That's your opinion and to be perfectly honest I don't give a fuck what you think about me.
Nor should you. Just give some thought to whether or not I'm right.
Isn't that what PC is? If I worried about what everyone else thought then I would never say a god damn thing, and no one else would either.
No, PC is when people ignore factual reality and claim everybody is equal in ability. PC is when you have to refer to Oriental people as Asians because some oversensitive ex-hippie professor at Swarthmore (who's white) finds it offensive. In general, PC is more about the heightened sensitivities of academics, not the people they are referring to. I was suggesting that what you wrote could be upsetting to a real person for personal, not intellectual, reasons. Maybe I'm wrong that somebody would be upset by it, but I don't think it's fair to throw the PC card in my face.
Definitely true. If someone says something I find offensive I go somewhere else. I don't hang around places that offend me. You should try it sometime.
You're totally off on this. Public places (and/. is pretty public) should induce a bit different behavior in you than when you're around a small group. I'd be the first guy to make Hiroshima jokes among my friends (we'd probably get along pretty good outside/.) but I wouldn't try one when speaking in public. You were speaking in public.
Tell me how many hiroshima survivors do you know on slashdot? How many holocaust survivors do you know on slashdot? It's funny that there is always some unspecified period of time that has to go by until you are allowed to joke about some horrible event and if you are one to break the silence prematurely you are castigated.
Yeah, I think the unspecified period is when there aren't people around who experienced the event. For example, you would be insensitive to joke about 9/11, since there are probably people here who lost friend and relatives. Seriously, you know well enough not to joke about 9/11 (nobody does here) yet you call me a prude for suggesting similar logic dictates not joking about Hiroshima. They aren't equivalent, but the same tangent of logic applies.
Look, it's not like I don't care about what happened in hiroshima or the nazi concentration camps but the fact is there is no one, except sensitive prudes like you, on slashdot that is going to get offended.
For the last time, *I* wasn't offended. I was annoyed by your flippant response to people who suggested that if was rude to make such a joke. If I was offended by anything, it was your BS, not your joke. And 'the fact is' you have NO idea who's reading/. or who would be legitimately offended. Laughter is great, but if you can't be funny without joking about modern holocausts, then you've got a rather deficient sence of humor.
nmb: having reread my response to you I think I owe you an apology for making a personal attack, especially with regard to your kids. I could've said everything of substance I wanted to say without being so mean spirited, especially since your post in no way deserved such a response. So, while I disagree with what you said, I really shouldn't have said it the way I did and I'm sorry.
I'm sure your therapist would find your lurid fantasies fascinating, but they really have nothing to do with my liberty to choose what I want to drive.
I figured you to be smart enough to not need the following simple argument, but I'm starting to reconsider that position. So here goes: do you think I have the liberty to drive a car that has explosive armor that takes out anybody who hits me at their expense? That's pretty much the logical conclusion to the SUV arms race you and others are suggesting is just a natural part of freedom.
You've really only taken the most shallow elements of libertarian philosophy. You just want to be able to do what you want, which isn't libertarianismm, in true form, but is just being a childish brat. Read some books. Please. Even the founding fathers recognized that part of preserving individual freedom is restricting other's freedom to do harm to you or your property. We try to balance individual liberty with that protection, and people like you make it hard to argue for a heavy weighting of the first. Oddly enough, "libertarians" like you make libertarianism work less well, which really pisses me off. You almost make me want to become a damn Democrat.
Needing to go off-road actually seems like one of the few legitimate reasons to own an SUV. (Except for the fact that most SUVs these days are built on car platforms.) Anyway, I'm quite willing to admit there are cases where an SUV isn't a ludicrous thing, and if you live where the roads unimproved, I don't think I'd argue with you. In fact, I actually sort of agreed with the original poster (the guy with seven kids) right up until the bollocks about him having no other choice.
The fantastic irony here is that while you're somewhat right (I certainly wouldn't talk to a person like that in real life, at least not without far greater provocation) you are probably the kind of person who wouldn't say what you wrote to me if we met in person. So you've just observed, and then demonstrated, the obvious fact that people are capable of greater rudeness in writing than in person. I was aware of this, but thanks for caring about my education. Anyway, if you'd like to test your brilliant theory, my office phone number is available on my website. Give me a call and we'll see how it goes.
