The people on both sides of this fight are childless morons, eager to tell people how to raise their children. But both sides are fighting a futile fight.
the amazing thing about human beings is that we are able to learn vicariously, and from wisdom trasmitted from others. Consequently having children does not necessarily mean you know how best to raise them. If that were the case then there would be no bad parents.
It really doesn't matter to me what any teacher wants to tell my kids about various theories of where the world came from. To me, it's more important that they grow up with respect for other people, and that other peoples belief systems for the most part wont interfere with them.
thats fine and dandy, but that has fuck-all to do with science. And where do you get this fantasy that people's belief systems wont interfere with you? Belief is the basis of all instances of people interfering with each other. They don't interfere because they agree, they interfere because they disagree and feel self-righteous in whatever their position is, so strongly, that they are willing to use force to compel other human beings to comply with their notions of the world.
Science is a specific study. Scientists have made specific observations of the universe and put down those observations. It's not for a teacher of science to apply their personal interpretation. If the state wants to remove science from the curriculum, that is a matter of public policy. But you can't just teach any arbitrary thing, label it science, and then say 'it doesn't really matter what any teacher wants to tell my kids'.
What Mrs CBag general arts degree has to say about the origins of life means shit-all to them in the long run.
Kids don't know that Mrs CBag only has a general arts degree and is not truly qualified to teach them. But that is a seperate issue.
I'd hate for them to be the kind of thoughtless shitbags I see posting here about how everyone but them is a "big stupid idiot" for not believing exactly what you're told to, especially when what I was told about evolution 20 years ago is different than now.
Part of what you learn in science class is that as more evidence comes in scientific theories are refined and fine tuned or sometimes thown out entirely. No science class should ever teach that science is an immutable and static body of knowledge that has reached the pinnacle of perfection. That is for Bible class. And a good science class teaches what scientists used to theorize in the past, how that changed and WHY that changed, in order to give kids an understanding of what scientists do and the limitations of the scientific method, verses say Religious Zealotry. One of the things taught in science class is the concept of 'error'. And a good science class requires students to document all of the possible sources of error in their experiments. In any event, I also went to school 20 years ago and what they taught about natural selection, as vague as it was, holds true today. And the exact same scientific principle came up in university in the course of studying computer science and certain system devised to use natural selection to evolve algorithmic solutions to problems (such as how to park a truck without crashing it). A dumb computer will evolve the solution to the answer. Natural selection works. I've seen proof of it with my own eyes.
I'd hope they realize that at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter if the lady in the office next to me believes God made the universe 6000 years ago, or if some other guy thinks it just popped out of nothing 2.53 billion years ago - both "calculations" are based on a ridiculously small data sample, and both are completely worthless, and almost guaranteed to be wrong.
Well some of us consider school to be a place of learning, not a mere day care. But I can understand how someone like you who has an issue with book learnin' might not see the point.
There was never any need of legislation to protect teachers who perform bonafide science in the class room. This legislation attempts to protect teachers who simply disagree with the science on religious grounds and give them a platform to teach superstition as a substitute. At most such teachers should simply refuse to teach science as a violation of their religious beliefs, and then they should be reassigned to another subject such as sex education. And when they say sex education violates their religious beliefs then they should be reassigned to another subject such as being unemployed.
Why should teachers be obligated to teach to a curriculum to all the other subjects but not science? I say let them teach math that contradicts mathematics, grammar that contradicts english, history revised to their personal taste, imaginary geography, using non standardized mapping systems, let them teach kids the wrong organs. For example if I believe people have 3 hearts, why shouldn't I be allowed to teach that? If some teacher thinks that the solar system rotates around the earth, or that the earth is flat, or that heavier objects fall faster, well whose to say they aren't allowed to teach that? Isn't the real purpose of having a teaching job to have a platform to spread your personal views to other peoples children?
Why stop at the subject matter? If teachers think children learn best by playing outside all day long and having no homework, well aren't the teachers the ones who are supposed to know how beast to teach? That is their life long profession isn't it? Its not like we let the teachers dictate what the current state of scientific knowledge is... oh.. wait.. that is what this bill is about isn't it?
Watching your children 100% of the time is not feasible. But you can engender in them the belief that they're being watched 100% of the time. That may be enough.
And it will prepare them for the real world where they will be. I would not want to live in your "real world".
Where as the reality is, company deploy computer systems and make use of the internet to make productivity savings. You know, the advent of the assembly line marked a new era of cost savings in manufacturing, but it also opened up a lot of jobs for engineers and other workers. It's the nature of progress; adapt or die. Nobody has an inherent right to a job, but it is everyone's personal responsibility to take steps to make sure their skills stay relevant. If a particular skill becomes obsolete or subject to significantly less demand, the burden lies on the individual to find another way to make himself economically valuable. when you say "cost savings" what you mean is "the boss/lord can now throw a bunch of people off his land".
Don't all living things have an inherent right to to take what they need from the environment in order to survive and reproduce?
Imagine if a king, upon discovering a method of "Cost savings" decided to throw his surplus subjects into the ocean? He decries "there is no inherent RIGHT to be my subject and leech off my *MY* kingdom. The burden is on you to make yourself useful to me! Don't come back until you are useful."
As a property owner, you are merely a manager of wealth. there is nothing NATURAL that makes any wealth the exclusive property of a single being to enjoy. All the wealth of the world is naturally commonly shared by all the life of the world.
If you have taken it upon yourself to be "wealthy" then you have a duty to manage that wealth in a way that benefits all. and you have a moral duty for the welfare of your employees. you can tell yourself its ok to just 'let them go free'. But you dictated their level of education while they worked for you, by controlling the amount of free time they have and their work conditions. If you expect them to have skills for future occupations.. you must provide those skills.. otherwise you are a dictator and a tyrant and have no right to complain when the workers revolt and take the means of their survival into their own hands (and perhaps take your head in the bargain).
In general, all employers conspire to minimize the education and marketability of their workers. employers don't want mobile workers because such workers cost the most money. And any skills they posssess that don't go to their job, actually reduce their productivity. The wealthy may enjoy their lavish lifestyles, but it comes with a MORAL DUTY to the rest of mankind. A leader has a duty to his followers. You can't cut them loose in any natural kind of social relationship.
Some of the better monarchs in history understood this. In capitalism we have created a class of petty dictators that want all the benefits of monarchy but none of the responsibilities of leadership.
And then a bunch of wannabe petty dictators who go around blathering about now 'natural' and 'inherent' it all is.
As the AC said to the other poster, you fail economics. Why? Here's a clue: the exact same line of thinking can be applied to monetary transactions. What you get is worth exactly the amount of money you paid for it, so income (the thing) minus expenses (the cash) equals 0, so no taxes. profit is not made during the buying and selling commodities. Profit is made by getting more than what you pay for. And in general you'll never get more than what you pay for in an open and free market.
No one who isn't under duress can be compelled to sell anything for less than what it is worth. Because value is merely a quantification of what price things demand on the market. If buyers are willing to pay you a certain quantity, then that is what the commodity is worth. It can not be said to be worth less than what it will fetch. And you would never give it up for less than what it could fetch unless you have no choice.
