Odd. In the thread above, it was explained that the Randists object to FORCED charity, yet these people objected to your totally voluntary fund-raiser. Is the explanation given in the thread above erroneous, or were those people a little too far to the left of the IQ curve?
Well, halivar, above, posted a few quotes from Rand showing an opposition to any charity, forced or not.
And, whether these quotes were taken out of context or not, this does seem to be the attitude of most of her followers.
It was also the impression I got from reading her books: Altruism was, at best, something to look down on and sneer at, at worst a dangerous concept likely to lead to the destruction of society. Of course, "society" itself was a pretty bad idea, as it led to people being forced to cooperate, which gets in the way of inherent selfishness, so is bad.
At one point in Atlas Shrugged, she has one character renting a car to another for a quarter. Why not just let him use it as a courtesy? Why because that would be selfless, thus horribly wrong to do.
Maybe in her other writings she's got a different point of view, but I've only read her novels. But I don't think I've encountered any "Objectivists" that have ever espoused any ideas not mentioned therein.
Also, are those logic holes in Rand's books themselves, or in the interpretations of those who seem to see her views as some kind of infallible truth?
In the books themselves.
For instance, in Atlas Shrugged, we have a bunch of industrialists - the "thinkers" of the world - fed up with having to work together for a common good so they go off, secede from society, and all work together, for the common good of themselves. Note that, of course, every "thinking" person in the world did this, leaving just the non-thinkers to try to run things. (Which, of course, makes it all fall apart.) Any of them could have made billions by betraying the group, but they won't because selfishness is a virtue, and thus they all selflessly support it.
When I mention "thinkers" and put it in quotes like that, that's because that's very much what Rand, and her followers, do. The world is divided into two classes, one of which is smaller but, by right of being able to think and understand better, is naturally the leader of the other, larger, class. All of Rand's followers, of course, believe themselves to be in this "elite" class which, conveniently, requires no actual deeds as proof that you belong there.
This division is especially pounded in in The Fountainhead, which centers on a young architect who, though of course brilliant and far superior to those around him, can't sell his designs. Never mind the idea that, by any kind of "objective" (to borrow a word and use it correctly for a change) measurement, a good architect would be one whose designs sell well. A thing is worth only what others will pay for it, right? No, in this case, everyone knows he's the better architect, but the senior architects are holding him back because they know if they let him go out unfettered he'll make them all look like the old has-beens they are. This is a very appealing philosophy for adolescent males, of course, and anybody else who wants to believe they are hidden geniuses but don't have any actual accomplishments to back it up.
This works in the worlds of Rand's novels, where everybody fits neatly into one of these two classes, and knows exactly which group they're in, and which group everyone else is in as well. The non-industrialists in Atlas Shrugged know that they're not fit to lead. They acknowledge that they just want to be in charge but, as they are the wrong class of people to be making decisions, want the industrialists to come back and think for them.
I help run a non-profit organization that sets up computers and related technology to schools, orphanages, medical clinics, and the like in third-world countries.
One of our annual fundraisers is at a science fiction convention in Seattle, and every year there we get at least a couple of them come to our booth and try to explain how we're such terrible people for doing this, and don't we know we're only making them weaker and hurting America and so on.
OK, it's actually more amusing than annoying usually. I've read a couple of her books, and like pointing out all the logic holes in them. They usually run off though as soon as I start doing that, though, sadly...
Anybody out there know of an instance of someone actually utilizing an MS Office (or any office software, for that matter) support contract?
I did, a couple of times at my last job, for strange problems we couldn't figure out.
Of course, it didn't help. Even after 3rd-tier escalation, one problem we eventually figured out ourselves, and another one I got a solution to a couple of weeks later from a ClearCase mailing list...
I'm not the original poster, but if the guy works from home, and raises his own pigs, my guess is he's not in downtown San Francisco.
I've seen three-bedroom houses in Eugene, OR go for as little as $80K, a little outside the city, but still within reach of the busses. Farther out than that? Yeah, easily $40K.
