You don't "lose freedom" by using proprietary software. You gain the opportunity to use the software.
Before you obtained the closed-source software you had, what? The freedom to stare at a blank screen? The freedom to modify the power button state? The freedom to write your own completely from scratch? How do you lose any of that joyful freedom by using a closed source package?
Consider that the US is the only country in the history of the world that was founded on principles of individual liberty and the protection of individual rights - even if it was applied inconsistently. The rest of the world still hasn't accepted even the mostly painfully obvious of those principles, much less equalled or surpassed the US in forming a society based on them.
And you want to give the rest of the world a say in the running of the Internet.. for freedom and individual liberty?
One of the reasons beef is such a common staple food is the fact that it survives without refrigeration for longer periods of time than most other foods. In fact, beef jerky doesn't need any refrigeration at all, and it's just dried/salted/spiced beef, nothing special really.
If we cut back on beef production, we'd see a net *increase* in refrigeration and production costs. Unless you expect people to replace beef with vegetation instead of another meat, in which case there are questions of exactly what volume of vegetation X it takes to replace beef in a human diet, the cost of producing/transporting that extra volume, the resource requirements for growing that extra vegetation, etc.
It can be argued by people who took too much acid in the '90s. Or college professors. Or their first-year , first-semester students. It couldn't be argued by people who actually understand philosophy.
Probably because your econ textbook was written by an academic with a very shallow understanding of philosophy.
What "rules" need to be enforced in a free market?
No theft, sure. No fraud, yeah. But that's it.
Enforcing competition? No, the government has no place defining what competition is, much less ensuring that it exists.
The real problem isn't that free markets "don't work". They do - in fact they're the only system that actually works. The real problem is the widely-held belief that ideas don't have anything to do with the real world, that the real world is full of contradictions and inconsistencies, etc. etc. People want to get away with things, and because they can't have those things and be consistent, they allow themselves the indulgence and blame reality when it doesn't conform.
The question of "Why?" in the context of science is better stated as "By what mechanism?" or "What is it about the nature of X that makes it do Y under Z circumstances?". "Why?" implies that we're seeking a purpose.. the goal of a conscious being who set things up just so for some end of its own. That's not science.
The fact that there will always be another "why?" is exactly the fact that there is no such thing as omniscience. There is no such thing as "everything" to know, much less knowing everything.
The fact that most people these days *do* coast along without putting much-if-any effort into conscious thought doesn't in any way show that they are incapable of doing so, or that coasting is inescapable "human nature".
You're right. Intelligence has nothing to do with it. As long as you're not physiologically damaged, your mental habits are much more important to your overall personality and behavior than any non-quantifiable "intelligence" factor.
Being human is a *choice*, and most people choose poorly.
Morally speaking, animals other than humans are the equivalent of self-mobile, self-replicating rocks. They have no moral standing except as natural resources for our use.
So yes, you are correct. It is completely *a*moral. The post to which you replied is wrong, in that he chose the wrong word. The waste factor is *immoral*, not amoral. And that's the only immoral thing about hunting, end of story.
This is a question of Constitutional Law. All the people who claim they're "Conservatives" without quoting the Constitution's prohibition against States regulating inter-State commerce are deceiving themselves about their political stance.
States can not regulate interstate commerce. Period. Not. Can't. Prohibited. That means they can't tax you for something that happens in another state.
The Great Depression was caused by government interference in the economy. Thanks for playing this round of "I Learned History At Public School"! You are the... winner?
I don't think you're a Socialist or a Communist. You're just mis-educated, which is in fact far worse and much harder to correct than simply being uneducated.
No, they don't. A majority of scientists? Not one of the scientists I know - who doesn't work for a lobbying group or left-leaning "think tank" aka lobbying group - claims to believe that Global Warming is caused by humans.
So, where do you get the idea that "a majority" have formed a "consensus"? And more importantly, how do you know that they came to that conclusion based on solid reasoning and not just from accepting what "everyone knows"? Scientists aren't immune to that, you know.
