that's why you change the firefox icon to the BLUE E, and stick it under My Computer. And in the hotlaunch bar.
on every machine you can.
why should you care? well, maybe you shouldn't care, unless you're a network admin who has to deal with the ie spyware, or if you actually want people to have a browser that allows functional text resizing, bla bla.
you seem kind of confused. the controversy comes from the fact that science has disproved many claims and suppositions about the universe (including claims about the word of god himself) that have historically been peddled by religious doctrineers. for example: that demons cause sickness, that sin causes sickness, that the world is a few thousand years old, that the sun revolves around the earth, that this or that woman is a witch.
science has helped us understand the world without using ghost stories, even though there's a lot we don't know. it exposes zealous claims about "the word of god" for the frauds that they are.
as you said, "science" doesn't "disprove god." it disproves various PROPOSITIONS about the world that god-fearing people have historically repeated over the years. science is a METHOD for investigating reality in a sensible way, not a collection of claims. if you oppose it, you're an ostrich with your head in the sand. you can oppose some of the claims that a scientist might make, and then make a counterargument. that's great. but opposing rational inquiry itself is something else entirely.
the "strident atheist" is a straw man. you can't test, prove, or falsify claims made about an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient entity. so theology doesn't belong in a science classroom. the only "strident" thing that fundamentalists are opposing is the TRUTH itself, and the acknowledgment of certain facts about the world, which is why their current goal is to dumb down the science curriculum in school. you should have noticed by now that the provocateurs DON'T go around saying "Hey, everyone, science does NOT actually disprove the existence of a god. let's be careful when we talk about theology." which would be theologically sound, and possibly even appreciated by many people. but instead of saying that, they say "Evolution? I don't believe it. We gotta stop teaching it, or, at least, it's just a THEORY, and it's mostly wrong". the whole controversy is nothing but a repeat of the persecution of Galileo.
and in due time, everyone will be so familiar with the basic facts of biology that the campaign against teaching evolution will be nothing but a historical absurdity, just like with astronomy in the case of Galileo. you can only keep people in the dark so long.
the truth comes home to roost. and it ruffles a lot of feathers.
"Nobody really needs a military right now anyhow, right? If we need one sometime later on, we'll just materialise one out of the same orifice you got that free lunch from above."
the goal of intelligent threat assessment is to minimize paranoid military funding in circumstances where it's entirely inappropriate. --and speaking of WWII, which gets thrown around a lot, the american military wasn't mobilized at large, obviously, until after america was attacked. which is what an industrious, free society does. here's what they don't do: commit to an endless program of militarism.
"Demonstrated proof of benefit, eh? Sure, give my right hand a cookie while you chop off the left. You just gave me a benefit, right? [...] Taxes are the cost we pay for a civilized society. A civilised society doesn't magically come along with that."
for some reason, a lot of people (definitely including you), can very easily imagine being bamboozled, finagled, conned, utterly DECEIVED in every possible arena of public spending.... except with regards to the military/security complex.
"Other countries have proved they can offload the maintenance of security across most of the world onto another country that values its military and is willing to take on the burden of being the world's policeman."
which countries? USA? i've lived there all my life. when have i been willing to be the "world's policeman" ? who are you talking about? do you somehow represent all of the millions of americans?
i'm asking, because i personally value the military, which is why i don't support sending its members to die by the thousands in a pointless war, while leading to the deaths of many more thousands of civilians.
and if what you're saying is true, that all those dirty socialist nations have "offloaded" their security onto you/America......... then it sure looks like somebody's been duped, doesn't it? you're practically beating your chest over having been duped into providing for the security of all those wimpy cheapskate first-world nations. (beating your chest while having a kind of "gee whiz, burden burden burden" moment at the same time)
"In a few select cases, they've shown that a well-armed populous in conjunction with harsh terrain and/or weather can bog down an invading army badly enough that the invaders might choose to reconsider."
obviously if somebody has "harsh" terrain (..and, weather? what the hell?) on their side, and their enemies can't handle it, they don't need to waste money on a bloated military, do they. but it's hard to tell what your point was: you're either saying that some countries are cowards, but safe because of "luck", or you're saying something about american involvement in iraq, or something. i don't know. feel free to explain.
"Instead, let the free market take care of that; governments are the wrong institutions to do this type of thing, as they are very bureaucratic and like throwing their power around."
only governments like throwing around their power, not Free Marketeers?
i guess you've never been sued for thousands of dollars because you downloaded a couple of tunes (that you already owned on CD)
only governments are "very bureaucratic", not corporations? have you ever worked for a commercial organization with more than a few dozen employees? something tells me the answer is no.
anyway, it's unbelievable that you think government should handle the creation/maintenance of ROADS, but not internet access. i mean, ROADS-- which are one of the closest public analogies i can think of for talking about internet access. "not necessary for commerce" is an incredibly ignorant thing to say about the internet, in the 21st century.
but....even weirder than that... you don't seem to be aware that the democratic republic is based on majority rule....
