Suddenly "everyone" (90%) is opposed to free speech, and people like Scientologists should go get themselves buried under 6 feet dirt. It doesn't seem like you people have thought very much about your attitudes, you're just borrowing opinions from others closely matching what you feel. This makes for very hypocritical thinking.
Maybe I'll go see the movie when it comes around over here, in about 6-8 months I guess. If it's any good, maybe I should join CoS? I mean, I'm sure I'll be so indoctrinated and enslaved at the end of the 1000-page film, I just gotta part with all my money just to join a very questionable New Age cult.
No I prefer my own thoughts and my own "religion". Instead of adopting others' opinion and throwing away everything related to something "bad", it's better to adopt the core of truth in all. Going to war against everything you don't agree with isn't at all constructive. You don't convince anybody by yelling, kicking, screaming and killing. Not that I'm doing so much better than the rest of humanity mind you.
That recursive acronym should explain it sufficiently. So what you really mean by "native" here means using typical Linux libraries instead of a wrapper redirecting Windows API calls to Linux and X. Frankly, I don't see the point of writing every application specifically for every platform. However, I see the point that a Windows-centric wrapper is not the ideal solution to cross-platform porting.
IANAL but this whole rhyme on Slashdot nowadays that "Stockholders can sue companies for not attempting to up their income in every possible legal way", is total Crap IMHO. Everyone can sue everybody, I can sue anyone and their mother now if I want. The question is not if you can be sued, but wether you can win or have enough money to defend yourself in court properly (unless the judge dismisses it).
Now such a case is pretty weak in my opinion. A company may come up with dozens of reasons NOT to exploit every hole in the law. For example, it's obviously bad PR to misuse your powers like certain companies have done. Why should you be forced to do unpopular stunts, unless you're voted down by the owners/investors? But in the end, the stockholders are just investing money trusting that company to be successful in the marketplace, the company is not under any obligation to profit, share its profit with its shareholders or do The Right Thing whatever that is now. The stockmarket is just a game of gambling, which by statistics and theories should benefit promising companies.
Now if a company withholds important information or are too late to announce things, they might be held responsible. But ruling that is up to the judge, and advice is supposed to come from a lawyer.
You can live without alot of stuff, but people prefer to do what they want. That's a basic human right in my book. Including breaking the law. We are living for christ sake! Companies do not.
The only way to "steal" information would be to delete it from the place you got it. You may argue all you want that it is stealing (I'm not doing this myself btw), but all you're trying to do is limit other people and society. Which you have full right to do, but then we all have the full right not to be controlled by you.
Of course you may limit everyone's "rights" by viewing this from legal grounds, but you're doing yourself a huge disfavour in the end if you do so. Stop trying to supress others, and you'll discover that you really supressed yourself.
Changes will always bring controversy. The best thing to do is read and listen, don't shout at others.
First of all your post is just cut'n paste from several others posted here on Slashdot, with a twist typical of "Elite" Slashdotters, saying that the bunch of us is living in self-denial. I humbly disagree, and labelling people only makes you look bad in the long run. Unfortunately, many of my own arguments will be borrowed too, just showing that we all can masturbate together instead of spending time finding REAL solutions..
"You may notice a large number of posts made on Slashdot concering Napster, or similar programs such as Gnutella or FreeNet. Often these will be posted under "Your Rights Online" (YRO), in order to show how the use of Napster affects your "rights". You may wonder what the hell programs whose sole purpose is to circumvent copyright laws is doing on a conservative (yes, I mean it) site such as Slashdot."
First of all, Napster does not circumvent the copyright laws. Downloading- and making copyrighted works available for upload is still illegal, but not the tools themselves. You may do the same with IRC, FTP, ICQ, HTTP/HTML, floppy-disks and dozen of other ways. It's just that programs like Napster is specifically made for sound-formats and finding other peoples albums. You may state that the purpose behind making Napster was to make it easier for people to do illegal copying. However, the actual use is what's interesting, as you cannot (yet) control people's thoughts and intent.
As for Slashdot being conservative, where have you got that ridiculous judgement from? Stories are fetched from all over the world (in theory), and submitted by many different kinds of people (also in theory). But just saying that the Slashdot-crew themselves should- or does conform to conservatism, is IMHO laughable. I think you have misunderstood something completely fundamental: They're different people, with different minds and goals.
"Let me explain to you. In the back of their minds, most Slashdot readers ("Slashbots")"
What a display of arrogance! I believe most people read Slashdot to get many different opinions and distributed information from many different places. There's many topics from religion to cyberpunk, and even if many tend to agree on certain topics such as Linux and stuff, doesn't mean people don't develop personal opinions while they read.
"... know that they simply don't want to pay for anything which they can get illegally for free. Most people are exactly the same way. Napster et al allows them to get music for free, so they use it. They know that this is copyright violation, which is a bad thing to do. This brings them feelings of guilt which they want to do away with."
Here you have a valid point. Yes, people DO want things for free, or as cheap as possible. It's the fundamental mechanism of effectivity, capitalism and free-market. Is that suddenly wrong now? Do we HAVE to live in a limited world with limited goods just because that is the way it has "always been"? For example: If a new invention could create free energy and mass for everybody, should this be banned because it would be out of control? (A very legitimate reason seen from one perspective, but I digress. Just wanted to point out that life isn't necessarily easy, and quick opinions leaves you nowehere.)
Then you claim that violating a copyright (law) is a bad thing to do, but everything is relative. I think you would regard laws a bit different if you lived in a dictature. Laws != Morals and ethics (Right and Wrong), and even those are highly subjective. Noone can say "this is right" and "this is wrong". You can only truly say: "This is right for _me_", "this is wrong for _me_."
So when we agree that this only applies to the ego self, you go further by claiming people have a bad conciense about copying illegally. Well, maybe you're right, but only because _we're told to have it_! Corporations and magazines states over and over that infringing and violating IP and copyright is _theft_, a horrible thing, piracy. But is it really theft? Do I steal something from you by reading your sourcecode, listening to your music or saving your film on my HDD. Do you actually lose anything? Not actually, you can't compare the natural laws of information to that of physical objects. You can't prove that I would've bought your CD or DVD. Why should I feel guilty for helping my neighbour (as RMS put it)? We shouldn't feel guilty over breaking laws, because they're only a means to control us. (IANAL btw, this is crummy legal advice;-)
Why should we let us be controlled you may ask? Well, it's easier to live that way. You don't have to have much responsibility, just do what they say. It's like in the military, you'll know what I'm talking about if you've ever been in there. It's for children, and we're growing up!
Also there is the issue of money and power in all of this. The record-companies and movie-industry want as much as possible. They want control over the production, distribution _and_ the use. They'll probably want control over disposal and other stuff too if they can think of it. Why? Because this gives them _more_ money, power and success. It's a war out there, but where did the fine _art_ go? Is everything really just about money and power? Don't corporations violate another person's "moral rights" by having power over him or her?
