I have a lot of opinions on welfare and politics but they are not relevant to the question of what is and isn't human life. I will sum it up with charity is good, forced charity is bad. Adoption is great.
Because there isn't a libertarian definition for "life". That's been my whole point since the beginning.
To continue your discussion though, the definition you want them to adopt isn't even a good one. By that definition if you had a couple conjoined twins that wouldn't survive if they were seperated then it would be rational to carve one out at the request of the other, because he's not "self sustaining". Now you'll add "unless x y z" to your test, but it just isn't a logical base for determining if someone is human / alive / sapient and whether they deserve to have legal rights. Really, the fact that one person's body is dependant on another person is immaterial for determining if it is an entity. Abortion is barbaric if you decide there are two entities involved, so the only rational and moral way to support it is to decide that the child at different stages isn't "alive", and then you're just talking about opinions and arbitrary distinctions about when it actually is alive (in vietnam it's not alive until it's been born, so there is no limit to how late you can abort). So join in and make up arbitrary distinctions with everyone else, but don't pretend that they are supported by rational scientific rigor.
I don't agree with that definition. What does sustaining itself have to do with being alive? Lots of people can't sustain themselves for a lot of different reasons, that doesn't mean they are not alive or shouldn't have rights / be protected. Brain activity is a much better measurement if you want to use pure science.
Except I didn't make an claim about the libertarian stance on abortion. I'm not attacking your opinion, I'm attacking your incorrect statement. There is nothing inherently libertarian about being prochoice. Read my comments on the sister thread if you need more detail.
I get what you're saying, and I happen to agree with you to some extent, but it's still an arbitrary distinction. In any case, many legal abortions are done well after the third trimester which I believe IS murder; and I am libertarian. Abortion is not an issue that can be easily classified against the general libertarian philosophy because it depends on when you arbitrarily declare the beginning of life is.
Blastula is only one stage of pregnancy. It's not religious to maintain that some stage prior to birth the baby it's more than indistinguishable cell. After that any line you draw is arbitrary.
You consider abortion private, because you don't consider it murder. Once you make that logical leap, it clearly ceases to be a private matter. Unfortunately for you, the personhood of different stages of fetus is still wildly open to interpretation, and therefore you can not be "correct", only opinionated.
The non coercian principle is the best libertarian test. Abortion is still ambigious because either way one party is forced (the mother or the child).
Your post isn't very accurate since you have ignored the progress of the open source gallium drivers. It's not very relevent either since we're talkign about a 2D turned based RPG. Futher, it seems to be written using Moai, which already lists supports for the linux platform.
We don't know the reason why there won't be a linux port because they never said why, so stop making crap up. Frankly, I wouldn't even care to hear an excuse, since it would just be bull anyway. Humble Indie Bundle has already proven that Linux users will pay 20% of total donations for even crappy games, and since there's already Android and Mac versions slated it would be simple to hire Ryan Gordon (or anyone else) to do the port.
I don't want to get anyone's hopes up because a Linux port is probably still completely off the table, but in response to the large number of comments on the Shadowrun Returns kickstarter page they replied:
"... Anyway, we want to let you know that we're definitely listening to your feedback and you can expect a full, considered response about Linux early this week. As a company, we are being very careful not to over-commit to ideas and features just to get more funding - everything we decide to include in Shadowurn Returns needs to be within our ability to deliver as part of a great product."
And there are third party packages for Fedora and Ubuntu!
I don't want to get into the debate of whether or not gnome-shell is an improvement over the traditional desktop. Either way, it was wrong for them to push it unfinished on unsuspecting users. Now I can start promoting linux again, something I've had to stop doing because of all the coolaid drinking that has been going on in the UI space. My wife has been on Fedora 14 and now I can upgrade her without her killing me.
I hate to say it because I'm a big fan of gnome and fedora, but from a technical standpoint this release is really sub par. I've had more problems with installation with 15 than any I can remember in recent history.
- For the first time the installer requires more than the 512gigs of ram on my laptop, had to do a network update - new kernel won't detect network card on PC, had to force latest fedora 14 kernel to get online - Oh look, evolution changed it's mail folder structure and decided to delete all my existing email - Random freezes when doing large file transfers?? - Now my PC hangs indefinitely on reboot unless I hit the power switch - Gnome shell is a little clunky but its growing on me. To bad they removed every menu option to turn off the computer except the oh-so-useful Suspend... the option every computer needs except the vast majority that aren't laptops
I've been using FreeNX since Fedora 8 or so and it's superior in just about every way to VNC. Yeah, it's annoying brittle when the distro's packages are broken or not configured correctly, but that's just an implementation issue. The way it caches X calls makes a remote desktop run at local speeds over most broadband. This is a technology that needs to be brought mainstream.
