So as someone who still hasn't formed an educated opinion on this subject, I'd like to ask: what made Microsoft so evil?
As far as I can tell, Microsoft is only guilty of forcing its way into a market that was previously dominated by Netscape by handing away its browser application for free. They also bundled their browser onto their operating systems to further get people to use their product over Netscape's. However, at the same time Netscape gave out their non-commercial client browser for free as well. Also, there was nothing stopping Netscape from running on the Windows operating system at the time. Thus a consumer at the time using Windows had the choice of either bringing Netscape onto their OS (at no charge to them) or using the native IE that came with the OS.
What I fail to understand though, is why IE won out in the end. If your claim is true, that IE was an inferior product thrown together to drive Netscape out of business, I cannot perceive why the consumer would choose such an inferior product over a superior one that costs the same thing. Perhaps there's a convenience factor involved, but even still, that shouldn't be enough to give Microsoft the monopoly that it established.
Also there are commenters below who claim that IE was actually the better product and support that claim with details on how IE was better. Please explain why you claim that Netscape was better. Citations would help your rebuttal.
What's so hard to believe about paying for movies even when you can get them for free?
I do it all the time.
Just because I can watch something at home, alone, in the dark, with a crappy atmosphere, with horrible sound, and on my puny monitor doesn't mean that I wouldn't go to a theatre with my friends and enjoy the movie as it was meant to be enjoyed. Even though I can easily download movies, I've probably seen as many films in theatre as I have on my computer, and that's not including before finding out about torrents. I've even seen movies in theatre a second or third time after watching them on my computer because they were just so good and because I wanted that movie theatre experience.
Forcing artists to play gigs and make money is a totally good idea. This prevents them from sitting on their asses and milking their past achievements and keeps them on the music scene. Why wouldn't you agree with this model?
Exactly.
This system is terribly broken off the bat just because of the nature of music production.
If we only pay artists who get signed to a major recording label, not only do the labels hold a highly unfair monopoly of the music industry, but also this means that basement artists like Bon Iver and Iron and Wine don't get a fair chance at trying to support themselves.
Who would pay for records in addition to their monthly "internet music fee?"
But it doesn't matter if the argument is pointless or not. Your original claim was that it's an "obviously untrue" idea. But now you're conceding that you can't prove it either way. I don't understand how you can justify a false statement like that when you clearly know it to be untrue. What is this, internet liaring?
Remember when that guy, what was his name..
Oh right, George Washington.
Remember when our preeminent founding father said that the party system would be the death of us?
I'm still not seeing anything to suggest otherwise.
The problem is that the buck has to stop there, at the president's desk. If we've got an ignorant fool sitting behind that desk, that just makes it all the easier for lobbyists with their own self interests in mind to persuade the president on key issues that could potentially ruin everything.
If the president doesn't know much about golfing, that doesn't make a difference. If the president doesn't know much about economics or history or the world at large, that's totally unacceptable. The point is that the person in charge of one of the most prominent nations in the world better know what he or she's doing doing. The president should be able to make the right decisions with the best interests of the nation and, if possible, the world at heart. Ultimately, the point is that we need leaders who don't have "Knows how to run a damned good presidential race" as their main credential on their resume.
I'd like to see your evidence beyond "that is a really stupid, obviously untrue idea."
Claiming with confidence about something without empirical or logical evidence is a terrible crime. The smart ones don't. The assholes do.
Before we make assumptions about how the brain is a deterministic machine that is incapable of housing free will, may I remind you that our understanding of the human brain is still in its infancy. Our understanding of say the human digestive system or the method of osmoregulation is much stronger than our understanding of nervous function.
I think it's still much too early to confidently say that because we have brains we have no free will. This doubt mostly rises from the lack of concrete ways of scientifically exploring the function of the brain. So far our understanding is mostly based on anatomy coupled with some weak anecdotal and experimental evidence. For example, neuroscience usually follows along the lines of "Well this part of the brain must have some effect on speech recognition because when person x received brain trauma affecting this area, person x lost his ability to understand verbal conversations but was still able to process language as evidenced by his ability to read and write."
Stronger evidence is provided by MRI scans detecting activity in the brain when certain processing functions are used, but even then that only strengthens our understanding of which areas of the brain are involved in what kinds of activity. But this, again, says nothing about free will.
Otherwise neuroscience is concerned with anatomy and functional units of the nervous system. However, proof that humans have no free will cannot be found here either. Just because we know that the neuron is involved in nervous communication and because we know how neurons communicate with each other and are kept structurally secure doesn't give us enough information to say whether or not free will exists.