That's an easy dismissal, but a little too easy. Maybe you've got me on hatred, and I should work on this. But class envy is definitely out (I've been lucky in life) and jealousy is close but not it. I'm not jealous of people who have a lot in life, but am annoyed by people who have a lot and act selfishly. It's perhaps still not heathy to get so annoyed, but I wouldn't call it jealousy. Trust me, he could buy a car that costs twice as much, and I wouldn't care. Actually, it just occured to me that my car probably cost twice what a suburban costs. So I don't think you're right about this; I'd be the first BMW owner with class envy. So you're going to have to expand the complexity of your model of the world. Sometimes people just resent other people for fairly decent reasons.
It is vindictive hate mongers like you that are far worse for society than someone driving a suburban. Your post is only insightful as/. is packet to the gills with jealous little losers. People who are so bound up in class envy that they turn it into vile hatred of anyone who obviously doesn't live like they do.
You are absolutely right about the fact that I'm adding bad things to the world with my mean spirited posting. I certainly should've toned down my response quite a bit. But I'd rather face somebody's self righteous indignation than their SUV bumper. I put zero people's lives at risk with my innane posting. While hard to quantify, he definitely puts people's lives at risk when he takes the clan on vacations. As for/. being full of class envy, I think that's just absurd. The whole class warfare thing is often used as a cheap excuse by the right to excuse poor behavior. As a member of the right (at least compared to most people here) I can vouch for this.
The rest of your post wandered into complete incoherence and, ironically, the exact same hate mongering you called me on, I'll end here.
You, sir, have just mistaken a Libertarian for a liberal. You really should evaluate some of your thinking. If a relatively conservative Libertarian thinks you're a self-absorbed ass, you might consider the possibility that you are. Keep in mind that I'm the kind of person who believes everybody should be able to carry a handgun without a permit and take drugs, perhaps even at the same time. And yet I think you're an asocial dick.
Congratulations. You're not conservative, you're just an asshole.
(As for your childish rant about what you drive being your business, that can change with one law, and people like you make people like Ted Kennedy have supporters.)
SUV's occupy a public space. Surely you can't be such a complete, selfish ass as to consider the public roads and our atmosphere to be "your business."
So, would you like to explain to me why moving seven people requires a vehicle with it's fucking bumper at the same height as my head when I'm in my car? When I was a kid, we got seven people in a station wagon. I'm sure you could put seven in a more reasonable SUV than the tank you've got now. Don't use the fact that you can't figure out contraception as a sorry excuse to endanger the families of other people (who don't have as many children to spare as you).
You pretty much HAVE to have a suberban? Jesus christ, what a load of self-serving bullshit. Unless the seven people you're hauling around are Marines and you're in a combat zone, you don't need a fucking Suburban. If your kids can't deal with anything else, you're raising a bunch of pansy-assed prima donnas with an over-active sense of entitlement.
I don't even want to imagine the kind of pictures I'm going to see on that website.:-) Probably enough to make anybody a prude. Anyway, I don't want considerate posters. I just want posters who don't make light of other people's horrific deaths, especially when there are people around who still remember it. If you can't find comic fodder out there with that modest rule in place, you shouldn't be wasting other's time with your thoughts.
Actually, to be more accurate, I don't mind such posts myself, and have yet to read something on/. that has offended ME. However, I dislike people who are completely full of shit, which the grandparent was. Note that I never bothered to respond to the Japan joke itself, just the guy's pathetic response to people who though it should be modded down.
Oh come on. It's so easy to excuse bad behavior by just claiming to do otherwise is politically correct. That's a cop out. Political correctness is when useful dialogue is stifled by group think. Not making jokes about Hiroshima is just about not being a complete insensitive asshole. You have to judge your civility by the feelings of others, not yourself, otherwise it's kind of pointless.
Just because you find it funny (and I have no problem with that) doesn't mean everybody should. Claiming knowledge of a few jews who joke about the holocaust is about the stupidest reason to excuse public joking about it. I know people who like to have others shit on their chest, but I assume you'd take offense if I came over and took a steamer on you. Would it make a difference if I said "Look, you politically correct prude, I know people who love this! So just shut up and take the poop."
I'm sick of people who act as if anything can be a public joke and anybody who disagrees is a prude. If you think that kind of stuff is funny (as do I), great. Tell jokes with your friends. But not everybody finds it funny, and you're stupid if you don't know that, and insensitive if you do. My guess is people who lost parents in Hiroshima don't find it funny. So, not making public jokes is really about being considerate, something I hope hasn't gone out of style.
I find the idea that you have decided that I am both a Liberal and a Socialist, with no evidence of either, quite interesting. It neatly underlines the problems you have with evidence and logical though, I guess.
