Desires for those of the same sex are found everywhere in nature. Take a good hard look at the animal kingdom without the blinders of prejudice and homosexuality is all over the place.
Putting millions of your own species to death deliberately...not so much.
As for pedophiles, yes, they exist, and there's not a whole lot they can do about their desires. The main difference is that civilized societies recognize that contrary to homosexual love between willing willing adults, sexuality between an adult and a child is not permitted on account of the child not being able to consent.
If there is a reasonable case to be made that in order for justice to be done, an individual's privacy needs to be invaded, then there is this funny thing called the Judiciary that can authorize it.
Judges can tell you to cough up your password, not Principals.
The amount of CO2 produced by the burning of food in human bodies is negligible compared to other sources.
Just compare the amount of calories it requires to keep your body running, breathing and thinking to the amount it takes a motor vehicle to propel itself forward from to 70 mph.
I agree, there are still many things we do not know about gravity and how it does what it does.
However, there is one thing about gravity one could say the scientific community is relatively certain about, and that is that it is there.
Which is a shame really, because maybe otherwise folks that bring up this argument could stop believing in it and would just float off the goddamn planet.
If one compares the amounts of money being thrown around during election season, then yes, compared to the US the EU is a bunch of small children playing at politics when it comes to corruption.
The big difference is that effectively corruption has been legalized/formalized in the US and corporations have been transformed into some sort of super-citizens that have all the rights (and then some) but almost none of the obligations of a regular citizen.
Stephen Colbert has done an excellent job taking the whole SuperPAC business to its logical extremes to show just how silly it is. Unfortunately the kind of people that think Colbert has a point are pinko commie socialists hellbent on desecrating the graves of the Founding Fathers anyway.
Doesn't make the sentence any less correct. He'll be exceeding the speed of sound (or so we think/hope), but by a relatively small margin. If he were going 2000 miles per hour he'd exceed the speed of sound as well, wouldn't he?
Oh, great. Now for the rest of the day I'm stuck with an image of electrons happily ice skating around on a plate of graphene...at the speed of light no less.
Won't someone please think of the people with visual imaginations?
Contrary to other kinds of DRM, Steam also provides advantages. In the case of Skyrim, any mods you may have installed get checked automatically for updates, and copies of savegames are kept in the cloud so you can play the same game on multiple machines.
When your internet connection goes down, it won't interrupt gameplay in any way, and it'll take care of synchronizing stored gamedata later on.
So yes, Steam is a form of DRM, but it is really quite mild, it is compensated by a lot of advantages, and it has made the necessity of having some sort of shiny spinning noise-making disc in the computer obsolete. In my book that more than makes up for it.
What ever happened to people doing good things without doing so in the only way that ensures THEY get credit. What we need are more "do-gooders" and less "talkers-about-doing-good".
Oh, there's tons of these people out there. You might want to step back just a bit before suggesting running for office though, in order to avoid getting their vomit all over your shoes.
So long as we expect our politicians to be filthy whores, that is exactly what we'll get, and decent people won't have anything to do with them.
How, except perhaps for the timing, is this any different from the blatant lies and misinformation that are the hallmark of US election season?
There are already laws for libel and slander on the books that handle how these cases are dealt with between private citizens, is there really any point in making them criminal offenses?
One of the reasons the US grew so powerful was its blatant disregard for intellectual property in the old world. And now, many years later, as the US is in decline, guess which other growing nation doesn't give a flying fuck about what the US thinks about intellectual property.
I guess 50 years from now the US and Europe will be on the same side trying to fight off Intellectual Property laws being crammed down our throats by the Chinese. Assuming, of course, they need to resort to such silly things as laws to make their point and don't just call in their loans.
Sorry, but unless I manage to get an *actual* real life Mega Pulse Laser II and manage to use that to convince someone to hand over his Nightmare...I reckon I'm in the clear..
Because a judge signs a piece of paper saying they have to, following claims by a district attorney that tools used in a crime were obtained through Sourceforge.
Buying a gun is not a crime either, but when it's used in a robbery they will try to find out who bought it.
