If you get to the point where you build up a company that can even consider garnering the term "monopoly", then get back to us...At that point, maybe, just maybe, you may come to thinking that you you earned what you got, and the government has no right to tell you how to run your business...
Yeah. Because the person best suited to decide what a company should or should not be allowed to do are the people who own the company. Of course you're going to want to be completely unrestricted to mow down your competitors using whatever advantages you have if you are in a position to do so. What you're missing is that no one should be allowed to use unfair practices to do it. Some people think we should idolize the free market as some sort of religion. We don't like free market economy because it was given to us by the gods. We like it because it tends to result in better products and lower prices. That ceases to be true when you have a monopoly in the mix.
That being said, I'm not really informed about any Microsoft specifics, so I'm not going to argue in favor or against any "federal laws" as it applies to them (or failed to apply to them). However, suggesting that only people who have built a company that holds a monopoly should be able to decide what is fair regulation isn't rational. It may even be that the current federal laws regarding monopolies may be unfair and in need of reform, but the fact remains that the existence of a set of laws to regulate businesses is necessary.
Having something "stuck in your mind" is a metaphor for not being able to stop thinking about something.
I wouldn't have argued against that metaphor had you not tried to argue that because they had seen your house, the actual, physical house was now theirs. Of course that's not true, because the actual physical house didn't become physically stuck to their heads. You got the design vs. actual house confused.
No, it isn't. It's theft. You might have spent six months designing a new form of buttress and they've just gone and made their own, having seen your copy.
What's your point? What was stolen? Do you still have the design? Can you build more? Do you still have the buttress? Nothing was taken from you, you still have everything you had before.
If you don't want others to compete with you by using your design, you need to learn to keep it a secret. Trade secrets can be a part of your business strategy depending on your business. I'd diversify so that I don't lose everything if I lose that secret, but it's up to you how you deal with your business risks.
If I spend my time and money making a song, the fact it *can* be copied for free means I've chosen a stupid way to make a living?
If your business strategy is being able to sell copies of that song forever, when anyone can make a copy for free, yeah, that's a damn stupid way of making a living. That's exactly the same as me deciding to copy books by hand, competing with printing publishers for a living. That profession has been deemed obsolete. I can't make money off it.
Doesn't mean that you can't find other ways of making money out of that song. Go perform it. Get hired to make movie or play soundtracks, so that you get paid for the actual service of making the song. Be creative.
Moreover, if this IS taken to be so, absolutely NO ONE will produce ANY form of work which can be copied for free, because they could never recapture what it cost them to produce it...So - no more films, no more songs, no more plays... excepting in so much as there might be other ways to still make money from them (cinema showing, theatrical performances) which permit money still to be made.
Now at least you're looking at it from the right perspective. That's why we as a society allow you the artificial right of being the only one able to copy the song you produced, which is now rightfully ours, for a limited time. Because we want you to produce more works for us, we accept copyright as a means to encourage you to produce more. If the copyright term is too long, that becomes counterproductive, we get no benefit from it, so why would we give you this right?
I'm not against copyright. I understand the reason we have it, and the reason why it must be limited. Limited to a much shorter period than we now have. Enough so that it is possible to profit from it (but by no means guaranteed. If you make a crappy song and lose money on it, but think you could recover costs if you had copyright for just a little longer, tough luck. Song wasn't good enough.
I'm not even against you making money from your work after the copyright expires. Sell autographed albums. Go on tour. Offer the public something *new* that will make them want to give you the money.
I have some friends over. They love my house. In fact, they keep talking about it. They can't get it out of their heads. It's become part of them. By letting them come over, I've given my house to them.
This is what I'm talking about. You can't seem to discern the difference between the physical product and the actual physical one. They can't literally get your physical house out of their heads? How can they stand the weight?
Oh, you mean they can't get over the design of your house. You've shown it to them, so that part of it is now theirs. They can go back and spend their own *bucket load* of money to build a house using the design ideas they liked so much. Oh, they have some fantastic method of making a copy for free (and getting free land to put it on)? That's great for them. They still haven't taken anything from you that you didn't voluntarily give to them.
But let's imagine my house could be copied as easily as a digital song...If I actually made my living by creating beautiful houses and then selling copies, and people, through the State, passed a law saying they could have copies for free - I've just been robbed blind.
