No. And it isn't possible to set an account up like this.
Macs have 'administrator' accounts which are actually just members of a 'wheel' like group for sudoing. There is a 'root' account on OSX, which you can't even log into by default. You can set a password for it by doing a 'sudo -s' and then 'passwd'. This account can't be logged into in the GUI, merely on the command line. The vast majority of users will not use this functionality.
Whenever a program needs rootlike privileges to install software (which is rare, as macs use app-folders) or to do system maintenance, they OS requires you to actually type in your password. This is the 'wheel' like functionality.
This security model is more secure than having only 'root' and 'user' accounts, which is why many Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, now default to this exact behavior.
So in OSX anyway, there is NO user account with root or root-like privileges.
They sell a quality product for a reasonable price.
If I were you I would stay far away from any sort of investment. You don't have the sense for it. The point of investing is to make money. That is the only point of investing.
I'm sure you think that you have a valid reason, that is to influence the company somehow. But you will not have any influence, and your money will be at risk.
Selling a quality product at a reasonable price is a great way to lose money. If you don't charge the price that maximizes profit then you are cheating shareholders, and you can be forced out of you position at the company. If Trolltech has an IPO you will see that the behavior of the company changes drastically, no matter who owns shares. If even a medium small minority of shareholders don't like the 'charity pricing' of it's products the company will go down spewing money in lawsuits.
And since we aren't skimming 98% of the effort going into linux in order to fund an ever larger house for Bill 'Reginald' Gates III and other assorted Fops and Dandies, it takes very little to support the community.
So even with only 2% of the market share Linux is progressing faster than Windows, and only OS X is setting the pace, although OSX is built on a GNU base, and Darwin is OSS even if not GPL'd.
So by all measures Linux is better for people who 'know' computers than windows. I know if I had to use Windows at work I would find a different job instead, developing on windows is painful.
Here at LinuxCorp we pride ourselves in creating the most usable desktop environment and most stable server environment available. It might not be as pretty as OSX or as familiar as Windows, but this is the path we have chosen.
I must regretfully inform you that your application to become a Linux user has been rejected. The following may have contributed to this decision:
* Too little relevant computer experience * Intellectual laziness * Failure to understand that a different operating system might have a different philosophy with regards to any of the following: **installing software **uninstalling software **command line or lack of command line **hand holding * Belief that ability to perform mundane tasks corresponds in some way to computer knowledge or ability * Unhealthy fear of compilation
We are sorry that we could not offer Linux use to you at this time. We hope you are satisfied with LinixCorp and will continue to recommend Linux to your friends and associates.
We would like to again remind you that you are not to attempt to use any Linux product, and use of said product(s) may cause you to be accosted and / or threatened by one Richard Stallman.
"And then it turns out that a lot of the students at my school were dumb, so I dropped out during senior year in the middle of a semester."
I call BULL SHIT. Maybe this story will work on grandma, but there is no reason to try to pawn it off here.
You've put yourself in the following situation: 1. You are an idiot for dropping out so close to graduation. OR 2. You are lying to make yourself come off better than you should.
I'm guessing that it is a big fat #2. In fact, I'm guessing that this whole post is your cover story for getting kicked out of school for weed or something. Why you would volunteer it like this is curious. It may be that you have serious emotional issues and couldn't bring yourself to finish college, and the 'they were all idiots' routine is your defense mechanism.
Regardless, this story stinks. No way will I believe it.
because GCC happened to be one of the best C compilers arround
Don't flaunt your ignorance too much! GCC has never really been one of the 'best' compilers. It is has always been a somewhat decent compiler that usually worked fairly well. However, it is FREE. Say that with me, FREE. There are very few free compilers that aren't GCC derived, and those that exist are only free because they want to compete with GCC or are obsolete (aka Watcom).
GCC is a prerequisite for linux to exist because otherwise only those people who shelled out $500 for a compiler could hack on it, and they would all have to have the SAME $500 compiler, and they couldn't release said compiler with any linux distro. Where would that leave Linux?
