Governments are the most corrupt organizations on the planet? Yes because everyone knows that big corporations are actually run by angels and bunnies, who would never do anything wrong...
Hmm, let's see, governments have been responsible for the Jewish holocaust, Apartheid, both World Wars, the Chinese 'Cultural Revolution', the Rape of Nanking, the Rwandan genocide, the Khmer Rouge genocides, the massacre of millions in the Soviet Union. Tens if not hundreds of millions of people dead, countless more lives ruined and harmed, and I haven't even scratched the surface.
What's your list for corporations? Microsoft 'cut off Netscape's air supply'? Enron cooked the books? Cigarette companies had advertisements showing doctors smoking. Companies often lobby for regulation that protects their markets.
I'm sorry, I'm struggling to think of examples that put corporations in anywhere near the same league of evil as governments.
A lot of articles already are just about products on Wikipedia, but only for big companies. I find this a bit odd... smaller companies can't have articles about their products on Wikipedia because that would supposedly be commercial and biased, but bigger companies / products can. I understand that some products are so pervasive in so many peoples' lives that they become "notable", but it feels a bit fuzzy somehow to be drawing an arbitrary line somewhere and saying "this company we'll advertise for free for on Wikipedia, these ones not" and seems unfair as it by definition favors the big companies. Some products are obviously so huge (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows) that it seems "OK" to push those products in articles, but why should e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileMaker be a Wikipedia page? And its smaller competitors, why not? Ostensibly one of Wikipedia's goals is to be "non-commercial", but in reality we live in a market-driven society where companies create the very world we live in, so it's an impossible goal to remain true to, and yet this goal specifically allows biased Wikipedia moderators (perhaps associated with companies) to arbitrary and selectively 'censor' content from companies that 'compete' with their organizations, and even 'socially'-funded organizations to censor their market competition.
Obligatory just-to-try-set-the-record-straight (as the summary perpetuates the common myth) Jimmy Wales isn't "the" founder of Wikipedia, he didn't come up with the idea for Wikipedia, didn't agree with the idea initially and had to be convinced, didn't come up with the name, didn't build the initial software, and didn't create the first Wikipedia community. Most of the credit for all of the above goes to co-founder Larry Sanger; in the beginning Wales acknowledged this but he has since been attempting to rewrite history by going around marketing himself as "the founder" of Wikipedia. He is at very best "co-founder".
And now imagine someone looks upon humankind exactly the way you talked about animals . ..
Actually that's all the more reason to keep at the top of our game, ruling over and managing the animal kingdom, keeping our hunting skills in top shape, etc., because if we become a bunch of "ooh the poor suffering animals let's give them equal rights" pansies, and an alien race rocks up here intent on killing us and eating us, we'll be a total walkover. I guarantee your pleas that they treat you humanely will fall on deaf ears. The laws of nature are not obsolete and never will be; any temporarily isolated and "progressive" civilization that forgets this, will learn a very hard lesson.
Check the context, I was responding to a post that said "Another reason to stop eating meat", not a post that said "Another reason to slowly and gradually over time phase out industrial livestock and poultry farming via a carefully planned strategy to minimize economic disruption and give the market time to adapt".
We're still quite a way away from technology giving us cheap mass-produced artificial meat.
I cannot believe this nonsense gets voted up to 5. Cows and chickens extinct because we stop eating them? Have you never heard of eggs and milk?
Did you even read my post? Apparently I have heard of milk, because in my post I specifically mentioned dairy (????). Did you know that "milk" is a form of "dairy"? Apparently not. Anyway, if you read my post, and think about it, if we are keeping cattle ONLY for dairy, as opposed to now for dairy and meat and leather (we'd have to stop leather as the same cruelty of slaughtering arguments apply), then the number of uses of cattle is dramatically diminished, which means that in order for dairy farming to remain economical the price of milk would have to SKYROCKET - in fact very literally, the price of meat now (which is a reflection of production costs) would have to be added to the cost of milk, amortized over production time. Would people still buy milk if it cost, say, 10 times as much? And if people stopped buying milk due to skyrocketing prices compared to milk substitutes, then the milk/dairy market may collapse because it may become totally uneconomical.
