You're incorrect. The philosopher who said "You never step in the same river twice" is Heroclitus, a Greek philosopher. Thats why the phrase "Heroclitian flux" refers to the very Heisenburg-esque fact that you change things by interacting with them. Frankly, you sound unfamiliar with the tenets of Zen buddhism, since most of their koans [i.e. meditative stories/poems] are not phrases with actual meaning (such as "you can never step in the same river twice) which can be discovered, but in fact phrases or stories without meaning. The koans are employed by Zen buddhists to become more comfortable with the lack of reason in the universe, and thus come closer to the meditative state of nirvana.
You want a demonstration of voters' power between elections? Take a look at California; they're removing their elected leader, outside of the election system, through democratic processes. Now, it'd be difficult to get rid of a president in a similar manner (in fact, impossible, as far as I know), but most states have similar rules which allow an elected official to be removed prior to term completion.
Actually, its relevant. A significant percentage of students in some states (specifically California, Texas, New York, New Jersey and Florida) contain resident aliens (i.e. non-US citizens who reside in the US). Statistically, they have a high drop out rate when compared to US citizens, as well as typically having language issues (since their first language is usually not english). The problems involved here are part of what stimulated California to debate co-teaching Spanish with English (although the larger issue there was the increasing Spanish-speaking population of the state/country).
Okay, you've introduced a massive fallacy here. This demonstrates why people like you need philosophers, since you don't examine your own arguments.
"Humans are animals that had human parents, and no amount of postulation or terminology will make a cat or a machine into a human."
By this argument, nothing whose parents were not human can be human. Ergo there can never be a "first" human, since its parents must have (by definition) not have been human. As such, unless humanity was created, in situo, then there can be no humans. Now, if you're a Creationist, thats fine, but for those of us who believe in Evolution, its absurd.
Are you kidding? There are maybe a dozen or so irregular verbs in spanish, and similar numbers in French and Italian (although I dont speak the latter two, so I cant be sure). Latin itself (at least Church latin) has even fewer. English, on the other hand, has dozens and dozens. English (and the other Germanic languages) have far more irregularities than the Romance (aka Italic) languages.
Actually, they can do this, at least in some states (if not all). However, if they do so, they must make it explicit before you sign the contract, otherwise you'll be able to break the lease whenever you find out about it. You wont be able to get any damages, or have them arrested though. Its the same principle as the nanny-cam: you can surveil your own property. There was a case of this in Florida last year I believe, where the landlord was simply chastised.
One point to make about the "bad-guy" cops in "Enter the Matrix". As noted in the movies, those cops (with the exception of the agents, of course) are not "bad guys" in the strictest sense. They are unaware of the reality of machines oppressing and enslaving humanity, and so have no idea they are fighting the "good guys" that compose the resistance. As such, these are men who have done nothing wrong, and are utterly unaware of (and have no reason to suspect) the nature of their superiors.
As such, frankly, I'm not sure its entirely okay for them to summarily be called "bad guys" in the way the Sheriff of Nottignham (who was a wilfull "bad guy") was.
The irony of your comment, although you couldn't possibly have known, is that I play pool quite often, as well as dating often.
Anyway, its quite obvious that your just covering your own feelings of inadequacy by making comments like this. Its a logical fallacy, that basically states "if you have to deny this, then it must be true", and is the same fallacy demonstrated by people who claim we didnt land on the moon, or who claim the holocaust never occured.
The kind of asshole who needs to brag about their sexlife isn't the kind of person who would invest time in a real relationship. The two characteristics are pretty much mutually exclusive. As a result, the guy who spent time building a relationship would never get into your situation (and moreover, wouldn't care about the arse in graphic design).
"People should tell bullied kids to gang up and beat the fuckers senseless - then there's no need for shooting innocents. If you can't gang up, you do what I did - everyone is alone sooner or later - and those who have IQs only marginally above chimps don't understand the concept of mechanical advantage vs. bone. Or something as simple as a knife in the gut and the ability to remain silent. Just don't do it on school property so your future remains intact."
You're mentally ill. You just - in a single paragraph, mind you - claimed that its okay to assault and greviously injure someone (including a "knife in the gut" which has a signficant chance of being fatal). Thats completely insane, period. If the agression against you is anything at all to remotely justify violence like that, then you can get police involved to arrest these "teasers". If its not violent, then you dont need to stab them. Christ man...
