An important part of politics is to be able to ally against a common cause, even if you have different reasons for it, or different viewpoints.
Are you actually saying you won't support this opposition to the scans? Or just that you won't support him specifically?
And, at least it's consistent. The mad thing is to live in a world where people have a problem with consensual porn done by other people in private, but coercing people into showing themselves naked is considered okay (I wonder if under 18s can be scanned by this machine - whilst I know that simply nudity is not in itself considered child porn, given the hysteria over anything that might remotely involve children and nakedness, it seems rather inconsistent that this is considered acceptable; the politician did say "wife and kids").
Curious - I wonder if it's because people really do prefer someone seeing them naked, to being patted down whilst clothed? Or if it's that people aren't aware of what the machine actually shows? I mean, presumably it's just a case of "Please step into this scanning machine", I doubt they actually show them example images... (which is in itself an issue I think - do they explain that this means someone will see them naked?)
Put it another way - if the choice was between having a non-touch strip search in a room, versus the pat down, would most people really choose the former?
Maybe if the law said all the TSA employees had to work naked, we'd see less of this kind of thing. Fair's fair, after all.
Just because some people are hypocrites, doesn't mean it follows that morality is meaningless or arbitrary. I mean, if it was arbitrary, then we'd never have the problem of people breaking their own moral code. Why make a moral code that you have to break, if it's no less arbitrary to have a moral code such as "nothing is wrong" or "anything I do defines what is right"?
Would you really? I'd like to think I wouldn't. I suppose it's consistent if we take a more general interpretation of "pleasure". It wouldn't please me, say, to torture small animals or rape people - even if I might get pleasure out of the act itself, that would be weighed down by the stress of abusing someone.
I'm not clear exactly what you are saying - firstly you list other reasons, including psychological, but then talk about fear of being punished, I'm not sure how that would apply to psychological reasons?
But my point is that even if people don't fear a higher power, that doesn't mean that they suddenly go out raping people - whether that's empathy, self-interest, or upbringing, hard-wired evolutionary instinct, or whatever. If any theist is really claiming that the only thing that stops him committing such acts is fear of God, then yes, I do find it worrying. Although it's more likely that in practice they wouldn't, in which case their claim is bogus anyway.
And if the theist acknowledges that other things would stop a person from doing such things - whether it's that they wouldn't want to, or fear of other things that you list - then again, there claim that we need to believe in a higher power is also disproven.
I'm not sure how that is relevant to my post. I am not claiming that such a being doesn't exist - perhaps there does exist, for example, a giant almighty elephant who tells us that raping women with elephant tusks is ethical. But it was the OP who suggested that we should believe in a higher power, and it's worrying that we don't.
Nowhere am I claiming that people believe that no higher power exists. I suspect the only reason you posted is so you could make a tired straw man atheist rant:
I'm an agnostic. I don't know if there is, or isn't a god/God/whatever--and furthermore, I don't think that we CAN know that. I view devout atheists as I do devout evangelicals...
I'm an atheist because I don't believe in God. I'm also an agnostic, in the sense that I don't know if there is a God.
Trying to plead "but we can't prove it isn't" is irrelevant - are you a theist? No, neither am I. Do you believe in unicorns "because there's no evidence they don't exist"? No, neither do I.
In fact, I didn't even identity as an atheist in my post, so your attempt to drag up a boring atheist-agnostic-definitions-debate is completely off topic. Unless you're actually an agnostic theist, neither of us believe in that morality comes from a higher power, so I fail to see what your disagreement with me is.
Without some timeless being which created everything, there is no absolute truth, which means that morality is a construct of society, and reflects the values of that society.
It's unclear to me how a creator of the Universe means that there is any "absolute truth". If this being says "stoning someone to death is ethical" and I disagree, why is their view the absolute truth, and I wrong?
Having a single point of truth makes it easier. Not neccessarily right, just easier.
