...And just because you haven't read up much on ancient rome/greece doesn't mean that their form of slavery wasn't fairly gracious...
I had prepared to respond with information about roman slavery, I was even going to expose my own biblical ignorance and ask when we started talking about rome and not jews, but I realized that the heart of this debate lies in the last part of your comment.
So, you should think of ancient slaves as sort of adopted people along with contracted workers.
This is where you show your perspective to be a bit off. Allow me to illustrate:
(proto-christians ride up to a walled city) Hey, everyone inside! All you farmers and bankers and free men, we are here to conqour you! You have two options. You can either open the gates, let us in, and we will adopt all of you. Or, you can resist, and we will take all your stuff and kill all your men! So which is it?
(King of the city) Well, the addoption sounds better than the killing. What exactly does that entail?
(Proto-Christian) Well, we are gonna take all of your stuff and then give you a job.
(King) Well, that doesn't sound great, what kind of job?
(Proto-Christian) Dunno, hadn't thought about it. Tilling a field all day long, maybe something in waste management? Don't worry, after like 3 years, you can be un-adopted.
(King) Oh, and after that will you give me all my stuff back?
(Proto-Christian) Oh no, God is giving that all to us.
(King) Sounds pretty crappy compared to my current job. In fact, it sounds crappy compared to most peoples jobs in this city. Archers, open fire, we will take our chances. You can keep your adoption.
God, where he to exist, should be able to mandate a better situation than this, and should be far above negotiating with the locals until they get into "less evil" behavior. And let me tell you, if I was offered this form of "adoption", I would happily put a bullet in the brain of the person offering it.
In fairness, your comment was not an outright support of the practice of raising towns, but what I am trying to illustrate is that just because the slaves of the time were well treated, doesn't make this sort of thing any less morally reprehensible. Many people (our founding fathers being one good example) would rather die than have even a happy friendly form of slavery forced upon them.
It's true that the King James Version of the english Bible translates that passage "Thou shalt not kill" but the NIV, NKJV, NASB and others translate that passage "Thou shalt not murder."
I have heard this argument before, and it has always smelled deeply of fish to me. Here is my problem in a nutshell. Let us assume the role of god. Now as God, we know everything that is, was, or ever shall be. We know exactly how many times the bible will be translated, into what languages, and plan to take a direct hand (through the holy ghost) in helping the translators get it exactly right.
BTW, this is the rational that many of the fundies around here have presented to me. The bible is the word of god by way of divine inspiration.
Anyway, to continue our premise, all the permutations are known before hand. Being infallible beings, we have a very important message that we need to give to all mankind. Something so vitally important, that we can't over word it, we can't muddle the meaning to interpretation. This message is just too darn important for them to be arguing over! So we choose four simple words. Words so blunt and clear that they can not be mistaken and they can not be argued. Thou shalt not kill.
Now, when that doesn't fit into their personal beliefs, people start arguing "Kill is supposed to mean murder!" Well, as the bible never makes an accurate definition between kill and murder, that doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference, does it?
Anyway, when presented with arguments such as these, I imagine you can understand why many of us non-Christians have a hard time trusting Christians ability to reason. When they can't when the argument, they tend to change the premise.
I have heard this many times before, but have yet to see references from which these facts are gleaned. Simply put, could they leave? Did they have freedom to do or go as they pleased? One could just as easily argue that american slaves were paid in food and shelter, that wouldn't make it any less repugnant. In fact, if it was so desireable of a lifestyle, why were the jews so up and ready to get out of egypt (which I seriously doubt was ever the case anyway)?
At best, your argument illustrates more that we should be taking a serious look at how to make "border hoppers" less like slaves, than throwing up our hands and saying, "Sometimes, slavery just ain't that bad."
I say the US has done a fine job in managing whatever it is managing.
And this gets modded insightful?
Our general stance of "my toy, go away" works for a lot of things, such as nukes, primarily because other countries have a hard time implementing them or affording their creation. DNS is NOT SUCH AN ITEM!
