I don't know. I think robotic armies would completely eliminate the horrors of war. Either you go to war with another country with a robot army (in which case you have a protracted war of production, same as any war between world powers since 1914 except with no human lives lost in the process) or you totally overpower the enemy (meaning they immediately surrender). Now, it would suck if the wrong people had robots, but war would be a remarkably tidy business.
War is what happens when treaties stop working. You can't have a treaty for some other competition to replace war--if that was the case, FIFA would have replaced the UN by now and Brazil would be a superpower. The purpose of war is to use force in order to impose your will on the enemy, whoever those people may be. The idea is, after your robots destroy the enemy's robots, they will continue to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and population until they give up.
1) The US of A is a Constitutional Republic. Is that OK with you?
Not all constitutional republics are democracies, but the US is. That's not OK with me but I bet it's okay with the parent poster.
2) How does the Shaw of Iran and how he came to power fit into your enlighten worldview?
You mean "Shah." "Shaw" was an Irish playwright. The Shah probably wasn't legitimate either, but at far as illegitimate governments go he wasn't that bad.
Genocide requires intent. If Israel intended to commit genocide, there would be no Palestinians left. Maybe a few token Palestinians living on reservations.
and has violated more UN resolutions than any other nation, since the establishment of the General Assembly
Irrelevant. The UN is illegitimate since at least a majority of member nations are illegitimate governments.
It also denies full citizenship rights to some, based on ethnicity - despite being indigenous to the region.
Many Arabs are full-fledged Israeli citizens, who even hold the right to vote. The only difference in citizenship rights is that Israeli Arabs are not compelled to serve in the military.
It was created through acts of terror against the UK.
So was Ireland. So was the United States, by that standard. The King David Hotel bombing was against a legitimate target (the hotel was the headquarters of the British colonial authority) and multiple warnings were issued before the bombing. The Jewish population of Israel never attacked buses, pizzerias, or other civilian targets. They never even attacked the UK itself. Furthermore, the creation of Israel was a result of the Balfour Declaration, made by the UK in 1917, decades before the King David Hotel bombing, and secured in a war of independence, not against Britain but against nearly every Arab country that existed.
You also should understand that the UK was perhaps the greatest imperial power the world has ever known, and managed to piss off about half the world in the process. Iraq? The UK invented Iraq by conquering most of the Middle East and dividing it into different British colonies. Same with Jordan. Anyway, eventually it became more expensive than it was worth and the British gave up. The point is, it's just plain wrong for you to cast the British as the good guys here, as they were one of the most genocidal imperial powers in world history. Not that I want to bomb London, but on the other hand I have minimal sympathy for mid-20th-century British bureaucrats overseeing an imperial possession and consider such persons very legitimate targets.
Just because a government doesn't have a right to exist doesn't justify going to war. Sometimes war isn't prudent, and sometimes letting the government carry on unmolested is the lesser of two evils.
Ahmadinejad is an administrator. No more, no less. The real power lies with Ayotollah Ali Khamenei, who as Supreme Leader controls the military and media. Even if you elected John Locke or Thomas Paine to be President of Iran, they would be completely paralyzed. (Let's gloss over the fact that John Locke and Thomas Paine aren't Iranian citizens. Or alive.)
Lets, for the sake of argument take the position that this is actually an ill person. What exactly was he supposed to say?
From a pure Machiavellian standpoint, which is where Romney already stands, he could have promised to think seriously about the issue and about the man's situation without committing to actually changing any of his policy positions. Then the YouTube moment is ruined and he gets away with opposing medical cannabis later on.
Beyond that, besides trying to make a federalist argument that it isn't the president that would arrest him but the state government he is pretty much SOL.
It's also wrong. Cannabis prohibition is a federal law. The state legalizations are at best declarations of "your local police, sheriff, and state patrol won't enforce the law in this situation". Doesn't stop the DEA, just ask Peter McWilliams.
