That said, I agree that it's absurd that we can even think of locking people up for life for copying bits. There are easier and more humane ways to go about this. For example, probation, being forbidden to own/operate a computer, etc.
Life without a computer? I think I'd rather have the chair.
Seriously, my internet access at home has been out for two weeks and I'm ready for my first strike right now.
I am not a scientist, but there is no guarantee that this particular strain of HIV can exist without that sugar molecule, or that evolution will occur fast enough to save the species. For example, this may be like removing oxygen from a human environment. Sure, we may one day evolve the ability to exist on another common chemical, but we could never do it in time, if a natural catastrophe should strike.
This could be an excellent argument for organizations trying to distribute AIDs drugs in third world nations (once they get their hands on this one), since the practice of curing only those who can afford it would simply allow the virus to exist long enough to evolve (if possible), whereas curing everybody could could make it go the way of polio and small-pox.
But, I reiterate. I am not a scientist, so the next person to read this may point out where I am wrong.
Man is not the most fierce, or the fastest, or the most capable at hiding. We are not as efficient as the plants (photosynthesis is so much easier than having to kill other organisms). The only things we really have going for us are our ability to form plans, strategies, to work together to meet common goals, and to take up for others, so that we, as a collective can have a higher survival rate.
It is easy to tell someone these things, but making him or her really believe it, so much so that said person is willing to put aside his or her own selfishness for the good of society, is a little more difficult. The desire to be part of a collective, to conform to their ways, and to believe that we are serving something greater than ourselves is a pretty powerful behavior.
I have never voted. No party respects the values of equality, freedom and democracy that I have.
But some are closer than others, right? If so, then couldn't people push those politicians closer to their view by voting for the ones with the most similar stance? To turn it around, why should a politician care what you think if you're just going to sit at home on election day?
That brings up a good point. If there were an "abstain" column, then you could show your interest in politics by participating, but also show your disdain for the available candidates, by choosing neither of them.
There is an "abstain" column. It's labelled "Nader"
This may be a noob question, but why can't electric cars run on a system (especially now), where gas stations become changing stations, like what is often done with propane? We show up, replace an existing battery (which would have to be made easier to replace, I admit), with a freshly charged battery and pay the station for the service.
others think it is bouncing through an endless series of big bangs and big crunches.
Doesn't the current evidence show that all objects are moving away from the center of the universe at a rate of speed which is increasing, rather than decreasing? If so, then doesn't this mean that the universe will never do the "big crunch"?
Pretending that they have rights that they do not and treating this nonsense in their meaningless EULA as if it were even sane is just fucking retarded.
In the case of dipshit vs. fucknut, the if it were even sane it's just fucking retarded defense was overturned. Check your precedents, please.
BTW, I'm not calling you a dipshit or a fucknut. I just thought it would be a funny name for a case.
All evidence indicates "he" didn't evolve "into us". If anything, it was the opposite.
Well, thank you for providing a dignified response. You're just pissed off at the world aren't you? You should really calm down. relax, go to the park, feed some ducks, avoid the temptation to call them all "retards", and then go home. You'll feel a little better.
And, yes, you are right about one thing. I did get my facts wrong. "He", "she" or "it" is suspected to have evolved from "us". I'm sure evangelicals wouldn't possibly dispute that.
"As an aside, I'm also quite interested to see what the bible-thumpers eventually come to make of all of this." Bible thumpers will make of it what they make of every instance of evolution: God's hand at work. A 3 foot (or whatever it is) tall homonid isn't going to change their minds, given that there are many examples of evolution right in front of their eyes that they refuse to accept.
Well, one of the more the mainstream evangelical views (among people not yelling at each other on news networks) is that time is relative to god, and, therefore, it is possible that by 7 days, the Bible meant "7 eras of unknown duration" (seem a little like "the meaning of the word 'is'" to me, but o.k.). This view can be used to justify belief both in God, and Dinosaurs, as well as hobbits. Someone else posted that if "The Hobbit" is a missing link, then we just have to find the next missing link. Good call. That's exactly what many mainstream evangelicals will claim. They will say "that's nice. You did all your laboratory hoopajoob and said that he's similar, but how do you know he evolved into us? Well, prove it by finding the missing link between him and us."
