First, let me state in no uncertain terms that, in very important ways, homosexuality and pedophilia are not equivalent and cannot serve as functional substitutes for one another in a debate in general. This is because "homosexuality" describes desires upon which to act is normal, healthy, and acceptable, while "pedophilia," in the sense you mean, describes desires upon which to act is harmful and unacceptable.
That said, in the broad sense you mean, I am supportive of pedophiles who refrain from acting on their desires. I don't know all that much about pedophilia, but I am under the impression that, as with attraction to a specific gender, attraction to children is innate and cannot be altered through willpower or other known means. Those who are afflicted with attraction to children yet do not harm them (either themselves or through child pornographers) deserve our acceptance and understanding. Anyone who spurns them causes suffering and misery, without justice. (In fact, I suspect this widespread hatred likely causes many such people to look more favorably on those who would encourage them to harm children.)
Also, by the way, I do not think that people who express (in words, without threat or intimidation) dislike for homosexuals or disapproval of homosexual acts or marriage are "morally wrong." Some are expressing political opinions which are misguided. This is not morally or ethically wrong; I just disagree with them. Others describe broader positions, the collective prevalence of which does real harm to homosexuals beyond the political realm by creating the unjust social burden of being treated as an outcast or deviant in many contexts and communities, with consequences ranging from loneliness and shame to poverty and suicide. Nevertheless, those espousing these positions are not committing a moral act; they are simply wrong, and the harm they cause is in the domain of ethics, rather than morality. (Those who shout slurs or otherwise intentionally intimidate people are morally wrong, but we weren't discussing them I don't think.)
Finally, stop trying to create some sort of equivalence over, for example, being fired for a political opinion and being fired for being gay. Both are generally wrong, but they are not the same.
Yes, not liking a group of people is a perfectly okay position to take. Lots of people who claim to stand up for "equality" themselves dislike lots of other groups (capitalists, conservatives, etc.). Likewise, equality [of outcome] and [positive] human rights are something many people reject, including people ostensibly intended to be "beneficiaries" of such policies. What you are complaining about are valid political positions you simply happen to disagree with.
Being gay isn't an ideology. Disliking homosexuals is completely different from not liking capitalists, conservatives, liberals, etc. Disliking homosexuals is disliking people for something that they didn't choose and cannot change. It is not a political opinion, and it is not acceptable.
Furthermore, note that "disliking homosexuals" is marginal, even among evangelical Christian organizations. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest protestant body in the US, and are evangelical Baptists. Their Resolution on Homosexuality, while harmful and deeply misguided, doesn't go nearly that far. In fact, it contains the language "God loves the homosexual."
Finally, I feel obligated to point out that you seem to be implicitly lumping LGBT rights activists with those seeking "equality of outcome," as though that program is seeking some sort of government handout. The key issue for LGBT rights activists is freedom to marry, which is "equal treatment under the law," not "equality of outcome."
Replying to AC is pointless, but I can't resist just this once. Some day you'll grow up and realize that not everyone in the world shares your exact ideas for how everything should work. Sometimes those people have power, and yes, sometimes you have to fill out their forms. That's just the way it is, so lighten up; this isn't exactly the holocaust.
What? You can't just make some tangentially related comparison without explanation and call that an argument. And yes, you do have to carry ID at a border crossing, and yes, that's okay.
That you've been dreaming of for the last ten years. I personally want my console to play games very well, not do lots of media stuff OK. I have a PC for a reason.
Just because you don't have use for these features doesn't mean they're not useful to a lot of people. My PC is in my office, with a normal monitor, while my television and consoles are in a larger room with couches, suitable for family viewing. Playing a digital collection to this screen either requires me to hook up a laptop every time or have some device that can do the job. If a console (or the TV itself) can do it without me having to go out and buy or build a special purpose streaming device, all the better. I'm sure this scenario describes a lot of people.
They don't need a reason to do a search or give extra scrutiny at a border crossing. Furthermore, carrying more than $10,000 in cash across the border without reporting it is illegal.