With that said... profit can be made whether or not items are traded for green pieces of paper in between transactions. That is irrelevant. What is important is that someone somewhere has a gun to their head (metaphorically speaking).
if you really want to know where profit is made.... go look at how much goods a worker can exchange his green pieces of paper for. On average it is ALWAYS LESS than the amount that the actual product of his labour will fetch on the open market. If you operated some machine that took $10 of wood (plus other assorted wear and tear on tools etc), and turned it into chair which fetches $109 on the open market. You probably got paid $20 for the effort. Where did that other $79 of value come from? It came from your labour that you undersold by $79.
Of course, there is a large pool of starving carpenters also willing to sell $99 of labour for a mere $20, you have no choice but to do the same or die.
But don't pretend that your labour is worth less than $99. Because $99 is exactly what your labour adds to what was previously $10 of raw materials. $10 is the price that much material is available for. And $109 is the amount of money that chair will fetch on the market. There is no other input into the equation.
One might ask why any sane person would pay $109 for a chair, when they could simply buy $10 in materials and pay someone $20 for their labour. The answer would generally be along the lines of unless you happened to have access to the means of production (a factory), which enables 1 worker to do the work of 5 men; Without access to the means of production, it would take $100 of labour + the $10 to make a chair. Consequently it would cost you $110. Buying the chair from the factory owner actually saves you $1 (notwithstanding that he is extracting $79 of unpaid labour from the employee).
So why can't you simply use the factory for a while and make yourself a chair? Or why cant you have that chair for its real cost of $30. Why must you pay someone $109 for a chair which only cost them $30? And how did they manage to get anyone to work for a mere $20 (and why isn't anyone willing to pay $21 when even at $21 they could still make a tidy $78 of profit in the chair business). well.. who knows... maybe it it is an intractible mystery, or maybe it is well understood.
but either way, whether you barter for it or pay with green pieces of paper, there is a profit when the worker is paid less than the output of his labour will fetch. and it isn't because they are overcharging for the chair.
whoever said no profit can be made in barter systems doesn't understand economics or what profit actually is. (or what money is for that matter).
Congress routinely enacts laws that are only constitutional if justified by the "general welfare" clause of the preamble, not any part of the actual constitution.
Note, of course, that the "general welfare" clause was not intended to permit unrestrained growth of government services for whatever vaguely-collective reason Congresspeople might concoct in the service's defense. The "general welfare" clause was not intended to permit galloping socialism.
At least, that's true according to James Madison in Federalist 41. Alexander Hamilton, OTOH, took the broader view that Congress may spend as it sees fit, so long as it doesn't favor a particular party.
Of course, even according to Hamilton's relatively-leftist, pro-government position, expenses to pay for, say, private military contractors, farm subsidies (which mostly go to the largest 20% of farms, often owned by e.g. Tyson Foods), welfare checks for the poor, (benefiting a subset of the population is not necessarily a benefit to the whole population. This doesn't make welfare a bad idea (though its implementations thus-far have ranged from moderately-useful at best (e.g. the EITC), and idiotic at worst) - merely, it conflicts with the way the U.S. Constitution both stands and as was intended by its authors), etc. would, I suspect, be invalid reasons for government spending. I don't think you are considering the economic effect of welfare properly. Anything which gives income to the unemployed by the operation of the free market indirectly raises the wages of the employed. If you can make $5/hour doing nothing. You aren't going to work for $5. That would be the same as working for free, or worse (since you would need to hire a babysitter while you were working for free).
So a job which might have commanded $3/hour in a pure free market, must command more than $5 if there is a $5/hour equivalent welfare. Another way to look at it is that anyone satisfied with what they can make on welfare is not going to work, thus the labour pool is smaller, thus those with jobs benefit from welfare in the form of decreased competition for their jobs. real jobs must pay significantly higher than welfare, since people on welfare avoid the costs associated with having a job (such as transportation, work clothes etc).
It would not be correct to ignore the other factors such as inflation (which congress also tries to influence via the Federal Reserve that it has created) but it is wrong to say that welfare only benefits people without jobs. We don't even need to get into the other side effects such as decreased crime that exists in welfare states. Obviously decreased crime benefits everyone (except those in the business of selling crime-fighting related products - guns, police cars, jails, security).
Luckily for American Congresspeople, the majority of the American public has neither read the Constitution or Bill of Rights, nor has been asked to think hard about those documents -- we can thank the public education that the Dept. of Education tries to manage -- and the 20% or so who might have given them more than a passing thought tend neither to abide by those documents nor care about their intent. Combined with incentives to ignore the meaning of the highest law of the land, Congresspeople thus trample the documents they are supposed to uphold... well.. I'd basically have to agree with that, except the congress people are neither lucky nor unlucky. It is the private interests (i.e. the wealthy) who benefit. If the public was more educated there would be a different set of congress people and they would be lucky in other ways (they would be beloved and trusted by the people and the world and celebrated as heroes for all time to come). Currently each and every congress person is going to have to take to their grave, knowledge of the disaster they have wrought on their homeland, and the knowledge that future generations (if there are any future generations) are probably not going to forgive them.
People should learn to take responsibility for their actions. Paedophilia is wrong, and those who practice it should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Pedophilia is not an action.
So what is it that you are trying to say? We should prosecute people for their thoughts?
"But see, Linux sucks! It has holes just like Windows does!"
The difference is that we know about this hole, and can now fix it - I'm just going to bed, and it will no doubt be fixed by the time I wake up. How many Windows security issues are known that haven't been fixed?
"Oh man, this is why Linux is great! We can find holes, and fix them, like, immediately!"
Yes, that's a strength of Linux. What I want to know is, what steps will be taken to ensure that bugs of this type - whatever they might be - don't crop up again? One advantage that a large paid organization can have is strict testing requirements - I'm honestly not sure if I believe the Linux kernel is held to the strong standards that a commercial kernel theoretically could be.
The existence of this bug is a failure on Linux's part. There's no way to get around that. Many mistakes were made, from the original code or design decision that caused this bug all the way up to it not being found until now. The bug will be fixed rapidly - but the process that let this bug be released needs to be looked at, casually at the very least, to figure out if there's a way to stop this class of error from ever happening again. (Whatever class of error it ends up being - I don't pretend to know.) What are you? a politician? It takes a lot of gall to decree that there is a problem in the process, and the process must be fixed so "this class of error" never happens again, when you don't even know what the process is, what class of error it is, and whether or not it is even theoretically feasible to prevent it from ever happening again.
