If you define capitalism = "private control of a market", and socialism = "state control of a market", then socialism = greater disparity in wealth.
I didn't define it, but I did read the definition. In any case, your assertion is just not so, because the more money a person makes, the more they are taxed (proportionally) in pretty much every country, including the US and all of Europe I've seen numbers on. As such the wealth is taken more from the wealthy and spent on programs that help everyone or just the poor. For example, socialized medicine helps everyone in a society to the same degree without significant favoritism, but a wealthy person pays more in taxes to support that program, thus subsidizing it for the poor. Another example would be welfare, where again the wealthy pay more of the tax burden, but are ineligible for any of the benefits.
Socialism creates an illusion of equality, because the people who exercise power over the means of production claim to do so "on behalf of the people".
Socialism takes from people disproportionately. It can give back to society disproportionately too, but generally does so more to the advantage of the poor than the rich in democracies. There are examples where it does otherwise, such as the socialist program that is the US military, that benefits the poor less than the wealthy who are collecting the big contracts. That said, socialism can and does mitigate wealth disparity in most industrialized nations.
However, whoever controls something for all intents and purposes owns something. State property = the private property of the ruling class.
Except the "ruling class" is not the only ones with say into how socialism is implemented whereas they are the only ones with say as to how private industry is run. The government theoretically serves the people and realistically does to some degree. Private industry theoretically and realistically serves only the shareholders. Can you see how the former benefits the people more in many cases?
It is a perfect example of people trying to redefine the problem away - simply define the property of the wealthy ruling class as "public property", and then suddenly "inequality" goes away. Amazing!
Except when you do that, the people can vote to make that property into a park, and occasionally does so.
It is dubious that European socialist programs help the poor.
WTF?!?!!!!! It is dubious in whose mind? I've seen little or no argument in that regard from either poor people, economists, sociologists, or human rights groups. People in European countries pay less for health care, have longer lives, lower rates of infant death, better overall health, and all of them have access to it instead of the huge numbers of people in the US who are without access. Hell, medical aid charities that service the poorest parts of Africa have started visiting the US because it is so bad. How is that not helping the poor?
It is easy to claim your socialist programs help the poor, when the poverty that Europe created with slavery and imperialism in the 18th and 19th century exists in Africa, Asia, and South America, where as the poverty the U.S. created during the 18th and 19th century exists in the United States.
Except the large majority of the poorest people in both the US and Europe are immigrants, and in Europe they enjoy a better standard of living, less poverty, less wealth disparity, and better upward mobility. How exactly do you account for that difference for immigrants to both nations? Are you even taking into account unexploited natural resources?
Europe simply used nationalism to redefine its poverty to be a foreign problem...
Please that was a long time ago and while historical poverty lasts, it has lasted less in Europe even for the poor who immigrate there, than in the US. Their wealth disparity is decreasing
Except that Europe is slowly dying. The population on the continent is in sharp, seemingly irreversible decline.
Umm, not according to all the numbers I've seen. Last I saw both the US and Europe were growing in population, both due primarily to immigration. Got a link to back up your assertion?
The solution to that isn't to force them to give their money to welfare mothers, it's to teach them to help their fellow human beings.
Any social structure that does not exploit self interest, is likely to fail. Changing people is a poor methodology for engineering a better society. Providing people with incentive to change themselves is at least workable.
Using force breeds feelings of injustice, whether or not there is any injustice, and that does nothing but cause problems.
Sociological studies have shown the primary factors preventing crime and violence is feeling of morality and fairness. When you normalize for other factors, the number one correlation with violence and crime is wealth disparity (note, disparity not just poverty). People feel justified in committing crimes in general because they feel life is so unfair and they have so few options. The problems, are already here and we suffer for them as a society every day. I'm more likely to be shot on the street or have my home burned down because 2% of the population has managed to be taxed less than the advantage their wealth gives them economically, and so they are getting richer while everyone else is getting relatively poorer.
If we instead focus on teaching everyone to help other people freely, especially if they have wealth available, then the world would run a lot smoother.
I think an appeal to self interest is more likely to work. Educate people that they're more likely to be shot by a crack addict because their money is accumulating and siphoning away money from the bottom of the finance brackets. Educate people that, in their lifetime, their may be a revolution where the poor walk into their home, kill them and loot their possessions, and the cops may be in the front of the mob. Educate people that the more wealth accumulates, the greater the chances that the cook at their favorite restaurant will ejaculate or shit into their food, while the rest of the staff laughs. Educate people that the more this continues, the harder and more often people will try to take their wealth by any available means, even some russian kid with a computer who might empty their account and leave them penniless, and the less likely the cops will be to care.
Wealth disparity and visible stratification is a huge societal problem and one of the reasons why crime is so high and likely to be getting worse. Life isn't fair. That the wealthy were born that way and can live without ever doing any work while increasing numbers of people struggle just to get by is not fair. Either the government does something about that unfairness, or the people will do it themselves, possibly forming a new government in the process. This has happened dozens of times historically, and will happen again, unless people learn from history.
I'm actually writing a sci-fi short story right now about the creation of a device sort of like a "replicator" from Star Trek. Basically, it s about the invention of such a device and how society reacts. The premise is basically that it would follow the same lines as IP laws, where all the people with power to get laws passed (industry) uses that power to keep the device from undermining their ability to make money, even though all their manufacturing is now obsolete. Have you ever seen that idiotic RIAA commercial about "You wouldn't steal a car would you?" I always think, well probably not, but I'd sure make an exact copy of one if I could do so for a few bucks. I think if you could do just that, it would be made illegal so fast it would make your head spin, probably by extending IP laws even further and introducing huge "product safety" fees to prevent new entrants from creating free alternative products.