Well, you guys are pretty easy to spot these days. Anyway, I never said you were a socialist with a capital S. Perhaps it's fair to say I'm more right about you than you'd like to believe I have evidence for?
We're still a minority though. Hopefully in another fifty years time humanity will have finally gotten over it's superstitious unsubstantiated beliefs and get a grip on itself, and we can all get on with our own lives without interference from well meaning but misguided politicies copying down from a badly translated 2000 year old book.
We'll see how well that works. My guess is we'll come full circle (maybe leaving out a few things) and find that Christianity was based on a lot more than superstition. Look, I don't believe the supernatural elements of it, either, but if you think it's all just made up, you're sort of missing your own point to say it's bogus. If it's contrived, than perhaps it was contrived (or, alternatively, evolved) for a reason and to address issues that are universal to humans. My point is basically this: dismissing ideas solely due to their origin is just as irrational as the religion you criticize. Being anti-religious is, itself, a form of religion. A truly rational person can't be anti-religious, because they have to admit they don't really know the answer and that there's probably truth to be found coming from all sides.
Nope, I don't get it yet. I fail to see how acknowedging that God stays out of the business of controlling humans means that humans who believe in God must stay out of the business of protecting themselves from the actions of other humans, or even protect other humans from actions of other humans. It seems pretty consistent to me. They believe God told them how humans should live to be happy and fulfilled. They believe God, allowing us free will, isn't going to keep others from doing wrong and infringing on their ability to lead said prescribed life. Ergo, laws. Believe it or not, much of your beloved liberalism comes from Christianity. So I find it highly amusing to watch pseudo-intellectual liberals berate religion when their ethics are so clearly a product of it. Where do you think you got the idea of welfare? Liberalism is pretty much Christian ethics without the supernatural fun stuff.
The Judeo-Christian tradition has had thousands of years to get the consistencies worked out just fine. You think your idea (or the idea of the guy with the lame sig) is so fricking clever that in the thousands of years between Moses and now that nobody had thought of it? Are we supposed to now say: "Oh shit. He's right. Let's get rid of all laws that have anything to do with morality." Consider the possibility that while religion is not provable, nor is it an easily destoyed sham that we've all been waiting for somebody smart like you to dismantle. Granted, that's not a logical argument meant to refute your statement (though the paragraph that preceded it was) but an appeal to investigate the notion of humility.
Anyway, how the heck do you plan to defend wealth redistribution laws except as moral codification? You think socialism isn't a moral code of sorts? Similar attacks could be made against any underlying moral theory underlying a law, and they would be equally wrong.
Is being a patronizing asshole some minimal requirement for an AC post?
What's that got to do with it? People who rely on government to enforce their faith apparently don't have much faith in their Gods ability to convince others of their devine infalability. In other words, they don't have much faith in their own God.
You're making assumptions. Most religions explicitly acknowledge the notion that people have free will. Laws enforcing religious moral codes doesn't really consitute a lack of faith.
I'd say you failed Logic 101 and never made the Debate Team.
Another AC tactic: make ad homimum insult about logic and then go on to commit worse acts of abuse to logic.
Just for shits and giggles though, the government doesn't "enforce the idea". I'm certainly not planing on murdering anyone any time soon; the government don't need to tell me it's wrong. Notice that no government can ever stop someone; the best they can do is punish after the fact.?
That strawman argument was a lot more shit than giggle. You've completely missed the... Nevermind. I can't believe I just responding to an AC troll.
That's a pretty obnoxious sig. Maybe they have faith that it's the right way to live? Bothering to enforce one's beliefs would be, if anything, a sign of their sincere faith in the way of life.
What if I were to say to you: if you really believed murder were wrong, you wouldn't need the government to enforce the idea.
Enforcing some parts of religion as law is obviously wrong, but given that much of our law arose from Judeo-Christian tradition, I think you could tone down the near-religious anti-religious agitprot.
Oh wait, it's a commercial hardware product? That costs hundreds of dollars? I'm sorry, I thought this was Slashdot. I keep accidentally hitting my Overstock.com bookmark when I meant to hit Slashdot. Sometimes it's all about the Open source profiteering. Glad to know that all the generous souls who helped out a little to make linux what it is can have the pleasure of going into a store and paying hundreds of bucks to get their own work inside a box which cost as much to produce as a can of koolaid. Welcome to the brave new world of open source software, where the consumer and the developer become one in the ultimate act of convergence.
Talk about thinking... You're assuming that the cost of all forms of energy used in solar cell production (which includes the energy needs of all input suppliers and transportation) is the same as consumer electrical power. That's a rather unreasonable assumption.