I didn't mention eggs for a couple of important reasons: Firstly, eggs are basically meat anyway. Secondly, and more importantly, if you actually go do some reading, you'll learn that the farming methods used to produce eggs are just as cruel to the hens as any other kind of poultry farming (e.g. battery farming, induced laying through starvation, etc.), if not more so. Therefore if the same logic is applied, and the goal is to eliminate suffering in animals, we'd have to stop egg farming --- egg production is just as inhumane.
You could argue that it's *possible* to have humane egg production through better regulation and market demand through consumer awareness. Sure, it is. But it's possible to have humane *all kinds of farming* - and that was my argument.
So either one is for humane farming - as I am (in which case both egg farming and ALL other meat production must be logically OK) - or one is for no farming at all - as the its-cruel-to-farm crowd feels (in which case egg farming must be stopped too).
You can't believe my post got modded up because you obviously didn't really bother to read it properly or understand it.
If everyone stopped eating meat today, they would have to immediately slaughter billions of cows, chickens, pigs, sheep etc.
Oh sorry, I forgot that the industrial farmers would keep them alive at own expense, out of the kindness of their hearts, because they would feel sorry for all those poor cute animals in spite of the enormous costs of keeping them alive and housing and feeding them and treating their sicknesses etc. Or maybe you think the taxpayer could be forced to chip in and subsidize our poor furry friends? Apart from a blanket statement that my statement was "stupid", it's not clear to me who you think will bear the burden of the costs of maintaining all the livestock that nobody will want if the demand for meat is removed.
How are we dealing with the endangered species ? By starting to eat them ? No, right ? We will deal with the currently domesticated species, the same way.
We aren't "dealing with" endangered species very effectively at all - most of them are dying out.
If everyone stopped eating meat today, they would have to immediately slaughter billions of cows, chickens, pigs, sheep etc. as the market as every day keeping them alive would be just sinking money for nothing. Nice short-term outcome, is that what you want? Then rather than saving these animals, the majority would cease to exist, as one of the main reasons we keep them is for their meat. It would also cause the price of products like dairy to skyrocket, it may even become totally uneconomical, in which case rather than saving these animals, you may just drive them extinct. These animals are domesticated, it's not going to be like a Disney movie where they are all freed into the wild to survive happy and free on their own, they don't have survival skills - we keep them alive. The trade is really that they get to exist at all, and we get to eat them.
I'm all for non-cruel livestock raising methods but ceasing to eat meat is completely illogical, it doesn't do anything to solve that problem at all, in fact it may exacerbate it, since by stressing the market for meat products you directly put pressure on farmers to cut corners price-wise. There are better ways to solve that problem; lobbying for regulation and enforcement, raise public awareness, and selective boycotting - e.g. name and shame the worst farms. These methods have done huge amounts to help improve farming conditions for animals.
Yes, it's better than vice versa. What gives governments the moral higher ground anyway, I mean you're talking about a government attempting to mandate non-anonymity on the Internet, you think honestly that's more ethically sound than trying to work around that?
What lovely kumbaya-style sentiment. It sounds nice and laudible but the problem with that reasoning is that without military spending for defense, nations would be overrun by barbarians and even more people would go hungry than ever. Industrialized free-market agriculture can't work its magic at feeding more people ever-cheaper without being able to operate within the clearing of peace carved out by military defense, and defended at the front-lines against the forces of chaos perpetually.
Because MSCE's and MVP's and their ilk hired in the IT department need to pledge their allegiance rigidly to MS solutions in order to cover up their own lack of competency.
As for home users, well a significant percentage of them wouldn't know a web browser from a street whore.
