The difference is that smoking is a choice. I happen to enjoy smoking my pipe (there's a reason it caught on when brought back from the New World); I'm not an addict (I forget to smoke, sometimes for more than a month); it's none of your business if I choose to smoke.
This is as opposed to radical Islamism, which quite cheerfully murders anyone; the only choice its victims get is whether or not to convert. We're fighting the war on terror not for the few thousands killed so far, but to prevent many more from being killed without their consent in the future.
Modern OSes may feel like they run somewhat slower on today's hardware than older OSes felt on yesterday's hardware, but today's OSes also do a lot more. I've yet to crash OS X, or even a single program save the ones I've written; yet Win95, when I used it, regularly gave me the blue screen of death. Today I have true multi-tasking, advanced networking, plug-n-play, Expose, and a host of other features that make my computing experience generally more plesant and productive.
What's amusing is that the OS part of Mac OS X is pretty much bog-standard BSD Unix which has been around for decades. Pre-emptive multitasking and advanced networking ran on machines with speeds measures in KHz!
Today's OSes don't do all that much more than they used to--today's layers of abstraction are many more than they previously were. Each adding its overhead has added up.
Well, yeah--it'd be nice to have intelligent users. While we're dreaming, I'd like a pony.
And using hashcash as one part of spam scoring is irrelevant to the fact that if large emailers such as SourceForge (or mailing lists, or...) must calculate the hash for even a fraction of a percent of their recipients, then they will end up wasting a massive amount of CPU time; indeed, I figure it's not unlikely that they'd be unable to drain the queue of outgoing email.
If large emailers required their users to be intelligent, they would have precious few users. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's generally bad business to turn away customers.
They could, of course, simply refuse to calculate the hash--but that would either lead to dropped mail, or extremely low-scoring mail (which is much more likely to be dropped). Failing to deliver mail is unacceptable when dealing with user accounts.
The problem goes away for you. Sourceforge, OTOH, has problems so long as even 1% of their users don't have them whitelisted. Whitelisting requires intelligent users: given that 50% of the population have IQs of 100 or less, relying on intelligence is quite foolish.
And as others have noted, your argument is simply against intrusive display of links.
Regardless, that's not what the Semantic Web is about. Its concern is presenting data in such a form that machines can reason about it and perform useful services for users. This is not really AI (which is good, since AI is impossible): it's just intelligent description of data. Done right, an RDF engine could perform such tasks as 'find the cheapest trip to Memphis from Denver next week, with three to four nights and a luxury car' without needing to know anything about trips, Memphis, Denver, hotels, cars, taxes or aught else--that information would be made available in the Semantic Web, and the engine would simply perform its reasoning.
It's uncertain if this would work or not, but it's a valiant effort.
The 'previous condition of servitude' in Article XV refers, of course, to slavery--the intent of the article was to prevent states from denying the vote to former slaves. It doesn't apply to the practise (inherited from England) of denying felons the vote because their vote is not denied due to race, colour or pervious condition of servitude, but because they committed felonies.
Article XIII is irrelevant, since it merely forbids slavery except as a punishment.
No, the point is that every religious organization does not have to pay the taxes that my "organization" has to pay, and therefore I am paying for them.
What, exactly, does the religious organisation demand which was not already paid for by its members? They already paid for their share of the military; they already paid for their share of the police; they already paid for their share of everything, just as you already paid for your share of everything. I don't see any additional burden being placed on the state due to the existence of non-profits (save for tracking them, and that's what their registration fees cover).
You're not paying a single penny for them.
This is utter nonsense. These organizations generate huge amounts of profit.
No--if they were for-profit, they would not be exempt from corporate taxation. That's the whole point of non-profit corporations, after all: that it doesn't make sense to treat a political party, a church or an animal shelter the same way as a car manufacturer.
Go look around inside a Catholic or Episcopalian church.
Ah, as I thought: you're economically as well as legally ignorant. That's not profit. A business deducts from its revenues its expenses (like buildings); a church-building is an expense, albeit an attractive one.
But the thing is, none of this is relevant; the issue is, I'm being forced to carry the load for religious operations, and I object. I have a right to object, and I am correct to object, and the government is wrong to make me pay for these ideas which I do not support.
Do you object to the fact that political parties are considered non-profits? After all, there are a good number of those which you disagree with.
You're not carrying the load for religious organisations. You're not carrying the load for religious organisations.You're not carrying the load for religious organisations. Their members pay for them and carry that load. If tomorrow there were no more religious non-profits, the expense of government would be no less (rather more, probably).