Having said that, my understanding was that solar cells barely paid for themselves over their lifetime, and I had no idea that they could routinely last 50 years. I'm skeptical of that, but it's clear that my information is either outdated or I'm flat out wrong. Maybe my info took into account all the extraneous equipment needed to run a solar cell (batteries, etc.). Anyway, I guess the bottom line is that I'm mistaken.
(Though if solar cells really only take 4 years to pay for themselves, I fail to see why every home in the nation doesn't have them. I suspect you're either getting your information from a less than objective source or stealing your solar cells.)
The term "security posture" has an obvious and well-defined meaning. It's been in use since before IT systems, and its etemology is from the military world.
Jeez, that makes it sound even more pretentious! Guys with guns who dodge morter rounds invented the term, and it's been adopted by pasty guys who wear sandals, write computer code and wake up around noon. (I'm one of the latter guys, so don't get too pissy about the insult.) Sure, call me a dick (and you'd be half right) but don't you see my point even a little bit?
I think if you reread my first post, you'll see that I made a point of saying that I respected WHAT these folks do, and just thought the words were contrived. But you're right about MIT having a reputation for arrogance, and I really don't want to contribute to that. I didn't mean to sound arrogant, because my original point was that I don't like the way professions try to sound important by coming up with obfuscating phrases, when simple ones (or existing ones) will do. I was being accusatory, but I'm perfectly willing to admit my profession does it quite a bit, too.
The point is taken about attack vector. I understand the meaning now, I think. Still a bit hokey (couldn't just say attack method?) but I agree it has a specific meaning. But security posture? That's just indefensible.:-)
Guess what? An attack vector isn't the same thing as an attack. There are plenty of attack vectors that are never exploited through actual attacks.
That's like saying there are a lot of pitches that haven't been pitched. I mean, pitch vectors that haven't been pitched.
Look, if you consider making fun of an entire industry tantamount to personally attacking each individual, then fine, give me that power. At any rate, I'm sorry if my argument isn't as tight as you'd like. Maybe if I summarized it more eloquently, you'd quit being so knee-jerk defensive?
I was talking about PEOPLE (i.e. an entire industry field), not a specific PERSON. You calling me a pompous ass is a personal attack, me faulting a group mentality isn't. If you had the stones to post under your own name, I'd have the chance to show you what a decent personal attack looks like.
I agree that CV is pretentious as a word. But, there's a difference between a CV and a resume. And CV comes about historically; it's an older phrase than resume and people trying to get academic jobs have called their list of papers, etc. a CV for as long as anybody knows. However, there's no real difference between attack and attack vector, and it's not something people inherited. Some guys just thought it would make their jobs sound cooler by using a technical word (vector) in what is really a non-technical context. Just try to show me a sentence where I won't understand what you mean by removing the word vector. Same thing for security posture. Anyway, if hackers want to emulate academics in terms of being pretentious dicks, then I guess I've won my argument.
Wow. I never attacked anyone in particular. I think I pretty much addressed it as a general criticism, in fact one that is very common to other fields, so if you're just a minion going along with the flow, no need to feel picked on. What the heck did I do that constitutes "taking it out" on anybody?
Yeah, I'm extremely bitter because I can't figure out what attack vector means... My point, sport, is that I know exactly what it means, because adding "posture" after security doesn't add any meaning. It's just, well, posturing; nerds playing cloak and dagger, painting themselves as agents in an engagement that's far less interesting in real life than they'd like to believe. Hence, all the dark-this and black-that, as if we were talking about something more important than a computer file.
There are a billion and two ways to get atomic hydrogen, and this is just one of them. Sure, it's ineffecient, but so is burning carbon fuels.
Besides, electricity can be derived from anything these days. Put a few solar panels on your roof, and you've got a self contained hydrogen producer. Step it up another notch with rain water collection and filtration and it's competely autonomous.
Well, now we can tell who the left-winger is. Burning carbon fuels is incredibly "efficient" in that it doesn't take much energy to get them relative to what we release by burning them. On the other hand, solar cells almost take as much energy to produce as they will ever use over their lifetime (last I read, about half) not to mention the fact that solar cells will always require a full backup infrastructure to handle low-sun days, and will require the spoiling of our land (aren't lefties supposed to hate spoiling land?) with huge farms of solar cells.
I hate to break into your hippie dream world, but physics, not the Sierra Club, determines what we can and should do. And right now, if you want your Hydrogen economy with zero emissions, there's only ONE way to do it: nuclear. But you probably have a knee-jerk hatred for nuclear, too, so I'm sure that's out.
