I don't know what you're suggesting, other than that you like to gripe.
Who should you have voted for instead? Hillary? She's a hardcore DLCer, working tirelessly to pull the Democratic Party to the right (not to mention her bog-standard low-road campaigning). McCain? Please.
No one ever said Obama was perfect or the Second Coming (except in Republican attack ads). I was a Kucinich man, till he dropped out, then for Edwards for the five minutes it took before he dropped out. Only then did I back Obama.
Obama was by no means my first choice, but, in the end, was by far the best choice.
See, this opens up the whole can of worms of what it means for supply and demand when supply is effectively infinite. You say copies of popular stuff should cost more, but why? Are they harder to obtain than copies of the less popular stuff? Are there fewer of them?
Also, consider this: usually, when something is very popular, lots more of it is produced, which generally decreases the marginal cost of producing each one, and thus the final price charged for each one -- "economy of scale", as they say. This scenario turns that on its head: the more they make, the more they charge for each one. This is despite the fact that the marginal cost of "producing each one" (servicing a download) is more or less zero, regardless of the quantity produced.
That's the same line of logic that the right-wingers use to condemn sex ed and condom distribution.
Not quite. The unspoken premise of the anti-sex-ed crowd is that having sex is bad. Whereas in my argument it's that killing is bad. That is the logic. Now, if you're going to say that those two assertions are equally true, I don't know what to say to you, other than "go away, troll".
It's even worse than that. A coworker of mine used to work for a company that made models for mortgage banks. Some of the banks started balking that the models were showing something bad was happening, so they demanded the models be changed. Instead of saying no, the company responded by giving the banks "knobs" to tweak. This shut them up, but also let them lie to themselves till it was too late.
Actually more people are killed in automobile accidents than accidental shootings but I'm guessing you really don't care about facts and are only interested in pushing your gun-control agenda.
I'm unsure why you're limiting your argument to accidents, nor why you are ignoring the vastly larger number of and hours spent using cars compared to guns, but the fact of the matter is that an automobile is a device which is designed to transport, whereas a gun is a device which is designed to wound or kill. Those are the facts.
Your "lot's of shootings" argument has been dispelled by every single state that has passed shall-issue legislation.
And it's upheld by every third-world hellhole in existence. Your theory that more guns equals less crime/violence means Mexico, Columbia, and the whole of the Middle East should be veritable Gardens of Eden, yes?
No, the stupid bullshit is you putting words in my mouth and claiming that I was advocating for killing people "with ease". The vast majority of cases where firearms are used defensively end without a single shot being fired.
I didn't need to put any words in your mouth. You advocate more guns; guns are there to make it easier to kill; therefore, you advocate greater ease of killing. Period.
You'll note I said "defend", not "kill", although I suspect the difference is lost on someone like you. The law says you can only use deadly force if you have a reasonable belief that your own life or the life of another is in danger. What's the problem?
No, there are many many stupid things. Among them are mixing a load of guns in with a society.
You give a bunch of people a bunch of cars, you're going to get a lot of car trips. You give a bunch of people a bunch of TVs, you've going to get a lot of consumption of entertainment. You give a bunch of people a bunch of guns, you're going to get a lot of shootings. It really is that simple.
As far as this moronic "you don't like _____, therefore you aren't really tolerant" canard the GGP spouted, it's always been stupid bullshit.
And the final bit of stupid bullshit is your argument, oft repeated, that the best way to prevent crime is for everyone to be capable of killing one another with ease. Please, then, explain why the crime rate in the gun-crazy US is so much higher than in, say, gun-banning Japan. Surely, Japan is just one giant juicy target for criminals? A veritable "armed predator" magnet? Yet, much lower crime rates. How strange. It's as though the idea that spreading a lot of deadly weaponry around might be, what's the word? Oh yeah, "stupid".
I agree that it's sometimes unpleasant that some creatively bankrupt advertising f*****t can cheapen a piece of out-of-copyright classical music by using it for some lousy product, but that's an unfortunate side effect of something that is desirable on the whole.
True. On the other hand, we'd also be missing things like Procol Harum's Whiter Shade Of Pale, among others.
I just dread the day terrorists start pulling bombings of buses or trains or truck weigh stations or busy freeways or malls or what-have-you in the US. Because that day, all the stupidity we see in airports and airplanes will be copied into those venues too.
Unless, of course, we as a people finally pull our heads out instead.
1. Taxes are when we pay our bills. Microsoft (and all the other big companies) are shirking their share of the bills. You aren't against paying bills, are you?
2. We are idiots, but it's because we allow crap like offshoring and tax havens and all the rest of it to exist. Were we to have a sensible international trade policy (like the rest of the countries have), there wouldn't be a problem.
I guess not where you are, but where I am, the trains don't get in traffic jams. That's the good part.
The bad part is, you have to share the seats with a bunch of people who may be one or more of the following: stinky, noisy, diseased, rude, violent, or in some other novel way objectionable. That's if you can find an open seat. If not, you have to deal with these people and the lurching of the train while standing. Also, the trains insist on stopping at a bunch of places whether I want to go to them or not. Also, they never go to a bunch of places I might want to go from time to time.