And your hatred for religion is relevant, because it is blinding you to the truth that religious organisations aren't burdening you a bit. You're so full of hate and loathing that you refuse to accept what is plainly obvious.
BTW, witch burnings were not religiously motivated. The trials were civil trials of those accused of harming others, exactly like trying someone for poisoning or shooting. The state of scientific knowledge of the day was such that witchcraft was believed to exist (and in fact, witchcraft trials were an outgrowth of the early scientific era: the Roman Church had outlawed such trials).
Cost savings go right into the hands of the "big" execs and share holders.
Initially, yes, which is why they implement cost-saving measures (hint: they're not in business to spread sweetness and light; they're in business to make money--just as you continue living by making money). But then they realise that they can make even more money by passing a fraction of those savings on to the customer (because by making things slightly cheaper they draw in more customers), and so the customer comes out ahead and the economy in general is more efficient.
Then one of their competitors implements the same savings and a higher discount, drawing back those customers who left and yet more. Again, the customer wins and the economy is more efficient.
So the first company cuts prices back still more, and again the customer wins and the economy is more efficient.
That's the beauty of the Invisible Hand of the free market: everyone is acting greedily (the customer as well as the merchants--customers shop around for the best price while merchants attempt to charge as much as they can; employees as well as employers--employees try to make as much as they can while employers try to get the best possible price on labour), and yet in the end everyone is better off than before.
That's why a home theatre system today costs less and does more than a stereo system of a decade ago. That's why the local grocer can stock berries and fruit year-round. That's why movies can get better and better in terms of technical quality.
The point is that every organisation is treated the same. To make Catholic and Hindu organisations pay taxes while exempting atheist organisations would be discriminatory. You're not paying to support non-profits--their members do that. Part of the idea is that their members have already paid for the military, for the police, for the courts, for the state, and since the organisations do not generate any profit, they are not generating anything to be taxed. A non-profit is, in a sense, a legal non-entity, or in another sense it's really just an incorporation of its members. We don't pay for the animal shelter, or a church, or a drug rehab centre: we pay for ourselves, and some of us choose to pay for those things.
Note that a priest who lives in a rectory must pay taxes on the housing benefit he receives thereby. It's not a free ride.
As for your anti-religious bent, just remember that it was religion which freed the slaves; it was religion which gave women the vote; it was religion which argued against socialism of the Nazi and Communist variety. More people have been killed by atheism than by religion (Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot manage to dwarf every other lunacy of history).
Oh please. Just say K or Kb. The 'kibi-' pseudometric prefix is perhaps the second most stupid thing to ever issue forth from Europe (the French system of measurement is the most stupid). 'Kilo-' means 1,000 everywhere but in CS: surely that's not too hard to handle? Although it does get annoying when network folks mean 1,000 and computer folks mean 1,024...
You mean, the cold war we won? Doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.
What if those bloody europeans suddenly got to their senses and started to look upon the U.S. as offensive - on their rights, freedoms, daily lives ?
So far as I can tell we don't interefere with your silly trade-unionist constitution, nor your self-serving politics, nor your enfeebling socialism. Of course, it is America which is interefering with the right and freedom of Bosnians, Croats and Serbs to murder one another, which I suppose impacts their daily lives by forcing them to live in peace. Sorry.
Roads are paid for by taxes, yes: gas taxes. Which are paid by churches and churchgoers just as much as by anyone else (you don't show your Secret Cabal of Faith(tm) card and get to ignore taxes on gas). Religious organisations are a particular type of non-profit organisation (there are charitable non-profits, and educational non-profits as well as some others which I cannot recall). So far as I know, all non-profit organisations enjoy certain tax advantages, but not all share the same advantages.
The Roman Catholics don't get free roads any more than the local museum gets free roads. And when the local synagogue gets its parking lot and driveway paved, it has to pay for it from its own pockets.
I rather think that you are quite ignorant about the nature of non-profits.
Ummm...plenty of non-religious organisations don't pay taxes either. Non-profit organisations may or may not be parasites, but don't pretend that only the religious ones don't pay taxes.
Link 1 merely talks about asking politically-similar churches to help in the campaign. This is no different from the Democratic use of black churches as campaign grounds.
Link 2 concerns allowing religious organisations to apply for the same charitable grants that non-religious organisations can. That's only fair. The state does not discrimate against the religious when it hires employees; why should it discriminate against the religious when it hires organisations?
No, the electoral college helps ensure that whoever wins the election is able to govern. Remember the county-by-county map of the '00 election? Gore won almost none of the US, but won a slight majority of the popular vote. It would have been very difficult for him to govern well without a widespread base (remember 1993?). The college gives the presidency to the candidate who is popular across the nation, not just in two small parts of the nation.
