Look up where the whole "shouting fire in a crowded theater" thing comes from, and prepare to be unimpressed.
Here's the relevant part.
Holmes, writing for a unanimous majority, ruled that it was illegal to distribute flyers opposing the draft during World War I. Holmes argued this abridgment of free speech was permissible because it presented a "clear and present danger" to the government's recruitment efforts for the war.
I get where you're coming from, as I'm no fan of authoritarianism of any stripe. That's why I come up with analogies such as the crop rotation one (I like that one actually, I'll probably use it again), to get people thinking about possibilities, hopefully enough for them to really look into the problem, and (this one's a doozy) want to do something about it ON THEIR OWN.
Yeah, authoritarianism sucks (as the kids say), and those in charge wouldn't take the correct actions anyways. But hey, if you're welded to the tracks and a freight train is coming, I can't think of anything better to do about it than to point out the headlamp to the other people welded to the track with me. Unfortunately, no matter how close the headlamp gets, no matter how strong the rumble becomes, too many people are too busy hoarding as many of the valuable rocks on the tracks as possible.
So, we're going to lose either way if global climate change (I call it ecoshock personally) comes to call, because there is no way the people who keep claiming to 'need more information' are going to take the time away from their stock portfolios or their football games (2 different demographics with similar opinions on the subject, AFAICT) to actually look into it.
Yep, I'm an optimistic pessimist, because either we're going to go through hell, and I get to say 'I told you so', or we don't and life doesn't become one big horror film.
I win something either way, but would be entirely grateful to be proved wrong about that freight train.
Your civil liberties don't always trump the good intentions of the well meaning.
If the "good intentions" of those that are supposedly "well meaning" include my arrest for something that isn't illegal, why then yes, yes they do. Every time. EVERY time. Just because that makes you nervous, doesn't make it not so. Sorry (not really).
I always find it interesting when people have this Utopian view of things when in reality risks have to be taken to ensure the world runs smoothly.
Personally I find it interesting (disheartening actually) when something as innocuous as taking a picture of a train can seem so frightening to some people as to be enough reason to curtail civil liberties in order to prevent it from happening.
Personally, I think some people don't have what it takes to live in a free society, as that means someone will be able to kill you if they try hard enough. It's just a natural consequence of people being in charge of themselves. I'm sorry if that scares you (for real this time, I have empathy for that condition), but I promise that the alternatives are far worse and, unintuitively, more dangerous in the long run.
Twentieth century history is full of examples showing how well trading liberty for security works out. Please do not set the bar of expectation as low as taking pictures of trains or buildings, that is entirely too far gone down the proverbial slippery slope.
Wealth wealth wealth, it gets chanted repeatedly on every slashdot discussions that has anything to do with economics or (strangely) global weather patterns.
Look, wealth isn't everything, and I'll give you an analogy (sadly, no cars) to show you why. It's called crop rotation. You cannot plant corn in the same field every year, you have to switch between it and something lighter, like soybeans. Why? Well, the corn is the wealth crop, high resource, high intensity, wealth (energy). To grow at such an intense level, it consumes greedily from its environment (like it's supposed to). If you keep doing that over and over you'll destroy the ability for the environment to produce, well, anything. You'll bleed it dry of vital resources, and damage it in other ways as well. You have to take time off of intense, single-purpose wealth creation in order to restabilize the environment, so you go with low intensity soy. It's nice, it's useful, it's mellow on the earth, but it's not as wealth-creating as corn. So be it, that's the cost of doing business.
We need to do the same thing. The wealth creation part of the cycle has been going on for too long, and now needs a time for refreshing. We'll get it one of two ways, (continuing the analogy) either by wisely doing what is necessary to preserve our 'growing' environment by planting the 'soy' of alternative energies and carbon caps, or because we'll find ourselves trying to create wealth in an economic field that can no support weeds, let alone rich, wealth-bringing corn.
Then you should have stopped selling 2G service when you knew you weren't going to support it properly, but that would be denying a potential income stream. Or you could have at LEAST warned customers that they were going to be locked in to a contract that won't provide the services as advertised (oh, they might be within the contractual fine print, but it's not what the guy on TV told you it was going to be), but that would be bad PR. So the sneaky underhanded method works out the best... for you (as a representative of AT&T).
Caveat Emptor is good advice for consumers, but it makes a really nasty corporate business plan.
I'm not grandstanding, and I have no reason to. Your attempt at looking highbrow through a lengthy and well-worded post fails me. Please, instead of trying to look sophisticated yet snarky, explain to me how your post differs from a troll. What, exactly, opinion of yours am I differing on?
