But we can also create a human life from a sperm and an egg, I think it might even be possible to duplicate the genes in an egg and create a (probably deformed) human from that.
Humans should be more than a collection of atoms; in fact, this is one of the biggest problems I have with the philosophies of materialism and scientism.
"Should" is not "is". Proclaiming something as fact because you want it to be true, not because you have found it to be true is just deluding yourself and others.
Not saying I have answers, just questions. Both sides have problems. On the one hand ya have religious zealots singing the "Every Sperm is Sacred" song from _The Meaning of Life_ and on the other hand you have folks who, put bluntly, are pro infanticide. And the binary nature of the question doesn't leave much room for a sane middle ground.
There's a LOT of middle ground between infanticide (killing after birth?) and banning contraceptives. The common pro-abortion stance is that it should be limited to the first X weeks as the thing in the womb isn't much like a human then, after that threshold it should be left alone.
We care about that which we recognize as human (and which hasn't proven itself hostile). That's how our instincts work and from a resource perspective losing a clump of cells like that is unimportant, you can make dozens more with little time or energy cost. Now, a born baby or a grown human, that took a lot of time and energy to make and losing one would be a big setback.
Yes, the Bible, Quran, etc are pretty serious examples of hate speech and IMO should be treated like Mein Kampf, one problem is that you've got huge parts of the population in fanatical support of each (possibly with the willingness to riot or kill over it) and banning them would be too large a threat to public peace, never mind that in a democratic system something that the vast majority of the poppulation opposes strongly can't really be done, no matter what the founding principles of the nation say (in the end, a nation is just an arbitrary plot of land with people on it, held together by the will of said people to form one nation).
Of course the other explanation would be that these books are highly inconsistent and for every call for war you find a call for peace.
Hate crime is when an act was done in order to create hatred, violence or fear towards a group. When a white guy beats a black guy up because the black guy took his wallet that's normal assault, when a white guy beats a black guy up because he's black that's a hatecrime as it depends on an arbitrary trait of the victim that is shared with a crapload of people. Hatecrimes are worse than regular crimes because the perpetrator will likely do it again when encountering another member of the target group or may be attempting to get others to do the same.
Inciting a riot is against the law even if it is just attempted, the same goes for inciting hatred to cause violence.
If you want another area of the law where the intent of the crime plays a role in sentencing try manslaughter and murder, the mental state of the attacker has a big influence on the sentence.
That is, unless it's the DARPA or something inventing it (possibly as a field resupply system for the army) and the thing gets considered a military secret.
I'm not sure such a replication device is such a great idea.
Why not? If the device obsoletes the entire economy, isn't it time to drop the economy and replace it with something more fit for the changed situation? What kind of sane morality could endorse forfeiting the solution to all shortages just to maintain a system creating suffering for those who don't have and a great inequality in quality of life? If we can have the products of an economy without the human labor why would we keep the economy? The economy is a necessary evil to get stuff done but if we can get stuff done without it, why keep it? Sure, it'd reduce the incentive to research but it would fix all the basic needs for everyone, especially the third world.
If EULAs are considered valid you can be pretty sure you won't get to return anything as they circumvent the laws by claiming no sale ever happened (we really need a Digital Millenium Law Act that would penalize using technical measures to circumvent the law...).
Ball rolling games may work but there's more to a successful gaming machine than just that.
Many DS games that are not the "casual non-game" variety (Brain Training and so on which seems to have thousands of immitators that all fall short, I'd wager it took Nintendo a lot of skill to make such a seemingly stupid half-game into a megaseller) use buttons in addition to the touchscreen or even limit the screen to a few uses while making the buttons do the biggest part. A DS without its buttons would be gimped and I doubt Apple would have an easy time getting stylus-only games that are on par with Brain Training and Nintendogs (these games were not just random successes, they were created using Nintendo's talent for game design and implementation).