I'm not necessarily opposed to two electors from each state voting for the state's overall winner, and each other voting for the winner in his district. I would prefer that electors be selected by state legislatures (and that senators be selected the same way: popular election of senators was a foolish change to the Constitution).
I'm worried about liberty. I don't give a fig for democracy, or the opinion of the majority: I care about freedom.
And I agree that non-smokers tend to consider smoking is a nuisance. But I also think that short pants on anyone over the age of 13 are a nuisance. I don't presume to legislate over either issue:-)
Regarding the load on government-funded health care a) the government shouldn't be in that business in the first place and b) economic studies have shown that the net effect is positive: higher health expenses of some sorts (and reduced tax contributions) are offset by reduced Social Security and on-going health care costs (since cigarette smokers tend to die earlier).
I don't disagree that most cigarette smokers would have a much better quality of life if they quit. I do believe that most non-smokers would have a much better quality of life if they would smoke moderately (say, a cigar a month or a pipe a week). We pipe smokers outlast you all:-)
My point is that politeness is all about yielding preference to others. Thus smoker should not smoke, save in a smoking lounge or somewhere else where it won't offend others. However, cigarette smokers are addicts and are thus at times compelled by their addiction to smoke where they oughtn't; politeness demands that they ask. But politeness holds just as well for the non-smokers surrounding them, who out of charity for the smoker's lamentable condition should permit him to get his fix.
I can't stand the odour of 90% of the cigs on the market, but I'll let folks smoke in my car because politeness demands that I yield my interests in favour of others'.
It's also impolite to litter. I wouldn't defend ciogarette smokers, the vast majority of whom are addicted slobs, save for the fact that their foes are so much worse, in that they are prigs.
I smoke a pipe, and given the cost of a good pipe it'd be lunacy to leave it lying around as litter:-)
No, polite is always giving preference to others. Which is why a smoker should always ask, including in a bar. And why a non-smoker should always say yes. And why a smoker shouldn't smoke around others in the first place unless he's an addict who simply must get his fix.
That said, I have a certain antipathy towards cigarette smokers: their vice stinks; their cigs almost universally taste foul; they ruin good meals with benumbed taste buds.
I'm an occasional pipe-smoker (it has the most wonderful taste), and I've friends who don't know I smoke, because I make it a point not to do so around non-smokers.
Most smokers I know are almost militant about their right to smoke anywhere, absolutely ignoring the irritation and harm that they cause others.
You mean, like a right to smoke in an establishment whose owner permits it? Many localities now have stolen that right from property-owners. It's the non-smokers who legislate away rights; I know of no smokers who seriously advocate forcing property owners to permit smoking.
Or perhaps you mean the itty-bitty, shabby and out-back designated smoking zones which some non-smokers deign to provide? Yes, that's an example of smokers forcing themselves on non-smokers...not.
Smokers cause no harm to others, and non-smokers are just as irritating to smokers as vice versa.
Interestingly, none of my friends are smokers, but neither are any non-smokers. That is, none of us smokes on even a weekly basis--but each of us smokes every once in awhile (some monthly, some only a few times a year).
For my own part, I've no use for a man who neither smokes nor drinks: he's obviously untrustworthy.
Nope. 'Secondary smoke' is no more dangerous than anything else. But tobacco is a politically acceptable substance to hate, and so it is banned and its users persecuted. Why, today in Colorado voters are almost certain to raise the tax on tobacco several fold.
Now, of course a polite smoker will ask those around him if they mind him smoking; and of course polite non-smokers will reply that they do not. But politeness is an art little-practised in this debased modern world.
A public education system must not affiliate itself with a religious group of any kind.
Sure--but of course, that's not possible. Atheism is just as much a religion as Buddhism, Zoroastrianism or Christianity. We need to eliminate public schooling; then parents can send their children to be educated according to their own precepts.
And hello: I agree with you on macro-evolution. I just happen to find that no less a religious belief than disagreement thereon. The rationalist-objective viewpoint is no more well-founded than any other (read Goedel sometime...).
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This is as opposed to radical Islamism, which quite cheerfully murders anyone; the only choice its victims get is whether or not to convert. We're fighting the war on terror not for the few thousands killed so far, but to prevent many more from being killed without their consent in the future.
What's amusing is that the OS part of Mac OS X is pretty much bog-standard BSD Unix which has been around for decades. Pre-emptive multitasking and advanced networking ran on machines with speeds measures in KHz!
Today's OSes don't do all that much more than they used to--today's layers of abstraction are many more than they previously were. Each adding its overhead has added up.