So it has nothing to do with GCC being one of the best compilers around. It has to do with an open source project that depends on people contributing to it cannot require those same people to spend $1000's of dollars on tools.
I think zerocool^ might be too retarted to understand what is being said here.
Why would you call Debian "linux"? Is every OS named for the kernel it runs? This is a naive point of view. The reason Stallman deserves it to be called GNU is because:
1. GNU was there first, 2. GNU is a prerequisite for the linux kernel to exist 3. Linux without GNU is worthless, as there are a large number of necessary utilities for linux that can ONLY be compiled with GCC, so even if you decide to replace it with ICC you can't compile firefox,etc 4. Every 'Linux' system uses GNU software, but there are a lot of GNU systems that don't use Linux. Thus 'Linux' is just one of many GNU systems. 5. Because zerocool^ is an idiot, and I as a general rule it is fun to disagree with idiots.
Even against great players, it doesn't lose over time
Spoken like someone who knows nothing about poker. 'Statistically perfect' doesn't exist. If you don't change the way you play against good players, for each different player you come up against, you will lose a whole lot of money.
This is a false claim you make. Given a society which posesses the technology to produce 'things' that is, things which you can't just pick up off the ground, then said society has a concept of property, period.
Any decent anthropologist will tell you the same thing. The only 'cultures' without property are the ones where all they have are stick and rocks which are so plentiful it would be stupid to try to take one from someone when you can just pick up a different one off the ground.
Oh, and please forward me your address so I can send a truck to pick up all that stuff you have laying around your house, which I would call property but you apparently are too enlightened to care about. Failure to forward your address for the purpose of having all 'your' things shipped to me is equivelent to admitting you are a hypocrite.
I agree, except to say that ALL RELIGION IS REDICULOUS.
Religion is just the fantasies that people believe. If you don't get this then you're delusional. There are lots of cute little arguments against religions, but the best argument is 'demonstrate a factual basis for ANY religious claim'. There isn't any, because all religion is false.
Now, it is easy to snipe this, and say that 'you are claiming something that is impossible to prove' and this is true. It is impossible to prove that all religious belief is false. Then again, if you did prove one false the fanatics would believe it anyway, and possibly kill you. You see, throughout history nothing has been more hostile to thought than religion. This continues to this day, where Christians insist that their unthinking nonsense be taught in school, while at the same time using arguments which they know to be completely without merit to try to lampoon any theory which in the slightest way contradicts their myths. See the 'second law of thermodynamics makes evolution impossible' and 'it is more likely for a 747 jet to spontaneously appear through chance than a single cell so evolution is implausible' arguments if you don't believe me.
Lawyers also protect people who are honestly creating wealth from having it stolen, and force the government to prove their cases rather than simply jailing based on assumed guilt.
Lawyers also help people who are being abused by those much more powerful than them gain some relief. Pig Hogger, you dumbass, given your strong opinions about lawyers being worthless, I take it that when your neighbor builds his fence five feet past the property line you'll be representing yourself? How about when a large company steals your intellectual property and sells it, making a large amount of money? Will you say 'fuck lawyers' and try to talk the money out of them?
Yes, there are smarmy laywers. But there are a whole lot of smarmy people.
The things you say about lawyers can equally well be said about karate instructors, soldiers, stay at home mothers, old people, the police, etc etc etc. Lawyers make money because there is demand for their services, just like anyone else (except government employees).
You don't understand "embrace, extend, extinguish".
If there is a standard, complience with that standard is what gives it value. If you and I agree on a standard for the FTP protocol, I can write a client and you can write the server. Then 'people' can use ftp with your server and my client to download files from websites.
However, let's say a company, call it Bugsoft, creates a 'File Trasfer Protocol + Bugsoft Enhancements". Since this company has millions of captive users, they ship "FTP + B" and make it the default for those millions of users. Now when one of those users tries to log in to your server which you wrote to the standard, it doesn't work. When someone tries to use my client to log into an "FTP + B" server, it doesn't work. Maybe it just fails, or maybe the features which make it worthwhile only work if you use a Bugsoft client and server. Those features are available on YOUR server and MY client, but they use a different mechanism as is laid out in the standard.