"Your tax dollars go to various special interest groups and some other services that you may not want (or need), just because some representatives or the majority of the people decided to approve them. What if you don't want (or need) broadband Internet access?"
that's funny because. because i don't want or need an overinflated military marching around the world poking at bees nests. --according to you, i have no freedom. yet, somehow, i have the feeling that if i said something like "they took away my freedom by forcing me to pay for destructive things that I DON'T WANT" you would rebuff me.
just so you know, if internet access was publicly funded, it wouldn't mean that "government" controlled the internet. it would mean that the government gave money to private companies for developing infrastructre in unprofitable areas, because it's the right, civil thing to do. and it ends up benefitting everyone. (just like education, which you mentioned yourself...)
you trust "government" to maintain a national military, local police force, and the entire justice system.... but you don't trust them in financing/prompting the creation of a crucial peace of 21st century infrastructre. sorry, but that makes you an ideological lunatic.
jack is an idiot. but should he really be scared to have his home information public?....SOMEHOW.....somehow, you know, somehow i imagine that what you're talking about HAPPENED to him, it would actuallly be bad. cause you know, it would be a big outspoken lunatic/critic of [videogame] VIOLENCE being harmed or killed because of his [idiotic] opining.
which, SOMEHOW, ya know, maybe it would trigger a backlash(?)
actually, corporate entities are quite capable of violating peoples rights, just like many other entities. have you ever had factories dump toxic waste upstream from your home? have you ever been wrongfully detained by private security? been monitored by some private firm (..that you know about)? been sold a dangerously faulty product? been sold a completely fraudulently advertised product? had your personal contact information sold to a dozen telemarketing companies that you do not want business with, without your knowledge? had your finances stolen by some criminal executive?
if not, can you IMAGINE any of these things POSSIBLY happening?
are you going to justify it by saying "Well, you made the CHOICE to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time" ?
what you said is just ideology, nothing more. an entity's status as "corporate" or "government" doesn't affect its ability to violate peoples humans rights.
"A non-governmental entity collecting information you provide while surfing along on this Internet-thingy, that's no breach of your rights."
so, if a "governmental" search engine were to collect information that YOU provide while you're surfing the net, for the exact same stated purpose, it's a breach of your rights? but not when a corporation does the exact same thing?
INFORMED CONSENT should be the name of the game, but isn't. so-called corporations don't have any respect for your autonomy or privacy, though. in case you haven't noticed.
the fact is, if they don't have a good transparent opt-out system, available for people who wish to continue using google, then they're just a thug. maybe a thug with a "good business sense", but a thug all the same. which is why somebody might say "i feel that this is a breach of rights." it will take more than ideology to address those concerns.
anyway, it's nice to know that google can use my personal information to "ensure that its network continues to function." yeah, right.
isn't that like saying that we should thank imperialism because it created gandhi? or that we should thank awful germs because they prompted the creation of medicine?
you can imagine, that if the "crappy software" you're talking about NEVER EXISTED, the "great [alternatives]" still would have come about, all the same. (though the case seems different for the rhetorical examples i just gave.)
anyway it usually seems to get lost in the software flames that microsoft doesn't just produce shoddy software. they ascended to power like practically any other entity: by corruption.
where's that guy with the "MICROSOFT IS A CONVICTED MONOPOLIST" sig?
TFA didn't help me get much of a clue. I tried reading it, and I said to myself: "aren't there one trillion possible IP addresses, available in principle? (minus 1)" just because of the 12-digit IP addresses i'm used to.
"The IPv4 address space has 32 bits, limiting it to an absolute maximum of 232 (roughly 4.3 billion) possible addresses. For both administrative and technical reasons (the latter in large part being related to routing), IPv4 addresses are allocated in blocks which are restricted to sizes which are powers of 2; this leads to many addresses being unused at any given time. In addition to this, substantial parts of the IP address space are not easily usable because of early technical decisions reserving them for private network use, loopback addresses, multicast, and unspecified future uses, which has resulted in some of these limitations being programmed into devices; working around these limitations will require substantial amounts of re-engineering to increase the amount of available address space. Finally, some of the IPv4 address allocations made early in the development of the Internet (in the 1970s), when only blocks of 224 possible addresses (called a/8 in IPv4 address terminology) were supported, led to some institutions that were involved in the development of the Internet having disproportionally large allocations. MIT, for example, has an entire/8 block allocated to it (224 addresses, about 0.39% of the whole internet address space) and various US Department of Defense agencies have several such blocks."
and anybody with a firm grasp of human communication should realize that the "popular" (philosophically MISTAKEN) notion of "begging the question" is actually more useful than the technical one.
because in most cases, a situation really makes a person sit back for a second and think: "Wow, this really RAISES an interesting question." or, the even better use is in response to somebody who tries using a contradictory excuse or a contradictory alibi. "Well...now that begs the question of how you could actually [XYZ]." the word BEGS packs more punch than "raises." it has an effective, even sarcastic ring to it, that 'raises' lacks.
i can't think of an equally punchy way to say that something has raised the question. so you see, the Wrong Usage seems to fit the purposes of communication like a glove.
on the other hand, "begging the question" seems pretty cumbersome to describe the commonplace circular argument. (circularly, it's cumbersome because nobody uses it that way....) most people prefer to call that sort of thing "idiotic" or "circular", when they recognize it. "he's begging the question!" is done. stick a fork in it.
for a while i had a problem with people using "ironically" to mean "strangely/surprisingly/unexpectedly." personally i think it's much better used with its "correct" meaning. but that meaning has been completely taken over by the word "sarcasm." (which has negative connotations, which I don't like.) i'm starting to accept it, though.