And if the government were just doing this to ensure the future safety and freedom of it constituents, that could be arguable a good thing.
However, like *any* institution since the dawn of time, its first and foremost interest seems to be looking after itself, with its official job a distant second.
Up next, whistleblowers and people to openly critical of the DHS actively conspiring to overthrow the US government. Brave DHS agents manage to diffuse the plot just in time. Conspirators never heard from again.
I'd pay good money for video footage of a judge explaining in single-syllable words to a lawyer the concept of Trias Politica and kindly referring his clients to the legislative branch.
But still... we can appreciate Synerg1y's point. A pirated copy of a game is usually more convenient than a legitimate one.
In the case of Steam I'd disagree, I find Steam keeping a backup copy of both the game itself as well as my savegames massively useful, especially since I game on both a desktop and a laptop from physically different locations. Being able to fire up my laptop in a completely different country, installing a game without hassle and finding my savegames ready to pick up where I left off is a massive plus in my book.
You can tell other people (and companies are groups of people) what they should do when it's your money they're spending.
Ehmm, newsflash, that *IS* my money. IP law is just that, a set of laws. Written by public servants, upheld by public servants, judged by public servants. And if We, the People decide the law should be different, then it has to change. That might get us into a boatload of trouble with other countries and make it impossible to do business in ours, but it should still be our decision to make.
As voting members of a democracy, we can decide it is worthwhile to give inventors/creators an extra incentive, and we can just as well decide that it is doing more harm than good, and needs to be changed or abolished.
Slashdot Mirror
Desires for those of the same sex are found everywhere in nature. Take a good hard look at the animal kingdom without the blinders of prejudice and homosexuality is all over the place.
Putting millions of your own species to death deliberately...not so much.
As for pedophiles, yes, they exist, and there's not a whole lot they can do about their desires. The main difference is that civilized societies recognize that contrary to homosexual love between willing willing adults, sexuality between an adult and a child is not permitted on account of the child not being able to consent.
I'll let you get back to your homophobia now.
Now, now, don't go and blame the poor deity for the sheer stupidity of its followers.
Homo sapiens is perfectly capable of creating a hell of its own, no need to drag fictional characters into the mix.
A young man was shot and killed while bearing only a can of iced tea and a bag of skittles.
And sporting a hoodie. Don't forget the hoodie.
The school district had reasonable suspicion.
If there is a reasonable case to be made that in order for justice to be done, an individual's privacy needs to be invaded, then there is this funny thing called the Judiciary that can authorize it.
Judges can tell you to cough up your password, not Principals.
The amount of CO2 produced by the burning of food in human bodies is negligible compared to other sources.
Just compare the amount of calories it requires to keep your body running, breathing and thinking to the amount it takes a motor vehicle to propel itself forward from to 70 mph.
Class warfare!
They're called "job creators" now, get with the program!
I agree, there are still many things we do not know about gravity and how it does what it does.
However, there is one thing about gravity one could say the scientific community is relatively certain about, and that is that it is there.
Which is a shame really, because maybe otherwise folks that bring up this argument could stop believing in it and would just float off the goddamn planet.
If one compares the amounts of money being thrown around during election season, then yes, compared to the US the EU is a bunch of small children playing at politics when it comes to corruption.
The big difference is that effectively corruption has been legalized/formalized in the US and corporations have been transformed into some sort of super-citizens that have all the rights (and then some) but almost none of the obligations of a regular citizen.
Stephen Colbert has done an excellent job taking the whole SuperPAC business to its logical extremes to show just how silly it is. Unfortunately the kind of people that think Colbert has a point are pinko commie socialists hellbent on desecrating the graves of the Founding Fathers anyway.
Doesn't make the sentence any less correct. He'll be exceeding the speed of sound (or so we think/hope), but by a relatively small margin. If he were going 2000 miles per hour he'd exceed the speed of sound as well, wouldn't he?
Oh, great. Now for the rest of the day I'm stuck with an image of electrons happily ice skating around on a plate of graphene...at the speed of light no less.
Won't someone please think of the people with visual imaginations?
Me not being able to tell whether this is satire or honest opinion scares the crap out of me...
