Islam is not the problem so much as the misunderstanding between people of Islam and people who worship differently (or not at all) and the rise of fundamentalism.
Islam mandates that its followers must convert, subjugate or kill infidels. Its teachings cause Muslims to resist and avoid all those things that are part of modern civilization.
That is a problem in all religions not at all unique to Islam.
No, it's not a problem in all religions because all religions are not the same.
We've actually managed to deteriorate from that point and instead of learning to come together we have Muslims blaming Christians for the problem and Christians blaming Muslims, and atheists saying "let's call the whole thing off."
Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus seem to have very little trouble co-existing with each other. Meanwhile, Muslims are waging holy war of some sort in almost every part of the world (in Thailand it's starting to become an ethnic cleansing), and Muslim immigrants are actively refusing to integrate or respect the values of the societies they live in. Instead of integration, they've got Islamization.
No wonder we haven't "learned to come together."
As for the sharia law, not all Muslims are for that any more than all Christians are.
Christianity does not have sharia law. Christianity does not dictate how people should live their lives nearly as much as Islam, because Islam is not only a religion, but a political system and an entire regulation of life and the universe.
What's funny about sharia law is it is exactly what Christian fundamentalists want as well (no drinking, dancing, fornication, homosexuality, etc).
Oh dear. I don't think you're quite familiar with sharia. It goes far beyond opposing drinking, fornication and homosexuality, and has little in common even with Christian fundamentalists in the US.
The difference here is that whereas the Cristian fundamentalists only get so far because they can only count on their base for support for such things, in the Middle East you have a choice between the local government which hates you and the US which seems to hate you since they support that government, or the Islamists who promise to get rid of the local government and the US. To the extent which the Islamists have support it is because people see no better choice.
Here you make the extremely common fallacy of assuming that Muslims are exactly like us and want exactly the same things, so of course living in Islamic societies must make them terribly miserable, because that would make us miserable too. Unfortunately this is not the case, and it can be readily observed in Europe where Muslim immigrants are busy establishing or attempting to establish Islamic societies, much like those found in the Middle-East. Their culture is perfectly normal to them, and from their point of view it's us who are immoral and evil. Even many of their women support the system.
However, I think we could go a long way by changing some of the actions we are taking which make life worse for these people, so that when we tell them our way of life is better (which it is) and that we mean well (which most of us do) they might believe us.
Appeasement, dialogue, tolerance and concessions have been tried, and the result has been a total catastrophe because people refuse to understand that contemporary Western culture is not shared by every human being. Converting Muslims to Westerners is as hard as doing it the other way around.
They form Muslim-only ghettoes where they typically try to enforce sharia law as much as they can. I've even read reports of religious police in Sweden, making sure that everyone follows Islamic values. I'm sure they exist elsewhere too. Muslim youths also commit a staggerinly disproportionate amount of crimes, especially rapes (which are not much of an issue in Islamic societies, see Pakistan for example).
Then there are of course the usual threats and demands (special treatment, special priviledges, "religious tolerance" etc.), with occasional terrorist strikes (London, Madrid and some failed strikes elsewhere) and assassinations (Theo van Gogh). In simple terms, their eventual goal is the Islamization of the society they live in, and they will accomplish this through threats, political manipulation, violence and demographic majority.
This is all documented in exhausting detail on sites related to the subject.
I remember a story on Boing Boing where a guy shot an intruder in his home. Turned out later that the intruder was a plainclothes police officer who did not announce his identity or intentions. I think he was facing a lenghty prison sentence but I don't know what eventually happened.
I'm also pretty sure that here in Finland it's definitely illegal to shoot an intruder unless you can demonstrate that you had no choice and were in mortal danger.
If the terrorists hated our freedoms, then the Netherlands would be fucking DUST! As would Denmark, and Sweden, and Switzerland and Canada and every country that's truly freer than we are, but...
It's debatable if those countries are more free than the US, but the perception is that the US represents freedom and the West in general. Jihadists are making advances in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Canada, and have been doing so for years. What they're doing in those countries isn't as high profile as a terrorist strike, but much more dangerous (there was that failed terrorist plan in Canada though).
I think he sent them because of our support for Israel and our ties to the Saudi family and all our military bases in Saudi Arabia. You know why I think that? Because THAT'S WHAT HE FUCKING SAID! - David Cross
That's part of the reason but also a pretext to justify the attack. The idea that Jihadists attack the US because they hate its freedom is true in a sense. It's every Muslim's duty* to convert, subjugate or kill infidels, and they certainly don't like our "decadent" culture where we have things like gender equality and sexual freedom.
