>Every reasonable interpretation of international law allows plenty of man-made structures (independently of their construction material) to be considered soveriegn territory of nations.
So does history. Maritime law for centuries recognized all ships as part of the sovereign territory of their host nation. It gets weirder than that, maritime law for those same centuries (and to this day) recognized anybody ON a ship as being in the sovereign territory of their home-country (indeed the long-held ability to get married by a ship's captain in international waters derived from that). It's a bit more convoluted these days - but the core of that remains in modern international law.
Indeed in some cases most of the complexity takes it FURTHER. Do you think for one second that the USA does not consider every single one of their aircraft carriers to be part of their sovereign territory and an attack of them to be an act of war against the COUNTRY of the United States ?
And THAT my friends is another example of a fallacy. In this case the false dichotomy.
The poster is attempting to imply that to reject the fallacy of call-to-authority one must reject anything learned from another person, implying that all knowledge is either brand new or a call to authority.
That is of course, a false dichotomy as those are NOT the only types of knowledge that exists. There is also knowledge backed up by empirical evidence. There are arguments founded on solid logical principles and valid conclusions - and that's just two other kinds.
The point of the call to authority fallacy is to teach us, when evaluating an idea that: It's not about who said it, it's about whether what was said is a good argument. To judge the merit of the claim not the merit of the speaker. Why ? Because wise people still say stupid shit sometimes.
By your logic if a French boat is sailing in international waters the British navy has every right to blow it the hell up ?
And if the French owners complain to the British court that their country has acted in that way they are accepting British sovereignity ? So Apple has now accepted the Sovereignity of the German government because they took a case (much discussed on/.) to a German court ?
There are valid problems with sealand as an attempt to establish an independent micronation and this is partly why it's not been much of a success, but your arguments aren't among them.
>Self interest is the underlying motivation to participate in the economy. Greed is more of a strategy for doing so, and it's a pretty good one up to the point where thousands of little guys decide to do away with you.
And this reply is a cop-out as "self-interest" is a completely meaningless term that can literally be applied to absolutely any stated motivation. In other words, you are using semantic trickery - not strong argument. The vast majority of people who cite different reasons for (some of) their economic activities than greed would not agree that those actions are based on self-interest. The fact that you can stretch the word to make it seem that way doesn't make it a valid argument. If people give to charity because they believe it's a commandment of their God and you say "wanting to go to heaven is self-interest" you are claiming self interest as the motivation when in fact the only sane interpretation is that the action was motivated by "religious belief".
That is just one example - like I said "self interest" is a phrase coined by capitalist appologists to make every action look greedy, that doesn't make it true.
>Frankly, I'm not that terribly concerned about greed since that is the underlying motivation to participate in the economy (prove me wrong)
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. The claim here - that for ALL people, greed is the motivation for economic activity is quite extraordinary (and easily proven false: all those people who start charities are ALSO participating in the economy and any time you make a donation to one that is non-greed-motivated economic participation). So not only is there no extraordinary evidence for your claim - but in fact there is massive evidence against it.
Now if you amend it to "most people, most of the time" that's at least a potentially realistic claim - but it's still an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary evidence, especially as there is strong evidence that the vast majority of people do NOT participate for that reason. The vast majority of people are religious and have a work-ethic from that religion that says labor is it's own reward. A significant proportion of people state that their biggest motivation for their (economic activity) is PASSION rather than money, they give their greatest work away for free and in choosing their paying jobs will choose a lower paying job over a higher paying one if it's more fun. Families, love, friendship, patriotism... in fact there are literally thousands of concepts humans cling to which motivate them. For most of them - greed isn't even on the list. They recognize money merely as a means to those higher ends, not as an end in itself (and that is the OPPOSITE of greed).
So you're claiming that those who want greed and material wealth outnumber these people by a significant amount ? That is a most extraordinary claim and until you can provide the extraordinary evidence it requires I'll be forced to dismiss it as nothing but meaningless conjecture.
