the underlying argument is the same for both buying from someone who makes confectionary in an objectionable colour and a slave created goods provider.
It is a typical strategy of advanced capitalism to rationalise economic oppression by explaining the ethics in terms of personal/private preference, thus robbing it of any general significance.
Are you really surprised that people care more about enforced slave labour than a company that allows two people to enter into a contract which sets out on what devices they are able to buy a licensed product?
There often is no real difference. Consider the 'contract' between the capitalist and the labourer. Is that a valid contract if the only real choice for the labourer is either to agree to unfair/exploitative terms of service or to starve?
The GP's analogy wasn't really bad.
Not monsters, but regular people like you and me (okay, may be a bit richer than us) once owned slaves and supported slavery.
Not monsters, but regular people like you and me support DRM today.
The two world-views are different not fundamentally, but in degree, because both entail curbing the freedom of others in order to maximise profit.
Given a choice, I wouldn't do business with a company that thought DRM was acceptable. Certain things really do have universal human significance.
Translation for those irrevocably sold to the capitalist trope of absolute ethical relativity: I believe that certain things really do have universal human significance.
Wouldn't that also make it the least prestigious general decoration?
This is how I parsed the sentence:
The Federal Cross of Merit is both (the most prestigious) as well as (the only general) decoration awarded by...
That is, there are many decorations, but of them only one is a general decoration. This decoration also happens to be the most prestigious of all existing decorations, general or specific.
Learning to speak English well is difficult. Most native speakers can't do it, and writing it is even harder.
Many non-native speakers, myself included, may disagree with you. I learned English from books, not through speech. I am totally comfortable when I read or write it, but tend to fumble and falter when i speak it.
Compare it to another popular world language, like Spanish (or Portuguese) and you'll see something that is a lot easier to learn.
That is not wholly true either. One big thing going for English is its lack of grammatical gender. I found gendered languages like Spanish and German significantly more difficult to learn than English, if only because I have to remember the gender of each individual noun I use. In fact, I have always found it an incredible feat that proficient native speakers of these languages manage to do this. Luckily, neither English nor my first language (Bangla) has this problematic feature.
Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the Vale profound Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?-- Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;-- I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.
I wonder whom the poet was addressing when he said 'stop here, or gently pass' -- was it RIAA agents?
The hindu conception is a little more plausible in terms of time spans, but still makes claims that don't hold up under the microscope. No idea about the Sikh concept. Budhism? I think you'll find the same problems with hinduism, but possibly compounded by different schools of thought. Admittedly I dont know much about the specific claims of much outside the judeo-christian-muslim religions,but its not the point.
Hmmm. So you
o tackle three world religions one by one
o trash all of them
o admit you don't know much about any of them
o claim that your ignorance is not the point, your uninformed opinions are still correct
and you have been modded insightful. Well done, slashdot.
FYI, Buddhism (note the spelling) does not speak of a god.
I find it humorous how quickly so many want to bask in the glow of this, using it as proof of something, when I'm fairly certain that it was discarded as proof of nothing when the LSE first went the.NET route.
Microsoft's salesbot teams clinch a major deal : Insignificant, not news.
Microsoft's salesbot teams, and if the client is important enough, Gates (previously) or Ballmer himself, fail to clinch a major deal, big client chooses Linux solution from small company : Significant, therefore news.
And, as we all know, any information gathered by the UK government is normally in the hands of random Indians, Nigerians and Russians, etc within days, and the information on database so corrupt as to be worthless in less than a year.
In your post against genetic fingerprinting, you are expressing ethnic prejudice. Are you being dumb, or intentionally ironical, or am I misreading you?
It is interesting how this "I know this is going to modded [insert random negative mod label], but..." trope almost guarantees positive moderation here.
But to be fair, you have a religion quote in your sig, so it is clear you are brain damaged in some way! Yeah, god exists, and XP was ahead of its time. Idiot.
Right, because everyone knows that the rational thing to do when you encounter a world-view different from yours is to scream, foam at the mouth, and jump up and down.
