Something I've always wanted to see (and for awhile, thought Wal-Mart[1]) was television episodes available for purchase either the next week or the next day after it's aired on a DVD-1 or DVD-2 sized DVD (these are like those semi-cool mini-CD's you see, DVD-1 can hold 1.36 GB and DVD-2 can hold 2.47 GB). And I don't mean a crappy 4:3 non-anamorphic release, but a release based on the HDTV airing of the show with the fully Dolby Digital treatment.
Sell this for $1-3 (dumping the price in half after, say, a month or so) and I'd probably buy television episodes that way (even if I did watch it). There's something like 24 episodes per season, that works the cost out to (to buy a full season)--
24 x $3 = $72 24 x $2 = $48 24 x $1 = $24
And in these smaller formats (especially DVD-1) they can get away with using a lower bitrate, reserving the higher bitrate for their season packages at the end of the year.
I'd be willing to bet if they sold television shows like this that you'd see piracy curbed. Especially if there wasn't any advertising during the shows, but there was advertising (that you couldn't skip past) at the beginning of the show (say, two or three 30 second commercials).
[1] Wal-Mart had a little display off to the side of their new DVD section that had TV episodes on a single DVD-5 disc (which was shrinkwrapped in a cardboard holder, no plastic case and no frills). They had first episodes for a couple of relatively recent TV series such as E.R. and others. The display said to check back every week for new episodes (which at the time I took to mean "current"). Unfortunately it's just been old episodes as far as I can tell.
I suspect the problem with advertising in BitTorrent distro'd TV episodes is the issue of counting how many people actually *see* the ads. Yes BitTorrent keeps track (at the tracker level) of who finishes a file, but TV ad executives aren't silly enough to think that there are only one set of eyes watching an episode.
Actually the reason to call it x86-64 is because this is what AMD themselves called it initially.
Though I hear Microsoft has standardized on AMD64--
C:\Program Files\NTDDK\4074\bin\win64\x86\amd64>cl Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.31008.15 for AMD64 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
For example: Bringing a child into a life where it is unwanted, the mother does not have time or money to provide for the child, the child has no father, the parent is addicted to drugs, the parent is irresponsible and will neglect/abuse the child, etc.. There are countless possibilities. Why do you think these things are laughable?
There's adoption for situations such as that. There's also public assistance in the form of welfare. There's also a system of forced accountability in the form of child support. The list goes on. Murder is not the only option...
As far as why society has decided murder is wrong, well.. that's just too insane to even respond to. If you need that explained, you should really re-evaluate your morals: it's never been "right" to deprive another of their life because of something that inconveniences you.
An unborn baby is still partially part of another human being (the mother). So in effect, the mother is killing a part of herself by having an abortion.
You might have a point if what you said was true-- unfortunately if the mother has repeated abortions she will not eventually "die" from having killed "parts of herself" so many times.
No, the only victim during an abortion is the unborn child and it's that unborn child which must be protected from selfish mothers who are careless with their bodies and sexuality.
The problem is that new players are being added to the marketplace every day, so it would be a bitch to keep it updated.
I didn't mean something that was constantly updated. Just a yearly/seasonal article with the current definitive listing (sort of how this article was plugged-- as if somehow the 4 previous years worth of shitty articles makes up for this years single shitty article).
Updating it once a year (around Christmas most likely) doesn't seem so challenging to me, especially if you give yourself a few weeks to get the information gathered.
Anyways, thanks for the other links, I'll have to take a look-see.
How insane. Abortion is so far from protecting an innocent unborn child as to be laughable. How do you expect to be taken seriously by making such ludicrous claims?
Murder is killing a human being. An unborn child is living. Therefore abortion is murder.
As far as society goes, I'll point to the fact that society does not tolerate murder (the indiscriminate killing of other humans) and ask, why is it you think abortion is somehow a "special case" that society should just accept?
As for the value of human life, the life is valuable, above all else, to itself. How it wants to live is up to itself. An unborn child cannot make it's decision known so the burden falls to society to speak for the child. As most of society would rather live than die, I think you know where society would like an unborn child to go.
