So because some other schools, most of which we have no control over what so ever, engage in blatant and destructive propaganda... we should let these schools over which we DO have control engage in blatant and destructive propaganda as well?
In any event, that's not the issue being discussed, making it irrelevant information, making your entire point a meaningless digression.
I'll bet you're one of those people who says "well if a terrorist captures an American, they'll torture and brutally execute them, so that makes it morally justified for us to torture them to gather intelligence". It turns out that, in fact, two wrongs DON'T make a right. It's rationalization, plain and simple, and it has no place in a society that purports itself to be the defender of civilization and human progress.
Not really, no. Would you like to point out such a period?
There is a much greater correlation between poor governance and economic ruin than there is between any single economic policy and economic ruin.
If anything, what we have learned is that extreme capitalism and communism both have the same problem: they would work only if people did not behave the way they do. In light of that, neither system is a good idea, which leaves us with needing to find something in the middle. The problem we're having right now is that people are so shy of communism that they've relabeled ANYTHING other than unrestricted capitalism as extreme, and we're tilting heavily in the other way. It is unsustainable, and if people don't figure out the real issue soon enough (that the wealthiest people in our society are often the least productive, and that the occupations currently given the highest rewards are ones which explicitly do not create anything of actual value, just bigger numbers after the dollar sign) what has happened so far will look like a drop in the bucket. Real financial reform would bring back into balance the financial reward of shuffling numbers on paper with the value of producing actual things of real value... I am unaware of any current effort in any body of any government to do so, so at least for now I'd say to expect more of the same.
"Where did I fault the ACLU with respect to freedom of religion? I don't think you can find it."
You implied the crap out of it.
"Where did I say the ACLU fights against freedom of religion?"
You were talking about the ACLU, then stated that some people want to eradicate all mention of religion and religious symbols... a certified non-genius like myself would put those two together and infer you're claiming the ACLU is such a group.
"They sometimes take stances that I find strange, to say the least, but, at the end of the day, they are fairly balanced in that respect."
I'm going to stick by my guns and say that's exactly what you were saying, and when I called your bluff on an obvious untruth you tried to turn it around on me. It's cute, but I'm not buying that one.
"Hypocrisy, btw, is saying you believe in something, but act entirely in opposition to that statement."
Agreed, apparently you DO know the definition.
"Anyone who claims that they want their "right" to be not "offended" by a symbol by the courts, such as the cross honoring fallen WWI GI's, by trampling on the rights of those who are exercising their rights by erecting the cross, is a hypocrite."
Whoa there sparky, not so fast. That's not a question of insult... I have never heard of any instance where anybody claimed that another person shouldn't have a cross in their memory (well, none that were taken seriously), but not all fallen WWI GIs were Christians, it would be wholly inappropriate to "honor" them with a cross, and could in fact DIShonor some of our fallen heroes. I suspect that nobody actually wants to do that (or, rather, nobody whose opinion society at large takes seriously... I'm sure that somebody out there is more than happy to dishonor any fallen soldier who didn't share the Christian faith), and I can't help but feel that there are any number of alternative images which could just as appropriately honor the dead without imposing religious beliefs.
At the very least, I'd hope that you can see where a reasonable conflict of legitimate rights might exist. The world is made of shades of gray.
Actually I hadn't noticed that at all. So, I decided to do 5 seconds worth of research on your claim. I discovered that of the 10 headlines which drop down from my Reuters RSS bookmark thing in Firefox, precisely 1 is about the oil spill. I can't imagine that 9 other newsworthy things might be happening in the entire world, so you're probably right that this whole oil spill thing is being swept under the rug by getting only 1/9th the exposure of everything else combined.
Oh, mind that none of the sarcasm drips on your shoes... it stains.
I would prefer that the government do it themselves, with the same exact rules. I don't like the government paying private corporations to do things it is perfectly capable of doing for itself and which fall inside of the 'core business" of governance.
This is quite similar to my objection to the government hiring PMCs. If a private corporation wants to do it, then fine, they can justify it to their shareholders, but the government is explicitly in the business of running a military... why should they be hiring a private vendor to duplicate that functionality?
