As much as the linux community would like to believe that NT is as unstable as Win95/98, it will never crash on you and is extremely stable and efficient.
..but I've heard several people claim that their Windows 95 boxen never crash, either. I've seen them crash on a more than daily basis myself, and have yet to hear an account from a strictly reliable source that claims an NT box to survive more than a week or two without crashing.
It's nice to know that you have decided to refuse to face reality. There is already a term for what GNU/Linux is. It's a clone. Why? Because it did not evolve from the original Unix code. *BSD and their predecessors, however, did. That is why they are referred to as "derivatives". You'll find that the definitions for these words are rather widely accepted beyond the court room, and somehow I doubt that it was a lawyer who coined them in this particular context (i.e., with regards to software, code, whatever).
A note to others who believe they can refute facts with opinions: I'm not interested. Go sit in a corner obsessed with your denial of the truth somewhere else.
Linux seems to be the among the healthiest of the direct Unix derivatives...
It seems odd that he would refer to GNU/Linux as a derivative of Unix (I would assume from the context that he is referring to the entire system), since it is clearly not. If it was, it wouldn't be any different from the 80 or so flavors of Unix already out there.. What makes it so different is that most of it was built from practically the ground up (for example, the compiler, gcc). Which rock has Dennis been hiding under lately? Or is he just full of ego these days..?
Not meant to incite (for all you DR fans out there..;), but to me this comment seems a little odd.. Otherwise a nice gesture, however.
ESR has often complained about being flamed rather than being given constructive criticism (e.g., the Bruce Perens/ESR dispute), so I simply have to wonder.. Exactly how will he react to criticism like this, which is much more academic in nature?
Of course, the reason why this comes to mind is because of a post in a previous discussion (I believe regarding ESR's answers to the questions posed by Slashdot) that suggested that flaming ESR was pointless because it would engender an attitude in him along the lines of "no, you don't understand. I'm right, you're wrong, so get out of my way".
Now...I think the idea behind this legal threat is good because every porn site on the planet is putting legitamate words in their tags so searching on the name of any famous female yeilds a ton of porn links.
Ok, well.. Maybe it's just a little too early in the morning for rational thought, but would you care to explain that a little further? It's not making a lot of sense to me at the moment.
What do you consider to be a "legitimate" word? As in, a "not made up" word? Like, what, girl? Girl is a word, and I'm sure a search for that word would yield more than just a couple of porn sites. Besides, are you really subjected to the porn itself during a search on a search engine (well, on Google I mean.. Yahoo! is more annoying)?
Besides which, what do you mean by the "idea behind" it? That it's a good idea to sue every site under the sun for misreprenting themselves through "inappropriate" usage of keywords in their meta tags? Did it recently become a crime to lie? If so, I would like to state for the record that I am the richest man in the world, not Bill Gates. So, send me to jail now?
And no, this time I'm not trying to flame. I'm geniunely and completely boggled. Someone care to explain.. politely?
Ok. Let me set you straight. I never said we were avoiding natural selection. I said the opposite several times. There's no way around it. That said, you are just about the dumbest fscking idiot I've ever had the misfortune of having to read their pathetic excuse for "commentary". If you're going to refute my assertions, at least refute the assertions I actually made myself, rather than responding to the ones you made up in your head and subsequently attributed to me.
Or do you like looking stupid in front of everyone else?
The rest of your comment is likewise so much drivel. I've stated and restated my point throughout this entire thread. I've spent more time responding to comments on this thread than I have posting onto any other discussion this whole week. The least you could do is actually fscking read the damn things before you continue to bother the hell out of me. Since you won't, however, feel free to chat with yourself for a while, because I have no further comments to make on this or any other post here today.
The rights of a living things depends on the vale we decide to give to them, either by laws or morality. This is a matter of choice on where you decide to draw the line.
So humans are the masters of the world? We control nature? We are unto gods? And practically everyone who responded to my thread wondered why I said hubris.. Guess what, genius? Cockroaches are evolutionarily superior to humans. Pretty funny, don't you think? Guess what else? After humans are long since dead, cockroaches will still be around. So will nature. So will the earth. So.. how precisely are we its masters? Simple. We're not. We'd like to think so, however.
Actually, try this little experiment: wander off into some woods that are populated by wolves. Don't take a gun. Figure out how high up on the food chain you actually are. I'd certainly like to see the wolf consider your "value" as a life form.
Saying that all beings are equal by nature is wrong. Nature makes, and whatever is fit enough and lucky enough to survive does. Humans have pretty much went over these by virtue of thinking. We can now make our own choices which may or may not ressemble what nature would make, but the choice is still ours and nature is but one of the bases we could use.
First off, that's not what I said. Second off, I explicitly stated more times than I can count that all things are equally "deserving of life" but not all things are equally "able to survive" it.
This is probably the least enlightened and/or original arguement I've seen yet. It practically boils down to "no you're wrong, and I'm right".
I did see the second thread and I think even with the correction to your typo you're still very wrong. I'd venture to say that most people who are vegan are in better health than the majority of people who eat meat. Anyone who's going to be vegan for any length of time has to care about what they eat, they choose not to eat the majority of the junkfood most people consume, fast food, candy, soda, etc.
I'd venture to say that I worked in a natural foods store as an assistant bakery manager for some time. Indeed, one might say that since I rose to the position of assistant manager, I was there for a while. I'd then venture to say that you're wrong. I'd also venture to say that most people in general are not very healthy. Finally, I'd venture to say that the entire point was to stimulate thought. Apparently I stimulated more thought in some than others (and no, I'm not going to explicitly point out precisely who I mean by that.. just don't assume anything;).
