For example, Disney is still pimping out a 1920s creation - Mickey Mouse.
Didn't Disney violate someone's copyright with Mickey Mouse or something? I don't remember exactly, but just like Microsoft's behaviour it just goes to show that the people fearing thieves most are the thieves themselves.
Well, that you were arguing about something completely different doesn't make you wrong.
"Whichever comes first" would be especially problematic as it would encourage public domain killing squads who go around and kill artists so their work becomes public domain.
In which case they simply stop selling that crop and sell a different one which isn't protected by patents. That already happened with some crops, by the way.
Of course, after the patents run out, it will be legal to keep the seeds of the former year for the next one - no wait, it won't, because the end of the patent protection doesn't mean that the license ends.
Also, terminator genes will be used to make it not only illegal but impossible. This way, everyone has to buy from them, or they aren't economically viable (as GM crops have higher yield and therefore are more cost effective - until the prices are raised because there isn't anything else anymore).
So, the GP is correct, though he may be understating the problems a bit.
The trick of the US system is that there is no obvious dictatorial power like there was in the Soviet Union, but that the politicians are just puppets of business interests. The experience of the third Reich (should have) taught business that it is very stupid to allow one to become emperor, because then he controls all power and not business.
Therefore, representative democracy is in the interest of business: representativity, because the people cannot be allowed to decide themselves, because bribing 300,000,000 people is harder than bribing 3,000. Democracy, because an emperor cannot be trusted not to turn on his masters, so he has to be switched out regularly.
What implications does this have to voting? Well, firstly, there will be no emperor, the system will continue as currently. But secondly, people realize that their vote doesn't count (or they actively endorse the current government). Thus, less and less people vote, until only intelligent people vote (i.e. voting is a necessary, but not a sufficient criterion for being intelligent).
It's all the same in any case. To me, that (like the cold war) always smelled very much like the "The Judean People's Front" vs "The People's Front of Judea". (see my sig)
Except that in Germany, being part of continental Europe, creator's right1 is used, not copyright. Of course, this doesn't really make a difference for the GPL, as creator's right is a superset of copyright. But the FSF ran into problems there, because the FSF requires assignment of copyright, but while anglo-saxon copyright can be assigned or sold, this isn't possible in the same way with creator's right (as the protection of the original author is stronger in that he can't just abdict all of his rights), thus requiring some kind of extended license.
1 Wikipedia claims the correct translation to be moral rights, but moral rights encompass only part of creator's right, the other part being what is known as copyright. The problem with this is that the line between the inalienable rights of the creator and the rights to be sold is interpreted differently everywhere, the Berne convention nonwithstanding. Most notably, the US doesn't recognize all moral rights, thus neglecting the protection of the original creator and strenghtening the position of the distributor.
Uh. I think you misunderstood what I meant. I wanted to point out how Saddam was told he would win the war like the US government was told that Saddam had WMDs because that was what they wanted to hear. Forcing people to tell what one wants to hear rather what is true is indeed the hallmark of any stupid government. (Which, of course, resonates well with your point about them not having read their evil overlord handbooks.)
Also, I think that the intelligent thing to do for the US would have been to stick to Afghanistan, because thats where 100% of the world stood behind them. But because the Bush family had "unfinished business" with Iraq, it was a given from the start that they would go to Iraq, they just needed an excuse.
However, while the US was able to fight the war (which I, as I said, did not want to dispute), it is very doubtful whether it could handle any additional fights before the occupations are brought to conclusion. Of course, I don't know any details, but it seems very much like the US is in danger of overstretching itself, both in terms of manpower and financially, because war doesn't have any positive economical effect because the only things it produces are death and terrorists.
Also, the best way is taking care that they don't know they are conquered. The US indeed had perfected this over its history: Instead of sending in the troops (which they still did more often than is healthy), they just exported their "culture". For example: Nearly everyone uses Windows (or eats at McDonalds or Burger King, but that's no/.ty example). When it is paid for, the money flows to the US (of course, it isn't always paid for, which is a problem to the US like the thirteen colonies not paying taxes to the queen was a problem for England).
