The only reason its the right way of distributing is because they haven't abused it for DRM purposes.
That's correct, the single largest reason why Valve is "doing it right" is because they don't abuse it. They could, but they don't. Like you point out, that can change overnight, and if it did I think they would see their customer base shrink faster than a nutsack in ice water.
This has happened to severe hackers on their more popular titles, such as Counter Strike and Team Fortress 2.
Well.. I have no sympathy for people whose idea of fun is to intentionally and specifically harm the experience for 31 other players. I've been in several CS games where you've got a guy with a speed hack plus an aim bot, and it's absolutely no fun to be on either team. On the opposite team you can't even shoot before you've been headshotted, and on the same team you just feel like a dick. There's no reason to let those guys play the game, and Valve is the only authority to stop them.
What exactly does Steam have to apologize for? Steam is a practical, high-quality, professional distribution service and Valve is a company committed to its customers. What is there to apologize for? When games were requiring the CD to be in the drive did that also just positively infuriate you? What about when you installed Ultima 7 and had to read off map coordinates, were you going around looking for the map coordinate apologists?
Show your support for a model which not only works, but is actually being done correctly. Companies like Ubisoft and EA are great examples for how to completely ruin a distribution platform like this. Valve is, and has been for many years, an excellent example of how to do it right. This type of protection is no more "evil" than requiring the CD to be in the drive (that being said, I still refuse to purchase GTA4 even over Steam because of the additional DRM added by Rockstar). Show companies like Ubisoft and EA that you reject not the concept of online distribution, but their specific implementation of it, by supporting a company like Valve which is committed to a good experience for its customers. Just as companies who make terrible decisions against their customers deserve to be boycotted, companies who prioritize a good customer experience also deserve to be rewarded.
In other words, help Valve prove that Linux is a viable market for games, and that even free software folks are willing to pay for high-quality games. It will give companies like Ubisoft a lot to think about.
I'm not sure which world you live in where $28 billion counts as "a few pennies" of his ~$60 billion fortune (do you give half of your wealth?), but maybe you could enlighten the audience as to exactly what Bill is doing behind the scenes that is so nefarious.
to promote good publicity
I'm sure by "good publicity" you really meant "world healthcare and education", it's really the same thing right?
How exactly is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation connected to Microsoft? The largest transparently-operated private foundation in the world doesn't have a lot in common with Microsoft Corp. In fact, there's only one thing I can think of that they do have in common.
I'm using Firefox for development only and just because of Firebug
Here, here. I give Firefox some grief every now and then, and it's usually relegated to only a few tabs open to whatever I'm working on. But whoever thought up and implemented Firebug... that's a guy I can relate to. The native tools for Chrome, IE8, and Opera are all pretty good, but all of them lack at least one thing I consider a requirement (e.g., in IE8 I can't view the requests).
Hopefully, the 'Droid can come out with a version that beats Apple's 4G series that are approaching the market.
Indeed. It's also a wifi hotspot for 8 devices, and can stream HD video out of an HDMI port on the phone, in case you're one of those people who likes to watch videos on something other than your phone.
So, we had a decent system before government started meddling
Not necessarily. We had a system which fit the state that the country was in decades ago. That's not the same system we should be using now. That's like the RIAA trying to still sell everyone vinyl records. Times have changed, needs have changed.
You don't want economic freedom, you want government control.
I've never stated anything which should cause you to think that I value government control over economic freedom. Economic freedom is the backbone of this country. Economic freedom has nothing to do with the government providing health care to its citizens, and it's disingenuous for you to say that if you are in favor of government health care that you are also opposed to freedom. You still have the freedom to pay for your own health care. This bill does not remove any options you currently have, it simply gives new options to people who don't currently have them.
This bill forces people to buy insurance.
I have not read the hundreds of pages in the bill, so I frankly don't know what it says (and I'm smarter than thinking that the "information" coming from Fox is remotely accurate - you're not going to be jailed, either). I'm not even arguing that the current bill is the solution to all of our problems. I do find it interesting though that the Republicans asked for several changes to the bill, which they were given, and then not a damn one of them voted for it. Why make the changes if it's not going to change any minds? That's where reform needs to start, in Congress. The Democrats and Republicans have had it too good for too long, they're lazy now. We need people in there who want to be there because they want to help. It's the same bullshit going on with our new immigration bill, everyone all of a sudden hates us for daring to make a law, but the only thing anyone else is doing is talking. It doesn't help, you need to make changes, see if they work, if they don't work then figure out why and change it again.
