I fix a leaking faucet cause I can't friggin sleep at night from the "drip.... drip.... drip...." Again, another purely selfish motivation. If I thought fixing faucets was an inherent good, I'd break into people's homes to make sure their faucets were not leaking, but still it would be producing SELF SATISFACTION, and ergo it would be selfish.
Pure Altruism does not exist, there are just varying relative degrees of selfish behavior.
Even what you are saying now you do not to educate me, but to prove that you are right, and therefore more superior than I, ergo feeding your self satisfaction. You can go and lie to your concious self about it, but deep down you know its all a crock. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Danila,
You say you do it because "it feels right". It is YOUR feeling that you feel there, not how the person you help feels. You do good because IT MAKES YOU FEEL RIGHT. This is indeed how we are wired, to do good things because it makes US, as INDIVIDUALS feel good ABOUT OURSELVES.
Sadists get the EXACT SAME feeling by hurting others as you do by helping others. Both your actions, and that of the sadist, are entirely selfish.
a) raising tax rates has NEVER increased tax revinues. Ever.
b) I encourage as many baby boomers as possible to do their part for mother Earth and my paycheck by early euthanization. I'll miss some of you, but frankly, most of you are just dead weight to me. You boomers are responsible for this massive federal debt, our crushing bureaucracy and nanny state, and by the time I live long enough to enjoy any of it, it won't exist anymore, so F you very much.
c) Did I mention that raising tax rates has never increased tax revinues?
What is really annoying is that this Act is supported by Barbara Boxer (California Democrat). For some reason California's Senators are extremely anti-tech industry and yet they keep getting elected. The movie/music industry is big, but it doesn't hold a candle to the tech/consumer electronics industries in CA.
I just don't get it. I hope we do slashdot them.
What you don't get is that congresscritters vote for the causes of the people who get them elected: those who donate to campaigns and who vote in elections. Geeks, generally, are aloof to both activities, in the snotty and ignorant belief that government is 'obsolete' or some other rationalization for political laziness.
" One reason I wouldn't do it for a potential $5000 is that somebody else might beat me to it. Why waste my time?"
Oh, my, isn't that the sort of creed that sent men to the moon, that sent Columbus sailing, and that drove every inventor and scientist in history to make their mark in the world....
Frankly, it's a good thing you didn't write it. I don't think your imagination is up to the challenge.
Exactly how is a measurement system based on one arbitrarily chosen natural constant for each type of measurement any better than a system with no constants, only arbitrariness. I thought you europhilic fasco-socialist moral relativists loved arbitrary rules....
Same with 'english' paper, bucko. Two Papers (8 1/2" x 11") will equal a Tabloid (11" x 17"), and two of those will equal newsprint (17" x 22"), etc... What, you think that American printing companies have been throwing away tons of paper all these years?
Rather than basing the paper size on some cute mathematical trick, it was based on the capacity of common sheet fed offset presses to handle a maximum printed sheet size of 22" x 34" plus a one inch border on the raw 24" x 36" sheet produced by paper makers (a 2 foot by 3 foot sheet) to handle registration and crop marks.
So the origin of these sheets is the desire of paper wholesalers to sell their product in easy integer units of 2' by 3' size, where 500 sheets of the standard density equals 20 pounds (which is where the term '20 lb paper' comes from).
I've talked to people I know who are Prius owners. They all say that if you got less than EPA milage with your old car, it's gonna be even worse with the hybrid: i.e. if you are a lead foot, the problem isn't your car, it's you. Stop treating your car like the Ferrari it's not, stop road raging, and chill the hell out. Life isn't going to go by any faster with you freaking out on it and your car.
The point of HEVs, like EVs, is to change your lifestyle. If you aren't willing and able, you might as well just enjoy racking up the bad karma with your SUV.
Gee, if I write a virus and cut a deal with a friend to split the reward, I'll be able to go back to college, pay my tuition, and I'll have a nice quiet state-paid dorm room to study in for three to seven years.
I don't know about you, but I'll rather be keeping my win98 systems safely protected behind nat and a strict firewall than trusting some stranger offering me unofficial service packs.
Is this a joke? What happened to your Open Source Religion? If just anybody can offer a patch for linux, and you trust THEM, why won't you trust someone else offering a patch for Windoze? A bit hypocritical, don't you think?
Do you have any idea of how 'careful' our troops were, compared to other conflicts?
Fact: 14,000 french civilians died on D-Day within 20 miles of the Normandy coast. ONE DAY.
During the 'active' phase of the Iraq war, independent sources could not document more than a few hundred Iraqi civilian dead. This was over a month.
Since then, far more Iraqis have died AT THE HANDS OF OTHER IRAQIS.