You may think that, but GPLv3 is the very same as GPLv2, except with some legal loopholes closed, making it harder to violate the spirit of the license while conforming to its letter. Thus, if you don't like GPLv3, you shouldn't have used any GPL'd software in the first place, no matter which version, but something else.
The main idea of the GPL is that you are free to do what you want unless you infringe on the freedom of others, including the original author - this is, indeed, the very definition of the concept of freedom, especially as contrasted to the basic concept of ability to do something. I, for one, would not want to release the code, allowing anyone to come along and close it, thus deprieving me of their improvements while they continue to live off of mine.
Of course, the main focus is the user: If I am to purchase software (yes, I do always purchase the software I use or at least donate to the project - though not the inflated price of what a commercial alternative would have cost me), I don't want my business process getting broken just because the seller of the software goes under, discontinues the product or otherwise goes contrary to the intentions I have with the product. The GPL offers me this (apart from being cheaper).
Therefore, if you don't want the GPL, what you are saying is that you hate the user and, indeed, the developer, if you argue that e.g. Tivo should be allowed to not give back: You are claiming that freedom is to do what you want, even if it means taking away freedom of others. Indeed, this delusion of freedom including the ability to take away freedom is the fallacy developers releasing software under the BSD-license or similar succumbed to.
The only one having difficulties are those who don't offer any value: If you just take some distribution and resell it, you won't do that good - which is why Red Hat etc. offer additional services (or consider those resellers who send you burned or pressed CDs for a fee, which is a service, too).
And before you start: One can very well make money with GPL'd software as with any other software. If you fail at that, don't blame the GPL, blame yourself because you (like me) lack the business sense to sell things to people. Put differently: Windows still gets pirated, it's just less legal and Microsoft still makes money, because they know how to make money (and that's all they do).
However, what clashes with most people's monetaristic upbringing is that one doesn't necessarily needs to be paid in money but in material ways: Where the BSD license simply communistically gives their code away, ready to be abused by people who put their own profit above cooperation, the GPL makes a perfectly capitalistic trade: "I give you my code, but then you need to give me the code you build on mine".
While your point is valid, the title of your post irks me.
So I've got a question: How, exactly, can you determine who did the modding and which were their motivations? Because, as far as I can see, there is absolutely no practical way to determine who did it and why. Therefore, I find your interpretation of it being "Left-Wing Fascists" to mod the GP off-topic somewhat doubtful.
Indeed, one would have much more reason to assume it to be "Right-Wing Fascists" - after all, while his main argument is just a rational observation (which only the insanest of the left - which doubtlessly exist - would have taken as slighting them), while his PS notes his position, making him seem left, therefore a target of right-wingers because he doesn't rally behind the president in an unconditional way but thinks for himself, recognizing an error, no matter which side makes it.
Why, then, do you get the idea that it is "Left-Wing Fascists" who did the modding? Well, I didn't want to randomly accuse people, so I read up about you (which is more than you can claim about those who did the modding). The image which resulted demonstrated impressively that you are, indeed, a "Right-Wing Fascist", projecting your own behaviour on others, perceiving them as being "on the other side".
The most interesting point is: As pointed out above, the PS makes the right mod the GP down. However, because the GP dares to criticize "the left stance" (which is why he feels the need to add the PS), you think he is on the right side (because, after all, lefties could never ever criticize themselves - which is exactly what I meant by projection), you side with him and claim that it were lefties who did the modding down.
Do you know whom this reminds me of? Not wanting to invoke Godwins law by pointing out how Hitler started the second world war, I give you the example of Operation Gladio: This NATO stay-behind-organization made, on command of the CIA, terroristic strikes in several countries, especially Europe, and blamed it on the communists.
There's also another thing of note: Here in Europe, we have a balance between left and right (though we became significantly more fascist, i.e. right, in the aftermath of 9/11). From our perspective, the Democrats and Republicans are both as far right as the fringemost right parties we have here. Thus, we can only shake our heads at your irrational fear of any hint of social responsibility, endangering your ability (not freedom, though you righties call it such) to take freedom away.
The problem was compounded by the fact that the intelligence community seemed to be largely composed of yes men who were looking to tell the president what he wanted to hear.
