Right now, we're getting our ass handed to us by a Communist Capitalist state, namely China...
You are less knowledgeably than the poster you responded to. It is not possible to have a "Communist Capitalist state" Communism is as much an economic system as Socialism or Capitalism. There are two reasons that people associate Socialism with Communism. First, socialism was first talked about by Karl Marx as an intermediate stage on the way from capitalism to communism. Second, it was the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (numerous other Communist regimes also called themselves Socialist).
Finally, socialism, fascism, and communism are all economic systems that claim that the best way to manage an economy is through central planning. As opposed to free market capitalism (I am using the modifier "free market" to indicate that I am not talking about the type of capitalism described by Karl Marx), which says that the most efficient economy is one where individuals make decisions for themselves and prices are used to determine how resources should be distributed (as opposed to the other three where resources are allocated to some degree or another by some government agent).
You do realize that the when someone proposed at the general assembly in the Occupy Oakland camp that they adopt a resolution of non-violence they were overwhelmingly booed and voted down? The same group loudly applauded a speaker who condemned Gandhi and King for their non-violence? These groups have discouraged women from reporting sexual assults and rapes to the police. The Occupy protestors are not peaceful.
I guess there would be more jobs if you guys didn't need to give 700bil to Goldman and friends for bonuses.
The funny thing about that is that the "Occupy" movement is as much, or more, a branch of the Democratic Party as the Tea Party was of the Republican Party, yet the guys receiving the bonuses you are complaining about are movers and shakers in the same Democratic Party.
And before he failed to get the Democratic nomination for Mayor, he was a Democrat. He changed parties to Republican in order to secure the nomination of one of the parties for Mayor of New York.
This should simply reinforce the point that I'm making which is that the selfishness or non-selfishness of a person really has nothing to do with whether or not they will commit suicide,...
No, it does not. To commit suicide is to behave selfishly. You may argue it however you want, but someone who commits suicide is acting selfishly. Unless you think that committing suicide is a good method of dealing with depression arguing that it is not selfish serves no useful purpose.
No, it is not a matter of being "seen as selfish". It is selfish. In a culture such as that of the Samurai it is more complicated. However, by committing suicide, the person makes themselves the center of events.
That is a more complicated situation than the one that I was addressing. However, I believe that there is an argument to be made that even in such a culture committing suicide is, generally, selfish. It is just that such selfish action has been made the cultural norm.
It is a somewhat arbitrary number, 25 or 30 would work just as well. 28 is the result of the fact that at one point term of copyright was in multiples of 7 years.
The reason for, at this time, choosing a term between 25-30 years is because of the number of companies that have built their businesses on longer copyright. Additionally, while I, also, am under the impression that most copyrighted material makes most of its money in the first year, there is a lot of material where that is not the case, especially for small independently produced material.
I happen to think that the 25-30 year range is longer than ideal. However, I believe that by shooting for a somewhat longer time than I think is ideal increases the chances of getting the law actually changed.
How is it not selfish to stand there and watch someone you love suffer to such extreme degrees that they no longer see effective living solutions as even possible and then NOT want them to do anything about it because "you'll miss them." or you feel like "you need them." Fuck they're feelings and suffering, they should go on living under extreme stress and suffering just for me!
Yes, that would be selfish. However, that is not the position, or feeling of all of the people who love those who choose to commit suicide. And it is irrelevant to the question of whether or not committing suicide is selfish. Whether or not the other person is selfish does not determine whether or not one's actions are selfish.
As to your battered woman example, the answer is (as a general rule, there are certainly exceptions) no she is not selfish for leaving. A man who physically abuses those who are weaker than him has a problem that needs to be addressed. If the woman he is abusing leaves him, there is a greater chance that he will recognize that need and get the help he needs.
I do not think that labor needed the help of the mob to improve its situation. As a matter of fact, I think that labor would be better off today if they had never gotten into bed with organized crime...which is what most unions are.
I do not agree that those who desire that someone not committ suicide are necessarily selfish in that desire. However, that is irrelevant to whether or not the act of suicide is selfish. Whether those who care about a potential suicide are selfish or not has no impact on whether or not the act of taking one's own life is selfish.
