The founding fathers did not in any way think of the internet, therefore we shouldn't have a right to free expression on the internet. The founding fathers didn't have a clue about Mormonism, therefore Mormons shouldn't have a right to practice their religion. Etc.
It is a misconception that the second amendment was written to allow for hunting or even just private home defense. Instead the second amendment was written to allow private citizens to own the same weapons that the government had access to, therefore assuring that if the republic would turn to tyranny the citizens could stage an armed revolt and change the government.
Irony at its finest. It always baffles me that those in favor of banning guns are the very ones that use them. Of course its perfectly alright to have people with guns protecting them, yet it is entirely unacceptable for others to use them to protect themselves and their family.
Except for the fact there are a whole lot of things that aren't under copyright (or allowed under copyright) and yet the creators of the work still are held in high esteem (and still get profit).
Which would you rather see, AC/DC or a cover band of AC/DC? The songs are the same, the lyrics are the same so why does AC/DC sell out shows while an AC/DC cover band barely gets enough money for gas?
Which would you rather own, the original Mona Lisa or a replica? Does the fact that I can go anywhere online and download a copy of the Mona Lisa diminish its value? No, of course not.
The problem with copyright is it attempts to view an idea, which is intangible and not scarce with the physical world and the scarcity associated with it.
Any successful artist can make money even if all copyright was abolished. Indeed they might be even -more- successful. There is scarcity involved with going to a concert, because seats, particularly good seats, are scarce, people will pay money to go to a concert. People will pay artists to paint a portrait of them. People will pay writers to write. Etc.
But why would you even WANT to work for someone who wants your Facebook login? A business which even thinks about asking for that sort of information would be a big red flag to not work at that company.
Get rid of copyright. Get rid of the notion of applying property rights to non-scarce goods. Any system of property rights (capitalism, communism, etc.) is designed with scarcity in mind.
Because most game developers are concerned about making the game be fun and the actual game mechanics rather than strict programmers who think in terms of, oh, we need to optimize this subroutine.
Publishers though specialize in making sure the platforms are compatible and they have the resources to do such a thing fairly easily.
For example, consider Minecraft. Mojang doesn't have the resources to port the game to Xbox and iPhone/Android so they used publishers to do that. Because of this Mojang can focus on what they do best (making Minecraft fun) instead of having to spend resources making Minecraft work on different platforms.
Except for the fact that hunting rifle != bolt action. Other than my bolt action high caliber guns (.404 Jeffery,.416 Rigby) for dangerous game, most of my hunting rifles are semi-auto. And in an unarmed situation, the fact that the magazines only hold ~8 rounds isn't a drawback. Sure, if I was in a situation where people were firing at me, extra rounds would be nice but in a situation like Sandy Hook, the extra 5 seconds to change a magazine isn't going to make much of a difference, I mean, what is a 6 year old going to do in that time?
What the hell is a "military grade" weapon and how would banning those stop shootings?
Banning "assault weapons" to help reduce crime is like banning red cars to reduce speeding.
The gun used in the Sandy Hook Shooting was a.223 Remington, a caliber too small in most states to legally shoot a deer. Meaning that the majority of hunting guns have much more energy than your so-called "military grade" weapon.
These guns aren't fully automatic, they are semi-automatic, the same types that many hunters use. You pull the trigger once and it fires once. You can't hold down the trigger and spray bullets everywhere, to get those you have go to through a LOT of paperwork and they are quite expensive and because of that very, very, very few civilians own fully-automatic firearms.
These guns have detachable magazines, much like any hunting rifle, either bolt-action or semi-automatic. The magazine capacity doesn't matter all that much when we are dealing with unarmed people in a school, the 5 seconds it takes to change in a magazine doesn't make a difference in a massacre like that.
The only other things that separate an "assault weapon" from an ordinary hunting weapon is the use of bayonet mounts and some other stylistic differences, none of which make a difference when it comes to the Sandy Hook Shooting.
The idea that the gun used in the Sandy Hook Shooting is somehow more dangerous than your grandpa's.30-06 is absolute bullshit. The idea that these "military style" weapons are somehow more dangerous demonstrates a lack of knowledge or a willful ignorance to the facts.
Of course calm doesn't mean stable but the idea that taking your kid out target shooting instantly trains them on how to be a mass murderer is absolutely ridiculous.
