On the contrary, the intended use of guns is self defense. Often, this only requires a credible show of force. Sometimes, it requires use of a gun to incapacitate or kill someone who is trying to hurt you or those you love.
Use of a gun to harm someone when not acting in self defense is misuse, just as use of a car to make a car bomb is misuse.
Hmm, yes, once again the bankrupcy of the left rears its head. Do you actually have a rational argument to make? Or just the typical liberal fear of an opposing opinion being discussed?
Re:Gratis vs. Libre
on
Debian And WineX
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Um, just what do you mean by `close the source'? Nothing a company does with my code has any effect at all on the freedom or availability of the code which I released under BSDL. If said company wants the benefits of open-sourcing their code, great. If they feel better off not doing so, great. Either way, the code I released under BSDL is still available under BSDL.
What you're really saying is that you feel you have a right to control the distribution of their code as well as yours. Now that's fine, if that's what you want, and there are certainly valid arguments for using the GPL in that case, but don't pretend it has anything to do with companies `closing' your source -- only you can do that.
Um, no we need guns because self-defense is a legitimate human right -- and a legitimate human responsibility. You may feel that you can leave this responsibility to the police to do for you. I have a wife and children and live in a neighborhood where average 911 response times are between 25 and 45 minutes, and am thus legally and legitimately prepared to defend myself when a burglar comes through the window at 2 AM.
Leaving aside hunting, target shooting and so forth, the fact is that guns are for defending oneself with, ideally by presenting a credible threat that deters violence, but failing that by preventing an attacker from harming you by rendering them incapacitated or dead.
It's certainly possible to misuse a gun by shooting not in self-defense, but, as you said, the other technologies in the list can be misused as well.
aid is often a mixed blessing for everyone involved. It is seldom as simple as the whiz-bang charity world makes it out to be.
Yup, I have no disagreement with that statement. There are a lot of potential side effects to aid, such as creation of dependence, or disruption of local market mechanisms, which have to be considered when deciding how aid is to be given.
While this is on the mark, I repeat that beating the Soviets to the moon had real repurcussions for the ideological conflict here on earth, a conflict which was about a lot more than PR.
Concern about the military repurcussions of being behind in the space race should also be kept in mind, of course.
Which is all very well, but it's also worth recognizing (and this is what I was trying to point out) that the Russians actually did pose a very real threat, and that competing with them in space, as here on earth was anything but a simple PR game. The lives and liberty of millions of real human beings were at stake.
Sure, but I stand by my statement that we shouldn't be making our foreign policy based on concerns about who might attack us -- that way lies appeasement. We should be making foreig policy based on what is right and what is wrong.
After all, when you provide foreign aid to a population, the people who were benefiting from that population's misery are going to be pissed off. We saw that in Somalia, we see that among the Kurds in Iraq, we see that all over the world.
The debate over "carpet bombing" is getting to the level of "That depends on what your definition of 'is' is." -- I don't thinks so. Words have meanings, and by the commonly understood meaning of `Carpet Bombing' or by any dictionary definition of `Carpet Bombing' which I have been able to locate, we are doing nothing of the sort. If you are going to use a private, personal meaning of a commonly used phrase, the onus is on you to explain that when using the term.
You've said something else which strikes me as odd: "To pretend that the belief that America should be destroyed is morally equivalent to a belief that it should not is nonsense." I'm not trying to say that the two beliefs are equivalent. But which belief is "right" is going to depend on who you're talking to. -- not at all. One of these two beliefs is right in a real and objective sense, and one is not. The fact that some people believe the wrong one is right does not make the two views equivalent any more than it would make `2+2=4' and 2+2=5' equivalent if some people believed the latter.
