If by settling you are giving up your "life savings", what's the downside to fighting this? Even if he represented himself in court and got a judgement against him for $10 billion, he can just declare bankruptcy and walk away.
Guess I'm not seeing what is to be gained by agreeing amicably to be 100% financially ruined.
I'm a techie that just moved away from my beloved CA, and this just bums me out to see this. Someone get Gray-out Davis out of office. Here's something for you non-CA residents --
How To Tell if Your State is Going Under Economically:
1) Your state government runs like CA's does.
2) See 1).
I wonder how many more high-tech jobs will end up leaving the state now...(it's why I left)!
No. My observations obviously will reflect those observations that I have made from my own life. I could insert any number of a hundred names there. But you mentioned interaction, so I cited my own...if you prefer, I'll cite the guy down the street's interaction.
But God's existence and truth of Him has nothing to do with my belief in Him or not. This is what I mean by me-centric. Many of the posts reflect a "God doesn't exist because I don't choose to believe in him" view, which essentially places the individual in the center of things dictating what is and what is not true. That is me-centric. Few realize that truth is not me-centric, nor man-centric...it just is. We can either align with it, or reject it, but it doesn't change that it is truth.
Obviously, you were competing for some kind of debate "win", and if you have to reason yourself the winner, well then so be it. But I would never appeal to anything but an authority...why would I? He is the one that will have the last say...no need to debate that with me...tell Him yourself. You will certainly have the opportunity, as we all will.:-)
As for interaction, yes, certainly I interact with God, through prayer, through His direction in my life. Through conviction of things I shouldn't have done, or things I should stay away from, or things I should be a part of, or should do. I am being changed as a person, not by my own power, but to a person that believe me, is nothing like how I would be with my own effort...the contrast is amazing. My mind is being changed, to view things through Christ's viewpoint, not the one that is natural to me, which bends to my own physical desires and cravings....again, another thing that is entirely opposite of who I would be otherwise. My actions toward others are being changed, with self-control, forgiveness and mercy, towards those who do wrong to me, when in reality, I'd like to knock their front teeth out sometimes. I see creation, I see what the Bible says about it, I see all of the obvious answers to things our scientists can't explain, just because they are so bent on denying God. Interacting? Yes, there is plenty of it...with a living God.
One thing very true you point out: many Christians, or people who call themselves Christians, sadly deny Christ with their lives. That is sad, and it shouldn't be. But each one of us, our responsibility is not toward these failures, its toward truth. When we all stand accountable one day for our own lives, those mistakes others have made won't matter.
It is a grave error to hold a me-centric world view, as if everything in life, and your belief, revolve around you.
But as I have said to others in this thread, the debate isn't necessary, because regardless of opinion, this is one issue that will be answered for sure. No need to argue...both you and I will stand accountable, and stare into the eyes of Truth.
Not so. You stated first that "perception is reality" (which for the record, is an out-of context use of a phrase that means to indicate that what people perceive will direct their actions, regardless of what reality is...it is not an actual statement on what truly is reality). So back to it, because you believe that reality is the result of perception, you have offered up your entire existence as 100% manipulatable simply by what you perceive. So my use of the word "perceive" reflected your own definition -- to define reality by your own perception.
Nope....your post only proves my point. The world was never flat. It was always round, even when people thought it was flat. Just like truth exists continually as truth, regardless of whether people believe it or not.
Can you see the wind? Does that mean it is in an indeterminate state? It can't be observed...its effects can, but it can't be seen.
And no, it doesn't agree with Christianity. Christianity is not a self-help-whatever-i-want-to-believe-i-can-believe religion. That is a gross distortion of the truth.
Really, you are willing to guess on other life existing based only on the size of the universe, while we are surrounded by amazing creation on the earth, all in a delicate balance? We see a building, and recognize there is an architect without knowing who he is, what he is like, or when he did it. We see a bridge and acknowledge and recognize an engineer. But we see the ultimate design, and refuse to acknowledge a creator? Doesn't intelligent design scream of a designer?