If I understand correctly, these are worse, since they affect browsers automatically while loading a badly corrupt (fuzzed) page
I'm afraid you don't understand correctly at all. The fuzzing is only part of the browser testing process, delivering a 'fuzzed' page is not an attack on its own. The fuzzing process is a kind of long-running randomized stress-test that throws literally millions of different random scenarios at the software and in the process reveals bugs / vulnerabilities. Once the vulnerabilities are revealed and understood, they can then be exploited by more targeted attacks (which are not 'fuzzed' at all), which can include far more serious payloads.
Fuzzing is a standard software testing process, and if you ask me, this is something any serious browser developer should be doing internally already - that's their JOB as browser developers, it's a little disturbing that they wait for guys like Mr Zalewski to do their jobs for them --- honestly I hope they're at least paying him market value for the labor at the rates it would've cost them to hire someone to do this in-house. The value of this testing to them is gold, as they can basically be delivered a list of probably previously unknown bugs; this is pretty skilled work.
You couldn't be more wrong. You are the smug one --- I know already that 'shit happens' in life more than most - there is a horrible debilitating illness that runs in my family, I've watched family members slowly die from it, and I have a good chance of getting it.
So you know what I do? I am living well within my means, and saving money so that if it hits me, I will be able to pay for my own healthcare.
I know that 'shit happens' in life, and instead of arguing that that somehow makes me entitled to other peoples money, I do something called "planning for it", unlike most people. I long ago figured out that "shit happens' and I live a lower quality of life to save money, now you're arguing that my savings should be taken to pay for people who *didn't* plan, and were having a nicer life, spending money on more luxuries, and then got "surprised" by shit happening.
What evidence do we have that you actually "work hard"? You might have just been lucky and/or privileged.
WTF? I started with nothing in a 3rd world country, don't tell me about "privileged". I have earned every cent I've ever made by working for it. I get paid for the fruits of my labor. I work 10-12-hour days every day, and work every weekend. I keep my skills refreshed by spending my own spare time learning more.
You people can call me a sociopath, but stealing is wrong no matter how you spin it. A real man pays his own way and stands on his own two feet.
And what are you talking about me "letting orphans die", there isn't a big crisis where orphans are actually dying left right and center, because there are enough people in this world who care enough to help pay for their care, and I have nothing against that. I'm not "letting" anyone die. If you want to pretend there is some great crisis whereby orphans are dying in huge numbers, by all means base your conclusions on fake premises. You're making the mistake of presuming that if government doesn't provide, everyone will just die.
2) Get disability insurance too 3) Save money so that I can pay for someone to look after me 4) Get sick 5) Pay for own care
That is exactly what I'm doing. If I get sick, I will be able to pay for my own care. If for some reason my savings get blown or I haven't managed to save enough before I get sick, I STILL don't see how the logic leads you to "I should be able to steal from other people so they must look after me". I would frankly rather just put a bullet through my brain at that point. What is the point of living if you're just a leech on everyone around you? I will never leech off others, and no matter how many conniptions you do, leeching off others is theft.
What you are basically saying is that your "right" to see a doctor is so important that it's OK to steal from other people to pay for it. Funny how that's always easier to argue when you're the beneficiary of the theft.
The funny thing is, for all YOUR lecturing, I in fact am the one who DOES have a debilitating sickness that runs in our family, so there is a very good chance I WILL land up in this very situation by 50 or 60. And guess what, I'm NOT going around crying 'boo hoo I should be able to steal from others' while simultaneously living in a nice house with nice car etc. On the contrary, I know "that's life", that life can be harsh, and so I do what's called "planning" for it --- I live within my means, I live in a small house, I drive a small older car, I put away money into risk-spread investments so that I'll have savings to pay for my OWN care if and when I get sick.
That way I STILL get to pay my own way in life, AND I don't have to steal from anyone.
And if I don't use those savings, then my family can use that money as rainy-day money.
It's not rocket science.
The fact that I'm getting modded "Troll" for this left right and center is beyond bizarre, while the guy who calls me a "douchebag" for living my life so that I don't steal from other people gets "insightful", I've never seen so much incredibly biased moderating in one go.
I would call you legitimately the most worthless human being on the planet.