The main issue is not knowing enough about how neurons are organized so that received stimuli can be processed in a complex way. Until this is made clear, one cannot point to neuroscience and say A-Hah. I knew free will was false all along.
Right now, the question of free will still exists solely in the murky fields of philosophy and psychology.
I think being born again or standing for christian values can justifiably be called part of "the issues."
Sure it's vague and discussion is usually socially impolite, but "standing for christian values" implies all sorts of things like pro-life, anti-gay marriage, etc.
I was introduced to torrents when I was 14.
I have never looked back.
Not only does pirating provide me a way to get material that I otherwise wouldn't be able to get with my limited cash, there's also the allure of doing something illegal and sticking it to the large gaming corporations that are largely just profit making vehicles. Besides, you tell me if it's right that I bug my parents or work a meaningless job to purchase things that hold no real physical value.
I believe that the ideas and intellectual works of others should be free to use for enjoyment and noncommercial purposes. If I made a video game or a computer program or wrote a song, I'd distribute it over torrenting just because it's the right thing to do.
I feel bad for the people who still pay for things, and I constantly try to teach my peers how to pirate and avoid being exploited. Yarh.
It seems unlikely.
The political landscape doesn't look like what it did pre-WWI europe.
For one thing, there totally isn't the whole tanglement of alliances that escalated the conflict.
I think such a war would be impossible for another fundamental reason.
Communications technology has shrunk the world to the point where it is inconceivable to allow that sort of thing to happen. Instantaneous foreign criticism would likely stop the violence from escalating, and global organizations like the UN would attempt to stop the fight (UN =/= league of nations in terms of uselessness, before anyone says anything).
Besides, there's no sign of foreign involvement as of now so it seems highly unlikely that this will be little more than a burp.
Lots of teens commit suicide every year.
"In a survey of high school students, the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center found that almost 1 in 5 teens had thought about suicide, about 1 in 6 teens had made plans for suicide, and more than 1 in 12 teens had attempted suicide in the last year."
And yeah sure, you could whine about number rigging and high school students not seriously filling out the forms or just trying to make an image, but the fact is that suicide isn't the rarity that you make it out to be. This is why we have suicide hotlines and the like.
edit: forgive my horrible formatting. I just realized that/. comment entry is completely html.
I'd have to respectfully disagree with you on this. Knowing the color of dinosaurs in the past is not important, and putting time and effort into researching this is a mismanagement of resources. Instead of figuring out something so unimportant, we should be trying to figure out more important things. There are plenty of fields that need much more funding that can deliver useful results soon such as energy related science and technology. Funding scientists to study color pigments in fossils would divert crucial resources from more important subjects.
Also you say that standardizing parts of our past that we don't know about would be a mistake. I agree with you on this, but deciding here and now that the color of dinosaurs is not that important right now and should not be funded for the time being is in no way standardizing anything. We could always decide later that this information is actually important and revise our earlier decision.
The point is that choosing to fund something that isn't important (as you yourself admitted) solely out of fear of later misjudging the importance of knowing something is illogical and makes little sense.
But of course, scientists particularly interested in this are free to study to their hearts content. Just don't let them suck money from other scientists whose work will definitely benefit humanity in a huge way.
I'd have to respectfully disagree with you on this.
Knowing the color of dinosaurs in the past is not important, and putting time and effort into researching this is a mismanagement of resources. Instead of figuring out something so unimportant, we should be trying to figure out more important things. There are plenty of fields that need much more funding that can deliver useful results soon such as energy related science and technology. Funding scientists to study color pigments in fossils would divert crucial resources from more important subjects.
Also you say that standardizing parts of our past that we don't know about would be a mistake. I agree with you on this, but deciding here and now that the color of dinosaurs is not that important right now and should not be funded for the time being is in no way standardizing anything. We could always decide later that this information is actually important and revise our earlier decision. The point is that choosing to fund something that isn't important (as you yourself admitted) solely out of fear of later misjudging the importance of knowing something is illogical and makes little sense.
But of course, scientists particularly interested in this are free to study to their hearts content. Just don't let them suck money from other scientists whose work will definitely benefit humanity in a huge way.
So as a complete child who's been raised solely on Web 2.0, I've only heard of usenet as a legendary relic. I am however well adjusted to *chan. It seems like usenet and *chan share something in common though, both have users that complain of influxes of new users. In fact that's one of the reasons why there are so many *chan sites. Old users discontent with new users branch off, buy server times and urls, set up *chan software, and form new communities until new users take notice of the new *chan site.
Slashdot Mirror
So as someone who still hasn't formed an educated opinion on this subject, I'd like to ask: what made Microsoft so evil?
