Government imposed quality regulations only hurt the industry.
Thats not always the case. I don't think you'd find too many people that would bash the FDA and the FCC for making sure that you can buy food thats not poisoned and drive from New York to California without having to change radios because of different broadcast standards.
They make it so companies don't want to improve quality, they make the barrier to entry lower for quality, and they put companies who've built a good names for themselves on the same level as some new startup who just happens to meet the minimums.
How is the enforcement of warranties a disinsentive to improving quality? Haven't you ever seen a car ad that totes its ratings on government saftey tests?
Note to consumers, don't be an idiot, do some research on the product you buy before you buy it.
That assumes that you have plenty of choices to choose from. But what if you don't have a choice? Look at the hard drive manufacuters that want to drop drive warranties to a year. If they all did it, how could you take your money somewhere else?
And having plenty of choices can be a bad thing in the grand scheme of things. Look at HDTV standards: last time I checked there were about 40. Few consumers are willing to purchase such sets because they don't want to spend $2,000 (for a cheap one) only to have it cease working when a different standard becomes available. Constrast that to if they FCC had dictated a standard 10 years ago. Manufacturers could have rolled out HDTV years ago and consumers wouldn't have been afraid to buy them. In cases like that, regulation's better for consumers and industry.
Most importantly, in a free market, price is not tightly related to cost. The question is what the product or service is worth to the buyer, not how much it costs to deliver.
Thats my point, at the current prices it wont be worth it to many buyers. Basically it all comes down to basic economics: pricing your product to sell just the right amount to maximize profits. I think that 99 cents per song is way to high to do that.
Not sure what your point is, since its all paid for. I will repeat with an addition: if Apple's bandwidth costs are 3 cents per song, its 3 cents per song if you're downloading 5 songs or 5,000.
For those who whine about the price: note that if you buy detergent in bulk, the unit cost (dollar per gallon) is usually lower. This is because packaging, transportation, and shelving costs do not work to the same proportions as the actual amount of detergent in the container.
But thats exactly why $.99 per song is too much...there are no physical costs! No manufacturing, no shipping, no storing, no wages for the help at Best Buy. It wont matter to you or Apple if you buy 5 songs through them or 5,000; its just a few more transactions in a database.
For those who compare the service to "free" downloading: grow up.
Get realistic. Apple's main competition here wont be meatspace stores but rather p2p services. To paraphrase, "its the economics, stupid". You only download stuff from kazaa for free if your time (and bandwidth) are worthless; Apple will have speed, quality and reliability, but they still need to price it so its not worth people's time to download it off the net w/o paying for it.
Way late in the game, but maybe someone will read this.
I did.:)
Really, we're not arguing the State's right to tell a women what she can do with her body now are we? You just choose a different point in time.
I've just chosen an earlier point. Conception.
Thats where we differ. Banning abortion just after conception is ludicrous. It is not remotely reasonable to dictate to a man and a woman what to do with the next 19 years of their lives over a single cell oranism. Even past that point, it is still just as rediculous when cell division hits 32, 512 or 3,000. Its easy for you to sit back and be an armchair dictator on biology, but how about if this affected you personally?
Say you're a young guy in college, and your condom rips while having sex with your girlfriend. Now your girlfriend could run out and get an abortion pill the next day to make sure the zygote doesn't plant itself on the uterine wall, except some know-it-all you've never met has decided you can't do that. Unless you and the mother are willing to give the kid up for adoption, get ready, because somebody has decided that that small group of cells is more important than the next ninteen years of your life. Be prepared to give up your college education and a decent carrer, because you're going to have drop out of school and get a job to support this kid. If you and the mom don't get married, get ready to explain to all your potential dates that you have a child. Better yet, if you and the mom have a falling out, you might end up not even having visitation rights but still have to pay child support for a kid you never get to see.
So tell me, do you still feel comfortable telling other people what to do with their lives?
Obviously you're comfortable with telling a women she has to carry a baby to term at least the last 3 months of her pregnancy..and for the next 18 years.
Because she should have made up her mind by that point. When the fetus is capable of surviving on its own outside the womb its a little to late to say "hey, maybe I don't want this baby after all...."