Except it isn't, because no one can know what this being says, and no one agrees. You still have people who disagree, but with the additional problem that the argument is now reduced to "It's wrong because God says so", "No it's right because God says so" - and logic, reason and evidence are thrown out the window. On top of that is the problem that people can justify all sorts of actions that you and I would consider greatly immoral, believing that their actions are justified in the eyes of God.
People don't agree on all sorts of subjective matters, such as what food is most tasty, or which music is best. This doesn't mean that we can't have meaningful discussions at all (e.g., it doesn't mean it makes sense to claim that the sound of banging one's head against the wall is as good a piece of music as that of Mozart's). No one would claim that we need to invent some being of "absolute truth" by which to judge how good food and music are - especially when that we have no idea what this made up being says on the matter.
I find it more frightening that most of our leaders and most of the population in general have all bought into the idea that morality is just convention
And here we uncover the fossil known as Straw Man.
and that there is no higher power to answer to.
So? There is no evidence that there is. And if there is, there is no way we could know what "morality" he expects us to behave by. There is no reason that his standard of morality should match up with what we consider to be ethical.
And above all, I find it worrying that people only behave ethically out of fear of having to answer to some "higher power".
Ironic if you're Alanis maybe. Otherwise it's just a straw man.
No one claims Wikipedia is itself authoritative - like any encyclopedia, its purpose is collect information together by reference to reliable sources.
The particular problem in this case is that if Wolfram is including information from Wikipedia (but without specifying exactly), then it can't be cited because there of the risk of a circular reference. You know, the sort of thing people like you whine about when a single instance of it in Wikipedia's millions of articles is shown to have occurred at some point in the past.
RTFS. This isn't a debate about whether attributations are good, it's about allegations of copyright infringment.
When I blog about what I ate for breakfast, sure it might be good practice to attribute some fact I give about the food I ate, but that doesn't mean not doing so should be illegal.
This is not about good scientific practices such as citations, it's about Terms Of Services and allegations of copyright infringement. If anything, I'd say that those things are the very opposite to the scientific method.
Just like any of those other sources, you should cite it as a reference
I should, if I'm writing an academic paper. I never thought of it as something that should be enforced, with them claiming I've violated the ToS, or threatening copyright infringement, especially when all I'm doing is posting a search result to Slashdot.
In observing iPhone users of my acquaintance, and in my vicinity, I've gotten the impression that one of the things that separates it from the touch, in their perception and use, is the "always connected" aspect of it. The being able to use the internet and internet related applications more or less without thinking about it, unlike the touch, where you have to be near a friendly AP.
Every phone these days is "always connected" (it's been years since we got rid of WAP). The only issue is the cost, but just because it's not "unlimited" doesn't mean you have to be paying lots everytime you use the Internet.
I'm on Pay As You Go, but I don't worry about checking a web page or my email. I'm sure that the 5p it costs me works out much less that the cost of contract + handset of the Iphone, anyway...
when I was on dialup
But most broadband providers have data limits. Phones today are comparable to that. The problem with dialup was when you had to pay by the minute, which was comparable to the ancient WAP phones of the last century.
No one seriously believes that, even if limiting distribution to those who only own the DVD was the actual intent, that it's even slightly feasible to design a system that proves only those people could do it.
It would be feasible for the companies themselves to offer an online system where downloads were available to those willing to pay for it (without the DRM, please). Unfortunately they're mostly not interested in doing this, so it's not surprising that people use the
I'm not sure how your argument works here - if someone was suggesting it shouldn't be illegal if someone downloads something they've already paid for, then it doesn't matter how the system is designed, or whatever other people use it for - it just matters what that person did, when you're discussing if he should be liable. (Also it doesn't have to be a case of being explicitly legal - since this is a civil issue, I think it'd be better that costs should reflect the damage done. Which in the case of someone downloading something they already own, is hard to argue. But for someone who say uploads a leaked pre-release copy, obviously there's a lot more argument that this has caused damages.)
Which is exactly why your argument about open source is pointless. Evidently people disapprove of cutting someone off the Internet for copyright violation, whether it's music, or open source software (although I concede it would be funny to see the plan backfire on a company that had supported this law...).