Less arrogant expansion of simple concepts and more information please.
Nice post, and less than 4 hours after the OP admitted his mistake. Oh, and that bit about completely ignoring the person you're talking about while they're standing right next to (on top of in this case) you, pure brilliance. Raw arrogance, ignoring the admitted correction, and generalizing about why slashdot sucks.
Beautiful troll, and written well enough so that most people won't even notice. Bravo.
Just to burst your 'toughguy' bubble, I'll remind you how little artillery you have, how few helicopters you have, the sorry state of your anti-aircraft weaponry and your total and complete lack of tanks.
Yeah, if it comes down to lawless gangwars, you're pretty fucked, dontcha think?
Yeah, you're fine, I was talking to the AC who was bitching about your moderation. I act the same way you do, though perhaps less often. Look back far enough in my post history, and you'll find some flame and some pure troll. I just smile at the moderations when they come. If fact, one of my Very Minor Goals in life is to be honestly rated either +5 Troll or +5 Flamebait on slashdot some day in my life.
Therein lies the crux. I can't do it, SeaDuck can't do it, because you're not ASKING us. You're watching TV, and we all know how far the biggest media player will go to ensure an accurate view of any particular groups philosophy, right? I think their technique goes something like 'find the biggest eye-ball catching wack-job you can who calls himself STORY_FOCUS_OF_THE_DAY and plaster him on the headliner shows'. That's what happens. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd think that there was a plot to increase raw divisiveness between people, but I'm enough of a cynic to think that it's really about the money, because so many people buy sensationalist stories.
I would think that belief in string theory could very well be protected under freedom of religion. In fact, I think even an Atheist could make this claim, being that mainstream Atheism seems to be faith in either non-conscious math or non-conscious physics.
As for myself, I'm a monotheist with a strong belief that a possibly-conscious math interacts (or may be the same as) a possibly-conscious spacetime foundation. I would hope that if I were presented with what I consider sufficient evidence of string theory to incorporate it into my greater belief system, that it WOULD be protected, as it very much WOULD be a part of what I consider my 'religion'.
That being said, I have no idea if this has been tested in court or not, and I fully realize that the courts have only a 'flirtatious' relationship to common sense may times, so I could be very wrong.
I just understand the difference between civilized and uncivlized behavior
Really now? Reading through this entire thread to this point (I browse at -1 on slashdot) I find it difficult to believe that you honestly do. Or, perhaps you DO, but feel no compulsion to follow the civilized track.
You might even be right about the OP being a bitch, I don't know (and neither do you, really, from the flimsy 'evidence' you're grasping so tightly). What I DO know is that you have sunk down into a very poor position to be arguing morality and ethics from, as you gave up attempts at reasoned debate in favor of smug character attacks. You've convinced no-one, and have pushed many away from your point of view by brushing aside all arguments with nothing more than pure ego masquerading as flippant dismissal. Your calling upon Godwin's "law" (it's not really a law, and if it WERE a law (due to the possibility of an 'infinite' thread), you've misapplied it) higher up in the thread really hit the point home, as you were plainly either unwilling or unable to answer a completely relevant question.
Looks to me like your pissy attitude has dug you into a hole, that from your perspective seems to look like a platform for some reason. Go back and re-read the thread (trying to be objective, try really hard) and tell me if you really think you come across as someone who should be lecturing on civilized behavior.
Ahem... If I were to walk into, say, a predominately black church, stand at the pulpit and say "Water is wet, niggers!" my 'correctness' would not even slightly dampen the raw power of trollishness that I have just unleashed.
When are you insecure nerds (I'm a secure nerd, myself) going to learn that being smart and being a douchbag don't go hand in hand, nor does being right excuse unnecessarily rude behavior. People like to joke that nerds can't get girls, but it's just not true. Nerds can get girls, but nerds who've never bothered to spend even an ounce of thought about social graces don't get along with much of ANYBODY (especially girls), except similar people who are willing to overlook your social ineptitudes out of sheer loneliness.
BTW, this applies to that "I'm going to be so helpful and easy to push over she'll HAVE to love me" train of thought too, which is a thought that most people would easily see the flaw in, if they bothered to spend the effort thinking about it.
In short, anyone who can successfully manage memory in C should EASILY be able to discern at least basic social rules and strategies. Slinging terms like 'freetard' because someone is misinformed about a recent development in some obscure topic is 10x the fail of getting the fact wrong in the first place.
