I'm sick of the know-better Christian Right and of Zion Israelis, and would never think that killing them is an acceptable idea, I also think both groups are as harmful as the insane zealot Muslim minority.
The second that mass murder sounds like a good solution, you are no better than whoever you hate.
In what world would CoD be a 10? CoD would be around a 3, and this would be around a solid average 5. Perhaps even 6 or 7 if you like the gimmicks. CoD is YACFPS (Yet another console FPS), with boring cover-based combat, idiotic progression (I want to kill shit, not play WoW like grind). Horrible color schemes (ooh grey and brown, how realistic.. oh wait the world is full of colors... nevermind), and one of the worst communities to ever grace gaming (and that is saying a lot, considering LoL, Diablo 3, and WoWs communities). Borderlands at least tries to be fun, which gives it a leg up.
But that is the great thing, though. All opinion is subjective.
I'm not going to be picking it up until a Steam Sale though. Between Guild Wars 2 and Torchlight 2 my gaming time is already going to be over-extended.
Copyrights are an important concept in our world, as are patents and trademark rights.
No argument there. I agree with you on everything, thus I never claimed that abolishing them were a good idea (reining them in, yes; killing them, no)
I'm just getting annoyed with the claim that if we weakened copyright all art would die, or it would be vastly reduced in quality. This isn't true, as demonstrated by history, human nature, and the legions of starving artists with no real hopes of being rich megastars. I think the RIAA Fallacy (I've grown to be obsessed with this term) is just another shade of the modern idea that you have the "right to get rich" (entitlement). This idea has pretty much shaded or doomed much of our political culture of late. And as such copyright went from a sane thing made to promote the continued creation of arts, balancing the momentary gains of creators (the carrot) with the eventually betterment of our arts as a whole; to nothing but a tool to ensure a continued revenue stream and continued control at the cost of innovation.
The original concept had nothing to do with individuals, outside of manipulating them to be useful. And now individual profit is all that matters, which is contrary to what our founding fathers actually wanted.
The damages are for the act which he is on trial for, not his acts during the trial. Perjury is a crime, and he should be held to that. But the RIAA shouldn't get $600k for a crime against the court.
I'm not saying I agree with him, or what he did was right. But I can see where the "principle" thing could come in play. He was a bit wormy about the whole thing, and really didn't play the innocent victim card right. I would be much more sympathetic towards him if he pirated the stuff, admitted it, then fought like hell. But this doesn't make the fine very realistic, or sane, all the same.
Or that the damages are absurd to almost any rational individual, and that they don't in anyway fit the scope of the crime. I don't think anyone, included him, actually thinks hes "not guilty", the punishment is just idiotic.
How can anyone think that over half a million dollars is really a fair value for 30.99c songs?
Except they wouldn't. There are thousands of years of art, all created before copyright existed, and much of it better than the drivel we have now.
People create art because we are human. Thats what we do. We're not going to stop doing that because people stop being willing to sacrifice all their rights to my imaginary property.
Further, you ignore the fact that artists can make money without relying on imaginary property. Go to a concert, see them live, go see an exhibit, etc...
People who claim that content will die if revenue dies are morons.
Wow... Onlive is the new timecube? Everything is possible through Onlive. Glory to Onlive. My life for Onlive. Onlive akbar.
I don't want a Mac. I've owned several, they didn't do it for me. I don't like Onlive, it has a crappy selection, it has crappy latency, and I love owning my own games. I especially don't want to depend on a company that might be dead at any time, and that I have no trust in.
To reiterate, why spend more money for a computer that doesn't do what you want it to do, and that will cost much more in the long run, than just pony up an extra $200 for a computer that does what you want it to do, and can be upgraded for much cheaper than the cost of replacing your Mac when its obsolete?
Onlive is a waste of money, for pretty much everyone. There is a reason that they went bankrupt.
Why spend $2k on a pc rig, in order to play a game that I can play for free on onlive?
A) Why would anyone pay $2k on a gaming rig? My PC has some aging hardware, and could probably be made for around $500 now (less if you got spare parts sitting around, or in your current computer), and it plays pretty much everything on highest settings (AMD Phenom II x4 965 90$ now, ATI 5770 $100+/-, 6Gb DDR2 very very cheap, a decent mobo for that would be around $75 now and pretty much stock HDDs and other bits). Yes, you could pay $2k, but it would be pointless, and you would be a moron.
