your fencing analogy is flawed, because napster isnt an entity thats sitting there loking at each individual item that passes by. Napster is more like a person who knows a thief, and knows a fencer, and helps the two of them get in contact with each other.
I think you miss or exagerate the point. Corps. dont care how free we are or what we think. They arent against individuality, or any particular culture. They want to make money. How they make it is irrelevent. They will use any tool at their disposle if they belive it will increase their profits. The problems we face stem from the fact that the thinking is way too short term. They want profit NOW. The fact that they actions maybe result in a bad public impression which in turn can lead to lower sales doesnt seem to occur to them.
Corporations used to thrive on innovations. One upping their competitors to offer a better product. Now you go into a store, you find stacks and stacks of products that differe little save for the packaging. The focus has shifted from innovation, to preventing others from making innovations, by using legal means to block their attempts whenever possible.
Whats intresting is that you miss something very importat about these mega-corporations: WE OWN THEM!
I use "we" in a very broad sense. What i mean is, most if not all compinies are owned mostly by nameless share holders, who have no say in how the company behaves. (How much of microsoft does bill gates own?) They recive a check everynow and then, and that is the extent of their interaction. The companies policies and decisions are mostly carried out and created by hired employees(boards of directors?) paid company salaries (and hence in the employ of the shareholders). So in effect we have entities with inredable amounts of money power and influcence, being run by people whos jobs are to maximize the amount every share hodler recives, and who can get up and walk away from any mess they made with no obligations or responsibilites.
Take a look at microsoft. Every one seems to think that microsoft is bad, evil what ever. But what exactly is it thats "bad"? "Microsoft" is just a group of people working under a common name. Is it those people that are bad? a few of those people? one of them? Who is responsible for a corporations actions? The boards of directors are just employees. The shareholders have no real say in what the company does (unless they own ALOT of stock). Where then do we put this blame?
As has been pointed out, these mega-corps have their fingers in too many pies to be able to boycott them. Maybe we can boycott their stock. If you disagree with what a company does, sell their stock. if the market was flooded with stock no one wants, the value goes down, and the company will find it hard to do what it wants: make money. (of course that alos opens the door to even bigger mergers as the companies become devalued)
Just as unworkable: buy stock in the company, hopefully enough that oyu have influence with the board of directors. maybe we cand band together and creat ficitional corportions just to own shares for us in the large corporations, so that a collective voice could be heard.
"... Confession cannot be done by telephone, e-mail or proxy."
I'm curious as to exactly how they interpret their own words. I'm not a christian, but the last time i read the bible, it said only god could forgive sins, and jesus said to tell your sins directly to god.
What do they think "teling them to god" means? Telling them to a priest to recive pennance? But a priest is just a proxy for god (proxy meaning "a person authorized to speak for or represent another")... so by their own words they've condemened their own practices.
Re:The Science of Religion and Religion of Science
on
Planet Gattaca
·
· Score: 1
>>Personally, I would say sciece is just re-discovering existing laws, and providing a better understanding of how the whole darn universe works (allthough gravity still throws us for a loop, pardon the pun.)
a couple of things:
1. "re-discovering"? as in "learning something that was previously known and then forgotten?" known by who?
2. of course they are discovering pre-existing laws... what the hell do you think they were doing? making up rules as they went along and nature somehow magicaly complied with the way they felt the universe should be?
3. gravity "throws us for a loop" only when we attempt to integrate einsteins theory of gravity (which says that gravity is casued by a distortion of space-time caused by matter... basicaly geometry? think of a blanket pulled taunt. put a rock on it and it makes a dimple. a marble going in a stright line in the dimple goes in a circle around the rock. the rock is the sun, the marble is the earth, the sheet is space. the earth goes in a stright line in the curved space around the sun) with quantum mechanics, which says the electro-magnetic and nucular forces are caused by the exchange of particles. a quantum theory of gravity would be one in which gravity was casued by the exchange of a "gravity particle" (gravitron?). The problem is mixing two seperate things that, more and more, seem to be different aspects of the universe that must be explained in different ways (gravity by geometry, and the electro magnetic and nucular forces by particles).