The nuttier view is that either god or the devil buried "the Hobbit", along with all kinds of other half-decayed bones, in the earth, on the day it was created, and that either god or the devil created beams of light that appeared to have hit an object millions of light years away, millions of light years ago, and were in mid transit to earth. I've never met anyone in person who could explain that view. The nuttiest Christian I ever met would just get pissed off and claim that the evidence was all made up and that evolution was all a big conspiracy.
Disabling the entire site with (apparently) minimal investigation is overreaction, plain and simple. That quote from Jones, where they refused to rule out taking down an entire news site to block access to one story -- or even one comment -- is telling.
Wow, you interpretted that quote completely different from most of us. (I assume) that most of us interpretted it as "We reserve the right to screw our customers, as long as screwing that particular customer is the most convenient course of action for us"
This is a political ploy by Telecoms to push governments into subsidizing broadband. It is trolling, just like "You are not intelligent if you don't use vi/java/rails/xml/etc."
It's more like DELL saying you're not intelligent if you don't own a computer. There may be a link between intelligence and the ownership of research material, and the internet is probably the best research tool we have today. Lawyers and reporters use Lexis-Nexus because written formats cannot keep up with the speed of change, and most other fields have some online research mediums, or journals, that are more convenient than their written counterparts.
With that having been said, DELL probably would have ulterior motives, but that doesn't diminish the previous point. Also, we couldn't be sure that the computerist was smarter than someone who owns very little technology, but, statistically speaking, there probably is a correlation, and when you're discussing social trends, the correlation is much more important than the possibility of an exception.
People define thoughtcrimes to make their jobs easier because it doesn't force them to debate items in question (from Holocaust denial to questioning state history to global warming).
But what about items that are only in question if you don't want to do the research, or items that are taken seriously only by laymen, conspiracy theorists, and opportunists? If we have evidence that the holocaust happened, then is it such a terrible thing for (hypothetically) historians to not recognize holocaust deniers as historians?
Along these same lines, isn't it o.k. for the AMA to revoke medical licenses from doctors who tell their patients that faith healing is an equally effective alternative to real medicine?
The real issues are, A). "Is there enough evidence among climatologists to justify this point", and B). "Is this the best thing to do politically". This would simply lend credibility to those who want to claim that scientists are closed minded people who are just pushing their own ideology (i.e. conspiracy theorists). A better measure would be to produce a well-documented wiki that explains global warming theories, criticisms, rebuttals, as well as statistics on how many climatologists believe it is happening, and that it is man-made. Then scientists can go on media sources and say "x percent of climatologists believe this, based on the evidence. Go to this website for details..."
As much as I dislike the current way of patent laws, wouldn't this be an example of why patent laws are good? If this drug could be patented, pfizer would have jumped all over it by now.
The GP suggested that it made him mad that the rich make a lot of money and implied that if he could get a percentage of that money, everything would better for him. In other words, take from the rich and give to the poor. I guess you're right. It's socialism.
You've been reading Ann Coulter, haven't you? There is a middle ground between socialism/communism, and some people complaining about the the amount of disparity between the rich and the poor, in this country, alone. We weren't communists twenty years ago, but the disparity wasn't as bad as then it is now. It was nowhere near as bad in the 1950's, or at any other time in America's history. So, there must be a middle ground between the average CEO pulling in 200 times what the average employee makes, and communism. America has spent it's entire histroy in that middle ground, and most of the world, not counting Brazil, Mexico, and China, is in that middle ground now.
Yes, it may be a little whiny to complain about being a poor person, in the richest nation on Earth, when enjoying privileges that are unheard of to the middle class in other countries, but the term "fair wage" is relative to what is possible, and to what others are earning off of your labor. So, someone who earns 200 times what you earn is not working 200 times harder. If they were, they'd have died from exhaustion long ago. They are not 200 times smarter. If they were, they wouldn't be spending their money on fountains that urinate Vodka. So, how can it be justified in a system where money is supposed to be earned?