Okay, I'll bite: Where exactly can I buy any single song that I want on CD for $.99? Until you show me that I can do this, don't complain that they "want us to pay the same price." Apple is filling a void in the market that is not currently being satisfied, precisely because of all of the physical costs.
But if I have to pay the same for an album though their service as through Best Buy, then whats the point of getting it online, when I get so much less for my money? In addition to the physical media, I can rip the music in a compression format of my choice, and listen to it without any of their (admittedly well done) DRM restrictions?
And as I've said elsewhere, Apple's main compeditors here wont be Best Buy or Wal-Mart, but rather Kazaa and WinMX. If Apple's service was convienent enough and priced well enough, they'd never have to worry about losing much to p2p, as people would rather pay for quality, reliability and speed. Sure, there are some people who will download stuff from kazaa rather than pay anything, but you'd never see any money from those people anyway.
I agree with what most other people have posted: $0.99 per 128kb/sec song is overcharging.
It is massively overcharging, because all the physical costs are gone. Manufacturing, storing, shipping, paying for all the part time help at Best Buy....all those costs are eliminated. And yet they still want us to pay about the same price when we aren't getting the physical media...
Now, not to troll or anything, but who is going to actually buy into this service? Even if Apple dropped the price to say,.25 a song for a higher quality format, would anyone still buy it? It's unfortunate... but I don't think it would do well either. Why buy when you can get it free?
Its only free if your time is worthless. Sure, if I'm patient enough, I can find just about any popular album through a p2p service or a newsgroup. But is it worth my time to wait a week to get the latest Manson album when I could spend another hour at work and buy it in a store?
Why not? We already have decided as a society that you cannot use certain drugs or other thing with "your body."
More laws passed on us by luddites. There are many drugs out there that are much better for you than alcohol or tabacco (chiefly marajuana) but are illegal. Mostly because there wasn't a large domestic industry to lobby against those laws when they were being passed. The Drug War is essentially Prohibition II, and is working about as well.
Further, by having consentual sex, she has to accept the consequences of that behavior.
As far as carring a pregnancy to term goes, thats a consequence thats forced upon her.
Once again, the situation matters, as there is no perfect solution when you have a case were two fundamental right are in conflict.
Which is why I think people need to shake hands and come up with a compromise. Either that or shake hands and agree to disagree, and to vote our seperate ways.:)
Again, the crux of the matter is when do we decide a blob becomes a human? I put forth that we cannot know for sure, so the only sane course of action in my mind is to err on the side of caution and not allow abortions except for maybe the extreme circumstances that you have already put forth.
Alright, let me turn this on you: at what point does your caution become necessary? At the moment of fertilization? When cell devision hits 32? 128? When its heart starts beating? At what point, exactly, do you feel comfortable with making what a woman does with her body your business? At what point do you dictate to her what she's going to do with her life for the next 8+ months, and maybe the next 18 years after that? I don't think I'd be too comfortable looking a woman in the eye and telling her that she has to carry a baby she doens't want.
This is why I propose that the first trimester-last trimester is the only feasable compromise until we have those artificial wombs. Unfortunatly its not too likely to happen.
Your last paragraph, while I agree with it totally, is offtopic.
I don't see it that way. Any discussion of abortion inevitably will involve "a womans right to choose", and I think its only fair to point out that the only "choice" many men have is to support whatever the mother wants to do.
If I want anything that will run OSX, it's going to cost me at least $1000.
If I just want an x86, to run linux, I have to spend about $300.
Not from Dell, Gateway or HP you aren't. Origional poster was comparing OEM machines to OEM machines, not OEM's to something cobbled together from cheap parts with a power supply borrowed from a toaster.
Its not technical issues that are keeping Apple from releasing a port for x86. If they did that, two issues would bring them down: supporting the wide array of hardware on x86 and piracy of the operating system. Right now I might be pirating a copy of Jaguar to run on my Mac, but I have to have bought a Mac in the first place, so Apple has at least gotten some money out of me. If I take a copy of OS X for x86 and install it on a Dell, Apple sees nothing.
Can you say for sure? Do you know of any doctor that can say for sure? No? Then it seems to me that your arbitrary first trimester, second trimester lines could, in fact, be wrong.
