Re:Why can't we think for ourselves?
on
Ready, Steady, Evolve
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Most of us have thought for ourselves; hopefully by reading some material from both sides of this argument and deciding based on the evidence presented whether they too believe in the theory of evolution or not.
The thing that draws most scientifically minded people to evolution is the scientific observations presented to back it up, and the difficulty in refuting it for the most part. Christianity on the other hand, while having the difficult to refute part down REALLY solidly, has only a series of assumptions based on "faith" for its defense. No offense to anyone's religion, but religion not only is not equal to science, but it doesn't even WANT to be like science. You're not SUPPOSED to test your God. You're just supposed to believe. Nothing wrong with that, but when you start putting up faith in the face of scientific data, it's a bit silly.
Your philosophical argument about thought is very interesting, but I don't need faith in my own intelligence either. I believe what I see with my own eyes; i.e. thinking for myself.
Just wondering what gave you the idea that IE's components were in a disk-cache? It sounds to me as if you're speculating.
Windows loads plenty of stuff into memory so that it can operate efficiently. For every Win machine I've ever used that had Win98 or greater, Explorer's windows have just been IE windows.
The way you put it certainly makes me re-think my previous position, but I still wonder if it is all right to take someone else's product and re-package and re-sell an alternate version of it without the permission of its original author.
How about if I hack a Super Mario Bros. ROM and re-sell that (after buying as many copies as I am going to sell, naturally, so that I am not cutting into Nintendo's sales)? I'll make sure to tell everyone that it's really SMB and I've just "modified" it a bit. I am pretty sure that has never been legal.
What about if I buy 20 bags of cheetos, remove them from their packaging, add a few ingredients, and re-package them in my own bag which says "Clean Films Cheetos" on it, but of course, also mentions on there that it DOES in fact contain modified cheetos. That seems pretty close to what these guys are doing, and I doubt anyone would get away with it with that sort of product. Why is it different for movies, exactly?
Despite all that, I think that, in the end, it will all come down to the fact that CF is using someone else's trademark without their permission. You are correct in saying that it is most likely not an issue of copyright.
How do you reconcile the fact that the movie as sold by this company is NOT, in fact, the original movie but a separate picture BASED on the original?
You can't tell me they're the same any more. What this company is doing is basically producing a movie using 99% of the content of another movie. If that isn't a blatant infringement of copyright, I don't know what is.
If you buy a movie and rip content out of it, then it would be false advertising to claim that it is the same movie any more, don't you agree?
And yet, if you call it something else, or claim that it is a different movie BASED on the original, then you are violating copyright.
So, in short, their product is illegal because it is a separate product which contains an illegal amount of the original.
Another example: if I take the newest Stephen King book, change the title and two of the pictures, and then claim that I am selling the newest Stephen King book, I am obviously infringing copyright. If I call it anything else, though, then I am plagiarizing. Right? Seems simple enough to me.
First off, pissing someone off doesn't give them the right to blow people up, and it never has.
Second, my country has been in support of Israel for LONG before Bush was in office, and this seems to be the major thorn in the side of islamic terrorists.
I don't even like Bush, but I certainly wouldn't go blaming him for the crimes of others, you creep.
"R" and "U", first of all, are NOT useful reforms of spelling. Not at all. It is not the end goal of written English to have the shortest words possible. We certainly do not need every individual letter of the alphabet having a separate meaning. A and I are enough for me.
Note that I am not a linguist. (I think that should be obvious). But I am annoyed that many people here think that slang and colloquialisms are acceptable in formal, written English. Whether you personally think the sentence "when r teh ppl cmg ovr" is a good use of language or not is entirely irrelevant.
Let me put it simply: it makes the writer look stupid. When you are writing a paper in a class about some topic or another, the last thing you want to convey to the person grading that paper is that you are a total idiot. I am not calling the users of net slang idiots; merely stating that this is the easiest impression to draw from their ridiculously not at all elegant use of language.
When you are having an informal conversation with someone, you probably don't care how you present yourself to others. You simply want to communicate your ideas in a comprehensible fashion. When you are writing something academic, you REALLY should care about whether you sound intelligent. Don't think I'm just being superficial either. If I am reading the beginning of something you wrote and you use a bunch of irritating garbage like omg, lol, and so forth, I am going to assume that you have nothing worthwhile to say.