WHy didn't our founders say that government had to provide healtchare?
The constitution also didn't say that people had the right to free speech, nor the right to bear arms, nor the right to vote at 18, nor that people have the right not to be searched without a reason, etc etc etc. Why do you think the constitution has been amended 27 times? Times change, so do the needs of the country. Within 15 years of its creation the constitution had already been amended 10 times. The last time an amendment was proposed was 32 years ago. Maybe it's time for another one.
notice, how this has happened since the US started getting involved?
That's right, if there's one thing we know how to do, it's fuck up a system. That doesn't mean we can't eventually get it right, and it doesn't mean we should stop trying.
Germany has the world's oldest universal health care system, with origins dating back to Otto von Bismarck's social legislation, which included the Health Insurance Bill of 1883, Accident Insurance Bill of 1884, and Old Age and Disability Insurance Bill of 1889.
We have almost 130 years of experience to look at. It's no wonder that Germany is the model for the bill which was passed.
Most current universal health care systems were implemented in the period following the Second World War as a process of deliberate health care reform, intended to make health care available to all, in the spirit of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, signed by every country doing so. The US did not ratify the social and economic rights sections, including Article 25's right to health.
Here's a personal story as well: in 2003 I was finishing up college and living in a house with 4 other roommates, two couples. One of them was a guy who didn't take very good care of himself, without going into too much detail it was pretty clear that his immune system wasn't very strong because of how he treated his body. During February and March of that year he became sick, he just had a flu or cold or something like that. One Sunday I saw him walking from the basement to his room sort of staggering, he seemed pretty tired. Later that evening his girlfriend reported that she wasn't able to wake him. We called the medics, got some firemen there to lift him out of bed (he was crying, not knowing where he was, very out of it). His parents transported him to the hospital, where he became combative with the staff. They sedated him, and it put him in a coma for the next several years. He eventually awoke, but never spoke, did not recognize anyone, couldn't eat, etc. He spent about 5 years in various hospitals and clinics, including the reknowned Barrow Neurological Center here in Phoenix. Each year of his care cost his parents several hundred thousand dollars. Each year. He eventually died in a hospice due to complications that occured there.
The single reason he didn't go to the doctor when he originally got sick, which lasted for over a month, was because he did not have insurance and didn't want to pay so much just to go get an antibacterial. He told me exactly that when I asked him why he wasn't going to the doctor. The infection turned into menengitis, and that was that. He was 22 when he got sick. The end result was death and around a million dollars in health bills for his parents.
The US has the highest GDP in the world, by a lot. We can do better than that.
IOW, he was killed not for arguing against the church but for publicly insulting the man with the power to have him killed, which is generally regarded as a bad idea.
I guess, although one would imagine that the leader of a religion which preaches "love thy brother" may actually follow his own teachings. Of course, history shows that's not always the case.
Like i've said a bazillion times, limited government is important.
I agree with that, but even though it didn't even address my question I'll let it go.
the cases where it looks like socializing medicine has worked, are in small countries such as sweden and holland.
Right, small countries like Germany and France which have the 4th and 5th largest economies in the world ranked by GDP, the largest 2 economies in the EU. Germany spends $3328 per capita on health care, or 10.4% of their GDP. France spends $3554 per capita, or 11.1%. Canada spends $3672 per capita, or 10.0%. The US spends $6714 per capita, or 15.3% of our GDP which is nearly as large as the entire GDP for Europe. Those numbers come from the WHO. We're spending twice as much per capita as many other countries and still can't even manage to help everyone like they do.
Look at canada, look at the UK, look at what socializing industries has done.
Here's something fun to try: find someone from Canada, and ask them whether they would prefer the Canadian health system or the current US health system. See what they say.
and they'll implode within our life times anyways.
Wow, that's a great argument. We shouldn't do something because the countries that are currently succeeding at it are going to fail at some undetermined point in the future. That's some iron-clad reasoning right there.
Another fact, the US started getting involved in medical care not so long ago, and look what's happened? costs have risen, adjusting for inflation.
No shit, that's exactly why it needs to be fixed. Costs have risen, care has declined. That can be fixed.
but look at lasik. not covered by insurance, not really regulated. quality has gone up, price has come down.