>I was listening up to "teabagger". Anyone that would smear an entire group of people with a crude sexual slur just because they disagree with them can't be too bright.
Anybody that would dismiss an entire opinion just because at once point it called a spade a spade can't be all that bright either.
Do you also dismiss everything Winston Churchill ever wrote because he once called a duchess "ugly" ?
>If Gimp was a viable alternative to Photoshop for professional users they would be using it. I use Gimp for my small modificationos of private pictures, but I sure as hell miss the more advanced plugins from Photoshop.
Did you try installing the advanced plugins for GIMP ? This argument is 5 years out of date and I'm getting sick of it. PS. I'm a professional art photographer (as in published in international magazines including Marie Claire) who uses exclusively free software on Linux. And I have never had an editing task or post-processing idea that UFRaw+Gimp couldn't handle with incredible ease and exceptional power. Photoshop hasn't been better than gimp in many, many years - it has ONE advantage only: familiarity. People like you know where the plugins ARE - and you expect it all to come shipped with the main program. Gimp ships the core functionality with the main program - the advanced plugins are shipped separately - so users doing website logos don't need to muddle through menus of plugins only useful to photographers (and vice versa). Name ANY photoshop plugin and then type it's name +gimp alternative into google and I guarantee you'll find it.
In fact, I actually tried photoshop the other day since I was not at home and wanted to do a quick edit on a friend's pc which had windows and photoshop but no gimp. After half an hour of fruitlessly searching for the feature I wanted in the unfamiliar menu structure I gave up and downloaded gimp for windows and the plugin I needed.
You learned photoshop, you haven't learned gimp. And if like me, you had done the opposite, you would be saying the opposite. The difference is just that there are a lot more people like you . There is no real difference in quality between the programs - but if I had to wager one and with my clearly stated bias I would say gimp is the higher quality one.
>Over time there would be a significant build up of people living on the moon for commercial purposes, and when there were enough he would welcome an application to become a state. Is that so crazy?
Yes, it is. The US is a signatory to the UN space treaty which specifically prevents any nation on earth from laying claim to the moon. So, basically - he would have to renege on a U.N. treaty to accept that request for state-hood. Bush just went ahead without waiting for the U.N. or lying to them but actually reneging on a treaty in an organization where the US holds a veto right? Can you begin to imagine the consequences for the USA ? For the world as a whole ? If the USA reneges on a U.N. treaty that will completely devalue all such treaties. Everyone of those campaign-funding corporate sponsors would shit himself in time's square on national TV before allowing that to happen.
In short, no-way does a career politician like Gingrich have that kind of balls. But it's the kind of thing that might get you votes if you say it in Florida.
What a lovely rant. So I take it all those scientific studies that found that the vast majority of welfare recipients consider their welfare a short-term hand-up to get back on their feet and treat it this way, as a means to simply survive while searching for a new job. Well I guess all those scientists are just idiot academics who never had to make a living in the real world (that's how republicrats shoot down ANY science that proves their bullshit theories wrong right).
The good news is - most people DO think that citizens have a responsibility toward other citizens in jeopardy and that the government is meant to act as a facilitator toward fullfilling that responsibility. That is to say - most people think that the portion of their tax money that goes to feed a hungry person and save somebody from starvation is the just about the only part of it that was well-spent.
>You'd have to eliminate all unessential government programs, and replace social security and medicare with government run lower cost options.
No you won't. Afghanistan alone cost 4 Trillion so far. So if you cut your target just a bit, you could cover the entire debt with two presidents (16 years) by simply NOT killing anybody for a while.
>That is my whole point. Republicans can be scared off something we do not like. Look at the magnitude of repines against SOPA, huge names and so forth - yet Democrats were not swayed out of that forbidden tree.
