Please show me anything that demonstrates that cognitive ability was tested for voting ages or running ages for Public office at the time of the Revolution. You can not do any such thing unless it's fabricated.
Pointing at General ages or anything else is simply trying to continue the fallacy you presented previously. There is no possible way you can convince me that Psychology and Psychoanalysis existed during the Revolutionary war. The Sciences did not yet exist, and it would be well over a century before they were truly able to do anything related to science!
Ages were set for discriminating reasons, the same reason a Black person counted as 3/5ths of a person. It had nothing to do with mental maturity, end of story.
If it helps, it is a grand fairy tale. If you think it helps soothe the pain of knowing we were not perfect a couple hundred years ago keep telling it to yourself. Just don't present it as fact to everyone else since it is extremely simple to dismiss as fantasy.
While I agree with the majority of your position I will point out two reasons why the position will fall on deaf ears.
First, it requires consideration for every case. Outside of the obvious "People are Lazy" reason, this does put the case up for a person or jury to determine. This means that the same exact circumstances can lead to two different outcomes based on the jury or judge's moral upbringing, past experiences, etc... In my opinion, it's a rational methodology. Most people would prefer a perfectly black and white rule.
Second, which is hinted at in the first is that this would be overwhelming to an already over taxed Judicial system. It requires money which is short supply to address that problem in particular.
People in general will be lazy and complacent since what we have no works so long as it's not them or their teenagers involved.
As a personal story: When I was in high school I knew of a girl slept with several guys at the same time, all of us were between 14 and 15 years old. I happened to be at the party where it happened, was invited to join in but I declined. The girl was not drunk, not on drugs, she was trying to be popular with a bunch of guys and make friends. Save the Psycho-babble about her, that's not even the point yet. We had 1 black kid attending our school (yeah, I group up in the sticks) and about a week after the party the cops came to school and arrested him. Turns out, the girl went to the cops and claimed she was raped a week prior by a black kid.
The best I can speculate, hell I'm not a shrink let alone her shrink, is that she was in fear that she may have gotten pregnant or VD, or something. She flat out lied to the police and a kid ended up in jail. I did go to the police and informed them of what happened at the party. A few days after the kid was arrested she finally claimed that it was not him that raped her. He was let out of jail, but.. he was under constant death threats by several people and his family had to move. There were wanted posters all over town and in Newspapers showing someone that was completely fabricated for about 2 years.
The point I'm trying to make is that it's easy to pass judgment when you don't have all of the facts. This kid may have ended up in prison for 5-10 years because a girl had regrets. I won't claim it was me being a savior either, I think she would have come clean on her own. Knowing her the little I did she seemed to feel guilty when she found out the police had hauled him away. She never changed her story about being raped, and up until graduation was the school mascot for victimization.
Your argument is flat out fairy tale, I won't even call it wrong.
The reason that the voting age was 21 was to ensure that people with enough property and standing could vote, but if you did not own enough property or have enough standing in the community you could not. Similarly, being in politics required a certain amount of age to have enough "clout" in society. These were discrimination practices and had absolutely nothing to do with cognitive abilities.
The truth is that the Science to begin testing for these types of cognitive functions would take well over a century to come out. You are simply making something up that is not true (or perhaps repeating a story that you heard instead of researching facts.)
The only part of your argument that has any truth to it is that the marrying age was younger and life span was shorter. The average age of consent was 13 however, so you are off by a year.
Your argument is one of fallacy. It does not need to be Government run to be abused and/or misused by either the Government or Private institutions. With no regulations in place to say what information can be used and how said information can be used, it is completely open to any abuse at the moment.
Problem: There is a tremendous amount of private information which is being made public for profit. Claiming "save the Children" is yet another fallacy being presented to allow it to continue. There must be regulations put in place to control what information is available and to whom, and more importantly every person should have the ability to know the rules.
Caution: "profit" above does not simply relate to money, but also power and control. I intentionally avoided "Financial Profit" since that would not be completely true.
The second item you quoted was a question. It was sincere and had a point, in that you seemed to desire quantification for my statement. Quantification in this matter is extremely difficult for numerous reasons (which I believe I spelled out in my previous post), while obviously not impossible. I still suspect that you did not take as much issue with the statement as you did with a lack of quantity or a specific name. If you believed for example that the only pharmaceutical company with legal problems was Merck I would have pointed out at least two other examples (or perhaps asked you to Google for current litigation against Pharmaceutical companies). Since I don't have all of the facts available, I would have been forced back to a generalization. My last statement in my first post I believe had the best suggestion for the quantity in the generalization "anti-corrupt-corporation", which opts out the majority of companies which are not under scrutiny.
I agree that generalizations are a delicate, though sometimes unavoidable. The best approach is to ask for clarification or quantification when generalizations are used since assumptions can easily be wrong and drastically change the perception of the argument or statement.
To your last point..
Titles are specific to the markets one works in. A Chemical Engineer is not a Mechanical Engineer (obviously) though both are Engineers. IT does have different methods of gaining qualifications for "Engineer" and "Architect" titles. Just like with college degrees, some are very good and others very poor. Given that knowledge I never judge a person by their titles but rather by their thoughts, their opinions, and their ability to express both. I have probably met as many people with MBAs that in my opinion were ignorant and/or unpleasant as I have people MSCE titles.
As a side note I do hold both College degrees and Professional Certifications (none of which are MSCE certificates) but again will state that "Systems" does not relate to "Pharmaceutical" at least with the subject matter being discusses, so there is no relevance in questioning what my credentials are except for an Ad hominem purpose.