If being a right winger is what you call somebody who has the ability to think logically and bases arguments on scientific knowledge and not wishful emotion, then I'd be happy to take the insult.
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Nor should you. Just give some thought to whether or not I'm right.
Isn't that what PC is? If I worried about what everyone else thought then I would never say a god damn thing, and no one else would either.
No, PC is when people ignore factual reality and claim everybody is equal in ability. PC is when you have to refer to Oriental people as Asians because some oversensitive ex-hippie professor at Swarthmore (who's white) finds it offensive. In general, PC is more about the heightened sensitivities of academics, not the people they are referring to. I was suggesting that what you wrote could be upsetting to a real person for personal, not intellectual, reasons. Maybe I'm wrong that somebody would be upset by it, but I don't think it's fair to throw the PC card in my face.
Definitely true. If someone says something I find offensive I go somewhere else. I don't hang around places that offend me. You should try it sometime.
You're totally off on this. Public places (and /. is pretty public) should induce a bit different behavior in you than when you're around a small group. I'd be the first guy to make Hiroshima jokes among my friends (we'd probably get along pretty good outside /.) but I wouldn't try one when speaking in public. You were speaking in public.
Tell me how many hiroshima survivors do you know on slashdot? How many holocaust survivors do you know on slashdot? It's funny that there is always some unspecified period of time that has to go by until you are allowed to joke about some horrible event and if you are one to break the silence prematurely you are castigated.
Yeah, I think the unspecified period is when there aren't people around who experienced the event. For example, you would be insensitive to joke about 9/11, since there are probably people here who lost friend and relatives. Seriously, you know well enough not to joke about 9/11 (nobody does here) yet you call me a prude for suggesting similar logic dictates not joking about Hiroshima. They aren't equivalent, but the same tangent of logic applies.
Look, it's not like I don't care about what happened in hiroshima or the nazi concentration camps but the fact is there is no one, except sensitive prudes like you, on slashdot that is going to get offended.
For the last time, *I* wasn't offended. I was annoyed by your flippant response to people who suggested that if was rude to make such a joke. If I was offended by anything, it was your BS, not your joke. And 'the fact is' you have NO idea who's reading /. or who would be legitimately offended. Laughter is great, but if you can't be funny without joking about modern holocausts, then you've got a rather deficient sence of humor.
nmb: having reread my response to you I think I owe you an apology for making a personal attack, especially with regard to your kids. I could've said everything of substance I wanted to say without being so mean spirited, especially since your post in no way deserved such a response. So, while I disagree with what you said, I really shouldn't have said it the way I did and I'm sorry.
I figured you to be smart enough to not need the following simple argument, but I'm starting to reconsider that position. So here goes: do you think I have the liberty to drive a car that has explosive armor that takes out anybody who hits me at their expense? That's pretty much the logical conclusion to the SUV arms race you and others are suggesting is just a natural part of freedom.
You've really only taken the most shallow elements of libertarian philosophy. You just want to be able to do what you want, which isn't libertarianismm, in true form, but is just being a childish brat. Read some books. Please. Even the founding fathers recognized that part of preserving individual freedom is restricting other's freedom to do harm to you or your property. We try to balance individual liberty with that protection, and people like you make it hard to argue for a heavy weighting of the first. Oddly enough, "libertarians" like you make libertarianism work less well, which really pisses me off. You almost make me want to become a damn Democrat.
Needing to go off-road actually seems like one of the few legitimate reasons to own an SUV. (Except for the fact that most SUVs these days are built on car platforms.) Anyway, I'm quite willing to admit there are cases where an SUV isn't a ludicrous thing, and if you live where the roads unimproved, I don't think I'd argue with you. In fact, I actually sort of agreed with the original poster (the guy with seven kids) right up until the bollocks about him having no other choice.
The fantastic irony here is that while you're somewhat right (I certainly wouldn't talk to a person like that in real life, at least not without far greater provocation) you are probably the kind of person who wouldn't say what you wrote to me if we met in person. So you've just observed, and then demonstrated, the obvious fact that people are capable of greater rudeness in writing than in person. I was aware of this, but thanks for caring about my education. Anyway, if you'd like to test your brilliant theory, my office phone number is available on my website. Give me a call and we'll see how it goes.
Yeah, it was a pretty self-righteous and obnoxious post. I should've waiting a bit before posting it.