That said, this is probably not the end of the world. They weren't bragging about any protocol level enhancements, more user level enhancements like a "revamped client GUI" which were never available under an open source license anyway. The core NX library is probably pretty mature by now. Since all future development on their side will be closed, it presents the opportunity for a real project to grow up around a fork. No more being held back by lockstep to a company that never wanted a successful open solution to begin with.
I think he meant one can legally racially discriminate in America. That is true. Governments can't because of equal protection. Businesses can't because of anti-discrimination laws. But you can.
Unlike discrimination, which is a choice of the person doing the discriminating (see my other post for an explanation of this), slavery directly infringes a person's ability to make a choice. It is direct coercion, not comparable to a "negative right", but is just one aspect of a person's right to liberty.
You're right, certain protections take the form of a negative right. Anti-discrimination laws do not fall under equal protection because that is a requirement of governments, not individuals, except as a forced restricting of, e.g. a business's right to discriminate. The reason is as follows.
There is no Freedom from Oprah Winfrey, but you have a right to choose what you watch. They are different, because one puts the onus on society to "protect" you from what you don't like (take off the air and block it from transmission) while the other forces you to take responsibility and pro-actively choose not to engage with it.
Sometimes a thing becomes so entrenched and damaging to society that it effectively removes your right to make any choice, which is when a negative right might be required (but hopefully this is rare). Personally I think "freedom from discrimination" has outgrown its purpose. Racial discrimination as it was in the 50s required it, but today its just fodder for the lawyers.
Very few people are held in a position where they HAVE to smoke, drink, do drugs, steal - maybe peer pressure pushes them to doing things once, but it's up to them to either stop or continue doing so.
I actually see it as the reverse. The opportunity to choose comes prior to giving in to peer pressure. After that, choices are often impaired by the habit. Once one is physically addicted or has already made the wrong associations, they may not have a reasonable choice anymore.
If the open source community always gave in to FUD and declined to implement anything that *might* have a patent covering it, nothing would ever be accomplished.
Mono is great for the same reason Samba, Wine, and Evolution's exchange connector are. They assist in taking things cross platform (yes, even if you still have to port and avoid certain libraries). The fact that some people find it to be an efficient platform for development is just the icing on the cake. You never have to worry about code written for Mono... being compatible with Mono.
In my experience lots of people, at least around Los Angeles, have stopped talking on the phone because they are scared of the $200 ticket.
To clarify, the law in question is stupid anyway. The whole point of the California law isn't to stop people from using phones while driving, it only mandates you have to use a hands free headset. The attention split is the same in either case as having a conversation in the vehicle. So the only possible effect is all those non-existant accidents from "driving with one hand" or "not being able to check your blind spot on the cell side" are being prevented.
Since the most dangerous part of using a phone while driving is dialling the handset I'm not sure why anyone would think the law would influence the number of accidents.
While I agree with most of what you said in principle, in practice it is near impossible to write a legal framework that is "very clear". If you make the wording too specific you are likely to leave out important coverage, causing loopholes that allow an end run around the law (the more you tighten your grip the more star systems will slip through your fingers). If you leave room to cover all cases your law may become too vague and will be "interpreted" to death. To make matters worse, new words are necessary to communicate reoccurring concepts and legal connotations can mean the exact opposite of normal language. E.g. in the elastic clause of the U.S. Constitution, "necessary" is legally defined as "expedient". The founding fathers thought they were using clear and simple language and the results show that more clarification was probably necessary.
In short, while we require language to express laws, it will be impossible to write them clear and precise and you will always need someone trained to write and interpret them.
Your other comments about the moral responsibility of lawyers are well taken.
I suspect a break away was inevitable, since at a certain point the size of the entire industry is restricted. The utility of an AOL is only useful if it can communicate with a Compuserve, just like the utility of a pair of rails in Los Angeles is only useful if it connects to New York. Or if you have T-mobile you can call Verizon. If each network only talked to itself then the vast majority of people wouldn't have cell phones, or wouldn't ride the train or won't bother with "those data services". These things have a market imperative to connect. Now once you're talking about a situation where AOL buys Compuserve, and Prodigy folds, then yes that's a potential AT&T situation (without an open internet to compete).
But none of that really addresses your fallacy, which is your assertion that you need a large modern day government to create something that is interconnected.
In order to be talking about a limited government you have to talk about Pre-Civil War economies, since after the civil war the government had lot more federal power. The first railway networks circa 1860, that connected the east to the midwest, were funded by private stock market initiatives.
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Not sure how great the tech is but I'm happy with mine. Sound sucks, but works fine with a soundbar or surround sound and the price is right.