Morals are incapable of being objective. As they exist only in the mind of an indivudial, they necssarily are going to be different from person to person. -- and here we come to the crux of our disagreement. I would posit that this claim is simply false. Necessarily, there is, in fact, some objective moral truth to which we all strive, for if we do not accept this, then you have no grounds to possibly make the other claims in your post. You (rightly, of course) object to the massacre at Tianenmen, but how can you sustain this claim if morals are relative and the Chinese claim that their brutality is justified by their morality? No, your post practices a far better morality than it preaches.
With due respect, what are you suggesting the US should have done about Russia? Knuckle under and let even more nations live under the iron fist of Communist rule than already did? Really?
And by the way, just where do you get the idea that the government is going to `share with you?' Do you really think that that much money going to Washington is helping out anyone?
In contrast, even a rudimentary study of economics would tell you that when that money is left in private hands, and investment is not punished, that money actually works to improve everyone's position.
Here's a fact for you: in 1990, the bottom-most 20% of American society -- that's the `everyone else' of your post, if anyone is -- had, earned, and consumed as much as the middle 20% of society did in 1950. That's growth, and that's the only thing that actually makes any long-term improvement in people's economic situation. And government does not create growth, individuals do. But only if all their money isn't already en route to Washington.
Hmm, clever. I don't think you can even presume to know my position on the drug war from the previous post, but before you shoot your self-righteous little mouth off, I would remind you that just about the only mainstream voices for an adjustment of drug policy are coming from within the Conservative movement.
You can read your lefty rags and your High Times, and feel very clever about yourself, but publications like National Review and The Wall Street Journal are carrying a nuanced position in favor of normalization that is actually influencing the debate instead of covering for classified ads for bong parts.
The problem with taxes is that everybody likes the benefits but nobody wants to pay 'em. -- nope the problem is that what you call `benefit' is mostly wasteful spending on social engineering experiments. Conservatives such as myself believe that if the government were to stop funding such extravagances as the office of the national tea taster in Connecticut and the federal (!) subsidies for tattoo-removal in San Diego, to pick two recent examples, the government could perform it's actual job as defined in the constitution without an oppressive and crippling tax burden.
Except that what makes this disproportionate is not that the rich pay the highest percentage of the total tax burden, but that the rich pay a percentage of the total tax burden which is much higher than their percentage of all income or holdings. So the `example' you give has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
So, if you want to present an argument for making the rich pay more as a percentage of what they earn do that, but all presented so far in this thread boil down to `because we can'.
With due respect, if Saddam is not only building palaces but using diverted food aid money to build palaces it is meaningless to speak of sanctions being responsible for starvation in his country. We are making sure that enough money gets to him to feed his population. It is not our responsibility to also pay for him to build palaces.
As for `ending the occupation', you miss the fact that 98% of the west bank has not been occupied for nine years now (since Oslo). To pretend that the murder-suicide bombings have anything to do with `occupation', rather than with Arafat's stated goal of annihilating Israel would be suicidal. This is why Peace Now's call for a unilateral end to Israel's self defense without a prior end to murder-suicide bombings makes no sense whatsoever.
As for Afghanistan, are you really claiming that the people in Afghanistan are no better off than under the Taliban? Really? Before, they had one of the most repressive regimes on the face of the planet. Now, they have a regime which is at least trying to create a secular democratic government. Try telling the girls returning to school, the men shaving their beards without fear of being beaten or killed, and the women returning to the streets without fear of being caned if their shoes make too much noise if things aren't better...
Which raises an obvious question: are the comatose then not alive? Are the severely underdeveloped `less' alive? Does any electrical activity count? If the baby is alive when the first neuron fires, why is that moment distinct from the previous moment, as the baby is not any more capable of thought or other neural activity that we associate with a human being.
Yes, and many born infants die before they grow up. The fact that this does happen in nature doesn't mean that we should cause it to happen for research.
Your point being what, exactly? Remember that not only is capital gains taxation a dual tax on the same income, but, worse, it is a direct punishment for people who go out and invest their money, thus creating jobs and encouraging growth, instead of staying home and saving their money.
Now why would we want to discourage investment, again?