I recently added the second half of the statement you point out "AC Warning, I try to ignore people with teeny tiny ones" and I will contemplate removing or changing that statement. It has nothing to do with Systems mind you. It really relates to the following:
AC = Anonymous Coward (the label given to names when people post anonymously on Slashdot)
If people post anonymously to my comments, I try to ignore the post. It takes a certain amount of bravado to post with your name and your information in many situations.
When it comes to people posting as AC, replying is often not worth the effort since you have no idea whether there is dialogue or a string of different people posting anonymously. Often people post anonymously and get angry that you won't respond, or that you don't recognize that there is dialogue because of a series of people posting anonymously.
In my opinion, if you want to express an opinion or debate someone else' opinion one should have enough bravado to do so with their own account for numerous reasons. The slang terms "Grow a pair" or "Get a pair", while not politically correct, describe my thought process. In the US (I have no idea where you are from) the terms are well known as would be the term "They have a pair of tiny ones".
Well stated. I very much like your choice in wording and have to wonder if you study history? Your wording is very similar to several of Adam Smith's works.
I have heard these rumors on several web sites as well, but have yet to see any such documentation. I know of several cases where many of the big companies have done wrong things, but not not like this. Please provide links to said "stacks of internal memos and documentation.
I'm forty-alot, and while I don't completely discount Patents or Copyright, the current implementations are broken so badly that they can no longer function as intended. The current implementation allows for rampant abuse of monopoly.
To be more clear, the problem I have with copyright is simply duration. 70 years for a book is a lifetime in the digital age where you can print and distribute to millions of people in minutes. The 70 year law had to consider things like how long it took to print and ship books across the world, as well as make translation and get those to print and shipped. Even considering hard copy time to produce, we no longer have to typeset presses to do the work. Years has become minutes for the most part, and that is in just one aspect of production. Even considering how fast we can do those things, Copyright law changes of late have lengthened the duration, not reduced the duration.
I most definitely honor copyright in code. Of course I may learn tricks from you, but would never even copy/paste. It's an honor and respect thing as much as the copyright.
As for originality: Slide to Unlock existed since the first dead bolt was created. Does that mean Apple's slide to unlock idea should not be patentable because it was simply a slightly different application?
Absolutely not. Translation of hardware to software is by definition obvious. Of course if you stole my code to do your version, then we have a copyright issue correct? Both of us may see the need to perform the act. Just because one of us may code faster should not allow us to "own" the patent on the idea. This is the way coders worked before the system went haywire. I remember how ballistic most of us went back when the Shopping Cart patent law suits started getting filed, I believe that was 2001.
Thanks for that story. I agree with their premise that allowing law suits for mistakes would be harmful. But when they break the law there is no way to prosecute or punish? In my opinion, that is the heart of the problem (and not just with Prosecutors). Why do we call it a mistake and have double standards when a person in certain public offices breaks the law? If a Prosecutor hides evidence, tampers with evidence, etc.. it is illegal and it should cost them their license to practice law at a minimum. Depending on the result of their actions it should also bring about civil or criminal action.
Before you think I'm Joe I_hate_Law that is not the case. Most people get in to Law with good intentions and want to do the right things. They should be able to protect themselves from the corrupted people that damage the reputation of their profession.
AFAIK that would not be true, but I'm not a patent attorney either so it may be something recent that I'm not aware of. What they did do away with was the originality testing. Prior to business process patents the invention had to be unique from top to bottom. Business process patents allowed modifications to existing patents as long as the patent(s) received mention and the description stated how the patent was modified.
Example, prior to the patent change if I filed for patent on "if() {stuff}, else{stuff};" you could not come file a patent to add "elif()". Under patent changes 20 years ago, that was made absolutely valid.
I do realize that the example is primitive, but it works.
I'm not sure if you read the article, I believe the judge to be very correct. There are too many patents, and I believe the indicators are that we have so many "Patent Trolls", an over taxed Patent office, and an over taxed judicial system trying to deal with them all. Patents are being submitted and received for things that should not have a patent. Whether it's obvious, or previously patented, there are simply to many.
What I tend to not give much thought to, and what the Judge so elegantly points out, is that Pharmaceutical companies are actually shafted by the patent system. It still works fine for mechanical invention, but mechanics is a small fraction of the patents being submitted to the US PTO each year.
He also gives some possible solutions. I think most of what he wrote I have seen before from various sources discussing the issue. His presentation is well thought out and not over the top.
A general statement does not mean "all", nor should it be taken to imply all. I was very intentional in the generalization. There is more than one company involved, and more than two. I was also very intentional not to state "all" or "every" pharmaceutical company since, as you correctly point out, that would have been an incorrect statement. The list is longer than one or two, and trying to manage a list of them is not something I wish to entertain. Since you seem to have knowledge on the subject you probably know that there are several current court cases in addition to guilty convictions already ruled for various companies. I'm not going to attempt to follow the cases nor update the list when a general statement of "more than a few" suffices quite well. If you inject "all", "every", or even "most" into the statement on your own then the problem is not with my argument but your ability to read and/or comprehend what was written.
Was my opinion incorrect regarding pharmaceutical companies being responsible for illness, death, or groups of people being angry with several companies that bear responsibility? If I was not correct, what does my signature have to do with the correctness, or incorrectness, of my statements? You know very well that it has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion. It is still an Ad hominem attack, though technically you could also name other fallacies that apply to that same tactic. Creating a new paragraph does not magically make fallacy not exist. The tactic in fact is rather old and well documented. Perhaps you should seek some remedial or introductory courses in Rhetoric and Logic.