"Is the ACLU going to go to court and support the Constitutional right be a fool too?"
They frequently do go to court to defend peoples' right to do foolish things. I suppose that if a law were passed making it unlawful to be a fool, then they would fight it directly, but in the absence of such laws they've defended individual foolish things instead. For example, it would be very foolish for a chapter of the American Nazi Party to march through the streets of a town with more Holocaust survivors per capita than any other in America... and yet they have sued (and won, although the group evidently thought better of it and called the event off) to affirm precisely that right.
"I find it amazing that people will say a Christian doesn't have the right to spread/proselytize their religion, or the symbols of Christianity offend them, and want all symbols of Christianity wiped out"
What people? If you're claiming that the ACLU has supported any such view or action, then you are sorely mistaken. Even a cursory glance at their catalog of suits will turn up cases where they argued explicitly FOR allowing private citizens to express their Christian beliefs in the face of censorship. That said, Christians have a bit of a persecution complex, imagining that they are oppressed when it is clearly not so; they also like to mistake failure to give them overtly preferential treatment at all times with attempting to destroy their faith, which is less endearing than they think.
"while they will fight for the right to offend someone else with their profanity"
I often find that it is substantially easier to offend a person if you don't use any profanity at all. In fact, a not insignificant people aren't offended by profanity in the slightest. You have no right not to be offended.
"It's nothing but pure hypocrisy."
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I usually just push the button on the front. If I'm ejecting a disc, it's probably because i want to take it out and put in another... so just touching the drive seems sensible enough to me.
Of course, I don't own a single Apple product and don't use iTunes, so obviously I'm crazy and don't have any perspective. Anyone who has ever used any of their products knows full well that the only rational response is to love it uncontrollably and unconditionally. It is, quite simply, not possible that I have used iPods and disliked their UI or (un)reliability, or that I found iTunes to be a resource hogging pain in the ass and uninstalled it after a 3-month trial run. Those things just can't happen.
Sure it does... he is claiming to be the summary's author, and is apologizing for his poor grammar.
It's alright, GP, we forgive you. Contrary to popular belief, not EVERY poster on Slashdot is a soulless, humorless, grammar-Nazi waste of life fuckwit.
Don't be silly, of course they're popular, they always are. They just aren't realistic, and when they get their way the results are anything but popular.
It's rather like communism, in a way, although neither group is ever happy to hear that comparison.
So you would prefer drunk drivers be allowed to tool around in supermarket parking lots?
It sounds like they extended the current law to apply in areas which may be private property, technically, but are in fact still a public space.
If you are out of a vehicle and do something which is legal in private but illegal in public (say, intercourse) in one of those places, you are arrested for whatever you did rather than trespassing... should being in a car change that?
Heck, if you walk in the front door and steal something from a store, it's called larceny and for items below a certain value it is a misdemeanor... if you do the same to somebody's home it is a B&E and burglary, and typically a felony regardless of the item's value.
There is long standing-precedent, most of which is hardly considered to be controversial, for treating some private properties differently than others with regard to which laws still apply and how.
"but I would look at the electoral college and various senate problems as bigger problems than our current 2 party system."
Of course, most of those problems are directly related to the two-party system. In the case of the electoral college, it is the primary means by which the system is enforced, and most of our Senate shenanigans are a direct result. Serious reform of any one will result in changing all three.
"I can buy that unskilled people being granted admin access could be the problem, but that's not a function of market share."
lolwut?
Do you mean to imply that the market share of "people who are not trained sysadmins" is even remotely comparable to the market share of "trained sysadmins"?
Increasing Linux market share would necessarily mean that less qualified and unskilled people would be running it. Linux will be hit double by increasing popularity, first because it will be more appealing as a target, second because it will have a substantially decreased user skill base.
That may or may not make it more/less secure than Windows, I concede that I am simply unqualified to know... but I somewhat suspect that they intrinsically comparable, but that the Windows malware war has significantly more experienced veterans and substantially more evolved tactics to match on both sides.