"How do they do this? They rationalize it away. It's the copyright laws that are wrong, not them. DCMA needs to be rewritten. The MPAA needs to be destroyed. It's an expression of free speech. And those greedy record companies take all the money anyway. Never mind that with pirate mp3s the artist never sees any money anyway. This way, they are sticking it to "the Man", who exists to make life difficult for 31337 Linux users like... "
Nobody says everybody must follow the same rules set out by the industry and government. The DMCA and all other such laws, came _after_ people started pirating, not the other way around. Also, having a huge company does not earn you the right to profit, again, that's what capitalism and free-market is all about. If the industry can't keep up with technology, it must either stifle it, enforce control over the public or go bankrupt. I'm sorry to say this, but if they don't change soon, they're going to pay dearly because the public are paying their salaries and stock options. If they don't change their bussiness model and stop cheating customers and artists, new technologies are going to run over this questionable industry like trains do.
"...themselves. Yes, it is flimsy, and yes, it allows them to take the moral high ground by robbing hard-working artists. Yes, many will say that modern popular music is all horrible anyway, and that their favorite music is the only worthwhile type, but then go on to slam others for being "elitist" in any discussion in which Gnome or KDE is mentioned."
IMHO, and I think you agree, anybody judging other people, their taste or preferences are fooling themselves and cutting new interesting experiences away from their lives. We all are guilty of this from time to time, some more often than others. In the end, we only fool ourselves however, but it can be REALLY annoying to others too. Likewise, saying that everyone of such and such opinion, also have this opinion about music/GNOME/KDE/whatever, is a futile exercise of extrapolation and generalisation. Only fooling oneself.
"And what about the Corel Linux beta? Didn't that violate the GPL by attaching a boilerplate disclaimer saying that only people over 18 years old could download it? And remember the cries of the Slashbots that Corel should be sued, destroyed. boycotted, etc.? All because Corel who was helping out the Linux community mistakenly added a certain clause to their beta, which violated the GPL. As you can see, the "community" is quick to cry foul when the copyrights on their software is violated, even by companies with good intentions. Our copyright good, yours bad.
It's called "hypocrisy" and if you read Slashdot enough, you'll have to get used to it."
How is this hypocrisy? I would say just the opposite of that, since this shows that the community doesn't take sides with "good" companies disregarding their "bad" sides. Whining, bitching, fear and panic yes, but certainly not hypocrisy. Your argument here only display your ignorance of fundamental differences in licenses, and that this site doesn't really have an official policy or bias (except News for Nerds).
"Now ask yourself exactly why ther is coverage of Napster on a site obstensibly devoted to Free Software. Napster is proprietary as hell. Those protocol specs had to be reverse engineered. Isn't proprietary software bad? Isn't all free software superior? Isn't "open sourcing" a piece of software the best way to improve it?"
Again, who said Slashdot was about Free Software only? If you want a site dedicated to that, go to the GNU homepage. You sure as hell won't find it here, there's even Microsoft-news on here. I'm beginning to suspect you're a troll or flamebait now.
About if Open Source is the Best Way Or Not To Every Conceivable Problem, there are two answers: Theoretically: yes. Practically: no. Simply put, we need a bussiness-model for Open Source and Free Software to work (food on the platter), but it's still lacking. So when people are arguing this, they're usually talking about two different things: What's best for programmers and customers. And what's best for the pockets of the owners and shareholders. Let me remind you, people are always in war about this, that's what's free marked is about, war.
"These are all bleatings of the party lines. Here, we consider proprietary software Evil until Rob Malda tells us otherwise, or it gets ported to Linux. Then it becomes a special class of proprietary software which somehow becomes better than the rest. Napster is one example. WordPerfect is another. Somehow, they are able to ignore this seemingly large discrepency by claiming that these companies are "helping" the "community". The only one being helped is Andover.Net who gets to sell ads to these people after giving them free publicity on the most popular "Linux" site of them all."
So you rather prefer people don't have different opinions, and some share them? There are opposing opinions and partylines all over the world. Why not try to see the cores of your truth in other's views, rather than bash down "partylines".
Maybe a few people are hypocritical here. So what? It's not like it's the first time. There are good and bad people on both sides of a conflict. What's bad is labelling people as this-or-that, or judging them without really knowing them.
"Stop lying to yourselves."
I'll try, but there's only so much a "Slashbot" can do on its own...
- Steeltoe
If you keep your opinion and I keep mine, not much good that will do.
The only feasible way of reversing this trend is to come up with a superior video codec and distribute it freely. Until now, many people have argued that developing a good media codec involves such high-end mathematics that developing one under traditional Open Source development model is not possible.
This sort of project is perfect for Open Source! It's not failure of the Open Source that it hasn't happened yet. People must BE WILLING to collaborate across communities/companies.
People should really stop blaming and faming external things, and start looking at themselves and what they choose to do. You can't blame a particular ice-cream for you never having tasted it.
The darkest side already exists among us in our society and others. The *important* point raised here is wether we should allow Big Brother Governments to hide the truth from us. We've been living in a make-believe-lie-of-a-world for a long time now, maybe it's time to open up the gates? It's ultimately our choice, even if we let other people decide even that for us too.
I for one get a bad stomach when viewing something grotesque. However, I understand that the pictures/movies are not evil in themselves. Sure they show the horrible truth, not fiction, and I might be immensely hurt by it, but that's it. It's not a hurt that's not already there anyways, just more hidden. What's really a shame is that these things really happen and continue to happen, not that somebody brings a camera along.
You may argue that by illegalizing distribution of such evidence, you effectively make it harder for such communities to abuse people. But there's no scientific evidence of that, just alot of propaganda from the authorities telling us what to think.
Many people are very afraid of thinking about such things. If you read alot of people's comments on torture/rape/kid pornography, they're very very afraid, taking as much distance as they can. It's safest to shut that reality out of your mind. Just like the wife, of the husband who abused his child for 10 years...
We become the victims of ourselves. Instead of facing our fears, we suppress it. Which makes matters worse over time of course, but we suppress that too. (If you want to see modern double-thinking in process, just try to serve good-looking, bad-tasting food to people and ask them how it tastes, it's hillarious!!). During peace-time, we bake, cook and go to the factories. When war-time comes, we go to war, maim, torture and rape. It's reality, because we don't dare face who we really are and do something about it.
In the end, it's up to ourself if we want to have responsibility for our own lives. Wether we want to be children, or adults. If we opt for adults, we need to learn how to live without being controlled. Maybe we just aren't ready for that yet?
On the other side, you just can't change society overnight. E.g victims of brutal acts might not want everyone to see what was being done to them in every gory detail, there are many sane laws, and so on. My conclusion will be that the best way to change society is starting by changing yourself.