And "assault rifle" is an absolute bullshit description which basically amounts to "this gun looks dangerous" there's nothing in the 1994 Assault Weapons ban that really bans anything functional in the guns. Basically its the gun equivalent to trying to reduce speeding by banning people from owning cars that are red, orange, yellow or have flames painted on.
If anything, hunting rifles are -more- dangerous than so-called "assault weapons" because they've got more power behind the rounds. They are also far more accurate.
It amazes me how much of a knee-jerk reaction people have when it comes to guns. Especially from people who have never really shot one. Real guns are quite different than those that Hollywood portrays. Shooting is completely different than that which Hollywood (and video games) portrays.
The cause wasn't that the shooter played video games, the cause wasn't that the shooter had shot a gun before. The cause was that this guy seriously had some mental issues. You can't fix humanity.
Guns and shooting ranges are not violent in and of themselves. Target shooting is a mental exercise, a bit like meditation, it requires quite a bit of focus and mental control to be good at shooting. You've got to simultaneously be both very observant of the world around you (which way is the wind blowing, how fast is it blowing, etc.) and at the same time block it all out. You can't just go in and empty your clip in 2 seconds and expect to hit anything. If you've never been shooting, you should and you'll see that it is anything but violent. It is a form of mental exercise.
Its highly possible that a technologically advanced civilization would have never really used radio waves. Or its possible that they are advanced, but not -that- advanced.
Imagine if we put a random sample of humanity on a different planet even as recently as 1700 AD. I'd imagine the 2 worlds would look quite different even though its only 300 years. The evolution of human communication is mostly an accident. There's no "line of technology", its quite possible that an advanced civilization skipped radio and used some completely different method of communication that we haven't even thought of and the two civilizations could be both as advanced.
You mean like the hidden interesting scroll called The Gospel of Matthew that until 2012 has never been published that says in Matthew 1:16 "Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah."
If you look at the old testament law, a lot of it was pretty useful for survival outside of religion.
Of course you've got the basic ethical principles (don't steal, don't murder, etc.) but then you've got things that their value is not apparently obvious such as don't eat pork. Why pork? Well for one undercooked pork can more easily make you sick than many "kosher" animals. For another pigs aren't exactly the best animals to keep in the desert because they tend to need a lot of water and are best kept in the mud, two things that the Middle East doesn't exactly have a lot of. You've got prohibitions against marrying family members, a pretty good idea to help strengthen genetic diversity at a time when genes were not understood. You've also got basic sanitation. You've got prohibitions against eating animals that could carry diseases. You've got quarantining of people who could carry diseases. Etc.
If you read through Leviticus you can see a whole lot of useful things for the Jews during that era. Of course it isn't presented as "don't eat pork because you'll get Trichinosis" but its all quite useful.
But having streaming options available now of everything simply makes sense. There are a lot of films that I've never watched, I've got no doubt there are some absolutely wonderful TV shows and movies that I've never watched before. However, I'm not going to spend $15 on a DVD of a movie that I hadn't heard of before I walked into the store. I'm certainly not going to pay $45 for that same DVD because it happens to be a movie that is very hard to get a copy of. A combination of having a huge streaming selection and a good prediction algorithm (think Pandora for movies) would be simply revolutionary. Even if the service is discontinued in 15 years, I'd certainly subscribe to it and drop Netflix even if it was a bit more a month.
At the moment Netflix has an expanding but still pathetic library of things available for streaming, and their prediction algorithms, while they aren't terrible, they aren't Pandora for movies.
It would be easy to beat Netflix, just offer nearly everything possible to be available for online streaming. And don't just have one season of a show, have all of them. And carry even the most obscure shows and movies.
It would be awesome if Netflix was an online library of movies and TV shows, nearly everything produced in the past 100 years. Unfortunately it seems it is quite far from that goal and Redbox doesn't seem to be much of a competitor at this point.
Religion discourages critical thinking no more than man's own reasoning which can also justify immoral acts. Furthermore, any attempt to justify morality ends up, in essence, being the same thing as a religious belief as it regards to one's own actions.
For example, a belief in a superior race can come across both through religion (we are divinely appointed to rule X people) or without religion (we are ethnically more evolved, thus making us best suited to rule X people).
