Uh-huh. But you're assuming that the source code developed in-house is under the GPL, which is not neccesarily true. In fact, it's probably not true.
Think about it.
There's nothing (legally) preventing me, a user, from building and linking non-GPL source code against a GPL library, so long as I don't distribute the resulting binary. If use of the binary within a company does not count as "distribution" [1], well, then you can easily create a situation where anyone within a company can legally use an app linked to Qt/GPL, but that same app cannot legally be distributed outside of the company.
If the company wants to release everything as GPL at a later date, no problem - they simply re-license all the existing source code under the GPL. If they want a Qt/Commercial license at a later date, it should be no problem as well, assuming TrollTech is willing to allow them to "upgrade" from Qt/GPL to Qt/Commercial. (A seperate issue - IMHO, they'd be foolish to not provide an explicit upgrade path solely for people going through this kind of development cycle.)
[1] This seems to be a majority view - and, IIRC, the EFF view - of what "distribution" means.
Sure - I understand that. But here's the problem: I can buy a license for Qt/Commercial from TrollTech without telling them what I plan on using it for. If they want to refuse to sell to me under those circusmstances, again, it's their right. However, even if I do tell them, there's nothing to prevent me from using it to build other projects as well - including projects that started out using Qt/GPL and my own dual-licensed source code, for example.
Basically, their "if it's GPL from the start, it has to remain GPL forever" clause of theirs has zero force; they know it, which is why their means of dealing with it is to refuse to sell you a commercial license. Before that can work, though, they need to have intimate knowledge of what you're developing, why you're developing it, what your future development plans are, etc. In other words, they need to start treating every customer as a potential license violator and criminal. Take a look at the RIAA, and you can see how well that works.
This is correct. You would have to scrap the GPL code, unless you were given explicit permission by Trolltech to do otherwise.
Of course, you could always do what TrollTech themselves have chosen to do:
Dual-license your own code.
IANAL, but - the source code is yours, after all. You wrote it, you own the copyright. Make it available under the GPL and a commercial license. When you build your source code against QT/GPL, then you produce a GPL-licensed app. When you build against QT/Commerical, then you produce a commercially-licensed app.
TrollTech's commercial license may say otherwise - but it's a license you never accepted, if you developed your code using QT/GPL. TrollTech could still choose to refuse to sell you a license for QT/Commercial, which is their right. If they did sell you a commercial license, though, I really doubt they'd have any legal way to force you to revoke any alternate licenses to your code.
No, but one of your (ex)employees can post the source code on the internet and you can't do anything about it since the code is GPL'd.
Wrong.
Whatever license the source code is under, the copyright to that source code is owned by somebody. In this case, presumably, it's owned by the company. An employee or ex-employee posting the source code on the internet without permission from the copyright holder (the company) would be guilty of copyright violation, at the very least. Probably violation of trade secret agreements as well.
If you mean that once the source code is out there, then you can't stuff the genie back into the bottle, well, yah - probably. The person who put it out there is setting themselves up for a whole world of hurt, though.
Still, it's not an issue anymore, as the "stingy" word has cause the US government to up their donation, and so was well worth using.
Nope. The US government didn't up the commitment because of the "stingy" comment. They upped their commitment because it's just part of the way our government works. It's large, and at times, can be slow; but once it's moving, it tends to get the job done, no matter what. Current estimates are that the US aid contributions over the next year for this particular effort in disaster relief will eventually top out at over a billion dollars or more. That's not including expenditures like redirecting naval forces to help with relief efforts.
What they don't do is assess how much their governments have given before deciding how much to give themselves.
Man, this is just so wrong. So, let me get this straight: the only place in the world where you can find short-sighted, self-centered people is in the US? There is no other place in the world where anyone else has ever said, "Eh, we (the government) are already giving them $X million [dollars|euros|yen|whatever], why should I bother?"
Had something very similar happen to me playing Quake online... I ended up on a map, alone with one other player, at 3 in the morning. He was slagging me pretty well, we got to talking...
