The statement you're responding to with this question is essentially the same "it's not personal, it's business" idea that I mentioned previously: an idea is an idea is an idea - if it's good, it doesn't matter who came up with it, it will stand on its own merits.
That's almost certainly how things would be run in your company, but in my experience the best idea rarely has a great deal of bearing on solving the problem. Spheres of influence are usually the winning mechanic at play. The reason being, is that there are emotional humans at play. If you demonstrate that no one is to be trusted with more authority than their best ideas can garner them, you're quite likely to marginalize a great many personality types. In short 'good enough' and and often does trump 'best', merits be damned.
I believe that "regligious" beliefs are what Mordok is referencing, whereas you are referencing something closer to "universal human" beliefs. Not everyone agrees that aborting a fetus is wrong. Pretty much everyone believes that torture is wrong. There are a few who may approve of it in special circumstances, but as a concept, everyone agrees it is not good.
Your line is arbitrary to the point of being meaningless. Religions exist that support torture, and religions exist that allow for abortion. Fundamentally everyone is 'religious', provided that they follow any sort of moral code at all. You may well be a 'Haffnerist', who would believe that the reverent logic and teachings of Haffner is the true source for living your life. That's not organized religion, but it is in fact religious. Perhaps you pray at the alter of 'atheism', or 'logic', or 'science', or maybe just 'common sense'. The simple fact is, you're not weighing each and every moral dilemma each and every time you come across one. All you'd have to do to start a church is write it down and start handing out copies...
Well - no - some people don't think its right to sacrifice human embryos for scientific research regardless if they have a soul or anything.
I don't think you quite understand the situation.
The embryos will be destroyed no matter what. They are left over at IVF clinics. The lives will be 'sacrificed'.
Perhaps we should use them for some good before they are destroyed?
Fruit from the poisonous tree, I'm afraid. IVF needs to be refined until they can implant a single embryo and produce a single human. Allowing them to profit on the 'extra' human life isn't exactly the cleanest of ethics.
This same sort of position could be made for the exploitation of the terminally ill, by the way. They're already going to die, so why not just take whatever we need of them?
Plus, you assume that the tech lead seeking to preserve his authority is a bad thing. Why would they want to bring in someone highly experienced (possibly overqualified?) to perform a very specific role?. Eventually that highly experienced person will be wanting to apply their other experience, and there won't be enough Indians left to actually get the work done.
This.
Post above specifically cited a 'leadership threat' which should never, ever, ever be part of a candidate's point of view. If you're being interviewed for a position, you really ought to expect to fill that position until such time as you get promoted according to your proven track record with that company. If you're already looking to leapfrog the manager interviewing you, and he or she senses that, the interview has effectively ended.
Do we harvest the flesh and non-donated organs of our dead for processing into dog food? Or do we just let it rot in the ground?
Why? Specifically, why is a dead human of greater reverence than a live embryo?
Do we name and bury our stillborn offspring? Or simply incinerate them?
Again, why?
Is it considered double murder to kill a pregnant woman?
There are really a lot of these to explore, when you think about it.
I'm asserting that human life and human tissue have a greater value than that of their biological composition. IVF being relatively barbaric is a reason for it to change, rather than advocacy for further barbaric behavior.
Hard to make an argument against constructive use of these embryos when the only alternative is--literally--trash.
I agree. I do, however, feel they shouldn't be created in the first place. The entire practice of 'implant more babies than you want, and then kill some of them' is barbaric. The science of IVF needs to improve drastically. As it stands now, the reasoning behind your 'gotcha' rebuttal is constructed entirely out of imprecise science and the valuation of cost as greater than embryo life. That's hardly compelling, I'm afraid.
Ethically, the non-experimental IVF practice should probably be stopped until they get it worked out.
I despise the latter - not because they're old, it's because they behave as if their age automatically confers upon them some sort of infallibility in all things technical.
Because apparently nothing supports their point quite as well as waving away technical limitations with "you're young, you can't possible understand."
People old enough to be my parents earn my respect when I see that they are genuine authorities in the subject matter, they don't automatically get it by virtue of the fact that they've been sitting around the office longer than me.
