No. Early civilization was exactly the opposite, and has been for almost all of history (and still was in many places, as of this morning). Brutal feudalism, slavery at every turn, war for turf and routine, horrible death of the weak and unprepared.
Civilization is great!
Really, you consider making $149,999.00 a year to be living at the poverty level? It's not really clear how you're approaching this. Not everyone who makes six figures consider themselves to be poor.
They want to get rid of the individual mandate because, among other things, it's a hideous twisting of the Commerce Clause, and a fantastically scary precedent to let stand. And of course you're deliberately ignoring the things they DO want, that the lefties deliberately kept out the legislation that Pelosi said had to be passed "so we could see what was in it." Things like taking all of the fun out ruinous of the absurd circus that is the malpractice suit industry (and it is and industry, and one that drives doctors' insurance rates up to unbelievable levels... something they must pass along to patients). Things like allowing actual competition for health care financing across state lines. If all you can hear are people saying one thing, they you are deliberately not listening.
That's very poetic and stuff. Now, as an exercise, write another one about how a hundred families who are taxed each year to pay for the tens of millions it costs to do non-stop protein replacement for the lifetime of one person with a wretched genetic defect are better off having their own resources shortened. Explain, using dramatic imagery, how despite you assertion that everyone is going to die, that it's actually better to chip away at one person's life - to conscript them for part of each day - to change the slope of someone else's decline.
While you're at it, poetically describe the horror of starving to death, and explain why the sure sign of civilization is to make slaves of everyone so that everyone only starves some. Why stop with protein treatments that cost millions of dollars per patient? Isn't food even more important to more patients, since anyone who doesn't get enough of it is a patient? And what about housing? Bad health-related things happen when you don't have enough shelter, or risk your life in an older car with dodgy brakes, or live in a neighborhood with predatory criminals, or venture outside in lightning storms. Surely the sign of real civilization would be to protect the vulnerable, including those too dim to realize they should use a skateboard without a helmet, and those who drink too much beer in a 30-minute period. Civilization really should hold others accountable for that sort of thing. There's certainly no point drawing any lines. One person's "reckless" is just another person's "vulnerable," right? Pay up! The vulnerable-o-meter is reading off the charts no matter where you point it!
Since your main concern seems to be with painful, lingering deaths, perhaps you should just explore some of the simpler options along those lines? Don't lecture me. I got to watch my dad asphixiate in front of my eyes after years of watching ALS rob him of his life. He didn't want to life on support, and would not have liked your urge to use Civilization to Make It Better.
And no, by the way. Doing a lifetime of protein replacement therapy is not at the top of cilization's list. Caring for vulnerable people is what compassionate people do because they want to, not because they're forced to. The top marker of civilization is the assurance that someone who feels like it can't make you vulnerable (through force). And you're preaching the exact opposite. You're saying that everyone who can claim neediness has a claim, backed by force, on someone else's life. I can't think of a less civil notion.
So I guess Google, Youtube etc etc can fall under being an accessory to copyright violation?
Other than for the sake of trolling and FUD-spreading, why would you conclude that? The two cases couldn't be more distinct. TPB flagrantly promotes the ripping off of people's works, and operations like YouTube have entire staffs dedicated to rapidly investigating and dealing with reports of abuse.
a thinly veiled stab at a political movement that you obviously disagree with
No, I'd say it was an astute observation about cluelessess and/or hypocrisy in a movement that generally gets an uncritical and warm/fuzzy embrace by lots of people in the media and the celebritocracy. The silliness on display in such groups (to say nothing of the they way their restlessness and the awareness that their protest theater is making no point and no headway is leading to more and more juvenile/violent type acts) is definitely worth noting, especially in an environment like Slashdot, where Railing Against The Man is a popular and utterly unfocused, half-baked past-time.
Now that Apple's manufacturing practices are becoming better known, there is a growing back lash.
Except it's really China's manufacturing practices. Foxconn makes parts and subsystems (as well as finished goods) for thousands of companies. Calls to boycotting Apple, in that context, are absurd, and in some ways suggest and even less informed (by way of thinking you know something now, but only knowing part of the story) position.
Want to boycott something? Boycott everything made in China. Good luck with that.
Should everyone give a free pass to Apple just because you produced an anecdote that occupy protesters use too many apple devices?
The point is that all of those Down With Teh Corporate Amerikan Fascist Corporatist Plutocratic Corportations And Their Corporate Corporation Stooge Corporate Corporation Employees And Corporate Investors idiots is that most of them would be dead if it weren't for antibiotics made by businesses. Most of them wouldn't own the underwear they're wearing without businesses to make it for them. Their tents and drums they bang on are made by businesses. Almost everything they wear, use to communicate, eat, drink, sit on, etc., depends on a huge marketplace of services and manufacturers that happens to also include a large amount of Chinese involvement on the labor side. Harping on Apple is ludicrously disingenuous (or adolescently short-sighted, ignorant, and irrational).