I'm fairly well convinced that any huge, disruptive scientific advance will be outlawed to ensure revenue for the powers that be and maintain the status quo.
This is often the propaganda associated with European style socialism. My firsthand experience tells me that class-roles are much more rigid and established in Europe than in the United States.
Class roles != wealth. In Europe their is less wealth disparity (in general) and more upward mobility as measured by numerous studies and human rights organizations. The fact is, in the US you are less likely to become wealthy if you were not wealthy to start with.
An explanation of European socialism that makes more sense to me is that landed European upper-class, who were traditionally one and the same as the state, saw a way to take advantage of popular dissatisfaction with the burgeoning industrial capitalist class.
Are you actually trying to argue that the wealthy in Europe have more political influence than the wealthy in the US?
The landed lord became the socialist legislator, filling mostly the same social/economic role as a feudal lord.
Please. Because of restrictions on campaign donations from lobbyists and because of limited marketing dollars and matching funds for all candidates, the wealthy are at much less of an advantage in Europe when elections roll around.
European socialism does offer the promise of more comfortable poverty for the underclass, but it is a machine for re-enforcing class and hierarchy by making an underclass existence more tolerable.
It reduces wealth disparity by moving some of the wealth from the top to the bottom. This does prevent an eventual revolution and is to the advantage of both the wealthy and the poor as well as promoting stability. It certainly is not perfect, but it sure beats an unstable system where things get worse and worse and then their is a violent revolution and who knows what type of government emerges each time.
"Capitalism" is a term invented by Karl Marx, and doesn't objectively describe any real-life ideology or economic construct.
Bullshit. Capitalism is a well defined term used by economists around the world. It refers to economies where private individuals control industry/markets instead of the government.
In reality, all system of economic production could be called capitalism, in that the means of production are in the hands of a small minority.
The defining factor is if those hands are private of government. It also distinguishes itself from socialism (government control of a market, funded by the people as a whole) of communism (shared control of a market or of expenses by a collective, operating within a larger capitalist market).
Your thinking is flawed because you assume that capital owned by a state elite class is somehow less "capitalistic" than capital owned by an industrialist/entrepreneur.
Buy a dictionary. That's the definition of capitalism.
State intervention is not an alternative to extreme capitalism.
State intervention is one of the two alternatives to extreme capitalism. When the state takes tax dollars and builds roads, that is socialism that benefits everyone, using money taken in larger shares from the wealthy. When your family shares a car instead of each buying their own, that is communism, mitigating extreme capitalism with resource sharing.
State intervention is a form of extreme capitalism.
State intervention, by definition, is not capitalism.
However, state-education and nationalistic brainwashing has convinced people that the state-elite are somehow not a capitalist class, when it is the very epitome of it.
State education is an example of socialism. It is just that the education is fairly poor, so most people don't understand the distinction.
Western Europe and the United States have about the same amount of capitalism. On the Index of Economic Freedom (which is p
This reads to me like an excellent defence of patents. The whole concept of patents is that the ideas are out in the open, and the inventor can talk freely about their idea without worrying that they will have their idea pulled from under them by a larger competitor with more resources.
Actually, that is only half of the idea. What good does it do to society for an inventor to be able to talk about an idea if the government prevents anyone else from implementing it, ever? To society an idea that can't be used is the same as an idea they don't know, so unless such ideas eventually become the property of society, there is no justification for patents.
Of course patents expire and so, theoretically, do copyrights. The question then becomes determining the ideal amount of time for these types of IP to be granted their monopoly so that society benefits as much as possible. It has to be enough so that inventors will patent their ideas and profit, but no longer. The problem with current laws is that they are written not for the people, but for the powerful. The powerful are the same as the wealthy, so if you gain wealth from a patent, you can use that wealth to change the laws to favor you more than society... and that is exactly what has happened to IP laws.
Therefore, suggesting that you should be free to take my idea is tantamount to saying that you should be free to come along and knock down my house.
No it isn't. Most people recognize the right to own real property as a basic human right. They also recognize the right to free expression and liberty, which IP laws are an artificial restriction of. A person taking your idea is their natural right, and the only justification for stopping them is if the case can be made for benefiting society as a whole. So if I want to knock down your house, the onus is on me to prove that it will benefit society as a whole (immanent domain or because is is a fire hazard and might burn down the block and kill a lot of people). If I want to copy your idea, the onus is on you to prove society can be benefitted more by letting you have an exclusive right to exploit that idea for a short time.
Sorry, I do not want a war every generation because people feel it's their birthright to have land. It is not. Study, work, make money, buy it. I did, why can't you?
I think you're taking the term "property" too literally. Property can be cars or yachts or stock certificates. I agree no one has the inherent right to land or any other wealth, but what you're not taking into account is that your ability to study and work and make money is tied very strongly to the wealth of your parents. The primary determining factor for wealth is not how hard you work, but how wealthy your parents were. When you are born indebted and grow up without proper nourishment or education and spend your entire life working very long hours of physical labor resulting in your being exhausted all the time, there is little hope that you can advance your station in life.
In a truly fair world, all children would receive all the same benefits in life, including nutrition, education, free time, and beginning wealth. That is a hard ideal to achieve, but it is the most fair way people to begin life.