You remind me of a junior admin I once hired and was grooming to take my place after I got promoted out of doing technical stuff and into management. Now I don't know you as well as I knew him, so I apologize in advance if you fail to see any similarities. I do implore you to pause and consider what I'm about to say, as I'm fairly certain he never did, and I still regret never getting my point across.
The comments here illustrate someone who has a problem with authority. This type of person doesn't like taking the word of someone with seniority, and challenges every decision into some form of IT debate. This person has considerable competitive drive, which made them an excellent student and a highly desirable novice employee. They have not yet realized that such unabashed drive and attitude doesn't generally equate to 'playing well with others'. It would take a mentor with a raft of skill and patience to make this sort of person understand the nuances of their experience, and due to whatever factors, most eventually stop trying. The mentors fall into cliches like "you can't understand" because it is easier and less offensive than to point out that you're not putting enough effort into listening, understanding, and thinking it all the way through. Typically the implicit or explicit authority these senior folks have is enough security to ensure they simply don't have to rise to the challenge of helping you see it their way. They can just be "obnoxious, stale, inflexible, cantankerous pains in the ass" and things still come out the way they wanted them to in the first place. This occurs, by the way, even when they're blatantly incorrect, because this kind of person will quickly pigeon-hole themselves into a 'does not cooperate' stereotype.
The core issue has nothing to do with who is 'best' or 'smartest' or any of that. It has everything to do with working together in groups, respecting authority as being a naturally occurring phenomenon, and picking your battles. Unfortunately, these things take real-world experience to learn, and I lack the language to describe them well enough in this format.
Also unfortunately, if I'm reading you right, you will be unhappy professionally for a very long time until you work this out on your own.
Just as I don't expect someone to assume I'm correct simply because "my college training is more recent than yours" - if I'm correct, then it doesn't matter if I'm young or old; if I'm incorrect, the same applies.
Do you correct your boss's spelling? In front of others? I'm just curious...
There's a lot of people that genuinely believe that it's their right not to have to share the planet with people that disagree with their religious views even if said religious views are fucked up beyond belief. Which is why abortion is wrong, but fertility drugs and IVF are perfectly fine.
These two statements are incongruent. Look, I'm a Christian, mostly, and yet I absolutely hate the harm that organized religion has done to our species. That being said, this isn't a part of that.
Consider first, what if your own embryo had been used for such research? Are you not at least a little glad that it wasn't?
There is definitely a line to draw. Do we consider eggs and sperm humans, too? Probably not. But they're still human products, which are generally taboo in and of themselves. Or, if not, how much does a donor kidney go for at WalMart these days? How much for a few pints of human blood? Or perhaps breast milk? No, these things are either restricted or generally not sold openly, even though they're cannot be considered people and are only parts of them.
Same thing with embryonic research. If there is any other way to do this work without killing potential humans, why not use that resource first? Why jump headlong into the grey area of where life begins when other methods not only exist, but have been proven to work better?
I personally fault people like yourself. If you can legitimize the killing of embryo's you can 'strike a blow' at those who would defend them. You can move away from 'fucked up tradition' and into your 'more enlightened' era. Never mind that the research could thrive without such bellicosity, because your agenda would suffer.
The irony is, who's truly more 'enlightened', here? Those opposed to the one specific type of behavior due to a personal conviction, or those who ignore alternatives to further an agenda?
Does it not bother you even slightly to be creating a market for human offspring??
No encyclopedia would ever meet these standards. Ever. To even consider that it might is ridiculous.
I disagree with the 'ridiculous' position. Unless we're going back to Freud's notes or some such, then nearly nothing on the topic could be considered an original source. Everything starts somewhere, and we're all standing on the shoulders of giants. Take a textbook, for example. There's zero originality in there, and yet they use them to teach the students. The whole book is basically an encyclopedia on that one, specific topic. Why use such an non-credible source as the pillar of your education??
The distinction is decidedly arbitrary. I personally believe it has more to do with competitiveness amongst book publishers than any actual content of the data within the pages.
It doesn't matter which was right, what matters is you don't use an encyclopedia, any encyclopedia as a source to cite
This, to me, seems arbitrary and stupid. I realize that we prefer original knowledge in our sources, but there are many, many areas of study where such a thing simply does not exist. If I were writing a paper on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, for example, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone alive that would be eligible as an 'expert witness' to that event. Any hope of original research died with the last survivor - quite a while ago.
