Actually, I used the definition provided in a real estate law text book. It seemed to fit the situation and because I just recently completed the course, it was still fresh in my mind. Besides, to extend your analogy, the Kingees would be ruled by a Kingor;o)
IANAL, but I do know the basics of a contract. It has to have three basic elements to be valid.
1.)OFFER- In an offer there is a promise by a party to do something or not to do something. This must be something that persons are not already legally bound to do or not to do.
2.)ACCEPTANCE- The offer must be accepted by the offeree, at which point an agreement and thus a contract is formed.
3.)Consideration- The legal detriment bargained and promised for in exchange for legal benefit, by both parties, either orally or in writing, as required by the statute of frauds.
Now granted, there is allot more to contracts than the basic laymans explanation I give above. The best anyone in my state of ignorance regarding contract laws or Rambus's contracts in particular could manage under the circumstances is to make a wild 50/50 guess as to how the courts would intrepret them and whether the courts would decide they were valid and enforceable or invalid and void.
This is the kind of thing that makes speculating and investing allot like gambling. Knowledge of how this is all going to wash out in court is almost like knowing a winning lottery ticket number in advance. Either that or it could save a savvy investor the loss of a fortune. Too bad I'm not investor class, but hey, at least if Rambus loses I have a cheap and competetive supply of memory producers from which to choose for my next memory purchase;o)
The customer service numbers are 1-800-821-7250 and 1-800-595-9003. Both of these numbers will have a menu option that leads to Road Runner tech support in an expedient fashion.
While we are on the subject.... I have had excellent support from AOL-Time Warner's Road Runner service. The wait times for a knowledgeable and polite rep are negligible and they are willing to spend money in the form of free service to earn a customer's good will and make up for a genuine error on their own part. Although, I have heard that this wasn't always true for them, but I am only recently subscribed and can only speak for my experiences.
A couple of years ago I worked as a phone support rep for an outsourcing phone support company. Their whole attitude was about getting the call done as fast as possible; usually in under four minutes for questiions related to a certain SCSI card they supported, for example. The managers also tried to shift cost and blame onto customers who were often in the right. Such as telling someone who didn't even order the card to just ship it back. Well, I usually advocated for the customer in instances like this. If a company told me to ship a product back at my expense that I didn't even order, I'd tell them to get bent, and then I would keep it. Also, my managers loved to say "no", it didn't matter how reasonable a customers request, because our "real" customer was the card manufacturer or whom ever elses product we were handling. They didn't give the least bit of a crap about the end user. Because of the pressure to get calls done quick, most of the phone reps with whom I worked would pass complicated calls that they could otherwise handle to keep their call time down. Often, I would get a customer who had been told to hang up and call back a half dozen times. They would usually not be happy, and rightfully so.
Of course, let's not forget money, after all that's what drives these companies. From the cheap underhanded customer service policy I described above to the low pay and wretched working conditions for the phone reps, they have taken care of their financial interests.
To answer your question, none of them. Most of the executives and lawyers pushing lawsuits and lobbying congress for strict copyright laws have a very high opinion of themselves. Couple this with their firm, if misguided and warped concepts regarding Capitalism and free markets. Throw in an almost sociopathic self-centeredness along with justifications of their actions and attitudes through a social Darwinist perspective, and you have my amateur psychological opinion of what drives these people. These are the kind of people, were they in sales, who would eat their own young and sell their mother to make a deal.
Actually, in your example sentence you use the acronyms MPAA, RIAA, and NSPA as pejoratives. Of course it's also not necessarily the number of letters in a word or an acronym that creates negative connotations or denotations. A word or phrase becomes loaded above and beyond it's literal meaning depending on the general context with which it is used. To that end, it is safe to say that you are not alone in associating your contempt for the above organizations with their acronyms.
I agree with you 100%. Now, how do you convince your average American that not only is it wrong to stick your nose in other peoples business in consensual matters, but it is harmful to society and their own personal interests?