GM crops can be *better* for the environment. After all, the BT gene is just a way of putting a pesticide only harmful to a narrow range of insects *into* the crop, so only pests that actually eat it will die. This is a whole lot more targeted than crop-dusting the field with something that'll kill anything that moves with more than four legs. Monsanto's abuse of the patent system is another matter altogether, of course.
Modern species are products of (m/b)illions of years of evolution. Their present genetic compositions are a results of a very long history of innumerable evolutionary changes that make them suitable as endemic organisms in their native ecosystems.
Tinkering with genes with the kind of the very incomplete knowledge we have of them, is a dangerous game when played in vivo. For one thing, they often result in the creation of unforeseen transposons, which can wreak havoc and destroy the delicate balance of an ecosystem.
You seem to think highly of the BT gene. Please get acquainted with some of its disastrous effects.
KDE is able to project a halo of (mostly valid) hype around itself which attracts users and hence contributors, which results in more features and hype, and so on.
from the princeton wordnet: "hype: to publicize in an exaggerated and often misleading manner".
the word derives from 'hyperbole'.
from wikipedia: "Hyperbole, meaning excess or exaggeration, is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated..."
False. India has both GSM and CDMA networks, both hugely popular. And no one there even knows that there exists any such critter as a locked GSM phone.
However, I also believe that we can strike a balance between responsible stewardship, individual liberty, and capitalist enterprise.
I just read Beyond Developmentality, a fascinating book on this subject. Quoting from the blurb:
In both capitalist and socialist nations, industrial growth has destroyed the natural world, intensified social inequalities, and abrogated intergenerational equity. The greatest obstacle on the path to sustainability is the hegemony of developmentality, which equates affluence with happiness, measures development in terms of GNP growth, and accepts development to be the destiny of civilization.
To arrest further destruction of the natural world and build a sustainable society, the economy must terminate growth. State economic institutions must eventually introduce, and be accustomed to, zero rates of interest and profit.
This revolutionary proposition seems absurd to the layperson, policy-makers and the traditional Left alike. Public acceptance of a new economic order -- where money cannot buy any resource that could yield rent in perpetuity, where internalization of environmental costs would nullify profit, and where savings in banks would yield no interest -- would seem extremely difficult at the outset. But from an ecological economic perspective, zero-growth economy is our only option if we really want to save our common future.
The author, Dr.Debal Deb, is a renowned ecologist and environmental biologist with several publications in the field.
Full disclosure: I personally know Dr.Deb, but this post is not a shameless plug to boost sales. I truly believe that what the book recommends is mankind's only real hope. See
'No root password' actually sounds like a good thing. In a default Ubuntu installation, there is no root password. You have to login to a normal a/c, and then use sudo for administrative tasks. SSH is usually configured not to allow direct root logins; you have to login as a normal user, and then su into root.
What the OP probably meant was that the root a/c had password-less login enabled, which of course is an unthinkable configuration for an important server connected to the internet.
Seriously, helping behaviour hasn't been an issue for a couple of decades, and only then amongst the innumerate hangers-on from an earlier era. No one who knows anything about modern evolutionary thinking believes it is an issue today
You mean evolutionary explanations for non-obvious human behaviour are no longer tentative, and there is no room for doubt any more? No one has dared to question a hypothesis in the past twenty years, because if they did, they would face this sort of ridicule?
There is no proof that Santa Claus does not exist -- does this make him believable? Clearly not. Is that question even worth the attention? Nope.
This is a popular argument with atheists. Sometimes they will use golden reindeer, pixies, little green men or invisible dogs instead of Santa Claus. But I think this analogy is flawed.
When using such examples, they are referring to (existent or non-existent) objects, often associated with childish beliefs, in our immediate and familiar surroundings. Since most of us have grown out of such beliefs, this atheist rhetoric works by evoking a sense of shame in agnostics, by implying that their position is as childish as being agnostic about the existence of little green men.