Yeah. Though if he hadn't just always shoot the messenger on bringing bad news, they might have told him the truth - namely, that his country was in no way fit to fight this war - and would quickly left for somewhere else.
So you want to tell us that the bible is no fantasy novel? The bible is just cobbled together from earlier myths (in a much uglier fashion than the HP novels, I might add), so why couldn't Harry borrowed from them? Especially seeing how, in contrast to Narnia, HP isn't drawing exclusively from Christianity but from pretty much every mythology in the world.
That is if you have mastered the syntax of the language of course.
Then claiming I took it out of context means that you assert that I didn't master the syntax. While I must admit that this is a very elegant ad hominem, it definitely doesn't show that I took it out of context: If I actually didn't master the syntax, how would I have been able to write a compileable program in the first place? It only shows that you believe that there is a dichotomy between "the author writes bad code" and "the reader can't read", not admitting the possibility that one could express rather complex concepts in a program.
Why should we care about obese people when they can't even make any effort to look after themselves?
Because they, like smokers, are driving up the cost of health insurance?
Also, as I pointed out in another post, shared responsibility is twice the responsibility: One shouldn't blame either the obese or the industry but both.
I know you are used to the situation in the US, but if you actually made an effort to look after yourself by reading the ingredient lists and then travelled to Europe and did the same there, you'd realize that in the US, nearly all food has additives like HCFS in poisonous amounts.
Also, specificially fructose has the effect of making you even more hungry, so you can't really stop eating - this is intended by the industry, because they make more money that way, but you're going to need more self-control to stop eating in such a situation than you need to stop masturbating.
Thus, the industry bears responsibility (not the whole, but not none, either) for the obesity in the US by forcing it upon the people by making it hard to get anything which isn't poisoned. For example, you can see obese people in Europe, too, and according to you, this is presumably self-inflicted, but they are much less common than in the US simply because the food available to buy is so much healthier in the first place.
Furthermore, the industry (and, in the same way, the government) has, as noted above, an interest in the people being weak and stupid, because otherwise they couldn't make their profits. Therefore, they do their best to keep them that way by methods like lobbying for weakening the regulations on what may go into food and how it needs to be noted on the package or at least not strenghtening them. Sometimes they even sue others to disallow them from writing on their products that they do not contain a certain poison, because the people then would flock to that product instead of theirs.
That was a joke about those Nigerian scams. You see, they laugh at you for being so gullible for sending them money.
Wait a minute - you're believing that you're buying your food from China? I knew you USians don't know anything about the outside world, but you don't even know what happens in your own country - sad.
The US is the primary food exporter in the world (of course, many farmers are paid not to produce because otherwise the market would be oversatiated), the HCFS produced from US corn to subsidize US farmers (instead of buying healthy South American sugar), the beef you eat and the milk you drink being from all-American, hormone and antibiotica poisoned cattle and so on: You're poisoning yourself.
They don't say that it's ok to be who you are. In fact, they say that it's not ok to be who you are (or how should we interpret those ugly beauty ideals?) but that they don't give a shit about what happens to you (if you're obese, nobody is going to care about it).
Also, lack of self-control doesn't excuse the industry from intentionally filling all food up with fructose and other stuff in a less-than-healthy dosage.
If they laugh at how much money they make off stupid Americans, they're from Asia.
I will now smugly criticize the lacking geographical knowledge of you Americans in an European way by pointing out that Nigeria lies in Africa, not in Asia.
There may be other things who can cause obesity, but fructose in itself is sufficient to cause obesity. And the consumer cannot possibly avoid eating large quantities of it because the food industry puts large quantities of it in every food because it causes people to be more hungry and therefore eat more which causes two things: firstly, it makes people fat. Secondly, it gives the food industry greater profits. And they only care about the latter.
You can't buy what isn't sold: To get something healthy you have to hunt it like our ancestors did (and that is going to be toxic, too, due to companies dumping toxic waste and fertilizers into the environment), because in the stores you won't find anything which isn't filled with toxic amounts of fructose and other stuff, be it because it isn't available or because the food industry sues them not to point it out, because this would mean people would live healthier at the expense of their profits.