Quite the contrary, you haven't read what I wrote. I do not extend it past human life, and I've made a concise and rational argument why an embryo is human life.
For a concise summation of why I consider an embryo a human life, please go back and read the parent to your post
(here).
On the contrary, remember that most tax breaks have a cap on how much of your salary they can be applied to. If you look at the percentage the rich pay of the total tax burden, it's even higher.
No, these rates are grossly disproportionate. You are merely arguing that it is right that they be so.
Which is all very well, except that the basis of your argument is the assumption that the rich have less right to their money than others. There are good ethical reasons (if the government gets to decide what your property is worth to you, do we have property rights at all?) and practical reasons (money invested does much more to provide jobs, growth and prosperity than money taken by the government) why this assumption is a bad idea.
I have no evidence, but Cheney failed to mention any concrete cases or even the existence of such cases, that lead them to believe the threat is still present. -- say what? We know, of course, that not only is a lot of the infrastructure which made 9/11 possible still out there, but that the nations which funded and armed that infrastructure are untouched. We also know that al Qaeda is still releasing tapes calling for attacks on the US, including a tape using footage of Daniel Pearl's brutal murder. I'd say that's evidence enough for concern, and motivation enough for action in our own defense, no?
examples abound, this mention of media pirates funding terrorism is merely the latest one. -- we certainly agree that this push on the part of the ??AA is reprehensible,but I don't understand why you try to link that push to Cheney. Remember that if we want to talk about links to politicians, the ??AA and their buddies the trial lawyers are stalwart Democratic party funders.
Really? Are your pubic hair follicles a life (his first condition)? Remember that that includes being a distinct life -- being part of you doesn't count.
If they do meet this definition, you really should consider showering more often...
As for the spew of anti-religious bigotry at the end, don't worry -- I don't intend to take religious advice from someone who has demonstrated over several posts that he can't get through a thought without talking about his pubic hair...
Slashdot Mirror
On the contrary, the intended use of guns is self defense. Often, this only requires a credible show of force. Sometimes, it requires use of a gun to incapacitate or kill someone who is trying to hurt you or those you love.
Use of a gun to harm someone when not acting in self defense is misuse, just as use of a car to make a car bomb is misuse.
Hmm, yes, once again the bankrupcy of the left rears its head. Do you actually have a rational argument to make? Or just the typical liberal fear of an opposing opinion being discussed?
Um, just what do you mean by `close the source'? Nothing a company does with my code has any effect at all on the freedom or availability of the code which I released under BSDL. If said company wants the benefits of open-sourcing their code, great. If they feel better off not doing so, great. Either way, the code I released under BSDL is still available under BSDL.
What you're really saying is that you feel you have a right to control the distribution of their code as well as yours. Now that's fine, if that's what you want, and there are certainly valid arguments for using the GPL in that case, but don't pretend it has anything to do with companies `closing' your source -- only you can do that.
Um, no we need guns because self-defense is a legitimate human right -- and a legitimate human responsibility. You may feel that you can leave this responsibility to the police to do for you. I have a wife and children and live in a neighborhood where average 911 response times are between 25 and 45 minutes, and am thus legally and legitimately prepared to defend myself when a burglar comes through the window at 2 AM.
Leaving aside hunting, target shooting and so forth, the fact is that guns are for defending oneself with, ideally by presenting a credible threat that deters violence, but failing that by preventing an attacker from harming you by rendering them incapacitated or dead.
It's certainly possible to misuse a gun by shooting not in self-defense, but, as you said, the other technologies in the list can be misused as well.
aid is often a mixed blessing for everyone involved. It is seldom as simple as the whiz-bang charity world makes it out to be.
Yup, I have no disagreement with that statement. There are a lot of potential side effects to aid, such as creation of dependence, or disruption of local market mechanisms, which have to be considered when deciding how aid is to be given.
While this is on the mark, I repeat that beating the Soviets to the moon had real repurcussions for the ideological conflict here on earth, a conflict which was about a lot more than PR.