I also find it odd that those complaining about Iraqi deaths have not documented how many Iraqi lives have been saved by US military medical treatment.
Those opposing the war suffer from a severe fact deficit. I run into these fools claiming hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths as if they are facts.
One more question for those yakking about Iraqi 'civilian' deaths: How can you tell the difference between a real dead civilian Iraqi and an insurgent (Iraqi or foreigner) whose weapon was taken by his comrades? You can't.
Apparently none of you is a fourth degree brother.
The first secrets were invented specifically to get laid.
The second set of secrets was invented so the misogynistic pedants wouldn't be upset that they put all that effort into joining to find out it's just a scam to get laid.
The third set of secrets is so you can tell the misogynistic pedants from the rest.
I'm not saying what the fourth set of secrets is for.
The point of developers holding off on releasing patches that are not currently being exploited is PR: If an exploit occurs, you get to immediately whip out the proper patch developed months ago to 'prove' to your customer base that you are very responsive to their needs, and 'obviously' responsive in a way that those evil open source ninnies could never do without a profit incentive... blah blah blah...
What is means is that when the rest of the world pressures Americans to be more like them, Americans, being contrarians, say, "Hell, NO, I won't, I'm goin' the other way."
Americans tend to be more xenophilic when we are being the most ignored.
The rest of the world works the same way, you just haven't noticed it. We studiously ignore the rest of the world when we can, and that makes y'all want to be more and more like Americans...
Typical arrogance of furriners, dagnabit.
Barratry, otherwise known as an act by an uppity serf who insists on wasting the kings time and money in court, is typically little known here specifically because access to the courts is a recognised right here (oh, yeah, and we aren't serfs, unlike the rest of y'all).
Nor are we "the youngest country in the world", as you'd like to claim. Since you seem to be counting our age by the age of our government system, it can pretty reasonably be said that, as one of the oldest democratic governments in the world (the rest of y'all didn't get democratic til much later), that we are one of the oldest countries in the world.
The lack of health care is disinformation. We have plenty of health care for those who cannot afford it. We also have plenty of health care for those who can more than afford it. The only shortage of health care are for those on the margin, who are productive citizens, but are being priced out of the market by the increased demand created by the fact that the rationed health care systems of other countries forces their citizens in need of life-saving care to come to the US and pay cash.
When your own country's vaunted socialized health care system actually has waiting lists for terminal patients that is actually shorter than their life expectancy, then you can bitch about care here in the US.
As for our nuclear capability, I have only one thing to say: when the rest of y'all value our lives as much as you do those of your own families, we won't need our nukes. Til then, we'll be keeping the rockets fuelled... thanks anyways.
de Toqueville (if you read the articles) said we were exceptional when we were less than 50 years old. We've been exceptional in the interim almost completely (with the possible interregnum of the Roosevelt-Carter period, as was also noted in the article.)
You are right that we MAY not remain exceptional, but that will only occur if the rest of the world stops acting so insistent that we start doing things their way. What has happened since 9/11 is that a good chunk of the American people have rediscovered that they are NOT pseudo-europhiles, they are not pseudo-sophisticates, and they are NOT "citizens of the world". They've also realized that good and evil are not obsolete terms, that moral equivalency is a bankrupt concept.
The Economist isn't a US publication, BTW, it is British. It is also quite right. The US IS exceptional, it will remain exceptional, and the more that our enemies, be they islamists, chinese, or francophiles, take steps to attack us for it, the more we will choose to be more exceptional.
The rest of the world needs to realize that we are contrarians: we succeed because we do the opposite of what your tired old world wisdom thinks we will do.
They are heroes to those who perceive the guys they nail or turn in are bad. As another poster said, if these fellows were vigilantizing on spammers, we'd all be cheering them on.
If these fellows were vigilantizing on al-Qaeda, some of us would be cheering them on, while others would be condeming them, each based upon their own prejudices.
If they were vigilantizing against the heavy handed anti-property tactics of the EU, then most people here would consider them to be the worste rat bastards alive.
If their application was used to expose radical leftists giving aid and comfort to terrorists, too many here would automatically assume they are bad guys.
If, instead, they were using their tactics to report every time the FBI filed a Secret Search Warrant, they'd be heroes.
The fact is that these fellows are simply using the same irregular tactics that those they oppose use. This is to be expected, and is the only possible tactic to use in effectively opposing an entity which uses guerilla tactics against you.
And exactly WHAT law was broken? In the case of Microsoft, the corporation (mind you, it is an American corporation, NOT a European one, so the EU has no right to confiscate its property) is guilty of not allowing other companies to sell their products in Microsofts 'storefront' (i.e. desktop), free of charge, taking up rack space, and thus limiting the ability of Microsoft to earn a profit for ITS OWN shareholders.