Those are all problems that would go away if we had the self-driving cars.
Geez...if they keep up with this trend, you might as well have a "Johnny Car" system that just automatically drives you around. Man...I hope I never see the day of that in the remaining days of my life.
They have this now, although it's amazingly expensive and probably no better at driving than you are anyway. It's called a "chauffeur".
For a small percent of the driving population, ABS actually makes you a less safe driver as ABS can not and does not stop a vehicle is a shorter distance than what a better than average driver can accomplish - on any road surface. This means for a small percentage of the driving population, ABS actually made you a less safe, more dangerous driver.
ABS can't do better, therefore it makes you less safe? Faulty comparison. ABS does exactly as well as the best human can. Slightly better, I would think -- how many people can pump their brakes at 15Hz?
Well, for one, you have to raise a lot more cash to create that endowment (read: lots more ads, which is what they want to avoid). For another, the interest from an endowment varies with the going interest rate. Interest rates can go into the toilet too. Like now, for example.
To paraphrase the great Mel Brooks, a travesty, and an unconstitutional abuse of the justice system is when I get a parking ticket. Kind of sad is when ten cops anally rape you to death with a broom handle.
Or you could just auto-throttle the ads to match the operating expenses.
It seems they get roughly 77.3 kajillion page hits per day; ads on only a tiny fraction of those page hits would suffice to fund them completely. Or, an even tinier percentage if they keep the donation system.
How the hell did a thread about CastleCops going down devolve into Yet Another Gun Thread(tm)? No matter, I suppose...
"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government." --Thomas Jefferson
Things were as they were in Jefferson's time. Today, if your aim is to be able to fight the military of the US, your best bet, according the latest results in far-off lands we have invaded unbidden, is not in firearms at all, but in remote-controlled bombs. If you are advocating making remote-controlled bombs legal, I'm afraid I'm going to have to call you a loon.
"That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper. natural and safe defense of a free State. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that. in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power." --George Mason
This point of this quote is that standing militaries (such as we have had here in the US ever since we decided wiping out the natives was more important) are to be avoided, and when needed they should be under civilian control. What this has to do with individual gun ownership, I'm not getting.
"The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams
I'm wondering under what authority he made this proclamation.
"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed -- unlike the citizens of other countries, whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." --James Madison
Never mind that, I don't trust you with arms.
"Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" --Patrick Henry
Ad hominem notwithstanding, Patrick Henry was a theocratic wingnut. That aside, his argument necessarily leads to the conclusion that you and I should be the ones controlling tanks and land mines and jet fighters and intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear explosives.
"[A]rms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but, since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up." --Thomas Paine
This sounds like an argument in favor of standing armies. Again, I don't see the connection.
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I don't know what you're suggesting, other than that you like to gripe.
Who should you have voted for instead? Hillary? She's a hardcore DLCer, working tirelessly to pull the Democratic Party to the right (not to mention her bog-standard low-road campaigning). McCain? Please.
No one ever said Obama was perfect or the Second Coming (except in Republican attack ads). I was a Kucinich man, till he dropped out, then for Edwards for the five minutes it took before he dropped out. Only then did I back Obama.
Obama was by no means my first choice, but, in the end, was by far the best choice.
That would cost far more than the printed magazine they previously delivered, and have a far inferior quality binding.
See, this opens up the whole can of worms of what it means for supply and demand when supply is effectively infinite. You say copies of popular stuff should cost more, but why? Are they harder to obtain than copies of the less popular stuff? Are there fewer of them?
Also, consider this: usually, when something is very popular, lots more of it is produced, which generally decreases the marginal cost of producing each one, and thus the final price charged for each one -- "economy of scale", as they say. This scenario turns that on its head: the more they make, the more they charge for each one. This is despite the fact that the marginal cost of "producing each one" (servicing a download) is more or less zero, regardless of the quantity produced.
Right, and cancer doesn't directly cause death. It's just your body's inability to accommodate it that causes death.
Sheesh.
Not quite. The unspoken premise of the anti-sex-ed crowd is that having sex is bad. Whereas in my argument it's that killing is bad. That is the logic. Now, if you're going to say that those two assertions are equally true, I don't know what to say to you, other than "go away, troll".
They have kind of a history of this, seeing as how the vast majority of TVs are still totally bereft of Internet connectivity.
It's even worse than that. A coworker of mine used to work for a company that made models for mortgage banks. Some of the banks started balking that the models were showing something bad was happening, so they demanded the models be changed. Instead of saying no, the company responded by giving the banks "knobs" to tweak. This shut them up, but also let them lie to themselves till it was too late.
I'm not sure what your point is. That segregation would solve all our problems?
I'm unsure why you're limiting your argument to accidents, nor why you are ignoring the vastly larger number of and hours spent using cars compared to guns, but the fact of the matter is that an automobile is a device which is designed to transport, whereas a gun is a device which is designed to wound or kill. Those are the facts.