It's called being the opposition party. It's what happens to any opposition party anywhere in the world during an election year. If you think the Republicans will STILL give a flying fuck what you say if they WIN the presidency then YOU are deluded. They care NOW, because they want you to vote for their candidate later in the year. If he wins, they'll stop caring before he takes his oath of office and a year from now everyone will be talking about how only the democrats give a damn what voters actually want and longing for the good old days under Obama. Just as people right now are actually forgetting the incredible acts of stupidity under Bush and missing him ! The same pattern happens even on longer terms. Democrats still think that JFK and Roosefeldt were the best presidents you ever have. Republicans still lust after Nixon and Reagan.
>Rights? Go look at the civil rights struggles. The Republicans were the defenders of civil rights; the Democrats were the ones trying to make black people sit in the back of the bus. You really think a Dem would call in the national guard to let a little girl go to a better school? And that difference goes back to the 1800s when the Republican Party was founded.
At the time - the Republican's were also the party of the Northern States. The South voted democrat all the way. That was Lincoln's republicans and they were just about the exact OPPOSITE of the modern day republicans. Not least as evidenced by the fact that all the states that were red states in Lincoln's time are now blue and the ones that were blue are now red. The two parties neatly swopped spots in the years after the civil war. They will probably do so again in the next 50 to a 100 years.
My typing speed is more than 5 times higher than my handwriting speed, and my handwriting is basically illegible - not my fault, I was born with bad small-muscle hand-eye coordination in certain tasks.
As a result: I never take notes for anything. Didn't do so in school, nor university, don't do so in meetings now. These days I take my tablet and may generate a mindmap as I go to connect core points (especially if it's a design session) but then it's not about recalling the content so much as the relationship between the content.
I simply learned to pay careful attention and listen - since writing notes was never a practical option for me (I went to university before laptops were affordable enough for poor students to own - they were executive toys back then).
More-over, without the option of buying used games. Quite a lot of us will simply refuse to buy another console ever again. That means we're buying nothing at all. No console, no games.
>What the hell is happening to us? Aren't we supposed to be the shining light? Aren't we supposed to be the beacon of hope, the pinnacle of freedom? More importantly, why do so few people seem to care?
Only two people types of people have ever said that: American politicians and American schoolteachers. Nobody else in the world has EVER thought of you that way, and frankly when us people in the rest of the world think of nations that are the epitomy of civil liberty and freedom - America hasn't even been in the top 10 in decades. The most liberal constitution in the world belongs to an African country for crying out loud.
>So if someone takes a picture of something you are actually arguing that anyone else who ever takes a picture of that thing again is infringing some mythical copyright? That is preposterous!
On the other hand, if every nude model on earth can only ever pose for ONE photographer ONCE - then they'll be able to make a fortune !:P
>But then you can't copyright books; books are just ideas that are written down
Bullshit, a book is an EXPRESSION of an idea. What you can't copyright is somebody writing a book with a similar plot and characters. Or do you think every vampire book after Bram Stoker's Dracula violates copyright ? As much as I'm in favor of banning Twilight -that is NOT the way to do it.
>If you duplicate a painting by being extremely close to it as much as possible, in oil instead of latex, isn't that violating copyright?
No, it isn't. In fact it's a required practice in artschool to learn to paint "like the masters" in this manner. Of course if you then claim your version IS the original you are guilty of a crime and that crime has nothing to do with copyright, that crime is "fraud".
>These two photographs are much the same, the second is clearly trying to copy the fundamentals of the original
So what ? Every photographer looks at his favorite photographers and try to reproduce their fundamentals, it's how we learn. The the better ones take what they learned, mix it in with other lessons from other masters and some of their own ideas and come up with something unique. Most of them would love nothing more than to think that some day, some other young photographer will study their photos and try to replicate their techniques. So common is this that some of the more well-known processing styles of famous photographers are built into image processing programs like Gimp and Photoshop so that photographers can see how their pictures would have looked with the same effects applied (or even use them with those effects). The style of "one item in color" is not original in the least, it's a fundamental archetype in photography. One of the basic styles every photographer learns early on because it's so powerful. I've used it for portraiture years ago, and I never had any illusions that the idea was original - but I could try to be original in my expression of it. In fact the book "Gimp for photographers" includes a chapter teaching exactly this technique as the author considers it a vital skill every photographer OUGHT to have !
