Well, where's the city going to get the money if not by forcing people to pay up? That's the crux of the matter. If government is going to do something about it, it needs to get the money from somewhere. Which is your point about taxes, which, if I understand it correctly basically says the government shouldn't take our money in taxes/licenses/whatever and spend it on other people's irresponsibility. So it's an impasse. That's assuming the government is the only way to do it, but it is the only way to do it without depending on people volunteering to help.
Now, yeah, sure, people can and should volunteer to help other people and they do it all the time. Many form NGOs that raise money very well and go and help people. There's no doubt about that. But it's never been enough. It's one of those things where someone who can show beyond most shadows of doubt that it's a worthy investment has to step in and take a little bit from everyone, knowing it won't benefit everyone, but it will benefit many. I don't think there's a way out of it than that.
Now, we probably agree the government wastes a lot of money.:) And we probably agree that government isn't the most efficient solution imaginable. But there is an existing framework with government, and imo it's an acceptable framework. I certainly disagree with the implementation many times. I don't like the prison system at all and would just do away with it. I'd replace it, of course, but with something that probably has a much higher up-front cost. But I'm no expert on the issues involved, I'm far from being able to dream up something that might actually work. I go to the polls to pick the guy that convinces me he knows enough to pick the right people to do the job.
In any case:
Reconcile it with your own choice and tell me what government should do for both of us.
Protect us by the rule of law from extortion, violence, theft, invasion, fraud, etc.
Fundamentally, my point is that government can do all those things better if it spends time on prevention methods and migration strategies.:) (Where a migration strategy helps people transition to a life that doesn't involve infringing other people's rights and does involve taking direct personal responsibility for their actions) And that it can work on prevention methods and migration strategies for 'known bad behaviors'. And I'm sure we share some skepticism on how to define 'known bad behavior', government could easily get out of control, and arguably already has in some areas.
You're still missing the point. Go back over my posts and find one single law I suggested as a solution to any problem. Just one. Can't do it, can you? I didn't suggest any laws. Laws aren't prevention, and people most often don't obey laws out any sense of right and wrong. They obey them because breaking the law would be more inconvenient than obeying it.
In any case, I also don't think I mentioned social security one time. While I do, in fact, agree with social security, let's focus on the stuff I actually mentioned, which in turn is derived from your post. You mentioned behavior that can easily class as 'known bad behavior', and I mentioned some ways such behavior can be prevented.
Turn it around. Let's say your fella that exercises his right to eat shit does so, has a heart attack, and crashes into your car. Now you're a parapalegic. What happened to your freedom? Where is it now? Oh, you'll be dependent on a whole subset of laws that are designd to protect your freedom, and society pays the bill for that.
Your philosophy is a really nice ideal, but I don't see it ever being practical in implementation. The cost to society for the cold-hearted don't-give-a-fuck-about-anyone-but-yourself is too high. I won't pay that price. That's my choice, and it's a responsible choice. Reconcile it with your own choice and tell me what government should do for both of us.
Um, I'm not trying to hide the costs, I'm saying there are hidden costs society has to pay, and you can't change that. To get drunks off the street requires society make an investment somewhere, and then you still don't get all of them. How are you going to account for society's hidden costs in something? My point was that it was in society's best interests to absorb these hidden costs by trying to prevent known bad behavior (where 'known bad behavior' has serious slippery slope potential). You don't have to assume responsibility for the crime when you assume responsibility for making sure it doesn't happen to you.
Also, comparing the damage done by terrorists to the damage done by drunk drivers is a strawman. Drunk drivers kill many more people than terrorists, at least in the US, and really are a danger to a substantial number of people.
I think it's fairly idealistic to just assume most of the costs for any given behavior are assumed by the person with the behavior. How many drunks kill someone, but themselves face slight cost (by comparison)?
I really think it's in society's best interests to help absorb some of these costs. Defining "some" is the tricky part, though.
Thanks for the pedantry. Intellectual property is a synonym for thoughts. Isn't the common complaint now that you can't write any non-trivial application without violating someone's patent? In that case, does your application contain your own thoughts or somebody else's? When you get prosecuted for patent infringement for code you thought up yourself, tell me then what thoughtcrime is.
