Sci-fi is the genre that imagines human progress, especially through technology. Anything that starts in another timeline that is obviously contradictory to our history, or anything from a completely fictional timeline such as another planet or reality, is fantasy.
Interesting. Then what about Guns of the South, where South African apartheid supporters use a time machine to go back and supply the Confederacy with AK-47s during the Civil War?
It's contradictory to our history but still science fiction, in my opinion anyway.
I fail to see what so many people here have against someone getting a small return on passing on some potentially interesting information to people as long as it doesn't cost the end users.
Because people hate being used as rubes for someone else's gain. Referrer links should either be publicly disclosed or stripped. To do otherwise is to try to make a buck on the sly.
It also calls into question the integrity of Slashdot as this is very close to being an advertisement. Yeah, yeah, a game company posts a big publicity-gaining screed about how selling games sucks.... oh, and hey! 20% off! With nobody credited with the story, I have to wonder whose user id this might be. I'm just saying it creates a bad impression.
There are organic methods to combat erosion, but you can bet that a company like Monsanto isn't going to employ them on their 10,000,000 acre corn-for-diesel fields.
I think you're confusing your evil agricultural giants. You're thinking of Archer Daniels Midland. Monsanto is the company that makes the seeds that can't be replanted and the crops that can withstand having gobs and gobs of pesticide dumped on them.
ADM is the company that owns the soul of the Midwest.
I think it's probably just so much bunk, but that's a product of my education under the conventional theory. It may also be wishful thinking that has kept me from ever forming an interest into looking into the theory. I can think of few ideas more horrific for the future survival of humanity than that it may continue to be cheap to burn off hydrocarbons for centuries to come.
I notice that the link to the screed in their games section has a userid component. I also notice that the link to the 20% off all games link has the same userid in it.
If people are going to have this opinion in a capatalistic society, then that's hypocrisy and I think they need to think a bit more about what they are doing. If these people think that advertising shouldn't have a place in our society then I think they should consider that maybe money doesn't either. Because we can't have both. Capitalism needs marketing,
What sort of nonsense is this? If you accept the concept of a free market, then you must accept the fact that there is a market for businesses that do not perform an action that irritates a segment of the market. Capitalism in fact demands that businesses must consider and respond to whether or not customers appreciate marketing. If you fail to meet this demand, then do not have the hypocrisy to whine about consumers having choices.
Capitalism does not mean that society must roll over and accept anything that a business does.
You might solve the rise of the oceans (if you can find a good place to store an amount of water equivalent to all the new meltwater), but you won't do a thing about the heat or the potential effects on ocean currents.
The context of his post makes it pretty clear that he's advocating that education not be tax-supported, since he feels that the tax code shouldn't be structured to give special breaks to people with children. The thrust of his argument is that people should pull their kids out of the public system to make for less of a tax drain on others (i.e. him).
The logical conclusion from this stance is that the poster has a desire to eliminate public education in favor of the supposedly superior private system. This is advocated by numerous Libertarian thinkers (who also often have the stance that the government should get out of marriage), and it is a common argument in any Slashdot story that deals with education.
Given that background, my assumption that this was the thrust of his statement is not unreasonable, though admittedly not founded on rock-solid evidence. I may have been misreading his intent, but I doubt it. At the very least, it sounds like an advocacy for school vouchers which is another way to drain the public school system of money and create a haves and have-nots system of education.
Also, you should learn to recognize an admission of error couched within an attempt at humour when you see it. It's a valuable life skill, not unlike being able to roll a joint while riding a bicycle in a crosswind.
Eh, it's so hard to tell. Humor, reason, and a visceral dislike of HIllary Clinton always don't go together in my experience, and the internet makes everyone sound serious. Plus there's that whole strain of conservative thought from during his presidency that Hillary was the one really in charge. So... um...
No, her husband did, and it's doubtful he would've used it against a bill that passed with a veto-proof majority. She had an ability to offer input, but I can't recall a single presidential veto in history that came down to "my wife didn't like the bill."