> Religion/faith is all about the step after that.
No. Religion and faith are the step *before* science, in that religion and faith are all people have as an attempt to explain the working of the world *before* they figure out things like causation and identity. The idea that religion and faith somehow give us a deeper insight into the way things *really* are, beyond what our "puny human minds" can comprehend, is absolute nonsense. True, we can't know everything the universe has to offer - there is no such thing as knowing everything. Omniscience doesn't exist, and it isn't a valid standard by which to judge human capabilities. So what? That fact in no way implies either that there must be some "higher" intelligence which *can* meet this absurd standard or that the areas of our ignorance are where all the answers to all the supposed mysteries people of 'faith' wave in our faces actually reside, inaccessible to our 'lower', 'worldly' scientific minds.
Faith means one thing - making things up in the absence of or in spite of observable facts. In cavemen it's excusable. In moderns it's a mental illness.
This result isn't very interesting, much less newsworthy.
The first problem is that the primary source material for most academic papers is - other academic papers. There is a strong Andy Warhol effect in academia: once a paper is referenced by enough papers, it becomes standard practice to reference that paper. It becomes famous simply for being famous. Regardless of the papers' actual merit, a small but ideologically homogeneous set of original texts can easily spawn an entire cottage industry of follow-ons.
Secondly, who are the "peers" who review these papers? By what standard do they decide what gets published and what doesn't? The belief that someone who claims to be a scientist is only interested in the truth is, to be polite, extraordinarily naive.
Far more common and damaging oversight? Absolutely not. Why shouldn't the people who produce the wealth be the ones who benefit from it? That's what so-called economic "output" is - material wealth, the goods and services that make our society such a (relatively) great place to live.
Certainly, the population of China is many times larger than that of the U.S. Consider that the vast majority of the Chinese populace are peasants who live on subsistance farms, and it's easy to spot the cause of that "gap".
Unless you've been to college in the West. Then you'll probably never understand simple things like economics and critical reasoning.
This is absolutely not true. There may have been a time when it could be reasonably assumed that someone who went on to "higher education" did so because of merit or a greater propensity for tackling intellectual challenges, but that is not currently the case. These days, college kids are more likely to feel very good about all the stupid things they believe but don't understand. Modern college kids are exactly the strata of gullible-and-militant fools who are easily led into things like, say, terrorist groups and doomsday cults.
What happens if the Earth warms up and it has absolutely nothing to do with human activity? What then? Because if the Earth is warming, that is the most logical first conclusion. Instead, what we get is that any measurable change in the Earth's climate MUST be the fault of those evil, evil humans who are destroying God's Eden paradise, where the deer and the bunnies are best friends and speak English to each other when those evil defiler Humans aren't there to shoot their mothers. (That's for the hippies and Michael Moore fans who might believe that "Bambi" was a documentary).
Unions are for the benefit of those workers who want to receive multiples of the benefits of doing a job without having to actually do the job. Unions are also for those who have no problem profiting from this sort of institutionalized graft, namely politicians and organized crimimals.
The competent, valuable employees are never the ones who benefit from unionization, in any field.
Or it could be that the only realistic alternative is John Kerry. That's the primary reason I plan to vote for Bush, and... well... basically the only one, at that.
Considering that the game isn't actually on sale yet - anywhere - you're absolutely wrong. Someone *had* to steal at least one copy of the game in order to make it available.
As far as damages are concerned, yes, the principal theft isn't even a fraction of a drop in the bucket. What? $49.99 at Best Buy? Compared to the loss of marketability, dilution of brand, interference in the performance of contractual obligations, etc. that can be argued as a source of damages, that $50 pocket discount just doesn't register.
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You don't "lose freedom" by using proprietary software. You gain the opportunity to use the software.
Before you obtained the closed-source software you had, what? The freedom to stare at a blank screen? The freedom to modify the power button state? The freedom to write your own completely from scratch? How do you lose any of that joyful freedom by using a closed source package?
