Nice bit of conversational judo there but only an idiot would buy an "if one thing in the past was bad, it all was bad" argument". Oh, hey, I just described the majority of the Democratic party.
Think of the children. Some poor, unfortunate teenagers right here in our very own country might actually have to wait a few seconds to see the quality Internet porn the rest of us take for granted every day.
Now for only pennies a day, you too can bring much needed broadband porn to hillbillies across the nation.
Nah, this is San Francisco we're talking about after all. They'll probably trace it back to a couple college kids who heard smoking fiber gave you a killer high and immediately start up federally funded fiber-smoking bars.
And yet feeling that same certainty, that same feeling that darn it, you're doing the right thing, doesn't make you wonder if perhaps you're the bad guy... because you don't think it matters.
Nope, not for an instant. I'm fairly certain that I am the bad guy from their perspective. I'm also certain that it does not matter. When I adhere to my morals, I remain the good guy. When I stray from them, I become the bad guy. If I take what others think about me into account above my own morals then I show that I don't really hold those morals, have an extremely low self image, and have a serious weakness of character.
I'm having difficulty understanding what you mean here. By "moral equivalence", I'm referring to your claim that you hold the same moral values as anyone who was cheerleading the 9/11 attacks. You felt threatened, and according to you, that justified violence carried out on your behalf. By your lights, that's the whole story.
Ahh, I see. You're saying equivalence of substance while I'm saying equivalence of value because I don't care about the substance of their beliefs unless they're interested in debating them before things get out of hand. What I do care about are any actions they take on their beliefs.
I dislike definitional arguments. By "morality", I'm referring to your sense of what right and wrong actions are.
Fair enough. What I meant to convey was that the values stated by a society aren't likely to be exactly the same as those held by an individual of that society. They're not so much the held beliefs of any individual as they are a transfer of personal responsibility to the group and the foundation of all forms of government. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is for each individual to decide but they aren't given the same weight in decision making unless they agree with your personal morals or you consciously chose practicality over morality.
For instance, I think it's immoral to kill people because they make me nervous, or to expect to have different rules apply to me than apply to other people
So do I, until they cross from making me nervous into making me fairly certain they mean to harm me or mine. As to thinking different rules should apply to me than to other people, I don't. I believe everyone, societies and individuals, should do as their conscience dictates and deal with the consequences of their actions. That's one rule and I apply it to everyone evenly, myself included.
I didn't say that it was unlikely that your ideas, as you define them, could be wrong.
Ideals and morality cannot be factually right or wrong, they are opinion. Everyone is entitled to hold whatever beliefs they like but they should be ready to deal with the consequences of any actions they take based on on them.
Because you've defined your morality to be, in essence, that might makes right--and claimed that everyone else holds this same belief--there's no arguing with it.
I probably should have cleared this up earlier. That's neither what I said nor meant. What I meant was, factually, violence can solve any problem if enough is used. The results may not be what you like and you may have far more new or worse problems as a result but the original problem will no longer exist. I didn't say it was wise. I didn't say it was morally correct for any situation. It is, however, true.
Absurd but hopefully illuminating example. My neighbor's dog shits on my grass every morning. This annoys me, so I put land mines in the yard. The land mines blow said dog to itty-bitty bits. I'm fairly sure that there would be unpleasant consequences for blowing a dog up with land mines but I guarantee it will no longer shit in my yard.
As to the morality of the above example? If I truly believed that the dog were threatening me or my family by shitting in my yard, I would be entirely morally justified in taking action to remove the threat. Fairly stupid for using land mines, sure, but morally justified.
They're self-supporting, self-contained and immune to argument or disagreement.
And you prefer your morals to be ones you're uncertain of? Please, arguing that you shouldn't believe something because you've thought it out to as near the point of certainty as you can some is hardly a brilliant strategy.
As for the rest? You're obviously confusing morals with mores. Morals are always personal and mores are always a societal consensus.
Above all you seem to be misconstruing what I've repeatedly tried to explain. There is no equivalency in morals. It is not possible for there to be without a complete lack of a sense of self. There is, however, an equivalency of a right to hold whatever morals you so choose. There is also an equivalent obligation to bear the consequences of any actions you take from said morals.
For the purposes of this argument, that means that I don't need to feel Al-Qaeda are amoral bastards to want to see them rounded up and executed. All I need to do is give the proper response to their actions. Hell, there were probably plenty of Nazis that were certain they were doing what was good and right; doesn't mean they were any less deserving of a good killing.
You're obviously an educated person; please attempt to be an intelligent one as well. Think about what your brain's been fed before you just go believing it on faith and regurgitating it in public.