People scored your post insightful??? It should be scored TROLL.
now that the competing "workers paradise" is out of the way, our unelected hegemony of massive corporate concerns can look beyond the business of marketing and spinning the wonders of unfettered capitalism and get back to the business of maximizing profit. I agree with what you are saying, but I really do think that if we can take the language and respin it so that it doesn't sound like a manifesto, but more like something that an average guy would talk about we would get more people to listen- not a trolling here but more of a concern that there are a lot of good ideas and intelligent thought that get thrown by the wayside because language like I bolded in the quote scares the average joe and tends to give less credence to an otherwise correct opinion in their eyes. ok: when there was a communist empire, the business community had something to prove. it needed to prove that the free market is great for everyone. We have been living in a system where part of the cold war strategy was to give the masses of people a higher standard of living than the free market dictated, lest the working class become jealous of the standard of living of workers in the communist empire. Now that the communist empire is gone, we will revert back to true free market capitalism for the first time since the late 1800s. In the same way that free market economics pushes the sale price down to the bare mimimum level of profitability. And free market economics forces competetors to cut costs and become more and more efficient. A simple analysis of of free market economics, shows that the free market pushes the standard of living of the worker to the BARE MINIMUM NECESSARY FOR REPRODUCTION. It pushes the standards of education down to the bare minimum necessary to perform a labour function, at the youngest age possible. And a little bit of sociological study shows, that when the "Average" income is barely enough for reproduction, at any given point in time a large number of unemployed people will be out there desperately searching for jobs, somewhat analagous to the large inventories of raw materials and stock that business keep on hand to meet market demand. When the market goes up, business snatches up the extra workers, when the market goes down, they lay off thousands of people to beg, borrow and steal for survival. In any event the free market eventually makes it impossible for people to maintain the survival of their idle senior citizens. you will be faced with letting your kids starve, or letting your parents starve. Of course your parents will dutifully sacrifice themselves for the well being of the grandchildren. Don't wait for a free market solution. There are plenty of unemployed youths out there who will do your job for less money than you. If you can't afford to care for your aging parents, the free market doesn't care.
all of this will happen, unless labour works together and organizes. The same way the corporations and banks and doctors and lawyers and the wealthy organize. Those who stand alone will always be the victims.
maximizing profit is only done by restricting competition, and lowering costs. Lowering costs is done by getting more out of your workforce and paying them less.
When they talk about falling spending power, and the vanishing middle class.. none of this is mysterious. Even Adam Smith, champion of free market economics warned that the state should not trust the merchant class. Because, he said, whatever is good for the merchant class is invariably bad for the great masses of people. When rates of profit are UP, standards of living go down. Meanwhile our poor and middle classes are being raised into a culture of ignorant consumerism. Being told that spending money is good for the economy. Every business knows that in order to get ahead you have to REDUCE SPENDING. So the people spend and the corporations INVEST... how long does that continue before you yourself are bound by a court appointed trustee to manage your property in order to help pay off your debts?
When i am crossing the USA border with encryption that is not crackable with ease - like keys over 1kb long - the enforcers (beleive to) have enough reason to put me in jail, either to annoy, prosecute or study me. And besides that: rumor has it that even when one uses or develops heavy encryption outside North-America soil, they might want to jail that person when it visits the states later on. The article is misrepresents the ruling. The Minnesota appeals court found that what a person was using their computer for, encryption or otherwise was RELEVENT to the facts of the case.
Not all admissible evidence is "evidence of criminal intent".
In fact I would argue the availability of encryption software and the NON-USAGE of it, is evidence of innocence (or at least proof that the accused is no hardened criminal and deserves some leniency)!
They never said that the encryption is necessarily evidence of wrong doing. Only that it is admissible as evidence. It would be for the jury to decide whether or not it proves anything; guilt innocence or otherwise.
""We find that evidence of appellant's Internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state's case against him,""
He was convicted for the actual testimony from the girl. There was no evidence he has even encrypted anything at all. The defense was attempting to have the conviction thrown out on the basis that somehow this evidence was irrelevant and tainted the verdict. The evidence was slightly relevant (barely), and it was not prejudicial anyway, so the trial was fair.
Even if the appeals court found the evidence completely irrelevant it wouldn't have reversed the ruling, since in light of the fact that nothing had actually been encrypted it is absurd to think that the jury somehow had a reasonable doubt about the girls testimony but the existence of unused PGP software erased that doubt.
No way did a judge say "evidence of encryption software = evidence of criminal intent".
the only way to exclude evidence is to prove it is absolutely irrelevant or that it is so misleading that it would threaten the validity of the verdict. (or that it was obtained by government misconduct).
at the end of the day most good prosecutors who have a good case aren't going to harp on little minutia of barely material information. They are going to confuse the jury into thinking that somehow this detritus is supposed to prove something, and if you get some jury members fixated on the idea that encryption software that hasn't been used is supposed to prove something they might just acquit because they lost the crowns line of reasoning.
for whatever insight it gives into the mental state of the user of a computer it is tangentally relevant and would be admissible unless it was misleading or too confusing. evidence of general behavior around an object relevent to the crime (the computer) is somewhat relevant.
the existence of microsoft word would have been deemed admissible. it also proves no crime per se. But some newspaper might say "microsoft word is evidence of criminal intent!"
Associating violence with any one religion, or religion as a whole is just silly. All humans, religious or not, are capable of atrocities, and have been carrying them out for nearly every reason imaginable for millennia. The capacity for hatred really is the one thing all humans have in common. Thinking that there is no correlation between religion and hatred is just MORE silly. All humans are capable of atrocities, but time and time again, it is the religious community that crystalizes this capacity for hatred into actual hatred and strikes out against their fellow men and tries to wipe them off the face of the earth.
Needless to say.. the next suicide bomb that goes off will be by a religious person.
the japanese Kamikaze were literally "divine wind" or "god wind". They were not called "human guided bombs". It is religion and religion alone that can be relied upon to muster and focus the hatred of mankind into something beyond the occasional statistical blip of hate motivated violence.
That's pretty funny! But it's also very, very close to the totalitarian ideas of the ex-Soviet Union (a Worker's Paradise, dontchaknow?) The State owns everything, and controls the means of production, including the people. We saw how well that worked out. now that the competing "workers paradise" is out of the way, our unelected hegemony of massive corporate concerns can look beyond the business of marketing and spinning the wonders of unfettered capitalism and get back to the business of maximizing profit. That is to say: busting the unions and teaching our work force to work faster, longer and harder for less pay, less compensation, less education, and a lower overall quality of life).
What kind of oppressive society would infringe on my natural born right to own the means of production and do with it as I see fit? If I want to own the only automobile factory in the world, (and buy out the other automobile manufacturers) the state should protect my right. If I want to be the sole owner of the means of producing food, only a terrorist would deny me! If a pendemic threatens to kill a million people. Well who are they to infringe on my intellectual property rights? The government should bomb them if they try making generic drugs. Its not my fault if they dont want to pay me whatever price I set? my ideas are my own. I paid my employees fair and square! I own them!
Men have no right to produce for themselves. They'll need to deal with big business if they want to avoid starving to death. They are lucky that they still get free air! If we didn't live in such a pinko bleeding heart society we'd auction off the atmosphere to the private sector. Use the proceeds to lower taxes. Think of how much the GDP would go up if we could turn breathing into a profitable business?
Where does the State get off owning the means of breathing? I thought protecting the minority (the wealthy) from the oppression of the majority (the poor) is what our country was about?
And I can't really imagine a situation in which a paladin would do better than a cleric or druid. Paladins don't get any abilities at all that clerics and druids can't do better. The fact that you can't imagine something proves nothing except your lack of imagination.
