>One of the more delusional excuses for this I've heard is that people have a right to defend their homes in war, armed revolution and the like. Bullcrap. The US civil population would stand as little chance as the Iraqi population if faced with the US Army (or a foreign army strong enough to defeat the US Army). Warfare has come a long way since the 1700s.
Yes, it has. For instance, anyone in the US can legally buy these and these. One person with good aim could do quite a bit of damage with them, even against military equipment.
>Like all unproven technologies, there are bound to be hidden costs, hidden delays, and hidden engineering problems.
You mean like with the first moon landing? Even if we had never made it to the moon the first time, the amount of research that was done has benefited this country immensely. Why not invest in something new?
Lazy asses! Back when I was a teenager, I for one welcomed my Natalie Portman overlords as they demanded that I write a Deep Blue emulator on an abacus using nothing but hot grits! If it wasn't completed in 15 minutes, I wasn't allowed to look at the goatsex man with my one good eye.
I seem to remember that mp3.com was in a very similar situation a few years ago, claiming that their copying of thousands of cds for use in their streaming-of-mp3s-that-you-had-the-cd-for program was a fair use. The courts didn't agree, and I'm betting they won't this time either, regardless of what a good idea it actually is.
>Use a "forbidden" P2P protocol, and your ISP can and will dump you;
Didn't you read the article? That 'forbidden' P2P is one of the main drivers of broadband consumption. If an ISP dumped everyone who was running (or whom they suspected was running) P2P, they'd go out of business.
I download things (usually full albums in.rar and.zip format, but also some 'adult' material) using amule all the time. I usually start downloading before I go to bed, and when I wake up I'll typically have about 50% of the downloads complete. I find that it's a good idea to have 7-10 going at any given time.
People shouldn't be rewarded for choosing a stupid place to build their homes. Don't build on a hillside in California(earthquakes and mudslides), or in one of the valleys near Mt. St. Helens or Mt. Ranier (pyroclastic flows), or anywhere in New Orleans (because you are under water).
And for god's sake, don't live in a trailer in Arkansas!
>The law is in Japan, apparently, and you are MISSING THE ISSUE, which is that he (and his accomplices) used the bots to cheat people out of money. Real money is involved, hence real police is involved.
What money were these people cheated out of? If he had killed them without the aid of the bot, how would the situation be any different? It wouldn't. The 'person' who was killed in the game would still be out the exact same thing - an item within the game. Hell, the game could close its doors tomorrow, and everyone would be out all the items they've built up within it, and there would still be nothing criminal about it.
>They used a game as a medium to commit fraud, the fact that it's a game does not make it ok.
What fraud? There was no agreement between those players to do anything, let alone not kill one another.
>You need to get a grasp of reality: He wasn't playing a game, he was STEALING REAL MONEY FROM REAL PEOPLE who were playing a game
No, he was not. If someone decides to buy something that has no value whatsoever in the real world, it's their own fault for being so stupid. This is a GAME. Buying things within that game for real world money is cheating just as much as the guy using the bot.
>"Hiding a metal object in a boxing glove, causing physical injury to the other boxer, should not get you arrested."???
It won't. Boxing, like online gaming, carries its own intrinsic risks. Physical injury is one of them.
>Riiiiiight, how about I just add you to my list of idiots who's opinions aren't worth the bandwith it's carried on then?
I'm just terrified that I'm about to be blacklisted by the borderline-retarded.
>Not by using bots it isn't. That's an exploit, used for illegal financial gain.
Illegal how? Where is there a law that says that you aren't allowed to use bots in an online game? At absolute worst, he broke the EULA and should be banned from the game. The financial gain is irrelevant, since selling *anything* from this game is against the EULA.
>The bots are cheating, the rolls of quarters in boxing gloves are cheating.
>Do you really want a system where ability does determines the right to do something.