Basically, not only do I disagree with your argument, but it has no bearing on the point I made. It is possible for those who wish someone to not committ suicide to be selfish and for the person committing suicide to be selfish as well.
You are correct, all we can judge are results. One should judge others on the basis of their actions, not their perceived thoughts. There are very few cases where someone committing suicide does not result in more suffering in others than it alleviates in others (alleviating the suffering of the one commtting suicide does not count in the balance for considering whether or not the behavior is selfish).
Whether a behavior is rational or not has no bearing on whether it is a selfish behavior or not. Once again, you fail to actually make an argument for suicide not being selfish, you merely state that the person is motivated by irrational thought processes. I agree that depression is a terrible condition that causes people to behave irrationally. In many cases, people suffering from depression behave in outrageously selfish behaviors that are well short of suicide.
As a matter of fact, I suspect that many people's depression gets worse because people around them tell them it is ok to behave selfishly because they have a mental disorder. It is not ok to behave selfishly, even if the individual is unable to rationally understand that they are doind so. There is a feedback loop related to people's moods and behaviors. If you act depressed, you are likely to be depressed. Once you are depressed, you are more likely to act depressed. This creates an ever deepening cycle. On the other hand, if you act happy, you are likely to be happy. This creates the reverse effect. Unfortunately, some people have depression that does not respond to this approach. Those people may be suffering from influences beyond their control (chemical inbalances in the body are one possible explanation).
I will repeat. Just because someone is unable to rationally understand that their behavior is selfish, does not mean that their behavior is not selfish.
Perhaps evidence of an affair? I know that there are other things that effect a divorce sttlement as well that might be indicated by communications on facebook.
They do not actually present a case that suicide is not selfish, they merely assert that it is not selfish. The argument for saying that suicide is selfish is: committing suicide is saying that ending the pain that I am in is more important than not causing pain to those who love me. Or to put it another way, my wants are more important than the wants of those who love me.
That has already been done in the U.S. In Kelo v New London the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London could take someone's house in order to give it to someone else (the city had to pay "market value" for the house). Interestingly enough, it was the "liberal" faction of the Court that supported this decision, with the "conservative" side opposing it.
You hit on it exactly, the solution to the current problems with copyright law would be to reduce the term of copyright to some reasonable length. I would recommend a term of something on the order of 28 years with 7 year extensions available at the expiration for a large fee that goes up geometrically with each extension (you could easily convince me that the fee should go up logarithmically rather than geometrically).
Twenty-eight years might be too long, but I think it is the place to start. Once we got the term changed to 28 years we could revisit the length of copyright again in a few years and consider shortening it further.
He might have gotten the recount, but he would not have won the election. In early 2001, several groups went through the ballots and concluded that by counting all of the ballots that the intention of the voter could be discerned George W. Bush won the vote in Florida. The only way for Al Gore to win was to assume that every ballot where there was any question as to the intention of the voter was intended to be a vote for Al Gore, even ones where the voter appeared to intend to vote for someone else but "spoiled" their ballot in some way (such as partially marking for Al Gore and then clearly marking someone else, or marking Al Gore and then scribbling over it and marking someone else, or several other ways where an unbiased observer--or even an observer biased in favor of Al Gore, as these groups mostly were--would conclude that they intended to vote for someone other than Al Gore).
Gore lost in Florida. Several news organizations, including the New York Times, recounted the Florida ballots after the election and concluded that more people in Florida voted for George W. Bush than voted for Al Gore. You can try to spin Al Gore's failed attempt to steal the 2000 election anyway you want, he still actually lost.
That is actually a different subject than what is under discussion in the parent posts. The question under discussion was some variant on, "What happens if Facebook closes their accounts for violation of its Terms of Service?" You are suggesting that one of the parties delete evidence from their Facebook account before the other side has a chance to discover it. The danger with doing that is that you do not know how much either party knows about what the other has done on Facebook. Suppose one party knows that the other sent a message to a third person on a particular date and suspects that it contains something incriminating. Now when they go to look for what was in the message, the message is gone. If they can present evidence that the message had existed, the person who destroyed the message will be punished for destroying evidence.