>I mean, if you saw a movie called "Triassic Park" with a logo using the same font as the original and a different angle for the T-rex silhouette, and the same storyline but with different actors and slightly different shots, and a soundtrack that resembled the original but for a few changed notes, you'd still consider it a rip-off of Jurassic Park. At some level, it's just common sense.
Indeed, and more blatant ripp-offs happen all the time. Hollywood has made a string of them in recent years without even changing the titles. They call them "remakes" or "re-imaginings" - Nobody has yet been sued for copyright infringement. You can't copyright an idea.
>then potentially a subsequent stage being boycotts of the products which pro-sopa companies produce
Doesn't work - these companies think they have a legal right to profit, and the government thinks it has a duty to protect them "when they suffer losses" (as per the politicians supporting the bill). If you boycott them - they will suffer even greater losses, which they'll blame on piracy and use as proof they need even MORE draconian laws.
I wasn't trying to discredit your post, merely to make light of the heavy discussion by making a joke about the difference between "not believing in relativity" and "offering evidence apparently contradicting parts of relativity" (the latter having come from CERN quite recently).
Actually the much more interesting thing will be when CERN makes their Higgs Boson announcement in March (if they keep to the schedule). If they found it, yay... but it will be even more interesting if they haven't. Already it will have to be quite a lot larger than previously believed - if it's not there in these searches it becomes reasonable to say it doesn't exist. If it doesn't - that means the entire standard model of quantum mechanics needs to be radically rewritten.
Now THAT is where science is interesting - when the doubts on a theory is recognized, and active research is done - and if a doubt is cast will force a radical rethink. I think we can both agree that nothing from the climate denialists have fallen anywhere in that category. Nobody has attempted to prove that CO2 does not absorb infrared light the way we say it does. Nobody has attempted to prove that the isotope signatures indicating the rise in CO2 is from human-activities is flawed in some way (implying that non fossil-fuel CO2 could gain the same isotope distribution through some previously unknown mechanism) etc. etc.
Until they can offer that, they are simply not challenging science with science.
Wrong! Nuclear energy (including nuclear weapons) first came out as a possibility thanks for to Einstein - specifically that most famous of his equations: e=mc^2 which calculates the amount of potential energy in matter (which can be released). c is of course a pretty damn huge number - multiplied by itself it becomes a number that is, to use the technical term, fucking huge. Even when m (the mass) is very low the energy in it is still huge - indeed the energy in a single hydrogen atom (where m = 1) is still c^2. Nuclear weapons (and later nuclear power stations) were conceived specifically due to people realizing this - and coming up with ways to unleash that energy.
Where quantum processes come in is only in the METHODS used to unleash it (radioactive chain reactions), but quantum had nothing to do with the possibility being recognized. Indeed Einstein rejected most of the fundamental concepts of quantum physics (his famous "God doesn't play dice" line) - but recognized that nuclear weapons were possible and encouraged the Eisenhower administration to develop them before the Germans did.
So if relativity was wrong - then a nuclear bomb would be harmless as the energy it unleashes wouldn't exist.
The post I made was, of course, a joke - meant to show how silly it is to apply "belief" to science. Your post therefore was a triple fail. You showed you were ignorant of science, ignorant of history and ignorant of humour.
PS. Your may have escaped the humour fail if you had said "this ball of Neutrinos" - you'd at least have appeared to be making a joke of your own based on current research (which are showing strong suggestions that under at least some conditions Neutrinos may be able to travel faster than light).
Well... lets see if we can make it so... "I don't believe in Einstein's theories. I will therefore hit the detonation switch on this nuclear device - Einstein was wrong and it can't possibly explode."
Slashdot Mirror
>Every reasonable interpretation of international law allows plenty of man-made structures (independently of their construction material) to be considered soveriegn territory of nations.