I'm sorry, are you claiming that human children have no more ability to reason than dogs? Wow, you must have no self esteem to think that when you were a child it was such, and you must think nothing of your kids [if you have them] or other peoples' kids.
There's a key difference between cornered dogs and human beings: we can think things through. Moreover, you destroy dogs when they hurt human beings, period. If these kids are nothing but dogs (as your post claims apparently), then they should be "destroyed" for hurting anyone too.
I dont think you're disagreeing with me that significantly, partially because I find myself only marginally disagreeing with your post. I believe that its obviously true that the pornography industry isn't having any trouble of course. As well, I agree that corpulence in the renaissance was an indication of opulence of course. However, I think you underestimate the ability of Men (and Women) to sublimate one desire (such as for wealth) into the sexual drive. Just a cursory glance at the number of fetishes which exist in pornography (for example scat-porn i.e "fecal porn", clothing fetishes, heterosexual cross dressing, S&M, etc.) seems to demonstrate that sexuality becomes conflated with other desires (i.e. power relationships, etc.). Similarly, I believe it was the desire for wealth and success amongst Renaissance men that made corpulence "sexy". Note that besides the attraction, these artists depicted past female subjects as being similarly shaped. This indicates an attraction to the form, not necessarily its particular shape. Considering how much better suited these women were for childbirth and rearing as compared to the heroin-chic, it seems obvious that they may even be more "natural" than we are perhaps?
Besides which, I dont think I was suggesting dehumanization. In fact, to lose the connection between violence/harm would not be dehumanization, I feel. Cynically, I think it would be humanization, considering the bloodthirsty history of our cultures (such as, oh, I dunno...the Crusades, the Inquisition, the World Wars, the Holocaust, etc.).
The question is far more socio-economic than racial, actually. The majority of murders committed by minorities (in the US, statistically) are commited by individuals in the lower-class (alternately called "working class", although both of these terms are nebulous) i.e. those who live on or below the poverty line. A significant portion (I believe its the majority, though I'm not positive) of these occur inside ghettos or the penumbra of those ghettos, and are perpetuated against other lower-class individuals living in those areas. A significant portion are also gang-related (i.e. "warfare").
This is, among other things, due to the extremely bleak outlook for a poor individual (minority or otherwise) living in a ghetto. There are limited avenues for escape, and the quick-fix of a "family" and economic support of a gang (or pseudo-gang) can often seem like the best choice for such underpriviledged youth. A cursory glance at autobiographical and ethnographic literature written by authors from the working class (consider "Bone Black" or "Bastard Out of Carolina" for examples by a Black woman and a White Gay Woman respectively, both of which are national best sellers, and continue to be used in Universities) clearly confirm this. Whether its the urban ghettos of the Bronx or the rural ghetto of bumble-fuck Carolina, it can seem imposssible to escape.
Remember, coincidence isn't causality: just because only white kids have their [attempted] mass-murders blamed on media, doesn't mean that the blame is because they're white. It just means that there aren't any [to my recollection] cases of minorities committing such crimes when coming from middle or upper class communities in such a situation.
I'm sorry, but while I'm all for blaming the kids for their own [attempted] crime, you'd have to be a complete idiot to blame the kids who teased them.
Now, I'm going to be modded down because a significant portion of Slashdotters were harassed in school. But the fact is that a healthy human individual can survive any teasing without the need to physically harm or kill anyone. It may be tough, but no one sane thinks violence like this will solve it. You have to have taken a jump off the edge to think murder is the answer.
Someone, about now, is thinking "well the teasing pushed them over the edge". No, frankly, it didn't. The teasing may have been terrible, but unless it involved murder, then the answer cannot be murder. The bully knocked you down? It sucks, I'm sure. Go to the fucking gym and do some exercise or learn martial arts or something instead of just fuming about it in the room. These kids took all their rage, and instead of focusing it on something useful or helpful (i.e. something healthy), they bottled it up and refused to deal with it. Eventually, it built up until they snapped, and came to believe violence was the key.
Look, I'm not saying the teasing wasn't wrong. It was: its always wrong to hurt someone unfairly. Life, however, is unfair by nature. No one, ever, with the exception of Hindus and some Buddhists have claimed otherwise. It sucks to get bullied. It sucks to be short, or scrawy or have acne or be ugly. But how much can you blame the unfairness of the world before you start trying to take control of your life? If you're weak, exercise (this applies to both the body and the mind). If you're ugly, develop your personality or something. If you're awkward, take some lessons (people went to Catillian to learn manners, poise, posture and pronunciation for years and still do today, including the USA).