That is the evil of Communism, when you think everything belongs to everyone, individuals have nothing and the government owns everything.
Evil is a subjective term, and the word "communism" has had its meaning so badly distorted, especially in the US, that it should probably pass out of use except as an economic term. Government ownership of everything, by the way, would be extreme socialism, not communism. Anarchism is, well, fairly useless as a practical concept and lets just ignore it.
The main problem with extreme capitalism is "it takes money to make money." This is formally known as the wealth condensation principal. The more money you have, the faster you can acquire money. If I inherit a million bucks from my parents and you inherit nothing, well I can live my entire life doing no work and collecting interest from the loans I give to you and other people so you can buy a home. Basically, it is rewarding circumstance of birth over merit, and that is exactly the reason extreme capitalism cannot be a sustainable system. Economists attempt to balance out wealth condensation using inheritance taxes and progressive wealth taxes combined with socialist programs to redistribute this wealth to the poorest people or among all people. The main problem is wealth is also power and so laws are changed and rewritten primarily by the wealthy, who tend to favor their own interests and constantly undermine said process without regard for the economic and societal collapse it eventually brings about.
Social convention decides that. Most people in the U.S., Europe, etc., agree with property rights as they currently exist.
Actually, their are widely varying opinions amongst industrialized nations. Much of Europe, for example, places societal rights higher than individual rights, not recognizing, the "right" of people to profit based upon heredity. This is reflected in taxation designed to cancel out wealth condensation and/or high inheritance taxes that attempt to return property and wealth to society as a whole for redistribution, when the current owner passes away. This is a sliding scale, with these measures being taken in different measure in different nations, but little of that has to do with the ethical/moral conventions or economic theory.
Economists will tell you, hereditary property rights provide an economic advantage to those people, leading to more and more wealth consolidating into the hands of fewer and fewer people. The wealth of your parents is the #1 most important factor for how wealthy you will be. It is NOT primarily based upon merit or how hard you work. Those are exceptions, not the rule for society. Without intervention, extreme capitalism collapses under its own weight when the poor rebel and forcibly redistribute the wealth, with a lot of pain, suffering, injustice, and instability at the same time. Philosophers and moralist scoff at the idea that because you have deed to some land for historical reasons, you have any more right to it than others. You likely only have that deed because you were lucky enough to be born to a family with more wealth than others.
Many societies have tried to abolish property rights, and massively redistribute property.
Many societies have tried to redistribute property rights, with varying degrees of "success". All of which depends upon how you define success. Is the US where 50% of the people have no net wealth at all and 2% of the people have nearly 50% of the wealth a success? Is it a success when you consider that not even one in a hundred of that 2% of people were not born to parents already in that wealth bracket?
Morality is measured in the effects of those property rights, and right now no-one has come up with a system of abolishing property rights that doesn't result in mass-murder and mass-poverty.
I think you're ignoring taxes. If you have to keep paying society for land, you don't truly own it. If you have to pay larger portions of your wealth as your total wealth increases, how is that "fair" and more importantly, is that respecting your right to own property or is it charging you for that so called right?
What results in mass-murder and mass-poverty is not respect for property rights, but attempting to craft an extreme economy, extreme in any direction. An economy that is too capitalist, collapses just as horrifically as one that is too socialist. What lasts are societies that manage to balance capitalism, socialism, and communism in such a way that they maintain stability. (Note: I use the terms capitalism, socialism, and communism in their definitions within economics, not politics or as a synonym for "bad" as speech writers tend to.) Wealth does not condense making individual merit worthless, but neither does wealth immediately disperse, likewise making individual merit worthless.
Comparing societies in this light, the US has recently been moving more and more towards extreme capitalism and wealth condensation, where the wealthy are not taxed heavily enough to compensate society for the earning advantages their inherited wealth affords them. It has not yet come to a head as it did in the great depression and new deal, but it is certainly headed that way. If you're looking for an example of a more balanced and stable economy/society, look to the European countries with the high standards of living.
Grandparent does make one mistake, though: the "works like XX application" have been deprecated, and *supposedly* they have been defined in that deprecated section -- IE, use only for interpreting older documents, not new ones, as I understand MS's definition.
The last I heard these were in "optional" sections, not in deprecated ones. That is to say, MS can and probably will use them in new documents they create, but others won't be required to implement them to meet the spec. Of course this still means documents will slightly "break" when switching between applications and as such still undermines the ability of OOXML to bring all the benefits of a truly open standard. For that matter, since OOXML has not yet been fully implemented by anyone, there is no reason for such a clause to be in the spec if it won't be in newly created documents.
But, I don't see how those restrictions can be reconciled with the first amendment, as it is currently written. "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech" seems to be pretty unambiguous to me.
I see where you're coming from, but I just don't think it is a practical way to interpret the constitution. It is no more clear than "the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Obviously if someone exercises one right and at the same time deprives another of a different right it needs to be resolved justly. We either have to reconcile any discrepancy or the document fails. Maybe they should have included "save in that it protects a different right enumerated here" but that would have weakened the document and missed the purpose that all rights are supposed to belong to the people inherently unless specified otherwise. It also misses, that for the most part, mitigating conflict between citizens and states is supposed to be the only types of laws that are constitutional (sans a few specific exceptions).
All I am saying is that if people want to limit rights, they should have to change the constitutional amendments..
Then all the rights in the bill of rights need to be changed... something I sure don't want our current crop of politicians doing. (Note this is an appeal to consequences and not a logical argument as to why the constitution does not need to be amended.)