And yet somehow the denizens of New York City managed to survive without them for centuries...
And using hashcash as one part of spam scoring is irrelevant to the fact that if large emailers such as SourceForge (or mailing lists, or...) must calculate the hash for even a fraction of a percent of their recipients, then they will end up wasting a massive amount of CPU time; indeed, I figure it's not unlikely that they'd be unable to drain the queue of outgoing email.
If large emailers required their users to be intelligent, they would have precious few users. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's generally bad business to turn away customers.
They could, of course, simply refuse to calculate the hash--but that would either lead to dropped mail, or extremely low-scoring mail (which is much more likely to be dropped). Failing to deliver mail is unacceptable when dealing with user accounts.
The problem goes away for you. Sourceforge, OTOH, has problems so long as even 1% of their users don't have them whitelisted. Whitelisting requires intelligent users: given that 50% of the population have IQs of 100 or less, relying on intelligence is quite foolish.
And as others have noted, your argument is simply against intrusive display of links.
Regardless, that's not what the Semantic Web is about. Its concern is presenting data in such a form that machines can reason about it and perform useful services for users. This is not really AI (which is good, since AI is impossible): it's just intelligent description of data. Done right, an RDF engine could perform such tasks as 'find the cheapest trip to Memphis from Denver next week, with three to four nights and a luxury car' without needing to know anything about trips, Memphis, Denver, hotels, cars, taxes or aught else--that information would be made available in the Semantic Web, and the engine would simply perform its reasoning.
It's uncertain if this would work or not, but it's a valiant effort.
Article XIII is irrelevant, since it merely forbids slavery except as a punishment.
Well yeah--that's why I'm in favour of free markets. The free market is what's important, not capitalism.
What, exactly, does the religious organisation demand which was not already paid for by its members? They already paid for their share of the military; they already paid for their share of the police; they already paid for their share of everything, just as you already paid for your share of everything. I don't see any additional burden being placed on the state due to the existence of non-profits (save for tracking them, and that's what their registration fees cover).
You're not paying a single penny for them.
This is utter nonsense. These organizations generate huge amounts of profit.
No--if they were for-profit, they would not be exempt from corporate taxation. That's the whole point of non-profit corporations, after all: that it doesn't make sense to treat a political party, a church or an animal shelter the same way as a car manufacturer.
Go look around inside a Catholic or Episcopalian church.
Ah, as I thought: you're economically as well as legally ignorant. That's not profit. A business deducts from its revenues its expenses (like buildings); a church-building is an expense, albeit an attractive one.
But the thing is, none of this is relevant; the issue is, I'm being forced to carry the load for religious operations, and I object. I have a right to object, and I am correct to object, and the government is wrong to make me pay for these ideas which I do not support.
Do you object to the fact that political parties are considered non-profits? After all, there are a good number of those which you disagree with.
You're not carrying the load for religious organisations. You're not carrying the load for religious organisations. You're not carrying the load for religious organisations. Their members pay for them and carry that load. If tomorrow there were no more religious non-profits, the expense of government would be no less (rather more, probably).
And your hatred for religion is relevant, because it is blinding you to the truth that religious organisations aren't burdening you a bit. You're so full of hate and loathing that you refuse to accept what is plainly obvious.
BTW, witch burnings were not religiously motivated. The trials were civil trials of those accused of harming others, exactly like trying someone for poisoning or shooting. The state of scientific knowledge of the day was such that witchcraft was believed to exist (and in fact, witchcraft trials were an outgrowth of the early scientific era: the Roman Church had outlawed such trials).
Initially, yes, which is why they implement cost-saving measures (hint: they're not in business to spread sweetness and light; they're in business to make money--just as you continue living by making money). But then they realise that they can make even more money by passing a fraction of those savings on to the customer (because by making things slightly cheaper they draw in more customers), and so the customer comes out ahead and the economy in general is more efficient.
Then one of their competitors implements the same savings and a higher discount, drawing back those customers who left and yet more. Again, the customer wins and the economy is more efficient.
So the first company cuts prices back still more, and again the customer wins and the economy is more efficient.
That's the beauty of the Invisible Hand of the free market: everyone is acting greedily (the customer as well as the merchants--customers shop around for the best price while merchants attempt to charge as much as they can; employees as well as employers--employees try to make as much as they can while employers try to get the best possible price on labour), and yet in the end everyone is better off than before.
That's why a home theatre system today costs less and does more than a stereo system of a decade ago. That's why the local grocer can stock berries and fruit year-round. That's why movies can get better and better in terms of technical quality.