I have a lot of opinions on welfare and politics but they are not relevant to the question of what is and isn't human life. I will sum it up with charity is good, forced charity is bad. Adoption is great.
Because there isn't a libertarian definition for "life". That's been my whole point since the beginning. To continue your discussion though, the definition you want them to adopt isn't even a good one. By that definition if you had a couple conjoined twins that wouldn't survive if they were seperated then it would be rational to carve one out at the request of the other, because he's not "self sustaining". Now you'll add "unless x y z" to your test, but it just isn't a logical base for determining if someone is human / alive / sapient and whether they deserve to have legal rights. Really, the fact that one person's body is dependant on another person is immaterial for determining if it is an entity. Abortion is barbaric if you decide there are two entities involved, so the only rational and moral way to support it is to decide that the child at different stages isn't "alive", and then you're just talking about opinions and arbitrary distinctions about when it actually is alive (in vietnam it's not alive until it's been born, so there is no limit to how late you can abort). So join in and make up arbitrary distinctions with everyone else, but don't pretend that they are supported by rational scientific rigor.
I don't agree with that definition. What does sustaining itself have to do with being alive? Lots of people can't sustain themselves for a lot of different reasons, that doesn't mean they are not alive or shouldn't have rights / be protected. Brain activity is a much better measurement if you want to use pure science.
Except I didn't make an claim about the libertarian stance on abortion. I'm not attacking your opinion, I'm attacking your incorrect statement. There is nothing inherently libertarian about being prochoice. Read my comments on the sister thread if you need more detail.
Correction, I meant to say: well after the FIRST trimester
I get what you're saying, and I happen to agree with you to some extent, but it's still an arbitrary distinction. In any case, many legal abortions are done well after the third trimester which I believe IS murder; and I am libertarian. Abortion is not an issue that can be easily classified against the general libertarian philosophy because it depends on when you arbitrarily declare the beginning of life is.
Blastula is only one stage of pregnancy. It's not religious to maintain that some stage prior to birth the baby it's more than indistinguishable cell. After that any line you draw is arbitrary.
You consider abortion private, because you don't consider it murder. Once you make that logical leap, it clearly ceases to be a private matter. Unfortunately for you, the personhood of different stages of fetus is still wildly open to interpretation, and therefore you can not be "correct", only opinionated. The non coercian principle is the best libertarian test. Abortion is still ambigious because either way one party is forced (the mother or the child).
Your post isn't very accurate since you have ignored the progress of the open source gallium drivers. It's not very relevent either since we're talkign about a 2D turned based RPG. Futher, it seems to be written using Moai, which already lists supports for the linux platform.
We don't know the reason why there won't be a linux port because they never said why, so stop making crap up. Frankly, I wouldn't even care to hear an excuse, since it would just be bull anyway. Humble Indie Bundle has already proven that Linux users will pay 20% of total donations for even crappy games, and since there's already Android and Mac versions slated it would be simple to hire Ryan Gordon (or anyone else) to do the port.
"... Anyway, we want to let you know that we're definitely listening to your feedback and you can expect a full, considered response about Linux early this week. As a company, we are being very careful not to over-commit to ideas and features just to get more funding - everything we decide to include in Shadowurn Returns needs to be within our ability to deliver as part of a great product."
And there are third party packages for Fedora and Ubuntu!
I don't want to get into the debate of whether or not gnome-shell is an improvement over the traditional desktop. Either way, it was wrong for them to push it unfinished on unsuspecting users. Now I can start promoting linux again, something I've had to stop doing because of all the coolaid drinking that has been going on in the UI space. My wife has been on Fedora 14 and now I can upgrade her without her killing me.
s/512gigs/512megs/
I hate to say it because I'm a big fan of gnome and fedora, but from a technical standpoint this release is really sub par. I've had more problems with installation with 15 than any I can remember in recent history.
- For the first time the installer requires more than the 512gigs of ram on my laptop, had to do a network update
- new kernel won't detect network card on PC, had to force latest fedora 14 kernel to get online
- Oh look, evolution changed it's mail folder structure and decided to delete all my existing email
- Random freezes when doing large file transfers??
- Now my PC hangs indefinitely on reboot unless I hit the power switch
- Gnome shell is a little clunky but its growing on me. To bad they removed every menu option to turn off the computer except the oh-so-useful Suspend... the option every computer needs except the vast majority that aren't laptops
I've been using FreeNX since Fedora 8 or so and it's superior in just about every way to VNC. Yeah, it's annoying brittle when the distro's packages are broken or not configured correctly, but that's just an implementation issue. The way it caches X calls makes a remote desktop run at local speeds over most broadband. This is a technology that needs to be brought mainstream.