4. there are theories that offer idea's as to what existed before the big bang (look up super string theory. it claims before our universe there was a universe that was 10-dimensional, but was extremely unstable. it "spltit" into a 6 dimensional uuniverse, which shrank down to a tiny point, and ours, a 4 dimensional one, which then violently expanded). Still, though, the question of "what came before" remains to be answered (though if you are familiar with physics it gets a little blurry... when you approach the big bang or whatever, the laws of physics as we understand them break down, and also time strats to act weird and eventualy dissapears entierly at the singularity the big bang theory says existed... if there's no "time" as such how can you say event A happened "before" event B?)
5. If you cannot preform experiments on the "meta-physical" (a misleading term dating back to a book written by aristotle, meaning "after-physics") or "spirtual realm" how can you ever prove it to exist in the first place? If you claim something exists, the burden of prooving it lies on you. its not sciences job to disproove every crackpot theory (i dont mean to imply this is a crackpot thory) that is propoused. they are invalidated by the theorys that science does prove.
6. Ever hear of Godels Proof? Godel came up with a mathmetical proof that mathmatics will always be "open ended", there will never be a set of self consistent axioms from which all mathmatical laws can be derived. Science never calimed to have all the answers; and i agree science will never have "all the answers" (how would we know when we know everything?). We will have an ever growing mass of information, and a better understanding of how the universe works, but its doubtfull there will ever be a final best theory of everything. But the difference between science and religion is that science tests its answers to see if they can be prooved false (a theory that cannot be tested, and there by be shown to be right or wrong, is worthless, and quite simply not science), while religious "answers", by their very nature, do not offer themselves up to being "prooved" or "dis-prooved." If they did, it would be science and not religion.
To close, a comment on ethics and god:
Its been mentioned in this thread that religion is the authority for ethics and morality, but i fear this is not true. Religion is the only way to effectively enforce morality (and no, laws are not morality, nor are they ment to legistlate morality. For instance, i might like to murder someone, and have no qualms about taking a human life, but no do it because my personal freedom is more valuable to me then the experience of murdering someone. obeying the law only gives the apperance of morality, where as a truly morale person acts moraley out of inner conviction regardless of civil laws) by offering up the possibility of punishment in the afterlife for immorality in this one.
What it comes down to is that ethics are a matter of opinion. "good" and "evil" are concepts invented by humans, and can only be applied to humans actions in a particular frame work, and depeneding on circumstances (someone mentioned murder to be wrong... But again, its all circumstance. If I walked up to someone on the street and kille him, people will say i did something wrong. if that person walked into mcdonalds with a 12 guage, and strating murdering people, and i killed him, people will say i did something good. Theres nothing in the act of murder itself that is bad, its the circumstances in which it was done that makes the act "good or bad".) Along the same lines, technology and information is neither good or bad. Its the intent with which it is used that dertmine the "goodness" or "badness" of it, and even then it is a case by case thing.
Religion is also not the source of morality. For example, christians claim that god is "perfeclty good". In order to judge god to be "perfectly good" one needs a way to measure "goodness" that doesnt depened on that which is being measured (in this case god). So to judge god to be good, we need an idea of goodness before we judge him, or else the term "good" is totaly meaningless.
Its quite an old argument, acctualy. Socrates phrased it roughly like this:
Is justice (he said peity acctualy...) good because god loves it; or does god love it because it is good?
If its good because god loves it, then anything god loves (or commands us to do?) is good by default (so if he said to go out and muder 5 month old babies, are all you christians going to go out and do it? if you say you wouldnt, tell me why not. because in that case i think you have a problem with your faith...)
If he loves it because it is good, meaning god loves all good things, then he doesnt have a choice about loving it or not, and therefore cannot be all powerfull (and also cannot be used to determine "good" and "bad" since it would seem that they are properties of things, which he cannot grant or take away?).
Please dont flame. if you have a logical rational response, i'm more then willing to read and reply, as long as we can keep it civil.
I'd like to belive that nintendo will win simply because its a ridiculous case... but i've lost all faith in the american legal system... and most of it citizens... and its government... humm whats left?