B) Onlive is awesome in principle, but sucks in practice. It's high latency kills most multiplayer games. Also, if you follow the news, the continued existence of it is in question at the moment.
I do doubt that PC games will ever be supreme again, but right now they beat the crap out of console games so are getting a boost. Really PCs should win, but publishers don't like them because they don't give them the level of tyrannical control they really want. Also PC gamers are generally more savvy than console gamers, which doesn't really help the bottom line. PC gamers aren't quite as willing to accept crap.
I don't really see this. You still have a desktop, and you can pretty much stay there your whole session. The only real difference is the somewhat annoying Metro start screen. If I was running Windows 8 at this moment, I don't really see how my current workflow would change much, outside of opening applications being a bit more jarring, but functionally the same.
As a fellow creator (and now I feel like a pompous ass), I see what your saying, but I think it is a bit over stated. I generally have 3 or four windows sitting on my desktop when I'm doing my workflow, even while I'm not using all of them at the moment. Windows 8 won't effect that, opening them will be a bit more annoying, but after that point it doesn't really matter if you're using 7 or 8.
I'm not sold on Windows 8, so don't take that bit of defense as fanboyism. I will stick it on my HTPC, which is pretty much only used for consumption, and is generally used by my non-technical friends. Metro is perfect for that. I'm also intrigued by the Surface tablets, I find Metro nicer than iOS or Android, at least on an aesthetic level, obviously I'm not sure how it is functionally compared to the big two. I do think an x86 Surface tablet might be the best thing since sliced bread, if MS pulls it off right (I doubt it, but you never know). As for my main PC, I'm not sure. So far I haven't seen any compelling features to make me want to upgrade. I am intrigued by Metro, it does seem to have some uses (convenient information, and live "icons" are a nice idea), but i don't like the fact that it takes a whole screen, and I don't like how tacked together it seems. Go full Metro (with full functionality), or go full on with the current Windows paradigm.
Before people paid, there was so little content search engines built their databases manually.
This is true, but I'm not sure how strong the relationship is. Before people paid, there also was much (much) fewer people with access. A quick Google shows somewhat ambiguously shows me that in 1995 there was only 16 million people online (0.4 % of the population), and now there are 2.2 billion users (32.7%). Also, back then the barrier to entry was much higher, and the ease of content creation much steeper.
Obviously there would be less content in an ad free internet. But I do wonder how much the quality would suffer. Obviously this is all hand waving, since ads are here to stay, and over time will get more plentiful, more obnoxious, and more technologically annoying. That seems to be the zeitgeist of our era, ads slowly consume content. I don't watch broadcast television, and I don't browse the internet with ads on (Ad Block, Ghostery, NoScript, Flashblock, oh my). And it is jarring when I'm forced to watch TV, or browse on an unsecure browser. I will generally will out of the experience in its entirety, since I really can't be bothered.
I know, I know. You don't drink Coke because teaching the world to sing invokes madness and migraines;)
I don't drink Coke because I don't like soda. Take that, millions of advertising dollars!
I've always wondered how true that marketing truism actually is. When I was pretty young I had a brilliant teacher teach a whole class on informal fallacies, and various manipulative techniques used by advertisers and politicians. We got to watch tons of TV, and write down all the little tricks we found. Later in life, I realized how subversive this teacher was, basically trying to vaccinate us against backhanded manipulation. I later took a slew of social psych and sociology classes just to give myself a booster.
I wish someone did a study on how effective advertising is when people know the tricks, as opposed to people who don't.
You've got proof that you can't make any money aggregating "news for nerds". So why on earth would someone create a new one?
There was an internet before the ad infestation. If people have something to say, they will say it.
As I pointed out earlier in this topic, this is what I call the RIAA Fallacy; the false idea that if no one pays there will be no content. Luckily there was content before ads, and luckily there was music before albums and labels.
The amount of people who use adblock, is around 0.04%.... because they're also lazy.