Life's hard for all of us, and the only thing we can do is take responsibility for our own actions and stop winging about how unfair the world is.
Off the top of my head [having not read the article since I first saw it a day or two ago], the ringleader (the 18 year old, who apparently led the 15 and 14 year olds) also had Matrix posters on his wall, and referred to himself as "The Mystic" and "The One". Now, the former isn't as easily related, but the latter sounds quite coincidental.
Actually, the nudist-raised child may have an entirely different reaction to a nude woman (even whilst in or after puberty) than a non-nudist-child, simply because of the extremely socialized nature of human sexuality. Numerous studies have confirmed this, but just look at the massively ethnocentric nature of beauty (i.e. the oft-mentioned enjoyment of fat women during the renaissance as compared to our current heroin-chic). He simply may not find arousal in the nudity, having been socialized to only find arousal in true interaction (i.e. dialogue).
Relating this to the video games, a person who is so muted to the presence of violence (but lacking a corresponding presence of consequences of violences) may think themselves to be innured against violence. I.e., they may claim that because they are not shocked or suprised by violence, that they are less excited by it. However, our fear is not childrens' reactions to violence (which would be the parallel to the nudist example), but instead their proclivity towards violence. Basically, if we remove the internal connection of "violence by nature harms someone", replacing it with "violence doesn't hurt anyone", we may create children who have no real understanding of the damage inflicted by violence. We may, in short, end up with Columbine kids.
Now keep in mind, I'm not advocating a removal of violent video games. I just finished playing a few minutes of Vice City, and I'm happy to have enjoyed it. However, I'm old enough that I know the difference, in the same way that I'm old enough to distinguish pornographic sex from real sex, or to distinguish cartoon science from real science. A seven year old, however, cannot really do this [often]. What should we do? My answer is parenting: take a bit of personal accountability for your children. The problem, though, is that parents are more concerned these days with limiting the child's exposure, as opposed to preparing them emotionally to interpret these fictional situations. We need parents to teach kids to deal with virtual violence, sex and the ilk.
Thats not shoplifting, although its quite obviously stealing. Shoplifting would be if you somehow walked onto the showroom floor, slid into a car without anyone noticing or caring, and drove it without problem out of the store.
No, figuratively would mean I made a figurative statement, i.e. a metaphorical interpretation of "keeping an eye on" something. However, again, I mean precisely what I'm saying: keeping the eyes focused on the property.
If you're going to be a grammar nazi, try and be a correct one.
I made no error here. The expression "keep an eye on " is a literal statement, meaning "keeping the eye focused on the blank". It isn't metaphorical at all (although it is slightly abbreviated).
Linkin' Park is among the bands refusing to sell on the Apple Store because they beleive the album format (i.e. a disc composed of multiple tracks in a particular order) is something important to preserve. The seperation of the album into individual tracks, to artists like them, ruins this part of their art.
Actually, it happens to many people every year that they're asked to produce receipts to account for their physical property when someone believes they may have acquired it illegally. Its called an "audit" and the IRS does it every year.
The difference is this: its actually rather difficult to shoplift anything besides books, CDs and other small objects. Those objects - the small stuff - are priced around this "shrinkage" (just ask anyone in retail) though, because of this. You cant shoplift a car, period. So, since stores know they only have to worry about small (size wise, not cost wise) they establish security mechanisms (such as RIDs, cameras, etc.) to try and prevent that shoplifting.
Now, if you're a copyright holder, how do you do the same thing? If I were a storeowner, I can keep an eye, literally, on all my merchandise. You cant steal from me without being in my store. But with music and other file sharing/whatever you want to call it, you can steal from the copyright holders from anywhere that has internet access. Obviously, this means the only way to prevent theft of this sort is (a) DRM(ooooh, I hear the 'boos' from the/. audience), (b) surveillence of networks (impossible, really), (c) destruction of those networks over which sharing is done (also impossible, really) or something similar. Basically, as much as I dislike DRM in principle, it seems to be the only real way to protect the copyrights.
There's one possible alternative: make it so cheap to acquire the material legally that functionally no one steals it. The Apple Music store is a step in this direction, but the resistance its facing from Artists (such as Linkin' Park, Alanis Morissette, etc.) and Lables (for reasons ranging from protection of the 'album' as a form of presentation by artists, to simple economic protection of markets) makes this quite difficult to accept as the solution.