To put it into a car analogy: NASCAR stock cars travel hundreds of miles at speeds in excess of 200mph only inches apart from one another while driven by professional race car drivers, and in many many thousands of miles driven, there are rarely even 2 or 3 fatalities in a given year. Clearly if we gave every day drivers access to these vehicles for their everyday travel, commutes would be much faster and safer. This logic doesn't hold up, and neither does yours.
"The only market that the netbook serves moderately well is if you need a PC operating system in an ultraportable form factor."
Seems like a worthy market to be in. Isn't that actually the stated purpose of netbooks... providing a PC operating system in an ultraportable form factor?
Your criticism seems to be deeply flawed.
Aside from that... the iPod Touch was really just Apple's (2nd) attempt at a Palm Pilot. It did pretty well, but more because people heard iPod and wanted to buy the "best" (most expensive) one. I used to sell the things... most people actually think there is a functional difference between "iPods" and "mp3 players" beyond branding, and very rare was the customer who actually had a clue on what was different between the Touch/Nano/Classic/Shuffle beyond price.
The iPad is a jumbo-sized Touch with a few nifty extras. Through the magic of advertising, Apple has made them seem attractive to a huge number of people, but the success so far has been pretty stunning, and there's a good chance the lustre will fade once early buyers realize it's too big to fit in a pocket and doesn't offer much that a smaller, less expensive, but otherwise virtually identical product with equal or greater sex appeal has had all along.
Personally, I'm looking to see what the next generation of netbooks brings to the table. I'd much rather have the keyboard, and if somebody sells a model with 1080p HDMI out and an SSD at $500 I'm going to be a very happy camper.
Given the amount of unethical behavior people engage in on a daily basis, I would say that you were being far more insightful than sarcastic.
Sure, nobody would come out and say they aren't hiring you because they don't want a conflict with their misdeeds, but it's always easy enough to just say "sorry, we decided to go with somebody else, best of luck" and hire somebody less scrupulous.
If nothing else remotely compared, there would be no reason to use anything else. Of course, since there are several perfectly comparable, good alternatives, it can be left to reasonable choice whther someone wants to use OSX or something else.
Or did you mean to imply that OSX is the only good operating system there is? A patently flawed and untrue assessment of reality (although the RDF sometimes makes it a challenge for people stuck inside to realize how grossly out of touch they are).
Alternatively: I have better things to do than install Debian.
There are people in this world who just don't care enough to spend hours setting up a system to get the absolute highest possible performance when they check their email. Crazy.
OK, we can't convict every person of that, innocent or guilty.
Conspiracy charges are hard to convict on because they require just as much evidence and proof of guilt as non-conspiracy crimes, but don't inherently leave behind any such proof: it's easier to prove that somebody killed a person who is dead than that they planned to kill someone who isn't.
In practice, conspiracy charges only stick when plans are written down, recorded in a phone tap, a sting operation worked as intended, caught entirely on camera, or otherwise so well-documented that it couldn't possibly be a misinterpretation. Well, that or when other charges are dropped in a plea bargain.
The Industrial revolution was already kicking in the late 1700s. The assemble line was still a ways off, but British troops carried guns with (theoretically) interchangeable parts in the War of Independence. One of our many beefs with England at the time was, in fact, that they were denying industrial technologies to the colonies, enforcing a system where they bought raw materials from the Americas at a discount, then sold finished goods back to them at a steep mark up.
One of the other big issues, unfair taxation, was similar in many ways: the British government created various rates and exemptions to favor certain well-connected, semi-nationalized corporations and conglomerates. For example, the tea tax behind the Boston Tea Party was the result of English attempts to preserve the British East India Company's monopoly on importing tea to both the colonies and England proper (where smuggled Dutch tea hugely undercut the official channels).
For what it's worth... I have the funny feeling that if you were to purchase a car and attempt to race it professionally in a large enough venue, the manufacturer very well COULD come out of the woodwork and demand that you pay various licensing fees to use their tech for racing rather than commuting.
Slashdot Mirror
You'd warp to Kansas. Ever been to Kansas? You might want to consider leaving those heels unclicked.
Well maybe if you hadn't stuffed it in a sack with a capsule of poison gas, these things wouldn't happen.
Posted from my abacus.
So because some other schools, most of which we have no control over what so ever, engage in blatant and destructive propaganda... we should let these schools over which we DO have control engage in blatant and destructive propaganda as well?