"Outside the US, the tragedy that hundreds of people died and countless thousands were displaced isn't what registers with a lot of people any more; they just see the mighty US get what they thought it had coming."
well, congratulations to the people who feel that way, because they're just as petty as the boogeyman whom they hate.
anyone who sees mass death and destruction in a foreign nation state as "Getting What They Had Coming" is slime. that's the end of the story. and most of the time these kinds of people are making the same arrogant mistake that they often attribute exclusively to Arrogant America (or whoever, as the case may be). of course, america makes the mistake as much as anyone. the mistake is reducing an entire Nation State to a homogenous mass of people who are somehow EACH INDIVIDUALLY GUILTY for the crimes of their GOVERNMENT even though they have nothing to do with it most of the time, and usually disapprove of it, as a majority, and otherwise didn't vote for them or support them in any particular way. (just look at the polls for president's approval ratings, which are worse than clinton's during the impeachment)
it's gonna take a little more subtlety to make a peaceful, functional world, folks.
if you were to take the most evil corrupt nation on the face of the planet and destroy it, you'd be killing millions of innocent people who just happen to be there, along with the crooks. it's a fact of life.
the idea that a massive natural disaster, or warfare, or what have you, that kills thousands of people can somehow be a stroke of righteous justice is a very sickening delusion. in fact, i think every genocide or atrocity ever committed is based on it. a natural disaster isn't perpetrated by anyone, but evidently the same notions shape peoples reactions to it.
i tried switching to linux. i loved it. the distros are brilliant today, they come preinstalled with practically everything i need on a daily basis. but i couldn't install software. i just couldn't do it. it took me forever to install PRAAT, and i was vastly confused about how to install a new version of firefox, after downloading the appropriate files.
i ended up thinking: "am i missing something? is there a hidden interface somewhere that will let me install the damn app just by clicking a few buttons? am i an idiot?"
(no need to answer that last question, everyone, thanks....)
i work partly as a network administrator (all Windows), and i personally use an ibook. i've done a small amount of webdev, i know the difference between the internet and the web (and other applications of the internet), i'm the person who people call on to fix their mucked up windows boxes (usually trivial fixes.) so i'm reasonably experienced with computing in general. i've made and used some linux live-cds, and i ended up installing Ubuntu on desktop where i work. but the linux software-install was just killer.
i ended up succeeding how? by googling about the installation, and copying some CLI text that i found into the shell. i'm sure it's only a matter of time before i'm familiar with the process
with Ubuntu 5.04, i also had major problems changing my desktop resolution. an web search revealed that i'd have to put a bunch of arcane (incomprehensible TO ME) code into a config file somewhere. anyway, the latest updated version of ubuntu works great, resolution wise. (there's a simple desktop GUI for it, and it works.) i also haven't been able to set up linux/windows filesharing. the linux box sees the shares, but tries to read them as "desktop configuration files" and can't/won't open them. haven't had much luck searing for a fix.
honestly, PEOPLE WILL SWITCH. when they realize that they can do everything with a distro of linux that they can do with windows-- ONCE THEY CAN ACTUALLY do the trivial things they're used to, slightly beyond simply browsing and emailing and typing documents-- WITHOUT PAYING 200 DOLLARS. i'm patient. i see the future as linux, once it fixes these bottlenecks for the masses. i know it's a process. my point is only that the designers have to be aware of the BOTTLENECKS that hinder the UNINITIATED.
but at a certain point, Joe Blow, along with billions of people like him, need an intact ecosystem full of functioning flora and fauna to survive. just something to keep in mind, when making [so far] small-scale decisions like this. taken to the logical extreme, immediately voting for the sake of A Man can lead to his ultimate doom. it's the dilemma of responsible resource management. it's a slippery slope, even though it seems like such obviously good solid tread right up until you get to the end.
maybe everything useful in the ocean will have been overfished to oblivion though, by the time the BF-noiseblaster becomes standard issue. hey.
i thought i was going to have to argue against a very dangerous idea, and have to really talk about the totally misbegotten ideas about the correlation between warfare and technological advance. but then you knocked down your own house of cards:
"You'd better bet if the government needed some awesome software to defeat cyberterrorists or something, there'd be a boom in the market"
yes, that's exactly right. if "government" needs something awesome-- AND pours money into it (that part is crucial)-- good things can happen. you can actually cut out the middleman, who is war. it's all about the money, not war. somehow you haven't noticed that.
not only are there peaceful technologies that could improve everyone's quality of life if it was made a national priority for THAT REASON, rather than the hysterical r&d impulses and blank-checks for the military-industrial complex that come with war, there are many technologies that ALREADY HAVE ARISEN without war. so what you said is coming off as very crackpot and very dangerous.
the immediate forms and formats of every piece of gadgetry i use has nothing to do with military technology, and has everything to do with consumer technology. the world wide web itself has come unto its own without war. now you can argue until youre blue in the face that somehow everything that i find useful, in some ultimate or original way, comes from military research. but you'd be pathological. for example: "It's likely we wouldn't have satellite communications if it weren't for the German's V2." you might as well surmise that we wouldn't have "fast-moving vehicles" if somebody somewhere didn't want to kill somebody in short order. because, actually, regardless of what the connections between some sectors of space-technology and warfare are, satellite communication BOOMED for just that-- communication, not war. peaceful commercial purposes are what gave rise to modern satellites, not war. similarly, automative technology comes from companies who want to make money off of it, and who want to make their racing teams the fastest. you see, it's kind of nice, isn't it? because hundreds of thousands of people don't have to die. (the profit-motive, even during peace-time, has some obvious problems, but i digress...)
war just happens to be the easiest current way to get the money floodgates open. in fact, there's even some people out there who don't think "government" should bother collecting or spending any money at all on anything other than warfare. but in reality, war does not magically make venture capitalism, or wise investments possible.
you'd be correct if you could name some things that are anything close to unfeasible without the motivation of national warfare. but, you're not correct.
did the first commercial spaceflights have military objectives? did the first GUI have military objectives? does my beautiful ibook come about from war? desktop linux? the blogosphere, the world wide web? no. they didn't.