That's because the technology has improved, genius, not because it's privatized.
where we let free markets occur, prices go down, quality goes up.
I do not believe that the government has an obligation to provide clothes and technology for its people. I do believe it has an obligation to provide medical care.
Just imagine how silly he's going to feel when he realizes that the church is choosing to use technology which was produced by the same scientific community the church had previously persecuted.
You're not arguing about car accidents and cancer, you're arguing about 2 slightly different forms of cancer, that are formed in basically the same way, and have basically the same effects.
Really? Representative democracy and tyranny are formed the same way, and have the same effects? Pray tell, what exactly distinguishes them?
If you think that we're gonna to have socialized healthcare, and socialized heatlhcare means a drastic reduction in quality.. how is that not a threat?
That's not what I think. If you can prove that socialized health care will result in a "drastic reduction of quality" for all concerned then we'll have a debate. I'm not going to debate a hypothetical situation or unproven assumption. One thing is a fact though: the US spends way more money on health care as a percentage of our GDP than the majority of other countries, yet our standard is lower. We spend more of our GDP than Germany, but Germany is still able to provide superior care to all of their citizens, even though we spend more and don't do that. This means that it's possible to both spend less and provide better care then we currently are. The entire system is a sham when a doctor is able to submit a bill for $150 for a Tylenol and expect it to get paid. I assume that would mean that I could walk in with a bottle of 100 Tylenol as payment for a $15,000 procedure, but for some reason it doesn't work that way.
I never said i wanted to remove this government and install a new one, i said, i want to limit what government can do.
No, you said that representative democracy and tyranny are the same thing, that it doesn't matter what you call them because they produce the same result. I wonder what someone who had to live under Pol Pot or Robert Mugabe would say if you told them that you live in a tyranny because we vote on issues and there's always a side which loses the vote. If you asked them if that was the same thing they faced, I wonder what they would say.
As for calling him a socialist.. so what?
Because he's not even close. Ask an American socialist if Obama is following their ideals. He's no more a socialist than he is a communist, so why all the bullshit rhetoric?
This is a weird world we're living in. Microsoft is offering patent protection to an open source product to counter lawsuits by Apple, thereby increasing the viability of the open source platform to spite Apple's own platform, even though Microsoft also has a competing platform.
Well, I guess I still hate Apple, so.. go Microsoft!
Right, so it's fine if we've got hoards of protesters calling the government fascist and tyrannical. It's all the same, right? You know what two of the leading causes of death are? Car accidents, and cancer. Both of those have the same effect, death, so obviously we can conclude that car accidents and cancer are the exact same thing. It doesn't matter if the causes are different, because the result is the same, so we might as well respond to the results instead of looking for the causes.
This level of logic and reasoning should really help to progress the national debate. I especially like the posters which show Obama as Hitler, and call him a socialist. It doesn't matter to those people that Hitler had many of the socialists in Germany, who were his enemies, murdered after he came to power. History and facts are irrelevant when the government dares to do something like pass a law to require health care. Clearly health care is a major threat to this nation and the constitution. That whole warrantless wiretapping thing done by the previous president and continued by the current, that's fine and dandy, there's no way in hell that something as innocent as eavesdropping on citizens without court approval could ever be used to infringe on our rights as Americans. Clearly the real danger is health care.
Thanks for helping to progress the national debate, you're doing some fine work. Clearly the only reasonable goal to strive for is a system of government where not a single citizen ever feels oppressed. Since this government does not meet that criterion, then clearly the correct course of action is to remove the government and install a new one. I'm sure no one will feel oppressed or disenfranchised if that were to happen.
Technically, any decision that is supported by less than 100% of the population in question is an illegitimate decision that is closer to tyranny than participatory democracy.
It's completely disingenuous to say that. How about this:
Technically, any decision that is supported by more than 50% of the population in question is a decision that is closer to participatory democracy than tyranny.
Would you say, if you had 2 people that were tyrants, that's not tyranny?