If we were discussing systems architecture and I made a grave error it would then be sensible to bring my signature in to the arguments and question my qualifications. As it stands that never happened, so there is no need for me to present any qualifications or defend any of the titles I have held during my career.
Unlike you, I won't pretend to know your personal or professional situation. My opinions, as presented, have as much to do with my user name as they do with what is in my signature. The relevance of my signature is that when it comes to technical discussions (Slashdot is a technical site which often discusses technical issues) the signature has meaning. Notice that I do not place a company name in my signature. That is intentionally done to show that while I have qualifications to discuss systems architecture, systems engineering, systems analysis, etc... my opinions on Slashdot represent my thoughts and not those of the compan(y/ies) that I work for.
In closing I wish to point out that I am not claiming to be perfect or infallible. Quite the contrary, I'm not ashamed to admit that I make mistakes. If you catch me doing so I hope you have enough knowledge to point them out so that I can better my arguments or even change my opinion when it's wrong. Twice now you have shown that you lack such knowledge and resort to the most simple and easily detected fallacies. Prove that you are smarter than that in the future.
I agree very much with your point regarding the Vatican, but would like to point out that any Catholic Church in the US can be audited. You can see what is being sent to the Vatican by each Church because it must be listed on their books.
I will admit that the above is over simplified. The way the Catholic Church is set up, they have a lot of pools for money so it's going to be a bit more complex to track. The little I know about how it works, local Churches send to regional offices, central offices, State offices, etc.. I don't know myself the break down, I can only speculate. Since it's all open in the US (and must be by law) you can easily find the facts if you are willing to do the work. Claiming you can't see what they do is false, you just need to do the work.
The Vatican is not in US territory, so the US has no legal right to audit the Vatican. In line with that statement, the Vatican has no legal obligation to allow the US to audit them. I'm sure you realize that, but it's an obvious reason we can't audit them. Just saying "They won't let us audit them" can imply that the only reason is because they are hiding something, and not that they have no obligation to allow the US to audit them. I believe that your last paragraph does exactly that.
To be very honest, I'm not a fan of the Catholic Church myself. The reasoning is lengthy and beyond the scope of what I'm willing to type here since it's mostly my opinion. In the US, I believe that Catholic is a minority in Christian establishments. That fact is hard to establish since it depends on who's census you believe (The Catholic Church claims much higher membership than other census data). In the cities I have been in I can tell you that for every Catholic Church there are at least 1 Lutheran, 1 Baptist, 1 and one other (7th day Adventist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, etc..). This does not even count the non-Christian Churches. The point of the fore mentioned is that you are making your position on "Religion" based on one group, which at least according to Wiki is less than 1/4th of just the Christian Religion in the US.
This post, and the one you replied to should be enough to present a reasonable case that claiming "religious abuse under the guise of tax shelters" is simple fallacy. Reasonable logic would claim that there is some abuse. Take away the hasty generalization fallacy and it is no longer the "Normal" or even due to "Religion".
Because with the increase in tax revenues over the last 20 years we have solved a majority of our issues with the economy? Wow, and someone says this is the best post ever? I'm sure you two could get a room together and have a great time patting each other on the back for your great ideas, but most of us are not so easily fooled.
Religion spends more money on charity than any private institution, period. You can read their financial books, because as tax exempt they are available to everyone for review. The majority of Detroit's homeless populations rotates from Church to Church, State law prevents them from staying in a Church for more than a night. Religious institutions pay for numerous hospitals and medical centers for people in poverty, in addition to feeding and housing them in their homeless shelters. Religious organizations feed and cloth people in poverty regardless of residence, purchase gifts at Christmas for those in poverty, etc.. etc... In addition to helping at home, most large Religions also establish missions overseas to help remote populations. One may argue that it's self serving, but lets make sure we stick with facts. Churches feed, cloth, build housing, run schools, teach skills and their reward is being able to teach a belief. How often do you burn 10% of your pay check on someone to feed, cloth, house, offer medical treatment, teach them skills, help them farm, just to teach them your atheism? My guess is that you have never done anything of the sort, but you may occasionally drop a dollar in the Salvation army bucket at Christmas time so that you can write off that $200.00 on your Federal income tax without as much guilt.
Contrary to your implication the majority of people working in Religion are not living a life of luxury. The vast majority live just above poverty themselves (as mentioned above, you can go read the books and see how much any member of a Church makes in a year). How often do you hear people say "I'm gonna go to a Monastery so I can be Rich!" You have probably never heard anyone say any such thing since we all know it would be nonsense. Hubbard and Jones pretty much blew it for everyone else wanting to play PT Barnum 30+ years ago.
Claiming that giving the Government more money in taxes will fix our economic problems is ignoring all reasonable and factual data. In fact, it's a blatant lie.
Then to top that off, you claim Religion has false prophets and ignore Government in your statement. Are you claiming or implying that the Government does not. Where is our change as promised by Obama? End of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Hmm, a fix to the economy? Damn, I don't see any of those things. I know, Gitmo was closed.. er wait, it was not closed. State laws regarding legalization of medical marijuana were honored? Damn, not that either. Hell that's just the latest President, you know damn well anyone could do the same for any politician current or past. Yeah, it's all Religions fault. Lets completely ignore the the fact that humans are corrupt bastards and will find ways to abuse any system to satisfy greed and Religion has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Look, if you want to claim Churches should lose tax exempt status, and trust me you are not the first that has, at least try and do so using reasonable logic and present your arguments without the obvious fallacy!