Pot does ruin lives. It makes people paranoid and stupid and is linked to paranoid schizophrenia. It should not be legalized.
Let's be fair here, alright? Cannabis is usually smoked, and smoke inhalation is bad for the lungs. Furthermore, smoking any kind of plant introduces carcinogens. THC, the drug ingredient of cannabis, has effects on memory and cognition, as well as causing paranoia in some cases. However, cannabis is not physically addictive or chemically toxic, nor is it possible to take in a lethal dose of it. Cannabis doesn't make people angry or violent. It doesn't cause hangovers or other long-lasting toxic effects. It compares quite favorably with tobacco and alcohol, both of which are and should remain legal. The problem with cannabis is not, and has never been, its health effects, but rather the "subversive" "cannabis drug culture" (as opposed to the perfectly normal and mainstream alcohol drug culture, as tobacco is increasingly becoming taboo as well).
No, it's not. Unjust laws will be broken and just laws will be followed. It was and still is considered good to actually support someone you like. The law itself does nothing to influence whether it's considered just or not just look at the drug laws.
So how exactly do you propose to abolish copyright without making everyone think copyright is unjust? And if everyone believes copyright is unjust, how exactly will they advocate for publishers to pay royalties, which you're also going to abolish, to the authors?
In other words you want authors to be paid more. For what end?
I think authors are paid enough as it is. I'm wary of changing the system from this point because as far as books go, we know that what we have works. As far as other media go, there are reforms we can undertake that won't eliminate copyright entirely.
I don't want them to be paid less per se. I just don't think you can own information. Owning information means that you own a tiny piece of everyone else's property. It's also completely arbitrary unless you think IP should be owned eternally like tangible goods or have my views.
So for vaguely defined ideological reasons you want to undertake reforms that have a real risk of harming literacy and public discourse in this country.
Money will go to the authors as shown in the Tolkien example. That is what I'm saying and you're disagreeing with. We've gone all the way to the beginning again almost in record time:). I don't think we'll get any further.
On the contrary. I've concluded that you have almost no good justification for your opinions. That's definite progress, at least on my part, because now I can safely dismiss your arguments as the rubbish that they are instead of continuing to seriously entertain them.
That doesn't even enter into it. If the law has a great effect on what people do then people wouldn't have preferred the authorized version.
That's an incredibly simplistic view. The principle of copyright protection was written into the law. The fact that Tolkein's book in particular was not under copyright was due to, as I said, loopholes in the law. The spirit of the law remained, as did the public's sense of how justice is served in such cases. These are the very things you're advocating getting rid of.
I'm just wondering how why you want a law if it's not going to be enforced.
Stopping publishers from printing copyrighted books when they don't have the author's permission and don't pay royalties to the author is a very simple enforcement task. No "war on piracy" needed.
I don't think it will be normal royalties in a system w/o copyright either.
But in the Tolkein example, the public outcry was in favor of paying Tolkein normal royalties. Are you now saying that example is completely irrelevant to your argument?
But you can bet your ass that there will be an official version, signed copies and a tip jar.
In other words you want authors to be paid less. For what end?
My firm belief grounded in empirical evidence is that books will still be written and that people are somewhat rational and will pay for things they like.
Some books will still be written, but probably fewer than before. People will still pay for them, but the money won't go to the authors. You haven't shown me yet how this is an improvement.
I was surprised when Microsoft announced that Windows 7 (successor to Vista) will probably be out in about 16 months.
If Vista was any indication, Microsoft announcing that Windows 7 will be out in 16 months means that delays will push back the Windows 7 release to about 2013, at which point it will have half the initially promised feature set and require at least a 40-core processor to work properly. Meanwhile, the Linux kernel will be at version 2.6.557 and Apple will be making advertisements about people downgrading to Vista and releasing Mac OS X "Serval". Hurd will still be in development.
After Skylab impacted right on top of it at 9.8 meters per second.
I think Skylab was a bit higher than 1 second above the Earth's surface. I'm pretty sure it was falling faster than that. (Hint: You mean meters per seconds squared.)
