Posts by badmonkey

Apple iOS 6 review

Re: Not that useful on a 4

NavFree on Android is riddled with shitty internet dating ads.

It also doesn't do offline search or navigation, so wtf is the point as a replacement to Google Maps? Idiotic.

Governments block YouTube over that video

The truth hurts

>>> I am rather surprised to see the amount of flack that atheists seem to be coming under

Shooting the messenger is a strong tradition.

Not just amongst the religious, but the liberals who do not understand just how far the west has come, how much progress against Christianity we have made, and how dangerous the remaining elements of the dark ages still are.

"Atheists", who tend to lack the ethically twisted mindset that tolerance of any and all idiocy is some sort of virtue, are much easier to target for "poking the beehive" as one liberal put it above. Facing up to the real threat requires some very uncomfortable admissions about the world in which we all live.

is it really that shocking?

Not especially, but our response needn't depend on whether it is "shocking" or not.

Apple iDiots should be ruthlessly teased and mocked for their stupidity too. Why? Because irrational behavior should be discouraged. I believe you have come to the right place for it...

Re: The film has served its purpose

>>> Your stupid nonsense is their strongly-held belief. I understand that you don't share that belief (or appear to share any belief). What you don't appear to understand is that 'they' don't subscribe to your 'values'.

I understand that perfectly, which is exactly why they must be fought against very strongly.

>>> Say I met you down the pub one night and proceeded to rubbish your choice of clothes, drinks, football team and girlfriend. What then?

I suppose we wouldn't be friends. Next dumb question?

Re: The film has served its purpose

>>> I am not, in any way, apologising for "these people". I am simply pointing out cause and effect and that the effect was entirely to be expected by the perpetrators of the cause.

By shifting blame you are doing exactly that.

>>> So, is all the blame to be laid at the feet of a group of religious fanatics?

No, it is to be laid at the feet of the religious mainstream and the liberal fools who prattle on about tolerance, whilst the "fanatics" calmly proceed with God's work in the certainty they are right.

>>> When you poke a beehive and get stung does all the blame lie with the bees?

What a stupid argument, I hardly know where to being. Let's start with the idea that bees are not intelligent beings, and that we may reasonably assume they are not trying to destroy Western civilization, shall we?

Re: disease

>>> I disagree, I think it would be easier to say you're agnostic or atheist.

Only because of centuries of struggle. Move to the Middle East with your friendly protesters and try it.

>>> It's certainly not easy to defend my faith

Nor should it be. It is indefensible.

Re: disease

>>> Well, no, I was actually meaning the poster who pretty much suggested that the only way forward is to nuke everyone who doesn't share his convictions. Interesting responses though, when you consider I was suggesting that a middle ground would be best for everyone.

Typical religious: no sense of humor!

As to your second point, typical religious: two failures of logic in one sentence! C'mon, you can do better. Only a false dichotomy and a middle ground fallacy forming the basis of your beliefs?

Harris clear thinking

TThis issue dealt with brilliantly as usual:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-freedom-to-offend-an-imaginary-god

Re: The film has served its purpose

Oh bollox. Stupid nonsense deserves to be ridiculed, should be ridiculed, in fact MUST be ridiculed - and satirical film is a great way of doing it.

The only problem is that the production value of this particular example is just so mind numbingly bad!

Re: Cultural imperialism

FINLAND even, oops!

Re: Cultural imperialism

>>> Don't forget that it's not that many years ago that homosexuality was a crime in this country,

And not so long ago that we were burning witches at the stake. Never mind history: the UK is still a monarchist parliamentary theocracy in a technical sense last time I looked, a relic of our history if there was ever one, and we are even now allowing the nation's children to be brainwashed and divided against each other in "faith schools". But, the worse things used to be, the more we can see we are making progress. The Islamic world is stuck several hundred years behind, and moving more slowly. Meanwhile the reality of 21st century weaponry and warfare is rapidly colliding with our assumption that ideological or political enemies will act rationally and in their own best interests.

