People tend to flock to where the group-think is. Very few people want to be challenged about what they believe on a daily basis- it takes a lot of work, especially if you're willing to admit the possibility you might be wrong. Slashdot tends to have a variety of (highly nerd-centric) views, so it's easy to find a bunch of people who passionately agree with you on issues that most people don't care about: File sharing, the best Star Trek Captain, Emacs vs. Vi, etc. There will be the heretics who disagree with you, but you can always mod up those you agree with and ignore the rest.
That being said, Slashdot would be horrible as my only news source. It's got a huge number of opinions, but most of them are the idealistic ravings of an intelligent but dysfunctional individual with minimal real-world experience. (Something like 80% of non-troll posts are in this category, including most of my own). Then you've got the corporate shills, the grammar Nazis, and the occasional individual who knows what he's talking about. Plus, there are all these rambling posts that are almost on topic, but don't really address the issue at hand- not to mention the article.
I'm all for discrimination based on ability- but DNA testing is hardly that. It's pretty clear that even people with serious genetic problems can do great things, an obvious example being Stephen Hawking. I don't see how denying me a job based on my genetic code is any different than denying me a job because I'm female or black.
You're probably just talking about discrimination done by health insurance providers- which, incidentally, would also lead to health insurance rates being different based on race. Different races have different predispositions to various diseases, not to mention that some ethnic groups have a higher tendency to need emergency medical care due to bullet wounds. You may find that acceptable, but many Americans have serious problems with that sort of discrimination.
A good teacher can get his entire class to ace AP Calculus exams, or get someone who hates writing to be competent (even skilled) at it. Likewise, bad teachers or chance can get people with great innate talent to hate what they are natural at.
From what I've seen, almost anyone can be taught enough mathematics, language, and athletics to be competent. This doesn't mean, of course, that anyone can become an Einstein, a Charles Dickens, or a Babe Ruth- but unless you're born mentally or physically disabled, you can become a engineer, a journalist/tech writer, or a ditch digger. (There's a very limited number of major league spots available- anyone who tells their kid they can grow up to be Michael Jordan is an idiot. The most athletically talented people I've ever met never even made it to the minor leagues. You can still make a living off physical strength in the military or in construction, but those aren't jobs most people would choose).
Certainly the best in any field will have innate talent as well as investing considerable effort. The merely competent, though, can have talent OR hard work, without needing both. (Most will have some of each).
Also, chaos theory implies that even slightly different experiences as a child can have major long-term changes. Different food eaten during pregnancy, owning a set of blocks at an earlier age, having an older sister- these have significant effects on a kid. It's as impossible to rule out nurture as it is to rule out nature.
There's nothing particularly wrong about using a Pseudonym- everyone on slashdot does it. Even you, Mr. Anonymous Coward, aren't posting as "Darl McBride". Even if you were, we still wouldn't believe it was you.
Honestly, though, if 'Pamela Jones' is really a Pseudonym for Patricia Johnson, a agoraphobic paralegal who used to work for Microsoft, would that really matter? I confess I'm curious, but for the most part it doesn't matter to me who PJ is- I don't read her articles to find out about her personal life, I read it to find out relevant legal information. As long as the information is good it doesn't matter who she is.
Circumstantial evidence suggests, though, that she's just obsessive about her privacy, in a way that puts even the tin-foil hat crowd at Slashdot to shame. Certainly Maureen O'Gara went far enough to publish her address, after which the Pamela Jones living there moved suddenly... so there is a real privacy-obsessed Pamela Jones, who may or may not be the same as the one on Groklaw.
Mostly, though, I'm surprised to see SCO employees posting on Slashdot- you'd think they'd be too busy looking for new jobs to troll here. Of course, if they are still 'working' for SCO, they might as well be browsing Slashdot during the day...
When someone from slashdot creates something market-worthy, it's almost always software. Software has a very different life-cycle than music- very few people are buying copies of 'Wing Commander' or 'Lotus 1-2-3' nowadays, even though those were huge programs in their time. Neither of those programs is making money for their creator anymore.
With music, on the other hand, if I manage to make a top 10 song they'll be playing it for the rest of my lifetime, and my label will be getting a steady stream of revenue for the next 100 years, which they may share with me. Actually, I think music is the only profession where this is the case- very few books or movies last long enough to provide this near-eternal revenue stream. With most artists, once all the money is spent on drugs and hookers, they need to create more art to feed themselves: with music it's not always the case.