But being agnostic about Santa and being agnostic about god are two very different things. We have grown up to know that it was our parents, not Santa, who left the presents in the stockings. Thus the necessity of Santa in the chlldish belief system was replaced by a more complete knowledge of how society works. But we have no such intimate knowledge about the fundamentals of the universe. It is possible that our current state of knowledge is analogous to that of the child who believes in Santa, but just because Santa didn't put the presents there does not mean we shall never wake up into a greater understanding of the universe where there is really is a cosmic #insert favourite name for a cosmic Santa who put the universe there#.
Further, Santa or pixies or flying deer aren't useful for any theory
I used to share your discomfort with the concept of atheism vs. agnosticism... As I grew older, though, I began to see that agnosticism was a much less useful state of being. If one is truly agnostic, then one ought to feel compelled to give equal weight to all systems of knowing. I believe that accepting a personal state of functional atheism requires more up-front intellectual honesty, but in the long run produces much less cognitive dissonance.
But then your position is not rational, but merely convenient. I can agree with atheism-for-convenience or atheism-for-all-practical-social-purposes, but most people who ridicule faith claim rational bases for their position, when in fact they have none.
Countries are making the kind of legislation this article talks about and you don't think some rational zealotry is in order?
Do not confound philosophical faith and organised religion. An idiotic act like that described in TFA involves the latter, and also political motives. The former, whether mistaken or not, is a contemplative category, and has no power either to help or harm society. And zealotry in any form is bad, because it destroys the ability to think and act rationally.
Seriously. It's time to pick a side and stand up for it.
No reason why one should have to.
Science has never been about the existence (or the lack thereof) of god. Science concerns itself with understanding the observed phenomena of the universe, and says nothing about the primary cause, if any, behind all phenomena. There is no way to scientifically prove or disprove god. Our current knowledge of the universe is incomplete, and perhaps inaccurate in many ways. We are simply not in a position to be 'resolute' about such questions, at least not yet.
Being 'irresolute' when discussing ultimate causes, therefore, seems to me not cowardly at all, but logically the most acceptable position at present. Staunch theism and staunch atheism are both extreme positions, and neither can be scientifically defended.
Atheism is fashionable in certain circles, slashdot not the least among them. But if you disregard public opinion and apply cold logic, you'll see that an atheist is just as pig-headed and stubborn as a creationist.
There was no one called Ghandi.
At least, no one famous by that name.
But perhaps you're referring to Mohandas Karamchand GANDHI, the apostle of peace.
Do look it up, and please do not repeat this common mistake.
Aren't we all deterministic automotons governed by the laws of physics? How can free will exist?
Methinks you're taking a lot for granted; I am not a physicist, but AFAIK, science hasn't yet reached the conclusion that the universe is deterministic. Perhaps someone who knows more on this subject can elaborate?
Slashdot Mirror
the underlying argument is the same for both buying from someone who makes confectionary in an objectionable colour and a slave created goods provider.
It is a typical strategy of advanced capitalism to rationalise economic oppression by explaining the ethics in terms of personal/private preference, thus robbing it of any general significance.
Are you really surprised that people care more about enforced slave labour than a company that allows two people to enter into a contract which sets out on what devices they are able to buy a licensed product?
There often is no real difference. Consider the 'contract' between the capitalist and the labourer. Is that a valid contract if the only real choice for the labourer is either to agree to unfair/exploitative terms of service or to starve?
The GP's analogy wasn't really bad.
Not monsters, but regular people like you and me (okay, may be a bit richer than us) once owned slaves and supported slavery.
Not monsters, but regular people like you and me support DRM today.
The two world-views are different not fundamentally, but in degree, because both entail curbing the freedom of others in order to maximise profit.
Given a choice, I wouldn't do business with a company that thought DRM was acceptable. Certain things really do have universal human significance.
Translation for those irrevocably sold to the capitalist trope of absolute ethical relativity: I believe that certain things really do have universal human significance.
Wouldn't that also make it the least prestigious general decoration?
This is how I parsed the sentence:
The Federal Cross of Merit is both (the most prestigious) as well as (the only general) decoration awarded by...
