They don't need a clue. They've demonstrated that they'll take any liberty toward advantage, ethical or not. The GOVERNMENTS need the cluebat. They seem to suck down that swill by the bucketfulls. It's time for them to ignore the crap that the BSA, RIAA, or any other alphabet industy group prepares for their ingestion.
Yuppers, they have the right to muck up their format, but we can vote with our wallets.
When will we grasp the idea of a grass-roots movement to cease our discretionary spending on CDs for 6 months? If we all could get our collective act together, we could put a serious hurt on these idjiots!!!
This is part of a larger debate that cries out to be settled. I propose a new doctrine known as "The Public Threshold". Anyone who pushes information beyond "The Public Threshold" is making the choice to lose certain rights with regard to that information. Deep linking falls within this area. If you expose the interface for public use, you lose the right to cry "foul" if someone sidesteps your ads, or login, or personal picture pages or... (ad nauseum). Some rights should be protected of course, but the information/content/link is fair game for (perhaps the old doctrine of..) "fair use". This applies as well to broadcast television. If a program crosses the "Public Threshold" you lose the right to beat other local/remote stations and cable providers with the "Exclusive Rights" club. We need to simplify our classification into 3 types, Public Domain, Public Copyrighted, and Propriatary.
You said: ...standardized education hits the middle of the bell-curve and ignores, or is actively hostile to, any more than a standard deviation or so out. That is to say public education satisfies it's demands for about 69-78%... Perhaps the answer is to provide parents with vouchers to select the school that best fits their child's temperment and needs. Wow, what a concept!
Freedom is the bedrock of our country's way of living, but it's important to understand just what freedom is and how it is framed. The same founding fathers that sounded the cry of "Life, Liberty and the persuit of happiness" also understood that freedom does not mean liberty without boundries. Limits must be set between your rights to hapiness, and my right to keep the money that you try to steal from me to have your happiness, for example. Thomas Jefferson said in defense of a Virginia Statute on Religious liberty: "to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical" Freedom and anarchy are not synonyms. Government is a necessary and proper institution for confirmation and definition of the boundaries between personal freedoms. The First Amendment guarantees your right to express your opinion. The means is entirely up to you, however I should not be compelled to pay your salary, or livelyhood, or advertising space, or any other enablement to the expression of your opinion which may be repugnant). You will not hear me express the idea that you should not be free to express your opinion here. Slashdot is one of the facilities on the web to foster communication and the free exchange of ideas. You and I however do not have absolute freedom to express whatever we want. I'm sure that our astute hosts would remove posts that are patently offensive to the majority of participants. If someone posted nude pictures on slashdot, they would have every right to pull the post. After all, it's their quarter! The Brooklyn Museum is supported by public funds. These funds have been given to the government with a variety of states of cheerfulness. In any case, we render to Caesar that which is Caesar's. Under our republican form of government, (who convinced you that we live in a democracy?) our representatives have been given authority to disburse funds by the consent of the governed. The Mayor has every right to do what is in his power to insure that these funds are used wisely. I give him credit for stepping to the plate and taking responsibility. In today's environment of excessive burecracy it's too easy to say "well, that's the system". Entire sectors of public spending evade blame by carefully crafted obfuscation. If we don't (or can't) know who is to blame, we can't exercise our ability to exert our opinion (and our vote) for or against the person behind the decision. Peter Singer is a man living under the common and usual and customary restrictions outlined here. He does not stand apart due to the unique nature of his opinions. Too many times, the faculty of our universities have not held professors accountable for their teachings. You seem to have a problem with university contributors, trustees, and advocates for the handicapped expressing their opinions and fulfilling their duties and callings in this matter. No doubt you consider this to be somewhat less than an attempt to censor their views. There's no knowing what would happen if university contributors exercised control of what their money was spent for! What I am most discouraged about, is our waning belief in right and wrong. The fundamental principles that our country has been built on are being erroded by "politically correct" fallacies that are being propagated. I have a fundamental belief that sooner or later, a lot of people in our country will realize that relativism is the cancer that eats away at our national inheritance. We in this country are getting the cart before the horse. We have come to believe that the "national discourse" is designed to bring all the facts into the open so that the nation can decide what is right from wrong. This differs radically from our responsibility to DISCERN what is right and wrong. We do not determine the truth or "rightness" of a thing through our opinion, either singly or in aggregate. We can only seek the truth as it exists. Your opinion as to the safety of walking across a busy highway has no effect whatsoever on the mathamatical probability that you will be smashed into the pavement. This is the way of a real world. We have, to our detriment, confused "the thing" with our perceptions of "the thing". We reduce our world, and