That doesn't really mean a damn thing. I mean, computing is already pervasive, but knowing how to use a computer or write code still doesn't help me use my microwave or refrigerator, even though both of them probably have microcontrollers.
You don't get the feeling they're waiting for a critical point and then planning to release oil faster than ever for another 5 years, bankrupting everyone who invested in alternative energy, before lowering production again and repeating the cycle?
Failing government services are rarely abolished, just half-assedly reformed until they appear to work better while in fact degrading the quality of service.
Are you kidding? You know damn well adding a replaceable battery would make the legs at least 5mm thicker! They had to balance many competing design goals and I'm confident they made the right decision.
To combat unscrupulous printers who were engaged in the large-scale printing and selling of "pirated copies" of books during the eighteenth century. I fail to see what that has to do with the issue at hand.
That is the issue at hand, and that's why copyright abolition would hurt authors. I'm glad we're agreed on both of these points, but about half of the other people in this discussion really do want to abolish copyright.
If you didn't notice, Enron was a failed company. Now, it may be the case that many companies, like Enron, are scams rather than profit-seeking companies. And it may be that many other companies, like Paul Newman's, use the company's goal (profit) as a means to a further goal (benefitting charity). But the purpose of a company in and of itself is profit. As much profit as possible. Look at Wal-Mart. Do they intend to destroy and homogenize small-town middle America? Is that the purpose for which it was created? Was it created to create jobs overseas, or to hold down increases in the cost of living? No, it was created to make money. It does all the other things as a side effect.
There is no indication that Microsoft exists to do anything other than to earn income and make its owners (shareholders) fabulously wealthy. It has in fact succeeded in that goal for many years, and while things may change, Gates, Allen, and Ballmer are all billionaires, and hundreds more are multimillionaires.
For-profit companies don't exist to create "influence", they exist to turn a profit. That means money. Now, influence is a means to make money, but if you have all the influence in the world but no money, you have failed as a company. (Conversely, if you have all the money in the world but no influence, you win!)
Slashdot Mirror
That sounds exactly as insightful as I thought it would once you said "Gundam".
Also, if we have mass armies of robots, won't the victor simply be the one with the most natural resources (metal, power, etc) to waste?War is already based on production and logistics, and has been since the Industrial Revolution.
I don't know. I think robotic armies would completely eliminate the horrors of war. Either you go to war with another country with a robot army (in which case you have a protracted war of production, same as any war between world powers since 1914 except with no human lives lost in the process) or you totally overpower the enemy (meaning they immediately surrender). Now, it would suck if the wrong people had robots, but war would be a remarkably tidy business.
War is what happens when treaties stop working. You can't have a treaty for some other competition to replace war--if that was the case, FIFA would have replaced the UN by now and Brazil would be a superpower. The purpose of war is to use force in order to impose your will on the enemy, whoever those people may be. The idea is, after your robots destroy the enemy's robots, they will continue to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and population until they give up.
Not all constitutional republics are democracies, but the US is. That's not OK with me but I bet it's okay with the parent poster.
2) How does the Shaw of Iran and how he came to power fit into your enlighten worldview?You mean "Shah." "Shaw" was an Irish playwright. The Shah probably wasn't legitimate either, but at far as illegitimate governments go he wasn't that bad.
Genocide requires intent. If Israel intended to commit genocide, there would be no Palestinians left. Maybe a few token Palestinians living on reservations.
and has violated more UN resolutions than any other nation, since the establishment of the General AssemblyIrrelevant. The UN is illegitimate since at least a majority of member nations are illegitimate governments.
It also denies full citizenship rights to some, based on ethnicity - despite being indigenous to the region.Many Arabs are full-fledged Israeli citizens, who even hold the right to vote. The only difference in citizenship rights is that Israeli Arabs are not compelled to serve in the military.