Really? Less time intensive I can see, as for cooking I need less time than driving to a restaurant, waiting there to get the food and driving back home. But in my experience, boxed meals are at least twice as expensive as if I cook myself (six times if one considers that they usually are of less volume than when you make it yourself; not even starting on nutriutional value). After all, a restaurant not only has to pay for the foodstuffs, but also someone to purchase them, someone to prepare them and someone to bring them to your table; and then there come things like paying for the localities (rent or property expenses), the furniture, the tools etc.
Shared responsibility is twice the responsibility.
The stupidity of one party doesn't excuse the unethical behaviour of the other - and the other way around.
If one smokes, who is responsible for the cancer? He who is so stupid to smoke or the tobacco companies who push smoking by advertising and lobbying? Both are.
If one eats incorrectly, who is responsible for the obesity? He who is so stupid to eat/let his kids eat things making them fat or those who lobby for making it harder to find healthy food? Both are.
You really do not appreciate how it is intentionally made difficult to do the right thing if it isn't in the interest of the industry. One really can't go anywhere without getting fast food or smoke getting shoved in his face.
Of course, you and I probably don't fall for that. But other people do. And why? Because they are weak and stupid. And why are they weak and stupid? Because corporations and government both love them that way and thus make sure they are.
A company I worked for started as an Open Source company for server side data processing during the dot com boom. However, we often got complaints about how badly the code is written (hey, how else should we make sure that nobody steals it?). But the last straw came when we got a complaint from the ESRB because some old lady saw our code when her son hacked it and fainted because she saw all those variables called "f*ck" and "sh*t" (I still doubt that they legetimately could do that).
So we closed the source to prevent a lawsuit. This has obviously helped, because we stopped receiving complaints how bad the code quality was, so it must have improved. Accordingly, our software was seen in a positive light, giving us enough profits to survive the dot com bust. Of course, some complained that they couldn't read the code, but we've had it with those Open Source Zealots after they nearly caused us to get sued and go bankrupt (hey, so we copied code from the GNU project - who cares?).
However, we soon found a new problem. See, we didn't only sell our main product, but also certain libraries which enabled the main product to be embedded in other software. Of course, we didn't sell those libraries directly because they had no GUI that way and we didn't want to be sued, so we only sold them to those who specificially asked for them and sued everyone under the DMCA who mentioned their existence. However, some hackers had a look at the symbol tables and complained about the interface being so unclear. So we started stripping all symbols from the libraries and all our executables (yes, I know we were idealistic in not doing so in the first place). However, the work invested there, including writing a script which sent the executables to a special server with an early web 2.0-application doing the stripping, proved useless as the sale of the libraries was discontinued due to lack of demand.
The same time, some other problems showed when users complained about the clunkyness of the GUI of our main product (I must say that we were lucky not to have used a command line interface - just imagine the complaints of people who didn't know of the existence of the command line about how hard it is to use). We first thought that it might have something to do with the standard Java GUI, so we ported the application to.NET (which meant a complete rewrite, but without the source, we didn't have another choice - not that we would have done anything else even if we kept it, because if we had the source, the code would be so ugly we couldn't understand it and would be forced to rewrite it). Of course, this meant that users of MacOS or Linux couldn't use it, but they didn't buy it in the first place: Our userbase was primarily Windows, which was also why we didn't offer the MacOS and Linux versions on our web page, because the work needed to add two more option buttons besides the windows one would have been inappropriate considering how little the market for the other versions was.
However, the complaints continued. Experienced by our experience with the source code, we decided that we needed to overhaul our user interface in a similar way. So we started writing our second-to-last version by removing all text and replaced it with images which blinked and changed when you pressed one. Some then started selling it as computer games, granting us significant revenue. However, our management - fearing another run-in with the law and being disconcerted by the complaints failing to cease in spite of this superior user friendlyness - wisely decided that our efforts were insufficient and rewrote the user interface such that it was perfectly clean and predictable. Of course, there was no way we could make it work with our back-end code, because we lacked source code or documentation, but the customers finally were satisfied, as evidenced by the lack of complaints.
Today, the company is bankrupt, due completely unrelated lawsuits in which we failed to
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Didn't Disney violate someone's copyright with Mickey Mouse or something? I don't remember exactly, but just like Microsoft's behaviour it just goes to show that the people fearing thieves most are the thieves themselves.