>>> that it was the CIA who originally armed the Taliban and were perfectly happy to ignore how appallingly they treated women as long as they gave the Russians a bloody nose the way we support regimes like Saudi Arabia or Kazakhstan (or Israel's treatments of the Palestinians) because it's strategically or politically convenient to do so

I won't defend US or British foreign policy carte blanche, but these examples are simplistic. The Taliban morphed out of the US sponsored rebels when the US didn't keep up the aid once the Ruskies had been ousted, and are much more the responsibility of the Pakis than anyone else. As to Saudi Arabia, well. We also allied ourselves with Stalin during the war, and so against democratic Norway, in the greater interest of putting a stop to the Catholic right in Europe. Life sucks. Nothing is simple.

Re: Yeah, but...

>>> "One of the reasons we have made progress is because the Bible has been changed over the years and the Church has been forced to adapt or die"

Sort of. Christianity used to be very similar though to your valid points about Islam, even down to the translations of the Latin being blasphemous to keep the true interpretation controlled by the priesthood. It's only in the order of hundreds of years ago that it was equally intolerant and vicious.

Really though I think it's more a case of reduced religious knowledge (liberals/moderates) and a heavy case of cognitive dissonance in all modern western Christians, with the churches performing more and more delicate balancing acts as they attempt to keep their flock's attention, while science and literacy in reason make slow but inevitable advances against them. I don't see why it shouldn't be possible to have something similar in the Islamic world.

The danger lies in whether there's enough time before the various escaped genies find their way back to the dark ages, and medieval mentalities are empowered with 21st century weapons. The escalating crisis with Iran being the first example - we can't have a cold war with a theocratic Islamist state; at least the Soviets were rational people.

Re: disease

He must mean those same fanatics of intellectual honesty and Much Great Cleverness.

The truth hurts and it's much easier to try to slander those who are brave enough to point to the elephant in the room.

Re: Fanatics

>>> Ignoring the Christian-inspired dark ages completely (though I don't get how you could)

The period of interest is the Enlightenment onward, as this is the distinction if you like.

>>> The Islamic middle-eastern world was, at one time, a centre of learning.

Only relatively speaking.

Notice how it hasn't been in a long long time?

Re: Fanatics

>>> O-ho, I'd love to see how you get to that. I know some people in Africa that might disagree with you.

I said *said* corruption, it wasn't meant as an exclusive.

Re: Have I got the right website?

I don't see your point is valid. I don't disagree that the books are interpreted differently. In some senses, they have to be, because the only sane reaction in any reasonable person's mind to a reading of them is a severe case of cognitive dissonance, which will obviously lead to problems.

My point is: the fundamentalists, the "extremists", are almost by definition the ones who have read the books the most closely, and who are most correct in their "interpretation".

"Radicalization" in the Islamist sense is simply a process of learning the true nature of the Quaran and Hadiths, accepting it as truth, and maybe mixing a convenient bit of politics in there.

Re: @Ken Hagan

>>> "Also: I never protested against any pIRA atrocity, that doesn't mean that I supported them."

I'm unsure whether you mean to say you're Irish, from above or below the border, and of what religio-cultural persuasion, but to the extent that Catholic Irish and Republicans did not make their voices publicly heard against the terrorist tendencies of some of their countrymen *does* imply apathetic collaboration, support, or at least sympathy.

Re: @Ken Hagan

>>> There was fairly well document shock and revulsion across the Muslim world about Sept11, but I guess that doesn't fit with your worldview.

There was lots of hedged "so sorry too bad" type comments, followed by "but if only the Americans hadn't [insert favorite peeve] back in the 80s/90s/etc".

There was a lot of political boot licking as the entire Islamic world hid scared while they waited to see where and at whom the Americans were about to focus their firepower.

Where were the mass street protests against Al Queda and the like? Why were the streets of Mecca, Kabul, and Damascus not filled with hundreds of thousands of good Muslims condemning the atrocious acts carried out in their name?

Re: Fanatics

>>> "It's nothing to do with Islam per se - it's the nasty little vermin who corrupt the faithful into believing that cold-blooded murder is justified, simply to further their own political ends. Those are the real enemies, not the poor sods who regard killing Westerners as their sacred duty because that's the claptrap their heads have been filled with since birth."