So does history. Maritime law for centuries recognized all ships as part of the sovereign territory of their host nation. It gets weirder than that, maritime law for those same centuries (and to this day) recognized anybody ON a ship as being in the sovereign territory of their home-country (indeed the long-held ability to get married by a ship's captain in international waters derived from that). It's a bit more convoluted these days - but the core of that remains in modern international law.
Indeed in some cases most of the complexity takes it FURTHER. Do you think for one second that the USA does not consider every single one of their aircraft carriers to be part of their sovereign territory and an attack of them to be an act of war against the COUNTRY of the United States ?
And THAT my friends is another example of a fallacy. In this case the false dichotomy.
The poster is attempting to imply that to reject the fallacy of call-to-authority one must reject anything learned from another person, implying that all knowledge is either brand new or a call to authority.
That is of course, a false dichotomy as those are NOT the only types of knowledge that exists. There is also knowledge backed up by empirical evidence. There are arguments founded on solid logical principles and valid conclusions - and that's just two other kinds.
The point of the call to authority fallacy is to teach us, when evaluating an idea that:
It's not about who said it, it's about whether what was said is a good argument.
To judge the merit of the claim not the merit of the speaker. Why ? Because wise people still say stupid shit sometimes.
By your logic if a French boat is sailing in international waters the British navy has every right to blow it the hell up ?
And if the French owners complain to the British court that their country has acted in that way they are accepting British sovereignity ? So Apple has now accepted the Sovereignity of the German government because they took a case (much discussed on /.) to a German court ?
There are valid problems with sealand as an attempt to establish an independent micronation and this is partly why it's not been much of a success, but your arguments aren't among them.
>Self interest is the underlying motivation to participate in the economy. Greed is more of a strategy for doing so, and it's a pretty good one up to the point where thousands of little guys decide to do away with you.
And this reply is a cop-out as "self-interest" is a completely meaningless term that can literally be applied to absolutely any stated motivation. In other words, you are using semantic trickery - not strong argument.
The vast majority of people who cite different reasons for (some of) their economic activities than greed would not agree that those actions are based on self-interest. The fact that you can stretch the word to make it seem that way doesn't make it a valid argument. If people give to charity because they believe it's a commandment of their God and you say "wanting to go to heaven is self-interest" you are claiming self interest as the motivation when in fact the only sane interpretation is that the action was motivated by "religious belief".
That is just one example - like I said "self interest" is a phrase coined by capitalist appologists to make every action look greedy, that doesn't make it true.
>Frankly, I'm not that terribly concerned about greed since that is the underlying motivation to participate in the economy (prove me wrong)
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. The claim here - that for ALL people, greed is the motivation for economic activity is quite extraordinary (and easily proven false: all those people who start charities are ALSO participating in the economy and any time you make a donation to one that is non-greed-motivated economic participation). So not only is there no extraordinary evidence for your claim - but in fact there is massive evidence against it.
Now if you amend it to "most people, most of the time" that's at least a potentially realistic claim - but it's still an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary evidence, especially as there is strong evidence that the vast majority of people do NOT participate for that reason. The vast majority of people are religious and have a work-ethic from that religion that says labor is it's own reward. A significant proportion of people state that their biggest motivation for their (economic activity) is PASSION rather than money, they give their greatest work away for free and in choosing their paying jobs will choose a lower paying job over a higher paying one if it's more fun.
Families, love, friendship, patriotism... in fact there are literally thousands of concepts humans cling to which motivate them. For most of them - greed isn't even on the list. They recognize money merely as a means to those higher ends, not as an end in itself (and that is the OPPOSITE of greed).
So you're claiming that those who want greed and material wealth outnumber these people by a significant amount ? That is a most extraordinary claim and until you can provide the extraordinary evidence it requires I'll be forced to dismiss it as nothing but meaningless conjecture.
>I was listening up to "teabagger". Anyone that would smear an entire group of people with a crude sexual slur just because they disagree with them can't be too bright.
Anybody that would dismiss an entire opinion just because at once point it called a spade a spade can't be all that bright either.