Granted, one's time should be on an escalating scale. Someone who works 80 hours a week should get paid more than twice that of someone who works forty hours, because they are sacrificing so much of what is important to them. For the sake of intellectual honesty, I feel the need to point that out, but do CEOs really work that much more than factory workers. If given the opportunity to receive a 56 million dollar bonus, most factory workers would gladly work eighty hour weeks every day for a year (and then retire)
I hope I wasn't flaming on any part of this. I feel pretty passionate about the issue and get annoyed when someone says that it is the same as communism, because I feel passionate about it. It bugs the hell out of me to think that people like Paris Hilton and George W. Bush will have opportunity after opportunity, and, no matter how many times they screw things up, will receive a second chance, when most of us will have to work our entire lives in hopes of one day getting a shot at what was given to them as a graduation present.
Hold on. Nobody is suggesting that we ditch the whole money idea and turn to communism. That is a strawman argument.
As for the taxes part, that asks the listener to ignore the plight of someone who works hard for little income, and feel sympathy for someone who has an excessive amount of money, but must give away a larger-than-average portion of it. Now if we are to feel no sympathy for people who have no money, than how do we feel sympathy for people who are incredibly well-off, but could have more.
If all comes down to what you believe about human nature. Roughly speaking, some people believe that poor people are poor because they are lazy and violent, while others believe that people are poor because they don't have opportunities available to them, so they turn to violence as an effective, but not ideal, way of problem solving in their miserable lives.
And yet, very few people will look at how changes in policy in forgeign cultures affect things. We act as if we live in this vacuum where there is no world outside of ourselves, so there is no way we can evaluate our way of doing x or y by looking at how other countries have tackled the same problem and whether their strategy worked or failed.
If only political science were more science and less politics...
This may be related to the talking computer thing, but how about how that, in every sci-fi series, there is always a scene where people have to do something really important (initiate or deactivate self-destruct, hand over controls to some stranger, shut-down life support), and the scene requires at least two people to verbally give the most high-priority password they have.
They literally shout it out across the room, sometimes, so that anyone with a cheap recorder can save it for future use. And, it's always something easy like "username: walker, password: texas ranger"
It also makes a big difference, because, if the RIAA decides to sue over some infringement, real or imagined, they may find that I store my media files on a shared folder. The jury may or may not be saavy enough to realize that since my firewall block SMB traffic, that the only people who could illegally download from me are my technophobic mom, and my fiance, neither of whom own a computer (meaning they would have to use either my home pc or my laptop to steal my MP3s, but the fact that it can be done via a network share somehow makes me more of a threat than if the mp3s were simply on the computer.)
But, I'm getting off point. The point is that, once you start saying x = y and y=z, then you run into situations where it doesn't matter if anyone is actually breaking the law. There's a network involved, so it's illegal. Reminds me of a law in Tennessee. You have to provide proof of insurance when a cop pulls you over. That SHOULD be a violation of the "burden of proof". But the law considers it required paperwork, meaning that it doesn't matter if you actually have insurance, if you don't have that card on you, you get fined.
Slashdot Mirror
Life without a computer? I think I'd rather have the chair.
Seriously, my internet access at home has been out for two weeks and I'm ready for my first strike right now.
I am not a scientist, but there is no guarantee that this particular strain of HIV can exist without that sugar molecule, or that evolution will occur fast enough to save the species. For example, this may be like removing oxygen from a human environment. Sure, we may one day evolve the ability to exist on another common chemical, but we could never do it in time, if a natural catastrophe should strike.
This could be an excellent argument for organizations trying to distribute AIDs drugs in third world nations (once they get their hands on this one), since the practice of curing only those who can afford it would simply allow the virus to exist long enough to evolve (if possible), whereas curing everybody could could make it go the way of polio and small-pox.
But, I reiterate. I am not a scientist, so the next person to read this may point out where I am wrong.
Man is not the most fierce, or the fastest, or the most capable at hiding. We are not as efficient as the plants (photosynthesis is so much easier than having to kill other organisms). The only things we really have going for us are our ability to form plans, strategies, to work together to meet common goals, and to take up for others, so that we, as a collective can have a higher survival rate.
It is easy to tell someone these things, but making him or her really believe it, so much so that said person is willing to put aside his or her own selfishness for the good of society, is a little more difficult. The desire to be part of a collective, to conform to their ways, and to believe that we are serving something greater than ourselves is a pretty powerful behavior.
