Re:No it ain't dead.
on
The VHS is Dead
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Zero, right? No matter what you try, most toddlers don't have patience. It isn't something you can teach a 2 year old.
Sure you can. My daughter will be 2 in January. It is just a matter of not giving into demands. Screaming at the top of your lungs and throwing things gets you a trip to the crib or ignored. Silence and patience gets you a movie and a snack. It is particularly effective if she sees the snack first so she knows what she lost (if she lost it) and knows what is at stake.
But we cannot sacrifice personal liberty in the process without a compelling reason. I do not believe that compelling reason has yet been articulated under secular reasoning.
That's because there is no compelling reason. To use your own words, the reason we should outlaw a particular action is because that action causes harm to other people. There is no such harm being done in porn so long as all involved parties are consenting adults. The only way you can say there is harm is by claiming people are harming themselves and the government should step in and stop the actions of consenting adults - but that is completely contrary to the libertarian ideals of freedom and personal responsibility.
You might want to try looking for a job in Cleveland (at the other end of ohio). It is much more liberal and a little more like a coast city than Cincinati. I don't know how it compares to Boston (Boston is most likely better) but it sure beats most midsize midwestern cities like Cinci. The tech job market is pretty good, probably as good as or better than most midwestern cities. I was looking for a job not too long ago and had one in a couple weeks. I even turned down another offer and they increased their salary offering by $12k to get me to change my mind. And my current company is hiring...
Anyway, maybe something to consider, at least for now to escape Cincinati. It is a few hundred miles closer to Boston too:).
I don't care whose fault it is. Valve has decided to keep control of something after they've already sold it to me. This violates my private property rights. I pay my $70, I get a copy of Half Life 2. Nowhere on the box is it advertised that the contents of the box isn't a complete copy (missing some code needed to play) or that I need to ask for someone else's permission to use my own property. This is like advertising that you're selling a car, but concealing the fact that it doesn't come with an engine.
This is being forced, as the game did not ship with the module containing the actual executable code(likely dubbed "half-life 2 client.gcf"),
Do they advertise on the retail boxes that you buy that what you're buying isn't quite half life 2, it is only part of half-life 2? If not, how is that legal? You can't sell a car that is missing an engine and advertise it as a complete car.
And again what you fail to understand is that allowing gays to marry _does_ harm someone. It harms the people who wish to keep marriage the way it is defined
But how, exactly? I've asked this question to several other people and all anyone can come up with (aside from the negligible tax issue) is that it infringes upon their personal moral code and offends them.
That's not a good enough reason to tell gays they can't marry. If homosexuality offends you, don't practice it and don't associate with those who do. At any rate, you don't have a right to not be offended. That's a conservative concept, particularly popular during the Clinton administration when affirmative action and political correctness were all the rage.
But that is precisely the point. You are not asking for "continuance", you are asking for change. In a democracy, you have to receive majority approval for change.
So, dropping the point that I'm somehow forcing my opinion on you?
And here we have the crux of our argument: you have no respect for the established definition of marriage and wish to change it.
That definition wasn't established until issue 1 passed. But that isn't the crux of the argument anyway. If this law were passed 200 years ago, I'd be calling for its repeal, so you don't need to argue any further about wether I'm calling for change or not. Wether I'm calling for change or not, I look at it this way: practical, tangible benefits are granted to gays if they can marry. There are no tangible detriments to heterosexuals or anyone else if gays marry. So why not allow gays to marry?
The practice of homosexuality may offend some people's morals, but nobody in this country has a fundamental right not to be offended. There are plenty of white supremacist groups in this country whose opinions offend me greatly, but I would oppose any legislation against their activities so long as said activities didn't bring any real harm to anyone else. White supremacists should be allowed their opinions just as much as gays or right wing religous people. Only when somebody crosses the line and harms another is it time for the government to step in.
I got a new job last month. During the search when sending out resumes, I'd specialize my resume for what I thought they were looking for. I have lots of different experience, but if the company was looking for a Linux system administrator, my resume would have lots of that and little programming mentioned. If they wanted a DBA, my database and app development experience would be amplified and everything else reduced.