To be absolutely clear on this, if the rest of the world is so inclined, they can create their own TLDs for DNS. More importantly, they can, if they so desired, spoof our DNS completely. It would not be easy in the sense of flipping a switch, but it would be very easy compared to say, launching a major offensive.
Here are the implications of spoofing, in as close to layman terms as I can create. Yahoo.com points to a place here in the states (yeah, I know about redirects, but I am trying to keep this simple). If the UK wanted to, they could spoof the system so that any time a UK resident typed in "yahoo.com", it went to some decidedly non-US company. Or how about Ford.com.
In this case, the rest of the world can quite literally have a party on the internet to which we are not invited.
If my mod points hadn't expired yesterday, I would be moding you through the roof! This is one of the most coherent and well thought out posts I have ever seen, or am ever likely to see on slashdot.
While you post largely correct, there is one simple economic point that a lot of people miss about location.
For most buisness models, close to the customer = less expenses. If you distribute food items to vending machines in a city, you will make more money the less you have to drive to your end customer.
In the case if internet buisnesses, you will get better deals on bandwidth in an area that already has lots of bandwidth for end customers (cities with broadband) than having a pipe delivered to a fallout shelter in the mountains.
Also, never EVER underestimate the market forces of "supporting the local economy." Sometimes the customers will find you because of that alone.
a dry place to sleep is the real need.
Which is why bringing in communications equipment is a good idea. The sooner that victims can arange to be somewhere other than a shelter (by calling family, finding out of town shelters, etc.), the sooner you will have an extra bed for someone who doesn't have that option.
Maybe now that the power is down, all that broadband-over-power-lines will be down so the ham radio operators can help with the truly urgent info.
Well, not to flame, but if you had a child that had just moved into the dorm at UNO, and you didn't know if they were alive or not, your definition of "urgent info" might change a bit.
This is not an either/or circumstance, bringing in a satalite phone or 2 is not going to cause the survivors to start keeling over. I am sure if it were the choice between a life and a phone, the red cross would choose the life.
Ha, that's nothing, I live in NE Louisiana and have a family member who lives in Texas. Every time I try to call her using my land line, I get an "all circuits are busy" message. Hopefully it will slack off by this evening.
There's much more information on how developers, including open source developers...
HOW DARE YOU! You can't include open source developers as a sub category of developers! When you say developers, you better mean closed source developers! We don't let that open source scum use our compilers and such, so we refuse to let the word "developers" mean "all developers". Don't you go insinuating that it should include OTHER TYPES OF DEVELOPERS when we say DEVELOPERS!
And while we are at it, Perl Developers aren't developers either. Lump them in the cryptographers, we don't want them.
Most humans are either too ignorant (not stupid) or too arrogant, and think that the only way an organism can 'live' anywhere must be by our own standards as seen on Earth.
Ok, you could have saved yourself a lot of righteous indignation by doing a 3 second search on google.
Biologists studying primitive organisms all agree on one thing. Liquid water is absolutely essential for life to evolve and survive. The search for life on other worlds is a search for places where water can exist in liquid form. But why is water so precious?
For life to evolve, simple chemicals must combine to form more complex ones. Many chemicals dissolve in water allowing them to mix together and react
Liquid water is the right temperature for chemical reactions to happen
Many chemicals have parts which are attracted to water and parts which are repelled by it. These forces also help reactions happen
Basically, what you are proposing is that life may exist that doesn't follow the rules of basic chemistry. While that may very well be the case, it is more the realm of philosophy than it is the realm of anything we recognize as science.
Outrageous speculation (no matter how well reasoned you assume it is) is no substitute for good old research.
