There has been a moratorium on executions since 1999
A moratorium in place, at least in part, due to the false convictions of three men. Convicted of the exact same murder that this trial and sentencing is for. So this guys crime may actually save him from the death penalty.
If this fool is defective, then those defective genes should be flushed from the gene pool.
But who is supposed to determine what is and what is not defective? And who is to determine what intermediary steps will lead to detriment or benefit? Had Neanderthal's employed eugenics would Homo Sapiens exist?
It takes many many generations to determine if a certain variation is beneficial to the species. Sometimes it takes variations of detrimental variations to finally come to a beneficial variation. Eugenics only perpetuations the current state or a specific evolutionary path chosen by those practicing eugenics.
Now if anyone was up for it I would love to see some one carry out an experiment where one group of people, lets say a couple thousand, practiced eugenics, and another group did not. Then say 100k years from now we see which one is showing more beneficial variations, and then again a million years from now.
Just imagine if Stephen Hawking had been victim to eugenics. But I guess we don't really need his contributions to science of quantum gravity. And that's not to mention the multitude of convicted criminals that have upon release contributed highly to society.
I have yet to see a society that is not, at its heart and soul, essentially an oligarchy.
That's probably because you did not live during the Spanish revolution. Short lived as they may have been the anarchist communes where not oligarchies. This is not to say that they wouldn't end up that way, but for a time they were not.
If only 1.5% of your cake consisted of strawberries.... but fewer than 0.1% of your cake consisted of feces, what is the real problem with your cake?
You wasted way to much time on your sensitization process.
Oh and the strawberries really don't care how much feces is in your cake, and neither does the rest of the cake.
The end user might, but interesting as the may be, it shows that your analogy is useless, as the end user of software does not care how many sexist comments where made by the developers, only that it works.
Insurance isn't a scam, it's risk mitigation. It's a convenient way for a society to pool their resources to help cover the expenses of a large group. Because the cost of medical care is as high as it is it's not reasonable to expect every person to be able to pay for their own care in the case of a catastrophic event (which by the way is as simple as a few day stay at a hospital for most people). When the cost of Care is higher than the average pay you have to have some way for those that need to be able to pay for the care they need. Since we don't know ahead of time if we will or will not need the coverage we chose to pay into an insurance fund.
Now I will admit that the US insurance system is certainly not the most efficient way to do this with the unbelievably high over head, but it is over all more effective than having no system at all (unless you prefer people to just be cast aside if they, or their caretakers, can't afford medical care).
Not everything where the odds are not in your favor is a scam.
Can I trade-in my 72 downloads for a female virgin? Actually I'll just settle for any female around age 20 and less than 140 pounds
140lbs sounds great until you realize she's 4'9". Never mind the fact that if you are chosing a partner based on age and weight you are bound to be very disappointed.
Aside-
I don't understand the male obsession with virgins. They're messy.
They are also typically disease free, not played out, and won't know enough to realize you suck at intercourse.
Aside -
I don't understand the male obsession with 20 year olds. They don't know shit!
Not a fair analogy. In your example you would not have gotten anything out of the lottery ticket had you had a dollar or not. In the case of copyright infringement the one doing the infringing is getting something out of the product whether they pay for it or not. To make you analogy work you would have had to won a million dollars without actually purchasing the lottery ticket (say by producing a counterfeit copy, which is really what copyright infringement is).
I realize you were trying to be funny, and in a way you were, but check the definition of occult. One of the definitions, and the oldest one for that matter, is "hidden from view." Heck, your reference even has the first definition of Occulted (on the same page as above) as "To conceal or cause to disappear from view."
Just saying that before you try and correct someone, you actually check that what your saying is, in fact, correct.
I replaced the HD in an MBP just about 2 months ago. Yes it's more work than it should be but it's a 20 minute job, not that big of a deal.
The reason the HP you compared it too seems so much easier to maintain is because it's a cheap bulky monstrosity, made of plastic and other disposable parts.
That's a laughable question. Unless you have had no financial responsibility or discretionary spending in the past 20 os so years then you contributed to the economic downturn. And if you are young enough that you didn't contribute the the crisis then you have to pay for the mistakes of your parents, which is just the nature of civilized existence.
Those who didn't get into ridiculous amounts of debt, or finance houses they couldn't afford?
You also seem to miss the far reaching effects of the financial crisis. With banks having to take huge losses on defaulted loans they have no capital to loan to other industries. This means no growth and no new entry into the rest of the industries. So as much as you have a job that pays you enough to pay your debts and afford your cost of living now it does not mean it will remain that way if about 10 million homes are foreclosed on. As of right now, with what has been approved, the government will be spending about 1k per home that is being assisted, while foreclosure on those homes would be a capital loss of over 200k per home. I don't know about you but I would much rather have the 1k loss from taxes (which will be a drop in the bucket for each of us) over the 200k loss of capital which would be completely disastrous to the US economy causing even those that made what appeared to be sound financial choices to be struggling for their next meal let alone a roof over their heads.
We have a safety net called welfare and food stamps and communal housing. If people choose not to avail themselves of these safety nets, they have no one to blame but themselves. I am willing to pay that expense.
It's going to be much cheaper to you, and the other tax payers, in the long run if we have a safety net to allow people to retain their current holdings, than if we take those holdings and give them new ones through the current welfare system. Just not seeing what is wrong with a safety net that allows people to retain their homes, keeps our financial system from complete collapse, and keeps the middle class city sections from becoming havens for squatters, causing further economic decline.
As for buying a Lexus or house, I am Not willing to do that. If you can't afford to keep up, sell both and move into an apartment, as I did when I was young and without money.
Many people who bought homes in the past 5 years are in a position where they can't actually sell them, even if they were smart and bought homes they could afford at the time and with reasonable loan offerings. So all they can do is default on the loan (there is no difference between defaulting on some or all of your loan). So after defaulting on there home loan they will not be able to rent at an apartment (yes they check your credit). So as noble as your idea seems on paper, it just doesn't work in the midst of an economic crash.
People like yourself seem to miss the fact that this economic disaster is effecting even people that made sound financial decisions but some how hit bad circumstances that have caused either drastic drops in the value of their collateral or drops in income and even joblessness. Continuing to starve these people of all resources and dignity is not going to help the economic system recover.
A government that violates human rights by stealing money, property, or labor from its citizens (whether for itself or for wealth redistribution) is a government that is illegitimate.
I really think you need to learn what the phrase "human rights" means.
Where is this money that the government will give to the corporations coming from?
Same place it has been for as long as I can remember, the pockets of the the tax payers and the backs of the working class. My whole point was not that Tax payers were paying, but that this is a) business as usual, b)corporatism, c) fair pay backs for all the people that voted for, or did not do enough to get others to vote against, the government that put us in this place. Yes we are paying the bill for our own mistakes, all of us.
It's clear to the independents that both parties created this problem.
Good post over all, but lets not let the independents of the hook. We are all responsible for this problem, that is how democracy works, even representative democracy as seen in a federated republic.
And yes I am registered independent and did not vote for either any of the major parties presidential candidates this time around.
Obviously you know nothing at all about the mortgage assistance programs that are being approved. I can't say I whole heartedly agree with them, as I am getting screwed on both ends, but they are not hand outs to "pay somebody else's mortgages." What they are is financial payouts to corporations in exchange for those corporations to offer lower interest loans to people severely hurt by an unregulated financial industry. Not a single person is getting out of paying for their homes, and keeping them that is, it's only changing loan conditions.
No one is demanding anything more than has been demanded for the life of this country, as well as others, and that is that the people pay for the benefits of the government. In this case we also pay for the faults of that government, one which we chose I might add. This is the government of the US paying for it's past mistakes of unregulated distribution of resources, thank you Reagan and Greenspan (who at least admitted his mistake and apologized, unlike the rest of the free market economists of the world).
Oh and since you consider debt relief to be a human rights violation I can't wait to hear what you call forced homelessness and starvation.
My point was that there is no reason to treat intellectual property and physical property differently. Simply the fact that something is easy to copy doesn't mean it should be allowed to be done freely. Now I'm all for making all things, be they ideas, or physical items, public domain, but it should be a unilateral right. There is no reason that builders should benefit over thinkers.
Now if you read my other comments you will see that I proposed the rule that you have full domain of property as long as you are actively using it. So applied to our IP laws it would mean that you can maintain IP rights as long as you are using the IP, such as producing a product, or performing an art work, or publishing a book. When applied to your car analogy it would me the car is yours as long as you are driving it, but once you get out and go into a store anyone can freely use the vehicle, just as you could do the same when you come back out of the store.
There is just no reason for the amount of wasted resources we have because people have artificially enforced right to horde those resources, including capital.
I'd rather have businesses compeat to stay in business instead of having a monopoly of unlimited duration.
The problem with that is you are trading limited monopoly for indefinite monopoly. Without some sort of protection you risk there being no way for a new business, with little capital, to bring a significant idea to production.
Patents certainly don't "retard progress" anymore than allowing individuals to control and monopolize resources and capital. And Copyrights don't retard progress at all, if anything they promote it since it means someone would have to create something new and not just copy someone else's idea. Remember that, unlike patents, you can't copyright something that does not yet exist.
I would rather the right be more along the lines of Trademarks, or even clearly defined to mean "while actively in use." This way manufactures who stop producing a product don't have the right to limit others from producing the product. It would also keep people from sitting on ideas in the hopes that someone else does all the actual works so that they can profit from someone else's work.
My personal preference, as mentioned elsewhere, would be for this form of restriction to apply to all property, not just intellectual, and including capital. This would force people to either be productive with what they do have or forfeit ownership to someone that can do something with it.
I am all for decreasing the duration of copyright and patent protections as long as we extended these new laws to included all property, not just Intellectual.
So if we limit copyright to X years, then we should limit home and automobile ownership, along with all other property, to X years as well.
The problem with this is that those with property want to maintain protection and those without do not, at least generally speaking. Even those who own property, intellectual or otherwise, wanted to give up those rights then they already would.
Lock the PS3 up in a small contained space and it'll fry too.
The difference between the PS3 and other consoles in this regard is that the PS3 displays a warning and shuts down processes to allow the system to cool down, where as, the XBox360 for example, just allows it self to be permanently damaged.
This language is define by usage. "Socialisism" means the kind of government we get when people calling themselves socialists are in control. Ditto "Communism" - that grand scam by which dictators routinely take totaliarian control.
Personally I like to use the actually accepted meaning of words, not someone's usurpation of a word for their own personal usage.
But that is beside the point. Your point actually supports mine. All I was saying is that if the US is not Capitalist, as "defined by usage" then China is not Socialist. You can't have it both ways. Either common usage is the correct usage, or dictionary definition is correct, you can't pick and chose when a word has which meaning to suit your own needs.
What I mean is, doesn't an 'ideal' system have to account for actual human nature?
One could argue that in an 'ideal' system human nature wouldn't matter. On the other hand it depends on what your 'ideals' are.
'Ideally' all humans would work collectively toward the betterment of all, so I support any system that does away with those not interested in this 'ideal' goal.
Slashdot Mirror
Citizen Barny, "tigers" are communist propaganda. Please report for immediate termination.
There computer is your friend.
There has been a moratorium on executions since 1999
A moratorium in place, at least in part, due to the false convictions of three men. Convicted of the exact same murder that this trial and sentencing is for. So this guys crime may actually save him from the death penalty.
If this fool is defective, then those defective genes should be flushed from the gene pool.
But who is supposed to determine what is and what is not defective? And who is to determine what intermediary steps will lead to detriment or benefit? Had Neanderthal's employed eugenics would Homo Sapiens exist?
It takes many many generations to determine if a certain variation is beneficial to the species. Sometimes it takes variations of detrimental variations to finally come to a beneficial variation. Eugenics only perpetuations the current state or a specific evolutionary path chosen by those practicing eugenics.
Now if anyone was up for it I would love to see some one carry out an experiment where one group of people, lets say a couple thousand, practiced eugenics, and another group did not. Then say 100k years from now we see which one is showing more beneficial variations, and then again a million years from now.
Just imagine if Stephen Hawking had been victim to eugenics. But I guess we don't really need his contributions to science of quantum gravity. And that's not to mention the multitude of convicted criminals that have upon release contributed highly to society.
I have yet to see a society that is not, at its heart and soul, essentially an oligarchy.
That's probably because you did not live during the Spanish revolution. Short lived as they may have been the anarchist communes where not oligarchies. This is not to say that they wouldn't end up that way, but for a time they were not.
You've just described about 90% of all jobs.
Or 100% of all jobs that provide stable income.
If only 1.5% of your cake consisted of strawberries .... but fewer than 0.1% of your cake consisted of feces, what is the real problem with your cake?
You wasted way to much time on your sensitization process.
Oh and the strawberries really don't care how much feces is in your cake, and neither does the rest of the cake.
The end user might, but interesting as the may be, it shows that your analogy is useless, as the end user of software does not care how many sexist comments where made by the developers, only that it works.
Insurance isn't a scam, it's risk mitigation. It's a convenient way for a society to pool their resources to help cover the expenses of a large group. Because the cost of medical care is as high as it is it's not reasonable to expect every person to be able to pay for their own care in the case of a catastrophic event (which by the way is as simple as a few day stay at a hospital for most people). When the cost of Care is higher than the average pay you have to have some way for those that need to be able to pay for the care they need. Since we don't know ahead of time if we will or will not need the coverage we chose to pay into an insurance fund.
Now I will admit that the US insurance system is certainly not the most efficient way to do this with the unbelievably high over head, but it is over all more effective than having no system at all (unless you prefer people to just be cast aside if they, or their caretakers, can't afford medical care).
Not everything where the odds are not in your favor is a scam.
Can I trade-in my 72 downloads for a female virgin? Actually I'll just settle for any female around age 20 and less than 140 pounds
140lbs sounds great until you realize she's 4'9". Never mind the fact that if you are chosing a partner based on age and weight you are bound to be very disappointed.
Aside-
I don't understand the male obsession with virgins. They're messy.
They are also typically disease free, not played out, and won't know enough to realize you suck at intercourse.
Aside -
I don't understand the male obsession with 20 year olds. They don't know shit!
To be fair, not everyone wants children, including myself.
Actually about half the worlds population would rather not have children, and the other half are women.
Not a fair analogy. In your example you would not have gotten anything out of the lottery ticket had you had a dollar or not. In the case of copyright infringement the one doing the infringing is getting something out of the product whether they pay for it or not. To make you analogy work you would have had to won a million dollars without actually purchasing the lottery ticket (say by producing a counterfeit copy, which is really what copyright infringement is).
Fascist? I think that word doesn't mean what you think it means.
Good luck trying to correct that misnomer.
I realize you were trying to be funny, and in a way you were, but check the definition of occult. One of the definitions, and the oldest one for that matter, is "hidden from view." Heck, your reference even has the first definition of Occulted (on the same page as above) as "To conceal or cause to disappear from view."
Just saying that before you try and correct someone, you actually check that what your saying is, in fact, correct.
I replaced the HD in an MBP just about 2 months ago. Yes it's more work than it should be but it's a 20 minute job, not that big of a deal.
The reason the HP you compared it too seems so much easier to maintain is because it's a cheap bulky monstrosity, made of plastic and other disposable parts.
And for those of us who didn't make mistakes?
That's a laughable question. Unless you have had no financial responsibility or discretionary spending in the past 20 os so years then you contributed to the economic downturn. And if you are young enough that you didn't contribute the the crisis then you have to pay for the mistakes of your parents, which is just the nature of civilized existence.
Those who didn't get into ridiculous amounts of debt, or finance houses they couldn't afford?
You also seem to miss the far reaching effects of the financial crisis. With banks having to take huge losses on defaulted loans they have no capital to loan to other industries. This means no growth and no new entry into the rest of the industries. So as much as you have a job that pays you enough to pay your debts and afford your cost of living now it does not mean it will remain that way if about 10 million homes are foreclosed on. As of right now, with what has been approved, the government will be spending about 1k per home that is being assisted, while foreclosure on those homes would be a capital loss of over 200k per home. I don't know about you but I would much rather have the 1k loss from taxes (which will be a drop in the bucket for each of us) over the 200k loss of capital which would be completely disastrous to the US economy causing even those that made what appeared to be sound financial choices to be struggling for their next meal let alone a roof over their heads.
We have a safety net called welfare and food stamps and communal housing. If people choose not to avail themselves of these safety nets, they have no one to blame but themselves. I am willing to pay that expense.
It's going to be much cheaper to you, and the other tax payers, in the long run if we have a safety net to allow people to retain their current holdings, than if we take those holdings and give them new ones through the current welfare system. Just not seeing what is wrong with a safety net that allows people to retain their homes, keeps our financial system from complete collapse, and keeps the middle class city sections from becoming havens for squatters, causing further economic decline.
As for buying a Lexus or house, I am Not willing to do that. If you can't afford to keep up, sell both and move into an apartment, as I did when I was young and without money.
Many people who bought homes in the past 5 years are in a position where they can't actually sell them, even if they were smart and bought homes they could afford at the time and with reasonable loan offerings. So all they can do is default on the loan (there is no difference between defaulting on some or all of your loan). So after defaulting on there home loan they will not be able to rent at an apartment (yes they check your credit). So as noble as your idea seems on paper, it just doesn't work in the midst of an economic crash.
People like yourself seem to miss the fact that this economic disaster is effecting even people that made sound financial decisions but some how hit bad circumstances that have caused either drastic drops in the value of their collateral or drops in income and even joblessness. Continuing to starve these people of all resources and dignity is not going to help the economic system recover.
A government that violates human rights by stealing money, property, or labor from its citizens (whether for itself or for wealth redistribution) is a government that is illegitimate.
I really think you need to learn what the phrase "human rights" means.
Where is this money that the government will give to the corporations coming from?
Same place it has been for as long as I can remember, the pockets of the the tax payers and the backs of the working class. My whole point was not that Tax payers were paying, but that this is a) business as usual, b)corporatism, c) fair pay backs for all the people that voted for, or did not do enough to get others to vote against, the government that put us in this place. Yes we are paying the bill for our own mistakes, all of us.
It's clear to the independents that both parties created this problem.
Good post over all, but lets not let the independents of the hook. We are all responsible for this problem, that is how democracy works, even representative democracy as seen in a federated republic.
And yes I am registered independent and did not vote for either any of the major parties presidential candidates this time around.
Obviously you know nothing at all about the mortgage assistance programs that are being approved. I can't say I whole heartedly agree with them, as I am getting screwed on both ends, but they are not hand outs to "pay somebody else's mortgages." What they are is financial payouts to corporations in exchange for those corporations to offer lower interest loans to people severely hurt by an unregulated financial industry. Not a single person is getting out of paying for their homes, and keeping them that is, it's only changing loan conditions.
No one is demanding anything more than has been demanded for the life of this country, as well as others, and that is that the people pay for the benefits of the government. In this case we also pay for the faults of that government, one which we chose I might add. This is the government of the US paying for it's past mistakes of unregulated distribution of resources, thank you Reagan and Greenspan (who at least admitted his mistake and apologized, unlike the rest of the free market economists of the world).
Oh and since you consider debt relief to be a human rights violation I can't wait to hear what you call forced homelessness and starvation.
My point was that there is no reason to treat intellectual property and physical property differently. Simply the fact that something is easy to copy doesn't mean it should be allowed to be done freely. Now I'm all for making all things, be they ideas, or physical items, public domain, but it should be a unilateral right. There is no reason that builders should benefit over thinkers.
Now if you read my other comments you will see that I proposed the rule that you have full domain of property as long as you are actively using it. So applied to our IP laws it would mean that you can maintain IP rights as long as you are using the IP, such as producing a product, or performing an art work, or publishing a book. When applied to your car analogy it would me the car is yours as long as you are driving it, but once you get out and go into a store anyone can freely use the vehicle, just as you could do the same when you come back out of the store.
There is just no reason for the amount of wasted resources we have because people have artificially enforced right to horde those resources, including capital.
I'd rather have businesses compeat to stay in business instead of having a monopoly of unlimited duration.
The problem with that is you are trading limited monopoly for indefinite monopoly. Without some sort of protection you risk there being no way for a new business, with little capital, to bring a significant idea to production.
Patents certainly don't "retard progress" anymore than allowing individuals to control and monopolize resources and capital. And Copyrights don't retard progress at all, if anything they promote it since it means someone would have to create something new and not just copy someone else's idea. Remember that, unlike patents, you can't copyright something that does not yet exist.
I would rather the right be more along the lines of Trademarks, or even clearly defined to mean "while actively in use." This way manufactures who stop producing a product don't have the right to limit others from producing the product. It would also keep people from sitting on ideas in the hopes that someone else does all the actual works so that they can profit from someone else's work.
My personal preference, as mentioned elsewhere, would be for this form of restriction to apply to all property, not just intellectual, and including capital. This would force people to either be productive with what they do have or forfeit ownership to someone that can do something with it.
I am all for decreasing the duration of copyright and patent protections as long as we extended these new laws to included all property, not just Intellectual.
So if we limit copyright to X years, then we should limit home and automobile ownership, along with all other property, to X years as well.
The problem with this is that those with property want to maintain protection and those without do not, at least generally speaking. Even those who own property, intellectual or otherwise, wanted to give up those rights then they already would.
Lock the PS3 up in a small contained space and it'll fry too.
The difference between the PS3 and other consoles in this regard is that the PS3 displays a warning and shuts down processes to allow the system to cool down, where as, the XBox360 for example, just allows it self to be permanently damaged.
This language is define by usage. "Socialisism" means the kind of government we get when people calling themselves socialists are in control. Ditto "Communism" - that grand scam by which dictators routinely take totaliarian control.
Personally I like to use the actually accepted meaning of words, not someone's usurpation of a word for their own personal usage.
But that is beside the point. Your point actually supports mine. All I was saying is that if the US is not Capitalist, as "defined by usage" then China is not Socialist. You can't have it both ways. Either common usage is the correct usage, or dictionary definition is correct, you can't pick and chose when a word has which meaning to suit your own needs.
What I mean is, doesn't an 'ideal' system have to account for actual human nature?
One could argue that in an 'ideal' system human nature wouldn't matter. On the other hand it depends on what your 'ideals' are.
'Ideally' all humans would work collectively toward the betterment of all, so I support any system that does away with those not interested in this 'ideal' goal.