I don't know how it is around your family and friends, but in THIS place, you're not the brightest bulb in the box, there are many bright bulbs here. Random insults at strangers on the internet don't make you look cool, or too smart for the rest of us, or 'leet' or whatever you're going for, it makes you look immature. The GP was troll, flamebait and informative all in one, but I would argue that it's more of the first one than it is the last.
Many posts get modded to +5 funny, but this is above and beyond. Your post is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time, slashdot or otherwise. Bravo.
Since some people actually take it seriously, can anyone give me any basis to believe 'never attribute to malice that which can be adequately be explained by stupidity" is more than something which sounds catchy and faux-wise? I know, from my own actions, that people do malicious things and feign stupidity/ignorance.
I like the way it sounds too, but "Heinlein's Razor" sure doesn't seem too cut very accurately.
No, honestly, I really don't. What magical power of restriction-outside-the-boundaries-of-the-law are you referencing? Do you have a restrictionyer's degree from Harvard Restriction School?
Oh, and as far as the whole federal-state thing, keep reading Amendments, don't stop at 10... You might be in for a surprise!;-)
Stop asking questions and RUN NOW!!! SAVE YOUR SOUL! RUN LIKE HELL!!!
If you don't know what/b/ is, you're not ready for/b/ and/b/ will eat your psyche... Or turn you into the kind of guy that tells us about meeting Obama in a bathroom stall.
I'm a 'look at the trees' kind of guy too, but I can appreciate a view of the forest, so to speak. Don't be too quick to dismiss the 'trees' view though, because when you need an apple (hehe), it doesn't matter how beautiful or well functioning your forest is, if you didn't look for an apple tree, you might just come up short. If you KNOW you're going to need apples, not making sure you have an apple tree is foolhardy short-sightedness at best. That being said, I don't care HOW nice your apple orchard is if I need walnuts. I'm looking for walnut trees, and every effort in the world you put towards your apple orchard (short of growing walnuts) is going to be ineffective at drawing my business.
Slashdot Mirror
Look up where the whole "shouting fire in a crowded theater" thing comes from, and prepare to be unimpressed.
Here's the relevant part.
Holmes, writing for a unanimous majority, ruled that it was illegal to distribute flyers opposing the draft during World War I. Holmes argued this abridgment of free speech was permissible because it presented a "clear and present danger" to the government's recruitment efforts for the war.
I get where you're coming from, as I'm no fan of authoritarianism of any stripe. That's why I come up with analogies such as the crop rotation one (I like that one actually, I'll probably use it again), to get people thinking about possibilities, hopefully enough for them to really look into the problem, and (this one's a doozy) want to do something about it ON THEIR OWN.
Yeah, authoritarianism sucks (as the kids say), and those in charge wouldn't take the correct actions anyways. But hey, if you're welded to the tracks and a freight train is coming, I can't think of anything better to do about it than to point out the headlamp to the other people welded to the track with me. Unfortunately, no matter how close the headlamp gets, no matter how strong the rumble becomes, too many people are too busy hoarding as many of the valuable rocks on the tracks as possible.
So, we're going to lose either way if global climate change (I call it ecoshock personally) comes to call, because there is no way the people who keep claiming to 'need more information' are going to take the time away from their stock portfolios or their football games (2 different demographics with similar opinions on the subject, AFAICT) to actually look into it.
Yep, I'm an optimistic pessimist, because either we're going to go through hell, and I get to say 'I told you so', or we don't and life doesn't become one big horror film.
I win something either way, but would be entirely grateful to be proved wrong about that freight train.
That is why all this is nothing more than 'Security Kabuki'.
Actually, I prefer to think of it as 'Security Bukakke', but my sense of humor is 'tilted' a bit. :-D
Your civil liberties don't always trump the good intentions of the well meaning.
If the "good intentions" of those that are supposedly "well meaning" include my arrest for something that isn't illegal, why then yes, yes they do. Every time. EVERY time. Just because that makes you nervous, doesn't make it not so. Sorry (not really).
I always find it interesting when people have this Utopian view of things when in reality risks have to be taken to ensure the world runs smoothly.
Personally I find it interesting (disheartening actually) when something as innocuous as taking a picture of a train can seem so frightening to some people as to be enough reason to curtail civil liberties in order to prevent it from happening.
Personally, I think some people don't have what it takes to live in a free society, as that means someone will be able to kill you if they try hard enough. It's just a natural consequence of people being in charge of themselves. I'm sorry if that scares you (for real this time, I have empathy for that condition), but I promise that the alternatives are far worse and, unintuitively, more dangerous in the long run.
