"in history" always implies "until next time" - it's headlines like "worst school shooting ever" that make no sense and generally aren't true (since "ever" includes both the past and the future).
There already is a deal in place where both sides get something, though. If I post a video on YouTube, I get free hosting so I don't have to worry about bandwidth; at the same time, YouTube gets content, which is what drives the site. YouTube can try to change the deal now by including advertising, but I can change the deal as well by saying "screw it, I'm going elsewhere". I wouldn't call it greed, I also don't think that YouTube are just being altruistic do-gooders who only host your video and swallow the bill because they like you so much.
Ultimately, every site has to decide how they want to make money, but I'm not convinced that forced ads for user-generated content are worth it. I prefer the Flickr approach, myself; offer basic accounts with restricted but decent functionality, and then charge a (comparatively small) fee to lift pretty much all restrictions.
I've got a Pro account on Flickr myself, which costs me 2 bucks per month, but I think it's worth it - I've got thousands of photos on the site already that add up to somewhere around 5 GB in total, and I really love the ability to organise my stuff, add it to relevant groups to gain exposure and so on. It's something I gladly pay for, but I would never have gotten a free account on Flickr in the first place if my photos had had ads embedded in them, for instance - the equivalent of embedding ads in Flash videos now. I'm not really into doing videos, but if I ever do, I certainly won't be uploading them to a service that sticks unskippable ads in front of them.
Even though this may sound absolutely cold and cynical, I suppose you get used to it after while - just like people don't care about the more than 40,000 fatalities in traffic accidents in the USA each year.
It's the unexpected, rare, out-of-the-ordinary things that scare us most.
Also, I can play the what-if game all day too. I'd accomplish more by masturbating, but here's my what-if for you: If general gun posession was illegal, who knows if this shooter would have just poisoned a vat of beans in the cafeteria?
Unlikely: people like that want recognition. There's certainly modi operandi that don't involve random shooting sprees (read Andrew Vachss' "A bomb built in hell", for instance - I very much recommend that book), but poisoning a vat of beans doesn't sound like a realistic scenario. The killer doesn't care about people being dead: he cares about killing people, and about people knowing that HE killed people. He wants to feel power and enact revenge, and he wants to shock people and leave a mark and just "stick it to them". Why do you think so many shooting sprees end in suicides?
Sure, people like this could find other things to do if they couldn't get their hands on guns, but poisoning the ingredients used for lunch in the school cafeteria... somebody who finally wants to be heard when he goes out with a bang wouldn't do that.
Fact: Someone with a gun would have been in a better position to shoot the shooter than someone without a gun. In fact, once the event was confirmed, they called some men with guns and those men came and shot the man shooting people.
But those people (I suppose you're referring to the police) were trained to do so, right? They knew how to handle their weapons, they had proper training, and - maybe most importantly - they probably were in contact with each other and wore uniforms so that they were able to identify each other (and, therefore, avoid shooting each other instead of the killer). If they'd been a bunch of random people instead - even ones with proper training -, they likely would've ended up shooting each other instead of the killer.
Seriously, think about it - there is literally NO way to tell the killer apart from a random well-meaning student who just runs around with his gun drawn and fires it occasionally who's just trying to hunt down the real killer. Your only options would be to either shoot the guy and try to incapacitate rather than kill him so that if it turns out he really isn't the killer, at least he'll recover, or to not shoot the guy at all; but in the latter case, you obviously haven't gained anything, and in the former case... well, good luck trying to incapacitate someone without killing him or doing permanent harm, and good luck trying to survive yourself when he thinks *you* are the killer.
It's a nice movie plot scenario - heroic students down gun-touting madman before he kills anyone -, but in real life, it just doesn't work. There's a reason why the police exist and why they are trained to handle situations like this.
Yes, and if this guy lives in a glass bubble, he might not have been able to get a gun. But I will bet you that I can purchase an unregistered handgun within 24 hours in any city over 20,000 people in this country. It might cost a few extra bucks, but it can be had.