* no, this does not mean that everyone's doing it.
They'd stop hating you if you converted yourself into an Islamic state, so in a way it's true that if you get rid of your freedoms, they'll stop hating you.
Yes. It's very hypocritical to complain about a lack of freedom of speech somewhere while you're using a system where you can vote down completely legitimate and reasonable posts without any explanation.
For anyone that thinks Turkey is a non-western nation that doesn't belong in the EU, please goto Turkey, vacation there, you will come back with a much different prospective.
I would submit that the problem may not be so easily laid to rest as it would seem that ignoring the Middle East and allowing countries there to lag behind the entire rest of the world including other third-world nations in terms of technology, economy, civilization, education, etc has already cost us and is ultimately the root of the problem which has led us here.
How are we responsible for that, and how are we going to improve the technology, economy, civilization and education of nations that don't want our help and will in fact violently resist any such help?
and is ultimately the root of the problem which has led us here.
The root of the problems in the Middle-East is Islam.
It's not a problem of intervening so much as intervening in the wrong way (setting up oppressive governments that discriminate against the most predominant religion, for instance
What? Oppressive Islamic governments oppress Muslims? Since when? They oppress mainly Christians, Jews and other religious minorities.
If we continue to ignore the plight of people who are desperately begging for relief from their suffering
Who are these people, exactly? If those poor, poor Muslims are so horribly oppressed, why do they oppose US intervention in the Middle-East, and why do they attempt to establish their failed societies in infidel nations in the form of sharia law?
It isn't present in children; I've yet to see a toddler say, "She can't say that! Those are my words!"
So because copyright isn't biologically ingrained into people, it must not make sense? Not even democracy, gender equality or human rights are biological. They're strictly cultural.
Ancient texts were bandied about and edited rather commonly, and the authors never really demonstrated any concept of ownership over their works beyond, "I didn't say that!" which is natural.
That doesn't prove anything. I could argue that we should keep slaves because in ancient societies they also kept slaves.
It raises the question, "Is it ethical to own and control information?" If you answer in the affirmative, then you have also provided the logical basis for justifying other free speech issues.
Except copyright has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Making it illegal to pirate PC games hardly impacts freedom of speech.
I'd like to know just how exactly people are supposed to publish books, music, movies and video games if it's just "information" that everyone should share freely? Are you willing to invest millions of dollars into a game and get nothing in return? Or are you under the impression that things like video games just grow on trees, as if by magic?
And saying that your culture is better than another is bordering on racism indeed.
Ah, so you're saying that culture is racial. That is, the way people behave is directly related to their race, and is a biological property? Isn't that what's usually called racism? Or... how does this work, exactly? Isn't it the same thing if I say that black people are biologically less intelligent than white people? Or is that "wrong?"
Also, cultures are not equal. Some cultures are better than others, just like some cars, display adapters or electric shavers are better than others. If we accept that all cultures are equal, then a culture of racism and xenophobia is as good as any other culture, which of course means that racism is acceptable, contrary to what you just said. Oh dear.
Only if you have very oldfashioned morals you can think that a country (or people as turkey is not the ottoman empire) carries this guilt over the generations.
So they don't carry guilt over generations, but they can keep denying the genocide over generations? If they want to keep denying it after so many years, I don't see why they can't still be held accountable for it. It works both ways.
Its mostly racism that motivates these 'Turkey not in EU' plebs.
It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with race (it's funny how you guys always turn everything into a race issue), and everything to do with the unwillingness of accepting an Islamic and utterly non-European country into the EU.
And again if u want to write something about a country try to read some books about it and do some research... and not everything u read on the net is true:P
What an idiotic thing to say. Slashdot can't complain about, say, China imprisoning political dissidents because they implement a crappy moderation system?
It's a moderating system that's used by leftists to silence dissent (as well as the system allows).
If you ever designed your own FPS level with AI monsters you know how fucking difficult it is to get them to walk straight down a corridor EVEN with massive pre-proccessing.
Well I don't know what games you've been mapping for, but in Half-Life it's as simple as putting down some waypoint nodes, which the AI will follow obediently. Also, we've had some pretty stellar AI for multiplayer bots for a while now. Quake had some pretty competent bots, and Unreal Tournament's own bots are very good too.