That said, this is probably not the end of the world. They weren't bragging about any protocol level enhancements, more user level enhancements like a "revamped client GUI" which were never available under an open source license anyway. The core NX library is probably pretty mature by now. Since all future development on their side will be closed, it presents the opportunity for a real project to grow up around a fork. No more being held back by lockstep to a company that never wanted a successful open solution to begin with.
I think he meant one can legally racially discriminate in America. That is true. Governments can't because of equal protection. Businesses can't because of anti-discrimination laws. But you can.
Unlike discrimination, which is a choice of the person doing the discriminating (see my other post for an explanation of this), slavery directly infringes a person's ability to make a choice. It is direct coercion, not comparable to a "negative right", but is just one aspect of a person's right to liberty.
You're right, certain protections take the form of a negative right. Anti-discrimination laws do not fall under equal protection because that is a requirement of governments, not individuals, except as a forced restricting of, e.g. a business's right to discriminate. The reason is as follows.
There is no Freedom from Oprah Winfrey, but you have a right to choose what you watch. They are different, because one puts the onus on society to "protect" you from what you don't like (take off the air and block it from transmission) while the other forces you to take responsibility and pro-actively choose not to engage with it.
Sometimes a thing becomes so entrenched and damaging to society that it effectively removes your right to make any choice, which is when a negative right might be required (but hopefully this is rare). Personally I think "freedom from discrimination" has outgrown its purpose. Racial discrimination as it was in the 50s required it, but today its just fodder for the lawyers.
Very few people are held in a position where they HAVE to smoke, drink, do drugs, steal - maybe peer pressure pushes them to doing things once, but it's up to them to either stop or continue doing so.
I actually see it as the reverse. The opportunity to choose comes prior to giving in to peer pressure. After that, choices are often impaired by the habit. Once one is physically addicted or has already made the wrong associations, they may not have a reasonable choice anymore.
Yet they didn't. It was a "veil of threats", spread to cause fear, uncertainty and doubt. Never has the term FUD been more appropriate.
If the open source community always gave in to FUD and declined to implement anything that *might* have a patent covering it, nothing would ever be accomplished.
Mono is great for the same reason Samba, Wine, and Evolution's exchange connector are. They assist in taking things cross platform (yes, even if you still have to port and avoid certain libraries). The fact that some people find it to be an efficient platform for development is just the icing on the cake. You never have to worry about code written for Mono... being compatible with Mono.
In my experience lots of people, at least around Los Angeles, have stopped talking on the phone because they are scared of the $200 ticket.
To clarify, the law in question is stupid anyway. The whole point of the California law isn't to stop people from using phones while driving, it only mandates you have to use a hands free headset. The attention split is the same in either case as having a conversation in the vehicle. So the only possible effect is all those non-existant accidents from "driving with one hand" or "not being able to check your blind spot on the cell side" are being prevented.
Since the most dangerous part of using a phone while driving is dialling the handset I'm not sure why anyone would think the law would influence the number of accidents.
While I agree with most of what you said in principle, in practice it is near impossible to write a legal framework that is "very clear". If you make the wording too specific you are likely to leave out important coverage, causing loopholes that allow an end run around the law (the more you tighten your grip the more star systems will slip through your fingers). If you leave room to cover all cases your law may become too vague and will be "interpreted" to death. To make matters worse, new words are necessary to communicate reoccurring concepts and legal connotations can mean the exact opposite of normal language. E.g. in the elastic clause of the U.S. Constitution, "necessary" is legally defined as "expedient". The founding fathers thought they were using clear and simple language and the results show that more clarification was probably necessary.
In short, while we require language to express laws, it will be impossible to write them clear and precise and you will always need someone trained to write and interpret them.
Your other comments about the moral responsibility of lawyers are well taken.
I suspect a break away was inevitable, since at a certain point the size of the entire industry is restricted. The utility of an AOL is only useful if it can communicate with a Compuserve, just like the utility of a pair of rails in Los Angeles is only useful if it connects to New York. Or if you have T-mobile you can call Verizon. If each network only talked to itself then the vast majority of people wouldn't have cell phones, or wouldn't ride the train or won't bother with "those data services". These things have a market imperative to connect. Now once you're talking about a situation where AOL buys Compuserve, and Prodigy folds, then yes that's a potential AT&T situation (without an open internet to compete).
But none of that really addresses your fallacy, which is your assertion that you need a large modern day government to create something that is interconnected.
In order to be talking about a limited government you have to talk about Pre-Civil War economies, since after the civil war the government had lot more federal power. The first railway networks circa 1860, that connected the east to the midwest, were funded by private stock market initiatives.