No memory, no thoughts, no desires...pretty safe to say its not a human being. You can say its "alive" because it has a heartbeat, but then so does a mouse.
Every year it seems that some new miracle baby survives premature birth at an earlier and earlier point in the pregnancy.
With massive amounts of life support, yes. Left on its own, no. What I see happening eventually is somebody will build an artificial uterus and then maybe people can quit bickering over abortion.
Reminds of the argument against the 21 year old drinking age...what's the difference between a 21 year old and a 20 year old 1 month before his 21st b-day?
But to stick with your analogy, we aren't talking about a 20 year old vs a 21 year old, but rather a 21 year old vs a 7 year old. Just a biiit more of a difference then.
My position is basically this. First trimester, anybody can have an abortion for any reason. Third trimester, no way no how unless the mothers health is going to be adversely affected, or severe deformities are discovered in the fetus. The second trimester is a big grey area.
But thats not all. Currently when it comes to children, women have all the rights while men only have responsibilities. If the woman wants to have an abortion she is free to do so. If she wants to give the child up for adoption, she's under no obligation to check with the father first. But the real kicker is that if she wants, she will most likely be awarded sole custody of the child and get 18 years of child support out of the father. Hell, in some states she can name some random shmoe the father, and if he isn't notified within 6 months he can no longer challenge the defaut judgement, and the federal Bradley amendment prohibits retroactive modifications of child support awards. The law needs to be changed so that men have rights and choices equal to the responsibilities they face when it comes to kids.
If my local grocery store can rent DVD's for 87 cents and make a profit I think a huge company like Blockbuster can charge a little less than four dollars.
Um...sure...which way would positivley get my senators attention: "hey, I voted for you, campaigned for you, but I'm very concerned by your position on issue x" or "hey I didn't vote for you and I think you're a back stabber".
I'm not wording this well, but the main parties do look at how much the 3rd parties get. If the 3rd parties get enough votes, the main parties will "steal" the issues and do what we want them to do. I call that a win.
You'd think that would be the case, but it doesn't seem to be happening with the Dems. After 2000, you'd think they'd come up with a core platform, find new issues that connect with voters and stop acting like 11 year old kids waiting for the balls to drop. But look where they are today. Estrada is about the only thing they've put up a real fight over; usually they just roll over and play dead, letting Bush and Delay roll over them. Hell, one of a southern democrats main campain points was that she voted "with Bush more often then against him", like it was admirable. The GOP isn't taking it easy; they control all 3 branches of government and they still fight like they're behind.
And I don't think democrats are falling over themsevles to reach out to Greens. Thanks to 90,000 of em we'll have at least 4 years of an extremely conservative, unaccountable administration. Similarily, I don't think rebublicans will reach out to libertarians because they've pulled enough votes away from their canidates to let democrates win a few senate races.
Say 5% of a states citizens vote for third party candidates. I think they'd have much more of an affect if even 1% got out and fought so GOP and Dem candidates would pick up their issues.
Not to flame, but I think that voting for 3d parties on a national level (senators, represenatives, president) is a great way to consign yourself to irrelvancy. Look at all the Green Party voters in Florida who went and principled George Bush right into office. Now I'm sure they could have had legit gripes with Gore, but Greens in general wanted better treatment of the environment, workers and a more accountable government. If thats what you want, why risk letting a guy into office who's going to trash workers rights, the environment and have an unaccountable government that would put Nixon to shame?
If you truly want to make a difference, forget 3d parties. Pick whichever party most fits your views and then fight to push the party in that direction. Like low taxes but hate having religion shoved in your face? Vote republican but yell loud and hard so your represenative isn't so ready to prostitute himself to the sourthern babtists. Similarily, if you like the environment but hate gun control, pressure your congressman to support your right to own firearms.
...guys like this AC who keep insisting that the world is flat despite all reason and evidence to the contratry.
Copyright infringement reduces demand and thereby lowers the value of the copyright holder's inventory. Smells a lot like theft to me.
If I burn down his warehouse, thats depleted the value of his inventory as well. Is that theft? No, its arson. Like I said: "You can argue that its morally and legally wrong, but that doesn't make it theft, anymore than arson is theft because it is morally and legally wrong."
If you want to split hairs, fine, but what's the point?