If you read it this far, you're a very cool person;-)
You critizise idealism but fail to see that morals and principals ain't about "right" and "wrong". It's about standing up to what you believe in. Since that varies from person to person, right and wrong are just illusions. There are no definite right and wrong. It's like the universe has a HUGE disclaimer on it: AS IS.
However, we also have a choice NOT to stand up to what we believe in. Ie, not having any particular reason to do what we do. This leads on to a very dangerous road IMHO where people do what others tell them to, sheeps following the shepherds etc. This is not necessarily "wrong" mind you, but it _may_ have devastating results since the more people who think, the better result you usually get. Not in every situation though.
I prefer standing up for what I believe in, even if it means negative Karma and people ignoring what I say.
- Steeltoe
Spoooiing!!! (Shattering all the seriousness into oblivion)
If things were only that simple... The regional codes you have access to are to my knowledge hardwired into each player as a long encryptet string or key (not just an integer mind you), necessary to gain permission to play the disc. Now, the chip/file containing these codes may be or may not be alterable, that depends upon implementation. But it's not easy to do this, and it costs extra money to do it "legally" (It still hasn't been tested properly in court). However, some player-manufacturers found out they could earn alot more money on including a few "hacks" so that people could choose their region by undocumented procedures.
If you don't have such a player however, you are out of luck. It doesn't matter if you move to another region and want to see the movie you rent there. Your player will simply refuse to play them! You are then at the mercy of the manufacturer.
Consumers who thinks this is stupid should quit buying DVD-players. I recently bought a new computer (1 month ago), but I refused to have a combined CD-ROM/DVD-player installed in it. I simply didn't want to support the MPAA. The only DVD player I have now is an unusable one in my laptop. It's unusable now because of regional encodings and since the DVD-format suddenly changed standards a dozen times.
It's time for consumers to become aware of where they want to be customers.
How difficult can it be to block a certain protocol in a firewall? There are firewalls/proxies that block webpages containing specific words and sentences (parsing the damn thing!).
I think the fight should revolve around making people aware, not pirating or hacking through the system because that won't fix the root problem.
I think the point that everyone has been missing is that when MS bundled IE with Windows, they could continue "charging" for it by making better deals on their OS. Netscape obviously couldn't do this since IE was now "free of charge". Although everyone was buying it anyways through purchasing a new computer (those nasty OEM deals) or upgrading Windows. I guess it didn't make any sense to Netscape to continue developing a grossly overcomplex and buggy system, superior at that time though, without much of revenue back for their efforts. Certainly not on a platform where Microsoft were doing all the development and could use undocumented features to get an advantage anyways.
So what we've learned is that nothing bundled together with a product is ever "free of charge", it's just a sales-gimmick. The price of developing IE went into the same rich pool Microsoft has exploited since the day it were conceived, its OS.
There's only so much a consumer can know about every product he or she's going to buy a lifetime. Without such Federal regulations you're basically putting all the responsibility on the consumer. Hell, you can't just complain about a McDonald burger and get a new and bigger one. You need something to base your complaint on, and even then the service at McDonald's is so lousy you probably don't get your burger. (I don't go to McDonalds for obvious reasons;)
Now, I totally agree that such regulations are much harder to do on OSes and software in general. But as we have experienced in the last 5-10 years, the consumer needs something to protect them from advertising and articles fooling them into believing a product is a must-have. That everyone are buying it, everyone should have one, it's the best product you can get, it got all the features you ever wanted, you'll be more productive and happier, and you need it to play Office.
Sometime, somewhere, whole masses of people have been lead on by this into buying MS only. Then Microsoft capitalized on this by making all their products incompatible with others, except those endorsing Microsoft. Obviously there's something wrong here to be fixed.
Maybe the consumers need to be more informed, but I think that's an enormous task considering all the AOLers out there. In my opinion it's best to take a wait-and-see attitude, because it's impossible to extrapolate the future based on hypothetical rulings. It can't get worse than it is now, even if Microsoft goes bankrupt. That would only mean responsibility back to the people.
Sure you may be right we can build AIs in a 100 years. Like every stupid intellectual discussion it's only a matter of definitions and technicalities that you can set up. But you lose an important aspect when you rule out the human-side of it all.
a) Are these AIs "intelligent"? IOW, what's the definition of intelligent, or consciousness?
b) Can they outperform us? Depends on the task. For example a machine can never outperform us being human. We're ourselves as best as we can be.
c) What do you lose in such a transformation? Like when you go from analog to digital you lose information but gain simplicity and "correctness", literally stripping "noise" the datastream. However, this "noise" might be essential for our lives. For instance it may be quantuum effects in our brains, which _may_ be information from some other dimension(s) OR just random inputs, but could just as well be a connection to our souls (science DOES NOT define this in detail, so it is IMPOSSIBLE to simulate at present...) Do you really want to cut away your connection to your soul so that you can live an AI-life with an AI-brain? You can probably be 1000 times more efficient at work, but you'll lose your humanity/soul. It just doesn't sound very good to _me_ put that way.;-)
My point is that such questions about this is impossible to answer 100% 100 years from now as well as at The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe. Because it depends on what world-view you have. It'll be an eternal unanswerable question, at least until we're MUCH more advanced than we're now.
I like having a balanced view though. 5-15 years from now we'll possibly have the technology and know-how to put things in our brains to restore lost functionality to a lesser degree. And if using drugs to repair damaged areas doesn't help, I see no reason not to put in a chip with an artificial neural net.
It's just that such protesis may become "better" than our flesh and bone in say 50-200 years, but we should do some real hard thinking before exchanging healthy bodyparts.
I have no doubt we will be able to exchange most of our important bodyparts 50-100 years from now. It's the ethical questions I'm after here. And that even though they after 200 years seems superior, they can have hidden agendas we'll figure out much later.
I'm really sad how little people know of feelings and personal development. Having AIs feeling sad for others won't help much. We have that in human society too, it's called pitty. It won't help as the basics of nature says any entity should care for itself first. Why? Well because they will all die/get destructed from self-deprivation.
Okay, maybe you can make them care for each other, and not themselves (to some degree). But you'll still have factions in the society that care for that faction more than others etc, thus becoming a body. So there's no such thing as a perfect algorithm. It's as good as the programmers.
What happens if the world keeps getting worse and worse, e.g because of ecological disasters and such, and the robots must make some severe actions such as enslaving humans, or destroying us, or destroying themselves and leave earth or whatever. What say have we in this? How can such programs be absolutely bugfree? etc..etc
On quite another complexity scale, is how are these AIs going to _cooperate_. Who will the new "Masters" be? Or should we have an anarchy. Then what ability should those that prevail have? Be strongest, smartest, have wisdom, compassionate?
Also, comparing AI-goals to emotions are completely false. Goals are just complex commands. Our emotions stem from our personal fantasies and dreams. Every human being is a universe in him/herself based on this. You can't easily simulate that in an AI and make them remain as sane as we are, or not eat up all the CPU cycles.