For those unfamiliar with the story of the emperor
on
FPGA Supercomputers
·
· Score: 1
The Emperor's New Clothes
by Hans Christian Anderson
http://www.deoxy.org/emperors.htm
Once upon a time there lived a vain Emperor whose only worry in life was to dress in elegant clothes. He changed clothes almost every hour and loved to show them off to his people.
Word of the Emperor's refined habits spread over his kingdom and beyond. Two scoundrels who had heard of the Emperor's vanity decided to take advantage of it. They introduced themselves at the gates of the palace with a scheme in mind.
"We are two very good tailors and after many years of research we have invented an extraordinary method to weave a cloth so light and fine that it looks invisible. As a matter of fact it is invisible to anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its quality."
The chief of the guards heard the scoundrel's strange story and sent for the court chamberlain. The chamberlain notified the prime minister, who ran to the Emperor and disclosed the incredible news. The Emperor's curiosity got the better of him and he decided to see the two scoundrels.
"Besides being invisible, your Highness, this cloth will be woven in colors and patterns created especially for you." The emperor gave the two men a bag of gold coins in exchange for their promise to begin working on the fabric immediately.
"Just tell us what you need to get started and we'll give it to you." The two scoundrels asked for a loom, silk, gold thread and then pretended to begin working. The Emperor thought he had spent his money quite well: in addition to getting a new extraordinary suit, he would discover which of his subjects were ignorant and incompetent. A few days later, he called the old and wise prime minister, who was considered by everyone as a man with common sense.
"Go and see how the work is proceeding," the Emperor told him, "and come back to let me know."
The prime minister was welcomed by the two scoundrels.
"We're almost finished, but we need a lot more gold thread. Here, Excellency! Admire the colors, feel the softness!" The old man bent over the loom and tried to see the fabric that was not there. He felt cold sweat on his forehead.
"I can't see anything," he thought. "If I see nothing, that means I'm stupid! Or, worse, incompetent!" If the prime minister admitted that he didn't see anything, he would be discharged from his office.
"What a marvelous fabric, he said then. "I'll certainly tell the Emperor." The two scoundrels rubbed their hands gleefully. They had almost made it. More thread was requested to finish the work.
Finally, the Emperor received the announcement that the two tailors had come to take all the measurements needed to sew his new suit.
"Come in," the Emperor ordered. Even as they bowed, the two scoundrels pretended to be holding large roll of fabric.
"Here it is your Highness, the result of our labour," the scoundrels said. "We have worked night and day but, at last, the most beautiful fabric in the world is ready for you. Look at the colors and feel how fine it is." Of course the Emperor did not see any colors and could not feel any cloth between his fingers. He panicked and felt like fainting. But luckily the throne was right behind him and he sat down. But when he realized that no one could know that he did not see the fabric, he felt better. Nobody could find out he was stupid and incompetent. And the Emperor didn't know that everybody else around him thought and did the very same thing.
The farce continued as the two scoundrels had foreseen it. Once they had taken the measurements, the two began cutting the air with scissors while sewing with their needles an invisible cloth.
"Your Highness, you'll have to take off your clothes to try on your new ones." The two scoundrels draped the new clothes on him and then held up a mirror. The Emperor was embarrassed but since none of his bystanders were, he felt relieved.
"Yes, this is a beautiful suit and it looks very good on me," the Emperor said trying to look comfortable. "You've done a fine job."
"Your Majesty," the prime minister said, "we have a request for you. The people have found out about this extraordinary fabric and they are anxious to see you in your new suit." The Emperor was doubtful showing himself naked to the people, but then he abandoned his fears. After all, no one would know about it except the ignorant and the incompetent.
"All right," he said. "I will grant the people this privilege." He summoned his carriage and the ceremonial parade was formed. A group of dignitaries walked at the very front of the procession and anxiously scrutinized the faces of the people in the street. All the people had gathered in the main square, pushing and shoving to get a better look. An applause welcomed the regal procession. Everyone wanted to know how stupid or incompetent his or her neighbor was but, as the Emperor passed, a strange murmur rose from the crowd.
