I don't think it is an original observation but Steve Jobs chose a very capable and worthy successor. Tim Cook gets more impressive each time you hear anything about him.
Tim Cook Speaks Up
931–940 of 1001 posts
Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up
#932Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and is that due to butterfly effect ? Yes very much so. The initial condition and the differential equation were not that different for the two countries. The trajectory however turned out to be drastically different. The statesmen in charge during its formative period did not take steps which would have otherwise made such a scenario less likely. Small changes in courses of their actions early in its history, a de…
Blaming only leaders for the intolerance of Islam is far fetched. And Hindu's killing minorities cannot be equated to what happens in Pakistan, if not only what happens but at what scale happens mattered.
Ah ! I see, the "We do it a little less here, so it would be fine, but sometimes we try to catchup on the scores" defence. Well played sir, I rest my case, that logic is irrefutable.
Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up
#933Earlier quoted context omitted.
People don't call civil rights or women's rights "agendas," they call them "movements." Agenda is pejorative, pertaining to "underlying intentions"; whereas movement directly refers to the act of changing, and in other fields such as music indicates a progression or forward dynamic. Portraying gay people in media could have an advertising "agenda" (e.g. they have an intention of selling things by appearing gay friend…
Edit: Woah, my mistake! I thought you were responding to my statement above. My apologies. What is the etiquette on HN for this? Is it editing out my comment, which, given my misunderstanding of the context, is irrelevant to your statement? [ Did you read (critically) the comment I was responding to? I mostly agree with your statement, except for the implication you may be making that agenda always has this pejorativ…
Hey, no problem. My issue is one of language itself. As someone who takes the english language very seriously, I don't ignore when someone makes the choice to use a particular word. Between our two comments, we have used the following set of words to roughly address the same concept (advancement of LGBT rights): [agenda, movement, purpose, goal]. Of these, only "agenda" has a secondary definition referring to underlying intentions or motives (even consider the word motive - "a reason for doing something, especially one that is hidden").
Writing is an act of art, and reading is an act of interpretation. These secondary definitions come into play when determining what someone means. Agenda is not purely pejorative, and it's true LGBT groups have agendas - they have plans of things to be done - they have motives - reasons for doing something. However, these attributes of LGBT groups could also be described with words that do not have any negative aspects, such as goals, plans, purposes, etc.
>If you want to understand people...
I assume people understand the words they use and intend to use them. If people use words without precision, how can they expect to be understood?
As for etiquette... no idea ha. Made the same mistake myself.
Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up
#934Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and is that due to butterfly effect ? Yes very much so. The initial condition and the differential equation were not that different for the two countries. The trajectory however turned out to be drastically different. The statesmen in charge during its formative period did not take steps which would have otherwise made such a scenario less likely. Small changes in courses of their actions early in its history, a de…
Blaming only leaders for the intolerance of Islam is far fetched. And Hindu's killing minorities cannot be equated to what happens in Pakistan, if not only what happens but at what scale happens mattered.
It seems everyone is out to get Islam today. And I think I know the main reason ... Islam as a religion leads much more often to religious states. One graphic should illustrate this for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion
And when a state has a lot of people who believe sharia law should be the law of the land, the courts and politicians have to grapple with what are essentially 6th century moral and legal ideas. And not just 6th century in fact, but made by one of the only prophets who commanded an army, and went to war, and wrote things like this:
http://www.islamawakened.com/quran/8/67/
"It is not fitting for a prophet that he should have prisoners of war until he hath thoroughly subdued the land. Ye look for the temporal goods of this world; but Allah looketh to the Hereafter: And Allah is Exalted in might, Wise."
You'd be hard pressed to find Old Testament prophets speaking this way or being described in this way. In fact, the Jews are admonished for "killing their prophets" who basically went around speaking.
So the "differential equation with initial conditions" analogy is very much a big factor.
Judaism formed to have an exclusionary character - it's hard to become a Jew, and so the Jews were always a minority, never ambitious to make the whole world Jews.
Christianity formed with a "peaceful proselytizing" character, for one thing because when it formed the apostles were the ones being persecuted and they didn't have the power to raise an army and convert people by the sword.