...not have a judge insert "meaning" into the amendments, like has been done for almost all of them.
Actually it is the legislature that writes laws that may or may not be constitutional, it is the judges that rule if they conflict with the constitution. This has been going on from the very beginning of our constitution with libel and slander laws on the books and enforced both before and after the bill of rights was written and without those who wrote the bill of rights seeing a conflict. Judges also look for indirect attacks, like where the government monitoring everything everyone reads is an indirect attack on freedom of speech (since speech is no good if no one can hear you).
In this case the judges simply ruled that the law was constitutional because it was mitigating two protected rights from different individuals, protected by different parts of the constitution. Certainly you would not favor a system where it was legal for a mafia don to order you killed nor would you prefer the bill of rights was "amended" by our politicians to "fix" this problem? I agree the constitution is very poorly interpreted by politcos these days and that is a real problem, but it is important to understand where they're ignoring the constitution out of convenience and where they're resolving valid conflicts within it's bounds
Why? Why would I want a word processing document printed at home to be laid out slightly differently when I print it at work? How is that an advantage instead of a huge pain in my ass?
Because your setup at home is probably different from your setup at work. Different printers, different margins, different fonts, etc. Depending on the situation, your home printer may well be physically incapable of producing identical output to your work printer (different hardware margins, for example).
You're making assumptions. Usually they can both print identically and when they can't that can be handled when printing. I suppose you think word processing documents should switch to black and white when your default printer only does black and white too?
Exactly. Which is why the layout of that content is going to change depending on what the printer is capable of outputting.
Except in the past it has changed regardless of what the printer can output, because MS Word defaulted to using versions of the fonts the printer has installed, even when all fonts are present on both computers. In this day and age of network printers and laptops, it seems absurd to try to "pre-resolve" printing issues when the word processor does not even know which printer you will end up using. If you printer can't handle outputting a document exactly, let it tell you when you try to print and until then, don't worry about it.
PDF is not appropriate for all uses.
It is, however, appropriate for the case I gave as an example.
What? You wrote "If you want a document to look the same regardless of where it is viewed, use something like a PDF." How is that not the use case I was just saying it is not appropriate for? I want a document to look the same to everyone and be editable by them. PDF doesn't work, for that I need A WORD PROCESSING FORMAT!!!! It's not like this is an unusual use case, it happens at work all the time.
For example, when I check a document into SVN and I want multiple people to collaborate on it, all making edits. Why the hell is it useful for one person to tweak the fonts to get them to fit properly on their printer, only to have the other people change them back to work on a different printer?
Because person 2's printer might not be setup the same as person 1's printer.
Who cares if we're not printing it? Not all word processing docs are ever printed, in fact a good portion aren't. I don't give a rat's ass if the people I'm collaborating with even have printers, I just want us to all be able to see and edit the same document we're working on. PDF is not appropriate. A word processing document from anything other than Word, is.
1. So what you see on screen is an accurate representation what comes out of your printer.
Which is shown as a print preview when you actually go to print and select a printer. Previous to that, your word processor doesn't actually know if you'll be printing on your home printer, the big laserjet at work, or the smaller color printer at work. For that matter, it doesn't know if you're going to take it to Kinkos. Changing the way it looks without that knowledge is just annoying.
2. So that when someone opens the document on a machine with different printing capabilities, what they see on their screen is also what will come out of their printer.
Except they don't because the word processor cannot accurately assess their printing capabilities, especially when there are multiple printers available.
Or, more succinctly, the whole point of having a WYSIWYG word processor in the first place. You are complaining because a program whose primary purpose is to make what you see on screen look the same as what will come out of the printer is doing exactly that.
Because not all printers are physically capable of identical output. The most obvious example being the use of A4- vs US-Letter-sized paper.
At which point it can scale or you can change the setting in your word processor to use a different sized paper (which you have to do in Word already). We're talking about printing the same document onto the same sized paper. Some versions of MS word screw this up, because they rely upon the fonts installed on the printer. This is a bug. Have you really drank the MS kool-aid so much that you believe this bug is a feature?
Why would a malware writer write software that will only affect technically elite users? The goal in his eyes, is to damage as many people as possible through the least path of resistance.
Generally the goal is profit, by one means or another. Linux boxes are regularly hacked to use as control channels for botnets. If it was easy, botnet operators would certainly add exploits for Linux and OS X to their worms, many of which already have numerous different ones they try against Windows. They also are fighting over machines with other botnet operators, so hitting say 6% of machines that no one else is targeting is a great proposition, if they can do it. The truth is, it is harder to get a functioning exploit to work on Linux, especially in an automated fashion, also many of the malware authors have much less experience coding for anything but Windows.
In recent years, malware has had several other means of making money, including mining machines for useful and profitable data, like account information, credit cards data, etc. This data is more prevalent and profitable on OS X than on Windows, since it cuts out the third world machines that don't have such useful info and instead targets the wealthiest people in Europe and the US. Still, there are no spreading worms or even real contenders. That isn't because of a lack of motivation, so it is another reason.
This is a stupid question.
Nope. It is a very valid question and I've read papers by security experts attempting to figure out that same thing.
Well it is not completly[sic] a windows problem. If people stop using windows then malware writters[sic] will make their stuff work on a different platform.
The question is if other platform vendors will put more effort into solving that problem than Microsoft has for Windows.
The main problem with windows is there are too many Windows users...