I agree with the sentiment, and afaik marriage is mostly bound by contract law right now. I don't think it would hurt too much to move to where marriage has the same view from the law as, say, incorporating or establishing a partnership in business. Of course, that is the opposite direction of where bushie wants to go...
I guess programmers aren't lawyers for a reason. We'd have short, clean, easy-to-read, and poorly documented contracts. And life would be better.
I"m only going to say this once. Insulting the people you're trying to persuade is counter-productive.
Liberals are not misguided any more than conservatives are misguided. Everyone, with very few exceptions, wants to make the world a better place. We disagree on means, for the most part.
Um, he was talking about the media in the context of this article. You're forcing a generalization on him. Make sure you give enough air time to the point he's actually trying to make, instead of the point you're trying to defeat.
And when he finds out he needs his triple by-pass at 60mph right behind you, who are stopped in rush hour traffic? You might laugh, but I know someone who narrowly avoided getting rear-ended by a woman having a diabetic seizure. She hit a city bus instead. Um.
There are hidden costs in a lot of behavior that doesn't appear to have hidden costs. Know anybody who smokes pot and collects food stamps? Ever wonder if they could feed themselves if they smoked less pot and worked more? I've seen people go from $6k/year to $25k/year in the space of about one year by quitting pot. I've watched people become emotionally stable and independent after quitting pot. I haven't even mentioned drunk drivers, yet, have you noticed?
Yeah, I agree there should be some more legal drugs than there are, that smoking pot is still in large part a victimless crime (unless it's your dad, but I've also known very good parents who smoked pot). I've seen studies done that I can't cite right now that indicate that over a person's lifetime, spending on education and rehab is cheaper than incarceration for their behavior, and that education and rehab has a lasting positive influence on a person's behavior where incarceration has no influence or lasting negative influence.
But let's not pretend we can see all the costs associated with any behavior. Ok?
Besides permanently increasing the gap in all your little synapses? What is currently not known is if that effect is reversible, but that it's long term and responsible for the overall decrease in brain activity is pretty well-established.
I disagree, and dammit I'm going to get fair airtime!:)
Anyway, I think the states do have an interest in marriage. More particularly, they have an interest in divorce, specifically in keeping order in divorce and ensuring a reasonable and rational distribution of property. They also have an interest in determining who are the legal guardians of a child. They can't prosecute kidnappers without that! I generally agree that in this day and age there exists a legal framework and support system for protecting the rights of parents, children, and everyone that might be involved in a divorce or other issue related to marriage. Which means the state can back off from marriage quite a ways and still do what they need to do in regards to marriage, i.e. register when it happens and who's involved.
THe split between the modern mainstream LDS and the Fundamentalist LDS happened over statehood. The mainstream group wanted to get rid of polygamy so they could become a state, and the fundies wanted to keep polygamy.
I don't object to polygamy as long as a woman's rights are protected, and it's not just one man and many women. I.e. there has to be room for one woman and many men. But show me one polygamist group whose polygamy is a religious thing who respects women and puts them on equal footing with men. And yes, the FUndamentalist LDS is not such a group. They're pure, unadulterated Evil.
In my own subjective world, a lot of people leaning liberal are turning off their TVs because they don't want their brains sucked out by an 8-legged green monster.
If it were to happen that my subjective world represented a wider world, that would be a reason for stations leaning like they do. I could be wrong, as I said, it's my own subjective world I'm talking about. But I'm the one in the house who turns off the TV.:)
Indeed, if nothing else positive comes of this article, millions of Maiden fans now know what the fuck happens in that song. I, for one, welcome our new doomsday overlord whose name is Eddie!
emerge sync doesn't actually update anything but portage. If you want to update installed software, you have to do emerge -uDav world, and if you haven't noticed a couple of recent migrations (like the switch to modular x.org), then you're probably still running the base system you installed.:)
Seriously, between packages being phased out and the holy grail of package managers being completely unable to deal with it without manual intervention (a problem urpmi doesn't have), I really did find myself spending 1-6 hours each week maintaining my system. That's ignoring the fact that every single package seems like it's perfectly designed to make sure that only Gentoo documentation can help you, the project's original documentation can't because it doesn't work that way anymore (either because config files have been moved all over the place or because of excessive amounts of third-party patches). Looking for help in Gentoo land? RTFM. Only nobody ever seems to notice that every single Gentoo how-to gets you 90% of the way there, and then leaves you hanging. Go to their irc channel if you want to be called an idiot and have your every decision questioned, but there's no help to be found there.