No, it means you chose a piss-poor method of making your living. Unless you want to argue that we "robbed the scribes" blind when we invented the printing press. My god, they made their living copying books by hand over the course of years, and now we can make millions of copies cheaply and very, very fast!!! Technology made their profession obsolete. Change professions. If they made copying houses easy, you can't make a living selling copies of houses. Deal with it, and find another way to make money.
The ethical rule is this; if you make something, it belongs to you, and you can do what you want with it - and that includes handing it down to your kids to help them in their lives.
If you make something physical, that object belongs to you. You paid for the materials, you did the work. If you show it to someone, and they like it, they might decide to build one themselves. The one they build does not belong to you, it belongs to them.
Intellectual property is very different from real property. Here's another example:
Let's say you tell someone that you have this ESP-like feeling that the numbers 17 35 8 7 22 and 19 are going to be this week's lotto numbers. You go ahead and play those numbers, and guess what...the person you told them to figures they might play them as well. You both win. Now the jackpot is divided between the two of you. Do you think you should have the right to sue them because it was your idea to play those numbers? If you didn't want them to play those numbers, why did you tell it to them?
Music is pretty much the same way. If you don't want to share it with the world at large, you can write it and keep it a secret. Record it, play it to yourself when no one else is at home. No one is going to "steal it" from you. However, you want other people to listen don't you? You want to make money off of it? Well, once they listen, it becomes part of their culture. They might get it stuck in their heads. They might be whistling it while they work. They might like to sing along with it when they hear it on the radio. They'll reference the lyrics when they think they would bring something to the conversation. The music is now theirs. It's part of them. By letting them hear it, you gave it to them.
Any rights you have to prevent them from singing it in public (like Happy Birthday in restaurants), or to otherwise copy it, is purely artificial. Nothing is being taken from you. You still have the guitar you used to compose the music (unless you sold it), you still have the original recordings (unless you threw them away), you can still play them yourself. The only reason people can copy your song is because you let them have it in the first place. So choose. Keep your song secret and profit from it, or give it to the community.
You want both? Well, if you're a good musician, society wants to encourage you to write more songs. So we'll give you the artificial right to control what is now our song for a set number of years. They should be small enough that you can't really live off of that one song for the rest of your life. After all, that defeats the purpose of encouraging you to write more songs, doesn't it?
Do you want to profit from the song after the copyright has expired? Feel free. Society has this strange "celebrity complex." If you perform the song in public, the people who like the song will pay to be near you, to see you there, next to them, singing it live. Society has taken nothing from you. You definitely gave something to society. Stop trying to steal it back from us, while at the same time keeping our money.
No one is immune to it. It's human nature to try to stick to familiar groups of people. You can make yourself be a better person by doing what you can to be as kind and fair a human being as you can be, but most of the world doesn't have that patience, even if for one type of person.
You know, it doesn't take "patience." It takes a willingness to be open minded enough to get to know one member of each group that makes you uncomfortable. Once you get to know them, really get to know them, they become part of the "familiar groups of people." You mentioned the problem and the solution all in one paragraph.
Then again, I suppose being unwilling to be open minded is what makes one a bigot. However, I do actually believe that racism will disappear in time. It's a consequence of the smaller world we live in these days. People are exposed to people of many different cultures every day and in time there will be no such thing as an unfamiliar group of people. Maybe I'm just an optimist.
There were changes in the production staff, including bringing Ron Moore onboard in the second season, and promoting him to co-executive producer for the last few seasons. As in Battlestar Galactica Ron Moore.
Battlestar Galactica is awesome, but it's not like Ron Moore wasn't a heavy-weight in the Star Trek universe before the second season of DS9. He was a producer in TNG and have you seen the list of Ron Moore-written TNG episodes?:
Yesterday's Enterprise
Sins of the Father
Family
Redemption, parts 1 and 2
Ethics
Chain of Command, part 1 (ok, the meat was in part 2)
Tapestry
Descent, part 1
All Good Things... (eh...not very good for a series finale, but it wasn't a bad episode by any stretch of the imagination)
The above isn't an exhaustive list. And it doesn't count episodes where he has credit as "Story Editor" which includes Best of Both Worlds. Honestly, I have no idea how much a "story editor" is really responsible for the story, so I won't argue for that. Either way, he's responsible for some of the best of TNG.