I think we're doing fairly good when you begin to get an understanding of the complexity of it all. You can't get an AI to have a life, not like ours anyways. Trying to make a perfect creation without being perfect yourself usually ends up in disaster. It's a poor excuse for not working on oneself.
You can't just cut away "baggage"/bad parts and remain healthy. At least don't call it development. That's a flawed argument based on thinking too much with your left half of the brain. While cutting away the things that you hate in your life, you also cut away those that give you pleasure. For what is pleasure without hardship? How can you learn without doing mistakes?
Evolution is the process where the real baggage is _naturally_ cut away from our strains. While things like "junk DNA", blind- is not cut away, that may mean these things really count for something! At least we should give it time to evolve into new stuff. If we must tamper with our genes or melding with silicon hardware, we should at least know what we're doing!
Who are we to cut away all our inner parts until all we're left with is cold robot technology. We'll be punished by our own stupidity for doing a thing like that. Ask anyone who was performed lobotomy upon.
It's an interesting thought wether AIs can evolve into human-thinking or not though. But it will never replace real human experiences, just be a poor emulation. You can't possibly simulate quantuum-effects to 100% correctness with a machine. Because the universe is a huge self-mirroring hologram. You can't just simulate a part of it, you'll lose the intensity and correctness of the whole.
It's not that I believe genetic engineering will be the way in the future, it's just that it's such a LOONG way off. Even when we get the know-how we shouldn't do it until we have done lots of more research to know the effects.
Stop dreaming about the future and start living in the now. You're responsible for your own baggage, and it's _people_ who limit themselves (and others) on what they can and can't do.
So other students can choose better professors maybe? Anyways, I agree with your opinion. I've had my share of good and bad teachers too. Many of them should never teach.
Somtimes this goes for students too, some students should never study;-). It's especially stupid when students gives reviews when they've never had the professor in question. They're using their anger from other teachers as fuel to the flames.
Teaching is the most underestimated and underprivileged profession nowadays.
One thing is to be sceptical, another is to lose your job and professional reputation just because you want to study some more exciting stuff than exciting atoms, like telekinesis or telepathy. Many scientists shy away from such projects as fast as they can because of punishments for doing such research and publishing them. You have to believe in the current religion of science, or else your results can't be trusted. So ultimately scientific people goes into the same trap as religious people. It's about arrogance and power stiffling the potential for new discoveries. A very human trap you can't blaim other than the humans themselves.
Science should be sceptical. Religion should be built on faith. This is because science is built on the mind, and religion is that of the heart. To have a balance of these two is a very healthy way of living life. This means the two shouldn't oppose each other, but complement. You can't build a society on either pure science or religion.
It was never supposed to be easy though. It's much easier to come up with pure scientific or religious claims, than trying to grasp the whole picture.
Doesn't searching for the truth involve looking in all the places you can? How can modern science defend their attitudes towards religions and other faiths of mankind (not to mention New Age)? How can anyone claiming to search for the truth defend cutting and chipping away at the Big Picture?
Oh, well continue dancing, that's what you do best. We'll just harvest your efforts;-)
Consider nuclear-, biological and wave-technological (HARP) warfare. Not to mention future warfare like nanotechnology and lasers. Now what's dangerous?
Science and religion doen't hurt anybody. It's people that torture, murder and rape.
We should stop blaming external things, and assume responsibility to our own choices and actions. Science doesn't tell you HOW to live. People that doesn't think for themselves and develop a belief-system on how to live, will become puppets for leaders who may not have those good intents they display on TV.
I wouldn't call myself "religious", but I recognize religion is much more than a law-keeping incentive. What you refer to as laws, are more like moral codes in most religions btw. But in certain societies, religion has/had so much power that they are/were considered Laws.
The big fault of you and many others is to look at the Ten Commandments and think this is Christianity, and that Christianity is all there is to religion. Both religion and Christianity is much more than that, even more than the Golden Rule and Hinduism combined!;-) People REALLY need to educate themselves about this!
The way I see it, everyone needs something to believe in, a personal religion. Science by itself only tells you HOW things work, it doesn't tell you WHAT to do about it! Eg, science doesn't tell you to keep slaves or not, exploit the earth or not, steal, kill and rape or not, live with in monogamous relationships or not, etc, etc, etc.
Thus the Laws in our society is NOT based on science and will never be, since it can't tell us how to live. It is based on a mixture of experience (trial- and error, a sort of science) and religion.
The big danger is people that don't want to be religious and cuts away those pieces of their hearts that has to do with beliefs, morals and love. You don't have to look further than Hitler Germany, for how extreme beliefs in science can do damage.
Basically, religion has never harmed anyone. It's people that go to war and kill. Don't blame the smoking gun-barrel!
We need some guidelines, and we need them more than ever. Wether you define this as the word 'religion' or whatever is _totally irrelevant_. The most important thing is to recognize that science alone won't tell us everything.
In fact religion goes beyond mere practical value in a society. It's about evolving yourself, the individual, to become something better. What that is depends on yourself however. It can be done with many others, or it can be done utterly alone. There's so many different religions out there as there are people.
"Sorry, but it's the One True Way mentality of world religions that causes those wars (along with witch hunts, judicial murders, and imprisonment of pot smokers). It's hardly unfair to lambast a system for the effects arising directly from its fundamental principles."
Yes, that mentality is causing wars. But it could just as well cause war among "scientific" people. Basically, _people_ starts wars, _people_ that torture, murder and rape, not religion, science, cultures etc. People. Our leaders. Us, the consenting and ignoring masses.
If no such thing as religion existed, I doubt we would have lived peacefully for all these years. Why blame something else, when it's clearly our own fault? Why do we distance ourself from it when sticking our heads in the sand clearly doesn't help the situation? It didn't in the past, and it won't in the future.
We just need an excuse for going to war, and religion is a very convinient way to move people. But you have so many examples of otherwise. You have the Holocaust, mongolian invaders, Vikings, vast amounts of conquerors like Alexander the Great, Napoleon, the Conquistadors, the Romans, etc, etc, etc.... The list goes on and on and on. Many "religious" wars was just started because people hated their neighbours and needed an excuse, or just wanted more land, values and foreign pussies.
If we're going to do something about war, we'll have to accept the fact that it is inherent in us as humans. And we have to do things to counter it, not blame external things and other people. Many of us would kill if our country went to war.
Slashdot Mirror
Suddenly "everyone" (90%) is opposed to free speech, and people like Scientologists should go get themselves buried under 6 feet dirt. It doesn't seem like you people have thought very much about your attitudes, you're just borrowing opinions from others closely matching what you feel. This makes for very hypocritical thinking.
Maybe I'll go see the movie when it comes around over here, in about 6-8 months I guess. If it's any good, maybe I should join CoS? I mean, I'm sure I'll be so indoctrinated and enslaved at the end of the 1000-page film, I just gotta part with all my money just to join a very questionable New Age cult.