You seem to be overlooking the "ex nihilo" part. *WHAT*, tell me, has eternally existed? The big bang, evolution, whatever, is all based on the eternal existence of something! That *IS* an article of faith. If you are an atheist, then your articles of faith are some form of matter or something.
So while a Christian believes that "In the beginning, God..." and atheist believes "In the beginning, dirt..." or "In the beginning, gas..."
or whatever. You may not call it your god, but it is your article of faith.
Absolutely ridiculous confusion. Walk outside and stand in the way of an oncoming car and try to perceive you are just fine. I am sure reality will correct your "perception."
If everything is just "perception", why are you spending your time on/. when you could be perceiving yourself with everything your heart desires while laying on the beach on an island in Fiji?
You chose to perceive computers, the internet, the/. web site, this thread, and you even wasted time perceiving someone opposed to your opinion so that you could perceive a response?
I think you might want to perceive a reconsideration of this perception and perceive something else...
Interesting that you assumed Christian...though I didn't state anything about my religious persuasion.
Anyway, the truth is that there is technically no such thing as an "athiest".
Man and science cannot, and will never have an answer to the ultimate ex nihilo origin of life, without some pre-existence of some eternal form, whether you acknowledge God, or choose to believe that is cosmic gasses, or some ancient hunk or rock or dirt. Whatever it is, these are your articles of faith. And it is also an acknowledgemet of the supernatural, so whatever it is, it is your god. So to say you don't believe in "God", is not to say you don't have a god, it is to say that you don't acknowledge a particular one.
Of course, what you choose to believe doesn't change reality. The truth is, even though you are an athiest, God is as real to you as it is to any devout believer -- you just choose to ignore that...
Ridiculous comment. I believe if you do your research you'll find that the Clinton Democratic administration is the one that funded 18 out of 20 Enron ventures, and propped that company up, while the Republican administration of former Bush Sr. funded one out of 15 proposed, or around that number. I also believe Enron contributed more to the Dems than Repubs. And at any rate, I'm not accusing either Dems or Repubs of anything at Enron...
I was attracted by your bible quote...and curious...do you really believe Dems help the common man? I don't wish to get into a political arg. here, but Dems encourage both dependency and servitude on and to the government.
If source code is the same source code, even if the variable names have been changed (which would seem like a plausible claim), then the license really isn't on the "literal" source code, it is on an algorithm.
Therefore, this presents another problem: if the license is on an algorithm, it is very likely that more than one person can independently produce exactly the same algorithm...who owns the license to that?
Take a queue implementation, for example. How different will different organizations' implementations of a queue be? If there was a GPL license on an app with a Queue, who owns the license? And does the license apply to the separate parts of the product (an individual class in an application, a la plagiarism in literature), or to the whole application? If the whole application, then this company gets away free, probably. But if not, there is a much bigger mess...there are small parts (classes) in probably all apps that violate existing licenses of other apps.
I find this to be a fascinating topic for this message board. The opinions seem to be overwhelmingly against this practice. In essence, taking GPL code and cosmetically changing it, is viewed as stealing and against the licensing terms, according to most of the posters here.
However, the overwhelming majority of posters on topics that deal with the RIAA are totally opposed to their position (me included). But I think it is interesting to point out that ripping an mp3 from an original CD is essentially a cosmetic change of something that is fundamentally the same, obtained for free. Isn't this a bit of a double standard? As much as we do not like the RIAA, this is a very similar situation.
It seems the only thing truly consistent here is that the sentiment overwhelmingly falls onto the side of the opposition of corporations and where the big money lies, which is not a valid reason for anything...it seems packed with envy to me.
Morality IS popular opinion. There once was a time a long long time ago that believed women should not vote and they were treated as property. These were considered popular opinion and at that time, a long long long time ago, these were considered moral.