Unfortunately in the US, you don't get that option.
Actually, you do. As I mentioned in my post, I did go to vote, but didn't choose any of the candidates. Instead, I just voted on the state constitutional amendments for South Carolina.
The thing is I'm not convinced that, in the US at least, that's a more effective means of protest than staying at home. I went because I wanted to see one of those amendments in particular defeated (even though I knew it wouldn't be), but I don't see anybody displaying the number of blank votes on the news. However, people always talk about voter turnout.
Well that's where we disagree. A democracy by definition is "rule by the people" where all citizens have an equal say in shaping policy. By not voting you have no say.
We do indeed disagree. In my view, having a say in shaping policy means that if I care, my voice will be heard. I don't think the government suddenly becomes less democratic if I choose not to say anything. After all, I think most people in the US don't believe voting should be compulsory, so the people shaped that policy, right?
Your forefathers _adopted_ the concept (quite an old one actually) of an electoral college which basically guarantees that by living in a smaller state your vote is worth more than someone living in a larger state. Again it can be argued that all citizens are not having an equal say.
By "came up with" I meant "decided on", but whatever. I specifically mentioned that the electoral college didn't always work as it does today because previously there were no general elections. So it wasn't that your vote counted differently depending on which state you are in, it was that you didn't vote at all. People voted for their local state governments and for their federal representatives (House). Senators were voted on by the state government, and the President by the Electors. Both without a vote by the general public.
In your silly analogy, not voting at all is akin to silently sitting in the chair and taking the abuse willingly, instead of trying to stop it.
Why is everyone ignoring the paragraph I wrote about what you should actually do if you don't like any of the choices? I said you should consider getting involved in politics. In my "silly" analogy, that's akin to not choosing to get hit with either bat, and instead trying to get away, as AKABatman pointed out in one of the responses above. You can always lobby or run for office yourself, but don't choose a guy you don't like just because he's not as bad as the other guy.
I've made this same response a bunch of times already, but I figured that since you responded twice, that means you're interested in hearing what I have to say.
The whole point of living in a democracy is to get involved in politics and at the very least cast a vote.
No. The whole point of living in a democracy if having the right to get involved in politics. It's also having the right not to do anything if you don't want to.
That aside, everyone responding to me seems to have ignored the paragraph where I advocated getting involved in politics in order to change the available choices in the case where you don't like any of the choices presented to you.
Do you think your forefathers went to war against anti-democratic regimes just so you could sit on your ass and be uninformed?
My forefathers came up with the concept of the electoral college because they thought that the majority of the population was incapable of making an informed decision on who the President would be. The electoral college didn't always work as it does today. Heck, before the 17th amendment people didn't directly vote for Senators either.
How informed do you need to be anyway?
You don't need to be an expert. You just need to take the time to find out what each candidate stands for. A lot of people are just traditionally republican or democrat, and they'll just vote for whoever is representing that party, without having any idea what the guy actually plans to do. That's especially true for the more local elections, for people who didn't get ads on tv.
The reason you vote for the lesser of two evils is because candidates that are representing tens or hundreds of thousands of people are going to have to have some policies that you don't like. So, pick what policies are important to you and vote accordingly.
I don't disagree. When I say I don't like any of the choices, it means that, on the issues that are important to me, they either hold the same view, or both hold views I disagree with. On the other issues, I don't care one way or another.
I'm not advocating being unreasonable and expecting your candidate to agree with you on every single issue. However, sometimes none of them agree with you on the few issues you do find very important. When that is the case, I don't advocate choosing the one that is slightly less bad than the other.
A working Democracy needs participation in order to function.
I don't disagree with that either. I said in my original post that if you don't like either candidate, but you want to do your part, you need to get involved in politics. That includes lobbying, and if that doesn't work, you could always run for office yourself.
However, if you're too lazy to do anything about it, don't just choose one of the candidates you don't like. That's actively voicing your approval of them.
But seriously, if you feel that strongly, vote for a write-in
Well, sure. But that's still not choosing the lesser of two evils, which is the term I originally disagreed with. Whether or not voting for a write-in is more effective than not voting in "showing" anyone anything is debatable, although at least I agree that it's a perfectly valid choice.
However, a write-in is still "lazy" to some extent. Like I mentioned in my original post, if you're not lazy, and you're disgusted the choices, you should get involved with politics. That ranges from lobbying to running for office yourself. It's not easy, but it's better than voting for the lesser of two evils.