There is no moral right to acquire property without the permission of the people who created it or who now own it.
By what argument?
I'm in favour of some limited term of copyright law, but it's not clear to me that there is any kind of fundamental moral argument one way or another, it's just that I acknowledge that limited copyright law (as opposed to the excessive ones we have today) provide a means for authors etc to be paid.
Yes, it's wrong to claim that sports car drivers are all criminals, just as it would be wrong to say the same for all Internet users.
Should a car dealer not sell such cars to people who come in, ask about upgrading the performance and handling, ask about options for tinted windows, ask about the mechanics of transferring their personalised plates onto the car, ask to take a test drive under load of a route from a bank to an airport, show no interest in security or insurance details, and then say "Yeah, we're just looking for a good getaway car"? Well, maybe not so much.
Maybe, but how would that apply to Internet use? Perhaps if someone signed up asking for where they can download Photoshop, you might have a point, but this argument doesn't apply to the way that ISPs sell Internet access, since those users do not ask about any such upgrades.
But there are also good reasons that pretty much every justice system considers assisting illegal activity and/or inciting illegal activity itself to be illegal.
Which is off-topic here, as that requires knowledge or intent. If you want to compare to other systems, the obvious example is common carriers such as the postal service.
yet we spend little time considering whether all these blanket exceptions and "get out of jail free" cards we give to facilitators are universally justified and in the interests of fairness.
Slashdot Mirror
An important part of politics is to be able to ally against a common cause, even if you have different reasons for it, or different viewpoints.
Are you actually saying you won't support this opposition to the scans? Or just that you won't support him specifically?
And, at least it's consistent. The mad thing is to live in a world where people have a problem with consensual porn done by other people in private, but coercing people into showing themselves naked is considered okay (I wonder if under 18s can be scanned by this machine - whilst I know that simply nudity is not in itself considered child porn, given the hysteria over anything that might remotely involve children and nakedness, it seems rather inconsistent that this is considered acceptable; the politician did say "wife and kids").
Curious - I wonder if it's because people really do prefer someone seeing them naked, to being patted down whilst clothed? Or if it's that people aren't aware of what the machine actually shows? I mean, presumably it's just a case of "Please step into this scanning machine", I doubt they actually show them example images... (which is in itself an issue I think - do they explain that this means someone will see them naked?)
Put it another way - if the choice was between having a non-touch strip search in a room, versus the pat down, would most people really choose the former?
Maybe if the law said all the TSA employees had to work naked, we'd see less of this kind of thing. Fair's fair, after all.
Don't get on the plane then.
It's a good thing none of those people exist.
Although when I look at creationists, I admit it's hard to tell the difference between them and a pile of...
Just because some people are hypocrites, doesn't mean it follows that morality is meaningless or arbitrary. I mean, if it was arbitrary, then we'd never have the problem of people breaking their own moral code. Why make a moral code that you have to break, if it's no less arbitrary to have a moral code such as "nothing is wrong" or "anything I do defines what is right"?
Would you really? I'd like to think I wouldn't. I suppose it's consistent if we take a more general interpretation of "pleasure". It wouldn't please me, say, to torture small animals or rape people - even if I might get pleasure out of the act itself, that would be weighed down by the stress of abusing someone.
I'm not clear exactly what you are saying - firstly you list other reasons, including psychological, but then talk about fear of being punished, I'm not sure how that would apply to psychological reasons?
But my point is that even if people don't fear a higher power, that doesn't mean that they suddenly go out raping people - whether that's empathy, self-interest, or upbringing, hard-wired evolutionary instinct, or whatever. If any theist is really claiming that the only thing that stops him committing such acts is fear of God, then yes, I do find it worrying. Although it's more likely that in practice they wouldn't, in which case their claim is bogus anyway.
And if the theist acknowledges that other things would stop a person from doing such things - whether it's that they wouldn't want to, or fear of other things that you list - then again, there claim that we need to believe in a higher power is also disproven.
Likewise, there is no evidence that there ISN'T.