Facebook does not currently have a legal obligation to allow this access. However, it is clear from legal precedent that if Facebook's cooperation were necessary to allow this access the judge would so order. Actually, your example is perfect, if the court compelled me to give my safe deposit key to my wife and the bank, in response to that order, threw the safe deposit box in the river, the bank would be found guilty of something ranging from contempt of court to destruction of evidence. The bank was not legally obligated to allow my wife access to my safe deposit box only because the court did not believe it necessary to involve the bank in the proceedings. If the bank chose to pro-actively thwart the court's intentions, the court would not respond graciously. I do not know exactly what it is called but there is a legal principle that amounts to "You should have known that the court would compel you to comply if there was any reason for them to believe that you would not do so in the normal course of business."
Once the Judge has ruled that they must share passwords in order to allow the other side to look for evidence any attempt to prevent the other side from looking at what is there will be considered an attempt to destroy evidence. For example, if the court orders me to turn over papers to another party and I shred them instead, it is considered destruction of evidence (even if later someone produces copies of those papers that show that there was no evidence in them).
Yes the legal pairing of marriage has implications regarding the sharing of intellectual property, just like it has implications regarding the sharing of physical property, and in much the same way.
Just look at the Bush v. Gore decision where they decided that one man one vote meant that enough votes were left untallied to effectively hand the election to Bush because they were concerned that too much attention was being paid to those particular ballots.
That is a complete misrepresentation of the Supreme Court decision. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Equal Protection clause was violated by the recount called for by the Florida Supreme Court and that there was not enough time to conduct a recount that met the Equal Protection clause. A significant factor in their decision was that the end result of any Constitutional decision by them would be the same as the result of their ruling. If the Supreme Court had not ruled as it had, it is probable that the Florida legislature would have appointed a group of Electors who would have voted for Bush (according to the U.S. Constitution, each state legislature decides how that state's Electors are chosen). If that had happened it is quite possible that the end result would have been that there were no Electors from the state of Florida (there are several other scenarios in which this would have happened). In which case, the election would have been decided by the U.S. House of Representatives, who would have chosen Bush. Finally, the fact of the matter is that several groups that consistently favor the Democratic Party counted the ballots in Florida later and found that under no reasonable standard would Gore have won the state.
Slashdot Mirror
Right now, we're getting our ass handed to us by a Communist Capitalist state, namely China...
You are less knowledgeably than the poster you responded to. It is not possible to have a "Communist Capitalist state" Communism is as much an economic system as Socialism or Capitalism. There are two reasons that people associate Socialism with Communism. First, socialism was first talked about by Karl Marx as an intermediate stage on the way from capitalism to communism. Second, it was the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (numerous other Communist regimes also called themselves Socialist).
Finally, socialism, fascism, and communism are all economic systems that claim that the best way to manage an economy is through central planning. As opposed to free market capitalism (I am using the modifier "free market" to indicate that I am not talking about the type of capitalism described by Karl Marx), which says that the most efficient economy is one where individuals make decisions for themselves and prices are used to determine how resources should be distributed (as opposed to the other three where resources are allocated to some degree or another by some government agent).
I don't see what your argument is. All three of those are variations on the government running the economy.
You do realize that the when someone proposed at the general assembly in the Occupy Oakland camp that they adopt a resolution of non-violence they were overwhelmingly booed and voted down? The same group loudly applauded a speaker who condemned Gandhi and King for their non-violence? These groups have discouraged women from reporting sexual assults and rapes to the police. The Occupy protestors are not peaceful.
I guess there would be more jobs if you guys didn't need to give 700bil to Goldman and friends for bonuses.
The funny thing about that is that the "Occupy" movement is as much, or more, a branch of the Democratic Party as the Tea Party was of the Republican Party, yet the guys receiving the bonuses you are complaining about are movers and shakers in the same Democratic Party.
And before he failed to get the Democratic nomination for Mayor, he was a Democrat. He changed parties to Republican in order to secure the nomination of one of the parties for Mayor of New York.
Really, have you examined the history of the AFL-CIO or the Teamsters? You do know why Jimmy Hoffa, Sr. disappeared don't you?
This should simply reinforce the point that I'm making which is that the selfishness or non-selfishness of a person really has nothing to do with whether or not they will commit suicide,...
No, it does not. To commit suicide is to behave selfishly. You may argue it however you want, but someone who commits suicide is acting selfishly. Unless you think that committing suicide is a good method of dealing with depression arguing that it is not selfish serves no useful purpose.
