I didn't bother to click the link, but i'll reply to what's there.
[...]
In other words, the author does not seem to have a clue how to make a persuasive argument, and instead wants to flog a personal agenda's dead horse. Providers who offer their services for free actually get something in return. This is well known, redundant at this point, and poorly argued.
It sure is easy to rebut an argument you haven't read.
By the way, I'm not sure the interviewee offered an argument at all. She simply pointed out reasons to be concerned about social networks. I didn't see anything that looked like an attempt to persuade others that they should leave Facebook.
But, never mind. You rebutted her argument brilliantly. Who needs to read the article?
Uploading, even a small amount, in order to be able to download at a reasonable rate does not sound anything like (the US notion of) fair use to me. The actual amount copied matters, but other factors matter as well. A small amount doesn't automatically give one a fair use exemption.
To augment your scenario a little: since you are allowed to share a certain portion of a copyrighted work up to a limit on the basis of Fair Use - laws you could likely argue that you must have shared content with a single entity over the limit for it to constitute copyright infringement.
I don't think fair use works like that. The portion of the original work copied is only one criterion for fair use. By itself, it is insufficient to prove that the copying falls under fair use.
I can't just make a copy of five minutes of an action movie and distribute it online and claim that, because the portion is small, I'm not infringing on the copyright. It just don't work like that!
Yeah that's end user price I was talking about dealer rates...When you buy a kilo u ain't payin to 120 per gram, not if you intend to make money that is. You're talking about something that doesn't have a real cost to manufacture so at dealer levels they basically define the price at however much they want to move to keep their rep up this week. Oh and LMFAO at that article you linked, yeah a slideshow of some scenic places tells me a whole lot about how much people pay for cocaine. And those numbers look suspiciously like averages...I mean, noones payin for a gram of anything illegal by the dollar, they pay in intervals of 5 because some drug dealers will actually shoot you in the head if you try to give them 1's or change. In other words, this article is bullshit.
Under some circumstances, not having an NDA can kill your ability to get a patent.
How?
Do you mean that, if people take your idea and develop it prior to your filing of the patent, then prior art can kill the application? If so, that sounds about right, but you said something different. Namely, you said that "not having an NDA" can kill the patent.
Not only had he paid the fine, and not only did he show the officer a sealed letter from the state saying he had paid it, but having an unpaid fine is not an arrestable offense (in New Jersey, where this all happened)
Well, it seems to me that the fact he was innocent and shouldn't have been arrested is irrelevant here. The question is whether persons who are arrested may be strip-searched. The outcome may seem worse because this poor guy shouldn't have been arrested at all, but that fact isn't relevant to the argument before the court (we all know that sometimes, innocent people are arrested, so his innocence doesn't add anything to the argument).
I'm not saying that I agree (or disagree) with the judgment, but rather that his innocence is irrelevant to the question at hand.
I have no idea how you keep old hardware running. My experience is that when I put a box or laptop aside for several months and then start it again, something goes wrong.
Back in the mid-90s I loaded Linux (Yggdrasil or Slackware, IIRC) on a 40MHz 386. I got Xwindows running in 8MB of RAM, which is half what the guy in the article needed. It was pretty useless.
In 1996, I installed Slackware on a similar machine. Far from useless, it was liberating. Finally, I had a UNIX-like operating system on my home machine.
To each his own, I guess, but I made the switch from DOS/Win 3.1 to Linux and never looked back. (I had some experience with a then-girlfriend's Windows 95, but it didn't tempt me in the least.)
Look this has ceased to be a constructive argument. You did take it out of context, I never said they could not give it to who ever they wanted to.
By your logic, a person cannot do whatever they want to do with their own wealth. So I guess you don't believe in freedom then??!
No, this does not follow from my logic, since I never said I agreed that a person should be allowed to keep all and only that wealth which he has earned. That was your claim, not mine.
But it's apparent that this is going nowhere. I just wanted to point out that a natural consequence of what you said was something that you likely did not intend or agree with. Seems to me the correct response is to admit that you misspoke and try to fix your claim so that it more accurately reflects your opinions, but instead you just want to pretend that this unfortunate consequence really doesn't follow from your clearly stated principle.
As far as my own opinion, I'm fairly sympathetic to Nozick's ideas on what constitutes a just distribution of wealth (more or less that the history consists entirely of just transactions from previously just states --- if it was given to you by someone who had a right to hold it, then you have a right to hold it, with no nonsense about whether you earned it or not).