That is, there are many decorations, but of them only one is a general decoration. This decoration also happens to be the most prestigious of all existing decorations, general or specific.
if you can cook or have an Eastern European partner
Myself, I very much prefer having my partners to cooking them, but I guess tastes will vary...
As a Washingtonian I am here to say what they are doing is not wrong. Responsibility lies on law makers to make this practice illegal.
But if no one thinks it is wrong until there's a law against it, then who is going to make the law against it?
Learning to speak English well is difficult. Most native speakers can't do it, and writing it is even harder.
Many non-native speakers, myself included, may disagree with you. I learned English from books, not through speech. I am totally comfortable when I read or write it, but tend to fumble and falter when i speak it.
Compare it to another popular world language, like Spanish (or Portuguese) and you'll see something that is a lot easier to learn.
That is not wholly true either. One big thing going for English is its lack of grammatical gender. I found gendered languages like Spanish and German significantly more difficult to learn than English, if only because I have to remember the gender of each individual noun I use. In fact, I have always found it an incredible feat that proficient native speakers of these languages manage to do this. Luckily, neither English nor my first language (Bangla) has this problematic feature.
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
I wonder whom the poet was addressing when he said 'stop here, or gently pass' -- was it RIAA agents?
The hindu conception is a little more plausible in terms of time spans, but still makes claims that don't hold up under the microscope. No idea about the Sikh concept. Budhism? I think you'll find the same problems with hinduism, but possibly compounded by different schools of thought. Admittedly I dont know much about the specific claims of much outside the judeo-christian-muslim religions ,but its not the point.
Hmmm. So you
o tackle three world religions one by one
o trash all of them
o admit you don't know much about any of them
o claim that your ignorance is not the point, your uninformed opinions are still correct
and you have been modded insightful. Well done, slashdot.
FYI, Buddhism (note the spelling) does not speak of a god.
Microsoft's salesbot teams clinch a major deal : Insignificant, not news.
Microsoft's salesbot teams, and if the client is important enough, Gates (previously) or Ballmer himself, fail to clinch a major deal, big client chooses Linux solution from small company : Significant, therefore news.
Refugee's are supposed to goto the nearest safe country [...] fake asylum seekers we let in who I'm not aloud to complain about because its racist.
Refugees.
whom.
allowed.
it's.
First learn your language, and then complain about who should or should not have access to your country's limited habitable land.
Incidentally, English is my third language.
And, as we all know, any information gathered by the UK government is normally in the hands of random Indians, Nigerians and Russians, etc within days, and the information on database so corrupt as to be worthless in less than a year.
In your post against genetic fingerprinting, you are expressing ethnic prejudice. Are you being dumb, or intentionally ironical, or am I misreading you?
I know this is going to modded troll, but ...
It is interesting how this "I know this is going to modded [insert random negative mod label], but ..." trope almost guarantees positive moderation here.
But to be fair, you have a religion quote in your sig, so it is clear you are brain damaged in some way! Yeah, god exists, and XP was ahead of its time. Idiot.
Right, because everyone knows that the rational thing to do when you encounter a world-view different from yours is to scream, foam at the mouth, and jump up and down.
Modern species are products of (m/b)illions of years of evolution. Their present genetic compositions are a results of a very long history of innumerable evolutionary changes that make them suitable as endemic organisms in their native ecosystems.
Tinkering with genes with the kind of the very incomplete knowledge we have of them, is a dangerous game when played in vivo. For one thing, they often result in the creation of unforeseen transposons, which can wreak havoc and destroy the delicate balance of an ecosystem.
You seem to think highly of the BT gene. Please get acquainted with some of its disastrous effects.
KDE is able to project a halo of (mostly valid) hype around itself which attracts users and hence contributors, which results in more features and hype, and so on.
from the princeton wordnet: "hype: to publicize in an exaggerated and often misleading manner".
the word derives from 'hyperbole'.
from wikipedia: "Hyperbole, meaning excess or exaggeration, is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated..."
i fail to see how any exaggeration can be valid.
False.
India has both GSM and CDMA networks, both hugely popular.