I'm probably not the only person who does that, so when browsing resumes consider that people may have specialized their resume to what they think your company wants.
Either that or they specialize their resume to bring out the things they like to do. For example, I have much experience with MS SQL server, but you'll find little mention of it on my resume because I don't enjoy doing it as much as other things... but if an employer wanted me to do some work with MS SQL server among other things, I could.
So there probably are plenty of people out there with wide experience, they just don't look that way on paper.
No, actually you're not. You're specifically not tolerating my position on marriage. See how convoluted it can become?
I tolerate your positions so long as you allow everyone else to continue living their lives the way they choose. Not very convoluted is it?
And your statement is meaningless - no matter who wins, someone is "legislating their view onto everyone else". That's what legisilation IS. My point is that your position is no more objectively valid than mine.
My original point was that allowing gays to marry harms noone. There is no reason whatsoever to legislate against it. Yes, both of our views are subjective, which is why I'm not telling you or anyone else what you can and can't do with your life. If you're attracted to men, marry a man. If you're not, don't marry a man. Your decision completely doesn't involve me so I'm not interested in getting the government to tell you one way or the other.
In fact, it is less valid because I provide reason for my position - the fact that what your kind want to do is change what marriage is, which is _not_ a right. It is a request.
I've provided a reason for my position - that allowing gays to marry harms noone, therefore it should be allowed, regardless of whether or not it is a right or a request. There is simply no valid reason to tell them "no, you can't do that. we won't let you.". Well, there's the tax breaks thing, but we both know that isn't the real reason behind this.
Is it truly impossible for you to understand that many people simply respect marriage as it is defined and don't want it changed?
No, it is impossible for me to understand why someone would want to outlaw somehting which doesn't change their life in any significant way and would make the life of others better.
Would you make the same arguments for polygamy, or if I were to propose changing marriage to mean the man now "owns" the woman?
Yes, I would argue that such marriages be allowed, so long as all people involved are consenting adults. In fact, there already exist such relationships.
What is offensive about your position is that you don't care about anyone else's beliefs. You just want what you want.
I'm all about caring for other people's positions and people doing whatever they want. It is only when someone's activities affect non-consenting people will I consider legislating against it. Having a position is one thing, affecting others with it is another.
But to many people marriage is a sacred institution. Religious people see it as the recognition of a relationship by their god.
Let it continue to be sacred and religious to them. If they want, they can have their own ceremonies and regulations on marriage within their institution. In fact, isn't it already the case in most Christian churches (the Roman Catholic one at least) that in order for your marriage to be recognized by that church you must be married by that church, since marriage is a sacrament? If these institutions want to not accept gay marriage, that's fine. They're private institutions, they can do what they want.
Not only that, but there are religions where the woman is subordinate, or where polygamy is normal. That definition of marriage is sacred to their religion. Why does the government not honor them?
How offensive of you to insist that they be forced to accept your deviant behavior, and then call them names for not just smiling and agreeing to it.
They only need to accept my behaviour insofar as I accept theirs. As you may have gathered, I'm a pretty accepting person.
The law was simply to protect the existing definition of marriage,
Before the law, it wasn't defined. Issue 1 defined it more narrowly.
Bottom line: you want something and you can't get it, so you use personal attacks, vitriol, and name-calling to try to get your way. It's a standard juvenile tactic.
What name did I call you? What personal attack did I launch on you?
Frankly I think I am exhibiting more tolerance than your type on this matter.
I don't see how that can be. I'm the one tolerating other people's behaviour.
t has an effect on society. Besides the material effects there is also the psychological effect: it legitimizes gay relationships, which I do not agree with. It labels homosexuality as an acceptable practice, which I do not agree with. And I am not alone in this matter.
Homosexuality is not a legitimate or acceptable practice to you. That's your view, your opinion. You can have that opinion regardless of the gay marriage issue. The law won't make it any more or less legitimate to you or anyone else capable of developing an opinion on the issue. This gay marriage issue was nothng but a means of people like you legislating your view onto everyone else.