As far as I can tell, Microsoft is only guilty of forcing its way into a market that was previously dominated by Netscape by handing away its browser application for free. They also bundled their browser onto their operating systems to further get people to use their product over Netscape's. However, at the same time Netscape gave out their non-commercial client browser for free as well. Also, there was nothing stopping Netscape from running on the Windows operating system at the time. Thus a consumer at the time using Windows had the choice of either bringing Netscape onto their OS (at no charge to them) or using the native IE that came with the OS.
What I fail to understand though, is why IE won out in the end. If your claim is true, that IE was an inferior product thrown together to drive Netscape out of business, I cannot perceive why the consumer would choose such an inferior product over a superior one that costs the same thing. Perhaps there's a convenience factor involved, but even still, that shouldn't be enough to give Microsoft the monopoly that it established.
Also there are commenters below who claim that IE was actually the better product and support that claim with details on how IE was better. Please explain why you claim that Netscape was better. Citations would help your rebuttal.
What's so hard to believe about paying for movies even when you can get them for free? I do it all the time.
Just because I can watch something at home, alone, in the dark, with a crappy atmosphere, with horrible sound, and on my puny monitor doesn't mean that I wouldn't go to a theatre with my friends and enjoy the movie as it was meant to be enjoyed. Even though I can easily download movies, I've probably seen as many films in theatre as I have on my computer, and that's not including before finding out about torrents. I've even seen movies in theatre a second or third time after watching them on my computer because they were just so good and because I wanted that movie theatre experience.
Forcing artists to play gigs and make money is a totally good idea. This prevents them from sitting on their asses and milking their past achievements and keeps them on the music scene. Why wouldn't you agree with this model?
Exactly.
This system is terribly broken off the bat just because of the nature of music production.
If we only pay artists who get signed to a major recording label, not only do the labels hold a highly unfair monopoly of the music industry, but also this means that basement artists like Bon Iver and Iron and Wine don't get a fair chance at trying to support themselves.
Who would pay for records in addition to their monthly "internet music fee?"
But it doesn't matter if the argument is pointless or not. Your original claim was that it's an "obviously untrue" idea. But now you're conceding that you can't prove it either way. I don't understand how you can justify a false statement like that when you clearly know it to be untrue. What is this, internet liaring?
Remember when that guy, what was his name..
Oh right, George Washington.
Remember when our preeminent founding father said that the party system would be the death of us?
I'm still not seeing anything to suggest otherwise.
The problem is that the buck has to stop there, at the president's desk. If we've got an ignorant fool sitting behind that desk, that just makes it all the easier for lobbyists with their own self interests in mind to persuade the president on key issues that could potentially ruin everything.
If the president doesn't know much about golfing, that doesn't make a difference. If the president doesn't know much about economics or history or the world at large, that's totally unacceptable. The point is that the person in charge of one of the most prominent nations in the world better know what he or she's doing doing. The president should be able to make the right decisions with the best interests of the nation and, if possible, the world at heart. Ultimately, the point is that we need leaders who don't have "Knows how to run a damned good presidential race" as their main credential on their resume.
I'd like to see your evidence beyond "that is a really stupid, obviously untrue idea."
Claiming with confidence about something without empirical or logical evidence is a terrible crime. The smart ones don't. The assholes do.
Before we make assumptions about how the brain is a deterministic machine that is incapable of housing free will, may I remind you that our understanding of the human brain is still in its infancy. Our understanding of say the human digestive system or the method of osmoregulation is much stronger than our understanding of nervous function.
I think it's still much too early to confidently say that because we have brains we have no free will. This doubt mostly rises from the lack of concrete ways of scientifically exploring the function of the brain. So far our understanding is mostly based on anatomy coupled with some weak anecdotal and experimental evidence. For example, neuroscience usually follows along the lines of "Well this part of the brain must have some effect on speech recognition because when person x received brain trauma affecting this area, person x lost his ability to understand verbal conversations but was still able to process language as evidenced by his ability to read and write."
Stronger evidence is provided by MRI scans detecting activity in the brain when certain processing functions are used, but even then that only strengthens our understanding of which areas of the brain are involved in what kinds of activity. But this, again, says nothing about free will. Otherwise neuroscience is concerned with anatomy and functional units of the nervous system. However, proof that humans have no free will cannot be found here either. Just because we know that the neuron is involved in nervous communication and because we know how neurons communicate with each other and are kept structurally secure doesn't give us enough information to say whether or not free will exists.