I'm not sure how that is relevant to my post. I am not claiming that such a being doesn't exist - perhaps there does exist, for example, a giant almighty elephant who tells us that raping women with elephant tusks is ethical. But it was the OP who suggested that we should believe in a higher power, and it's worrying that we don't.
Nowhere am I claiming that people believe that no higher power exists. I suspect the only reason you posted is so you could make a tired straw man atheist rant:
I'm an agnostic. I don't know if there is, or isn't a god/God/whatever--and furthermore, I don't think that we CAN know that. I view devout atheists as I do devout evangelicals...
I'm an atheist because I don't believe in God. I'm also an agnostic, in the sense that I don't know if there is a God.
Trying to plead "but we can't prove it isn't" is irrelevant - are you a theist? No, neither am I. Do you believe in unicorns "because there's no evidence they don't exist"? No, neither do I.
In fact, I didn't even identity as an atheist in my post, so your attempt to drag up a boring atheist-agnostic-definitions-debate is completely off topic. Unless you're actually an agnostic theist, neither of us believe in that morality comes from a higher power, so I fail to see what your disagreement with me is.
Without some timeless being which created everything, there is no absolute truth, which means that morality is a construct of society, and reflects the values of that society.
It's unclear to me how a creator of the Universe means that there is any "absolute truth". If this being says "stoning someone to death is ethical" and I disagree, why is their view the absolute truth, and I wrong?
Having a single point of truth makes it easier. Not neccessarily right, just easier.
Except it isn't, because no one can know what this being says, and no one agrees. You still have people who disagree, but with the additional problem that the argument is now reduced to "It's wrong because God says so", "No it's right because God says so" - and logic, reason and evidence are thrown out the window. On top of that is the problem that people can justify all sorts of actions that you and I would consider greatly immoral, believing that their actions are justified in the eyes of God.
People don't agree on all sorts of subjective matters, such as what food is most tasty, or which music is best. This doesn't mean that we can't have meaningful discussions at all (e.g., it doesn't mean it makes sense to claim that the sound of banging one's head against the wall is as good a piece of music as that of Mozart's). No one would claim that we need to invent some being of "absolute truth" by which to judge how good food and music are - especially when that we have no idea what this made up being says on the matter.
I find it more frightening that most of our leaders and most of the population in general have all bought into the idea that morality is just convention
And here we uncover the fossil known as Straw Man.
and that there is no higher power to answer to.
So? There is no evidence that there is. And if there is, there is no way we could know what "morality" he expects us to behave by. There is no reason that his standard of morality should match up with what we consider to be ethical.
And above all, I find it worrying that people only behave ethically out of fear of having to answer to some "higher power".
Someone should register a "Disapproval"/"Disillusioned" party ... and third parties are some form of extremism that I don't support
Does that include the Disapproval"/"Disillusioned" party?
Then your initial "because the Democrats aren't sold out to the telcos." was itself a straw man - because the OP never even mentioned Democrats.
Trying to play the "straw man" claim when your initial post was a straw man is ridiculous.
If your point wasn't to compare Democrats to Republicans, then what on earth was your point?
Stealing my music? How do I steal something I already own?
I OTOH found the Amiga easy to use, more so than the pretty iconed Mac (and I won't even mention DOS).
I remember lots of 3D applications that started out on the Amiga that I found fun and easy to use, but the offerings today just seem less intuitive.
Ironic if you're Alanis maybe. Otherwise it's just a straw man.
No one claims Wikipedia is itself authoritative - like any encyclopedia, its purpose is collect information together by reference to reliable sources.
The particular problem in this case is that if Wolfram is including information from Wikipedia (but without specifying exactly), then it can't be cited because there of the risk of a circular reference. You know, the sort of thing people like you whine about when a single instance of it in Wikipedia's millions of articles is shown to have occurred at some point in the past.
Now go back to trusting your tabloids.
RTFS. This isn't a debate about whether attributations are good, it's about allegations of copyright infringment.
When I blog about what I ate for breakfast, sure it might be good practice to attribute some fact I give about the food I ate, but that doesn't mean not doing so should be illegal.