So let me get this straight, because I work hard and pay my OWN way in life, and because I don't expect anyone else to pay my way unfairly, and I ask only the same from others, I am "the most worthless human being on the planet"? That makes no sense whatsoever. I guess that sums up your moral philosophy loud and clear.
Personally I think if someone totally uncovered comes into an emergency room, the hospital should put them back out on the street. Call me heartless, but if you want cover, work hard for it like I do.
Um, I don't think you know how health insurance works. If this guy has paid, say, $2000 for health insurance, and his little foray racks up $20,000 in hospital expenditures, then we have paid the other $18,000 as the other insurance pool members. Where do you think the money comes from, the big money tree in the back of each hospital? I am working on the assumption that someone this idiotic probably would not have been covered if he wasn't forced to pay.
Tsvangirai (good) hiddenly supports sanctions against his own country to harm his opponent, Mugabe (bad). That scheme comes to light, possibly spelling doom for democracy. Shame on Wikileaks for screwing it up.
Lolwhat? Zimbabwe hasn't had anything remotely resembling democracy for years, it's a dictatorship, and Wikileaks had nothing to do with that. Mugabe has been in power since before Julian Assange hit puberty.
Wikileaks hasn't done squat that wasn't already known. Even to Zimbabweans. Anyone who considers Tsangvirai a traitor based on the Wikileaks cables already believed that he is a traitor, and the non-existence of Wikileaks wouldn't have changed squat.
Precisely. Mugabe destroyed his country and wreaked havoc and death and destruction and prevented free and fair elections and blocked Tsvangirai years before Wikileaks was even a twinkle in the media's eyes. The way they paint it, you would think Mugabe was sitting around thinking "drat, I wish I had something against Tsvangirai but my hands are just tied" until this leak. Please. Mugabe does what Mugabe wants to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Governments are the most corrupt organizations on the planet? Yes because everyone knows that big corporations are actually run by angels and bunnies, who would never do anything wrong...
Hmm, let's see, governments have been responsible for the Jewish holocaust, Apartheid, both World Wars, the Chinese 'Cultural Revolution', the Rape of Nanking, the Rwandan genocide, the Khmer Rouge genocides, the massacre of millions in the Soviet Union. Tens if not hundreds of millions of people dead, countless more lives ruined and harmed, and I haven't even scratched the surface.
What's your list for corporations? Microsoft 'cut off Netscape's air supply'? Enron cooked the books? Cigarette companies had advertisements showing doctors smoking. Companies often lobby for regulation that protects their markets.
I'm sorry, I'm struggling to think of examples that put corporations in anywhere near the same league of evil as governments.
A lot of articles already are just about products on Wikipedia, but only for big companies. I find this a bit odd ... smaller companies can't have articles about their products on Wikipedia because that would supposedly be commercial and biased, but bigger companies / products can. I understand that some products are so pervasive in so many peoples' lives that they become "notable", but it feels a bit fuzzy somehow to be drawing an arbitrary line somewhere and saying "this company we'll advertise for free for on Wikipedia, these ones not" and seems unfair as it by definition favors the big companies. Some products are obviously so huge (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows) that it seems "OK" to push those products in articles, but why should e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileMaker be a Wikipedia page? And its smaller competitors, why not? Ostensibly one of Wikipedia's goals is to be "non-commercial", but in reality we live in a market-driven society where companies create the very world we live in, so it's an impossible goal to remain true to, and yet this goal specifically allows biased Wikipedia moderators (perhaps associated with companies) to arbitrary and selectively 'censor' content from companies that 'compete' with their organizations, and even 'socially'-funded organizations to censor their market competition.
Lol .. if you follow the very link I posted, you'll see it references where Wales himself calls Sanger the co-founder, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Obligatory just-to-try-set-the-record-straight (as the summary perpetuates the common myth) Jimmy Wales isn't "the" founder of Wikipedia, he didn't come up with the idea for Wikipedia, didn't agree with the idea initially and had to be convinced, didn't come up with the name, didn't build the initial software, and didn't create the first Wikipedia community. Most of the credit for all of the above goes to co-founder Larry Sanger; in the beginning Wales acknowledged this but he has since been attempting to rewrite history by going around marketing himself as "the founder" of Wikipedia. He is at very best "co-founder".
http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001424.html
I just believe strongly in credit where credit is due, and in not taking credit for other people's work.