I thought the whole point of being a shareholder was that you couldn't be charged for the wrong doing of the corporation?
Not entirely.
If what the corporation was doing was against the law, and you can be proven to have knowledge of it, then you can be held liable.
It's also possible to "pierce the corporate veil" in civil matters, if an officer can be proven to be negligent, though that's really hard to prove and the corporation generally has more money than any of the individuals involved, so usually noboby bothers.
If a prosecutor can show that actions were outside the scope of your employment, you can be held personally liable for wrong-doing, also.
IANAL, but I have set up a few corporations, and have been plaintiff, defendant, or witness in several cases.
Hey now, you can't blame that one on the Melnorme. The Sylandro would have been fine if they'd thought it through a bit before attempting to reprogram the probes.
Snow Crash would make for an awful movie. There's far too much expositionary material regarding namshubs and so forth that would be interminable on the screen and couldn't be cut without rendering much of the story incomprehensible. It (largely) works in book form, but its density would make it impossible to bring to the screen.
Right. It's much like Lord of the Rings in that way.
Yeah, your experience is more closely related to my own, as well.
I've been using PayPal since before they were part of eBay. It's become my primary debit account as it's free, interest-bearing, and has no minimum balance.
I have, in the years of using it, had only a couple of problems: Once, my PayPal card was stolen. In that case, they immediately canceled the transactions that were made with it and issued me a new one I received about a week later.
In another case, I had just transfered a large sum into it and used it to purchase six airline tickets at once. This exceeded the spending limit I didn't know I had. I called them up, furious that they weren't allowing a legitimate transaction. It took about fifteen minutes to reach a representative, calm down, explain the situation, verify my identity, and get my limit raised for the transaction.
Maybe they do suck in some cases, but they're a damn sight better than Bank of America.
Which part of the world do you live in that serves wine but doesn't have ambulances?
Ambulances aren't always the best way to get to the hospital when you need to.
The one time I've ever needed to ride in one, it took almost fifteen minutes before it arrived. If I'd been capable of driving, or with someone that was, I could have driven myself to the hospital in about ten.
And, "over the legal limit" does not a drunk make. The law recognizes exemptions in the law in cases of emergency. An automated car won't.
In science, every attempt to disprove a fact confirmed theory just strengthens it.
Except that, these groups did nothing to try to disprove the theory.
They're PR agencies whose only job was to try to convince people that the science on the other side was wrong. They performed no actual scientific studies of their own.
There is actual science that suggests alternatives to global warming, but that's not what this article was talking about.
And, in answer to all the posts saying that we didn't cause global warming, I have to ask why it matters. If there was a large meteor that had a good chance of hitting Earth shouldn't we do everything we could to deflect it? Even though we didn't cause it? If we don't do anything, I doubt any of the other species on this planet will.
...no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause...
No problem then: Bush has no intention of having his people going through the hassle of getting a warrant before opening your mail...
Re:We have one! - enjoy it while it lasts...
on
Bill Gates on Robots
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· Score: 1
They don't last. I burned through three until the warranty ran out and I gave up.
What were you doing to those poor things?
I ran mine for two years almost every day before getting rid of it to upgrade to the newer model. (The new ones know how to find their charging station. The original, you had to pick up and plug back in manually.)
they get stuck under furniture, caught on throw rugs, wires, chair legs, heater registers, and just about anything that makes a bump in the floor.)
Wasn't my experience, either.
It's never gotten stuck under my furniture, or on either of my two throw rugs (though they don't have lots of fringe so that may make a difference.)
I don't have lots of wires snaking across the floor, either. But you're right, I had to fix that for my Roomba long before I had to fix it for my girlfriend. (Strangely, she doesn't like loose wires on the floor either.)
Anything that "makes a bump in the floor" it either goes over (if it's a small bump) or around (if it's a big one). Never seen it get stuck trying to go over something. But then, my floor is relatively flat, unlike a typical road or forest.