Oh there's no void in my morals. They're quite clear and sharply defined, thanks much. You just don't happen to agree with me.
I wouldn't go reading moral equivalence into my statements either. Morals are an entirely personal concept. I am more important to myself than you are to me. Therefore, my morals are always superior to yours. QED.
Nah, that's simply a case of using just enough violence to get yourself in trouble and not enough to get out of it; exactly like Viet-Nam, Korea, gulf war one, Afghanistan, and to a lesser degree, Iraq. Any of the above could have been won but weren't due to a lack of desire to do whatever it took to win them. Iraq however is all but won. It was simply won at too slow a pace and too high a cost.
I'm right with you on knowing what the hell you're doing beforehand going a long way towards not looking like idiots though.
because we haven't evolved beyond it.
And we never will. Evolution is determination of fitness via competition. If one group hamstrings itself, they haven't so much evolved as put themselves on the path to extinction.
Very long last point there but I'll answer it briefly. Yes, an weapon is a dandy threat. A threat you don't have to follow through on is the ideal outcome. Not following through on a threat when called on it though makes you look weak and makes the possibility of violence becoming necessary much higher than if you had nothing to threaten with.
The point is, we don't back our nuclear limitation treaties with force anymore, apparently. We've effectively told the world we're unwilling to back up any threats in that area that we make as witnessed in North Korea and Iran.
Sure they do. At this particular point in history though, they are all but irrelevant aside from what they offer the world in the way of either oil or violence.
It has nothing to do with good-guys/bad-guys. It's simply a matter of harm or threaten to harm me, my family, town, state, or nation and you will be stopped.
That isn't advocating violence whenever possible but it is advocating violence every single time it proves to be necessary. No exceptions, no equivocating, and no sympathy.
Any attitude less and every bit of harm that comes to those you're responsible for is entirely your fault the same as if you'd done the deed yourself.
Some people would consider Mr Bush to qualify as such.
Yes, some people are indeed loudmouthed, apologist, dumbshits. Two-bit? He ran the most powerful nation on earth for eight years. Dictatorship doesn't apply because he was narrowly voted in both times, had to argue with congress on almost every law he signed, even then had some of them overturned by the courts, and left when his two terms were up.
As to Israel and Pakistan, so fucking what. Who the current nuclear powers are has nothing to do with whether it's a good idea to let Iran, North Korea, or anyone else for that matter become a serious nuclear threat to the rest of the world.
Unless you just really prefer allowing every two-bit dictatorship in the world to have as many nukes as they can build.
There's a reason violence is still so commonly used after so many thousands of years of human existence; it works every single time if used in sufficient quantity.
"A few feet of water"
- can mean massive problems for those in the Pacific islands, Holland, London and other very low lying areas, or where they are already fighting to keep water out.
Fuck em! Serves the bastards right for living closer to the beach than me.
On the up side, adding more cores rather than ramping up clock speed lead to Microsoft overestimating how their newest OS would run on the hardware that would be out at release time(Vista). The rampant pissed offedness from that debacle lead to a version of Windows(7) that actually is faster than the previous one, rather than just claiming it is.
Who knows, another few years of idling around 4GHz and they may actually put out something worth using for something besides games.
Maybe it's different in Great Britain. Over here in the States though either it's an emergency and they're busting much ass or the rest of the utility crew are standing around watching one guy work. I'm pretty sure passing up a perfectly good chance to dick off is against union rules.
You obviously have far more faith than I do in developers. My experience has been that all code has bugs and many of them are quite capable of hosing a system beyond any ability to repair without external bootstrapping.
That's not even considering user error, admin error, or malicious asshats.
Input validation is all fine and good except that it can't be done perfectly. Hell, it can't even be done well. The input validating intarweb you seem so enamored of is only still standing because nobody with the knowledge has ever put a serious effort into breaking it on a fundamental scale and because admins like me make regular backups.
If you don't assume the eventual catastrophic failure of everything you admin as the default, you've got no business speaking in sysadmin discussions; you won't be one for long.
If that's a problem, build it into the programing language. Or a standard library.
Abstracting low level operations at the OS level for the convenience of a few tools who get wood over object orientation, at the expense of everyone else, is just plain old asshatery.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe we just don't like hippies.
And? So they were wrong on one particular issue by modern thinking and right on hundreds more. Baby, bathwater....
I'm also fairly certain that arguing the slaves' freedom and rights to own property also qualifies you for a libertarian club card.
In any case, nobody can claim wisdom in every instance. Take us, we're arguing politics on the Internet. How brilliant is that?
Awe, isn't that cute. But it's wrong!
Every single example stated above was in fact done away with, and replaced by, the libertarian ideals you seem to want to argue with.
