She is also very smart - has a masters in math, probably could easily answer trivia like how much of the Earth is covered in water. But she is firm in her beliefs and faith is always > reason.
This is an extremely common misconception based on the lies of philosophers and armchair scientists. It's not that faith > reason for these people. That's ridiculous and whoever is trying to tell you that is trying to manipulate you. It's that faith > current views.
You have to understand that these people recognize that something unseen moves their life the same way that unseen wind can move trees. It's not an observable phenomena, as far as they're concerned, but to them it's more real than any of our current measurements can accurately observe. Let's face it. If you were to fall into a time machine and get stuck back in the 1400's and try to explain bacterias to people as manipulative, stiff-necked, and unreasonable as today's philosophers and armchair scientists, they would laugh you out! 'Unseen animals that are everywhere, making us sick, processing our foods in our bellies, aging our cheese, and everything else... yes, sure, magical animals -- too small to see, of course, except in the future where we have instruments that let us see them. Keep talking Futureman!'
To say that people and dinosaurs certainly did not coexist is based on a lack of fossil evidence. How is it, then, reasonable to tell people they are idiots for not jumping to conclusions that humans and dinosaurs never coexisted? Elementary students could even call this shit out after their first science fair.
To say that dinosaurs didn't exist is an inference based on a lack of evidence. However, the claim that dinosaurs could have coexisted with humans has evidence (google: Mokele-Mbembe, Cadborosaurus, Kongamoto). None of this can be considered proof or very strong evidence, but it sure as hell trumps a lack of evidence.
There's a reason why the scientific method doesn't come to a screeching halt at "hypothesis"; because that's the beginning of the method, and not the end. Telling people they don't accept reason because they question a hypothesis is idiocy, manipulation, unreasonable, and (sadly) the popular thing to do nowadays. Don't let this be you.
</rant>
That's not what my libertarian friend who's never left the country said! He told me that all Europeans receive terrible health care - for example, they have to wait ten months for a check-up and if you go to the emergency room shot you have to wait in line for hours. And it's such a financial burden on the state that the European countries are facing ginormous deficits which they will never be able to pay back. Not to mention the fact that they're miserable because they're socialists.
I tried to explain to him that everyone in Europe seemed happier - and much healthier - than us here in the States every time I went there, but he said I didn't know what I was talking about.
You are, indeed, a very misguided soul. I've spent hundreds of hours in European hospitals including time I've spent as a patient in the best hospital in Frankfurt, and the time I've spent visiting friends. Their healthcare is frightening. Their hospitals are practically in shambles and reek of disease instead of sterilization. Toward the eastern bloc, many don't have hot water, and everyone in the hospital is waiting to die. In the socialist states, they give you the weakest healthcare possible so you can take the most days off work. Here in the states, for a broken leg, you get a cast that's practically made of concrete so it won't break and bruise when you're banging around on things on your way back to work. There, you get an aircast, so you have to "keep off it" for 2 months. Besides, what person is going to want to go through the intense training of an American doctor if school teachers are paid better for barely making it through a few college courses?
Your time off is paid for by the companies that are doing well in society. So what do you get? Entire cities doing poorly because they don't have to do well in order to receive all the benefits of a strong economy and innovative companies.
If you want to know what a European hospital is like without crossing the pond, Mexico might be a good indicator of what you'll be getting.
The argument here is that since the border patrol saw the files, the entire government has all access to it. This is a ridiculous argument. If a cop says he saw me doing something, suddenly my 5th amendment rights are waved, because the executive branch's witness revokes my rights and it becomes a "foregone conclusion"? Bullshit. If I wasn't in court, then blind Lady Justice didn't see anything but what the executive branch can provide as evidence and witness. If the accused cannot reasonably provide counter evidence or counter witness, then he stands condemned, but it goes against the very right granted in the 5th amendment to compel him to provide the witnesses against him with proof of their witness.
The creators seem to think that we would all be better off if we abandoned technology and all went back to live in caves.