This is nearly right, but not quite there. The problem with security on Windows is that Windows is a monopoly and so MS has little to no economic incentive to make sure malware is not a problem for those users. We'd likely see the same problem on any other platform that had monopoly influence, but if the market were competitive the problem would be solved. This could happen in several ways:
the market ends up with several different OS's each holding significant market share.
MS is broken up into multiple companies that start producing versions of Windows that compete with each other.
Linux or some other open source OS dominates, which while having overwhelming market share does not wield monopoly influence because the license allows for forks.
Basically I don't think the malware problem will be solved from the bottom up. Malware infected computers that have failed the consumer generally motivate the purchase of a new computer and paying MS for another Windows license, because really that is all that they sell in pretty much all retail stores. Being insecure is making MS money. Until that changes, why would we expect effective anti-malware solutions from them?
It is easy to blame Windows but windows has actually gotten fairly secure over the past decade. And it is nowhere as bad as it use to be.
Windows differs from other OS's not in a lack of technical "solutions" for malware, but in that it does not have an appropriate level of security for the threat to which it is exposed. Regular Linux distros have security that works for stopping automated malware that threatens for most users. Ultra-secure workstations have SELinux and similar tools to lock them down and stop more direct threats. Only Windows users are regularly compromised, such that is a major inconvenience to the average user, because MS has just copied (often badly) security measures from other platforms without investing enough to have a truly working solution.
Your whole arguement is based on scemantics[sic] with someone who is telling you the meaning of what they believe. If you were to open up a dictionary, and read the definition of "dog" and you said "It could just as easily be a cat" and an English speaker said "No it's a dog" and you persist then you're really just being a douche for douches sake now aren't you?
No, my argument is based upon someone else trying to claim what the original poster said does not apply because they believe the definition does not fit, for an unspecified reason and they assume it is derogatory, again for no reason specified.
Please address my examples specifically. How is referring to praying as telepathy inaccurate or derogatory?
The poster to whom I was describing was the one claiming the terms were inaccurate and derogatory and he is not the person who originally used them. We're all speaking English here and no one of us has more authority in that area than any other.
Furthermore going on with historical points that do not describe current status, and then insisting in some abstract way that it does or that it should, is equally contrarian.
I used both historical and current examples to demonstrate that christianity is very different in different places and times and such blanket statements about what its "main themes" are, are less than useful, especially when completely unsupported.
And you're also incorrect, he is trolling, and you're trying to defend him on the basis of your own belief that all of religion is hogwash.
Wow, generalize much? You're making broad and completely incorrect assumptions about my religious beliefs. I said it is understandable to assert that religion is irrational, which is part of the definition. I never said it was "hogwash" or wrong, or anything else of the sort.
You don't have to lie to someone because they are offended by something that is meant to offend them. Notice I'm not telling you should grow a bigger brain because you misunderstood the fellow, I'm saying you did so deliberately and you should stop.
I lied to no one. I asked some very pointed questions which both the person I was replying to and you have completely ignored. If you're going to have a coherent discussion you actually have to address my points specifically. Otherwise, it is naught but empty rhetoric.
Please go back and address my points logically and stop making assumptions about what I think and feel. The original poster had some very good points in showing ways in which christianity and scientology are similar and claiming to be persecuted or that such comments are trolling does nothing to logically disprove them.
For speech not to be protected it has to advocate criminal violence, not just state an opinion about it. And where is that exception in the first amendment?
I wasn't talking about what is constitutional, just what is enacted in our current laws, but I actually do believe such a law to be constitutional in the US. In order to explain why, I'll present a very exaggerated example, just so you can get the concept. Suppose I build a voice activated robot that disintegrates guns. If I were to say "robot destroy" it would disintegrate your firearm. Can it be illegal for me to say that command since there is no explicit exception in the bill of rights? Can it be legal for me to say that command since it would violate your second amendment right?
Basically what we're coming down to is conflicting civil rights. People have the inherent right to free speech, but they also have the inherent right to life and liberty. When those come into conflict laws are supposed to mitigate that conflict (and theoretically those should be about the only laws, constitutionally). To make the analogy more practical and even closer to what we're discussing, if a Mafia Don is caught on tape ordering his goons to go shoot you, should he be immune to prosecution because all he did was exercise his free speech? If a hit man invents a voice activated killbot does that mean he can kill all he wants since the constitution forbids creating a law that would make his action illegal?
To advocate criminal violence is the same in principal as both the examples I listed, differing only in degree. The courts have, so far, ruled that specifically inciting people to criminal violence against others compromises the rights of those others to live more than it compromises the rights of the person speaking. The old phrase is "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose."
If you can insert "little changes" into the amendment without actually amending it, then it can be changed to say anything.
These aren't changes to the bill of rights, but rather laws mitigating conflicting rights granted by it. If you want a more detailed explanation just search the Web for "yelling fire in a theater" which is the classic example used for explaining this concept in law classes.
Quite the opposite. Word processors should most definitely change the display to match new output devices like a printer.
Why? Why would I want a word processing document printed at home to be laid out slightly differently when I print it at work? How is that an advantage instead of a huge pain in my ass?
Just like browsers should change the display of a web page to match *your* screen, not the screen of some web designer somewhere.
Markup is a fine idea and works well for the Web. Word processing is not the Web. Word processing fits content to a page, a paper page for printing. It is nice to be able to customize how you view a simulation of that page on your screen, but there is no advantage to it printing differently on different computers and printers.
If you want a document to look the same regardless of where it is viewed, use something like a PDF.
