found the SJW
I wasn't trying to take a side but I was pointing out that there are reasons he might not be criticizing Muslims besides fear.
If you don't think that the power and social standing of groups doesn't matter in humour then take the jokes a black comedian tells about blacks or a Jewish comedian about Jews and try telling them as a white non-Jew. It's not translatable because the context is completely different.
As you pointed out the "disempowered" covers Muslims in the US. And my evidence for them being disempowered (marginalized would be a better term) is the ease with which people will hear Muslim and translate it to Islamist, and then they'll start sprouting off half a dozen negative stereotypes that would be verboten if applied to most other groups.
You're really going off on a tangent here. Getting back on subject, perhaps we can agree that the most likely reason for SMBC's curious silence toward Islam is not because Zach can't find anything silly in their beliefs, but rather because conservative Muslims around the world, aka Islamists of different degrees, are likely to commit acts of violence in response to their religion being made fun of.
Possibly, but I don't recall him making fun of Hindu's, African Tribal religions, or Chinese culture either. He might be silent out of caution, or he might be ignoring them for the same reasons he ignores those other groups.
Also, just for the record, equating "Muslim" and "Islamist" is often a reasonably accurate approximation, particularly outside the USA but frequently here as well. There are useful litmus tests to identify an Islamist, such as: "Should it be illegal to burn a Koran?" "Should people be allowed to apostatize from Islam?" and so forth. If you only ask about affinity for Osama bin Laden you will definitely miss a lot of the scary religious nuts. Their ultimate goal is not peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic society, but rather enforcement of norms of sharia law and subjugation of non-Islamic people. Whether they are likely to be successful in their goal is irrelevant as to their classification as Islamists in that respect.
Since around 50% of Americans support a flag burning amendment does that make them all scary nationalist nuts? There's not even a god who's supposed to care about that one. As for Muslims some of what you're picking up on is just cultural differences, a Christian who talks about killing apostles is a pretty legitimate risk to go out and hurt someone because that kind of talk isn't part of modern Christianity. A Muslim who does so is mostly just aping cultural expectations, they're very unlikely to do anything about it, particularly in the west (though there are enough extremists that apostles still have legitimate cause for concern).
It could be caution, but it could also be the fact that poking fun at empowered groups in your own culture carries a very different context than poking fun at foreign cultures (or disempowered groups in your own culture).
So you're saying Islam is a "foreign culture" in the USA. How many Muslims do we have to have living here as citizens before it becomes one of the (many) American subcultures?
Also, your use of the term "disempowered" is hilarious. Just because Islamists in the USA can't get away with chopping off people's heads here (like they do elsewhere in the world) doesn't make them "disempowered" relative to Christianity and Judaism. Always with Islam it's the (pardon the expression) camel's nose in the tent. Islamists have no sense of humor, no tolerance for criticism, and no qualms about taking their half from the middle and screwing atheists, homosexuals, apostates, and in general, persons of other religions (inculding variants of Islam slightly different from theirs).
As you pointed out the "disempowered" covers Muslims in the US. And my evidence for them being disempowered (marginalized would be a better term) is the ease with which people will hear Muslim and translate it to Islamist, and then they'll start sprouting off half a dozen negative stereotypes that would be verboten if applied to most other groups.
The only danger will be to someone's bank account. Anyone who couldn't tell this was a scam almost deserves to be separated from their money as a sort of fiscal Darwin award. There is not and never will be an actual mission to anywhere though this scam. Furthermore I'm tired of hearing about it and don't know why slashdot continues to give these scammers free publicity.
I wish an attorney general with appropriate jurisdiction would get involved and put the people behind this in jail.
Not necessarily, the world if full of people working on terrible start up ideas, why should Mars One be any different?