In any event, that's not the issue being discussed, making it irrelevant information, making your entire point a meaningless digression.
I'll bet you're one of those people who says "well if a terrorist captures an American, they'll torture and brutally execute them, so that makes it morally justified for us to torture them to gather intelligence". It turns out that, in fact, two wrongs DON'T make a right. It's rationalization, plain and simple, and it has no place in a society that purports itself to be the defender of civilization and human progress.
Not really, no. Would you like to point out such a period?
There is a much greater correlation between poor governance and economic ruin than there is between any single economic policy and economic ruin.
If anything, what we have learned is that extreme capitalism and communism both have the same problem: they would work only if people did not behave the way they do. In light of that, neither system is a good idea, which leaves us with needing to find something in the middle. The problem we're having right now is that people are so shy of communism that they've relabeled ANYTHING other than unrestricted capitalism as extreme, and we're tilting heavily in the other way. It is unsustainable, and if people don't figure out the real issue soon enough (that the wealthiest people in our society are often the least productive, and that the occupations currently given the highest rewards are ones which explicitly do not create anything of actual value, just bigger numbers after the dollar sign) what has happened so far will look like a drop in the bucket. Real financial reform would bring back into balance the financial reward of shuffling numbers on paper with the value of producing actual things of real value... I am unaware of any current effort in any body of any government to do so, so at least for now I'd say to expect more of the same.
And nothing of value was lost...
Time to go get 4chan added to the list. I've already cleared a space on my shelf for the "Great Hero of Pakistan" medal.
"Where did I fault the ACLU with respect to freedom of religion? I don't think you can find it."
You implied the crap out of it.
"Where did I say the ACLU fights against freedom of religion?"
You were talking about the ACLU, then stated that some people want to eradicate all mention of religion and religious symbols... a certified non-genius like myself would put those two together and infer you're claiming the ACLU is such a group.
"They sometimes take stances that I find strange, to say the least, but, at the end of the day, they are fairly balanced in that respect."
I'm going to stick by my guns and say that's exactly what you were saying, and when I called your bluff on an obvious untruth you tried to turn it around on me. It's cute, but I'm not buying that one.
"Hypocrisy, btw, is saying you believe in something, but act entirely in opposition to that statement."
Agreed, apparently you DO know the definition.
"Anyone who claims that they want their "right" to be not "offended" by a symbol by the courts, such as the cross honoring fallen WWI GI's, by trampling on the rights of those who are exercising their rights by erecting the cross, is a hypocrite."
Whoa there sparky, not so fast. That's not a question of insult... I have never heard of any instance where anybody claimed that another person shouldn't have a cross in their memory (well, none that were taken seriously), but not all fallen WWI GIs were Christians, it would be wholly inappropriate to "honor" them with a cross, and could in fact DIShonor some of our fallen heroes. I suspect that nobody actually wants to do that (or, rather, nobody whose opinion society at large takes seriously... I'm sure that somebody out there is more than happy to dishonor any fallen soldier who didn't share the Christian faith), and I can't help but feel that there are any number of alternative images which could just as appropriately honor the dead without imposing religious beliefs.
At the very least, I'd hope that you can see where a reasonable conflict of legitimate rights might exist. The world is made of shades of gray.
Actually I hadn't noticed that at all. So, I decided to do 5 seconds worth of research on your claim. I discovered that of the 10 headlines which drop down from my Reuters RSS bookmark thing in Firefox, precisely 1 is about the oil spill. I can't imagine that 9 other newsworthy things might be happening in the entire world, so you're probably right that this whole oil spill thing is being swept under the rug by getting only 1/9th the exposure of everything else combined.
Oh, mind that none of the sarcasm drips on your shoes... it stains.
I would prefer that the government do it themselves, with the same exact rules. I don't like the government paying private corporations to do things it is perfectly capable of doing for itself and which fall inside of the 'core business" of governance.
This is quite similar to my objection to the government hiring PMCs. If a private corporation wants to do it, then fine, they can justify it to their shareholders, but the government is explicitly in the business of running a military... why should they be hiring a private vendor to duplicate that functionality?