JimmyB: Have you set your mouse so you can right-click to do X?
Croaker: I don't use the mouse.
JimmyB: WHAT!
JimmyB: You're kidding me...
Yep. Until he took the time to convince me I needed to learn how to use the mouse, and let me practice with him, I was a keyboard-only player. Once he knew that, he was amazed I'd been able to do as well as I had against him:-) I'd probably have carpal tunnel in both wrists if he hadn't gotten me to learn how to use the mouse in FPS...
IBM is a company focused on growing its services biz and Apple has none.
iTunes? IBM could take iTunes, craft content distribution deals with major labels, and then later turn around and re-license their services and technology to other digital music suppliers, so that eventually 'digitial music' would mean 'IBM servers and services'. It could be a way of turning the digital music (and, presumably, movie) distribution industry into a commodity market with IBM at the helm.
Aside from that, if IBM were to dump their PC business and buy Apple, they then end up in the exact situation they lost with the original IBM PC: what is (essentially) a proprietary hardware platform. Keep the consumer sales side going, push MacOS X machines for business use, and they'd have a big stick to swing at the Wintell Hegemony...
When the Bible lists something historical that is corroborated by independent evidence, the _only_ thing you can conclude is that the Bible has some independently-corroborated historical facts listed in it - you can't honestly conclude that anything else the Bible says is true.
Understood - what I'm pointing out is that even if you don't think the Bible is the word of God, it has still shown itself to be an accurate historical document. I'll concede that, if you treat it as a purely historical document, some portions of the Bible have more independent corroboration than others, and would be regarded as more trustworthy by secular scholars.
Given that, if the Bible says that so-and-so was ruler of Samaria at some time, and there's no other historical evidence for that particular assertion one way or another, then I would think that even a secular scholar shouldn't have much of a problem with citing the Bible as as a relevant source.
For some reason, the Bible often seems at odds with the findings of archaeologists, historians, geologists and science in general.
History (no pun intended) has shown that the New Testament can be regarded as an accurate historical document. Luke, in particular, has proven himself a better and more critical historian than a lot of more honored contemporaries. Geisler & Nix, in A General Introduction to the Bible, summarize some of the "known innacuracies" in Luke that have been proven true thanks to new archaelogical evidence being uncovered.
IIRC, they didn't go into quite as much detail on Old Testament authenticity, though they did cover it to some extent; and from what I remember, there is at least a grudging admission from most archaelogists that as time goes by, new discoveries tend to confirm, rather than disprove, the historical authenticity of the OT.
My point is that rejection of the Bible's extrordinary claims does not neccessitate rejection of it's un-extraordinary claims. Even if you think most of the authors of the Bible were cluelss mumps for believing in God, you can at lest look at the Bible and treat it as a historical document that has shown itslef to be accurate to some degree. Whether or not you consider the Bible accurate enough that you would base a professional opinion on it's contents is an entirely different issue.
If I buy a book, I can then sell it to someone else. Doctrine of first sale, correct?
If I buy HL2, but *don't* install it, I can then sell it to someone else. Again, doctrine of first sale. At this point, it's a product that I own; there is no licensing agreement, no contract entered into, etc.
If I buy HL2, and *do* install it, then Valve (and other companies) argue that I've entered into a contract with them. As part of that contract, I have *lost* something - my ability to resell the product. I cannot sell my copy of HL2 to someone else without Valve's permission. Well, I guess I can still sell it - but because of the issue of registration, that particular copy of HL2 is worthless now, to anyone but me.
Here's my question: how can Valve sell me something that is obviously a product, a physical good, something that can be resold and treated by law exactly as if it were book or a car or an iPod... but which later is somehow redefined or transformed into a license?
It's as if the law considered a car a "product" only so long as you didn't start the engine; but as soon as you actually get behind the wheel and put the key in the ignition, you no longer *own* a car, but instead now have a "license" to drive that one particular instance of a car.
Interesting comment about WoW's rest system - I'm not really into MMOGs, but it seems like a reasonable way to account for the online/offline dichotomy. I'm surprised it's taken this long for someone to figure out something like this.