you can blab all you want about how war is the greatest thing ever and we should say prayers in thanks for it every day. but it's sickening. there's not some magical barrier stopping people from innovating during peace-time. it's a matter of national fear and the willingness to invest in new technology. military industry gets a blank check during war-time. that's all it is. how could you not have noticed this?
for any piece of technology that owes itself to some military research somewhere, some DARPA project, some ancient innovation of death, i could probably name a hundred computer, scientific, biomedical advances that have absolutely nothing to do with war. yes, "it can even be argued that innovation has slowed in america because we don't have a war."
innovation hasn't slowed down. technology does not start or stop at your, or war's, convenience. you'd have to live under a rock to think that, because so many breakthroughs are all over the web, all over the news, and they make the items on your shortlist of nic-nacs look puny and trivial in comparison. have you looked at a physics or astronomy journal lately? visited a biomedical lab? surfed the internet?
any idiot knows you don't pay for something unless you'll get a return-- preferably a big fat filthy rich return. (isn't that the american way? where you been?)
and, hey, whaddya know, how often does big american money go toward any horror show any where when there wouldn't be a big fat geopolitical return, in the form of material wealth or in the form of a puppet-government that actually established resources and infrastructure to control?
which includes.... most of sub-saharan africa, rwanda when it mattered, timor when it mattered. you think we gave war machines to colombia, stinger missiles to taliban "freedom fighters", spend billions of dollars liberating/killing iraqi citizens, and tried "cleaning up" french indochina because we just love to spend money lending a nice big helping hand?
i'm sure i sound cynical, maybe i'll even get modded down by the jingo squad, but pick up a history book sometime. or read the CIA world factbook-- it's great.
now i'm going to put it simply in a way that i think everyone might be able to understand: money. and. power. motivates. the bulk. of global politics. and "mess" management.
anyway, half of "America" despises where the nation is heading. dear rest of the world: please keep that in mind. don't be a fool. thank you.
wikipedia is amazing for looking up pop culture references, actors, music, video games, the ins-and-outs of pro-wrestling character histories. has anybody read the wiki for action movies? or for GREY GOO? it's brilliant.
anything that doesn't involve peoples egos or nationalistic identities is usually brilliantly done. it's also great for looking up foods, plants, animals, technology, vinegars-- a big beautiful range of things.
science and math articles are great too, but try looking up an important scientific figure who happens to have said some unflattering things about american foreign policy, or american race relations. gg.
look up these things though, you won't be disappointed:
fermi paradox grey goo clanking replicator steven seagal (call me crazy) action movies
or, if you're disappointed, you're already dead, RIP.
i suppose the thread is over and done with, but i happened to be scanning my posts for karma-effects, and your post is so absurd that it really demands a response right now. if you'd been paying attention you'd realize that the "duh" award should go to the author of what i was responding to. they described the following scenario: europe came screaming to the US, the US stepped in and kicked ass. which isn't what happened. the US joined the war when it was attacked. i wasn't making a soliloquy, or stating that fact out of nowhere; it said it in response to the previous characterization given in the thread.
secondly, you seem to have confused or collapsed the distinctions between "america", "the president", and "congress." you said the president "wanted" to step in, you said congress didn't want to step in, and of course the pre-existing topic under discussion was what led "america" to join the war. to review: it wasn't screaming europeans that led to a war declaration. it was a direct attack against america. at some point you have to accept that. you can talk about the president all you want, but it's irrelevant. america at large wasn't in the mood to go to war for europe or the jews or anybody else. now if you want to put aside "congress" for a moment-- who are elected officials supposedly representing the popular sentiment, in case you've forgotten-- and talk about the actual american popular sentiment about the war in europe, we can do that.
anyway, you said flat-out that "the isolationists [woke up]", which implies they were asleep, BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T RESPOND UNTIL ATTACKED THEMSELVES. let's say this again: america and congress didn't join the war until a direct attack against america.
you even pointed out that america or the isolationists "realized" something. so, before they realized XYZ, what state of mind were they in?
because you see, i thought that's exactly what i was describing in my post. (admittedly, to make a point, i oversimplified when i said "nobody came screaming." obviously the point is that the warfare in europe didn't incite an american war effort.
it's a simple point.
you've also convoluted it by slandering the french, who were blitzkriegged, invaded on the ground and suffered a massive deaths, being much less geographically lucky than britain. british forces were in france, but couldn't stop the germans. churchill himself feared a land war in britain, which would have been devestating like anywhere else. you don't seem to have anything more than a board-game mentality-- you can criticize the french war machine if you want to do that, but i think it's a disgusting meme to suggest that the french simply "did what they do best" by surrendering.
and you see, i do take lessons from history (i'm an american by the way, not french), which is why it disturbs me when these revisionists accounts of the war appear, with europe coming screaming and america jumping in to save the day, and when conventional wisdom uses that [revised] history as proof of our courage and foresight, for all time. (not just as proof of our courage and foresight, but proof of the cowardice or weakness of france/europe, and so on ad nauseum.)