If they wanted to rack up charges on your phone bill by making unauthorized calls and text's, it's not like they'd put that in the terms of use.
That app is so invasive that it even managed to usurp your Slashdot account while you were typing and slip a completely superfluous, meaningless apostrophe into your use of the word "texts." These new apps are really insidious.
Really? I threw that at you because you're just puffing about it, and not being specific. And you're still doing everything you can to avoid it. Which is entirely predictable.
Which is the more credible source for scientific analysis: reports written in terms of physics, and published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal; or an opinion piece written in terms of politics and economics, and published in the house organ of the financial-commodities-trading industry?
Except that it's dire economic tail-chasing and suicide that most of the It's All Man's Fault And We're Doomed people propose. It's entirely appropriate to mention that the economic wreckage caused by pursuing things the way that the leftist-eviro-axis says we should would torpedo the very prosperity that pays for research and developement of more energy-efficient ways of life. The costs of doing something hideously expensive that likely will make almost no difference whatsoever (especially since countries like India and China, with energy use rates growing at staggering rates, won't play ball) is nonsensical. And there's nothing wrong with talking about that. And there's a reason that physicists don't talk about it.
The CBO's estimate for 2011 spending is $3.7 tillion. You know, over a trillion and a half more than the number you're using. The difference alone is more than twice the size of the military spending.
You are either a troll, or seriously uninformed about history and current events.
If it was about body count, we'd just carpet bomb entire areas containing anyone we thought was trouble, using technology we've had handy for over half a century.
But it's not, which you would know, if you bothered to digest any information (or admit it to, if you weren't a lying troll). We've lost thousands of soldiers precisly because it's not about body count. Our rules of engagement in places like Iraq and Afghanistan grotesquely favor murderous insurgents over peacekeepers. Try paying attention, huh?
Esp. since there will probably be some charitable giving to the cop during his discipline from other members of the force.
Sure, just like there were people here on Slashdot talking about raising money for Hans Reiser, because, you know, he was, like, totally framed by The Man.
There's nothing wrong with supporting people when you think they deserve it, or when you think they deserve the benefit of the doubt. In Reiser's case, he was a big ol' lying murder. That doesn't mean that people willing to help him out were necessarily misguided, at least early on.
Hurting people who smoke non-dangerous drugs like marijuana is certainly in the realm of fascism.
No, making people who don't increase their own odds of early-onset mental problems, a broad spectrum of addictive behaviors, respiratory trouble, seriously impaired productivity and stunted cognitive development and the rest pay for the results of the people who do is grotesque Nanny Statism and a particularly ironic form of slavery. Same applies to making productive people who know how to eat vegetables pay for the medical care racked up by people who die slowly and expensively because they did nothing but sit in front of the TV and eat sugar and fat. Regardless, you're still completely mis-using the word "fascism," which you surely know, since you are obviously a highly educated, elite liberal arts major. And that brings up the question of why you would so deliberately mis-use such a clearly defined word. I suspect it's because you don't want to be seen eroding the credibility of all of the shrill whiners who use that word so reflexively... but only because they more often use it in defense of leftist sensibilities.
this very lame ad hominem
Nah, it was an appropriate characterization of the juvenile perspective expressed by the person who - like you - trotted out the hilariously wrong "police state" meme. Most people who make it past adolscent levels of "debate" along those lines figure out how ridiculous they sound. I'm helping out with that, by making sure they notice it sooner, rather than later. Which is very generous of me.
Right, it's "fascist" to control dangerous substances. I suppose we're also, like, totally Fascist, man, for prosecuting murderers and rapists, or people who con little old ladies out of money, or...
Never mind, you're 12 years old and can't actually use a dictionary. I see that now.
Which is exactly why things like DropBox are so useful. But the key is to only support sharing with specific users. And, of course, to not have a business model (like MU) built around pirated material.
If these sites can be shut down with lawsuits now, why do we need SOPA and PIPA?
We don't need SOPA and PIPA as currently written, but we need something. Because not all of these piracy-for-cash operations work out of places where reciprocity (as in New Zealand) is workable.
But you're right about the facade coming down. The whole it's-just-for-Linux-distros bit of Kabuki Theater was getting really ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. The company shoud be shut down and nationalized, just like all businesses.
No. Early civilization was exactly the opposite, and has been for almost all of history (and still was in many places, as of this morning). Brutal feudalism, slavery at every turn, war for turf and routine, horrible death of the weak and unprepared. Civilization is great!
Too bad that life will be one of poverty
Really, you consider making $149,999.00 a year to be living at the poverty level? It's not really clear how you're approaching this. Not everyone who makes six figures consider themselves to be poor.