So in astrodynamics, the only way to win is...not to play?
Interesting...
For the record, a 5-second Google search reveals that these laws were mostly revoked in France in 1999.
Speaking from personal experience, any encrypted protocols an end-user might want to use are fully available.
Contrary to other kinds of DRM, Steam also provides advantages. In the case of Skyrim, any mods you may have installed get checked automatically for updates, and copies of savegames are kept in the cloud so you can play the same game on multiple machines.
When your internet connection goes down, it won't interrupt gameplay in any way, and it'll take care of synchronizing stored gamedata later on.
So yes, Steam is a form of DRM, but it is really quite mild, it is compensated by a lot of advantages, and it has made the necessity of having some sort of shiny spinning noise-making disc in the computer obsolete. In my book that more than makes up for it.
What ever happened to people doing good things without doing so in the only way that ensures THEY get credit. What we need are more "do-gooders" and less "talkers-about-doing-good".
Oh, there's tons of these people out there. You might want to step back just a bit before suggesting running for office though, in order to avoid getting their vomit all over your shoes.
So long as we expect our politicians to be filthy whores, that is exactly what we'll get, and decent people won't have anything to do with them.
How, except perhaps for the timing, is this any different from the blatant lies and misinformation that are the hallmark of US election season?
There are already laws for libel and slander on the books that handle how these cases are dealt with between private citizens, is there really any point in making them criminal offenses?
If you have to brake sharply often, that means you approach *potentially* dangerous situations at too high a pace.
Once or twice is just an incident, but a consistent pattern of heavy braking does indeed indicate bad driving.
One of the reasons the US grew so powerful was its blatant disregard for intellectual property in the old world. And now, many years later, as the US is in decline, guess which other growing nation doesn't give a flying fuck about what the US thinks about intellectual property.
I guess 50 years from now the US and Europe will be on the same side trying to fight off Intellectual Property laws being crammed down our throats by the Chinese. Assuming, of course, they need to resort to such silly things as laws to make their point and don't just call in their loans.
Sorry, but unless I manage to get an *actual* real life Mega Pulse Laser II and manage to use that to convince someone to hand over his Nightmare...I reckon I'm in the clear..
And yes, I'm dutch ;-)
Because a judge signs a piece of paper saying they have to, following claims by a district attorney that tools used in a crime were obtained through Sourceforge.
Buying a gun is not a crime either, but when it's used in a robbery they will try to find out who bought it.
And the government, in a democracy at least, is a direct extension of "We, the People".
Shutting other people up is hardly ever a good idea. Much better to make them face the consequences instead.
And if the government were just doing this to ensure the future safety and freedom of it constituents, that could be arguable a good thing.
However, like *any* institution since the dawn of time, its first and foremost interest seems to be looking after itself, with its official job a distant second.
Up next, whistleblowers and people to openly critical of the DHS actively conspiring to overthrow the US government. Brave DHS agents manage to diffuse the plot just in time. Conspirators never heard from again.
Oh, that would just be awesome.
I'd pay good money for video footage of a judge explaining in single-syllable words to a lawyer the concept of Trias Politica and kindly referring his clients to the legislative branch.
But still... we can appreciate Synerg1y's point. A pirated copy of a game is usually more convenient than a legitimate one.
In the case of Steam I'd disagree, I find Steam keeping a backup copy of both the game itself as well as my savegames massively useful, especially since I game on both a desktop and a laptop from physically different locations. Being able to fire up my laptop in a completely different country, installing a game without hassle and finding my savegames ready to pick up where I left off is a massive plus in my book.
You can tell other people (and companies are groups of people) what they should do when it's your money they're spending.
Ehmm, newsflash, that *IS* my money. IP law is just that, a set of laws. Written by public servants, upheld by public servants, judged by public servants. And if We, the People decide the law should be different, then it has to change. That might get us into a boatload of trouble with other countries and make it impossible to do business in ours, but it should still be our decision to make.
As voting members of a democracy, we can decide it is worthwhile to give inventors/creators an extra incentive, and we can just as well decide that it is doing more harm than good, and needs to be changed or abolished.