But there's no need to go into Nozick's views nor continue this discussion. Either you didn't get my point about why your statement was evidently incorrect or you refuse to admit error, but in either case, we've reached an impasse.
Yes I did say a person should be able to keep their wealth if they earned it, also since they own that wealth they can do whatever they want with it, and if that means giving it away they should be able to.
Please don't try twisting what I said, your taking it out of context, I was referring to Government or outside entity forcibly telling an individual to give up their earned wealth.
I'm not twisting anything. You wrote, "conservatives believe that a person who has earned their wealth should keep it, those who haven't earned it should not."
Perhaps you didn't mean to say that those who have not earned their wealth should not keep it, but that's what you said. As an immediate consequence, no one should keep any (unearned) gifts, including inheritances.
This really is a perfectly obvious consequence of what you wrote.
So, I suppose that conservatives would aim to abolish inheritance, because surely the heir doesn't (usually) do anything to earn wealth.
That depends on the person leaving the wealth, I may or may not leave my wealth to my son and daughter, the choice is mine in that fact.
Well, I generally agree, but you just said that a person should be able to keep wealth if and only if they've earned it. Now, we assume that you earned your wealth, but your heirs didn't earn the inheritance. This was a gift from you.
So, by your own terms, they should not be able to keep the inheritance because they didn't earn it.
(There may, of course, be certain cases in which one can be said to have "earned" an inheritance, but these are unusual and need not distract us here. If one should be able to keep only wealth which they have earned, then he should not be able to keep inheritances or other gifts, generally speaking. This strikes me as quite a silly principle.)
Meanwhile conservatives also believe there is finite wealth but feel those who do not "deserve" it should not have access to it. (ie there should never be enough wealth for everyone).
Not true at all, conservatives believe that a person who has earned their wealth should keep it, those who haven't earned it should not.
Oh. I didn't realize that conservatives think that only people who have "earned" their wealth should keep it. So, I suppose that conservatives would aim to abolish inheritance, because surely the heir doesn't (usually) do anything to earn wealth.
I have to say, though, that this entire thread is chock-full of arrogance on a grander scale than Zonk's. His fault was only minor oversight of the consequence of his claim, while we have folks claiming that voting for Bush is a greater sin than Zimmerman's apparent crime, or that anyone who understands conservatism would be a conservative.
I have no doubt that non-racists can dislike Obama, and I reckon the majority of Tea Party members are not racist.
Now, how about some evidence for your claims that:
(1) Some or many of the racist signs at Tea Party events were the product of liberals trying to discredit the movement and (2) The media has removed black people from images of Tea Party rallies.
It's not hard to come up with problems best solved by scripting.
I'm a teacher. Suppose I want to produce a letter for each student who is currently averaging below C. I want to include their names and current averages in the letter, and perhaps some text that depends on annotations in my roster.
It would be tedious and silly to do this by hand.
Now, as it happens, I'm not a word processor user, so I don't know whether Word can do what I need here. But in any case, this is an obvious use for scripting in a word processor.
The underlying reason 'slippery slope' arguments are considered a logical fallacy is that formal logic uses absolute formulas
No, that's not the underlying reason.
The various fallacies you mention (slippery slop, post hoc, etc.) are informal fallacies, that is, fallacies of informal reasoning. The fact that they are fallacies of inductive, not deductive, logic has not escaped logicians at all. They are nonetheless fallacies (though because they are informal, whether a fallacy has actually occurred is a bit more of a judgment call).
Honestly, the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning (the latter you mention as using "absolute formulas") is well-understood.
It's a goddamned shame that this bigoted post is ranked insightful.
I'm not a Tea Party supporter. On the contrary, I dislike the movement quite a bit, and especially dislike their political leaders.
But to call a teapartier fascist, or to accuse the party of being dominated by -- not preferred by, but dominated by -- racists, etc., is shameful. Let's treat our political opponents with basic respect. Let's try to encourage frank but respectful discourse.
Indeed, this is one reason I dislike the right wing: they are loathe to treat their opponents with basic decency and respect. But the proper response is emphatically not to emulate them.
I know it's a desperate and silly thought, but wouldn't it be nice to return to disagreements over ideas rather than caricatures?
And you're an asshole who refuses to take a man at his word and instead accuses him of racism because of his self-declared political views.