PDF is not appropriate for all uses. For example, when I check a document into SVN and I want multiple people to collaborate on it, all making edits. Why the hell is it useful for one person to tweak the fonts to get them to fit properly on their printer, only to have the other people change them back to work on a different printer? That is a stupid annoyance, not a benefit. You haven't presented a single use case where this is an advantage.
You're confusing word processing with page layout.
No, I'm not. Layout programs are for letting the user more exactly place content. There is absolutely no reason why a word processing document cannot be rendered exactly by each program and printed exactly by each device. If it does not, it is a bug.
If you want total control over presentation, use FrameMaker -- that's what it's for.
No it isn't. Framemaker is primarily for longer documents than Word can handle easily and more features aimed at technical books and manuals. It does have better support for exact layout than say MSWord, but it also has worse support than something like InDesign or Quark.
I fundamentally disagree with you. Give me one good reason why a word processing document should look different when viewed on different computers that have all the fonts used.
No word processing format looks the same across all platforms. Even something as simple as using a different printer can cause problems with the same version of MS Word opening it's own doc files.
That's called a bug. Word processing files should look exactly the same across platforms and versions, with exceptions given for missing fonts or other referenced data. It should absolutely not change when you switch printers and as far as I know MS Word is the only program to have that problem.
PDF is for files you want to distribute and don't want to be easily editable. ODF is for files you want others to edit as well. DOC is deprecated and is for dealing with legacy versions of Word when you have to.
And here I always thought the eating the unleavened bread was just symbolic of the Body of Christ, as he said that it was symbolic during the Last Supper, when he and his apostles were observing Passover, which has unleavened bread in it. I guess all those years of Catholic grade school were wrong about the whole thing. Hrmph, learn something new everyday.
Actually the doctrine of the catholic church is that it actually transforms. It's called transubstantiation and that has been the case since the council of Trent. They do hem and haw over the difference between substantially present and physically present when it is referred to as cannibalism, but not in any logical way. The official doctrine is it is to be accepted as a "mystery" which cannot be explained by any human.
And no, I'm not a Bible thumper. Just someone who hates when Catholics get bagged on about mistaken(and sometimes flat out lies) beliefs about Catholic ceremonies.
I'm not opposed to religion, but when the church makes official statements like "the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together" and then refuses to explain any more because it is a "mystery" well I think people should be given more than a little slack on their interpretation.
As much as I like the sentiment - in which jurisdiction do you have the right to do that for X="My neighbour Mr Smith" and Y="a thief/murderer/rapist"? In any country I know of, there are libel and slander laws which pose limits on free speech. Usually there are exceptions for people who are in the public view (e.g. politicians or movie stars) so you are often free to insult them, but in general that's not the case.
Ethically, the right to free expression ends when it infringes upon the rights of another person. Traditionally, slander and libel were considered such when they damaged the other person (such as causing problems getting a job or anything else provable). I think this is important to mention because most people don't understand the difference between a law that restricts freedom and a law that mediates conflicting freedoms between different people. As for people in the public view, laws are both more and less strict depending upon the damages. For example, lying about a politician in such a way that they lose an election is a greater crime in most jurisdictions, whereas lying about a regular person may well cost them nothing and cause no damages.
Not all restrictions on free expression are censorship. For example, a law against yelling "fire" in a crowder theater (classic example) simply weighs the right of the theater patrons to live without injury over another person's right to speak in an inaccurate way. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. So I agree with your sentiment. I just wanted to clarify the reasoning so it can be applied to the general case, not just to slander and libel.
Yeah, executing politicians as traitors does so much good for most countries that tried it.
Whereas not executing traitors who happen to be politicians has done so much good for others? They pass virtually the same, unconstitutional laws again and again with no repercussions. They intentionally lie to the people with no repercussions. Hundreds of thousands die as a result, and still nothing. Seems to be working great, huh?
Maybe you're keeping just on the safe side of 'incitement to illegal violence' line but you are clearly hostile to the current constitutional system in which politicians are not generally executed by kangaroo courts on trumped up treason charges.
Who said anything about kangaroo courts or trumped up charges? Only you. Both I and the previous poster merely submitted our opinion that Bush is a traitor and that the courts should prosecute him for that using the established process of impeachment for sitting politicians.
Your assertions otherwise are empty and inflammatory.
Maybe you're the real traitor in that you advocate overthrowing that system and killing your political opponents.
I see. Perhaps you'd be so good as to quote where I advocated overthrowing the "system" or where I stated anyone was my political opponent. Gee, I just mentioned applying the existing laws, including capital punishment for treason, which are already part of the system.
Don't be too surprised if the Secret Service are checking up on you if you say stuff like this - certainly they would be in the UK.
Yeah, and that you bring it up is exactly why the US courts ruled that government monitoring was an infringement of free speech due to the "chilling effect" it had on people attempting to express themselves or access said speech.
You would have made your point far better had you been a little more accurate. The Christian bible says nothing of telepathy, nor that the Christ was a "god fragment". Nor that he is dead; the opposite in fact.
First, praying can certainly be considered telepathy. You're communicating with another being remotely, using your mind. It fits the definition. Second, the catholic church and many others recognize a "trinity" where Jesus was one aspect of god, a "fragment" is not a misleading description. As to the alive versus dead versus both argument, it can be interpreted many ways, but is too vague to really argue any way in my opinion.
The entire religion revolves around this man being tortured to death in order to pay for all the nasty shit YOU have done to other people in your life, then walking out of the tomb alive. The religion of Christanity is a religion based on giving, sharing, being non-judgemental, and forgiving of others' faults.
