Other than the fact they are outright profiting from their infringement. I have been known to pirate software, but I am *very* particular about who can "borrow" my CDs of anything except SNES games because I do know that profiting (or distributing, most of the time) from infringement puts you in a whole new league.
It happens in my school district pretty often, unfortunately. My class had 3 or 4 girls get pregnant senior year, and the classes after me got worse in that regard...
Regarding your last paragraph, that hardly ever happens anymore. Now, it's always "No, my little child is a perfect, pure snowflake!" Who cares your kid kicked a pregnant girl in the stomach (which I saw happen once, sadly...); they couldn't have done it, because... you say so? O.o
The kid who kicked the pregnant girl in the stomach was the son of a lawyer, by the way, which is how he got away with it -- "If you expel my son, I'll sue the school!"
If I ever have kids and one of them is bullied, and I confront the bully's parents and they say it's a way of building character, I am going to punch them straight in the damn face and ask them if they feel like a better person yet.
Somehow, education for people who work hard and actually give a damn isn't popular anymore (look at Corbett's budget proposal in PA). God forbid, however, that you kick out a dipshit asshole who disrupts things on a daily basis, because education is his right.
I am all for holding kids to the same standards of conduct as adults, for the most part. This "assault is ok because it's part of growing up" bullshit is ridiculous as a justification for doing fuckall. If a school employee hits a student (even in self-defense), that's more or less immediate suspension, if not termination; if a student hits another student because they can, nothing gets done; sometimes, if the victim fights back, they get in trouble, while nothing happens to the instigator.
What the hell is wrong with us that we have decided that victims fighting back is somehow unacceptable while bullies picking on others is fine? If bullies can hit, the victim should be allowed to, as well. Or no one should be allowed to hit. Stop the damn double standard.
Yep. I know a few people who homeschool, and, frankly, it's not for a reason I would consider valid.
The only reason these people homeschool their kids is so that their children don't have to be exposed to ideas contradictory to their indoctrination (like the devil's tool, evolution). It's not that these people think they can provide a truly better education -- in fact, it's quite the opposite: they want their kids to only see one point of view, ever.
What really bothers me is that a girl I went to high school with receives food stamps and welfare payments, despite being perfectly capable of getting a decent job. She says she's going to homeschool her kids, which, frankly, I think is BS -- let me get this right, you're gonna homeschool your kids for the sole purpose of "protecting" them from "evil" ideas like evolution and sex, while we give you money so you can stay home and do so instead of being a productive member of society?
In other news, when faced with a strange glass vial of liquid originally thought to be some sort of explosive, NASA officials were relieved to discover it was actually the essence of pure flavor (plain water supersaturated with LSD).
Actually, the standard "test" for virginity was the presence of a hymen. Yes, that's terribly accurate, when the hymen can be absent for any of a number of non-sexual reasons.
Those are purely modern problems; women with illegitimate children, in Bible times, were pretty much expected to live in poverty for their "sins".
If it was really about preventing diseases or a plethora of pregnancies, infidelity perpetrated by a husband would have been grounds for divorce. As it was, only infidelity by the wife was proper grounds.
The prohibition of sex is more about keeping a man's "property" clean, pure, and virginal, rather than any altruistic societal ideals. If it was about actually preventing unwanted children and disease, rape victims would not have been forced by decree to marry their attacker, men would have been stoned to death for not being virgins on their wedding nights (which was expected for a woman who wasn't a virgin on her wedding night), et cetera.
And, don't forget the whole patriarchy of the Bible. The whole Bible portrays women as property and temptresses. If you "humble" a woman by raping her, she is forced to marry you (presumably because no other man would want a woman who isn't a virgin); if a woman has sex with someone other than her husband, he can get a divorce (but not the other way around). Women were commonly bought and sold as wives/servants (at roughly half the price of a man, at that). Women are usually blamed for the "fall of man". God outright says "Kill all the men, and rape the women as you see fit."