The main issue is not knowing enough about how neurons are organized so that received stimuli can be processed in a complex way. Until this is made clear, one cannot point to neuroscience and say A-Hah. I knew free will was false all along.
Right now, the question of free will still exists solely in the murky fields of philosophy and psychology.
e. Waterboarding
I think being born again or standing for christian values can justifiably be called part of "the issues."
Sure it's vague and discussion is usually socially impolite, but "standing for christian values" implies all sorts of things like pro-life, anti-gay marriage, etc.
Thanks for your eloquent and persuasive rebuttal. Now everything makes sense.
I was introduced to torrents when I was 14. I have never looked back. Not only does pirating provide me a way to get material that I otherwise wouldn't be able to get with my limited cash, there's also the allure of doing something illegal and sticking it to the large gaming corporations that are largely just profit making vehicles. Besides, you tell me if it's right that I bug my parents or work a meaningless job to purchase things that hold no real physical value.
I believe that the ideas and intellectual works of others should be free to use for enjoyment and noncommercial purposes. If I made a video game or a computer program or wrote a song, I'd distribute it over torrenting just because it's the right thing to do.
I feel bad for the people who still pay for things, and I constantly try to teach my peers how to pirate and avoid being exploited. Yarh.
What is this, Red Scare v2.0?
It seems unlikely. The political landscape doesn't look like what it did pre-WWI europe. For one thing, there totally isn't the whole tanglement of alliances that escalated the conflict. I think such a war would be impossible for another fundamental reason. Communications technology has shrunk the world to the point where it is inconceivable to allow that sort of thing to happen. Instantaneous foreign criticism would likely stop the violence from escalating, and global organizations like the UN would attempt to stop the fight (UN =/= league of nations in terms of uselessness, before anyone says anything). Besides, there's no sign of foreign involvement as of now so it seems highly unlikely that this will be little more than a burp.
Lots of teens commit suicide every year. "In a survey of high school students, the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center found that almost 1 in 5 teens had thought about suicide, about 1 in 6 teens had made plans for suicide, and more than 1 in 12 teens had attempted suicide in the last year."
And yeah sure, you could whine about number rigging and high school students not seriously filling out the forms or just trying to make an image, but the fact is that suicide isn't the rarity that you make it out to be. This is why we have suicide hotlines and the like.
edit: forgive my horrible formatting. I just realized that /. comment entry is completely html.
I'd have to respectfully disagree with you on this. Knowing the color of dinosaurs in the past is not important, and putting time and effort into researching this is a mismanagement of resources. Instead of figuring out something so unimportant, we should be trying to figure out more important things. There are plenty of fields that need much more funding that can deliver useful results soon such as energy related science and technology. Funding scientists to study color pigments in fossils would divert crucial resources from more important subjects.
Also you say that standardizing parts of our past that we don't know about would be a mistake. I agree with you on this, but deciding here and now that the color of dinosaurs is not that important right now and should not be funded for the time being is in no way standardizing anything. We could always decide later that this information is actually important and revise our earlier decision.
The point is that choosing to fund something that isn't important (as you yourself admitted) solely out of fear of later misjudging the importance of knowing something is illogical and makes little sense.
But of course, scientists particularly interested in this are free to study to their hearts content. Just don't let them suck money from other scientists whose work will definitely benefit humanity in a huge way.
I'd have to respectfully disagree with you on this. Knowing the color of dinosaurs in the past is not important, and putting time and effort into researching this is a mismanagement of resources. Instead of figuring out something so unimportant, we should be trying to figure out more important things. There are plenty of fields that need much more funding that can deliver useful results soon such as energy related science and technology. Funding scientists to study color pigments in fossils would divert crucial resources from more important subjects. Also you say that standardizing parts of our past that we don't know about would be a mistake. I agree with you on this, but deciding here and now that the color of dinosaurs is not that important right now and should not be funded for the time being is in no way standardizing anything. We could always decide later that this information is actually important and revise our earlier decision. The point is that choosing to fund something that isn't important (as you yourself admitted) solely out of fear of later misjudging the importance of knowing something is illogical and makes little sense. But of course, scientists particularly interested in this are free to study to their hearts content. Just don't let them suck money from other scientists whose work will definitely benefit humanity in a huge way.
We're revoking your fight club membership card. Turn in your soap.
So as a complete child who's been raised solely on Web 2.0, I've only heard of usenet as a legendary relic. I am however well adjusted to *chan. It seems like usenet and *chan share something in common though, both have users that complain of influxes of new users. In fact that's one of the reasons why there are so many *chan sites. Old users discontent with new users branch off, buy server times and urls, set up *chan software, and form new communities until new users take notice of the new *chan site.