So you see, people will have no choice but to use Bugsoft's "FTP + B" because everybody else is. However, they didn't make it so you had to use their "FTP + B" so that they could make money on "FTP + B". They are afraid that if people can use my client on any operating system people will just use the OS that is most convienient. Bugsoft wants people to have to use BUG/OS to get work done. So they only realease "FTP + B" on BUG/OS, meaning that users of FREESTYLE/OS can't even FTP at all! Bugsoft has 'extended' FTP into a worthless standard, meanwhile causing two incompatible FTP's to exist, meanwhile making it artificially difficult to transfer files or use another operating system.
Notice that the type of license doesn't come to play in this AT ALL.
This is why once Free software becomes competative with Microsoft products developers should refuse to support any buggy microsoft products that aren't written strictly to the applicable standard. This will effectively force them to support standars OR suffer the same incompatabilities they forced on everyone else.
You're making my situations into strawmen. They are stronger than you make them out to be.
1. Aliens and Infants: The government could always use an orphan. Nobody need know the exchange is going on, that doesn't effect the ethical portion of the situation. The point is, is it ok to murder innocent babies in exchange for alien happiness technology?
2. What if I really really don't like being a slave, but you really really really like owning me?
3. You can't murder depressed people. That is an insane proposition. However, Utilitarianism says it's ok in under certain conditions.
4. You miss the point. Given an equal average happiness, is it better to concentrate that happiness or spread it around? The theory gives no reason to prefer one over the other. This is a flaw in the theory. If it is better to concentrate it, then this justifies oppressing minorities if it makes the majority happy and increases the 'average' happiness. If it is better to spread it around then it is ok to take rich people's stuff if you will enjoy it more than them.
5. Once again you totally miss the point. Nobody is ever happier when the bum lives. Therefore, the fireman should NEVER risk his life to save a bum. This is again a rediculous idea. The fireman should certainly save the bum if he is at only a.00000001% chance of dying in the attempt for example. However, under the 'maximum happiness' theory he should NEVER TRY.
6. You miss the point here. If dead people don't count against the average happiness then the best thing to do with chronically unhappy people is to fire them into the sun when no-one is looking. If dead people have some level of happiness then it causes all sorts of theoretical issues. The point is that the theory doesn't account for this at all. This is a major problem.
I understand that you have little philisophical training so I won't rip your throat out, but I'm not asking for your personal opinions here. You should be able to support your ideas at least a bit. Oh, and read more carefully, you didn't grasp most of my examples.
Except what if aliens land, and offer us technology providing extreme happiness, every one of us, except the government secretly supplies them with an infant every week which they torture to death in the most gruesome way imaginable, for reasons of their own.
Clearly happiness is greatly increased. Do you consider this a 'good' thing?
Or, what if owning slaves makes you very very happy, and makes the slaves unhappy, but not to the extent you enjoy it. Does that mean that slavery is ok, because it increases net happiness? Is slavery 'bad' only when people dislike being slaves more than people enjoy owning them? Your definition says that this is the case.
What if we just round up and kill every person who has no family and is depressed? The average happiness is increased.
Is it 'better' under your 'net happiness' regime to have a few people be really really happy and everybody else be sortof neutral, or have everybody be just a little bit happier than neutral?
If a fireman runs into a building and saves a bum, and the fireman dies and the bum lives, and the bum was drunk and the next day he doesn't remember it, and the fireman dies. The bum doesn't even know he almost died, so his happiness is unchanged. However, the fireman's family is very very unhappy for a very long time. Your theory of 'good' says that there should be a general policy not to try and save drunk bums from burning buildings, because there is a huge downside and no upside for net happiness.
Are dead people unhappy? Because if they aren't then murder is only wrong if somebody cares about the person.
Utilitarianism is bogus because it leads to repugnant conclusions when you try to honestly apply it.