Dear slashdot, thanks for escaping the "#" in the link in my above post to a "%23". How helpful of you to break my intra-page link. I'm curious if this just applies to "#"-signs at the beginning of the URI, or if you can't link to parts of a page at all. Here is a test of linking to a sub-page on Wikipedia:
I don't think it's so clear cut. While it's clearly not at the same level of physicality as sports like American football or rugby, competitive videogaming is closer to these than it is to, say, chess. This isn't you playing games on a lazy weekend afternoon; if you've seen videos of professional gamers competing, it is clear that being good requires a high degree of speed, precision, stamina, and physical coordination. I think this merits being placed in the same category of sport as, e.g. auto racing, golf, or ping pong (credit to div_2n for mentioning golf and ping pong).
I'm not sure why the article claims that opening new warehouses will contribute to operating losses. The price war certainly makes sense, since selling your product for less directly translates to lower profits. My best explanation is to note that what you quote is the writer paraphrasing Mr. Szkutak, rather than a direct quote from Mr. Szkutak. I'd guess that the article writer is slightly confused as to what exactly Mr. Skutak was saying when he mentioned the new warehouses, since he is a tech writer and not a finance writer.
Accounting statements are based around three types of accounts: assets, liabilities, and equity. Broadly, assets are things of value the company owns, liabilities are things they owe others, and equity is what's left over, i.e. the net value of the company. The profit and loss statement explains why equity changed in a given time period. Many people confuse this with a cash flow statement, which explains why the amount of cash a company owns changed. When a company makes an investment, they are exchanging cash (a type of asset) for whatever they bought (another asset). Since the equity doesn't change, the purchase itself doesn't show up in a profit and loss statement. It will show up eventually over time, however, as the asset is depreciated: as the investment is used and moves toward the end of its lifespan, it loses value. This loss is a decrease in the value of the asset, and corresponds with a decrease in equity (so it is an expense).
You are correct; investments show up when they are depcreciated over the course of their use. A good investment, however, will generate more revenue than its depreciation expense, so such an investment should not have a net negative effect on any profit and loss statement.
...they could start taking profits at any moment simply by pocketing more revenue instead of re-investing.
Accounting tip: infrastructure investment doesn't show up in a profit and loss statement. It is only relevant for cash flow, and I don't think anyone accuses Amazon of managing cash poorly. Amazon isn't profitable because their sale prices are so close to the costs of the goods they sell. They can't stop any of these losses because they can't sell anything without first buying it from someone else. The only ways for them to increase profitability of their retail business are to raise prices (which they can maybe do) or to cut their costs for each item (which are probably pretty close to as low as possible already).
It is very important to note that this particular stance is about evidence outside of the United States, not investigations of activities occurring outside the United States. It is routine for a court to compel people and companies to produce evidence related to an investigation. Since these companies have operations in the US, the court has the means to enforce such a compulsion; where the evidence happens to be seems irrelevant to me.
I'm alright with a cashless future, so long as it's done right. One thing it can't be is the current propriety charge card system implemented by and for rent-seeking middlemen. It is the government's job to develop modern, usable currency (electronic or otherwise), and they have been lax in this responsibility.
How do you know what the revolutionary army capable of defeating the US federal government will do when it seizes control? How is that any better? How is it not, in fact, far less predictable?
It will continue until they are physically restricted from doing these things.
Get real. Putting the Green or Libertarian parties in charge of the presidency and both houses of congress, with an overwhelming mandate to fix these issues, would be much, much easier and more successful than waging a successful war of violence on the federal government. "Grab your rifles and rise up" only works when you have the public at large passionately on your side. When that is the case in a modern republic, there are better tools available.
I admit that the article doesn't go into any technical details, but the number of comments here that are completely ignorant of what formal verification is and reject that it is even possible is...disturbing. (See CompCert for a real-world example of this practice.) Since the article was so bad, I don't know what the team actually did, but "mathematically proven to be invulnerable to large classes of attack" is exactly the sort of prudent statement I would expect from someone who has done good work making a hardened system.
Is that a complete list of countries where homeschooling is a crime? If so, it's not a very big list.
For comparison, Wikipedia lists the following counties where alcohol is illegal: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, India (some parts), Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Qatar, United Arab Emirates. Not quite as many, but within a factor of two.
Slashdot Mirror
First, let me state in no uncertain terms that, in very important ways, homosexuality and pedophilia are not equivalent and cannot serve as functional substitutes for one another in a debate in general. This is because "homosexuality" describes desires upon which to act is normal, healthy, and acceptable, while "pedophilia," in the sense you mean, describes desires upon which to act is harmful and unacceptable.