Oh, and by the way, most importantly.. "Many" is defined as "a large number of persons or things". The word "large" is even more subjective. I could state that I believed any number more than 1 (hell, I could even say the number 1) was a "large" number. That said, precisely how do you plan to go about proving my statement factually incorrect? By proving that there are no unhealthy vegans anywhere in the world? That's patently ridiculous.
Sorry to nitpick but I'd just like to see some of the common vegan/vegitarian myths disaperar. As you can see from the Walden quote they same myths have been around for quite a while.
As I said, I made a typographical error. I apologize. However, with the correction to the sentence, there is nothing left for you to disprove about that sentence. Thank you, and good day.
..for clueless replies? I never addressed the issue of who owned the fscking company. Paul Allen is not an employee, and guess what? That's all I said!! Get a clue. Respond to a post where what you said is even vaguely relavent.
This post that I'm replying to is one of the shining examples of why I flame people. If more humans put that "vaunted intellect" of theirs to good use before shooting their mouths off, I wouldn't feel so inclined to refer to them as total idiots.
..but I seriously doubt "open sourcing" Windows would go a very long way toward making it a more viable OS than the alternatives. Too messy. I'm sure there would be some interest, however, due to a variety of reasons.:)
"That MS guy" doesn't work there. He helped fund the founding of the company IIRC. Not exactly the same thing. Linus Torvalds, however, is indeed an employee.
If you're really interested in finding out all you can about Transmeta, I'd imagine doing a search on Google or Slashdot for "Transmeta" would give you a good amount of information. Personally, I'd choose the latter. You can read all the "relavent" articles and see all the wild-eyed speculation, as well.
..which I'm sort of surprised you didn't just come out and say: How many of us would prefer going back, slashing, then completely reworking all of the code for Windows so that it is actually a viable, stable operating system that does something useful besides, well, look pretty? GNU/Linux (and a multitude of other good OSes, like *BSD) are already stable, and with a nice selection of desktop environments and window managers, I think can make a lot of them pretty, too.;)
Well, with that in mind, I'm going to pay off Sun with a ton of money for the right to call myself Java. However, does that make me a programming language? Clearly not.
I'm talking about technical details, not whether or not some fscking idiot wants to get permission from a trademark owner to call something something it's not. And as I clearly mentioned before, I never said Linux was certified anything!
First off, your base dismissal of my response has no merit. Second off, Bartmoss over there has been flinging such base reactions at everything even close to the top of the discussion of this article.
Perhaps if you actually read the article, you would understand how my comment makes sense. Since you, like Bartmoss, apparently did not.. I see little reason in enlightening you. It really doesn't take that much to reach the fscking article, and I'm not going to bother parroting it.
Actually, just so you might figure something out and get a clue, I'll give you this: Obviously the parents are going to be the ones who ultimately decide. Ostensibly the doctor would give them the option of deciding if in his medical opinion the child was "ill-equipped to survive in the world" or whatever. The parents are obviously not going to have racist feelings toward their own child (at least not in "normal" circumstances.. please don't bore with examples right out of a Jerry Springer show), and the doctor is not going to decide if the child dies. The parents will. Does this not make sense to you, Mr. Knee-Jerk Reaction?
And you people are accusing me of a lack of thought. Yeah. Sure.
So, anyone care to mention how the "race card" is going to be played in this scenario? Don't bother responding to me personally.. I've had enough conversation on this article. See closer to the bottom of the discussion if you care.
Who, you? My comments are only out of context if you don't bother to read the article. At least brush up on your English before you bother trying to debunk my commentary. You seem to be missing a word somewhere in your post.. Amazing for such a short one. Do you know what the preview button is for, by any chance?
Most of this has been covered. Perhaps you should read this entire thread before posting more comments? I'll stick to the things that have had little coverage so far.
I see little evidence of "genius" on Singer's part. Oh, I'm sure his IQ is respectably above 100. But he's not really developed anything new here. At most, he's articulating the logical conclusion of a line of thought that's fairly obvious given the premises. And he certainly has a knack for publicity-generating pushing of hot buttons, but that doesn't count as "genius" in my estimation.
Do I care what you believe to be qualifications for being a "genius"? No. Did you miss the entire rationale for why I called him a genius? Obviously. Try reading my post.. again.
Throw off the shackles of conventional "thought", and actually ponder these weighty issues before making a snap judgement. The world will be better off for it.
This is namecalling. It's a sophisticated way of saying "if you don't think like me, you're obviously not thinking."
Since you don't seem to comprehend anything other than the most direct and base of speech, let me enlighten you of my opinion: You are an idiot. You are reading too much into what I am saying. This is not what I was implying. I was implying nothing, actually. There is no implicit meaning. You obviously chose to overlook the explicit meaning in order to hunt for ways to attack my arguement because the rest of your arguements against mine are an indication of utter cluelessness.
It means.. precisely.. what it says.. Or is that too much for you to grasp? I don't give a fuck if you think the same as I do. I simply believe people should actually ponder the facts of the matter before throwing their opinions into an arguement and attempting to support them as facts, as you have done throughout your post.
If you don't think that humans are a part of the natural world, or that we are not subject to natural selection, you clearly believe yourself to be an artificial life form.
At any rate, you, as have many others, have clearly misinterpreted my point. At least be original and misinterpret it in a way that hasn't been done previously.