Do you also dismiss everything Winston Churchill ever wrote because he once called a duchess "ugly" ?
>and of course suggests that famous and generally respected people share his ideas.
Which is a call to authority, that is to say, a fallacy.
>If Gimp was a viable alternative to Photoshop for professional users they would be using it. I use Gimp for my small modificationos of private pictures, but I sure as hell miss the more advanced plugins from Photoshop.
Did you try installing the advanced plugins for GIMP ? This argument is 5 years out of date and I'm getting sick of it.
PS. I'm a professional art photographer (as in published in international magazines including Marie Claire) who uses exclusively free software on Linux. And I have never had an editing task or post-processing idea that UFRaw+Gimp couldn't handle with incredible ease and exceptional power. Photoshop hasn't been better than gimp in many, many years - it has ONE advantage only: familiarity. People like you know where the plugins ARE - and you expect it all to come shipped with the main program. Gimp ships the core functionality with the main program - the advanced plugins are shipped separately - so users doing website logos don't need to muddle through menus of plugins only useful to photographers (and vice versa).
Name ANY photoshop plugin and then type it's name +gimp alternative into google and I guarantee you'll find it.
In fact, I actually tried photoshop the other day since I was not at home and wanted to do a quick edit on a friend's pc which had windows and photoshop but no gimp. After half an hour of fruitlessly searching for the feature I wanted in the unfamiliar menu structure I gave up and downloaded gimp for windows and the plugin I needed.
You learned photoshop, you haven't learned gimp. And if like me, you had done the opposite, you would be saying the opposite. The difference is just that there are a lot more people like you . There is no real difference in quality between the programs - but if I had to wager one and with my clearly stated bias I would say gimp is the higher quality one.
>Over time there would be a significant build up of people living on the moon for commercial purposes, and when there were enough he would welcome an application to become a state. Is that so crazy?
Yes, it is. The US is a signatory to the UN space treaty which specifically prevents any nation on earth from laying claim to the moon. So, basically - he would have to renege on a U.N. treaty to accept that request for state-hood. Bush just went ahead without waiting for the U.N. or lying to them but actually reneging on a treaty in an organization where the US holds a veto right? Can you begin to imagine the consequences for the USA ? For the world as a whole ? If the USA reneges on a U.N. treaty that will completely devalue all such treaties.
Everyone of those campaign-funding corporate sponsors would shit himself in time's square on national TV before allowing that to happen.
In short, no-way does a career politician like Gingrich have that kind of balls. But it's the kind of thing that might get you votes if you say it in Florida.
>That way, people hopefully wouldn't have long enough to develop such a sense of entitlement that they'd start to demand more.
"entitlement", n, what capitalists call "other people's rights"
What a lovely rant. So I take it all those scientific studies that found that the vast majority of welfare recipients consider their welfare a short-term hand-up to get back on their feet and treat it this way, as a means to simply survive while searching for a new job. Well I guess all those scientists are just idiot academics who never had to make a living in the real world (that's how republicrats shoot down ANY science that proves their bullshit theories wrong right).
The good news is - most people DO think that citizens have a responsibility toward other citizens in jeopardy and that the government is meant to act as a facilitator toward fullfilling that responsibility. That is to say - most people think that the portion of their tax money that goes to feed a hungry person and save somebody from starvation is the just about the only part of it that was well-spent.
>You'd have to eliminate all unessential government programs, and replace social security and medicare with government run lower cost options.
No you won't. Afghanistan alone cost 4 Trillion so far. So if you cut your target just a bit, you could cover the entire debt with two presidents (16 years) by simply NOT killing anybody for a while.
Yeah right, like Americans will EVER go for THAT.
>That is my whole point. Republicans can be scared off something we do not like. Look at the magnitude of repines against SOPA, huge names and so forth - yet Democrats were not swayed out of that forbidden tree.