Everyone said, loud enough for the others to hear: "Look at the Emperor's new clothes. They're beautiful!"
"What a marvellous train!"
"And the colors! The colors of that beautiful fabric! I have never seen anything like it in my life!" They all tried to conceal their disappointment at not being able to see the clothes, and since nobody was willing to admit his own stupidity and incompetence, they all behaved as the two scoundrels had predicted.
A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.
"The Emperor is naked," he said.
"Fool!" his father reprimanded, running after him. "Don't talk nonsense!" He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy's remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:
"The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It's true!"
The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.
Amen to that, I am already salivating over the prospect of gutting one of these things for the graphics card, replacing the card with a cheap alternative, and giving the still serviceable carcass to my computer illiterate parents.
Wow! I expected you to flame me big time if you were going to respond at all. It pleases me that you took my reply in the spirit it was intended without taking personal offense. Thanks for the links, having watched the 700 Club on occasion I shudder to think at what I will find at these Baptist sites. The ignorance of your average person, American or otherwise, is breathtaking in it's scope and depth. The ignorance of others has a profound effect on my personal freedoms and liberties, and the ignorance of the zealously religious scares me because there is no room for my beliefs or philosophies according to their beliefs and worldview.
Two more things. One: at least for me, your point would have been more clear had you said "borderline - anarchist, liberal, and conservative philosophies." or something to that affect. Semantics is a tough thing sometimes... Two: I'll do you a "Christian" thing of good in exchange for evil and give you two urls that lead to uplifting sites rather than the depressing drivel I am likely to read at the links in your reply:O) http://www.macwilliams.com and http://www.capitalism.org though I think that you will likely be depressed or angered by some of what you find at either site, at least they display a glimmer of hope for those of us who care about individual freedom.
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." --Bertrand Russel
As scary as the notion might seem I think that we are better off taking individualism much further. I believe that an individual has the right to harm themselves up to and including their own death. An individual also has the right to make foolish or uninformed decisions. If you would like a more eloquent and clearer view on the matter of individualism try http://www.capitalism.org or http://www.macwilliams.com.
I disagree that you could cover all of the back doors and flaws in your views that the Slashdot community would find. If you could,I want
your secret and the formula for bottling it:0)
That is why I frequently read here and less frequently post. The diversity of opinions and articulation of ideas make Slashdot a great stone for sharpening your intellectual knife and honing your own opinions to a finer point. Still, the education that you gain in the writing of such a book as you suggest will benefit you personaly, and may benefit society by decreasing someone elses ignorance. Oh, and thanks for your support on my last post, though I don't seek out people of like mind it is nice to know that I am not alone in my views.
What I find interesting is that in a supposedly free country, a consensual activity like drug use is illegal. Same thing goes for prostitution or any other individual activity that society wrongly chooses to make it's business. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, we have to "protect the children". Silly me, and here I am selfishly wanting personal liberties and freedom.
You make a valid point until you drag the whole liberal versus conservative thing into the debate. Being a non-religious moderate, I say plague on both of your houses, but since you took up for the conservatives against the liberals I'll do a a little conservative bashing of my own to balance things out. Conservatives are a bunch of control freak blow-hards who wish to strangle free speech and truly free markets by advocating freedom and liberty for themselves at the expense of the less wealthy and unlike minded to their religious or economic beliefs. A conservative's idea of freedom is having the legal right to shut up and repress people of different religions and ideals while monopolizing resources in the name of laissez-faire capitalism and creating an aristocracy of wealth.
Oh, and I don't need Freenet to anonymously bash anyone. However, it does come in handy if I have something to say about a major corporation or wealthy individual with deep enough pockets to legally harass me into financial ruin, whether what I said was true, or I was legally and constitutionally entitled to say it.