This is not about good scientific practices such as citations, it's about Terms Of Services and allegations of copyright infringement. If anything, I'd say that those things are the very opposite to the scientific method.
Just like any of those other sources, you should cite it as a reference
I should, if I'm writing an academic paper. I never thought of it as something that should be enforced, with them claiming I've violated the ToS, or threatening copyright infringement, especially when all I'm doing is posting a search result to Slashdot.
A pedantic point really - their business is still dead if no one turns up to use it, for free or not.
Does Apple allow that, or do you need to jailbreak it first?
In observing iPhone users of my acquaintance, and in my vicinity, I've gotten the impression that one of the things that separates it from the touch, in their perception and use, is the "always connected" aspect of it. The being able to use the internet and internet related applications more or less without thinking about it, unlike the touch, where you have to be near a friendly AP.
Every phone these days is "always connected" (it's been years since we got rid of WAP). The only issue is the cost, but just because it's not "unlimited" doesn't mean you have to be paying lots everytime you use the Internet.
I'm on Pay As You Go, but I don't worry about checking a web page or my email. I'm sure that the 5p it costs me works out much less that the cost of contract + handset of the Iphone, anyway...
when I was on dialup
But most broadband providers have data limits. Phones today are comparable to that. The problem with dialup was when you had to pay by the minute, which was comparable to the ancient WAP phones of the last century.
2. "Yeah, that stupid computer won't run this software I downloaded - you know anything about how to fix it?"
No one seriously believes that, even if limiting distribution to those who only own the DVD was the actual intent, that it's even slightly feasible to design a system that proves only those people could do it.
It would be feasible for the companies themselves to offer an online system where downloads were available to those willing to pay for it (without the DRM, please). Unfortunately they're mostly not interested in doing this, so it's not surprising that people use the
I'm not sure how your argument works here - if someone was suggesting it shouldn't be illegal if someone downloads something they've already paid for, then it doesn't matter how the system is designed, or whatever other people use it for - it just matters what that person did, when you're discussing if he should be liable. (Also it doesn't have to be a case of being explicitly legal - since this is a civil issue, I think it'd be better that costs should reflect the damage done. Which in the case of someone downloading something they already own, is hard to argue. But for someone who say uploads a leaked pre-release copy, obviously there's a lot more argument that this has caused damages.)
You can't have it both ways!!!!
Which is exactly why your argument about open source is pointless. Evidently people disapprove of cutting someone off the Internet for copyright violation, whether it's music, or open source software (although I concede it would be funny to see the plan backfire on a company that had supported this law...).
There is no moral right to acquire property without the permission of the people who created it or who now own it.
By what argument?
I'm in favour of some limited term of copyright law, but it's not clear to me that there is any kind of fundamental moral argument one way or another, it's just that I acknowledge that limited copyright law (as opposed to the excessive ones we have today) provide a means for authors etc to be paid.
You completely missed his point.
Yes, it's wrong to claim that sports car drivers are all criminals, just as it would be wrong to say the same for all Internet users.
Should a car dealer not sell such cars to people who come in, ask about upgrading the performance and handling, ask about options for tinted windows, ask about the mechanics of transferring their personalised plates onto the car, ask to take a test drive under load of a route from a bank to an airport, show no interest in security or insurance details, and then say "Yeah, we're just looking for a good getaway car"? Well, maybe not so much.
Maybe, but how would that apply to Internet use? Perhaps if someone signed up asking for where they can download Photoshop, you might have a point, but this argument doesn't apply to the way that ISPs sell Internet access, since those users do not ask about any such upgrades.
But there are also good reasons that pretty much every justice system considers assisting illegal activity and/or inciting illegal activity itself to be illegal.
Which is off-topic here, as that requires knowledge or intent. If you want to compare to other systems, the obvious example is common carriers such as the postal service.
yet we spend little time considering whether all these blanket exceptions and "get out of jail free" cards we give to facilitators are universally justified and in the interests of fairness.
Which ones do you mean?