I'm a sysadmin. I have about 2000 HD's going. They fail at a rate of about 1 every week and a half. They also fail in groups of 2 or 3 (possibly temperature driven?). IDE HD's fail much more often than FC, although I have many more (3-4x as many) FC disks than IDE. Whenever the temperature jumps the IDE drives start going haywire.
No. The chips are all equally good,and come from the same manufacturers anyway.
The PCB's (the green part) vary widely. If you want to save money on ram production this is the only place to do it, as there are no 'generic' ram chips (the black part of a dimm).
Notice that a "stick" of ram consists of two parts, the actual microchips, which are black, and the PCB, which is blue, black or green, (sometimes red or purple) which the chips are mounted on. The chips are produced by Micron, Infineon, and Samsung (all of which are fine quality wise), whereas there are myriad producers of PCB's, many of them are shady.
When you buy brand name ram you are buying a higher quality PCB, along with higher production standards.
Does it mean that men in white lab coats didn't make it in a test tube?
Does it mean it was found out in the woods?
Does it mean it isn't made out of oil?
There is a thing called the naturalistic falacy which basically says that every definition of natural is nonsense.
Plus, who made it a rule that natural=good? Is penicillan preferable to tetracycline since it is 'natural' as in found in nature, whereas tetracycline is man made? What about drug resistant TB?
Oh, and plutonium is much better than maple syrup, if your goal is to cause hidious tumors.
Plus, I'll take polyester, decidedly unnatural, as a material for clothes instead of poison ivy sewn together into a suit (no clothes more natural than leaves folks).
In a lot of cases 'natural' will kill you dead. Take bears for example. And of course all the poisonous plants, which is almost all of them. Feel free to wander around taking bites of things in the forest if you don't believe me.
Don't forget goat feces! Natural natural natural. But I'll use miracle grow, thank you very much.
Oh, I suppose using a computer isn't natural, however it seems that eating raw meat is highly natural. So next time you're outside and you spy a tasty rabbit, dig him out and chow down! When they try to arrest you for being a maniac just explain that in nature preditors don't cook their prey, they just eat them. I'm sure they'll agree that natural is great.
Oh, and I'm leaving out herpes, which is natural, but not so great, and money, completely unnatural, which rocks.
I think a major reduction in world population in a non-violent way would be an extremely good thing.
Now that you've served up a heaping helping of bullshit, do me a favor. Tell us all what it means 'to be a good thing'. Tell us how you know this, and tell us how we can tell whether something is 'good' or not.
This could clear up a lot of issues, thanks in advance.
Oh, one restriction. You can't use the following words or synonyms of these words in the definition of 'good' without it being circular.
good best worse bad better desirable evil preferable nice
Now, before you start I should also point out that neither you nor anyone else has any chance of actually giving an answer to this.
Feel free to try, and I'll be glad to tell you exactly where you are wrong. I promise that you will either have to resort to an argument that either: Does not satisfy the question OR uses the 'god said so' method of proof OR is circular.
doesn't the secular world view this as a mistake on the part of natural selection?
Natural selection isn't a being, and therefore doesn't make 'mistakes'. This is the same kind of stupid anthropomorphism that gives us rediculous ideas like 'god'.
That is just because Australia is a backwater. Their native species are millions of years behind the rest of the world in adaptation, just as the native people were thousands of years behind in technology. It is an isolated ecosystem with very few habitable regions, so evolution is slower.
Where else could a frog and a rabbit overrun a country?
One example will do, the Platipus.
So yes, Australia is going to have problems as their animals are out-competed by almost every other animal on earth. I'll bet that mountain lions can out compete regular lions in the US however.
You don't have to systematically kill things to get them all. The only condition is that they are delictious, and/or dangerous. Then Humans will kill them whenever they have a chance.
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So you're saying only use gzip if we don't want to a-splode in the upper atmosphere?
Suppose for a second that it is possible.
It is so difficult to do this that it will only happen if someone wants it intentionally.
One can hardly say an OS's security is at fault if a user with the root password decides to comprimise the system on purpose!
No. And it isn't possible to set an account up like this.