Islam on the other hand was formed that way and the political character of Islam is hard to defeat by populations full of sharia law-abiding, devout muslims. Disestablishment of the Church took a long time, but ultimately there is far less in Christianity that says the Church and Government must be one. In fact, statements like this emphasize the separation of Church and State:
http://biblehub.com/mark/12-17.htm
So yeah founding conditions matter, and I think that's why you see so many Islamic states and why there are more Muslims around the world living in democratic countries who truly believe that if their society was transformed from a democracy into an Islamic state, everyone would be better off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYAcLudBbhg
Personally I think Islam is not alone. I think various forms of socialism (Communism, Nazism) are also like "mind viruses" or group memes that tend to want to take over the government. If you look at it epidemiologically, certain ideas simply take over the population (the vector of transmission is almost always primarily young men, especially in bad economies or situations, e.g. hitler youth, or hamas, or vietkong, etc.) and states built around these ideas are intolerant and squash dissent. In my opinion, the greatest political danger lies in ideologies whose proponents obtain power.
Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up
#935Earlier quoted context omitted.
His resignation was not celebrated here as I recall. Many found it regrettable (and rightly so in my opinion) that he was nominated for the position in the first place, considering what a symbolic figure the CEO of a foundation is. But it was always recognized the culprit in this case was the board of directors who put him in this position, only to retract their support later. Eich is a brilliant technologist, and th…
"Supporting discriminatory laws is not even on the same plane as being "offensively" open-minded." That's an obviously unfair polemic. It could be flipped around thusly (and would be just as invalid): "Seeking to destroy the institution of marriage that has been consistently defined for centuries is not even on the same plane as being 'offensively' traditional."
I disagree, because actively supporting limiting the rights of minorities over what amounts to an appeal to religious tradition seems more than a matter of opinion to me.
Also, I understand that you downvoted me above, but going to my other comments in another thread and giving them the same treatment is abusive - especially since I'm a new user. You have single-handedly destroyed my karma balance. So I guess the message is that I'm not welcome here because I support equal rights?
Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up
#936Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wow. I feel so sorry for you that you live in a supposedly civilized country You might have missed the part where he said he lives in Texas.
Name one city in Texas that is more dangerous for blacks than Detroit, Philadelphia, Oakland, or Chicago. You seem extremely ignorant about Texas.
Who said anything about "dangerous"? But I'm flattered that you created an account just to downvote l'il ol' me and offer a non-sequitur to the discussion.
Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up
#937Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For people who view LGBT as unhealthy sexual expression, the net effect feels a lot like "pushing homosexuality" on us. I suppose it does. But if one of your children should happen to be gay, you've left no question, from what you've written, that you won't hesitate to push heterosexuality on them. We care more about them finding a path to self-acceptance than we do about your prejudice.
> But if one of your children should happen to be gay, you've left no question, from what you've written, that you won't hesitate to push heterosexuality on them. I doubt anyone can do anything to change a paraphilia; pushing normative sexuality on someone is unlikely to be productive. But I don't think self-acceptance is a good goal either. There are many unhealthy things in each of us; we shouldn't accept them, but…
Consensual sex between adults is not harmful just because they happen to be the same sex.
Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up
#938Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe I'm bad at math, but wouldn't the set of (female, none), (male, female), and (male, male) ultimately lead to more females than males?
No, because the three cases happen with different probabilities: (F,none): 0.5 (M,F): 0.25 (M,M): 0.25 The expected number of both F and M is 0.75
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Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up
#939Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course, that was 6 years ago... so why should Brendan Eich be ostracised in 2014 for donating money to a campaign which was quite popular back then? It's wrong regardless of when it occurred. > At what point did Mozilla's mission for a free and open internet turn into one about social justice and identity politics? This lame attempt to dismiss equality won't fly.
> It's wrong regardless of when it occurred. The world is a big place with different cultures and different opinions. You are making a giant assumption that your world-view is the correct one.
> You are making a giant assumption that your world-view is the correct one.
OTOH, if you condemn people for judging Eich, you are -- by so doing -- committing the same offense.