But should I? If I really don't support any of the candidates, should I vote?
I agree completely. I ran into this issue for this election, and ended up not voting for anyone (although I did go to vote for the constitutional amendments referendum)
I don't get this "lesser of two evils" thing. I don't want to choose the lesser of two evils. If someone ties you down to a chair and asks me if I prefer to be beaten with the steel or metal bat, I answer that I prefer to be let go without harm. If those are the only two choices presented, I'll refuse to choose. Otherwise, you'll give the man a justification for the beating. He'll say, "well, he said he wanted to beaten with the wooden bat" in very much the same way politicians say, "the people voted for me. They approve of my actions." And they're right. So stop approving of their actions if you don't like them.
The question is what to do when you don't like any of the choices. Unfortunately, this takes a little bit more work than researching candidates for an election, and you need to get actively involved in politics. I haven't taken that step myself, but those who feel they're not doing enough if they don't vote should consider it as an alternative to voting for someone they don't like just because they think he'll hurt them less than the other guy.
Assuming a uniform probability distribution on parties, they will cancel each other out.
Which is a really bad assumption. Most districts tend to prefer a party over another. If they're uninformed about the candidates, they're likely to vote to the party that favors their views, and might end up electing a candidate that strays from the party on that one issue the community finds really important.
This is a bill introduced by one crazy senator, Senator Eduardo Azeredo (PSDB-MG). This isn't law and hopefully will never be. I don't think the people of Brazil are this gullible.
I've lived in Brazil years ago. I think you're right that this isn't going to pass, but from what I remember, if it doesn't pass it'll be because of technical arguments, not because of privacy ones. I always complained that Brazilians were especially prone to "think of the children" arguments, but I guess I've been seeing similar stuff happen here in the U.S. too, so maybe they're not any different.
What is PSDB-MG, anyway? Piece of Shit Damn British MG?
PSDB is the party, MG is the state (Minas Gerais). PSDB stands for "Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira" or "Party of the Brazilian Social Democracy."
However, a person with a driver's license which expires on Nov 6 is just plain screwed according to the law and must vote provisionally.
Alright. I'm with you on the whole over-reliance on papers thing. However, there are good reasons for picture id's to expire (as you get older, you change), and especially driver's licenses (need to make sure you can still pass the eye exam). Now, for purposes of voting, and assuming you can still be recognized from your picture, I don't see why the expiration date matters, but that is completely irrelevant to your statement quoted above for one simple reason: why the hell would you wait for your license to actually expire before renewing it?
Those people are not "just plain screwed," they're just procrastinating idiots. Or if they don't drive and don't want to bother renewing their state ID, they can take in the secondary documents you speak of.
You can be a fundamentalist anything, it's only an adjective, and therefore has no meaning of its own. It's what it modifies that makes the person a threat or not. I'm a religious fanatic by your definiton, but I'm also a college student who nobody would think of calling "uneducated or ignorant". I don't wish people to be stupid, since with greater knowledge also comes a greater understanding of your faith.
I'm not the poster you're replying to, but since I agree with him, and since you labeled yourself a "religious fanatic" by his definition, I got curious and wanted you to clarify what you mean by that. I think the problem may be that you two disagree on the definition of "fanatic," rather than him specifically being intolerant of your beliefs.
My definition of a "fanatic" is a person that is so set in their beliefs that they refuse to accept the possibility that they are wrong in any particular point. Although that by itself won't necessarily make you dangerous, there are different levels of fanaticism. You say that you would never kill anyone because they disagree with you (and I assume that includes actively disagreeing with you, meaning engaging in activities with which you disagree). That to me already says that you're not a dangerous fanatic. However, it's your lack of conviction to kill for what you believe in that makes you not dangerous, not the fact that your fanaticism is Christian instead of Islamic. After all, there are examples of Christian fanatics that disagree with Abortion on the terms that it is murder, but proceed to murder people themselves in order to stop it. I'm not arguing that's a Christian belief, but I'm arguing that their fanaticism has risen to levels where they cannot see the irony in their actions. They believe so strongly that what others are doing is wrong, that they're willing to do anything to stop it, even if it does violate their beliefs. Fanaticism will allow you to rationalize your behavior. It's not Islam that's out to get us, it's the people who are so fanatical that they don't even stop to consider that what they're doing is wrong.