Also, the guy completely ignores Nintendo's situation: unlike MicroSoft and Sony, they don't have money to burn. They have to make a profit off their consoles from day one since that's all they do. They don't have other businesses with which they can make money (apart from licensing, of course). So they can't subsidize their consoles like MicroSoft and Sony do (they sell their consoles for less than their production costs).
Nintendo has made plenty of money from their handheld consoles and games (for all their consoles), I don't think they're in any danger of going out of business. Even Microsoft and Sony eventually make a profit from their consoles, it would be crazy of them to be in the console business without getting any money at all.
Gamers were catching on that the industry is merely eating glitter to make the same old crap sparkle more.
Do people still think that they'll appear oldskool and hardcore because for the billionth time they make that tired old predictable speech about games being unoriginal and all about the graphics, as if nobody cared about graphics prior to the PS1 or made copies of other games?
But let's face it, the Wii is enjoyable. They chose a different definition of "art". To Nintendo, making games a social experience, making them widely available, and making them "fun" was what "art" is. To Nintendo, their system is THE system to progress video games as an "art form".
Any good game is fun. If a game isn't fun, it's a bad game.
To say that Nintendo does not do for gaming as an art form as much as the other two major systems does is rather blind, I think. No other company has been as influential on the other two systems as Nintendo.
Sure, but I believe the rant was about the Wii, not about what Nintendo has done in the past.
In all fairness, the system has nothing to do with the art of a game. Shadows of the Colossus is a great example of a fun game, that was pretty, and used a system that was not Nintendo. If you think your art is hindered by what paint you use... you sir, are no artist.
If you're comfortable playing Space Invaders and Pacman for the rest of your years then I guess it doesn't matter what hardware you have, but it's a cold hard fact that hardware dictates what kind of games you can and can't do. Unlike painting, game design is heavily dependent on the tools you use.
If you said "no" to any of those, then obviously you believe there is some amount of control that people should be able to exercise over their own property to determine what speech it can be used to present. The only question is where the line should be drawn.
I never at any point claimed that freedom of speech should be limitless.
As a consequence of this belief, I see no detrimental effect to free speech by slashdot implementing any moderation system they please.
In that case Slashdot has no business whining about other people infringing on freedom of speech.
If you truly believe in this brand of free speech you advocate
Yep, that's exactly it. Freedom of speech is in the Constitution, as in the charter document for the government.
Who cares? It's up to the people to maintain freedom of speech. Obviously not many people are interested in that sort of thing, though that doesn't stop them from telling everyone how much they support freedom of speech.
Excuses, excuses (semantics will get you nowhere). It's quite clear that far too many Slashdot users oppose freedom of speech and rational discourse, and wish to stiffle them as much as possible using the tools they have available to them. Stop being an apologist.
Freedom of speech has nothing to do with forcing others to publish your words, which is effectively what removing the moderation system on slashdot would do. You have every right to distribute your stuff, but you have no right to force me to do it for you.
So in other words freedom of speech should only be practised by the government, everyone else can just go "yeah of course I support freedom of speech but in here you can't say anything I don't want to hear." I can just imagine if every site followed that policy.
If you're annoyed about the moderation system then start your own damned web site.
This reminds me of pearls of wisdom like "well if you're unhappy with WoW make your own MMORPG." Lame copout response with no substance to it.
Hmm, since when was it forbidden to insult Jews? Anti-semitism is on the rise in Europe, and as far as I know nobody gives a shit about what happens to Jews. I think Israel has even deemed France unsafe for Jews, though I don't have a source for that.
It's actually funny that Slashdot pretends to be deeply concerned about the freedom of speech violation of the week, yet its members see no problem with aggressively modding down politically incorrect or otherwise "wrong" opinions, using the tools provided by the site itself. But to be fair, the same thing is happening all over the web, and likeminded people are unfortunately running governments, universities and media services, so the erosion of freedom of speech seems to be unstoppable.
I can think of one movie where this myth doesn't appear: Chan-wook Park's excellent Oldboy. There's a fight scene lasting around two minutes, and it's just one long take with no cuts. Not only is the protagonist very tired after the fight, but the actor was actually tired as well. Also, even though he takes on a bunch of guys by himself, they still managed to make it look like it could be completely plausible.