Said corruption is only enabled by Islam, which explicitly instructs the sort of violence that is being lamented here. Religion is always a vehicle for politics, so much so that it's almost redundant to say it.

>>> "Put it another way - if the West was mainly Islamic and the Muslim world was mainly Christian..."

A rather strange idea, since I cannot see how the Americas or the Pacific could ever have been reached or developed by the scientifically illiterate and backward people that Muslims became while Christendom struggled ever so slowly free of its mental shackles.

I suspect that the colonies would still be "Christian" in origin, with friendly and longstanding relations with the old world.

Conversely one would assume that the EU, or rather MEU (Middle East Union) would be a comparatively peaceful and prosperous place, having worked out their issues for the most part, achieved a pan-Arabia and settled matters with the Persians, while Europe struggled in hate, ignorance, and destitution whilst launching terrorist campaigns against the MEU for not giving away all that oil (and for occasionally daring to suggest that maybe they'd like to come out of the dark ages and join the rest of the civilized world).

To counter this, MEU and American forces get drawn into occasional regrettable military adventures into the wilds of deepest darkest Belgium, Sweden, and even a recent disastrous intervention in East Anglia.

Turkey, the old secular Christian nation, continues on a path to modernization whilst dealing with extremist Christians on its northern European borders.

The Jews of course would still be fucked.

Marks by upvote/downvote for reimagined history?

Re: Cultural imperialism

>>> imposing its rules and sensibilities on the rest of the world (whether on child pornography, or online gambling, or trade with Cuba, or "democracy and freedom"

You're right, child pornography is clearly acceptable. How dare the Feds impose their arrogance on the rest of us who just need to get their daily 10 yr old lovin', praise the Lord!

"Trade with Cuba" is a hangover from the Cold War. Despite what Michael Moore might have you believe about Havana, Cuba remains an outpost of authoritarianism and heavily restricted freedom.

And "democracy and freedom", as you so scathingly smear them with scare quotes, are, you will be surprised to find, in fact universal values that history has shown time and time again to be cherished by all humans. It is right that they are promoted and exported.

>>> "and then getting all worked up when it realises that other cultures have different priorities or attitudes concerning what they think is or is not acceptable."

Throwing acid on a woman's faces because she didn't follow the misogynistic patriarchal sexual restrictions of her "culture" is not acceptable.

Driving a car laden with sweets and explosives into the middle of a crowd, attracting as many children as possible, then detonating - because those filthy Shia are not the true followers of Allah - is not acceptable.

In fact when you think about it, murdering an ambassador, on the anniversary of the happy day that your martyred friends murdered thousands of innocent civilians, is a bit off too really.

Hunting down and trying to murder those evil infidel apostates, who dare to blow the whistle on your pathetic bag of lies and deception, is not acceptable.

>>> "What gives us the right to assume we're always correct and can force our point of view down other people's throats?"

Sometimes: human rights, civilized bodies of law, civilized debate, reason, rational argument, and science.

Re: During the meanwhile ...

>>> "Well, we can take the Mick out of them for now because they don't control countries"

You mistake me, I will happily take the mick out of all. I am an equal-opportunities anti-theist.

Re: @AC He's not a deity...

>>> "If the "majority" (defined as > 50%) of Muslims behaved the way you claim, I think we'd have noticed it a bit by now."

Haven't you noticed? Some of us have.

Re: Have I goit the right website?

I've got news for you. The fundamentalists, whether Muslim, Jew, or Christian, have actually read the books.

They know what they're talking about.

Have you read the books?

Re: Jesus-H-Christ

1) Go away,

2) research Serbian/Russian Orthodoxy, Austrian-German Catholicism, Turkish/Ottoman Islamist expansionism, the pan-Arab cause, the Catholic Right involvement in fascism, the explicit backing of the Nazis by the Vatican, antisemitism here there and everywhere, and Japanese militant Buddhism and Shintoism to start with,

3) come back and THEN we'll talk about religious factors in WW 1 & 2.

Okay?

Re: Yeah, but...

>>> "Whilst I agree with the main idea in your post, I would have to point out that your friend probably did not go and behead anyone or have enough buddies with similarly warped views to be able to go and storm a foreign embassy."