What the EU is essentially saying, is that if you own a coffee shop, then other coffee makers have a right to sell coffee in your shop, that you have no right to limit what coffee you supply to your customers to the brand(s) you have a contractual relationship with.
The purpose isn't to go head to head with the US military. The purpose of the US Military, when each member is sworn in, is to "defend THE CONSTITUTION against all enemies, foreign and domestic." No military personnel are obligated under law to defend abusive politicians, in fact, it is their obligation to defend AGAINST such governments.
The purpose of the 2nd amendment is to enable the people to remove abusive politicians with prejudice when they seriously violate the constitution.
The looters had nothing to fear, as they had nothing worth looting. THe looted fled, to preserve what little they had left, and part of that was distrust in the governments that were supposed to serve them, not subdue them.
I happen to agree that Corporate law gives too much power to organizations and does not hold responsible the individuals who make the decisions that are abusive.
This is not the point.
The point is that the moment that government has the right to tell a proprietary software owner to open their software, it also has the right to tell an open software developer to close their software. It is the death of the Open Software Movement when the right to choose to make software open or not is taken out of the hands of the developer, and put in the hands of the government.
The answer is fairly easy: it's a selection effect. The rest of the world had such bad government for so long, that all the people with genetic mistrust of government fled to the US. Those that stayed where they were have a genetic dumb serf tendency.
Slashdot Mirror
I fix a leaking faucet cause I can't friggin sleep at night from the "drip.... drip.... drip...." Again, another purely selfish motivation. If I thought fixing faucets was an inherent good, I'd break into people's homes to make sure their faucets were not leaking, but still it would be producing SELF SATISFACTION, and ergo it would be selfish. Pure Altruism does not exist, there are just varying relative degrees of selfish behavior. Even what you are saying now you do not to educate me, but to prove that you are right, and therefore more superior than I, ergo feeding your self satisfaction. You can go and lie to your concious self about it, but deep down you know its all a crock. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
You say you do it because "it feels right". It is YOUR feeling that you feel there, not how the person you help feels. You do good because IT MAKES YOU FEEL RIGHT. This is indeed how we are wired, to do good things because it makes US, as INDIVIDUALS feel good ABOUT OURSELVES.
Sadists get the EXACT SAME feeling by hurting others as you do by helping others. Both your actions, and that of the sadist, are entirely selfish.
b) I encourage as many baby boomers as possible to do their part for mother Earth and my paycheck by early euthanization. I'll miss some of you, but frankly, most of you are just dead weight to me. You boomers are responsible for this massive federal debt, our crushing bureaucracy and nanny state, and by the time I live long enough to enjoy any of it, it won't exist anymore, so F you very much.
c) Did I mention that raising tax rates has never increased tax revinues?
d) back to (b)
I just don't get it. I hope we do slashdot them.
What you don't get is that congresscritters vote for the causes of the people who get them elected: those who donate to campaigns and who vote in elections. Geeks, generally, are aloof to both activities, in the snotty and ignorant belief that government is 'obsolete' or some other rationalization for political laziness.
Oh, my, isn't that the sort of creed that sent men to the moon, that sent Columbus sailing, and that drove every inventor and scientist in history to make their mark in the world....
Frankly, it's a good thing you didn't write it. I don't think your imagination is up to the challenge.
Rather than basing the paper size on some cute mathematical trick, it was based on the capacity of common sheet fed offset presses to handle a maximum printed sheet size of 22" x 34" plus a one inch border on the raw 24" x 36" sheet produced by paper makers (a 2 foot by 3 foot sheet) to handle registration and crop marks.
So the origin of these sheets is the desire of paper wholesalers to sell their product in easy integer units of 2' by 3' size, where 500 sheets of the standard density equals 20 pounds (which is where the term '20 lb paper' comes from).
Is this a perpissual motion machine?
If XCOR Aerospace shows up for this event, I predict that they'll win categories 1, 3, and 5.
I've talked to people I know who are Prius owners. They all say that if you got less than EPA milage with your old car, it's gonna be even worse with the hybrid: i.e. if you are a lead foot, the problem isn't your car, it's you. Stop treating your car like the Ferrari it's not, stop road raging, and chill the hell out. Life isn't going to go by any faster with you freaking out on it and your car.
The point of HEVs, like EVs, is to change your lifestyle. If you aren't willing and able, you might as well just enjoy racking up the bad karma with your SUV.
Gee, if I write a virus and cut a deal with a friend to split the reward, I'll be able to go back to college, pay my tuition, and I'll have a nice quiet state-paid dorm room to study in for three to seven years.
Is this a joke? What happened to your Open Source Religion? If just anybody can offer a patch for linux, and you trust THEM, why won't you trust someone else offering a patch for Windoze? A bit hypocritical, don't you think?