The one truly great thing about it is that it's greatly reduced the problems I have with allergies. I'm allergic to cats, and live with two of them. By vacuuming every day, including getting under the bed and couches, it gets rid of the dander far better than I would do by vacuuming every few weeks.
And, of course, it's always fun to watch it chase the cats around.
I suppose it would depend on how you define a "chicken egg".
Is it an egg layed by a chicken? Or an egg from which a chicken hatches?
At one point on the evolutionary scale, there had to be an egg that that was the latter, but not the former. If you use the first definition, the chicken came first. If the second, the egg.
This is, of course, all assuming that by "the egg" you are referring to a "chicken egg". If you mean any kind of egg, then, of course, the egg came first, as there were many creatures laying eggs for aeons before the chicken came along.
Heh, it was a friend's wife who pointed out to me that they can't do anything to stop you. Ever since then, I've had great fun walking right by them saying something like: "Sure! Thanks!" "He's got it." (Point to random stranger behind you). "Yep. Here it is." "You, too!" "I left it in the car." "No thanks."
It doesn't really matter what you say. If you don't stop, they can't stop you. I've never had anyone try. Usually, they just smile and tell me to HaveANiceDay or ThankYouForShoppingAt as I go by.
Smart of them to go try this out against a spamming fraudster (or is that fraudulent spammer)?
Certainly there is easily enough evidence out there to obtain a search warrant.
And it's not like search warrants are difficult to obtain.
The only reason I can think of not to bother in this case would be because someone wanted to set a precedent. And who better to set one against than someone hated by everyone?
Once you send it out, that copy of the data belongs to the ISP, not you. No different than committing a crime in front of the local police station when you get right down to it.
Sure it's different.
By your reasoning, any letter you send is property of the Post Office, therefore they have the right to read it without a warrant.
And any phone call you make is property of the phone company, therefore they have the right to listen in to it without a warrant.
While both of these have certainly been done (and not just by Bush and Friends), there is significant dispute over their legality, even after the outgoing congress passed a special new law to legalize ongoing activity.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, halivar, above, posted a few quotes from Rand showing an opposition to any charity, forced or not.
And, whether these quotes were taken out of context or not, this does seem to be the attitude of most of her followers.
It was also the impression I got from reading her books: Altruism was, at best, something to look down on and sneer at, at worst a dangerous concept likely to lead to the destruction of society. Of course, "society" itself was a pretty bad idea, as it led to people being forced to cooperate, which gets in the way of inherent selfishness, so is bad.
At one point in Atlas Shrugged, she has one character renting a car to another for a quarter. Why not just let him use it as a courtesy? Why because that would be selfless, thus horribly wrong to do.
Maybe in her other writings she's got a different point of view, but I've only read her novels. But I don't think I've encountered any "Objectivists" that have ever espoused any ideas not mentioned therein.
In the books themselves.
For instance, in Atlas Shrugged, we have a bunch of industrialists - the "thinkers" of the world - fed up with having to work together for a common good so they go off, secede from society, and all work together, for the common good of themselves. Note that, of course, every "thinking" person in the world did this, leaving just the non-thinkers to try to run things. (Which, of course, makes it all fall apart.) Any of them could have made billions by betraying the group, but they won't because selfishness is a virtue, and thus they all selflessly support it.
When I mention "thinkers" and put it in quotes like that, that's because that's very much what Rand, and her followers, do. The world is divided into two classes, one of which is smaller but, by right of being able to think and understand better, is naturally the leader of the other, larger, class. All of Rand's followers, of course, believe themselves to be in this "elite" class which, conveniently, requires no actual deeds as proof that you belong there.