Uh, yeah I would, due to the fact that a tyranny is A SINGLE RULER WITH ABSOLUTE POWER. Two people with absolute power is, once again, by definition, not a tyranny. It's something else. Not everything where people get oppressed is a tyranny. There are many, many, many forms of oppression, such as mob rule, that are not tyrannies. The failure to understand that and lump every kind of oppression into the "tyranny" bucket is the issue here. I'm not saying that democratic voting does not result in some sort of oppression, all I'm saying is that it's TOTALLY DIFFERENT than a tyranny. How can you not understand this? Tyranny and oppression are not synonyms. One is a form of government, and one is a social condition.
you could, have 49% of the population exterminated, if 51% voted that way. That's tyranny of the majority.
No it's not. It's oppression, and it's genocide, but it's not tyranny. It is not a single person with absolute power, it's 51% of the people hating the other 49%. That is not a tyranny, it's a civil war.
I do not believe, the government has the obligation to protect people from hurting themselves.
They aren't hurting themselves, they're being hurt by Facebook.
if joe blow says that I can't dance on saturday nights(completely random example), and it so does the majority, bam it's voted, they win, that's tyranny.
Tyranny for whom, for Joe Blow? Does Joe feel like he's living under a tyrant? If they have absolute power by definition, then why do they need to vote? Is it because they don't have absolute power? Is a group of people considered to be a single ruler? You quoted the definition of a tyranny, and then you went and gave an example which bears no relationship to a single ruler with absolute power. Any group of more than one person voting on an issue is by your definition not a tyranny. It doesn't really matter whether some people disagree with the outcome. Democracy doesn't mean that everyone needs to agree on one thing.
Yeah, I know, I smoke. I made some bad decisions younger when I started, and now that I'm in a high-stress job it's very difficult to stop. Anything that raises my stress level is not good at this point. The irony, of course, is that smoking will probably result in more stress than anything else.
It's much easier to drop the IE6 habit than it is to quit smoking.
Slashdot Mirror
Firefox isn't the only browser where you can disable Javascript..
The picture of the plane raises all kinds of questions?
I don't know the answer to that.
What are the wings made of?
Wingstuff!
Where do they store the fuel?
Fuel tanks!
The only reason its the right way of distributing is because they haven't abused it for DRM purposes.
That's correct, the single largest reason why Valve is "doing it right" is because they don't abuse it. They could, but they don't. Like you point out, that can change overnight, and if it did I think they would see their customer base shrink faster than a nutsack in ice water.
This has happened to severe hackers on their more popular titles, such as Counter Strike and Team Fortress 2.
Well.. I have no sympathy for people whose idea of fun is to intentionally and specifically harm the experience for 31 other players. I've been in several CS games where you've got a guy with a speed hack plus an aim bot, and it's absolutely no fun to be on either team. On the opposite team you can't even shoot before you've been headshotted, and on the same team you just feel like a dick. There's no reason to let those guys play the game, and Valve is the only authority to stop them.
No, that's not what I mean.
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=ea+drm&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
What exactly does Steam have to apologize for? Steam is a practical, high-quality, professional distribution service and Valve is a company committed to its customers. What is there to apologize for? When games were requiring the CD to be in the drive did that also just positively infuriate you? What about when you installed Ultima 7 and had to read off map coordinates, were you going around looking for the map coordinate apologists?
Show your support for a model which not only works, but is actually being done correctly. Companies like Ubisoft and EA are great examples for how to completely ruin a distribution platform like this. Valve is, and has been for many years, an excellent example of how to do it right. This type of protection is no more "evil" than requiring the CD to be in the drive (that being said, I still refuse to purchase GTA4 even over Steam because of the additional DRM added by Rockstar). Show companies like Ubisoft and EA that you reject not the concept of online distribution, but their specific implementation of it, by supporting a company like Valve which is committed to a good experience for its customers. Just as companies who make terrible decisions against their customers deserve to be boycotted, companies who prioritize a good customer experience also deserve to be rewarded.
In other words, help Valve prove that Linux is a viable market for games, and that even free software folks are willing to pay for high-quality games. It will give companies like Ubisoft a lot to think about.
I'm not sure which world you live in where $28 billion counts as "a few pennies" of his ~$60 billion fortune (do you give half of your wealth?), but maybe you could enlighten the audience as to exactly what Bill is doing behind the scenes that is so nefarious.
to promote good publicity
I'm sure by "good publicity" you really meant "world healthcare and education", it's really the same thing right?
How exactly is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation connected to Microsoft? The largest transparently-operated private foundation in the world doesn't have a lot in common with Microsoft Corp. In fact, there's only one thing I can think of that they do have in common.