As for assisted suicide, I'm fine with it. That's the person making their own decision about their life. I think it serves as a great parallel to abortion (where someone is murdered and never given a choice to live or die).
...to just put a table together with the product names, their suggested retail price, the type of media they use and/or built-in storage size, connectivity (Firewire/USB/etc) and their supported formats?
And actually, I'm having my doubts that that's a comprehensive comparison/listing they've got on there in the first place.
What a load of crap. NO good piece of software FORCES you to have to do a clean install. That's bad design on their part.
I agree, and for the record I've never had a problem installing over old installations (been using FireFox exclusively since 0.9.1), so I don't know what the grand-parent poster is on about but it's hardly insightful/informative.
Microsoft, Micron and whoever else sponsored that ad need to put down the bong and back away slowly.
I've been mostly out of work for almost 3 years now (I have "work", but I'm what most people would call "underemployed") since I got laid off from my last job (which filed chapter 7 shortly after it laid me and all my co-workers off, then failed to give us our severance pay or other promised bonuses for staying on during the non-liquidation bankruptcy (chapter 13 isn't it?)).
I was, at the time, living in the Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond area of Washington state and I still don't see any kind of response to job applications. Back in 2000 when I was looking for a new job it was vastly different-- I'd put my resume on some job sites (e.g. - Monster.com, etc) and I'd get 2-3 calls a day. I don't get any cold calls now in response to my resume, and what few responses I do get to job apps don't usually even lead to an interview (because they hired someone before me, usually).
More H1-B visas? Maybe when there's no Americans to fill the jobs. And no, a shortage of C# programmers (when you have a flood of C/C++ programmers that could be retrained fairly easily) does not count to me. That they want someone who knows 8 specific technologies (and lists them as "required") tells me they're trying to flood the statistics to make it look like there's a shortage of workers here in the U.S.
Oddly enough, I imagine the politicians will cave and up the number of H1-B's. Though I suppose the alternative is worse-- if they don't up the number of H1-B's then the companies will just outsource the jobs entirely.. lose-lose all around.
You're right, we kill animals for food, etc, etc. We do horrible things everyday. This does not mean that we should. In the future we're going to have the technology to create things out of thin air without harming animals ever again-- are we going to continue to kill animals that are "less than us" just because we can?
As for the mother and the unborn child-- I'm sorry, I can't subscribe to your idea that allowing women to commit murder is "good" for the unborn child.
If the mother didn't want to have a child, she simply should not have had sex. It's a matter of responsibility and accountability. If you want to be irresponsible and wreckless, I urge you to find a society where this behavior is accepted because this society does not accept it. Hence why we have murder laws, why we have laws to penalize people who speed, why we have laws to punish people who assault others. And yet oddly we have a large group of people in our society who don't mind all those other laws on the books, but are hell-bent against laws to protect an innocent unborn child from a raving mother more concerned with her figure than the life she purposefully created.
I hope that after getting 10+ similar responses, you've finally noticed* that all those people weren't suggesting that rape victims should be forbidden to have abortions, but rather that your perspective (that abortion is murder, but that it's OK in case of rape) is illogical.
The only thing illogical here are the people who are unable to see how that life came to be. In the case of someone trying to use abortion as birth control, the responsibility for the creation of that child lies squarely with the mother. In the case of the rape victim however, they had no choice.
I do not see it as being illogical in the slightest. I do find it highly suspect that so many are trying to attack me with an exception I'm willing to make for someone who is the victim of a violent act however. Would you rather I was a full-blown right-wing Rush Limbaugh lover who is totally against abortion, even in the case of rape or when the life of the mother is at risk?
You spoiled liberals need to learn to compromise on these things and realize that, unlike you, most of America respects unborn life-- you're not going to get your way by strong-arming society.
Let the uber-accurate Capcom fighting games begin! (Now they just need to bring out a port of Super Street Fighter II and all will be right in the world).