No I prefer my own thoughts and my own "religion". Instead of adopting others' opinion and throwing away everything related to something "bad", it's better to adopt the core of truth in all. Going to war against everything you don't agree with isn't at all constructive. You don't convince anybody by yelling, kicking, screaming and killing. Not that I'm doing so much better than the rest of humanity mind you.
- Steeltoe
What do you do to limit yourself today?
That recursive acronym should explain it sufficiently. So what you really mean by "native" here means using typical Linux libraries instead of a wrapper redirecting Windows API calls to Linux and X. Frankly, I don't see the point of writing every application specifically for every platform. However, I see the point that a Windows-centric wrapper is not the ideal solution to cross-platform porting.
- Steeltoe
"In fact, they now can accurately be portrayed
as the bad guys on both sides: both limiting
technology & (potentially) illegally appropriating it."
Only by biased hypocrites.
- Steeltoe
IANAL but this whole rhyme on Slashdot nowadays that "Stockholders can sue companies for not attempting to up their income in every possible legal way", is total Crap IMHO. Everyone can sue everybody, I can sue anyone and their mother now if I want. The question is not if you can be sued, but wether you can win or have enough money to defend yourself in court properly (unless the judge dismisses it).
Now such a case is pretty weak in my opinion. A company may come up with dozens of reasons NOT to exploit every hole in the law. For example, it's obviously bad PR to misuse your powers like certain companies have done. Why should you be forced to do unpopular stunts, unless you're voted down by the owners/investors? But in the end, the stockholders are just investing money trusting that company to be successful in the marketplace, the company is not under any obligation to profit, share its profit with its shareholders or do The Right Thing whatever that is now. The stockmarket is just a game of gambling, which by statistics and theories should benefit promising companies.
Now if a company withholds important information or are too late to announce things, they might be held responsible. But ruling that is up to the judge, and advice is supposed to come from a lawyer.
- Steeltoe
Frankly, why should people listen to you?
You can live without alot of stuff, but people prefer to do what they want. That's a basic human right in my book. Including breaking the law. We are living for christ sake! Companies do not.
The only way to "steal" information would be to delete it from the place you got it. You may argue all you want that it is stealing (I'm not doing this myself btw), but all you're trying to do is limit other people and society. Which you have full right to do, but then we all have the full right not to be controlled by you.
Of course you may limit everyone's "rights" by viewing this from legal grounds, but you're doing yourself a huge disfavour in the end if you do so. Stop trying to supress others, and you'll discover that you really supressed yourself.
Changes will always bring controversy. The best thing to do is read and listen, don't shout at others.
- Steeltoe
What do you do to limit yourself today?
First of all your post is just cut'n paste from several others posted here on Slashdot, with a twist typical of "Elite" Slashdotters, saying that the bunch of us is living in self-denial. I humbly disagree, and labelling people only makes you look bad in the long run. Unfortunately, many of my own arguments will be borrowed too, just showing that we all can masturbate together instead of spending time finding REAL solutions..
;-)
"You may notice a large number of posts made on Slashdot concering Napster, or similar programs such as Gnutella or FreeNet. Often these will be posted under "Your Rights Online" (YRO), in order to show how the use of Napster affects your "rights". You may wonder what the hell programs whose sole purpose is to circumvent copyright laws is doing on a conservative (yes, I mean it) site such as Slashdot."
First of all, Napster does not circumvent the copyright laws. Downloading- and making copyrighted works available for upload is still illegal, but not the tools themselves. You may do the same with IRC, FTP, ICQ, HTTP/HTML, floppy-disks and dozen of other ways. It's just that programs like Napster is specifically made for sound-formats and finding other peoples albums. You may state that the purpose behind making Napster was to make it easier for people to do illegal copying. However, the actual use is what's interesting, as you cannot (yet) control people's thoughts and intent.
As for Slashdot being conservative, where have you got that ridiculous judgement from? Stories are fetched from all over the world (in theory), and submitted by many different kinds of people (also in theory). But just saying that the Slashdot-crew themselves should- or does conform to conservatism, is IMHO laughable. I think you have misunderstood something completely fundamental: They're different people, with different minds and goals.
"Let me explain to you. In the back of their minds, most Slashdot readers ("Slashbots")"
What a display of arrogance! I believe most people read Slashdot to get many different opinions and distributed information from many different places. There's many topics from religion to cyberpunk, and even if many tend to agree on certain topics such as Linux and stuff, doesn't mean people don't develop personal opinions while they read.
"... know that they simply don't want to pay for anything which they can get illegally for free. Most people are exactly the same way. Napster et al allows them to get music for free, so they use it. They know that this is copyright violation, which is a bad thing to do. This brings them feelings of guilt which they want to do away with."
Here you have a valid point. Yes, people DO want things for free, or as cheap as possible. It's the fundamental mechanism of effectivity, capitalism and free-market. Is that suddenly wrong now? Do we HAVE to live in a limited world with limited goods just because that is the way it has "always been"? For example: If a new invention could create free energy and mass for everybody, should this be banned because it would be out of control? (A very legitimate reason seen from one perspective, but I digress. Just wanted to point out that life isn't necessarily easy, and quick opinions leaves you nowehere.)
Then you claim that violating a copyright (law) is a bad thing to do, but everything is relative. I think you would regard laws a bit different if you lived in a dictature. Laws != Morals and ethics (Right and Wrong), and even those are highly subjective. Noone can say "this is right" and "this is wrong". You can only truly say: "This is right for _me_", "this is wrong for _me_."
So when we agree that this only applies to the ego self, you go further by claiming people have a bad conciense about copying illegally. Well, maybe you're right, but only because _we're told to have it_! Corporations and magazines states over and over that infringing and violating IP and copyright is _theft_, a horrible thing, piracy. But is it really theft? Do I steal something from you by reading your sourcecode, listening to your music or saving your film on my HDD. Do you actually lose anything? Not actually, you can't compare the natural laws of information to that of physical objects. You can't prove that I would've bought your CD or DVD. Why should I feel guilty for helping my neighbour (as RMS put it)? We shouldn't feel guilty over breaking laws, because they're only a means to control us. (IANAL btw, this is crummy legal advice
Why should we let us be controlled you may ask? Well, it's easier to live that way. You don't have to have much responsibility, just do what they say. It's like in the military, you'll know what I'm talking about if you've ever been in there. It's for children, and we're growing up!
Also there is the issue of money and power in all of this. The record-companies and movie-industry want as much as possible. They want control over the production, distribution _and_ the use. They'll probably want control over disposal and other stuff too if they can think of it. Why? Because this gives them _more_ money, power and success. It's a war out there, but where did the fine _art_ go? Is everything really just about money and power? Don't corporations violate another person's "moral rights" by having power over him or her?