That's an easy dismissal, but a little too easy. Maybe you've got me on hatred, and I should work on this. But class envy is definitely out (I've been lucky in life) and jealousy is close but not it. I'm not jealous of people who have a lot in life, but am annoyed by people who have a lot and act selfishly. It's perhaps still not heathy to get so annoyed, but I wouldn't call it jealousy. Trust me, he could buy a car that costs twice as much, and I wouldn't care. Actually, it just occured to me that my car probably cost twice what a suburban costs. So I don't think you're right about this; I'd be the first BMW owner with class envy. So you're going to have to expand the complexity of your model of the world. Sometimes people just resent other people for fairly decent reasons.
It is vindictive hate mongers like you that are far worse for society than someone driving a suburban. Your post is only insightful as /. is packet to the gills with jealous little losers. People who are so bound up in class envy that they turn it into vile hatred of anyone who obviously doesn't live like they do.
You are absolutely right about the fact that I'm adding bad things to the world with my mean spirited posting. I certainly should've toned down my response quite a bit. But I'd rather face somebody's self righteous indignation than their SUV bumper. I put zero people's lives at risk with my innane posting. While hard to quantify, he definitely puts people's lives at risk when he takes the clan on vacations. As for /. being full of class envy, I think that's just absurd. The whole class warfare thing is often used as a cheap excuse by the right to excuse poor behavior. As a member of the right (at least compared to most people here) I can vouch for this.
The rest of your post wandered into complete incoherence and, ironically, the exact same hate mongering you called me on, I'll end here.
You, sir, have just mistaken a Libertarian for a liberal. You really should evaluate some of your thinking. If a relatively conservative Libertarian thinks you're a self-absorbed ass, you might consider the possibility that you are. Keep in mind that I'm the kind of person who believes everybody should be able to carry a handgun without a permit and take drugs, perhaps even at the same time. And yet I think you're an asocial dick.
Congratulations. You're not conservative, you're just an asshole.
(As for your childish rant about what you drive being your business, that can change with one law, and people like you make people like Ted Kennedy have supporters.)
SUV's occupy a public space. Surely you can't be such a complete, selfish ass as to consider the public roads and our atmosphere to be "your business."
So, would you like to explain to me why moving seven people requires a vehicle with it's fucking bumper at the same height as my head when I'm in my car? When I was a kid, we got seven people in a station wagon. I'm sure you could put seven in a more reasonable SUV than the tank you've got now. Don't use the fact that you can't figure out contraception as a sorry excuse to endanger the families of other people (who don't have as many children to spare as you).
You pretty much HAVE to have a suberban? Jesus christ, what a load of self-serving bullshit. Unless the seven people you're hauling around are Marines and you're in a combat zone, you don't need a fucking Suburban. If your kids can't deal with anything else, you're raising a bunch of pansy-assed prima donnas with an over-active sense of entitlement.
I don't even want to imagine the kind of pictures I'm going to see on that website. :-) Probably enough to make anybody a prude. Anyway, I don't want considerate posters. I just want posters who don't make light of other people's horrific deaths, especially when there are people around who still remember it. If you can't find comic fodder out there with that modest rule in place, you shouldn't be wasting other's time with your thoughts.
/. that has offended ME. However, I dislike people who are completely full of shit, which the grandparent was. Note that I never bothered to respond to the Japan joke itself, just the guy's pathetic response to people who though it should be modded down.
Actually, to be more accurate, I don't mind such posts myself, and have yet to read something on
Oh come on. It's so easy to excuse bad behavior by just claiming to do otherwise is politically correct. That's a cop out. Political correctness is when useful dialogue is stifled by group think. Not making jokes about Hiroshima is just about not being a complete insensitive asshole. You have to judge your civility by the feelings of others, not yourself, otherwise it's kind of pointless.
Just because you find it funny (and I have no problem with that) doesn't mean everybody should. Claiming knowledge of a few jews who joke about the holocaust is about the stupidest reason to excuse public joking about it. I know people who like to have others shit on their chest, but I assume you'd take offense if I came over and took a steamer on you. Would it make a difference if I said "Look, you politically correct prude, I know people who love this! So just shut up and take the poop."
I'm sick of people who act as if anything can be a public joke and anybody who disagrees is a prude. If you think that kind of stuff is funny (as do I), great. Tell jokes with your friends. But not everybody finds it funny, and you're stupid if you don't know that, and insensitive if you do. My guess is people who lost parents in Hiroshima don't find it funny. So, not making public jokes is really about being considerate, something I hope hasn't gone out of style.