It's not a religious argument. Society respects life, just because you do not does not mean you should be able to kill a small child.
Or are we now going to say "Hey, kill whoever you want, you know, I mean, unless you believe in God what have you got to lose? And if you do believe in God, well, too bad, I don't, and killing you just makes my life a little better off".
It's bullshit trying to tie this to religion when it's really about right and wrong. If it's wrong to kill an adult, why is it right to kill an innocent unborn child that hasn't even had nearly the chances at life that the mother/father have had?
Exactly. I'd be willing to bet that Dell receives tons of support calls for problems that are actually the result of vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer.
Firefox would reduce their IE support calls to simply answering the question of "Where's my blue 'E' to get on the internet?".
And Microsoft's incentive would be what, exactly?
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What's Next For Mozilla?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Pissing off the company that sells their OEM operating system pre-installed at very low prices?
It's a two-way street. I don't know exactly how much Dell pays MS for their OEM OS's, but something tells me it wouldn't be a major hurt to buck the system. Besides, I imagine Dell and Microsoft have a contract in place for prices-- I doubt Microsoft can just arbitrarily hike the prices up because Dell grows a spine.
Well, a fertilized egg has about as much value as any single live cell from any human body (except maybe cancer cells and weird growths). But then, I have to think that to accept abortion.
Well then there's not much else to say to that really. You have an opinion and I've obviously failed to change it.
You state that you are against abortion as it is equivalent of murder. What i still can't grasp is why it is less of a murder in case of rape or danger to the mother. I REALLY want to know this. Who should decide the risk-level needed to get an abortion?
It's not less of a murder. It's a judgement call. Tough decisions get made every day, do you think the choice between a mother who would die and her unborn child would be any easier? As to who would make the judgement, I suspect it'd be left to a panel of doctors that would be, preferably, experts in the kinds of issues faced by the mother and her unborn child. I'd never support having these kinds of things go through civil courts unless there was a suspicion of wrong-doing by the panel of doctors.
As for the rapist creating life, again, yes he creates a life, but it's how he created the life that's at issue. Obviously the mother had no choice as the rapist forced it on her. Why is an abortion optional (not "needed" as you put it)? Because the mother should not be forced to endure the pain and suffering of carrying her rapists baby through pregnancy-- it's obviously cruel.
I'll reiterate-- it's awful a life would be lost in such a situation, but we should not encourage, as a society, reproduction through rape. As I've said elsewhere, until we develop a time machine and can literally "undo" what was done, offering the mother the opportunity of having an abortion seems the fairest thing to do for someone who has already been the victim of a traumatic experience.
To all of you guys that are so gung-ho pro-life, why don't you first try to convince your male counterparts to take responsability for the children they've fathered or are about to father.
(I live in Washington State).
In my state, and I imagine a great many more in the United States, child support is required and automatically deducted from your paychecks before you're given your money. See, the law does require "fathers" to provide care for any children that they are responsible for. The problem is that there's an imbalance here-- the mother can choose to shrug off that responsibility (and hence, that accountability) by simply having an abortion.
"Fathers" don't get off that easy-- they can't force a woman to have an abortion. They don't have an easy out.
As far as "responsibility" not stopping at birth-- if the mother chooses to have the child put up for adoption it does. There are alternatives to the brutal and horrible "abortion alternative" that kids are presented with these days. As for it costing so much? Last time I checked Planned Parenthood practically gave abortions away in larger cities-- it seems to me the only reason they do it isn't out of kindness but because they want to indoctrinate entire generations to abortion being "ok". 40 years ago peoples attitudes were far different with regard to life... something tells me their campaign has largely worked.
The decision to abort belongs with the woman as she alone faces the consequences of the procedure.
IMO, the only way you can reach this conclusion is if you have zero value for the unborn child. In fact, I'd go one farther and say the unborn child has more to lose, and the consequences are more severe for, than anybody in the equation.