The media is evidence of this, the Mars One project isn't exactly hiding much, sure there's a lot of BS around how well they're doing but they're not claiming they have a secret game changing tech or shadow billionaire who's going to change everything. The problems are there for everyone to see, the reason they're getting ignored is that the idea is so infectious that the traditional media is generally playing along, and if the even media is getting caught up then why do you think the founders would be immune? They're going to be drinking the koolaid harder than anyone.
Most likely the founders thought this was the greatest idea ever, they figured if you got the ball rolling, maybe enticed a billionaire or two, then you could put together a crowd-funded project on a global scale. At that point the talent and money would start rolling in and you'd get a legitimate Apollo Mission style project with a real shot at Mars. It doesn't have a hope in hell of happening but it's an intoxicating idea.
He is actually really careful about that. There are regular barbecues of sacred cows related to Judaism and Christianity, but never so much as a hint of poking fun at Islam or Mohammed.
It could be caution, but it could also be the fact that poking fun at empowered groups in your own culture carries a very different context than poking fun at foreign cultures (or disempowered groups in your own culture).
Well two or maybe three things really.
Mars, as a larger body, is likely to have the gravity required, as well as other resources to make it more viable for long term habitation than the moon.
In a thousand years sure, but right now the place you can viable go back and forth from is much more viable.
Secondly, and probably decisively, they're trying to push the program forward beyond a place we've already been. They have the thesis that it is possible, at least one way. They want to prove that. So, its a stretch goal.
Saying you'll get your lunar colony to have a permanent population of 100 people is a stretch goal, saying you're going to colonize Mars is a signal you're not being serious.
I think you may well have a good point, but I think people might feel that a one way trip to a place we've already been there and back, may not feel justified. Been there and done that is less romantic.
Well the Moon colony wouldn't have to be a one way trip. But I don't see what the Mars One project has going for it other than romanticism, and besides, a Lunar colony is still an unbelievably awesome idea.
The poles have not permanent sunlight.
There are only a few rims of some craters that have permanent sun light.
Rims which you can cover with solar panels.
A nuclear reactor would be needed to be built on the moon, you hardly can ship a ready made one from earth to there.
Why can't we ship them? We have small Nuclear reactors and the energy requirements of a base won't be huge.
The rest of your post makes pretty clear you never thought about the topic anyway
I got a bit chippy too so I'll let that go
Because:
o the moon has a 28 'days' day and night cycle, which makes e.g. solar power a big challange
Use Nuclear or go to a poll with permanent light.
o the moon has only a trace atmosphere, you could call it 'no atmosphere at all' - but technically that would be incorrect
So instead of wearing spacesuits and living in airtight protected habitats they'll need to wear spacesuits and live in airtight protected habitats
o the gravity on moon is even lower
Which gives you the option of taking back off.
o water, if it does exist, is only available in a few craters close to the poles
So settle on a crater close to the poll (same place you get reliable sunlight).
So bottom line, besides travel time, Mars is the easier target.
Yeah, except for the fact it's massively more difficult Mars is much easier.
Likely it even can be terraformed.
In hundreds of years by a mission completely unlike what Mars One is planning. Before planning to terraform an entire planet why don't we first try the project that's only ridiculously difficult.
because on Mars you may have reasonable gravity to live out your life without muscle waste. On the moon you do not.
We know humans can survive prolonged periods of weightlessness from space stations, and on the Moon we have the capability of switching out colonists within those time frames it if becomes necessary. No such possibility exists for Mars so I'd say muscle waste is a bigger concern on Mars for that very reason.
Democrats could have enacted a serious climate policy if they had sat down and negotiated. But they tried to do it unilaterally and got stuffed. Same with health care reform; the Republicans wanted to be at the table and work out a solution - but Pelosi locked the door.
That's some highly revisionist history.
The Republicans were unable to come to the table or tone down the extremist rhetoric for a healthcare bill that was Republican in origin, you really think there were willing to have sincere negotiations about climate change?