Interesting post from a purported lawyer, since you are outright wrong at least a few times.
First, you state here "Also the claim "If you know that murder will always get the same punishment (although not capital, which I'm not endorsing here) then you will be less apt to do it." is not fully accurate.", which is nonsense. I state that one cause (punishing impulse murder) will make people "less apt" to commit the crime. You then claim that its not "fully accurate". This is not actually disagreeing with me, since my statement only means some people would be affected, not all. You seem to be claiming I believe ALL people would be dissuaded.
Second, you say " I never said, or even implied, that the cirminal justice system in the US was about rehabilitation". In actuality, you did [imply this]: " The criminal justice system is about prevent repeat crimes". Thats your quote from the parent. The only way a justice system can prevent repeat crimes is to kill the criminal, permanently isolate him (a la Minority Report) or rehabilitate him.
Third, you state "Nor did I talk about ancient or even old-world legal systems." In your parent post, you stated however that "In the real world revenge does not work, and only causes more problems." which I was responding to by talking about past legal systems, demonstrating that in fact they dont necessarily cause problems.
Finally, you claim that I failed to "respond to my salient points", when in fact I did. I stated, to quote my post, that "self-defense is ameliorative not because of "context" but because I think the act of murder is defined as the willful termination of another individual's life who is not actively engaged in attempting your murder. As such, self-defense fails to meet the definition of murder, any more than theft meets the definition of murder. Thats not context, thats just definition. Similarly, manslaughter is not murder. "
So to sum up, Shadowlore, you're factually incorrect on all these points. Seems like you're the one posting strawmen.
Incidentally, regarding the definition of legal realism. Your link [from Cornell] does not say anywhere anything to contradict my claim that legal realists believe that the laws are automatically morally right. They may be superceded by later laws (which will then be "right") but nonetheless it stands.
Slashdot Mirror
You're incorrect. The philosopher who said "You never step in the same river twice" is Heroclitus, a Greek philosopher. Thats why the phrase "Heroclitian flux" refers to the very Heisenburg-esque fact that you change things by interacting with them. Frankly, you sound unfamiliar with the tenets of Zen buddhism, since most of their koans [i.e. meditative stories/poems] are not phrases with actual meaning (such as "you can never step in the same river twice) which can be discovered, but in fact phrases or stories without meaning. The koans are employed by Zen buddhists to become more comfortable with the lack of reason in the universe, and thus come closer to the meditative state of nirvana.
You want a demonstration of voters' power between elections? Take a look at California; they're removing their elected leader, outside of the election system, through democratic processes. Now, it'd be difficult to get rid of a president in a similar manner (in fact, impossible, as far as I know), but most states have similar rules which allow an elected official to be removed prior to term completion.
Actually, its relevant. A significant percentage of students in some states (specifically California, Texas, New York, New Jersey and Florida) contain resident aliens (i.e. non-US citizens who reside in the US). Statistically, they have a high drop out rate when compared to US citizens, as well as typically having language issues (since their first language is usually not english). The problems involved here are part of what stimulated California to debate co-teaching Spanish with English (although the larger issue there was the increasing Spanish-speaking population of the state/country).
Okay, you've introduced a massive fallacy here. This demonstrates why people like you need philosophers, since you don't examine your own arguments.
"Humans are animals that had human parents, and no amount of postulation or terminology will make a cat or a machine into a human."
By this argument, nothing whose parents were not human can be human. Ergo there can never be a "first" human, since its parents must have (by definition) not have been human. As such, unless humanity was created, in situo, then there can be no humans. Now, if you're a Creationist, thats fine, but for those of us who believe in Evolution, its absurd.
"We have countries on this planet that still discriminate because of religion, race, culture, background, color, etc (the US is one of them duh)."
More accurately, its that we dont have a single country that doesn't discriminate based on some combination of religion, race, culture, etc.
Are you kidding? There are maybe a dozen or so irregular verbs in spanish, and similar numbers in French and Italian (although I dont speak the latter two, so I cant be sure). Latin itself (at least Church latin) has even fewer. English, on the other hand, has dozens and dozens. English (and the other Germanic languages) have far more irregularities than the Romance (aka Italic) languages.