"How do they do this? They rationalize it away. It's the copyright laws that are wrong, not them. DCMA needs to be rewritten. The MPAA needs to be destroyed. It's an expression of free speech. And those greedy record companies take all the money anyway. Never mind that with pirate mp3s the artist never sees any money anyway. This way, they are sticking it to "the Man", who exists to make life difficult for 31337 Linux users like... "
Nobody says everybody must follow the same rules set out by the industry and government. The DMCA and all other such laws, came _after_ people started pirating, not the other way around. Also, having a huge company does not earn you the right to profit, again, that's what capitalism and free-market is all about. If the industry can't keep up with technology, it must either stifle it, enforce control over the public or go bankrupt. I'm sorry to say this, but if they don't change soon, they're going to pay dearly because the public are paying their salaries and stock options. If they don't change their bussiness model and stop cheating customers and artists, new technologies are going to run over this questionable industry like trains do.
"...themselves. Yes, it is flimsy, and yes, it allows them to take the moral high ground by robbing hard-working artists. Yes, many will say that modern popular music is all horrible anyway, and that their favorite music is the only worthwhile type, but then go on to slam others for being "elitist" in any discussion in which Gnome or KDE is mentioned."
IMHO, and I think you agree, anybody judging other people, their taste or preferences are fooling themselves and cutting new interesting experiences away from their lives. We all are guilty of this from time to time, some more often than others. In the end, we only fool ourselves however, but it can be REALLY annoying to others too. Likewise, saying that everyone of such and such opinion, also have this opinion about music/GNOME/KDE/whatever, is a futile exercise of extrapolation and generalisation. Only fooling oneself.
"And what about the Corel Linux beta? Didn't that violate the GPL by attaching a boilerplate disclaimer saying that only people over 18 years old could download it? And remember the cries of the Slashbots that Corel should be sued, destroyed. boycotted, etc.? All because Corel who was helping out the Linux community mistakenly added a certain clause to their beta, which violated the GPL. As you can see, the "community" is quick to cry foul when the copyrights on their software is violated, even by companies with good intentions. Our copyright good, yours bad.
It's called "hypocrisy" and if you read Slashdot enough, you'll have to get used to it."
How is this hypocrisy? I would say just the opposite of that, since this shows that the community doesn't take sides with "good" companies disregarding their "bad" sides. Whining, bitching, fear and panic yes, but certainly not hypocrisy. Your argument here only display your ignorance of fundamental differences in licenses, and that this site doesn't really have an official policy or bias (except News for Nerds).
"Now ask yourself exactly why ther is coverage of Napster on a site obstensibly devoted to Free Software. Napster is proprietary as hell. Those protocol specs had to be reverse engineered. Isn't proprietary software bad? Isn't all free software superior? Isn't "open sourcing" a piece of software the best way to improve it?"
Again, who said Slashdot was about Free Software only? If you want a site dedicated to that, go to the GNU homepage. You sure as hell won't find it here, there's even Microsoft-news on here. I'm beginning to suspect you're a troll or flamebait now.
About if Open Source is the Best Way Or Not To Every Conceivable Problem, there are two answers: Theoretically: yes. Practically: no. Simply put, we need a bussiness-model for Open Source and Free Software to work (food on the platter), but it's still lacking. So when people are arguing this, they're usually talking about two different things: What's best for programmers and customers. And what's best for the pockets of the owners and shareholders. Let me remind you, people are always in war about this, that's what's free marked is about, war.
"These are all bleatings of the party lines. Here, we consider proprietary software Evil until Rob Malda tells us otherwise, or it gets ported to Linux. Then it becomes a special class of proprietary software which somehow becomes better than the rest. Napster is one example. WordPerfect is another. Somehow, they are able to ignore this seemingly large discrepency by claiming that these companies are "helping" the "community". The only one being helped is Andover.Net who gets to sell ads to these people after giving them free publicity on the most popular "Linux" site of them all."
So you rather prefer people don't have different opinions, and some share them? There are opposing opinions and partylines all over the world. Why not try to see the cores of your truth in other's views, rather than bash down "partylines".
Maybe a few people are hypocritical here. So what? It's not like it's the first time. There are good and bad people on both sides of a conflict. What's bad is labelling people as this-or-that, or judging them without really knowing them.
"Stop lying to yourselves."
I'll try, but there's only so much a "Slashbot" can do on its own...
- Steeltoe
If you keep your opinion and I keep mine, not much good that will do.
You know, this ain't gonna earn you karma. I should know, just look at my history of posts lately... :*>
However, I enjoyed reading your opinion very much, so don't let karma be the judge on what to think and express!
- Steeltoe
People should really stop blaming and faming external things, and start looking at themselves and what they choose to do. You can't blame a particular ice-cream for you never having tasted it.
- Steeltoe
kiddy/rape/snuff/torture.
;-)
The darkest side already exists among us in our society and others. The *important* point raised here is wether we should allow Big Brother Governments to hide the truth from us. We've been living in a make-believe-lie-of-a-world for a long time now, maybe it's time to open up the gates? It's ultimately our choice, even if we let other people decide even that for us too.
I for one get a bad stomach when viewing something grotesque. However, I understand that the pictures/movies are not evil in themselves. Sure they show the horrible truth, not fiction, and I might be immensely hurt by it, but that's it. It's not a hurt that's not already there anyways, just more hidden. What's really a shame is that these things really happen and continue to happen, not that somebody brings a camera along.
You may argue that by illegalizing distribution of such evidence, you effectively make it harder for such communities to abuse people. But there's no scientific evidence of that, just alot of propaganda from the authorities telling us what to think.
Many people are very afraid of thinking about such things. If you read alot of people's comments on torture/rape/kid pornography, they're very very afraid, taking as much distance as they can. It's safest to shut that reality out of your mind. Just like the wife, of the husband who abused his child for 10 years...
We become the victims of ourselves. Instead of facing our fears, we suppress it. Which makes matters worse over time of course, but we suppress that too. (If you want to see modern double-thinking in process, just try to serve good-looking, bad-tasting food to people and ask them how it tastes, it's hillarious!!). During peace-time, we bake, cook and go to the factories. When war-time comes, we go to war, maim, torture and rape. It's reality, because we don't dare face who we really are and do something about it.
In the end, it's up to ourself if we want to have responsibility for our own lives. Wether we want to be children, or adults. If we opt for adults, we need to learn how to live without being controlled. Maybe we just aren't ready for that yet?
On the other side, you just can't change society overnight. E.g victims of brutal acts might not want everyone to see what was being done to them in every gory detail, there are many sane laws, and so on. My conclusion will be that the best way to change society is starting by changing yourself.
If you read it this far, you're a very cool person
- Steeltoe
What do you do to limit yourself today?
You're a funny guy!