And if you're not aware, the official account is all kinds of messed up, and even the Natives had dissenting versions of what actually happened. Various parties had a hand in screwing with the forensics of it, and much of the actual property remained privately owned after the battle. The actual events of the it will likely never, ever be discerned.
Back to the point, who's to say one hearsay source is any better or worse than the other? This is but a single example...
I think the more reasonable position, still valid in this situation, would be:
...you should never use an encyclopedia, any encyclopedia when there is a better source to cite
If I just bought something, why would they think I'm going to buy it again? If it was a perishable product or one that is periodically used up, that's understandable, but good shoes generally last at least a year or so.
I prefer it, actually, to the approach used by television. There must not be a lot of brand loyalty in feminine hygiene products, but I'm fairly certain that they're wasting their ad dollars trying to woo me.
Ads for things I have bought is one step closer to ads for things I might actually buy, and is a step away from ads that I'd rather not even think about.
Therefore - good thing.
Besides, if you've already been to the site and made your decision, what's the harm, exactly?
By your reasoning, someone who lends a book in a library using stolen credentials is not responsible for that but the robbed party is, and all millions of owners of hacked spam-bots computers are criminals.
I said they were responsible, and they would be in both of the cases above. The robbed party would have a duty to report the discrepancy and would unfortunately be required to prove that they in fact did not take the books. This is merely the way society is structured. Don't take it out on me, if you please.
Also those owners are, technically, criminals, but only once convicted in court. They are, again technically, aiding and abetting crimes.
However, I'd also point out that you're exaggerating what I said. I said they are RESPONSIBLE for the harm those computers do. And they in fact are, regardless of whether or nor this is a convict-able crime.
I'm sorry, but the vast majority of people on the earth, would disagree with you there. if sex were not a good thing: we as a race would cease to exist. point and fact.
'Sex' 'procreation'
For example, please explain to me how homosexual sex and/or oral sex furthers the survival of the race.
just because people feel that they're "above nature" and somehow we need to "take the moral high ground" does not mean that we are not animals like the rest of the world. it's not up to us to "protect" our children from the rest of the world, it's up to us to make sure they have what it takes to survive in it.
(Why do you capitalize things in one case, but not in the other?)
We both are and are not like animals. I see us as 'animal plus'. We get the added feature of being able to share our experiences and learn from them. Animals, not so much. The simple fact that we're all biological creatures should not exclude our ability to reason and learn.
Morals are a result of that. Once individuals learn the same lessons over and over and over again, they begin to cement them in their minds. Eventually these become important enough to teach to others, and that expounds into laws and ethics.
Further if we cannot impart morals onto our children as a function of 'making sure they have what it takes', then what is the point of teaching them anything at all?
you explicitly mention "common sense" yet fail to give reference
You likewise fail to rebut it, so what is your exact point here?
sex is a fact of life. if people would stop treating it like it's some sort of taboo
Killing is a fact of life as well, and yet this behavior is also taboo in certain situations. We laud our soldiers as effective killers and decry young men of the same age, using the same weapons and tactics I might add, for killing their enemies in the streets. This is due to social order, which is intrinsic to being human.
I am not at all against sexual education, and your asserting otherwise is offensive. You're setting up the most casual of terrible arguments, and if you're going to make a habit of it, you're probably on the wrong site.
YOU CAN TRUST PEOPLE! (even those that you don't have sex with!)
You can trust people. You can trust them to be stupid, reckless, and make idiotic choices. Particularly when they are young children. The opposite can be true, of course, but I'm at a loss as to understand how the television set can be built with the ability to determine which is which.
That's for people to decide. Not - certainly not - the Federal government, but we as consumers of the content. We should protest and complain and failing that vote with our wallets.
maybe we'd continue to advance as a people, instead of tearing ourself apart trying to hide what we are.
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to accuse you of doing exactly what you're trying to prevent. Your attitude would mean that we cannot obstruct our more basic nature by virtue of learning from our past. We'd not have farming, conservation, or anything even close to a 'green' movement. Our very culture would evaporate. The concept that this is a good idea is absolutely absurd.