I was thinking that there would be additional differentiators aside from death penalties - ie, if it wasn't just experience; perhaps some quests would only be open to hardcore players, or open up at lower levels, etc. Though I understand your comment about players complaining about lag deaths. You hear the same whining in 1PS games:-/
I'm not a MMOG player, so I can't really comment:-/ Still - there are players who think that this kind of thing is how games *should* be played. If they want to be ub3r-l33t and play hardcore, then why not let them? Yah, if they lag, or something else happens, the admins can bring them back... that's not the kind of death I'm talking about. Heck, you could probably come up with a rough first-cut mechanism for figuring out if death should be permanent or not... say, if a character "dies", you send the player's machine a message. If it responds, you send the "permanent death announcement", and the character is permanently dead, barring outside intervention (admin or friendly companions). If the player's machine looks dead or overwhelmingly lagged, then you fall back to respawning the character with some measure of stat/equipment loss, etc.
If nothing else, this makes the usual "in-game" devices, spells, etc. that deal explictly with death-avoidance much more interesting and valuable.
Why not allow the player to select their death penalty at character creation time? The idea would be to make it so that the characters who are more likely to suffer when they die are also the ones more likely to advance...
For example:
A casual player could take the the minimum death penalty - something like WoW, where there's a time delay only before you respawn somewhere (relatively) safe. In return, they get normal experience from the game.
A more dedicated player could take a medium death penalty - item deterioration/theft, stat deterioration, etc. In return, they would get an experience bonus - say, 25% extra experience. They're risking more, so they're earning more as well.
A hardcore player could take the "he's dead, Jim" level of death penalty: you die, that's it. But they'd earn 50% extra experience when compared to their less-adventuresome brethren.
Hmm. Now that I think of it, you could adapt this idea to solve the 2 hours a night vs. 12 hours a day player problem, too. Keep track of how many hours a player has been online in a particular day. Players online for more than, say, 4 hours, get nada. Players online for less time get a sliding percentage of some standard experience award at the end of the day, so that the player who's playing casually (1-2 hours every couple of days) can "keep up" with the hardcore players. Maybe not even with them - where a hardcore player might be pulling down 8000 xp from 8 hours of play, for example, someone who plays 1 hour might get a bonus award of 3000 xp. Enough so that they're not completely outstripped, but not enough that the hardcore player feels like the casual Joe has the better deal.
Then there's the solution. Sell the stuff to France. They have a use for it, we can sell it at a price that merely covers the cost of shipping, and voila! - We solve our problem, the French get cheap fuel, and everybody's happy.
The point here is still that your point of view forces something on someone else, while my point of view doesn't force anyone to do anything.
Once more: I'm not interested in debating abortion. Can you please understand that? I am making the point that we have fundamentally different views on the matter, stemming from our basic moral belief systems; and that whatever law the government enacts on the matter, it will offend one of us.
Your assertion that "my point of view doesn't force anyone to do anything", is, based on my beliefs, absolutely wrong, because from my point of view, it forces a child to die. Can you understand that? My argument assumes to be true a basic premise (fetus does have individual rights) that your argument considers to be false (fetus does not have individual rights). As a result, we are starting from different basic assumptions about reality that inevitably lead to opposed views on certain matters.
Because of this, regardless of what the government does, one of us will be offended, because it challenges a basic moral premise that either you or I consider to be true.
Again, you're missing the point entirely, while making my point exactly.
I'm not particularly interested in discussing abortion - I'm just using it as an example of a divisive issue that is the result of fundamentally different moral frameworks. In the case or abortion, you and I have very different moral frameworks, and we simple cannot come to an accomidation or compromise on a principle like abortion unless one of us changes our fundamental world view.
It doesn't really matter where you draw the line - you end up with some people on one side, some people on the other, and no way to come to an accomidation between them except to convince your opponents to subscribe to your moral framework. Again, this isn't particularly about abortion - in this case, it's just a convenient example of the phenomenon I'm talking about.