Find another argument.
P.S. Glad you're flattered; it's been a slow news week.
Nice bit of conversational judo there but only an idiot would buy an "if one thing in the past was bad, it all was bad" argument". Oh, hey, I just described the majority of the Democratic party.
Yeah, guess I should have put and tags around that. Maybe the humorless mods tonight wouldn't have modded me flamebait.
Think of the children. Some poor, unfortunate teenagers right here in our very own country might actually have to wait a few seconds to see the quality Internet porn the rest of us take for granted every day.
Now for only pennies a day, you too can bring much needed broadband porn to hillbillies across the nation.
Nah, this is San Francisco we're talking about after all. They'll probably trace it back to a couple college kids who heard smoking fiber gave you a killer high and immediately start up federally funded fiber-smoking bars.
Out of order this time simply for variety's sake.
And yet feeling that same certainty, that same feeling that darn it, you're doing the right thing, doesn't make you wonder if perhaps you're the bad guy... because you don't think it matters.
Nope, not for an instant. I'm fairly certain that I am the bad guy from their perspective. I'm also certain that it does not matter. When I adhere to my morals, I remain the good guy. When I stray from them, I become the bad guy. If I take what others think about me into account above my own morals then I show that I don't really hold those morals, have an extremely low self image, and have a serious weakness of character.
I'm having difficulty understanding what you mean here. By "moral equivalence", I'm referring to your claim that you hold the same moral values as anyone who was cheerleading the 9/11 attacks. You felt threatened, and according to you, that justified violence carried out on your behalf. By your lights, that's the whole story.
Ahh, I see. You're saying equivalence of substance while I'm saying equivalence of value because I don't care about the substance of their beliefs unless they're interested in debating them before things get out of hand. What I do care about are any actions they take on their beliefs.
I dislike definitional arguments. By "morality", I'm referring to your sense of what right and wrong actions are.
Fair enough. What I meant to convey was that the values stated by a society aren't likely to be exactly the same as those held by an individual of that society. They're not so much the held beliefs of any individual as they are a transfer of personal responsibility to the group and the foundation of all forms of government. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is for each individual to decide but they aren't given the same weight in decision making unless they agree with your personal morals or you consciously chose practicality over morality.
For instance, I think it's immoral to kill people because they make me nervous, or to expect to have different rules apply to me than apply to other people
So do I, until they cross from making me nervous into making me fairly certain they mean to harm me or mine. As to thinking different rules should apply to me than to other people, I don't. I believe everyone, societies and individuals, should do as their conscience dictates and deal with the consequences of their actions. That's one rule and I apply it to everyone evenly, myself included.
I didn't say that it was unlikely that your ideas, as you define them, could be wrong.
Ideals and morality cannot be factually right or wrong, they are opinion. Everyone is entitled to hold whatever beliefs they like but they should be ready to deal with the consequences of any actions they take based on on them.
Because you've defined your morality to be, in essence, that might makes right--and claimed that everyone else holds this same belief--there's no arguing with it.
I probably should have cleared this up earlier. That's neither what I said nor meant. What I meant was, factually, violence can solve any problem if enough is used. The results may not be what you like and you may have far more new or worse problems as a result but the original problem will no longer exist. I didn't say it was wise. I didn't say it was morally correct for any situation. It is, however, true.
Absurd but hopefully illuminating example. My neighbor's dog shits on my grass every morning. This annoys me, so I put land mines in the yard. The land mines blow said dog to itty-bitty bits. I'm fairly sure that there would be unpleasant consequences for blowing a dog up with land mines but I guarantee it will no longer shit in my yard.
As to the morality of the above example? If I truly believed that the dog were threatening me or my family by shitting in my yard, I would be entirely morally justified in taking action to remove the threat. Fairly stupid for using land mines, sure, but morally justified.
They're self-supporting, self-contained and immune to argument or disagreement.
And you prefer your morals to be ones you're uncertain of? Please, arguing that you shouldn't believe something because you've thought it out to as near the point of certainty as you can some is hardly a brilliant strategy.
As for the rest? You're obviously confusing morals with mores. Morals are always personal and mores are always a societal consensus.
Above all you seem to be misconstruing what I've repeatedly tried to explain. There is no equivalency in morals. It is not possible for there to be without a complete lack of a sense of self. There is, however, an equivalency of a right to hold whatever morals you so choose. There is also an equivalent obligation to bear the consequences of any actions you take from said morals.
For the purposes of this argument, that means that I don't need to feel Al-Qaeda are amoral bastards to want to see them rounded up and executed. All I need to do is give the proper response to their actions. Hell, there were probably plenty of Nazis that were certain they were doing what was good and right; doesn't mean they were any less deserving of a good killing.