I'll bite:
"Is the ACLU going to go to court and support the Constitutional right be a fool too?"
They frequently do go to court to defend peoples' right to do foolish things. I suppose that if a law were passed making it unlawful to be a fool, then they would fight it directly, but in the absence of such laws they've defended individual foolish things instead. For example, it would be very foolish for a chapter of the American Nazi Party to march through the streets of a town with more Holocaust survivors per capita than any other in America... and yet they have sued (and won, although the group evidently thought better of it and called the event off) to affirm precisely that right.
"I find it amazing that people will say a Christian doesn't have the right to spread/proselytize their religion, or the symbols of Christianity offend them, and want all symbols of Christianity wiped out"
What people? If you're claiming that the ACLU has supported any such view or action, then you are sorely mistaken. Even a cursory glance at their catalog of suits will turn up cases where they argued explicitly FOR allowing private citizens to express their Christian beliefs in the face of censorship. That said, Christians have a bit of a persecution complex, imagining that they are oppressed when it is clearly not so; they also like to mistake failure to give them overtly preferential treatment at all times with attempting to destroy their faith, which is less endearing than they think.
"while they will fight for the right to offend someone else with their profanity"
I often find that it is substantially easier to offend a person if you don't use any profanity at all. In fact, a not insignificant people aren't offended by profanity in the slightest. You have no right not to be offended.
"It's nothing but pure hypocrisy."
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I usually just push the button on the front. If I'm ejecting a disc, it's probably because i want to take it out and put in another... so just touching the drive seems sensible enough to me.
Of course, I don't own a single Apple product and don't use iTunes, so obviously I'm crazy and don't have any perspective. Anyone who has ever used any of their products knows full well that the only rational response is to love it uncontrollably and unconditionally. It is, quite simply, not possible that I have used iPods and disliked their UI or (un)reliability, or that I found iTunes to be a resource hogging pain in the ass and uninstalled it after a 3-month trial run. Those things just can't happen.
6, tops. And that's only if you hax and get all 5 skinny nerds in the sample size.
Sure it does... he is claiming to be the summary's author, and is apologizing for his poor grammar.
It's alright, GP, we forgive you. Contrary to popular belief, not EVERY poster on Slashdot is a soulless, humorless, grammar-Nazi waste of life fuckwit.
Don't be silly, of course they're popular, they always are. They just aren't realistic, and when they get their way the results are anything but popular.
It's rather like communism, in a way, although neither group is ever happy to hear that comparison.
So if pirate it, will they miss my $50 then?
So you would prefer drunk drivers be allowed to tool around in supermarket parking lots?
It sounds like they extended the current law to apply in areas which may be private property, technically, but are in fact still a public space.
If you are out of a vehicle and do something which is legal in private but illegal in public (say, intercourse) in one of those places, you are arrested for whatever you did rather than trespassing... should being in a car change that?
Heck, if you walk in the front door and steal something from a store, it's called larceny and for items below a certain value it is a misdemeanor... if you do the same to somebody's home it is a B&E and burglary, and typically a felony regardless of the item's value.
There is long standing-precedent, most of which is hardly considered to be controversial, for treating some private properties differently than others with regard to which laws still apply and how.
"but I would look at the electoral college and various senate problems as bigger problems than our current 2 party system."
Of course, most of those problems are directly related to the two-party system. In the case of the electoral college, it is the primary means by which the system is enforced, and most of our Senate shenanigans are a direct result. Serious reform of any one will result in changing all three.
"I can buy that unskilled people being granted admin access could be the problem, but that's not a function of market share."
lolwut?
Do you mean to imply that the market share of "people who are not trained sysadmins" is even remotely comparable to the market share of "trained sysadmins"?
Increasing Linux market share would necessarily mean that less qualified and unskilled people would be running it. Linux will be hit double by increasing popularity, first because it will be more appealing as a target, second because it will have a substantially decreased user skill base.
That may or may not make it more/less secure than Windows, I concede that I am simply unqualified to know... but I somewhat suspect that they intrinsically comparable, but that the Windows malware war has significantly more experienced veterans and substantially more evolved tactics to match on both sides.