So by your logic bad cops make all cops bad, bad politicians make all politicians bad, bad bosses make all bosses bad, bad employees make all employees bad, bad parents make all parents bad, bad sports figures make all sports figures bad, bad actors and actresses make all of them bad, etc... Do you see where your logic is flawed and you are using a very simple hasty generalization fallacy to back your opinion? Probably not, but you seem to know what bias and bigotry are.
Just one more quick point. "It doesn't have to be unconstitutional to be harmful." I can't agree with that statement at least in the USA regarding US laws. The constitution is the rule of law, which would include the Bill of Rights. As is true in all Republics, all additional laws must be aligned with the Constitution.
Example: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. From that we can extract that Murder is illegal since it interferes with all of the fore mentioned.
In order to create laws that subvert, undermine, or modify the Constitution there must be a formal change to the Constitution. This is exactly what the amendment process is.
So while it should be obvious that we can abstract from the Constitution, the Constitution _is_ the rule of Law. An interesting side note, perhaps, is that the USPS is something guaranteed in the Constitution.
Let me ask a question: Suppose a company opens that delivers packages and ensures that what they ship is up to all state and federal agriculture laws. You can pay them, or not, to ship your produce from Farmer John's to you. Is this illegal and immoral? What if Farmer John said "We are going to start using this company, and we know it'll cost you extra but we trust them." Is that illegal and immoral?
It becomes an issue when it's forced on everyone to use that company and pay the extra fees right? In the case above, it's not. The wording of the title and story is intentionally skewed to make it seem like it's a Religious mass censorship rule. It's not!
I agree with your premise, but find it rather out of place. You are, perhaps mislead in to, thinking that something is happening that is not happening.
You are so far out of context it's alarming. If someone CHOOSES TO PAY FOR THIS SERVICE why the hell do you care? Mind your own business and let them do their thing, as long as they are not making you do the same thing. As you would tell Religious people to stay out of your business, you need to stay out of theirs! That is how we all get along.
As to your last comment, you do realize that abstinence and self control is proven to be the best birth control one could use right? I'd rather teach my kid to have self control and self respect; then about how having sex with random people could lead to pregnancy or VD; then how VD can often leave you disfigured, or give you life long pain, or even kill you; then teach them to be open and honest about when they really believe they want to have sex.. so that I can finally teach them birth control.
Why is it you believe that only your way is the right way? And before you go there, it's not about Religion in that case. It's about being smart and having self respect. We don't put our kids through AA when they are 10 years old because they may get a DUI when they are 16, but hopefully parents have enough sense to teach their kids not to drink and drive before they get their license.
Sorry, but why does everyone equate the term ISP to be a back end mandatory service? I know we in the tech industry tend not to use them, but did we suddenly forget they exist? Read upward for links on US companies that are similar, they are used pretty often in schools in the US.
If you read much of what I post, I'm about as pro constitution as you will find. This company appears not to be an issue, and what they are doing appears a non issue. I can't say definitively since I'm not in the UK and have no intimate knowledge of the company.
ISPs in the US do the same thing as this company. The difference is really that it's harder to do this for Religion than it is to "save the children" in the US. Same thing in reality, both add additional controls and content filtering.
I know it's hard for people that have been around a while to remember, but back in the day we had AOL and Prodigy which were the same exact thing also. Content was filtered based on their rules. Most of us now days don't use this tier of service, but you still could if you wanted and paid for it.
This is not a company like Comcast or AOL. I intentionally gave examples of similar companies in the US. I used to pay a lot more attention to these companies when my kid was younger, but he's been old enough to see boobies for a while now.
Picture paying for Comcast, then paying Cyber Sitter for services. You get a setup from Cyber Sitter which points you to _their_ proxy and mail services. Their software filters and sends you data over Comcast's lines. Comcast is not impacted at all by your relationship with Cyber Sitter.
You may be stuck with Comcast but you are not stuck with Cyber Sitter. If Cyber Sitter does something you don't like, cancel their services and point yourself back to Comcast for internet and mail. Or go pay Net Nanny for a similar additional service and run their set up.
I did check, and both companies are still in business. Learn what they do, because it's not censoring the web for everyone.
Wrong! It's more like changing the story from Claranet to "AOL" or "NetZero" or some such. From the article, it's not a back end provider. It's an additional services provider.
Your cookie example is horrible. It's more like having an optional pay-for valet service at a restaurant. If the company providing valet services says "Due to potential health risks to our employees we will not park smokers cars.". Seeing that sign do you get hysterical and claim they should not be allowed to operate and try to drive them out of business?
In your case maybe you would, hell I can't speak for you. Morally, Ethically, and Legally that would be incorrect to do. IMO park your own car, walk your fat ass in to the restaurant and get some dinner!
By that logic there should be no drinking age and most surely pornography should be able to be printed anywhere. There should be no movie rating system, lyrics rating system, or game rating system. Do you see that you have crossed well beyond the realm of common sense.
Customers _pay_for_this service, it is not mandatory for _anyone_ to use the service.
The reason this was brought up as a/. article was to create traffic based on the atheist zealots that come out of the wood work spewing hate on anything Religious for any reason.
I doubt that you understand what that means for you and your comment, but I do feel an obligation to point it out.
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Please show me anything that demonstrates that cognitive ability was tested for voting ages or running ages for Public office at the time of the Revolution. You can not do any such thing unless it's fabricated.
Pointing at General ages or anything else is simply trying to continue the fallacy you presented previously. There is no possible way you can convince me that Psychology and Psychoanalysis existed during the Revolutionary war. The Sciences did not yet exist, and it would be well over a century before they were truly able to do anything related to science!
Ages were set for discriminating reasons, the same reason a Black person counted as 3/5ths of a person. It had nothing to do with mental maturity, end of story.
If it helps, it is a grand fairy tale. If you think it helps soothe the pain of knowing we were not perfect a couple hundred years ago keep telling it to yourself. Just don't present it as fact to everyone else since it is extremely simple to dismiss as fantasy.
While I agree with the majority of your position I will point out two reasons why the position will fall on deaf ears.
First, it requires consideration for every case. Outside of the obvious "People are Lazy" reason, this does put the case up for a person or jury to determine. This means that the same exact circumstances can lead to two different outcomes based on the jury or judge's moral upbringing, past experiences, etc... In my opinion, it's a rational methodology. Most people would prefer a perfectly black and white rule.
Second, which is hinted at in the first is that this would be overwhelming to an already over taxed Judicial system. It requires money which is short supply to address that problem in particular.
People in general will be lazy and complacent since what we have no works so long as it's not them or their teenagers involved.
As a personal story: When I was in high school I knew of a girl slept with several guys at the same time, all of us were between 14 and 15 years old. I happened to be at the party where it happened, was invited to join in but I declined. The girl was not drunk, not on drugs, she was trying to be popular with a bunch of guys and make friends. Save the Psycho-babble about her, that's not even the point yet. We had 1 black kid attending our school (yeah, I group up in the sticks) and about a week after the party the cops came to school and arrested him. Turns out, the girl went to the cops and claimed she was raped a week prior by a black kid.
The best I can speculate, hell I'm not a shrink let alone her shrink, is that she was in fear that she may have gotten pregnant or VD, or something. She flat out lied to the police and a kid ended up in jail. I did go to the police and informed them of what happened at the party. A few days after the kid was arrested she finally claimed that it was not him that raped her. He was let out of jail, but.. he was under constant death threats by several people and his family had to move. There were wanted posters all over town and in Newspapers showing someone that was completely fabricated for about 2 years.
The point I'm trying to make is that it's easy to pass judgment when you don't have all of the facts. This kid may have ended up in prison for 5-10 years because a girl had regrets. I won't claim it was me being a savior either, I think she would have come clean on her own. Knowing her the little I did she seemed to feel guilty when she found out the police had hauled him away. She never changed her story about being raped, and up until graduation was the school mascot for victimization.
Your argument is flat out fairy tale, I won't even call it wrong.
The reason that the voting age was 21 was to ensure that people with enough property and standing could vote, but if you did not own enough property or have enough standing in the community you could not. Similarly, being in politics required a certain amount of age to have enough "clout" in society. These were discrimination practices and had absolutely nothing to do with cognitive abilities.
The truth is that the Science to begin testing for these types of cognitive functions would take well over a century to come out. You are simply making something up that is not true (or perhaps repeating a story that you heard instead of researching facts.)
The only part of your argument that has any truth to it is that the marrying age was younger and life span was shorter. The average age of consent was 13 however, so you are off by a year.
Helps if I close my dang quote.. bah!
It's not a government run panopticon.
Your argument is one of fallacy. It does not need to be Government run to be abused and/or misused by either the Government or Private institutions. With no regulations in place to say what information can be used and how said information can be used, it is completely open to any abuse at the moment.
Problem: There is a tremendous amount of private information which is being made public for profit. Claiming "save the Children" is yet another fallacy being presented to allow it to continue. There must be regulations put in place to control what information is available and to whom, and more importantly every person should have the ability to know the rules.
Caution: "profit" above does not simply relate to money, but also power and control. I intentionally avoided "Financial Profit" since that would not be completely true.
Perfectly logical assumption and in line with how these things work historically.
The second item you quoted was a question. It was sincere and had a point, in that you seemed to desire quantification for my statement. Quantification in this matter is extremely difficult for numerous reasons (which I believe I spelled out in my previous post), while obviously not impossible. I still suspect that you did not take as much issue with the statement as you did with a lack of quantity or a specific name. If you believed for example that the only pharmaceutical company with legal problems was Merck I would have pointed out at least two other examples (or perhaps asked you to Google for current litigation against Pharmaceutical companies). Since I don't have all of the facts available, I would have been forced back to a generalization. My last statement in my first post I believe had the best suggestion for the quantity in the generalization "anti-corrupt-corporation", which opts out the majority of companies which are not under scrutiny.
I agree that generalizations are a delicate, though sometimes unavoidable. The best approach is to ask for clarification or quantification when generalizations are used since assumptions can easily be wrong and drastically change the perception of the argument or statement.
To your last point..
Titles are specific to the markets one works in. A Chemical Engineer is not a Mechanical Engineer (obviously) though both are Engineers. IT does have different methods of gaining qualifications for "Engineer" and "Architect" titles. Just like with college degrees, some are very good and others very poor. Given that knowledge I never judge a person by their titles but rather by their thoughts, their opinions, and their ability to express both. I have probably met as many people with MBAs that in my opinion were ignorant and/or unpleasant as I have people MSCE titles.
As a side note I do hold both College degrees and Professional Certifications (none of which are MSCE certificates) but again will state that "Systems" does not relate to "Pharmaceutical" at least with the subject matter being discusses, so there is no relevance in questioning what my credentials are except for an Ad hominem purpose.
I recently added the second half of the statement you point out "AC Warning, I try to ignore people with teeny tiny ones" and I will contemplate removing or changing that statement. It has nothing to do with Systems mind you. It really relates to the following:
AC = Anonymous Coward (the label given to names when people post anonymously on Slashdot)
If people post anonymously to my comments, I try to ignore the post. It takes a certain amount of bravado to post with your name and your information in many situations.
When it comes to people posting as AC, replying is often not worth the effort since you have no idea whether there is dialogue or a string of different people posting anonymously. Often people post anonymously and get angry that you won't respond, or that you don't recognize that there is dialogue because of a series of people posting anonymously.
In my opinion, if you want to express an opinion or debate someone else' opinion one should have enough bravado to do so with their own account for numerous reasons. The slang terms "Grow a pair" or "Get a pair", while not politically correct, describe my thought process. In the US (I have no idea where you are from) the terms are well known as would be the term "They have a pair of tiny ones".
Well stated. I very much like your choice in wording and have to wonder if you study history? Your wording is very similar to several of Adam Smith's works.
I have heard these rumors on several web sites as well, but have yet to see any such documentation. I know of several cases where many of the big companies have done wrong things, but not not like this. Please provide links to said "stacks of internal memos and documentation.
The under 25 generation has pretty much...
I'm forty-alot, and while I don't completely discount Patents or Copyright, the current implementations are broken so badly that they can no longer function as intended. The current implementation allows for rampant abuse of monopoly.
To be more clear, the problem I have with copyright is simply duration. 70 years for a book is a lifetime in the digital age where you can print and distribute to millions of people in minutes. The 70 year law had to consider things like how long it took to print and ship books across the world, as well as make translation and get those to print and shipped. Even considering hard copy time to produce, we no longer have to typeset presses to do the work. Years has become minutes for the most part, and that is in just one aspect of production. Even considering how fast we can do those things, Copyright law changes of late have lengthened the duration, not reduced the duration.
I most definitely honor copyright in code. Of course I may learn tricks from you, but would never even copy/paste. It's an honor and respect thing as much as the copyright.
As for originality: Slide to Unlock existed since the first dead bolt was created. Does that mean Apple's slide to unlock idea should not be patentable because it was simply a slightly different application?
Absolutely not. Translation of hardware to software is by definition obvious. Of course if you stole my code to do your version, then we have a copyright issue correct? Both of us may see the need to perform the act. Just because one of us may code faster should not allow us to "own" the patent on the idea. This is the way coders worked before the system went haywire. I remember how ballistic most of us went back when the Shopping Cart patent law suits started getting filed, I believe that was 2001.
Thanks for that story. I agree with their premise that allowing law suits for mistakes would be harmful. But when they break the law there is no way to prosecute or punish? In my opinion, that is the heart of the problem (and not just with Prosecutors). Why do we call it a mistake and have double standards when a person in certain public offices breaks the law? If a Prosecutor hides evidence, tampers with evidence, etc.. it is illegal and it should cost them their license to practice law at a minimum. Depending on the result of their actions it should also bring about civil or criminal action.
Before you think I'm Joe I_hate_Law that is not the case. Most people get in to Law with good intentions and want to do the right things. They should be able to protect themselves from the corrupted people that damage the reputation of their profession.
AFAIK that would not be true, but I'm not a patent attorney either so it may be something recent that I'm not aware of. What they did do away with was the originality testing. Prior to business process patents the invention had to be unique from top to bottom. Business process patents allowed modifications to existing patents as long as the patent(s) received mention and the description stated how the patent was modified.
Example, prior to the patent change if I filed for patent on "if() {stuff}, else{stuff};" you could not come file a patent to add "elif()". Under patent changes 20 years ago, that was made absolutely valid.
I do realize that the example is primitive, but it works.
I'm not sure if you read the article, I believe the judge to be very correct. There are too many patents, and I believe the indicators are that we have so many "Patent Trolls", an over taxed Patent office, and an over taxed judicial system trying to deal with them all. Patents are being submitted and received for things that should not have a patent. Whether it's obvious, or previously patented, there are simply to many.
What I tend to not give much thought to, and what the Judge so elegantly points out, is that Pharmaceutical companies are actually shafted by the patent system. It still works fine for mechanical invention, but mechanics is a small fraction of the patents being submitted to the US PTO each year.
He also gives some possible solutions. I think most of what he wrote I have seen before from various sources discussing the issue. His presentation is well thought out and not over the top.
A general statement does not mean "all", nor should it be taken to imply all. I was very intentional in the generalization. There is more than one company involved, and more than two. I was also very intentional not to state "all" or "every" pharmaceutical company since, as you correctly point out, that would have been an incorrect statement. The list is longer than one or two, and trying to manage a list of them is not something I wish to entertain. Since you seem to have knowledge on the subject you probably know that there are several current court cases in addition to guilty convictions already ruled for various companies. I'm not going to attempt to follow the cases nor update the list when a general statement of "more than a few" suffices quite well. If you inject "all", "every", or even "most" into the statement on your own then the problem is not with my argument but your ability to read and/or comprehend what was written.
Was my opinion incorrect regarding pharmaceutical companies being responsible for illness, death, or groups of people being angry with several companies that bear responsibility? If I was not correct, what does my signature have to do with the correctness, or incorrectness, of my statements? You know very well that it has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion. It is still an Ad hominem attack, though technically you could also name other fallacies that apply to that same tactic. Creating a new paragraph does not magically make fallacy not exist. The tactic in fact is rather old and well documented. Perhaps you should seek some remedial or introductory courses in Rhetoric and Logic.
If we were discussing systems architecture and I made a grave error it would then be sensible to bring my signature in to the arguments and question my qualifications. As it stands that never happened, so there is no need for me to present any qualifications or defend any of the titles I have held during my career.
Unlike you, I won't pretend to know your personal or professional situation. My opinions, as presented, have as much to do with my user name as they do with what is in my signature. The relevance of my signature is that when it comes to technical discussions (Slashdot is a technical site which often discusses technical issues) the signature has meaning. Notice that I do not place a company name in my signature. That is intentionally done to show that while I have qualifications to discuss systems architecture, systems engineering, systems analysis, etc... my opinions on Slashdot represent my thoughts and not those of the compan(y/ies) that I work for.
In closing I wish to point out that I am not claiming to be perfect or infallible. Quite the contrary, I'm not ashamed to admit that I make mistakes. If you catch me doing so I hope you have enough knowledge to point them out so that I can better my arguments or even change my opinion when it's wrong. Twice now you have shown that you lack such knowledge and resort to the most simple and easily detected fallacies. Prove that you are smarter than that in the future.
I agree very much with your point regarding the Vatican, but would like to point out that any Catholic Church in the US can be audited. You can see what is being sent to the Vatican by each Church because it must be listed on their books.
I will admit that the above is over simplified. The way the Catholic Church is set up, they have a lot of pools for money so it's going to be a bit more complex to track. The little I know about how it works, local Churches send to regional offices, central offices, State offices, etc.. I don't know myself the break down, I can only speculate. Since it's all open in the US (and must be by law) you can easily find the facts if you are willing to do the work. Claiming you can't see what they do is false, you just need to do the work.
The Vatican is not in US territory, so the US has no legal right to audit the Vatican. In line with that statement, the Vatican has no legal obligation to allow the US to audit them. I'm sure you realize that, but it's an obvious reason we can't audit them. Just saying "They won't let us audit them" can imply that the only reason is because they are hiding something, and not that they have no obligation to allow the US to audit them. I believe that your last paragraph does exactly that.
To be very honest, I'm not a fan of the Catholic Church myself. The reasoning is lengthy and beyond the scope of what I'm willing to type here since it's mostly my opinion. In the US, I believe that Catholic is a minority in Christian establishments. That fact is hard to establish since it depends on who's census you believe (The Catholic Church claims much higher membership than other census data). In the cities I have been in I can tell you that for every Catholic Church there are at least 1 Lutheran, 1 Baptist, 1 and one other (7th day Adventist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, etc..). This does not even count the non-Christian Churches. The point of the fore mentioned is that you are making your position on "Religion" based on one group, which at least according to Wiki is less than 1/4th of just the Christian Religion in the US.
This post, and the one you replied to should be enough to present a reasonable case that claiming "religious abuse under the guise of tax shelters" is simple fallacy. Reasonable logic would claim that there is some abuse. Take away the hasty generalization fallacy and it is no longer the "Normal" or even due to "Religion".
Because with the increase in tax revenues over the last 20 years we have solved a majority of our issues with the economy? Wow, and someone says this is the best post ever? I'm sure you two could get a room together and have a great time patting each other on the back for your great ideas, but most of us are not so easily fooled.
Religion spends more money on charity than any private institution, period. You can read their financial books, because as tax exempt they are available to everyone for review. The majority of Detroit's homeless populations rotates from Church to Church, State law prevents them from staying in a Church for more than a night. Religious institutions pay for numerous hospitals and medical centers for people in poverty, in addition to feeding and housing them in their homeless shelters. Religious organizations feed and cloth people in poverty regardless of residence, purchase gifts at Christmas for those in poverty, etc.. etc... In addition to helping at home, most large Religions also establish missions overseas to help remote populations. One may argue that it's self serving, but lets make sure we stick with facts. Churches feed, cloth, build housing, run schools, teach skills and their reward is being able to teach a belief. How often do you burn 10% of your pay check on someone to feed, cloth, house, offer medical treatment, teach them skills, help them farm, just to teach them your atheism? My guess is that you have never done anything of the sort, but you may occasionally drop a dollar in the Salvation army bucket at Christmas time so that you can write off that $200.00 on your Federal income tax without as much guilt.
Contrary to your implication the majority of people working in Religion are not living a life of luxury. The vast majority live just above poverty themselves (as mentioned above, you can go read the books and see how much any member of a Church makes in a year). How often do you hear people say "I'm gonna go to a Monastery so I can be Rich!" You have probably never heard anyone say any such thing since we all know it would be nonsense. Hubbard and Jones pretty much blew it for everyone else wanting to play PT Barnum 30+ years ago.
Claiming that giving the Government more money in taxes will fix our economic problems is ignoring all reasonable and factual data. In fact, it's a blatant lie.
Then to top that off, you claim Religion has false prophets and ignore Government in your statement. Are you claiming or implying that the Government does not. Where is our change as promised by Obama? End of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Hmm, a fix to the economy? Damn, I don't see any of those things. I know, Gitmo was closed.. er wait, it was not closed. State laws regarding legalization of medical marijuana were honored? Damn, not that either. Hell that's just the latest President, you know damn well anyone could do the same for any politician current or past. Yeah, it's all Religions fault. Lets completely ignore the the fact that humans are corrupt bastards and will find ways to abuse any system to satisfy greed and Religion has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Look, if you want to claim Churches should lose tax exempt status, and trust me you are not the first that has, at least try and do so using reasonable logic and present your arguments without the obvious fallacy!
So by your logic bad cops make all cops bad, bad politicians make all politicians bad, bad bosses make all bosses bad, bad employees make all employees bad, bad parents make all parents bad, bad sports figures make all sports figures bad, bad actors and actresses make all of them bad, etc... Do you see where your logic is flawed and you are using a very simple hasty generalization fallacy to back your opinion? Probably not, but you seem to know what bias and bigotry are.
Just one more quick point. "It doesn't have to be unconstitutional to be harmful." I can't agree with that statement at least in the USA regarding US laws. The constitution is the rule of law, which would include the Bill of Rights. As is true in all Republics, all additional laws must be aligned with the Constitution.
Example: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. From that we can extract that Murder is illegal since it interferes with all of the fore mentioned.
In order to create laws that subvert, undermine, or modify the Constitution there must be a formal change to the Constitution. This is exactly what the amendment process is.
So while it should be obvious that we can abstract from the Constitution, the Constitution _is_ the rule of Law. An interesting side note, perhaps, is that the USPS is something guaranteed in the Constitution.
Let me ask a question: Suppose a company opens that delivers packages and ensures that what they ship is up to all state and federal agriculture laws. You can pay them, or not, to ship your produce from Farmer John's to you. Is this illegal and immoral? What if Farmer John said "We are going to start using this company, and we know it'll cost you extra but we trust them." Is that illegal and immoral?
It becomes an issue when it's forced on everyone to use that company and pay the extra fees right? In the case above, it's not. The wording of the title and story is intentionally skewed to make it seem like it's a Religious mass censorship rule. It's not!
I agree with your premise, but find it rather out of place. You are, perhaps mislead in to, thinking that something is happening that is not happening.
You are so far out of context it's alarming. If someone CHOOSES TO PAY FOR THIS SERVICE why the hell do you care? Mind your own business and let them do their thing, as long as they are not making you do the same thing. As you would tell Religious people to stay out of your business, you need to stay out of theirs! That is how we all get along.
As to your last comment, you do realize that abstinence and self control is proven to be the best birth control one could use right? I'd rather teach my kid to have self control and self respect; then about how having sex with random people could lead to pregnancy or VD; then how VD can often leave you disfigured, or give you life long pain, or even kill you; then teach them to be open and honest about when they really believe they want to have sex.. so that I can finally teach them birth control.
Why is it you believe that only your way is the right way? And before you go there, it's not about Religion in that case. It's about being smart and having self respect. We don't put our kids through AA when they are 10 years old because they may get a DUI when they are 16, but hopefully parents have enough sense to teach their kids not to drink and drive before they get their license.
Sorry, but why does everyone equate the term ISP to be a back end mandatory service? I know we in the tech industry tend not to use them, but did we suddenly forget they exist? Read upward for links on US companies that are similar, they are used pretty often in schools in the US.
If you read much of what I post, I'm about as pro constitution as you will find. This company appears not to be an issue, and what they are doing appears a non issue. I can't say definitively since I'm not in the UK and have no intimate knowledge of the company.
ISPs in the US do the same thing as this company. The difference is really that it's harder to do this for Religion than it is to "save the children" in the US. Same thing in reality, both add additional controls and content filtering.
Net Nanny and Cyber Sitter
I know it's hard for people that have been around a while to remember, but back in the day we had AOL and Prodigy which were the same exact thing also. Content was filtered based on their rules. Most of us now days don't use this tier of service, but you still could if you wanted and paid for it.
This is not a company like Comcast or AOL. I intentionally gave examples of similar companies in the US. I used to pay a lot more attention to these companies when my kid was younger, but he's been old enough to see boobies for a while now.
Picture paying for Comcast, then paying Cyber Sitter for services. You get a setup from Cyber Sitter which points you to _their_ proxy and mail services. Their software filters and sends you data over Comcast's lines. Comcast is not impacted at all by your relationship with Cyber Sitter.
You may be stuck with Comcast but you are not stuck with Cyber Sitter. If Cyber Sitter does something you don't like, cancel their services and point yourself back to Comcast for internet and mail. Or go pay Net Nanny for a similar additional service and run their set up.
I did check, and both companies are still in business. Learn what they do, because it's not censoring the web for everyone.
Wrong! It's more like changing the story from Claranet to "AOL" or "NetZero" or some such. From the article, it's not a back end provider. It's an additional services provider.
Your cookie example is horrible. It's more like having an optional pay-for valet service at a restaurant. If the company providing valet services says "Due to potential health risks to our employees we will not park smokers cars.". Seeing that sign do you get hysterical and claim they should not be allowed to operate and try to drive them out of business?
In your case maybe you would, hell I can't speak for you. Morally, Ethically, and Legally that would be incorrect to do. IMO park your own car, walk your fat ass in to the restaurant and get some dinner!
By that logic there should be no drinking age and most surely pornography should be able to be printed anywhere. There should be no movie rating system, lyrics rating system, or game rating system. Do you see that you have crossed well beyond the realm of common sense.
Customers _pay_for_this service, it is not mandatory for _anyone_ to use the service.
The reason this was brought up as a /. article was to create traffic based on the atheist zealots that come out of the wood work spewing hate on anything Religious for any reason.
I doubt that you understand what that means for you and your comment, but I do feel an obligation to point it out.