It is selfless to realize your own uselessness.
No one is useless.
That is a more complicated situation than the one that I was addressing. However, I believe that there is an argument to be made that even in such a culture committing suicide is, generally, selfish. It is just that such selfish action has been made the cultural norm.
It is a somewhat arbitrary number, 25 or 30 would work just as well. 28 is the result of the fact that at one point term of copyright was in multiples of 7 years.
The reason for, at this time, choosing a term between 25-30 years is because of the number of companies that have built their businesses on longer copyright. Additionally, while I, also, am under the impression that most copyrighted material makes most of its money in the first year, there is a lot of material where that is not the case, especially for small independently produced material.
I happen to think that the 25-30 year range is longer than ideal. However, I believe that by shooting for a somewhat longer time than I think is ideal increases the chances of getting the law actually changed.
How is it not selfish to stand there and watch someone you love suffer to such extreme degrees that they no longer see effective living solutions as even possible and then NOT want them to do anything about it because "you'll miss them." or you feel like "you need them." Fuck they're feelings and suffering, they should go on living under extreme stress and suffering just for me!
Yes, that would be selfish. However, that is not the position, or feeling of all of the people who love those who choose to commit suicide. And it is irrelevant to the question of whether or not committing suicide is selfish. Whether or not the other person is selfish does not determine whether or not one's actions are selfish.
As to your battered woman example, the answer is (as a general rule, there are certainly exceptions) no she is not selfish for leaving. A man who physically abuses those who are weaker than him has a problem that needs to be addressed. If the woman he is abusing leaves him, there is a greater chance that he will recognize that need and get the help he needs.
I do not think that labor needed the help of the mob to improve its situation. As a matter of fact, I think that labor would be better off today if they had never gotten into bed with organized crime...which is what most unions are.
I do not agree that those who desire that someone not committ suicide are necessarily selfish in that desire. However, that is irrelevant to whether or not the act of suicide is selfish. Whether those who care about a potential suicide are selfish or not has no impact on whether or not the act of taking one's own life is selfish.
Basically, not only do I disagree with your argument, but it has no bearing on the point I made. It is possible for those who wish someone to not committ suicide to be selfish and for the person committing suicide to be selfish as well.
You are correct, all we can judge are results. One should judge others on the basis of their actions, not their perceived thoughts. There are very few cases where someone committing suicide does not result in more suffering in others than it alleviates in others (alleviating the suffering of the one commtting suicide does not count in the balance for considering whether or not the behavior is selfish).
Whether a behavior is rational or not has no bearing on whether it is a selfish behavior or not. Once again, you fail to actually make an argument for suicide not being selfish, you merely state that the person is motivated by irrational thought processes. I agree that depression is a terrible condition that causes people to behave irrationally. In many cases, people suffering from depression behave in outrageously selfish behaviors that are well short of suicide.
As a matter of fact, I suspect that many people's depression gets worse because people around them tell them it is ok to behave selfishly because they have a mental disorder. It is not ok to behave selfishly, even if the individual is unable to rationally understand that they are doind so. There is a feedback loop related to people's moods and behaviors. If you act depressed, you are likely to be depressed. Once you are depressed, you are more likely to act depressed. This creates an ever deepening cycle. On the other hand, if you act happy, you are likely to be happy. This creates the reverse effect. Unfortunately, some people have depression that does not respond to this approach. Those people may be suffering from influences beyond their control (chemical inbalances in the body are one possible explanation).
I will repeat. Just because someone is unable to rationally understand that their behavior is selfish, does not mean that their behavior is not selfish.
Perhaps evidence of an affair? I know that there are other things that effect a divorce sttlement as well that might be indicated by communications on facebook.
They do not actually present a case that suicide is not selfish, they merely assert that it is not selfish. The argument for saying that suicide is selfish is: committing suicide is saying that ending the pain that I am in is more important than not causing pain to those who love me. Or to put it another way, my wants are more important than the wants of those who love me.
That has already been done in the U.S. In Kelo v New London the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London could take someone's house in order to give it to someone else (the city had to pay "market value" for the house). Interestingly enough, it was the "liberal" faction of the Court that supported this decision, with the "conservative" side opposing it.