Logic fail. So the ones who put in extra work to block ads are lazier than the ones who don't go through the extra work? Perhaps you should look up "lazy".
How much do you really care for anything on the internet? For a lot of sites their value is in large number of user. Subscriptions or other form of payment can lead to drop in users thus loss in value.
This line of reasoning is a flavor of what I like to call the "RIAA fallacy"; if no one pays there will be no content. I doubt this, I've been on the Web (and general internet before that, and BBSs before that) for a long time, and most of that time was ad free. Sure, there was less stuff out there, but stuff was still out there. People who want to be heard will still produce content, and people who want something more will pay for it (even in highschool I threw money at "free" BBSs for perks, or just to promote the continued existence of my community). The internet pre-exists the advertising model.
Further, Your number 5 is a bit off. Not all sites are businesses. And many of them that are, can die, for all I care. I can live happily without Facebook, or Coke.com... If they want to survive they might have to mirror real businesses, and offer a product that is worth money. And, just to add some snark to the discussion; if people don't want to pay for it, was it really that important? Value is what I'm willing to pay, if I'm not willing, there is no value, and thus nothing of value was lost.
This also points to the fact (Kant be damned), that even if I completely block all ads and trackers there still will be enough people who don't to keep things running. Sure, there might be less eye-ball money floating around, but things will tick on without me being forced to contend with all the problems of ads. If your product isn't good enough to have been recommended to me by live people who had positive experiences, I probably don't want it. As such, I'm not even hurting people, since I wouldn't buy your product anyways, in fact advertisement makes me hostile to your brand.
Human conception (any conception really) is a miracle to me.
As are magnets.
Seriously though, it isn't a miracle, its biology, pure and simple. There is no magic, just sloppy carriers of DNA, honed by millions of years of evolution, doing the thing that they were meant to do, start the process of making another carrier of genetic material to continue the chain. Blah blah blah SCIENCE!
and to me an unborn child is the ultimate in innocence
At one point is one innocent, and at what point is one not really "one", but merely a mass of undifferentiated cells.
No child gets to choose his parents
But thankfully they can choose their platitudes.
. But one thing that always gets me is the assumption that -all- rape victims abort any pregnancy that occurs as a result.
Who was toting that assumption about? I never heard anyone state that as a fact. Also, what does it matter if some women carry it? How does that effect the choice of other women not wanting to? I chose to get a tattoo, that doesn't mean everyone now needs one. That is a fallacy, based on a strawman.
I'm not saying force them all to bear the kid. But I will say, stop and think for a second about what is actually being thrown away in that medical "waste" bin.
Knowing several women who have gotten abortions, I would say that this is a given. I've never met a woman where the decision was taken lightly. I'm sure they exist, but in my experience they are rare. This, again anecdotally, is also true of the few women I've known who have been raped (none of them, thankfully got pregnant, but there still were moments of fear).
This is a sloppy human problem, with no right answer, and no chance of ever having an objective answer. It all boils down to individual values. Yes, a blastocyst isn't a human being, but it is more than just a bunch of cells at the same time. What conclusion can we draw from that? I don't presume to have the slightest idea, much less an idea strong enough to force it on others with differing opinions. This will never be an issue of right and wrong, it will always be a value judgement.
Personally, and I'm a guy so this is irrelevant, I'm against abortion. But, I'm also not in favor of restricting its access (beyond a certain point) to anyone. I am not god, and I know no better than anyone else, so how can I force my view on others? In this case, the opinions of those who disagree with me are probably as valid as mine. Further, my opinion is based on "perfect world" ideals, and logic, which really aren't applicable in the messy, dirty, chaotic, and ultimately gray world in which we live.
When you are talking about what some people consider murder, there are no shades of gray.
I'll agree to completely outlawing abortion, if they agree to throw all military personnel (and their superiors) who fired weapons at enemies into prison for murder as well. And all of the governors who have had executions in their states under their control.
Note: I don't actually believe the above, for the most part. I do find the fact that the hardcore pro-life crowd are generally pro-military engagement, and pro-capital punishment a bit strange, verging on hypocritical, though.