I see that argument being thrown around a lot, but one thing I'm wondering about is this: would that still be true if guns weren't as widespread as they are now in the USA? I'm not saying it wouldn't; I'm just not sure either way, and I'm wondering. Food for thought..
Outside of that, don't underestimate things like "it might cost a few extra bucks", either. I have no idea what a gun costs, especially if it's bought illegally, but I estimate you'd have to part with a few hundred bucks at least - money that a student might not have. And also, how does an average person where to buy illegal firearms, anyway? I live in a city with more than 20,000 inhabitants, but I wouldn't know where I could get a gun - I wouldn't even know where to start looking (things like "the seedy side of town", in my experience, mostly exist in RPGs, novels and the like: in real life, you can't just go to the red light district and expect to be able to buy a gun in the first bar you walk into).
None of this would probably stop someone who's determined to go on a shooting spree, but I don't think it's true that guns are equally available illegally no matter how they are regulated. If that were true, they'd also have to be equally available all over the world - but in reality, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Actually, Virginia has very liberal (conservative?) buyer and concealed carry laws. Just about anyone without a record can obtain both with little effort, so by your logic, we should be seeing shooting sprees all over VA.
If that's the case, then by the GP's logic, this shooting spree shouldn't have happened, either - somebody should've just stopped the perpetrator by shooting (and either incapacitating or killing) him.
It didn't, though. If anything, I think this tells that "guns automatically lead to more crimes" and "guns automatically lead to less crimes" are both statements that should be taken with a grain of salt and evaluated critically. I'm not saying that one of them can't still turn out to be true in the end, but things probably aren't as simply as they might seem.
Yes, we've lowered ourselves to the level of the anti-gun nuts, in that regard. I guess that is sad, but it would be sadder to say nothing, do nothing, and watch more innocent people die in Defenseless Victim Zones like Virginia Tech.
...because *not* immediately screaming "GUNS R GOOD MMMKAY" would somehow lead to more people dying? I'm sorry, but appeals to emotion like that sicken me. Can't you at least wait until the bodies are cold before you use them as a justification for your non sequiturs?
Of course a *rational* debate on the merits and flaws of gun control would be good, as would be a rational debate on why things like this happen and how they can be prevented in the future (to the extent that that's possible). And of course, immediately screaming "GUNS R BAD MMMKAY" is just as disgraceful as what you did.
But that doesn't give you a (moral) right to act like an arsehole now. If you see someone screaming "GUNS R BAD MMMKAY" now and using the victims of this shooting spree as a justification... by all means, do tell them that that's sick and tasteless, but also have some fucking decency and common sense and don't do the same thing.
Not to mention that you shouldn't complain about someone do something and then use the fact that he did it as a justification to do exactly the same thing. Hypocrite.
I think the GP's premise differs from yours insofar as that you see evil as a purely utilitarian concept: for you, whether someone is evil or not only depends on their actions, rather than being an intrinsic quality.
I'm not sure I agree with that, though. When someone plans a shooting spree like this, isn't he "evil" (and I'm putting that word in quotes simply because I think that "deranged and in desparate need of treatment" is most likely a better description) when he walks into the school with his gun drawn, ready to shoot everyone he sees, even before he actually *does* shoot anyone?
If the answer to that is yes, then "evil" does not just depend on things like your bodycount, and you cannot deduce from the fact that someone didn't shoot anyone today (what about other days, anyway?) that they're less evil than someone else who did. I'm not saying that there is no difference between someone who goes on shooting sprees and someone who doesn't (not at all!), but I think that "I'm better because I didn't shoot anyone today" is a non sequitur.
Not to mention that if the only reason why you feel that you're a better person than a mass murderer is that you, unlike him, did not commit mass murder, then I'm not sure I'd see that as something to be proud of, anyway. But again, that's probably my non-utilitarian view of concepts like "evil".
I'm not saying these people are victims. I'm saying we live in a sick society.
Let me do that for you, then: these people are - well, were - victims. Oh, sure, they're also perpetrators, mass killers, and most likely batshit insane, but it's not like you can't be a perpetrator and a victim at the same time: that's a false dichotomy.