I want the time I wasted on Gentoo back, goddammit!
I guess you're blind to text that says stuff like "After using Gentoo, I wouldn't recommend it". Everything you're saying is true, but what you're not saying is that you're required to spend 1-6 hours a week maintaining your system, it will arbitrarily break periodically when you update, and so forth. I could go on. Suffice it to say, I will probably never even attempt to run Gentoo again. I really do have things to do with my time that do not involve my computer.
Well, after my experience with Gentoo and Kubuntu right before it, I'd have to say Mandriva is the one to start with.:) Unless you need a network printer setup...grrrr...
I'm really sick of every distribution being broken in some way. They're all like 90% perfect, and then 10% broke-ass piles of cow shit. I'll take less distributions if we can push that up to something more like 95% perfect, 4% workable, and only 1% broken.
All that said, I don't think dual-booting is a good idea. The reason? Simple, you'll choose windows more often than not, and in 3-6 months you'll say "Why do I even need that Linux partition anymore? I never use it". Pick one of the older, more well established commercial distributions and throw it on there (backup your data first!) and just dive right in. You don't learn to swim by dipping your toe in the water.
Slashdot Mirror
y = mx + b
Not that hard to figure out. :)
Oh yeah, did you manage to fit the line to the curve without bending the line? Because then it wouldn't be a line anymore...
Well, where's the city going to get the money if not by forcing people to pay up? That's the crux of the matter. If government is going to do something about it, it needs to get the money from somewhere. Which is your point about taxes, which, if I understand it correctly basically says the government shouldn't take our money in taxes/licenses/whatever and spend it on other people's irresponsibility. So it's an impasse. That's assuming the government is the only way to do it, but it is the only way to do it without depending on people volunteering to help.
Now, yeah, sure, people can and should volunteer to help other people and they do it all the time. Many form NGOs that raise money very well and go and help people. There's no doubt about that. But it's never been enough. It's one of those things where someone who can show beyond most shadows of doubt that it's a worthy investment has to step in and take a little bit from everyone, knowing it won't benefit everyone, but it will benefit many. I don't think there's a way out of it than that.
Now, we probably agree the government wastes a lot of money. :) And we probably agree that government isn't the most efficient solution imaginable. But there is an existing framework with government, and imo it's an acceptable framework. I certainly disagree with the implementation many times. I don't like the prison system at all and would just do away with it. I'd replace it, of course, but with something that probably has a much higher up-front cost. But I'm no expert on the issues involved, I'm far from being able to dream up something that might actually work. I go to the polls to pick the guy that convinces me he knows enough to pick the right people to do the job.
In any case:
Fundamentally, my point is that government can do all those things better if it spends time on prevention methods and migration strategies. :) (Where a migration strategy helps people transition to a life that doesn't involve infringing other people's rights and does involve taking direct personal responsibility for their actions) And that it can work on prevention methods and migration strategies for 'known bad behaviors'. And I'm sure we share some skepticism on how to define 'known bad behavior', government could easily get out of control, and arguably already has in some areas.
You're still missing the point. Go back over my posts and find one single law I suggested as a solution to any problem. Just one. Can't do it, can you? I didn't suggest any laws. Laws aren't prevention, and people most often don't obey laws out any sense of right and wrong. They obey them because breaking the law would be more inconvenient than obeying it.
In any case, I also don't think I mentioned social security one time. While I do, in fact, agree with social security, let's focus on the stuff I actually mentioned, which in turn is derived from your post. You mentioned behavior that can easily class as 'known bad behavior', and I mentioned some ways such behavior can be prevented.