Well, that you were arguing about something completely different doesn't make you wrong.
"Whichever comes first" would be especially problematic as it would encourage public domain killing squads who go around and kill artists so their work becomes public domain.
In which case they simply stop selling that crop and sell a different one which isn't protected by patents. That already happened with some crops, by the way.
Of course, after the patents run out, it will be legal to keep the seeds of the former year for the next one - no wait, it won't, because the end of the patent protection doesn't mean that the license ends.
Also, terminator genes will be used to make it not only illegal but impossible. This way, everyone has to buy from them, or they aren't economically viable (as GM crops have higher yield and therefore are more cost effective - until the prices are raised because there isn't anything else anymore).
So, the GP is correct, though he may be understating the problems a bit.
The trick of the US system is that there is no obvious dictatorial power like there was in the Soviet Union, but that the politicians are just puppets of business interests. The experience of the third Reich (should have) taught business that it is very stupid to allow one to become emperor, because then he controls all power and not business.
Therefore, representative democracy is in the interest of business: representativity, because the people cannot be allowed to decide themselves, because bribing 300,000,000 people is harder than bribing 3,000. Democracy, because an emperor cannot be trusted not to turn on his masters, so he has to be switched out regularly.
What implications does this have to voting? Well, firstly, there will be no emperor, the system will continue as currently. But secondly, people realize that their vote doesn't count (or they actively endorse the current government). Thus, less and less people vote, until only intelligent people vote (i.e. voting is a necessary, but not a sufficient criterion for being intelligent).
It's all the same in any case. To me, that (like the cold war) always smelled very much like the "The Judean People's Front" vs "The People's Front of Judea". (see my sig)
Except that in Germany, being part of continental Europe, creator's right1 is used, not copyright. Of course, this doesn't really make a difference for the GPL, as creator's right is a superset of copyright. But the FSF ran into problems there, because the FSF requires assignment of copyright, but while anglo-saxon copyright can be assigned or sold, this isn't possible in the same way with creator's right (as the protection of the original author is stronger in that he can't just abdict all of his rights), thus requiring some kind of extended license.
1 Wikipedia claims the correct translation to be moral rights, but moral rights encompass only part of creator's right, the other part being what is known as copyright. The problem with this is that the line between the inalienable rights of the creator and the rights to be sold is interpreted differently everywhere, the Berne convention nonwithstanding. Most notably, the US doesn't recognize all moral rights, thus neglecting the protection of the original creator and strenghtening the position of the distributor.
Uh. I think you misunderstood what I meant. I wanted to point out how Saddam was told he would win the war like the US government was told that Saddam had WMDs because that was what they wanted to hear. Forcing people to tell what one wants to hear rather what is true is indeed the hallmark of any stupid government. (Which, of course, resonates well with your point about them not having read their evil overlord handbooks.)
/.ty example). When it is paid for, the money flows to the US (of course, it isn't always paid for, which is a problem to the US like the thirteen colonies not paying taxes to the queen was a problem for England).
Also, I think that the intelligent thing to do for the US would have been to stick to Afghanistan, because thats where 100% of the world stood behind them. But because the Bush family had "unfinished business" with Iraq, it was a given from the start that they would go to Iraq, they just needed an excuse.
However, while the US was able to fight the war (which I, as I said, did not want to dispute), it is very doubtful whether it could handle any additional fights before the occupations are brought to conclusion. Of course, I don't know any details, but it seems very much like the US is in danger of overstretching itself, both in terms of manpower and financially, because war doesn't have any positive economical effect because the only things it produces are death and terrorists.
Also, the best way is taking care that they don't know they are conquered. The US indeed had perfected this over its history: Instead of sending in the troops (which they still did more often than is healthy), they just exported their "culture". For example: Nearly everyone uses Windows (or eats at McDonalds or Burger King, but that's no
You may think that, but GPLv3 is the very same as GPLv2, except with some legal loopholes closed, making it harder to violate the spirit of the license while conforming to its letter. Thus, if you don't like GPLv3, you shouldn't have used any GPL'd software in the first place, no matter which version, but something else.