Well, would YOU hit a girl over the head with a club and then drag her by her hair back to your cave
or
Would you rather go with her to Sex and the City: the Movie! Read the first Twilight novel just so you can follow along when she and her friends are talking about the series, put up with buying things she doesn't want or need because she was just testing you to see how devoted you are to her through your wallet, answer all the questions in her latest Cosmo quiz, deal with listening to her talk about her ex-boyfriend, not pick up your calls, and talk about the guy at work to make you jealous and "want her more"? Pay for her 1000 text messages sent between her and her girlfriends and some "guy friends" who she "totally isn't into" but she calls them "dear" "sweetE" and "luv" every month because she can't afford her cellphone after all the manicures she's gotten this month...
Caves are starting to look pretty good to a brother.
The naivete of your comments mixed with your pretentiousness is sickening. Perhaps you should re-read what I had said so you can realize what a dumbass you are for saying everything you just said. I look down on you, sir. Walk away from this conversation and give me no reason to look down on you again.
Are you dense? If the battered woman was blocking caller ID, her husband wouldn't be able to contact her anyway. What is the difference between calling your husband from a secret number with a phone that blocks caller ID so that he can't call you back, and putting your phone on silent/turning it off so that he can't call you back? Either way, initiating contact is entirely one-way; the wife can contact the husband at will but the husband can't contact the wife. Or if cell phones really aren't your thing, just buy one of those pre-paid phone cards where you dial an 800 number and enter a PIN. Those are even cheaper than a cell phone, and always appear to be coming from the phone center of the calling card company. It sounds like the battered women advocates in the article are just trying to make noise in order to keep their cause in the news, even if it makes them sound like clueless idiots.
No, I am not dense. Perhaps phones should be used for contacting more than one person? Or maybe, just MAYBE she wants to be called by people who AREN'T abusive ex-husbands once in a while, and be able to know they're calling. Maybe she wants to be able to use her phone for normal things... like calling and receiving calls, instead of just using it as a portal into her home that welcomes harassment from abusive individuals if she wants to make it functional. Did you bother to actually think your logic through before rhetorically asking someone if they were dense?
Yes, the phone cards are a nice idea, but currently, they're not free (whereas anonymous calling is) -- and it's only a matter of time, like someone else mentioned, that there is a workaround for that as well. This current bug in the system should not simply be ignored because there are other, costly alternatives. It should just be patched.
But it wasn't scientific evidence that showed that DDT caused birds to have thin egg shells. When the actual SCIENTIFIC METHOD was used, these allegations were proven false. (see footnote)
___ Cecil, HC et al. 1971. Poultry Science 50: 656-659 (No effects of DDT or DDE, if adequate calcium is in diet); Chang, ES & ELR Stokstad. 1975. Poultry Science 54: 3-10 1975. (No effects of DDT on shells); Edwards, JG. 1971. Chem Eng News p. 6 & 59 (August 16, 1971) (Summary of egg shell- thinning and refutations presented revealing all data); Hazeltine, WE. 1974. Statement and affidavit, EPA Hearings on Tussock Moth Control, Portland Oregon, p. 9 (January 14, 1974); Jeffries, DJ. 1969. J Wildlife Management 32: 441-456 (Shells 7 percent thicker after two years on DDT diet); Robson, WA et al. 1976. Poultry Science 55:2222- 2227; Scott, ML et al. 1975. Poultry Science 54: 350-368 (Egg production, hatchability and shell quality depend on calcium, and are not effected by DDT and its metabolites); Spears, G & P. Waibel. 1972. Minn. Science 28(3):4-5; Tucker, RK & HA Haegele. 1970. Bull Environ Contam. Toxicol 5:191-194 (Neither egg weight nor shell thickness affected by 300 parts per million DDT in daily diet);Edwards, JG. 1973. Statement and affidavit, U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, 24 pages, October 24, 1973; Poult Sci 1979 Nov;58(6):1432-49 ("There was no correlation between concentrations of pesticides and egg shell thinning].")
So buy a $30 pay-as-you-go cellphone. Problem solved.
In a perfect world, where women don't share custody with sociopaths who will do nothing but call their phone all day and all night, and policemen bother to acknowledge and follow up on violated restraining orders or reports of criminal harassment, and courts revoke custody of sociopaths who do nothing but stalk, threaten, harass, and vandalize the property of people (that hold restraining orders against them)in their free time, and women who fled from abusive relationships have all the spending money in the world to afford multiple phones, this would work.
In our world, it's not a solution.