Similarly, I'd also like to remark that there is a difference between "excuse" and "explain". What killers like these do is unexcusable, but that doesn't mean it's unexplainable or impossible to understand on a rational level. I think people are making a mistake when they just condemn everyone who commits a crime - no matter how heinous - as simply being evil; there's almost always a reason why it happened, and if we want to avoid things like this from now on and keep them from happening again, we'd better make sure we understand those reasons so we can do something about them.
Um, you know, in order for "only one person" to die, the killer would've had to be shot before he actually did anything himself. Do you honestly want to live in a society where people randomly shoot you and try to kill you because "OMGhesgotagun!!!1"?
A doctor can study your broken leg and understand how/why it broke or what needs to be done to fix it even when his own legs are in order. A lawyer can attack the RIAA's litigation tactics even when he doesn't employ similar tactics himself in other cases. Historians can study what happened in, say, Cambodia without being like the Khmer Rouge.
Saying that you can't understand it is the easy way out - it's just codespeak for "I don't want to understand it; I don't even want to look, because I fear what I might find". Now, *you* don't have to look, of course, but when can't or don't want to, at least acknowledge that and let others do their work and be happy that they're doing the things you can't.
Inciting others to kill, or attack a religion or race is not something that should be allowed but is, especially if the "free speech" advocates are Islamic Extremists.
Be careful what you wish for. If "attacking a religion" was really made illegal, monikers like "islamic extremists" might already be considered over the top. Sure, you might say it's not going to happen, since you're not referring to *all* muslims, but I'm sure that people who talk about "jewish pigs" will also try to bail out by saying "oh, but I didn't refer to all jews, I only referred to those jews who actually *are* pigs".
I frankly don't see myself why "attacking a religion or race" is something that should be banned. Inciting others to kill (or commit other crimes)? Sure. Slandering groups of people by making false and - well - slanderous claims in order to harm their reputation? Sure, outlaw that, too. But I don't see why statements like "muslims suck" or "jews are pigs" or "christians are shit" would have to be outlawed. They're vile and shocking, of course, and I don't think that they're acceptable (not at all!), but I also don't think that they should be illegal. Ultimately, you're just trying to censor people's opinions, anyway, and that's neither justified nor is it going to work.
This refers to the story's submitter, Roland Piquepaille, who has, shall we say, a bit of a reputation on Slashdot. (And not a good one, either, just in case there's any doubt...)
Most of the search market is controlled by google.
Is it really? According to Alexa, the top three websites in the world are, in order, 1) Yahoo, 2) msn and 3) Google. Maybe all the people who visit the former two do so for the news, or the groups, or the mail, but I'm not sure your hypothesis is automatically valid. Google sure seems to be the search engine of choice among geeks, but what about Joe Random and Suzie Sixpack? I don't think you can just extrapolate without doing any actual research here.
But if they wind up owning much of the internet its not going to be good for the rest of us.
I would love to be able to look forward 10 years and see exactly where this is heading. The don't be evil bit may just be ironic by then.
Wow, talk about ominous gloom-and-doom prophecies. I'd love to be able to look forward ten years to see where everything's heading, too, but neither of us can. I think the term "FUD" is quite appropriate here: what you're trying to create is fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the absence of any actual arguments.
Oh yeah, and since I just read your comment again, let me give another example:
How much have they changed linux to optimise their operations? Who would benefit from the same patches? Nobody knows.
I'm sorry, but that's FUD, too, although some rather underhanded one. The reason is simple: while the question "how much have they changed Linux" is a valid one, your second question and the answer you give to that not only already implies that the answer to the first one is "a lot" but also implies that others would not only benefit from those alleged patches but also that Google is holding them back for the sole purpose of not contributing back to the community - being evil, in essence.
And while Google's contributions to the kernel are indeed much smaller than those made by other companies, that's still just FUD until you actually come up with some solid evidence to back up your claims. But then, the fact that you don't actually go ahead and *openly* accuse Google of doing anything unethical is probably evidence that you do not, in fact, have any.