But your being presumptuous of the actual content and value of his life. Thats my issue. There is no potential for a rational decision here, since you actually can't know the end value of your decision.
Would he have been happier to have been born otherwise the same, but without his disease?
That is a meaningless question.
The purpose of genetic selection is to pick the best from the batch that would have arose by chance; to say, "screw you, Nature, I'm not obliged to make someone suffer for you for no damned good reason."
How do you gauge potential suffering? From your point of view his potential ordeals may be horrific, but humans have a miraculous ability to cope. To him his life is generally tolerable, and mostly happy (as far as I know from talking to him).
Also, where do we draw the line? I am in a risk category for some nasty things down the line, but I am very very happy that I am here. Okay, we take out downs and cystic fibrosis, now what? Sickle cell? Diabetes? Depression? Heart Disease?
Further, I have a big issue (and we all should, thanks to recent history) with using so-called rational criteria for deciding about the fate of people.
Genetic selection is not like retroactively killing people. It's like birth control. Think of all the people you've decided *not* to make.
So the summary mentions cystic fibrosis. This is a perfect example. If you get 2 copies of the gene, you get a terrible condition and would (without modern treatment) probably die in you 20's. However, a single copy of the gene offers advantages [brynmawr.edu] over not having it at all.
Cystic Fibrosis is a good illustration, also, that selecting for the supposed well-being of children is a trap. One of my close friends is engaged to a man in his late 20's (or early 30's) with cystic fibrosis. Yes, he worries about his health, and yes he has had some scary moments, but generally he is fine. Him and his fiance are in love, and have a pretty good quality of life. He has done some interesting things in his life, and has pretty much enriched the lives of people around him. And while there are inevitable bouts of suffering (which is actually just part of the universal human condition), he is happy.
He is much happier than he would have been if he had been aborted. And we, the people around him, are better for his presence. So its presumptuous to really make a claim that ridding yourself of people like him would benefit anyone. This observation is true for many of the "defective" individuals I have met.
The key to my own ethical philosophy is "anyone how knows better, doesn't.". Enforcing anyone's vision of utopia on anyone else's is a greater wrong than letting a bit of suffering escape from the gates.
You also enter a bit of a slippery slope. Where do we draw a line? All of us are genetically defective. My family is prone to some nasty cardiovascular ailments, should we have been "fixed"? You run into eugenics, which really didn't end very well. Sure you switch the metric from skull shape to genes, but the beast remains the same. We just filled a newer version of science into an ancient justification.
This also completely ignores the environment, yet again. Yes, genes are important, but they aren't destiny. Yes, your child will have cystic fibrosis (or whatever), but this doesn't mean they will die of it, or even suffer. Science is awesome, and just maybe will have a way of helping when the time comes. This is pretty much true of most diseases now.
I hate the phrase "playing God", but it sums things up nicely. We act like we have knowledge, and that forcing our will on others is good, because of said knowledge. But in the end we don't actually much at all. Especially when it comes to dealing with human lives, sure we can know a little about the aggregate, but the individual will always remain a mystery.
Wow, the second time in my life that I end up agree with CTS... I do hope hell freezes over soon since its almost 115 degrees (F, obviously) on my patio.
If you notice, the first anecdotal bit was a refutation of the parent's claim that the tablet market only exists because people want to look hip and cool, not because tablets are actually useful. I could have also pointed out my terribly unhip father, and his iPad (used as a light laptop while traveling, to keep up with his small business).
The other bits of my comments are valid opinion making bits. I made a claim, and supported it with a bit of larger observation (neither personal or anecdotal) or logic. I can't claim any personal experience with a 7" tablet, since I'm not in the market for them, but I can say it isn't a new market, or a small market, and that the market has been colored in one way, and thus it is harder to compete on another opposite metric. My latter claim about MS was pure opinion, I admit. But the closer of that point is also valid, a corporation's image does effect what demographics will consume it. MS is unsexy, thus they have an uphill battle selling something sexy. Seems a rather simple point of conjecture, there.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sick of the know-better Christian Right and of Zion Israelis, and would never think that killing them is an acceptable idea, I also think both groups are as harmful as the insane zealot Muslim minority.
The second that mass murder sounds like a good solution, you are no better than whoever you hate.