You then proceed to say that you do not wish people to be uneducated. If you truly do not oppose education in any form, even when what is being taught disagrees with your personal beliefs, than you are not even a fanatic in my book. You're a religious person, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, you also found it necessary to include the phrase "since with greater knowledge also comes a greater understanding of your faith." It worries me that you would then disagree with anything being taught that does not support your faith. I've checked a few your previous posts to get an idea of what you believe in, and I noticed that you don't believe in evolution, and that's fine, it's your choice to have faith in your beliefs. However, how do you feel about evolution being taught in public schools? To your children? If you have no problem with that, then you're not a "religious fanatic," you're just religious and neither I nor I assume the original poster, has anything against that.
There are different variations. Some train the chickens to peck at spots that light up, and guide the chickens to the right place. Others display the correct move regardless of where the chicken actually tapped. Either way, the player will always be separated from the chicken in a way so that you can't see what's going on.
Not that it still doesn't require some training of the chicken. And it's still entertaining to watch, but it's still a trick. Especially when you see people lose to the chicken. Which brings up a nice point...if even some humans haven't learned the combinations, you can't expect a chicken to be able to.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. Because the person best suited to decide what a company should or should not be allowed to do are the people who own the company. Of course you're going to want to be completely unrestricted to mow down your competitors using whatever advantages you have if you are in a position to do so. What you're missing is that no one should be allowed to use unfair practices to do it. Some people think we should idolize the free market as some sort of religion. We don't like free market economy because it was given to us by the gods. We like it because it tends to result in better products and lower prices. That ceases to be true when you have a monopoly in the mix.
That being said, I'm not really informed about any Microsoft specifics, so I'm not going to argue in favor or against any "federal laws" as it applies to them (or failed to apply to them). However, suggesting that only people who have built a company that holds a monopoly should be able to decide what is fair regulation isn't rational. It may even be that the current federal laws regarding monopolies may be unfair and in need of reform, but the fact remains that the existence of a set of laws to regulate businesses is necessary.
Hal Jordan, of course. After all, even without his ring some of his most important...err...attributes are still present.
Damn, why did you have to bring that up? I pre-ordered that game. I thought it was going to be a return to great games like Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and the even better Star Trek: Judgment Rites. Perhaps even as good as A Final Unity.
And then Interplay cancelled the game and my pre-order.
I wouldn't have argued against that metaphor had you not tried to argue that because they had seen your house, the actual, physical house was now theirs. Of course that's not true, because the actual physical house didn't become physically stuck to their heads. You got the design vs. actual house confused.
No, it isn't. It's theft. You might have spent six months designing a new form of buttress and they've just gone and made their own, having seen your copy.What's your point? What was stolen? Do you still have the design? Can you build more? Do you still have the buttress? Nothing was taken from you, you still have everything you had before.
If you don't want others to compete with you by using your design, you need to learn to keep it a secret. Trade secrets can be a part of your business strategy depending on your business. I'd diversify so that I don't lose everything if I lose that secret, but it's up to you how you deal with your business risks.
If I spend my time and money making a song, the fact it *can* be copied for free means I've chosen a stupid way to make a living?If your business strategy is being able to sell copies of that song forever, when anyone can make a copy for free, yeah, that's a damn stupid way of making a living. That's exactly the same as me deciding to copy books by hand, competing with printing publishers for a living. That profession has been deemed obsolete. I can't make money off it.
Doesn't mean that you can't find other ways of making money out of that song. Go perform it. Get hired to make movie or play soundtracks, so that you get paid for the actual service of making the song. Be creative.
Moreover, if this IS taken to be so, absolutely NO ONE will produce ANY form of work which can be copied for free, because they could never recapture what it cost them to produce it...So - no more films, no more songs, no more plays... excepting in so much as there might be other ways to still make money from them (cinema showing, theatrical performances) which permit money still to be made.Now at least you're looking at it from the right perspective. That's why we as a society allow you the artificial right of being the only one able to copy the song you produced, which is now rightfully ours, for a limited time. Because we want you to produce more works for us, we accept copyright as a means to encourage you to produce more. If the copyright term is too long, that becomes counterproductive, we get no benefit from it, so why would we give you this right?