The main idea of the GPL is that you are free to do what you want unless you infringe on the freedom of others, including the original author - this is, indeed, the very definition of the concept of freedom, especially as contrasted to the basic concept of ability to do something. I, for one, would not want to release the code, allowing anyone to come along and close it, thus deprieving me of their improvements while they continue to live off of mine.
Of course, the main focus is the user: If I am to purchase software (yes, I do always purchase the software I use or at least donate to the project - though not the inflated price of what a commercial alternative would have cost me), I don't want my business process getting broken just because the seller of the software goes under, discontinues the product or otherwise goes contrary to the intentions I have with the product. The GPL offers me this (apart from being cheaper).
Therefore, if you don't want the GPL, what you are saying is that you hate the user and, indeed, the developer, if you argue that e.g. Tivo should be allowed to not give back: You are claiming that freedom is to do what you want, even if it means taking away freedom of others. Indeed, this delusion of freedom including the ability to take away freedom is the fallacy developers releasing software under the BSD-license or similar succumbed to.
The only one having difficulties are those who don't offer any value: If you just take some distribution and resell it, you won't do that good - which is why Red Hat etc. offer additional services (or consider those resellers who send you burned or pressed CDs for a fee, which is a service, too).
And before you start: One can very well make money with GPL'd software as with any other software. If you fail at that, don't blame the GPL, blame yourself because you (like me) lack the business sense to sell things to people. Put differently: Windows still gets pirated, it's just less legal and Microsoft still makes money, because they know how to make money (and that's all they do).
However, what clashes with most people's monetaristic upbringing is that one doesn't necessarily needs to be paid in money but in material ways: Where the BSD license simply communistically gives their code away, ready to be abused by people who put their own profit above cooperation, the GPL makes a perfectly capitalistic trade: "I give you my code, but then you need to give me the code you build on mine".
While your point is valid, the title of your post irks me.
So I've got a question: How, exactly, can you determine who did the modding and which were their motivations? Because, as far as I can see, there is absolutely no practical way to determine who did it and why. Therefore, I find your interpretation of it being "Left-Wing Fascists" to mod the GP off-topic somewhat doubtful.
Indeed, one would have much more reason to assume it to be "Right-Wing Fascists" - after all, while his main argument is just a rational observation (which only the insanest of the left - which doubtlessly exist - would have taken as slighting them), while his PS notes his position, making him seem left, therefore a target of right-wingers because he doesn't rally behind the president in an unconditional way but thinks for himself, recognizing an error, no matter which side makes it.
Why, then, do you get the idea that it is "Left-Wing Fascists" who did the modding? Well, I didn't want to randomly accuse people, so I read up about you (which is more than you can claim about those who did the modding). The image which resulted demonstrated impressively that you are, indeed, a "Right-Wing Fascist", projecting your own behaviour on others, perceiving them as being "on the other side".
The most interesting point is: As pointed out above, the PS makes the right mod the GP down. However, because the GP dares to criticize "the left stance" (which is why he feels the need to add the PS), you think he is on the right side (because, after all, lefties could never ever criticize themselves - which is exactly what I meant by projection), you side with him and claim that it were lefties who did the modding down.
Do you know whom this reminds me of? Not wanting to invoke Godwins law by pointing out how Hitler started the second world war, I give you the example of Operation Gladio: This NATO stay-behind-organization made, on command of the CIA, terroristic strikes in several countries, especially Europe, and blamed it on the communists.
There's also another thing of note: Here in Europe, we have a balance between left and right (though we became significantly more fascist, i.e. right, in the aftermath of 9/11). From our perspective, the Democrats and Republicans are both as far right as the fringemost right parties we have here. Thus, we can only shake our heads at your irrational fear of any hint of social responsibility, endangering your ability (not freedom, though you righties call it such) to take freedom away.
Yeah. Though if he hadn't just always shoot the messenger on bringing bad news, they might have told him the truth - namely, that his country was in no way fit to fight this war - and would quickly left for somewhere else.
Or aren't you talking about Saddam?
So you want to tell us that the bible is no fantasy novel? The bible is just cobbled together from earlier myths (in a much uglier fashion than the HP novels, I might add), so why couldn't Harry borrowed from them? Especially seeing how, in contrast to Narnia, HP isn't drawing exclusively from Christianity but from pretty much every mythology in the world.