Paladins do get abilities that clerics and druids can't do better: Base Attack bonus and an average of 2 extra hit points + 1 per level beyond 1st level. Not to mention charisma bonus to saving throws, a paladin's mount. And paladins aren't useless once their daily spell allotment runs out.
whether these make the paladin more or less powerful than another class depends on the campaign style. campaigns that push the characters constantly and give them little time to rest, let alone pray or prepare spells will let paladins really shine. druids and clerics will deplete their spells and then become pathetic fighters. paladins have as many hp and combat bonuses as fighters and a charisma bonus to saving throws. not to mention can heal themselves without needing to prepare spells. I ran a campaign where it was the paladin who was always ready to keep on going while the cleric and mage constantly wanted to rest and prepare more spells. ultimately the paladin actually departed the party because the party was delaying too long and the paladin felt the quest would fail if they continued to delay. for story purposes we felt it was more believable if the paladin went on without the rest of the party.
clerics and wizards can unleash a blast of power for a short time.. but if an encounter is protected or continues to involve enemies which break off and let duration based spells wear out or otherwise engage the pcs in a way so the wizard can't target multiple enemies simultaneously or tempts the wizard to waste spells (which is what intelligent enemies will do when they can)...
bah this discussion is pointless. I'm replying to an AC! *shakes head*
if the dm throws a different mix of enemies, then the fighter can shine, or the wizard or the cleric or the rogue or even a diviner.. its all up to the DM's mix.
anyone who hasn't figured that out, isn't paying much attention to the fact that certain challenges tend to favour certain kinds of solutions and not all classes as equal.
if you are faced with countless locks and traps then a rogue is going to seem very powerful. if you face undead constantly then clerics seem the best. if you are always stuck magic-dead zones obviously the wizard will appear useless.
if you face enemies which a paladins strengths are well suited to.. paladins will shine.
challenges which assault the party with many moderate to easy DC saving throw resistable attacks, fear and combined with numerous low damage physical attacks and a moderate level of easy to turn undead will make paladins seem extremely powerful.
its easy to see how the circumstances really affects who appears to be more powerful.
There are all kinds of examples of people who enjoy greater freedoms *AND* fewer responsibilities than others. For example : 21-year-olds and very young children.
I don't see how you can make such a sweeping generalization.
"You are inconsistent in a funny way! First you confidently assert that there is no God. Then you comment on what that non-existent God wouldn't do."
its called 'reductio ad absurdum' the fact that your rights are being stripped from you proves that God doesn't exist. Because according to the authorities you cite : men are bestowed by certain "inalienable" rights by the Creator. Which according to your definition of Creator, is an onmipotent and willful creator. Nothing whatsoever can alienate what an omnipotent power makes inalienable. Look up the word.
"When people stop believing in and because of this belief, living by the commands and precepts of this Creator God, they slowly, but surely forfeit their rights given to them by the Creator." "The founding fathers believed scripture, which most (including you, evidently) no longer do:"
The founding fathers were mostly NOT Christians, but rather they were Deists. So they had no belief that God gave mankind "commands and precepts" and they did not believe in scripture, they believed in science and reason.
But thanks for playing the "Lets Revise the History of America" game. It was a blast.
Although I am not sure I enjoy playing the "non-believers forfeit their rights" game. You are a religious fundamentalist zealot, and a threat to anyone who doesn't agree with your superstitious world view. People like you are responsible for virtually all of the misery and suffering in the world.
As far as where rights came from.. you haven't given any argument to suggest they came from your god, you simply presupposed they came from god and then begged the question. I'm not wasting my time with you. Unlike you (in your imagination) I don't have an immortal soul; I must treasure each second.
There is no God. And the belief that God knows what goes on inside your head is part of what makes many people feel like privacy is not a human right. Afterall, God wouldn't violate your rights would he?
Just because we have the technology to spy on everyone doesn't mean its ok, or beneficial to do so. At the end of the day you've got to live with yourself and your own conscience. "National Security" doesn't give a rats ass about anything except protecting the interests of the wealthy and powerful.
for the 46 million people without healthcare, struggling to make ends meet.. it doesn't get much worse. why do they care about national security? you want to find a threat.. look to the people who have no vested interest in maintaining the status quo. give them hope, healthcare, a job.. then the danger will go down. far more effectively than recording their email and telephone calls.
History has shown that the more oppressive society becomes, the less people feel like the nation is something worth preserving. We can only ignore that fact to our own peril. Look at what happened to the USSR.. it wasn't mere economics that ruined it.. but lack of political will amongst its people to preserve the communist regime.
the fact is that all of this desire to spy domestically presupposes that "the enemy" is getting inside help. that means it is employing disgruntled residents.. logically then, the more disgruntled residents there are, the more easily they are employed... of course.. that assumes there even is an "enemy" and the whole thing isn't just some fabricated boogieman. nothing would suprise me. all options are on the table when it comes to what the powerful and greedy will do to increase their hold on humankind.
The problem with the trying to make a trademark claim is that the car in the picture *IS* a ford. Its not trademark infringement to call a Ford a Ford. It is trademark infringement to call a car made by someone else a Ford. It is perfectly legal to sell a picture of yourself drinking a can of coke, saying "I am drinking a coke!". As long as there is no confusion that Coke didn't produce this photograph. You should be clear that the photograph was not produced by coke and coke is not responsible for it.
The only thing that is normally required is that you make sure you aren't purporting that you designed the car, or that it is your product or that you are representing the trademark owner in some way. In this case there was no chance that a reasonable person would imagine the Mustang club was selling its own cars which looked like Fords. It was a club of Mustang enthusiasts, posing next to their Ford Mustangs. This is absolutely NOT trademark infringement unless you claim you represent Ford. At the very most, if one of the cars was modified, they would need to indicate clearly that the car in the photo was custom modified, and is not representative of a ford Mustang.
If Ford thought they had an issue with a legal requirement they could have given the club license to use the likeness. That satisfies the requirement to protect your trademark. Since this club is obviously pro-ford, they would have agreed to put a statement saying "The Mustang car and likeness is a trademark of Ford motor company and used by permission".
Suing your most loyal and fanatical customers is absolute lunacy.
"But it's an approach worth pursuing, if damn difficult to do so."
only if there was evidence justifying the pursuit. You don't just pick wild scenarios out of your ass and call them "worth pursuing" just because there is some remote possibility.
Perhaps you are on fire. Perhaps you should go and figure out a way to determine whether or not you are on fire. You could call the fire department. Is that worth pursing?
What is more likely? A VR universe or that you have caught on fire without noticing?
If you think some scientist should devote years of study to the possibility of a VR universe (when we have never stumbled across a single problem whatsoever that could be solved by this knowledge), certainly you should devote as much time to the more important issue (to you) of insuring that you are not actually bursting into flames which could certainly prove fatal or result in serious disfigurement if you don't take immediate remedial action!
And while you might merely trust your senses which probably tell you that you aren't on fire, can you be sure that your senses aren't suffering from the effects of the fire? It could be that the fire has already damaged your nervous system, rendering you incapable of detecting it. It seems worthwhile to consult the experts at the fire department.. and just to be on the safe side, a psychic.
We have no reason to suspect our reality is "virtual".
It is certainly NOT worthwhile for sane people to spend time investigating random hypothetical possibilities. There is an infinite supply of them, and no matter how much finite resources we throw at the problem, we aren't making any headway.