Maybe an example by negatives is better for you: I personally think that cutting taxes is, in general, a Good Thing (tm). With the right arguments, you might be able to convince me that I was wrong about that, and that in fact, raising taxes was the right and proper way to run a government.
If you do convince me of this, it won't require any soul searching on my part. I won't lie awake for hours at night, wondering if I made the right choice. I won't argue passionately (ha!) about it on public message boards.
My point is that I won't have to change my moral framework to make this change in my opinion. It may seem like a big change, but it really isn't - the remainder of my life is more or less untouched by that decision. I didn't have to make any major adjustments to my world view in order to hold this new opinion.
In order to change my mind about abortion, though, I would have to go back and pretty much change my entire attitude about everything: God. Family. Other people. Sex. In order for you to go from being pro-abortion to pro-life, you'd have to make the same kind of major adjustment in your basic starting assumptions about the world, what is good, what is moral, etc.
Neither one of us is likely to do this unless we think there is a vitally important reason to do so. That's the point that I'm trying to make: the issue itself is not the issue. The real issue, the underlying issue, is a conflict between two different moral systems. There is no way that the government can satisfy both these systems at the same time, so one set of people always ends up feeling that the other side has "imposed" their morals on them.
It all comes down to your personal beliefs. Therefore, it is up to each person to take responsiblity for his or her own body.
...
The simple answer is: Her body, her decision.
I'll end with this, since it's a great example of the point I'm trying to make. What you're missing is that the statement "It all comes down to your personal beliefs" is your moral framework - not mine. When you talk about a woman "takign responsibility" for her own body, I'm absolutely convinced you're wrong - that it is not her choice to make, any more than it is my "choice" to walk up to someone and shoot them. You're absolutely convinced that I'm wrong - that a woman who chooses to have an abortion is doing nothing more than exercising control of her own body, and preventing her from that is morally similar to rape.
A person can't hold both opinions at the same time - and neither can a government. In a situation like this, the only thing the government can do is "force" morality on the populace. Either I am forced to live under laws that reflect your morals, or you are forced to live under laws that reflect my morals. Either way, someone ends up having to live with a law they consider immoral.
(And before you start arguing that abortion laws don't affect
Right. But abortion and sexuality are personal issues, and of no concern to the government or anyone else.
You still don't see the problem I tried to descibe... by my moral standards, abortion is murder. I feel quite justified in asking the government to pass a law that prevents people from (as I see it) casually comitting murder. You don't seem to share my viewpoint, and feel quite justified in asking the government to pass a law that (as you see it) prevents others from infringing on your personal liberty.
My point is that the two are mutually exclusive. If the government says that abortions are legal, that offends my sense of morality. If it says that abortions are illegal, that offends your sense of morality. It doesn't matter what the government does - one of us will be offended by what we consider immoral and unreasonable legislation.
Don't ask me for a simple answer to the problem; if I had any inkling of an idea of how to solve something like this, I'd be running for office myself.
You are proving his point, that you don't see the problem, because it fits with your beliefs. But it is not as simple as you think it is!
I think you're ignoring a fundamental problem with "moral issues": taking a stance, one way or another, forces your opinion on those who do not share your position.
To take abortion as an example: someone with a right-to-life stance feels that abortion is murder. Someone with a right-to-abortion stance feels that abortion is permissible. There are variations on the two themes, but the real problem is that they are fundamentally incompatible. If laws are proposed that would enforce the pro-life position, someone with a pro-abortion stance sees those laws as being immoral. Likewise, laws proposed that enforce the pro-abortion position are seen as immoral be someone holding a pro-life position.
The problem is that something like abortion really isn't an "issue". An issue is something you can debate or argue over, with an eye towards convicing your opponent about your point of view. Except in rare circumstances, this doesn't work for when discussing moral stances, because it involves far more than changing someone's point of view about a subject. In order for someone to convince me that I should adopt a pro-abortion stance, they would first have to convince me that my entire moral structure was wrong - because my opinion on the abortion issue is a product of my moral framework. The same holds true for the opposite kind of shift; in order to convince someone holding a pro-abortion stance that they should instead hold pro-life views, I would first have to convince them that the moral framework that led them to their current stance was wrong.