Concern about the military repurcussions of being behind in the space race should also be kept in mind, of course.
Which is all very well, but it's also worth recognizing (and this is what I was trying to point out) that the Russians actually did pose a very real threat, and that competing with them in space, as here on earth was anything but a simple PR game. The lives and liberty of millions of real human beings were at stake.
Sure, but I stand by my statement that we shouldn't be making our foreign policy based on concerns about who might attack us -- that way lies appeasement. We should be making foreig policy based on what is right and what is wrong.
After all, when you provide foreign aid to a population, the people who were benefiting from that population's misery are going to be pissed off. We saw that in Somalia, we see that among the Kurds in Iraq, we see that all over the world.
Just to respond to a few points here:
- The debate over "carpet bombing" is getting to the level of "That depends on what your definition of 'is' is." -- I don't thinks so. Words have meanings, and by the commonly understood meaning of `Carpet Bombing' or by any dictionary definition of `Carpet Bombing' which I have been able to locate, we are doing nothing of the sort. If you are going to use a private, personal meaning of a commonly used phrase, the onus is on you to explain that when using the term.
- You've said something else which strikes me as odd: "To pretend that the belief that America should be destroyed is morally equivalent to a belief that it should not is nonsense." I'm not trying to say that the two beliefs are equivalent. But which belief is "right" is going to depend on who you're talking to. -- not at all. One of these two beliefs is right in a real and objective sense, and one is not. The fact that some people believe the wrong one is right does not make the two views equivalent any more than it would make `2+2=4' and 2+2=5' equivalent if some people believed the latter.
- Morals are incapable of being objective. As they exist only in the mind of an indivudial, they necssarily are going to be different from person to person. -- and here we come to the crux of our disagreement. I would posit that this claim is simply false. Necessarily, there is, in fact, some objective moral truth to which we all strive, for if we do not accept this, then you have no grounds to possibly make the other claims in your post. You (rightly, of course) object to the massacre at Tianenmen, but how can you sustain this claim if morals are relative and the Chinese claim that their brutality is justified by their morality? No, your post practices a far better morality than it preaches.
For more on this theme, you may wish to check out my recent journal entry on the subject (and respond there).Mm, typical. Read this post's parent and it's parent's parent, and note which got modded `insightful' and which got modded `flamebait'.
Let it never be claimed that /.'s moderation doesn't favor a particular political position.
With due respect, what are you suggesting the US should have done about Russia? Knuckle under and let even more nations live under the iron fist of Communist rule than already did? Really?
And by the way, just where do you get the idea that the government is going to `share with you?' Do you really think that that much money going to Washington is helping out anyone?
In contrast, even a rudimentary study of economics would tell you that when that money is left in private hands, and investment is not punished, that money actually works to improve everyone's position.
Here's a fact for you: in 1990, the bottom-most 20% of American society -- that's the `everyone else' of your post, if anyone is -- had, earned, and consumed as much as the middle 20% of society did in 1950. That's growth, and that's the only thing that actually makes any long-term improvement in people's economic situation. And government does not create growth, individuals do. But only if all their money isn't already en route to Washington.
So thanks for playing, try again some time.
Hmm, clever. I don't think you can even presume to know my position on the drug war from the previous post, but before you shoot your self-righteous little mouth off, I would remind you that just about the only mainstream voices for an adjustment of drug policy are coming from within the Conservative movement.
You can read your lefty rags and your High Times, and feel very clever about yourself, but publications like National Review and The Wall Street Journal are carrying a nuanced position in favor of normalization that is actually influencing the debate instead of covering for classified ads for bong parts.
So sorry, you lose.
The problem with taxes is that everybody likes the benefits but nobody wants to pay 'em. -- nope the problem is that what you call `benefit' is mostly wasteful spending on social engineering experiments. Conservatives such as myself believe that if the government were to stop funding such extravagances as the office of the national tea taster in Connecticut and the federal (!) subsidies for tattoo-removal in San Diego, to pick two recent examples, the government could perform it's actual job as defined in the constitution without an oppressive and crippling tax burden.