"I wonder if anyone's had SSN 000-00-0001, and who it was." If i remember correctly, the first SSN was 001-01-0001. They offered it to FDR, but he refused, so they gave it to te first citizen that applied for one (someone in vermont i belive). Also, the numbers arent bumped up by one everytime one is assigned, at least not anymore. They changed the system after a couple of years so the 001-01-0001 isnt a valid number anymore. The first 3 numbers indicate the area of the country the number was assigned at. The middle 2 numbers are used as a control so they know what numbers have been issued. Only the last 4 numbers increase by one with each issue (in that particular area anyway). Its possible that certin areas could be running out of numbers.
So what you are saying is only those who belive in god and study the bible know what right and wrong are? And also that you cant be open minded and morale?
Just because soemone knows what is "right" and what is "wrong" doesnt mean they wont do something that is wrong. I'm sure the two kids in colorado knew it was wrong to walk and try to kill as many people as they could... aparently it didnt stop them though.
"The point is to not make things easy for racists; if they want to spread their views, they'll have to work harder at it because one obvious place they might go to on the web is unavailable to them."
I'm sure people would raise hell if microsoft started registering linux related websites in an attempt to block information about linux from being "easy" to get to. How is this really any different? Do racists not have the right to publish thier views in a place where people who are looking for the material can find it? Not that this will make much of a difference. If you are smart enough to type in a url, I'm sure you can work a search engine... how is that any harder?
Making it hard to find information on a given subject is the first step towards censoring that subject. I guess this implies the NAACP supports censorship... At least for things they dont like, but then I guess everyone does.
What if a group started to register NAACP related or tolerance related names in an attempt to block that information? Or if a group with anti-gay views bought up pro-gay sounding names? I'm sure a big uproar over that would ensue... we wouldnt want these ideas to be blocked now would we?
By saying "And what of it?" it would seem to me that you support censorship, which, in my opinion, this is a form of. This is even worse then people publishing racist material in the first place. You cannot selectivly apply the freedom of speech, or fight for its protection only for your own views. It works for everyone, or it works for no one.
Anyway... If you find racist material offensive... dont read it.
Slashdot Mirror
your fencing analogy is flawed, because napster isnt an entity thats sitting there loking at each individual item that passes by. Napster is more like a person who knows a thief, and knows a fencer, and helps the two of them get in contact with each other.
I think you miss or exagerate the point. Corps. dont care how free we are or what we think. They arent against individuality, or any particular culture. They want to make money. How they make it is irrelevent. They will use any tool at their disposle if they belive it will increase their profits. The problems we face stem from the fact that the thinking is way too short term. They want profit NOW. The fact that they actions maybe result in a bad public impression which in turn can lead to lower sales doesnt seem to occur to them.
Corporations used to thrive on innovations. One upping their competitors to offer a better product. Now you go into a store, you find stacks and stacks of products that differe little save for the packaging. The focus has shifted from innovation, to preventing others from making innovations, by using legal means to block their attempts whenever possible.
Whats intresting is that you miss something very importat about these mega-corporations: WE OWN THEM!
I use "we" in a very broad sense. What i mean is, most if not all compinies are owned mostly by nameless share holders, who have no say in how the company behaves. (How much of microsoft does bill gates own?) They recive a check everynow and then, and that is the extent of their interaction. The companies policies and decisions are mostly carried out and created by hired employees(boards of directors?) paid company salaries (and hence in the employ of the shareholders). So in effect we have entities with inredable amounts of money power and influcence, being run by people whos jobs are to maximize the amount every share hodler recives, and who can get up and walk away from any mess they made with no obligations or responsibilites.
Take a look at microsoft. Every one seems to think that microsoft is bad, evil what ever. But what exactly is it thats "bad"? "Microsoft" is just a group of people working under a common name. Is it those people that are bad? a few of those people? one of them? Who is responsible for a corporations actions? The boards of directors are just employees. The shareholders have no real say in what the company does (unless they own ALOT of stock). Where then do we put this blame?