In the case of an online game, absolutely! The programmers could have easily made it so that theft in the game were impossible. Half of the fun in playing a MMOG is the fact that you can do things that you never would be able to in real life. If you're just going to build a mirror of the real world, why bother playing at all?
Being arrested from 'stealing' from someone in a game is beyond ridiculous.
The funny thing is that most of the people pushing ID don't even understand what they are supporting. For instance "Intelligent Design" accepts 100 percent that humans evolved from apes, it simply says that certain things that have evolved (blood clotting, bacterial flagellum, etc.) could not have done so by chance and require a designer.
Go ahead, ask an ID proponent if they think we evolved from apes and see how consistent they are.
> There is a huge difference here. With Muslims, the religous leaders are not standing up and preaching terrorism is bad.
Hmm. I must have imagined this news report for the other day where "The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) released a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, against terrorism and extremism last week"
>The duplication hypothesis (for duplication being the origin of novel proteins) has its own problems, because (a) it is based on the supposition that the duplicate is non-functional, which is in fact false,
Where has anyone said that a duplication is non-functional? Why would anyone even think that? One of the things that a duplication does is allow point mutations to occur that don't affect the original function (because there is still another functioning copy).
>(b) it is based on the supposition that because the duplicate is non-functional, it can freely search the "mutation space" without being selected for a disadvantage, which has also been shown to be false,
I don't see why anyone would think this either. Mutations that occur on the duplicate would be no more or less likely to be beneficial than any other point mutations. The only difference is that it isn't going to harm existing function.
You wouldn't be setting up strawmen, now would you?
>(c) it assumes that the distance between a duplicated gene and a modified functional gene which does a different function is realistically achievable.
Now that I'll have to look up, but your first link doesn't help much because it's subscription only and the second one says nothing about the distance between genes. At worst it says that some protein features won't work in isolation, but so what?
>This has also been shown to be false
How? Your links said nothing like this. Got something better?
Please google the term 'duplication mutation'. Point (single location) mutations are not the only type of mutation, by far. For an extreme example, also look up 'Polyploidy'.
Whether or not they are rights, the federal government has no business regulating any of them except where they actually relate to interstate commerce, since none of them are mentioned anywhere in the constitution.
You should really have a look at amendments 9 and 10 and try to figure out what they are saying before you post nonsense like this again.
>Says the people whose job it is to know. What possible gain would there be to imprison him for no reason at all?
It's the "He's a bad person because bad people are in jail!" argument. If he's guilty of a crime, try him already!
>However, I don't automatically distrust the government either, which woul be just as stupid.
The government lies about everything. The only safe way to deal with it is to assume lies unless they present some evidence to back up what they are saying. It's supposed to be the very foundation of our legal system - that the government is wrong about someone committing a crime until the prove otherwise in open court.
>Ok, scenario 1. "Terrorist" goes on trial, operative is called to testify (which you cannot do anonymously) operative, which was previously VERY useful is now USELESS.
So what? Our government is not free to do whatever it wants with its citizens simply because it has decided that we are "at war" with an abstract concept. Nowhere in the constitution does it say that your rights are null and void at the whim of the executive branch.
>THINK please. It helps you avoid sounding ignorant when you talk.
You must not be doing it right, because you sound plenty ignorant.
Can you even read the headline of the article you linked to? Here, I'll help - "Moussaoui Pleads Guilty to Sept. 11 Plot". The only mention of Padilla in this article is in reference to his lawyer.
Slashdot Mirror
> It doesn't (a) interfere with interstate commerce,
How is that? Is taxing something not interfering with it? What would be considered 'interfering'?
>One of the more delusional excuses for this I've heard is that people have a right to defend their homes in war, armed revolution and the like. Bullcrap. The US civil population would stand as little chance as the Iraqi population if faced with the US Army (or a foreign army strong enough to defeat the US Army). Warfare has come a long way since the 1700s.