Macs have 'administrator' accounts which are actually just members of a 'wheel' like group for sudoing. There is a 'root' account on OSX, which you can't even log into by default. You can set a password for it by doing a 'sudo -s' and then 'passwd'. This account can't be logged into in the GUI, merely on the command line. The vast majority of users will not use this functionality.
Whenever a program needs rootlike privileges to install software (which is rare, as macs use app-folders) or to do system maintenance, they OS requires you to actually type in your password. This is the 'wheel' like functionality.
This security model is more secure than having only 'root' and 'user' accounts, which is why many Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, now default to this exact behavior.
So in OSX anyway, there is NO user account with root or root-like privileges.
They sell a quality product for a reasonable price.
If I were you I would stay far away from any sort of investment. You don't have the sense for it. The point of investing is to make money. That is the only point of investing.
I'm sure you think that you have a valid reason, that is to influence the company somehow. But you will not have any influence, and your money will be at risk.
Selling a quality product at a reasonable price is a great way to lose money. If you don't charge the price that maximizes profit then you are cheating shareholders, and you can be forced out of you position at the company. If Trolltech has an IPO you will see that the behavior of the company changes drastically, no matter who owns shares. If even a medium small minority of shareholders don't like the 'charity pricing' of it's products the company will go down spewing money in lawsuits.
If it took an article to convince you this was a hoax then you are more than just a little retarded.
Linux succeeds every day where I work.
And since we aren't skimming 98% of the effort going into linux in order to fund an ever larger house for Bill 'Reginald' Gates III and other assorted Fops and Dandies, it takes very little to support the community.
So even with only 2% of the market share Linux is progressing faster than Windows, and only OS X is setting the pace, although OSX is built on a GNU base, and Darwin is OSS even if not GPL'd.
So by all measures Linux is better for people who 'know' computers than windows. I know if I had to use Windows at work I would find a different job instead, developing on windows is painful.
From: The desk of LinuxCorp
To: Coward, Anonymous
Here at LinuxCorp we pride ourselves in creating the most usable desktop environment and most stable server environment available. It might not be as pretty as OSX or as familiar as Windows, but this is the path we have chosen.
I must regretfully inform you that your application to become a Linux user has been rejected. The following may have contributed to this decision:
* Too little relevant computer experience
* Intellectual laziness
* Failure to understand that a different operating system might have a different philosophy with regards to any of the following:
**installing software
**uninstalling software
**command line or lack of command line
**hand holding
* Belief that ability to perform mundane tasks corresponds in some way to computer knowledge or ability
* Unhealthy fear of compilation
We are sorry that we could not offer Linux use to you at this time. We hope you are satisfied with LinixCorp and will continue to recommend Linux to your friends and associates.
We would like to again remind you that you are not to attempt to use any Linux product, and use of said product(s) may cause you to be accosted and / or threatened by one Richard Stallman.
Sincerely,
LinuxCorp AutoReject 2.0
"And then it turns out that a lot of the students at my school were dumb, so I dropped out during senior year in the middle of a semester."
I call BULL SHIT. Maybe this story will work on grandma, but there is no reason to try to pawn it off here.
You've put yourself in the following situation:
1. You are an idiot for dropping out so close to graduation.
OR
2. You are lying to make yourself come off better than you should.
I'm guessing that it is a big fat #2. In fact, I'm guessing that this whole post is your cover story for getting kicked out of school for weed or something. Why you would volunteer it like this is curious. It may be that you have serious emotional issues and couldn't bring yourself to finish college, and the 'they were all idiots' routine is your defense mechanism.
Regardless, this story stinks. No way will I believe it.
OH, so that's what's wrong with you!
Here I thought you were born an idiot, but you've actually been trained that way.
because GCC happened to be one of the best C compilers arround
Don't flaunt your ignorance too much! GCC has never really been one of the 'best' compilers. It is has always been a somewhat decent compiler that usually worked fairly well. However, it is FREE. Say that with me, FREE. There are very few free compilers that aren't GCC derived, and those that exist are only free because they want to compete with GCC or are obsolete (aka Watcom).