You can blame Hillary Clinton for a lot, and you could even reasonably suggest that she probably doesn't have a problem with the DMCA given the rest of her legislative history, but you might as well blame O.J. Simpson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or even yourself for not voting against the DMCA because the three of you all had just as much of a vote as she did.
Because the benefits of an educated electorate and workforce apply best when the whole population is educated. Leaving people to get what education they can pay for is essentially saying leaving the poor poorly educated. Do we really want a return to the days when there were families that could only afford to send a single kid to school? It's not like we have subsistence farming for the others to fall back on.
Making good education only for the people that can afford it leaves you with an uneducated electorate that makes poor voting decisions and a large segment of the workforce that is incapable of holding skilled jobs that support strong economic growth. Communist, fascist, and theocratic revolutions are built on the backs of the frustration of people with poor opportunities and who are easily swayed by scant logic and emotional arguments.
I'm berating him because his short-sighted "me, me, me" obsession for avoiding paying money to help others out would end up screwing him and everybody else in the end. Public education is a necessity for a functioning modern democracy.
No. The situation hasn't changed at all. This is still right-wing talk radio's dream come true. If she wins the primary, she'll turn out the conservative base in droves. She can seriously damage the chances of down-ticket Democrats in state & local offices by turning out the voters most likely to simply check off Republican down the line.
Hell, many grass-roots Democrats don't like her either. Count me with them. I find her an unpalatable political oppotunist who often stands for fear-driven issues that make me sick. She's also a DLC Democrat (a member of the pro-corporate, pro-lobbyist wing of the party). Worse, I fear she may suck up a ton of money that could go to good candidates, and I think she has a chance of winning the primary with absolutely zero chance of winning the general election.
The woman is pure politcal hemlock for the Democratic party.
I don't want to be forced to pay for other people's health care...
Are you saying that you don't have insurance (that forces you to pay for the healthcare of others so that they'll pay for yours), and you'll never visit hospitals (that often charge high prices to cover the loss of people who can't pay)?
Don't get sick then, 'cause it's a hard world out there for the unfit and the lonely in Social Darwinism Land.
What? Are you going to take the ethnocentric position that we're the only people that live in a system of united states? I think people from the United Mexican States and the State Union of Serbia & Montenegro might take issue with that, not to mention all the people from Federal Republics, United Republics, United Provinces, etc.
Just go with the flow -- the rest of the world does, so quit wearing your cultural oversensitivity on your sleeve. It's not our fault our founding fathers expected us to identify ourselves a Georgians or Virginians first.
All laws that attempt to prevent people from hurthing others or themselves are moral laws, based on the ethical proposition that harm to self or others is a bad thing. There is simply no difference between a law against the taking of drugs and helmet/seat belt laws in terms of ethical justification for their existence.
The main obstacle to banning tobacco is lobbies from North Carolina and other states that profit from tobacco farming. The tobacco grower's lobby is very powerful; just look at how much effort it took to finally end tobacco crop subsidies in 2003. For this same reason, America has forced countries to unban smoking as part of trade agreements for decades.
The hypocrisy over tobacco, at least, is fueled by powerful and legal industry lobbies behind it that other banned drugs do not have.
Oh my God, I know. The nerve of [those heroine dealers], developing a product that some people might buy. And the nerve of all those plebians, excersising their awful right to choose...how could people make unhealthy choices? They should be beaten....Oooh, oooh! I know...
Oh my God, I know. The nerve of [child pornographers], developing a product that some people might buy. And the nerve of all those plebians, excersising their awful right to choose...how could people make unhealthy choices? They should be beaten....Wait, I've got another one...
Oh my God, I know. The nerve of [euthanasia advocates], developing a product that some people might buy. And the nerve of all those plebians, excersising their awful right to choose...how could people make unhealthy choices? They should be beaten.
Straw man arguments against straw man arguments aside...