The sociopath will call the phone constantly, trying to speak to the abused. If they silence the phone, throw it away, or get a new phone that the sociopath can't contact, then the sociopath will file a court order against that person saying that they kidnapped their child (violating custody orders by disallowing contact with the child) and won't allow contact. On top of this, they have to pay for multiple lines so they can have their own phone, and one that the abuser can contact the child through -- which can only last so long before it's used as another form of harassment. The sysem works much better for someone living a parasitic lifestyle with all the time in the world on their hands than someone who is hiding, raising a child alone, trying to make ends meet who doesn't have a spare minute to spend with court documents.
I see your anecdotal evidence and question you this:
How many DVD's do you own that are store-bought? If the number is greater than zero, your argument is invalid.
The problem with anecdotal evidence, when it comes to piracy, is that everyone in the United States of America and Europe has anecdotal evidence of whether piracy works or not. The first time I meet a "pirate" who doesn't have an extensive DVD/BluRay/HDDVD collection is when I'll do what I had to do in the early 90's: Buy nothing but pure bullshit from the entertainment at their illegally-fixed asking price. Until then, I'll call it for what it is: Bullshit, and not buy into their arguments. The only people with pirated-only DVD collections are those who got them from pirates as gifts and presents, or bought them from a street vendor for a reasonable asking price.
Do I pirate videogames? All the time. How much did I spend on videogames last week? $70. Why would I spend $70 on videogames? Because I was confident I would receive $70 in value, and not $70 in impressive packaging with nothing but bullshit on a disk inside.
And no, I don't think any musician should have a free meal ticket for an entire year due to a weekend's work. If he wants money, he should be doing what musicians should do for their lunches: PERFORM. If I work for 2 days a month in an entry-level position at any other industry, I wouldn't eat. If you don't want to be homeless, work. Who does the entertainment industry think they are to be exempt from this? They are swindlers, liars, and dumbasses by trade (in a positive way to make the money, but a negative way when they show what they feel are their deservings)
They are not going to even listen to someone with a single share.
The CEO might not listen, but you have the right to attend and speak in shareholders' meetings. Your intention won't be to sway the big dogs, but to influence enough of the little dogs that they can outnumber and influence the big dogs. Carl Icahn buys ridiculously few shares in the companies that he rips apart, but he is allowed to speak, and his arguments sound convincing to enough people who DO hold the shares to move the mountains he wants moved.
Seriously, if somebody gets all huffy about somebody cracking a joke about their religion, they must not be that secure in their beliefs.
That or they hold their beliefs sacred and important. Perhaps there is nothing in your life worthy of reverence or respect, but there are some people on the planet that wrap their time around more important things than just their work and their favorite Monday night tv shows. Finding your mockery of their lives' foundations to be rude, disrespectful, and distasteful isn't insecurity on their part, it's complete inconsideration on yours. Have you ever had the balls to tell someone "Dude, that's not funny." or do you take your lessons from 14-year-olds on what is and is not appropriate? What kind of a man has to make fun of someone else's belief system? Seriously?
I use Road Runner and it is at 10mbs oddly enough that is fast enough for me and I am not at all interested in the 15mbs upgrade. 60mbs is way more then I ever need. So you put caps on the slow speeds to make people want to upgrade.
I prefer not to have my ISP be synonymous with both the RIAA and MPAA, therefore I choose to go offline/pirate internet rather than subscribe to Time-Warner internet for my area for the time being.
Also, anyone in business will tell you that money/price is hardly ever a deciding factor on whether someone will pay for a product.
This has got to be the stupidest thing I've heard in months. It is ALWAYS a factor of whether I pay for a product. Psychologists say that most people weigh the pain of losing money with the pleasure of having a new product in order to decide whether or not they'll buy it. No wonder an entire economy can crash in a matter of months -- it's got too many idiots, disconnected with reality, pulling the strings. When I need to choose between listening to a new music artist or feeding the family for a day, I choose feeding the family. If it were a choice of listening to a new music artist where I just have to skip dessert to break even, I might consider buying the CD.
High energy cosmic rays dwarf what LHC can do. LHC was built, not because it produces higher energy particles than these cosmic rays, but because it produces high energy particles on demand.