That said, in the broad sense you mean, I am supportive of pedophiles who refrain from acting on their desires. I don't know all that much about pedophilia, but I am under the impression that, as with attraction to a specific gender, attraction to children is innate and cannot be altered through willpower or other known means. Those who are afflicted with attraction to children yet do not harm them (either themselves or through child pornographers) deserve our acceptance and understanding. Anyone who spurns them causes suffering and misery, without justice. (In fact, I suspect this widespread hatred likely causes many such people to look more favorably on those who would encourage them to harm children.)
Also, by the way, I do not think that people who express (in words, without threat or intimidation) dislike for homosexuals or disapproval of homosexual acts or marriage are "morally wrong." Some are expressing political opinions which are misguided. This is not morally or ethically wrong; I just disagree with them. Others describe broader positions, the collective prevalence of which does real harm to homosexuals beyond the political realm by creating the unjust social burden of being treated as an outcast or deviant in many contexts and communities, with consequences ranging from loneliness and shame to poverty and suicide. Nevertheless, those espousing these positions are not committing a moral act; they are simply wrong, and the harm they cause is in the domain of ethics, rather than morality. (Those who shout slurs or otherwise intentionally intimidate people are morally wrong, but we weren't discussing them I don't think.)
Finally, stop trying to create some sort of equivalence over, for example, being fired for a political opinion and being fired for being gay. Both are generally wrong, but they are not the same.
Yes, not liking a group of people is a perfectly okay position to take. Lots of people who claim to stand up for "equality" themselves dislike lots of other groups (capitalists, conservatives, etc.). Likewise, equality [of outcome] and [positive] human rights are something many people reject, including people ostensibly intended to be "beneficiaries" of such policies. What you are complaining about are valid political positions you simply happen to disagree with.
Being gay isn't an ideology. Disliking homosexuals is completely different from not liking capitalists, conservatives, liberals, etc. Disliking homosexuals is disliking people for something that they didn't choose and cannot change. It is not a political opinion, and it is not acceptable.
Furthermore, note that "disliking homosexuals" is marginal, even among evangelical Christian organizations. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest protestant body in the US, and are evangelical Baptists. Their Resolution on Homosexuality, while harmful and deeply misguided, doesn't go nearly that far. In fact, it contains the language "God loves the homosexual."
Finally, I feel obligated to point out that you seem to be implicitly lumping LGBT rights activists with those seeking "equality of outcome," as though that program is seeking some sort of government handout. The key issue for LGBT rights activists is freedom to marry, which is "equal treatment under the law," not "equality of outcome."
fuck you and your boot-licking mentality
Replying to AC is pointless, but I can't resist just this once. Some day you'll grow up and realize that not everyone in the world shares your exact ideas for how everything should work. Sometimes those people have power, and yes, sometimes you have to fill out their forms. That's just the way it is, so lighten up; this isn't exactly the holocaust.
What? You can't just make some tangentially related comparison without explanation and call that an argument. And yes, you do have to carry ID at a border crossing, and yes, that's okay.
That you've been dreaming of for the last ten years. I personally want my console to play games very well, not do lots of media stuff OK. I have a PC for a reason.
Just because you don't have use for these features doesn't mean they're not useful to a lot of people. My PC is in my office, with a normal monitor, while my television and consoles are in a larger room with couches, suitable for family viewing. Playing a digital collection to this screen either requires me to hook up a laptop every time or have some device that can do the job. If a console (or the TV itself) can do it without me having to go out and buy or build a special purpose streaming device, all the better. I'm sure this scenario describes a lot of people.
Or she could have obeyed the law and filled out the one page form.
It's not illegal to do those things. You just need to do some paperwork.
Have you ever crossed a border? They don't need a pretense. They can search anyone they want, without reason.
I assume this can distinguish between someone with cash in their wallet and a suitcase full of $100s...
They don't need a reason to do a search or give extra scrutiny at a border crossing. Furthermore, carrying more than $10,000 in cash across the border without reporting it is illegal.