Candidates in an election can debate issues and hope that their arguments will sway voters, they can only advertise those positions derived from their moral frameworks.
Its that it is official: You can lie, mislead, and divide, and sucessfully win an election.
No. Kerry lost.
You want to talk about lies, deception, and divisiveness? How about:
Kerry's complete inability to remember his voting record and the positions he supported during his time in Congress.
The outright lies about voter disenfranchisement in Flordia during the 2000 eleection.
The fear mongering and outright lies about Bush wanting to reinstate the draft.
The outright lies about his original position supporting the war in Iraq.
The fear mongering and outright lies to senior citizens about how Bush wanted to kill social security.
Kerry's shown some integrity and spirit in his concession. Unfortunately, he - and the DNC - showed none when they were running his campaign. For some reason though that ignoring the issues and focusing on FUD was a good idea.
Slashdot Mirror
"That's one small click for a man, and a giant slashdotting for a completely unprepared webserver."
Uh-huh. But you're assuming that the source code developed in-house is under the GPL, which is not neccesarily true. In fact, it's probably not true.
Think about it.
There's nothing (legally) preventing me, a user, from building and linking non-GPL source code against a GPL library, so long as I don't distribute the resulting binary. If use of the binary within a company does not count as "distribution" [1], well, then you can easily create a situation where anyone within a company can legally use an app linked to Qt/GPL, but that same app cannot legally be distributed outside of the company.
If the company wants to release everything as GPL at a later date, no problem - they simply re-license all the existing source code under the GPL. If they want a Qt/Commercial license at a later date, it should be no problem as well, assuming TrollTech is willing to allow them to "upgrade" from Qt/GPL to Qt/Commercial. (A seperate issue - IMHO, they'd be foolish to not provide an explicit upgrade path solely for people going through this kind of development cycle.)
[1] This seems to be a majority view - and, IIRC, the EFF view - of what "distribution" means.
Sure - I understand that. But here's the problem: I can buy a license for Qt/Commercial from TrollTech without telling them what I plan on using it for. If they want to refuse to sell to me under those circusmstances, again, it's their right. However, even if I do tell them, there's nothing to prevent me from using it to build other projects as well - including projects that started out using Qt/GPL and my own dual-licensed source code, for example.
Basically, their "if it's GPL from the start, it has to remain GPL forever" clause of theirs has zero force; they know it, which is why their means of dealing with it is to refuse to sell you a commercial license. Before that can work, though, they need to have intimate knowledge of what you're developing, why you're developing it, what your future development plans are, etc. In other words, they need to start treating every customer as a potential license violator and criminal. Take a look at the RIAA, and you can see how well that works.
Of course, you could always do what TrollTech themselves have chosen to do:
IANAL, but - the source code is yours, after all. You wrote it, you own the copyright. Make it available under the GPL and a commercial license. When you build your source code against QT/GPL, then you produce a GPL-licensed app. When you build against QT/Commerical, then you produce a commercially-licensed app.
TrollTech's commercial license may say otherwise - but it's a license you never accepted, if you developed your code using QT/GPL. TrollTech could still choose to refuse to sell you a license for QT/Commercial, which is their right. If they did sell you a commercial license, though, I really doubt they'd have any legal way to force you to revoke any alternate licenses to your code.
Wrong.
Whatever license the source code is under, the copyright to that source code is owned by somebody. In this case, presumably, it's owned by the company. An employee or ex-employee posting the source code on the internet without permission from the copyright holder (the company) would be guilty of copyright violation, at the very least. Probably violation of trade secret agreements as well.
If you mean that once the source code is out there, then you can't stuff the genie back into the bottle, well, yah - probably. The person who put it out there is setting themselves up for a whole world of hurt, though.
First post!
Man, that was stressful. Now if only there was some way to decrease other stressors in my life, like work...