They would have in the past though, when they had the power to do it.

And what an indictment of our own happy past that LoB was banned. We have made progress in the West, but it is tenuous, easily lost, and must constantly be defended against those who would take it away again. (That includes the Christians as well as the Muslims).

Re: Have I goit the right website?

Ironic troll is ironic.

Seriously....

>>> this is a bunch of fanatics who have decided to interpret their religion in this way

... this is untrue. They are interpreting it more or less correctly. This is the problem.

Re: @Ken Hagan

Sept 11 even, my bad

@Ken Hagan

>>> The position of the majority of Muslims on these matters is pretty obvious from the fact that they don't do all the things you mention.

That's a non sequitur and untrue. Have a gander at Sam Harris on the topic for extensive references to surveys that illustrate Muslims as generally quite sympathetic with the "extremists". Such mentality is much more mainstream than people in the West like to face up to.

It is neither marginal nor extreme.

>>> The fact that they haven't publically protested on these issues actually puts them in the same position as most Christians, Buddhists, atheists and Jedi knights.

I don't see how. There have been many large scale protests in the west against things like the Iraq war and various govt. cock-ups. Where was the Middle East 'street' condemning their recently martyred faithful representatives after Sept 9 2001?

Re: It's more than the film

>>> Other sources, including Aisha's own account, only make sense if she was older. If she were that young, she wouldn't remember the things she said she did. The issue is the subject of scholastic argument in the Islamic world.

There is a scholastic argument about what Warp Factor 10 means, too.

Personally I choose to believe that it is "infinite velocity" the achievement of which would allow me to meld with the mind of God! I mean Allah! This must be the doctrine and all who stray from it must be destroyed!

The problem with fantasy, as well discussed in a certain recent thread, is that the story tellers tend to get things inconsistent over time. I suppose it's particularly hard with a 7th century set of word processing tools and those juicy tempting 7 year old girls running around your tent just begging for it.

Re: atheist 'sense'

Don't feed the [Islamic] troll, guys!

Seriously J1, you only exemplify the problems you will find most reasonable and civilized people will have with you.

Start with your definition of atheist. The word is a strange term that exists only because it is forced to in the presence of deism or theism.

I am an atheist, an anti-theist, and, by the way, an anti-fairyist. Cos I don't believe in fairies at the bottom of my garden either. I also don't believe there is a fine china teapot in orbit between Earth and Mars. See how we don't need to make the point in civilized conversation.

If that doesn't work, all you need to know, troll, is that when you follow your indoctrination to its logical conclusion, you will eventually find men in your way who will guard against you, one way or another, and that one day you will be consigned to the dark ages of history where you belong.

Re: Live and let live

>>> Apart from the wacky extremists of any persuasion, are they hurting you?

Yes. Moderates enable the true faithfuls. Even the most harmless of well intentioned Christians are inadvertently making it impossible to deal with serious problems. Then there is that little business of them constantly seeking and striving to destroy the minds of the young.

>>> So they believe in something, big deal, get over it, it's none of your business.

If it was none of my business, I would be happy to, but they all consistently do their best to *make* it my business so I really have very little choice.

Re: During the meanwhile ...

>>> ".....Ain't gonna happen in my lifetime...." Islam is very interesting in that it was obviously structured for longevity...

Thought you were talking about Scientology there for a minute.

Good post. The thing is all religions are like that. They are perfectly tuned and adapted to take advantage of the little evolutionary flaws or side effects in the human brain that make us all susceptible to them.

The only solution is a long hard slog to fight off the indoctrination of the young and let the old generations die off. In the meantime, although no politician would admit it, the civilized world is at war with Islam, and will be for a long time yet.

Re: During the meanwhile ...

>>> "The Lord is my shepherd"

AKA

"I am a sheep"

Suggest anyone who is interested look up the debate between the Hitchens brothers. Watch for Christopher H's demanding of the audience who would stand up and call themselves a sheep. A few are brave enough to do it; I am sure many more are there but are not.

Re: This is not about the video.

>>> Instead of having a debate about how we approach Muslim extremism, both in our own countries and as a foreign policy towards countries that tolerate it, we're having one about the limits of free speech.