Dear slashdot, thanks for escaping the "#" in the link in my above post to a "%23". How helpful of you to break my intra-page link. I'm curious if this just applies to "#"-signs at the beginning of the URI, or if you can't link to parts of a page at all. Here is a test of linking to a sub-page on Wikipedia:
Fragment Identifier
I don't think it's so clear cut. While it's clearly not at the same level of physicality as sports like American football or rugby, competitive videogaming is closer to these than it is to, say, chess. This isn't you playing games on a lazy weekend afternoon; if you've seen videos of professional gamers competing, it is clear that being good requires a high degree of speed, precision, stamina, and physical coordination. I think this merits being placed in the same category of sport as, e.g. auto racing, golf, or ping pong (credit to div_2n for mentioning golf and ping pong).
I'm not sure why the article claims that opening new warehouses will contribute to operating losses. The price war certainly makes sense, since selling your product for less directly translates to lower profits. My best explanation is to note that what you quote is the writer paraphrasing Mr. Szkutak, rather than a direct quote from Mr. Szkutak. I'd guess that the article writer is slightly confused as to what exactly Mr. Skutak was saying when he mentioned the new warehouses, since he is a tech writer and not a finance writer.
Accounting statements are based around three types of accounts: assets, liabilities, and equity. Broadly, assets are things of value the company owns, liabilities are things they owe others, and equity is what's left over, i.e. the net value of the company. The profit and loss statement explains why equity changed in a given time period. Many people confuse this with a cash flow statement, which explains why the amount of cash a company owns changed. When a company makes an investment, they are exchanging cash (a type of asset) for whatever they bought (another asset). Since the equity doesn't change, the purchase itself doesn't show up in a profit and loss statement. It will show up eventually over time, however, as the asset is depreciated: as the investment is used and moves toward the end of its lifespan, it loses value. This loss is a decrease in the value of the asset, and corresponds with a decrease in equity (so it is an expense).
You are correct; investments show up when they are depcreciated over the course of their use. A good investment, however, will generate more revenue than its depreciation expense, so such an investment should not have a net negative effect on any profit and loss statement.
...they could start taking profits at any moment simply by pocketing more revenue instead of re-investing.
Accounting tip: infrastructure investment doesn't show up in a profit and loss statement. It is only relevant for cash flow, and I don't think anyone accuses Amazon of managing cash poorly. Amazon isn't profitable because their sale prices are so close to the costs of the goods they sell. They can't stop any of these losses because they can't sell anything without first buying it from someone else. The only ways for them to increase profitability of their retail business are to raise prices (which they can maybe do) or to cut their costs for each item (which are probably pretty close to as low as possible already).
It is very important to note that this particular stance is about evidence outside of the United States, not investigations of activities occurring outside the United States. It is routine for a court to compel people and companies to produce evidence related to an investigation. Since these companies have operations in the US, the court has the means to enforce such a compulsion; where the evidence happens to be seems irrelevant to me.
I'm alright with a cashless future, so long as it's done right. One thing it can't be is the current propriety charge card system implemented by and for rent-seeking middlemen. It is the government's job to develop modern, usable currency (electronic or otherwise), and they have been lax in this responsibility.
How do you know what the revolutionary army capable of defeating the US federal government will do when it seizes control? How is that any better? How is it not, in fact, far less predictable?
It will continue until they are physically restricted from doing these things.
Get real. Putting the Green or Libertarian parties in charge of the presidency and both houses of congress, with an overwhelming mandate to fix these issues, would be much, much easier and more successful than waging a successful war of violence on the federal government. "Grab your rifles and rise up" only works when you have the public at large passionately on your side. When that is the case in a modern republic, there are better tools available.
Um, what? Insane pseudoscience at its finest.
Of course that's all bullshit since irrational numbers don't exist in our quantum Universe.
I was soclose to modding you up for an otherwise good technical explanation, until I got to this ridiculous last sentence. Oh well.
Needless, inane, editorializing in the summary, as usual. So sad. Especially when the article itself is concise, factual, and free of such nonsense.
I admit that the article doesn't go into any technical details, but the number of comments here that are completely ignorant of what formal verification is and reject that it is even possible is...disturbing. (See CompCert for a real-world example of this practice.) Since the article was so bad, I don't know what the team actually did, but "mathematically proven to be invulnerable to large classes of attack" is exactly the sort of prudent statement I would expect from someone who has done good work making a hardened system.
Is that a complete list of countries where homeschooling is a crime? If so, it's not a very big list.
For comparison, Wikipedia lists the following counties where alcohol is illegal: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, India (some parts), Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Qatar, United Arab Emirates. Not quite as many, but within a factor of two.