People are people and have the same nature regardless if they believe there is a God, believe in many gods or believe there is no God at all. Its no surprise that a lot of violence occurred in the name of religion (or the belief in a lack of religion) because its what people most strongly believe in and it allows for the hiding of the root causes of the conflict. Its much more heroic to die fighting for what you believe in than it is for someone to die, say, acquiring a lot of land. Therefore, conflicts which were based on human desires such as the crusades were depicted as a religious struggle because it gains much more support and makes the deaths seem nobler. Consider the Trojan War, in order to make it sound noble it was fought over love, rather than the real reasons (the Greeks really wanted the wealth of Troy).
As technology improves and wealth increases, it is natural that ways to create clean water and grow/farm food would increase too.
You can't both simultaneously predict that technology would rise in all areas and predict that technology will not have risen in regards to food production.
Does anyone actually use QR codes to go to websites? I've only used a handful of QR codes and those were for store promotions where if you were in their store you could scan a QR code and get a virtual "scratchers" ticket which would tell you if you won a prize or not.
"Stealing" from the treasury! What a load of BS. Google/Microsoft are no more "stealing" from the treasury than you are because you haven't gone out and bought me something.
You mean like Gobuntu or gNewSense? The versions of Ubuntu that only contain free software? The ones that if you install on a laptop you have a 75% chance of not having wi-fi?
RMS's demands end up being unworkable. Although he's had a pretty good track record for being right, any "free software only" distro ends up being limiting.
Any talk about "Legitimate" speech is on the same level as "Legitimate Rape". All speech is legitimate, though, clearly the UN and most of its members do not.
Don't believe me that the UN classifies political dissent as non-protected? Just look at their "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#atop where it says Article 29: (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Do we really want people controlling the internet who in their own "bill of rights" basically say you don't have these basic, "universal" rights if you disagree with us?
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The founding fathers did not in any way think of the internet, therefore we shouldn't have a right to free expression on the internet. The founding fathers didn't have a clue about Mormonism, therefore Mormons shouldn't have a right to practice their religion. Etc.
It is a misconception that the second amendment was written to allow for hunting or even just private home defense. Instead the second amendment was written to allow private citizens to own the same weapons that the government had access to, therefore assuring that if the republic would turn to tyranny the citizens could stage an armed revolt and change the government.
Irony at its finest. It always baffles me that those in favor of banning guns are the very ones that use them. Of course its perfectly alright to have people with guns protecting them, yet it is entirely unacceptable for others to use them to protect themselves and their family.
Except for the fact there are a whole lot of things that aren't under copyright (or allowed under copyright) and yet the creators of the work still are held in high esteem (and still get profit).
Which would you rather see, AC/DC or a cover band of AC/DC? The songs are the same, the lyrics are the same so why does AC/DC sell out shows while an AC/DC cover band barely gets enough money for gas?
Which would you rather own, the original Mona Lisa or a replica? Does the fact that I can go anywhere online and download a copy of the Mona Lisa diminish its value? No, of course not.
The problem with copyright is it attempts to view an idea, which is intangible and not scarce with the physical world and the scarcity associated with it.
Any successful artist can make money even if all copyright was abolished. Indeed they might be even -more- successful. There is scarcity involved with going to a concert, because seats, particularly good seats, are scarce, people will pay money to go to a concert. People will pay artists to paint a portrait of them. People will pay writers to write. Etc.
But why would you even WANT to work for someone who wants your Facebook login? A business which even thinks about asking for that sort of information would be a big red flag to not work at that company.
Get rid of copyright. Get rid of the notion of applying property rights to non-scarce goods. Any system of property rights (capitalism, communism, etc.) is designed with scarcity in mind.
Because most game developers are concerned about making the game be fun and the actual game mechanics rather than strict programmers who think in terms of, oh, we need to optimize this subroutine.
Publishers though specialize in making sure the platforms are compatible and they have the resources to do such a thing fairly easily.
For example, consider Minecraft. Mojang doesn't have the resources to port the game to Xbox and iPhone/Android so they used publishers to do that. Because of this Mojang can focus on what they do best (making Minecraft fun) instead of having to spend resources making Minecraft work on different platforms.
Except for the fact that hunting rifle != bolt action. Other than my bolt action high caliber guns (.404 Jeffery, .416 Rigby) for dangerous game, most of my hunting rifles are semi-auto. And in an unarmed situation, the fact that the magazines only hold ~8 rounds isn't a drawback. Sure, if I was in a situation where people were firing at me, extra rounds would be nice but in a situation like Sandy Hook, the extra 5 seconds to change a magazine isn't going to make much of a difference, I mean, what is a 6 year old going to do in that time?