The original poster's objection is to the very real problem of people adding an addictive drug to an unhealthy food item (which currently doesn't have to be labelled beyond the ingredients section on the back) for the explicit purpose of helping people get addicted to a product that harms them.
Would you feel as warm and fuzzy about the idea if manufacturers had figured out a way to sneak nicotine into unhealthy, impulse-buy food items? I mean, it's not that people objecting to this feel that people's right to choose is awful. It's a manufacturer's ability to chemically influence people's right to choose that bothers us.
How are you supposed to keep your kids healthy when other people might be slipping them addictive junk food? I mean, the sugar in it and the barrage of advertising are bad enough...
robert v gentry has no problem putting his data into peer review publications such as nature and science -- and trust me, if there were someone that could debunk his findings for sure, they themselves would have put it in nature or science because they'd loooove to be the person that debunks gentry in the same exact journals hes posted his work in.
It would be nice if people fixedated on a dogmatic idea would even bother to read the refutal material that people provide to them. The first article in the link cites numerous published, peer-reviewed papers that directly refute various hypotheses by Gentry -- Collins 1999, Wakefield 1988 -- as well as numerous other published papers that are not directly attempting to refute him but provide evidence that contradicts with his ideas.
Maybe you should actually read the article next time before making claims that no one has refuted him in peer-reviewed journals. Also, Gentry has had little trouble getting published because he hasn't made wild claims about creationism in any of his works that have actually been published. He stuck to only a description of phyiscal evidence and has kept his conjectures about their meaning to the realm of non-peer reviewed publishing.
Slashdot Mirror
A little spoiler alert for the next book.
Sci-fi is the genre that imagines human progress, especially through technology. Anything that starts in another timeline that is obviously contradictory to our history, or anything from a completely fictional timeline such as another planet or reality, is fantasy.
Interesting. Then what about Guns of the South, where South African apartheid supporters use a time machine to go back and supply the Confederacy with AK-47s during the Civil War?
It's contradictory to our history but still science fiction, in my opinion anyway.
I just always get suspicious of such things.
Also, mod up the guy above the parent too. He got it first, but this guy was a little more informative.
Quayle? Hah! How about a Carter joke.
I fail to see what so many people here have against someone getting a small return on passing on some potentially interesting information to people as long as it doesn't cost the end users.
Because people hate being used as rubes for someone else's gain. Referrer links should either be publicly disclosed or stripped. To do otherwise is to try to make a buck on the sly.
It also calls into question the integrity of Slashdot as this is very close to being an advertisement. Yeah, yeah, a game company posts a big publicity-gaining screed about how selling games sucks.... oh, and hey! 20% off! With nobody credited with the story, I have to wonder whose user id this might be. I'm just saying it creates a bad impression.
There are organic methods to combat erosion, but you can bet that a company like Monsanto isn't going to employ them on their 10,000,000 acre corn-for-diesel fields.
I think you're confusing your evil agricultural giants. You're thinking of Archer Daniels Midland. Monsanto is the company that makes the seeds that can't be replanted and the crops that can withstand having gobs and gobs of pesticide dumped on them.
ADM is the company that owns the soul of the Midwest.
It depends on where you are. Supposedly the theory has popularity in former Soviet states according to this nice Wikipedia article on the subject.
I think it's probably just so much bunk, but that's a product of my education under the conventional theory. It may also be wishful thinking that has kept me from ever forming an interest into looking into the theory. I can think of few ideas more horrific for the future survival of humanity than that it may continue to be cheap to burn off hydrocarbons for centuries to come.
I notice that the link to the screed in their games section has a userid component. I also notice that the link to the 20% off all games link has the same userid in it.
Does this site reward referrer links?
Strangely enough, they do -- mercury. Has CA considered the cost of mass noncompliance with recycling regulations when people are forced to buy CFLs?