The analogy was used to point out the absurdity of the law and give a moral judgement, not as a legal point. From a moral standpoint I think copyright shouldn't let them do more than other sellers can do. It should allow them to prevent copying (verbatim or less accurately) and allow them to sell easily replicable data for profit, it should not allow them to pull crap like telling people what they can do with their copies (if I got the game legally and have the allowed one installation I should be allowed to apply trainers, cracks, etc as much as I want to that copy without copyright interfering, if they want to do anything they should be required to argue over TOS violations or so). Apparently copyright does not fulfill thse requirements and is thus in need of an overhaul.
As for EULAs, I think they should be given to the customer in paper at the checkout and require signature there. Sure, it's impractical and annoying but forcing the customer to jump through hoops shouldn't come without a cost. Make the customer see he's signing a contract before money changes hands and if he doesn't feel comfortable and bails out you lose the sale.
Though AFAIK copyright allows by default to install software, if a license violation just terminates the license how does use of the software become infringing?
The gameplay got better over time as the tolerance for bad design choices went down. These days it's unacceptable to require the player to find secrets with no hint towards them or have huge mazes without any map function. It's unacceptable to kill the player with traps he can't see coming to force trial and error or to make progressing through the game impossible because the player failed to get some object that he can no longer access. Outside of retro-styled games there is no massive death penalty in RPGs (died? Sorry, you lose all items and experience) and mindless grinding is much less common (outside of MMORPGs, at least). Yes, some people whine that this made games too easy but it's entirely possible to make a game difficult without resorting to massively cheap crap. Oh and controls got a lot better too.
Slashdot Mirror
Is that each console or all consoles in total? Because there are 3 consoles...
We can either try to get everyone to agree or we could just go ahead and ignore them.
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
Which explains the poisonous atmosphere.
It was but they starved.
In some jurisdictions you need a license to brew beer. I doubt that's included...
But we can also create a human life from a sperm and an egg, I think it might even be possible to duplicate the genes in an egg and create a (probably deformed) human from that.
Humans should be more than a collection of atoms; in fact, this is one of the biggest problems I have with the philosophies of materialism and scientism.
"Should" is not "is". Proclaiming something as fact because you want it to be true, not because you have found it to be true is just deluding yourself and others.
Not saying I have answers, just questions. Both sides have problems. On the one hand ya have religious zealots singing the "Every Sperm is Sacred" song from _The Meaning of Life_ and on the other hand you have folks who, put bluntly, are pro infanticide. And the binary nature of the question doesn't leave much room for a sane middle ground.
There's a LOT of middle ground between infanticide (killing after birth?) and banning contraceptives. The common pro-abortion stance is that it should be limited to the first X weeks as the thing in the womb isn't much like a human then, after that threshold it should be left alone.
We care about that which we recognize as human (and which hasn't proven itself hostile). That's how our instincts work and from a resource perspective losing a clump of cells like that is unimportant, you can make dozens more with little time or energy cost. Now, a born baby or a grown human, that took a lot of time and energy to make and losing one would be a big setback.
What if it doesn't stay there? Or if it was created outside of any mother?
Aware and self-aware are different things. A baby isn't self-aware for a few years IIRC.
Outside the three mile zone?
Yes, the Bible, Quran, etc are pretty serious examples of hate speech and IMO should be treated like Mein Kampf, one problem is that you've got huge parts of the population in fanatical support of each (possibly with the willingness to riot or kill over it) and banning them would be too large a threat to public peace, never mind that in a democratic system something that the vast majority of the poppulation opposes strongly can't really be done, no matter what the founding principles of the nation say (in the end, a nation is just an arbitrary plot of land with people on it, held together by the will of said people to form one nation).
Of course the other explanation would be that these books are highly inconsistent and for every call for war you find a call for peace.
Hate crime is when an act was done in order to create hatred, violence or fear towards a group. When a white guy beats a black guy up because the black guy took his wallet that's normal assault, when a white guy beats a black guy up because he's black that's a hatecrime as it depends on an arbitrary trait of the victim that is shared with a crapload of people. Hatecrimes are worse than regular crimes because the perpetrator will likely do it again when encountering another member of the target group or may be attempting to get others to do the same.
