The Music Recommendation System for iTunes from the University of Illinois doesn't solve your problem because it requires you to rate most of your own library. However, it might be an interesting step on the way to solving the problem you raise.
Not that anyone cares, since this is Slashdot, but it might interest some as our legal system is based on Judao-Christian values.
Revenge in the Christian religion is right out, in all circumstances. In no case should an individual take revenge in the case of being wronged. The reason is two-fold: Christians should forgive, just as they have been forgiven in Christ's atoning sacrifice, and revenge is God's prerogative. All harms done against other people are ultimately seen as attacks on God.
In this life, perfect justice is never possible; however, the state is an instrument of God's justice, as imperfect as it might be. The reason one should not take things into their own hands is it demonstrates a lack of faith in God's final justice. Either the offender will be paid for his transgressions, or if the offender is a Christian, Christ paid for his transgressions.
This may seem hopelessly unfair, buy why? God is vindicated and is proved just, and people are punished according to their deeds. The only unfair part are those who go free because Christ paid the penalty for what they did. This is the Christian definition of love. While we were taking pleasure in our revenge for cutting people off, Christ died to restore those who would turn from their vengefulness and place their trust in his sacrifice on their behalf. This is also called grace, or unmerited favor.
One final note: In the Christian religion, God is the standard of justice. Because he is seen as the author of creation, he has the right to make the rules, which people have a natural tendency to rebel against. It is this attitude of rebellion that leads to people taking "justice" into their own hands. It is also this attitude of despising all authority that threatens to separate them from God forever.
When you read this reply to your post, you have agreed to put all your money in a paper bag, put your underwear on your head if it is not already there, slather yourself with Marmite, and run naked down the center of the street throwing your money to passers-by.
It's not a contract without consideration. You should offer to leave a flaming bag of poop on their doorstep. If they accept the poop, you have a contract. If they stamp it out, it's null and void.
The reason it is "fair" is that they are giving you music, which by your opening the packaging and listening to it (using the product), you are tacitly agreeing to the EULA. It's called a shrinkwrap agreement. If you don't like it, you can return the product unopened.
The Constitution is worth fighting and dying for. The moment it becomes just another piece of paper [...] - then freedom in the United States is truly dead.
It is interesting to note that our country was referred to by its founders as "the American experiment."
It acknowledged that individual rights are derived from a Creator.
It was based on enduring principles compatible with "the laws of nature and of nature's God."
It recognized human imperfection and that a tendency to abuse power is ever present in the human heart.
It restrained those in power through a written Constitution which carefully divided, balanced, and separated the powers of government and then intricately knitted them back together again through a system of checks and balances.
It left all powers with the people, except those which, by their consent, the people delegated to government and then made provision for their withdrawing that power, if it was abused.
Very few have noticed the subtle shift away from the framers' assumptions--most people today believe that human beings are fundamentally good, and that the bad things that people do result from ignorance. That is directly the opposite from the framers' view stated above. In effect, popular notion has made reference to God as the standard of good unnecessary, thereby reducing the constitution to "just another piece of paper." So long as people are willing to uphold that piece of paper, the American Experiment will persist. We've seen many erosions from people accountable only to themselves. America is by no means permenent, and our experiment is actually quite likely to fail. Consider Ben Franklin's words on what kind of government the founders structured:
"...A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT."
ps. This is why attempts to democratize Iraq will be unlikely to succeed. Their assumptions are based on a completely different socio-religious background: one which assumes that people can in fact be controlled and forced to believe something by the state. The Judeo-Christian worldview makes no such assumption: only God can convert someone, and people will naturally try to change his standard of good to their own in rebellion against him. This is the reason the framers intended for citizens to mistrust the government (because it is being run by imperfect people who naturally crave power). Because the Iraquis are operating under different assumptions, they have a different experiment, and their constitution is already nothing but a piece of paper, easily discarded. Why protect people's rights if you don't assume they are derived from the Creator? Answer: self-interest. Not a particularly good place to start when trying to duplicate the American Experiment.
If I copy a file from one computer to the other, nothing, absolutely nothing have been wasted. There are no resources that have been spent. No one will go home emptyhanded because they didn't get paid. No one will lose anything on it.