To put it into a car analogy: NASCAR stock cars travel hundreds of miles at speeds in excess of 200mph only inches apart from one another while driven by professional race car drivers, and in many many thousands of miles driven, there are rarely even 2 or 3 fatalities in a given year. Clearly if we gave every day drivers access to these vehicles for their everyday travel, commutes would be much faster and safer. This logic doesn't hold up, and neither does yours.
"The only market that the netbook serves moderately well is if you need a PC operating system in an ultraportable form factor."
Seems like a worthy market to be in. Isn't that actually the stated purpose of netbooks... providing a PC operating system in an ultraportable form factor?
Your criticism seems to be deeply flawed.
Aside from that... the iPod Touch was really just Apple's (2nd) attempt at a Palm Pilot. It did pretty well, but more because people heard iPod and wanted to buy the "best" (most expensive) one. I used to sell the things... most people actually think there is a functional difference between "iPods" and "mp3 players" beyond branding, and very rare was the customer who actually had a clue on what was different between the Touch/Nano/Classic/Shuffle beyond price.
The iPad is a jumbo-sized Touch with a few nifty extras. Through the magic of advertising, Apple has made them seem attractive to a huge number of people, but the success so far has been pretty stunning, and there's a good chance the lustre will fade once early buyers realize it's too big to fit in a pocket and doesn't offer much that a smaller, less expensive, but otherwise virtually identical product with equal or greater sex appeal has had all along.
Personally, I'm looking to see what the next generation of netbooks brings to the table. I'd much rather have the keyboard, and if somebody sells a model with 1080p HDMI out and an SSD at $500 I'm going to be a very happy camper.
Given the amount of unethical behavior people engage in on a daily basis, I would say that you were being far more insightful than sarcastic.
Sure, nobody would come out and say they aren't hiring you because they don't want a conflict with their misdeeds, but it's always easy enough to just say "sorry, we decided to go with somebody else, best of luck" and hire somebody less scrupulous.
If nothing else remotely compared, there would be no reason to use anything else. Of course, since there are several perfectly comparable, good alternatives, it can be left to reasonable choice whther someone wants to use OSX or something else.
Or did you mean to imply that OSX is the only good operating system there is? A patently flawed and untrue assessment of reality (although the RDF sometimes makes it a challenge for people stuck inside to realize how grossly out of touch they are).
Wait, you actually believe the excuse that it was sent to him in an email by a female court employee?
I bet the dog ate his homework, too.
Alternatively: I have better things to do than install Debian.
There are people in this world who just don't care enough to spend hours setting up a system to get the absolute highest possible performance when they check their email. Crazy.
OK, we can't convict every person of that, innocent or guilty.
Conspiracy charges are hard to convict on because they require just as much evidence and proof of guilt as non-conspiracy crimes, but don't inherently leave behind any such proof: it's easier to prove that somebody killed a person who is dead than that they planned to kill someone who isn't.
In practice, conspiracy charges only stick when plans are written down, recorded in a phone tap, a sting operation worked as intended, caught entirely on camera, or otherwise so well-documented that it couldn't possibly be a misinterpretation. Well, that or when other charges are dropped in a plea bargain.
The Industrial revolution was already kicking in the late 1700s. The assemble line was still a ways off, but British troops carried guns with (theoretically) interchangeable parts in the War of Independence. One of our many beefs with England at the time was, in fact, that they were denying industrial technologies to the colonies, enforcing a system where they bought raw materials from the Americas at a discount, then sold finished goods back to them at a steep mark up.
One of the other big issues, unfair taxation, was similar in many ways: the British government created various rates and exemptions to favor certain well-connected, semi-nationalized corporations and conglomerates. For example, the tea tax behind the Boston Tea Party was the result of English attempts to preserve the British East India Company's monopoly on importing tea to both the colonies and England proper (where smuggled Dutch tea hugely undercut the official channels).
For what it's worth... I have the funny feeling that if you were to purchase a car and attempt to race it professionally in a large enough venue, the manufacturer very well COULD come out of the woodwork and demand that you pay various licensing fees to use their tech for racing rather than commuting.
It wouldn't surprise me even a little.