- Steelie
What do you do to limit yourself TODAY? *hick*
You critizise idealism but fail to see that morals and principals ain't about "right" and "wrong". It's about standing up to what you believe in. Since that varies from person to person, right and wrong are just illusions. There are no definite right and wrong. It's like the universe has a HUGE disclaimer on it: AS IS.
However, we also have a choice NOT to stand up to what we believe in. Ie, not having any particular reason to do what we do. This leads on to a very dangerous road IMHO where people do what others tell them to, sheeps following the shepherds etc. This is not necessarily "wrong" mind you, but it _may_ have devastating results since the more people who think, the better result you usually get. Not in every situation though.
I prefer standing up for what I believe in, even if it means negative Karma and people ignoring what I say.
- Steeltoe
Spoooiing!!! (Shattering all the seriousness into oblivion)
If things were only that simple...
The regional codes you have access to are to my knowledge hardwired into each player as a long encryptet string or key (not just an integer mind you), necessary to gain permission to play the disc. Now, the chip/file containing these codes may be or may not be alterable, that depends upon implementation. But it's not easy to do this, and it costs extra money to do it "legally" (It still hasn't been tested properly in court). However, some player-manufacturers found out they could earn alot more money on including a few "hacks" so that people could choose their region by undocumented procedures.
If you don't have such a player however, you are out of luck. It doesn't matter if you move to another region and want to see the movie you rent there. Your player will simply refuse to play them! You are then at the mercy of the manufacturer.
Consumers who thinks this is stupid should quit buying DVD-players. I recently bought a new computer (1 month ago), but I refused to have a combined CD-ROM/DVD-player installed in it. I simply didn't want to support the MPAA. The only DVD player I have now is an unusable one in my laptop. It's unusable now because of regional encodings and since the DVD-format suddenly changed standards a dozen times.
It's time for consumers to become aware of where they want to be customers.
- Steeltoe
How difficult can it be to block a certain protocol in a firewall? There are firewalls/proxies that block webpages containing specific words and sentences (parsing the damn thing!).
I think the fight should revolve around making people aware, not pirating or hacking through the system because that won't fix the root problem.
- Steeltoe
I think the point that everyone has been missing is that when MS bundled IE with Windows, they could continue "charging" for it by making better deals on their OS. Netscape obviously couldn't do this since IE was now "free of charge". Although everyone was buying it anyways through purchasing a new computer (those nasty OEM deals) or upgrading Windows. I guess it didn't make any sense to Netscape to continue developing a grossly overcomplex and buggy system, superior at that time though, without much of revenue back for their efforts. Certainly not on a platform where Microsoft were doing all the development and could use undocumented features to get an advantage anyways.
So what we've learned is that nothing bundled together with a product is ever "free of charge", it's just a sales-gimmick. The price of developing IE went into the same rich pool Microsoft has exploited since the day it were conceived, its OS.
- Steeltoe
There's only so much a consumer can know about every product he or she's going to buy a lifetime. Without such Federal regulations you're basically putting all the responsibility on the consumer. Hell, you can't just complain about a McDonald burger and get a new and bigger one. You need something to base your complaint on, and even then the service at McDonald's is so lousy you probably don't get your burger. (I don't go to McDonalds for obvious reasons ;)
Now, I totally agree that such regulations are much harder to do on OSes and software in general. But as we have experienced in the last 5-10 years, the consumer needs something to protect them from advertising and articles fooling them into believing a product is a must-have. That everyone are buying it, everyone should have one, it's the best product you can get, it got all the features you ever wanted, you'll be more productive and happier, and you need it to play Office.
Sometime, somewhere, whole masses of people have been lead on by this into buying MS only. Then Microsoft capitalized on this by making all their products incompatible with others, except those endorsing Microsoft. Obviously there's something wrong here to be fixed.
Maybe the consumers need to be more informed, but I think that's an enormous task considering all the AOLers out there. In my opinion it's best to take a wait-and-see attitude, because it's impossible to extrapolate the future based on hypothetical rulings. It can't get worse than it is now, even if Microsoft goes bankrupt. That would only mean responsibility back to the people.
- Steeltoe
Sure you may be right we can build AIs in a 100 years. Like every stupid intellectual discussion it's only a matter of definitions and technicalities that you can set up. But you lose an important aspect when you rule out the human-side of it all.
;-)
a) Are these AIs "intelligent"? IOW, what's the definition of intelligent, or consciousness?
b) Can they outperform us? Depends on the task. For example a machine can never outperform us being human. We're ourselves as best as we can be.
c) What do you lose in such a transformation? Like when you go from analog to digital you lose information but gain simplicity and "correctness", literally stripping "noise" the datastream. However, this "noise" might be essential for our lives. For instance it may be quantuum effects in our brains, which _may_ be information from some other dimension(s) OR just random inputs, but could just as well be a connection to our souls (science DOES NOT define this in detail, so it is IMPOSSIBLE to simulate at present...) Do you really want to cut away your connection to your soul so that you can live an AI-life with an AI-brain? You can probably be 1000 times more efficient at work, but you'll lose your humanity/soul. It just doesn't sound very good to _me_ put that way.
My point is that such questions about this is impossible to answer 100% 100 years from now as well as at The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe. Because it depends on what world-view you have. It'll be an eternal unanswerable question, at least until we're MUCH more advanced than we're now.
I like having a balanced view though. 5-15 years from now we'll possibly have the technology and know-how to put things in our brains to restore lost functionality to a lesser degree. And if using drugs to repair damaged areas doesn't help, I see no reason not to put in a chip with an artificial neural net.
It's just that such protesis may become "better" than our flesh and bone in say 50-200 years, but we should do some real hard thinking before exchanging healthy bodyparts.
I have no doubt we will be able to exchange most of our important bodyparts 50-100 years from now. It's the ethical questions I'm after here. And that even though they after 200 years seems superior, they can have hidden agendas we'll figure out much later.
- Steeltoe
I'm really sad how little people know of feelings and personal development. Having AIs feeling sad for others won't help much. We have that in human society too, it's called pitty. It won't help as the basics of nature says any entity should care for itself first. Why? Well because they will all die/get destructed from self-deprivation.
Okay, maybe you can make them care for each other, and not themselves (to some degree). But you'll still have factions in the society that care for that faction more than others etc, thus becoming a body. So there's no such thing as a perfect algorithm. It's as good as the programmers.
What happens if the world keeps getting worse and worse, e.g because of ecological disasters and such, and the robots must make some severe actions such as enslaving humans, or destroying us, or destroying themselves and leave earth or whatever. What say have we in this? How can such programs be absolutely bugfree? etc..etc
On quite another complexity scale, is how are these AIs going to _cooperate_. Who will the new "Masters" be? Or should we have an anarchy. Then what ability should those that prevail have? Be strongest, smartest, have wisdom, compassionate?
Also, comparing AI-goals to emotions are completely false. Goals are just complex commands. Our emotions stem from our personal fantasies and dreams. Every human being is a universe in him/herself based on this. You can't easily simulate that in an AI and make them remain as sane as we are, or not eat up all the CPU cycles.