Actually, they can do this, at least in some states (if not all). However, if they do so, they must make it explicit before you sign the contract, otherwise you'll be able to break the lease whenever you find out about it. You wont be able to get any damages, or have them arrested though. Its the same principle as the nanny-cam: you can surveil your own property. There was a case of this in Florida last year I believe, where the landlord was simply chastised.
You forgot the real punch line; in response, Amy says "I know how to make love, Bender!"
One point to make about the "bad-guy" cops in "Enter the Matrix". As noted in the movies, those cops (with the exception of the agents, of course) are not "bad guys" in the strictest sense. They are unaware of the reality of machines oppressing and enslaving humanity, and so have no idea they are fighting the "good guys" that compose the resistance. As such, these are men who have done nothing wrong, and are utterly unaware of (and have no reason to suspect) the nature of their superiors.
As such, frankly, I'm not sure its entirely okay for them to summarily be called "bad guys" in the way the Sheriff of Nottignham (who was a wilfull "bad guy") was.
The irony of your comment, although you couldn't possibly have known, is that I play pool quite often, as well as dating often.
Anyway, its quite obvious that your just covering your own feelings of inadequacy by making comments like this. Its a logical fallacy, that basically states "if you have to deny this, then it must be true", and is the same fallacy demonstrated by people who claim we didnt land on the moon, or who claim the holocaust never occured.
The kind of asshole who needs to brag about their sexlife isn't the kind of person who would invest time in a real relationship. The two characteristics are pretty much mutually exclusive. As a result, the guy who spent time building a relationship would never get into your situation (and moreover, wouldn't care about the arse in graphic design).
You're incorrect. The 18 year old's younger brother, who was not amongst the assailants, was the one with the cleft palette.
Moreover, I was referring to psychologically healthy humans, although perhaps I didn't make that clear enough.
"People should tell bullied kids to gang up and beat the fuckers senseless - then there's no need for shooting innocents. If you can't gang up, you do what I did - everyone is alone sooner or later - and those who have IQs only marginally above chimps don't understand the concept of mechanical advantage vs. bone. Or something as simple as a knife in the gut and the ability to remain silent. Just don't do it on school property so your future remains intact."
You're mentally ill. You just - in a single paragraph, mind you - claimed that its okay to assault and greviously injure someone (including a "knife in the gut" which has a signficant chance of being fatal). Thats completely insane, period. If the agression against you is anything at all to remotely justify violence like that, then you can get police involved to arrest these "teasers". If its not violent, then you dont need to stab them. Christ man...
I'm sorry, are you claiming that human children have no more ability to reason than dogs? Wow, you must have no self esteem to think that when you were a child it was such, and you must think nothing of your kids [if you have them] or other peoples' kids.
There's a key difference between cornered dogs and human beings: we can think things through. Moreover, you destroy dogs when they hurt human beings, period. If these kids are nothing but dogs (as your post claims apparently), then they should be "destroyed" for hurting anyone too.
I dont think you're disagreeing with me that significantly, partially because I find myself only marginally disagreeing with your post. I believe that its obviously true that the pornography industry isn't having any trouble of course. As well, I agree that corpulence in the renaissance was an indication of opulence of course. However, I think you underestimate the ability of Men (and Women) to sublimate one desire (such as for wealth) into the sexual drive. Just a cursory glance at the number of fetishes which exist in pornography (for example scat-porn i.e "fecal porn", clothing fetishes, heterosexual cross dressing, S&M, etc.) seems to demonstrate that sexuality becomes conflated with other desires (i.e. power relationships, etc.). Similarly, I believe it was the desire for wealth and success amongst Renaissance men that made corpulence "sexy". Note that besides the attraction, these artists depicted past female subjects as being similarly shaped. This indicates an attraction to the form, not necessarily its particular shape. Considering how much better suited these women were for childbirth and rearing as compared to the heroin-chic, it seems obvious that they may even be more "natural" than we are perhaps?
Besides which, I dont think I was suggesting dehumanization. In fact, to lose the connection between violence/harm would not be dehumanization, I feel. Cynically, I think it would be humanization, considering the bloodthirsty history of our cultures (such as, oh, I dunno...the Crusades, the Inquisition, the World Wars, the Holocaust, etc.).
The question is far more socio-economic than racial, actually. The majority of murders committed by minorities (in the US, statistically) are commited by individuals in the lower-class (alternately called "working class", although both of these terms are nebulous) i.e. those who live on or below the poverty line. A significant portion (I believe its the majority, though I'm not positive) of these occur inside ghettos or the penumbra of those ghettos, and are perpetuated against other lower-class individuals living in those areas. A significant portion are also gang-related (i.e. "warfare").