We're talking about Europe, here. That'd be 1/10 a tank of gas, because gas is more expensive over here and the Euro worth more than the Dollar.
Then claiming I took it out of context means that you assert that I didn't master the syntax. While I must admit that this is a very elegant ad hominem, it definitely doesn't show that I took it out of context: If I actually didn't master the syntax, how would I have been able to write a compileable program in the first place? It only shows that you believe that there is a dichotomy between "the author writes bad code" and "the reader can't read", not admitting the possibility that one could express rather complex concepts in a program.
Maybe one could take the perspective that while the grind of leveling up is the "game" in WoW, taking part in the economy is the "game" in SL?
Because they, like smokers, are driving up the cost of health insurance?
Also, as I pointed out in another post, shared responsibility is twice the responsibility: One shouldn't blame either the obese or the industry but both.
I know you are used to the situation in the US, but if you actually made an effort to look after yourself by reading the ingredient lists and then travelled to Europe and did the same there, you'd realize that in the US, nearly all food has additives like HCFS in poisonous amounts.
Also, specificially fructose has the effect of making you even more hungry, so you can't really stop eating - this is intended by the industry, because they make more money that way, but you're going to need more self-control to stop eating in such a situation than you need to stop masturbating.
Thus, the industry bears responsibility (not the whole, but not none, either) for the obesity in the US by forcing it upon the people by making it hard to get anything which isn't poisoned. For example, you can see obese people in Europe, too, and according to you, this is presumably self-inflicted, but they are much less common than in the US simply because the food available to buy is so much healthier in the first place.
Furthermore, the industry (and, in the same way, the government) has, as noted above, an interest in the people being weak and stupid, because otherwise they couldn't make their profits. Therefore, they do their best to keep them that way by methods like lobbying for weakening the regulations on what may go into food and how it needs to be noted on the package or at least not strenghtening them. Sometimes they even sue others to disallow them from writing on their products that they do not contain a certain poison, because the people then would flock to that product instead of theirs.
That was a joke about those Nigerian scams. You see, they laugh at you for being so gullible for sending them money.
Wait a minute - you're believing that you're buying your food from China? I knew you USians don't know anything about the outside world, but you don't even know what happens in your own country - sad.
The US is the primary food exporter in the world (of course, many farmers are paid not to produce because otherwise the market would be oversatiated), the HCFS produced from US corn to subsidize US farmers (instead of buying healthy South American sugar), the beef you eat and the milk you drink being from all-American, hormone and antibiotica poisoned cattle and so on: You're poisoning yourself.
Whoops. I meant "It doesn't run on Linux."
After all, it's a piece of software and no toaster, so it's expected that it can't run Linux.
However, IE also has a very big drawback: It doesn't run Linux. So I can't use it. Yay!
They don't say that it's ok to be who you are. In fact, they say that it's not ok to be who you are (or how should we interpret those ugly beauty ideals?) but that they don't give a shit about what happens to you (if you're obese, nobody is going to care about it).
Also, lack of self-control doesn't excuse the industry from intentionally filling all food up with fructose and other stuff in a less-than-healthy dosage.
I will now smugly criticize the lacking geographical knowledge of you Americans in an European way by pointing out that Nigeria lies in Africa, not in Asia.
There may be other things who can cause obesity, but fructose in itself is sufficient to cause obesity. And the consumer cannot possibly avoid eating large quantities of it because the food industry puts large quantities of it in every food because it causes people to be more hungry and therefore eat more which causes two things: firstly, it makes people fat. Secondly, it gives the food industry greater profits. And they only care about the latter.
You can't buy what isn't sold: To get something healthy you have to hunt it like our ancestors did (and that is going to be toxic, too, due to companies dumping toxic waste and fertilizers into the environment), because in the stores you won't find anything which isn't filled with toxic amounts of fructose and other stuff, be it because it isn't available or because the food industry sues them not to point it out, because this would mean people would live healthier at the expense of their profits.