As far as "irrational policies", I'd consider it much more irrational to make abortion illegal and force rape victims to give birth to their assaulters children. That's as irrational as it gets in my book. I can't understate how unfortunate it would be that a life would be ended because of this, nor can I fully express my anger at the person who forced the issue (the rapist).
As for the rapist creating life I disagree-- he put the mother in the unfortunate position of having to kill a life. Something the rapist could have avoided altogether by simply not raping the victim.
I'm pretty much against the death penalty, yeah. I think it's an easy out for our worst criminals. But I also think their punishment should be far more severe. It makes me ill that some prisoners in for awful crimes are getting such things as access to television and different varieties of meals each day. Should all prisoners be treated equal? No-- someone in for small crimes should receive better treatment (access to a TV, different meals each day), but someone in for a heinous crime? They should get the bare minimum to keep them surviving. Not torture, of course, but their life should be deprived of every possible enjoyment they could have.
A serial killer (for example) shouldn't receive such benefits.
Why is it less of a murder if the pregnancy happens by rape. Or if the life of the mother is threathened - does the mother have more of a right to live?
It's not less of a murder but less pain for a victim of an already atrocious crime-- rape. The better question here is, why are you trying to suggest a rape victim should be forced to carry the offspring of her attacker? Doesn't that seem cruel to you?
As I've said elsewhere in this sub-thread, I'd be all for the rapist being charged with murder on top of rape if the victim chose abortion (in the event the victim becomes pregnant in the first place-- in most cases you'd think they'd be given a "morning after" pill to keep her from getting pregnant).
In the country where i live, doctors recently declared that they were ready to sort fertilized eggs that have the gene for breast cancer. Now we're moving in the right direction:)
Heh, well that's great then-- of course it'd be better if they could sort it out before the eggs have been fertilized (if that's even possible), but really.. I'm not against furthering science. I'm not a Bible thumper. I voted for Kerry and was very much disappointed that he lost. I just don't see eye to eye on everything he believes in-- but I am smart enough to know that 4 more years of Bush are the last thing this country needed.
Unfortunately the majority of the rest of the country thought otherwise.
By all means, increase education for the young so they'll avoid the issue altogether. I have zero problem with that. But even if we up education or do as you say and have abortion-seekers talk to people who have done it before allowing the abortion, you're still going to have people who go through with it.
The issue I guess is, where does the will of the unborn child come into play with your solution? In the case of increased education it's a non-issue, but counseling only helps the would-be abortionist, not the unborn child. Who helps the unborn child?
Human nature is to survive. Without any way to peer into the mother's womb and ask the child "do you want to live or do you want to die?", we must go with what human nature would-- the unborn child wants to live. The mother's decision was made back at the "do I want to have sex?" stage.
And keeping the child after it's born isn't required-- there's thousands of couples out there that would love to have a child but can't: put the child up for adoption if you can't handle it financially (even with government help).
I agree with most of what you say-- I agree education should be better, and I think people might react differently to abortion if they were forced to talk to others who'd gone through with it first (or at least, didn't just get to flip through some paperwork then say "let's do it"). In the absence of making abortion illegal I imagine your ideas would be the next best thing. But I'd also like to think my ideas aren't so far-fetched as to be totally unacceptable-- I'm not Conservative by any means here: I'm not going for a total outright ban of abortion. I'm for making exceptions for situations that are out of the mothers control.
Yes but the point is, the woman has already been victimized by the mere act of being raped-- why should she also be forced to endure bringing her assaulters child into the world?
I don't think it's that contrived. I'm not saying there's no conflict-- yes the life is just as valuable. But the issue is, it should have never happened to begin with. Until we perfect time travel, the only solution I see (besides forcing the victim to have her assaulters child) is to allow her to have an abortion if she chooses. In recognition that a life has been taken as a result of the rapists action, the rapist would also be charged with murder.
Rape is a traumatic event in any persons life, compounding the pain by forcing the victim to have her assaulters child is just an awful idea.
For me it's like I said in my original post-- a "woman's right to choose" is when she has sex. In the case of rape though that choice has been forced on her. I don't believe she should be forced into the same consequences if she wasn't given the choice up front about having sex in the first place. Maybe that better articulates where I'm coming from on this.