As has been pointed out, these mega-corps have their fingers in too many pies to be able to boycott them. Maybe we can boycott their stock. If you disagree with what a company does, sell their stock. if the market was flooded with stock no one wants, the value goes down, and the company will find it hard to do what it wants: make money. (of course that alos opens the door to even bigger mergers as the companies become devalued)
Just as unworkable: buy stock in the company, hopefully enough that oyu have influence with the board of directors. maybe we cand band together and creat ficitional corportions just to own shares for us in the large corporations, so that a collective voice could be heard.
Ok i'm done. start critizing.
"... Confession cannot be done by telephone, e-mail or proxy."
I'm curious as to exactly how they interpret their own words. I'm not a christian, but the last time i read the bible, it said only god could forgive sins, and jesus said to tell your sins directly to god.
What do they think "teling them to god" means? Telling them to a priest to recive pennance? But a priest is just a proxy for god (proxy meaning "a person authorized to speak for or represent another")... so by their own words they've condemened their own practices.
>>Personally, I would say sciece is just re-discovering existing laws, and providing a better understanding of how the whole darn universe works (allthough gravity still throws us for a loop, pardon the pun.)
a couple of things:
1. "re-discovering"? as in "learning something that was previously known and then forgotten?" known by who?
2. of course they are discovering pre-existing laws... what the hell do you think they were doing? making up rules as they went along and nature somehow magicaly complied with the way they felt the universe should be?
3. gravity "throws us for a loop" only when we attempt to integrate einsteins theory of gravity (which says that gravity is casued by a distortion of space-time caused by matter... basicaly geometry? think of a blanket pulled taunt. put a rock on it and it makes a dimple. a marble going in a stright line in the dimple goes in a circle around the rock. the rock is the sun, the marble is the earth, the sheet is space. the earth goes in a stright line in the curved space around the sun) with quantum mechanics, which says the electro-magnetic and nucular forces are caused by the exchange of particles. a quantum theory of gravity would be one in which gravity was casued by the exchange of a "gravity particle" (gravitron?). The problem is mixing two seperate things that, more and more, seem to be different aspects of the universe that must be explained in different ways (gravity by geometry, and the electro magnetic and nucular forces by particles).
4. there are theories that offer idea's as to what existed before the big bang (look up super string theory. it claims before our universe there was a universe that was 10-dimensional, but was extremely unstable. it "spltit" into a 6 dimensional uuniverse, which shrank down to a tiny point, and ours, a 4 dimensional one, which then violently expanded). Still, though, the question of "what came before" remains to be answered (though if you are familiar with physics it gets a little blurry... when you approach the big bang or whatever, the laws of physics as we understand them break down, and also time strats to act weird and eventualy dissapears entierly at the singularity the big bang theory says existed... if there's no "time" as such how can you say event A happened "before" event B?)
5. If you cannot preform experiments on the "meta-physical" (a misleading term dating back to a book written by aristotle, meaning "after-physics") or "spirtual realm" how can you ever prove it to exist in the first place? If you claim something exists, the burden of prooving it lies on you. its not sciences job to disproove every crackpot theory (i dont mean to imply this is a crackpot thory) that is propoused. they are invalidated by the theorys that science does prove.
6. Ever hear of Godels Proof? Godel came up with a mathmetical proof that mathmatics will always be "open ended", there will never be a set of self consistent axioms from which all mathmatical laws can be derived. Science never calimed to have all the answers; and i agree science will never have "all the answers" (how would we know when we know everything?). We will have an ever growing mass of information, and a better understanding of how the universe works, but its doubtfull there will ever be a final best theory of everything. But the difference between science and religion is that science tests its answers to see if they can be prooved false (a theory that cannot be tested, and there by be shown to be right or wrong, is worthless, and quite simply not science), while religious "answers", by their very nature, do not offer themselves up to being "prooved" or "dis-prooved." If they did, it would be science and not religion.
To close, a comment on ethics and god:
Its been mentioned in this thread that religion is the authority for ethics and morality, but i fear this is not true. Religion is the only way to effectively enforce morality (and no, laws are not morality, nor are they ment to legistlate morality. For instance, i might like to murder someone, and have no qualms about taking a human life, but no do it because my personal freedom is more valuable to me then the experience of murdering someone. obeying the law only gives the apperance of morality, where as a truly morale person acts moraley out of inner conviction regardless of civil laws) by offering up the possibility of punishment in the afterlife for immorality in this one.