You avoid the point that some dumbass modded down because he was too stupid to actually read up on the LHC. It's like you all drank some crazy bullshit-flavored kool-aid and forgot everything ever explained or written about the LHC that's older than 3 months. It was built to simulate or recreate the big bang. It was built to observe the collision of particles we have not yet been able to observe. It was built to collide particles at unnatural energies (in comparison to our current universe). Quit trying to paint new targets on the hardware as attempts to quiet criticism. People with an attention span longer than a goldfish's can see you're full of it, even if You only started hearing about the LHC since last year.
There reason the whole LHC black hole rubbish is dismissed out of hand is simply because we have already obvesrved particles colliding with much higher energies than the LHC can produce and they didn't form black holes
The probability of a black hole at the LHC swallowing the Earth is approximately zero
You seem awfully sure about yourself for someone who listens to someone who's built a machine that, by purpose, is suppose to smash particles together at never-before-seen energies because they have no idea of what will happen when they do such. Do you always act so pompously when you, by the very nature of what you are trying to stand up for, stand on uncertain ground?
I suppose since they all wear white lab coats, have shiny degrees, and hundreds of millions of dollars that when they say "We don't know what will happen when we attempt to create dark matter -- something we hardly know anything about, but if we do, we KNOW it will be completely under our control!" that you willingly blind yourself to the glaring contradictions between their assurances and their purposes, and will call any man stupid who would dare question the almighty labcoats!
I sure as hell don't think LHC is going to destroy the world, but I'd be an enormous dumbass if I accepted the assurance of someone who has just dropped crazy millions into an oversized centrifuge who admits they don't know what the hell is going to happen when it starts going. In fact, I'd be stupid to believe in anything that's had the same amounts of money and time invested into it that has yet to show its first result.
That "theory in a world of practice" is an advice you might want to apply to yourself... ever seen a kid (under 10) play Carmageddon or GTA?
Of course I have. 10-year-olds equate violence with awesomeness when it comes to cartoons, games, and drawing. I was possibly the worst of them all. However, you're no parent. You don't realize how blurred the line between media and reality is for kids. You're not constantly bombarded with questions like "Can this really happen?" "Do those kinds of things really exist?" "Can we really go somewhere like that?" "What happens to the videogame guys when they die? Do they go to heaven?" Spend enough time with a 7-year-old and find out how, to them, "going to work" is as ethereal and socially relevant as "achieving nirvana" is to you. Hear the questions that come from them as their brains are still establishing the boundaries of reality.
You just sit there, saying that you see kids playing GTA for a few minutes and suddenly you have an arbitrarily accurate gauge on the healthy psychological development of 10-year-olds. You obviously deserve some honorary degrees in child psychology from your intense sessions of hearing about other peoples' kids' reactions to play video games.
Every kid is different, but avoiding addictions to violence, childhood trauma, or apathy to suffering are 3 targets of every good parent. Seeing splattering blood, for one reason or another, tends to be the first large canyon for kids to cross when it comes to seeing forms of violence. Removing that and/or dismemberment from a violent depiction seems to soften much of the impact on their developing brains. Try listening to someone who deals with this kind of thing every day, rather than trying to view your childhood memories through your current, rigid understanding of the world, and trying to treat other peoples' kids as your own "progressive" social experiments, then insulting them when they tell you that your theories are shallow, misdirected, and unfounded in reality. Theory in a world of practice.
So, I guess you're one of those fools who bought into the "any marijuana use is automatically abuse" propoganda
Don't post while high. It apparently makes you either a very poor reader or a really bad guesser. You managed to deduce the exact opposite of what I just said. Congrats tokabola, you're a poster boy for dumbass marijuana fanboys, and a credit from your movement! Use != Smoke.
Slashdot Mirror
She is also very smart - has a masters in math, probably could easily answer trivia like how much of the Earth is covered in water. But she is firm in her beliefs and faith is always > reason.
This is an extremely common misconception based on the lies of philosophers and armchair scientists. It's not that faith > reason for these people. That's ridiculous and whoever is trying to tell you that is trying to manipulate you. It's that faith > current views.