I'm not against copyright. I understand the reason we have it, and the reason why it must be limited. Limited to a much shorter period than we now have. Enough so that it is possible to profit from it (but by no means guaranteed. If you make a crappy song and lose money on it, but think you could recover costs if you had copyright for just a little longer, tough luck. Song wasn't good enough.
I'm not even against you making money from your work after the copyright expires. Sell autographed albums. Go on tour. Offer the public something *new* that will make them want to give you the money.
This is what I'm talking about. You can't seem to discern the difference between the physical product and the actual physical one. They can't literally get your physical house out of their heads? How can they stand the weight?
Oh, you mean they can't get over the design of your house. You've shown it to them, so that part of it is now theirs. They can go back and spend their own *bucket load* of money to build a house using the design ideas they liked so much. Oh, they have some fantastic method of making a copy for free (and getting free land to put it on)? That's great for them. They still haven't taken anything from you that you didn't voluntarily give to them.
But let's imagine my house could be copied as easily as a digital song...If I actually made my living by creating beautiful houses and then selling copies, and people, through the State, passed a law saying they could have copies for free - I've just been robbed blind.No, it means you chose a piss-poor method of making your living. Unless you want to argue that we "robbed the scribes" blind when we invented the printing press. My god, they made their living copying books by hand over the course of years, and now we can make millions of copies cheaply and very, very fast!!! Technology made their profession obsolete. Change professions. If they made copying houses easy, you can't make a living selling copies of houses. Deal with it, and find another way to make money.
If you make something physical, that object belongs to you. You paid for the materials, you did the work. If you show it to someone, and they like it, they might decide to build one themselves. The one they build does not belong to you, it belongs to them.
Intellectual property is very different from real property. Here's another example:
Let's say you tell someone that you have this ESP-like feeling that the numbers 17 35 8 7 22 and 19 are going to be this week's lotto numbers. You go ahead and play those numbers, and guess what...the person you told them to figures they might play them as well. You both win. Now the jackpot is divided between the two of you. Do you think you should have the right to sue them because it was your idea to play those numbers? If you didn't want them to play those numbers, why did you tell it to them?
Music is pretty much the same way. If you don't want to share it with the world at large, you can write it and keep it a secret. Record it, play it to yourself when no one else is at home. No one is going to "steal it" from you. However, you want other people to listen don't you? You want to make money off of it? Well, once they listen, it becomes part of their culture. They might get it stuck in their heads. They might be whistling it while they work. They might like to sing along with it when they hear it on the radio. They'll reference the lyrics when they think they would bring something to the conversation. The music is now theirs. It's part of them. By letting them hear it, you gave it to them.
Any rights you have to prevent them from singing it in public (like Happy Birthday in restaurants), or to otherwise copy it, is purely artificial. Nothing is being taken from you. You still have the guitar you used to compose the music (unless you sold it), you still have the original recordings (unless you threw them away), you can still play them yourself. The only reason people can copy your song is because you let them have it in the first place. So choose. Keep your song secret and profit from it, or give it to the community.
You want both? Well, if you're a good musician, society wants to encourage you to write more songs. So we'll give you the artificial right to control what is now our song for a set number of years. They should be small enough that you can't really live off of that one song for the rest of your life. After all, that defeats the purpose of encouraging you to write more songs, doesn't it?
Do you want to profit from the song after the copyright has expired? Feel free. Society has this strange "celebrity complex." If you perform the song in public, the people who like the song will pay to be near you, to see you there, next to them, singing it live. Society has taken nothing from you. You definitely gave something to society. Stop trying to steal it back from us, while at the same time keeping our money.
Leaving aside the argument that $100/hour might be too high to start with...
Seven lawyers for a single case? Seven lawyers working exclusively for that case? Their entire 40 hour workweeks for 6 months on that one case??
You know, it doesn't take "patience." It takes a willingness to be open minded enough to get to know one member of each group that makes you uncomfortable. Once you get to know them, really get to know them, they become part of the "familiar groups of people." You mentioned the problem and the solution all in one paragraph.
Then again, I suppose being unwilling to be open minded is what makes one a bigot. However, I do actually believe that racism will disappear in time. It's a consequence of the smaller world we live in these days. People are exposed to people of many different cultures every day and in time there will be no such thing as an unfamiliar group of people. Maybe I'm just an optimist.