The Bible's admonitions of sex outside of marriage have nothing to do with trying to keep men pure -- in fact, it is rarely mentioned as to whether a male in the Bible is a virgin or not, as the society didn't really care if a man slept with 40 women before he got married (a double standard which endures even to today, as a women who sleeps with even one man before her wedding is often called a slut or a harlot or what-have-you, while a man who sleeps with dozens of women is revered). The prohibition of sex has everything to do with keeping a man's "future property" clean and virginal. That's all it really is.
Also, I think my post goes hand-in-hand with its sibling post.
Alright, let's say that their aren't any sources either way because, as you noted, there are many external factors (when discussing economics, please avoid the word "externality" as it means something different in economics). So, what, then, is your rational basis for giving the rich tax cuts?
It is a well-noted observation that the MPS for the rich is significantly higher; that is, less of each additional dollar they get goes into the economy. Based even solely on that, if you want to actually stimulate the economy, you give tax breaks to the lower classes before you give them to the rich -- if you even give them a tax break.
And, frankly, trickle-down has been proven wrong over and over.
The rich, if less is taken in the form of taxes, are *not* going to use it to create jobs. They are more than likely going to put it into savings/investments, whereas taking less from a middle-class family means that a higher proportion of the money "saved" will be put back into the immediate economy.
Er... there aren't many people who deal exclusively with spam filters...
And, really, that's like saying we shouldn't try to prevent rape and murder because they give people jobs (in the form of police officers, judges, prison guards, et cetera).
Just because something creates jobs by existing doesn't mean that it's a good thing...
For starters, all that spam is basically junk mail where the sender didn't pay any postage. It's an abuse of the system in a lot of ways: 1) the strain it puts on the network (all those e-mails take up a good chunk of space) 2) the strain it puts on the mail servers (both in terms of processing to remove junk mail and in terms of hard drive space) 3) the fact that a significant portion of spam is sent by botnets without the users' knowledge
As to why people on/. hate it more... just think of how many people on this site have to spend hours trying to fix/update/manage their server's spam filters.
The reason for the contractual difficulty in firing teachers arose from the fact that, without that, if a teacher didn't give some snot-nosed lazy bastard a passing grade that he didn't earn, the school would be sued and the teacher would be fired, often without any proof that the teacher did anything wrong. At least, that's what my aunt (a teacher who just retired after 35 years in the classroom -- and, coincidentally, was my best friend's dad's sixth grade teacher) told me.
Is the policy abused? You better believe it. But lots of policies are abused. Look at the Westboro Baptist "Church". Bunch of inbred pricks hide behind free speech even when they know they're spouting hate speech and targeting people for outright harassment.
Point is, the policy is really more of a symptom of the real problem -- people thinking their precious little snowflake shouldn't get what he actually earned, or threatening the school just because a teacher is "different" or doesn't agree with their child.
Well, in the interest of being true to the actual meaning of "pedophile," I should point out that having sex with someone who is underage does not make one a pedophile. If the victim has hit puberty, that's a different paraphilia (which, for the record, is only a paraphilia because society has moved away from 20+ year old men marrying 13 year old girls).
Also, I should point out that, contrary to modern usage standards, child molesters and pedophiles are 2 distinct groups that just happen to have some overlap. Some child molesters are pedophiles, and vice versa; that's it.
Anyway, what you said reminds me of that episode of South Park where Ike is being molested by his teacher. The perceived double standard is honestly vaguely annoying, even if you don't have a real stake.
Slashdot Mirror
The brain cells of lesbians are similar to those of straight men; the cells of gay men are similar to those of women.
I actually know next to nothing about electronic circuits. I think the most complex thing I ever built was a metronome with variable tempo.
I would expect that almost everyone here would know this kind of stuff already...
It's news that removing unnecessary parts of a circuit make it more efficient? Really?