What the hell is a "military grade" weapon and how would banning those stop shootings?
.223 Remington, a caliber too small in most states to legally shoot a deer. Meaning that the majority of hunting guns have much more energy than your so-called "military grade" weapon.
.30-06 is absolute bullshit. The idea that these "military style" weapons are somehow more dangerous demonstrates a lack of knowledge or a willful ignorance to the facts.
Banning "assault weapons" to help reduce crime is like banning red cars to reduce speeding.
The gun used in the Sandy Hook Shooting was a
These guns aren't fully automatic, they are semi-automatic, the same types that many hunters use. You pull the trigger once and it fires once. You can't hold down the trigger and spray bullets everywhere, to get those you have go to through a LOT of paperwork and they are quite expensive and because of that very, very, very few civilians own fully-automatic firearms.
These guns have detachable magazines, much like any hunting rifle, either bolt-action or semi-automatic. The magazine capacity doesn't matter all that much when we are dealing with unarmed people in a school, the 5 seconds it takes to change in a magazine doesn't make a difference in a massacre like that.
The only other things that separate an "assault weapon" from an ordinary hunting weapon is the use of bayonet mounts and some other stylistic differences, none of which make a difference when it comes to the Sandy Hook Shooting.
The idea that the gun used in the Sandy Hook Shooting is somehow more dangerous than your grandpa's
Of course calm doesn't mean stable but the idea that taking your kid out target shooting instantly trains them on how to be a mass murderer is absolutely ridiculous.
.22LR cartage. Such a thing would be banned under the terms of the '94 ban. However, http://cdn2.armslist.com/sites/armslist/uploads/posts/2012/07/13/470085_01_browning_30_06_bar_640.jpg would not be banned, despite the fact that a 30-06 has a whole lot more energy behind it and could do a whole lot more damage: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Z_e7UMpSDh0/S-x2DjLi22I/AAAAAAAAE6U/LbntDs3L6UU/s1600/comparisonlabel.JPG
And "assault rifle" is an absolute bullshit description which basically amounts to "this gun looks dangerous" there's nothing in the 1994 Assault Weapons ban that really bans anything functional in the guns. Basically its the gun equivalent to trying to reduce speeding by banning people from owning cars that are red, orange, yellow or have flames painted on.
For example this gun: http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/uzi_pistol_2245800_rs-tfb.jpeg
Looks dangerous, but really its just a semi-automatic pistol firing a
If anything, hunting rifles are -more- dangerous than so-called "assault weapons" because they've got more power behind the rounds. They are also far more accurate.
It amazes me how much of a knee-jerk reaction people have when it comes to guns. Especially from people who have never really shot one. Real guns are quite different than those that Hollywood portrays. Shooting is completely different than that which Hollywood (and video games) portrays.
The cause wasn't that the shooter played video games, the cause wasn't that the shooter had shot a gun before. The cause was that this guy seriously had some mental issues. You can't fix humanity.
Look at China, they've got some of the strictest gun control laws in the world. They've got censorship of nearly everything and yet this happens: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2248054/China-stabbing-22-children-elderly-woman-stabbed-outside-primary-school-Chinese-knifeman.html
You've got to strike at the root cause which is the mental issues. Not guns, not knives, not baseball bats, not video games, not comic books, etc.
Guns and shooting ranges are not violent in and of themselves. Target shooting is a mental exercise, a bit like meditation, it requires quite a bit of focus and mental control to be good at shooting. You've got to simultaneously be both very observant of the world around you (which way is the wind blowing, how fast is it blowing, etc.) and at the same time block it all out. You can't just go in and empty your clip in 2 seconds and expect to hit anything. If you've never been shooting, you should and you'll see that it is anything but violent. It is a form of mental exercise.
Depends.
Its highly possible that a technologically advanced civilization would have never really used radio waves. Or its possible that they are advanced, but not -that- advanced.
Imagine if we put a random sample of humanity on a different planet even as recently as 1700 AD. I'd imagine the 2 worlds would look quite different even though its only 300 years. The evolution of human communication is mostly an accident. There's no "line of technology", its quite possible that an advanced civilization skipped radio and used some completely different method of communication that we haven't even thought of and the two civilizations could be both as advanced.
You mean like the hidden interesting scroll called The Gospel of Matthew that until 2012 has never been published that says in Matthew 1:16 "Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah."