Again, as with the other post, I see where you're trying to reach. You see the oppression of certain people as wrong (as do I) and seek to oppose it (as do I). Where you diverge is by taking this 'they have gone too far' observation and taking it into insanity land. 'We should be animals' is patently absurd, when we have already realized that we are much, much, much more.
You do not hold the same exact beliefs as the set described in 3: The beliefs of this group by definition prohibits downloading content from TPB.
To be honest, I'm unaware of any group with beliefs that would prohibit downloading content from TPB. That, as a belief system, doesn't necessarily exist.
I'd point out, however, that by your implication that all Pirate Bay content is stolen and illegal, that you're arguing my point, rather than your own. There's more than one type of content up there, as I'm sure you're aware.
accurate enough for even conversation scratched into the stall of a public restroom.
Ah yes, the petty insults. I'll take that as a white flag and will let you have the last word...
You don't genuinely know what my beliefs are, do you? What's your source?
I have indeed used it. I used it just the other week to get Adywan's cut of Star Wars (which was excellent, by the way.) I do, however, know that my use of it is rare enough that the observation I made above is valid enough for conversation on slashdot.
While I agree that you are correct about the First, you're completely and totally incorrect with the rest of your statements...
There are more than children living in this country.
False. Everyone living in this country is either a child or a former child. There's no excuse for lack of empathy for childhood innocence. Even if you, personally, lived some kind of hellishly messed up childhood nightmare, you shouldn't be in favor of seeing that happen to other children.
Since when are images of the human body and messages of love harmful?
They're not. Sexualizing young children, however, is repugnant. For the same reason you would not have sex with a child, or have sex adjacent to a child, you should not be viewing others having sex along with a child. This should NOT need to be explained, as it is a basic moral value.
Children will find out about these things sooner or later.
Later being the preference.
Parents: if you have a problem with this, take responsibility and teach them so they will be prepared.
Yes! Definitely!
Don't have time? Don't have kids.
No! By the time any non-parent thinks about whether or not television is okay for kids to watch, the kids already exist. Unless you're advocating these parents un-have the kids in some way, this policy is an absurd rebuttal to decency standards.
Sure, you shouldn't just bombard them from the get go, but cutting them off completely will be worse in the long run.
And here's the part where you make my point...
Get a clue and get a grip: sex is not bad
Sex is also not 'good'. It can lead to either. Sex can bring joy and happiness, or abortion and AIDS. Monogamous relationships are the only safe environment for sexual activity, and anyone to immature to conduct one of those successfully has NO BUSINESS experimenting with sex. This is a simple, common sense argument to which there genuinely can be no sound rebuttal, religion or not.
Factual, scientific, rational education is the answer.
Indeed it is. Given at the appropriate age, of course, to the correct audience. Further you'll need to add some semblance of values to the discussion, perhaps from a psychologist or sociologist to be in keeping with your atheist beliefs. Your advocacy of leaving the entire discussion to the biology class, however, is absurdly disastrous.
Please don't go so far in pushing your religious atheism that you wind up doing more harm that those you're fighting against. Organized religion is indeed the enemy, but unfortunately this includes organized atheists such as yourself...
We're now living in a time where it's trivially easy to block potentially offensive channels, or restrict their use with a code to keep them out of children's reach if their parents don't want them watching.
Broadcasting is DEAD anyway. Streaming is the future of video, period, the end. The FCC's loss of power here would be noticed by nearly no one of the future generations.
I had to 'lol' on this one... All those poor, indignant, Fox-bashing slashdotters must be gnashing teeth over this one:
The Commission ruled in 2006 that, under its new policy, both Billboard broadcasts were indecent. Fox, which broadcast the awards shows, responded by appealing that decision. In its appeal Fox was joined by other broadcasters who opposed the FCC's stricter enforcement policies.
So who does the seething liberal root for? The government and their 'think of the children' stance, or the devil incarnate, Fox?
why _would_ someone include an.exe file for a cracked Mac program?:\
Well, why wouldn't one do so? Even the developer of the program apparently used this exe to evaluate the harm the crack does to his software. I understand it is an affront to Mac users, but I don't think the rest of us are as emotionally attached.
Slashdot Mirror
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1771270&cid=33420006
The statement you're responding to with this question is essentially the same "it's not personal, it's business" idea that I mentioned previously: an idea is an idea is an idea - if it's good, it doesn't matter who came up with it, it will stand on its own merits.