Would you wear dirty jeans with holes in them and no shirt and shoes to an important job interview? No? Then why do you want to use gutter level English in an important paper?
You and the other children are going to have to learn to spell and write like normal people if you want other normal people (your professors in college, for instance) to take the time to read and grade what you hand in.
The stupid excuses you are making to cover up your lack of effort would be similar to a math student inventing their own rules about numbers so that calculations could be made more easily. Stop being so whiny and lazy.
No, and no one's arresting you if you use someone else's registration information (or even randomly generated data) to read the online version either, are they?
L33T Ebonics? I don't think it would be very much different from the way it is now... Wigger-speak and IRC/discussion boards go hand in hand, as far as I've seen.
I'd come up with a good example, but I guess I'm just not l33t enough, or whatever.
With the exception of LASER, you can not expect to use any of your examples in formal writing. RTFM is internet slang, just like ppl, lol, omg, and so forth, and would never, NEVER be acceptable in a paper or book or anything of that sort.
You're extrapolating. He never defended copying software at all. He said it's not the same as theft of physical goods, and he is entirely correct. It's an infringement of copyright and therefore falls under a different set of rules. But he is not saying taking the software is good or all right, and neither am I.
If you killed someone, isn't that theft? Yes. You shouldn't kill people. If you drive faster than the speed limit or smoke pot, isn't that theft? Yes. Those things are against the law. They are theft. If you sell alcohol to minors.... etc.
Not everything is theft, as some people would love to think. Specifically, your two examples involve copyright and/or trademark infringement.
The case at hand should have been settled by the affected parties suing the individuals in the warez group. It should be handled without criminal charges. That way, the offenders would still be punished, and the companies whose IP was improperly copied (i.e. NOT stolen) could have a chance to recover financial damages. But no, since the feds equate IP infringement with theft, this guy gets 33 months (a sentence which in no way fits the severity of the crime), and the companies get NOTHING.
I found a little file in my/tmp called.uubugtraq. It probably came from this worm, since I was running the old OpenSSL. I've since upgraded. So just creating that one file might not be a very good solution.
I've only watched this show a couple of times, and I've rarely been more annoyed than that. I guess I just find the entire concept of the series, the writing, and all of the characters to be completely irritating.
I've also noticed that all of the die-hard fans really loved that musical episode. Musical episodes suck. I don't care if they're trying to parody Broadway or whatever it is that the authors think they're brilliantly trying to do. (IT'S SOOOOOOOO 3DGY AND ORIGINAL TO DO THE FIVE THOUSANDTH MUSICAL PARODY EPISODE! HUR HUR HUR!) Also: Broadway sucks.
That doesn't make any sense, what you just said. They found information proving that the man had lied on a job application. I work for the public sector; it seems pretty universal that you get asked whether you have been convicted of any crimes on your application. What other possible reason would they need for firing this guy?
Lincoln, being a small city, is still substantially large (100,000+), and what you are saying is very idealistic and lofty, but not very close to reality.
We have a guy here, he was a law student for several years (can't remember if he graduated or not). He can usually be found somewhere near the downtown Lincoln area with various politically or legally charged slogans written all over his clothing.
He writes the slogans on himself because he will be arrested for bothering people if he says them out loud. He will not discuss the sayings at length with you in public even if you ask him because he could be arrested as a protester. (Were you aware that protests are illegal unless registered with the city ahead of time?) He cannot stand in one place or he will be "impeding the flow of traffic" or some such crap. (or he is a protester again, take your pick). He cannot come to the same place every day either, or so I've heard.
The first amendment? It has no meaning in my city. Think it sounds odd? No one even notices this stuff unless they dig around, do some reading, or talk to odd people like this guy. I would venture to guess that most comparable cities (and ALL larger cities) have similar "reasons" to arrest people who are exercising their freedom to peacably assemble, or even their freedom to talk in public. It's an ugly world at times, and the ACLU is NOT going to save some poor, borderline homeless political outsider like this guy.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of us have thought for ourselves; hopefully by reading some material from both sides of this argument and deciding based on the evidence presented whether they too believe in the theory of evolution or not.