The issue is not one of your right to practice something of which I disapprove.
But it is. People who voted against the gay marriage issue did so because they hate gay people and would like to make their lives as painful as possible. This law was a step in that direction.
It is of your _request_ to alter the definition of an established institution and practice, which is NOT your right.
I didn't request to alter the definition of anything - conservatives did. That was the purpose of the law in those states.
I store my data on redundant arrays of disks in two geographical locations (my house and my parents' house, synced nightly via rsync). This is IMHO a far better solution than backing up to tape or CD/DVD.
I agree, although this doesn't protect you against accidental overwrites or files becoming corrupt. My backup scheme goes like this:
I have a directory on my machine called 'archive'. Files in the archive are never changed or removed - only new files may be added. Existing files may be renamed, but their content may not be changed. Most of my archive contains media files, software installers and other large files which have no reason to change. Every so often I will throw a tarball of my home directory (relatively small lacking all those media files) into the archive to back it up too.
Every night, I run a perl script I wrote which computes the MD5 sum of every file in the archive and stores this list of sums. It then compares this list of sums with a similar list generated last night. If every sum in the old list is also in the new list, the archive is considered in tact and a I rsync it to a backup machine.
The backup "machine" is actually a jail on a freebsd host. Every week or two at the console of the freebsd host (which can not be accessed remotely, only the jail) I repeat the above checksumming process just to make sure I didn't make a mistake or someone didn't hack my workstation and screw up the above script.
Once I've verified that that version of the archive is in tact, I copy that version to one of two removable hard drives which I stash offsite.
Marriage allows for some tax deductions, and pensions for widowhood, which impact on every taxpayer.
Why do only the relatively miniscule number of potential gay marriages concnern you rather than all the the tax deductions for hetero marriages?
I formed my opinion against gay marriage after I read about a diplomat who wanted to marry his boyfriend in order to get the government to pay the boyfriend's travel expenses.
What if it were his girlfriend?
I've had this conversation before with people - everyone usually admits that the tax deductions aren't the real reason they're against gay marriage.
Wow! Really reading a lot into my comments aren't you?
Reading all that's there, questioning what isn't.
I'm going to make a few assumptions of my own...mainly that you spend a good portion of your free time at High Times dawt Com.
And you assumed wrong.
I'm not going to want any additional monies wasted toward your rehabilitation or punishment and simply have you off'd.
If you don't want to spend your tax money rehabilitating or punishing pot smokers, then don't rehabilitate or punish them. Or punish them for the actual damage they do to someone, which is usually nothing. So either way, I agree, lets save our tax money.
As we live in a democratic society I and others should be able to form our own opinions regarding political issues, including the topic of gay marriage.
That's great. Go and form your opinion. Now let everyone else form theirs and lets live our lives accordingly.
Disliking homosexuality is not a phobia. It is perfectly rational for a person to form their own likes and dislikes regarding topics and practices.
Perfectly rational to have likes & dislikes? Sure, no problem. Its that whole telling other people whose actions have zero effect on you whatsoever how to live their lives part that I find not rational.
Frankly I find it more than a bit ironic that self-proclaimed "open-minded" people like yourself routinely pigeonhole those who are against gay marriage in such a manner.
Pigeonholed? Who was pigeonholed by issue 1 on nov 2?
If you are a serial criminal and see nothing wrong with it, put them in prison for life. If we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were doing this -- far more than just Reasonable Guilt -- kill the fucker
Kill the fucker? for what serial crime exactly? Murder, or smoking pot?
if you look at the top ten list of what makes Best Buy profit, #1 is home theatre (big screen TVs, etc). want to know #2-10 ? it's their PRP/PSP (product replacement plan and product service plans). that's the main reason they push customers so hard about them.
Are you sure cables & accessories aren't in that top 10 list? I don't see how they possibly couldn't be when they charge US$2.00/foot for CAT5 ethernet cable, or more for those idiotic gold plated RCA cables. In my experience, their sales people ask you if you're sure you have all the cables you need more than they ask you to buy the extended warranties.