It's called being the opposition party. It's what happens to any opposition party anywhere in the world during an election year. If you think the Republicans will STILL give a flying fuck what you say if they WIN the presidency then YOU are deluded. They care NOW, because they want you to vote for their candidate later in the year. If he wins, they'll stop caring before he takes his oath of office and a year from now everyone will be talking about how only the democrats give a damn what voters actually want and longing for the good old days under Obama.
Just as people right now are actually forgetting the incredible acts of stupidity under Bush and missing him !
The same pattern happens even on longer terms. Democrats still think that JFK and Roosefeldt were the best presidents you ever have. Republicans still lust after Nixon and Reagan.
>Rights? Go look at the civil rights struggles. The Republicans were the defenders of civil rights; the Democrats were the ones trying to make black people sit in the back of the bus. You really think a Dem would call in the national guard to let a little girl go to a better school? And that difference goes back to the 1800s when the Republican Party was founded.
At the time - the Republican's were also the party of the Northern States. The South voted democrat all the way. That was Lincoln's republicans and they were just about the exact OPPOSITE of the modern day republicans. Not least as evidenced by the fact that all the states that were red states in Lincoln's time are now blue and the ones that were blue are now red.
The two parties neatly swopped spots in the years after the civil war. They will probably do so again in the next 50 to a 100 years.
My typing speed is more than 5 times higher than my handwriting speed, and my handwriting is basically illegible - not my fault, I was born with bad small-muscle hand-eye coordination in certain tasks.
As a result: I never take notes for anything. Didn't do so in school, nor university, don't do so in meetings now. These days I take my tablet and may generate a mindmap as I go to connect core points (especially if it's a design session) but then it's not about recalling the content so much as the relationship between the content.
I simply learned to pay careful attention and listen - since writing notes was never a practical option for me (I went to university before laptops were affordable enough for poor students to own - they were executive toys back then).
More-over, without the option of buying used games. Quite a lot of us will simply refuse to buy another console ever again. That means we're buying nothing at all. No console, no games.
>What the hell is happening to us? Aren't we supposed to be the shining light? Aren't we supposed to be the beacon of hope, the pinnacle of freedom? More importantly, why do so few people seem to care?
Only two people types of people have ever said that: American politicians and American schoolteachers. Nobody else in the world has EVER thought of you that way, and frankly when us people in the rest of the world think of nations that are the epitomy of civil liberty and freedom - America hasn't even been in the top 10 in decades. The most liberal constitution in the world belongs to an African country for crying out loud.
>So if someone takes a picture of something you are actually arguing that anyone else who ever takes a picture of that thing again is infringing some mythical copyright? That is preposterous!
On the other hand, if every nude model on earth can only ever pose for ONE photographer ONCE - then they'll be able to make a fortune ! :P
>But then you can't copyright books; books are just ideas that are written down
Bullshit, a book is an EXPRESSION of an idea. What you can't copyright is somebody writing a book with a similar plot and characters.
Or do you think every vampire book after Bram Stoker's Dracula violates copyright ? As much as I'm in favor of banning Twilight -that is NOT the way to do it.
>If you duplicate a painting by being extremely close to it as much as possible, in oil instead of latex, isn't that violating copyright?
No, it isn't. In fact it's a required practice in artschool to learn to paint "like the masters" in this manner. Of course if you then claim your version IS the original you are guilty of a crime and that crime has nothing to do with copyright, that crime is "fraud".
>These two photographs are much the same, the second is clearly trying to copy the fundamentals of the original
So what ? Every photographer looks at his favorite photographers and try to reproduce their fundamentals, it's how we learn. The the better ones take what they learned, mix it in with other lessons from other masters and some of their own ideas and come up with something unique. Most of them would love nothing more than to think that some day, some other young photographer will study their photos and try to replicate their techniques. So common is this that some of the more well-known processing styles of famous photographers are built into image processing programs like Gimp and Photoshop so that photographers can see how their pictures would have looked with the same effects applied (or even use them with those effects).