Add to the mix the fact that the other planets are warming up, too, and you've found out the secret. Welcome to the club.
There is no such thing as a "fair share" to be paid.
Consider that the US is the only country in the history of the world that was founded on principles of individual liberty and the protection of individual rights - even if it was applied inconsistently. The rest of the world still hasn't accepted even the mostly painfully obvious of those principles, much less equalled or surpassed the US in forming a society based on them.
And you want to give the rest of the world a say in the running of the Internet.. for freedom and individual liberty?
You must have been smoking the dirty rocks again.
If you really cared about children, you'd work for the abolition of public education.
One of the reasons beef is such a common staple food is the fact that it survives without refrigeration for longer periods of time than most other foods. In fact, beef jerky doesn't need any refrigeration at all, and it's just dried/salted/spiced beef, nothing special really.
If we cut back on beef production, we'd see a net *increase* in refrigeration and production costs. Unless you expect people to replace beef with vegetation instead of another meat, in which case there are questions of exactly what volume of vegetation X it takes to replace beef in a human diet, the cost of producing/transporting that extra volume, the resource requirements for growing that extra vegetation, etc.
It can be argued by people who took too much acid in the '90s. Or college professors. Or their first-year , first-semester students. It couldn't be argued by people who actually understand philosophy.
Probably because your econ textbook was written by an academic with a very shallow understanding of philosophy.
What "rules" need to be enforced in a free market?
No theft, sure. No fraud, yeah. But that's it.
Enforcing competition? No, the government has no place defining what competition is, much less ensuring that it exists.
The real problem isn't that free markets "don't work". They do - in fact they're the only system that actually works. The real problem is the widely-held belief that ideas don't have anything to do with the real world, that the real world is full of contradictions and inconsistencies, etc. etc. People want to get away with things, and because they can't have those things and be consistent, they allow themselves the indulgence and blame reality when it doesn't conform.
And that's the short answer.
He did say industrial nations. I don't know if Maple Syrup and moose porn count as "industries".
The question of "Why?" in the context of science is better stated as "By what mechanism?" or "What is it about the nature of X that makes it do Y under Z circumstances?". "Why?" implies that we're seeking a purpose.. the goal of a conscious being who set things up just so for some end of its own. That's not science.
The fact that there will always be another "why?" is exactly the fact that there is no such thing as omniscience. There is no such thing as "everything" to know, much less knowing everything.
The fact that most people these days *do* coast along without putting much-if-any effort into conscious thought doesn't in any way show that they are incapable of doing so, or that coasting is inescapable "human nature".
You're right. Intelligence has nothing to do with it. As long as you're not physiologically damaged, your mental habits are much more important to your overall personality and behavior than any non-quantifiable "intelligence" factor.
Being human is a *choice*, and most people choose poorly.
Morally speaking, animals other than humans are the equivalent of self-mobile, self-replicating rocks. They have no moral standing except as natural resources for our use.
So yes, you are correct. It is completely *a*moral. The post to which you replied is wrong, in that he chose the wrong word. The waste factor is *immoral*, not amoral. And that's the only immoral thing about hunting, end of story.
No, it's the same world, we're just within arm's reach of the savages who populate the rest of it now.
No tax is a fair tax.
This is a question of Constitutional Law. All the people who claim they're "Conservatives" without quoting the Constitution's prohibition against States regulating inter-State commerce are deceiving themselves about their political stance.
States can not regulate interstate commerce. Period. Not. Can't. Prohibited. That means they can't tax you for something that happens in another state.
The Great Depression was caused by government interference in the economy. Thanks for playing this round of "I Learned History At Public School"! You are the ... winner?
I don't think you're a Socialist or a Communist. You're just mis-educated, which is in fact far worse and much harder to correct than simply being uneducated.
I will when I feel like it! Dang!
No, they don't. A majority of scientists? Not one of the scientists I know - who doesn't work for a lobbying group or left-leaning "think tank" aka lobbying group - claims to believe that Global Warming is caused by humans.