Which is why the Postal Service censors my mail... oh... nevermind.
Stop being paranoid, please. It doesn't add anything.
So the solution is to replace them with even bigger idiots?
FPS - if COD is a 10 this is a 4
In what world would CoD be a 10? CoD would be around a 3, and this would be around a solid average 5. Perhaps even 6 or 7 if you like the gimmicks. CoD is YACFPS (Yet another console FPS), with boring cover-based combat, idiotic progression (I want to kill shit, not play WoW like grind). Horrible color schemes (ooh grey and brown, how realistic.. oh wait the world is full of colors... nevermind), and one of the worst communities to ever grace gaming (and that is saying a lot, considering LoL, Diablo 3, and WoWs communities). Borderlands at least tries to be fun, which gives it a leg up.
But that is the great thing, though. All opinion is subjective.
I'm not going to be picking it up until a Steam Sale though. Between Guild Wars 2 and Torchlight 2 my gaming time is already going to be over-extended.
Copyrights are an important concept in our world, as are patents and trademark rights.
No argument there. I agree with you on everything, thus I never claimed that abolishing them were a good idea (reining them in, yes; killing them, no)
I'm just getting annoyed with the claim that if we weakened copyright all art would die, or it would be vastly reduced in quality. This isn't true, as demonstrated by history, human nature, and the legions of starving artists with no real hopes of being rich megastars. I think the RIAA Fallacy (I've grown to be obsessed with this term) is just another shade of the modern idea that you have the "right to get rich" (entitlement). This idea has pretty much shaded or doomed much of our political culture of late. And as such copyright went from a sane thing made to promote the continued creation of arts, balancing the momentary gains of creators (the carrot) with the eventually betterment of our arts as a whole; to nothing but a tool to ensure a continued revenue stream and continued control at the cost of innovation.
The original concept had nothing to do with individuals, outside of manipulating them to be useful. And now individual profit is all that matters, which is contrary to what our founding fathers actually wanted.
The damages are for the act which he is on trial for, not his acts during the trial. Perjury is a crime, and he should be held to that. But the RIAA shouldn't get $600k for a crime against the court.
I'm not saying I agree with him, or what he did was right. But I can see where the "principle" thing could come in play. He was a bit wormy about the whole thing, and really didn't play the innocent victim card right. I would be much more sympathetic towards him if he pirated the stuff, admitted it, then fought like hell. But this doesn't make the fine very realistic, or sane, all the same.
Or that the damages are absurd to almost any rational individual, and that they don't in anyway fit the scope of the crime. I don't think anyone, included him, actually thinks hes "not guilty", the punishment is just idiotic.
How can anyone think that over half a million dollars is really a fair value for 30 .99c songs?
Except they wouldn't. There are thousands of years of art, all created before copyright existed, and much of it better than the drivel we have now.
People create art because we are human. Thats what we do. We're not going to stop doing that because people stop being willing to sacrifice all their rights to my imaginary property.
Further, you ignore the fact that artists can make money without relying on imaginary property. Go to a concert, see them live, go see an exhibit, etc...
People who claim that content will die if revenue dies are morons.
Wow... Onlive is the new timecube? Everything is possible through Onlive. Glory to Onlive. My life for Onlive. Onlive akbar.
I don't want a Mac. I've owned several, they didn't do it for me. I don't like Onlive, it has a crappy selection, it has crappy latency, and I love owning my own games. I especially don't want to depend on a company that might be dead at any time, and that I have no trust in.
To reiterate, why spend more money for a computer that doesn't do what you want it to do, and that will cost much more in the long run, than just pony up an extra $200 for a computer that does what you want it to do, and can be upgraded for much cheaper than the cost of replacing your Mac when its obsolete?
Onlive is a waste of money, for pretty much everyone. There is a reason that they went bankrupt.
Or just save the hassle and buy the damn game.
Why spend $2k on a pc rig, in order to play a game that I can play for free on onlive?