The style of "one item in color" is not original in the least, it's a fundamental archetype in photography. One of the basic styles every photographer learns early on because it's so powerful. I've used it for portraiture years ago, and I never had any illusions that the idea was original - but I could try to be original in my expression of it. In fact the book "Gimp for photographers" includes a chapter teaching exactly this technique as the author considers it a vital skill every photographer OUGHT to have !
>I mean, if you saw a movie called "Triassic Park" with a logo using the same font as the original and a different angle for the T-rex silhouette, and the same storyline but with different actors and slightly different shots, and a soundtrack that resembled the original but for a few changed notes, you'd still consider it a rip-off of Jurassic Park. At some level, it's just common sense.
Indeed, and more blatant ripp-offs happen all the time. Hollywood has made a string of them in recent years without even changing the titles. They call them "remakes" or "re-imaginings" - Nobody has yet been sued for copyright infringement. You can't copyright an idea.
So, pretty much every newly produced song in the last 100 THOUSAND years should be illegal?
FTFY
>then potentially a subsequent stage being boycotts of the products which pro-sopa companies produce
Doesn't work - these companies think they have a legal right to profit, and the government thinks it has a duty to protect them "when they suffer losses" (as per the politicians supporting the bill). If you boycott them - they will suffer even greater losses, which they'll blame on piracy and use as proof they need even MORE draconian laws.
I wasn't trying to discredit your post, merely to make light of the heavy discussion by making a joke about the difference between "not believing in relativity" and "offering evidence apparently contradicting parts of relativity" (the latter having come from CERN quite recently).
Actually the much more interesting thing will be when CERN makes their Higgs Boson announcement in March (if they keep to the schedule). If they found it, yay... but it will be even more interesting if they haven't. Already it will have to be quite a lot larger than previously believed - if it's not there in these searches it becomes reasonable to say it doesn't exist. If it doesn't - that means the entire standard model of quantum mechanics needs to be radically rewritten.
Now THAT is where science is interesting - when the doubts on a theory is recognized, and active research is done - and if a doubt is cast will force a radical rethink. I think we can both agree that nothing from the climate denialists have fallen anywhere in that category. Nobody has attempted to prove that CO2 does not absorb infrared light the way we say it does. Nobody has attempted to prove that the isotope signatures indicating the rise in CO2 is from human-activities is flawed in some way (implying that non fossil-fuel CO2 could gain the same isotope distribution through some previously unknown mechanism) etc. etc.
Until they can offer that, they are simply not challenging science with science.
Wrong!
Nuclear energy (including nuclear weapons) first came out as a possibility thanks for to Einstein - specifically that most famous of his equations: e=mc^2
which calculates the amount of potential energy in matter (which can be released). c is of course a pretty damn huge number - multiplied by itself it becomes a number that is, to use the technical term, fucking huge.
Even when m (the mass) is very low the energy in it is still huge - indeed the energy in a single hydrogen atom (where m = 1) is still c^2. Nuclear weapons (and later nuclear power stations) were conceived specifically due to people realizing this - and coming up with ways to unleash that energy.
Where quantum processes come in is only in the METHODS used to unleash it (radioactive chain reactions), but quantum had nothing to do with the possibility being recognized. Indeed Einstein rejected most of the fundamental concepts of quantum physics (his famous "God doesn't play dice" line) - but recognized that nuclear weapons were possible and encouraged the Eisenhower administration to develop them before the Germans did.
So if relativity was wrong - then a nuclear bomb would be harmless as the energy it unleashes wouldn't exist.
The post I made was, of course, a joke - meant to show how silly it is to apply "belief" to science. Your post therefore was a triple fail. You showed you were ignorant of science, ignorant of history and ignorant of humour.
PS. Your may have escaped the humour fail if you had said "this ball of Neutrinos" - you'd at least have appeared to be making a joke of your own based on current research (which are showing strong suggestions that under at least some conditions Neutrinos may be able to travel faster than light).
Well... lets see if we can make it so...
"I don't believe in Einstein's theories. I will therefore hit the detonation switch on this nuclear device - Einstein was wrong and it can't possibly explode."