In the United States, that doesn't work because our congresmen represent geographic areas [...]
You've got a bicameral parliament already, though, don't you? Why not just use one house (say, Senate) to ensure that the states have their say and that the small ones don't get overriden all the time, and turn the House of Representatives into, oh, I don't know, a house of *representatives*?:)
Of course, adopting a better voting system that actually seeks to capture voter intent would be a good idea as well.
Hardcopies of books will still sell, maybe even more if they're freely available on the net before purchase. I can count several books (of a technical nature) that I have purchased of hardcopies, even though the entire contents of the book was (legally even) available for free on the Internet.
Indeed, and the same goes for non-technical works, too. I don't know about anyone else, but I *like* to read actual books - hardcovers, ideally, printed in an eye-pleasing font on good paper, beautiful bound, with a ribbon and everything you expect from a book. Softcovers are acceptable as well, as long as the paper quality is good; but in either case, the simple fact is that actually holding a book makes reading so much more fun than sitting in front of your computer and staring at the screen.
And don't tell me I could just print books I got on the Internet - a stack of paper is not the same as a book, either, and besides, once you do that, you'd have to factor in costs, anyway, so the "it's available for free" argument would not apply anymore, either. Oh, sure, the book itself would still be available for free, but tell that to my wallet when I have to pay for paper, ink/toner, and the like.
Similarly, going to a bookstore is just different from going to some website and downloading a PDF (if it's even a PDF and not just a text file!), and I think I can safely say that I, for one, would still go to bookstores and buy the dead tree editions.
Oh, actually, you can win a war - it just depends on what "you" means. You're right when you're talking about a nation, a people, or any other group, but if you just look at those who are ultimately responsible for initiating a war, you'll get a different picture.
Case in point: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, may have cost the lives of thousands of coalition soldiers (US-Americans and others), and they may also have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands (at least) of civilians; they have also cost tax payers an insane amount of money, they've encouraged terrorism, and they've alienated the USA from much of the rest of the world by showing them that the USA are willing to do whatever it takes to reach its goals, even if it's abductions, torture, murder, locking up innocent people forever in inhumane conditions, and so on.
However, if you look at people like Bush and his buddies... you'll find that things don't look so bad for them personally. Bush managed to get re-elected (although some election rigging probably also helped there), they're making tons of money, and they are able to implement their political goals and secure their power - arguably, they have won.
And the same's true in many modern conflicts, too. Back in "the old days", kings and leaders at least used to lead their troops into battle and ran a real risk of getting killed or injured themselves; these days, they are nothing but cowards who let others do the dirty work for them and sacrifice them like pawns in a game of chess.
Slashdot Mirror
"in history" always implies "until next time" - it's headlines like "worst school shooting ever" that make no sense and generally aren't true (since "ever" includes both the past and the future).
There already is a deal in place where both sides get something, though. If I post a video on YouTube, I get free hosting so I don't have to worry about bandwidth; at the same time, YouTube gets content, which is what drives the site. YouTube can try to change the deal now by including advertising, but I can change the deal as well by saying "screw it, I'm going elsewhere". I wouldn't call it greed, I also don't think that YouTube are just being altruistic do-gooders who only host your video and swallow the bill because they like you so much.
Ultimately, every site has to decide how they want to make money, but I'm not convinced that forced ads for user-generated content are worth it. I prefer the Flickr approach, myself; offer basic accounts with restricted but decent functionality, and then charge a (comparatively small) fee to lift pretty much all restrictions.
I've got a Pro account on Flickr myself, which costs me 2 bucks per month, but I think it's worth it - I've got thousands of photos on the site already that add up to somewhere around 5 GB in total, and I really love the ability to organise my stuff, add it to relevant groups to gain exposure and so on. It's something I gladly pay for, but I would never have gotten a free account on Flickr in the first place if my photos had had ads embedded in them, for instance - the equivalent of embedding ads in Flash videos now. I'm not really into doing videos, but if I ever do, I certainly won't be uploading them to a service that sticks unskippable ads in front of them.