The hubris of being exempt from natural selection? Most of civilization is an attempt to evade natural selection. Do you favor no one having eyeglasses, since that would help weed out the poor sighted? Is it a "disgusting way of thinking" to come up with allergy medication, or to treat possibly fatal congenital diseases, helping them spread to later generations? Like it or not, most of civilization interferes with natural selection.
As much as I enjoy having my words twisted around into meanings not previously intended.. I fail to see how this questions whether or not it is hubris to claim that humans are exempt from natural exemption. Indeed, there is a good argument against your points in the replies to your post preceding this one. I'm not quite sure what kind of point you are trying to make here.
The comparison to Hitler is more apt that you apparently think. Yes, he killed the Jews, whom he thought inferior. However, the sick, the weak, those with congenital diseases, the alcoholic, the mentally or physically infirm, these were all separated, prevented from reproducing (under the various German Health Acts), and were planned to be killed.
Excuse me, but we're talking about the two parents of their one child deciding whether or not to euthanize said child. I'm not sure how this directly correlates to one human trying to impose his "perfectionist" views upon the rest of the entire world.
As you point out, Singer isn't saying to make this mandatory. However, unless people disagree with him, his views could easily be adopted by the majority and become mandatory.
I believe what you mean to say "if people don't disagree with those who twist his views around and make them utterly extremist". If people agreed with what he's saying word for word, what you suggest would not be a possibility.
Finally, I simply find it strange that a bunch of supposed geeks, who often seem to take offense at the idea of parents controlling the lives of teenaged children, find nothing wrong with parents having complete control over their children's life and death.
Well, once you actually have a child and it becomes independent enough to make decisions on its own.. it's, well, an independent life form. Not some kind of "extension" of the parent. It is now a separate entity. That's a different arguement entirely.
At any rate, "supposed geeks"? I imagine that depends on whether you think of "geeks" as "free thinking free willed human beings with a strong attraction to those things nerdy or geek-like" or as "lumbering automatons who do not truly think for themselves and are simply clueless in a manner different than that of the rest of the world". Do you always call into question the "geekiness" of those who disagree with you? Are you the "top geek"? Have you subjugated us, and now we must obey your will and agree with your every thought? heh.
also wonder how, if "morality is wholly in your mind" and "there is nothing natural about it," why Hitler was evil?
"Hitler was evil"..? Is this a documented fact? Morality is highly subjective (or did you at some point note an all-encompassing moral code that every human abides by? I rather.. doubt.. it), and as such, you are stating an opinion, not a well known fact. Fact: I am male. Opinion: I am evil incarnate. Just because some (or many.. or most) people believe me to be evil, based on their own moralistic/ethical views, does that mean I am? Obviously that's subject to some debate. Please stop trying to weigh in your opinions as documented facts. At least feel free to look up "holy war" in the Jargon File, so you, as a "superior techno geek", may grasp the concept of why I find your arguements laughable in terms you can understand better.
In short, you're arguements don't make a bit of sense. If I didn't cover that enough for you, again, see the preceding replies.
I don't know whether you suffer. It is impossible for me to get inside your head and know what it feels like to be you. If we're talking about absolutely sure knowledge, the only suffering I can be absolutely sure of is my pain at the moment I experience it. But that's clearly a ridiculous position to take. It would mean, by an extension of your argument, that it's not wrong to stab you. Saying that we can't know whether animals suffer, however much evidence there is, is equally ridiculous.
This is an interesting way to twist my point around, and is quite far from my original point. I certainly made no claims as the ones presented in the last two sentences of the preceding paragraph. Let's try to stick a little closer to on topic.. This arguement can be taken in far too many directions for me to bother responding.;)
We have good reason to believe animals suffer as we do, therefore (to simplify slightly) I decided to become vegan. We do not have good evidence to believe plants suffer in any way. Yes, I have read "Secret Life of Plants", and some experiments look quite convincing, but the conclusion that plants feel pain is utterly unwarranted and a leap in the dark.
Obviously animals are capable of suffering. I never suggested otherwise. I believe your extremist twists on my statements were unwarranted, actually. What I was saying is that we don't have sufficient evidence to support claims either for or against whether or not plants suffer. Why? Because while animals are comparable to humans (big fscking surprise, humans are animals), the same is not true of plants. There's simply no way to know for sure. Until you can shed some light that invalidates that statement beyond all question, there's no point in continuing with this thread, now is there?
In any case, if plants could suffer we should still be vegan (I'm not seriously suggesting plants do feel pain, this is just for people with over-open minds).
"Over-open minds"? At what point should I stop thinking, pray tell? When you think I've thought too much? When too many people disagree with my opinions? When I won't content myself to not speaking out about how I feel? Anyone who truly believes that you can be "too open" is really just asking for someone to follow, at least every once in a while. Thinking for yourself.. is good..
As for the rest of your comment.. The world is hopelessly overpopulated with humans (there would be plenty of food to go around otherwise). Why is that? Because our precious technology allows us to overcome natural selection by attempting to place ourselves above it. In fact, that isn't quite what we did.. Instead, the changes the rules of the game, and the place where it is played, but the game in and of itself is quite the same.
A bit more to the point, however: I myself am not overly concerned with the "suffering" aspect of this entire arguement. I am merely stating that nothing is any more "deserving of life" than anything else. As such, I'll continue to eat whatever I deem appropriate. Sure, maybe eating beef consumes more resources than just eating grain, but you know, maybe I like eating beef? Certainly other animals can subsist on a broad range of things, though even they seem to prefer certain food sources over others in many cases.