You have to understand that these people recognize that something unseen moves their life the same way that unseen wind can move trees. It's not an observable phenomena, as far as they're concerned, but to them it's more real than any of our current measurements can accurately observe. Let's face it. If you were to fall into a time machine and get stuck back in the 1400's and try to explain bacterias to people as manipulative, stiff-necked, and unreasonable as today's philosophers and armchair scientists, they would laugh you out! 'Unseen animals that are everywhere, making us sick, processing our foods in our bellies, aging our cheese, and everything else... yes, sure, magical animals -- too small to see, of course, except in the future where we have instruments that let us see them. Keep talking Futureman!'
To say that people and dinosaurs certainly did not coexist is based on a lack of fossil evidence. How is it, then, reasonable to tell people they are idiots for not jumping to conclusions that humans and dinosaurs never coexisted? Elementary students could even call this shit out after their first science fair.
To say that dinosaurs didn't exist is an inference based on a lack of evidence. However, the claim that dinosaurs could have coexisted with humans has evidence (google: Mokele-Mbembe, Cadborosaurus, Kongamoto). None of this can be considered proof or very strong evidence, but it sure as hell trumps a lack of evidence.
There's a reason why the scientific method doesn't come to a screeching halt at "hypothesis"; because that's the beginning of the method, and not the end. Telling people they don't accept reason because they question a hypothesis is idiocy, manipulation, unreasonable, and (sadly) the popular thing to do nowadays. Don't let this be you. </rant>
These girls aren't whores
If a girl is exchanging her modesty for money, that makes her a whore.
That's not what my libertarian friend who's never left the country said! He told me that all Europeans receive terrible health care - for example, they have to wait ten months for a check-up and if you go to the emergency room shot you have to wait in line for hours. And it's such a financial burden on the state that the European countries are facing ginormous deficits which they will never be able to pay back. Not to mention the fact that they're miserable because they're socialists.
I tried to explain to him that everyone in Europe seemed happier - and much healthier - than us here in the States every time I went there, but he said I didn't know what I was talking about.
You are, indeed, a very misguided soul. I've spent hundreds of hours in European hospitals including time I've spent as a patient in the best hospital in Frankfurt, and the time I've spent visiting friends. Their healthcare is frightening. Their hospitals are practically in shambles and reek of disease instead of sterilization. Toward the eastern bloc, many don't have hot water, and everyone in the hospital is waiting to die. In the socialist states, they give you the weakest healthcare possible so you can take the most days off work. Here in the states, for a broken leg, you get a cast that's practically made of concrete so it won't break and bruise when you're banging around on things on your way back to work. There, you get an aircast, so you have to "keep off it" for 2 months. Besides, what person is going to want to go through the intense training of an American doctor if school teachers are paid better for barely making it through a few college courses?
Your time off is paid for by the companies that are doing well in society. So what do you get? Entire cities doing poorly because they don't have to do well in order to receive all the benefits of a strong economy and innovative companies.
If you want to know what a European hospital is like without crossing the pond, Mexico might be a good indicator of what you'll be getting.
The argument here is that since the border patrol saw the files, the entire government has all access to it. This is a ridiculous argument. If a cop says he saw me doing something, suddenly my 5th amendment rights are waved, because the executive branch's witness revokes my rights and it becomes a "foregone conclusion"? Bullshit. If I wasn't in court, then blind Lady Justice didn't see anything but what the executive branch can provide as evidence and witness. If the accused cannot reasonably provide counter evidence or counter witness, then he stands condemned, but it goes against the very right granted in the 5th amendment to compel him to provide the witnesses against him with proof of their witness.
The creators seem to think that we would all be better off if we abandoned technology and all went back to live in caves.
Well, would YOU hit a girl over the head with a club and then drag her by her hair back to your cave
or
Would you rather go with her to Sex and the City: the Movie! Read the first Twilight novel just so you can follow along when she and her friends are talking about the series, put up with buying things she doesn't want or need because she was just testing you to see how devoted you are to her through your wallet, answer all the questions in her latest Cosmo quiz, deal with listening to her talk about her ex-boyfriend, not pick up your calls, and talk about the guy at work to make you jealous and "want her more"? Pay for her 1000 text messages sent between her and her girlfriends and some "guy friends" who she "totally isn't into" but she calls them "dear" "sweetE" and "luv" every month because she can't afford her cellphone after all the manicures she's gotten this month...
Caves are starting to look pretty good to a brother.