The Republicans had a very simple and effective strategy, refuse to cooperate on anything making Obama look far left rather than bipartisan, then profit from the ensuing disorder when the public responded by punishing the incumbents (whomever they perceived to be controlling the White House).
I think it's obvious: do the moon first. We are _incredibly lucky_ to have this resource on our backyard.
The more I think of it if the Mars One people are going to make any pretence of being serious then why aren't they trying to colonize the moon? It has to be an order of magnitude cheaper, landing on the moon is something we've actually done before, it's not a one way journey, and it gives you a chance to learn how to build an off-world colony before going all-in on Mars.
It might even be a proposal you could take seriously.
Wow, the level of ignorance here is astounding. When Barack and company had both the White House and both houses of Congress, just how much did they get accomplished on this? Or did they too "kick the can down the road?" Politicians are all alike, and if you don't comprehend that then just keep feeding on what they're shoveling to you. Maybe your determined consumption of political bull$h!t will cut down on some cow's carbon footprint.
Unfortunately US politics is a lot more complex than that. The Democrats as a whole probably did want to get something done, however the Republicans REALLY didn't want to do anything even on things they could agree with, for something like Global Warming they would have been able to make it extraordinarily costly to do something.
The Democrats simply didn't have the popular support to enact a serious climate policy, especially after they spent all their political capital on health care reform and economic stimulus.
Is 2015 the year of the Linux gaming system?
Could we please stop this shit? Please?
This is the one time it might actually apply (though maybe it was properly 2014). Two years ago major game being ported to Linux were virtually non-existent. Now 20% of the games from the largest game store on the Internet are suddenly available and generally functional.
For Linux desktop users that exposition of commercial software is completely unprecedented.
Bandwidth and latency are interlinked in most cases.
Bandwidth is how much you can fit down the pipe.
Latency is how long it takes to get there.
If you don't have enough bandwidth, you get latency as the packet queue up trying to get past the bottleneck. Increasing the bandwidth in this case decreases latency.
The only other reason you get latency is because of the speed of light and the distance you're trying to cover. The only cure for this is to reduce that distance.
QoS is only a bandwidth management practice, only coming into play when you have a bottleneck. I've found that in terms of overhead and headache, more bandwidth is ALWAYS cheaper than QoS.
So, for your desire for low latency for one and high bandwidth for the other, they're likely the same thing.
Isn't prioritization a factor? If I'm watching Netflix you push my packets further back in the queue, but when they reach the front I get a lot of the pipe. Conversely if I'm just browsing my packets skip to the front of the line with the understanding they're going to be quite small.
But users end up paying the subscription fee to those content providers, do they not?
Not for the service they're getting. Let's say I'm a Speakeasy customer, and I also pay for Netflix.
You're a Comcast customer, and you also pay for Netflix.
Speakeasy is network neutral, so Netflix has no disadvantage compare to any other provider. If Speakeasy has congestion, Netflix and Amazon will be just as slow. To relieve this, they increase their bandwidth do their peering points, and all networks are again running fast. I may have to pay more to Speakeasy for this speed increase.
However, in your case, Comcast segregates Netflix's traffic and slows it down to relieve congestion, instead of treating all networks as equal. Comcast says their networks are not the issue, because they show you perfect speed from Amazon. You complain to Netflix, who must pay Comcast to get their speed increased.
Now, this is where the bullshit starts: Netflix passes the cost for the Comcast toll on to both you and ME, even though I'm not a Comcast customer, and this toll did nothing to increase MY speed. In fact, I already had to pay extra to my ISP to get my speed fixed.
That being said bandwidth when I'm watching something on Netflix, big deal, latency when I'm watching something on Netflix, fairly inconsequential.
But latency on Amazon, or particularly an online game? Big deal.
So I could see an argument for allowing ISPs to mess around on that basis. Increasing bandwidth on Netflix and decreasing latency on Amazon would be a win-win for the end user. How to stop ISPs from using that power to screw around with providers is another issue.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