This is, among other things, due to the extremely bleak outlook for a poor individual (minority or otherwise) living in a ghetto. There are limited avenues for escape, and the quick-fix of a "family" and economic support of a gang (or pseudo-gang) can often seem like the best choice for such underpriviledged youth. A cursory glance at autobiographical and ethnographic literature written by authors from the working class (consider "Bone Black" or "Bastard Out of Carolina" for examples by a Black woman and a White Gay Woman respectively, both of which are national best sellers, and continue to be used in Universities) clearly confirm this. Whether its the urban ghettos of the Bronx or the rural ghetto of bumble-fuck Carolina, it can seem imposssible to escape.
Remember, coincidence isn't causality: just because only white kids have their [attempted] mass-murders blamed on media, doesn't mean that the blame is because they're white. It just means that there aren't any [to my recollection] cases of minorities committing such crimes when coming from middle or upper class communities in such a situation.
I'm sorry, but while I'm all for blaming the kids for their own [attempted] crime, you'd have to be a complete idiot to blame the kids who teased them.
Now, I'm going to be modded down because a significant portion of Slashdotters were harassed in school. But the fact is that a healthy human individual can survive any teasing without the need to physically harm or kill anyone. It may be tough, but no one sane thinks violence like this will solve it. You have to have taken a jump off the edge to think murder is the answer.
Someone, about now, is thinking "well the teasing pushed them over the edge". No, frankly, it didn't. The teasing may have been terrible, but unless it involved murder, then the answer cannot be murder. The bully knocked you down? It sucks, I'm sure. Go to the fucking gym and do some exercise or learn martial arts or something instead of just fuming about it in the room. These kids took all their rage, and instead of focusing it on something useful or helpful (i.e. something healthy), they bottled it up and refused to deal with it. Eventually, it built up until they snapped, and came to believe violence was the key.
Look, I'm not saying the teasing wasn't wrong. It was: its always wrong to hurt someone unfairly. Life, however, is unfair by nature. No one, ever, with the exception of Hindus and some Buddhists have claimed otherwise. It sucks to get bullied. It sucks to be short, or scrawy or have acne or be ugly. But how much can you blame the unfairness of the world before you start trying to take control of your life? If you're weak, exercise (this applies to both the body and the mind). If you're ugly, develop your personality or something. If you're awkward, take some lessons (people went to Catillian to learn manners, poise, posture and pronunciation for years and still do today, including the USA).
Life's hard for all of us, and the only thing we can do is take responsibility for our own actions and stop winging about how unfair the world is.
Off the top of my head [having not read the article since I first saw it a day or two ago], the ringleader (the 18 year old, who apparently led the 15 and 14 year olds) also had Matrix posters on his wall, and referred to himself as "The Mystic" and "The One". Now, the former isn't as easily related, but the latter sounds quite coincidental.
Actually, the nudist-raised child may have an entirely different reaction to a nude woman (even whilst in or after puberty) than a non-nudist-child, simply because of the extremely socialized nature of human sexuality. Numerous studies have confirmed this, but just look at the massively ethnocentric nature of beauty (i.e. the oft-mentioned enjoyment of fat women during the renaissance as compared to our current heroin-chic). He simply may not find arousal in the nudity, having been socialized to only find arousal in true interaction (i.e. dialogue).
Relating this to the video games, a person who is so muted to the presence of violence (but lacking a corresponding presence of consequences of violences) may think themselves to be innured against violence. I.e., they may claim that because they are not shocked or suprised by violence, that they are less excited by it. However, our fear is not childrens' reactions to violence (which would be the parallel to the nudist example), but instead their proclivity towards violence. Basically, if we remove the internal connection of "violence by nature harms someone", replacing it with "violence doesn't hurt anyone", we may create children who have no real understanding of the damage inflicted by violence. We may, in short, end up with Columbine kids.
Now keep in mind, I'm not advocating a removal of violent video games. I just finished playing a few minutes of Vice City, and I'm happy to have enjoyed it. However, I'm old enough that I know the difference, in the same way that I'm old enough to distinguish pornographic sex from real sex, or to distinguish cartoon science from real science. A seven year old, however, cannot really do this [often]. What should we do? My answer is parenting: take a bit of personal accountability for your children. The problem, though, is that parents are more concerned these days with limiting the child's exposure, as opposed to preparing them emotionally to interpret these fictional situations. We need parents to teach kids to deal with virtual violence, sex and the ilk.
