I have been having on-going debates about this style of use for 'begs the question' for quite sometime. I'm a big believer in the 'prompts the question' meaning rather than the 'assuming the conclusion' meaning. It serves a definite need, even if it is technically 'wrong'.
Language is constructed by consensus, and it evolves with time. Who can truly say what the 'proper' meaning for a word or idiom is? As long as the speaker manages to communicate his thought, it works.
So beware, oh ye members of the verbal amish. This speaker's use of 'begs the question' may seem an insolated incident. it is not... We who share his use are out there, walking among you. We could be your friends, your neighbors. We grow in strength with time-- ye, we do not die, we multiply...
Is there any way you can legally buy the right to listen to only one track of a cd? or are they 'bundling' good songs with others songs and requiring that you buy them all. Definitely sounds like an Anti-trust thing to me.
It occurs to me that the second amendment's right to bear arms was so that militia's could protect themselves from oppressive rulers who wanted to curtail their rights. In other words, the right to bear arms exists only in order to protect the other rights we are entitled to. -- Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion, freedom of thought. These are what the second amendment was made to protect...
I think it's reasonable of the ACLU to fight much more harder to protect our rights themselves rather than to try to fight for our right to use violence to fight for our rights. .. Course, I guess if the new world order comes and martial law is declared, I guess the joke will be on me. But in the meantime, I think the ACLU can do a lot more to protect my rights than my uzi can.
Fort Worth, Texas, July 9 (AP) An examination by AOL revealed last night that Open Source Sotware Gnutella found on a lonely Nullsoft website was just a harmless high-altitude weather balloon - not an open source napster. Excitement was high until Roger M. Ramey, head of the AOL legal forces, cleared up the mystery.
The bundle of source codes, executables, and remnants of a balloon were sent to AOL yesterday in the wake of reports that it was an Open Source Napster.
But the legal staff said the sofware was just the crushed remains of a ray wind target used to determine the direction and velocity of winds at high altitudes.
Irving Newton, forecaster at the AOL weather station here said, "we use them because they go much higher than the eye can see."
The weather balloon was found several days ago near the center of Nullsoft websites by websurfer W. W. Brazel. He said he didn't think much about it until he went to Slashdot, and heard the Open Source Napster reports.
He returned to his computer and downloaded the wreckage of the balloon, which he had placed under his favorites folder.
William H. Blanchard, supervisor of the Nullsoft group, reported the find to Ramey and the object was sent immediately to the AOL offices.
Ramey went on the air here last night to announce the Nullsoft discovery was not an open source napster.
Newton said that when rigged up, the instrument "looks like a six-pointed star, is sivery in appearance and rises in the air like a kite."
A public relations officer here said the balloon was in his office "and it'll probably stay right there."
Newton, who made the examination, said some 80 weather stations in the U. S. were using that type of balloon and that it could have come from any of them.
He said he had sent up identical balloons during the invasion of Okinawa to determine ballistics information for heavy guns.
Who can own a rock? Who can own a tree? Who can own a thought? Only the Great Spirit. --
All the rhetoric aside, it is worth stepping back, from time to time, and analyzing what morality really is. Murder is wrong. Breaking into someone's house is wrong. Such actions are clear and present causes of misery to others. Law are in part codifications of morality.
In contrast, some rules of etiquette are necesary to help society function smoothly, and these too are embodied in law. If I park too long in front of a parking meter, I have violated a law, but I have not committed an immoral act. Such is the case with intellectual property
Society will need a system to allow idea creators to eat in exchange for their ideas. And while I don't know what it will be, such a system will be found. But don't tell me that I'm morally wrong for reading something when I haven't purchased the right to do so. All I have done is increased the pressure on society to find a better reimbursement system.
The notion that an individual or a corporation can OWN an idea is the world's biggest Jedi Mind Trick, but the ranks of the weak-minded are thinning all the time...
The article mentions one alternative, the chordal keyboard. It sounds like an excellent idea-- where could I get such a thing-- either in hardware or software form?
> But theaters are privately owned businesses. If they don't want to admit children to certain movies, then that is their business.
What if they don't want to admit blacks or jews or gays? Is that just their business?
Perhaps there is a racial minority which has a higher incidence of committing violent crime-- is it then okay to deny members of that group access to a movie because it might make them 'more violent'? -- I'm a programmer. I have no desire to open my own theater, run my own restaurant, or operate my own bus line. I just don't want my children to have to sit at the back of the bus or use seperate drinking fountains. Discrimination is not okay. People should be judged not by the date of their birth but by the content of their soul. A huge burden of proof falls on someone who wants to discriminate to demonstrate a clear and present danger to society if they don't discriminate.