"As a result of structural historical and economic reasons, black people make up the overwhelming majority of criminals in certain urban areas."
if you define "certain urban areas" with enough specificity, then you can demonstrate that any kind of person you want makes up the overwhelming majority of criminals.
Its been some 300 years since people generally confused facts about the physical world with facts about morality, rights, laws or agreements. Welcome to the 21 century.
Property merely defines a social relationship between human beings, which exists by agreement between us and and exist only in those agreements between us. The earth doesn't get its shape from an agreement, but rather from the physical properties of the natural universe.
Manslaughter has a mental element. "recklessness".
In order to be guilty of manslaughter you must INTENTIONALLY do something with recklessness towards the fact that it is likely to cause death or grievous bodily harm. Something like drinking and driving, or driving down the sidewalk at 60 mph. Or even, throwing bibles out of penthouse windows at random pedestrians as a prank.
Manslaughter requires no intention to kill but it does require an intention to carry out an activity which has a reasonable likelyhood of serious injury, resulting in death.
Murder (in the traditional sense) requires a specific intention to cause death.
If you accidentally drop a airconditioner out of a window while trying to installing it, killing someone, it would NOT be recklessness, and thus it would not be manslaughter. Why? Because you weren't trying to drop the airconditioner. You intent was to INSTALL IT.
In this cause it would probably be "negligence causing death" (which requires you to intentionally act without due dilligence). If you were exercising due dilligence you would have removed the motor from the chassis, and installed the chassis first and only put the motor back once the chassis was properly installed. On the other hand, if you did everything properly, and took every reasonable precaution, but then the entire wall of your building falls outwards due to an unknown structural defect, you would not be guilty of a crime whatsoever. It would be a pure unavoidable accident.
manslaughter is not death caused by an accident.. manslaughter is doing something dangerous on purpose with reckless disregard for the fact that it is likely to cause death or serious injury.. and then your actions resulting in a death which you didn't intend, but wasn't a suprise either.
"E.g., an incomplete, distorted mis-understanding of each other is largely why we have a perpetual conflict in the Middle East, or Islamist nuts blowing themselves up."
My understanding of Islam is perfectly clear. Allah is all knowing, and hates those who are unjust.
Slashdot Mirror
The people on both sides of this fight are childless morons, eager to tell people how to raise their children. But both sides are fighting a futile fight.
the amazing thing about human beings is that we are able to learn vicariously, and from wisdom trasmitted from others. Consequently having children does not necessarily mean you know how best to raise them. If that were the case then there would be no bad parents.
It really doesn't matter to me what any teacher wants to tell my kids about various theories of where the world came from. To me, it's more important that they grow up with respect for other people, and that other peoples belief systems for the most part wont interfere with them.
thats fine and dandy, but that has fuck-all to do with science. And where do you get this fantasy that people's belief systems wont interfere with you? Belief is the basis of all instances of people interfering with each other. They don't interfere because they agree, they interfere because they disagree and feel self-righteous in whatever their position is, so strongly, that they are willing to use force to compel other human beings to comply with their notions of the world.
Science is a specific study. Scientists have made specific observations of the universe and put down those observations. It's not for a teacher of science to apply their personal interpretation. If the state wants to remove science from the curriculum, that is a matter of public policy. But you can't just teach any arbitrary thing, label it science, and then say 'it doesn't really matter what any teacher wants to tell my kids'.
What Mrs CBag general arts degree has to say about the origins of life means shit-all to them in the long run.
Kids don't know that Mrs CBag only has a general arts degree and is not truly qualified to teach them. But that is a seperate issue.
I'd hate for them to be the kind of thoughtless shitbags I see posting here about how everyone but them is a "big stupid idiot" for not believing exactly what you're told to, especially when what I was told about evolution 20 years ago is different than now.
Part of what you learn in science class is that as more evidence comes in scientific theories are refined and fine tuned or sometimes thown out entirely. No science class should ever teach that science is an immutable and static body of knowledge that has reached the pinnacle of perfection. That is for Bible class. And a good science class teaches what scientists used to theorize in the past, how that changed and WHY that changed, in order to give kids an understanding of what scientists do and the limitations of the scientific method, verses say Religious Zealotry. One of the things taught in science class is the concept of 'error'. And a good science class requires students to document all of the possible sources of error in their experiments. In any event, I also went to school 20 years ago and what they taught about natural selection, as vague as it was, holds true today. And the exact same scientific principle came up in university in the course of studying computer science and certain system devised to use natural selection to evolve algorithmic solutions to problems (such as how to park a truck without crashing it). A dumb computer will evolve the solution to the answer. Natural selection works. I've seen proof of it with my own eyes.
I'd hope they realize that at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter if the lady in the office next to me believes God made the universe 6000 years ago, or if some other guy thinks it just popped out of nothing 2.53 billion years ago - both "calculations" are based on a ridiculously small data sample, and both are completely worthless, and almost guaranteed to be wrong.
Well some of us consider school to be a place of learning, not a mere day care. But I can understand how someone like you who has an issue with book learnin' might not see the point.
There was never any need of legislation to protect teachers who perform bonafide science in the class room. This legislation attempts to protect teachers who simply disagree with the science on religious grounds and give them a platform to teach superstition as a substitute. At most such teachers should simply refuse to teach science as a violation of their religious beliefs, and then they should be reassigned to another subject such as sex education. And when they say sex education violates their religious beliefs then they should be reassigned to another subject such as being unemployed.
Why should teachers be obligated to teach to a curriculum to all the other subjects but not science? I say let them teach math that contradicts mathematics, grammar that contradicts english, history revised to their personal taste, imaginary geography, using non standardized mapping systems, let them teach kids the wrong organs. For example if I believe people have 3 hearts, why shouldn't I be allowed to teach that? If some teacher thinks that the solar system rotates around the earth, or that the earth is flat, or that heavier objects fall faster, well whose to say they aren't allowed to teach that? Isn't the real purpose of having a teaching job to have a platform to spread your personal views to other peoples children?
Why stop at the subject matter? If teachers think children learn best by playing outside all day long and having no homework, well aren't the teachers the ones who are supposed to know how beast to teach? That is their life long profession isn't it? Its not like we let the teachers dictate what the current state of scientific knowledge is... oh.. wait.. that is what this bill is about isn't it?
And it will prepare them for the real world where they will be. I would not want to live in your "real world".
Don't all living things have an inherent right to to take what they need from the environment in order to survive and reproduce?
Imagine if a king, upon discovering a method of "Cost savings" decided to throw his surplus subjects into the ocean? He decries "there is no inherent RIGHT to be my subject and leech off my *MY* kingdom. The burden is on you to make yourself useful to me! Don't come back until you are useful."
As a property owner, you are merely a manager of wealth. there is nothing NATURAL that makes any wealth the exclusive property of a single being to enjoy. All the wealth of the world is naturally commonly shared by all the life of the world.
If you have taken it upon yourself to be "wealthy" then you have a duty to manage that wealth in a way that benefits all. and you have a moral duty for the welfare of your employees. you can tell yourself its ok to just 'let them go free'. But you dictated their level of education while they worked for you, by controlling the amount of free time they have and their work conditions. If you expect them to have skills for future occupations.. you must provide those skills.. otherwise you are a dictator and a tyrant and have no right to complain when the workers revolt and take the means of their survival into their own hands (and perhaps take your head in the bargain).