Really? Less time intensive I can see, as for cooking I need less time than driving to a restaurant, waiting there to get the food and driving back home. But in my experience, boxed meals are at least twice as expensive as if I cook myself (six times if one considers that they usually are of less volume than when you make it yourself; not even starting on nutriutional value). After all, a restaurant not only has to pay for the foodstuffs, but also someone to purchase them, someone to prepare them and someone to bring them to your table; and then there come things like paying for the localities (rent or property expenses), the furniture, the tools etc.
Shared responsibility is twice the responsibility.
The stupidity of one party doesn't excuse the unethical behaviour of the other - and the other way around.
If one smokes, who is responsible for the cancer? He who is so stupid to smoke or the tobacco companies who push smoking by advertising and lobbying? Both are.
If one eats incorrectly, who is responsible for the obesity? He who is so stupid to eat/let his kids eat things making them fat or those who lobby for making it harder to find healthy food? Both are.
You really do not appreciate how it is intentionally made difficult to do the right thing if it isn't in the interest of the industry. One really can't go anywhere without getting fast food or smoke getting shoved in his face.
Of course, you and I probably don't fall for that. But other people do. And why? Because they are weak and stupid. And why are they weak and stupid? Because corporations and government both love them that way and thus make sure they are.
Before they come, let me troll for closed source:
.NET (which meant a complete rewrite, but without the source, we didn't have another choice - not that we would have done anything else even if we kept it, because if we had the source, the code would be so ugly we couldn't understand it and would be forced to rewrite it). Of course, this meant that users of MacOS or Linux couldn't use it, but they didn't buy it in the first place: Our userbase was primarily Windows, which was also why we didn't offer the MacOS and Linux versions on our web page, because the work needed to add two more option buttons besides the windows one would have been inappropriate considering how little the market for the other versions was.
A company I worked for started as an Open Source company for server side data processing during the dot com boom. However, we often got complaints about how badly the code is written (hey, how else should we make sure that nobody steals it?). But the last straw came when we got a complaint from the ESRB because some old lady saw our code when her son hacked it and fainted because she saw all those variables called "f*ck" and "sh*t" (I still doubt that they legetimately could do that).
So we closed the source to prevent a lawsuit. This has obviously helped, because we stopped receiving complaints how bad the code quality was, so it must have improved. Accordingly, our software was seen in a positive light, giving us enough profits to survive the dot com bust. Of course, some complained that they couldn't read the code, but we've had it with those Open Source Zealots after they nearly caused us to get sued and go bankrupt (hey, so we copied code from the GNU project - who cares?).
However, we soon found a new problem. See, we didn't only sell our main product, but also certain libraries which enabled the main product to be embedded in other software. Of course, we didn't sell those libraries directly because they had no GUI that way and we didn't want to be sued, so we only sold them to those who specificially asked for them and sued everyone under the DMCA who mentioned their existence. However, some hackers had a look at the symbol tables and complained about the interface being so unclear. So we started stripping all symbols from the libraries and all our executables (yes, I know we were idealistic in not doing so in the first place). However, the work invested there, including writing a script which sent the executables to a special server with an early web 2.0-application doing the stripping, proved useless as the sale of the libraries was discontinued due to lack of demand.
The same time, some other problems showed when users complained about the clunkyness of the GUI of our main product (I must say that we were lucky not to have used a command line interface - just imagine the complaints of people who didn't know of the existence of the command line about how hard it is to use). We first thought that it might have something to do with the standard Java GUI, so we ported the application to
However, the complaints continued. Experienced by our experience with the source code, we decided that we needed to overhaul our user interface in a similar way. So we started writing our second-to-last version by removing all text and replaced it with images which blinked and changed when you pressed one. Some then started selling it as computer games, granting us significant revenue. However, our management - fearing another run-in with the law and being disconcerted by the complaints failing to cease in spite of this superior user friendlyness - wisely decided that our efforts were insufficient and rewrote the user interface such that it was perfectly clean and predictable. Of course, there was no way we could make it work with our back-end code, because we lacked source code or documentation, but the customers finally were satisfied, as evidenced by the lack of complaints.
Today, the company is bankrupt, due completely unrelated lawsuits in which we failed to
Not necessarily. Sometimes it's just the reader who is to dumb to understand the concepts used.
At least that's what happens to me whenever I read the code I wrote.