And no one there even knows that there exists any such critter as a locked GSM phone.
I just read Beyond Developmentality, a fascinating book on this subject. Quoting from the blurb:
The author, Dr.Debal Deb, is a renowned ecologist and environmental biologist with several publications in the field.
Full disclosure: I personally know Dr.Deb, but this post is not a shameless plug to boost sales. I truly believe that what the book recommends is mankind's only real hope. See
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Developmentality-Constructing-Inclusive-Sustainability/dp/1844077128
Or
look it up on google
'No root password' actually sounds like a good thing. In a default Ubuntu installation, there is no root password. You have to login to a normal a/c, and then use sudo for administrative tasks. SSH is usually configured not to allow direct root logins; you have to login as a normal user, and then su into root.
What the OP probably meant was that the root a/c had password-less login enabled, which of course is an unthinkable configuration for an important server connected to the internet.
You mean evolutionary explanations for non-obvious human behaviour are no longer tentative, and there is no room for doubt any more? No one has dared to question a hypothesis in the past twenty years, because if they did, they would face this sort of ridicule?
Doesn't really sound like good science.
they're using Britney Spears waves to create the lesions.
Also, we now know what makes the RIAA people brain dead.
There is no proof that Santa Claus does not exist -- does this make him believable? Clearly not. Is that question even worth the attention? Nope.
This is a popular argument with atheists. Sometimes they will use golden reindeer, pixies, little green men or invisible dogs instead of Santa Claus. But I think this analogy is flawed.
When using such examples, they are referring to (existent or non-existent) objects, often associated with childish beliefs, in our immediate and familiar surroundings. Since most of us have grown out of such beliefs, this atheist rhetoric works by evoking a sense of shame in agnostics, by implying that their position is as childish as being agnostic about the existence of little green men.
But being agnostic about Santa and being agnostic about god are two very different things. We have grown up to know that it was our parents, not Santa, who left the presents in the stockings. Thus the necessity of Santa in the chlldish belief system was replaced by a more complete knowledge of how society works. But we have no such intimate knowledge about the fundamentals of the universe. It is possible that our current state of knowledge is analogous to that of the child who believes in Santa, but just because Santa didn't put the presents there does not mean we shall never wake up into a greater understanding of the universe where there is really is a cosmic #insert favourite name for a cosmic Santa who put the universe there#.
Further, Santa or pixies or flying deer aren't useful for any theory
But then your position is not rational, but merely convenient.
I can agree with atheism-for-convenience or atheism-for-all-practical-social-purposes, but most people who ridicule faith claim rational bases for their position, when in fact they have none.
Do not confound philosophical faith and organised religion. An idiotic act like that described in TFA involves the latter, and also political motives.
The former, whether mistaken or not, is a contemplative category, and has no power either to help or harm society.
And zealotry in any form is bad, because it destroys the ability to think and act rationally.
No reason why one should have to.
Science has never been about the existence (or the lack thereof) of god. Science concerns itself with understanding the observed phenomena of the universe, and says nothing about the primary cause, if any, behind all phenomena. There is no way to scientifically prove or disprove god. Our current knowledge of the universe is incomplete, and perhaps inaccurate in many ways. We are simply not in a position to be 'resolute' about such questions, at least not yet.
Being 'irresolute' when discussing ultimate causes, therefore, seems to me not cowardly at all, but logically the most acceptable position at present. Staunch theism and staunch atheism are both extreme positions, and neither can be scientifically defended.
Atheism is fashionable in certain circles, slashdot not the least among them. But if you disregard public opinion and apply cold logic, you'll see that an atheist is just as pig-headed and stubborn as a creationist.
There was no one called Ghandi.
At least, no one famous by that name.
But perhaps you're referring to Mohandas Karamchand GANDHI, the apostle of peace.
Do look it up, and please do not repeat this common mistake.
Methinks you're taking a lot for granted; I am not a physicist, but AFAIK, science hasn't yet reached the conclusion that the universe is deterministic. Perhaps someone who knows more on this subject can elaborate?