At any rate.. I won't respond to any more arguements revolving around veganism! =P
Think about it from a thermodynamics-ish view, to get one pound of beef it takes 10 pounds of grain (this is a statistic I heard long ago, I'm assuming it's validity for the sake of argument, feel free to correct me). That 10 pounds of grain could have fed a bunch more people, more nutritiously, than the pound of beef.
The point I was trying to make, however (and by the way, I rather doubt that many vegans/vegetarians are subscribing to the theory you are presenting, since they ostensibly don't believe plants "suffer"), is that it is not "wrong" to take a life in order to survive, and that nothing is "undeserving of life". After all, when you get hungry, you've got to eat, right? I myself can't just soak up sunlight and suck nutrients and water out of the dirt with my roots. Thus, being an animal, something has to continually die in order for me to live, be it plant, animal, or both. Loss of life is not the primary issue at hand. The rationale behind certain actions, however, is.
I'm curious what caused your belief that vegans are by nature sick. Did you have a friend who just one day decided to stop eating dairy? They probably didn't do any research about proper nutrition. I know people who have been vegan for years and I know people who have tried it for weeks. It's all about eating properly, something most people don't do anyway.
*sigh* You are witnessing a typo, which has been covered in this thread as well.
I appreciate the gesture, but anytime someone makes this kind of blatant generalization I feel compelled to ask for evidence to support this statement. I can give you all sorts of anecdotal evidence to support my side, but I won't since anecdotal does not equal proof. Secondly, you seem to be operating under the misconception that there is some nutrient that humans need that can't be gotten from vegetables, care to elaborate?
To your first point: As I said, I misworded my statement. Besides, it is effectively impossible to avoid any blatant generalization whatsoever throughout the course of everyday speech. Or would you care to disagree with that notion?
As for your second point: I never said it was impossible to subsist on vegetables. It's obviously quite possible. The problem being, it's a little more difficult. Unsurprising, since most people who don't choose that lifestyle can't keep themselves healthy, anyway. That you are actually informed enough to avoid that pitfall is highly commendable.
In short, your proposed notion is incorrect. I am operating under no such misconception, and as such, feel no need to elaborate further on the point.
Are you being a bit disingenious? Assuming we start from the idea that scietific materialism does in fact explain the universe, we can know with a high degree of certainty that thoughts and feelings all originate in the brain. Plants don't have brains, nor any apparent mechanism that would allow them to consciously experience any sensation.
You should always question what we "know". Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Egyptians not "know" what the brain was for? They thought vital organs such as the heart to be very important, but could not divine the purpose of the brain. Didn't they think it was worthless? Clearly we think such a thing laugable.. now.. Who's to say that plants do not have some mechanism by which they feel pain? What will we "know" twenty or thirty years from now?
Yeah sure, we could be wrong (just as you might be wrong in not believing that I'm actually a unicorn who came here from Mars yesterday), but we can make reasonable pronouncements if we can safely lower the probability to insignificant levels (like the probability of me being a Martian unicorn).
I'm not really refuting what is "probable". I'm talking about what is "possible". Besides which, what is "probable" depends strongly upon what we "know".
So basically it appears very reasonable to say that plants don't have feelings and especially don't consciously suffer therfore it is ok to eat them. Animals might be able to suffer (and some we are more certain about) therefore it is most likely wrong to eat them (according to this ethical basis).
This all appeals to the idea that ethical concerns such as this even make sense. Where does one draw the line for this kind of thing? Are carnivorous animals "evil" or "wrong" for eating other animals? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that whenever a wolf or a lion decides to attack something, they (the prey) are going to survive a little longer and feel a little more pain than the relatively quick and painless death a human could deal out to an animal (which is not to say that such is always the case.. though if you're going to slaughter an animal for food, or whatever, it seems to make the most sense to do it as painlessly as possible.. there's really no point in causing it to suffer any more than it has to).
Point being, I'm not concerned with ethical concerns, nor am I arguing with the idea of whether or not it is "right" to be a vegan. I don't care if anyone is a vegan or not. And I don't see any point in involving ethics in such a decision, because to me, such ethical reasoning is inherently flawed. Those are my opinions. I see no further need to argue these points, however. I believe we've covered the relavent ground. So, to each his (or her) own.
Except for the fact that the "parents" are not the ones doing the natural selection. Usually the weak or sick are taken from the population by predators. Natural selection is just that...natural. As soon as people start trying to enforce natural selection it is no longer natural. Thus the argument doesn't really apply to this situation.
There are many other examples (too many, one might say), but I'll list one I've actually witnessed. Have you ever seen a dog give birth to a litter of pups? Have you ever seen a dog eat those pups if they were far too sickly (or whatever) to survive anyway? Guess what..? I have.
And since you obviously missed the point, humans are still a part of the natural world. Or do you indeed believe we are above it? If so, I'm surprised you didn't take a stronger arguement against my thoughts on the matter.
What hubris it is for humans to even dare suggest that they are indeed exempt from natural selection.
Not exempt, but certainly in the western world, the forces of natural selection are very slight. In the absence of strong selective forces, and with the degree of intelligence we possess, humanity is relatively resistant to natural selection. Conscious selection plays a much more significant role. Interestingly, Dawkins suggest that intelligence should be a tool for us to rise above "base darwinian interests", but doesn't really say why.
I'm not quite sure how this "criticism" (what in the hell are we criticising here??) puts a hole into anything I said. Are we criticising the idea that humanity suggests it is exempt from natural selection, or whether or not there is any truth to the matter? If you are striving toward the latter, and somehow think of this statement as criticism of myself, I daresay you aren't tracking this discussion very well and need to reread it a few times. OTOH, if you meant the former.. Well, I can't really see that, or else your arguement lacks even more direction and sense.