Well, there could still be a god, it could just be that he *really* likes fucking with us.
Other than the fact they are outright profiting from their infringement. I have been known to pirate software, but I am *very* particular about who can "borrow" my CDs of anything except SNES games because I do know that profiting (or distributing, most of the time) from infringement puts you in a whole new league.
It happens in my school district pretty often, unfortunately. My class had 3 or 4 girls get pregnant senior year, and the classes after me got worse in that regard...
Regarding your last paragraph, that hardly ever happens anymore. Now, it's always "No, my little child is a perfect, pure snowflake!" Who cares your kid kicked a pregnant girl in the stomach (which I saw happen once, sadly...); they couldn't have done it, because... you say so? O.o
The kid who kicked the pregnant girl in the stomach was the son of a lawyer, by the way, which is how he got away with it -- "If you expel my son, I'll sue the school!"
If I ever have kids and one of them is bullied, and I confront the bully's parents and they say it's a way of building character, I am going to punch them straight in the damn face and ask them if they feel like a better person yet.
Exactly.
Somehow, education for people who work hard and actually give a damn isn't popular anymore (look at Corbett's budget proposal in PA). God forbid, however, that you kick out a dipshit asshole who disrupts things on a daily basis, because education is his right.
I am all for holding kids to the same standards of conduct as adults, for the most part. This "assault is ok because it's part of growing up" bullshit is ridiculous as a justification for doing fuckall. If a school employee hits a student (even in self-defense), that's more or less immediate suspension, if not termination; if a student hits another student because they can, nothing gets done; sometimes, if the victim fights back, they get in trouble, while nothing happens to the instigator.
What the hell is wrong with us that we have decided that victims fighting back is somehow unacceptable while bullies picking on others is fine? If bullies can hit, the victim should be allowed to, as well. Or no one should be allowed to hit. Stop the damn double standard.
Yep. I know a few people who homeschool, and, frankly, it's not for a reason I would consider valid.
The only reason these people homeschool their kids is so that their children don't have to be exposed to ideas contradictory to their indoctrination (like the devil's tool, evolution). It's not that these people think they can provide a truly better education -- in fact, it's quite the opposite: they want their kids to only see one point of view, ever.
What really bothers me is that a girl I went to high school with receives food stamps and welfare payments, despite being perfectly capable of getting a decent job. She says she's going to homeschool her kids, which, frankly, I think is BS -- let me get this right, you're gonna homeschool your kids for the sole purpose of "protecting" them from "evil" ideas like evolution and sex, while we give you money so you can stay home and do so instead of being a productive member of society?
In other news, when faced with a strange glass vial of liquid originally thought to be some sort of explosive, NASA officials were relieved to discover it was actually the essence of pure flavor (plain water supersaturated with LSD).
Your humor humors me, and I would like to subscribe to whatever newsletters you think may interest me.
"Thinks" implies there's a possibility it isn't true.
Actually, the standard "test" for virginity was the presence of a hymen. Yes, that's terribly accurate, when the hymen can be absent for any of a number of non-sexual reasons.
Those are purely modern problems; women with illegitimate children, in Bible times, were pretty much expected to live in poverty for their "sins".
If it was really about preventing diseases or a plethora of pregnancies, infidelity perpetrated by a husband would have been grounds for divorce. As it was, only infidelity by the wife was proper grounds.
The prohibition of sex is more about keeping a man's "property" clean, pure, and virginal, rather than any altruistic societal ideals. If it was about actually preventing unwanted children and disease, rape victims would not have been forced by decree to marry their attacker, men would have been stoned to death for not being virgins on their wedding nights (which was expected for a woman who wasn't a virgin on her wedding night), et cetera.
And, don't forget the whole patriarchy of the Bible. The whole Bible portrays women as property and temptresses. If you "humble" a woman by raping her, she is forced to marry you (presumably because no other man would want a woman who isn't a virgin); if a woman has sex with someone other than her husband, he can get a divorce (but not the other way around). Women were commonly bought and sold as wives/servants (at roughly half the price of a man, at that). Women are usually blamed for the "fall of man". God outright says "Kill all the men, and rape the women as you see fit."