Thats not shoplifting, although its quite obviously stealing. Shoplifting would be if you somehow walked onto the showroom floor, slid into a car without anyone noticing or caring, and drove it without problem out of the store.
No, figuratively would mean I made a figurative statement, i.e. a metaphorical interpretation of "keeping an eye on" something. However, again, I mean precisely what I'm saying: keeping the eyes focused on the property.
If you're going to be a grammar nazi, try and be a correct one.
I made no error here. The expression "keep an eye on " is a literal statement, meaning "keeping the eye focused on the blank". It isn't metaphorical at all (although it is slightly abbreviated).
Linkin' Park is among the bands refusing to sell on the Apple Store because they beleive the album format (i.e. a disc composed of multiple tracks in a particular order) is something important to preserve. The seperation of the album into individual tracks, to artists like them, ruins this part of their art.
Actually, it happens to many people every year that they're asked to produce receipts to account for their physical property when someone believes they may have acquired it illegally. Its called an "audit" and the IRS does it every year.
/. audience), (b) surveillence of networks (impossible, really), (c) destruction of those networks over which sharing is done (also impossible, really) or something similar. Basically, as much as I dislike DRM in principle, it seems to be the only real way to protect the copyrights.
The difference is this: its actually rather difficult to shoplift anything besides books, CDs and other small objects. Those objects - the small stuff - are priced around this "shrinkage" (just ask anyone in retail) though, because of this. You cant shoplift a car, period. So, since stores know they only have to worry about small (size wise, not cost wise) they establish security mechanisms (such as RIDs, cameras, etc.) to try and prevent that shoplifting.
Now, if you're a copyright holder, how do you do the same thing? If I were a storeowner, I can keep an eye, literally, on all my merchandise. You cant steal from me without being in my store. But with music and other file sharing/whatever you want to call it, you can steal from the copyright holders from anywhere that has internet access. Obviously, this means the only way to prevent theft of this sort is (a) DRM(ooooh, I hear the 'boos' from the
There's one possible alternative: make it so cheap to acquire the material legally that functionally no one steals it. The Apple Music store is a step in this direction, but the resistance its facing from Artists (such as Linkin' Park, Alanis Morissette, etc.) and Lables (for reasons ranging from protection of the 'album' as a form of presentation by artists, to simple economic protection of markets) makes this quite difficult to accept as the solution.
Interesting post from a purported lawyer, since you are outright wrong at least a few times.
First, you state here "Also the claim "If you know that murder will always get the same punishment (although not capital, which I'm not endorsing here) then you will be less apt to do it." is not fully accurate.", which is nonsense. I state that one cause (punishing impulse murder) will make people "less apt" to commit the crime. You then claim that its not "fully accurate". This is not actually disagreeing with me, since my statement only means some people would be affected, not all. You seem to be claiming I believe ALL people would be dissuaded.
Second, you say " I never said, or even implied, that the cirminal justice system in the US was about rehabilitation". In actuality, you did [imply this]: " The criminal justice system is about prevent repeat crimes". Thats your quote from the parent. The only way a justice system can prevent repeat crimes is to kill the criminal, permanently isolate him (a la Minority Report) or rehabilitate him.
Third, you state "Nor did I talk about ancient or even old-world legal systems." In your parent post, you stated however that "In the real world revenge does not work, and only causes more problems." which I was responding to by talking about past legal systems, demonstrating that in fact they dont necessarily cause problems.
Finally, you claim that I failed to "respond to my salient points", when in fact I did. I stated, to quote my post, that "self-defense is ameliorative not because of "context" but because I think the act of murder is defined as the willful termination of another individual's life who is not actively engaged in attempting your murder. As such, self-defense fails to meet the definition of murder, any more than theft meets the definition of murder. Thats not context, thats just definition. Similarly, manslaughter is not murder. "
So to sum up, Shadowlore, you're factually incorrect on all these points. Seems like you're the one posting strawmen.
Incidentally, regarding the definition of legal realism. Your link [from Cornell] does not say anywhere anything to contradict my claim that legal realists believe that the laws are automatically morally right. They may be superceded by later laws (which will then be "right") but nonetheless it stands.