They want to get rid of the individual mandate because, among other things, it's a hideous twisting of the Commerce Clause, and a fantastically scary precedent to let stand. And of course you're deliberately ignoring the things they DO want, that the lefties deliberately kept out the legislation that Pelosi said had to be passed "so we could see what was in it." Things like taking all of the fun out ruinous of the absurd circus that is the malpractice suit industry (and it is and industry, and one that drives doctors' insurance rates up to unbelievable levels ... something they must pass along to patients). Things like allowing actual competition for health care financing across state lines. If all you can hear are people saying one thing, they you are deliberately not listening.
That's very poetic and stuff. Now, as an exercise, write another one about how a hundred families who are taxed each year to pay for the tens of millions it costs to do non-stop protein replacement for the lifetime of one person with a wretched genetic defect are better off having their own resources shortened. Explain, using dramatic imagery, how despite you assertion that everyone is going to die, that it's actually better to chip away at one person's life - to conscript them for part of each day - to change the slope of someone else's decline.
While you're at it, poetically describe the horror of starving to death, and explain why the sure sign of civilization is to make slaves of everyone so that everyone only starves some. Why stop with protein treatments that cost millions of dollars per patient? Isn't food even more important to more patients, since anyone who doesn't get enough of it is a patient? And what about housing? Bad health-related things happen when you don't have enough shelter, or risk your life in an older car with dodgy brakes, or live in a neighborhood with predatory criminals, or venture outside in lightning storms. Surely the sign of real civilization would be to protect the vulnerable, including those too dim to realize they should use a skateboard without a helmet, and those who drink too much beer in a 30-minute period. Civilization really should hold others accountable for that sort of thing. There's certainly no point drawing any lines. One person's "reckless" is just another person's "vulnerable," right? Pay up! The vulnerable-o-meter is reading off the charts no matter where you point it!
Since your main concern seems to be with painful, lingering deaths, perhaps you should just explore some of the simpler options along those lines? Don't lecture me. I got to watch my dad asphixiate in front of my eyes after years of watching ALS rob him of his life. He didn't want to life on support, and would not have liked your urge to use Civilization to Make It Better.
And no, by the way. Doing a lifetime of protein replacement therapy is not at the top of cilization's list. Caring for vulnerable people is what compassionate people do because they want to, not because they're forced to. The top marker of civilization is the assurance that someone who feels like it can't make you vulnerable (through force). And you're preaching the exact opposite. You're saying that everyone who can claim neediness has a claim, backed by force, on someone else's life. I can't think of a less civil notion.
So I guess Google, Youtube etc etc can fall under being an accessory to copyright violation?
Other than for the sake of trolling and FUD-spreading, why would you conclude that? The two cases couldn't be more distinct. TPB flagrantly promotes the ripping off of people's works, and operations like YouTube have entire staffs dedicated to rapidly investigating and dealing with reports of abuse.
a thinly veiled stab at a political movement that you obviously disagree with
No, I'd say it was an astute observation about cluelessess and/or hypocrisy in a movement that generally gets an uncritical and warm/fuzzy embrace by lots of people in the media and the celebritocracy. The silliness on display in such groups (to say nothing of the they way their restlessness and the awareness that their protest theater is making no point and no headway is leading to more and more juvenile/violent type acts) is definitely worth noting, especially in an environment like Slashdot, where Railing Against The Man is a popular and utterly unfocused, half-baked past-time.
Now that Apple's manufacturing practices are becoming better known, there is a growing back lash.
Except it's really China's manufacturing practices. Foxconn makes parts and subsystems (as well as finished goods) for thousands of companies. Calls to boycotting Apple, in that context, are absurd, and in some ways suggest and even less informed (by way of thinking you know something now, but only knowing part of the story) position.
Want to boycott something? Boycott everything made in China. Good luck with that.
Should everyone give a free pass to Apple just because you produced an anecdote that occupy protesters use too many apple devices?
The point is that all of those Down With Teh Corporate Amerikan Fascist Corporatist Plutocratic Corportations And Their Corporate Corporation Stooge Corporate Corporation Employees And Corporate Investors idiots is that most of them would be dead if it weren't for antibiotics made by businesses. Most of them wouldn't own the underwear they're wearing without businesses to make it for them. Their tents and drums they bang on are made by businesses. Almost everything they wear, use to communicate, eat, drink, sit on, etc., depends on a huge marketplace of services and manufacturers that happens to also include a large amount of Chinese involvement on the labor side. Harping on Apple is ludicrously disingenuous (or adolescently short-sighted, ignorant, and irrational).
Yeah, OK. You keep telling yourself that.
If they wanted to rack up charges on your phone bill by making unauthorized calls and text's, it's not like they'd put that in the terms of use.
That app is so invasive that it even managed to usurp your Slashdot account while you were typing and slip a completely superfluous, meaningless apostrophe into your use of the word "texts." These new apps are really insidious.