It's so that you can defend yourself against the English soldiers when the king of Great Britain sends them your way.
Even though this may sound absolutely cold and cynical, I suppose you get used to it after while - just like people don't care about the more than 40,000 fatalities in traffic accidents in the USA each year.
It's the unexpected, rare, out-of-the-ordinary things that scare us most.
Unlikely: people like that want recognition. There's certainly modi operandi that don't involve random shooting sprees (read Andrew Vachss' "A bomb built in hell", for instance - I very much recommend that book), but poisoning a vat of beans doesn't sound like a realistic scenario. The killer doesn't care about people being dead: he cares about killing people, and about people knowing that HE killed people. He wants to feel power and enact revenge, and he wants to shock people and leave a mark and just "stick it to them". Why do you think so many shooting sprees end in suicides?
Sure, people like this could find other things to do if they couldn't get their hands on guns, but poisoning the ingredients used for lunch in the school cafeteria... somebody who finally wants to be heard when he goes out with a bang wouldn't do that.
But those people (I suppose you're referring to the police) were trained to do so, right? They knew how to handle their weapons, they had proper training, and - maybe most importantly - they probably were in contact with each other and wore uniforms so that they were able to identify each other (and, therefore, avoid shooting each other instead of the killer). If they'd been a bunch of random people instead - even ones with proper training -, they likely would've ended up shooting each other instead of the killer.
Seriously, think about it - there is literally NO way to tell the killer apart from a random well-meaning student who just runs around with his gun drawn and fires it occasionally who's just trying to hunt down the real killer. Your only options would be to either shoot the guy and try to incapacitate rather than kill him so that if it turns out he really isn't the killer, at least he'll recover, or to not shoot the guy at all; but in the latter case, you obviously haven't gained anything, and in the former case... well, good luck trying to incapacitate someone without killing him or doing permanent harm, and good luck trying to survive yourself when he thinks *you* are the killer.
It's a nice movie plot scenario - heroic students down gun-touting madman before he kills anyone -, but in real life, it just doesn't work. There's a reason why the police exist and why they are trained to handle situations like this.
I see that argument being thrown around a lot, but one thing I'm wondering about is this: would that still be true if guns weren't as widespread as they are now in the USA? I'm not saying it wouldn't; I'm just not sure either way, and I'm wondering. Food for thought..
Outside of that, don't underestimate things like "it might cost a few extra bucks", either. I have no idea what a gun costs, especially if it's bought illegally, but I estimate you'd have to part with a few hundred bucks at least - money that a student might not have. And also, how does an average person where to buy illegal firearms, anyway? I live in a city with more than 20,000 inhabitants, but I wouldn't know where I could get a gun - I wouldn't even know where to start looking (things like "the seedy side of town", in my experience, mostly exist in RPGs, novels and the like: in real life, you can't just go to the red light district and expect to be able to buy a gun in the first bar you walk into).
None of this would probably stop someone who's determined to go on a shooting spree, but I don't think it's true that guns are equally available illegally no matter how they are regulated. If that were true, they'd also have to be equally available all over the world - but in reality, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Hear, hear!
:)
Thanks for that comment; you've just reminded me (yet) again why I marked you as a friend.
It didn't, though. If anything, I think this tells that "guns automatically lead to more crimes" and "guns automatically lead to less crimes" are both statements that should be taken with a grain of salt and evaluated critically. I'm not saying that one of them can't still turn out to be true in the end, but things probably aren't as simply as they might seem.
...because *not* immediately screaming "GUNS R GOOD MMMKAY" would somehow lead to more people dying? I'm sorry, but appeals to emotion like that sicken me. Can't you at least wait until the bodies are cold before you use them as a justification for your non sequiturs?
Of course a *rational* debate on the merits and flaws of gun control would be good, as would be a rational debate on why things like this happen and how they can be prevented in the future (to the extent that that's possible). And of course, immediately screaming "GUNS R BAD MMMKAY" is just as disgraceful as what you did.