It was created through acts of terror against the UK.So was Ireland. So was the United States, by that standard. The King David Hotel bombing was against a legitimate target (the hotel was the headquarters of the British colonial authority) and multiple warnings were issued before the bombing. The Jewish population of Israel never attacked buses, pizzerias, or other civilian targets. They never even attacked the UK itself. Furthermore, the creation of Israel was a result of the Balfour Declaration, made by the UK in 1917, decades before the King David Hotel bombing, and secured in a war of independence, not against Britain but against nearly every Arab country that existed.
You also should understand that the UK was perhaps the greatest imperial power the world has ever known, and managed to piss off about half the world in the process. Iraq? The UK invented Iraq by conquering most of the Middle East and dividing it into different British colonies. Same with Jordan. Anyway, eventually it became more expensive than it was worth and the British gave up. The point is, it's just plain wrong for you to cast the British as the good guys here, as they were one of the most genocidal imperial powers in world history. Not that I want to bomb London, but on the other hand I have minimal sympathy for mid-20th-century British bureaucrats overseeing an imperial possession and consider such persons very legitimate targets.
Just because a government doesn't have a right to exist doesn't justify going to war. Sometimes war isn't prudent, and sometimes letting the government carry on unmolested is the lesser of two evils.
The point is that your opinions are completely impossible to implement, because any country has a vested interest in calling its enemies illegitimate.
Of course, I don't think any government is legitimate. What makes democracy so great, the fact that it's a gangbang instead of a serial rapist?
Ahmadinejad is an administrator. No more, no less. The real power lies with Ayotollah Ali Khamenei, who as Supreme Leader controls the military and media. Even if you elected John Locke or Thomas Paine to be President of Iran, they would be completely paralyzed. (Let's gloss over the fact that John Locke and Thomas Paine aren't Iranian citizens. Or alive.)
You just have to find her private key...
From a pure Machiavellian standpoint, which is where Romney already stands, he could have promised to think seriously about the issue and about the man's situation without committing to actually changing any of his policy positions. Then the YouTube moment is ruined and he gets away with opposing medical cannabis later on.
Beyond that, besides trying to make a federalist argument that it isn't the president that would arrest him but the state government he is pretty much SOL.It's also wrong. Cannabis prohibition is a federal law. The state legalizations are at best declarations of "your local police, sheriff, and state patrol won't enforce the law in this situation". Doesn't stop the DEA, just ask Peter McWilliams.
Let's be fair here, alright? Cannabis is usually smoked, and smoke inhalation is bad for the lungs. Furthermore, smoking any kind of plant introduces carcinogens. THC, the drug ingredient of cannabis, has effects on memory and cognition, as well as causing paranoia in some cases. However, cannabis is not physically addictive or chemically toxic, nor is it possible to take in a lethal dose of it. Cannabis doesn't make people angry or violent. It doesn't cause hangovers or other long-lasting toxic effects. It compares quite favorably with tobacco and alcohol, both of which are and should remain legal. The problem with cannabis is not, and has never been, its health effects, but rather the "subversive" "cannabis drug culture" (as opposed to the perfectly normal and mainstream alcohol drug culture, as tobacco is increasingly becoming taboo as well).
A techno remix of "who let the dogs out" with "he raised taxes"?
In the long run, oil is better for us if we don't drill and burn it.
So how exactly do you propose to abolish copyright without making everyone think copyright is unjust? And if everyone believes copyright is unjust, how exactly will they advocate for publishers to pay royalties, which you're also going to abolish, to the authors?
In other words you want authors to be paid more. For what end?I think authors are paid enough as it is. I'm wary of changing the system from this point because as far as books go, we know that what we have works. As far as other media go, there are reforms we can undertake that won't eliminate copyright entirely.
I don't want them to be paid less per se. I just don't think you can own information. Owning information means that you own a tiny piece of everyone else's property. It's also completely arbitrary unless you think IP should be owned eternally like tangible goods or have my views.So for vaguely defined ideological reasons you want to undertake reforms that have a real risk of harming literacy and public discourse in this country.