The thing that draws most scientifically minded people to evolution is the scientific observations presented to back it up, and the difficulty in refuting it for the most part. Christianity on the other hand, while having the difficult to refute part down REALLY solidly, has only a series of assumptions based on "faith" for its defense. No offense to anyone's religion, but religion not only is not equal to science, but it doesn't even WANT to be like science. You're not SUPPOSED to test your God. You're just supposed to believe. Nothing wrong with that, but when you start putting up faith in the face of scientific data, it's a bit silly.
Your philosophical argument about thought is very interesting, but I don't need faith in my own intelligence either. I believe what I see with my own eyes; i.e. thinking for myself.
Just wondering what gave you the idea that IE's components were in a disk-cache? It sounds to me as if you're speculating.
Windows loads plenty of stuff into memory so that it can operate efficiently. For every Win machine I've ever used that had Win98 or greater, Explorer's windows have just been IE windows.
The way you put it certainly makes me re-think my previous position, but I still wonder if it is all right to take someone else's product and re-package and re-sell an alternate version of it without the permission of its original author.
How about if I hack a Super Mario Bros. ROM and re-sell that (after buying as many copies as I am going to sell, naturally, so that I am not cutting into Nintendo's sales)? I'll make sure to tell everyone that it's really SMB and I've just "modified" it a bit. I am pretty sure that has never been legal.
What about if I buy 20 bags of cheetos, remove them from their packaging, add a few ingredients, and re-package them in my own bag which says "Clean Films Cheetos" on it, but of course, also mentions on there that it DOES in fact contain modified cheetos. That seems pretty close to what these guys are doing, and I doubt anyone would get away with it with that sort of product. Why is it different for movies, exactly?
Despite all that, I think that, in the end, it will all come down to the fact that CF is using someone else's trademark without their permission. You are correct in saying that it is most likely not an issue of copyright.
How do you reconcile the fact that the movie as sold by this company is NOT, in fact, the original movie but a separate picture BASED on the original?
You can't tell me they're the same any more. What this company is doing is basically producing a movie using 99% of the content of another movie. If that isn't a blatant infringement of copyright, I don't know what is.
If you buy a movie and rip content out of it, then it would be false advertising to claim that it is the same movie any more, don't you agree?
And yet, if you call it something else, or claim that it is a different movie BASED on the original, then you are violating copyright.
So, in short, their product is illegal because it is a separate product which contains an illegal amount of the original.
Another example: if I take the newest Stephen King book, change the title and two of the pictures, and then claim that I am selling the newest Stephen King book, I am obviously infringing copyright. If I call it anything else, though, then I am plagiarizing. Right? Seems simple enough to me.
You're right, moderator. Statements of agreement are off topic. What the hell were you thinking, you tool?
Someone's decided that your post was flamebait. I found it interesting, though. Sadly, I am without my mod hammer this week.
First off, pissing someone off doesn't give them the right to blow people up, and it never has.
Second, my country has been in support of Israel for LONG before Bush was in office, and this seems to be the major thorn in the side of islamic terrorists.
I don't even like Bush, but I certainly wouldn't go blaming him for the crimes of others, you creep.
"R" and "U", first of all, are NOT useful reforms of spelling. Not at all. It is not the end goal of written English to have the shortest words possible. We certainly do not need every individual letter of the alphabet having a separate meaning. A and I are enough for me.
Note that I am not a linguist. (I think that should be obvious). But I am annoyed that many people here think that slang and colloquialisms are acceptable in formal, written English. Whether you personally think the sentence "when r teh ppl cmg ovr" is a good use of language or not is entirely irrelevant.
Let me put it simply: it makes the writer look stupid. When you are writing a paper in a class about some topic or another, the last thing you want to convey to the person grading that paper is that you are a total idiot. I am not calling the users of net slang idiots; merely stating that this is the easiest impression to draw from their ridiculously not at all elegant use of language.
When you are having an informal conversation with someone, you probably don't care how you present yourself to others. You simply want to communicate your ideas in a comprehensible fashion. When you are writing something academic, you REALLY should care about whether you sound intelligent. Don't think I'm just being superficial either. If I am reading the beginning of something you wrote and you use a bunch of irritating garbage like omg, lol, and so forth, I am going to assume that you have nothing worthwhile to say.
Would you wear dirty jeans with holes in them and no shirt and shoes to an important job interview? No? Then why do you want to use gutter level English in an important paper?