There is a distinction between what society *calls* or *recognizes* moral, and what *is* moral. Moral rights and wrongs come from the creator, not from man. It is a grave danger to subscribe to the philosophy that true morals stem from sinful man, because then ultimately there is no right and wrong. Everyone decides for themself what is right and wrong, and if someone decides that murdering 3,000 people at the WTC is right, well then, it is no more right or wrong than anything else. Subscribing to this philosophy is essentially an apologetic for Hitler, bin Laden, Stalin, and every other mass murderer, terrorist, and criminal alive. (This belief is also very much in line with an evolutionary world view...survival of the fittest, Darwin's theory of the preservation of favored races, etc. These criminals were model Darwinians.)
The crux of this argument is the question of what is truth. I notice that when discussing issues of morality, everyone wants to play the *your belief* and *my belief* game. These are really secondary issues to the real issue, and that is one of truth. There *is* truth. Something out there is true. Whether we believe it or not doesn't change the truth. If we agree with it, we are consistent with the truth. If we don't, we are at odds with the truth, and are therefore wrong. It isn't opinion, it isn't subjective, it isn't relative. Truth doesn't play favorites, it has no bias toward race, gender, social status, etc.
So what I believe, is of no importance to the matter, when compared with what truth is. And if anyone is not absolutely sure what the truth is, there is no issue of greater importance in all of life than to seek it out. We all bet our eternal lives on what our beliefs about truth are.
I'm willing to discuss this with you intelligently...but you need to take part, rather than just reverting to a snide hit and run comment. In what way am I misinformed? About the Sperm=life comment, that wasn't mine...read the thread...someone else posted that.
I will agree with one thing though, any opinion of mine, misinformed or not, isn't the basis for moral rights or wrongs. In fact, no person's opinion is the basis for moral rights or wrongs. What is moral is not the arbitrary and meandering whim of us humans...morals come the creator (just like rights do, as our forefathers knew, and annotated into our Declaration of Independence...).
You are missing the logical progression of thought here. If human life begins at conception, then your statement:
The issue is whether a handful of cells should be treated the same as me.
isn't even possible, because the premise, "handful of cells", isn't true, unless you consider every human to be a "handful of cells". If human life begins at conception, then your statement must be rephrased to: "The issue is whether a human life should be treated the same as me." This is why the matter of when life begins is so hotly contested, because if it begins at conception, we aren't discussing handling of meaningless protoplasm, we are discussing a human life, and the whole "cells" or sub-human-fetus-notion is not analog.
Following, if sperm = life (which I do not believe), then if you abandon them, it is murder, regardless of what "it's considered". Popular opinion isn't a basis for moral rights or wrongs anyway, so what it is "considered" is insignificant anyway.
Nobody ever claimed that a fetus wasn't alive; that's not the debate.
Wrong. There is furious debate over this, about the fundamental issue of whether or not human life begins at conception or not. If people all agreed that a fetus was a human life, then the debate would be over...or at least the veil would be lifted from the debate. It would be a debate about whether the someone right to end another human life, i.e. legally murder someone.
The debate is over whether the fetus has all of the rights of a person.
This isn't what the real debate is over. This is a further extension, or corollary to the real issue I mentioned earlier, which is the point at which human life begins. The reason that abortion supporters are so adamant about refusing to call a fetus a human is that it makes abortion murder. And in our society, it is politically easy to justify something for the sake of preserving "rights", but very difficult to justify murder.
We have no problem killing bacteria, plants, insects and cows every day even though they are all 'living'.
I think there are quite a few people opposed to this, i.e. the environmental movement (at least the small faction of it that is truly interested in the environment). I won't go on and on here, but this is clearly another area of irony -- the push to protect the environment, plants, animals, and what have you, but not trying to protect unborn children, rather protecting the right to kill unborn children...but anyway, that's straying a bit, so I won't go further on that.
If we discover some form of life on Mars, one of the first things we will do is kill a few of them so we can study them.
Not the policy toward life I prefer to take...kill and study...Hitler had a similar view...:-)
I find it truly ironic that society will hail the possibility of the existence of a water molecule on another planet as a potential discovery of life, but society wants to call a growing, living unborn child something less than living.
Talk about situational ethics...such hypocrisy isn't fooling anyone...
