We're not supposed to complain when lawyers are hired by large corporations to sue peasants, only when peasants hire lawyers to sue large corporations. Now go back to North Korea you damned collectivist! [/rightwingstrawman]
...Wozniak has an old, old debate about openness vs closed with Steve Jobs, but I don't think they're talking about open source when they argue about "open vs closed" systems. Perhaps someone more familiar with this debate can enlighten us further.
To a rightist, any time there is a conflict between our corporate overlords and a mere peasant, the peasant is always wrong. Peasants who don't know their place need to be smacked down a little harder lest the other peasants get ideas.
Everyone here assumes that the Republicans would do this. Why? Because of their track record. We have a Democrat doing the opposite, and here you are with a straight face pulling out the old "Democrats are just as bad!" argument.
This is a double fallacy because even if the Democrats are just as bad, this does not excuse the Republicans. The other side of the fallacy is that the Democrats usually aren't just as bad when arguments of this sort are used, and this instance is no different.
Yes, it's true that a lot of Democrats are more beholden to corporate interests than the interests of we mere peasants, but you have to be more than a little out of touch with reality to imply that the Democrats are "just as bad" as Republicans in this regard.
The Republican party boldly defends the freedom of multinational corporations from all those dirty peasants, but because you hate America and want the terrorists to win, you want the nannystate to get on our backs and tell us what we can or cannot do. So of course to support your bashing of Real Americans(TM), you spin the facts to make it sound like Republicans would be doing something bad by defending our freedoms.
If I beat you with a baseball bat, the victim is one person: you.
However, if I beat you with a baseball bat because you're a white evangelical from rural Kentucky, then my intended victim is not you, it's all white evangelicals from rural Kentucky. Hate crimes are acts of terrorism designed to "send a message" to all members of the target group. The one who directly receives the violence is merely the message-bearer.
Do this kind of thing enough, and you can cause quite a bit of harm by keeping an entire population near-paralyzed with fear, such as African-Americans during the height of KKK cross-burnings (and other acts of vandalism, and murder, and rape).
Hate crimes are given larger punishments because the scope of the harm caused is so much greater.
One has to wonder, however, why exactly you are so offended at the notion that hate crimes receive heavier punishments. There are a few obvious explanations, and none of them are particularly flattering to you.
This software didn't allow Goldman Sachs to have a competitive edge over their competitors, it contributed to a massive financial collapse that resulted in taxpayers being robbed trillions of dollars. If this were a murder trial, should we make the trial secret because the gun manufacture doesn't want his competitors to know what kinds of springs he used?
This isn't about protecting intellectual property, it's about reminding we mere peasants that don't have as much influence over our government as our lords and ladies do.
Did you just try to put digits after the infinite number of nines? You are correct that there is something idiotic going on here, but I do not think you understand what that something is.
I've been in plenty of arguments about this on game-related forums, and the answer I get to what you propose is zero, followed by an infinite number of zeroes, which itself is followed by a one. People who don't understand that 0.999... = 1 also don't understand that you can't have any digits after an infinite number of digits because they don't understand what infinity means. They honestly think infinity is simply a very large finite number, therefore they think it is possible to have an absurd number such as 0.000...1.
As soon as you get to "You know you can represent 1/3 as 0.333... right?", you hit a brick wall. People who believe that 0.999... does not equal one also believe that 0.333... does not equal 1/3, and for many of the same reasons. Taking your approach, you simply shift from arguing about whether or not 0.999... equals one to arguing about whether or not 0.333... equals 1/3. You have to get at the root of the problem of why they refuse to believe those numbers are equal before you can get anywhere.
The problem with the argument you present is that people who don't believe 0.999...=1 also don't believe that 0.333...=1/3. They can't quite wrap their heads around the concept of infinity, so in their minds 0.333... continually comes closer to 1/3, but never quite reaches it because they can only imagine a finite number of digits. They honestly think of infinity as being a really large finite number, so they believe that no matter how many digits you add to 0.333..., it never quite reaches 1/3.
Another part of the problem is that many people simply can't wrap their heads around is that they don't separate the idea of a number and the symbols used to represent numbers, thus they cannot grasp that some numbers can be represented in more than one way by our number system.