A) Why would anyone pay $2k on a gaming rig? My PC has some aging hardware, and could probably be made for around $500 now (less if you got spare parts sitting around, or in your current computer), and it plays pretty much everything on highest settings (AMD Phenom II x4 965 90$ now, ATI 5770 $100+/-, 6Gb DDR2 very very cheap, a decent mobo for that would be around $75 now and pretty much stock HDDs and other bits). Yes, you could pay $2k, but it would be pointless, and you would be a moron.
B) Onlive is awesome in principle, but sucks in practice. It's high latency kills most multiplayer games. Also, if you follow the news, the continued existence of it is in question at the moment.
I do doubt that PC games will ever be supreme again, but right now they beat the crap out of console games so are getting a boost. Really PCs should win, but publishers don't like them because they don't give them the level of tyrannical control they really want. Also PC gamers are generally more savvy than console gamers, which doesn't really help the bottom line. PC gamers aren't quite as willing to accept crap.
I don't really see this. You still have a desktop, and you can pretty much stay there your whole session. The only real difference is the somewhat annoying Metro start screen. If I was running Windows 8 at this moment, I don't really see how my current workflow would change much, outside of opening applications being a bit more jarring, but functionally the same.
As a fellow creator (and now I feel like a pompous ass), I see what your saying, but I think it is a bit over stated. I generally have 3 or four windows sitting on my desktop when I'm doing my workflow, even while I'm not using all of them at the moment. Windows 8 won't effect that, opening them will be a bit more annoying, but after that point it doesn't really matter if you're using 7 or 8.
I'm not sold on Windows 8, so don't take that bit of defense as fanboyism. I will stick it on my HTPC, which is pretty much only used for consumption, and is generally used by my non-technical friends. Metro is perfect for that. I'm also intrigued by the Surface tablets, I find Metro nicer than iOS or Android, at least on an aesthetic level, obviously I'm not sure how it is functionally compared to the big two. I do think an x86 Surface tablet might be the best thing since sliced bread, if MS pulls it off right (I doubt it, but you never know). As for my main PC, I'm not sure. So far I haven't seen any compelling features to make me want to upgrade. I am intrigued by Metro, it does seem to have some uses (convenient information, and live "icons" are a nice idea), but i don't like the fact that it takes a whole screen, and I don't like how tacked together it seems. Go full Metro (with full functionality), or go full on with the current Windows paradigm.
Before people paid, there was so little content search engines built their databases manually.
This is true, but I'm not sure how strong the relationship is. Before people paid, there also was much (much) fewer people with access. A quick Google shows somewhat ambiguously shows me that in 1995 there was only 16 million people online (0.4 % of the population), and now there are 2.2 billion users (32.7%). Also, back then the barrier to entry was much higher, and the ease of content creation much steeper.
Obviously there would be less content in an ad free internet. But I do wonder how much the quality would suffer. Obviously this is all hand waving, since ads are here to stay, and over time will get more plentiful, more obnoxious, and more technologically annoying. That seems to be the zeitgeist of our era, ads slowly consume content. I don't watch broadcast television, and I don't browse the internet with ads on (Ad Block, Ghostery, NoScript, Flashblock, oh my). And it is jarring when I'm forced to watch TV, or browse on an unsecure browser. I will generally will out of the experience in its entirety, since I really can't be bothered.
I know, I know. You don't drink Coke because teaching the world to sing invokes madness and migraines ;)
I don't drink Coke because I don't like soda. Take that, millions of advertising dollars!
I've always wondered how true that marketing truism actually is. When I was pretty young I had a brilliant teacher teach a whole class on informal fallacies, and various manipulative techniques used by advertisers and politicians. We got to watch tons of TV, and write down all the little tricks we found. Later in life, I realized how subversive this teacher was, basically trying to vaccinate us against backhanded manipulation. I later took a slew of social psych and sociology classes just to give myself a booster.
I wish someone did a study on how effective advertising is when people know the tricks, as opposed to people who don't.
You've got proof that you can't make any money aggregating "news for nerds". So why on earth would someone create a new one?
There was an internet before the ad infestation. If people have something to say, they will say it.
As I pointed out earlier in this topic, this is what I call the RIAA Fallacy; the false idea that if no one pays there will be no content. Luckily there was content before ads, and luckily there was music before albums and labels.
The amount of people who use adblock, is around 0.04%. ... because they're also lazy.