Note that a priest who lives in a rectory must pay taxes on the housing benefit he receives thereby. It's not a free ride.
As for your anti-religious bent, just remember that it was religion which freed the slaves; it was religion which gave women the vote; it was religion which argued against socialism of the Nazi and Communist variety. More people have been killed by atheism than by religion (Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot manage to dwarf every other lunacy of history).
Oh please. Just say K or Kb. The 'kibi-' pseudometric prefix is perhaps the second most stupid thing to ever issue forth from Europe (the French system of measurement is the most stupid). 'Kilo-' means 1,000 everywhere but in CS: surely that's not too hard to handle? Although it does get annoying when network folks mean 1,000 and computer folks mean 1,024...
You mean, the cold war we won? Doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.
What if those bloody europeans suddenly got to their senses and started to look upon the U.S. as offensive - on their rights, freedoms, daily lives ?
So far as I can tell we don't interefere with your silly trade-unionist constitution, nor your self-serving politics, nor your enfeebling socialism. Of course, it is America which is interefering with the right and freedom of Bosnians, Croats and Serbs to murder one another, which I suppose impacts their daily lives by forcing them to live in peace. Sorry.
The Roman Catholics don't get free roads any more than the local museum gets free roads. And when the local synagogue gets its parking lot and driveway paved, it has to pay for it from its own pockets.
I rather think that you are quite ignorant about the nature of non-profits.
Ummm...plenty of non-religious organisations don't pay taxes either. Non-profit organisations may or may not be parasites, but don't pretend that only the religious ones don't pay taxes.
Link 2 concerns allowing religious organisations to apply for the same charitable grants that non-religious organisations can. That's only fair. The state does not discrimate against the religious when it hires employees; why should it discriminate against the religious when it hires organisations?
I'm not necessarily opposed to two electors from each state voting for the state's overall winner, and each other voting for the winner in his district. I would prefer that electors be selected by state legislatures (and that senators be selected the same way: popular election of senators was a foolish change to the Constitution).
And I agree that non-smokers tend to consider smoking is a nuisance. But I also think that short pants on anyone over the age of 13 are a nuisance. I don't presume to legislate over either issue:-)
Regarding the load on government-funded health care a) the government shouldn't be in that business in the first place and b) economic studies have shown that the net effect is positive: higher health expenses of some sorts (and reduced tax contributions) are offset by reduced Social Security and on-going health care costs (since cigarette smokers tend to die earlier).
I don't disagree that most cigarette smokers would have a much better quality of life if they quit. I do believe that most non-smokers would have a much better quality of life if they would smoke moderately (say, a cigar a month or a pipe a week). We pipe smokers outlast you all:-)
I can't stand the odour of 90% of the cigs on the market, but I'll let folks smoke in my car because politeness demands that I yield my interests in favour of others'.
I smoke a pipe, and given the cost of a good pipe it'd be lunacy to leave it lying around as litter:-)
That said, I have a certain antipathy towards cigarette smokers: their vice stinks; their cigs almost universally taste foul; they ruin good meals with benumbed taste buds.
I'm an occasional pipe-smoker (it has the most wonderful taste), and I've friends who don't know I smoke, because I make it a point not to do so around non-smokers.
That was my point: he was arguing for scientific proof of something which may at once be scientifically unprovable yet true.
You mean, like a right to smoke in an establishment whose owner permits it? Many localities now have stolen that right from property-owners. It's the non-smokers who legislate away rights; I know of no smokers who seriously advocate forcing property owners to permit smoking.
Or perhaps you mean the itty-bitty, shabby and out-back designated smoking zones which some non-smokers deign to provide? Yes, that's an example of smokers forcing themselves on non-smokers...not.
Smokers cause no harm to others, and non-smokers are just as irritating to smokers as vice versa.
Interestingly, none of my friends are smokers, but neither are any non-smokers. That is, none of us smokes on even a weekly basis--but each of us smokes every once in awhile (some monthly, some only a few times a year).
For my own part, I've no use for a man who neither smokes nor drinks: he's obviously untrustworthy.
Now, of course a polite smoker will ask those around him if they mind him smoking; and of course polite non-smokers will reply that they do not. But politeness is an art little-practised in this debased modern world.
Sure--but of course, that's not possible. Atheism is just as much a religion as Buddhism, Zoroastrianism or Christianity. We need to eliminate public schooling; then parents can send their children to be educated according to their own precepts.
And hello: I agree with you on macro-evolution. I just happen to find that no less a religious belief than disagreement thereon. The rationalist-objective viewpoint is no more well-founded than any other (read Goedel sometime...).