Slashdot Mirror
Islam mandates that its followers must convert, subjugate or kill infidels. Its teachings cause Muslims to resist and avoid all those things that are part of modern civilization.
No, it's not a problem in all religions because all religions are not the same.
Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus seem to have very little trouble co-existing with each other. Meanwhile, Muslims are waging holy war of some sort in almost every part of the world (in Thailand it's starting to become an ethnic cleansing), and Muslim immigrants are actively refusing to integrate or respect the values of the societies they live in. Instead of integration, they've got Islamization.
No wonder we haven't "learned to come together."
Christianity does not have sharia law. Christianity does not dictate how people should live their lives nearly as much as Islam, because Islam is not only a religion, but a political system and an entire regulation of life and the universe.
Oh dear. I don't think you're quite familiar with sharia. It goes far beyond opposing drinking, fornication and homosexuality, and has little in common even with Christian fundamentalists in the US.
Here you make the extremely common fallacy of assuming that Muslims are exactly like us and want exactly the same things, so of course living in Islamic societies must make them terribly miserable, because that would make us miserable too. Unfortunately this is not the case, and it can be readily observed in Europe where Muslim immigrants are busy establishing or attempting to establish Islamic societies, much like those found in the Middle-East. Their culture is perfectly normal to them, and from their point of view it's us who are immoral and evil. Even many of their women support the system.
Appeasement, dialogue, tolerance and concessions have been tried, and the result has been a total catastrophe because people refuse to understand that contemporary Western culture is not shared by every human being. Converting Muslims to Westerners is as hard as doing it the other way around.
They form Muslim-only ghettoes where they typically try to enforce sharia law as much as they can. I've even read reports of religious police in Sweden, making sure that everyone follows Islamic values. I'm sure they exist elsewhere too. Muslim youths also commit a staggerinly disproportionate amount of crimes, especially rapes (which are not much of an issue in Islamic societies, see Pakistan for example).
Then there are of course the usual threats and demands (special treatment, special priviledges, "religious tolerance" etc.), with occasional terrorist strikes (London, Madrid and some failed strikes elsewhere) and assassinations (Theo van Gogh). In simple terms, their eventual goal is the Islamization of the society they live in, and they will accomplish this through threats, political manipulation, violence and demographic majority.
This is all documented in exhausting detail on sites related to the subject.
I remember a story on Boing Boing where a guy shot an intruder in his home. Turned out later that the intruder was a plainclothes police officer who did not announce his identity or intentions. I think he was facing a lenghty prison sentence but I don't know what eventually happened.
I'm also pretty sure that here in Finland it's definitely illegal to shoot an intruder unless you can demonstrate that you had no choice and were in mortal danger.
It's debatable if those countries are more free than the US, but the perception is that the US represents freedom and the West in general. Jihadists are making advances in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Canada, and have been doing so for years. What they're doing in those countries isn't as high profile as a terrorist strike, but much more dangerous (there was that failed terrorist plan in Canada though).
That's part of the reason but also a pretext to justify the attack. The idea that Jihadists attack the US because they hate its freedom is true in a sense. It's every Muslim's duty* to convert, subjugate or kill infidels, and they certainly don't like our "decadent" culture where we have things like gender equality and sexual freedom.
* no, this does not mean that everyone's doing it.
They'd stop hating you if you converted yourself into an Islamic state, so in a way it's true that if you get rid of your freedoms, they'll stop hating you.
Yes. It's very hypocritical to complain about a lack of freedom of speech somewhere while you're using a system where you can vote down completely legitimate and reasonable posts without any explanation.
What perspective would that be?
How are we responsible for that, and how are we going to improve the technology, economy, civilization and education of nations that don't want our help and will in fact violently resist any such help?
The root of the problems in the Middle-East is Islam.
What? Oppressive Islamic governments oppress Muslims? Since when? They oppress mainly Christians, Jews and other religious minorities.
Who are these people, exactly? If those poor, poor Muslims are so horribly oppressed, why do they oppose US intervention in the Middle-East, and why do they attempt to establish their failed societies in infidel nations in the form of sharia law?
Would terrorism in Thailand, Indonesia, India or the Philippines melt away too?
So because copyright isn't biologically ingrained into people, it must not make sense? Not even democracy, gender equality or human rights are biological. They're strictly cultural.
That doesn't prove anything. I could argue that we should keep slaves because in ancient societies they also kept slaves.