This is terribly inconsistent. If abortion is murder (I think it is), then that implies that the embryo/fetus as full value as a human life. In that case, rape or incest matters zilch. If someone rapes you, you're not allowed to kill his brother, even if he looks like the offender and works with you every day.
As I've tried to tell others, we'll just have to agree to disagree-- I realize this is a charged issue and I'm very unlikely to change anybodies mind. Having said that.:P In the case of rape I think we're left with the issue of, "this should have never happened". Unfortunate for the unborn child, but one way to salvage it would be to charge the rapist with murder as well (afterall it would be murder to kill the child, but it should not be the fault of the unwilling mother, but rather the rapist). In addition to being fair from end to end (afterall, is a life less valuable if it's the result of a rape-- no, the rapist could/should be charged with the murder of the unborn child), it would serve as a larger deterrant to would-be rapists-- "do I really want to risk life in prison just so I can rape someone?".
And there's always the possibility that the victim may choose to have the child anyways-- it has happened. All I'm asking is, do we really want to hurt the victim even more by forcing her to bear the child that was forced upon her by a rapist? To be forced to see the child as it's born? That seems awfully cruel to me...
Otherwise, your comments are straight on. I've been arguing for civil unions and religious definitions of marriage for a long time, and that "In God we trust" simply does not respect the separation of church and state, whatever the supreme court imagines.
Certainly glad you could find something in my comment to agree with, lots of the replies seem to be focusing in on the thing they disagree with only. Ah well.. thanks for your reply.
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Something I've always wanted to see (and for awhile, thought Wal-Mart[1]) was television episodes available for purchase either the next week or the next day after it's aired on a DVD-1 or DVD-2 sized DVD (these are like those semi-cool mini-CD's you see, DVD-1 can hold 1.36 GB and DVD-2 can hold 2.47 GB). And I don't mean a crappy 4:3 non-anamorphic release, but a release based on the HDTV airing of the show with the fully Dolby Digital treatment.
Sell this for $1-3 (dumping the price in half after, say, a month or so) and I'd probably buy television episodes that way (even if I did watch it). There's something like 24 episodes per season, that works the cost out to (to buy a full season)--
24 x $3 = $72
24 x $2 = $48
24 x $1 = $24
And in these smaller formats (especially DVD-1) they can get away with using a lower bitrate, reserving the higher bitrate for their season packages at the end of the year.
I'd be willing to bet if they sold television shows like this that you'd see piracy curbed. Especially if there wasn't any advertising during the shows, but there was advertising (that you couldn't skip past) at the beginning of the show (say, two or three 30 second commercials).
[1] Wal-Mart had a little display off to the side of their new DVD section that had TV episodes on a single DVD-5 disc (which was shrinkwrapped in a cardboard holder, no plastic case and no frills). They had first episodes for a couple of relatively recent TV series such as E.R. and others. The display said to check back every week for new episodes (which at the time I took to mean "current"). Unfortunately it's just been old episodes as far as I can tell.
I suspect the problem with advertising in BitTorrent distro'd TV episodes is the issue of counting how many people actually *see* the ads. Yes BitTorrent keeps track (at the tracker level) of who finishes a file, but TV ad executives aren't silly enough to think that there are only one set of eyes watching an episode.
Though I hear Microsoft has standardized on AMD64--
But you wouldn't know it from their blogs.
Yeah really, I won't be convinced until I can see this for myself. Repeatedly. Long into the night. Hopefully with some variety. *cough*
There's adoption for situations such as that. There's also public assistance in the form of welfare. There's also a system of forced accountability in the form of child support. The list goes on. Murder is not the only option...
As far as why society has decided murder is wrong, well.. that's just too insane to even respond to. If you need that explained, you should really re-evaluate your morals: it's never been "right" to deprive another of their life because of something that inconveniences you.
You might have a point if what you said was true-- unfortunately if the mother has repeated abortions she will not eventually "die" from having killed "parts of herself" so many times.