Everyone knows that the real reason that cars that run on water and have beer for exhaust never caught on because the beer ends up skunking out real bad. It was just simply not economically feasible to make a car that would produce a fine draft quality beer. Then you have the whole American beer vs European beer which would mean extra tooling and expense, and that's not even counting the hundreds of different varieties of beer out there. As far as the plans being scrapped goes, please, give me a break! Here's a link to the plans if you don't believe me, htpp://www.runs_on_water_and_makes_beer.com
Let's see, $3300.00 for a cheap tv and cable every five years or $6000.00 for an expensive tv and cable every five years according to your math.
That makes for a difference of $2700.00. You have effectively doubled your expenditures on tv if you go the route of paying $3000.00 for a tv every five years. I can't justify the $50.00 a month for cable right now on top of my internet and extra dialup line, let alone justify the extravagance of a top of the line tv. I would be happy to take that money and save it for a something useful like a car or a years worth of rent. Even if I made more money I would have trouble justifying spending so much of it on something that does so little to improve the quality of my life or better me in any way. You do whatever you like with your six grand, I'll keep my $80.00 vcr and five year old $200.00 tv and be quite satisfied with the return on my investment.
I have been a certified PC technician for three years and I know more about computers than end users who have used them for several times longer.
Why? Because your average end user only knows how to use the bare minimum of a computer's or specific program's functions to do their job and nothing more. Some secretary or manager at Podunk Inc. who doesn't know how to open a program without a shortcut on their Windows desktop is not going to displace professional technicians or people in the know.
Legal, schmeegal! The truth that the government and most people don't seem to realize is that unenforceable laws are at their best worthless. At their worst they have a corrosive effect on the peoples respect for and power of the rule of law. A law is only as good as the governments ability to enforce it and the peoples willingness to obey it. What it boils down to is that the DMCA, UCITA, and most newer laws that restrain the free flow of information in this day and age are just bad laws that encourage civil disobedience. They will be either stricken from the books eventually or end up as laughably quaint as some legendary local ordinances like it being illegal to step on the cracks in the sidewalk, or that FLA law that says a man can't kiss his wife if he has bad breath.
On a more sobering note, bad laws like the anti-drug laws encourage the fleecing, criminalizing, and oppression of the poor while padding the pockets of the rich and corrupting the government. I may not be able to stop bad laws from being put on the books, but I won't obey them if I can get away with it.
Yeah, I remember that episode, and the series. It was definitely a step up from Star Trek on the Sci-Fi hardness scale along with better actors, acting, writing, and production. Like yourself I found the tentacle episode scary. The whole show was surreal and had interesting plot elements like the time that they landed on a planet with sentient plants. They inadvertently killed some of them on a survey mission and had to stand before a tribunal of pine trees filmed at an imposing angle. It's a show that would probably seem silly in retrospect, but I think that overall it would stand the test of time. Too bad I don't have cable and it isn't syndicated around here, as it is a show that I wouldn't mind revisting.
I have been boycotting music offered by RIAA member publishers for two years. Also, year after year my tv is increasingly becoming more of a dust collecter than a time waster. Life is too short to spend my precious time watching and listening to drivel while making a bunch of fascist fat cats rich.
Call it nitpicking, but as far as I know there is no law against sharing popular music unless it is done without the legitimate copyright holders consent. That is why the RIAA trying to shut down and subvert or charge a toll for all peer to peer networking is evil and un-American.
I found that the hornet gun works real well for those pesky "Floating Head Guys", that and the 357. When I start that level I make for the healing pool in the cave and then snipe the lightning shooting aliens with the crossbow, and of course the head guys with the hornet gun. If you want a little more variety and a faster pace I would strongly recommend the Opposing Forces Expansion pack. Watching your guy load the squid gun or use a tongue creature for a grappling hook gets funnier every time I see it.
Nah, the whole Elton John thing was just a brain-fart that I realized just as I hit the submit button. Yeah, you're right that I was probably thinking of Rocket man. It's cool of you to not kick a man when he's down.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I used the definition provided in a real estate law text book. It seemed to fit the situation and because I just recently completed the course, it was still fresh in my mind. Besides, to extend your analogy, the Kingees would be ruled by a Kingor;o)
IANAL, but I do know the basics of a contract. It has to have three basic elements to be valid.