Twentieth century history is full of examples showing how well trading liberty for security works out. Please do not set the bar of expectation as low as taking pictures of trains or buildings, that is entirely too far gone down the proverbial slippery slope.
Wealth wealth wealth, it gets chanted repeatedly on every slashdot discussions that has anything to do with economics or (strangely) global weather patterns.
Look, wealth isn't everything, and I'll give you an analogy (sadly, no cars) to show you why. It's called crop rotation. You cannot plant corn in the same field every year, you have to switch between it and something lighter, like soybeans. Why? Well, the corn is the wealth crop, high resource, high intensity, wealth (energy). To grow at such an intense level, it consumes greedily from its environment (like it's supposed to). If you keep doing that over and over you'll destroy the ability for the environment to produce, well, anything. You'll bleed it dry of vital resources, and damage it in other ways as well. You have to take time off of intense, single-purpose wealth creation in order to restabilize the environment, so you go with low intensity soy. It's nice, it's useful, it's mellow on the earth, but it's not as wealth-creating as corn. So be it, that's the cost of doing business.
We need to do the same thing. The wealth creation part of the cycle has been going on for too long, and now needs a time for refreshing. We'll get it one of two ways, (continuing the analogy) either by wisely doing what is necessary to preserve our 'growing' environment by planting the 'soy' of alternative energies and carbon caps, or because we'll find ourselves trying to create wealth in an economic field that can no support weeds, let alone rich, wealth-bringing corn.
Then you should have stopped selling 2G service when you knew you weren't going to support it properly, but that would be denying a potential income stream. Or you could have at LEAST warned customers that they were going to be locked in to a contract that won't provide the services as advertised (oh, they might be within the contractual fine print, but it's not what the guy on TV told you it was going to be), but that would be bad PR. So the sneaky underhanded method works out the best... for you (as a representative of AT&T).
Caveat Emptor is good advice for consumers, but it makes a really nasty corporate business plan.
I'm not grandstanding, and I have no reason to. Your attempt at looking highbrow through a lengthy and well-worded post fails me. Please, instead of trying to look sophisticated yet snarky, explain to me how your post differs from a troll. What, exactly, opinion of yours am I differing on?
Less arrogant expansion of simple concepts and more information please.
I don't understand your question.
Seriously, the fact that the poster was speaking in the general is covered in my post, I made no error.
Nice post, and less than 4 hours after the OP admitted his mistake. Oh, and that bit about completely ignoring the person you're talking about while they're standing right next to (on top of in this case) you, pure brilliance. Raw arrogance, ignoring the admitted correction, and generalizing about why slashdot sucks.
Beautiful troll, and written well enough so that most people won't even notice. Bravo.
Posting to undo a bad moderation. Sorry folks.
Incidental Redundancy?
Having the Fight Club fantasy again are we?
Just to burst your 'toughguy' bubble, I'll remind you how little artillery you have, how few helicopters you have, the sorry state of your anti-aircraft weaponry and your total and complete lack of tanks.
Yeah, if it comes down to lawless gangwars, you're pretty fucked, dontcha think?
Is there, by the way, a link to where these materials could be found? I'd very much like to see your stick-figure presentation.
Yeah, you're fine, I was talking to the AC who was bitching about your moderation. I act the same way you do, though perhaps less often. Look back far enough in my post history, and you'll find some flame and some pure troll. I just smile at the moderations when they come. If fact, one of my Very Minor Goals in life is to be honestly rated either +5 Troll or +5 Flamebait on slashdot some day in my life.
Therein lies the crux. I can't do it, SeaDuck can't do it, because you're not ASKING us. You're watching TV, and we all know how far the biggest media player will go to ensure an accurate view of any particular groups philosophy, right? I think their technique goes something like 'find the biggest eye-ball catching wack-job you can who calls himself STORY_FOCUS_OF_THE_DAY and plaster him on the headliner shows'. That's what happens. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd think that there was a plot to increase raw divisiveness between people, but I'm enough of a cynic to think that it's really about the money, because so many people buy sensationalist stories.
I would think that belief in string theory could very well be protected under freedom of religion. In fact, I think even an Atheist could make this claim, being that mainstream Atheism seems to be faith in either non-conscious math or non-conscious physics.
As for myself, I'm a monotheist with a strong belief that a possibly-conscious math interacts (or may be the same as) a possibly-conscious spacetime foundation. I would hope that if I were presented with what I consider sufficient evidence of string theory to incorporate it into my greater belief system, that it WOULD be protected, as it very much WOULD be a part of what I consider my 'religion'.
That being said, I have no idea if this has been tested in court or not, and I fully realize that the courts have only a 'flirtatious' relationship to common sense may times, so I could be very wrong.