This division is especially pounded in in The Fountainhead, which centers on a young architect who, though of course brilliant and far superior to those around him, can't sell his designs. Never mind the idea that, by any kind of "objective" (to borrow a word and use it correctly for a change) measurement, a good architect would be one whose designs sell well. A thing is worth only what others will pay for it, right? No, in this case, everyone knows he's the better architect, but the senior architects are holding him back because they know if they let him go out unfettered he'll make them all look like the old has-beens they are. This is a very appealing philosophy for adolescent males, of course, and anybody else who wants to believe they are hidden geniuses but don't have any actual accomplishments to back it up.
This works in the worlds of Rand's novels, where everybody fits neatly into one of these two classes, and knows exactly which group they're in, and which group everyone else is in as well. The non-industrialists in Atlas Shrugged know that they're not fit to lead. They acknowledge that they just want to be in charge but, as they are the wrong class of people to be making decisions, want the industrialists to come back and think for them.
Nah, there's still a few of them around.
I help run a non-profit organization that sets up computers and related technology to schools, orphanages, medical clinics, and the like in third-world countries.
One of our annual fundraisers is at a science fiction convention in Seattle, and every year there we get at least a couple of them come to our booth and try to explain how we're such terrible people for doing this, and don't we know we're only making them weaker and hurting America and so on.
OK, it's actually more amusing than annoying usually. I've read a couple of her books, and like pointing out all the logic holes in them. They usually run off though as soon as I start doing that, though, sadly...
Plus, it's the only way to make sure.
I did, a couple of times at my last job, for strange problems we couldn't figure out.
Of course, it didn't help. Even after 3rd-tier escalation, one problem we eventually figured out ourselves, and another one I got a solution to a couple of weeks later from a ClearCase mailing list...
I'm not the original poster, but if the guy works from home, and raises his own pigs, my guess is he's not in downtown San Francisco.
I've seen three-bedroom houses in Eugene, OR go for as little as $80K, a little outside the city, but still within reach of the busses. Farther out than that? Yeah, easily $40K.
Not entirely.
If what the corporation was doing was against the law, and you can be proven to have knowledge of it, then you can be held liable.
It's also possible to "pierce the corporate veil" in civil matters, if an officer can be proven to be negligent, though that's really hard to prove and the corporation generally has more money than any of the individuals involved, so usually noboby bothers.
If a prosecutor can show that actions were outside the scope of your employment, you can be held personally liable for wrong-doing, also.
IANAL, but I have set up a few corporations, and have been plaintiff, defendant, or witness in several cases.
Hey now, you can't blame that one on the Melnorme. The Sylandro would have been fine if they'd thought it through a bit before attempting to reprogram the probes.
Right. It's much like Lord of the Rings in that way.
It could never work.
Even when dealing with satellites??
When did Al-Qaeda get a freakin' space program??!
It's actually only a $49.00 coffee table. The rest is Ikea's home delivery charge.
Yeah, your experience is more closely related to my own, as well.
I've been using PayPal since before they were part of eBay. It's become my primary debit account as it's free, interest-bearing, and has no minimum balance.
I have, in the years of using it, had only a couple of problems:
Once, my PayPal card was stolen. In that case, they immediately canceled the transactions that were made with it and issued me a new one I received about a week later.
In another case, I had just transfered a large sum into it and used it to purchase six airline tickets at once. This exceeded the spending limit I didn't know I had. I called them up, furious that they weren't allowing a legitimate transaction. It took about fifteen minutes to reach a representative, calm down, explain the situation, verify my identity, and get my limit raised for the transaction.
Maybe they do suck in some cases, but they're a damn sight better than Bank of America.
"It's so simple, so very simple, that only a child can do it."
-Tom Lehrer
Ambulances aren't always the best way to get to the hospital when you need to.
The one time I've ever needed to ride in one, it took almost fifteen minutes before it arrived. If I'd been capable of driving, or with someone that was, I could have driven myself to the hospital in about ten.
And, "over the legal limit" does not a drunk make. The law recognizes exemptions in the law in cases of emergency. An automated car won't.
Really, where else will the computer lab workers even know what the difference between a AT and ATX case is, let alone be able to point to them?