You left out the fact that the U.S. produces roughly 21-31 % of global goods and services
How does this figure account for the number of goods and services whose actual production is outsourced to third world countries and merely managed & sold by US companies?
As I said in another post - as long as the spying is completely non-evasive - then I welcome the gov't researching my activities.
Well I think I would find that kind of monitoring acceptable too, mainly because what you're talking about is public information already. Everybody can observe a drug house and note the scouts hanging around, they have no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Entering someone's house to install a hardware keylogger without needing a warrant however is a different story.
First of all, I don't find it necessary for the government to control undesirable activity if I can avoid people who engage in it. If I dislike someone, the world is big enough that I don't have to be around them. If this person lives next door, I don't have to go see him.
I agree with you there.
But the problem is that by its "equal rights for every pervert" stance, the government makes this impossible in many cases. Suppose I own a company and have a job opening; an openly gay man applies for the job.
That's affirmative action, which I'm not a big fan of either. I'd rather you and the gay man just stay away from each other than breed more hate.
The purpose of government is to tell people how to live their lives.
The purpose of government should be to defent people's rights. That is the consitutionally defined function of the federal government.
You can apply the same argument to any behaviour and against any law. "There is no reason to outlaw murder, if nobody wants to kill you. There is no reason to outlaw theft, if you have nothing worth stealing. There is no reason to outlaw child pornography if you have no children.
In each of these examples the rights of an unwilling participant are violated, so following the above, those things ought to be illegal.
There is no reason to outlaw drugs if you are not using."
Even if you are, you aren't affecting anyone else.
What you actually mean to say is that you don't think you should be allowed to pass any sort of judgement on other people's activity. These days it is considered a blasphemy to have a moral code and to judge other people's actions by it.
Passing judgement is one thing, forcing others to live according to it is another.
But some people, like me, believe that there is such a thing as an absolute moral code. That some actions are wrong no matter who is looking at them. That it is possible to be right regardless of anybody's opinion.
But the fact that only people believe it and the fact that it is a belief, not a provable fact implies that it is not absolute. You may believe that it is absolute, and other people may believe theirs is absolute, so by definiton they are not absolute. You can't prove a moral code is the right one like you can prove the earth is round.
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Sure you can. My daughter will be 2 in January. It is just a matter of not giving into demands. Screaming at the top of your lungs and throwing things gets you a trip to the crib or ignored. Silence and patience gets you a movie and a snack. It is particularly effective if she sees the snack first so she knows what she lost (if she lost it) and knows what is at stake.
Actually, they already are. It is out there, cracked. Hope all the paying customers are enjoying that DRM...
That's because there is no compelling reason. To use your own words, the reason we should outlaw a particular action is because that action causes harm to other people. There is no such harm being done in porn so long as all involved parties are consenting adults. The only way you can say there is harm is by claiming people are harming themselves and the government should step in and stop the actions of consenting adults - but that is completely contrary to the libertarian ideals of freedom and personal responsibility.
Really? Who are the victims?
You might want to try looking for a job in Cleveland (at the other end of ohio). It is much more liberal and a little more like a coast city than Cincinati. I don't know how it compares to Boston (Boston is most likely better) but it sure beats most midsize midwestern cities like Cinci. The tech job market is pretty good, probably as good as or better than most midwestern cities. I was looking for a job not too long ago and had one in a couple weeks. I even turned down another offer and they increased their salary offering by $12k to get me to change my mind. And my current company is hiring...
:).
Anyway, maybe something to consider, at least for now to escape Cincinati. It is a few hundred miles closer to Boston too
Then why invade the country (announcing it months in advance no less) for the stated purpose of siezing said weapons?
Wrong.
Disneyland doesn't become your private property when you buy an annual pass to it. A particular copy of the game did (when you bought it).
I don't care whose fault it is. Valve has decided to keep control of something after they've already sold it to me. This violates my private property rights. I pay my $70, I get a copy of Half Life 2. Nowhere on the box is it advertised that the contents of the box isn't a complete copy (missing some code needed to play) or that I need to ask for someone else's permission to use my own property. This is like advertising that you're selling a car, but concealing the fact that it doesn't come with an engine.