Yes, it has. For instance, anyone in the US can legally buy these and these. One person with good aim could do quite a bit of damage with them, even against military equipment.
>Like all unproven technologies, there are bound to be hidden costs, hidden delays, and hidden engineering problems.
You mean like with the first moon landing? Even if we had never made it to the moon the first time, the amount of research that was done has benefited this country immensely. Why not invest in something new?
Lazy asses! Back when I was a teenager, I for one welcomed my Natalie Portman overlords as they demanded that I write a Deep Blue emulator on an abacus using nothing but hot grits! If it wasn't completed in 15 minutes, I wasn't allowed to look at the goatsex man with my one good eye.
I seem to remember that mp3.com was in a very similar situation a few years ago, claiming that their copying of thousands of cds for use in their streaming-of-mp3s-that-you-had-the-cd-for program was a fair use. The courts didn't agree, and I'm betting they won't this time either, regardless of what a good idea it actually is.
>Use a "forbidden" P2P protocol, and your ISP can and will dump you;
Didn't you read the article? That 'forbidden' P2P is one of the main drivers of broadband consumption. If an ISP dumped everyone who was running (or whom they suspected was running) P2P, they'd go out of business.
I download things (usually full albums in .rar and .zip format, but also some 'adult' material) using amule all the time. I usually start downloading before I go to bed, and when I wake up I'll typically have about 50% of the downloads complete. I find that it's a good idea to have 7-10 going at any given time.
Dot means any character. Dot star means any number of characters.
People shouldn't be rewarded for choosing a stupid place to build their homes. Don't build on a hillside in California(earthquakes and mudslides), or in one of the valleys near Mt. St. Helens or Mt. Ranier (pyroclastic flows), or anywhere in New Orleans (because you are under water).
And for god's sake, don't live in a trailer in Arkansas!
Gimme one too!
Someone send an invite to azurensis(at symbol)tekgnome.com!
I promise I'll be your friend forever...
>The law is in Japan, apparently, and you are MISSING THE ISSUE, which is that he (and his accomplices) used the bots to cheat people out of money. Real money is involved, hence real police is involved.
What money were these people cheated out of? If he had killed them without the aid of the bot, how would the situation be any different? It wouldn't. The 'person' who was killed in the game would still be out the exact same thing - an item within the game. Hell, the game could close its doors tomorrow, and everyone would be out all the items they've built up within it, and there would still be nothing criminal about it.
>They used a game as a medium to commit fraud, the fact that it's a game does not make it ok.
What fraud? There was no agreement between those players to do anything, let alone not kill one another.
>You need to get a grasp of reality: He wasn't playing a game, he was STEALING REAL MONEY FROM REAL PEOPLE who were playing a game
No, he was not. If someone decides to buy something that has no value whatsoever in the real world, it's their own fault for being so stupid. This is a GAME. Buying things within that game for real world money is cheating just as much as the guy using the bot.
>"Hiding a metal object in a boxing glove, causing physical injury to the other boxer, should not get you arrested."???
It won't. Boxing, like online gaming, carries its own intrinsic risks. Physical injury is one of them.
>Riiiiiight, how about I just add you to my list of idiots who's opinions aren't worth the bandwith it's carried on then?
I'm just terrified that I'm about to be blacklisted by the borderline-retarded.
>Not by using bots it isn't. That's an exploit, used for illegal financial gain.
Illegal how? Where is there a law that says that you aren't allowed to use bots in an online game? At absolute worst, he broke the EULA and should be banned from the game. The financial gain is irrelevant, since selling *anything* from this game is against the EULA.
>The bots are cheating, the rolls of quarters in boxing gloves are cheating.
Yes, and neither of them should get you arrested.
>That is not how reality works.
Well duh! These people *are* playing a game.
>Do you really want a system where ability does determines the right to do something.
In the case of an online game, absolutely! The programmers could have easily made it so that theft in the game were impossible. Half of the fun in playing a MMOG is the fact that you can do things that you never would be able to in real life. If you're just going to build a mirror of the real world, why bother playing at all?