That's almost certainly how things would be run in your company, but in my experience the best idea rarely has a great deal of bearing on solving the problem. Spheres of influence are usually the winning mechanic at play. The reason being, is that there are emotional humans at play. If you demonstrate that no one is to be trusted with more authority than their best ideas can garner them, you're quite likely to marginalize a great many personality types. In short 'good enough' and and often does trump 'best', merits be damned.
I believe that "regligious" beliefs are what Mordok is referencing, whereas you are referencing something closer to "universal human" beliefs. Not everyone agrees that aborting a fetus is wrong. Pretty much everyone believes that torture is wrong. There are a few who may approve of it in special circumstances, but as a concept, everyone agrees it is not good.
Your line is arbitrary to the point of being meaningless. Religions exist that support torture, and religions exist that allow for abortion. Fundamentally everyone is 'religious', provided that they follow any sort of moral code at all. You may well be a 'Haffnerist', who would believe that the reverent logic and teachings of Haffner is the true source for living your life. That's not organized religion, but it is in fact religious. Perhaps you pray at the alter of 'atheism', or 'logic', or 'science', or maybe just 'common sense'. The simple fact is, you're not weighing each and every moral dilemma each and every time you come across one. All you'd have to do to start a church is write it down and start handing out copies...
I don't think you quite understand the situation.
The embryos will be destroyed no matter what. They are left over at IVF clinics. The lives will be 'sacrificed'.
Perhaps we should use them for some good before they are destroyed?
Fruit from the poisonous tree, I'm afraid. IVF needs to be refined until they can implant a single embryo and produce a single human. Allowing them to profit on the 'extra' human life isn't exactly the cleanest of ethics.
This same sort of position could be made for the exploitation of the terminally ill, by the way. They're already going to die, so why not just take whatever we need of them?
Plus, you assume that the tech lead seeking to preserve his authority is a bad thing. Why would they want to bring in someone highly experienced (possibly overqualified?) to perform a very specific role?. Eventually that highly experienced person will be wanting to apply their other experience, and there won't be enough Indians left to actually get the work done.
This.
Post above specifically cited a 'leadership threat' which should never, ever, ever be part of a candidate's point of view. If you're being interviewed for a position, you really ought to expect to fill that position until such time as you get promoted according to your proven track record with that company. If you're already looking to leapfrog the manager interviewing you, and he or she senses that, the interview has effectively ended.
Consider this:
Do we harvest the flesh and non-donated organs of our dead for processing into dog food? Or do we just let it rot in the ground?
Why? Specifically, why is a dead human of greater reverence than a live embryo?
Do we name and bury our stillborn offspring? Or simply incinerate them?
Again, why?
Is it considered double murder to kill a pregnant woman?
There are really a lot of these to explore, when you think about it.
I'm asserting that human life and human tissue have a greater value than that of their biological composition. IVF being relatively barbaric is a reason for it to change, rather than advocacy for further barbaric behavior.
Hard to make an argument against constructive use of these embryos when the only alternative is--literally--trash.
I agree. I do, however, feel they shouldn't be created in the first place. The entire practice of 'implant more babies than you want, and then kill some of them' is barbaric. The science of IVF needs to improve drastically. As it stands now, the reasoning behind your 'gotcha' rebuttal is constructed entirely out of imprecise science and the valuation of cost as greater than embryo life. That's hardly compelling, I'm afraid.
Ethically, the non-experimental IVF practice should probably be stopped until they get it worked out.
I despise the latter - not because they're old, it's because they behave as if their age automatically confers upon them some sort of infallibility in all things technical.
Because apparently nothing supports their point quite as well as waving away technical limitations with "you're young, you can't possible understand."
People old enough to be my parents earn my respect when I see that they are genuine authorities in the subject matter, they don't automatically get it by virtue of the fact that they've been sitting around the office longer than me.
You remind me of a junior admin I once hired and was grooming to take my place after I got promoted out of doing technical stuff and into management. Now I don't know you as well as I knew him, so I apologize in advance if you fail to see any similarities. I do implore you to pause and consider what I'm about to say, as I'm fairly certain he never did, and I still regret never getting my point across.