You hit on it exactly, the solution to the current problems with copyright law would be to reduce the term of copyright to some reasonable length. I would recommend a term of something on the order of 28 years with 7 year extensions available at the expiration for a large fee that goes up geometrically with each extension (you could easily convince me that the fee should go up logarithmically rather than geometrically).
Twenty-eight years might be too long, but I think it is the place to start. Once we got the term changed to 28 years we could revisit the length of copyright again in a few years and consider shortening it further.
He might have gotten the recount, but he would not have won the election. In early 2001, several groups went through the ballots and concluded that by counting all of the ballots that the intention of the voter could be discerned George W. Bush won the vote in Florida. The only way for Al Gore to win was to assume that every ballot where there was any question as to the intention of the voter was intended to be a vote for Al Gore, even ones where the voter appeared to intend to vote for someone else but "spoiled" their ballot in some way (such as partially marking for Al Gore and then clearly marking someone else, or marking Al Gore and then scribbling over it and marking someone else, or several other ways where an unbiased observer--or even an observer biased in favor of Al Gore, as these groups mostly were--would conclude that they intended to vote for someone other than Al Gore).
Gore lost in Florida. Several news organizations, including the New York Times, recounted the Florida ballots after the election and concluded that more people in Florida voted for George W. Bush than voted for Al Gore. You can try to spin Al Gore's failed attempt to steal the 2000 election anyway you want, he still actually lost.
That is actually a different subject than what is under discussion in the parent posts. The question under discussion was some variant on, "What happens if Facebook closes their accounts for violation of its Terms of Service?" You are suggesting that one of the parties delete evidence from their Facebook account before the other side has a chance to discover it. The danger with doing that is that you do not know how much either party knows about what the other has done on Facebook. Suppose one party knows that the other sent a message to a third person on a particular date and suspects that it contains something incriminating. Now when they go to look for what was in the message, the message is gone. If they can present evidence that the message had existed, the person who destroyed the message will be punished for destroying evidence.
Facebook does not currently have a legal obligation to allow this access. However, it is clear from legal precedent that if Facebook's cooperation were necessary to allow this access the judge would so order. Actually, your example is perfect, if the court compelled me to give my safe deposit key to my wife and the bank, in response to that order, threw the safe deposit box in the river, the bank would be found guilty of something ranging from contempt of court to destruction of evidence. The bank was not legally obligated to allow my wife access to my safe deposit box only because the court did not believe it necessary to involve the bank in the proceedings. If the bank chose to pro-actively thwart the court's intentions, the court would not respond graciously. I do not know exactly what it is called but there is a legal principle that amounts to "You should have known that the court would compel you to comply if there was any reason for them to believe that you would not do so in the normal course of business."
Once the Judge has ruled that they must share passwords in order to allow the other side to look for evidence any attempt to prevent the other side from looking at what is there will be considered an attempt to destroy evidence. For example, if the court orders me to turn over papers to another party and I shred them instead, it is considered destruction of evidence (even if later someone produces copies of those papers that show that there was no evidence in them).
Yes the legal pairing of marriage has implications regarding the sharing of intellectual property, just like it has implications regarding the sharing of physical property, and in much the same way.
Just look at the Bush v. Gore decision where they decided that one man one vote meant that enough votes were left untallied to effectively hand the election to Bush because they were concerned that too much attention was being paid to those particular ballots.
That is a complete misrepresentation of the Supreme Court decision. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Equal Protection clause was violated by the recount called for by the Florida Supreme Court and that there was not enough time to conduct a recount that met the Equal Protection clause. A significant factor in their decision was that the end result of any Constitutional decision by them would be the same as the result of their ruling. If the Supreme Court had not ruled as it had, it is probable that the Florida legislature would have appointed a group of Electors who would have voted for Bush (according to the U.S. Constitution, each state legislature decides how that state's Electors are chosen). If that had happened it is quite possible that the end result would have been that there were no Electors from the state of Florida (there are several other scenarios in which this would have happened). In which case, the election would have been decided by the U.S. House of Representatives, who would have chosen Bush. Finally, the fact of the matter is that several groups that consistently favor the Democratic Party counted the ballots in Florida later and found that under no reasonable standard would Gore have won the state.