I don't want to see "Snakes on the Defiant"
Starring Will Smith as Cisco, Macaulay Culkin as quark, and Wilmer Valderrama as Dr. Bashir
But some are closer than others, right? If so, then couldn't people push those politicians closer to their view by voting for the ones with the most similar stance? To turn it around, why should a politician care what you think if you're just going to sit at home on election day?
There is an "abstain" column. It's labelled "Nader"
This may be a noob question, but why can't electric cars run on a system (especially now), where gas stations become changing stations, like what is often done with propane? We show up, replace an existing battery (which would have to be made easier to replace, I admit), with a freshly charged battery and pay the station for the service.
Doesn't the current evidence show that all objects are moving away from the center of the universe at a rate of speed which is increasing, rather than decreasing? If so, then doesn't this mean that the universe will never do the "big crunch"?
In the case of dipshit vs. fucknut, the if it were even sane it's just fucking retarded defense was overturned. Check your precedents, please.
BTW, I'm not calling you a dipshit or a fucknut. I just thought it would be a funny name for a case.
We should be paying about 4 grand for a new dell?
Otherwise they could simply claim it cures cancer and market it as an herbal remedy*.
* This statement not approved by the FDA
Well, thank you for providing a dignified response. You're just pissed off at the world aren't you? You should really calm down. relax, go to the park, feed some ducks, avoid the temptation to call them all "retards", and then go home. You'll feel a little better.
And, yes, you are right about one thing. I did get my facts wrong. "He", "she" or "it" is suspected to have evolved from "us". I'm sure evangelicals wouldn't possibly dispute that.
Well, one of the more the mainstream evangelical views (among people not yelling at each other on news networks) is that time is relative to god, and, therefore, it is possible that by 7 days, the Bible meant "7 eras of unknown duration" (seem a little like "the meaning of the word 'is'" to me, but o.k.). This view can be used to justify belief both in God, and Dinosaurs, as well as hobbits. Someone else posted that if "The Hobbit" is a missing link, then we just have to find the next missing link. Good call. That's exactly what many mainstream evangelicals will claim. They will say "that's nice. You did all your laboratory hoopajoob and said that he's similar, but how do you know he evolved into us? Well, prove it by finding the missing link between him and us."
The nuttier view is that either god or the devil buried "the Hobbit", along with all kinds of other half-decayed bones, in the earth, on the day it was created, and that either god or the devil created beams of light that appeared to have hit an object millions of light years away, millions of light years ago, and were in mid transit to earth. I've never met anyone in person who could explain that view. The nuttiest Christian I ever met would just get pissed off and claim that the evidence was all made up and that evolution was all a big conspiracy.
Wow, you interpretted that quote completely different from most of us. (I assume) that most of us interpretted it as "We reserve the right to screw our customers, as long as screwing that particular customer is the most convenient course of action for us"
It's more like DELL saying you're not intelligent if you don't own a computer. There may be a link between intelligence and the ownership of research material, and the internet is probably the best research tool we have today. Lawyers and reporters use Lexis-Nexus because written formats cannot keep up with the speed of change, and most other fields have some online research mediums, or journals, that are more convenient than their written counterparts.
With that having been said, DELL probably would have ulterior motives, but that doesn't diminish the previous point. Also, we couldn't be sure that the computerist was smarter than someone who owns very little technology, but, statistically speaking, there probably is a correlation, and when you're discussing social trends, the correlation is much more important than the possibility of an exception.
But what about items that are only in question if you don't want to do the research, or items that are taken seriously only by laymen, conspiracy theorists, and opportunists? If we have evidence that the holocaust happened, then is it such a terrible thing for (hypothetically) historians to not recognize holocaust deniers as historians?
Along these same lines, isn't it o.k. for the AMA to revoke medical licenses from doctors who tell their patients that faith healing is an equally effective alternative to real medicine?
The real issues are, A). "Is there enough evidence among climatologists to justify this point", and B). "Is this the best thing to do politically". This would simply lend credibility to those who want to claim that scientists are closed minded people who are just pushing their own ideology (i.e. conspiracy theorists). A better measure would be to produce a well-documented wiki that explains global warming theories, criticisms, rebuttals, as well as statistics on how many climatologists believe it is happening, and that it is man-made. Then scientists can go on media sources and say "x percent of climatologists believe this, based on the evidence. Go to this website for details..."