How is calling something exactly what it is, as opposed to something its not splitting hairs? I would call the inability to differentiate between two completely different actions monumental stupidity, but maybe thats just me.
Oh wait, I guess steal is a proper term, even if theft isn't:
to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
If you're copying, you aren't taking, ie removing something. Here, I'll spell it out in nice big letters so maybe you'll get it the second time: copyright infringment is COPYING something of yours (you still have it) and theft is REMOVING it from your possession (you don't have it, I do).
Thats why we have copyrights, patents and trademarks, and the terms copyright infringment, patent infringment and trademark infringment for things that are copied, not stolen.
But I'll be HAPPY to pat on the back any Democrat who proposes, or votes for, a legalization bill. Can you name one?
No, and thats one of the things I currently dislike about the democratic party: their general spinlessness and inability to fight on serious issues. But can you imagine what would have happened if say, President Clinton had advocated decriminalizing marajuana? The GOP has wanted to lynch him for a lot less than that.
The only politicians that I know of who are pushing such change are, in fact, Republicans. But I AFAIK thats only at the state level, unfortunatly.
I couldn't possibly engage in identity theft, could I?
Identity theft is a misnomer. The key part about theft is that you are removing something I have from my possession. You can take my credit card number and my mothers maiden name to get credit cards and loans in my name, but I still have my identity. I suppose if you had a Men In Black type device for erasing memory, I suppose then you could call it theft, because then I really would lose my name, memories etc.
There are much better, pre-existing words to describe such crimes: forgery and fraud. But "identity theft" sounds so much cooler than "identity fraud", so thats what the press uses. Kind of like how the music and film industries call copyright infringment stealing, eh?
"RCW 9A.56.020 Theft means: (1)(a)To wrongfully obtain or exert unauthorized control over the property or services of another or the value thereof, with intent to deprive him of such property or services."
If I tap into the cable companies lines, do they loose anything? No. I have illegally optained access to a service I haven't paid for, and can be taken to court for it, but its not theft because I haven't deprived the company of anything. And as I said in the origional post:
"You can argue that its morally and legally wrong, but that doesn't make it theft, anymore than arson is theft because it is morally and legally wrong."
They want to be able to get the songs for free instead of having to pay for them
Its only free if your time is worthless. If you really want to download Spider-Man off the net rather than buying it, you can certainaly do so. But it might take you the better part of the week just to get a copy downloaded (from people disconnecting), only to find out that the encoder was a noob and your movie has the wrong aspect ratio, that he didn't crop the video and its macroblocked to hell.
Comepare that to say being able to download the movie from Sony for $5. Less waiting, less frustration, and you can be sure of the quality.
Most people would still use Kazaa, since you now have high quality MP3s from the "official" service on Kazaa for free.
The content industry could take care of that easily by sharing dummy files with the names of movies or songs.
that doesn't take into account that movies also cost a lot more to make in the first place, and that most studios figure on making almost half their money from video sales and rentals. A movie that "only" costs 30 million to make is on the cheap side these days. I'm sure record lables spend similar amounts on "promotion", but only for a few bands.
Its copyright infringment. Theft is when I remove something from your possession and you don't have it anymore. If I copy something from you without your permission, you still have the origional item. Its that simple. But for some reason people who can tell the difference between apples and oranges, murder and arson, tax evasion and cannibalism can't tell the difference between infringment and stealing.
You can argue that its morally and legally wrong, but that doesn't make it theft, anymore than arson is theft because it is morally and legally wrong. The quote about Bagdad looters is rich, and incredibly stupid as it makes my point perfectly. These people are theives; all these thousands of year old artifacts might be gone forever. But if the looters were copying all the anchient scrolls as opposed to running off with them, they'd still be in the museum.
Any reasonably intelligent person should be able differentiate between infringment and theft, but even here on Slashdot there are numerous people who just can't seem to wrap their minds around it. Try imagining someone who insists that apples are oranges because they both come from trees and start out as flowers, thats what these guys are like.
To those people, before you respond, read these two things over and over until they sink in, and try not to let your minds be thrown into an infinite loop:
If I steal something from you, I have it and you don't.
If I illegally copy something from you, you still have the origional item.