I have to agree here. I caught the "What's up with Fan Pro" seminar, and I think the new rules accomplish nicely their stated goal, which was to make them easier and more accessable to new players. Now, I am not entirely sure I am fond of their new damage system, but much of the game has become MUCH easier without sacraficing the benefits of their previous systems. Additionally, as far as I am aware, no other system has ever done anything remotely like the new "glitches" where you can both succeed and fail at a task at the same time. Give yourself some time to get used to the new rules and I am sure you will understand where they were going with it.
While bowing to the hilarity of your post, I would like to point out that most years (this one included) the floor of the convention hall can be fairly littered with goth girls in little more than their underware, booth babes that will accost anyone asking for a picture with speaches about the product they are boosting, and very pretty women wearing next to nothing "costumes".
I actually have about 200 pictures I have taken this year, but there is no way you can get me to link them on slashdot:)
It was the first booth that I hit, mainly because the new eddition of rifts (ultimate gold eddition), which contains some MUCH needed class balancing. The limited edditions were signed by everyone involved, and you could get a sketch by the featured artist for 15 bucks.
Of course, there were stacks of free Rifters, which disapeared by mid day on thursday.
Additionally, over at the n-gage booth, there was a playable version of the rifts video game ( why n-gage! )
Kevin was his usual jovial self, and I got a pic of him holding my ultimate eddition!
Ok, this is just a question, and in no way intended to be a troll.
I am sure this story will be praised by the slashdot crowd, and as I work for a mid sized ISP, I can't say I am upset to see it happen. I am, however, curious about implications of the free speech side of this.
Let us assume that instead of commercial spam, this was a single individual that was sending out an email about some governmental injustice. For instance, if he had a friend that was being held under patriot act provisions without trial. Sure, a lot of people would junk the message, but judging from the messages I get that start with RE:FWD:RE:FWD:(ad infinitum), a goodly number of people would likely read it.
My question to slashdot is; Should there be occasions where it is ok to spam, and if so, how do we legislate it? If it can be justified, is bulk commercial spam just the price we have to pay for another venue by which our citizens can freely express themselves?
I would be very much interested to see if anyone had any legal precedents in the world of snail mail that might apply.
...and the Democrats will justify it as "Oh, I don't like it, but we must beat Bush, he is worse".
I get your meaning, but just a small point here. Since Bush is in his second term, if he is on the ballot in 2008 we will likely have a lot bigger problems to consider than the candidates stance on the first amendment. Like how to goose step in formation and dodge the secret police.:)
Printed pages are NEVER anonymous. Apart from fingerprints, DNA traces, ink and paper matching, how many people print stuff that they pass out anonymously? Most letters have a sender, books and other prints have a copyright note. And once you distribute any printed materials, others can trace it back.
Good, so the government won't need our printers to add to the mountain of tracable evidence from every printing. Kindly call them for us and tell them that.
1. How to work with other people 2. How to get along with people you may not like 3. Discipline and focus, with regard to achieving a goal 4. Planning and stragety 5. Competitiveness, which certainly can help later in life if applied correctly
Ok, though I find football awfully boring, I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with it. However, I also believe that enrolling your child in football in order to learn these 5 lessons is a waste of his time. Football is, in my opinion, probably the least sport-like sport that has ever existed and while a football team benefits from the qualities that you mention, football doesn't do a heck of a lot to encourage them. Allow me to illustrate:
Teamwork: Offensively, the team doesn't really consist of the whole team. A small fraction of it actually runs or throws the ball. The rest just try to push the other guys over. If you are a QB or a receiver, some collusion is required, but for the rest of the team, picking a target and crushing it will suffice. Compare to my favorite sport, soccer, where everyone on the team needs to constantly be trying to get open or looking for someone who is open. The difference should be obvious.
Community: Now it may have just been my surroundings, but the people I played football with were some of the most factious and blindly aggressive human beings I have ever met. Practices were generally about settling scores in a way that coach couldn't see. Fights were common. I don't think this was because of football, but football does encourage more physical contact, so I do believe that it aggravates what is already there.