Turn it around. Let's say your fella that exercises his right to eat shit does so, has a heart attack, and crashes into your car. Now you're a parapalegic. What happened to your freedom? Where is it now? Oh, you'll be dependent on a whole subset of laws that are designd to protect your freedom, and society pays the bill for that.
Your philosophy is a really nice ideal, but I don't see it ever being practical in implementation. The cost to society for the cold-hearted don't-give-a-fuck-about-anyone-but-yourself is too high. I won't pay that price. That's my choice, and it's a responsible choice. Reconcile it with your own choice and tell me what government should do for both of us.
Um, I'm not trying to hide the costs, I'm saying there are hidden costs society has to pay, and you can't change that. To get drunks off the street requires society make an investment somewhere, and then you still don't get all of them. How are you going to account for society's hidden costs in something? My point was that it was in society's best interests to absorb these hidden costs by trying to prevent known bad behavior (where 'known bad behavior' has serious slippery slope potential). You don't have to assume responsibility for the crime when you assume responsibility for making sure it doesn't happen to you.
Also, comparing the damage done by terrorists to the damage done by drunk drivers is a strawman. Drunk drivers kill many more people than terrorists, at least in the US, and really are a danger to a substantial number of people.
Thank you, Captain Obvious. That's what all licenses say. :)
I think it's fairly idealistic to just assume most of the costs for any given behavior are assumed by the person with the behavior. How many drunks kill someone, but themselves face slight cost (by comparison)?
I really think it's in society's best interests to help absorb some of these costs. Defining "some" is the tricky part, though.
THank you for missing the point, have a good day.
Thanks for the pedantry. Intellectual property is a synonym for thoughts. Isn't the common complaint now that you can't write any non-trivial application without violating someone's patent? In that case, does your application contain your own thoughts or somebody else's? When you get prosecuted for patent infringement for code you thought up yourself, tell me then what thoughtcrime is.
I agree with the sentiment, and afaik marriage is mostly bound by contract law right now. I don't think it would hurt too much to move to where marriage has the same view from the law as, say, incorporating or establishing a partnership in business. Of course, that is the opposite direction of where bushie wants to go...
I guess programmers aren't lawyers for a reason. We'd have short, clean, easy-to-read, and poorly documented contracts. And life would be better.
I"m only going to say this once. Insulting the people you're trying to persuade is counter-productive.
Liberals are not misguided any more than conservatives are misguided. Everyone, with very few exceptions, wants to make the world a better place. We disagree on means, for the most part.
Um, he was talking about the media in the context of this article. You're forcing a generalization on him. Make sure you give enough air time to the point he's actually trying to make, instead of the point you're trying to defeat.
And when he finds out he needs his triple by-pass at 60mph right behind you, who are stopped in rush hour traffic? You might laugh, but I know someone who narrowly avoided getting rear-ended by a woman having a diabetic seizure. She hit a city bus instead. Um.
There are hidden costs in a lot of behavior that doesn't appear to have hidden costs. Know anybody who smokes pot and collects food stamps? Ever wonder if they could feed themselves if they smoked less pot and worked more? I've seen people go from $6k/year to $25k/year in the space of about one year by quitting pot. I've watched people become emotionally stable and independent after quitting pot. I haven't even mentioned drunk drivers, yet, have you noticed?
Yeah, I agree there should be some more legal drugs than there are, that smoking pot is still in large part a victimless crime (unless it's your dad, but I've also known very good parents who smoked pot). I've seen studies done that I can't cite right now that indicate that over a person's lifetime, spending on education and rehab is cheaper than incarceration for their behavior, and that education and rehab has a lasting positive influence on a person's behavior where incarceration has no influence or lasting negative influence.
But let's not pretend we can see all the costs associated with any behavior. Ok?
Besides permanently increasing the gap in all your little synapses? What is currently not known is if that effect is reversible, but that it's long term and responsible for the overall decrease in brain activity is pretty well-established.
Smoking pot makes you stupid. Get over it.