Slashdot Mirror
..wasn't sure...
Government imposed quality regulations only hurt the industry.
Thats not always the case. I don't think you'd find too many people that would bash the FDA and the FCC for making sure that you can buy food thats not poisoned and drive from New York to California without having to change radios because of different broadcast standards.
They make it so companies don't want to improve quality, they make the barrier to entry lower for quality, and they put companies who've built a good names for themselves on the same level as some new startup who just happens to meet the minimums.
How is the enforcement of warranties a disinsentive to improving quality? Haven't you ever seen a car ad that totes its ratings on government saftey tests?
Note to consumers, don't be an idiot, do some research on the product you buy before you buy it.
That assumes that you have plenty of choices to choose from. But what if you don't have a choice? Look at the hard drive manufacuters that want to drop drive warranties to a year. If they all did it, how could you take your money somewhere else?
And having plenty of choices can be a bad thing in the grand scheme of things. Look at HDTV standards: last time I checked there were about 40. Few consumers are willing to purchase such sets because they don't want to spend $2,000 (for a cheap one) only to have it cease working when a different standard becomes available. Constrast that to if they FCC had dictated a standard 10 years ago. Manufacturers could have rolled out HDTV years ago and consumers wouldn't have been afraid to buy them. In cases like that, regulation's better for consumers and industry.
Most importantly, in a free market, price is not tightly related to cost. The question is what the product or service is worth to the buyer, not how much it costs to deliver.
Thats my point, at the current prices it wont be worth it to many buyers. Basically it all comes down to basic economics: pricing your product to sell just the right amount to maximize profits. I think that 99 cents per song is way to high to do that.
Not sure what your point is, since its all paid for. I will repeat with an addition: if Apple's bandwidth costs are 3 cents per song, its 3 cents per song if you're downloading 5 songs or 5,000.
Refer to any introductory biology text and you will see that there is a consensus that living organisms are characterized by the following:
1. metabolism
2. growth
3. reaction to stimuli
4. reproduction
These are all qualities that all living human beings have--even those in the first trimester.
So does an amoeba.
For those who whine about the price: note that if you buy detergent in bulk, the unit cost (dollar per gallon) is usually lower. This is because packaging, transportation, and shelving costs do not work to the same proportions as the actual amount of detergent in the container.
But thats exactly why $.99 per song is too much...there are no physical costs! No manufacturing, no shipping, no storing, no wages for the help at Best Buy. It wont matter to you or Apple if you buy 5 songs through them or 5,000; its just a few more transactions in a database.
For those who compare the service to "free" downloading: grow up.
Get realistic. Apple's main competition here wont be meatspace stores but rather p2p services. To paraphrase, "its the economics, stupid". You only download stuff from kazaa for free if your time (and bandwidth) are worthless; Apple will have speed, quality and reliability, but they still need to price it so its not worth people's time to download it off the net w/o paying for it.
Way late in the game, but maybe someone will read this.
:)
I did.
Really, we're not arguing the State's right to tell a women what she can do with her body now are we? You just choose a different point in time.
I've just chosen an earlier point. Conception.
Thats where we differ. Banning abortion just after conception is ludicrous. It is not remotely reasonable to dictate to a man and a woman what to do with the next 19 years of their lives over a single cell oranism. Even past that point, it is still just as rediculous when cell division hits 32, 512 or 3,000. Its easy for you to sit back and be an armchair dictator on biology, but how about if this affected you personally?
Say you're a young guy in college, and your condom rips while having sex with your girlfriend. Now your girlfriend could run out and get an abortion pill the next day to make sure the zygote doesn't plant itself on the uterine wall, except some know-it-all you've never met has decided you can't do that. Unless you and the mother are willing to give the kid up for adoption, get ready, because somebody has decided that that small group of cells is more important than the next ninteen years of your life. Be prepared to give up your college education and a decent carrer, because you're going to have drop out of school and get a job to support this kid. If you and the mom don't get married, get ready to explain to all your potential dates that you have a child. Better yet, if you and the mom have a falling out, you might end up not even having visitation rights but still have to pay child support for a kid you never get to see.
So tell me, do you still feel comfortable telling other people what to do with their lives?