I think his point is precisely that we should be doing the former but the media are being led by the nose right up the garden path.

Re: This is not about the video.

This is very true and I'm unsure why all the down votes.

One of the guests on BBC World's Dateline London this weekend pointed out the same thing. Particularly with regard to the killing of the US consulate people in Libya.

It happened on the September 11 anniversary, involved serious arms, and obviously took some serious organization and planning. Why the media continues to buy the line that it was a knee-jerk reaction to this film is beyond me. It was quite obviously an Islamist strike planned to have maximum impact and for no reason beyond their normal motives.

Re: If they just ignored it

>>> "* Not that I support doing this, as you are specifically targeting peoples' personal beliefs, regardless of whether you do or don't agree with them"

And what is wrong with that? If you tell me that you are a flying pig from Mars, I will explicitly target your belief and laugh at you. Stupidity and ignorance should not be acceptable in the name of tolerance.

I "believe" that Mohammed did not fly to heaven on a winged horse. I "believe" that blind faith without evidence should not be considered a virtue, and that submission before a fake deity is neither advisable nor moral. I "believe" that Islam, similar to but worse than most other religions, is a fascist authoritarian cult of hate, ignorance, and bigotry. If you tell me I am wrong, fuck you - now I am offended by your deep stupidity. See how that works?

Rational and reasonable people have the right to be offended too. The difference is, you will find the evidence is on their side.

Fanatics

>>> "These fanatics are their own worse enemy."

They are not fanatics, they are simply good Muslims obeying the explicit instructions of the Quran and backed up by the various authority figures today.

Mainstream Islam is explicitly sympathetic and collaborative with these actions. In fact much of the liberal west is sympathetic too.

>>> "What is it about religion that attracts such morons?"

They are not really morons. This is a simplistic argument along the lines of labeling the Nazis "evil". If you believed half of Islamic doctrine, you would find their actions to be perfectly reasonable and rational in the same way that a billion Muslims do, right now as you read this. (Scary isn't it?)

If you really believe in the Quran and the Hadiths, if you - the clot of dried blood, the filth, that you are - accept the unquestioned and unquestionable Word of Allah, and submit to His will, and thereby believe that nothing would please him more, and result in more reward for yourself in heaven, than cutting the throats of infidel hostesses and flying jetliners into buildings, then guess what? - You would find such a course of action to be entirely rational, reasonable, and indeed no act could be considered more brave or heroic.

These people are not mad, or seriously victimized by the west. They are not fanatics or morons, just the righteous faithful convinced of their cause, conceptually no different to the ostensibly harmless sheep who waddle off to the local parish in Englandshire on Sunday mornings.

Amazon cosies up to Nokia for Google Maps alternative

Re: But you can download google maps

A nice Nokia iPhone knock-off, a la Galaxy or LG Optimus, with Android - and Nokia maps on it - would be nice, would it not?

Ah first world problems.

Re: But you can download google maps

For about the 3rd time in this thread, it's necessary to point out that you *cannot* do navigation (or search) offline in Google Maps / Navigation!

Caching the maps just helps cut down bandwidth costs thereafter. They are all but unusable without a connection.

You can't even reverse a route that you just took from A to B, to get back to A from B again. Pretty hopeless when B is somewhere with sketchy or completely absent mobile internet. You can actually get yourself lost if you're not careful because of this.

For serious navigation you basically *need* a secondary proper offline maps app, which is a pity because the Google Maps UI is brilliant and all the others on the Android Play market are overpriced or junk. Hence, Nokia, Apple, and now it seems MS, all have a fairly major advantage.

I hope, probably in vain, that such competition forces Google to turn Maps into a practical app.

Re: Duh

It doesn't do offline navigation. Big problem for a lot of people including me.

Not everyone lives in Silicone Valley...

...with ever present fast mobile data. But Google want, need, you the product ONLINE. And so what is otherwise quite obviously one of the best map apps available is deliberately crippled.

Navigation requiring internet connectivity is just retarded. Anyone outside a major city center who doesn't understand that needs to get out a little more often.

It's actually one of the major drawbacks of Android.

Win8 tablets may cost MORE than iPads – AND LAPTOPS

Re: Am I the only one....