GCC is a prerequisite for linux to exist because otherwise only those people who shelled out $500 for a compiler could hack on it, and they would all have to have the SAME $500 compiler, and they couldn't release said compiler with any linux distro. Where would that leave Linux?
So it has nothing to do with GCC being one of the best compilers around. It has to do with an open source project that depends on people contributing to it cannot require those same people to spend $1000's of dollars on tools.
I think zerocool^ might be too retarted to understand what is being said here.
Why would you call Debian "linux"? Is every OS named for the kernel it runs? This is a naive point of view. The reason Stallman deserves it to be called GNU is because:
1. GNU was there first,
2. GNU is a prerequisite for the linux kernel to exist
3. Linux without GNU is worthless, as there are a large number of necessary utilities for linux that can ONLY be compiled with GCC, so even if you decide to replace it with ICC you can't compile firefox,etc
4. Every 'Linux' system uses GNU software, but there are a lot of GNU systems that don't use Linux. Thus 'Linux' is just one of many GNU systems.
5. Because zerocool^ is an idiot, and I as a general rule it is fun to disagree with idiots.
Even against great players, it doesn't lose over time
Spoken like someone who knows nothing about poker. 'Statistically perfect' doesn't exist. If you don't change the way you play against good players, for each different player you come up against, you will lose a whole lot of money.
This is a false claim you make. Given a society which posesses the technology to produce 'things' that is, things which you can't just pick up off the ground, then said society has a concept of property, period.
Any decent anthropologist will tell you the same thing. The only 'cultures' without property are the ones where all they have are stick and rocks which are so plentiful it would be stupid to try to take one from someone when you can just pick up a different one off the ground.
Oh, and please forward me your address so I can send a truck to pick up all that stuff you have laying around your house, which I would call property but you apparently are too enlightened to care about. Failure to forward your address for the purpose of having all 'your' things shipped to me is equivelent to admitting you are a hypocrite.
I agree, except to say that ALL RELIGION IS REDICULOUS.
Religion is just the fantasies that people believe. If you don't get this then you're delusional. There are lots of cute little arguments against religions, but the best argument is 'demonstrate a factual basis for ANY religious claim'. There isn't any, because all religion is false.
Now, it is easy to snipe this, and say that 'you are claiming something that is impossible to prove' and this is true. It is impossible to prove that all religious belief is false. Then again, if you did prove one false the fanatics would believe it anyway, and possibly kill you. You see, throughout history nothing has been more hostile to thought than religion. This continues to this day, where Christians insist that their unthinking nonsense be taught in school, while at the same time using arguments which they know to be completely without merit to try to lampoon any theory which in the slightest way contradicts their myths. See the 'second law of thermodynamics makes evolution impossible' and 'it is more likely for a 747 jet to spontaneously appear through chance than a single cell so evolution is implausible' arguments if you don't believe me.
Lawyers also protect people who are honestly creating wealth from having it stolen, and force the government to prove their cases rather than simply jailing based on assumed guilt.
Lawyers also help people who are being abused by those much more powerful than them gain some relief. Pig Hogger, you dumbass, given your strong opinions about lawyers being worthless, I take it that when your neighbor builds his fence five feet past the property line you'll be representing yourself? How about when a large company steals your intellectual property and sells it, making a large amount of money? Will you say 'fuck lawyers' and try to talk the money out of them?
Yes, there are smarmy laywers. But there are a whole lot of smarmy people.
The things you say about lawyers can equally well be said about karate instructors, soldiers, stay at home mothers, old people, the police, etc etc etc. Lawyers make money because there is demand for their services, just like anyone else (except government employees).
You don't understand "embrace, extend, extinguish".
If there is a standard, complience with that standard is what gives it value. If you and I agree on a standard for the FTP protocol, I can write a client and you can write the server. Then 'people' can use ftp with your server and my client to download files from websites.