Fact: 14,000 french civilians died on D-Day within 20 miles of the Normandy coast. ONE DAY.
During the 'active' phase of the Iraq war, independent sources could not document more than a few hundred Iraqi civilian dead. This was over a month.
Since then, far more Iraqis have died AT THE HANDS OF OTHER IRAQIS.
I also find it odd that those complaining about Iraqi deaths have not documented how many Iraqi lives have been saved by US military medical treatment.
Those opposing the war suffer from a severe fact deficit. I run into these fools claiming hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths as if they are facts.
One more question for those yakking about Iraqi 'civilian' deaths: How can you tell the difference between a real dead civilian Iraqi and an insurgent (Iraqi or foreigner) whose weapon was taken by his comrades? You can't.
Don't get played by Islamist propaganda.
The first secrets were invented specifically to get laid.
The second set of secrets was invented so the misogynistic pedants wouldn't be upset that they put all that effort into joining to find out it's just a scam to get laid.
The third set of secrets is so you can tell the misogynistic pedants from the rest.
I'm not saying what the fourth set of secrets is for.
What is means is that when the rest of the world pressures Americans to be more like them, Americans, being contrarians, say, "Hell, NO, I won't, I'm goin' the other way." Americans tend to be more xenophilic when we are being the most ignored. The rest of the world works the same way, you just haven't noticed it. We studiously ignore the rest of the world when we can, and that makes y'all want to be more and more like Americans...
Typical arrogance of furriners, dagnabit. Barratry, otherwise known as an act by an uppity serf who insists on wasting the kings time and money in court, is typically little known here specifically because access to the courts is a recognised right here (oh, yeah, and we aren't serfs, unlike the rest of y'all). Nor are we "the youngest country in the world", as you'd like to claim. Since you seem to be counting our age by the age of our government system, it can pretty reasonably be said that, as one of the oldest democratic governments in the world (the rest of y'all didn't get democratic til much later), that we are one of the oldest countries in the world. The lack of health care is disinformation. We have plenty of health care for those who cannot afford it. We also have plenty of health care for those who can more than afford it. The only shortage of health care are for those on the margin, who are productive citizens, but are being priced out of the market by the increased demand created by the fact that the rationed health care systems of other countries forces their citizens in need of life-saving care to come to the US and pay cash. When your own country's vaunted socialized health care system actually has waiting lists for terminal patients that is actually shorter than their life expectancy, then you can bitch about care here in the US. As for our nuclear capability, I have only one thing to say: when the rest of y'all value our lives as much as you do those of your own families, we won't need our nukes. Til then, we'll be keeping the rockets fuelled... thanks anyways.
You are right that we MAY not remain exceptional, but that will only occur if the rest of the world stops acting so insistent that we start doing things their way. What has happened since 9/11 is that a good chunk of the American people have rediscovered that they are NOT pseudo-europhiles, they are not pseudo-sophisticates, and they are NOT "citizens of the world". They've also realized that good and evil are not obsolete terms, that moral equivalency is a bankrupt concept.
The rest of the world needs to realize that we are contrarians: we succeed because we do the opposite of what your tired old world wisdom thinks we will do.
If these fellows were vigilantizing on al-Qaeda, some of us would be cheering them on, while others would be condeming them, each based upon their own prejudices.
If they were vigilantizing against the heavy handed anti-property tactics of the EU, then most people here would consider them to be the worste rat bastards alive.
If their application was used to expose radical leftists giving aid and comfort to terrorists, too many here would automatically assume they are bad guys.
If, instead, they were using their tactics to report every time the FBI filed a Secret Search Warrant, they'd be heroes.
The fact is that these fellows are simply using the same irregular tactics that those they oppose use. This is to be expected, and is the only possible tactic to use in effectively opposing an entity which uses guerilla tactics against you.
What the EU is essentially saying, is that if you own a coffee shop, then other coffee makers have a right to sell coffee in your shop, that you have no right to limit what coffee you supply to your customers to the brand(s) you have a contractual relationship with.
The purpose of the 2nd amendment is to enable the people to remove abusive politicians with prejudice when they seriously violate the constitution.
The looters had nothing to fear, as they had nothing worth looting. THe looted fled, to preserve what little they had left, and part of that was distrust in the governments that were supposed to serve them, not subdue them.
This is not the point.
The point is that the moment that government has the right to tell a proprietary software owner to open their software, it also has the right to tell an open software developer to close their software. It is the death of the Open Software Movement when the right to choose to make software open or not is taken out of the hands of the developer, and put in the hands of the government.
The answer is fairly easy: it's a selection effect. The rest of the world had such bad government for so long, that all the people with genetic mistrust of government fled to the US. Those that stayed where they were have a genetic dumb serf tendency.