By the GPs definition, we would call that a cult.
And no, I'm not interested in your newsletter at this time.
I just understand the difference between civilized and uncivlized behavior
Really now? Reading through this entire thread to this point (I browse at -1 on slashdot) I find it difficult to believe that you honestly do. Or, perhaps you DO, but feel no compulsion to follow the civilized track.
You might even be right about the OP being a bitch, I don't know (and neither do you, really, from the flimsy 'evidence' you're grasping so tightly). What I DO know is that you have sunk down into a very poor position to be arguing morality and ethics from, as you gave up attempts at reasoned debate in favor of smug character attacks. You've convinced no-one, and have pushed many away from your point of view by brushing aside all arguments with nothing more than pure ego masquerading as flippant dismissal. Your calling upon Godwin's "law" (it's not really a law, and if it WERE a law (due to the possibility of an 'infinite' thread), you've misapplied it) higher up in the thread really hit the point home, as you were plainly either unwilling or unable to answer a completely relevant question.
Looks to me like your pissy attitude has dug you into a hole, that from your perspective seems to look like a platform for some reason. Go back and re-read the thread (trying to be objective, try really hard) and tell me if you really think you come across as someone who should be lecturing on civilized behavior.
Ahem... If I were to walk into, say, a predominately black church, stand at the pulpit and say "Water is wet, niggers!" my 'correctness' would not even slightly dampen the raw power of trollishness that I have just unleashed.
When are you insecure nerds (I'm a secure nerd, myself) going to learn that being smart and being a douchbag don't go hand in hand, nor does being right excuse unnecessarily rude behavior. People like to joke that nerds can't get girls, but it's just not true. Nerds can get girls, but nerds who've never bothered to spend even an ounce of thought about social graces don't get along with much of ANYBODY (especially girls), except similar people who are willing to overlook your social ineptitudes out of sheer loneliness.
BTW, this applies to that "I'm going to be so helpful and easy to push over she'll HAVE to love me" train of thought too, which is a thought that most people would easily see the flaw in, if they bothered to spend the effort thinking about it.
In short, anyone who can successfully manage memory in C should EASILY be able to discern at least basic social rules and strategies. Slinging terms like 'freetard' because someone is misinformed about a recent development in some obscure topic is 10x the fail of getting the fact wrong in the first place.
I don't know how it is around your family and friends, but in THIS place, you're not the brightest bulb in the box, there are many bright bulbs here. Random insults at strangers on the internet don't make you look cool, or too smart for the rest of us, or 'leet' or whatever you're going for, it makes you look immature. The GP was troll, flamebait and informative all in one, but I would argue that it's more of the first one than it is the last.
Many posts get modded to +5 funny, but this is above and beyond. Your post is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time, slashdot or otherwise. Bravo.
Every now and again I'll open up my units.dat file and browse around. It's commented pretty well, and has some very interesting units.
man units and go to the bottom of the man page to find out where units.dat lives on your *nix system. If you don't have it, get it, it's greatness.
Since some people actually take it seriously, can anyone give me any basis to believe 'never attribute to malice that which can be adequately be explained by stupidity" is more than something which sounds catchy and faux-wise? I know, from my own actions, that people do malicious things and feign stupidity/ignorance.
I like the way it sounds too, but "Heinlein's Razor" sure doesn't seem too cut very accurately.
No, honestly, I really don't. What magical power of restriction-outside-the-boundaries-of-the-law are you referencing? Do you have a restrictionyer's degree from Harvard Restriction School?
Oh, and as far as the whole federal-state thing, keep reading Amendments, don't stop at 10... You might be in for a surprise! ;-)
Stop asking questions and RUN NOW!!! SAVE YOUR SOUL! RUN LIKE HELL!!!
If you don't know what /b/ is, you're not ready for /b/ and /b/ will eat your psyche... Or turn you into the kind of guy that tells us about meeting Obama in a bathroom stall.
I'm a 'look at the trees' kind of guy too, but I can appreciate a view of the forest, so to speak. Don't be too quick to dismiss the 'trees' view though, because when you need an apple (hehe), it doesn't matter how beautiful or well functioning your forest is, if you didn't look for an apple tree, you might just come up short. If you KNOW you're going to need apples, not making sure you have an apple tree is foolhardy short-sightedness at best. That being said, I don't care HOW nice your apple orchard is if I need walnuts. I'm looking for walnut trees, and every effort in the world you put towards your apple orchard (short of growing walnuts) is going to be ineffective at drawing my business.