As frightening as the Blair Witch Project is, the film's horror pales in comparison to the terror I feel when viewing the furvor with which people oppose 16 year olds viewing such movies.
I know this may sound melodramatic or trite. Back in my own school days, I asked a history teacher how it was possible for entire nations could lapse into totalitarianism-- how such huge public support for the abolishment of individual rights could ever take place. I never really got a good answer.
The last few years have seen events which are, to me, chilling. As the internet offers children never before seen freedoms of speech, virtual assembly, and religion, the backlash against adolescent freedom is astounding. Politicans are clammoring for laws requiring filtering software in libraries. TVs are govermentally required to have filtering chips to screen programming. I am scared to be an american when most people think the world vision in Orwell's 1984 is disturbing simply because the main characters were over the age of 18.
I find it terrifying to turn on CNN and watch how eager people are to develop and implement censorship, to deny 16 yr olds their inalienable human right to free speech, free listening, and free thought. Even on slashdot, freethinking opensource-advocating forum that it is, you don't have too read too many comments before finding someone vehemently arguing for the disenfrachisement and continued oppression of a 16 yr old who wants to see southpark.
I wasn't in Russa when Stalin came to power, I wasn't in Germany in the 30s, and I missed out on Mao's rise to the top. So I have to wonder. Is this how it starts? Is what we are seeing now the mechanism which makes people argue for the reduction of their own freedom? Is this fundamentally the same phenomenon that, when hugely magnified, fuels the creation of a totalitarian state?
Of course, I'm optimistic. I'm not concerned that we're on the brink of a slippery slope to totalitarism. The US goverment is a robust system which is designed to check, balance, and limit goverment power. It has withstood world wars, mcarthyism, and it will withstand this. I don't think the technology exists to censor; Rather, the technology exists to for the first time truly free everyone from censorship.
-----
"A struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth...Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea."
-Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" (a weak and inconclusive point, but I couldn't resist)
Slashdot Mirror
I have been having on-going debates about this style of use for 'begs the question' for quite sometime. I'm a big believer in the 'prompts the question' meaning rather than the 'assuming the conclusion' meaning. It serves a definite need, even if it is technically 'wrong'.
Language is constructed by consensus, and it evolves with time. Who can truly say what the 'proper' meaning for a word or idiom is? As long as the speaker manages to communicate his thought, it works.
So beware, oh ye members of the verbal amish. This speaker's use of 'begs the question' may seem an insolated incident. it is not... We who share his use are out there, walking among you. We could be your friends, your neighbors. We grow in strength with time-- ye, we do not die, we multiply...
Is there any way you can legally buy the right to listen to only one track of a cd? or are they 'bundling' good songs with others songs and requiring that you buy them all. Definitely sounds like an Anti-trust thing to me.
It occurs to me that the second amendment's right to bear arms was so that militia's could protect themselves from oppressive rulers who wanted to curtail their rights. In other words, the right to bear arms exists only in order to protect the other rights we are entitled to.
--
Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion, freedom of thought. These are what the second amendment was made to protect...
I think it's reasonable of the ACLU to fight much more harder to protect our rights themselves rather than to try to fight for our right to use violence to fight for our rights.
..
Course, I guess if the new world order comes and martial law is declared, I guess the joke will be on me. But in the meantime, I think the ACLU can do a lot more to protect my rights than my uzi can.
Fort Worth, Texas, July 9 (AP) An examination by AOL revealed last night that Open Source Sotware Gnutella found on a lonely Nullsoft website was just a harmless high-altitude weather balloon - not an open source napster. Excitement was high until Roger M. Ramey, head of the AOL legal forces, cleared up the mystery.
The bundle of source codes, executables, and remnants of a balloon were sent to AOL yesterday in the wake of reports that it was an Open Source Napster.
But the legal staff said the sofware was just the crushed remains of a ray wind target used to determine the direction and velocity of winds at high altitudes.
Irving Newton, forecaster at the AOL weather station here said, "we use them because they go much higher than the eye can see."
The weather balloon was found several days ago near the center of Nullsoft websites by websurfer W. W. Brazel. He said he didn't think much about it until he went to Slashdot, and heard the Open Source Napster reports.