Do you think that out in the wild parents (read animals) allow their offspring to go on living if it is clear that they can not fend for themselves? Clearly not. Only the strong survive. This is the natural way of things. The only thing that separates humans from the natural world is their disgusting way of thinking.
Ah, here we are. In nature this would happen, and again we hear the mantra "natural good, artificial bad". To quote Hume (badly) "Simply because something is the case, doesn't mean it ought to be the case. Since we are not living in a situation where the survival of the human race is at stake, or indeed the survival of anything else, arguments based on natural selection aren't relevant. Your further appeals to natural order founder on the same problem.
At this point you appear to be reaching coherency. At any rate.. I suppose that if I believed that we ought to live in a world where humans fashion weapons of mass destruction, subjugate other species and even other groups of humans, believe they are the ultimate masters of the fate of the world and all of its inhabitants, etc., then I might agree with anything you are saying so far. At this point I can only ask this: Even if a huge meteor struck the earth and wiped out every last human, or if we launched nuclear weapons which wiped out every last human, do you believe that life on earth would end? Do you really think that humans are the "masters" of this world? If not, then how can they not be a part of the natural world, and as such, subject to its laws?
Further, my points are a little deeper than a fscking mantra such as the one you suggest. Am I against technology for its own sake? No. Is it artificial? Ah, most of it would kind of have to be, no? What I'm so obviously against is the idea that something so easily found in the natural world could be considered "evil" or "wrong". Or did you miss that?
But in any case, this is a rather poor defence of Singers philosophy; he's by no means a shoddy thinker.
Could someone from the class please point out precisely when and where I stated that I agreed with Singer's philosophy?? I'll save you the effort: I didn't.
At any rate, I find it laughable that you think my arguements so poor, and yet you obviously failed miserably in your interpretations of my points. Care to try again?
(also think about how sick vegans and such get because it's so hard to maintain a healthy diet without eating any kind of animal product)
..for that oversight. Please insert the word "many" right before "vegans". In a post this long, however, I'm bound to make mistakes like these. *sigh*
The question is not whether the organism is alive, but whether it has significant enough cognitive abilities to experience suffering. Plants have no brains, therefore they cannot suffer.
Even if I were to agree with you, which I don't, having never been a plant, I can safely we say "we don't know anything for sure about what it's like to be a plant". People who haven't been raped can't even understand what it's like to be a rape victim. They can say they do, but do they truly understand? I think not. Therefore, it seems a little.. well. It seems untoward to assume one can assume what it's like to be a plant. Humans don't even fully understand how the human brain functions.
Besides which, to me, most ethical concerns are largely religious concerns. Most religious seem to agree on the notion that humans have souls. Is there proof to back this up? No. Even if it were true, is there proof that other life forms don't have souls? No. Perhaps plants have souls and their souls allow them to feel? No way to know for sure. We're not plants.
However.. as I stated more clearly farther down in the article, I could care less one way or the other if someone is vegan. It's their choice. To me, neither choice is any more "ethical" than the other.
So.. humans are better than animals, right? Well, hell yeah! Let's go kick a mangy pack of dogs for fun..
Damn. How.. Oh, nevermind. Everything and everyone is (equally!!) "deserving of life", though not everything and everyone is "fit to survive". Perhaps you should examine the differences a little before you jump the gun.
Slashdot Mirror
..but I've heard several people claim that their Windows 95 boxen never crash, either. I've seen them crash on a more than daily basis myself, and have yet to hear an account from a strictly reliable source that claims an NT box to survive more than a week or two without crashing.
It's nice to know that you have decided to refuse to face reality. There is already a term for what GNU/Linux is. It's a clone. Why? Because it did not evolve from the original Unix code. *BSD and their predecessors, however, did. That is why they are referred to as "derivatives". You'll find that the definitions for these words are rather widely accepted beyond the court room, and somehow I doubt that it was a lawyer who coined them in this particular context (i.e., with regards to software, code, whatever).
A note to others who believe they can refute facts with opinions: I'm not interested. Go sit in a corner obsessed with your denial of the truth somewhere else.
From Dennis Ritchie..
It seems odd that he would refer to GNU/Linux as a derivative of Unix (I would assume from the context that he is referring to the entire system), since it is clearly not. If it was, it wouldn't be any different from the 80 or so flavors of Unix already out there.. What makes it so different is that most of it was built from practically the ground up (for example, the compiler, gcc). Which rock has Dennis been hiding under lately? Or is he just full of ego these days..?
Not meant to incite (for all you DR fans out there.. ;), but to me this comment seems a little odd.. Otherwise a nice gesture, however.
ESR has often complained about being flamed rather than being given constructive criticism (e.g., the Bruce Perens/ESR dispute), so I simply have to wonder.. Exactly how will he react to criticism like this, which is much more academic in nature?
Of course, the reason why this comes to mind is because of a post in a previous discussion (I believe regarding ESR's answers to the questions posed by Slashdot) that suggested that flaming ESR was pointless because it would engender an attitude in him along the lines of "no, you don't understand. I'm right, you're wrong, so get out of my way".
Ok, well.. Maybe it's just a little too early in the morning for rational thought, but would you care to explain that a little further? It's not making a lot of sense to me at the moment.
What do you consider to be a "legitimate" word? As in, a "not made up" word? Like, what, girl? Girl is a word, and I'm sure a search for that word would yield more than just a couple of porn sites. Besides, are you really subjected to the porn itself during a search on a search engine (well, on Google I mean.. Yahoo! is more annoying)?