Why not treat others with respect? Whether you agree with his take on affirmative action or not, there is no need to claim that the man is a racist. Well-meaning, enlightened persons of good will can disagree whether affirmative action is either fair or well-suited for its end. There is no reason to pretend that any such doubt is the sign of a closet racist.
Respect in political disagreements is a good thing.
I'm visiting Shenzhen, a large city in the same province as ZengCheng. I hadn't heard anything about the protests (no surprise, since we're not keeping up with the news), so I thought I'd see what a search brought up.
I found a Wall Street Journal article as one of the first Google hits, no problems at all.
I'm often uncertain about the scope of the Great Firewall. I could read any online U.S. newspaper I tried thus far (this trip -- a previous year, the Washington Post was blocked while others were not). I could get to Usenet via Google Groups, Wikipedia, and pretty much every site I tried, except for Youtube (which seems to be redirected to a broken alternative) and Facebook (though Myspace is accessible). I can see why the great bulk of people are not terribly bothered by the firewall. I don't think they hit it all too often, unless they're exceptionally interested in politics.
In any case, I'm not saying the article is wrong, but I haven't seen the mentioned effects.
No, we don't. That it comes from Massachusetts, home of Romneycare, and was the brain-child of some NPR guy, home of "Republicans are racist" fundraisers, should be enough to prove that.
What a remarkably stupid opening.
Whether this is a good thing or not is certainly worth debate (and you provide some actual argument later in your post), but these silly examples of the genetic fallacy come off as nothing more than bigoted ignorance.
Slashdot Mirror
OMG! That is brilliant!
I mean it, "Facebot" is now (c) 2012 ultranova !
"Facebot" is a pretty clever neologism, but I don't think you can copyright words --- not even invented words.
Now, if he thought it was worth the investment, he could trademark it...
I didn't bother to click the link, but i'll reply to what's there.
[...]
In other words, the author does not seem to have a clue how to make a persuasive argument, and instead wants to flog a personal agenda's dead horse. Providers who offer their services for free actually get something in return. This is well known, redundant at this point, and poorly argued.
It sure is easy to rebut an argument you haven't read.
By the way, I'm not sure the interviewee offered an argument at all. She simply pointed out reasons to be concerned about social networks. I didn't see anything that looked like an attempt to persuade others that they should leave Facebook.
But, never mind. You rebutted her argument brilliantly. Who needs to read the article?
Uploading, even a small amount, in order to be able to download at a reasonable rate does not sound anything like (the US notion of) fair use to me. The actual amount copied matters, but other factors matter as well. A small amount doesn't automatically give one a fair use exemption.
Of course, Finland may be different.
To augment your scenario a little: since you are allowed to share a certain portion of a copyrighted work up to a limit on the basis of Fair Use - laws you could likely argue that you must have shared content with a single entity over the limit for it to constitute copyright infringement.
I don't think fair use works like that. The portion of the original work copied is only one criterion for fair use. By itself, it is insufficient to prove that the copying falls under fair use.
I can't just make a copy of five minutes of an action movie and distribute it online and claim that, because the portion is small, I'm not infringing on the copyright. It just don't work like that!
Drugs and wars over drugs killed more people than all airplane crashes, by all causes, combined.
Suppose you're right. It does not follow that a package of cocaine on an airplane will "kill" more people than an explosive on the same airplane.
Yeah that's end user price I was talking about dealer rates...When you buy a kilo u ain't payin to 120 per gram, not if you intend to make money that is. You're talking about something that doesn't have a real cost to manufacture so at dealer levels they basically define the price at however much they want to move to keep their rep up this week.
Oh and LMFAO at that article you linked, yeah a slideshow of some scenic places tells me a whole lot about how much people pay for cocaine. And those numbers look suspiciously like averages...I mean, noones payin for a gram of anything illegal by the dollar, they pay in intervals of 5 because some drug dealers will actually shoot you in the head if you try to give them 1's or change. In other words, this article is bullshit.
You so street.
Under some circumstances, not having an NDA can kill your ability to get a patent.
How?
Do you mean that, if people take your idea and develop it prior to your filing of the patent, then prior art can kill the application? If so, that sounds about right, but you said something different. Namely, you said that "not having an NDA" can kill the patent.
Did you mean that? If so, how is an NDA relevant?
It's even worse than that.