Except that, these groups did nothing to try to disprove the theory.
They're PR agencies whose only job was to try to convince people that the science on the other side was wrong. They performed no actual scientific studies of their own.
There is actual science that suggests alternatives to global warming, but that's not what this article was talking about.
And, in answer to all the posts saying that we didn't cause global warming, I have to ask why it matters. If there was a large meteor that had a good chance of hitting Earth shouldn't we do everything we could to deflect it? Even though we didn't cause it? If we don't do anything, I doubt any of the other species on this planet will.
No problem then: Bush has no intention of having his people going through the hassle of getting a warrant before opening your mail...
What were you doing to those poor things?
I ran mine for two years almost every day before getting rid of it to upgrade to the newer model. (The new ones know how to find their charging station. The original, you had to pick up and plug back in manually.)
they get stuck under furniture, caught on throw rugs, wires, chair legs, heater registers, and just about anything that makes a bump in the floor.)
Wasn't my experience, either.
It's never gotten stuck under my furniture, or on either of my two throw rugs (though they don't have lots of fringe so that may make a difference.)
I don't have lots of wires snaking across the floor, either. But you're right, I had to fix that for my Roomba long before I had to fix it for my girlfriend. (Strangely, she doesn't like loose wires on the floor either.)
Anything that "makes a bump in the floor" it either goes over (if it's a small bump) or around (if it's a big one). Never seen it get stuck trying to go over something. But then, my floor is relatively flat, unlike a typical road or forest.
The one truly great thing about it is that it's greatly reduced the problems I have with allergies. I'm allergic to cats, and live with two of them. By vacuuming every day, including getting under the bed and couches, it gets rid of the dander far better than I would do by vacuuming every few weeks.
And, of course, it's always fun to watch it chase the cats around.
My only complaint is that it doesn't do windows.
I suppose that would depend on whether the cups were being carried by African or European swallows.
Yes, but if written on in 12-point type, how many Libraries of Congress would that be?
I suppose it would depend on how you define a "chicken egg".
Is it an egg layed by a chicken? Or an egg from which a chicken hatches?
At one point on the evolutionary scale, there had to be an egg that that was the latter, but not the former. If you use the first definition, the chicken came first. If the second, the egg.
This is, of course, all assuming that by "the egg" you are referring to a "chicken egg". If you mean any kind of egg, then, of course, the egg came first, as there were many creatures laying eggs for aeons before the chicken came along.
Heh, it was a friend's wife who pointed out to me that they can't do anything to stop you. Ever since then, I've had great fun walking right by them saying something like:
"Sure! Thanks!"
"He's got it." (Point to random stranger behind you).
"Yep. Here it is."
"You, too!"
"I left it in the car."
"No thanks."
It doesn't really matter what you say. If you don't stop, they can't stop you. I've never had anyone try. Usually, they just smile and tell me to HaveANiceDay or ThankYouForShoppingAt as I go by.
But people use it that way.
And, more importantly, gmail lets people use it that way, and supports it.
So if that's the way everyone wants to use it, doesn't it make sense to try to support that, rather than to try to convince users not to do it?
Smart of them to go try this out against a spamming fraudster (or is that fraudulent spammer)?
Certainly there is easily enough evidence out there to obtain a search warrant.
And it's not like search warrants are difficult to obtain.
The only reason I can think of not to bother in this case would be because someone wanted to set a precedent. And who better to set one against than someone hated by everyone?
It's all part of the War on Terror, you know.
Why do the terrorists attack us? It's because they Hate Our Freedom.
Get rid of that, and we'll be rid of terrorism.
Sure it's different.
By your reasoning, any letter you send is property of the Post Office, therefore they have the right to read it without a warrant.
And any phone call you make is property of the phone company, therefore they have the right to listen in to it without a warrant.
While both of these have certainly been done (and not just by Bush and Friends), there is significant dispute over their legality, even after the outgoing congress passed a special new law to legalize ongoing activity.