I'm using Firefox for development only and just because of Firebug
Here, here. I give Firefox some grief every now and then, and it's usually relegated to only a few tabs open to whatever I'm working on. But whoever thought up and implemented Firebug... that's a guy I can relate to. The native tools for Chrome, IE8, and Opera are all pretty good, but all of them lack at least one thing I consider a requirement (e.g., in IE8 I can't view the requests).
Hopefully, the 'Droid can come out with a version that beats Apple's 4G series that are approaching the market.
Indeed. It's also a wifi hotspot for 8 devices, and can stream HD video out of an HDMI port on the phone, in case you're one of those people who likes to watch videos on something other than your phone.
So, we had a decent system before government started meddling
Not necessarily. We had a system which fit the state that the country was in decades ago. That's not the same system we should be using now. That's like the RIAA trying to still sell everyone vinyl records. Times have changed, needs have changed.
You don't want economic freedom, you want government control.
I've never stated anything which should cause you to think that I value government control over economic freedom. Economic freedom is the backbone of this country. Economic freedom has nothing to do with the government providing health care to its citizens, and it's disingenuous for you to say that if you are in favor of government health care that you are also opposed to freedom. You still have the freedom to pay for your own health care. This bill does not remove any options you currently have, it simply gives new options to people who don't currently have them.
This bill forces people to buy insurance.
I have not read the hundreds of pages in the bill, so I frankly don't know what it says (and I'm smarter than thinking that the "information" coming from Fox is remotely accurate - you're not going to be jailed, either). I'm not even arguing that the current bill is the solution to all of our problems. I do find it interesting though that the Republicans asked for several changes to the bill, which they were given, and then not a damn one of them voted for it. Why make the changes if it's not going to change any minds? That's where reform needs to start, in Congress. The Democrats and Republicans have had it too good for too long, they're lazy now. We need people in there who want to be there because they want to help. It's the same bullshit going on with our new immigration bill, everyone all of a sudden hates us for daring to make a law, but the only thing anyone else is doing is talking. It doesn't help, you need to make changes, see if they work, if they don't work then figure out why and change it again.
WHy didn't our founders say that government had to provide healtchare?
The constitution also didn't say that people had the right to free speech, nor the right to bear arms, nor the right to vote at 18, nor that people have the right not to be searched without a reason, etc etc etc. Why do you think the constitution has been amended 27 times? Times change, so do the needs of the country. Within 15 years of its creation the constitution had already been amended 10 times. The last time an amendment was proposed was 32 years ago. Maybe it's time for another one.
notice, how this has happened since the US started getting involved?
That's right, if there's one thing we know how to do, it's fuck up a system. That doesn't mean we can't eventually get it right, and it doesn't mean we should stop trying.
Universal health care is policy in all industrialized countries (except the United States which is currently in transition).
Surely you're not going to tell me that every other industrialized nation except the US is in imminent danger of failing.
Germany has the world's oldest universal health care system, with origins dating back to Otto von Bismarck's social legislation, which included the Health Insurance Bill of 1883, Accident Insurance Bill of 1884, and Old Age and Disability Insurance Bill of 1889.
We have almost 130 years of experience to look at. It's no wonder that Germany is the model for the bill which was passed.
Most current universal health care systems were implemented in the period following the Second World War as a process of deliberate health care reform, intended to make health care available to all, in the spirit of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, signed by every country doing so. The US did not ratify the social and economic rights sections, including Article 25's right to health.
Some more interesting reading here:
Are Patients in Universal Healthcare Countries Less Satisfied?
Some interesting data in those tables.
Here's a personal story as well: in 2003 I was finishing up college and living in a house with 4 other roommates, two couples. One of them was a guy who didn't take very good care of himself, without going into too much detail it was pretty clear that his immune system wasn't very strong because of how he treated his body. During February and March of that year he became sick, he just had a flu or cold or something like that. One Sunday I saw him walking from the basement to his room sort of staggering, he seemed pretty tired. Later that evening his girlfriend reported that she wasn't able to wake him. We called the medics, got some firemen there to lift him out of bed (he was crying, not knowing where he was, very out of it). His parents transported him to the hospital, where he became combative with the staff. They sedated him, and it put him in a coma for the next several years. He eventually awoke, but never spoke, did not recognize anyone, couldn't eat, etc. He spent about 5 years in various hospitals and clinics, including the reknowned Barrow Neurological Center here in Phoenix. Each year of his care cost his parents several hundred thousand dollars. Each year. He eventually died in a hospice due to complications that occured there.