Your logic is flawed; it is a subset of the broken window fallacy. In your line of reasoning, you claim that people benefit from free copying of software, and no one gets hurt. This neglects the opportunity cost for software makers.
The success of capitalism is dependent on the practice of certain theories of economics. One of the most important is the concept of opportunity cost vs. accounting cost. For the purposes of this discusson, accounting cost is more like actual cost. While it is true that resources are not consumed in copying bits, the vast number of companies that depend on any sort of Intellectual Property would go out of business if that is all they paid attention to. To survive, companies must take into account the amount of money they lose based on the course of action they take.
For example, I decide I want to watch TV. But I could have spent my time selling subscriptions to slashdot. There is an opportunity cost of the money I could have made with the time I had.
In the case of Microsoft, they could do nothing and let people copy their software, or they could enforce copy protection. There is a huge opportunity cost between the two courses of action.
The reason this affects you is that it is one of the hidden assumptions of our economic system. You might not care about Microsoft, but you certainly would care if someone broke your bedroom window and claimed they benefited society. Now, you might not be claiming to benefit anyone but yourself by stealing software, but to claim no one is hurt is short-sighted.
Re:Some classic Christian D&D FUD
on
D&D Is 30
·
· Score: 1
The problem Christians have with some RPGs is not so much the potential for evil within the environment, but the gaining of supernatural powers for the sake of self-exaltation. The dividing line for Christians is whether the actions taken by the player glorify himself or glorify God. It becomes a problem when the fantasy realm drifts into the desires of the player to have powers that would make him/her feel more powerful, as opposed to the grace of God, which is perfected in weakness.
Of the 143.6 million people who watched the superbowl, lets say that only 1% of them were children. Of the fathers I've talked to, not one was happy about what his children had seen. I'd even go so far as to call them "freaked out." Outraged would be better. So, even if it's "relatively few," we're still talking over a million outraged parents.
You may say, "who cares? the population is over 291 million here." Yeah, but a million people can do a lot in Washington.
Right, like in Real Genius?
"Do you have that dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?"
In my defence, my post left that open to interpretation. In case you didn't realize, the editors can change what you write at will. They put the linux slant in.
Its just an internal support job and no different or important to that of finance, human resources, etc. Or the post man for that matter. In my experience (and I have been one) they tend to be full of self importance and generally reluctant to help "idiot" users. Mike, UK
I posted:
To Mike, UK:
The difference between a postman and sysadmin is that the postman doesn't wear a pager to come in at 3 am when someone didn't get their post delivered five minutes after it was sent.
Slashdot Mirror
It's almost as though the article was generated using the PostModern Generator.
The Music Recommendation System for iTunes from the University of Illinois doesn't solve your problem because it requires you to rate most of your own library. However, it might be an interesting step on the way to solving the problem you raise.
Revenge in the Christian religion is right out, in all circumstances. In no case should an individual take revenge in the case of being wronged. The reason is two-fold: Christians should forgive, just as they have been forgiven in Christ's atoning sacrifice, and revenge is God's prerogative. All harms done against other people are ultimately seen as attacks on God.
In this life, perfect justice is never possible; however, the state is an instrument of God's justice, as imperfect as it might be. The reason one should not take things into their own hands is it demonstrates a lack of faith in God's final justice. Either the offender will be paid for his transgressions, or if the offender is a Christian, Christ paid for his transgressions.
This may seem hopelessly unfair, buy why? God is vindicated and is proved just, and people are punished according to their deeds. The only unfair part are those who go free because Christ paid the penalty for what they did. This is the Christian definition of love. While we were taking pleasure in our revenge for cutting people off, Christ died to restore those who would turn from their vengefulness and place their trust in his sacrifice on their behalf. This is also called grace, or unmerited favor.
One final note: In the Christian religion, God is the standard of justice. Because he is seen as the author of creation, he has the right to make the rules, which people have a natural tendency to rebel against. It is this attitude of rebellion that leads to people taking "justice" into their own hands. It is also this attitude of despising all authority that threatens to separate them from God forever.
It's not a contract without consideration. You should offer to leave a flaming bag of poop on their doorstep. If they accept the poop, you have a contract. If they stamp it out, it's null and void.