Actually, christianity as practiced in modern times has as much to do with the old testament as the new and with arbitrary restrictions laid down therein. You'll have a hard time finding a practicing christian who does not know the ten commandments or a christian priest who does not believe you are supposed to follow them.
As for christianity being based on giving, sharing, and being non-judgmental... christianity is an adaptable religion and has adapted itself to cultures in different places and times. It has been so judgmental at times that it tortured and killed everyone who disagreed, and in fact such things still happen with murders of physicians who perform abortions and homosexuals being a not too rare occurrence in the US and very common in other parts of the world. You can claim preachers with expensive suits don't count, but that is just the "no true scotsman fallacy" and it is a sliding scale. Are catholic priests who perform mass with golden crosses really christians? What about small town preachers who own televisions and haven't given away all of their possessions? The truth is, they're all christians because that is the religion with which they self identify and while you may disagree with them, you can't ignore their influence... regardless of if they are not from the one, true "western reformed presbelutheren" faith.
If you're going to troll Christians, at lest get your facts straight.
I don't think he was trolling at all. I think he was expressing his honest and very understandable opinion that all religions are making irrational and often incredible claims without presenting equally incredible proofs. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it is not a way in which scientology and christianity differ.
And yes, not only are there a lot of Christians at slashdot, a lot of scientests are Christians, Muslims, and Jews as well. Being deliberately offensive is trolling.
He wasn't insulting your religion. Grow a thicker skin. If you can't see how someone can interpret praying to be a form of telepathy, then you're clearly not being objective. There is a difference between "things that might make you think about aspects of your religion rationally" and "being deliberately offensive." How is considering praying to be telepathy offensive? Is there anything wrong with telepathy as a word or concept? It is just communicating remotely using only thoughts. How does that threaten you and your beliefs in such a way that you're offended?
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. Let me start by saying that I'm by no means religious. However, when I read such short-sighted and superficial comparisons between Scientology and mainstream Christianity I really want to smack somebody. The thing is this: Scientology makes its members pay to be involved in the church and to gain access to their "teachings."
I don't really see that as a fundamental difference. As a money making scheme I could invent or adopt a religion and fleece believers I indoctrinated, browbeat, or frightened in a variety of ways. On way would be to get them to pay me to alleviate their fears and another would be to alleviate their fears and then use guilt and gratitude to get them to pay me. So long as I'm getting paid, this is just a matter of technique, not a fundamental difference.
You can ask the priest pretty much anything and guess what, you are likely to get halfway straight and honest answer, without coughing up hundreds of dollars.
How do you know it is an honest answer? How do you know they truly believe instead of just claiming to for financial security? Certainly there have been christian preachers exposed in the past as being complete scam artists based upon their comments in private.
Further, most people don't really buy into the whole cannibalism thing or take everything the bible, especially the old testament, seriously.
Most people pick and choose religious quotes and beliefs to support whatever they have already decided to believe. Some believe strictly in transubstantiation while others don't. Some "believe" strongly enough in fairly vague excerpts from the old testament that they feel it justifies their actions in beating a homosexual to death or burning down the house of a person of a alternate religion. For the most part, I find christians in the US know very little of what is in the bible and don't really care to. They have a set of beliefs formed as much from television depictions of their religion as anything else. For the most part they are fine people, but what they believe is cultural more than religious (in both good and bad ways).
Of course were making points on Slashdot so it must be the case that the most extreme members of anything == all the members of anything.
You seem to have missed the point. Any religion can be interpreted in different ways and christianity is just as wacky and irrational as any other. It can and is exploited for profit just as much too. I'm in no way opposed to christianity. The example is pointing out a very common but rarely considered aspect of christianity. Personally, I have no objection to cannibalism from an ethical/moral perspective. I do have issues with murder and with cannibalism from a health perspective. Why are you reacting so strongly to cannibalism anyway? Is it just the social taboo? Really, what is fundamentally wrong with eating meat from other humans?
I've read the bible and think there are very valuable insights therein. I enjoy a good discussion of these things with a professional priest, because they have the time and education to discuss them in a less brain dead fashion than the average bloke. That said, if any priest wants to "convert" me, they'd better start from the position of having given away all their possessions, being destitute, and refusing to take gifts from others. If they aren't that convinced themselves, how can I trust them?
Slashdot Mirror
If you define capitalism = "private control of a market", and socialism = "state control of a market", then socialism = greater disparity in wealth.
I didn't define it, but I did read the definition. In any case, your assertion is just not so, because the more money a person makes, the more they are taxed (proportionally) in pretty much every country, including the US and all of Europe I've seen numbers on. As such the wealth is taken more from the wealthy and spent on programs that help everyone or just the poor. For example, socialized medicine helps everyone in a society to the same degree without significant favoritism, but a wealthy person pays more in taxes to support that program, thus subsidizing it for the poor. Another example would be welfare, where again the wealthy pay more of the tax burden, but are ineligible for any of the benefits.
Socialism creates an illusion of equality, because the people who exercise power over the means of production claim to do so "on behalf of the people".
Socialism takes from people disproportionately. It can give back to society disproportionately too, but generally does so more to the advantage of the poor than the rich in democracies. There are examples where it does otherwise, such as the socialist program that is the US military, that benefits the poor less than the wealthy who are collecting the big contracts. That said, socialism can and does mitigate wealth disparity in most industrialized nations.