Do they advertise on the retail boxes that you buy that what you're buying isn't quite half life 2, it is only part of half-life 2? If not, how is that legal? You can't sell a car that is missing an engine and advertise it as a complete car.
But how, exactly? I've asked this question to several other people and all anyone can come up with (aside from the negligible tax issue) is that it infringes upon their personal moral code and offends them.
That's not a good enough reason to tell gays they can't marry. If homosexuality offends you, don't practice it and don't associate with those who do. At any rate, you don't have a right to not be offended. That's a conservative concept, particularly popular during the Clinton administration when affirmative action and political correctness were all the rage.
That definition wasn't established until issue 1 passed. But that isn't the crux of the argument anyway. If this law were passed 200 years ago, I'd be calling for its repeal, so you don't need to argue any further about wether I'm calling for change or not. Wether I'm calling for change or not, I look at it this way: practical, tangible benefits are granted to gays if they can marry. There are no tangible detriments to heterosexuals or anyone else if gays marry. So why not allow gays to marry?
The practice of homosexuality may offend some people's morals, but nobody in this country has a fundamental right not to be offended. There are plenty of white supremacist groups in this country whose opinions offend me greatly, but I would oppose any legislation against their activities so long as said activities didn't bring any real harm to anyone else. White supremacists should be allowed their opinions just as much as gays or right wing religous people. Only when somebody crosses the line and harms another is it time for the government to step in.
I got a new job last month. During the search when sending out resumes, I'd specialize my resume for what I thought they were looking for. I have lots of different experience, but if the company was looking for a Linux system administrator, my resume would have lots of that and little programming mentioned. If they wanted a DBA, my database and app development experience would be amplified and everything else reduced.
I'm probably not the only person who does that, so when browsing resumes consider that people may have specialized their resume to what they think your company wants.
Either that or they specialize their resume to bring out the things they like to do. For example, I have much experience with MS SQL server, but you'll find little mention of it on my resume because I don't enjoy doing it as much as other things... but if an employer wanted me to do some work with MS SQL server among other things, I could.
So there probably are plenty of people out there with wide experience, they just don't look that way on paper.
I tolerate your positions so long as you allow everyone else to continue living their lives the way they choose. Not very convoluted is it?
My original point was that allowing gays to marry harms noone. There is no reason whatsoever to legislate against it. Yes, both of our views are subjective, which is why I'm not telling you or anyone else what you can and can't do with your life. If you're attracted to men, marry a man. If you're not, don't marry a man. Your decision completely doesn't involve me so I'm not interested in getting the government to tell you one way or the other.
I've provided a reason for my position - that allowing gays to marry harms noone, therefore it should be allowed, regardless of whether or not it is a right or a request. There is simply no valid reason to tell them "no, you can't do that. we won't let you.". Well, there's the tax breaks thing, but we both know that isn't the real reason behind this.
No, it is impossible for me to understand why someone would want to outlaw somehting which doesn't change their life in any significant way and would make the life of others better.
Yes, I would argue that such marriages be allowed, so long as all people involved are consenting adults. In fact, there already exist such relationships.
I'm all about caring for other people's positions and people doing whatever they want. It is only when someone's activities affect non-consenting people will I consider legislating against it. Having a position is one thing, affecting others with it is another.
Let it continue to be sacred and religious to them. If they want, they can have their own ceremonies and regulations on marriage within their institution. In fact, isn't it already the case in most Christian churches (the Roman Catholic one at least) that in order for your marriage to be recognized by that church you must be married by that church, since marriage is a sacrament? If these institutions want to not accept gay marriage, that's fine. They're private institutions, they can do what they want.
Not only that, but there are religions where the woman is subordinate, or where polygamy is normal. That definition of marriage is sacred to their religion. Why does the government not honor them?
They only need to accept my behaviour insofar as I accept theirs. As you may have gathered, I'm a pretty accepting person.
Before the law, it wasn't defined. Issue 1 defined it more narrowly.