There's nothing morally wrong with this revenue stream, it's just very different from how most people make money. And, naturally, when musicians act like it's their right to keep making money of the good work they produced 20 years ago, it annoys the people who notice only musicians have that right.
There's certainly a lot of value in something that 'just works'. Take Apple for instance- they sell ridiculously overpriced stuff, but it's worth it for some people because they don't have the time to deal with problems (but have the money to buy Apple).
Also, the more money you have, the more your time is worth. I 'waste' more money now to save me time that I never would have paid in college. That's because in college I had a lot of time but not much money, where as now I have a lot of money but not much time.
It's like hiring a maid- something that's a total waste of money for most people. Once you are making more per hour than the maid service costs, though, you might as well work some overtime and hire someone else to do cleaning for you.
I was always under the impression that defense attorneys needed to defend their clients even if they believed their clients were guilty. This doesn't mean perjury is acceptable, of course, but they can point out that evidence is circumstantial and any other flaws they can find in the prosecution's argument.
Of course, this may not hold up in civil cases, even if attorneys are obligated to represent their client in criminal ones.
There is a certain amount of truth in what you say- probably why you got modded down so quickly. I also prefer letting (most) ads run- I figure if I'm getting benefit from a site, they might as well make money off me (or try, anyway- just because I see ads doesn't mean I'll click on them.) Pop-up ads, of course, are not acceptable, and those will be blocked.
My understanding is that Bennett Haselton sues people who spam him as a hobby. His stories are entertaining and show some of the difficulties in implementing a legislative solution to Spam- many judges he deals with would rather discard the case on some technicality than enforce the law. It's nice to see people standing up for themselves, even when they'd probably be better off ignoring it.
What happened in this particular case is some spammer claimed he owned Slashdot, he sued the spammer, and lost.
Of course, Yahoo and MSN are also censoring search results. At least Google says "some results are being omitted due to local regulations" or some such. Google functions as the 'least evil' search engine in China, and thus Google is possibly doing more good than not being there at all. (Oh, and not telling people information they want to know is very different than telling the government where the activists are.) Google might be able to exert more influence in China be staying out of China and lobbying for reform, but that seems highly unlikely.
At least with Riverworld they were invited to participate- and if you're talking about Dungeon magazine, that's owned by TSR. A better example would be the Unauthorized Tolkien guides- there are few authors that have a Universe big and popular enough to justify unauthorized books detailing them, but Tolkien is one.
Writing books in a universe is clear infringement (for instance, I couldn't write a story about hobbits living in the Shire called "Hanging out with the Bagginses") but I could write books about the universe (for instance, I could write a book in which the protagonist was a big Tolkien fan, or write a book analyzing the themes of Good and Evil in 'Lord of the Rings'). There are even Cliff Notes about Lord of the Rings, so I assume that even such an obviously derived work as Cliff Notes are legal.
My guess is that Rowling is just annoyed because she helped this site get material and keep it accurate, with the assumption that they wouldn't be selling it. Depending on the level of assistance she provided them she may have a case- and if they ever implied to her they wouldn't be selling it, she should be able to stop them selling anything she helped them with, which might be a considerable part of the guide. But then, I'm not a lawyer.
Unfortunately, the stupid people have numbers on their side- not to mention people who are really smart in some areas (like being able to write bots that can bypass lameness filters) and really stupid in others (like thinking goatse is a fun picture).
"Religion is the source of all evil!"
"But what about all the atheists who murdered tens of millions of people?"
"Clearly they were religious, because they were evil!"
If you look at the biggest mass murderers in history- Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot- only Hitler claimed to be religious. Mankind's real problem is that we're a race of assholes, and we like to claim that we're being a asshole for some greater purpose. No one says "I'm killing these defenseless people because it's convenient and profitable" they say "God told me to kill them all" or "I'm killing them all for the greater good" or "They aren't real people anyway, this book I have says so". What did you think Stalin was going to say?
I'm now going to give you this equally unsound counter-argument, also done through mangling definitions to suit my needs:
True religious people are never evil.
Therefore, all evil is done by people who aren't truly religious.