The comments here illustrate someone who has a problem with authority. This type of person doesn't like taking the word of someone with seniority, and challenges every decision into some form of IT debate. This person has considerable competitive drive, which made them an excellent student and a highly desirable novice employee. They have not yet realized that such unabashed drive and attitude doesn't generally equate to 'playing well with others'. It would take a mentor with a raft of skill and patience to make this sort of person understand the nuances of their experience, and due to whatever factors, most eventually stop trying. The mentors fall into cliches like "you can't understand" because it is easier and less offensive than to point out that you're not putting enough effort into listening, understanding, and thinking it all the way through. Typically the implicit or explicit authority these senior folks have is enough security to ensure they simply don't have to rise to the challenge of helping you see it their way. They can just be "obnoxious, stale, inflexible, cantankerous pains in the ass" and things still come out the way they wanted them to in the first place. This occurs, by the way, even when they're blatantly incorrect, because this kind of person will quickly pigeon-hole themselves into a 'does not cooperate' stereotype.
The core issue has nothing to do with who is 'best' or 'smartest' or any of that. It has everything to do with working together in groups, respecting authority as being a naturally occurring phenomenon, and picking your battles. Unfortunately, these things take real-world experience to learn, and I lack the language to describe them well enough in this format.
Also unfortunately, if I'm reading you right, you will be unhappy professionally for a very long time until you work this out on your own.
Just as I don't expect someone to assume I'm correct simply because "my college training is more recent than yours" - if I'm correct, then it doesn't matter if I'm young or old; if I'm incorrect, the same applies.
Do you correct your boss's spelling? In front of others? I'm just curious...
90% of the time a smart and hard 8 hours is all that's necessary to get what you need out of your devs (or your job if you are a dev.)
Is posting on slashdot the 'smart' or the 'hard' part of those 8 hours?
There's a lot of people that genuinely believe that it's their right not to have to share the planet with people that disagree with their religious views even if said religious views are fucked up beyond belief. Which is why abortion is wrong, but fertility drugs and IVF are perfectly fine.
These two statements are incongruent. Look, I'm a Christian, mostly, and yet I absolutely hate the harm that organized religion has done to our species. That being said, this isn't a part of that.
Consider first, what if your own embryo had been used for such research? Are you not at least a little glad that it wasn't?
There is definitely a line to draw. Do we consider eggs and sperm humans, too? Probably not. But they're still human products, which are generally taboo in and of themselves. Or, if not, how much does a donor kidney go for at WalMart these days? How much for a few pints of human blood? Or perhaps breast milk? No, these things are either restricted or generally not sold openly, even though they're cannot be considered people and are only parts of them.
Same thing with embryonic research. If there is any other way to do this work without killing potential humans, why not use that resource first? Why jump headlong into the grey area of where life begins when other methods not only exist, but have been proven to work better?
I personally fault people like yourself. If you can legitimize the killing of embryo's you can 'strike a blow' at those who would defend them. You can move away from 'fucked up tradition' and into your 'more enlightened' era. Never mind that the research could thrive without such bellicosity, because your agenda would suffer.
The irony is, who's truly more 'enlightened', here? Those opposed to the one specific type of behavior due to a personal conviction, or those who ignore alternatives to further an agenda?
Does it not bother you even slightly to be creating a market for human offspring??
You should totally sue George Lucas...
No encyclopedia would ever meet these standards. Ever. To even consider that it might is ridiculous.
I disagree with the 'ridiculous' position. Unless we're going back to Freud's notes or some such, then nearly nothing on the topic could be considered an original source. Everything starts somewhere, and we're all standing on the shoulders of giants. Take a textbook, for example. There's zero originality in there, and yet they use them to teach the students. The whole book is basically an encyclopedia on that one, specific topic. Why use such an non-credible source as the pillar of your education??
The distinction is decidedly arbitrary. I personally believe it has more to do with competitiveness amongst book publishers than any actual content of the data within the pages.
It doesn't matter which was right, what matters is you don't use an encyclopedia, any encyclopedia as a source to cite
This, to me, seems arbitrary and stupid. I realize that we prefer original knowledge in our sources, but there are many, many areas of study where such a thing simply does not exist. If I were writing a paper on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, for example, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone alive that would be eligible as an 'expert witness' to that event. Any hope of original research died with the last survivor - quite a while ago.