Slashdot Mirror
no way dave:
if you refuse, you'll still get favorable pricing. the second you say "hey, i decided i want to give you my money."
kind of sad, in a way. but also useful. occasionally.
i agree completely with everything else you said, though!
that's why you change the firefox icon to the BLUE E, and stick it under My Computer. And in the hotlaunch bar.
on every machine you can.
why should you care? well, maybe you shouldn't care, unless you're a network admin who has to deal with the ie spyware, or if you actually want people to have a browser that allows functional text resizing, bla bla.
you seem kind of confused. the controversy comes from the fact that science has disproved many claims and suppositions about the universe (including claims about the word of god himself) that have historically been peddled by religious doctrineers. for example: that demons cause sickness, that sin causes sickness, that the world is a few thousand years old, that the sun revolves around the earth, that this or that woman is a witch.
science has helped us understand the world without using ghost stories, even though there's a lot we don't know. it exposes zealous claims about "the word of god" for the frauds that they are.
as you said, "science" doesn't "disprove god." it disproves various PROPOSITIONS about the world that god-fearing people have historically repeated over the years. science is a METHOD for investigating reality in a sensible way, not a collection of claims. if you oppose it, you're an ostrich with your head in the sand. you can oppose some of the claims that a scientist might make, and then make a counterargument. that's great. but opposing rational inquiry itself is something else entirely.
the "strident atheist" is a straw man. you can't test, prove, or falsify claims made about an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient entity. so theology doesn't belong in a science classroom. the only "strident" thing that fundamentalists are opposing is the TRUTH itself, and the acknowledgment of certain facts about the world, which is why their current goal is to dumb down the science curriculum in school. you should have noticed by now that the provocateurs DON'T go around saying "Hey, everyone, science does NOT actually disprove the existence of a god. let's be careful when we talk about theology." which would be theologically sound, and possibly even appreciated by many people. but instead of saying that, they say "Evolution? I don't believe it. We gotta stop teaching it, or, at least, it's just a THEORY, and it's mostly wrong". the whole controversy is nothing but a repeat of the persecution of Galileo.
and in due time, everyone will be so familiar with the basic facts of biology that the campaign against teaching evolution will be nothing but a historical absurdity, just like with astronomy in the case of Galileo. you can only keep people in the dark so long.
the truth comes home to roost. and it ruffles a lot of feathers.
"Nobody really needs a military right now anyhow, right? If we need one sometime later on, we'll just materialise one out of the same orifice you got that free lunch from above."
the goal of intelligent threat assessment is to minimize paranoid military funding in circumstances where it's entirely inappropriate. --and speaking of WWII, which gets thrown around a lot, the american military wasn't mobilized at large, obviously, until after america was attacked. which is what an industrious, free society does. here's what they don't do: commit to an endless program of militarism.
"Demonstrated proof of benefit, eh? Sure, give my right hand a cookie while you chop off the left. You just gave me a benefit, right? [...] Taxes are the cost we pay for a civilized society. A civilised society doesn't magically come along with that."
for some reason, a lot of people (definitely including you), can very easily imagine being bamboozled, finagled, conned, utterly DECEIVED in every possible arena of public spending.... except with regards to the military/security complex.
"Other countries have proved they can offload the maintenance of security across most of the world onto another country that values its military and is willing to take on the burden of being the world's policeman."
which countries? USA? i've lived there all my life. when have i been willing to be the "world's policeman" ? who are you talking about? do you somehow represent all of the millions of americans?
i'm asking, because i personally value the military, which is why i don't support sending its members to die by the thousands in a pointless war, while leading to the deaths of many more thousands of civilians.
and if what you're saying is true, that all those dirty socialist nations have "offloaded" their security onto you/America......... then it sure looks like somebody's been duped, doesn't it? you're practically beating your chest over having been duped into providing for the security of all those wimpy cheapskate first-world nations. (beating your chest while having a kind of "gee whiz, burden burden burden" moment at the same time)
"In a few select cases, they've shown that a well-armed populous in conjunction with harsh terrain and/or weather can bog down an invading army badly enough that the invaders might choose to reconsider."
obviously if somebody has "harsh" terrain (..and, weather? what the hell?) on their side, and their enemies can't handle it, they don't need to waste money on a bloated military, do they. but it's hard to tell what your point was: you're either saying that some countries are cowards, but safe because of "luck", or you're saying something about american involvement in iraq, or something. i don't know. feel free to explain.
"Instead, let the free market take care of that; governments are the wrong institutions to do this type of thing, as they are very bureaucratic and like throwing their power around."
only governments like throwing around their power, not Free Marketeers?
i guess you've never been sued for thousands of dollars because you downloaded a couple of tunes (that you already owned on CD)
only governments are "very bureaucratic", not corporations? have you ever worked for a commercial organization with more than a few dozen employees? something tells me the answer is no.
anyway, it's unbelievable that you think government should handle the creation/maintenance of ROADS, but not internet access. i mean, ROADS-- which are one of the closest public analogies i can think of for talking about internet access. "not necessary for commerce" is an incredibly ignorant thing to say about the internet, in the 21st century.
but....even weirder than that... you don't seem to be aware that the democratic republic is based on majority rule....
"Your tax dollars go to various special interest groups and some other services that you may not want (or need), just because some representatives or the majority of the people decided to approve them. What if you don't want (or need) broadband Internet access?"
that's funny because. because i don't want or need an overinflated military marching around the world poking at bees nests. --according to you, i have no freedom. yet, somehow, i have the feeling that if i said something like "they took away my freedom by forcing me to pay for destructive things that I DON'T WANT" you would rebuff me.
just so you know, if internet access was publicly funded, it wouldn't mean that "government" controlled the internet. it would mean that the government gave money to private companies for developing infrastructre in unprofitable areas, because it's the right, civil thing to do. and it ends up benefitting everyone. (just like education, which you mentioned yourself...)
you trust "government" to maintain a national military, local police force, and the entire justice system.... but you don't trust them in financing/prompting the creation of a crucial peace of 21st century infrastructre. sorry, but that makes you an ideological lunatic.
wow. pretty creepy.