It's not what our bodies look like that makes us Human. It's our minds.
Why is there a need to make a Sonic game in 3d? It was a classic the way it was. To me the whole idea sounds a bit like trying to make 3d pac-man.
Now, if "the people" weren't generally speaking stupid themselves I might disagree, but...
Battlestar Galactica is awesome, but it's not like Ron Moore wasn't a heavy-weight in the Star Trek universe before the second season of DS9. He was a producer in TNG and have you seen the list of Ron Moore-written TNG episodes?:
The above isn't an exhaustive list. And it doesn't count episodes where he has credit as "Story Editor" which includes Best of Both Worlds. Honestly, I have no idea how much a "story editor" is really responsible for the story, so I won't argue for that. Either way, he's responsible for some of the best of TNG.
Actually, you do. As I mentioned in my post, I did go to vote, but didn't choose any of the candidates. Instead, I just voted on the state constitutional amendments for South Carolina.
The thing is I'm not convinced that, in the US at least, that's a more effective means of protest than staying at home. I went because I wanted to see one of those amendments in particular defeated (even though I knew it wouldn't be), but I don't see anybody displaying the number of blank votes on the news. However, people always talk about voter turnout.
We do indeed disagree. In my view, having a say in shaping policy means that if I care, my voice will be heard. I don't think the government suddenly becomes less democratic if I choose not to say anything. After all, I think most people in the US don't believe voting should be compulsory, so the people shaped that policy, right?
By "came up with" I meant "decided on", but whatever. I specifically mentioned that the electoral college didn't always work as it does today because previously there were no general elections. So it wasn't that your vote counted differently depending on which state you are in, it was that you didn't vote at all. People voted for their local state governments and for their federal representatives (House). Senators were voted on by the state government, and the President by the Electors. Both without a vote by the general public.
Why is everyone ignoring the paragraph I wrote about what you should actually do if you don't like any of the choices? I said you should consider getting involved in politics. In my "silly" analogy, that's akin to not choosing to get hit with either bat, and instead trying to get away, as AKABatman pointed out in one of the responses above. You can always lobby or run for office yourself, but don't choose a guy you don't like just because he's not as bad as the other guy.
I've made this same response a bunch of times already, but I figured that since you responded twice, that means you're interested in hearing what I have to say.
No. The whole point of living in a democracy if having the right to get involved in politics. It's also having the right not to do anything if you don't want to.
That aside, everyone responding to me seems to have ignored the paragraph where I advocated getting involved in politics in order to change the available choices in the case where you don't like any of the choices presented to you.
My forefathers came up with the concept of the electoral college because they thought that the majority of the population was incapable of making an informed decision on who the President would be. The electoral college didn't always work as it does today. Heck, before the 17th amendment people didn't directly vote for Senators either.
You don't need to be an expert. You just need to take the time to find out what each candidate stands for. A lot of people are just traditionally republican or democrat, and they'll just vote for whoever is representing that party, without having any idea what the guy actually plans to do. That's especially true for the more local elections, for people who didn't get ads on tv.
I don't disagree. When I say I don't like any of the choices, it means that, on the issues that are important to me, they either hold the same view, or both hold views I disagree with. On the other issues, I don't care one way or another.
I'm not advocating being unreasonable and expecting your candidate to agree with you on every single issue. However, sometimes none of them agree with you on the few issues you do find very important. When that is the case, I don't advocate choosing the one that is slightly less bad than the other.
I don't disagree with that either. I said in my original post that if you don't like either candidate, but you want to do your part, you need to get involved in politics. That includes lobbying, and if that doesn't work, you could always run for office yourself.
However, if you're too lazy to do anything about it, don't just choose one of the candidates you don't like. That's actively voicing your approval of them.
Well, sure. But that's still not choosing the lesser of two evils, which is the term I originally disagreed with. Whether or not voting for a write-in is more effective than not voting in "showing" anyone anything is debatable, although at least I agree that it's a perfectly valid choice.
However, a write-in is still "lazy" to some extent. Like I mentioned in my original post, if you're not lazy, and you're disgusted the choices, you should get involved with politics. That ranges from lobbying to running for office yourself. It's not easy, but it's better than voting for the lesser of two evils.