However, let's say a company, call it Bugsoft, creates a 'File Trasfer Protocol + Bugsoft Enhancements". Since this company has millions of captive users, they ship "FTP + B" and make it the default for those millions of users. Now when one of those users tries to log in to your server which you wrote to the standard, it doesn't work. When someone tries to use my client to log into an "FTP + B" server, it doesn't work. Maybe it just fails, or maybe the features which make it worthwhile only work if you use a Bugsoft client and server. Those features are available on YOUR server and MY client, but they use a different mechanism as is laid out in the standard.
So you see, people will have no choice but to use Bugsoft's "FTP + B" because everybody else is. However, they didn't make it so you had to use their "FTP + B" so that they could make money on "FTP + B". They are afraid that if people can use my client on any operating system people will just use the OS that is most convienient. Bugsoft wants people to have to use BUG/OS to get work done. So they only realease "FTP + B" on BUG/OS, meaning that users of FREESTYLE/OS can't even FTP at all! Bugsoft has 'extended' FTP into a worthless standard, meanwhile causing two incompatible FTP's to exist, meanwhile making it artificially difficult to transfer files or use another operating system.
Notice that the type of license doesn't come to play in this AT ALL.
This is why once Free software becomes competative with Microsoft products developers should refuse to support any buggy microsoft products that aren't written strictly to the applicable standard. This will effectively force them to support standars OR suffer the same incompatabilities they forced on everyone else.
Fuck you, Microsoft.
You're making my situations into strawmen. They are stronger than you make them out to be.
.00000001% chance of dying in the attempt for example. However, under the 'maximum happiness' theory he should NEVER TRY.
1. Aliens and Infants: The government could always use an orphan. Nobody need know the exchange is going on, that doesn't effect the ethical portion of the situation. The point is, is it ok to murder innocent babies in exchange for alien happiness technology?
2. What if I really really don't like being a slave, but you really really really like owning me?
3. You can't murder depressed people. That is an insane proposition. However, Utilitarianism says it's ok in under certain conditions.
4. You miss the point. Given an equal average happiness, is it better to concentrate that happiness or spread it around? The theory gives no reason to prefer one over the other. This is a flaw in the theory. If it is better to concentrate it, then this justifies oppressing minorities if it makes the majority happy and increases the 'average' happiness. If it is better to spread it around then it is ok to take rich people's stuff if you will enjoy it more than them.
5. Once again you totally miss the point. Nobody is ever happier when the bum lives. Therefore, the fireman should NEVER risk his life to save a bum. This is again a rediculous idea. The fireman should certainly save the bum if he is at only a
6. You miss the point here. If dead people don't count against the average happiness then the best thing to do with chronically unhappy people is to fire them into the sun when no-one is looking. If dead people have some level of happiness then it causes all sorts of theoretical issues. The point is that the theory doesn't account for this at all. This is a major problem.
I understand that you have little philisophical training so I won't rip your throat out, but I'm not asking for your personal opinions here. You should be able to support your ideas at least a bit. Oh, and read more carefully, you didn't grasp most of my examples.
Ahh, very clever.
Except what if aliens land, and offer us technology providing extreme happiness, every one of us, except the government secretly supplies them with an infant every week which they torture to death in the most gruesome way imaginable, for reasons of their own.
Clearly happiness is greatly increased. Do you consider this a 'good' thing?
Or, what if owning slaves makes you very very happy, and makes the slaves unhappy, but not to the extent you enjoy it. Does that mean that slavery is ok, because it increases net happiness? Is slavery 'bad' only when people dislike being slaves more than people enjoy owning them? Your definition says that this is the case.
What if we just round up and kill every person who has no family and is depressed? The average happiness is increased.
Is it 'better' under your 'net happiness' regime to have a few people be really really happy and everybody else be sortof neutral, or have everybody be just a little bit happier than neutral?
If a fireman runs into a building and saves a bum, and the fireman dies and the bum lives, and the bum was drunk and the next day he doesn't remember it, and the fireman dies. The bum doesn't even know he almost died, so his happiness is unchanged. However, the fireman's family is very very unhappy for a very long time. Your theory of 'good' says that there should be a general policy not to try and save drunk bums from burning buildings, because there is a huge downside and no upside for net happiness.