Which is just about the best definition of "leadership" that I think I've come across in a long, long time.
Nope. The US government didn't up the commitment because of the "stingy" comment. They upped their commitment because it's just part of the way our government works. It's large, and at times, can be slow; but once it's moving, it tends to get the job done, no matter what. Current estimates are that the US aid contributions over the next year for this particular effort in disaster relief will eventually top out at over a billion dollars or more. That's not including expenditures like redirecting naval forces to help with relief efforts.
Man, this is just so wrong. So, let me get this straight: the only place in the world where you can find short-sighted, self-centered people is in the US? There is no other place in the world where anyone else has ever said, "Eh, we (the government) are already giving them $X million [dollars|euros|yen|whatever], why should I bother?"
I've got a 14th level Prime Minister that'll mop up the floor with that looser!
(Oh, c'mon. You know that your first thought was a lame joke like this, too...)
Had something very similar happen to me playing Quake online... I ended up on a map, alone with one other player, at 3 in the morning. He was slagging me pretty well, we got to talking...
JimmyB: Have you set your mouse so you can right-click to do X?
Croaker: I don't use the mouse.
JimmyB: WHAT!
JimmyB: You're kidding me...
Yep. Until he took the time to convince me I needed to learn how to use the mouse, and let me practice with him, I was a keyboard-only player. Once he knew that, he was amazed I'd been able to do as well as I had against him :-) I'd probably have carpal tunnel in both wrists if he hadn't gotten me to learn how to use the mouse in FPS...
"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company."
iTunes? IBM could take iTunes, craft content distribution deals with major labels, and then later turn around and re-license their services and technology to other digital music suppliers, so that eventually 'digitial music' would mean 'IBM servers and services'. It could be a way of turning the digital music (and, presumably, movie) distribution industry into a commodity market with IBM at the helm.
Aside from that, if IBM were to dump their PC business and buy Apple, they then end up in the exact situation they lost with the original IBM PC: what is (essentially) a proprietary hardware platform. Keep the consumer sales side going, push MacOS X machines for business use, and they'd have a big stick to swing at the Wintell Hegemony...
Understood - what I'm pointing out is that even if you don't think the Bible is the word of God, it has still shown itself to be an accurate historical document. I'll concede that, if you treat it as a purely historical document, some portions of the Bible have more independent corroboration than others, and would be regarded as more trustworthy by secular scholars.
Given that, if the Bible says that so-and-so was ruler of Samaria at some time, and there's no other historical evidence for that particular assertion one way or another, then I would think that even a secular scholar shouldn't have much of a problem with citing the Bible as as a relevant source.
IIRC, they didn't go into quite as much detail on Old Testament authenticity, though they did cover it to some extent; and from what I remember, there is at least a grudging admission from most archaelogists that as time goes by, new discoveries tend to confirm, rather than disprove, the historical authenticity of the OT.
My point is that rejection of the Bible's extrordinary claims does not neccessitate rejection of it's un-extraordinary claims. Even if you think most of the authors of the Bible were cluelss mumps for believing in God, you can at lest look at the Bible and treat it as a historical document that has shown itslef to be accurate to some degree. Whether or not you consider the Bible accurate enough that you would base a professional opinion on it's contents is an entirely different issue.
Maybe you can answer a question for me, then:
If I buy a book, I can then sell it to someone else. Doctrine of first sale, correct?
If I buy HL2, but *don't* install it, I can then sell it to someone else. Again, doctrine of first sale. At this point, it's a product that I own; there is no licensing agreement, no contract entered into, etc.
If I buy HL2, and *do* install it, then Valve (and other companies) argue that I've entered into a contract with them. As part of that contract, I have *lost* something - my ability to resell the product. I cannot sell my copy of HL2 to someone else without Valve's permission. Well, I guess I can still sell it - but because of the issue of registration, that particular copy of HL2 is worthless now, to anyone but me.
Here's my question: how can Valve sell me something that is obviously a product, a physical good, something that can be resold and treated by law exactly as if it were book or a car or an iPod... but which later is somehow redefined or transformed into a license?