He returned to his computer and downloaded the wreckage of the balloon, which he had placed under his favorites folder.
William H. Blanchard, supervisor of the Nullsoft group, reported the find to Ramey and the object was sent immediately to the AOL offices.
Ramey went on the air here last night to announce the Nullsoft discovery was not an open source napster.
Newton said that when rigged up, the instrument "looks like a six-pointed star, is sivery in appearance and rises in the air like a kite."
A public relations officer here said the balloon was in his office "and it'll probably stay right there."
Newton, who made the examination, said some 80 weather stations in the U. S. were using that type of balloon and that it could have come from any of them.
He said he had sent up identical balloons during the invasion of Okinawa to determine ballistics information for heavy guns.
Who can own a rock? Who can own a tree? Who can own a thought? Only the Great Spirit.
--
All the rhetoric aside, it is worth stepping back, from time to time, and analyzing what morality really is. Murder is wrong. Breaking into someone's house is wrong. Such actions are clear and present causes of misery to others. Law are in part codifications of morality.
In contrast, some rules of etiquette are necesary to help society function smoothly, and these too are embodied in law. If I park too long in front of a parking meter, I have violated a law, but I have not committed an immoral act. Such is the case with intellectual property
Society will need a system to allow idea creators to eat in exchange for their ideas. And while I don't know what it will be, such a system will be found. But don't tell me that I'm morally wrong for reading something when I haven't purchased the right to do so. All I have done is increased the pressure on society to find a better reimbursement system.
The notion that an individual or a corporation can OWN an idea is the world's biggest Jedi Mind Trick, but the ranks of the weak-minded are thinning all the time...
The article mentions one alternative, the chordal keyboard. It sounds like an excellent idea-- where could I get such a thing-- either in hardware or software form?
> But theaters are privately owned businesses. If they don't want to admit children to certain movies, then that is their business.
What if they don't want to admit blacks or jews or gays? Is that just their business?
Perhaps there is a racial minority which has a higher incidence of committing violent crime-- is it then okay to deny members of that group access to a movie because it might make them 'more violent'?
--
I'm a programmer. I have no desire to open my own theater, run my own restaurant, or operate my own bus line. I just don't want my children to have to sit at the back of the bus or use seperate drinking fountains. Discrimination is not okay. People should be judged not by the date of their birth but by the content of their soul. A huge burden of proof falls on someone who wants to discriminate to demonstrate a clear and present danger to society if they don't discriminate.
I find this whole issue terrifying.
As frightening as the Blair Witch Project is, the film's horror pales in comparison to the terror I feel when viewing the furvor with which people oppose 16 year olds viewing such movies.
I know this may sound melodramatic or trite. Back in my own school days, I asked a history teacher how it was possible for entire nations could lapse into totalitarianism-- how such huge public support for the abolishment of individual rights could ever take place. I never really got a good answer.
The last few years have seen events which are, to me, chilling. As the internet offers children never before seen freedoms of speech, virtual assembly, and religion, the backlash against adolescent freedom is astounding. Politicans are clammoring for laws requiring filtering software in libraries. TVs are govermentally required to have filtering chips to screen programming. I am scared to be an american when most people think the world vision in Orwell's 1984 is disturbing simply because the main characters were over the age of 18.
I find it terrifying to turn on CNN and watch how eager people are to develop and implement censorship, to deny 16 yr olds their inalienable human right to free speech, free listening, and free thought. Even on slashdot, freethinking opensource-advocating forum that it is, you don't have too read too many comments before finding someone vehemently arguing for the disenfrachisement and continued oppression of a 16 yr old who wants to see southpark.
I wasn't in Russa when Stalin came to power, I wasn't in Germany in the 30s, and I missed out on Mao's rise to the top. So I have to wonder. Is this how it starts? Is what we are seeing now the mechanism which makes people argue for the reduction of their own freedom? Is this fundamentally the same phenomenon that, when hugely magnified, fuels the creation of a totalitarian state?
Of course, I'm optimistic. I'm not concerned that we're on the brink of a slippery slope to totalitarism. The US goverment is a robust system which is designed to check, balance, and limit goverment power. It has withstood world wars, mcarthyism, and it will withstand this. I don't think the technology exists to censor; Rather, the technology exists to for the first time truly free everyone from censorship.
-----
"A struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth...Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea."
-Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf"
(a weak and inconclusive point, but I couldn't resist)