Obviously you're comfortable with telling a women she has to carry a baby to term at least the last 3 months of her pregnancy..and for the next 18 years.
Because she should have made up her mind by that point. When the fetus is capable of surviving on its own outside the womb its a little to late to say "hey, maybe I don't want this baby after all...."
Okay, I'll bite: Where exactly can I buy any single song that I want on CD for $.99? Until you show me that I can do this, don't complain that they "want us to pay the same price." Apple is filling a void in the market that is not currently being satisfied, precisely because of all of the physical costs.
But if I have to pay the same for an album though their service as through Best Buy, then whats the point of getting it online, when I get so much less for my money? In addition to the physical media, I can rip the music in a compression format of my choice, and listen to it without any of their (admittedly well done) DRM restrictions?
And as I've said elsewhere, Apple's main compeditors here wont be Best Buy or Wal-Mart, but rather Kazaa and WinMX. If Apple's service was convienent enough and priced well enough, they'd never have to worry about losing much to p2p, as people would rather pay for quality, reliability and speed. Sure, there are some people who will download stuff from kazaa rather than pay anything, but you'd never see any money from those people anyway.
I agree with what most other people have posted: $0.99 per 128kb/sec song is overcharging.
.25 a song for a higher quality format, would anyone still buy it? It's unfortunate... but I don't think it would do well either. Why buy when you can get it free?
It is massively overcharging, because all the physical costs are gone. Manufacturing, storing, shipping, paying for all the part time help at Best Buy....all those costs are eliminated. And yet they still want us to pay about the same price when we aren't getting the physical media...
Now, not to troll or anything, but who is going to actually buy into this service? Even if Apple dropped the price to say,
Its only free if your time is worthless. Sure, if I'm patient enough, I can find just about any popular album through a p2p service or a newsgroup. But is it worth my time to wait a week to get the latest Manson album when I could spend another hour at work and buy it in a store?
Why not? We already have decided as a society that you cannot use certain drugs or other thing with "your body."
:)
More laws passed on us by luddites. There are many drugs out there that are much better for you than alcohol or tabacco (chiefly marajuana) but are illegal. Mostly because there wasn't a large domestic industry to lobby against those laws when they were being passed. The Drug War is essentially Prohibition II, and is working about as well.
Further, by having consentual sex, she has to accept the consequences of that behavior.
As far as carring a pregnancy to term goes, thats a consequence thats forced upon her.
Once again, the situation matters, as there is no perfect solution when you have a case were two fundamental right are in conflict.
Which is why I think people need to shake hands and come up with a compromise. Either that or shake hands and agree to disagree, and to vote our seperate ways.
Again, the crux of the matter is when do we decide a blob becomes a human? I put forth that we cannot know for sure, so the only sane course of action in my mind is to err on the side of caution and not allow abortions except for maybe the extreme circumstances that you have already put forth.
Alright, let me turn this on you: at what point does your caution become necessary? At the moment of fertilization? When cell devision hits 32? 128? When its heart starts beating? At what point, exactly, do you feel comfortable with making what a woman does with her body your business? At what point do you dictate to her what she's going to do with her life for the next 8+ months, and maybe the next 18 years after that? I don't think I'd be too comfortable looking a woman in the eye and telling her that she has to carry a baby she doens't want.
This is why I propose that the first trimester-last trimester is the only feasable compromise until we have those artificial wombs. Unfortunatly its not too likely to happen.
Your last paragraph, while I agree with it totally, is offtopic.
I don't see it that way. Any discussion of abortion inevitably will involve "a womans right to choose", and I think its only fair to point out that the only "choice" many men have is to support whatever the mother wants to do.
You're perpetuating the falacy by comparing OEM prices to build-it-yourself prices, so of course your box is going to be cheaper.
If I want anything that will run OSX, it's going to cost me at least $1000.
If I just want an x86, to run linux, I have to spend about $300.
Not from Dell, Gateway or HP you aren't. Origional poster was comparing OEM machines to OEM machines, not OEM's to something cobbled together from cheap parts with a power supply borrowed from a toaster.