And now imagine someone looks upon humankind exactly the way you talked about animals . . .
Actually that's all the more reason to keep at the top of our game, ruling over and managing the animal kingdom, keeping our hunting skills in top shape, etc., because if we become a bunch of "ooh the poor suffering animals let's give them equal rights" pansies, and an alien race rocks up here intent on killing us and eating us, we'll be a total walkover. I guarantee your pleas that they treat you humanely will fall on deaf ears. The laws of nature are not obsolete and never will be; any temporarily isolated and "progressive" civilization that forgets this, will learn a very hard lesson.
Check the context, I was responding to a post that said "Another reason to stop eating meat", not a post that said "Another reason to slowly and gradually over time phase out industrial livestock and poultry farming via a carefully planned strategy to minimize economic disruption and give the market time to adapt".
We're still quite a way away from technology giving us cheap mass-produced artificial meat.
I cannot believe this nonsense gets voted up to 5. Cows and chickens extinct because we stop eating them? Have you never heard of eggs and milk?
Did you even read my post? Apparently I have heard of milk, because in my post I specifically mentioned dairy (????). Did you know that "milk" is a form of "dairy"? Apparently not. Anyway, if you read my post, and think about it, if we are keeping cattle ONLY for dairy, as opposed to now for dairy and meat and leather (we'd have to stop leather as the same cruelty of slaughtering arguments apply), then the number of uses of cattle is dramatically diminished, which means that in order for dairy farming to remain economical the price of milk would have to SKYROCKET - in fact very literally, the price of meat now (which is a reflection of production costs) would have to be added to the cost of milk, amortized over production time. Would people still buy milk if it cost, say, 10 times as much? And if people stopped buying milk due to skyrocketing prices compared to milk substitutes, then the milk/dairy market may collapse because it may become totally uneconomical.
I didn't mention eggs for a couple of important reasons: Firstly, eggs are basically meat anyway. Secondly, and more importantly, if you actually go do some reading, you'll learn that the farming methods used to produce eggs are just as cruel to the hens as any other kind of poultry farming (e.g. battery farming, induced laying through starvation, etc.), if not more so. Therefore if the same logic is applied, and the goal is to eliminate suffering in animals, we'd have to stop egg farming --- egg production is just as inhumane.
You could argue that it's *possible* to have humane egg production through better regulation and market demand through consumer awareness. Sure, it is. But it's possible to have humane *all kinds of farming* - and that was my argument.
So either one is for humane farming - as I am (in which case both egg farming and ALL other meat production must be logically OK) - or one is for no farming at all - as the its-cruel-to-farm crowd feels (in which case egg farming must be stopped too).
You can't believe my post got modded up because you obviously didn't really bother to read it properly or understand it.
If everyone stopped eating meat today, they would have to immediately slaughter billions of cows, chickens, pigs, sheep etc.
Oh sorry, I forgot that the industrial farmers would keep them alive at own expense, out of the kindness of their hearts, because they would feel sorry for all those poor cute animals in spite of the enormous costs of keeping them alive and housing and feeding them and treating their sicknesses etc. Or maybe you think the taxpayer could be forced to chip in and subsidize our poor furry friends? Apart from a blanket statement that my statement was "stupid", it's not clear to me who you think will bear the burden of the costs of maintaining all the livestock that nobody will want if the demand for meat is removed.
How are we dealing with the endangered species ? By starting to eat them ? No, right ? We will deal with the currently domesticated species, the same way.
We aren't "dealing with" endangered species very effectively at all - most of them are dying out.