In general, all employers conspire to minimize the education and marketability of their workers. employers don't want mobile workers because such workers cost the most money. And any skills they posssess that don't go to their job, actually reduce their productivity. The wealthy may enjoy their lavish lifestyles, but it comes with a MORAL DUTY to the rest of mankind. A leader has a duty to his followers. You can't cut them loose in any natural kind of social relationship.
Some of the better monarchs in history understood this. In capitalism we have created a class of petty dictators that want all the benefits of monarchy but none of the responsibilities of leadership.
And then a bunch of wannabe petty dictators who go around blathering about now 'natural' and 'inherent' it all is.
No one who isn't under duress can be compelled to sell anything for less than what it is worth. Because value is merely a quantification of what price things demand on the market. If buyers are willing to pay you a certain quantity, then that is what the commodity is worth. It can not be said to be worth less than what it will fetch. And you would never give it up for less than what it could fetch unless you have no choice.
With that said... profit can be made whether or not items are traded for green pieces of paper in between transactions. That is irrelevant. What is important is that someone somewhere has a gun to their head (metaphorically speaking).
if you really want to know where profit is made.... go look at how much goods a worker can exchange his green pieces of paper for. On average it is ALWAYS LESS than the amount that the actual product of his labour will fetch on the open market. If you operated some machine that took $10 of wood (plus other assorted wear and tear on tools etc), and turned it into chair which fetches $109 on the open market. You probably got paid $20 for the effort. Where did that other $79 of value come from? It came from your labour that you undersold by $79.
Of course, there is a large pool of starving carpenters also willing to sell $99 of labour for a mere $20, you have no choice but to do the same or die.
But don't pretend that your labour is worth less than $99. Because $99 is exactly what your labour adds to what was previously $10 of raw materials. $10 is the price that much material is available for. And $109 is the amount of money that chair will fetch on the market. There is no other input into the equation.
One might ask why any sane person would pay $109 for a chair, when they could simply buy $10 in materials and pay someone $20 for their labour. The answer would generally be along the lines of unless you happened to have access to the means of production (a factory), which enables 1 worker to do the work of 5 men; Without access to the means of production, it would take $100 of labour + the $10 to make a chair. Consequently it would cost you $110. Buying the chair from the factory owner actually saves you $1 (notwithstanding that he is extracting $79 of unpaid labour from the employee).
So why can't you simply use the factory for a while and make yourself a chair? Or why cant you have that chair for its real cost of $30. Why must you pay someone $109 for a chair which only cost them $30? And how did they manage to get anyone to work for a mere $20 (and why isn't anyone willing to pay $21 when even at $21 they could still make a tidy $78 of profit in the chair business). well.. who knows... maybe it it is an intractible mystery, or maybe it is well understood.
but either way, whether you barter for it or pay with green pieces of paper, there is a profit when the worker is paid less than the output of his labour will fetch. and it isn't because they are overcharging for the chair.
whoever said no profit can be made in barter systems doesn't understand economics or what profit actually is. (or what money is for that matter).
Note, of course, that the "general welfare" clause was not intended to permit unrestrained growth of government services for whatever vaguely-collective reason Congresspeople might concoct in the service's defense. The "general welfare" clause was not intended to permit galloping socialism.
At least, that's true according to James Madison in Federalist 41. Alexander Hamilton, OTOH, took the broader view that Congress may spend as it sees fit, so long as it doesn't favor a particular party.
Of course, even according to Hamilton's relatively-leftist, pro-government position, expenses to pay for, say, private military contractors, farm subsidies (which mostly go to the largest 20% of farms, often owned by e.g. Tyson Foods), welfare checks for the poor, (benefiting a subset of the population is not necessarily a benefit to the whole population. This doesn't make welfare a bad idea (though its implementations thus-far have ranged from moderately-useful at best (e.g. the EITC), and idiotic at worst) - merely, it conflicts with the way the U.S. Constitution both stands and as was intended by its authors), etc. would, I suspect, be invalid reasons for government spending. I don't think you are considering the economic effect of welfare properly. Anything which gives income to the unemployed by the operation of the free market indirectly raises the wages of the employed. If you can make $5/hour doing nothing. You aren't going to work for $5. That would be the same as working for free, or worse (since you would need to hire a babysitter while you were working for free).
So a job which might have commanded $3/hour in a pure free market, must command more than $5 if there is a $5/hour equivalent welfare. Another way to look at it is that anyone satisfied with what they can make on welfare is not going to work, thus the labour pool is smaller, thus those with jobs benefit from welfare in the form of decreased competition for their jobs. real jobs must pay significantly higher than welfare, since people on welfare avoid the costs associated with having a job (such as transportation, work clothes etc).
It would not be correct to ignore the other factors such as inflation (which congress also tries to influence via the Federal Reserve that it has created) but it is wrong to say that welfare only benefits people without jobs. We don't even need to get into the other side effects such as decreased crime that exists in welfare states. Obviously decreased crime benefits everyone (except those in the business of selling crime-fighting related products - guns, police cars, jails, security). Luckily for American Congresspeople, the majority of the American public has neither read the Constitution or Bill of Rights, nor has been asked to think hard about those documents -- we can thank the public education that the Dept. of Education tries to manage -- and the 20% or so who might have given them more than a passing thought tend neither to abide by those documents nor care about their intent. Combined with incentives to ignore the meaning of the highest law of the land, Congresspeople thus trample the documents they are supposed to uphold... well.. I'd basically have to agree with that, except the congress people are neither lucky nor unlucky. It is the private interests (i.e. the wealthy) who benefit. If the public was more educated there would be a different set of congress people and they would be lucky in other ways (they would be beloved and trusted by the people and the world and celebrated as heroes for all time to come). Currently each and every congress person is going to have to take to their grave, knowledge of the disaster they have wrought on their homeland, and the knowledge that future generations (if there are any future generations) are probably not going to forgive them.
So what is it that you are trying to say? We should prosecute people for their thoughts?
The difference is that we know about this hole, and can now fix it - I'm just going to bed, and it will no doubt be fixed by the time I wake up. How many Windows security issues are known that haven't been fixed?
"Oh man, this is why Linux is great! We can find holes, and fix them, like, immediately!"
Yes, that's a strength of Linux. What I want to know is, what steps will be taken to ensure that bugs of this type - whatever they might be - don't crop up again? One advantage that a large paid organization can have is strict testing requirements - I'm honestly not sure if I believe the Linux kernel is held to the strong standards that a commercial kernel theoretically could be.
The existence of this bug is a failure on Linux's part. There's no way to get around that. Many mistakes were made, from the original code or design decision that caused this bug all the way up to it not being found until now. The bug will be fixed rapidly - but the process that let this bug be released needs to be looked at, casually at the very least, to figure out if there's a way to stop this class of error from ever happening again. (Whatever class of error it ends up being - I don't pretend to know.) What are you? a politician?