Are dead people unhappy? Because if they aren't then murder is only wrong if somebody cares about the person.
Utilitarianism is bogus because it leads to repugnant conclusions when you try to honestly apply it.
I'm a sysadmin. I have about 2000 HD's going. They fail at a rate of about 1 every week and a half. They also fail in groups of 2 or 3 (possibly temperature driven?). IDE HD's fail much more often than FC, although I have many more (3-4x as many) FC disks than IDE. Whenever the temperature jumps the IDE drives start going haywire.
No. The chips are all equally good,and come from the same manufacturers anyway.
The PCB's (the green part) vary widely. If you want to save money on ram production this is the only place to do it, as there are no 'generic' ram chips (the black part of a dimm).
Notice that a "stick" of ram consists of two parts, the actual microchips, which are black, and the PCB, which is blue, black or green, (sometimes red or purple) which the chips are mounted on. The chips are produced by Micron, Infineon, and Samsung (all of which are fine quality wise), whereas there are myriad producers of PCB's, many of them are shady.
When you buy brand name ram you are buying a higher quality PCB, along with higher production standards.
What the fuck does 'natural' mean?
Does it mean that men in white lab coats didn't make it in a test tube?
Does it mean it was found out in the woods?
Does it mean it isn't made out of oil?
There is a thing called the naturalistic falacy which basically says that every definition of natural is nonsense.
Plus, who made it a rule that natural=good? Is penicillan preferable to tetracycline since it is 'natural' as in found in nature, whereas tetracycline is man made? What about drug resistant TB?
Oh, and plutonium is much better than maple syrup, if your goal is to cause hidious tumors.
Plus, I'll take polyester, decidedly unnatural, as a material for clothes instead of poison ivy sewn together into a suit (no clothes more natural than leaves folks).
In a lot of cases 'natural' will kill you dead. Take bears for example. And of course all the poisonous plants, which is almost all of them. Feel free to wander around taking bites of things in the forest if you don't believe me.
Don't forget goat feces! Natural natural natural. But I'll use miracle grow, thank you very much.
Oh, I suppose using a computer isn't natural, however it seems that eating raw meat is highly natural. So next time you're outside and you spy a tasty rabbit, dig him out and chow down! When they try to arrest you for being a maniac just explain that in nature preditors don't cook their prey, they just eat them. I'm sure they'll agree that natural is great.
Oh, and I'm leaving out herpes, which is natural, but not so great, and money, completely unnatural, which rocks.
I think a major reduction in world population in a non-violent way would be an extremely good thing.
Now that you've served up a heaping helping of bullshit, do me a favor. Tell us all what it means 'to be a good thing'. Tell us how you know this, and tell us how we can tell whether something is 'good' or not.
This could clear up a lot of issues, thanks in advance.
Oh, one restriction. You can't use the following words or synonyms of these words in the definition of 'good' without it being circular.
good
best
worse
bad
better
desirable
evil
preferable
nice
Now, before you start I should also point out that neither you nor anyone else has any chance of actually giving an answer to this.
Feel free to try, and I'll be glad to tell you exactly where you are wrong. I promise that you will either have to resort to an argument that either: Does not satisfy the question OR uses the 'god said so' method of proof OR is circular.
Have fun kids.
doesn't the secular world view this as a mistake on the part of natural selection?
Natural selection isn't a being, and therefore doesn't make 'mistakes'. This is the same kind of stupid anthropomorphism that gives us rediculous ideas like 'god'.
'Ya' hick.
That is just because Australia is a backwater. Their native species are millions of years behind the rest of the world in adaptation, just as the native people were thousands of years behind in technology. It is an isolated ecosystem with very few habitable regions, so evolution is slower.
Where else could a frog and a rabbit overrun a country?
One example will do, the Platipus.
So yes, Australia is going to have problems as their animals are out-competed by almost every other animal on earth. I'll bet that mountain lions can out compete regular lions in the US however.
You don't have to systematically kill things to get them all. The only condition is that they are delictious, and/or dangerous. Then Humans will kill them whenever they have a chance.
See: Dodo.