Besides which, what do you mean by the "idea behind" it? That it's a good idea to sue every site under the sun for misreprenting themselves through "inappropriate" usage of keywords in their meta tags? Did it recently become a crime to lie? If so, I would like to state for the record that I am the richest man in the world, not Bill Gates. So, send me to jail now?
And no, this time I'm not trying to flame. I'm geniunely and completely boggled . Someone care to explain.. politely?
Ok. Let me set you straight. I never said we were avoiding natural selection. I said the opposite several times. There's no way around it. That said, you are just about the dumbest fscking idiot I've ever had the misfortune of having to read their pathetic excuse for "commentary". If you're going to refute my assertions, at least refute the assertions I actually made myself, rather than responding to the ones you made up in your head and subsequently attributed to me.
Or do you like looking stupid in front of everyone else?
The rest of your comment is likewise so much drivel. I've stated and restated my point throughout this entire thread. I've spent more time responding to comments on this thread than I have posting onto any other discussion this whole week. The least you could do is actually fscking read the damn things before you continue to bother the hell out of me. Since you won't, however, feel free to chat with yourself for a while, because I have no further comments to make on this or any other post here today.
So humans are the masters of the world? We control nature? We are unto gods? And practically everyone who responded to my thread wondered why I said hubris .. Guess what, genius? Cockroaches are evolutionarily superior to humans. Pretty funny, don't you think? Guess what else? After humans are long since dead, cockroaches will still be around. So will nature. So will the earth. So.. how precisely are we its masters? Simple. We're not. We'd like to think so, however.
Actually, try this little experiment: wander off into some woods that are populated by wolves. Don't take a gun. Figure out how high up on the food chain you actually are. I'd certainly like to see the wolf consider your "value" as a life form.
First off, that's not what I said. Second off, I explicitly stated more times than I can count that all things are equally "deserving of life" but not all things are equally "able to survive" it.
This is probably the least enlightened and/or original arguement I've seen yet. It practically boils down to "no you're wrong, and I'm right".
I'd venture to say that I worked in a natural foods store as an assistant bakery manager for some time. Indeed, one might say that since I rose to the position of assistant manager, I was there for a while. I'd then venture to say that you're wrong. I'd also venture to say that most people in general are not very healthy. Finally, I'd venture to say that the entire point was to stimulate thought. Apparently I stimulated more thought in some than others (and no, I'm not going to explicitly point out precisely who I mean by that.. just don't assume anything ;).
Oh, and by the way, most importantly.. "Many" is defined as "a large number of persons or things". The word "large" is even more subjective. I could state that I believed any number more than 1 (hell, I could even say the number 1) was a "large" number. That said, precisely how do you plan to go about proving my statement factually incorrect? By proving that there are no unhealthy vegans anywhere in the world? That's patently ridiculous.
As I said, I made a typographical error. I apologize. However, with the correction to the sentence, there is nothing left for you to disprove about that sentence. Thank you, and good day.
..for clueless replies? I never addressed the issue of who owned the fscking company. Paul Allen is not an employee , and guess what? That's all I said!! Get a clue. Respond to a post where what you said is even vaguely relavent.
This post that I'm replying to is one of the shining examples of why I flame people. If more humans put that "vaunted intellect" of theirs to good use before shooting their mouths off, I wouldn't feel so inclined to refer to them as total idiots.
..but I seriously doubt "open sourcing" Windows would go a very long way toward making it a more viable OS than the alternatives. Too messy. I'm sure there would be some interest, however, due to a variety of reasons. :)
"That MS guy" doesn't work there. He helped fund the founding of the company IIRC. Not exactly the same thing. Linus Torvalds, however, is indeed an employee.
If you're really interested in finding out all you can about Transmeta, I'd imagine doing a search on Google or Slashdot for "Transmeta" would give you a good amount of information. Personally, I'd choose the latter. You can read all the "relavent" articles and see all the wild-eyed speculation, as well.
..which I'm sort of surprised you didn't just come out and say: How many of us would prefer going back, slashing, then completely reworking all of the code for Windows so that it is actually a viable, stable operating system that does something useful besides, well, look pretty? GNU/Linux (and a multitude of other good OSes, like *BSD) are already stable, and with a nice selection of desktop environments and window managers, I think can make a lot of them pretty, too. ;)
Well, with that in mind, I'm going to pay off Sun with a ton of money for the right to call myself Java. However, does that make me a programming language? Clearly not.
I'm talking about technical details, not whether or not some fscking idiot wants to get permission from a trademark owner to call something something it's not. And as I clearly mentioned before, I never said Linux was certified anything!
Get a clue, people.
First off, your base dismissal of my response has no merit. Second off, Bartmoss over there has been flinging such base reactions at everything even close to the top of the discussion of this article.
Perhaps if you actually read the article, you would understand how my comment makes sense. Since you, like Bartmoss, apparently did not.. I see little reason in enlightening you. It really doesn't take that much to reach the fscking article, and I'm not going to bother parroting it.
Actually, just so you might figure something out and get a clue, I'll give you this: Obviously the parents are going to be the ones who ultimately decide. Ostensibly the doctor would give them the option of deciding if in his medical opinion the child was "ill-equipped to survive in the world" or whatever. The parents are obviously not going to have racist feelings toward their own child (at least not in "normal" circumstances.. please don't bore with examples right out of a Jerry Springer show), and the doctor is not going to decide if the child dies. The parents will. Does this not make sense to you, Mr. Knee-Jerk Reaction?
And you people are accusing me of a lack of thought. Yeah. Sure.