Focus: Well, perhaps, but certainly no more than any other activity your kid could be doing. In all likelihood much less. I would suggest that you want something OTHER than a sport for a child to learn this, something that lasts longer than a few hours. Give him a hammer and let him build a good tree house. Teach him to program and let him write a simple game. True focus has to stand the test of boredom, sports don't give a lot of opportunity for that, at least for the participants.
Planning and strategy: Well, sports again would be a bad place to look for this trait. Compared with most other activities your child could be doing (Risk anyone?), the strategies in football are so simplistic as to be laughable. Everything revolves around tricking, out running, or smashing the other team. Real strategy requires larger goals than just advancing the next 10 yards, and more complexity than everyone resetting to default positions every 5 seconds.
Competitiveness: I doubt this is a trait you will need to teach your child. They will more than likely have possessed it well before you enroll them in a sport. As soon as they learn winning is better than loosing, the rest will come naturally.
Now, I am not saying that sports are useless, quite the contrary. They have one very large benefit, health. Sadly football and sumo wrestling seem to be the only 2 sports where fat kids are acceptable. Get your kids into soccer or track. Something that will encourage them to get their heart rate up and keep it up.
As for the above traits, no sport is going to be the magic cure-all for teaching them to your children. Challenge the child as often as you can with new activities. Enroll them in sports to encourage their health, teach them karate so they can defend themselves, but remember that like most things, they will get out of them what they put into them. Those children who take discipline seriously will become more disciplined; those who don't will just learn some new tricks and have some fun.
Slashdot Mirror
...And just because you haven't read up much on ancient rome/greece doesn't mean that their form of slavery wasn't fairly gracious...
I had prepared to respond with information about roman slavery, I was even going to expose my own biblical ignorance and ask when we started talking about rome and not jews, but I realized that the heart of this debate lies in the last part of your comment.
So, you should think of ancient slaves as sort of adopted people along with contracted workers.
This is where you show your perspective to be a bit off. Allow me to illustrate:
(proto-christians ride up to a walled city) Hey, everyone inside! All you farmers and bankers and free men, we are here to conqour you! You have two options. You can either open the gates, let us in, and we will adopt all of you. Or, you can resist, and we will take all your stuff and kill all your men! So which is it?
(King of the city) Well, the addoption sounds better than the killing. What exactly does that entail?
(Proto-Christian) Well, we are gonna take all of your stuff and then give you a job.
(King) Well, that doesn't sound great, what kind of job?
(Proto-Christian) Dunno, hadn't thought about it. Tilling a field all day long, maybe something in waste management? Don't worry, after like 3 years, you can be un-adopted.
(King) Oh, and after that will you give me all my stuff back?
(Proto-Christian) Oh no, God is giving that all to us.
(King) Sounds pretty crappy compared to my current job. In fact, it sounds crappy compared to most peoples jobs in this city. Archers, open fire, we will take our chances. You can keep your adoption.
God, where he to exist, should be able to mandate a better situation than this, and should be far above negotiating with the locals until they get into "less evil" behavior. And let me tell you, if I was offered this form of "adoption", I would happily put a bullet in the brain of the person offering it.
In fairness, your comment was not an outright support of the practice of raising towns, but what I am trying to illustrate is that just because the slaves of the time were well treated, doesn't make this sort of thing any less morally reprehensible. Many people (our founding fathers being one good example) would rather die than have even a happy friendly form of slavery forced upon them.
It's true that the King James Version of the english Bible translates that passage "Thou shalt not kill" but the NIV, NKJV, NASB and others translate that passage "Thou shalt not murder."
I have heard this argument before, and it has always smelled deeply of fish to me. Here is my problem in a nutshell. Let us assume the role of god. Now as God, we know everything that is, was, or ever shall be. We know exactly how many times the bible will be translated, into what languages, and plan to take a direct hand (through the holy ghost) in helping the translators get it exactly right.
BTW, this is the rational that many of the fundies around here have presented to me. The bible is the word of god by way of divine inspiration.