I think we're doing fairly good when you begin to get an understanding of the complexity of it all. You can't get an AI to have a life, not like ours anyways. Trying to make a perfect creation without being perfect yourself usually ends up in disaster. It's a poor excuse for not working on oneself.
- Steeltoe
You can't just cut away "baggage"/bad parts and remain healthy. At least don't call it development. That's a flawed argument based on thinking too much with your left half of the brain. While cutting away the things that you hate in your life, you also cut away those that give you pleasure. For what is pleasure without hardship? How can you learn without doing mistakes?
Evolution is the process where the real baggage is _naturally_ cut away from our strains. While things like "junk DNA", blind- is not cut away, that may mean these things really count for something! At least we should give it time to evolve into new stuff. If we must tamper with our genes or melding with silicon hardware, we should at least know what we're doing!
Who are we to cut away all our inner parts until all we're left with is cold robot technology. We'll be punished by our own stupidity for doing a thing like that. Ask anyone who was performed lobotomy upon.
It's an interesting thought wether AIs can evolve into human-thinking or not though. But it will never replace real human experiences, just be a poor emulation. You can't possibly simulate quantuum-effects to 100% correctness with a machine. Because the universe is a huge self-mirroring hologram. You can't just simulate a part of it, you'll lose the intensity and correctness of the whole.
It's not that I believe genetic engineering will be the way in the future, it's just that it's such a LOONG way off. Even when we get the know-how we shouldn't do it until we have done lots of more research to know the effects.
Stop dreaming about the future and start living in the now. You're responsible for your own baggage, and it's _people_ who limit themselves (and others) on what they can and can't do.
- Steeltoe
So other students can choose better professors maybe? Anyways, I agree with your opinion. I've had my share of good and bad teachers too. Many of them should never teach.
;-). It's especially stupid when students gives reviews when they've never had the professor in question. They're using their anger from other teachers as fuel to the flames.
Somtimes this goes for students too, some students should never study
Teaching is the most underestimated and underprivileged profession nowadays.
- Steeltoe
So.. Does this mean Slashdot is gonna get sued too?
;-)
- Steeltoe
One thing is to be sceptical, another is to lose your job and professional reputation just because you want to study some more exciting stuff than exciting atoms, like telekinesis or telepathy. Many scientists shy away from such projects as fast as they can because of punishments for doing such research and publishing them. You have to believe in the current religion of science, or else your results can't be trusted. So ultimately scientific people goes into the same trap as religious people. It's about arrogance and power stiffling the potential for new discoveries. A very human trap you can't blaim other than the humans themselves.
Science should be sceptical. Religion should be built on faith. This is because science is built on the mind, and religion is that of the heart. To have a balance of these two is a very healthy way of living life. This means the two shouldn't oppose each other, but complement. You can't build a society on either pure science or religion.
It was never supposed to be easy though. It's much easier to come up with pure scientific or religious claims, than trying to grasp the whole picture.
- Steeltoe
Doesn't searching for the truth involve looking in all the places you can? How can modern science defend their attitudes towards religions and other faiths of mankind (not to mention New Age)? How can anyone claiming to search for the truth defend cutting and chipping away at the Big Picture?
;-)
Oh, well continue dancing, that's what you do best. We'll just harvest your efforts
- Steeltoe
What do you do to limit yourself today?
Consider nuclear-, biological and wave-technological (HARP) warfare. Not to mention future warfare like nanotechnology and lasers. Now what's dangerous?
Science and religion doen't hurt anybody. It's people that torture, murder and rape.
We should stop blaming external things, and assume responsibility to our own choices and actions. Science doesn't tell you HOW to live. People that doesn't think for themselves and develop a belief-system on how to live, will become puppets for leaders who may not have those good intents they display on TV.
- Steeltoe
What do you do to limit yourself today?
I wouldn't call myself "religious", but I recognize religion is much more than a law-keeping incentive. What you refer to as laws, are more like moral codes in most religions btw. But in certain societies, religion has/had so much power that they are/were considered Laws.
;-)
The big fault of you and many others is to look at the Ten Commandments and think this is Christianity, and that Christianity is all there is to religion. Both religion and Christianity is much more than that, even more than the Golden Rule and Hinduism combined!
People REALLY need to educate themselves about this!
The way I see it, everyone needs something to believe in, a personal religion. Science by itself only tells you HOW things work, it doesn't tell you WHAT to do about it! Eg, science doesn't tell you to keep slaves or not, exploit the earth or not, steal, kill and rape or not, live with in monogamous relationships or not, etc, etc, etc.
Thus the Laws in our society is NOT based on science and will never be, since it can't tell us how to live. It is based on a mixture of experience (trial- and error, a sort of science) and religion.
The big danger is people that don't want to be religious and cuts away those pieces of their hearts that has to do with beliefs, morals and love. You don't have to look further than Hitler Germany, for how extreme beliefs in science can do damage.
Basically, religion has never harmed anyone. It's people that go to war and kill. Don't blame the smoking gun-barrel!
We need some guidelines, and we need them more than ever. Wether you define this as the word 'religion' or whatever is _totally irrelevant_. The most important thing is to recognize that science alone won't tell us everything.
In fact religion goes beyond mere practical value in a society. It's about evolving yourself, the individual, to become something better. What that is depends on yourself however. It can be done with many others, or it can be done utterly alone. There's so many different religions out there as there are people.
- Steeltoe
What do you do to limit yourself today?
"Sorry, but it's the One True Way mentality of world religions that causes those wars (along with witch hunts, judicial murders, and imprisonment of pot smokers). It's hardly unfair to lambast a system for the effects arising directly from its fundamental principles."
Yes, that mentality is causing wars. But it could just as well cause war among "scientific" people. Basically, _people_ starts wars, _people_ that torture, murder and rape, not religion, science, cultures etc. People. Our leaders. Us, the consenting and ignoring masses.
If no such thing as religion existed, I doubt we would have lived peacefully for all these years. Why blame something else, when it's clearly our own fault? Why do we distance ourself from it when sticking our heads in the sand clearly doesn't help the situation? It didn't in the past, and it won't in the future.
We just need an excuse for going to war, and religion is a very convinient way to move people. But you have so many examples of otherwise. You have the Holocaust, mongolian invaders, Vikings, vast amounts of conquerors like Alexander the Great, Napoleon, the Conquistadors, the Romans, etc, etc, etc.... The list goes on and on and on. Many "religious" wars was just started because people hated their neighbours and needed an excuse, or just wanted more land, values and foreign pussies.
If we're going to do something about war, we'll have to accept the fact that it is inherent in us as humans. And we have to do things to counter it, not blame external things and other people. Many of us would kill if our country went to war.
- Steeltoe
What do you do to limit yourself today?