You're obviously an educated person; please attempt to be an intelligent one as well. Think about what your brain's been fed before you just go believing it on faith and regurgitating it in public.
Oh there's no void in my morals. They're quite clear and sharply defined, thanks much. You just don't happen to agree with me.
I wouldn't go reading moral equivalence into my statements either. Morals are an entirely personal concept. I am more important to myself than you are to me. Therefore, my morals are always superior to yours. QED.
From their point of view, they probably were.
Fortunately we're under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to either care what their point of view is or to sympathize with it.
I'm right with you on knowing what the hell you're doing beforehand going a long way towards not looking like idiots though.
because we haven't evolved beyond it.
And we never will. Evolution is determination of fitness via competition. If one group hamstrings itself, they haven't so much evolved as put themselves on the path to extinction.
Very long last point there but I'll answer it briefly. Yes, an weapon is a dandy threat. A threat you don't have to follow through on is the ideal outcome. Not following through on a threat when called on it though makes you look weak and makes the possibility of violence becoming necessary much higher than if you had nothing to threaten with.
The point is, we don't back our nuclear limitation treaties with force anymore, apparently. We've effectively told the world we're unwilling to back up any threats in that area that we make as witnessed in North Korea and Iran.
Sure they do. At this particular point in history though, they are all but irrelevant aside from what they offer the world in the way of either oil or violence.
It has nothing to do with good-guys/bad-guys. It's simply a matter of harm or threaten to harm me, my family, town, state, or nation and you will be stopped.
That isn't advocating violence whenever possible but it is advocating violence every single time it proves to be necessary. No exceptions, no equivocating, and no sympathy.
Any attitude less and every bit of harm that comes to those you're responsible for is entirely your fault the same as if you'd done the deed yourself.
Some people would consider Mr Bush to qualify as such.
Yes, some people are indeed loudmouthed, apologist, dumbshits. Two-bit? He ran the most powerful nation on earth for eight years. Dictatorship doesn't apply because he was narrowly voted in both times, had to argue with congress on almost every law he signed, even then had some of them overturned by the courts, and left when his two terms were up.
As to Israel and Pakistan, so fucking what. Who the current nuclear powers are has nothing to do with whether it's a good idea to let Iran, North Korea, or anyone else for that matter become a serious nuclear threat to the rest of the world.
They're called clues. Get one.
With any luck, yes.
Unless you just really prefer allowing every two-bit dictatorship in the world to have as many nukes as they can build.
There's a reason violence is still so commonly used after so many thousands of years of human existence; it works every single time if used in sufficient quantity.
If by "sort of" you mean that we weren't invaded or destroyed during his administration, you're absolutely correct.
If you meant that Carter advanced US foreign policy in any positive way or kept us from getting fucked with by piss-ants like Iran, not so much.
and they're not just going to sit there and drown.
You obviously underestimate what a sufficient quantity of strategically applied duct tape can accomplish.
"A few feet of water" - can mean massive problems for those in the Pacific islands, Holland, London and other very low lying areas, or where they are already fighting to keep water out.
Fuck em! Serves the bastards right for living closer to the beach than me.
On the up side, adding more cores rather than ramping up clock speed lead to Microsoft overestimating how their newest OS would run on the hardware that would be out at release time(Vista). The rampant pissed offedness from that debacle lead to a version of Windows(7) that actually is faster than the previous one, rather than just claiming it is.
Who knows, another few years of idling around 4GHz and they may actually put out something worth using for something besides games.
There's a huge difference between asking for help in an emergency and being so paranoid that you need 24/7 monitoring.
Maybe it's different in Great Britain. Over here in the States though either it's an emergency and they're busting much ass or the rest of the utility crew are standing around watching one guy work. I'm pretty sure passing up a perfectly good chance to dick off is against union rules.
That or it's a Mobius sock.
You obviously have far more faith than I do in developers. My experience has been that all code has bugs and many of them are quite capable of hosing a system beyond any ability to repair without external bootstrapping.
That's not even considering user error, admin error, or malicious asshats.
Input validation is all fine and good except that it can't be done perfectly. Hell, it can't even be done well. The input validating intarweb you seem so enamored of is only still standing because nobody with the knowledge has ever put a serious effort into breaking it on a fundamental scale and because admins like me make regular backups.
If you don't assume the eventual catastrophic failure of everything you admin as the default, you've got no business speaking in sysadmin discussions; you won't be one for long.
Abstracting low level operations at the OS level for the convenience of a few tools who get wood over object orientation, at the expense of everyone else, is just plain old asshatery.