What name did I call you? What personal attack did I launch on you?
I don't see how that can be. I'm the one tolerating other people's behaviour.
Homosexuality is not a legitimate or acceptable practice to you. That's your view, your opinion. You can have that opinion regardless of the gay marriage issue. The law won't make it any more or less legitimate to you or anyone else capable of developing an opinion on the issue. This gay marriage issue was nothng but a means of people like you legislating your view onto everyone else.
But it is. People who voted against the gay marriage issue did so because they hate gay people and would like to make their lives as painful as possible. This law was a step in that direction.
I didn't request to alter the definition of anything - conservatives did. That was the purpose of the law in those states.
I agree, although this doesn't protect you against accidental overwrites or files becoming corrupt. My backup scheme goes like this:
I have a directory on my machine called 'archive'. Files in the archive are never changed or removed - only new files may be added. Existing files may be renamed, but their content may not be changed. Most of my archive contains media files, software installers and other large files which have no reason to change. Every so often I will throw a tarball of my home directory (relatively small lacking all those media files) into the archive to back it up too.
Every night, I run a perl script I wrote which computes the MD5 sum of every file in the archive and stores this list of sums. It then compares this list of sums with a similar list generated last night. If every sum in the old list is also in the new list, the archive is considered in tact and a I rsync it to a backup machine.
The backup "machine" is actually a jail on a freebsd host. Every week or two at the console of the freebsd host (which can not be accessed remotely, only the jail) I repeat the above checksumming process just to make sure I didn't make a mistake or someone didn't hack my workstation and screw up the above script.
Once I've verified that that version of the archive is in tact, I copy that version to one of two removable hard drives which I stash offsite.
Why do only the relatively miniscule number of potential gay marriages concnern you rather than all the the tax deductions for hetero marriages?
What if it were his girlfriend?
I've had this conversation before with people - everyone usually admits that the tax deductions aren't the real reason they're against gay marriage.
Reading all that's there, questioning what isn't.
And you assumed wrong.
If you don't want to spend your tax money rehabilitating or punishing pot smokers, then don't rehabilitate or punish them. Or punish them for the actual damage they do to someone, which is usually nothing. So either way, I agree, lets save our tax money.
That's great. Go and form your opinion. Now let everyone else form theirs and lets live our lives accordingly.
Perfectly rational to have likes & dislikes? Sure, no problem. Its that whole telling other people whose actions have zero effect on you whatsoever how to live their lives part that I find not rational.
Pigeonholed? Who was pigeonholed by issue 1 on nov 2?
Kill the fucker? for what serial crime exactly? Murder, or smoking pot?
porn was a priority before 9/11? It was a priority afterward as well.
Are you sure cables & accessories aren't in that top 10 list? I don't see how they possibly couldn't be when they charge US$2.00/foot for CAT5 ethernet cable, or more for those idiotic gold plated RCA cables. In my experience, their sales people ask you if you're sure you have all the cables you need more than they ask you to buy the extended warranties.
How does this figure account for the number of goods and services whose actual production is outsourced to third world countries and merely managed & sold by US companies?
Correction: the fact that only some people believe it.
Well I think I would find that kind of monitoring acceptable too, mainly because what you're talking about is public information already. Everybody can observe a drug house and note the scouts hanging around, they have no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Entering someone's house to install a hardware keylogger without needing a warrant however is a different story.
I agree with you there.
That's affirmative action, which I'm not a big fan of either. I'd rather you and the gay man just stay away from each other than breed more hate.
The purpose of government should be to defent people's rights. That is the consitutionally defined function of the federal government.
In each of these examples the rights of an unwilling participant are violated, so following the above, those things ought to be illegal.
Even if you are, you aren't affecting anyone else.
Passing judgement is one thing, forcing others to live according to it is another.
But the fact that only people believe it and the fact that it is a belief, not a provable fact implies that it is not absolute. You may believe that it is absolute, and other people may believe theirs is absolute, so by definiton they are not absolute. You can't prove a moral code is the right one like you can prove the earth is round.