No, the only victim during an abortion is the unborn child and it's that unborn child which must be protected from selfish mothers who are careless with their bodies and sexuality.
I didn't mean something that was constantly updated. Just a yearly/seasonal article with the current definitive listing (sort of how this article was plugged-- as if somehow the 4 previous years worth of shitty articles makes up for this years single shitty article).
Updating it once a year (around Christmas most likely) doesn't seem so challenging to me, especially if you give yourself a few weeks to get the information gathered.
Anyways, thanks for the other links, I'll have to take a look-see.
How insane. Abortion is so far from protecting an innocent unborn child as to be laughable. How do you expect to be taken seriously by making such ludicrous claims?
Murder is killing a human being. An unborn child is living. Therefore abortion is murder.
As far as society goes, I'll point to the fact that society does not tolerate murder (the indiscriminate killing of other humans) and ask, why is it you think abortion is somehow a "special case" that society should just accept?
As for the value of human life, the life is valuable, above all else, to itself. How it wants to live is up to itself. An unborn child cannot make it's decision known so the burden falls to society to speak for the child. As most of society would rather live than die, I think you know where society would like an unborn child to go.
As for assisted suicide, I'm fine with it. That's the person making their own decision about their life. I think it serves as a great parallel to abortion (where someone is murdered and never given a choice to live or die).
...to just put a table together with the product names, their suggested retail price, the type of media they use and/or built-in storage size, connectivity (Firewire/USB/etc) and their supported formats?
And actually, I'm having my doubts that that's a comprehensive comparison/listing they've got on there in the first place.
I agree, and for the record I've never had a problem installing over old installations (been using FireFox exclusively since 0.9.1), so I don't know what the grand-parent poster is on about but it's hardly insightful/informative.
Microsoft, Micron and whoever else sponsored that ad need to put down the bong and back away slowly.
I've been mostly out of work for almost 3 years now (I have "work", but I'm what most people would call "underemployed") since I got laid off from my last job (which filed chapter 7 shortly after it laid me and all my co-workers off, then failed to give us our severance pay or other promised bonuses for staying on during the non-liquidation bankruptcy (chapter 13 isn't it?)).
I was, at the time, living in the Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond area of Washington state and I still don't see any kind of response to job applications. Back in 2000 when I was looking for a new job it was vastly different-- I'd put my resume on some job sites (e.g. - Monster.com, etc) and I'd get 2-3 calls a day. I don't get any cold calls now in response to my resume, and what few responses I do get to job apps don't usually even lead to an interview (because they hired someone before me, usually).
More H1-B visas? Maybe when there's no Americans to fill the jobs. And no, a shortage of C# programmers (when you have a flood of C/C++ programmers that could be retrained fairly easily) does not count to me. That they want someone who knows 8 specific technologies (and lists them as "required") tells me they're trying to flood the statistics to make it look like there's a shortage of workers here in the U.S.
Oddly enough, I imagine the politicians will cave and up the number of H1-B's. Though I suppose the alternative is worse-- if they don't up the number of H1-B's then the companies will just outsource the jobs entirely.. lose-lose all around.
You're right, we kill animals for food, etc, etc. We do horrible things everyday. This does not mean that we should. In the future we're going to have the technology to create things out of thin air without harming animals ever again-- are we going to continue to kill animals that are "less than us" just because we can?
As for the mother and the unborn child-- I'm sorry, I can't subscribe to your idea that allowing women to commit murder is "good" for the unborn child.
If the mother didn't want to have a child, she simply should not have had sex. It's a matter of responsibility and accountability. If you want to be irresponsible and wreckless, I urge you to find a society where this behavior is accepted because this society does not accept it. Hence why we have murder laws, why we have laws to penalize people who speed, why we have laws to punish people who assault others. And yet oddly we have a large group of people in our society who don't mind all those other laws on the books, but are hell-bent against laws to protect an innocent unborn child from a raving mother more concerned with her figure than the life she purposefully created.