We've had plenty of news articles that say water is going to become more and more precious as this century unfolds. If someone is willing to pay the expense of shipping fresh water from Alaska to the Middle East, how long can it be before we all start paying more and more for fresh water? If that starts to happen, we can expect all kinds of ugly socioeconomic ramifications.
What matters is what the public sees, and most of those FOX News zombies will look at all of this and see the Noble Attorney General defending them from the vast international conspiracy consisting of 90% of the planet's scientists and being run from Al Gore's house (oops, I mean run from an obscure school in the UK, I forgot about the emails), which is of course in turn part of a much larger 4 decade old conspiracy by Kenyan goat herders to install a secret Muslim terrorist agent in the White House, who would destroy America by creating Death Panels that execute all the elderly white people so that undeserving black people can buy Rolls Royces with food stamps.
Did I mention that millions of stupid people are allowed to vote in my country?
He disagrees with something said on FOX News, therefore he is doing this solely to promote a socialist agenda designed to turn America into a communist-fascist atheist-Muslim nightmare in which everyone is forced to become gay and burn all the Bibles. How can you possibly defend someone like that? [/rightwingstrawman]
You do understand that it is perfectly possible for plant species A mentioned in study B to thrive while animal species C mentioned in study D to do poorly after the Chernobyl accident, right? This study and the one you cite are not producing conflicting information unless you assume all plants and all animals respond to environmental changes identically.
A lot of us around here work in IT and have provided tech support long enough to have generalizations about various groups and their relative computer literacy. Executives are among the dumbest computer users I have ever had to support. The older ones still can't figure out the difference between email and a mouse. By contrast, people involved in art in a corporate environment are invariably the most advanced computer users, often able to diagnose their own problems and only bother the IT people when they need something replaced.
Given that numerous studies have found correlations between people who are good at art or music and people who are good at technical/scientific matters, this should surprise no one.
I know this seems unrelated, but your post suddenly made me think of that.
The ancient Greeks complained that writing would make people stupid because they wouldn't have to memorize as much. While we can't measure this sort of thing, modern humans probably do have poorer memory capacity than those ancient Greeks who complained about it, but the irony is the only reason we know about their complaints is that someone used writing to record their thoughts.
I dunno if you've noticed, but liberals have been coming down on Obama for continuing many of Bush's worst policies. Contrast with what you rightists have done regarding many of these same policies. When it became apparent Bush was assassinating people, rightists did not criticize him for it, instead they accused anyone who had a problem with it of being anti-American traitors who were "with the terrorists". Now that Obama is continuing this bad policy, this same exact policy has gone from something the government must do, to something bad.
While a certain amount of this "it's only bad when the other side does it" does indeed happen on both sides, you rightists have proven yourselves to be much, much worse, so don't even think about trying to project onto others your most glaring flaws.
If only they did things like the corporate world... where the exact same thing happens.
The first time I encountered this phenomenon was in a corporate setting. The end of the fiscal year approached, and each department seemed to be competing with the others to see who could blow the most money on the most useless crap. In fact the only organizations at which I have not seen this phenomenon is at smaller companies and smaller non-profits.
It is always nice to be reminded that there is at least one regard (immigration) in which European conservatives are actually worse than our own American conservatives.
And because of that, we are just like Muslim countries in this regard: violence is good, sex is bad bad bad BAD yer goin' to HELL yew sinnah! *froth* *foam*
I'm sorry. Where was I?
Yeah, anyway, just look at the American public's response to the movie Kick Ass. No one batted an eye at the depiction of an 11 year old girl brutally slaughtering dozens of human beings, but the thought of a movie depicting an 11 year old girl using dirty words sent everyone into apoplectic seizures. We can tell little Johnny that's it is acceptable to use murder as a means of conflict resolution, but he must never come to think that it is acceptable to use a bad word or see a boobie.
Slashdot Mirror
...and nature can recycle that stuff far more efficiently than we can.