If everyone stopped eating meat today, they would have to immediately slaughter billions of cows, chickens, pigs, sheep etc. as the market as every day keeping them alive would be just sinking money for nothing. Nice short-term outcome, is that what you want? Then rather than saving these animals, the majority would cease to exist, as one of the main reasons we keep them is for their meat. It would also cause the price of products like dairy to skyrocket, it may even become totally uneconomical, in which case rather than saving these animals, you may just drive them extinct. These animals are domesticated, it's not going to be like a Disney movie where they are all freed into the wild to survive happy and free on their own, they don't have survival skills - we keep them alive. The trade is really that they get to exist at all, and we get to eat them.
I'm all for non-cruel livestock raising methods but ceasing to eat meat is completely illogical, it doesn't do anything to solve that problem at all, in fact it may exacerbate it, since by stressing the market for meat products you directly put pressure on farmers to cut corners price-wise. There are better ways to solve that problem; lobbying for regulation and enforcement, raise public awareness, and selective boycotting - e.g. name and shame the worst farms. These methods have done huge amounts to help improve farming conditions for animals.
Yes, it's better than vice versa. What gives governments the moral higher ground anyway, I mean you're talking about a government attempting to mandate non-anonymity on the Internet, you think honestly that's more ethically sound than trying to work around that?
What lovely kumbaya-style sentiment. It sounds nice and laudible but the problem with that reasoning is that without military spending for defense, nations would be overrun by barbarians and even more people would go hungry than ever. Industrialized free-market agriculture can't work its magic at feeding more people ever-cheaper without being able to operate within the clearing of peace carved out by military defense, and defended at the front-lines against the forces of chaos perpetually.
Why do companies still use MS Explorer?
Because MSCE's and MVP's and their ilk hired in the IT department need to pledge their allegiance rigidly to MS solutions in order to cover up their own lack of competency.
As for home users, well a significant percentage of them wouldn't know a web browser from a street whore.
If I understand correctly, these are worse, since they affect browsers automatically while loading a badly corrupt (fuzzed) page
I'm afraid you don't understand correctly at all. The fuzzing is only part of the browser testing process, delivering a 'fuzzed' page is not an attack on its own. The fuzzing process is a kind of long-running randomized stress-test that throws literally millions of different random scenarios at the software and in the process reveals bugs / vulnerabilities. Once the vulnerabilities are revealed and understood, they can then be exploited by more targeted attacks (which are not 'fuzzed' at all), which can include far more serious payloads.
Fuzzing is a standard software testing process, and if you ask me, this is something any serious browser developer should be doing internally already - that's their JOB as browser developers, it's a little disturbing that they wait for guys like Mr Zalewski to do their jobs for them --- honestly I hope they're at least paying him market value for the labor at the rates it would've cost them to hire someone to do this in-house. The value of this testing to them is gold, as they can basically be delivered a list of probably previously unknown bugs; this is pretty skilled work.
Except in this case there were genuine clues the size of Texas - i.e. it wasn't a guess - the whole thing stank to high heaven.
Hmm, I also called it ... http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1597606&cid=31639800 .. looked pretty obvious.
Would you find it distracting if you went to the movies, and half the people around you were using laptops throughout the movie?
If it's distracting in the movies, surely it's distracting in a learning environment like a lecture hall.
You couldn't be more wrong. You are the smug one --- I know already that 'shit happens' in life more than most - there is a horrible debilitating illness that runs in my family, I've watched family members slowly die from it, and I have a good chance of getting it.
So you know what I do? I am living well within my means, and saving money so that if it hits me, I will be able to pay for my own healthcare.
I know that 'shit happens' in life, and instead of arguing that that somehow makes me entitled to other peoples money, I do something called "planning for it", unlike most people. I long ago figured out that "shit happens' and I live a lower quality of life to save money, now you're arguing that my savings should be taken to pay for people who *didn't* plan, and were having a nicer life, spending money on more luxuries, and then got "surprised" by shit happening.
What evidence do we have that you actually "work hard"? You might have just been lucky and/or privileged.
WTF? I started with nothing in a 3rd world country, don't tell me about "privileged". I have earned every cent I've ever made by working for it. I get paid for the fruits of my labor. I work 10-12-hour days every day, and work every weekend. I keep my skills refreshed by spending my own spare time learning more.