1.)OFFER- In an offer there is a promise by a party to do something or not to do something. This must be something that persons are not already legally bound to do or not to do.
2.)ACCEPTANCE- The offer must be accepted by the offeree, at which point an agreement and thus a contract is formed.
3.)Consideration- The legal detriment bargained and promised for in exchange for legal benefit, by both parties, either orally or in writing, as required by the statute of frauds.
Now granted, there is allot more to contracts than the basic laymans explanation I give above. The best anyone in my state of ignorance regarding contract laws or Rambus's contracts in particular could manage under the circumstances is to make a wild 50/50 guess as to how the courts would intrepret them and whether the courts would decide they were valid and enforceable or invalid and void.
This is the kind of thing that makes speculating and investing allot like gambling. Knowledge of how this is all going to wash out in court is almost like knowing a winning lottery ticket number in advance. Either that or it could save a savvy investor the loss of a fortune. Too bad I'm not investor class, but hey, at least if Rambus loses I have a cheap and competetive supply of memory producers from which to choose for my next memory purchase;o)
The customer service numbers are 1-800-821-7250 and 1-800-595-9003. Both of these numbers will have a menu option that leads to Road Runner tech support in an expedient fashion.
While we are on the subject.... I have had excellent support from AOL-Time Warner's Road Runner service. The wait times for a knowledgeable and polite rep are negligible and they are willing to spend money in the form of free service to earn a customer's good will and make up for a genuine error on their own part. Although, I have heard that this wasn't always true for them, but I am only recently subscribed and can only speak for my experiences.
A couple of years ago I worked as a phone support rep for an outsourcing phone support company. Their whole attitude was about getting the call done as fast as possible; usually in under four minutes for questiions related to a certain SCSI card they supported, for example. The managers also tried to shift cost and blame onto customers who were often in the right. Such as telling someone who didn't even order the card to just ship it back. Well, I usually advocated for the customer in instances like this. If a company told me to ship a product back at my expense that I didn't even order, I'd tell them to get bent, and then I would keep it. Also, my managers loved to say "no", it didn't matter how reasonable a customers request, because our "real" customer was the card manufacturer or whom ever elses product we were handling. They didn't give the least bit of a crap about the end user. Because of the pressure to get calls done quick, most of the phone reps with whom I worked would pass complicated calls that they could otherwise handle to keep their call time down. Often, I would get a customer who had been told to hang up and call back a half dozen times. They would usually not be happy, and rightfully so.
Of course, let's not forget money, after all that's what drives these companies. From the cheap underhanded customer service policy I described above to the low pay and wretched working conditions for the phone reps, they have taken care of their financial interests.
"My guitar wants to kill your lawyer" --EvlPenguin
"My guitar (blade) sings for your blood, MORTAL, and by my dark masters it shall not be deniiied!" --Warlord of Blood, Diablo
To answer your question, none of them. Most of the executives and lawyers pushing lawsuits and lobbying congress for strict copyright laws have a very high opinion of themselves. Couple this with their firm, if misguided and warped concepts regarding Capitalism and free markets. Throw in an almost sociopathic self-centeredness along with justifications of their actions and attitudes through a social Darwinist perspective, and you have my amateur psychological opinion of what drives these people. These are the kind of people, were they in sales, who would eat their own young and sell their mother to make a deal.
Actually, in your example sentence you use the acronyms MPAA, RIAA, and NSPA as pejoratives. Of course it's also not necessarily the number of letters in a word or an acronym that creates negative connotations or denotations. A word or phrase becomes loaded above and beyond it's literal meaning depending on the general context with which it is used. To that end, it is safe to say that you are not alone in associating your contempt for the above organizations with their acronyms.