Not only had he paid the fine, and not only did he show the officer a sealed letter from the state saying he had paid it, but having an unpaid fine is not an arrestable offense (in New Jersey, where this all happened)
Well, it seems to me that the fact he was innocent and shouldn't have been arrested is irrelevant here. The question is whether persons who are arrested may be strip-searched. The outcome may seem worse because this poor guy shouldn't have been arrested at all, but that fact isn't relevant to the argument before the court (we all know that sometimes, innocent people are arrested, so his innocence doesn't add anything to the argument).
I'm not saying that I agree (or disagree) with the judgment, but rather that his innocence is irrelevant to the question at hand.
I have no idea how you keep old hardware running. My experience is that when I put a box or laptop aside for several months and then start it again, something goes wrong.
Back in the mid-90s I loaded Linux (Yggdrasil or Slackware, IIRC) on a 40MHz 386. I got Xwindows running in 8MB of RAM, which is half what the guy in the article needed. It was pretty useless.
In 1996, I installed Slackware on a similar machine. Far from useless, it was liberating. Finally, I had a UNIX-like operating system on my home machine.
To each his own, I guess, but I made the switch from DOS/Win 3.1 to Linux and never looked back. (I had some experience with a then-girlfriend's Windows 95, but it didn't tempt me in the least.)
Look this has ceased to be a constructive argument. You did take it out of context, I never said they could not give it to who ever they wanted to.
By your logic, a person cannot do whatever they want to do with their own wealth. So I guess you don't believe in freedom then??!
No, this does not follow from my logic, since I never said I agreed that a person should be allowed to keep all and only that wealth which he has earned. That was your claim, not mine.
But it's apparent that this is going nowhere. I just wanted to point out that a natural consequence of what you said was something that you likely did not intend or agree with. Seems to me the correct response is to admit that you misspoke and try to fix your claim so that it more accurately reflects your opinions, but instead you just want to pretend that this unfortunate consequence really doesn't follow from your clearly stated principle.
As far as my own opinion, I'm fairly sympathetic to Nozick's ideas on what constitutes a just distribution of wealth (more or less that the history consists entirely of just transactions from previously just states --- if it was given to you by someone who had a right to hold it, then you have a right to hold it, with no nonsense about whether you earned it or not).
But there's no need to go into Nozick's views nor continue this discussion. Either you didn't get my point about why your statement was evidently incorrect or you refuse to admit error, but in either case, we've reached an impasse.
Yes I did say a person should be able to keep their wealth if they earned it, also since they own that wealth they can do whatever they want with it, and if that means giving it away they should be able to.
Please don't try twisting what I said, your taking it out of context, I was referring to Government or outside entity forcibly telling an individual to give up their earned wealth.
I'm not twisting anything. You wrote, "conservatives believe that a person who has earned their wealth should keep it, those who haven't earned it should not."
Perhaps you didn't mean to say that those who have not earned their wealth should not keep it, but that's what you said. As an immediate consequence, no one should keep any (unearned) gifts, including inheritances.
This really is a perfectly obvious consequence of what you wrote.
So, I suppose that conservatives would aim to abolish inheritance, because surely the heir doesn't (usually) do anything to earn wealth.
That depends on the person leaving the wealth, I may or may not leave my wealth to my son and daughter, the choice is mine in that fact.
Well, I generally agree, but you just said that a person should be able to keep wealth if and only if they've earned it. Now, we assume that you earned your wealth, but your heirs didn't earn the inheritance. This was a gift from you.
So, by your own terms, they should not be able to keep the inheritance because they didn't earn it.
(There may, of course, be certain cases in which one can be said to have "earned" an inheritance, but these are unusual and need not distract us here. If one should be able to keep only wealth which they have earned, then he should not be able to keep inheritances or other gifts, generally speaking. This strikes me as quite a silly principle.)
Meanwhile conservatives also believe there is finite wealth but feel those who do not "deserve" it should not have access to it. (ie there should never be enough wealth for everyone).
Not true at all, conservatives believe that a person who has earned their wealth should keep it, those who haven't earned it should not.
Oh. I didn't realize that conservatives think that only people who have "earned" their wealth should keep it. So, I suppose that conservatives would aim to abolish inheritance, because surely the heir doesn't (usually) do anything to earn wealth.
I have to say, though, that this entire thread is chock-full of arrogance on a grander scale than Zonk's. His fault was only minor oversight of the consequence of his claim, while we have folks claiming that voting for Bush is a greater sin than Zimmerman's apparent crime, or that anyone who understands conservatism would be a conservative.
I have no doubt that non-racists can dislike Obama, and I reckon the majority of Tea Party members are not racist.