The single reason he didn't go to the doctor when he originally got sick, which lasted for over a month, was because he did not have insurance and didn't want to pay so much just to go get an antibacterial. He told me exactly that when I asked him why he wasn't going to the doctor. The infection turned into menengitis, and that was that. He was 22 when he got sick. The end result was death and around a million dollars in health bills for his parents.
The US has the highest GDP in the world, by a lot. We can do better than that.
CIA Factbook: 383 million (2009);
Whoa.. this country has more hosts than people?
The reason it was called SPAM on Usenet in the first place was as an acronym for "Shit Parading As Meat"
But.. it's not really parading as meat, is it?
IOW, he was killed not for arguing against the church but for publicly insulting the man with the power to have him killed, which is generally regarded as a bad idea.
I guess, although one would imagine that the leader of a religion which preaches "love thy brother" may actually follow his own teachings. Of course, history shows that's not always the case.
Like i've said a bazillion times, limited government is important.
I agree with that, but even though it didn't even address my question I'll let it go.
the cases where it looks like socializing medicine has worked, are in small countries such as sweden and holland.
Right, small countries like Germany and France which have the 4th and 5th largest economies in the world ranked by GDP, the largest 2 economies in the EU. Germany spends $3328 per capita on health care, or 10.4% of their GDP. France spends $3554 per capita, or 11.1%. Canada spends $3672 per capita, or 10.0%. The US spends $6714 per capita, or 15.3% of our GDP which is nearly as large as the entire GDP for Europe. Those numbers come from the WHO. We're spending twice as much per capita as many other countries and still can't even manage to help everyone like they do.
Look at canada, look at the UK, look at what socializing industries has done.
Here's something fun to try: find someone from Canada, and ask them whether they would prefer the Canadian health system or the current US health system. See what they say.
and they'll implode within our life times anyways.
Wow, that's a great argument. We shouldn't do something because the countries that are currently succeeding at it are going to fail at some undetermined point in the future. That's some iron-clad reasoning right there.
Another fact, the US started getting involved in medical care not so long ago, and look what's happened? costs have risen, adjusting for inflation.
No shit, that's exactly why it needs to be fixed. Costs have risen, care has declined. That can be fixed.
but look at lasik. not covered by insurance, not really regulated. quality has gone up, price has come down.
That's because the technology has improved, genius, not because it's privatized.
where we let free markets occur, prices go down, quality goes up.
I do not believe that the government has an obligation to provide clothes and technology for its people. I do believe it has an obligation to provide medical care.
Just imagine how silly he's going to feel when he realizes that the church is choosing to use technology which was produced by the same scientific community the church had previously persecuted.
You're not arguing about car accidents and cancer, you're arguing about 2 slightly different forms of cancer, that are formed in basically the same way, and have basically the same effects.
Really? Representative democracy and tyranny are formed the same way, and have the same effects? Pray tell, what exactly distinguishes them?
If you think that we're gonna to have socialized healthcare, and socialized heatlhcare means a drastic reduction in quality.. how is that not a threat?
That's not what I think. If you can prove that socialized health care will result in a "drastic reduction of quality" for all concerned then we'll have a debate. I'm not going to debate a hypothetical situation or unproven assumption. One thing is a fact though: the US spends way more money on health care as a percentage of our GDP than the majority of other countries, yet our standard is lower. We spend more of our GDP than Germany, but Germany is still able to provide superior care to all of their citizens, even though we spend more and don't do that. This means that it's possible to both spend less and provide better care then we currently are. The entire system is a sham when a doctor is able to submit a bill for $150 for a Tylenol and expect it to get paid. I assume that would mean that I could walk in with a bottle of 100 Tylenol as payment for a $15,000 procedure, but for some reason it doesn't work that way.
I never said i wanted to remove this government and install a new one, i said, i want to limit what government can do.
No, you said that representative democracy and tyranny are the same thing, that it doesn't matter what you call them because they produce the same result. I wonder what someone who had to live under Pol Pot or Robert Mugabe would say if you told them that you live in a tyranny because we vote on issues and there's always a side which loses the vote. If you asked them if that was the same thing they faced, I wonder what they would say.