The Bible's admonitions of sex outside of marriage have nothing to do with trying to keep men pure -- in fact, it is rarely mentioned as to whether a male in the Bible is a virgin or not, as the society didn't really care if a man slept with 40 women before he got married (a double standard which endures even to today, as a women who sleeps with even one man before her wedding is often called a slut or a harlot or what-have-you, while a man who sleeps with dozens of women is revered). The prohibition of sex has everything to do with keeping a man's "future property" clean and virginal. That's all it really is.
Also, I think my post goes hand-in-hand with its sibling post.
Alright, let's say that their aren't any sources either way because, as you noted, there are many external factors (when discussing economics, please avoid the word "externality" as it means something different in economics). So, what, then, is your rational basis for giving the rich tax cuts?
It is a well-noted observation that the MPS for the rich is significantly higher; that is, less of each additional dollar they get goes into the economy. Based even solely on that, if you want to actually stimulate the economy, you give tax breaks to the lower classes before you give them to the rich -- if you even give them a tax break.
And, frankly, trickle-down has been proven wrong over and over.
The rich, if less is taken in the form of taxes, are *not* going to use it to create jobs. They are more than likely going to put it into savings/investments, whereas taking less from a middle-class family means that a higher proportion of the money "saved" will be put back into the immediate economy.
Er... there aren't many people who deal exclusively with spam filters...
And, really, that's like saying we shouldn't try to prevent rape and murder because they give people jobs (in the form of police officers, judges, prison guards, et cetera).
Just because something creates jobs by existing doesn't mean that it's a good thing...
For starters, all that spam is basically junk mail where the sender didn't pay any postage. It's an abuse of the system in a lot of ways:
1) the strain it puts on the network (all those e-mails take up a good chunk of space)
2) the strain it puts on the mail servers (both in terms of processing to remove junk mail and in terms of hard drive space)
3) the fact that a significant portion of spam is sent by botnets without the users' knowledge
As to why people on /. hate it more... just think of how many people on this site have to spend hours trying to fix/update/manage their server's spam filters.
The reason for the contractual difficulty in firing teachers arose from the fact that, without that, if a teacher didn't give some snot-nosed lazy bastard a passing grade that he didn't earn, the school would be sued and the teacher would be fired, often without any proof that the teacher did anything wrong. At least, that's what my aunt (a teacher who just retired after 35 years in the classroom -- and, coincidentally, was my best friend's dad's sixth grade teacher) told me.
Is the policy abused? You better believe it. But lots of policies are abused. Look at the Westboro Baptist "Church". Bunch of inbred pricks hide behind free speech even when they know they're spouting hate speech and targeting people for outright harassment.
Point is, the policy is really more of a symptom of the real problem -- people thinking their precious little snowflake shouldn't get what he actually earned, or threatening the school just because a teacher is "different" or doesn't agree with their child.
Hey, obviously, the student who got knocked up needed a little object lesson in biology, that's all.
Well, in the interest of being true to the actual meaning of "pedophile," I should point out that having sex with someone who is underage does not make one a pedophile. If the victim has hit puberty, that's a different paraphilia (which, for the record, is only a paraphilia because society has moved away from 20+ year old men marrying 13 year old girls).
Also, I should point out that, contrary to modern usage standards, child molesters and pedophiles are 2 distinct groups that just happen to have some overlap. Some child molesters are pedophiles, and vice versa; that's it.
Anyway, what you said reminds me of that episode of South Park where Ike is being molested by his teacher. The perceived double standard is honestly vaguely annoying, even if you don't have a real stake.
This is why I stopped using iTunes completely a few years ago, other than to put podcasts on my (now defunct) iPod nano.