Inciting a riot is against the law even if it is just attempted, the same goes for inciting hatred to cause violence.
If you want another area of the law where the intent of the crime plays a role in sentencing try manslaughter and murder, the mental state of the attacker has a big influence on the sentence.
That is, unless it's the DARPA or something inventing it (possibly as a field resupply system for the army) and the thing gets considered a military secret.
I'm not sure such a replication device is such a great idea.
Why not? If the device obsoletes the entire economy, isn't it time to drop the economy and replace it with something more fit for the changed situation? What kind of sane morality could endorse forfeiting the solution to all shortages just to maintain a system creating suffering for those who don't have and a great inequality in quality of life? If we can have the products of an economy without the human labor why would we keep the economy? The economy is a necessary evil to get stuff done but if we can get stuff done without it, why keep it? Sure, it'd reduce the incentive to research but it would fix all the basic needs for everyone, especially the third world.
If EULAs are considered valid you can be pretty sure you won't get to return anything as they circumvent the laws by claiming no sale ever happened (we really need a Digital Millenium Law Act that would penalize using technical measures to circumvent the law...).
You could try renting the game though.
But ReiserFS gives plausible deniability if they want to get you for destruction of evidence.
Better to think your enemy evil than stupid.
Can a private organization really get a subpoena like that? I thought to create a subpoena you first have to open a court case?
It is an outbreak because they reacted to the pushing, usually that ends with the company just ignoring everyone and going ahead anyway.
Do you really think OpenGL has no trouble with Vista?
Ball rolling games may work but there's more to a successful gaming machine than just that.
Many DS games that are not the "casual non-game" variety (Brain Training and so on which seems to have thousands of immitators that all fall short, I'd wager it took Nintendo a lot of skill to make such a seemingly stupid half-game into a megaseller) use buttons in addition to the touchscreen or even limit the screen to a few uses while making the buttons do the biggest part. A DS without its buttons would be gimped and I doubt Apple would have an easy time getting stylus-only games that are on par with Brain Training and Nintendogs (these games were not just random successes, they were created using Nintendo's talent for game design and implementation).
The analogy was used to point out the absurdity of the law and give a moral judgement, not as a legal point. From a moral standpoint I think copyright shouldn't let them do more than other sellers can do. It should allow them to prevent copying (verbatim or less accurately) and allow them to sell easily replicable data for profit, it should not allow them to pull crap like telling people what they can do with their copies (if I got the game legally and have the allowed one installation I should be allowed to apply trainers, cracks, etc as much as I want to that copy without copyright interfering, if they want to do anything they should be required to argue over TOS violations or so). Apparently copyright does not fulfill thse requirements and is thus in need of an overhaul.
As for EULAs, I think they should be given to the customer in paper at the checkout and require signature there. Sure, it's impractical and annoying but forcing the customer to jump through hoops shouldn't come without a cost. Make the customer see he's signing a contract before money changes hands and if he doesn't feel comfortable and bails out you lose the sale.
Though AFAIK copyright allows by default to install software, if a license violation just terminates the license how does use of the software become infringing?
The gameplay got better over time as the tolerance for bad design choices went down. These days it's unacceptable to require the player to find secrets with no hint towards them or have huge mazes without any map function. It's unacceptable to kill the player with traps he can't see coming to force trial and error or to make progressing through the game impossible because the player failed to get some object that he can no longer access. Outside of retro-styled games there is no massive death penalty in RPGs (died? Sorry, you lose all items and experience) and mindless grinding is much less common (outside of MMORPGs, at least). Yes, some people whine that this made games too easy but it's entirely possible to make a game difficult without resorting to massively cheap crap. Oh and controls got a lot better too.
-No, you won't be able to afford porting them to the console du-jour.
Ironically Tower of Goo is getting ported to the Wii.