But that doesn't give you a (moral) right to act like an arsehole now. If you see someone screaming "GUNS R BAD MMMKAY" now and using the victims of this shooting spree as a justification... by all means, do tell them that that's sick and tasteless, but also have some fucking decency and common sense and don't do the same thing.
Not to mention that you shouldn't complain about someone do something and then use the fact that he did it as a justification to do exactly the same thing. Hypocrite.
I think the GP's premise differs from yours insofar as that you see evil as a purely utilitarian concept: for you, whether someone is evil or not only depends on their actions, rather than being an intrinsic quality.
I'm not sure I agree with that, though. When someone plans a shooting spree like this, isn't he "evil" (and I'm putting that word in quotes simply because I think that "deranged and in desparate need of treatment" is most likely a better description) when he walks into the school with his gun drawn, ready to shoot everyone he sees, even before he actually *does* shoot anyone?
If the answer to that is yes, then "evil" does not just depend on things like your bodycount, and you cannot deduce from the fact that someone didn't shoot anyone today (what about other days, anyway?) that they're less evil than someone else who did. I'm not saying that there is no difference between someone who goes on shooting sprees and someone who doesn't (not at all!), but I think that "I'm better because I didn't shoot anyone today" is a non sequitur.
Not to mention that if the only reason why you feel that you're a better person than a mass murderer is that you, unlike him, did not commit mass murder, then I'm not sure I'd see that as something to be proud of, anyway. But again, that's probably my non-utilitarian view of concepts like "evil".
Let me do that for you, then: these people are - well, were - victims. Oh, sure, they're also perpetrators, mass killers, and most likely batshit insane, but it's not like you can't be a perpetrator and a victim at the same time: that's a false dichotomy.
Similarly, I'd also like to remark that there is a difference between "excuse" and "explain". What killers like these do is unexcusable, but that doesn't mean it's unexplainable or impossible to understand on a rational level. I think people are making a mistake when they just condemn everyone who commits a crime - no matter how heinous - as simply being evil; there's almost always a reason why it happened, and if we want to avoid things like this from now on and keep them from happening again, we'd better make sure we understand those reasons so we can do something about them.
Um, you know, in order for "only one person" to die, the killer would've had to be shot before he actually did anything himself. Do you honestly want to live in a society where people randomly shoot you and try to kill you because "OMGhesgotagun!!!1"?
That's just not true.
A doctor can study your broken leg and understand how/why it broke or what needs to be done to fix it even when his own legs are in order. A lawyer can attack the RIAA's litigation tactics even when he doesn't employ similar tactics himself in other cases. Historians can study what happened in, say, Cambodia without being like the Khmer Rouge.
Saying that you can't understand it is the easy way out - it's just codespeak for "I don't want to understand it; I don't even want to look, because I fear what I might find". Now, *you* don't have to look, of course, but when can't or don't want to, at least acknowledge that and let others do their work and be happy that they're doing the things you can't.
Be careful what you wish for. If "attacking a religion" was really made illegal, monikers like "islamic extremists" might already be considered over the top. Sure, you might say it's not going to happen, since you're not referring to *all* muslims, but I'm sure that people who talk about "jewish pigs" will also try to bail out by saying "oh, but I didn't refer to all jews, I only referred to those jews who actually *are* pigs".
I frankly don't see myself why "attacking a religion or race" is something that should be banned. Inciting others to kill (or commit other crimes)? Sure. Slandering groups of people by making false and - well - slanderous claims in order to harm their reputation? Sure, outlaw that, too. But I don't see why statements like "muslims suck" or "jews are pigs" or "christians are shit" would have to be outlawed. They're vile and shocking, of course, and I don't think that they're acceptable (not at all!), but I also don't think that they should be illegal. Ultimately, you're just trying to censor people's opinions, anyway, and that's neither justified nor is it going to work.
Not to mention that the WWW was developed in Europe - it certainly doesn't seem unfitting that Firefox is more popular here.
Do you usually have lit candles or a lit fireplace in the room when you're asleep? I don't.