Its not technical issues that are keeping Apple from releasing a port for x86. If they did that, two issues would bring them down: supporting the wide array of hardware on x86 and piracy of the operating system. Right now I might be pirating a copy of Jaguar to run on my Mac, but I have to have bought a Mac in the first place, so Apple has at least gotten some money out of me. If I take a copy of OS X for x86 and install it on a Dell, Apple sees nothing.
Can you say for sure? Do you know of any doctor that can say for sure? No? Then it seems to me that your arbitrary first trimester, second trimester lines could, in fact, be wrong.
No memory, no thoughts, no desires...pretty safe to say its not a human being. You can say its "alive" because it has a heartbeat, but then so does a mouse.
Every year it seems that some new miracle baby survives premature birth at an earlier and earlier point in the pregnancy.
With massive amounts of life support, yes. Left on its own, no. What I see happening eventually is somebody will build an artificial uterus and then maybe people can quit bickering over abortion.
Reminds of the argument against the 21 year old drinking age...what's the difference between a 21 year old and a 20 year old 1 month before his 21st b-day?
But to stick with your analogy, we aren't talking about a 20 year old vs a 21 year old, but rather a 21 year old vs a 7 year old. Just a biiit more of a difference then.
My position is basically this. First trimester, anybody can have an abortion for any reason. Third trimester, no way no how unless the mothers health is going to be adversely affected, or severe deformities are discovered in the fetus. The second trimester is a big grey area.
But thats not all. Currently when it comes to children, women have all the rights while men only have responsibilities. If the woman wants to have an abortion she is free to do so. If she wants to give the child up for adoption, she's under no obligation to check with the father first. But the real kicker is that if she wants, she will most likely be awarded sole custody of the child and get 18 years of child support out of the father. Hell, in some states she can name some random shmoe the father, and if he isn't notified within 6 months he can no longer challenge the defaut judgement, and the federal Bradley amendment prohibits retroactive modifications of child support awards. The law needs to be changed so that men have rights and choices equal to the responsibilities they face when it comes to kids.
If my local grocery store can rent DVD's for 87 cents and make a profit I think a huge company like Blockbuster can charge a little less than four dollars.
Um...sure...which way would positivley get my senators attention: "hey, I voted for you, campaigned for you, but I'm very concerned by your position on issue x" or "hey I didn't vote for you and I think you're a back stabber".
I'm not wording this well, but the main parties do look at how much the 3rd parties get. If the 3rd parties get enough votes, the main parties will "steal" the issues and do what we want them to do. I call that a win.
You'd think that would be the case, but it doesn't seem to be happening with the Dems. After 2000, you'd think they'd come up with a core platform, find new issues that connect with voters and stop acting like 11 year old kids waiting for the balls to drop. But look where they are today. Estrada is about the only thing they've put up a real fight over; usually they just roll over and play dead, letting Bush and Delay roll over them. Hell, one of a southern democrats main campain points was that she voted "with Bush more often then against him", like it was admirable. The GOP isn't taking it easy; they control all 3 branches of government and they still fight like they're behind.
And I don't think democrats are falling over themsevles to reach out to Greens. Thanks to 90,000 of em we'll have at least 4 years of an extremely conservative, unaccountable administration. Similarily, I don't think rebublicans will reach out to libertarians because they've pulled enough votes away from their canidates to let democrates win a few senate races.
Say 5% of a states citizens vote for third party candidates. I think they'd have much more of an affect if even 1% got out and fought so GOP and Dem candidates would pick up their issues.
Not to flame, but I think that voting for 3d parties on a national level (senators, represenatives, president) is a great way to consign yourself to irrelvancy. Look at all the Green Party voters in Florida who went and principled George Bush right into office. Now I'm sure they could have had legit gripes with Gore, but Greens in general wanted better treatment of the environment, workers and a more accountable government. If thats what you want, why risk letting a guy into office who's going to trash workers rights, the environment and have an unaccountable government that would put Nixon to shame?
If you truly want to make a difference, forget 3d parties. Pick whichever party most fits your views and then fight to push the party in that direction. Like low taxes but hate having religion shoved in your face? Vote republican but yell loud and hard so your represenative isn't so ready to prostitute himself to the sourthern babtists. Similarily, if you like the environment but hate gun control, pressure your congressman to support your right to own firearms.
...guys like this AC who keep insisting that the world is flat despite all reason and evidence to the contratry.