The reason it is "fair" is that they are giving you music, which by your opening the packaging and listening to it (using the product), you are tacitly agreeing to the EULA. It's called a shrinkwrap agreement. If you don't like it, you can return the product unopened.
It is interesting to note that our country was referred to by its founders as "the American experiment."
Its principles were:
Very few have noticed the subtle shift away from the framers' assumptions--most people today believe that human beings are fundamentally good, and that the bad things that people do result from ignorance. That is directly the opposite from the framers' view stated above. In effect, popular notion has made reference to God as the standard of good unnecessary, thereby reducing the constitution to "just another piece of paper." So long as people are willing to uphold that piece of paper, the American Experiment will persist. We've seen many erosions from people accountable only to themselves. America is by no means permenent, and our experiment is actually quite likely to fail. Consider Ben Franklin's words on what kind of government the founders structured:
"...A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT."
ps. This is why attempts to democratize Iraq will be unlikely to succeed. Their assumptions are based on a completely different socio-religious background: one which assumes that people can in fact be controlled and forced to believe something by the state. The Judeo-Christian worldview makes no such assumption: only God can convert someone, and people will naturally try to change his standard of good to their own in rebellion against him. This is the reason the framers intended for citizens to mistrust the government (because it is being run by imperfect people who naturally crave power). Because the Iraquis are operating under different assumptions, they have a different experiment, and their constitution is already nothing but a piece of paper, easily discarded. Why protect people's rights if you don't assume they are derived from the Creator? Answer: self-interest. Not a particularly good place to start when trying to duplicate the American Experiment.
Oh, the glorious days of hypercard. . .
Your logic is flawed; it is a subset of the broken window fallacy. In your line of reasoning, you claim that people benefit from free copying of software, and no one gets hurt. This neglects the opportunity cost for software makers.
The success of capitalism is dependent on the practice of certain theories of economics. One of the most important is the concept of opportunity cost vs. accounting cost. For the purposes of this discusson, accounting cost is more like actual cost. While it is true that resources are not consumed in copying bits, the vast number of companies that depend on any sort of Intellectual Property would go out of business if that is all they paid attention to. To survive, companies must take into account the amount of money they lose based on the course of action they take.
For example, I decide I want to watch TV. But I could have spent my time selling subscriptions to slashdot. There is an opportunity cost of the money I could have made with the time I had.
In the case of Microsoft, they could do nothing and let people copy their software, or they could enforce copy protection. There is a huge opportunity cost between the two courses of action.
The reason this affects you is that it is one of the hidden assumptions of our economic system. You might not care about Microsoft, but you certainly would care if someone broke your bedroom window and claimed they benefited society. Now, you might not be claiming to benefit anyone but yourself by stealing software, but to claim no one is hurt is short-sighted.
The problem Christians have with some RPGs is not so much the potential for evil within the environment, but the gaining of supernatural powers for the sake of self-exaltation. The dividing line for Christians is whether the actions taken by the player glorify himself or glorify God. It becomes a problem when the fantasy realm drifts into the desires of the player to have powers that would make him/her feel more powerful, as opposed to the grace of God, which is perfected in weakness.
Of the 143.6 million people who watched the superbowl, lets say that only 1% of them were children. Of the fathers I've talked to, not one was happy about what his children had seen. I'd even go so far as to call them "freaked out." Outraged would be better. So, even if it's "relatively few," we're still talking over a million outraged parents.
You may say, "who cares? the population is over 291 million here." Yeah, but a million people can do a lot in Washington.
Right, like in Real Genius? "Do you have that dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?"
In my defence, my post left that open to interpretation. In case you didn't realize, the editors can change what you write at will. They put the linux slant in.
Some guy named Mike posted:
Its just an internal support job and no different or important to that of finance, human resources, etc. Or the post man for that matter. In my experience (and I have been one) they tend to be full of self importance and generally reluctant to help "idiot" users.
Mike, UK
I posted:
To Mike, UK:
The difference between a postman and sysadmin is that the postman doesn't wear a pager to come in at 3 am when someone didn't get their post delivered five minutes after it was sent.