Don't see why, it's just JPEG artifacting on the Reg version. If you look at the original at the link

http://cdn-static.zdnet.com/i/story/70/00/004378/asusroadmap-watermarked.jpg

it looks like a legit screenshot of a PowerPoint slide, amusing spelling correction squiggles n all.

Presumably ZDNet did edit the slide to stick their watermark in there.

PC share of DRAM biz falls below 50%

Re: And I feel slightly sad if this IS indicating...

Nothing is changing, it's just that many PCs in the past were [mis]used as consumption devices, and vast quantities of silicon and power were meaninglessly wasted in the pursuit of trivia.

Now at least the mindless consumption is a bit more efficient.

Windows Phone 8 stands a chance as Apple, Android dither

Re: The Android and IOS myth

It's defined by the app market(s), not the phone markets themselves.

Apple and Android both have massive momentum now c/o their app repository. To the extent that phones are becoming task devices, proper computers, this is where the relevant comparisons are to be made.

Australian gamers can get high and naked

Highly realistic killing and brutal violence perfectly acceptable my children

...but as your chosen protectors, we must keep your innocent eyes away from your disgusting human reproductive organs!

The plague of religiously based and inspired conservatism and hypocrisy remains with us.

Ultimate bacon sarnie scrap starts to sizzle

Re: Re:Baps

There are so many ways to take that wrong.

Actually on reconsideration there's only one.

Information is the UI in Windows 8, says design guru

There's more to it too

There are more problems with this new era of UI mentality from MS, too, the more I think about it.

>>> ...philosophies drawn from “Wayfinding” (signage in airports, train stations and other public places)...

But a computer monitor is not an airport, train station, or any other public place. It is not a 3D environment that needs to be negotiated by a traveler. It is a flat 2D environment with limited space and needing clear distinctions between controls (interactive) and displays (content).

>>> ...and moving type (The opening titles to Hitchcock's North by Northwest are apparently seminal so we've popped them in below)...

Come again? This, and the reference to animation, is surely cause for concern. Are we going to have ticker-tape style title bars? Vertically moving text, a la movie credits, on windows instead of a scroll bar? Eh?

As to animation...

>>> ...Mainstream developers will therefore need to come to terms with content-centric interfaces and the elements they offer, one of which is animation. Moving images, he said, even offer the chance to tap into users' primal instincts as we are attuned to interpreting fast-moving objects in peripheral vision as worthy of attention (if only to avoid being eaten by an approaching predator)...

Sorry, now I am not in a train station, but needing to watch out for the hungry lions?

Moving images in the periphery on a computer screen says one thing to most people: annoying advertising to be ignored. Static content should be static. If you have to resort to animation to "get attention", maybe something is fundamentally wrong with your 2D monitor GUI design!

Beyond that, animation has been used for legitimate purposes in Windows for a long time, from the simple file copying movie to the window minimize/maximize action. So what new is he on about?

>>> ...Developers must therefore strive to “present the information well enough it can form the user interface.”

Confusion of controls and content again.

>>> ...good design for Windows 8 apps, or any other, starts with decisions about what an application is intended to achieve, rather than just how it will look and behave.

Well that's a nice idea but it rather contradicts everything said prior.

Want to avoid another cookie law mess? Talk to EU bods next time

Re: Cookies aren’t evil, but marketing companies certainly are

That's nice but a little paranoid?

Most of these marketing issues are resolved by blocking 3rd party cookies. Sites placing 1st party cookies on behalf of The Evil Marketeers are likely to get caught and their names slandered from here to the BBC, particularly if they are breaching their own privacy policies (which most retailers are eager to see their customers' happy with). Dealing with this is exactly what this idiotic law should in fact be specifically doing, rather than making illegal the normal and accepted operation of most sites on the web.

Skype inks deal to tack payments onto your mobile bill

Neutral traffic?

Just so long as they don't try to restrict Skype and other VOIP traffic over their data networks.

Which certain telcos would love to do, I'm sure.

I'm surprised the operators would go for it actually - what's in it for them, other than a small commission? They are making it easier for their customers to circumvent their overpriced calling services.