Slashdot Mirror
If by settling you are giving up your "life savings", what's the downside to fighting this? Even if he represented himself in court and got a judgement against him for $10 billion, he can just declare bankruptcy and walk away. Guess I'm not seeing what is to be gained by agreeing amicably to be 100% financially ruined.
I'm a techie that just moved away from my beloved CA, and this just bums me out to see this. Someone get Gray-out Davis out of office. Here's something for you non-CA residents --
How To Tell if Your State is Going Under Economically:
1) Your state government runs like CA's does.
2) See 1).
I wonder how many more high-tech jobs will end up leaving the state now...(it's why I left)!
boo...
No. My observations obviously will reflect those observations that I have made from my own life. I could insert any number of a hundred names there. But you mentioned interaction, so I cited my own...if you prefer, I'll cite the guy down the street's interaction.
:-)
But God's existence and truth of Him has nothing to do with my belief in Him or not. This is what I mean by me-centric. Many of the posts reflect a "God doesn't exist because I don't choose to believe in him" view, which essentially places the individual in the center of things dictating what is and what is not true. That is me-centric. Few realize that truth is not me-centric, nor man-centric...it just is. We can either align with it, or reject it, but it doesn't change that it is truth.
Obviously, you were competing for some kind of debate "win", and if you have to reason yourself the winner, well then so be it. But I would never appeal to anything but an authority...why would I? He is the one that will have the last say...no need to debate that with me...tell Him yourself. You will certainly have the opportunity, as we all will.
As for interaction, yes, certainly I interact with God, through prayer, through His direction in my life. Through conviction of things I shouldn't have done, or things I should stay away from, or things I should be a part of, or should do. I am being changed as a person, not by my own power, but to a person that believe me, is nothing like how I would be with my own effort...the contrast is amazing. My mind is being changed, to view things through Christ's viewpoint, not the one that is natural to me, which bends to my own physical desires and cravings....again, another thing that is entirely opposite of who I would be otherwise. My actions toward others are being changed, with self-control, forgiveness and mercy, towards those who do wrong to me, when in reality, I'd like to knock their front teeth out sometimes. I see creation, I see what the Bible says about it, I see all of the obvious answers to things our scientists can't explain, just because they are so bent on denying God. Interacting? Yes, there is plenty of it...with a living God.
One thing very true you point out: many Christians, or people who call themselves Christians, sadly deny Christ with their lives. That is sad, and it shouldn't be. But each one of us, our responsibility is not toward these failures, its toward truth. When we all stand accountable one day for our own lives, those mistakes others have made won't matter.
It is a grave error to hold a me-centric world view, as if everything in life, and your belief, revolve around you.
But as I have said to others in this thread, the debate isn't necessary, because regardless of opinion, this is one issue that will be answered for sure. No need to argue...both you and I will stand accountable, and stare into the eyes of Truth.
Not so. You stated first that "perception is reality" (which for the record, is an out-of context use of a phrase that means to indicate that what people perceive will direct their actions, regardless of what reality is...it is not an actual statement on what truly is reality). So back to it, because you believe that reality is the result of perception, you have offered up your entire existence as 100% manipulatable simply by what you perceive. So my use of the word "perceive" reflected your own definition -- to define reality by your own perception.
Nope....your post only proves my point. The world was never flat. It was always round, even when people thought it was flat. Just like truth exists continually as truth, regardless of whether people believe it or not.
e religion. That is a gross distortion of the truth.
Can you see the wind? Does that mean it is in an indeterminate state? It can't be observed...its effects can, but it can't be seen.
And no, it doesn't agree with Christianity. Christianity is not a self-help-whatever-i-want-to-believe-i-can-believ
Really, you are willing to guess on other life existing based only on the size of the universe, while we are surrounded by amazing creation on the earth, all in a delicate balance? We see a building, and recognize there is an architect without knowing who he is, what he is like, or when he did it. We see a bridge and acknowledge and recognize an engineer. But we see the ultimate design, and refuse to acknowledge a creator? Doesn't intelligent design scream of a designer?