If you look at the old testament law, a lot of it was pretty useful for survival outside of religion.
Of course you've got the basic ethical principles (don't steal, don't murder, etc.) but then you've got things that their value is not apparently obvious such as don't eat pork. Why pork? Well for one undercooked pork can more easily make you sick than many "kosher" animals. For another pigs aren't exactly the best animals to keep in the desert because they tend to need a lot of water and are best kept in the mud, two things that the Middle East doesn't exactly have a lot of. You've got prohibitions against marrying family members, a pretty good idea to help strengthen genetic diversity at a time when genes were not understood. You've also got basic sanitation. You've got prohibitions against eating animals that could carry diseases. You've got quarantining of people who could carry diseases. Etc.
If you read through Leviticus you can see a whole lot of useful things for the Jews during that era. Of course it isn't presented as "don't eat pork because you'll get Trichinosis" but its all quite useful.
But having streaming options available now of everything simply makes sense. There are a lot of films that I've never watched, I've got no doubt there are some absolutely wonderful TV shows and movies that I've never watched before. However, I'm not going to spend $15 on a DVD of a movie that I hadn't heard of before I walked into the store. I'm certainly not going to pay $45 for that same DVD because it happens to be a movie that is very hard to get a copy of. A combination of having a huge streaming selection and a good prediction algorithm (think Pandora for movies) would be simply revolutionary. Even if the service is discontinued in 15 years, I'd certainly subscribe to it and drop Netflix even if it was a bit more a month.
At the moment Netflix has an expanding but still pathetic library of things available for streaming, and their prediction algorithms, while they aren't terrible, they aren't Pandora for movies.
It would be easy to beat Netflix, just offer nearly everything possible to be available for online streaming. And don't just have one season of a show, have all of them. And carry even the most obscure shows and movies.
It would be awesome if Netflix was an online library of movies and TV shows, nearly everything produced in the past 100 years. Unfortunately it seems it is quite far from that goal and Redbox doesn't seem to be much of a competitor at this point.
Religion discourages critical thinking no more than man's own reasoning which can also justify immoral acts. Furthermore, any attempt to justify morality ends up, in essence, being the same thing as a religious belief as it regards to one's own actions.
For example, a belief in a superior race can come across both through religion (we are divinely appointed to rule X people) or without religion (we are ethnically more evolved, thus making us best suited to rule X people).
People are people and have the same nature regardless if they believe there is a God, believe in many gods or believe there is no God at all. Its no surprise that a lot of violence occurred in the name of religion (or the belief in a lack of religion) because its what people most strongly believe in and it allows for the hiding of the root causes of the conflict. Its much more heroic to die fighting for what you believe in than it is for someone to die, say, acquiring a lot of land. Therefore, conflicts which were based on human desires such as the crusades were depicted as a religious struggle because it gains much more support and makes the deaths seem nobler. Consider the Trojan War, in order to make it sound noble it was fought over love, rather than the real reasons (the Greeks really wanted the wealth of Troy).
As technology improves and wealth increases, it is natural that ways to create clean water and grow/farm food would increase too.
You can't both simultaneously predict that technology would rise in all areas and predict that technology will not have risen in regards to food production.
But the ones I use are promotional ones meaning that the malware wouldn't work, it would just say "scan again" or something.
Does anyone actually use QR codes to go to websites? I've only used a handful of QR codes and those were for store promotions where if you were in their store you could scan a QR code and get a virtual "scratchers" ticket which would tell you if you won a prize or not.
"Stealing" from the treasury! What a load of BS. Google/Microsoft are no more "stealing" from the treasury than you are because you haven't gone out and bought me something.
You mean like Gobuntu or gNewSense? The versions of Ubuntu that only contain free software? The ones that if you install on a laptop you have a 75% chance of not having wi-fi?
RMS's demands end up being unworkable. Although he's had a pretty good track record for being right, any "free software only" distro ends up being limiting.
Any talk about "Legitimate" speech is on the same level as "Legitimate Rape". All speech is legitimate, though, clearly the UN and most of its members do not.
Don't believe me that the UN classifies political dissent as non-protected? Just look at their "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#atop where it says Article 29: (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Do we really want people controlling the internet who in their own "bill of rights" basically say you don't have these basic, "universal" rights if you disagree with us?
Just because something is twice as efficient doesn't mean they're working harder.
Posting to fix accidental -1 redundant