And if you're not aware, the official account is all kinds of messed up, and even the Natives had dissenting versions of what actually happened. Various parties had a hand in screwing with the forensics of it, and much of the actual property remained privately owned after the battle. The actual events of the it will likely never, ever be discerned.
Back to the point, who's to say one hearsay source is any better or worse than the other? This is but a single example...
I think the more reasonable position, still valid in this situation, would be:
...you should never use an encyclopedia, any encyclopedia when there is a better source to cite
If I just bought something, why would they think I'm going to buy it again? If it was a perishable product or one that is periodically used up, that's understandable, but good shoes generally last at least a year or so.
I prefer it, actually, to the approach used by television. There must not be a lot of brand loyalty in feminine hygiene products, but I'm fairly certain that they're wasting their ad dollars trying to woo me.
Ads for things I have bought is one step closer to ads for things I might actually buy, and is a step away from ads that I'd rather not even think about.
Therefore - good thing.
Besides, if you've already been to the site and made your decision, what's the harm, exactly?
By your reasoning, someone who lends a book in a library using stolen credentials is not responsible for that but the robbed party is, and all millions of owners of hacked spam-bots computers are criminals.
I said they were responsible, and they would be in both of the cases above. The robbed party would have a duty to report the discrepancy and would unfortunately be required to prove that they in fact did not take the books. This is merely the way society is structured. Don't take it out on me, if you please.
Also those owners are, technically, criminals, but only once convicted in court. They are, again technically, aiding and abetting crimes.
However, I'd also point out that you're exaggerating what I said. I said they are RESPONSIBLE for the harm those computers do. And they in fact are, regardless of whether or nor this is a convict-able crime.
I empathize, but do realize that civil disobedience comes with a price tag.
I'm sorry, but the vast majority of people on the earth, would disagree with you there. if sex were not a good thing: we as a race would cease to exist. point and fact.
'Sex' 'procreation'
For example, please explain to me how homosexual sex and/or oral sex furthers the survival of the race.
just because people feel that they're "above nature" and somehow we need to "take the moral high ground" does not mean that we are not animals like the rest of the world. it's not up to us to "protect" our children from the rest of the world, it's up to us to make sure they have what it takes to survive in it.
(Why do you capitalize things in one case, but not in the other?)
We both are and are not like animals. I see us as 'animal plus'. We get the added feature of being able to share our experiences and learn from them. Animals, not so much. The simple fact that we're all biological creatures should not exclude our ability to reason and learn.
Morals are a result of that. Once individuals learn the same lessons over and over and over again, they begin to cement them in their minds. Eventually these become important enough to teach to others, and that expounds into laws and ethics.
Further if we cannot impart morals onto our children as a function of 'making sure they have what it takes', then what is the point of teaching them anything at all?
you explicitly mention "common sense" yet fail to give reference
You likewise fail to rebut it, so what is your exact point here?
sex is a fact of life. if people would stop treating it like it's some sort of taboo
Killing is a fact of life as well, and yet this behavior is also taboo in certain situations. We laud our soldiers as effective killers and decry young men of the same age, using the same weapons and tactics I might add, for killing their enemies in the streets. This is due to social order, which is intrinsic to being human.
I am not at all against sexual education, and your asserting otherwise is offensive. You're setting up the most casual of terrible arguments, and if you're going to make a habit of it, you're probably on the wrong site.
YOU CAN TRUST PEOPLE! (even those that you don't have sex with!)
You can trust people. You can trust them to be stupid, reckless, and make idiotic choices. Particularly when they are young children. The opposite can be true, of course, but I'm at a loss as to understand how the television set can be built with the ability to determine which is which.
That's for people to decide. Not - certainly not - the Federal government, but we as consumers of the content. We should protest and complain and failing that vote with our wallets.
maybe we'd continue to advance as a people, instead of tearing ourself apart trying to hide what we are.
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to accuse you of doing exactly what you're trying to prevent. Your attitude would mean that we cannot obstruct our more basic nature by virtue of learning from our past. We'd not have farming, conservation, or anything even close to a 'green' movement. Our very culture would evaporate. The concept that this is a good idea is absolutely absurd.