As for calling him a socialist.. so what?
Because he's not even close. Ask an American socialist if Obama is following their ideals. He's no more a socialist than he is a communist, so why all the bullshit rhetoric?
Or maybe I'm stupid, and Microsoft is trying to use the threat of Apple's lawsuit to secure revenue on their own patents.
You know, either way.
This is a weird world we're living in. Microsoft is offering patent protection to an open source product to counter lawsuits by Apple, thereby increasing the viability of the open source platform to spite Apple's own platform, even though Microsoft also has a competing platform.
Well, I guess I still hate Apple, so.. go Microsoft!
Right, so it's fine if we've got hoards of protesters calling the government fascist and tyrannical. It's all the same, right? You know what two of the leading causes of death are? Car accidents, and cancer. Both of those have the same effect, death, so obviously we can conclude that car accidents and cancer are the exact same thing. It doesn't matter if the causes are different, because the result is the same, so we might as well respond to the results instead of looking for the causes.
This level of logic and reasoning should really help to progress the national debate. I especially like the posters which show Obama as Hitler, and call him a socialist. It doesn't matter to those people that Hitler had many of the socialists in Germany, who were his enemies, murdered after he came to power. History and facts are irrelevant when the government dares to do something like pass a law to require health care. Clearly health care is a major threat to this nation and the constitution. That whole warrantless wiretapping thing done by the previous president and continued by the current, that's fine and dandy, there's no way in hell that something as innocent as eavesdropping on citizens without court approval could ever be used to infringe on our rights as Americans. Clearly the real danger is health care.
Thanks for helping to progress the national debate, you're doing some fine work. Clearly the only reasonable goal to strive for is a system of government where not a single citizen ever feels oppressed. Since this government does not meet that criterion, then clearly the correct course of action is to remove the government and install a new one. I'm sure no one will feel oppressed or disenfranchised if that were to happen.
Again, thanks for helping the country.
Technically, any decision that is supported by less than 100% of the population in question is an illegitimate decision that is closer to tyranny than participatory democracy.
It's completely disingenuous to say that. How about this:
Technically, any decision that is supported by more than 50% of the population in question is a decision that is closer to participatory democracy than tyranny.
Would you say, if you had 2 people that were tyrants, that's not tyranny?
Uh, yeah I would, due to the fact that a tyranny is A SINGLE RULER WITH ABSOLUTE POWER. Two people with absolute power is, once again, by definition, not a tyranny. It's something else. Not everything where people get oppressed is a tyranny. There are many, many, many forms of oppression, such as mob rule, that are not tyrannies. The failure to understand that and lump every kind of oppression into the "tyranny" bucket is the issue here. I'm not saying that democratic voting does not result in some sort of oppression, all I'm saying is that it's TOTALLY DIFFERENT than a tyranny. How can you not understand this? Tyranny and oppression are not synonyms. One is a form of government, and one is a social condition.
you could, have 49% of the population exterminated, if 51% voted that way. That's tyranny of the majority.
No it's not. It's oppression, and it's genocide, but it's not tyranny. It is not a single person with absolute power, it's 51% of the people hating the other 49%. That is not a tyranny, it's a civil war.
I do not believe, the government has the obligation to protect people from hurting themselves.
They aren't hurting themselves, they're being hurt by Facebook.
if joe blow says that I can't dance on saturday nights(completely random example), and it so does the majority, bam it's voted, they win, that's tyranny.
Tyranny for whom, for Joe Blow? Does Joe feel like he's living under a tyrant? If they have absolute power by definition, then why do they need to vote? Is it because they don't have absolute power? Is a group of people considered to be a single ruler? You quoted the definition of a tyranny, and then you went and gave an example which bears no relationship to a single ruler with absolute power. Any group of more than one person voting on an issue is by your definition not a tyranny. It doesn't really matter whether some people disagree with the outcome. Democracy doesn't mean that everyone needs to agree on one thing.
Yeah, I know, I smoke. I made some bad decisions younger when I started, and now that I'm in a high-stress job it's very difficult to stop. Anything that raises my stress level is not good at this point. The irony, of course, is that smoking will probably result in more stress than anything else.
It's much easier to drop the IE6 habit than it is to quit smoking.