You and the other children are going to have to learn to spell and write like normal people if you want other normal people (your professors in college, for instance) to take the time to read and grade what you hand in.
The stupid excuses you are making to cover up your lack of effort would be similar to a math student inventing their own rules about numbers so that calculations could be made more easily. Stop being so whiny and lazy.
No, and no one's arresting you if you use someone else's registration information (or even randomly generated data) to read the online version either, are they?
L33T Ebonics? I don't think it would be very much different from the way it is now... Wigger-speak and IRC/discussion boards go hand in hand, as far as I've seen.
I'd come up with a good example, but I guess I'm just not l33t enough, or whatever.
With the exception of LASER, you can not expect to use any of your examples in formal writing. RTFM is internet slang, just like ppl, lol, omg, and so forth, and would never, NEVER be acceptable in a paper or book or anything of that sort.
You're extrapolating. He never defended copying software at all. He said it's not the same as theft of physical goods, and he is entirely correct. It's an infringement of copyright and therefore falls under a different set of rules. But he is not saying taking the software is good or all right, and neither am I.
If you killed someone, isn't that theft? Yes. You shouldn't kill people. If you drive faster than the speed limit or smoke pot, isn't that theft? Yes. Those things are against the law. They are theft. If you sell alcohol to minors.... etc.
Not everything is theft, as some people would love to think. Specifically, your two examples involve copyright and/or trademark infringement.
The case at hand should have been settled by the affected parties suing the individuals in the warez group. It should be handled without criminal charges. That way, the offenders would still be punished, and the companies whose IP was improperly copied (i.e. NOT stolen) could have a chance to recover financial damages. But no, since the feds equate IP infringement with theft, this guy gets 33 months (a sentence which in no way fits the severity of the crime), and the companies get NOTHING.
oversimplification
n. 1. excessive simplification (to the point of misrepresentation)
-- wordnet
Synonyms: Your post.
I found a little file in my /tmp called .uubugtraq. It probably came from this worm, since I was running the old OpenSSL. I've since upgraded. So just creating that one file might not be a very good solution.
Q: Why are you here?
A: It's fun.
You're right! If I was retarded I WOULD like cheesy musicals! Thanks for putting things in perspective.
I've only watched this show a couple of times, and I've rarely been more annoyed than that. I guess I just find the entire concept of the series, the writing, and all of the characters to be completely irritating.
I've also noticed that all of the die-hard fans really loved that musical episode. Musical episodes suck. I don't care if they're trying to parody Broadway or whatever it is that the authors think they're brilliantly trying to do. (IT'S SOOOOOOOO 3DGY AND ORIGINAL TO DO THE FIVE THOUSANDTH MUSICAL PARODY EPISODE! HUR HUR HUR!) Also: Broadway sucks.
Why, that is exactly why we're all here, bitching about Buffy.
then blowing your wad during the endgame
I must have skipped the "Adult" section of the instructions.
That doesn't make any sense, what you just said. They found information proving that the man had lied on a job application. I work for the public sector; it seems pretty universal that you get asked whether you have been convicted of any crimes on your application. What other possible reason would they need for firing this guy?
Also, hate to reply twice, but:
If you're not disturbing the peace, or being a nuissance
That's exactly what they'll say you were doing.
Lincoln, being a small city, is still substantially large (100,000+), and what you are saying is very idealistic and lofty, but not very close to reality.
We have a guy here, he was a law student for several years (can't remember if he graduated or not). He can usually be found somewhere near the downtown Lincoln area with various politically or legally charged slogans written all over his clothing.
He writes the slogans on himself because he will be arrested for bothering people if he says them out loud. He will not discuss the sayings at length with you in public even if you ask him because he could be arrested as a protester. (Were you aware that protests are illegal unless registered with the city ahead of time?) He cannot stand in one place or he will be "impeding the flow of traffic" or some such crap. (or he is a protester again, take your pick). He cannot come to the same place every day either, or so I've heard.
The first amendment? It has no meaning in my city. Think it sounds odd? No one even notices this stuff unless they dig around, do some reading, or talk to odd people like this guy. I would venture to guess that most comparable cities (and ALL larger cities) have similar "reasons" to arrest people who are exercising their freedom to peacably assemble, or even their freedom to talk in public. It's an ugly world at times, and the ACLU is NOT going to save some poor, borderline homeless political outsider like this guy.