And it's upheld by every third-world hellhole in existence. Your theory that more guns equals less crime/violence means Mexico, Columbia, and the whole of the Middle East should be veritable Gardens of Eden, yes?
I didn't need to put any words in your mouth. You advocate more guns; guns are there to make it easier to kill; therefore, you advocate greater ease of killing. Period.
This is the problem. Well, one of the many.
No, there are many many stupid things. Among them are mixing a load of guns in with a society.
You give a bunch of people a bunch of cars, you're going to get a lot of car trips. You give a bunch of people a bunch of TVs, you've going to get a lot of consumption of entertainment. You give a bunch of people a bunch of guns, you're going to get a lot of shootings. It really is that simple.
As far as this moronic "you don't like _____, therefore you aren't really tolerant" canard the GGP spouted, it's always been stupid bullshit.
And the final bit of stupid bullshit is your argument, oft repeated, that the best way to prevent crime is for everyone to be capable of killing one another with ease. Please, then, explain why the crime rate in the gun-crazy US is so much higher than in, say, gun-banning Japan. Surely, Japan is just one giant juicy target for criminals? A veritable "armed predator" magnet? Yet, much lower crime rates. How strange. It's as though the idea that spreading a lot of deadly weaponry around might be, what's the word? Oh yeah, "stupid".
Being tolerant doesn't mean being stupid.
I know it's considered poor form to reply to a .sig around here, but I just wanted to agree with you. Say "Happy Ramadan", dammit!
This is a sign that the system is very broken.
True. On the other hand, we'd also be missing things like Procol Harum's Whiter Shade Of Pale, among others.
Really? And having numbers would mean he did? Here:
XP = 5:04
Vista = 56:13
W7 = 1:03
There. Numbers. I guess that means I did the tests, huh?
But you can run your own tests and compare the order he gave with the order you get. Duh?
I just dread the day terrorists start pulling bombings of buses or trains or truck weigh stations or busy freeways or malls or what-have-you in the US. Because that day, all the stupidity we see in airports and airplanes will be copied into those venues too.
Unless, of course, we as a people finally pull our heads out instead.
1. Taxes are when we pay our bills. Microsoft (and all the other big companies) are shirking their share of the bills. You aren't against paying bills, are you?
2. We are idiots, but it's because we allow crap like offshoring and tax havens and all the rest of it to exist. Were we to have a sensible international trade policy (like the rest of the countries have), there wouldn't be a problem.
I guess not where you are, but where I am, the trains don't get in traffic jams. That's the good part.
The bad part is, you have to share the seats with a bunch of people who may be one or more of the following: stinky, noisy, diseased, rude, violent, or in some other novel way objectionable. That's if you can find an open seat. If not, you have to deal with these people and the lurching of the train while standing. Also, the trains insist on stopping at a bunch of places whether I want to go to them or not. Also, they never go to a bunch of places I might want to go from time to time.
Those are all problems that would go away if we had the self-driving cars.
They have this now, although it's amazingly expensive and probably no better at driving than you are anyway. It's called a "chauffeur".
ABS can't do better, therefore it makes you less safe? Faulty comparison. ABS does exactly as well as the best human can. Slightly better, I would think -- how many people can pump their brakes at 15Hz?
Well, for one, you have to raise a lot more cash to create that endowment (read: lots more ads, which is what they want to avoid). For another, the interest from an endowment varies with the going interest rate. Interest rates can go into the toilet too. Like now, for example.
To paraphrase the great Mel Brooks, a travesty, and an unconstitutional abuse of the justice system is when I get a parking ticket. Kind of sad is when ten cops anally rape you to death with a broom handle.
I think you'd have a good chance of winning this year's All-England Summarize Pratchett Competition.
Or you could just auto-throttle the ads to match the operating expenses.
It seems they get roughly 77.3 kajillion page hits per day; ads on only a tiny fraction of those page hits would suffice to fund them completely. Or, an even tinier percentage if they keep the donation system.
How the hell did a thread about CastleCops going down devolve into Yet Another Gun Thread(tm)? No matter, I suppose...
Things were as they were in Jefferson's time. Today, if your aim is to be able to fight the military of the US, your best bet, according the latest results in far-off lands we have invaded unbidden, is not in firearms at all, but in remote-controlled bombs. If you are advocating making remote-controlled bombs legal, I'm afraid I'm going to have to call you a loon.
This point of this quote is that standing militaries (such as we have had here in the US ever since we decided wiping out the natives was more important) are to be avoided, and when needed they should be under civilian control. What this has to do with individual gun ownership, I'm not getting.
I'm wondering under what authority he made this proclamation.
Never mind that, I don't trust you with arms.
Ad hominem notwithstanding, Patrick Henry was a theocratic wingnut. That aside, his argument necessarily leads to the conclusion that you and I should be the ones controlling tanks and land mines and jet fighters and intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear explosives.
This sounds like an argument in favor of standing armies. Again, I don't see the connection.