So, anyone care to mention how the "race card" is going to be played in this scenario? Don't bother responding to me personally.. I've had enough conversation on this article. See closer to the bottom of the discussion if you care.
Who, you? My comments are only out of context if you don't bother to read the article. At least brush up on your English before you bother trying to debunk my commentary. You seem to be missing a word somewhere in your post.. Amazing for such a short one. Do you know what the preview button is for, by any chance?
Most of this has been covered. Perhaps you should read this entire thread before posting more comments? I'll stick to the things that have had little coverage so far.
Do I care what you believe to be qualifications for being a "genius"? No. Did you miss the entire rationale for why I called him a genius? Obviously. Try reading my post.. again.
Since you don't seem to comprehend anything other than the most direct and base of speech, let me enlighten you of my opinion: You are an idiot. You are reading too much into what I am saying. This is not what I was implying. I was implying nothing, actually. There is no implicit meaning. You obviously chose to overlook the explicit meaning in order to hunt for ways to attack my arguement because the rest of your arguements against mine are an indication of utter cluelessness.
It means.. precisely.. what it says.. Or is that too much for you to grasp? I don't give a fuck if you think the same as I do. I simply believe people should actually ponder the facts of the matter before throwing their opinions into an arguement and attempting to support them as facts, as you have done throughout your post.
If you don't think that humans are a part of the natural world, or that we are not subject to natural selection, you clearly believe yourself to be an artificial life form.
At any rate, you, as have many others, have clearly misinterpreted my point. At least be original and misinterpret it in a way that hasn't been done previously.
As much as I enjoy having my words twisted around into meanings not previously intended.. I fail to see how this questions whether or not it is hubris to claim that humans are exempt from natural exemption. Indeed, there is a good argument against your points in the replies to your post preceding this one. I'm not quite sure what kind of point you are trying to make here.
Excuse me, but we're talking about the two parents of their one child deciding whether or not to euthanize said child. I'm not sure how this directly correlates to one human trying to impose his "perfectionist" views upon the rest of the entire world.
I believe what you mean to say "if people don't disagree with those who twist his views around and make them utterly extremist". If people agreed with what he's saying word for word, what you suggest would not be a possibility.
Well, once you actually have a child and it becomes independent enough to make decisions on its own.. it's, well, an independent life form. Not some kind of "extension" of the parent. It is now a separate entity. That's a different arguement entirely.
At any rate, "supposed geeks"? I imagine that depends on whether you think of "geeks" as "free thinking free willed human beings with a strong attraction to those things nerdy or geek-like" or as "lumbering automatons who do not truly think for themselves and are simply clueless in a manner different than that of the rest of the world". Do you always call into question the "geekiness" of those who disagree with you? Are you the "top geek"? Have you subjugated us, and now we must obey your will and agree with your every thought? heh.
"Hitler was evil"..? Is this a documented fact? Morality is highly subjective (or did you at some point note an all-encompassing moral code that every human abides by? I rather.. doubt.. it), and as such, you are stating an opinion, not a well known fact . Fact: I am male. Opinion: I am evil incarnate. Just because some (or many.. or most) people believe me to be evil, based on their own moralistic/ethical views, does that mean I am? Obviously that's subject to some debate. Please stop trying to weigh in your opinions as documented facts. At least feel free to look up "holy war" in the Jargon File, so you, as a "superior techno geek", may grasp the concept of why I find your arguements laughable in terms you can understand better.
In short, you're arguements don't make a bit of sense. If I didn't cover that enough for you, again, see the preceding replies.
This is an interesting way to twist my point around, and is quite far from my original point. I certainly made no claims as the ones presented in the last two sentences of the preceding paragraph. Let's try to stick a little closer to on topic.. This arguement can be taken in far too many directions for me to bother responding. ;)
Obviously animals are capable of suffering. I never suggested otherwise. I believe your extremist twists on my statements were unwarranted, actually. What I was saying is that we don't have sufficient evidence to support claims either for or against whether or not plants suffer. Why? Because while animals are comparable to humans (big fscking surprise, humans are animals), the same is not true of plants. There's simply no way to know for sure. Until you can shed some light that invalidates that statement beyond all question, there's no point in continuing with this thread, now is there?
"Over-open minds"? At what point should I stop thinking, pray tell? When you think I've thought too much? When too many people disagree with my opinions? When I won't content myself to not speaking out about how I feel? Anyone who truly believes that you can be "too open" is really just asking for someone to follow, at least every once in a while. Thinking for yourself.. is good..
As for the rest of your comment.. The world is hopelessly overpopulated with humans (there would be plenty of food to go around otherwise). Why is that? Because our precious technology allows us to overcome natural selection by attempting to place ourselves above it. In fact, that isn't quite what we did.. Instead, the changes the rules of the game, and the place where it is played, but the game in and of itself is quite the same.
A bit more to the point, however: I myself am not overly concerned with the "suffering" aspect of this entire arguement. I am merely stating that nothing is any more "deserving of life" than anything else. As such, I'll continue to eat whatever I deem appropriate. Sure, maybe eating beef consumes more resources than just eating grain, but you know, maybe I like eating beef? Certainly other animals can subsist on a broad range of things, though even they seem to prefer certain food sources over others in many cases.