You seem to be overlooking the "ex nihilo" part. *WHAT*, tell me, has eternally existed? The big bang, evolution, whatever, is all based on the eternal existence of something! That *IS* an article of faith. If you are an atheist, then your articles of faith are some form of matter or something.
So while a Christian believes that "In the beginning, God..." and atheist believes "In the beginning, dirt..." or "In the beginning, gas..." or whatever. You may not call it your god, but it is your article of faith.
Think about it...
Absolutely ridiculous confusion. Walk outside and stand in the way of an oncoming car and try to perceive you are just fine. I am sure reality will correct your "perception."
/. when you could be perceiving yourself with everything your heart desires while laying on the beach on an island in Fiji?
/. web site, this thread, and you even wasted time perceiving someone opposed to your opinion so that you could perceive a response?
If everything is just "perception", why are you spending your time on
You chose to perceive computers, the internet, the
I think you might want to perceive a reconsideration of this perception and perceive something else...
Interesting that you assumed Christian...though I didn't state anything about my religious persuasion. Anyway, the truth is that there is technically no such thing as an "athiest". Man and science cannot, and will never have an answer to the ultimate ex nihilo origin of life, without some pre-existence of some eternal form, whether you acknowledge God, or choose to believe that is cosmic gasses, or some ancient hunk or rock or dirt. Whatever it is, these are your articles of faith. And it is also an acknowledgemet of the supernatural, so whatever it is, it is your god. So to say you don't believe in "God", is not to say you don't have a god, it is to say that you don't acknowledge a particular one.
Of course, what you choose to believe doesn't change reality. The truth is, even though you are an athiest, God is as real to you as it is to any devout believer -- you just choose to ignore that...
:-)
Ridiculous comment. I believe if you do your research you'll find that the Clinton Democratic administration is the one that funded 18 out of 20 Enron ventures, and propped that company up, while the Republican administration of former Bush Sr. funded one out of 15 proposed, or around that number. I also believe Enron contributed more to the Dems than Repubs. And at any rate, I'm not accusing either Dems or Repubs of anything at Enron...
Enron is a result of dishonest people, period.
I was attracted by your bible quote...and curious...do you really believe Dems help the common man? I don't wish to get into a political arg. here, but Dems encourage both dependency and servitude on and to the government.
If source code is the same source code, even if the variable names have been changed (which would seem like a plausible claim), then the license really isn't on the "literal" source code, it is on an algorithm. Therefore, this presents another problem: if the license is on an algorithm, it is very likely that more than one person can independently produce exactly the same algorithm...who owns the license to that? Take a queue implementation, for example. How different will different organizations' implementations of a queue be? If there was a GPL license on an app with a Queue, who owns the license? And does the license apply to the separate parts of the product (an individual class in an application, a la plagiarism in literature), or to the whole application? If the whole application, then this company gets away free, probably. But if not, there is a much bigger mess...there are small parts (classes) in probably all apps that violate existing licenses of other apps.
I find this to be a fascinating topic for this message board. The opinions seem to be overwhelmingly against this practice. In essence, taking GPL code and cosmetically changing it, is viewed as stealing and against the licensing terms, according to most of the posters here.
However, the overwhelming majority of posters on topics that deal with the RIAA are totally opposed to their position (me included). But I think it is interesting to point out that ripping an mp3 from an original CD is essentially a cosmetic change of something that is fundamentally the same, obtained for free. Isn't this a bit of a double standard? As much as we do not like the RIAA, this is a very similar situation.
It seems the only thing truly consistent here is that the sentiment overwhelmingly falls onto the side of the opposition of corporations and where the big money lies, which is not a valid reason for anything...it seems packed with envy to me.
anyway, fascinating story and posts...
Morality IS popular opinion. There once was a time a long long time ago that believed women should not vote and they were treated as property. These were considered popular opinion and at that time, a long long long time ago, these were considered moral.