Being arrested from 'stealing' from someone in a game is beyond ridiculous.
You shouldn't talk about the president and his family that way. ;)
Of course nobody would ever be able to figure out that they were talking to Trudy instead of Alice becuause of her suddenly strange voice...
> The idea was something like, high-order abstract thinking and reasoning about a deity aren't particularly adaptive
I tend to disagree. Perhaps it adds some sort of social cohesion to our species to believe in some higher power that can punish us if we do wrong.
The funny thing is that most of the people pushing ID don't even understand what they are supporting. For instance "Intelligent Design" accepts 100 percent that humans evolved from apes, it simply says that certain things that have evolved (blood clotting, bacterial flagellum, etc.) could not have done so by chance and require a designer.
Go ahead, ask an ID proponent if they think we evolved from apes and see how consistent they are.
> There is a huge difference here. With Muslims, the religous leaders are not standing up and preaching terrorism is bad.
Hmm. I must have imagined this news report for the other day where "The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) released a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, against terrorism and extremism last week"
>Note the parenthetical statement.
Yeah, my bad. Saw that when I went back.
>The duplication hypothesis (for duplication being the origin of novel proteins) has its own problems, because (a) it is based on the supposition that the duplicate is non-functional, which is in fact false,
Where has anyone said that a duplication is non-functional? Why would anyone even think that? One of the things that a duplication does is allow point mutations to occur that don't affect the original function (because there is still another functioning copy).
>(b) it is based on the supposition that because the duplicate is non-functional, it can freely search the "mutation space" without being selected for a disadvantage, which has also been shown to be false,
I don't see why anyone would think this either. Mutations that occur on the duplicate would be no more or less likely to be beneficial than any other point mutations. The only difference is that it isn't going to harm existing function.
You wouldn't be setting up strawmen, now would you?
>(c) it assumes that the distance between a duplicated gene and a modified functional gene which does a different function is realistically achievable.
Now that I'll have to look up, but your first link doesn't help much because it's subscription only and the second one says nothing about the distance between genes. At worst it says that some protein features won't work in isolation, but so what?
>This has also been shown to be false
How? Your links said nothing like this. Got something better?
Please google the term 'duplication mutation'. Point (single location) mutations are not the only type of mutation, by far. For an extreme example, also look up 'Polyploidy'.
Whether or not they are rights, the federal government has no business regulating any of them except where they actually relate to interstate commerce, since none of them are mentioned anywhere in the constitution.
You should really have a look at amendments 9 and 10 and try to figure out what they are saying before you post nonsense like this again.
>Says the people whose job it is to know. What possible gain would there be to imprison him for no reason at all?
It's the "He's a bad person because bad people are in jail!" argument. If he's guilty of a crime, try him already!
>However, I don't automatically distrust the government either, which woul be just as stupid.
The government lies about everything. The only safe way to deal with it is to assume lies unless they present some evidence to back up what they are saying. It's supposed to be the very foundation of our legal system - that the government is wrong about someone committing a crime until the prove otherwise in open court.
>He's a citizen who has engaged in military training with an enemy of the US and returned to the country in order to wage war against it.
Says who?
>Ok, scenario 1. "Terrorist" goes on trial, operative is called to testify (which you cannot do anonymously) operative, which was previously VERY useful is now USELESS.
So what? Our government is not free to do whatever it wants with its citizens simply because it has decided that we are "at war" with an abstract concept. Nowhere in the constitution does it say that your rights are null and void at the whim of the executive branch.
>THINK please. It helps you avoid sounding ignorant when you talk.
You must not be doing it right, because you sound plenty ignorant.
Can you even read the headline of the article you linked to? Here, I'll help - "Moussaoui Pleads Guilty to Sept. 11 Plot". The only mention of Padilla in this article is in reference to his lawyer.