Sounds like a great business model that ensures a steady revenue stream for the manufacturer. :)
This refers to the story's submitter, Roland Piquepaille, who has, shall we say, a bit of a reputation on Slashdot. (And not a good one, either, just in case there's any doubt...)
Is it really? According to Alexa, the top three websites in the world are, in order, 1) Yahoo, 2) msn and 3) Google. Maybe all the people who visit the former two do so for the news, or the groups, or the mail, but I'm not sure your hypothesis is automatically valid. Google sure seems to be the search engine of choice among geeks, but what about Joe Random and Suzie Sixpack? I don't think you can just extrapolate without doing any actual research here.
Wow, talk about ominous gloom-and-doom prophecies. I'd love to be able to look forward ten years to see where everything's heading, too, but neither of us can. I think the term "FUD" is quite appropriate here: what you're trying to create is fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the absence of any actual arguments.
Oh yeah, and since I just read your comment again, let me give another example:
I'm sorry, but that's FUD, too, although some rather underhanded one. The reason is simple: while the question "how much have they changed Linux" is a valid one, your second question and the answer you give to that not only already implies that the answer to the first one is "a lot" but also implies that others would not only benefit from those alleged patches but also that Google is holding them back for the sole purpose of not contributing back to the community - being evil, in essence.
And while Google's contributions to the kernel are indeed much smaller than those made by other companies, that's still just FUD until you actually come up with some solid evidence to back up your claims. But then, the fact that you don't actually go ahead and *openly* accuse Google of doing anything unethical is probably evidence that you do not, in fact, have any.
How exactly are you supposed to find out it doesn't work without opening it?
You've got a bicameral parliament already, though, don't you? Why not just use one house (say, Senate) to ensure that the states have their say and that the small ones don't get overriden all the time, and turn the House of Representatives into, oh, I don't know, a house of *representatives*? :)
Of course, adopting a better voting system that actually seeks to capture voter intent would be a good idea as well.
Indeed, and the same goes for non-technical works, too. I don't know about anyone else, but I *like* to read actual books - hardcovers, ideally, printed in an eye-pleasing font on good paper, beautiful bound, with a ribbon and everything you expect from a book. Softcovers are acceptable as well, as long as the paper quality is good; but in either case, the simple fact is that actually holding a book makes reading so much more fun than sitting in front of your computer and staring at the screen.
And don't tell me I could just print books I got on the Internet - a stack of paper is not the same as a book, either, and besides, once you do that, you'd have to factor in costs, anyway, so the "it's available for free" argument would not apply anymore, either. Oh, sure, the book itself would still be available for free, but tell that to my wallet when I have to pay for paper, ink/toner, and the like.
Similarly, going to a bookstore is just different from going to some website and downloading a PDF (if it's even a PDF and not just a text file!), and I think I can safely say that I, for one, would still go to bookstores and buy the dead tree editions.
You're putting up a strawman, though. Whoever has been suggesting that copyright should be eliminated completely?
Oh, actually, you can win a war - it just depends on what "you" means. You're right when you're talking about a nation, a people, or any other group, but if you just look at those who are ultimately responsible for initiating a war, you'll get a different picture.
Case in point: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, may have cost the lives of thousands of coalition soldiers (US-Americans and others), and they may also have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands (at least) of civilians; they have also cost tax payers an insane amount of money, they've encouraged terrorism, and they've alienated the USA from much of the rest of the world by showing them that the USA are willing to do whatever it takes to reach its goals, even if it's abductions, torture, murder, locking up innocent people forever in inhumane conditions, and so on.
However, if you look at people like Bush and his buddies... you'll find that things don't look so bad for them personally. Bush managed to get re-elected (although some election rigging probably also helped there), they're making tons of money, and they are able to implement their political goals and secure their power - arguably, they have won.
And the same's true in many modern conflicts, too. Back in "the old days", kings and leaders at least used to lead their troops into battle and ran a real risk of getting killed or injured themselves; these days, they are nothing but cowards who let others do the dirty work for them and sacrifice them like pawns in a game of chess.