our importance itself, when we espouse the nonsense that what is true for me is not necessarily true for you. Relativism is a contradiction to reality itself. It is a fundamental philosophical atom that a thing cannot be both true and untrue at the same time. (Unless, of course, you are talking about quantum computing states!) I applaud your struggle to formulate an opinion on the grey areas of current medical research and capabilities, both realized and forecasted. Don't, however, view your struggle as a search for your "truth", but as a seeker's journey for "the truth". There DOES exist "right" and "wrong" here, and it's your job, responsibility, and calling to discover that truth. There was a man, 2000 years ago who asked the question "what is truth?". He was blown by the same winds that much of our society is being moved by today. You mention patriotism as visualized by some "blockheads" in the country as inhibiting the ability to appreciate the genius of our fouding fathers. I am in perfect agreement. The people that framed our nation were wise beyond belief. They were men who shared a common vision, to establish a country and a system of government based on what's right. You can see in EVERY document that has survived the test of time, that they were men who believed in right and wrong. "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." presupposes a couple of ideas. The fathers believed that there was truth, and that it could be less than self-evident. They were able to avoid the "lazy thinking" that is dispensed today through the conventional media outlets. It is easy to suppose that things are relative. If you base your life that way, it's no longer necessary to convince, discuss, debate, or decide. The removal of the imperitive removes the imperitive. It becomes much easier , as all you need is a consensus. Democracy becomes a much more compelling idea, and as it is embraced by the masses, mob rule replaces the ordered republic of our astute fathers. They were thinking, moral men who knew the value of someone being given authority and responsibility to decide. We all shoulder that burden. There are things that we need to decide and boundries to be choosen. We need to fulfill the calling of government to protect the framed liberty of all of it's citizens. Those that have life must be protected, and those things that need to be done must be done. Let's get up off of our lazy backsides and make some choices. If we don't, someone will choose for us.
I read the same article. All I saw was that India and Pakistan were hacking one another's web pages. (Don't let Jane's get wind of this or they'll revise their death estimates up a couple thousand)
You want real cyberwarfare, look back to the Gulf War when some of our folks hacked into the Iraqi Command and Control system and caused havoc beyond that caused by the bombs.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't need a clue. They've demonstrated that they'll take any liberty toward advantage, ethical or not. The GOVERNMENTS need the cluebat. They seem to suck down that swill by the bucketfulls. It's time for them to ignore the crap that the BSA, RIAA, or any other alphabet industy group prepares for their ingestion.
Yuppers, they have the right to muck up their format, but we can vote with our wallets. When will we grasp the idea of a grass-roots movement to cease our discretionary spending on CDs for 6 months? If we all could get our collective act together, we could put a serious hurt on these idjiots!!!
Drop by MP3.COM and search for a group(artist) called "Bassic". Good techno/trance stuff.
This is part of a larger debate that cries out to be settled. I propose a new doctrine known as "The Public Threshold". Anyone who pushes information beyond "The Public Threshold" is making the choice to lose certain rights with regard to that information. Deep linking falls within this area. If you expose the interface for public use, you lose the right to cry "foul" if someone sidesteps your ads, or login, or personal picture pages or... (ad nauseum). Some rights should be protected of course, but the information/content/link is fair game for (perhaps the old doctrine of..) "fair use". This applies as well to broadcast television. If a program crosses the "Public Threshold" you lose the right to beat other local/remote stations and cable providers with the "Exclusive Rights" club. We need to simplify our classification into 3 types, Public Domain, Public Copyrighted, and Propriatary.
You said: ...standardized education hits the middle of the bell-curve and ignores, or is actively hostile to, any more than a standard deviation or so out. That is to say public education satisfies it's demands for about 69-78% ... Perhaps the answer is to provide parents with vouchers to select the school that best fits their child's temperment and needs. Wow, what a concept!
MS Has set the standard for arrogance since the days of "Pirates..". They have ABSOLUTLY no shame!
Freedom is the bedrock of our country's way of living, but it's important to understand just what freedom is and how it is framed. The same founding fathers that sounded the cry of "Life, Liberty and the persuit of happiness" also understood that freedom does not mean liberty without boundries. Limits must be set between your rights to hapiness, and my right to keep the money that you try to steal from me to have your happiness, for example.
Thomas Jefferson said in defense of a Virginia Statute on Religious liberty:
"to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation
of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical"
Freedom and anarchy are not synonyms. Government is a necessary and proper institution for confirmation and definition of the boundaries between personal freedoms. The First Amendment guarantees your right to express your opinion. The means is entirely up to you, however I should not be compelled to pay your salary, or livelyhood, or advertising space, or any other enablement to the expression of your opinion which may be repugnant).