The naivete of your comments mixed with your pretentiousness is sickening. Perhaps you should re-read what I had said so you can realize what a dumbass you are for saying everything you just said. I look down on you, sir. Walk away from this conversation and give me no reason to look down on you again.
I'm running for city council in a large city next election. I have to start somewhere if I want to become a senator.
Are you dense? If the battered woman was blocking caller ID, her husband wouldn't be able to contact her anyway. What is the difference between calling your husband from a secret number with a phone that blocks caller ID so that he can't call you back, and putting your phone on silent/turning it off so that he can't call you back? Either way, initiating contact is entirely one-way; the wife can contact the husband at will but the husband can't contact the wife. Or if cell phones really aren't your thing, just buy one of those pre-paid phone cards where you dial an 800 number and enter a PIN. Those are even cheaper than a cell phone, and always appear to be coming from the phone center of the calling card company. It sounds like the battered women advocates in the article are just trying to make noise in order to keep their cause in the news, even if it makes them sound like clueless idiots.
No, I am not dense. Perhaps phones should be used for contacting more than one person? Or maybe, just MAYBE she wants to be called by people who AREN'T abusive ex-husbands once in a while, and be able to know they're calling. Maybe she wants to be able to use her phone for normal things... like calling and receiving calls, instead of just using it as a portal into her home that welcomes harassment from abusive individuals if she wants to make it functional. Did you bother to actually think your logic through before rhetorically asking someone if they were dense?
Yes, the phone cards are a nice idea, but currently, they're not free (whereas anonymous calling is) -- and it's only a matter of time, like someone else mentioned, that there is a workaround for that as well. This current bug in the system should not simply be ignored because there are other, costly alternatives. It should just be patched.
But it wasn't scientific evidence that showed that DDT caused birds to have thin egg shells. When the actual SCIENTIFIC METHOD was used, these allegations were proven false. (see footnote)
.")
It was a fictional story used to illustrate what could possibly go wrong if we kill or infect trillions of bugs with one chemical.
___
Cecil, HC et al. 1971. Poultry Science 50: 656-659 (No effects of DDT or DDE, if adequate calcium is in diet); Chang, ES & ELR Stokstad. 1975. Poultry Science 54: 3-10 1975. (No effects of DDT on shells); Edwards, JG. 1971. Chem Eng News p. 6 & 59 (August 16, 1971) (Summary of egg shell- thinning and refutations presented revealing all data); Hazeltine, WE. 1974. Statement and affidavit, EPA Hearings on Tussock Moth Control, Portland Oregon, p. 9 (January 14, 1974); Jeffries, DJ. 1969. J Wildlife Management 32: 441-456 (Shells 7 percent thicker after two years on DDT diet); Robson, WA et al. 1976. Poultry Science 55:2222- 2227; Scott, ML et al. 1975. Poultry Science 54: 350-368 (Egg production, hatchability and shell quality depend on calcium, and are not effected by DDT and its metabolites); Spears, G & P. Waibel. 1972. Minn. Science 28(3):4-5; Tucker, RK & HA Haegele. 1970. Bull Environ Contam. Toxicol 5:191-194 (Neither egg weight nor shell thickness affected by 300 parts per million DDT in daily diet);Edwards, JG. 1973. Statement and affidavit, U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, 24 pages, October 24, 1973; Poult Sci 1979 Nov;58(6):1432-49 ("There was no correlation between concentrations of pesticides and egg shell thinning]
So buy a $30 pay-as-you-go cellphone. Problem solved.
In a perfect world, where women don't share custody with sociopaths who will do nothing but call their phone all day and all night, and policemen bother to acknowledge and follow up on violated restraining orders or reports of criminal harassment, and courts revoke custody of sociopaths who do nothing but stalk, threaten, harass, and vandalize the property of people (that hold restraining orders against them)in their free time, and women who fled from abusive relationships have all the spending money in the world to afford multiple phones, this would work.
In our world, it's not a solution.