He wrote some Science Fiction dealing with alien life on other planets and their relationship to God- 'Out of the Silent Planet' was the start of a trilogy along those lines. Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles also dealt an one point with a Catholic priest trying to convert the Martians- but the Martians he encountered were utter alien life forms, which appeared to exist as glowing balls of energy. In that form they were incapable of classic human sins- Lust, Greed, Murder, etc- because they couldn't harm each other.
Speculating about Alien religion is, of course, even more a stab in the dark than Alien Biology. Encountering Alien religion (or the lack thereof) would be pretty interesting- and just like alien biology, there's no telling what forms it might take. There's also no reason to believe that even among individuals of the same species they share the same religion- if an alien ship landed it might have a mix of atheists and theists, or even a mix of theists (especially if they have a polytheistic religion of some sort). Even theist/atheist could be the wrong term to describe them- for instance, they may be atheistic, but believe in reincarnation and/or some sort of afterlife, or just believe in personified forces.
I would love to get a 'second opinion', as it were, on religion from a source outside humanity. Of course, it's not like humans have been able to agree on what God is or isn't, so even aliens might not have that question figured out, or have an answer unsatisfactory to us. "Hmm? Oh, yes, God exists, but he stopped hanging around here after you guys kept killing off his friends. He's hanging out with us now, but sent us back to earth to pick up a few things he left behind".
Obviously any age limit is going to have
1. People younger but mature enough.
2. People older but not mature enough.
While he makes a good case the 18 is arbitrary, he hasn't come up with a better way of handling the problem. We ban all sorts of (potentially harmful but fun) things for minors that adults can enjoy freely. Some things (like driving) we have both an age limit and a test, others (cigarettes, alcohol, sex) we have only an age limit. An age limit isn't perfect, but it's a reasonable way of handling the problem- alternatives would be having tests with some way of authenticating 'maturity', or having no limits at all.
He could just as easily be complaining that TCP/IP is a arbitrary protocol that has some disadvantages. His complaints may be accurate, but unless he has a better way of handling the problem they mean very little.
I've always had difficulty picking a side in this fight- On the one hand, we have the big, greedy, and deceitful RIAA, but it's not as if the file-sharers are paragons of virtue- I see them both as parasites on the back of the people who actually create things. Still, I'm counting on you (and others like you) to limit the damage the RIAA can do to fair use, privacy, and freedom of expression- not to mention all the innocents they sue along with the guilty. All these things are more valuable than my intellectual property rights. Good luck!
I've always thought something like this could be awesome for all sorts of geeky pastimes. Need an army for Warhammer 40k? Need a horde of orcs for D&D? Missing a piece to your favorite board game? You can print out an army, toss them back, then print out a new one the next day.
When you've got hundreds of people in our government, are you telling me that they all had the same motives? A good-hearted idiot can do more damage than an evil-hearted one, because people are less quick to spot them. Life is much simpler when all your foes are evil and stupid, and all your allies wise and good, but in reality there are plenty of malicious idiots who always hated Bush, and there were many good, intelligent people who supported him. (I'd like to think that there are very few of those now). I find it embarrassing to watch the idiots who oppose Bush mock the intelligent people who used to support him... but I suppose they aren't smart enough to realize the damage they are doing to their own cause.
I personally believed there were both noble and ignoble goals behind going to war in Iraq- I wasn't dumb enough to believe Saddam was supporting Al-Queda, or that our administration had nothing but good motives behind the invasion, but I knew Saddam was a horrible monster that had been a serious threat to his neighbors and stability in the region. Of course, it's clear now that if there were noble goals they were compromised by the incompetence of those in charge.
Napoleon once said 'never ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to incompetence'. I don't think it was unreasonable to assume that our administration was just incompetent instead of malicious. Now most people assume our leaders are both incompetent and malicious, but early on everything could have been explained by mere stupidity.
Mostly companies seem to go for people in college as interns- that way they can get them cheap and then hire them (as experienced) once they graduate. I don't know of anyone hiring graduates as interns. As far as a degree and no experience goes, it's pretty hard to find a job still.
