was a LONG time ago, it is time to get over it, and move on.
No, it wasn't a long time ago, and racism has continued to this day. You really think that when slavery ended, race relations were just hunky-dory? Again, it's likely that as a white person, even today, your lifestyle and status has benefited from a racist society.
How long exactly should we wallow in the past.
I never said anything about wallowing. But we also shouldn't sweep it under the rug, which is what you appear to be doing. We still need to deal with racial issues, not pretend they don't exist.
What about Big Salad?
That's a pretty retarded comment. Bureaucracies can make corruption very difficult if they are working properly. Corrupt people looking to embezzle money tend to avoid bureaucracies (unless the purpose of the bureaucracy is to further corruption, but that's not that common).
Capitalism, as in free, unregulated markets with healthy competition?
That doesn't exist anywhere on the planet, so if that's your definition then you may as well come out and say that Capitalism and Communism don't exist at all. Which would actually be pretty accurate. We keep using these words, when they have very little relevance to the world we live in.
When the Microsoft executives saw Apple's ability to apply heavy-handed censorship and control over applications offered on the iPhone platform, they thought "That's Brilliant! Why the hell didn't we think of that first?"
I haven't a clue of who you might be speaking, but if such a person did not get compensated the agreed upon wage for his work, then, yes, I would have made them my slave.
I was talking about people who pay more taxes than you. Unless you pay more taxes than everybody else in the country, there is somebody else paying a higher share, and that benefits you.
For example, you get to drive on roads maintained by the taxes of those more wealthy than you. Why is it fair that they subsidize you? Likewise, you benefit from the police force, fire department, etc.
Maybe you're talking about the "working poor". I know a few of those people. They did everything they could to not pay any attention to their lessons throughout school. When they finally graduated, or got old enough not to be forced to show up anymore, they bounce from entry-level position in one company after another.
You make it sound like they deliberately wanted to be in that position. I very much doubt that's the case.
Also, your original post seems to have a fallacy about hard work. There's probably plenty of people working twice as hard as you do, who earn minimum wage. There's not really any correlation between income and how hard you work. Plenty of people pull down millions of dollars per year, and have barely worked a day in their lives.
The premise is faulty. Those who pay the most taxes are not necessarily the hardest workers.
The problem is that 'poor' is defined as "having less than the rich".
Only if you define it that way. That doesn't make any sense as a definition to me. Being poor should be defined by the opportunities one has, lifestyle, ability to survive, etc.
There's no reason that America could have zero people living in poverty. Defining poor simply as "earning less than somebody else" is nonsensical. Middle Class people earn a lot less than the wealthy. Does that make them poor? Of course not.
Living smack-dab in the middle of the "Land of Opportunity", we have plenty of people that won't get of their duffs to lift a finger for themselves.
And there are also plenty that try very hard to raise themselves, but keep running into barriers put in place by society.
Obama will do absolutely NOTHING to reduce the welfare rolls. Every program he gets his Democratic Congress to fund will expand the rolls, as more people find it easier to let the government take care of them.
That's pretty silly. Would you give up your job to go on welfare, because it is easier? I don;t think so. Anybody who thinks it is easy living on welfare is kidding themselves. The idea of welfare, when used properly, is to give people opportunities to live with dignity, and take steps to improve their situation.
What's your solution - just have people dying in the streets? Have crime run rampant and people need to steal to afford to live?
They give handouts, and claim that they're working for the common man. But that handout is money taken from someone that would have given that common man a job.
Yeah right - everybody who is not on welfare is in a position to give somebody a job, if it wasn't for taxes? That's amazingly delusional. I really don't think you have a grip on reality.
In this case, he was implying that a white man should have some guilt or shame associated with race relations...and could relieve it by voting for a black man.
I don't think so, he was responding to somebody who obviously had some kind of guilt or complex about race. Acknowledging it is the starting point to working through it.
What I find odd is that rather than acknowledge that some white people feel this way, you react in this defensive fashion, proclaiming your lack of guilt.
I was just wondering why ANYONE today would have shame or guilt for anything like slavery that happened so long ago that anyone associated with it is dead.