If people are going to have this opinion in a capatalistic society, then that's hypocrisy and I think they need to think a bit more about what they are doing. If these people think that advertising shouldn't have a place in our society then I think they should consider that maybe money doesn't either. Because we can't have both. Capitalism needs marketing,
What sort of nonsense is this? If you accept the concept of a free market, then you must accept the fact that there is a market for businesses that do not perform an action that irritates a segment of the market. Capitalism in fact demands that businesses must consider and respond to whether or not customers appreciate marketing. If you fail to meet this demand, then do not have the hypocrisy to whine about consumers having choices.
Capitalism does not mean that society must roll over and accept anything that a business does.
"You're stupid!"
You might solve the rise of the oceans (if you can find a good place to store an amount of water equivalent to all the new meltwater), but you won't do a thing about the heat or the potential effects on ocean currents.
The context of his post makes it pretty clear that he's advocating that education not be tax-supported, since he feels that the tax code shouldn't be structured to give special breaks to people with children. The thrust of his argument is that people should pull their kids out of the public system to make for less of a tax drain on others (i.e. him).
The logical conclusion from this stance is that the poster has a desire to eliminate public education in favor of the supposedly superior private system. This is advocated by numerous Libertarian thinkers (who also often have the stance that the government should get out of marriage), and it is a common argument in any Slashdot story that deals with education.
Given that background, my assumption that this was the thrust of his statement is not unreasonable, though admittedly not founded on rock-solid evidence. I may have been misreading his intent, but I doubt it. At the very least, it sounds like an advocacy for school vouchers which is another way to drain the public school system of money and create a haves and have-nots system of education.
Also, you should learn to recognize an admission of error couched within an attempt at humour when you see it. It's a valuable life skill, not unlike being able to roll a joint while riding a bicycle in a crosswind.
Eh, it's so hard to tell. Humor, reason, and a visceral dislike of HIllary Clinton always don't go together in my experience, and the internet makes everyone sound serious. Plus there's that whole strain of conservative thought from during his presidency that Hillary was the one really in charge. So... um...
How strong of a crosswind are we talking?
No, her husband did, and it's doubtful he would've used it against a bill that passed with a veto-proof majority. She had an ability to offer input, but I can't recall a single presidential veto in history that came down to "my wife didn't like the bill."
You can blame Hillary Clinton for a lot, and you could even reasonably suggest that she probably doesn't have a problem with the DMCA given the rest of her legislative history, but you might as well blame O.J. Simpson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or even yourself for not voting against the DMCA because the three of you all had just as much of a vote as she did.
Because the benefits of an educated electorate and workforce apply best when the whole population is educated. Leaving people to get what education they can pay for is essentially saying leaving the poor poorly educated. Do we really want a return to the days when there were families that could only afford to send a single kid to school? It's not like we have subsistence farming for the others to fall back on.
Making good education only for the people that can afford it leaves you with an uneducated electorate that makes poor voting decisions and a large segment of the workforce that is incapable of holding skilled jobs that support strong economic growth. Communist, fascist, and theocratic revolutions are built on the backs of the frustration of people with poor opportunities and who are easily swayed by scant logic and emotional arguments.
I'm berating him because his short-sighted "me, me, me" obsession for avoiding paying money to help others out would end up screwing him and everybody else in the end. Public education is a necessity for a functioning modern democracy.
No. The situation hasn't changed at all. This is still right-wing talk radio's dream come true. If she wins the primary, she'll turn out the conservative base in droves. She can seriously damage the chances of down-ticket Democrats in state & local offices by turning out the voters most likely to simply check off Republican down the line.
Hell, many grass-roots Democrats don't like her either. Count me with them. I find her an unpalatable political oppotunist who often stands for fear-driven issues that make me sick. She's also a DLC Democrat (a member of the pro-corporate, pro-lobbyist wing of the party). Worse, I fear she may suck up a ton of money that could go to good candidates, and I think she has a chance of winning the primary with absolutely zero chance of winning the general election.
The woman is pure politcal hemlock for the Democratic party.
I don't want to be forced to pay for other people's health care...
Are you saying that you don't have insurance (that forces you to pay for the healthcare of others so that they'll pay for yours), and you'll never visit hospitals (that often charge high prices to cover the loss of people who can't pay)?