Well, you guys are pretty easy to spot these days. Anyway, I never said you were a socialist with a capital S. Perhaps it's fair to say I'm more right about you than you'd like to believe I have evidence for?
We're still a minority though. Hopefully in another fifty years time humanity will have finally gotten over it's superstitious unsubstantiated beliefs and get a grip on itself, and we can all get on with our own lives without interference from well meaning but misguided politicies copying down from a badly translated 2000 year old book.
We'll see how well that works. My guess is we'll come full circle (maybe leaving out a few things) and find that Christianity was based on a lot more than superstition. Look, I don't believe the supernatural elements of it, either, but if you think it's all just made up, you're sort of missing your own point to say it's bogus. If it's contrived, than perhaps it was contrived (or, alternatively, evolved) for a reason and to address issues that are universal to humans. My point is basically this: dismissing ideas solely due to their origin is just as irrational as the religion you criticize. Being anti-religious is, itself, a form of religion. A truly rational person can't be anti-religious, because they have to admit they don't really know the answer and that there's probably truth to be found coming from all sides.
Nope, I don't get it yet. I fail to see how acknowedging that God stays out of the business of controlling humans means that humans who believe in God must stay out of the business of protecting themselves from the actions of other humans, or even protect other humans from actions of other humans. It seems pretty consistent to me. They believe God told them how humans should live to be happy and fulfilled. They believe God, allowing us free will, isn't going to keep others from doing wrong and infringing on their ability to lead said prescribed life. Ergo, laws. Believe it or not, much of your beloved liberalism comes from Christianity. So I find it highly amusing to watch pseudo-intellectual liberals berate religion when their ethics are so clearly a product of it. Where do you think you got the idea of welfare? Liberalism is pretty much Christian ethics without the supernatural fun stuff.
The Judeo-Christian tradition has had thousands of years to get the consistencies worked out just fine. You think your idea (or the idea of the guy with the lame sig) is so fricking clever that in the thousands of years between Moses and now that nobody had thought of it? Are we supposed to now say: "Oh shit. He's right. Let's get rid of all laws that have anything to do with morality." Consider the possibility that while religion is not provable, nor is it an easily destoyed sham that we've all been waiting for somebody smart like you to dismantle. Granted, that's not a logical argument meant to refute your statement (though the paragraph that preceded it was) but an appeal to investigate the notion of humility.
Anyway, how the heck do you plan to defend wealth redistribution laws except as moral codification? You think socialism isn't a moral code of sorts? Similar attacks could be made against any underlying moral theory underlying a law, and they would be equally wrong.
Is being a patronizing asshole some minimal requirement for an AC post?
What's that got to do with it? People who rely on government to enforce their faith apparently don't have much faith in their Gods ability to convince others of their devine infalability. In other words, they don't have much faith in their own God.
You're making assumptions. Most religions explicitly acknowledge the notion that people have free will. Laws enforcing religious moral codes doesn't really consitute a lack of faith.
I'd say you failed Logic 101 and never made the Debate Team.
Another AC tactic: make ad homimum insult about logic and then go on to commit worse acts of abuse to logic.
Just for shits and giggles though, the government doesn't "enforce the idea". I'm certainly not planing on murdering anyone any time soon; the government don't need to tell me it's wrong. Notice that no government can ever stop someone; the best they can do is punish after the fact.? That strawman argument was a lot more shit than giggle. You've completely missed the... Nevermind. I can't believe I just responding to an AC troll.
That's a pretty obnoxious sig. Maybe they have faith that it's the right way to live? Bothering to enforce one's beliefs would be, if anything, a sign of their sincere faith in the way of life.
What if I were to say to you: if you really believed murder were wrong, you wouldn't need the government to enforce the idea.
Enforcing some parts of religion as law is obviously wrong, but given that much of our law arose from Judeo-Christian tradition, I think you could tone down the near-religious anti-religious agitprot.
Oh wait, it's a commercial hardware product? That costs hundreds of dollars? I'm sorry, I thought this was Slashdot. I keep accidentally hitting my Overstock.com bookmark when I meant to hit Slashdot. Sometimes it's all about the Open source profiteering. Glad to know that all the generous souls who helped out a little to make linux what it is can have the pleasure of going into a store and paying hundreds of bucks to get their own work inside a box which cost as much to produce as a can of koolaid. Welcome to the brave new world of open source software, where the consumer and the developer become one in the ultimate act of convergence.
I guess hardware really is Where It's At.
Talk about thinking... You're assuming that the cost of all forms of energy used in solar cell production (which includes the energy needs of all input suppliers and transportation) is the same as consumer electrical power. That's a rather unreasonable assumption.