Slashdot Mirror
People tend to flock to where the group-think is. Very few people want to be challenged about what they believe on a daily basis- it takes a lot of work, especially if you're willing to admit the possibility you might be wrong. Slashdot tends to have a variety of (highly nerd-centric) views, so it's easy to find a bunch of people who passionately agree with you on issues that most people don't care about: File sharing, the best Star Trek Captain, Emacs vs. Vi, etc. There will be the heretics who disagree with you, but you can always mod up those you agree with and ignore the rest.
That being said, Slashdot would be horrible as my only news source. It's got a huge number of opinions, but most of them are the idealistic ravings of an intelligent but dysfunctional individual with minimal real-world experience. (Something like 80% of non-troll posts are in this category, including most of my own). Then you've got the corporate shills, the grammar Nazis, and the occasional individual who knows what he's talking about. Plus, there are all these rambling posts that are almost on topic, but don't really address the issue at hand- not to mention the article.
I'm all for discrimination based on ability- but DNA testing is hardly that. It's pretty clear that even people with serious genetic problems can do great things, an obvious example being Stephen Hawking. I don't see how denying me a job based on my genetic code is any different than denying me a job because I'm female or black.
You're probably just talking about discrimination done by health insurance providers- which, incidentally, would also lead to health insurance rates being different based on race. Different races have different predispositions to various diseases, not to mention that some ethnic groups have a higher tendency to need emergency medical care due to bullet wounds. You may find that acceptable, but many Americans have serious problems with that sort of discrimination.
A good teacher can get his entire class to ace AP Calculus exams, or get someone who hates writing to be competent (even skilled) at it. Likewise, bad teachers or chance can get people with great innate talent to hate what they are natural at.
From what I've seen, almost anyone can be taught enough mathematics, language, and athletics to be competent. This doesn't mean, of course, that anyone can become an Einstein, a Charles Dickens, or a Babe Ruth- but unless you're born mentally or physically disabled, you can become a engineer, a journalist/tech writer, or a ditch digger. (There's a very limited number of major league spots available- anyone who tells their kid they can grow up to be Michael Jordan is an idiot. The most athletically talented people I've ever met never even made it to the minor leagues. You can still make a living off physical strength in the military or in construction, but those aren't jobs most people would choose).
Certainly the best in any field will have innate talent as well as investing considerable effort. The merely competent, though, can have talent OR hard work, without needing both. (Most will have some of each).
Also, chaos theory implies that even slightly different experiences as a child can have major long-term changes. Different food eaten during pregnancy, owning a set of blocks at an earlier age, having an older sister- these have significant effects on a kid. It's as impossible to rule out nurture as it is to rule out nature.
There's nothing particularly wrong about using a Pseudonym- everyone on slashdot does it. Even you, Mr. Anonymous Coward, aren't posting as "Darl McBride". Even if you were, we still wouldn't believe it was you.
Honestly, though, if 'Pamela Jones' is really a Pseudonym for Patricia Johnson, a agoraphobic paralegal who used to work for Microsoft, would that really matter? I confess I'm curious, but for the most part it doesn't matter to me who PJ is- I don't read her articles to find out about her personal life, I read it to find out relevant legal information. As long as the information is good it doesn't matter who she is.
Circumstantial evidence suggests, though, that she's just obsessive about her privacy, in a way that puts even the tin-foil hat crowd at Slashdot to shame. Certainly Maureen O'Gara went far enough to publish her address, after which the Pamela Jones living there moved suddenly... so there is a real privacy-obsessed Pamela Jones, who may or may not be the same as the one on Groklaw.
Mostly, though, I'm surprised to see SCO employees posting on Slashdot- you'd think they'd be too busy looking for new jobs to troll here. Of course, if they are still 'working' for SCO, they might as well be browsing Slashdot during the day...
When someone from slashdot creates something market-worthy, it's almost always software. Software has a very different life-cycle than music- very few people are buying copies of 'Wing Commander' or 'Lotus 1-2-3' nowadays, even though those were huge programs in their time. Neither of those programs is making money for their creator anymore.
With music, on the other hand, if I manage to make a top 10 song they'll be playing it for the rest of my lifetime, and my label will be getting a steady stream of revenue for the next 100 years, which they may share with me. Actually, I think music is the only profession where this is the case- very few books or movies last long enough to provide this near-eternal revenue stream. With most artists, once all the money is spent on drugs and hookers, they need to create more art to feed themselves: with music it's not always the case.