We're not supposed to complain when lawyers are hired by large corporations to sue peasants, only when peasants hire lawyers to sue large corporations. Now go back to North Korea you damned collectivist! [/rightwingstrawman]
...Wozniak has an old, old debate about openness vs closed with Steve Jobs, but I don't think they're talking about open source when they argue about "open vs closed" systems. Perhaps someone more familiar with this debate can enlighten us further.
To a rightist, any time there is a conflict between our corporate overlords and a mere peasant, the peasant is always wrong. Peasants who don't know their place need to be smacked down a little harder lest the other peasants get ideas.
Everyone here assumes that the Republicans would do this. Why? Because of their track record. We have a Democrat doing the opposite, and here you are with a straight face pulling out the old "Democrats are just as bad!" argument.
This is a double fallacy because even if the Democrats are just as bad, this does not excuse the Republicans. The other side of the fallacy is that the Democrats usually aren't just as bad when arguments of this sort are used, and this instance is no different.
Yes, it's true that a lot of Democrats are more beholden to corporate interests than the interests of we mere peasants, but you have to be more than a little out of touch with reality to imply that the Democrats are "just as bad" as Republicans in this regard.
The Republican party boldly defends the freedom of multinational corporations from all those dirty peasants, but because you hate America and want the terrorists to win, you want the nannystate to get on our backs and tell us what we can or cannot do. So of course to support your bashing of Real Americans(TM), you spin the facts to make it sound like Republicans would be doing something bad by defending our freedoms.
It's not just "bias", it's blatant spin!
[/ELABORATERIGHTWINGSTRAWMAN]
...for making me smile today.
If I beat you with a baseball bat, the victim is one person: you.
However, if I beat you with a baseball bat because you're a white evangelical from rural Kentucky, then my intended victim is not you, it's all white evangelicals from rural Kentucky. Hate crimes are acts of terrorism designed to "send a message" to all members of the target group. The one who directly receives the violence is merely the message-bearer.
Do this kind of thing enough, and you can cause quite a bit of harm by keeping an entire population near-paralyzed with fear, such as African-Americans during the height of KKK cross-burnings (and other acts of vandalism, and murder, and rape).
Hate crimes are given larger punishments because the scope of the harm caused is so much greater.
One has to wonder, however, why exactly you are so offended at the notion that hate crimes receive heavier punishments. There are a few obvious explanations, and none of them are particularly flattering to you.
This software didn't allow Goldman Sachs to have a competitive edge over their competitors, it contributed to a massive financial collapse that resulted in taxpayers being robbed trillions of dollars. If this were a murder trial, should we make the trial secret because the gun manufacture doesn't want his competitors to know what kinds of springs he used?
This isn't about protecting intellectual property, it's about reminding we mere peasants that don't have as much influence over our government as our lords and ladies do.
Did you just try to put digits after the infinite number of nines? You are correct that there is something idiotic going on here, but I do not think you understand what that something is.
People who do not believe 0.999...=1 also will not accept that 1/9=0.111...
Since you are beginning your proof with something they do not accept as true, they will not accept your proof.
I've been in plenty of arguments about this on game-related forums, and the answer I get to what you propose is zero, followed by an infinite number of zeroes, which itself is followed by a one. People who don't understand that 0.999... = 1 also don't understand that you can't have any digits after an infinite number of digits because they don't understand what infinity means. They honestly think infinity is simply a very large finite number, therefore they think it is possible to have an absurd number such as 0.000...1.
As soon as you get to "You know you can represent 1/3 as 0.333... right?", you hit a brick wall. People who believe that 0.999... does not equal one also believe that 0.333... does not equal 1/3, and for many of the same reasons. Taking your approach, you simply shift from arguing about whether or not 0.999... equals one to arguing about whether or not 0.333... equals 1/3. You have to get at the root of the problem of why they refuse to believe those numbers are equal before you can get anywhere.
The problem with the argument you present is that people who don't believe 0.999...=1 also don't believe that 0.333...=1/3. They can't quite wrap their heads around the concept of infinity, so in their minds 0.333... continually comes closer to 1/3, but never quite reaches it because they can only imagine a finite number of digits. They honestly think of infinity as being a really large finite number, so they believe that no matter how many digits you add to 0.333..., it never quite reaches 1/3.