I agree with you 100%. Now, how do you convince your average American that not only is it wrong to stick your nose in other peoples business in consensual matters, but it is harmful to society and their own personal interests?
The Emperor's New Clothes
by Hans Christian Anderson
http://www.deoxy.org/emperors.htm
Once upon a time there lived a vain Emperor whose only worry in life was to dress in elegant clothes. He changed clothes almost every hour and loved to show them off to his people.
Word of the Emperor's refined habits spread over his kingdom and beyond. Two scoundrels who had heard of the Emperor's vanity decided to take advantage of it. They introduced themselves at the gates of the palace with a scheme in mind.
"We are two very good tailors and after many years of research we have invented an extraordinary method to weave a cloth so light and fine that it looks invisible. As a matter of fact it is invisible to anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its quality."
The chief of the guards heard the scoundrel's strange story and sent for the court chamberlain. The chamberlain notified the prime minister, who ran to the Emperor and disclosed the incredible news. The Emperor's curiosity got the better of him and he decided to see the two scoundrels.
"Besides being invisible, your Highness, this cloth will be woven in colors and patterns created especially for you." The emperor gave the two men a bag of gold coins in exchange for their promise to begin working on the fabric immediately.
"Just tell us what you need to get started and we'll give it to you." The two scoundrels asked for a loom, silk, gold thread and then pretended to begin working. The Emperor thought he had spent his money quite well: in addition to getting a new extraordinary suit, he would discover which of his subjects were ignorant and incompetent. A few days later, he called the old and wise prime minister, who was considered by everyone as a man with common sense.
"Go and see how the work is proceeding," the Emperor told him, "and come back to let me know."
The prime minister was welcomed by the two scoundrels.
"We're almost finished, but we need a lot more gold thread. Here, Excellency! Admire the colors, feel the softness!" The old man bent over the loom and tried to see the fabric that was not there. He felt cold sweat on his forehead.
"I can't see anything," he thought. "If I see nothing, that means I'm stupid! Or, worse, incompetent!" If the prime minister admitted that he didn't see anything, he would be discharged from his office.
"What a marvelous fabric, he said then. "I'll certainly tell the Emperor." The two scoundrels rubbed their hands gleefully. They had almost made it. More thread was requested to finish the work.
Finally, the Emperor received the announcement that the two tailors had come to take all the measurements needed to sew his new suit.
"Come in," the Emperor ordered. Even as they bowed, the two scoundrels pretended to be holding large roll of fabric.
"Here it is your Highness, the result of our labour," the scoundrels said. "We have worked night and day but, at last, the most beautiful fabric in the world is ready for you. Look at the colors and feel how fine it is." Of course the Emperor did not see any colors and could not feel any cloth between his fingers. He panicked and felt like fainting. But luckily the throne was right behind him and he sat down. But when he realized that no one could know that he did not see the fabric, he felt better. Nobody could find out he was stupid and incompetent. And the Emperor didn't know that everybody else around him thought and did the very same thing.
The farce continued as the two scoundrels had foreseen it. Once they had taken the measurements, the two began cutting the air with scissors while sewing with their needles an invisible cloth.
"Your Highness, you'll have to take off your clothes to try on your new ones." The two scoundrels draped the new clothes on him and then held up a mirror. The Emperor was embarrassed but since none of his bystanders were, he felt relieved.
"Yes, this is a beautiful suit and it looks very good on me," the Emperor said trying to look comfortable. "You've done a fine job."
"Your Majesty," the prime minister said, "we have a request for you. The people have found out about this extraordinary fabric and they are anxious to see you in your new suit." The Emperor was doubtful showing himself naked to the people, but then he abandoned his fears. After all, no one would know about it except the ignorant and the incompetent.
"All right," he said. "I will grant the people this privilege." He summoned his carriage and the ceremonial parade was formed. A group of dignitaries walked at the very front of the procession and anxiously scrutinized the faces of the people in the street. All the people had gathered in the main square, pushing and shoving to get a better look. An applause welcomed the regal procession. Everyone wanted to know how stupid or incompetent his or her neighbor was but, as the Emperor passed, a strange murmur rose from the crowd.
Everyone said, loud enough for the others to hear: "Look at the Emperor's new clothes. They're beautiful!"
"What a marvellous train!"
"And the colors! The colors of that beautiful fabric! I have never seen anything like it in my life!" They all tried to conceal their disappointment at not being able to see the clothes, and since nobody was willing to admit his own stupidity and incompetence, they all behaved as the two scoundrels had predicted.
A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.
"The Emperor is naked," he said.
"Fool!" his father reprimanded, running after him. "Don't talk nonsense!" He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy's remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:
"The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It's true!"
The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.
Amen to that, I am already salivating over the prospect of gutting one of these things for the graphics card, replacing the card with a cheap alternative, and giving the still serviceable carcass to my computer illiterate parents.
Wow! I expected you to flame me big time if you were going to respond at all. It pleases me that you took my reply in the spirit it was intended without taking personal offense. Thanks for the links, having watched the 700 Club on occasion I shudder to think at what I will find at these Baptist sites. The ignorance of your average person, American or otherwise, is breathtaking in it's scope and depth. The ignorance of others has a profound effect on my personal freedoms and liberties, and the ignorance of the zealously religious scares me because there is no room for my beliefs or philosophies according to their beliefs and worldview. Two more things. One: at least for me, your point would have been more clear had you said "borderline - anarchist, liberal, and conservative philosophies." or something to that affect. Semantics is a tough thing sometimes... Two: I'll do you a "Christian" thing of good in exchange for evil and give you two urls that lead to uplifting sites rather than the depressing drivel I am likely to read at the links in your reply:O) http://www.macwilliams.com and http://www.capitalism.org though I think that you will likely be depressed or angered by some of what you find at either site, at least they display a glimmer of hope for those of us who care about individual freedom. "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." --Bertrand Russel
As scary as the notion might seem I think that we are better off taking individualism much further. I believe that an individual has the right to harm themselves up to and including their own death. An individual also has the right to make foolish or uninformed decisions. If you would like a more eloquent and clearer view on the matter of individualism try http://www.capitalism.org or http://www.macwilliams.com. I disagree that you could cover all of the back doors and flaws in your views that the Slashdot community would find. If you could,I want your secret and the formula for bottling it:0) That is why I frequently read here and less frequently post. The diversity of opinions and articulation of ideas make Slashdot a great stone for sharpening your intellectual knife and honing your own opinions to a finer point. Still, the education that you gain in the writing of such a book as you suggest will benefit you personaly, and may benefit society by decreasing someone elses ignorance. Oh, and thanks for your support on my last post, though I don't seek out people of like mind it is nice to know that I am not alone in my views.
What I find interesting is that in a supposedly free country, a consensual activity like drug use is illegal. Same thing goes for prostitution or any other individual activity that society wrongly chooses to make it's business. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, we have to "protect the children". Silly me, and here I am selfishly wanting personal liberties and freedom.
You make a valid point until you drag the whole liberal versus conservative thing into the debate. Being a non-religious moderate, I say plague on both of your houses, but since you took up for the conservatives against the liberals I'll do a a little conservative bashing of my own to balance things out. Conservatives are a bunch of control freak blow-hards who wish to strangle free speech and truly free markets by advocating freedom and liberty for themselves at the expense of the less wealthy and unlike minded to their religious or economic beliefs. A conservative's idea of freedom is having the legal right to shut up and repress people of different religions and ideals while monopolizing resources in the name of laissez-faire capitalism and creating an aristocracy of wealth.
Oh, and I don't need Freenet to anonymously bash anyone. However, it does come in handy if I have something to say about a major corporation or wealthy individual with deep enough pockets to legally harass me into financial ruin, whether what I said was true, or I was legally and constitutionally entitled to say it.