The sociopath will call the phone constantly, trying to speak to the abused. If they silence the phone, throw it away, or get a new phone that the sociopath can't contact, then the sociopath will file a court order against that person saying that they kidnapped their child (violating custody orders by disallowing contact with the child) and won't allow contact. On top of this, they have to pay for multiple lines so they can have their own phone, and one that the abuser can contact the child through -- which can only last so long before it's used as another form of harassment. The sysem works much better for someone living a parasitic lifestyle with all the time in the world on their hands than someone who is hiding, raising a child alone, trying to make ends meet who doesn't have a spare minute to spend with court documents.
I see your anecdotal evidence and question you this:
How many DVD's do you own that are store-bought? If the number is greater than zero, your argument is invalid.
The problem with anecdotal evidence, when it comes to piracy, is that everyone in the United States of America and Europe has anecdotal evidence of whether piracy works or not. The first time I meet a "pirate" who doesn't have an extensive DVD/BluRay/HDDVD collection is when I'll do what I had to do in the early 90's: Buy nothing but pure bullshit from the entertainment at their illegally-fixed asking price. Until then, I'll call it for what it is: Bullshit, and not buy into their arguments. The only people with pirated-only DVD collections are those who got them from pirates as gifts and presents, or bought them from a street vendor for a reasonable asking price.
Do I pirate videogames? All the time. How much did I spend on videogames last week? $70. Why would I spend $70 on videogames? Because I was confident I would receive $70 in value, and not $70 in impressive packaging with nothing but bullshit on a disk inside.
And no, I don't think any musician should have a free meal ticket for an entire year due to a weekend's work. If he wants money, he should be doing what musicians should do for their lunches: PERFORM. If I work for 2 days a month in an entry-level position at any other industry, I wouldn't eat. If you don't want to be homeless, work. Who does the entertainment industry think they are to be exempt from this? They are swindlers, liars, and dumbasses by trade (in a positive way to make the money, but a negative way when they show what they feel are their deservings)
Buy one share in all the RIAA companies
They are not going to even listen to someone with a single share.
The CEO might not listen, but you have the right to attend and speak in shareholders' meetings. Your intention won't be to sway the big dogs, but to influence enough of the little dogs that they can outnumber and influence the big dogs. Carl Icahn buys ridiculously few shares in the companies that he rips apart, but he is allowed to speak, and his arguments sound convincing to enough people who DO hold the shares to move the mountains he wants moved.
I think I'd rather be executed by firing squad than lethal injection or electric chair
It also creates an instant organ donor, instead of lethally-injected kidneys and extra crispy livers.
Seriously, if somebody gets all huffy about somebody cracking a joke about their religion, they must not be that secure in their beliefs.
That or they hold their beliefs sacred and important. Perhaps there is nothing in your life worthy of reverence or respect, but there are some people on the planet that wrap their time around more important things than just their work and their favorite Monday night tv shows. Finding your mockery of their lives' foundations to be rude, disrespectful, and distasteful isn't insecurity on their part, it's complete inconsideration on yours. Have you ever had the balls to tell someone "Dude, that's not funny." or do you take your lessons from 14-year-olds on what is and is not appropriate? What kind of a man has to make fun of someone else's belief system? Seriously?
I think that is a BS comparison. I hate it when my internet speed if slowed down because a few jerks are downloading DVDs all the time.
I think you misunderstood me. Time Warner is a member of the RIAA, the MPAA, and owns Road Runner.
I use Road Runner and it is at 10mbs oddly enough that is fast enough for me and I am not at all interested in the 15mbs upgrade. 60mbs is way more then I ever need. So you put caps on the slow speeds to make people want to upgrade.
I prefer not to have my ISP be synonymous with both the RIAA and MPAA, therefore I choose to go offline/pirate internet rather than subscribe to Time-Warner internet for my area for the time being.
"And apparently the iTunes homepage is a huge hit making device. "
This is part of what an iphone "killer" has to overcome (I'm looking at you Palm).
iThugs?
Or are you talking about a different type of hit?
Such an ugly term. How about Parahuman?
They're more of an analog from our species... How about Analhuman?
Whatever happened to doing things because we *could*, rather than because we should?
Ian Malcolm would like to have a word with you.
Also, anyone in business will tell you that money/price is hardly ever a deciding factor on whether someone will pay for a product.