....SOMEHOW.....somehow, you know, somehow i imagine that what you're talking about HAPPENED to him, it would actuallly be bad. cause you know, it would be a big outspoken lunatic/critic of [videogame] VIOLENCE being harmed or killed because of his [idiotic] opining.
pretty ominous too.
jack is an idiot. but should he really be scared to have his home information public?
which, SOMEHOW, ya know, maybe it would trigger a backlash(?)
actually, corporate entities are quite capable of violating peoples rights, just like many other entities. have you ever had factories dump toxic waste upstream from your home? have you ever been wrongfully detained by private security? been monitored by some private firm (..that you know about)? been sold a dangerously faulty product? been sold a completely fraudulently advertised product? had your personal contact information sold to a dozen telemarketing companies that you do not want business with, without your knowledge? had your finances stolen by some criminal executive?
if not, can you IMAGINE any of these things POSSIBLY happening?
are you going to justify it by saying "Well, you made the CHOICE to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time" ?
what you said is just ideology, nothing more. an entity's status as "corporate" or "government" doesn't affect its ability to violate peoples humans rights.
"A non-governmental entity collecting information you provide while surfing along on this Internet-thingy, that's no breach of your rights."
so, if a "governmental" search engine were to collect information that YOU provide while you're surfing the net, for the exact same stated purpose, it's a breach of your rights? but not when a corporation does the exact same thing?
INFORMED CONSENT should be the name of the game, but isn't. so-called corporations don't have any respect for your autonomy or privacy, though. in case you haven't noticed.
the fact is, if they don't have a good transparent opt-out system, available for people who wish to continue using google, then they're just a thug. maybe a thug with a "good business sense", but a thug all the same. which is why somebody might say "i feel that this is a breach of rights." it will take more than ideology to address those concerns.
anyway, it's nice to know that google can use my personal information to "ensure that its network continues to function." yeah, right.
well, afterall, he is an idiot, you know.
isn't that like saying that we should thank imperialism because it created gandhi? or that we should thank awful germs because they prompted the creation of medicine?
you can imagine, that if the "crappy software" you're talking about NEVER EXISTED, the "great [alternatives]" still would have come about, all the same. (though the case seems different for the rhetorical examples i just gave.)
anyway it usually seems to get lost in the software flames that microsoft doesn't just produce shoddy software. they ascended to power like practically any other entity: by corruption.
where's that guy with the "MICROSOFT IS A CONVICTED MONOPOLIST" sig?
yeah, you can rid yourself of everything microsoft until some jerk offers video content exclusively in .wmv, and you really need to view it.
:(
and they don't take appeals, and you can't install linux/mplayer.
proper-fucked frownface
TFA didn't help me get much of a clue. I tried reading it, and I said to myself: "aren't there one trillion possible IP addresses, available in principle? (minus 1)" just because of the 12-digit IP addresses i'm used to.
/8 in IPv4 address terminology) were supported, led to some institutions that were involved in the development of the Internet having disproportionally large allocations. MIT, for example, has an entire /8 block allocated to it (224 addresses, about 0.39% of the whole internet address space) and various US Department of Defense agencies have several such blocks."
"The IPv4 address space has 32 bits, limiting it to an absolute maximum of 232 (roughly 4.3 billion) possible addresses. For both administrative and technical reasons (the latter in large part being related to routing), IPv4 addresses are allocated in blocks which are restricted to sizes which are powers of 2; this leads to many addresses being unused at any given time. In addition to this, substantial parts of the IP address space are not easily usable because of early technical decisions reserving them for private network use, loopback addresses, multicast, and unspecified future uses, which has resulted in some of these limitations being programmed into devices; working around these limitations will require substantial amounts of re-engineering to increase the amount of available address space. Finally, some of the IPv4 address allocations made early in the development of the Internet (in the 1970s), when only blocks of 224 possible addresses (called a
THANK YOU wikipedia.
"wrong" should say right. or correct.
" 'Correct' meaning is done. stick a fork in it."
so zilly of me.
and anybody with a firm grasp of human communication should realize that the "popular" (philosophically MISTAKEN) notion of "begging the question" is actually more useful than the technical one.
because in most cases, a situation really makes a person sit back for a second and think: "Wow, this really RAISES an interesting question." or, the even better use is in response to somebody who tries using a contradictory excuse or a contradictory alibi. "Well...now that begs the question of how you could actually [XYZ]." the word BEGS packs more punch than "raises." it has an effective, even sarcastic ring to it, that 'raises' lacks.
i can't think of an equally punchy way to say that something has raised the question. so you see, the Wrong Usage seems to fit the purposes of communication like a glove.
on the other hand, "begging the question" seems pretty cumbersome to describe the commonplace circular argument. (circularly, it's cumbersome because nobody uses it that way....) most people prefer to call that sort of thing "idiotic" or "circular", when they recognize it. "he's begging the question!" is done. stick a fork in it.
for a while i had a problem with people using "ironically" to mean "strangely/surprisingly/unexpectedly." personally i think it's much better used with its "correct" meaning. but that meaning has been completely taken over by the word "sarcasm." (which has negative connotations, which I don't like.) i'm starting to accept it, though.
so. Masses 1. Philosophy zero.
you've been APPROPRIATED.
ya know, the prince of thieves?
a very foolish oversight. i scoff.