I disagree, and dammit I'm going to get fair airtime! :)
Anyway, I think the states do have an interest in marriage. More particularly, they have an interest in divorce, specifically in keeping order in divorce and ensuring a reasonable and rational distribution of property. They also have an interest in determining who are the legal guardians of a child. They can't prosecute kidnappers without that! I generally agree that in this day and age there exists a legal framework and support system for protecting the rights of parents, children, and everyone that might be involved in a divorce or other issue related to marriage. Which means the state can back off from marriage quite a ways and still do what they need to do in regards to marriage, i.e. register when it happens and who's involved.
THe split between the modern mainstream LDS and the Fundamentalist LDS happened over statehood. The mainstream group wanted to get rid of polygamy so they could become a state, and the fundies wanted to keep polygamy.
I don't object to polygamy as long as a woman's rights are protected, and it's not just one man and many women. I.e. there has to be room for one woman and many men. But show me one polygamist group whose polygamy is a religious thing who respects women and puts them on equal footing with men. And yes, the FUndamentalist LDS is not such a group. They're pure, unadulterated Evil.
Why is that so bad, then? We've already got copyright and patent. We already have thoughtcrime.
In my own subjective world, a lot of people leaning liberal are turning off their TVs because they don't want their brains sucked out by an 8-legged green monster.
If it were to happen that my subjective world represented a wider world, that would be a reason for stations leaning like they do. I could be wrong, as I said, it's my own subjective world I'm talking about. But I'm the one in the house who turns off the TV. :)
I prefer "nothing". "Are you a republican?" "no" "Are you a democrat?" "no" "What are you?" "nothing"
"Are you a Christian?" "no" "Are you a Moslem?" "no" "What are you?" "nothing"
I used to object to being called "nothing" if I didn't have a label. Now I've pretty much embraced it.
Indeed, if nothing else positive comes of this article, millions of Maiden fans now know what the fuck happens in that song. I, for one, welcome our new doomsday overlord whose name is Eddie!
emerge sync doesn't actually update anything but portage. If you want to update installed software, you have to do emerge -uDav world, and if you haven't noticed a couple of recent migrations (like the switch to modular x.org), then you're probably still running the base system you installed. :)
Seriously, between packages being phased out and the holy grail of package managers being completely unable to deal with it without manual intervention (a problem urpmi doesn't have), I really did find myself spending 1-6 hours each week maintaining my system. That's ignoring the fact that every single package seems like it's perfectly designed to make sure that only Gentoo documentation can help you, the project's original documentation can't because it doesn't work that way anymore (either because config files have been moved all over the place or because of excessive amounts of third-party patches). Looking for help in Gentoo land? RTFM. Only nobody ever seems to notice that every single Gentoo how-to gets you 90% of the way there, and then leaves you hanging. Go to their irc channel if you want to be called an idiot and have your every decision questioned, but there's no help to be found there.
I want the time I wasted on Gentoo back, goddammit!
I got taken by Freeciv this year. More recently, Scorched3d.
Yes, it's true, I only play open source games.
I guess you're blind to text that says stuff like "After using Gentoo, I wouldn't recommend it". Everything you're saying is true, but what you're not saying is that you're required to spend 1-6 hours a week maintaining your system, it will arbitrarily break periodically when you update, and so forth. I could go on. Suffice it to say, I will probably never even attempt to run Gentoo again. I really do have things to do with my time that do not involve my computer.
In my house, it's the user that makes awfuk noises.
You get a wookie, didn't you know that?
Well, after my experience with Gentoo and Kubuntu right before it, I'd have to say Mandriva is the one to start with. :) Unless you need a network printer setup...grrrr...
I'm really sick of every distribution being broken in some way. They're all like 90% perfect, and then 10% broke-ass piles of cow shit. I'll take less distributions if we can push that up to something more like 95% perfect, 4% workable, and only 1% broken.
All that said, I don't think dual-booting is a good idea. The reason? Simple, you'll choose windows more often than not, and in 3-6 months you'll say "Why do I even need that Linux partition anymore? I never use it". Pick one of the older, more well established commercial distributions and throw it on there (backup your data first!) and just dive right in. You don't learn to swim by dipping your toe in the water.