Having said that, my understanding was that solar cells barely paid for themselves over their lifetime, and I had no idea that they could routinely last 50 years. I'm skeptical of that, but it's clear that my information is either outdated or I'm flat out wrong. Maybe my info took into account all the extraneous equipment needed to run a solar cell (batteries, etc.). Anyway, I guess the bottom line is that I'm mistaken.
(Though if solar cells really only take 4 years to pay for themselves, I fail to see why every home in the nation doesn't have them. I suspect you're either getting your information from a less than objective source or stealing your solar cells.)
Jeez, that makes it sound even more pretentious! Guys with guns who dodge morter rounds invented the term, and it's been adopted by pasty guys who wear sandals, write computer code and wake up around noon. (I'm one of the latter guys, so don't get too pissy about the insult.) Sure, call me a dick (and you'd be half right) but don't you see my point even a little bit?
I think if you reread my first post, you'll see that I made a point of saying that I respected WHAT these folks do, and just thought the words were contrived. But you're right about MIT having a reputation for arrogance, and I really don't want to contribute to that. I didn't mean to sound arrogant, because my original point was that I don't like the way professions try to sound important by coming up with obfuscating phrases, when simple ones (or existing ones) will do. I was being accusatory, but I'm perfectly willing to admit my profession does it quite a bit, too.
:-)
The point is taken about attack vector. I understand the meaning now, I think. Still a bit hokey (couldn't just say attack method?) but I agree it has a specific meaning. But security posture? That's just indefensible.
That's like saying there are a lot of pitches that haven't been pitched. I mean, pitch vectors that haven't been pitched.
Look, if you consider making fun of an entire industry tantamount to personally attacking each individual, then fine, give me that power. At any rate, I'm sorry if my argument isn't as tight as you'd like. Maybe if I summarized it more eloquently, you'd quit being so knee-jerk defensive?
I was talking about PEOPLE (i.e. an entire industry field), not a specific PERSON. You calling me a pompous ass is a personal attack, me faulting a group mentality isn't. If you had the stones to post under your own name, I'd have the chance to show you what a decent personal attack looks like.
I agree that CV is pretentious as a word. But, there's a difference between a CV and a resume. And CV comes about historically; it's an older phrase than resume and people trying to get academic jobs have called their list of papers, etc. a CV for as long as anybody knows. However, there's no real difference between attack and attack vector, and it's not something people inherited. Some guys just thought it would make their jobs sound cooler by using a technical word (vector) in what is really a non-technical context. Just try to show me a sentence where I won't understand what you mean by removing the word vector. Same thing for security posture. Anyway, if hackers want to emulate academics in terms of being pretentious dicks, then I guess I've won my argument.
Wow. I never attacked anyone in particular. I think I pretty much addressed it as a general criticism, in fact one that is very common to other fields, so if you're just a minion going along with the flow, no need to feel picked on. What the heck did I do that constitutes "taking it out" on anybody?
Yeah, I'm extremely bitter because I can't figure out what attack vector means... My point, sport, is that I know exactly what it means, because adding "posture" after security doesn't add any meaning. It's just, well, posturing; nerds playing cloak and dagger, painting themselves as agents in an engagement that's far less interesting in real life than they'd like to believe. Hence, all the dark-this and black-that, as if we were talking about something more important than a computer file.
There are a billion and two ways to get atomic hydrogen, and this is just one of them. Sure, it's ineffecient, but so is burning carbon fuels.
Besides, electricity can be derived from anything these days. Put a few solar panels on your roof, and you've got a self contained hydrogen producer. Step it up another notch with rain water collection and filtration and it's competely autonomous.
Well, now we can tell who the left-winger is. Burning carbon fuels is incredibly "efficient" in that it doesn't take much energy to get them relative to what we release by burning them. On the other hand, solar cells almost take as much energy to produce as they will ever use over their lifetime (last I read, about half) not to mention the fact that solar cells will always require a full backup infrastructure to handle low-sun days, and will require the spoiling of our land (aren't lefties supposed to hate spoiling land?) with huge farms of solar cells.
I hate to break into your hippie dream world, but physics, not the Sierra Club, determines what we can and should do. And right now, if you want your Hydrogen economy with zero emissions, there's only ONE way to do it: nuclear. But you probably have a knee-jerk hatred for nuclear, too, so I'm sure that's out.
If being a right winger is what you call somebody who has the ability to think logically and bases arguments on scientific knowledge and not wishful emotion, then I'd be happy to take the insult.