Logic fail. So the ones who put in extra work to block ads are lazier than the ones who don't go through the extra work? Perhaps you should look up "lazy".
People are not obligated to make you money.
And this sentence should be required reading, and tattooed on pretty much everyone at birth.
And yet you're flamebait.
How much do you really care for anything on the internet? For a lot of sites their value is in large number of user. Subscriptions or other form of payment can lead to drop in users thus loss in value.
This line of reasoning is a flavor of what I like to call the "RIAA fallacy"; if no one pays there will be no content. I doubt this, I've been on the Web (and general internet before that, and BBSs before that) for a long time, and most of that time was ad free. Sure, there was less stuff out there, but stuff was still out there. People who want to be heard will still produce content, and people who want something more will pay for it (even in highschool I threw money at "free" BBSs for perks, or just to promote the continued existence of my community). The internet pre-exists the advertising model.
Further, Your number 5 is a bit off. Not all sites are businesses. And many of them that are, can die, for all I care. I can live happily without Facebook, or Coke.com... If they want to survive they might have to mirror real businesses, and offer a product that is worth money. And, just to add some snark to the discussion; if people don't want to pay for it, was it really that important? Value is what I'm willing to pay, if I'm not willing, there is no value, and thus nothing of value was lost.
This also points to the fact (Kant be damned), that even if I completely block all ads and trackers there still will be enough people who don't to keep things running. Sure, there might be less eye-ball money floating around, but things will tick on without me being forced to contend with all the problems of ads. If your product isn't good enough to have been recommended to me by live people who had positive experiences, I probably don't want it. As such, I'm not even hurting people, since I wouldn't buy your product anyways, in fact advertisement makes me hostile to your brand.
You meant "fnord", right?
Human conception (any conception really) is a miracle to me.
As are magnets.
Seriously though, it isn't a miracle, its biology, pure and simple. There is no magic, just sloppy carriers of DNA, honed by millions of years of evolution, doing the thing that they were meant to do, start the process of making another carrier of genetic material to continue the chain. Blah blah blah SCIENCE!
and to me an unborn child is the ultimate in innocence
At one point is one innocent, and at what point is one not really "one", but merely a mass of undifferentiated cells.
No child gets to choose his parents
But thankfully they can choose their platitudes.
. But one thing that always gets me is the assumption that -all- rape victims abort any pregnancy that occurs as a result.
Who was toting that assumption about? I never heard anyone state that as a fact. Also, what does it matter if some women carry it? How does that effect the choice of other women not wanting to? I chose to get a tattoo, that doesn't mean everyone now needs one. That is a fallacy, based on a strawman.
I'm not saying force them all to bear the kid. But I will say, stop and think for a second about what is actually being thrown away in that medical "waste" bin.
Knowing several women who have gotten abortions, I would say that this is a given. I've never met a woman where the decision was taken lightly. I'm sure they exist, but in my experience they are rare. This, again anecdotally, is also true of the few women I've known who have been raped (none of them, thankfully got pregnant, but there still were moments of fear).
This is a sloppy human problem, with no right answer, and no chance of ever having an objective answer. It all boils down to individual values. Yes, a blastocyst isn't a human being, but it is more than just a bunch of cells at the same time. What conclusion can we draw from that? I don't presume to have the slightest idea, much less an idea strong enough to force it on others with differing opinions. This will never be an issue of right and wrong, it will always be a value judgement.
Personally, and I'm a guy so this is irrelevant, I'm against abortion. But, I'm also not in favor of restricting its access (beyond a certain point) to anyone. I am not god, and I know no better than anyone else, so how can I force my view on others? In this case, the opinions of those who disagree with me are probably as valid as mine. Further, my opinion is based on "perfect world" ideals, and logic, which really aren't applicable in the messy, dirty, chaotic, and ultimately gray world in which we live.
When you are talking about what some people consider murder, there are no shades of gray.
I'll agree to completely outlawing abortion, if they agree to throw all military personnel (and their superiors) who fired weapons at enemies into prison for murder as well. And all of the governors who have had executions in their states under their control.