I agree completely. I ran into this issue for this election, and ended up not voting for anyone (although I did go to vote for the constitutional amendments referendum)
I don't get this "lesser of two evils" thing. I don't want to choose the lesser of two evils. If someone ties you down to a chair and asks me if I prefer to be beaten with the steel or metal bat, I answer that I prefer to be let go without harm. If those are the only two choices presented, I'll refuse to choose. Otherwise, you'll give the man a justification for the beating. He'll say, "well, he said he wanted to beaten with the wooden bat" in very much the same way politicians say, "the people voted for me. They approve of my actions." And they're right. So stop approving of their actions if you don't like them.
The question is what to do when you don't like any of the choices. Unfortunately, this takes a little bit more work than researching candidates for an election, and you need to get actively involved in politics. I haven't taken that step myself, but those who feel they're not doing enough if they don't vote should consider it as an alternative to voting for someone they don't like just because they think he'll hurt them less than the other guy.
Which is a really bad assumption. Most districts tend to prefer a party over another. If they're uninformed about the candidates, they're likely to vote to the party that favors their views, and might end up electing a candidate that strays from the party on that one issue the community finds really important.
I've lived in Brazil years ago. I think you're right that this isn't going to pass, but from what I remember, if it doesn't pass it'll be because of technical arguments, not because of privacy ones. I always complained that Brazilians were especially prone to "think of the children" arguments, but I guess I've been seeing similar stuff happen here in the U.S. too, so maybe they're not any different.
PSDB is the party, MG is the state (Minas Gerais). PSDB stands for "Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira" or "Party of the Brazilian Social Democracy."
Alright. I'm with you on the whole over-reliance on papers thing. However, there are good reasons for picture id's to expire (as you get older, you change), and especially driver's licenses (need to make sure you can still pass the eye exam). Now, for purposes of voting, and assuming you can still be recognized from your picture, I don't see why the expiration date matters, but that is completely irrelevant to your statement quoted above for one simple reason: why the hell would you wait for your license to actually expire before renewing it?
Those people are not "just plain screwed," they're just procrastinating idiots. Or if they don't drive and don't want to bother renewing their state ID, they can take in the secondary documents you speak of.
I'm not the poster you're replying to, but since I agree with him, and since you labeled yourself a "religious fanatic" by his definition, I got curious and wanted you to clarify what you mean by that. I think the problem may be that you two disagree on the definition of "fanatic," rather than him specifically being intolerant of your beliefs.
My definition of a "fanatic" is a person that is so set in their beliefs that they refuse to accept the possibility that they are wrong in any particular point. Although that by itself won't necessarily make you dangerous, there are different levels of fanaticism. You say that you would never kill anyone because they disagree with you (and I assume that includes actively disagreeing with you, meaning engaging in activities with which you disagree). That to me already says that you're not a dangerous fanatic. However, it's your lack of conviction to kill for what you believe in that makes you not dangerous, not the fact that your fanaticism is Christian instead of Islamic. After all, there are examples of Christian fanatics that disagree with Abortion on the terms that it is murder, but proceed to murder people themselves in order to stop it. I'm not arguing that's a Christian belief, but I'm arguing that their fanaticism has risen to levels where they cannot see the irony in their actions. They believe so strongly that what others are doing is wrong, that they're willing to do anything to stop it, even if it does violate their beliefs. Fanaticism will allow you to rationalize your behavior. It's not Islam that's out to get us, it's the people who are so fanatical that they don't even stop to consider that what they're doing is wrong.
You then proceed to say that you do not wish people to be uneducated. If you truly do not oppose education in any form, even when what is being taught disagrees with your personal beliefs, than you are not even a fanatic in my book. You're a religious person, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, you also found it necessary to include the phrase "since with greater knowledge also comes a greater understanding of your faith." It worries me that you would then disagree with anything being taught that does not support your faith. I've checked a few your previous posts to get an idea of what you believe in, and I noticed that you don't believe in evolution, and that's fine, it's your choice to have faith in your beliefs. However, how do you feel about evolution being taught in public schools? To your children? If you have no problem with that, then you're not a "religious fanatic," you're just religious and neither I nor I assume the original poster, has anything against that.
Maybe because he saw this?
Not that it still doesn't require some training of the chicken. And it's still entertaining to watch, but it's still a trick. Especially when you see people lose to the chicken. Which brings up a nice point...if even some humans haven't learned the combinations, you can't expect a chicken to be able to.