Copyright infringement reduces demand and thereby lowers the value of the copyright holder's inventory. Smells a lot like theft to me.
If I burn down his warehouse, thats depleted the value of his inventory as well. Is that theft? No, its arson. Like I said: "You can argue that its morally and legally wrong, but that doesn't make it theft, anymore than arson is theft because it is morally and legally wrong."
If you want to split hairs, fine, but what's the point?
How is calling something exactly what it is, as opposed to something its not splitting hairs? I would call the inability to differentiate between two completely different actions monumental stupidity, but maybe thats just me.
Oh wait, I guess steal is a proper term, even if theft isn't:
to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully
If you're copying, you aren't taking, ie removing something. Here, I'll spell it out in nice big letters so maybe you'll get it the second time: copyright infringment is COPYING something of yours (you still have it) and theft is REMOVING it from your possession (you don't have it, I do).
Thats why we have copyrights, patents and trademarks, and the terms copyright infringment, patent infringment and trademark infringment for things that are copied, not stolen.
But I'll be HAPPY to pat on the back any Democrat who proposes, or votes for, a legalization bill. Can you name one?
No, and thats one of the things I currently dislike about the democratic party: their general spinlessness and inability to fight on serious issues. But can you imagine what would have happened if say, President Clinton had advocated decriminalizing marajuana? The GOP has wanted to lynch him for a lot less than that.
The only politicians that I know of who are pushing such change are, in fact, Republicans. But I AFAIK thats only at the state level, unfortunatly.
I couldn't possibly engage in identity theft, could I?
Identity theft is a misnomer. The key part about theft is that you are removing something I have from my possession. You can take my credit card number and my mothers maiden name to get credit cards and loans in my name, but I still have my identity. I suppose if you had a Men In Black type device for erasing memory, I suppose then you could call it theft, because then I really would lose my name, memories etc.
There are much better, pre-existing words to describe such crimes: forgery and fraud. But "identity theft" sounds so much cooler than "identity fraud", so thats what the press uses. Kind of like how the music and film industries call copyright infringment stealing, eh?
"RCW 9A.56.020 Theft means: (1)(a)To wrongfully obtain or exert unauthorized control over the property or services of another or the value thereof, with intent to deprive him of such property or services."
If I tap into the cable companies lines, do they loose anything? No. I have illegally optained access to a service I haven't paid for, and can be taken to court for it, but its not theft because I haven't deprived the company of anything. And as I said in the origional post:
"You can argue that its morally and legally wrong, but that doesn't make it theft, anymore than arson is theft because it is morally and legally wrong."
They want to be able to get the songs for free instead of having to pay for them
Its only free if your time is worthless. If you really want to download Spider-Man off the net rather than buying it, you can certainaly do so. But it might take you the better part of the week just to get a copy downloaded (from people disconnecting), only to find out that the encoder was a noob and your movie has the wrong aspect ratio, that he didn't crop the video and its macroblocked to hell.
Comepare that to say being able to download the movie from Sony for $5. Less waiting, less frustration, and you can be sure of the quality.
Most people would still use Kazaa, since you now have high quality MP3s from the "official" service on Kazaa for free.
The content industry could take care of that easily by sharing dummy files with the names of movies or songs.
that doesn't take into account that movies also cost a lot more to make in the first place, and that most studios figure on making almost half their money from video sales and rentals. A movie that "only" costs 30 million to make is on the cheap side these days. I'm sure record lables spend similar amounts on "promotion", but only for a few bands.
You can argue that its morally and legally wrong, but that doesn't make it theft, anymore than arson is theft because it is morally and legally wrong. The quote about Bagdad looters is rich, and incredibly stupid as it makes my point perfectly. These people are theives; all these thousands of year old artifacts might be gone forever. But if the looters were copying all the anchient scrolls as opposed to running off with them, they'd still be in the museum.
Any reasonably intelligent person should be able differentiate between infringment and theft, but even here on Slashdot there are numerous people who just can't seem to wrap their minds around it. Try imagining someone who insists that apples are oranges because they both come from trees and start out as flowers, thats what these guys are like.
To those people, before you respond, read these two things over and over until they sink in, and try not to let your minds be thrown into an infinite loop: