Again, you seek evidence in religious books to show that people are violent, when you could just look at the people. Two billion muslims on the planet. "Terrorists" numbered in the hundreds, thousands maximum. You're dealing in thousandths of a percent and you're trying to argue this? That's lower than the incidence of schizophrenia.
What you are doing is exactly this: wanting to prove that religion causes terrorism, going to religious texts and pulling out the bits inciting murder and saying that this is what people do, ignoring the gross evidence that plainly religious people aren't following what you say their religion is. You can accuse people of hypocrisy if you think that they're not being as violent as you think their religion says they should be, but you can't support a case that they're actually any more violent when you allow for other factors.
For example, I've made several points which you've just passed over in favour of merely repeating your arguments by assertion that it is "dangerous idiocy". Argument by assertion is not good argument.
And you say that "it takes more than an abstract for any person to be willing to just give [their life] up". Many people have given their lives for their nation in war. People have given their lives for revolutions whether they be communist, wars of independence or whatever. It happens.
Well nothing's clear cut. It's a shame you posted AC as your viewpoint is worth hearing. That's mainly why I'm replying so that people will notice it. Some of the Iraqi army took off their uniforms and went home to their wife and kid. Others joined resistance groups. Others that had gone home to their wife and kids (or whatever family life they had) then later on took up arms again when they realised how bad things were getting - often against their Shia or Sunni neighbours, but usually against the US forces at the same time. The point I was making about the aircraft was that Iraq had no ability to counter it and even if more had been spent on the armed forces, they couldn't stop the US from striking any target it wished. And given that, I think you would have seen the same desertion even if they had been more numerous, better paid or equipped. They knew that they were going to lose. At least in any kind of traditional warfare. You might be right, but I'm a bit surprised people are suddenly coming up with this notion that if Saddam had allocated resources from chemical weapons to traditional military spending Iraq would suddenly have put up a much stronger fight. Is this a new meme being born? We can't argue conclusively without examining things in a lot more detail though, so I don't object to being told I'm wrong about it.:)
I do disagree about it being harder for the US government to bring the country to war if Iraq had spent more money on its military. The war has cost many lives and an ever growing debt and that was enough for us. Millions of us marched in our capitals to oppose the war and were ignored. We knew what would happen and we said what would happen. I doubt anything Saddam had done would have made any difference to our governments actions.
That's good 'cause you were making sense and if someone who's making sense disagrees was disagreeing with me then it would have implied I wasn't.:)
Regards,
H.
I think you may have replied to the wrong post. My post was a response to Nathrael's who, raising the One True Scotsman reference, appeared to be implying that Al Quaeda was representative of Islam but that people were pretending it wasn't. I disagree with that proposition as do you.
Specifically, they are known to have had sarin, tabun and VX, and may have had others.
Well yes. We still have the receipts for some of those. But he didn't have them at the time. As to conventional forces... I don't think it would have made much difference. The USA had air support. Every time the Iraqis tried to put something in the air or looked like they might, the US blew it to pieces. And anyway, the Iraqi army was never defeated. They just took their uniforms off and the US is still fighting them.
I don't wish to strike an aggressive tone. I'm happy to debate in a friendly fashion. I feel obliged to say this upfront because I find myself about to disagree with everything you've said. Sorry.:(
I thought the windmill metaphor was an excellent one.
I found it vague and misguided. He basically says the producers are at fault for not stopping people from ripping them off without giving anything in return. I'm quite certain that if someone found a way to force people to pay in return (say, a DRM method that actually worked, the old Trusted Computing chip, etc), he would be amongst the first to complain. Don't you think he would? His argument is just a variant on the old "He was asking for it" which I detest, putting the blame on the victim for not finding a way to stop it.
I also disagree with your contention that pirates live off the rest of us. You don't pay any more as a result of someone else not paying. You already pay as much as the content producers think they can gouge out of you, and far more than the product is actually worth because its price is artificially inflated through corrupt legislation.
How do you know I don't pay more? If I buy a PDF of a role-playing book and I'm charged US$25 for it, how do you know that the producer might not have sold it for less if there hadn't been five illegitimate copies flying around for every legally purchased one? Secondly, "gouge out of me" is a pejorative term. I'm happy to pay £0.79 pence for a song I'll listen to wherever and whenever I want many times. Others may not be but that's market forces. I believe negotiation is good because it allows parties to work out what it mutually acceptable to both. Might as well say that "the customers will always drive the prices down as far as possible by going elsewhere" and it's as true as "producers gouging the customer". But widespread piracy breaks down that negotiation process because it removes volition from one party. Therefore it unbalances the negotiation process for all of us.
You say that you disagree with my saying "pirates live off the rest of us". A product is produced. The funding for that product ultimately comes solely from those of us buying it. How are those that take without contributing not living off the rest of us? Really, where is their contribution that helps the product be produced?
Or perhaps you think that someone should be earning millions a year for a piece of work they did 45 years ago, and that it's criminal to expect them to actually do some more work if they want to earn more money. Me, I find myself short on sympathy.
Loaded example much? How many authors, film makers, song writers, musicians, game publishers, software writers do you know that are making millions annually from work they published 45 years ago? I mean who exactly is this example that you're justifying mass piracy of everyone on? And quite frankly if there's someone that's created something so popular that they can make millions off it 45 years later, I don't care. I mean, if Paul McCartney (the only artist I can think of that fits your example) wrote something that is played continuously around the world for 45 years, then fine, let him reap millions if he wants them. I still only paid £0.79 for it personally if I wanted a copy, around the same as most other songs and millions a year is nothing spread out around the world. A musician like that (and I'm waiting for a citation, by the way) is one tiny miniscule edge-case. And PitaBread wasn't making an argument saying: "Hey, it's okay for everyone to pirate Paul McCartney's music". Not even close to that. Is that your argument? That piracy becomes acceptable if you "lack sympathy" for the victims?
Whilst I enjoyed the phrase "legalised horse-bondage":D, I'm going to maintain that I didn't misunderstand his analogy about buggy whips. You make a more solid argument than he did. It is definitely a different argument.
I said that it was a bad analogy. When you draw an analogy, you have to draw it to the correct thing. He draws his analogy directly with the medium of the good. Clearly the value in buying a DVD isn't the disc, or a book the paper and splotches of ink. Nor is the effort of producing one primarily focused on the medium. The value is the information itself, whether that be software, a book, a song or whatever. His poor sleight of hand is to say that the buggy-whip equals the plastic CD or the paper of the book or whatever. He says people don't need (buggy whips / CDs) anymore, so it's the (buggy whip manufacturer / CD maker)'s problem. Rubbish. Verbatim and other CD manufacturers are the analogues to the buggy whip, but no-one's been talking about them. We're talking about content. And people still want that.
Now when you phrase the argument, you do draw the correct parallel. However, it's not one that I care about much. I too want to see content available in a more convenient digital format. So you'll see no argument from me with you on that. I like buying music online very much, and I buy some e-books too if I can find them unemcumbered by DRM.
But perhaps we disagree on some of our conclusions. As you're leaping in to support the other poster, perhaps you similarly feel that people are right to take without paying the asked for price. You suggest that media companies should evolve to embrace new technology and adjust costs to reflect the actual cost of production. That's great, but I believe that the market will sort this out. When I spend 79pence / 99 cents on a song that I can listen to over and over again, I think that's actually not a bad deal. I'm not concerned about production costs. And as to them evolving and embracing, I'm afraid piracy is one of the biggest things holding them back. Movie studios would surely love people to be able to click a button and give them money on impulse. But they're holding back because they don't know how they can do that without instantly getting ripped off by piracy. Of course that already happens, but they're still hoping for a fix - be that Blu-Ray encryption and file sizes, some sort of DRM system, legal prosecutions or whatever. Books are even more terrified of this (and rightly so - because if you make a book electronic, it's even easier to distribute than music and movies) Still, it's happening, and the argument of piracy apologists who claim they pirate because they can't get what they want in a format they want is even less valid than it used to be. And people rightly look down on those that expect them to support them by paying for the production of something that others take for free.
Religion isn't the elephant in the room. The Nazi's didn't come to power because they were anti-semitic. They came to power because the German people were suffering from hyper-inflation, the punitive Treaty of Versailles and other woes. Hamas didn't come to power because its founders said they wanted to dissolve Israel. They came to power because the Palestinian people's only other choice was a corrupt sell-out to the people are oppressing them. And Al Quaeda get support not because people in the Middle East want to support their Islamist rhetoric, but because like other instances in history, they don't see an alternative. It's like the organized crime bosses in "Batman: The Dark Knight", if you remember the trailer for that? "In their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand".
You want something more than rhetoric to counter your post? Consider this: Your post is all about how religion (the relevant one in this instance being Islam) can be quite violent. You quote things like: "Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them". Do you see 2 billion muslims doing that? No, didn't think so. Do you think they only don't do that because they lack the opportunity? Demonstrably false. Yet these people are muslims. How many attacks on the USA have their been from, say, Kazackhstan. Tonnes of muslims there. But oddly enough, they're not occupied by US troops or have a regime that depends on the US military to stay in power. Lots of other example countries, too. So why say that the cause of terrorism is 'X' when many countries that have that property don't exhibit terrorism and why say that the cause isn't 'Y' when all those countries that do have 'Y' in common do exhibit terrorism?
There are nearly two-billion people that profess faith in Islam on the planet. A handful of those are engaged in warfare with the US or their proxies. A tiny, tiny fraction of them have engaged in acts that can be called "terrorism" against the USA. You're not even within the bounds of what can be called statistical error, let alone demonstrating correlation. Related arguments would apply to Christianity.
If you want to say that many terrorists are religious, then that is observable fact. There are also non-religious terrorists. If you want to demonstrate that the cause of terrorism is religion, you have not even come close.
Maybe he meant negative matter as a clumsy way of saying: anti-matter. If you had a large anything made of anti-matter on Earth, then it would end up in orbit. Or at least everything within a few hundred miles around it would when it interacted with normal matter.;)
Engineering challenges can be solved easily.. building a space tug is a funding challenge...
The two are not separable. The greater your engineering knowledge, the less things become a funding challenge. Up to a certain point, at any rate. What people are saying is that there is still a lot of room for an increase in engineering skill to reduce the funding challenge.
The vast majority of muslims are a little bit hypocritical. Same as the vast majority of all people. They subscribe to Islam and revere the Koran, and indeed many do have a lot of sincere faith. But the Koran contains, as does the Bible and other holy books, odd little things that if taken literally and in absolute terms, are very destructive. So they're quietly downplayed or forgotten about. So who gets to say who is a True Scotsman *ahem* True Muslim. Well there's no absolute authority other than God / Allah Itself, and It isn't publishing specifications in the papers for us. For most people, including muslims, someone is a muslim (or a Christian) if they say they are.
A lot of criticism which starts from picking out some part of the Koran to illustrate how Islam believes in wiping out non-believers or whatever, is flawed. Not because there aren't such examples in the Koran, but because it's not really addressing the vast bulk of muslims who don't in their hearts believe or want such things. Yet these people are still muslims. It's an argument based on wanting to prove that culture X is evil and therefore finding legalistic reasons why it ought to be, instead of actual observation. There are nearly two-billion people on this planet that self-identify as muslim. If even one in ten-thousand were determined terrorists wanting to commit atrocities on the United States of America, that would be two-hundred thousand 9/11 hijackers, shoe-bombers, market-place killers decimating the USA right now. Simple fact of the matter is that muslims, like everyone else, are basically just people. There are good and bad bits to their cultures (and I'm an outspoken critic of some of those bad bits), but the demonisation of many millions of people by much of the US media is absurd. And the responses of the US government are absurd - and that's why the anti-terrorism measures have been ineffective:
The causes of terrorism have gone unacknowledged because they have to be. To acknowledge them is to address excess influence on policy and media by the oil industries, by the military-industrial complex, by politicians playing the Fear card to win votes and power, it's to acknowledge the actions of the Israeli government and the US sponsorship of their actions, it's to acknowledge the US navy bombing resistance camps at the request of the Saudi regime, it's to acknowledge all sorts of things that the US government doesn't want to acknowledge. But like someone who's an alcoholic, compulsive eater or whatever, you can't address a problem if you don't acknowledge it is there.
And do you understand that the parent poster was pointing out an easy analogy for his mom that would explain how two different browsers can use the same "Internet". Honestly, anyone that can't understand the principle that different browsers are akin to, say, different types of telephone (you're still talking to the same person), has some serious remedial problems when it comes to technology.
There was a situation where people who formerly sold buggy whips could no longer sell them.
Getting in entries for Worst Analogy of 2010, early, I see. People still want movies, books, music. People no longer wanted buggy whips. In the latter case, people moved on to other things. In the former case, people have started taking them en masse without paying the asked for price. Again - you're trying to liken things that are dissimilar for the sake of supporting your argument. Movies, music, software, books... none of these things are no longer in demand. They're simply being taken for free and without consent.
The freeloaders shift the burden of supporting these products onto everyone else. Why is that right? And then you make an argument that it is the content producers' problem that they need to find a way to make a profit from people taking what they want without giving what is asked. Well that presumes an obligation on the content producers' part that they must produce the content. Maybe they'll get out of the business, maybe they'll produce less or put less resource / effort into it. Maybe they'll focus on only that which pleases the largest demographic, maybe they'll raise the prices for those of us that do pay, maybe they'll take corporate sponsorship and insert more ads or product placement. Who knows?
Buggy whips... You're misunderstanding what Slashdot memes go where. The buggy whip analogy is one of a manufacturer facing a problem because society doesn't need their product, anymore. It's not one of someone facing a problem because society has chosen to take their product for free because they can't be stopped.
What's all this stuff about windmills? When people start talking in vague metaphors in response to simple questions, I begin to doubt whether they actually have an answer. Saying "Build a windmill" doesn't actually say anything though, does it? You have a situation where people who formerly sold copies of their work now find many are taking copies without paying anything in return in unprecedented numbers. That's a problem because it means that they have lost their ability to negotiate a price with their customers. Effectively they (and you) are saying: "we'll take what we want and it's your problem". I don't like removing the power of negotiation from people and putting all the power in the hands of one side. It leads to inequality.
If someone spends a year writing a book or a piece of software with the intention of selling it, then I believe they should be able to say how much they want for it. If they pitch the price too high, then the potential customers wont buy. If they pitch it low, then maybe they don't make as much money as they like. But it's all about choice and choice is good. But if the potential customers just take it for free instead, then the creator of the work had no choice - they were ripped off by the pirates. Blaming the creator for "not building a windmill" is a pretty piss-poor way of shifting the responsibility for what has happened.
Pirates put the financial burden of supporting a work on those of us that pay. They live off the resources of the rest of us. That deserves condemnation as does any behaviour where one freeloads off the resources of the rest of the group. Patent trolls, managers that live off their staff's ideas, professors that stamp their name on their researcher's work, pirates that download instead of buying... all the same principle: Live off someone else.
Except if people read it at the library, why would they need to buy it?
You have confused terms. It should read: "if a person can read it at the library, why would people need to buy it?".
Let me illustrate. The Harry Potter books are available at libraries. Can everyone who wants to read one of those books when they come out go straight down to the library and do so? No - the library is not able to distribute hundreds of thousands of copies on demand and even if they were, each of those copies would have been bought from the publisher in the first place. There is a difference.
Business models need to change to match that reality.
Again, I'll change your wording: "Businesses need to accept that people will take their stuff without having to give them anything in return.".
If that's different to what you meant, then please explain how. If it is what you meant, then it's something I disagree with.
A local lending library does not have and never has had the ability to reproduce a single book for as many people as want it at no significant cost to themselves.
Hence libraries have never had the capacity to threaten the actual profitability of a book that much. See - there's a difference for you.
Not all criticism has to be partisan. I'm not a US citizen and to me certain themes were very apparent in 300. Condoning and elevating of concepts of racial purity, eugenics; the evil Middle Easterners rampaging and devouring and sub-human. How one could watch the film and not see these things beggars belief.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, you seek evidence in religious books to show that people are violent, when you could just look at the people. Two billion muslims on the planet. "Terrorists" numbered in the hundreds, thousands maximum. You're dealing in thousandths of a percent and you're trying to argue this? That's lower than the incidence of schizophrenia.
What you are doing is exactly this: wanting to prove that religion causes terrorism, going to religious texts and pulling out the bits inciting murder and saying that this is what people do, ignoring the gross evidence that plainly religious people aren't following what you say their religion is. You can accuse people of hypocrisy if you think that they're not being as violent as you think their religion says they should be, but you can't support a case that they're actually any more violent when you allow for other factors.
For example, I've made several points which you've just passed over in favour of merely repeating your arguments by assertion that it is "dangerous idiocy". Argument by assertion is not good argument.
And you say that "it takes more than an abstract for any person to be willing to just give [their life] up". Many people have given their lives for their nation in war. People have given their lives for revolutions whether they be communist, wars of independence or whatever. It happens.
Well nothing's clear cut. It's a shame you posted AC as your viewpoint is worth hearing. That's mainly why I'm replying so that people will notice it. Some of the Iraqi army took off their uniforms and went home to their wife and kid. Others joined resistance groups. Others that had gone home to their wife and kids (or whatever family life they had) then later on took up arms again when they realised how bad things were getting - often against their Shia or Sunni neighbours, but usually against the US forces at the same time. The point I was making about the aircraft was that Iraq had no ability to counter it and even if more had been spent on the armed forces, they couldn't stop the US from striking any target it wished. And given that, I think you would have seen the same desertion even if they had been more numerous, better paid or equipped. They knew that they were going to lose. At least in any kind of traditional warfare. You might be right, but I'm a bit surprised people are suddenly coming up with this notion that if Saddam had allocated resources from chemical weapons to traditional military spending Iraq would suddenly have put up a much stronger fight. Is this a new meme being born? We can't argue conclusively without examining things in a lot more detail though, so I don't object to being told I'm wrong about it.
I do disagree about it being harder for the US government to bring the country to war if Iraq had spent more money on its military. The war has cost many lives and an ever growing debt and that was enough for us. Millions of us marched in our capitals to oppose the war and were ignored. We knew what would happen and we said what would happen. I doubt anything Saddam had done would have made any difference to our governments actions.
I think not.
That's good 'cause you were making sense and if someone who's making sense disagrees was disagreeing with me then it would have implied I wasn't. :)
Regards,
H.
I think you may have replied to the wrong post. My post was a response to Nathrael's who, raising the One True Scotsman reference, appeared to be implying that Al Quaeda was representative of Islam but that people were pretending it wasn't. I disagree with that proposition as do you.
Well yes. We still have the receipts for some of those. But he didn't have them at the time. As to conventional forces... I don't think it would have made much difference. The USA had air support. Every time the Iraqis tried to put something in the air or looked like they might, the US blew it to pieces. And anyway, the Iraqi army was never defeated. They just took their uniforms off and the US is still fighting them.
In other words: "Just because something is different, it is no different.
Go logic!
I found it vague and misguided. He basically says the producers are at fault for not stopping people from ripping them off without giving anything in return. I'm quite certain that if someone found a way to force people to pay in return (say, a DRM method that actually worked, the old Trusted Computing chip, etc), he would be amongst the first to complain. Don't you think he would? His argument is just a variant on the old "He was asking for it" which I detest, putting the blame on the victim for not finding a way to stop it.
How do you know I don't pay more? If I buy a PDF of a role-playing book and I'm charged US$25 for it, how do you know that the producer might not have sold it for less if there hadn't been five illegitimate copies flying around for every legally purchased one? Secondly, "gouge out of me" is a pejorative term. I'm happy to pay £0.79 pence for a song I'll listen to wherever and whenever I want many times. Others may not be but that's market forces. I believe negotiation is good because it allows parties to work out what it mutually acceptable to both. Might as well say that "the customers will always drive the prices down as far as possible by going elsewhere" and it's as true as "producers gouging the customer". But widespread piracy breaks down that negotiation process because it removes volition from one party. Therefore it unbalances the negotiation process for all of us.
You say that you disagree with my saying "pirates live off the rest of us". A product is produced. The funding for that product ultimately comes solely from those of us buying it. How are those that take without contributing not living off the rest of us? Really, where is their contribution that helps the product be produced?
Loaded example much? How many authors, film makers, song writers, musicians, game publishers, software writers do you know that are making millions annually from work they published 45 years ago? I mean who exactly is this example that you're justifying mass piracy of everyone on? And quite frankly if there's someone that's created something so popular that they can make millions off it 45 years later, I don't care. I mean, if Paul McCartney (the only artist I can think of that fits your example) wrote something that is played continuously around the world for 45 years, then fine, let him reap millions if he wants them. I still only paid £0.79 for it personally if I wanted a copy, around the same as most other songs and millions a year is nothing spread out around the world. A musician like that (and I'm waiting for a citation, by the way) is one tiny miniscule edge-case. And PitaBread wasn't making an argument saying: "Hey, it's okay for everyone to pirate Paul McCartney's music". Not even close to that. Is that your argument? That piracy becomes acceptable if you "lack sympathy" for the victims?
Whilst I enjoyed the phrase "legalised horse-bondage"
I said that it was a bad analogy. When you draw an analogy, you have to draw it to the correct thing. He draws his analogy directly with the medium of the good. Clearly the value in buying a DVD isn't the disc, or a book the paper and splotches of ink. Nor is the effort of producing one primarily focused on the medium. The value is the information itself, whether that be software, a book, a song or whatever. His poor sleight of hand is to say that the buggy-whip equals the plastic CD or the paper of the book or whatever. He says people don't need (buggy whips / CDs) anymore, so it's the (buggy whip manufacturer / CD maker)'s problem. Rubbish. Verbatim and other CD manufacturers are the analogues to the buggy whip, but no-one's been talking about them. We're talking about content. And people still want that.
Now when you phrase the argument, you do draw the correct parallel. However, it's not one that I care about much. I too want to see content available in a more convenient digital format. So you'll see no argument from me with you on that. I like buying music online very much, and I buy some e-books too if I can find them unemcumbered by DRM.
But perhaps we disagree on some of our conclusions. As you're leaping in to support the other poster, perhaps you similarly feel that people are right to take without paying the asked for price. You suggest that media companies should evolve to embrace new technology and adjust costs to reflect the actual cost of production. That's great, but I believe that the market will sort this out. When I spend 79pence / 99 cents on a song that I can listen to over and over again, I think that's actually not a bad deal. I'm not concerned about production costs. And as to them evolving and embracing, I'm afraid piracy is one of the biggest things holding them back. Movie studios would surely love people to be able to click a button and give them money on impulse. But they're holding back because they don't know how they can do that without instantly getting ripped off by piracy. Of course that already happens, but they're still hoping for a fix - be that Blu-Ray encryption and file sizes, some sort of DRM system, legal prosecutions or whatever. Books are even more terrified of this (and rightly so - because if you make a book electronic, it's even easier to distribute than music and movies) Still, it's happening, and the argument of piracy apologists who claim they pirate because they can't get what they want in a format they want is even less valid than it used to be. And people rightly look down on those that expect them to support them by paying for the production of something that others take for free.
Religion isn't the elephant in the room. The Nazi's didn't come to power because they were anti-semitic. They came to power because the German people were suffering from hyper-inflation, the punitive Treaty of Versailles and other woes. Hamas didn't come to power because its founders said they wanted to dissolve Israel. They came to power because the Palestinian people's only other choice was a corrupt sell-out to the people are oppressing them. And Al Quaeda get support not because people in the Middle East want to support their Islamist rhetoric, but because like other instances in history, they don't see an alternative. It's like the organized crime bosses in "Batman: The Dark Knight", if you remember the trailer for that? "In their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand".
You want something more than rhetoric to counter your post? Consider this: Your post is all about how religion (the relevant one in this instance being Islam) can be quite violent. You quote things like: "Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them". Do you see 2 billion muslims doing that? No, didn't think so. Do you think they only don't do that because they lack the opportunity? Demonstrably false. Yet these people are muslims. How many attacks on the USA have their been from, say, Kazackhstan. Tonnes of muslims there. But oddly enough, they're not occupied by US troops or have a regime that depends on the US military to stay in power. Lots of other example countries, too. So why say that the cause of terrorism is 'X' when many countries that have that property don't exhibit terrorism and why say that the cause isn't 'Y' when all those countries that do have 'Y' in common do exhibit terrorism?
There are nearly two-billion people that profess faith in Islam on the planet. A handful of those are engaged in warfare with the US or their proxies. A tiny, tiny fraction of them have engaged in acts that can be called "terrorism" against the USA. You're not even within the bounds of what can be called statistical error, let alone demonstrating correlation. Related arguments would apply to Christianity.
If you want to say that many terrorists are religious, then that is observable fact. There are also non-religious terrorists. If you want to demonstrate that the cause of terrorism is religion, you have not even come close.
One of the best posts I have ever read here on Slashdot.
Exotic weapons? Saddam Hussein? Uh, citation please.
Mind, you, I said the same to Colin Powell...
Maybe he meant negative matter as a clumsy way of saying: anti-matter. If you had a large anything made of anti-matter on Earth, then it would end up in orbit. Or at least everything within a few hundred miles around it would when it interacted with normal matter.
The two are not separable. The greater your engineering knowledge, the less things become a funding challenge. Up to a certain point, at any rate. What people are saying is that there is still a lot of room for an increase in engineering skill to reduce the funding challenge.
The vast majority of muslims are a little bit hypocritical. Same as the vast majority of all people. They subscribe to Islam and revere the Koran, and indeed many do have a lot of sincere faith. But the Koran contains, as does the Bible and other holy books, odd little things that if taken literally and in absolute terms, are very destructive. So they're quietly downplayed or forgotten about. So who gets to say who is a True Scotsman *ahem* True Muslim. Well there's no absolute authority other than God / Allah Itself, and It isn't publishing specifications in the papers for us. For most people, including muslims, someone is a muslim (or a Christian) if they say they are.
A lot of criticism which starts from picking out some part of the Koran to illustrate how Islam believes in wiping out non-believers or whatever, is flawed. Not because there aren't such examples in the Koran, but because it's not really addressing the vast bulk of muslims who don't in their hearts believe or want such things. Yet these people are still muslims. It's an argument based on wanting to prove that culture X is evil and therefore finding legalistic reasons why it ought to be, instead of actual observation. There are nearly two-billion people on this planet that self-identify as muslim. If even one in ten-thousand were determined terrorists wanting to commit atrocities on the United States of America, that would be two-hundred thousand 9/11 hijackers, shoe-bombers, market-place killers decimating the USA right now. Simple fact of the matter is that muslims, like everyone else, are basically just people. There are good and bad bits to their cultures (and I'm an outspoken critic of some of those bad bits), but the demonisation of many millions of people by much of the US media is absurd. And the responses of the US government are absurd - and that's why the anti-terrorism measures have been ineffective:
The causes of terrorism have gone unacknowledged because they have to be. To acknowledge them is to address excess influence on policy and media by the oil industries, by the military-industrial complex, by politicians playing the Fear card to win votes and power, it's to acknowledge the actions of the Israeli government and the US sponsorship of their actions, it's to acknowledge the US navy bombing resistance camps at the request of the Saudi regime, it's to acknowledge all sorts of things that the US government doesn't want to acknowledge. But like someone who's an alcoholic, compulsive eater or whatever, you can't address a problem if you don't acknowledge it is there.
And do you understand that the parent poster was pointing out an easy analogy for his mom that would explain how two different browsers can use the same "Internet". Honestly, anyone that can't understand the principle that different browsers are akin to, say, different types of telephone (you're still talking to the same person), has some serious remedial problems when it comes to technology.
Getting in entries for Worst Analogy of 2010, early, I see. People still want movies, books, music. People no longer wanted buggy whips. In the latter case, people moved on to other things. In the former case, people have started taking them en masse without paying the asked for price. Again - you're trying to liken things that are dissimilar for the sake of supporting your argument. Movies, music, software, books... none of these things are no longer in demand. They're simply being taken for free and without consent.
The freeloaders shift the burden of supporting these products onto everyone else. Why is that right? And then you make an argument that it is the content producers' problem that they need to find a way to make a profit from people taking what they want without giving what is asked. Well that presumes an obligation on the content producers' part that they must produce the content. Maybe they'll get out of the business, maybe they'll produce less or put less resource / effort into it. Maybe they'll focus on only that which pleases the largest demographic, maybe they'll raise the prices for those of us that do pay, maybe they'll take corporate sponsorship and insert more ads or product placement. Who knows?
Buggy whips... You're misunderstanding what Slashdot memes go where. The buggy whip analogy is one of a manufacturer facing a problem because society doesn't need their product, anymore. It's not one of someone facing a problem because society has chosen to take their product for free because they can't be stopped.
What's all this stuff about windmills? When people start talking in vague metaphors in response to simple questions, I begin to doubt whether they actually have an answer. Saying "Build a windmill" doesn't actually say anything though, does it? You have a situation where people who formerly sold copies of their work now find many are taking copies without paying anything in return in unprecedented numbers. That's a problem because it means that they have lost their ability to negotiate a price with their customers. Effectively they (and you) are saying: "we'll take what we want and it's your problem". I don't like removing the power of negotiation from people and putting all the power in the hands of one side. It leads to inequality.
If someone spends a year writing a book or a piece of software with the intention of selling it, then I believe they should be able to say how much they want for it. If they pitch the price too high, then the potential customers wont buy. If they pitch it low, then maybe they don't make as much money as they like. But it's all about choice and choice is good. But if the potential customers just take it for free instead, then the creator of the work had no choice - they were ripped off by the pirates. Blaming the creator for "not building a windmill" is a pretty piss-poor way of shifting the responsibility for what has happened.
Pirates put the financial burden of supporting a work on those of us that pay. They live off the resources of the rest of us. That deserves condemnation as does any behaviour where one freeloads off the resources of the rest of the group. Patent trolls, managers that live off their staff's ideas, professors that stamp their name on their researcher's work, pirates that download instead of buying... all the same principle: Live off someone else.
This guy had £300,000 pounds lying around in his accounts for "buying a new server". He wasn't losing money.
You have confused terms. It should read: "if a person can read it at the library, why would people need to buy it?".
Let me illustrate. The Harry Potter books are available at libraries. Can everyone who wants to read one of those books when they come out go straight down to the library and do so? No - the library is not able to distribute hundreds of thousands of copies on demand and even if they were, each of those copies would have been bought from the publisher in the first place. There is a difference.
Again, I'll change your wording: "Businesses need to accept that people will take their stuff without having to give them anything in return.".
If that's different to what you meant, then please explain how. If it is what you meant, then it's something I disagree with.
I'm guessing she doesn't.
A local lending library does not have and never has had the ability to reproduce a single book for as many people as want it at no significant cost to themselves.
Hence libraries have never had the capacity to threaten the actual profitability of a book that much. See - there's a difference for you.
You need to upgrade to a smarter mother. Mine's fine with that.
Applauds. :)
Not all criticism has to be partisan. I'm not a US citizen and to me certain themes were very apparent in 300. Condoning and elevating of concepts of racial purity, eugenics; the evil Middle Easterners rampaging and devouring and sub-human. How one could watch the film and not see these things beggars belief.