As much as I dislike the current way of patent laws, wouldn't this be an example of why patent laws are good? If this drug could be patented, pfizer would have jumped all over it by now.
You've been reading Ann Coulter, haven't you? There is a middle ground between socialism/communism, and some people complaining about the the amount of disparity between the rich and the poor, in this country, alone. We weren't communists twenty years ago, but the disparity wasn't as bad as then it is now. It was nowhere near as bad in the 1950's, or at any other time in America's history. So, there must be a middle ground between the average CEO pulling in 200 times what the average employee makes, and communism. America has spent it's entire histroy in that middle ground, and most of the world, not counting Brazil, Mexico, and China, is in that middle ground now.
Yes, it may be a little whiny to complain about being a poor person, in the richest nation on Earth, when enjoying privileges that are unheard of to the middle class in other countries, but the term "fair wage" is relative to what is possible, and to what others are earning off of your labor. So, someone who earns 200 times what you earn is not working 200 times harder. If they were, they'd have died from exhaustion long ago. They are not 200 times smarter. If they were, they wouldn't be spending their money on fountains that urinate Vodka. So, how can it be justified in a system where money is supposed to be earned?
Granted, one's time should be on an escalating scale. Someone who works 80 hours a week should get paid more than twice that of someone who works forty hours, because they are sacrificing so much of what is important to them. For the sake of intellectual honesty, I feel the need to point that out, but do CEOs really work that much more than factory workers. If given the opportunity to receive a 56 million dollar bonus, most factory workers would gladly work eighty hour weeks every day for a year (and then retire)
I hope I wasn't flaming on any part of this. I feel pretty passionate about the issue and get annoyed when someone says that it is the same as communism, because I feel passionate about it. It bugs the hell out of me to think that people like Paris Hilton and George W. Bush will have opportunity after opportunity, and, no matter how many times they screw things up, will receive a second chance, when most of us will have to work our entire lives in hopes of one day getting a shot at what was given to them as a graduation present.
Hold on. Nobody is suggesting that we ditch the whole money idea and turn to communism. That is a strawman argument.
As for the taxes part, that asks the listener to ignore the plight of someone who works hard for little income, and feel sympathy for someone who has an excessive amount of money, but must give away a larger-than-average portion of it. Now if we are to feel no sympathy for people who have no money, than how do we feel sympathy for people who are incredibly well-off, but could have more.
And yet, very few people will look at how changes in policy in forgeign cultures affect things. We act as if we live in this vacuum where there is no world outside of ourselves, so there is no way we can evaluate our way of doing x or y by looking at how other countries have tackled the same problem and whether their strategy worked or failed.
If only political science were more science and less politics...
Yeah, the last time the president was in charge of interpreting laws, our military wore red and the president's official title was "king"
This may be related to the talking computer thing, but how about how that, in every sci-fi series, there is always a scene where people have to do something really important (initiate or deactivate self-destruct, hand over controls to some stranger, shut-down life support), and the scene requires at least two people to verbally give the most high-priority password they have.
They literally shout it out across the room, sometimes, so that anyone with a cheap recorder can save it for future use. And, it's always something easy like "username: walker, password: texas ranger"
It also makes a big difference, because, if the RIAA decides to sue over some infringement, real or imagined, they may find that I store my media files on a shared folder. The jury may or may not be saavy enough to realize that since my firewall block SMB traffic, that the only people who could illegally download from me are my technophobic mom, and my fiance, neither of whom own a computer (meaning they would have to use either my home pc or my laptop to steal my MP3s, but the fact that it can be done via a network share somehow makes me more of a threat than if the mp3s were simply on the computer.)
But, I'm getting off point. The point is that, once you start saying x = y and y=z, then you run into situations where it doesn't matter if anyone is actually breaking the law. There's a network involved, so it's illegal. Reminds me of a law in Tennessee. You have to provide proof of insurance when a cop pulls you over. That SHOULD be a violation of the "burden of proof". But the law considers it required paperwork, meaning that it doesn't matter if you actually have insurance, if you don't have that card on you, you get fined.
Then why are so many diseases sexually transmitted?