Anyway, to continue our premise, all the permutations are known before hand. Being infallible beings, we have a very important message that we need to give to all mankind. Something so vitally important, that we can't over word it, we can't muddle the meaning to interpretation. This message is just too darn important for them to be arguing over! So we choose four simple words. Words so blunt and clear that they can not be mistaken and they can not be argued. Thou shalt not kill.
Now, when that doesn't fit into their personal beliefs, people start arguing "Kill is supposed to mean murder!" Well, as the bible never makes an accurate definition between kill and murder, that doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference, does it?
Anyway, when presented with arguments such as these, I imagine you can understand why many of us non-Christians have a hard time trusting Christians ability to reason. When they can't when the argument, they tend to change the premise.
I have heard this many times before, but have yet to see references from which these facts are gleaned. Simply put, could they leave? Did they have freedom to do or go as they pleased? One could just as easily argue that american slaves were paid in food and shelter, that wouldn't make it any less repugnant. In fact, if it was so desireable of a lifestyle, why were the jews so up and ready to get out of egypt (which I seriously doubt was ever the case anyway)? At best, your argument illustrates more that we should be taking a serious look at how to make "border hoppers" less like slaves, than throwing up our hands and saying, "Sometimes, slavery just ain't that bad."
I have a difficult time considering slavery enlightened, regardless of the context.
I say the US has done a fine job in managing whatever it is managing.
And this gets modded insightful?
Our general stance of "my toy, go away" works for a lot of things, such as nukes, primarily because other countries have a hard time implementing them or affording their creation. DNS is NOT SUCH AN ITEM!
To be absolutely clear on this, if the rest of the world is so inclined, they can create their own TLDs for DNS. More importantly, they can, if they so desired, spoof our DNS completely. It would not be easy in the sense of flipping a switch, but it would be very easy compared to say, launching a major offensive.
Here are the implications of spoofing, in as close to layman terms as I can create. Yahoo.com points to a place here in the states (yeah, I know about redirects, but I am trying to keep this simple). If the UK wanted to, they could spoof the system so that any time a UK resident typed in "yahoo.com", it went to some decidedly non-US company. Or how about Ford.com.
In this case, the rest of the world can quite literally have a party on the internet to which we are not invited.
If my mod points hadn't expired yesterday, I would be moding you through the roof! This is one of the most coherent and well thought out posts I have ever seen, or am ever likely to see on slashdot.
The appropriate response is to look for the knife in the other hand.
...no software, no games, no sense of self respect... :)
...no sense of humor.
Sorry, not actually a mac hater, but that was just hanging out there. Too good to pass up
And considering the flamebait portion of my moderation, let me add...
No open ports, no root access without password verification, no root password at all, no way to send executable attachments ...
...no software, no games, no sense of self respect...
:)
Sorry, not actually a mac hater, but that was just hanging out there. Too good to pass up
...of looking exactly like a pocket protector :)
Seriously though, am I the only one that thinks the iPod series has all the style and charm of an old rotary phone?
Maybe I am just wierd.
*shhh, can you hear it? That is what little karma I have shriveling...*
While you post largely correct, there is one simple economic point that a lot of people miss about location.
For most buisness models, close to the customer = less expenses. If you distribute food items to vending machines in a city, you will make more money the less you have to drive to your end customer.
In the case if internet buisnesses, you will get better deals on bandwidth in an area that already has lots of bandwidth for end customers (cities with broadband) than having a pipe delivered to a fallout shelter in the mountains.
Also, never EVER underestimate the market forces of "supporting the local economy." Sometimes the customers will find you because of that alone.
...this laptop I just looted!