There's nothing morally wrong with this revenue stream, it's just very different from how most people make money. And, naturally, when musicians act like it's their right to keep making money of the good work they produced 20 years ago, it annoys the people who notice only musicians have that right.
There's certainly a lot of value in something that 'just works'. Take Apple for instance- they sell ridiculously overpriced stuff, but it's worth it for some people because they don't have the time to deal with problems (but have the money to buy Apple).
Also, the more money you have, the more your time is worth. I 'waste' more money now to save me time that I never would have paid in college. That's because in college I had a lot of time but not much money, where as now I have a lot of money but not much time.
It's like hiring a maid- something that's a total waste of money for most people. Once you are making more per hour than the maid service costs, though, you might as well work some overtime and hire someone else to do cleaning for you.
I was always under the impression that defense attorneys needed to defend their clients even if they believed their clients were guilty. This doesn't mean perjury is acceptable, of course, but they can point out that evidence is circumstantial and any other flaws they can find in the prosecution's argument.
Of course, this may not hold up in civil cases, even if attorneys are obligated to represent their client in criminal ones.
There is a certain amount of truth in what you say- probably why you got modded down so quickly. I also prefer letting (most) ads run- I figure if I'm getting benefit from a site, they might as well make money off me (or try, anyway- just because I see ads doesn't mean I'll click on them.) Pop-up ads, of course, are not acceptable, and those will be blocked.
My understanding is that Bennett Haselton sues people who spam him as a hobby. His stories are entertaining and show some of the difficulties in implementing a legislative solution to Spam- many judges he deals with would rather discard the case on some technicality than enforce the law. It's nice to see people standing up for themselves, even when they'd probably be better off ignoring it.
What happened in this particular case is some spammer claimed he owned Slashdot, he sued the spammer, and lost.
Of course, Yahoo and MSN are also censoring search results. At least Google says "some results are being omitted due to local regulations" or some such. Google functions as the 'least evil' search engine in China, and thus Google is possibly doing more good than not being there at all. (Oh, and not telling people information they want to know is very different than telling the government where the activists are.) Google might be able to exert more influence in China be staying out of China and lobbying for reform, but that seems highly unlikely.
Don't make fun of the poor guy- for a lot of people, all they have to be pretentious about is their poor musical taste.
At least with Riverworld they were invited to participate- and if you're talking about Dungeon magazine, that's owned by TSR. A better example would be the Unauthorized Tolkien guides- there are few authors that have a Universe big and popular enough to justify unauthorized books detailing them, but Tolkien is one.
Writing books in a universe is clear infringement (for instance, I couldn't write a story about hobbits living in the Shire called "Hanging out with the Bagginses") but I could write books about the universe (for instance, I could write a book in which the protagonist was a big Tolkien fan, or write a book analyzing the themes of Good and Evil in 'Lord of the Rings'). There are even Cliff Notes about Lord of the Rings, so I assume that even such an obviously derived work as Cliff Notes are legal.
My guess is that Rowling is just annoyed because she helped this site get material and keep it accurate, with the assumption that they wouldn't be selling it. Depending on the level of assistance she provided them she may have a case- and if they ever implied to her they wouldn't be selling it, she should be able to stop them selling anything she helped them with, which might be a considerable part of the guide. But then, I'm not a lawyer.
Why would Ron Paul pay people to post on Slashdot? There's enough of us supporting him here that we'll post about how awesome he is for free!
Unfortunately, the stupid people have numbers on their side- not to mention people who are really smart in some areas (like being able to write bots that can bypass lameness filters) and really stupid in others (like thinking goatse is a fun picture).
"Religion is the source of all evil!"
"But what about all the atheists who murdered tens of millions of people?"
"Clearly they were religious, because they were evil!"
If you look at the biggest mass murderers in history- Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot- only Hitler claimed to be religious. Mankind's real problem is that we're a race of assholes, and we like to claim that we're being a asshole for some greater purpose. No one says "I'm killing these defenseless people because it's convenient and profitable" they say "God told me to kill them all" or "I'm killing them all for the greater good" or "They aren't real people anyway, this book I have says so". What did you think Stalin was going to say?
I'm now going to give you this equally unsound counter-argument, also done through mangling definitions to suit my needs:
True religious people are never evil.