You people can call me a sociopath, but stealing is wrong no matter how you spin it. A real man pays his own way and stands on his own two feet.
And what are you talking about me "letting orphans die", there isn't a big crisis where orphans are actually dying left right and center, because there are enough people in this world who care enough to help pay for their care, and I have nothing against that. I'm not "letting" anyone die. If you want to pretend there is some great crisis whereby orphans are dying in huge numbers, by all means base your conclusions on fake premises. You're making the mistake of presuming that if government doesn't provide, everyone will just die.
2) Get disability insurance too
3) Save money so that I can pay for someone to look after me
4) Get sick
5) Pay for own care
That is exactly what I'm doing. If I get sick, I will be able to pay for my own care. If for some reason my savings get blown or I haven't managed to save enough before I get sick, I STILL don't see how the logic leads you to "I should be able to steal from other people so they must look after me". I would frankly rather just put a bullet through my brain at that point. What is the point of living if you're just a leech on everyone around you? I will never leech off others, and no matter how many conniptions you do, leeching off others is theft.
What you are basically saying is that your "right" to see a doctor is so important that it's OK to steal from other people to pay for it. Funny how that's always easier to argue when you're the beneficiary of the theft.
The funny thing is, for all YOUR lecturing, I in fact am the one who DOES have a debilitating sickness that runs in our family, so there is a very good chance I WILL land up in this very situation by 50 or 60. And guess what, I'm NOT going around crying 'boo hoo I should be able to steal from others' while simultaneously living in a nice house with nice car etc. On the contrary, I know "that's life", that life can be harsh, and so I do what's called "planning" for it --- I live within my means, I live in a small house, I drive a small older car, I put away money into risk-spread investments so that I'll have savings to pay for my OWN care if and when I get sick.
That way I STILL get to pay my own way in life, AND I don't have to steal from anyone.
And if I don't use those savings, then my family can use that money as rainy-day money.
It's not rocket science.
The fact that I'm getting modded "Troll" for this left right and center is beyond bizarre, while the guy who calls me a "douchebag" for living my life so that I don't steal from other people gets "insightful", I've never seen so much incredibly biased moderating in one go.
I would call you legitimately the most worthless human being on the planet.
So let me get this straight, because I work hard and pay my OWN way in life, and because I don't expect anyone else to pay my way unfairly, and I ask only the same from others, I am "the most worthless human being on the planet"? That makes no sense whatsoever. I guess that sums up your moral philosophy loud and clear.
Personally I think if someone totally uncovered comes into an emergency room, the hospital should put them back out on the street. Call me heartless, but if you want cover, work hard for it like I do.
Um, I don't think you know how health insurance works. If this guy has paid, say, $2000 for health insurance, and his little foray racks up $20,000 in hospital expenditures, then we have paid the other $18,000 as the other insurance pool members. Where do you think the money comes from, the big money tree in the back of each hospital? I am working on the assumption that someone this idiotic probably would not have been covered if he wasn't forced to pay.
Tsvangirai (good) hiddenly supports sanctions against his own country to harm his opponent, Mugabe (bad). That scheme comes to light, possibly spelling doom for democracy. Shame on Wikileaks for screwing it up.
Lolwhat? Zimbabwe hasn't had anything remotely resembling democracy for years, it's a dictatorship, and Wikileaks had nothing to do with that. Mugabe has been in power since before Julian Assange hit puberty.
Wikileaks hasn't done squat that wasn't already known. Even to Zimbabweans. Anyone who considers Tsangvirai a traitor based on the Wikileaks cables already believed that he is a traitor, and the non-existence of Wikileaks wouldn't have changed squat.
Precisely. Mugabe destroyed his country and wreaked havoc and death and destruction and prevented free and fair elections and blocked Tsvangirai years before Wikileaks was even a twinkle in the media's eyes. The way they paint it, you would think Mugabe was sitting around thinking "drat, I wish I had something against Tsvangirai but my hands are just tied" until this leak. Please. Mugabe does what Mugabe wants to do.