Sorry, bad joke, but I couldn't help it.
a dry place to sleep is the real need. Which is why bringing in communications equipment is a good idea. The sooner that victims can arange to be somewhere other than a shelter (by calling family, finding out of town shelters, etc.), the sooner you will have an extra bed for someone who doesn't have that option. Maybe now that the power is down, all that broadband-over-power-lines will be down so the ham radio operators can help with the truly urgent info. Well, not to flame, but if you had a child that had just moved into the dorm at UNO, and you didn't know if they were alive or not, your definition of "urgent info" might change a bit. This is not an either/or circumstance, bringing in a satalite phone or 2 is not going to cause the survivors to start keeling over. I am sure if it were the choice between a life and a phone, the red cross would choose the life.
Yeah, just those annoying blackouts and riots, eh? :)
Ha, that's nothing, I live in NE Louisiana and have a family member who lives in Texas. Every time I try to call her using my land line, I get an "all circuits are busy" message. Hopefully it will slack off by this evening.
There's much more information on how developers, including open source developers...
HOW DARE YOU! You can't include open source developers as a sub category of developers! When you say developers, you better mean closed source developers! We don't let that open source scum use our compilers and such, so we refuse to let the word "developers" mean "all developers". Don't you go insinuating that it should include OTHER TYPES OF DEVELOPERS when we say DEVELOPERS!
And while we are at it, Perl Developers aren't developers either. Lump them in the cryptographers, we don't want them.
What about life as we do NOT know it?
s /index.shtml
Most humans are either too ignorant (not stupid) or too arrogant, and think that the only way an organism can 'live' anywhere must be by our own standards as seen on Earth.
Ok, you could have saved yourself a lot of righteous indignation by doing a 3 second search on google.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/life/beginning
Put succinctly on the BBC's web site...
Biologists studying primitive organisms all agree on one thing. Liquid water is absolutely essential for life to evolve and survive. The search for life on other worlds is a search for places where water can exist in liquid form. But why is water so precious?
For life to evolve, simple chemicals must combine to form more complex ones. Many chemicals dissolve in water allowing them to mix together and react
Liquid water is the right temperature for chemical reactions to happen
Many chemicals have parts which are attracted to water and parts which are repelled by it. These forces also help reactions happen
Basically, what you are proposing is that life may exist that doesn't follow the rules of basic chemistry. While that may very well be the case, it is more the realm of philosophy than it is the realm of anything we recognize as science.
Outrageous speculation (no matter how well reasoned you assume it is) is no substitute for good old research.
I have to agree here. I caught the "What's up with Fan Pro" seminar, and I think the new rules accomplish nicely their stated goal, which was to make them easier and more accessable to new players. Now, I am not entirely sure I am fond of their new damage system, but much of the game has become MUCH easier without sacraficing the benefits of their previous systems. Additionally, as far as I am aware, no other system has ever done anything remotely like the new "glitches" where you can both succeed and fail at a task at the same time. Give yourself some time to get used to the new rules and I am sure you will understand where they were going with it.
While bowing to the hilarity of your post, I would like to point out that most years (this one included) the floor of the convention hall can be fairly littered with goth girls in little more than their underware, booth babes that will accost anyone asking for a picture with speaches about the product they are boosting, and very pretty women wearing next to nothing "costumes".
:)
I actually have about 200 pictures I have taken this year, but there is no way you can get me to link them on slashdot
It was the first booth that I hit, mainly because the new eddition of rifts (ultimate gold eddition), which contains some MUCH needed class balancing. The limited edditions were signed by everyone involved, and you could get a sketch by the featured artist for 15 bucks. Of course, there were stacks of free Rifters, which disapeared by mid day on thursday. Additionally, over at the n-gage booth, there was a playable version of the rifts video game ( why n-gage! ) Kevin was his usual jovial self, and I got a pic of him holding my ultimate eddition!
Ok, this is just a question, and in no way intended to be a troll.
I am sure this story will be praised by the slashdot crowd, and as I work for a mid sized ISP, I can't say I am upset to see it happen. I am, however, curious about implications of the free speech side of this.
Let us assume that instead of commercial spam, this was a single individual that was sending out an email about some governmental injustice. For instance, if he had a friend that was being held under patriot act provisions without trial. Sure, a lot of people would junk the message, but judging from the messages I get that start with RE:FWD:RE:FWD:(ad infinitum), a goodly number of people would likely read it.