What's so hard to understand about it? People who share the same social grouping and ancestry as ourselves committed atrocities. It's sort of like - what if somebody in your family murdered someone - would you not feel slightly embarrassed about having a name and bloodline in common with that person?
Or what about when when a redneck spouts ignorant racist rhetoric, or commits violence against other races? Don't you feel like some of that negative perception affects you, even if you didn't partake in the racism?
Then there's the fact that much of what white people have today (status, power, wealth) still derives from the slave-holding era, and the ongoing inequality that followed it. How can you not feel a little uneasy about that idea? If you were born black, you likely wouldn't have had the same chances. Humans are social creatures with cultures and shared experiences that go well beyond our own lifetimes.
What the hell? Why is the first post in a slashdot thread rational? This doesn't make any sense!!!
Unlikely though it sounds, I ran a physical window manufacturing plant on Windows 3.11
You made windows with Windows? I'd be most worried about some kind of recursion error.
In other words: Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!
Firstly, there are other countries besides European ones that are happy about this.
Secondly, your statement is complete bullshit. America was founded on very liberal values. The US Constitution enshrines them. Being liberal has nothing to do with being less American. If anything, it's a return to being more American after years of authoritarian rule and loss of freedom.
Wow. Racism, sexism, class warfare, and teen parenthood.
Damn. Slashdot just got me pregnant! Gee, thanks guys.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
Ron Paul?
Are Canadian Tires like American Tires, but only cured, not smoked?
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid your neighbors' wallets and give you their money.
Wait, that is the purpose of my father? Who knew?
Well, torture is the most striking. It went from something he was absolutely opposed to, to something that "could be justified" and had a place in legislation he voted for.
He also claimed to be against pork and redistribution of wealth, then voted for the massive bail-out of banks. Also he chose Palin as a running-mate, somebody with a deep appetite for pork.
Then there was stuff about alternative energy and the environment, which later turned into "Drill Here, Drill Now!" and him encouraging hundreds of Harley riders at a motorcycle convention to wastefully rev their throttles just to make a loud noise.
McCain is emphatically opposed to torture. He formed this opinion while being subjected to it for several years.
But it turns out he doesn't really stand by that. He started carrying water for the Bush Pro-torture regime in recent years. If it's such an important principle to him, why did he turn around on it when it was politically expedient? One example here. He also voted for a pro-torture bill.
For a disgruntled Republican? I'm sure there are plenty of places where the style of government suits their ideology. Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Indonesia or Bhutan perhaps?
you've proven that you focus your attention on the majority based on a trait of that group that has no relevance to the problem.
But why do you say it has no relevance? Perhaps it does have relevance to the problem. But you just state it has nothing to do with it, without even wanting to research. If statistically, a certain group is having a much harder time than others - then that's a clue that maybe something is going on within that group which is causing the problem.
you've proven that you focus your attention on the majority based on a trait of that group that has no relevance to the problem.
So, we should have individual school classes, with one teacher per student? I don't think that's really economically viable. I also don't see where the other poster was arguing that we shouldn't also address students' needs on an individual basis where appropriate.
Apparently I hit a nerve somewhere. I mistakenly(?) used law when it could have been rule, or special circumstance. It all falls in the same boat here. There should be no reason to treat someone more favorably for any reason other than the accomplishment they achieved.
Who said anything about favoritism? You really don't seem to get it, do you? How is encouraging people to do better discriminatory or playing favorites? How is looking at possible causes of problems a bad thing?
Not a fat person, not a black person, not a square headed person. A person.
Because a black person is elected president, they suddenly aren't black any more? Would electing John McCain have made him any less of an old person? Would electing somebody fat make them any less overweight?
Your notion is pure BS. people are black, people are women, people are fat. They aren't just generic people.
Think of it like a balancing scale. If you elevate one side, you have to lower the other (or the rest.)
Of course, this is more bullshit. If you heal somebody who is sick, does that make everybody else less healthy? If you give an unemployed person a job, does that make everybody else less employed? Your logic simply makes no sense.