Now, how about some evidence for your claims that:
(1) Some or many of the racist signs at Tea Party events were the product of liberals trying to discredit the movement and
(2) The media has removed black people from images of Tea Party rallies.
Just 'cause, you know, anyone can say anything.
It's not hard to come up with problems best solved by scripting.
I'm a teacher. Suppose I want to produce a letter for each student who is currently averaging below C. I want to include their names and current averages in the letter, and perhaps some text that depends on annotations in my roster.
It would be tedious and silly to do this by hand.
Now, as it happens, I'm not a word processor user, so I don't know whether Word can do what I need here. But in any case, this is an obvious use for scripting in a word processor.
The only reason not to do repositories
[...] Only an idiot speaks in those sort of absolutes.
Er. Ah. Oh, never mind.
The underlying reason 'slippery slope' arguments are considered a logical fallacy is that formal logic uses absolute formulas
No, that's not the underlying reason.
The various fallacies you mention (slippery slop, post hoc, etc.) are informal fallacies, that is, fallacies of informal reasoning. The fact that they are fallacies of inductive, not deductive, logic has not escaped logicians at all. They are nonetheless fallacies (though because they are informal, whether a fallacy has actually occurred is a bit more of a judgment call).
Honestly, the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning (the latter you mention as using "absolute formulas") is well-understood.
The first real-world, publicly available use of this will be an app that lets you:
1. Take a picture of someone with your smart phone
2. Find naked pictures of this person online
BRB, heading to the local college campus...
Finally! A technology where the benefits clearly outweigh any dangers!
Sure, that seems fair enough.
I reckon you'd be happy to do the same during your workday?
I'm not defending the police officer's claim, mind you. Merely casting doubt on the wisdom of treating police officers as if they were convicts.
It's a goddamned shame that this bigoted post is ranked insightful.
I'm not a Tea Party supporter. On the contrary, I dislike the movement quite a bit, and especially dislike their political leaders.
But to call a teapartier fascist, or to accuse the party of being dominated by -- not preferred by, but dominated by -- racists, etc., is shameful. Let's treat our political opponents with basic respect. Let's try to encourage frank but respectful discourse.
Indeed, this is one reason I dislike the right wing: they are loathe to treat their opponents with basic decency and respect. But the proper response is emphatically not to emulate them.
I know it's a desperate and silly thought, but wouldn't it be nice to return to disagreements over ideas rather than caricatures?
You're a conservative and this is how you and many conservatives really think, if allowed to express your views annoymously and privately:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2998167
And you're an asshole who refuses to take a man at his word and instead accuses him of racism because of his self-declared political views.
Why not treat others with respect? Whether you agree with his take on affirmative action or not, there is no need to claim that the man is a racist. Well-meaning, enlightened persons of good will can disagree whether affirmative action is either fair or well-suited for its end. There is no reason to pretend that any such doubt is the sign of a closet racist.
Respect in political disagreements is a good thing.
According to the statement you're guilty until you prove your innocent, so much for innocent until proven guilty.
I don't like the cavalier attitude of the statement either -- after all, this fella lost wages because he drives for a living.
That said, this has nothing at all to do with the principle that, in criminal cases, the prosecutor must prove guilt.
I'm visiting Shenzhen, a large city in the same province as ZengCheng. I hadn't heard anything about the protests (no surprise, since we're not keeping up with the news), so I thought I'd see what a search brought up.
I found a Wall Street Journal article as one of the first Google hits, no problems at all.
I'm often uncertain about the scope of the Great Firewall. I could read any online U.S. newspaper I tried thus far (this trip -- a previous year, the Washington Post was blocked while others were not). I could get to Usenet via Google Groups, Wikipedia, and pretty much every site I tried, except for Youtube (which seems to be redirected to a broken alternative) and Facebook (though Myspace is accessible). I can see why the great bulk of people are not terribly bothered by the firewall. I don't think they hit it all too often, unless they're exceptionally interested in politics.
In any case, I'm not saying the article is wrong, but I haven't seen the mentioned effects.
No, we don't. That it comes from Massachusetts, home of Romneycare, and was the brain-child of some NPR guy, home of "Republicans are racist" fundraisers, should be enough to prove that.
What a remarkably stupid opening.
Whether this is a good thing or not is certainly worth debate (and you provide some actual argument later in your post), but these silly examples of the genetic fallacy come off as nothing more than bigoted ignorance.