At any rate.. I won't respond to any more arguements revolving around veganism! =P
That point has already been asserted in this thread. =P
The point I was trying to make, however (and by the way, I rather doubt that many vegans/vegetarians are subscribing to the theory you are presenting, since they ostensibly don't believe plants "suffer"), is that it is not "wrong" to take a life in order to survive, and that nothing is "undeserving of life". After all, when you get hungry, you've got to eat, right? I myself can't just soak up sunlight and suck nutrients and water out of the dirt with my roots. Thus, being an animal, something has to continually die in order for me to live, be it plant, animal, or both. Loss of life is not the primary issue at hand. The rationale behind certain actions, however, is.
*sigh* You are witnessing a typo, which has been covered in this thread as well.
To your first point: As I said, I misworded my statement. Besides, it is effectively impossible to avoid any blatant generalization whatsoever throughout the course of everyday speech. Or would you care to disagree with that notion?
As for your second point: I never said it was impossible to subsist on vegetables. It's obviously quite possible. The problem being, it's a little more difficult. Unsurprising, since most people who don't choose that lifestyle can't keep themselves healthy, anyway. That you are actually informed enough to avoid that pitfall is highly commendable.
In short, your proposed notion is incorrect. I am operating under no such misconception, and as such, feel no need to elaborate further on the point.
You should always question what we "know". Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Egyptians not "know" what the brain was for? They thought vital organs such as the heart to be very important, but could not divine the purpose of the brain. Didn't they think it was worthless? Clearly we think such a thing laugable.. now.. Who's to say that plants do not have some mechanism by which they feel pain? What will we "know" twenty or thirty years from now?
I'm not really refuting what is "probable". I'm talking about what is "possible". Besides which, what is "probable" depends strongly upon what we "know".
This all appeals to the idea that ethical concerns such as this even make sense. Where does one draw the line for this kind of thing? Are carnivorous animals "evil" or "wrong" for eating other animals? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that whenever a wolf or a lion decides to attack something, they (the prey) are going to survive a little longer and feel a little more pain than the relatively quick and painless death a human could deal out to an animal (which is not to say that such is always the case.. though if you're going to slaughter an animal for food, or whatever, it seems to make the most sense to do it as painlessly as possible.. there's really no point in causing it to suffer any more than it has to).
Point being, I'm not concerned with ethical concerns, nor am I arguing with the idea of whether or not it is "right" to be a vegan. I don't care if anyone is a vegan or not. And I don't see any point in involving ethics in such a decision, because to me, such ethical reasoning is inherently flawed. Those are my opinions. I see no further need to argue these points, however. I believe we've covered the relavent ground. So, to each his (or her) own.
There are many other examples (too many, one might say), but I'll list one I've actually witnessed. Have you ever seen a dog give birth to a litter of pups? Have you ever seen a dog eat those pups if they were far too sickly (or whatever) to survive anyway? Guess what..? I have.
And since you obviously missed the point, humans are still a part of the natural world. Or do you indeed believe we are above it? If so, I'm surprised you didn't take a stronger arguement against my thoughts on the matter.
I'm not quite sure how this "criticism" (what in the hell are we criticising here??) puts a hole into anything I said. Are we criticising the idea that humanity suggests it is exempt from natural selection, or whether or not there is any truth to the matter? If you are striving toward the latter, and somehow think of this statement as criticism of myself, I daresay you aren't tracking this discussion very well and need to reread it a few times. OTOH, if you meant the former.. Well, I can't really see that, or else your arguement lacks even more direction and sense.
At this point you appear to be reaching coherency. At any rate.. I suppose that if I believed that we ought to live in a world where humans fashion weapons of mass destruction, subjugate other species and even other groups of humans, believe they are the ultimate masters of the fate of the world and all of its inhabitants, etc., then I might agree with anything you are saying so far. At this point I can only ask this: Even if a huge meteor struck the earth and wiped out every last human, or if we launched nuclear weapons which wiped out every last human, do you believe that life on earth would end? Do you really think that humans are the "masters" of this world? If not, then how can they not be a part of the natural world, and as such, subject to its laws?
Further, my points are a little deeper than a fscking mantra such as the one you suggest. Am I against technology for its own sake? No. Is it artificial? Ah, most of it would kind of have to be, no? What I'm so obviously against is the idea that something so easily found in the natural world could be considered "evil" or "wrong". Or did you miss that?
Could someone from the class please point out precisely when and where I stated that I agreed with Singer's philosophy ?? I'll save you the effort: I didn't.
At any rate, I find it laughable that you think my arguements so poor, and yet you obviously failed miserably in your interpretations of my points. Care to try again?
..for that oversight. Please insert the word "many" right before "vegans". In a post this long, however, I'm bound to make mistakes like these. *sigh*
Even if I were to agree with you, which I don't, having never been a plant, I can safely we say "we don't know anything for sure about what it's like to be a plant". People who haven't been raped can't even understand what it's like to be a rape victim. They can say they do, but do they truly understand ? I think not. Therefore, it seems a little.. well. It seems untoward to assume one can assume what it's like to be a plant. Humans don't even fully understand how the human brain functions.
Besides which, to me, most ethical concerns are largely religious concerns. Most religious seem to agree on the notion that humans have souls. Is there proof to back this up? No. Even if it were true, is there proof that other life forms don't have souls? No. Perhaps plants have souls and their souls allow them to feel? No way to know for sure. We're not plants.
However.. as I stated more clearly farther down in the article, I could care less one way or the other if someone is vegan. It's their choice. To me, neither choice is any more "ethical" than the other.
So.. humans are better than animals, right? Well, hell yeah! Let's go kick a mangy pack of dogs for fun..
Damn. How.. Oh, nevermind. Everything and everyone is ( equally!! ) "deserving of life", though not everything and everyone is "fit to survive". Perhaps you should examine the differences a little before you jump the gun.