What it comes down to is that ethics are a matter of opinion. "good" and "evil" are concepts invented by humans, and can only be applied to humans actions in a particular frame work, and depeneding on circumstances (someone mentioned murder to be wrong... But again, its all circumstance. If I walked up to someone on the street and kille him, people will say i did something wrong. if that person walked into mcdonalds with a 12 guage, and strating murdering people, and i killed him, people will say i did something good. Theres nothing in the act of murder itself that is bad, its the circumstances in which it was done that makes the act "good or bad".) Along the same lines, technology and information is neither good or bad. Its the intent with which it is used that dertmine the "goodness" or "badness" of it, and even then it is a case by case thing.
Religion is also not the source of morality. For example, christians claim that god is "perfeclty good". In order to judge god to be "perfectly good" one needs a way to measure "goodness" that doesnt depened on that which is being measured (in this case god). So to judge god to be good, we need an idea of goodness before we judge him, or else the term "good" is totaly meaningless.
Its quite an old argument, acctualy. Socrates phrased it roughly like this:
Is justice (he said peity acctualy...) good because god loves it; or does god love it because it is good?
If its good because god loves it, then anything god loves (or commands us to do?) is good by default (so if he said to go out and muder 5 month old babies, are all you christians going to go out and do it? if you say you wouldnt, tell me why not. because in that case i think you have a problem with your faith...)
If he loves it because it is good, meaning god loves all good things, then he doesnt have a choice about loving it or not, and therefore cannot be all powerfull (and also cannot be used to determine "good" and "bad" since it would seem that they are properties of things, which he cannot grant or take away?).
Please dont flame. if you have a logical rational response, i'm more then willing to read and reply, as long as we can keep it civil.
I'd like to belive that nintendo will win simply because its a ridiculous case... but i've lost all faith in the american legal system... and most of it citizens... and its government... humm whats left?
"I wonder if anyone's had SSN 000-00-0001, and who it was." If i remember correctly, the first SSN was 001-01-0001. They offered it to FDR, but he refused, so they gave it to te first citizen that applied for one (someone in vermont i belive). Also, the numbers arent bumped up by one everytime one is assigned, at least not anymore. They changed the system after a couple of years so the 001-01-0001 isnt a valid number anymore. The first 3 numbers indicate the area of the country the number was assigned at. The middle 2 numbers are used as a control so they know what numbers have been issued. Only the last 4 numbers increase by one with each issue (in that particular area anyway). Its possible that certin areas could be running out of numbers.
So what you are saying is only those who belive in god and study the bible know what right and wrong are? And also that you cant be open minded and morale?
Just because soemone knows what is "right" and what is "wrong" doesnt mean they wont do something that is wrong. I'm sure the two kids in colorado knew it was wrong to walk and try to kill as many people as they could... aparently it didnt stop them though.
"The point is to not make things easy for racists; if they want to spread their views, they'll have to work harder at it because one obvious place they might go to on the web is unavailable to them."
I'm sure people would raise hell if microsoft started registering linux related websites in an attempt to block information about linux from being "easy" to get to. How is this really any different? Do racists not have the right to publish thier views in a place where people who are looking for the material can find it? Not that this will make much of a difference. If you are smart enough to type in a url, I'm sure you can work a search engine... how is that any harder?
Making it hard to find information on a given subject is the first step towards censoring that subject. I guess this implies the NAACP supports censorship... At least for things they dont like, but then I guess everyone does.
What if a group started to register NAACP related or tolerance related names in an attempt to block that information? Or if a group with anti-gay views bought up pro-gay sounding names? I'm sure a big uproar over that would ensue... we wouldnt want these ideas to be blocked now would we?
By saying "And what of it?" it would seem to me that you support censorship, which, in my opinion, this is a form of. This is even worse then people publishing racist material in the first place. You cannot selectivly apply the freedom of speech, or fight for its protection only for your own views. It works for everyone, or it works for no one.
Anyway... If you find racist material offensive... dont read it.