It's as if the law considered a car a "product" only so long as you didn't start the engine; but as soon as you actually get behind the wheel and put the key in the ignition, you no longer *own* a car, but instead now have a "license" to drive that one particular instance of a car.
Interesting comment about WoW's rest system - I'm not really into MMOGs, but it seems like a reasonable way to account for the online/offline dichotomy. I'm surprised it's taken this long for someone to figure out something like this.
I was thinking that there would be additional differentiators aside from death penalties - ie, if it wasn't just experience; perhaps some quests would only be open to hardcore players, or open up at lower levels, etc. Though I understand your comment about players complaining about lag deaths. You hear the same whining in 1PS games :-/
If nothing else, this makes the usual "in-game" devices, spells, etc. that deal explictly with death-avoidance much more interesting and valuable.
Why not allow the player to select their death penalty at character creation time? The idea would be to make it so that the characters who are more likely to suffer when they die are also the ones more likely to advance...
For example:
A casual player could take the the minimum death penalty - something like WoW, where there's a time delay only before you respawn somewhere (relatively) safe. In return, they get normal experience from the game.
A more dedicated player could take a medium death penalty - item deterioration/theft, stat deterioration, etc. In return, they would get an experience bonus - say, 25% extra experience. They're risking more, so they're earning more as well.
A hardcore player could take the "he's dead, Jim" level of death penalty: you die, that's it. But they'd earn 50% extra experience when compared to their less-adventuresome brethren.
Hmm. Now that I think of it, you could adapt this idea to solve the 2 hours a night vs. 12 hours a day player problem, too. Keep track of how many hours a player has been online in a particular day. Players online for more than, say, 4 hours, get nada. Players online for less time get a sliding percentage of some standard experience award at the end of the day, so that the player who's playing casually (1-2 hours every couple of days) can "keep up" with the hardcore players. Maybe not even with them - where a hardcore player might be pulling down 8000 xp from 8 hours of play, for example, someone who plays 1 hour might get a bonus award of 3000 xp. Enough so that they're not completely outstripped, but not enough that the hardcore player feels like the casual Joe has the better deal.
Then there's the solution. Sell the stuff to France. They have a use for it, we can sell it at a price that merely covers the cost of shipping, and voila! - We solve our problem, the French get cheap fuel, and everybody's happy.
Bah! As the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates points out, "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy - nothing more and nothing less."
Once more: I'm not interested in debating abortion. Can you please understand that? I am making the point that we have fundamentally different views on the matter, stemming from our basic moral belief systems; and that whatever law the government enacts on the matter, it will offend one of us.
Your assertion that "my point of view doesn't force anyone to do anything", is, based on my beliefs, absolutely wrong, because from my point of view, it forces a child to die. Can you understand that? My argument assumes to be true a basic premise (fetus does have individual rights) that your argument considers to be false (fetus does not have individual rights). As a result, we are starting from different basic assumptions about reality that inevitably lead to opposed views on certain matters.
Because of this, regardless of what the government does, one of us will be offended, because it challenges a basic moral premise that either you or I consider to be true.
Again, you're missing the point entirely, while making my point exactly.
I'm not particularly interested in discussing abortion - I'm just using it as an example of a divisive issue that is the result of fundamentally different moral frameworks. In the case or abortion, you and I have very different moral frameworks, and we simple cannot come to an accomidation or compromise on a principle like abortion unless one of us changes our fundamental world view.
It doesn't really matter where you draw the line - you end up with some people on one side, some people on the other, and no way to come to an accomidation between them except to convince your opponents to subscribe to your moral framework. Again, this isn't particularly about abortion - in this case, it's just a convenient example of the phenomenon I'm talking about.
Maybe an example by negatives is better for you: I personally think that cutting taxes is, in general, a Good Thing (tm). With the right arguments, you might be able to convince me that I was wrong about that, and that in fact, raising taxes was the right and proper way to run a government.