Everyone knows that the real reason that cars that run on water and have beer for exhaust never caught on because the beer ends up skunking out real bad. It was just simply not economically feasible to make a car that would produce a fine draft quality beer. Then you have the whole American beer vs European beer which would mean extra tooling and expense, and that's not even counting the hundreds of different varieties of beer out there. As far as the plans being scrapped goes, please, give me a break! Here's a link to the plans if you don't believe me, htpp://www.runs_on_water_and_makes_beer.com
Let's see, $3300.00 for a cheap tv and cable every five years or $6000.00 for an expensive tv and cable every five years according to your math. That makes for a difference of $2700.00. You have effectively doubled your expenditures on tv if you go the route of paying $3000.00 for a tv every five years. I can't justify the $50.00 a month for cable right now on top of my internet and extra dialup line, let alone justify the extravagance of a top of the line tv. I would be happy to take that money and save it for a something useful like a car or a years worth of rent. Even if I made more money I would have trouble justifying spending so much of it on something that does so little to improve the quality of my life or better me in any way. You do whatever you like with your six grand, I'll keep my $80.00 vcr and five year old $200.00 tv and be quite satisfied with the return on my investment.
I have been a certified PC technician for three years and I know more about computers than end users who have used them for several times longer. Why? Because your average end user only knows how to use the bare minimum of a computer's or specific program's functions to do their job and nothing more. Some secretary or manager at Podunk Inc. who doesn't know how to open a program without a shortcut on their Windows desktop is not going to displace professional technicians or people in the know.
Legal, schmeegal! The truth that the government and most people don't seem to realize is that unenforceable laws are at their best worthless. At their worst they have a corrosive effect on the peoples respect for and power of the rule of law. A law is only as good as the governments ability to enforce it and the peoples willingness to obey it. What it boils down to is that the DMCA, UCITA, and most newer laws that restrain the free flow of information in this day and age are just bad laws that encourage civil disobedience. They will be either stricken from the books eventually or end up as laughably quaint as some legendary local ordinances like it being illegal to step on the cracks in the sidewalk, or that FLA law that says a man can't kiss his wife if he has bad breath.
On a more sobering note, bad laws like the anti-drug laws encourage the fleecing, criminalizing, and oppression of the poor while padding the pockets of the rich and corrupting the government. I may not be able to stop bad laws from being put on the books, but I won't obey them if I can get away with it.
Yeah, I remember that episode, and the series. It was definitely a step up from Star Trek on the Sci-Fi hardness scale along with better actors, acting, writing, and production. Like yourself I found the tentacle episode scary. The whole show was surreal and had interesting plot elements like the time that they landed on a planet with sentient plants. They inadvertently killed some of them on a survey mission and had to stand before a tribunal of pine trees filmed at an imposing angle. It's a show that would probably seem silly in retrospect, but I think that overall it would stand the test of time. Too bad I don't have cable and it isn't syndicated around here, as it is a show that I wouldn't mind revisting.
I have been boycotting music offered by RIAA member publishers for two years. Also, year after year my tv is increasingly becoming more of a dust collecter than a time waster. Life is too short to spend my precious time watching and listening to drivel while making a bunch of fascist fat cats rich.
Call it nitpicking, but as far as I know there is no law against sharing popular music unless it is done without the legitimate copyright holders consent. That is why the RIAA trying to shut down and subvert or charge a toll for all peer to peer networking is evil and un-American.
I found that the hornet gun works real well for those pesky "Floating Head Guys", that and the 357. When I start that level I make for the healing pool in the cave and then snipe the lightning shooting aliens with the crossbow, and of course the head guys with the hornet gun. If you want a little more variety and a faster pace I would strongly recommend the Opposing Forces Expansion pack. Watching your guy load the squid gun or use a tongue creature for a grappling hook gets funnier every time I see it.
Nah, the whole Elton John thing was just a brain-fart that I realized just as I hit the submit button. Yeah, you're right that I was probably thinking of Rocket man. It's cool of you to not kick a man when he's down.
Today is just not a good day to post for me.