Money will go to the authors as shown in the Tolkien example. That is what I'm saying and you're disagreeing with. We've gone all the way to the beginning again almost in record timeOn the contrary. I've concluded that you have almost no good justification for your opinions. That's definite progress, at least on my part, because now I can safely dismiss your arguments as the rubbish that they are instead of continuing to seriously entertain them.
That's an incredibly simplistic view. The principle of copyright protection was written into the law. The fact that Tolkein's book in particular was not under copyright was due to, as I said, loopholes in the law. The spirit of the law remained, as did the public's sense of how justice is served in such cases. These are the very things you're advocating getting rid of.
I'm just wondering how why you want a law if it's not going to be enforced.Stopping publishers from printing copyrighted books when they don't have the author's permission and don't pay royalties to the author is a very simple enforcement task. No "war on piracy" needed.
I don't think it will be normal royalties in a system w/o copyright either.But in the Tolkein example, the public outcry was in favor of paying Tolkein normal royalties. Are you now saying that example is completely irrelevant to your argument?
But you can bet your ass that there will be an official version, signed copies and a tip jar.In other words you want authors to be paid less. For what end?
My firm belief grounded in empirical evidence is that books will still be written and that people are somewhat rational and will pay for things they like.Some books will still be written, but probably fewer than before. People will still pay for them, but the money won't go to the authors. You haven't shown me yet how this is an improvement.
If Vista was any indication, Microsoft announcing that Windows 7 will be out in 16 months means that delays will push back the Windows 7 release to about 2013, at which point it will have half the initially promised feature set and require at least a 40-core processor to work properly. Meanwhile, the Linux kernel will be at version 2.6.557 and Apple will be making advertisements about people downgrading to Vista and releasing Mac OS X "Serval". Hurd will still be in development.
I think Skylab was a bit higher than 1 second above the Earth's surface. I'm pretty sure it was falling faster than that. (Hint: You mean meters per seconds squared.)
That doesn't really mean a damn thing. I mean, computing is already pervasive, but knowing how to use a computer or write code still doesn't help me use my microwave or refrigerator, even though both of them probably have microcontrollers.
They're fabulously wealthy because they weren't trying to use Microsoft to make themselves fabulously wealthy? That's some zen shit right there.
You don't get the feeling they're waiting for a critical point and then planning to release oil faster than ever for another 5 years, bankrupting everyone who invested in alternative energy, before lowering production again and repeating the cycle?
Failing government services are rarely abolished, just half-assedly reformed until they appear to work better while in fact degrading the quality of service.
Are you kidding? You know damn well adding a replaceable battery would make the legs at least 5mm thicker! They had to balance many competing design goals and I'm confident they made the right decision.
That is the issue at hand, and that's why copyright abolition would hurt authors. I'm glad we're agreed on both of these points, but about half of the other people in this discussion really do want to abolish copyright.
If you didn't notice, Enron was a failed company. Now, it may be the case that many companies, like Enron, are scams rather than profit-seeking companies. And it may be that many other companies, like Paul Newman's, use the company's goal (profit) as a means to a further goal (benefitting charity). But the purpose of a company in and of itself is profit. As much profit as possible. Look at Wal-Mart. Do they intend to destroy and homogenize small-town middle America? Is that the purpose for which it was created? Was it created to create jobs overseas, or to hold down increases in the cost of living? No, it was created to make money. It does all the other things as a side effect.
There is no indication that Microsoft exists to do anything other than to earn income and make its owners (shareholders) fabulously wealthy. It has in fact succeeded in that goal for many years, and while things may change, Gates, Allen, and Ballmer are all billionaires, and hundreds more are multimillionaires.
For-profit companies don't exist to create "influence", they exist to turn a profit. That means money. Now, influence is a means to make money, but if you have all the influence in the world but no money, you have failed as a company. (Conversely, if you have all the money in the world but no influence, you win!)