You people are bizarre.
The only thing illogical here are the people who are unable to see how that life came to be. In the case of someone trying to use abortion as birth control, the responsibility for the creation of that child lies squarely with the mother. In the case of the rape victim however, they had no choice.
I do not see it as being illogical in the slightest. I do find it highly suspect that so many are trying to attack me with an exception I'm willing to make for someone who is the victim of a violent act however. Would you rather I was a full-blown right-wing Rush Limbaugh lover who is totally against abortion, even in the case of rape or when the life of the mother is at risk?
You spoiled liberals need to learn to compromise on these things and realize that, unlike you, most of America respects unborn life-- you're not going to get your way by strong-arming society.
I dunno, this alone has me wanting to buy one--
Vampire Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (Capcom)
Let the uber-accurate Capcom fighting games begin! (Now they just need to bring out a port of Super Street Fighter II and all will be right in the world).
It's not a religious argument. Society respects life, just because you do not does not mean you should be able to kill a small child.
Or are we now going to say "Hey, kill whoever you want, you know, I mean, unless you believe in God what have you got to lose? And if you do believe in God, well, too bad, I don't, and killing you just makes my life a little better off".
It's bullshit trying to tie this to religion when it's really about right and wrong. If it's wrong to kill an adult, why is it right to kill an innocent unborn child that hasn't even had nearly the chances at life that the mother/father have had?
How bizarre.
Exactly. I'd be willing to bet that Dell receives tons of support calls for problems that are actually the result of vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer.
Firefox would reduce their IE support calls to simply answering the question of "Where's my blue 'E' to get on the internet?".
Pissing off the company that sells their OEM operating system pre-installed at very low prices?
It's a two-way street. I don't know exactly how much Dell pays MS for their OEM OS's, but something tells me it wouldn't be a major hurt to buck the system. Besides, I imagine Dell and Microsoft have a contract in place for prices-- I doubt Microsoft can just arbitrarily hike the prices up because Dell grows a spine.
It's not less of a murder. It's a judgement call. Tough decisions get made every day, do you think the choice between a mother who would die and her unborn child would be any easier? As to who would make the judgement, I suspect it'd be left to a panel of doctors that would be, preferably, experts in the kinds of issues faced by the mother and her unborn child. I'd never support having these kinds of things go through civil courts unless there was a suspicion of wrong-doing by the panel of doctors.
As for the rapist creating life, again, yes he creates a life, but it's how he created the life that's at issue. Obviously the mother had no choice as the rapist forced it on her. Why is an abortion optional (not "needed" as you put it)? Because the mother should not be forced to endure the pain and suffering of carrying her rapists baby through pregnancy-- it's obviously cruel.
I'll reiterate-- it's awful a life would be lost in such a situation, but we should not encourage, as a society, reproduction through rape. As I've said elsewhere, until we develop a time machine and can literally "undo" what was done, offering the mother the opportunity of having an abortion seems the fairest thing to do for someone who has already been the victim of a traumatic experience.
In my state, and I imagine a great many more in the United States, child support is required and automatically deducted from your paychecks before you're given your money. See, the law does require "fathers" to provide care for any children that they are responsible for. The problem is that there's an imbalance here-- the mother can choose to shrug off that responsibility (and hence, that accountability) by simply having an abortion.
"Fathers" don't get off that easy-- they can't force a woman to have an abortion. They don't have an easy out.
As far as "responsibility" not stopping at birth-- if the mother chooses to have the child put up for adoption it does. There are alternatives to the brutal and horrible "abortion alternative" that kids are presented with these days. As for it costing so much? Last time I checked Planned Parenthood practically gave abortions away in larger cities-- it seems to me the only reason they do it isn't out of kindness but because they want to indoctrinate entire generations to abortion being "ok". 40 years ago peoples attitudes were far different with regard to life... something tells me their campaign has largely worked.
As far as "irrational policies", I'd consider it much more irrational to make abortion illegal and force rape victims to give birth to their assaulters children. That's as irrational as it gets in my book. I can't understate how unfortunate it would be that a life would be ended because of this, nor can I fully express my anger at the person who forced the issue (the rapist).