"Outside the US, the tragedy that hundreds of people died and countless thousands were displaced isn't what registers with a lot of people any more; they just see the mighty US get what they thought it had coming."
well, congratulations to the people who feel that way, because they're just as petty as the boogeyman whom they hate.
anyone who sees mass death and destruction in a foreign nation state as "Getting What They Had Coming" is slime. that's the end of the story. and most of the time these kinds of people are making the same arrogant mistake that they often attribute exclusively to Arrogant America (or whoever, as the case may be). of course, america makes the mistake as much as anyone. the mistake is reducing an entire Nation State to a homogenous mass of people who are somehow EACH INDIVIDUALLY GUILTY for the crimes of their GOVERNMENT even though they have nothing to do with it most of the time, and usually disapprove of it, as a majority, and otherwise didn't vote for them or support them in any particular way. (just look at the polls for president's approval ratings, which are worse than clinton's during the impeachment)
it's gonna take a little more subtlety to make a peaceful, functional world, folks.
if you were to take the most evil corrupt nation on the face of the planet and destroy it, you'd be killing millions of innocent people who just happen to be there, along with the crooks. it's a fact of life.
the idea that a massive natural disaster, or warfare, or what have you, that kills thousands of people can somehow be a stroke of righteous justice is a very sickening delusion. in fact, i think every genocide or atrocity ever committed is based on it. a natural disaster isn't perpetrated by anyone, but evidently the same notions shape peoples reactions to it.
amen.
i tried switching to linux. i loved it. the distros are brilliant today, they come preinstalled with practically everything i need on a daily basis. but i couldn't install software. i just couldn't do it. it took me forever to install PRAAT, and i was vastly confused about how to install a new version of firefox, after downloading the appropriate files.
i ended up thinking: "am i missing something? is there a hidden interface somewhere that will let me install the damn app just by clicking a few buttons? am i an idiot?"
(no need to answer that last question, everyone, thanks....)
i work partly as a network administrator (all Windows), and i personally use an ibook. i've done a small amount of webdev, i know the difference between the internet and the web (and other applications of the internet), i'm the person who people call on to fix their mucked up windows boxes (usually trivial fixes.) so i'm reasonably experienced with computing in general. i've made and used some linux live-cds, and i ended up installing Ubuntu on desktop where i work. but the linux software-install was just killer.
i ended up succeeding how? by googling about the installation, and copying some CLI text that i found into the shell. i'm sure it's only a matter of time before i'm familiar with the process
with Ubuntu 5.04, i also had major problems changing my desktop resolution. an web search revealed that i'd have to put a bunch of arcane (incomprehensible TO ME) code into a config file somewhere. anyway, the latest updated version of ubuntu works great, resolution wise. (there's a simple desktop GUI for it, and it works.) i also haven't been able to set up linux/windows filesharing. the linux box sees the shares, but tries to read them as "desktop configuration files" and can't/won't open them. haven't had much luck searing for a fix.
honestly, PEOPLE WILL SWITCH. when they realize that they can do everything with a distro of linux that they can do with windows-- ONCE THEY CAN ACTUALLY do the trivial things they're used to, slightly beyond simply browsing and emailing and typing documents-- WITHOUT PAYING 200 DOLLARS. i'm patient. i see the future as linux, once it fixes these bottlenecks for the masses. i know it's a process. my point is only that the designers have to be aware of the BOTTLENECKS that hinder the UNINITIATED.
i kid, i kid.
but at a certain point, Joe Blow, along with billions of people like him, need an intact ecosystem full of functioning flora and fauna to survive. just something to keep in mind, when making [so far] small-scale decisions like this. taken to the logical extreme, immediately voting for the sake of A Man can lead to his ultimate doom. it's the dilemma of responsible resource management. it's a slippery slope, even though it seems like such obviously good solid tread right up until you get to the end.
maybe everything useful in the ocean will have been overfished to oblivion though, by the time the BF-noiseblaster becomes standard issue. hey.
by "conquering" the web, does he mean "filling it with useful applications and tools for public use"?
?
i thought i was going to have to argue against a very dangerous idea, and have to really talk about the totally misbegotten ideas about the correlation between warfare and technological advance. but then you knocked down your own house of cards:
"You'd better bet if the government needed some awesome software to defeat cyberterrorists or something, there'd be a boom in the market"
yes, that's exactly right. if "government" needs something awesome-- AND pours money into it (that part is crucial)-- good things can happen. you can actually cut out the middleman, who is war. it's all about the money, not war. somehow you haven't noticed that.
not only are there peaceful technologies that could improve everyone's quality of life if it was made a national priority for THAT REASON, rather than the hysterical r&d impulses and blank-checks for the military-industrial complex that come with war, there are many technologies that ALREADY HAVE ARISEN without war. so what you said is coming off as very crackpot and very dangerous.
the immediate forms and formats of every piece of gadgetry i use has nothing to do with military technology, and has everything to do with consumer technology. the world wide web itself has come unto its own without war. now you can argue until youre blue in the face that somehow everything that i find useful, in some ultimate or original way, comes from military research. but you'd be pathological. for example: "It's likely we wouldn't have satellite communications if it weren't for the German's V2." you might as well surmise that we wouldn't have "fast-moving vehicles" if somebody somewhere didn't want to kill somebody in short order. because, actually, regardless of what the connections between some sectors of space-technology and warfare are, satellite communication BOOMED for just that-- communication, not war. peaceful commercial purposes are what gave rise to modern satellites, not war. similarly, automative technology comes from companies who want to make money off of it, and who want to make their racing teams the fastest. you see, it's kind of nice, isn't it? because hundreds of thousands of people don't have to die. (the profit-motive, even during peace-time, has some obvious problems, but i digress...)
war just happens to be the easiest current way to get the money floodgates open. in fact, there's even some people out there who don't think "government" should bother collecting or spending any money at all on anything other than warfare. but in reality, war does not magically make venture capitalism, or wise investments possible.