If you do convince me of this, it won't require any soul searching on my part. I won't lie awake for hours at night, wondering if I made the right choice. I won't argue passionately (ha!) about it on public message boards.
My point is that I won't have to change my moral framework to make this change in my opinion. It may seem like a big change, but it really isn't - the remainder of my life is more or less untouched by that decision. I didn't have to make any major adjustments to my world view in order to hold this new opinion.
In order to change my mind about abortion, though, I would have to go back and pretty much change my entire attitude about everything: God. Family. Other people. Sex. In order for you to go from being pro-abortion to pro-life, you'd have to make the same kind of major adjustment in your basic starting assumptions about the world, what is good, what is moral, etc.
Neither one of us is likely to do this unless we think there is a vitally important reason to do so. That's the point that I'm trying to make: the issue itself is not the issue. The real issue, the underlying issue, is a conflict between two different moral systems. There is no way that the government can satisfy both these systems at the same time, so one set of people always ends up feeling that the other side has "imposed" their morals on them.
I'll end with this, since it's a great example of the point I'm trying to make. What you're missing is that the statement "It all comes down to your personal beliefs" is your moral framework - not mine. When you talk about a woman "takign responsibility" for her own body, I'm absolutely convinced you're wrong - that it is not her choice to make, any more than it is my "choice" to walk up to someone and shoot them. You're absolutely convinced that I'm wrong - that a woman who chooses to have an abortion is doing nothing more than exercising control of her own body, and preventing her from that is morally similar to rape.
A person can't hold both opinions at the same time - and neither can a government. In a situation like this, the only thing the government can do is "force" morality on the populace. Either I am forced to live under laws that reflect your morals, or you are forced to live under laws that reflect my morals. Either way, someone ends up having to live with a law they consider immoral.
(And before you start arguing that abortion laws don't affect
You still don't see the problem I tried to descibe... by my moral standards, abortion is murder. I feel quite justified in asking the government to pass a law that prevents people from (as I see it) casually comitting murder. You don't seem to share my viewpoint, and feel quite justified in asking the government to pass a law that (as you see it) prevents others from infringing on your personal liberty.
My point is that the two are mutually exclusive. If the government says that abortions are legal, that offends my sense of morality. If it says that abortions are illegal, that offends your sense of morality. It doesn't matter what the government does - one of us will be offended by what we consider immoral and unreasonable legislation.
Don't ask me for a simple answer to the problem; if I had any inkling of an idea of how to solve something like this, I'd be running for office myself.
I think you're ignoring a fundamental problem with "moral issues": taking a stance, one way or another, forces your opinion on those who do not share your position.
To take abortion as an example: someone with a right-to-life stance feels that abortion is murder. Someone with a right-to-abortion stance feels that abortion is permissible. There are variations on the two themes, but the real problem is that they are fundamentally incompatible. If laws are proposed that would enforce the pro-life position, someone with a pro-abortion stance sees those laws as being immoral. Likewise, laws proposed that enforce the pro-abortion position are seen as immoral be someone holding a pro-life position.
The problem is that something like abortion really isn't an "issue". An issue is something you can debate or argue over, with an eye towards convicing your opponent about your point of view. Except in rare circumstances, this doesn't work for when discussing moral stances, because it involves far more than changing someone's point of view about a subject. In order for someone to convince me that I should adopt a pro-abortion stance, they would first have to convince me that my entire moral structure was wrong - because my opinion on the abortion issue is a product of my moral framework. The same holds true for the opposite kind of shift; in order to convince someone holding a pro-abortion stance that they should instead hold pro-life views, I would first have to convince them that the moral framework that led them to their current stance was wrong.
Candidates in an election can debate issues and hope that their arguments will sway voters, they can only advertise those positions derived from their moral frameworks.
No. Kerry lost.
You want to talk about lies, deception, and divisiveness? How about:
Kerry's shown some integrity and spirit in his concession. Unfortunately, he - and the DNC - showed none when they were running his campaign. For some reason though that ignoring the issues and focusing on FUD was a good idea.