It takes a lot of gall to decree that there is a problem in the process, and the process must be fixed so "this class of error" never happens again, when you don't even know what the process is, what class of error it is, and whether or not it is even theoretically feasible to prevent it from ever happening again.
People scored your post insightful??? It should be scored TROLL.
all of this will happen, unless labour works together and organizes. The same way the corporations and banks and doctors and lawyers and the wealthy organize. Those who stand alone will always be the victims.
maximizing profit is only done by restricting competition, and lowering costs. Lowering costs is done by getting more out of your workforce and paying them less.
When they talk about falling spending power, and the vanishing middle class.. none of this is mysterious. Even Adam Smith, champion of free market economics warned that the state should not trust the merchant class. Because, he said, whatever is good for the merchant class is invariably bad for the great masses of people. When rates of profit are UP, standards of living go down. Meanwhile our poor and middle classes are being raised into a culture of ignorant consumerism. Being told that spending money is good for the economy. Every business knows that in order to get ahead you have to REDUCE SPENDING. So the people spend and the corporations INVEST... how long does that continue before you yourself are bound by a court appointed trustee to manage your property in order to help pay off your debts?
Is that less frightening?
"A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent."
When i am crossing the USA border with encryption that is not crackable with ease - like keys over 1kb long - the enforcers (beleive to) have enough reason to put me in jail, either to annoy, prosecute or study me. And besides that: rumor has it that even when one uses or develops heavy encryption outside North-America soil, they might want to jail that person when it visits the states later on. The article is misrepresents the ruling. The Minnesota appeals court found that what a person was using their computer for, encryption or otherwise was RELEVENT to the facts of the case.
Not all admissible evidence is "evidence of criminal intent".
In fact I would argue the availability of encryption software and the NON-USAGE of it, is evidence of innocence (or at least proof that the accused is no hardened criminal and deserves some leniency)!
They never said that the encryption is necessarily evidence of wrong doing. Only that it is admissible as evidence. It would be for the jury to decide whether or not it proves anything; guilt innocence or otherwise.
""We find that evidence of appellant's Internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state's case against him,""
He was convicted for the actual testimony from the girl. There was no evidence he has even encrypted anything at all. The defense was attempting to have the conviction thrown out on the basis that somehow this evidence was irrelevant and tainted the verdict. The evidence was slightly relevant (barely), and it was not prejudicial anyway, so the trial was fair.
Even if the appeals court found the evidence completely irrelevant it wouldn't have reversed the ruling, since in light of the fact that nothing had actually been encrypted it is absurd to think that the jury somehow had a reasonable doubt about the girls testimony but the existence of unused PGP software erased that doubt.
No way did a judge say "evidence of encryption software = evidence of criminal intent".
the only way to exclude evidence is to prove it is absolutely irrelevant or that it is so misleading that it would threaten the validity of the verdict. (or that it was obtained by government misconduct).
at the end of the day most good prosecutors who have a good case aren't going to harp on little minutia of barely material information. They are going to confuse the jury into thinking that somehow this detritus is supposed to prove something, and if you get some jury members fixated on the idea that encryption software that hasn't been used is supposed to prove something they might just acquit because they lost the crowns line of reasoning.
for whatever insight it gives into the mental state of the user of a computer it is tangentally relevant and would be admissible unless it was misleading or too confusing. evidence of general behavior around an object relevent to the crime (the computer) is somewhat relevant.
the existence of microsoft word would have been deemed admissible. it also proves no crime per se. But some newspaper might say "microsoft word is evidence of criminal intent!"
Needless to say.. the next suicide bomb that goes off will be by a religious person.
the japanese Kamikaze were literally "divine wind" or "god wind". They were not called "human guided bombs". It is religion and religion alone that can be relied upon to muster and focus the hatred of mankind into something beyond the occasional statistical blip of hate motivated violence.
What kind of oppressive society would infringe on my natural born right to own the means of production and do with it as I see fit? If I want to own the only automobile factory in the world, (and buy out the other automobile manufacturers) the state should protect my right. If I want to be the sole owner of the means of producing food, only a terrorist would deny me! If a pendemic threatens to kill a million people. Well who are they to infringe on my intellectual property rights? The government should bomb them if they try making generic drugs. Its not my fault if they dont want to pay me whatever price I set? my ideas are my own. I paid my employees fair and square! I own them!
Men have no right to produce for themselves. They'll need to deal with big business if they want to avoid starving to death. They are lucky that they still get free air! If we didn't live in such a pinko bleeding heart society we'd auction off the atmosphere to the private sector. Use the proceeds to lower taxes. Think of how much the GDP would go up if we could turn breathing into a profitable business?
Where does the State get off owning the means of breathing? I thought protecting the minority (the wealthy) from the oppression of the majority (the poor) is what our country was about?
Paladins do get abilities that clerics and druids can't do better: Base Attack bonus and an average of 2 extra hit points + 1 per level beyond 1st level. Not to mention charisma bonus to saving throws, a paladin's mount. And paladins aren't useless once their daily spell allotment runs out.
whether these make the paladin more or less powerful than another class depends on the campaign style. campaigns that push the characters constantly and give them little time to rest, let alone pray or prepare spells will let paladins really shine. druids and clerics will deplete their spells and then become pathetic fighters. paladins have as many hp and combat bonuses as fighters and a charisma bonus to saving throws. not to mention can heal themselves without needing to prepare spells. I ran a campaign where it was the paladin who was always ready to keep on going while the cleric and mage constantly wanted to rest and prepare more spells. ultimately the paladin actually departed the party because the party was delaying too long and the paladin felt the quest would fail if they continued to delay. for story purposes we felt it was more believable if the paladin went on without the rest of the party.
clerics and wizards can unleash a blast of power for a short time.. but if an encounter is protected or continues to involve enemies which break off and let duration based spells wear out or otherwise engage the pcs in a way so the wizard can't target multiple enemies simultaneously or tempts the wizard to waste spells (which is what intelligent enemies will do when they can)...
bah this discussion is pointless. I'm replying to an AC! *shakes head*
if the dm throws a different mix of enemies, then the fighter can shine, or the wizard or the cleric or the rogue or even a diviner.. its all up to the DM's mix.
anyone who hasn't figured that out, isn't paying much attention to the fact that certain challenges tend to favour certain kinds of solutions and not all classes as equal.
if you are faced with countless locks and traps then a rogue is going to seem very powerful. if you face undead constantly then clerics seem the best. if you are always stuck magic-dead zones obviously the wizard will appear useless.
if you face enemies which a paladins strengths are well suited to.. paladins will shine.
challenges which assault the party with many moderate to easy DC saving throw resistable attacks, fear and combined with numerous low damage physical attacks and a moderate level of easy to turn undead will make paladins seem extremely powerful.
its easy to see how the circumstances really affects who appears to be more powerful.
"With freedom comes responsibility, always."
There are all kinds of examples of people who enjoy greater freedoms *AND* fewer responsibilities than others. For example : 21-year-olds and very young children.
I don't see how you can make such a sweeping generalization.
"You are inconsistent in a funny way! First you confidently assert that there is no God. Then you comment on what that non-existent God wouldn't do."
its called 'reductio ad absurdum' the fact that your rights are being stripped from you proves that God doesn't exist. Because according to the authorities you cite : men are bestowed by certain "inalienable" rights by the Creator. Which according to your definition of Creator, is an onmipotent and willful creator. Nothing whatsoever can alienate what an omnipotent power makes inalienable. Look up the word.
"When people stop believing in and because of this belief, living by the commands and precepts of this Creator God, they slowly, but surely forfeit their rights given to them by the Creator."
"The founding fathers believed scripture, which most (including you, evidently) no longer do:"
The founding fathers were mostly NOT Christians, but rather they were Deists. So they had no belief that God gave mankind "commands and precepts" and they did not believe in scripture, they believed in science and reason.
But thanks for playing the "Lets Revise the History of America" game. It was a blast.
Although I am not sure I enjoy playing the "non-believers forfeit their rights" game. You are a religious fundamentalist zealot, and a threat to anyone who doesn't agree with your superstitious world view. People like you are responsible for virtually all of the misery and suffering in the world.
As far as where rights came from.. you haven't given any argument to suggest they came from your god, you simply presupposed they came from god and then begged the question. I'm not wasting my time with you. Unlike you (in your imagination) I don't have an immortal soul; I must treasure each second.
There is no God. And the belief that God knows what goes on inside your head is part of what makes many people feel like privacy is not a human right. Afterall, God wouldn't violate your rights would he?
... of course.. that assumes there even is an "enemy" and the whole thing isn't just some fabricated boogieman. nothing would suprise me. all options are on the table when it comes to what the powerful and greedy will do to increase their hold on humankind.
Just because we have the technology to spy on everyone doesn't mean its ok, or beneficial to do so. At the end of the day you've got to live with yourself and your own conscience. "National Security" doesn't give a rats ass about anything except protecting the interests of the wealthy and powerful.
for the 46 million people without healthcare, struggling to make ends meet.. it doesn't get much worse. why do they care about national security? you want to find a threat.. look to the people who have no vested interest in maintaining the status quo. give them hope, healthcare, a job.. then the danger will go down. far more effectively than recording their email and telephone calls.
History has shown that the more oppressive society becomes, the less people feel like the nation is something worth preserving. We can only ignore that fact to our own peril. Look at what happened to the USSR.. it wasn't mere economics that ruined it.. but lack of political will amongst its people to preserve the communist regime.
the fact is that all of this desire to spy domestically presupposes that "the enemy" is getting inside help. that means it is employing disgruntled residents.. logically then, the more disgruntled residents there are, the more easily they are employed
The problem with the trying to make a trademark claim is that the car in the picture *IS* a ford. Its not trademark infringement to call a Ford a Ford. It is trademark infringement to call a car made by someone else a Ford. It is perfectly legal to sell a picture of yourself drinking a can of coke, saying "I am drinking a coke!". As long as there is no confusion that Coke didn't produce this photograph. You should be clear that the photograph was not produced by coke and coke is not responsible for it.
The only thing that is normally required is that you make sure you aren't purporting that you designed the car, or that it is your product or that you are representing the trademark owner in some way. In this case there was no chance that a reasonable person would imagine the Mustang club was selling its own cars which looked like Fords. It was a club of Mustang enthusiasts, posing next to their Ford Mustangs. This is absolutely NOT trademark infringement unless you claim you represent Ford. At the very most, if one of the cars was modified, they would need to indicate clearly that the car in the photo was custom modified, and is not representative of a ford Mustang.
If Ford thought they had an issue with a legal requirement they could have given the club license to use the likeness. That satisfies the requirement to protect your trademark. Since this club is obviously pro-ford, they would have agreed to put a statement saying "The Mustang car and likeness is a trademark of Ford motor company and used by permission".
Suing your most loyal and fanatical customers is absolute lunacy.
"But it's an approach worth pursuing, if damn difficult to do so."
only if there was evidence justifying the pursuit. You don't just pick wild scenarios out of your ass and call them "worth pursuing" just because there is some remote possibility.
Perhaps you are on fire. Perhaps you should go and figure out a way to determine whether or not you are on fire. You could call the fire department. Is that worth pursing?
What is more likely? A VR universe or that you have caught on fire without noticing?
If you think some scientist should devote years of study to the possibility of a VR universe (when we have never stumbled across a single problem whatsoever that could be solved by this knowledge), certainly you should devote as much time to the more important issue (to you) of insuring that you are not actually bursting into flames which could certainly prove fatal or result in serious disfigurement if you don't take immediate remedial action!
And while you might merely trust your senses which probably tell you that you aren't on fire, can you be sure that your senses aren't suffering from the effects of the fire? It could be that the fire has already damaged your nervous system, rendering you incapable of detecting it. It seems worthwhile to consult the experts at the fire department.. and just to be on the safe side, a psychic.
We have no reason to suspect our reality is "virtual".
It is certainly NOT worthwhile for sane people to spend time investigating random hypothetical possibilities. There is an infinite supply of them, and no matter how much finite resources we throw at the problem, we aren't making any headway.
"As a result of structural historical and economic reasons, black people make up the overwhelming majority of criminals in certain urban areas."
if you define "certain urban areas" with enough specificity, then you can demonstrate that any kind of person you want makes up the overwhelming majority of criminals.
"If everybody believes the world is flat, is it?"
No. But intellectual property is not a fact.
Its been some 300 years since people generally confused facts about the physical world with facts about morality, rights, laws or agreements. Welcome to the 21 century.
Property merely defines a social relationship between human beings, which exists by agreement between us and and exist only in those agreements between us. The earth doesn't get its shape from an agreement, but rather from the physical properties of the natural universe.
Manslaughter has a mental element. "recklessness".
In order to be guilty of manslaughter you must INTENTIONALLY do something with recklessness towards the fact that it is likely to cause death or grievous bodily harm. Something like drinking and driving, or driving down the sidewalk at 60 mph. Or even, throwing bibles out of penthouse windows at random pedestrians as a prank.
Manslaughter requires no intention to kill but it does require an intention to carry out an activity which has a reasonable likelyhood of serious injury, resulting in death.
Murder (in the traditional sense) requires a specific intention to cause death.
If you accidentally drop a airconditioner out of a window while trying to installing it, killing someone, it would NOT be recklessness, and thus it would not be manslaughter. Why? Because you weren't trying to drop the airconditioner. You intent was to INSTALL IT.
In this cause it would probably be "negligence causing death" (which requires you to intentionally act without due dilligence). If you were exercising due dilligence you would have removed the motor from the chassis, and installed the chassis first and only put the motor back once the chassis was properly installed. On the other hand, if you did everything properly, and took every reasonable precaution, but then the entire wall of your building falls outwards due to an unknown structural defect, you would not be guilty of a crime whatsoever. It would be a pure unavoidable accident.
manslaughter is not death caused by an accident.. manslaughter is doing something dangerous on purpose with reckless disregard for the fact that it is likely to cause death or serious injury.. and then your actions resulting in a death which you didn't intend, but wasn't a suprise either.
"E.g., an incomplete, distorted mis-understanding of each other is largely why we have a perpetual conflict in the Middle East, or Islamist nuts blowing themselves up."
My understanding of Islam is perfectly clear. Allah is all knowing, and hates those who are unjust.