you'd be correct if you could name some things that are anything close to unfeasible without the motivation of national warfare. but, you're not correct.
did the first commercial spaceflights have military objectives? did the first GUI have military objectives? does my beautiful ibook come about from war? desktop linux? the blogosphere, the world wide web? no. they didn't.
you can blab all you want about how war is the greatest thing ever and we should say prayers in thanks for it every day. but it's sickening. there's not some magical barrier stopping people from innovating during peace-time. it's a matter of national fear and the willingness to invest in new technology. military industry gets a blank check during war-time. that's all it is. how could you not have noticed this?
for any piece of technology that owes itself to some military research somewhere, some DARPA project, some ancient innovation of death, i could probably name a hundred computer, scientific, biomedical advances that have absolutely nothing to do with war. yes, "it can even be argued that innovation has slowed in america because we don't have a war."
innovation hasn't slowed down. technology does not start or stop at your, or war's, convenience. you'd have to live under a rock to think that, because so many breakthroughs are all over the web, all over the news, and they make the items on your shortlist of nic-nacs look puny and trivial in comparison. have you looked at a physics or astronomy journal lately? visited a biomedical lab? surfed the internet?
any idiot knows you don't pay for something unless you'll get a return-- preferably a big fat filthy rich return. (isn't that the american way? where you been?)
and, hey, whaddya know, how often does big american money go toward any horror show any where when there wouldn't be a big fat geopolitical return, in the form of material wealth or in the form of a puppet-government that actually established resources and infrastructure to control?
which includes.... most of sub-saharan africa, rwanda when it mattered, timor when it mattered. you think we gave war machines to colombia, stinger missiles to taliban "freedom fighters", spend billions of dollars liberating/killing iraqi citizens, and tried "cleaning up" french indochina because we just love to spend money lending a nice big helping hand?
i'm sure i sound cynical, maybe i'll even get modded down by the jingo squad, but pick up a history book sometime. or read the CIA world factbook-- it's great.
now i'm going to put it simply in a way that i think everyone might be able to understand: money. and. power. motivates. the bulk. of global politics. and "mess" management.
anyway, half of "America" despises where the nation is heading. dear rest of the world: please keep that in mind. don't be a fool. thank you.
wikipedia is amazing for looking up pop culture references, actors, music, video games, the ins-and-outs of pro-wrestling character histories. has anybody read the wiki for action movies? or for GREY GOO? it's brilliant.
anything that doesn't involve peoples egos or nationalistic identities is usually brilliantly done. it's also great for looking up foods, plants, animals, technology, vinegars-- a big beautiful range of things.
science and math articles are great too, but try looking up an important scientific figure who happens to have said some unflattering things about american foreign policy, or american race relations. gg.
look up these things though, you won't be disappointed:
fermi paradox
grey goo
clanking replicator
steven seagal (call me crazy)
action movies
or, if you're disappointed, you're already dead, RIP.
no, no. your conclusion is all wrong.
those gigantic space wasps are coming from my bum.
i suppose the thread is over and done with, but i happened to be scanning my posts for karma-effects, and your post is so absurd that it really demands a response right now. if you'd been paying attention you'd realize that the "duh" award should go to the author of what i was responding to. they described the following scenario: europe came screaming to the US, the US stepped in and kicked ass. which isn't what happened. the US joined the war when it was attacked. i wasn't making a soliloquy, or stating that fact out of nowhere; it said it in response to the previous characterization given in the thread.
secondly, you seem to have confused or collapsed the distinctions between "america", "the president", and "congress." you said the president "wanted" to step in, you said congress didn't want to step in, and of course the pre-existing topic under discussion was what led "america" to join the war. to review: it wasn't screaming europeans that led to a war declaration. it was a direct attack against america. at some point you have to accept that. you can talk about the president all you want, but it's irrelevant. america at large wasn't in the mood to go to war for europe or the jews or anybody else. now if you want to put aside "congress" for a moment-- who are elected officials supposedly representing the popular sentiment, in case you've forgotten-- and talk about the actual american popular sentiment about the war in europe, we can do that.
anyway, you said flat-out that "the isolationists [woke up]", which implies they were asleep, BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T RESPOND UNTIL ATTACKED THEMSELVES. let's say this again: america and congress didn't join the war until a direct attack against america.
you even pointed out that america or the isolationists "realized" something. so, before they realized XYZ, what state of mind were they in?
because you see, i thought that's exactly what i was describing in my post. (admittedly, to make a point, i oversimplified when i said "nobody came screaming." obviously the point is that the warfare in europe didn't incite an american war effort.
it's a simple point.
you've also convoluted it by slandering the french, who were blitzkriegged, invaded on the ground and suffered a massive deaths, being much less geographically lucky than britain. british forces were in france, but couldn't stop the germans. churchill himself feared a land war in britain, which would have been devestating like anywhere else. you don't seem to have anything more than a board-game mentality-- you can criticize the french war machine if you want to do that, but i think it's a disgusting meme to suggest that the french simply "did what they do best" by surrendering.
and you see, i do take lessons from history (i'm an american by the way, not french), which is why it disturbs me when these revisionists accounts of the war appear, with europe coming screaming and america jumping in to save the day, and when conventional wisdom uses that [revised] history as proof of our courage and foresight, for all time. (not just as proof of our courage and foresight, but proof of the cowardice or weakness of france/europe, and so on ad nauseum.)
ibook. hive.
xgrid, baby.
i've already computed the meaning of life, with a few of my buddies.
there's no geeks around here.