Another part of the problem is that many people simply can't wrap their heads around is that they don't separate the idea of a number and the symbols used to represent numbers, thus they cannot grasp that some numbers can be represented in more than one way by our number system.
We've had plenty of news articles that say water is going to become more and more precious as this century unfolds. If someone is willing to pay the expense of shipping fresh water from Alaska to the Middle East, how long can it be before we all start paying more and more for fresh water? If that starts to happen, we can expect all kinds of ugly socioeconomic ramifications.
What matters is what the public sees, and most of those FOX News zombies will look at all of this and see the Noble Attorney General defending them from the vast international conspiracy consisting of 90% of the planet's scientists and being run from Al Gore's house (oops, I mean run from an obscure school in the UK, I forgot about the emails), which is of course in turn part of a much larger 4 decade old conspiracy by Kenyan goat herders to install a secret Muslim terrorist agent in the White House, who would destroy America by creating Death Panels that execute all the elderly white people so that undeserving black people can buy Rolls Royces with food stamps.
Did I mention that millions of stupid people are allowed to vote in my country?
He disagrees with something said on FOX News, therefore he is doing this solely to promote a socialist agenda designed to turn America into a communist-fascist atheist-Muslim nightmare in which everyone is forced to become gay and burn all the Bibles. How can you possibly defend someone like that? [/rightwingstrawman]
You do understand that it is perfectly possible for plant species A mentioned in study B to thrive while animal species C mentioned in study D to do poorly after the Chernobyl accident, right? This study and the one you cite are not producing conflicting information unless you assume all plants and all animals respond to environmental changes identically.
A lot of us around here work in IT and have provided tech support long enough to have generalizations about various groups and their relative computer literacy. Executives are among the dumbest computer users I have ever had to support. The older ones still can't figure out the difference between email and a mouse. By contrast, people involved in art in a corporate environment are invariably the most advanced computer users, often able to diagnose their own problems and only bother the IT people when they need something replaced.
Given that numerous studies have found correlations between people who are good at art or music and people who are good at technical/scientific matters, this should surprise no one.
I know this seems unrelated, but your post suddenly made me think of that.
The ancient Greeks complained that writing would make people stupid because they wouldn't have to memorize as much. While we can't measure this sort of thing, modern humans probably do have poorer memory capacity than those ancient Greeks who complained about it, but the irony is the only reason we know about their complaints is that someone used writing to record their thoughts.
I dunno if you've noticed, but liberals have been coming down on Obama for continuing many of Bush's worst policies. Contrast with what you rightists have done regarding many of these same policies. When it became apparent Bush was assassinating people, rightists did not criticize him for it, instead they accused anyone who had a problem with it of being anti-American traitors who were "with the terrorists". Now that Obama is continuing this bad policy, this same exact policy has gone from something the government must do, to something bad.
While a certain amount of this "it's only bad when the other side does it" does indeed happen on both sides, you rightists have proven yourselves to be much, much worse, so don't even think about trying to project onto others your most glaring flaws.
It seems someone with points to give out lacks a sense of humor. Made me laugh, though.
If only they did things like the corporate world... where the exact same thing happens.
The first time I encountered this phenomenon was in a corporate setting. The end of the fiscal year approached, and each department seemed to be competing with the others to see who could blow the most money on the most useless crap. In fact the only organizations at which I have not seen this phenomenon is at smaller companies and smaller non-profits.
It is always nice to be reminded that there is at least one regard (immigration) in which European conservatives are actually worse than our own American conservatives.
And because of that, we are just like Muslim countries in this regard: violence is good, sex is bad bad bad BAD yer goin' to HELL yew sinnah! *froth* *foam*
I'm sorry. Where was I?
Yeah, anyway, just look at the American public's response to the movie Kick Ass. No one batted an eye at the depiction of an 11 year old girl brutally slaughtering dozens of human beings, but the thought of a movie depicting an 11 year old girl using dirty words sent everyone into apoplectic seizures. We can tell little Johnny that's it is acceptable to use murder as a means of conflict resolution, but he must never come to think that it is acceptable to use a bad word or see a boobie.
Like I said: just like the Muslim countries.