This has got to be the stupidest thing I've heard in months. It is ALWAYS a factor of whether I pay for a product. Psychologists say that most people weigh the pain of losing money with the pleasure of having a new product in order to decide whether or not they'll buy it. No wonder an entire economy can crash in a matter of months -- it's got too many idiots, disconnected with reality, pulling the strings. When I need to choose between listening to a new music artist or feeding the family for a day, I choose feeding the family. If it were a choice of listening to a new music artist where I just have to skip dessert to break even, I might consider buying the CD.
High energy cosmic rays dwarf what LHC can do. LHC was built, not because it produces higher energy particles than these cosmic rays, but because it produces high energy particles on demand.
You avoid the point that some dumbass modded down because he was too stupid to actually read up on the LHC. It's like you all drank some crazy bullshit-flavored kool-aid and forgot everything ever explained or written about the LHC that's older than 3 months. It was built to simulate or recreate the big bang. It was built to observe the collision of particles we have not yet been able to observe. It was built to collide particles at unnatural energies (in comparison to our current universe). Quit trying to paint new targets on the hardware as attempts to quiet criticism. People with an attention span longer than a goldfish's can see you're full of it, even if You only started hearing about the LHC since last year.
There reason the whole LHC black hole rubbish is dismissed out of hand is simply because we have already obvesrved particles colliding with much higher energies than the LHC can produce and they didn't form black holes
No we haven't. That's why we built the LHC.
The probability of a black hole at the LHC swallowing the Earth is approximately zero
You seem awfully sure about yourself for someone who listens to someone who's built a machine that, by purpose, is suppose to smash particles together at never-before-seen energies because they have no idea of what will happen when they do such. Do you always act so pompously when you, by the very nature of what you are trying to stand up for, stand on uncertain ground?
I suppose since they all wear white lab coats, have shiny degrees, and hundreds of millions of dollars that when they say "We don't know what will happen when we attempt to create dark matter -- something we hardly know anything about, but if we do, we KNOW it will be completely under our control!" that you willingly blind yourself to the glaring contradictions between their assurances and their purposes, and will call any man stupid who would dare question the almighty labcoats!
I sure as hell don't think LHC is going to destroy the world, but I'd be an enormous dumbass if I accepted the assurance of someone who has just dropped crazy millions into an oversized centrifuge who admits they don't know what the hell is going to happen when it starts going. In fact, I'd be stupid to believe in anything that's had the same amounts of money and time invested into it that has yet to show its first result.
That "theory in a world of practice" is an advice you might want to apply to yourself... ever seen a kid (under 10) play Carmageddon or GTA?
Of course I have. 10-year-olds equate violence with awesomeness when it comes to cartoons, games, and drawing. I was possibly the worst of them all. However, you're no parent. You don't realize how blurred the line between media and reality is for kids. You're not constantly bombarded with questions like "Can this really happen?" "Do those kinds of things really exist?" "Can we really go somewhere like that?" "What happens to the videogame guys when they die? Do they go to heaven?" Spend enough time with a 7-year-old and find out how, to them, "going to work" is as ethereal and socially relevant as "achieving nirvana" is to you. Hear the questions that come from them as their brains are still establishing the boundaries of reality.
You just sit there, saying that you see kids playing GTA for a few minutes and suddenly you have an arbitrarily accurate gauge on the healthy psychological development of 10-year-olds. You obviously deserve some honorary degrees in child psychology from your intense sessions of hearing about other peoples' kids' reactions to play video games.
Every kid is different, but avoiding addictions to violence, childhood trauma, or apathy to suffering are 3 targets of every good parent. Seeing splattering blood, for one reason or another, tends to be the first large canyon for kids to cross when it comes to seeing forms of violence. Removing that and/or dismemberment from a violent depiction seems to soften much of the impact on their developing brains. Try listening to someone who deals with this kind of thing every day, rather than trying to view your childhood memories through your current, rigid understanding of the world, and trying to treat other peoples' kids as your own "progressive" social experiments, then insulting them when they tell you that your theories are shallow, misdirected, and unfounded in reality. Theory in a world of practice.
So, I guess you're one of those fools who bought into the "any marijuana use is automatically abuse" propoganda
Don't post while high. It apparently makes you either a very poor reader or a really bad guesser. You managed to deduce the exact opposite of what I just said. Congrats tokabola, you're a poster boy for dumbass marijuana fanboys, and a credit from your movement! Use != Smoke.