My question to slashdot is; Should there be occasions where it is ok to spam, and if so, how do we legislate it? If it can be justified, is bulk commercial spam just the price we have to pay for another venue by which our citizens can freely express themselves?
I would be very much interested to see if anyone had any legal precedents in the world of snail mail that might apply.
The PS3 will supposedly ship with blue ray. End of format war.
...and the Democrats will justify it as "Oh, I don't like it, but we must beat Bush, he is worse".
:)
I get your meaning, but just a small point here. Since Bush is in his second term, if he is on the ballot in 2008 we will likely have a lot bigger problems to consider than the candidates stance on the first amendment. Like how to goose step in formation and dodge the secret police.
Printed pages are NEVER anonymous. Apart from fingerprints, DNA traces, ink and paper matching, how many people print stuff that they pass out anonymously? Most letters have a sender, books and other prints have a copyright note. And once you distribute any printed materials, others can trace it back.
Good, so the government won't need our printers to add to the mountain of tracable evidence from every printing. Kindly call them for us and tell them that.
1. How to work with other people
2. How to get along with people you may not like
3. Discipline and focus, with regard to achieving a goal
4. Planning and stragety
5. Competitiveness, which certainly can help later in life if applied correctly
Ok, though I find football awfully boring, I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with it. However, I also believe that enrolling your child in football in order to learn these 5 lessons is a waste of his time. Football is, in my opinion, probably the least sport-like sport that has ever existed and while a football team benefits from the qualities that you mention, football doesn't do a heck of a lot to encourage them. Allow me to illustrate:
Teamwork: Offensively, the team doesn't really consist of the whole team. A small fraction of it actually runs or throws the ball. The rest just try to push the other guys over. If you are a QB or a receiver, some collusion is required, but for the rest of the team, picking a target and crushing it will suffice. Compare to my favorite sport, soccer, where everyone on the team needs to constantly be trying to get open or looking for someone who is open. The difference should be obvious.
Community: Now it may have just been my surroundings, but the people I played football with were some of the most factious and blindly aggressive human beings I have ever met. Practices were generally about settling scores in a way that coach couldn't see. Fights were common. I don't think this was because of football, but football does encourage more physical contact, so I do believe that it aggravates what is already there.
Focus: Well, perhaps, but certainly no more than any other activity your kid could be doing. In all likelihood much less. I would suggest that you want something OTHER than a sport for a child to learn this, something that lasts longer than a few hours. Give him a hammer and let him build a good tree house. Teach him to program and let him write a simple game. True focus has to stand the test of boredom, sports don't give a lot of opportunity for that, at least for the participants.
Planning and strategy: Well, sports again would be a bad place to look for this trait. Compared with most other activities your child could be doing (Risk anyone?), the strategies in football are so simplistic as to be laughable. Everything revolves around tricking, out running, or smashing the other team. Real strategy requires larger goals than just advancing the next 10 yards, and more complexity than everyone resetting to default positions every 5 seconds.
Competitiveness: I doubt this is a trait you will need to teach your child. They will more than likely have possessed it well before you enroll them in a sport. As soon as they learn winning is better than loosing, the rest will come naturally.
Now, I am not saying that sports are useless, quite the contrary. They have one very large benefit, health. Sadly football and sumo wrestling seem to be the only 2 sports where fat kids are acceptable. Get your kids into soccer or track. Something that will encourage them to get their heart rate up and keep it up.
As for the above traits, no sport is going to be the magic cure-all for teaching them to your children. Challenge the child as often as you can with new activities. Enroll them in sports to encourage their health, teach them karate so they can defend themselves, but remember that like most things, they will get out of them what they put into them. Those children who take discipline seriously will become more disciplined; those who don't will just learn some new tricks and have some fun.
The rest will have to be taught by example.