Except copyright has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Making it illegal to pirate PC games hardly impacts freedom of speech.
I'd like to know just how exactly people are supposed to publish books, music, movies and video games if it's just "information" that everyone should share freely? Are you willing to invest millions of dollars into a game and get nothing in return? Or are you under the impression that things like video games just grow on trees, as if by magic?
Ah, so you're saying that culture is racial. That is, the way people behave is directly related to their race, and is a biological property? Isn't that what's usually called racism? Or... how does this work, exactly? Isn't it the same thing if I say that black people are biologically less intelligent than white people? Or is that "wrong?"
Also, cultures are not equal. Some cultures are better than others, just like some cars, display adapters or electric shavers are better than others. If we accept that all cultures are equal, then a culture of racism and xenophobia is as good as any other culture, which of course means that racism is acceptable, contrary to what you just said. Oh dear.
So they don't carry guilt over generations, but they can keep denying the genocide over generations? If they want to keep denying it after so many years, I don't see why they can't still be held accountable for it. It works both ways.
It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with race (it's funny how you guys always turn everything into a race issue), and everything to do with the unwillingness of accepting an Islamic and utterly non-European country into the EU.
Not everything you read in a book is true.
It's a moderating system that's used by leftists to silence dissent (as well as the system allows).
Well I don't know what games you've been mapping for, but in Half-Life it's as simple as putting down some waypoint nodes, which the AI will follow obediently. Also, we've had some pretty stellar AI for multiplayer bots for a while now. Quake had some pretty competent bots, and Unreal Tournament's own bots are very good too.
Nintendo has made plenty of money from their handheld consoles and games (for all their consoles), I don't think they're in any danger of going out of business. Even Microsoft and Sony eventually make a profit from their consoles, it would be crazy of them to be in the console business without getting any money at all.
Do people still think that they'll appear oldskool and hardcore because for the billionth time they make that tired old predictable speech about games being unoriginal and all about the graphics, as if nobody cared about graphics prior to the PS1 or made copies of other games?
Any good game is fun. If a game isn't fun, it's a bad game.
Sure, but I believe the rant was about the Wii, not about what Nintendo has done in the past.
If you're comfortable playing Space Invaders and Pacman for the rest of your years then I guess it doesn't matter what hardware you have, but it's a cold hard fact that hardware dictates what kind of games you can and can't do. Unlike painting, game design is heavily dependent on the tools you use.
I never at any point claimed that freedom of speech should be limitless.
In that case Slashdot has no business whining about other people infringing on freedom of speech.
Don't confuse your strawmen with my beliefs.
Who cares? It's up to the people to maintain freedom of speech. Obviously not many people are interested in that sort of thing, though that doesn't stop them from telling everyone how much they support freedom of speech.
Excuses, excuses (semantics will get you nowhere). It's quite clear that far too many Slashdot users oppose freedom of speech and rational discourse, and wish to stiffle them as much as possible using the tools they have available to them. Stop being an apologist.
So in other words freedom of speech should only be practised by the government, everyone else can just go "yeah of course I support freedom of speech but in here you can't say anything I don't want to hear." I can just imagine if every site followed that policy.
This reminds me of pearls of wisdom like "well if you're unhappy with WoW make your own MMORPG." Lame copout response with no substance to it.
Hmm, since when was it forbidden to insult Jews? Anti-semitism is on the rise in Europe, and as far as I know nobody gives a shit about what happens to Jews. I think Israel has even deemed France unsafe for Jews, though I don't have a source for that.
Freedom of speech is really a joke these days.
It's actually funny that Slashdot pretends to be deeply concerned about the freedom of speech violation of the week, yet its members see no problem with aggressively modding down politically incorrect or otherwise "wrong" opinions, using the tools provided by the site itself. But to be fair, the same thing is happening all over the web, and likeminded people are unfortunately running governments, universities and media services, so the erosion of freedom of speech seems to be unstoppable.
Here's a very satisfying video where happy slapping does not go entirely according to plan.
I can think of one movie where this myth doesn't appear: Chan-wook Park's excellent Oldboy. There's a fight scene lasting around two minutes, and it's just one long take with no cuts. Not only is the protagonist very tired after the fight, but the actor was actually tired as well. Also, even though he takes on a bunch of guys by himself, they still managed to make it look like it could be completely plausible.