Except that what makes this disproportionate is not that the rich pay the highest percentage of the total tax burden, but that the rich pay a percentage of the total tax burden which is much higher than their percentage of all income or holdings. So the `example' you give has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
So, if you want to present an argument for making the rich pay more as a percentage of what they earn do that, but all presented so far in this thread boil down to `because we can'.
With due respect, if Saddam is not only building palaces but using diverted food aid money to build palaces it is meaningless to speak of sanctions being responsible for starvation in his country. We are making sure that enough money gets to him to feed his population. It is not our responsibility to also pay for him to build palaces.
As for `ending the occupation', you miss the fact that 98% of the west bank has not been occupied for nine years now (since Oslo). To pretend that the murder-suicide bombings have anything to do with `occupation', rather than with Arafat's stated goal of annihilating Israel would be suicidal. This is why Peace Now's call for a unilateral end to Israel's self defense without a prior end to murder-suicide bombings makes no sense whatsoever.
As for Afghanistan, are you really claiming that the people in Afghanistan are no better off than under the Taliban? Really? Before, they had one of the most repressive regimes on the face of the planet. Now, they have a regime which is at least trying to create a secular democratic government. Try telling the girls returning to school, the men shaving their beards without fear of being beaten or killed, and the women returning to the streets without fear of being caned if their shoes make too much noise if things aren't better...
Which raises an obvious question: are the comatose then not alive? Are the severely underdeveloped `less' alive? Does any electrical activity count? If the baby is alive when the first neuron fires, why is that moment distinct from the previous moment, as the baby is not any more capable of thought or other neural activity that we associate with a human being.
Yes, and many born infants die before they grow up. The fact that this does happen in nature doesn't mean that we should cause it to happen for research.
Your point being what, exactly? Remember that not only is capital gains taxation a dual tax on the same income, but, worse, it is a direct punishment for people who go out and invest their money, thus creating jobs and encouraging growth, instead of staying home and saving their money.
Now why would we want to discourage investment, again?
For a concise summation of why I consider an embryo a human life, please go back and read the parent to your post (here) .
On the contrary, remember that most tax breaks have a cap on how much of your salary they can be applied to. If you look at the percentage the rich pay of the total tax burden, it's even higher.
No, these rates are grossly disproportionate. You are merely arguing that it is right that they be so.
Which is all very well, except that the basis of your argument is the assumption that the rich have less right to their money than others. There are good ethical reasons (if the government gets to decide what your property is worth to you, do we have property rights at all?) and practical reasons (money invested does much more to provide jobs, growth and prosperity than money taken by the government) why this assumption is a bad idea.
I have no evidence, but Cheney failed to mention any concrete cases or even the existence of such cases, that lead them to believe the threat is still present. -- say what? We know, of course, that not only is a lot of the infrastructure which made 9/11 possible still out there, but that the nations which funded and armed that infrastructure are untouched. We also know that al Qaeda is still releasing tapes calling for attacks on the US, including a tape using footage of Daniel Pearl's brutal murder. I'd say that's evidence enough for concern, and motivation enough for action in our own defense, no?
examples abound, this mention of media pirates funding terrorism is merely the latest one. -- we certainly agree that this push on the part of the ??AA is reprehensible,but I don't understand why you try to link that push to Cheney. Remember that if we want to talk about links to politicians, the ??AA and their buddies the trial lawyers are stalwart Democratic party funders.
Really? Are your pubic hair follicles a life (his first condition)? Remember that that includes being a distinct life -- being part of you doesn't count.
If they do meet this definition, you really should consider showering more often...
As for the spew of anti-religious bigotry at the end, don't worry -- I don't intend to take religious advice from someone who has demonstrated over several posts that he can't get through a thought without talking about his pubic hair...