As for the rapist creating life I disagree-- he put the mother in the unfortunate position of having to kill a life. Something the rapist could have avoided altogether by simply not raping the victim.
I'm pretty much against the death penalty, yeah. I think it's an easy out for our worst criminals. But I also think their punishment should be far more severe. It makes me ill that some prisoners in for awful crimes are getting such things as access to television and different varieties of meals each day. Should all prisoners be treated equal? No-- someone in for small crimes should receive better treatment (access to a TV, different meals each day), but someone in for a heinous crime? They should get the bare minimum to keep them surviving. Not torture, of course, but their life should be deprived of every possible enjoyment they could have.
A serial killer (for example) shouldn't receive such benefits.
As I've said elsewhere in this sub-thread, I'd be all for the rapist being charged with murder on top of rape if the victim chose abortion (in the event the victim becomes pregnant in the first place-- in most cases you'd think they'd be given a "morning after" pill to keep her from getting pregnant).
Heh, well that's great then-- of course it'd be better if they could sort it out before the eggs have been fertilized (if that's even possible), but really.. I'm not against furthering science. I'm not a Bible thumper. I voted for Kerry and was very much disappointed that he lost. I just don't see eye to eye on everything he believes in-- but I am smart enough to know that 4 more years of Bush are the last thing this country needed.
Unfortunately the majority of the rest of the country thought otherwise.
By all means, increase education for the young so they'll avoid the issue altogether. I have zero problem with that. But even if we up education or do as you say and have abortion-seekers talk to people who have done it before allowing the abortion, you're still going to have people who go through with it.
The issue I guess is, where does the will of the unborn child come into play with your solution? In the case of increased education it's a non-issue, but counseling only helps the would-be abortionist, not the unborn child. Who helps the unborn child?
Human nature is to survive. Without any way to peer into the mother's womb and ask the child "do you want to live or do you want to die?", we must go with what human nature would-- the unborn child wants to live. The mother's decision was made back at the "do I want to have sex?" stage.
And keeping the child after it's born isn't required-- there's thousands of couples out there that would love to have a child but can't: put the child up for adoption if you can't handle it financially (even with government help).
I agree with most of what you say-- I agree education should be better, and I think people might react differently to abortion if they were forced to talk to others who'd gone through with it first (or at least, didn't just get to flip through some paperwork then say "let's do it"). In the absence of making abortion illegal I imagine your ideas would be the next best thing. But I'd also like to think my ideas aren't so far-fetched as to be totally unacceptable-- I'm not Conservative by any means here: I'm not going for a total outright ban of abortion. I'm for making exceptions for situations that are out of the mothers control.
Yes but the point is, the woman has already been victimized by the mere act of being raped-- why should she also be forced to endure bringing her assaulters child into the world?
I don't think it's that contrived. I'm not saying there's no conflict-- yes the life is just as valuable. But the issue is, it should have never happened to begin with. Until we perfect time travel, the only solution I see (besides forcing the victim to have her assaulters child) is to allow her to have an abortion if she chooses. In recognition that a life has been taken as a result of the rapists action, the rapist would also be charged with murder.
Rape is a traumatic event in any persons life, compounding the pain by forcing the victim to have her assaulters child is just an awful idea.
For me it's like I said in my original post-- a "woman's right to choose" is when she has sex. In the case of rape though that choice has been forced on her. I don't believe she should be forced into the same consequences if she wasn't given the choice up front about having sex in the first place. Maybe that better articulates where I'm coming from on this.
And there's always the possibility that the victim may choose to have the child anyways-- it has happened. All I'm asking is, do we really want to hurt the victim even more by forcing her to bear the child that was forced upon her by a rapist? To be forced to see the child as it's born? That seems awfully cruel to me...
Certainly glad you could find something in my comment to agree with, lots of the replies seem to be focusing in on the thing they disagree with only. Ah well.. thanks for your reply.