Note: I don't actually believe the above, for the most part. I do find the fact that the hardcore pro-life crowd are generally pro-military engagement, and pro-capital punishment a bit strange, verging on hypocritical, though.
But your being presumptuous of the actual content and value of his life. Thats my issue. There is no potential for a rational decision here, since you actually can't know the end value of your decision.
Would he have been happier to have been born otherwise the same, but without his disease?
That is a meaningless question.
The purpose of genetic selection is to pick the best from the batch that would have arose by chance; to say, "screw you, Nature, I'm not obliged to make someone suffer for you for no damned good reason."
How do you gauge potential suffering? From your point of view his potential ordeals may be horrific, but humans have a miraculous ability to cope. To him his life is generally tolerable, and mostly happy (as far as I know from talking to him).
Also, where do we draw the line? I am in a risk category for some nasty things down the line, but I am very very happy that I am here. Okay, we take out downs and cystic fibrosis, now what? Sickle cell? Diabetes? Depression? Heart Disease?
Further, I have a big issue (and we all should, thanks to recent history) with using so-called rational criteria for deciding about the fate of people.
Genetic selection is not like retroactively killing people. It's like birth control. Think of all the people you've decided *not* to make.
This is a good point.
So the summary mentions cystic fibrosis. This is a perfect example. If you get 2 copies of the gene, you get a terrible condition and would (without modern treatment) probably die in you 20's. However, a single copy of the gene offers advantages [brynmawr.edu] over not having it at all.
Cystic Fibrosis is a good illustration, also, that selecting for the supposed well-being of children is a trap. One of my close friends is engaged to a man in his late 20's (or early 30's) with cystic fibrosis. Yes, he worries about his health, and yes he has had some scary moments, but generally he is fine. Him and his fiance are in love, and have a pretty good quality of life. He has done some interesting things in his life, and has pretty much enriched the lives of people around him. And while there are inevitable bouts of suffering (which is actually just part of the universal human condition), he is happy.
He is much happier than he would have been if he had been aborted. And we, the people around him, are better for his presence. So its presumptuous to really make a claim that ridding yourself of people like him would benefit anyone. This observation is true for many of the "defective" individuals I have met.
The key to my own ethical philosophy is "anyone how knows better, doesn't.". Enforcing anyone's vision of utopia on anyone else's is a greater wrong than letting a bit of suffering escape from the gates.
You also enter a bit of a slippery slope. Where do we draw a line? All of us are genetically defective. My family is prone to some nasty cardiovascular ailments, should we have been "fixed"? You run into eugenics, which really didn't end very well. Sure you switch the metric from skull shape to genes, but the beast remains the same. We just filled a newer version of science into an ancient justification.
This also completely ignores the environment, yet again. Yes, genes are important, but they aren't destiny. Yes, your child will have cystic fibrosis (or whatever), but this doesn't mean they will die of it, or even suffer. Science is awesome, and just maybe will have a way of helping when the time comes. This is pretty much true of most diseases now.
I hate the phrase "playing God", but it sums things up nicely. We act like we have knowledge, and that forcing our will on others is good, because of said knowledge. But in the end we don't actually much at all. Especially when it comes to dealing with human lives, sure we can know a little about the aggregate, but the individual will always remain a mystery.
Wow, the second time in my life that I end up agree with CTS... I do hope hell freezes over soon since its almost 115 degrees (F, obviously) on my patio.
If you notice, the first anecdotal bit was a refutation of the parent's claim that the tablet market only exists because people want to look hip and cool, not because tablets are actually useful. I could have also pointed out my terribly unhip father, and his iPad (used as a light laptop while traveling, to keep up with his small business).
The other bits of my comments are valid opinion making bits. I made a claim, and supported it with a bit of larger observation (neither personal or anecdotal) or logic. I can't claim any personal experience with a 7" tablet, since I'm not in the market for them, but I can say it isn't a new market, or a small market, and that the market has been colored in one way, and thus it is harder to compete on another opposite metric. My latter claim about MS was pure opinion, I admit. But the closer of that point is also valid, a corporation's image does effect what demographics will consume it. MS is unsexy, thus they have an uphill battle selling something sexy. Seems a rather simple point of conjecture, there.