You will not hear me express the idea that you should not be free to express your opinion here. Slashdot is one of the facilities on the web to foster communication and the free exchange of ideas. You and I however do not have absolute freedom to express whatever we want.
I'm sure that our astute hosts would remove posts that are patently offensive to the majority of participants. If someone posted nude pictures on slashdot, they would have every right to pull the post. After all, it's their quarter!
The Brooklyn Museum is supported by public funds. These funds have been given to the government with a variety of states of cheerfulness. In any case, we render to Caesar that which is Caesar's. Under our republican form of government, (who convinced you that we live in a democracy?) our representatives have been given authority to disburse funds by the consent of the governed. The Mayor has every right to do what is in his power to insure that these funds are used wisely. I give him credit for stepping to the plate and taking responsibility. In today's environment of excessive burecracy it's too easy to say "well, that's the system". Entire sectors of public spending evade blame by carefully crafted obfuscation. If we don't (or can't) know who is to blame, we can't exercise our ability to exert our opinion (and our vote)
for or against the person behind the decision.
Peter Singer is a man living under the common and usual and customary restrictions outlined here. He does not stand apart due to the unique nature of his opinions. Too many times, the faculty of our universities have not held professors accountable for their teachings. You seem to have a problem with university contributors, trustees, and advocates for the handicapped expressing their opinions and fulfilling their duties and callings in this matter. No doubt you consider this to be somewhat less than an attempt to censor their views. There's no knowing what would happen if university contributors exercised control of what their money was spent for!
What I am most discouraged about, is our waning belief in right and wrong. The fundamental principles that our country has been built on are being erroded by "politically correct" fallacies that are being propagated. I have a fundamental belief that sooner or later, a lot of people in our country will realize that relativism is the cancer that eats away at our national inheritance. We in this country are getting the cart before the horse. We have come to believe that the "national discourse" is designed to bring all the facts into the open so that the nation can decide what is right from wrong. This differs radically from our responsibility to DISCERN what is right and wrong. We do not determine the truth or "rightness" of a thing through our opinion, either singly or in aggregate. We can only seek the truth as it exists. Your opinion as to the safety of walking across a busy highway has no effect whatsoever on the mathamatical probability that you will be smashed into the pavement. This is the way of a real world. We have, to our detriment, confused "the thing" with our perceptions of "the thing". We reduce our world, and our importance itself, when we espouse the nonsense that what is true for me is not necessarily true for you. Relativism is a contradiction to reality itself. It is a fundamental philosophical atom that a thing cannot be both true and untrue at the same time.
(Unless, of course, you are talking about quantum computing states!)
I applaud your struggle to formulate an opinion on the grey areas of current medical research and capabilities, both realized and forecasted. Don't, however, view your struggle as a search for your "truth", but as a seeker's journey for "the truth". There DOES exist "right" and "wrong" here, and it's your job, responsibility, and calling to discover that truth.
There was a man, 2000 years ago who asked the question "what is truth?". He was blown by the same winds that much of our society is being moved by today. You mention patriotism as visualized by some "blockheads" in the country as inhibiting the ability to appreciate the genius of our fouding fathers. I am in perfect agreement. The people that framed our nation were wise beyond belief. They were men who shared a common vision, to establish a country and a system of government based on what's right. You can see in EVERY document that has survived the test of time, that they were men who believed in right and wrong. "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." presupposes a couple of ideas. The fathers believed that there was truth, and that it could be less than self-evident. They were able to avoid the "lazy thinking" that is dispensed today through the conventional media outlets. It is easy to suppose that things are relative. If you base your life that way, it's no longer necessary to convince, discuss, debate, or decide. The removal of the imperitive removes the imperitive. It becomes much easier , as all you need is a consensus. Democracy becomes a much more compelling idea, and as it is embraced by the masses, mob rule replaces the
ordered republic of our astute fathers. They were thinking, moral men who knew the value of someone being given authority and responsibility to decide. We all shoulder that burden. There are things that we need to decide and boundries to be choosen. We need to fulfill the calling of government to protect the framed liberty of all of it's citizens. Those that have life must be protected, and those things that need to be done must be done.
Let's get up off of our lazy backsides and make some choices. If we don't, someone will choose for us.
I read the same article. All I saw was that
India and Pakistan were hacking one another's
web pages. (Don't let Jane's get wind of this
or they'll revise their death estimates up
a couple thousand)
You want real cyberwarfare, look back to the
Gulf War when some of our folks hacked into
the Iraqi Command and Control system and
caused havoc beyond that caused by the
bombs.