Again, as with the other post, I see where you're trying to reach. You see the oppression of certain people as wrong (as do I) and seek to oppose it (as do I). Where you diverge is by taking this 'they have gone too far' observation and taking it into insanity land. 'We should be animals' is patently absurd, when we have already realized that we are much, much, much more.
You do not hold the same exact beliefs as the set described in 3: The beliefs of this group by definition prohibits downloading content from TPB.
To be honest, I'm unaware of any group with beliefs that would prohibit downloading content from TPB. That, as a belief system, doesn't necessarily exist.
I'd point out, however, that by your implication that all Pirate Bay content is stolen and illegal, that you're arguing my point, rather than your own. There's more than one type of content up there, as I'm sure you're aware.
accurate enough for even conversation scratched into the stall of a public restroom.
Ah yes, the petty insults. I'll take that as a white flag and will let you have the last word...
Only because you recommended it, friend. Though I can't say what it is you find so appealing...
You don't genuinely know what my beliefs are, do you? What's your source?
I have indeed used it. I used it just the other week to get Adywan's cut of Star Wars (which was excellent, by the way.) I do, however, know that my use of it is rare enough that the observation I made above is valid enough for conversation on slashdot.
Have a nice day!
While I agree that you are correct about the First, you're completely and totally incorrect with the rest of your statements...
There are more than children living in this country.
False. Everyone living in this country is either a child or a former child. There's no excuse for lack of empathy for childhood innocence. Even if you, personally, lived some kind of hellishly messed up childhood nightmare, you shouldn't be in favor of seeing that happen to other children.
Since when are images of the human body and messages of love harmful?
They're not. Sexualizing young children, however, is repugnant. For the same reason you would not have sex with a child, or have sex adjacent to a child, you should not be viewing others having sex along with a child. This should NOT need to be explained, as it is a basic moral value.
Children will find out about these things sooner or later.
Later being the preference.
Parents: if you have a problem with this, take responsibility and teach them so they will be prepared.
Yes! Definitely!
Don't have time? Don't have kids.
No! By the time any non-parent thinks about whether or not television is okay for kids to watch, the kids already exist. Unless you're advocating these parents un-have the kids in some way, this policy is an absurd rebuttal to decency standards.
Sure, you shouldn't just bombard them from the get go, but cutting them off completely will be worse in the long run.
And here's the part where you make my point...
Get a clue and get a grip: sex is not bad
Sex is also not 'good'. It can lead to either. Sex can bring joy and happiness, or abortion and AIDS. Monogamous relationships are the only safe environment for sexual activity, and anyone to immature to conduct one of those successfully has NO BUSINESS experimenting with sex. This is a simple, common sense argument to which there genuinely can be no sound rebuttal, religion or not.
Factual, scientific, rational education is the answer.
Indeed it is. Given at the appropriate age, of course, to the correct audience. Further you'll need to add some semblance of values to the discussion, perhaps from a psychologist or sociologist to be in keeping with your atheist beliefs. Your advocacy of leaving the entire discussion to the biology class, however, is absurdly disastrous.
Please don't go so far in pushing your religious atheism that you wind up doing more harm that those you're fighting against. Organized religion is indeed the enemy, but unfortunately this includes organized atheists such as yourself...
We're now living in a time where it's trivially easy to block potentially offensive channels, or restrict their use with a code to keep them out of children's reach if their parents don't want them watching.
Broadcasting is DEAD anyway. Streaming is the future of video, period, the end. The FCC's loss of power here would be noticed by nearly no one of the future generations.
And as anyone aware of TPB and what it does, I'll wager you've acquired content from it, as well.
I had to 'lol' on this one... All those poor, indignant, Fox-bashing slashdotters must be gnashing teeth over this one:
The Commission ruled in 2006 that, under its new policy, both Billboard broadcasts were indecent. Fox, which broadcast the awards shows, responded by appealing that decision. In its appeal Fox was joined by other broadcasters who opposed the FCC's stricter enforcement policies.
So who does the seething liberal root for? The government and their 'think of the children' stance, or the devil incarnate, Fox?
why _would_ someone include an .exe file for a cracked Mac program? :\
Well, why wouldn't one do so? Even the developer of the program apparently used this exe to evaluate the harm the crack does to his software. I understand it is an affront to Mac users, but I don't think the rest of us are as emotionally attached.