I do not want to hear about experts in learning from someone who non-ironically refers to one of them as a "massively renowned expert."
I don't have numbers
Sure you do, but you're pretending not to because if you acknowledge the real numbers, you'll be admitting that you know you're lying.
Most of SOPA's legislative supporters are Democrats. Most of those opposed to it are Republicans.
Really? I threw that at you because you're just puffing about it, and not being specific. And you're still doing everything you can to avoid it. Which is entirely predictable.
Ah, way to address the details. Excellent!
Which is the more credible source for scientific analysis: reports written in terms of physics, and published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal; or an opinion piece written in terms of politics and economics, and published in the house organ of the financial-commodities-trading industry?
Except that it's dire economic tail-chasing and suicide that most of the It's All Man's Fault And We're Doomed people propose. It's entirely appropriate to mention that the economic wreckage caused by pursuing things the way that the leftist-eviro-axis says we should would torpedo the very prosperity that pays for research and developement of more energy-efficient ways of life. The costs of doing something hideously expensive that likely will make almost no difference whatsoever (especially since countries like India and China, with energy use rates growing at staggering rates, won't play ball) is nonsensical. And there's nothing wrong with talking about that. And there's a reason that physicists don't talk about it.
You're an idiot troll.
No, you're avoiding all of the details that make him right and you a whiny twit who thinks things can run on rainbows and pixie dust.
The CBO's estimate for 2011 spending is $3.7 tillion. You know, over a trillion and a half more than the number you're using. The difference alone is more than twice the size of the military spending.
"biggest body count possible"
You are either a troll, or seriously uninformed about history and current events.
If it was about body count, we'd just carpet bomb entire areas containing anyone we thought was trouble, using technology we've had handy for over half a century.
But it's not, which you would know, if you bothered to digest any information (or admit it to, if you weren't a lying troll). We've lost thousands of soldiers precisly because it's not about body count. Our rules of engagement in places like Iraq and Afghanistan grotesquely favor murderous insurgents over peacekeepers. Try paying attention, huh?
Half of our national budget goes to the military.
That's so wrong it's not even wrong.
Esp. since there will probably be some charitable giving to the cop during his discipline from other members of the force.
Sure, just like there were people here on Slashdot talking about raising money for Hans Reiser, because, you know, he was, like, totally framed by The Man.
There's nothing wrong with supporting people when you think they deserve it, or when you think they deserve the benefit of the doubt. In Reiser's case, he was a big ol' lying murder. That doesn't mean that people willing to help him out were necessarily misguided, at least early on.
Hurting people who smoke non-dangerous drugs like marijuana is certainly in the realm of fascism.
No, making people who don't increase their own odds of early-onset mental problems, a broad spectrum of addictive behaviors, respiratory trouble, seriously impaired productivity and stunted cognitive development and the rest pay for the results of the people who do is grotesque Nanny Statism and a particularly ironic form of slavery. Same applies to making productive people who know how to eat vegetables pay for the medical care racked up by people who die slowly and expensively because they did nothing but sit in front of the TV and eat sugar and fat. Regardless, you're still completely mis-using the word "fascism," which you surely know, since you are obviously a highly educated, elite liberal arts major. And that brings up the question of why you would so deliberately mis-use such a clearly defined word. I suspect it's because you don't want to be seen eroding the credibility of all of the shrill whiners who use that word so reflexively ... but only because they more often use it in defense of leftist sensibilities.
this very lame ad hominem
Nah, it was an appropriate characterization of the juvenile perspective expressed by the person who - like you - trotted out the hilariously wrong "police state" meme. Most people who make it past adolscent levels of "debate" along those lines figure out how ridiculous they sound. I'm helping out with that, by making sure they notice it sooner, rather than later. Which is very generous of me.
I'm not sure I see the point of sarcastically complaining about something that you're imagining in your head.
The fact that the majority of such content is pirated is hardly MU's fault.
Sure it is, because they actively cultivated and rewarded exactly that behavior. Read the indictment. Really.
Right, it's "fascist" to control dangerous substances. I suppose we're also, like, totally Fascist, man, for prosecuting murderers and rapists, or people who con little old ladies out of money, or ...
Never mind, you're 12 years old and can't actually use a dictionary. I see that now.
Which is exactly why things like DropBox are so useful. But the key is to only support sharing with specific users. And, of course, to not have a business model (like MU) built around pirated material.
If these sites can be shut down with lawsuits now, why do we need SOPA and PIPA?
We don't need SOPA and PIPA as currently written, but we need something. Because not all of these piracy-for-cash operations work out of places where reciprocity (as in New Zealand) is workable.
But you're right about the facade coming down. The whole it's-just-for-Linux-distros bit of Kabuki Theater was getting really ridiculous.