Therefore, all evil is done by people who aren't truly religious.
He wrote some Science Fiction dealing with alien life on other planets and their relationship to God- 'Out of the Silent Planet' was the start of a trilogy along those lines. Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles also dealt an one point with a Catholic priest trying to convert the Martians- but the Martians he encountered were utter alien life forms, which appeared to exist as glowing balls of energy. In that form they were incapable of classic human sins- Lust, Greed, Murder, etc- because they couldn't harm each other.
Speculating about Alien religion is, of course, even more a stab in the dark than Alien Biology. Encountering Alien religion (or the lack thereof) would be pretty interesting- and just like alien biology, there's no telling what forms it might take. There's also no reason to believe that even among individuals of the same species they share the same religion- if an alien ship landed it might have a mix of atheists and theists, or even a mix of theists (especially if they have a polytheistic religion of some sort). Even theist/atheist could be the wrong term to describe them- for instance, they may be atheistic, but believe in reincarnation and/or some sort of afterlife, or just believe in personified forces.
I would love to get a 'second opinion', as it were, on religion from a source outside humanity. Of course, it's not like humans have been able to agree on what God is or isn't, so even aliens might not have that question figured out, or have an answer unsatisfactory to us. "Hmm? Oh, yes, God exists, but he stopped hanging around here after you guys kept killing off his friends. He's hanging out with us now, but sent us back to earth to pick up a few things he left behind".
Obviously any age limit is going to have
1. People younger but mature enough.
2. People older but not mature enough.
While he makes a good case the 18 is arbitrary, he hasn't come up with a better way of handling the problem. We ban all sorts of (potentially harmful but fun) things for minors that adults can enjoy freely. Some things (like driving) we have both an age limit and a test, others (cigarettes, alcohol, sex) we have only an age limit. An age limit isn't perfect, but it's a reasonable way of handling the problem- alternatives would be having tests with some way of authenticating 'maturity', or having no limits at all.
He could just as easily be complaining that TCP/IP is a arbitrary protocol that has some disadvantages. His complaints may be accurate, but unless he has a better way of handling the problem they mean very little.
I've always had difficulty picking a side in this fight- On the one hand, we have the big, greedy, and deceitful RIAA, but it's not as if the file-sharers are paragons of virtue- I see them both as parasites on the back of the people who actually create things. Still, I'm counting on you (and others like you) to limit the damage the RIAA can do to fair use, privacy, and freedom of expression- not to mention all the innocents they sue along with the guilty. All these things are more valuable than my intellectual property rights. Good luck!
I've always thought something like this could be awesome for all sorts of geeky pastimes. Need an army for Warhammer 40k? Need a horde of orcs for D&D? Missing a piece to your favorite board game? You can print out an army, toss them back, then print out a new one the next day.
Ron Paul has convincing tale... but then, he isn't running as a Democrat.
When you've got hundreds of people in our government, are you telling me that they all had the same motives? A good-hearted idiot can do more damage than an evil-hearted one, because people are less quick to spot them. Life is much simpler when all your foes are evil and stupid, and all your allies wise and good, but in reality there are plenty of malicious idiots who always hated Bush, and there were many good, intelligent people who supported him. (I'd like to think that there are very few of those now). I find it embarrassing to watch the idiots who oppose Bush mock the intelligent people who used to support him... but I suppose they aren't smart enough to realize the damage they are doing to their own cause.
Maybe he's saying he has a Redundant array of redundant arrays? So it's really a RARAID?
I personally believed there were both noble and ignoble goals behind going to war in Iraq- I wasn't dumb enough to believe Saddam was supporting Al-Queda, or that our administration had nothing but good motives behind the invasion, but I knew Saddam was a horrible monster that had been a serious threat to his neighbors and stability in the region. Of course, it's clear now that if there were noble goals they were compromised by the incompetence of those in charge.
Napoleon once said 'never ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to incompetence'. I don't think it was unreasonable to assume that our administration was just incompetent instead of malicious. Now most people assume our leaders are both incompetent and malicious, but early on everything could have been explained by mere stupidity.
Mostly companies seem to go for people in college as interns- that way they can get them cheap and then hire them (as experienced) once they graduate. I don't know of anyone hiring graduates as interns. As far as a degree and no experience goes, it's pretty hard to find a job still.