There is a distinction between what society *calls* or *recognizes* moral, and what *is* moral. Moral rights and wrongs come from the creator, not from man. It is a grave danger to subscribe to the philosophy that true morals stem from sinful man, because then ultimately there is no right and wrong. Everyone decides for themself what is right and wrong, and if someone decides that murdering 3,000 people at the WTC is right, well then, it is no more right or wrong than anything else. Subscribing to this philosophy is essentially an apologetic for Hitler, bin Laden, Stalin, and every other mass murderer, terrorist, and criminal alive. (This belief is also very much in line with an evolutionary world view...survival of the fittest, Darwin's theory of the preservation of favored races, etc. These criminals were model Darwinians.)
The crux of this argument is the question of what is truth. I notice that when discussing issues of morality, everyone wants to play the *your belief* and *my belief* game. These are really secondary issues to the real issue, and that is one of truth. There *is* truth. Something out there is true. Whether we believe it or not doesn't change the truth. If we agree with it, we are consistent with the truth. If we don't, we are at odds with the truth, and are therefore wrong. It isn't opinion, it isn't subjective, it isn't relative. Truth doesn't play favorites, it has no bias toward race, gender, social status, etc.
So what I believe, is of no importance to the matter, when compared with what truth is. And if anyone is not absolutely sure what the truth is, there is no issue of greater importance in all of life than to seek it out. We all bet our eternal lives on what our beliefs about truth are.
I'm willing to discuss this with you intelligently...but you need to take part, rather than just reverting to a snide hit and run comment. In what way am I misinformed? About the Sperm=life comment, that wasn't mine...read the thread...someone else posted that. I will agree with one thing though, any opinion of mine, misinformed or not, isn't the basis for moral rights or wrongs. In fact, no person's opinion is the basis for moral rights or wrongs. What is moral is not the arbitrary and meandering whim of us humans...morals come the creator (just like rights do, as our forefathers knew, and annotated into our Declaration of Independence...).
You are missing the logical progression of thought here. If human life begins at conception, then your statement:
The issue is whether a handful of cells should be treated the same as me.
isn't even possible, because the premise, "handful of cells", isn't true, unless you consider every human to be a "handful of cells". If human life begins at conception, then your statement must be rephrased to: "The issue is whether a human life should be treated the same as me." This is why the matter of when life begins is so hotly contested, because if it begins at conception, we aren't discussing handling of meaningless protoplasm, we are discussing a human life, and the whole "cells" or sub-human-fetus-notion is not analog.
Following, if sperm = life (which I do not believe), then if you abandon them, it is murder, regardless of what "it's considered". Popular opinion isn't a basis for moral rights or wrongs anyway, so what it is "considered" is insignificant anyway.
Nobody ever claimed that a fetus wasn't alive; that's not the debate. Wrong. There is furious debate over this, about the fundamental issue of whether or not human life begins at conception or not. If people all agreed that a fetus was a human life, then the debate would be over...or at least the veil would be lifted from the debate. It would be a debate about whether the someone right to end another human life, i.e. legally murder someone. The debate is over whether the fetus has all of the rights of a person. This isn't what the real debate is over. This is a further extension, or corollary to the real issue I mentioned earlier, which is the point at which human life begins. The reason that abortion supporters are so adamant about refusing to call a fetus a human is that it makes abortion murder. And in our society, it is politically easy to justify something for the sake of preserving "rights", but very difficult to justify murder. We have no problem killing bacteria, plants, insects and cows every day even though they are all 'living'. I think there are quite a few people opposed to this, i.e. the environmental movement (at least the small faction of it that is truly interested in the environment). I won't go on and on here, but this is clearly another area of irony -- the push to protect the environment, plants, animals, and what have you, but not trying to protect unborn children, rather protecting the right to kill unborn children...but anyway, that's straying a bit, so I won't go further on that. If we discover some form of life on Mars, one of the first things we will do is kill a few of them so we can study them. Not the policy toward life I prefer to take...kill and study...Hitler had a similar view...:-)
I find it truly ironic that society will hail the possibility of the existence of a water molecule on another planet as a potential discovery of life, but society wants to call a growing, living unborn child something less than living. Talk about situational ethics...such hypocrisy isn't fooling anyone...