Don't get sick then, 'cause it's a hard world out there for the unfit and the lonely in Social Darwinism Land.
Usians ( people born in the USA)
What? Are you going to take the ethnocentric position that we're the only people that live in a system of united states?
I think people from the United Mexican States and the State Union of Serbia & Montenegro might take issue with that, not to mention all the people from Federal Republics, United Republics, United Provinces, etc.
Just go with the flow -- the rest of the world does, so quit wearing your cultural oversensitivity on your sleeve. It's not our fault our founding fathers expected us to identify ourselves a Georgians or Virginians first.
Did She vote against the DMCA?
She wasn't in office in 1997. She didn't get a vote.
Better yet, send your children to private schools; provide a higher-quality education for them, and leach less off of public resources.
Yeah, 'cause the public gets absolutely nothing from an educated electorate and workforce.
Just nothing. Waste of taxpayers dollars.
Laws that prohibit drugs are simply moral laws.
All laws that attempt to prevent people from hurthing others or themselves are moral laws, based on the ethical proposition that harm to self or others is a bad thing. There is simply no difference between a law against the taking of drugs and helmet/seat belt laws in terms of ethical justification for their existence.
The main obstacle to banning tobacco is lobbies from North Carolina and other states that profit from tobacco farming. The tobacco grower's lobby is very powerful; just look at how much effort it took to finally end tobacco crop subsidies in 2003. For this same reason, America has forced countries to unban smoking as part of trade agreements for decades.
The hypocrisy over tobacco, at least, is fueled by powerful and legal industry lobbies behind it that other banned drugs do not have.
Oh my God, I know. The nerve of [those heroine dealers], developing a product that some people might buy. And the nerve of all those plebians, excersising their awful right to choose...how could people make unhealthy choices? They should be beaten. ...Oooh, oooh! I know...
...Wait, I've got another one...
Oh my God, I know. The nerve of [child pornographers], developing a product that some people might buy. And the nerve of all those plebians, excersising their awful right to choose...how could people make unhealthy choices? They should be beaten.
Oh my God, I know. The nerve of [euthanasia advocates], developing a product that some people might buy. And the nerve of all those plebians, excersising their awful right to choose...how could people make unhealthy choices? They should be beaten.
Straw man arguments against straw man arguments aside...
The original poster's objection is to the very real problem of people adding an addictive drug to an unhealthy food item (which currently doesn't have to be labelled beyond the ingredients section on the back) for the explicit purpose of helping people get addicted to a product that harms them.
Would you feel as warm and fuzzy about the idea if manufacturers had figured out a way to sneak nicotine into unhealthy, impulse-buy food items? I mean, it's not that people objecting to this feel that people's right to choose is awful. It's a manufacturer's ability to chemically influence people's right to choose that bothers us.
How are you supposed to keep your kids healthy when other people might be slipping them addictive junk food? I mean, the sugar in it and the barrage of advertising are bad enough...
robert v gentry has no problem putting his data into peer review publications such as nature and science -- and trust me, if there were someone that could debunk his findings for sure, they themselves would have put it in nature or science because they'd loooove to be the person that debunks gentry in the same exact journals hes posted his work in.
It would be nice if people fixedated on a dogmatic idea would even bother to read the refutal material that people provide to them. The first article in the link cites numerous published, peer-reviewed papers that directly refute various hypotheses by Gentry -- Collins 1999, Wakefield 1988 -- as well as numerous other published papers that are not directly attempting to refute him but provide evidence that contradicts with his ideas.
Maybe you should actually read the article next time before making claims that no one has refuted him in peer-reviewed journals. Also, Gentry has had little trouble getting published because he hasn't made wild claims about creationism in any of his works that have actually been published. He stuck to only a description of phyiscal evidence and has kept his conjectures about their meaning to the realm of non-peer reviewed publishing.
polonium-218 radiohalos in granite found around the world
I'll bet you don't realize this, but that's been debunked.