So, where do you get the idea that "a majority" have formed a "consensus"? And more importantly, how do you know that they came to that conclusion based on solid reasoning and not just from accepting what "everyone knows"? Scientists aren't immune to that, you know.
> Religion/faith is all about the step after that.
No. Religion and faith are the step *before* science, in that religion and faith are all people have as an attempt to explain the working of the world *before* they figure out things like causation and identity. The idea that religion and faith somehow give us a deeper insight into the way things *really* are, beyond what our "puny human minds" can comprehend, is absolute nonsense. True, we can't know everything the universe has to offer - there is no such thing as knowing everything. Omniscience doesn't exist, and it isn't a valid standard by which to judge human capabilities. So what? That fact in no way implies either that there must be some "higher" intelligence which *can* meet this absurd standard or that the areas of our ignorance are where all the answers to all the supposed mysteries people of 'faith' wave in our faces actually reside, inaccessible to our 'lower', 'worldly' scientific minds.
Faith means one thing - making things up in the absence of or in spite of observable facts. In cavemen it's excusable. In moderns it's a mental illness.
This result isn't very interesting, much less newsworthy.
The first problem is that the primary source material for most academic papers is - other academic papers. There is a strong Andy Warhol effect in academia: once a paper is referenced by enough papers, it becomes standard practice to reference that paper. It becomes famous simply for being famous. Regardless of the papers' actual merit, a small but ideologically homogeneous set of original texts can easily spawn an entire cottage industry of follow-ons.
Secondly, who are the "peers" who review these papers? By what standard do they decide what gets published and what doesn't? The belief that someone who claims to be a scientist is only interested in the truth is, to be polite, extraordinarily naive.
Far more common and damaging oversight? Absolutely not. Why shouldn't the people who produce the wealth be the ones who benefit from it? That's what so-called economic "output" is - material wealth, the goods and services that make our society such a (relatively) great place to live.
Certainly, the population of China is many times larger than that of the U.S. Consider that the vast majority of the Chinese populace are peasants who live on subsistance farms, and it's easy to spot the cause of that "gap".
Unless you've been to college in the West. Then you'll probably never understand simple things like economics and critical reasoning.
This is absolutely not true. There may have been a time when it could be reasonably assumed that someone who went on to "higher education" did so because of merit or a greater propensity for tackling intellectual challenges, but that is not currently the case. These days, college kids are more likely to feel very good about all the stupid things they believe but don't understand. Modern college kids are exactly the strata of gullible-and-militant fools who are easily led into things like, say, terrorist groups and doomsday cults.
What happens if the Earth warms up and it has absolutely nothing to do with human activity? What then? Because if the Earth is warming, that is the most logical first conclusion. Instead, what we get is that any measurable change in the Earth's climate MUST be the fault of those evil, evil humans who are destroying God's Eden paradise, where the deer and the bunnies are best friends and speak English to each other when those evil defiler Humans aren't there to shoot their mothers. (That's for the hippies and Michael Moore fans who might believe that "Bambi" was a documentary).
Unions are for the benefit of those workers who want to receive multiples of the benefits of doing a job without having to actually do the job. Unions are also for those who have no problem profiting from this sort of institutionalized graft, namely politicians and organized crimimals.
The competent, valuable employees are never the ones who benefit from unionization, in any field.
Or it could be that the only realistic alternative is John Kerry. That's the primary reason I plan to vote for Bush, and ... well ... basically the only one, at that.
Considering that the game isn't actually on sale yet - anywhere - you're absolutely wrong. Someone *had* to steal at least one copy of the game in order to make it available.
As far as damages are concerned, yes, the principal theft isn't even a fraction of a drop in the bucket. What? $49.99 at Best Buy? Compared to the loss of marketability, dilution of brand, interference in the performance of contractual obligations, etc. that can be argued as a source of damages, that $50 pocket discount just doesn't register.