However, whoever controls something for all intents and purposes owns something. State property = the private property of the ruling class.
Except the "ruling class" is not the only ones with say into how socialism is implemented whereas they are the only ones with say as to how private industry is run. The government theoretically serves the people and realistically does to some degree. Private industry theoretically and realistically serves only the shareholders. Can you see how the former benefits the people more in many cases?
It is a perfect example of people trying to redefine the problem away - simply define the property of the wealthy ruling class as "public property", and then suddenly "inequality" goes away. Amazing!
Except when you do that, the people can vote to make that property into a park, and occasionally does so.
It is dubious that European socialist programs help the poor.
WTF?!?!!!!! It is dubious in whose mind? I've seen little or no argument in that regard from either poor people, economists, sociologists, or human rights groups. People in European countries pay less for health care, have longer lives, lower rates of infant death, better overall health, and all of them have access to it instead of the huge numbers of people in the US who are without access. Hell, medical aid charities that service the poorest parts of Africa have started visiting the US because it is so bad. How is that not helping the poor?
It is easy to claim your socialist programs help the poor, when the poverty that Europe created with slavery and imperialism in the 18th and 19th century exists in Africa, Asia, and South America, where as the poverty the U.S. created during the 18th and 19th century exists in the United States.
Except the large majority of the poorest people in both the US and Europe are immigrants, and in Europe they enjoy a better standard of living, less poverty, less wealth disparity, and better upward mobility. How exactly do you account for that difference for immigrants to both nations? Are you even taking into account unexploited natural resources?
Europe simply used nationalism to redefine its poverty to be a foreign problem...
Please that was a long time ago and while historical poverty lasts, it has lasted less in Europe even for the poor who immigrate there, than in the US. Their wealth disparity is decreasing
Umm, not according to all the numbers I've seen. Last I saw both the US and Europe were growing in population, both due primarily to immigration. Got a link to back up your assertion?
Any social structure that does not exploit self interest, is likely to fail. Changing people is a poor methodology for engineering a better society. Providing people with incentive to change themselves is at least workable.
Using force breeds feelings of injustice, whether or not there is any injustice, and that does nothing but cause problems.Sociological studies have shown the primary factors preventing crime and violence is feeling of morality and fairness. When you normalize for other factors, the number one correlation with violence and crime is wealth disparity (note, disparity not just poverty). People feel justified in committing crimes in general because they feel life is so unfair and they have so few options. The problems, are already here and we suffer for them as a society every day. I'm more likely to be shot on the street or have my home burned down because 2% of the population has managed to be taxed less than the advantage their wealth gives them economically, and so they are getting richer while everyone else is getting relatively poorer.
If we instead focus on teaching everyone to help other people freely, especially if they have wealth available, then the world would run a lot smoother.I think an appeal to self interest is more likely to work. Educate people that they're more likely to be shot by a crack addict because their money is accumulating and siphoning away money from the bottom of the finance brackets. Educate people that, in their lifetime, their may be a revolution where the poor walk into their home, kill them and loot their possessions, and the cops may be in the front of the mob. Educate people that the more wealth accumulates, the greater the chances that the cook at their favorite restaurant will ejaculate or shit into their food, while the rest of the staff laughs. Educate people that the more this continues, the harder and more often people will try to take their wealth by any available means, even some russian kid with a computer who might empty their account and leave them penniless, and the less likely the cops will be to care.
Wealth disparity and visible stratification is a huge societal problem and one of the reasons why crime is so high and likely to be getting worse. Life isn't fair. That the wealthy were born that way and can live without ever doing any work while increasing numbers of people struggle just to get by is not fair. Either the government does something about that unfairness, or the people will do it themselves, possibly forming a new government in the process. This has happened dozens of times historically, and will happen again, unless people learn from history.
I'm actually writing a sci-fi short story right now about the creation of a device sort of like a "replicator" from Star Trek. Basically, it s about the invention of such a device and how society reacts. The premise is basically that it would follow the same lines as IP laws, where all the people with power to get laws passed (industry) uses that power to keep the device from undermining their ability to make money, even though all their manufacturing is now obsolete. Have you ever seen that idiotic RIAA commercial about "You wouldn't steal a car would you?" I always think, well probably not, but I'd sure make an exact copy of one if I could do so for a few bucks. I think if you could do just that, it would be made illegal so fast it would make your head spin, probably by extending IP laws even further and introducing huge "product safety" fees to prevent new entrants from creating free alternative products.
I'm fairly well convinced that any huge, disruptive scientific advance will be outlawed to ensure revenue for the powers that be and maintain the status quo.
This is often the propaganda associated with European style socialism. My firsthand experience tells me that class-roles are much more rigid and established in Europe than in the United States.
Class roles != wealth. In Europe their is less wealth disparity (in general) and more upward mobility as measured by numerous studies and human rights organizations. The fact is, in the US you are less likely to become wealthy if you were not wealthy to start with.
An explanation of European socialism that makes more sense to me is that landed European upper-class, who were traditionally one and the same as the state, saw a way to take advantage of popular dissatisfaction with the burgeoning industrial capitalist class.
Are you actually trying to argue that the wealthy in Europe have more political influence than the wealthy in the US?
The landed lord became the socialist legislator, filling mostly the same social/economic role as a feudal lord.
Please. Because of restrictions on campaign donations from lobbyists and because of limited marketing dollars and matching funds for all candidates, the wealthy are at much less of an advantage in Europe when elections roll around.
European socialism does offer the promise of more comfortable poverty for the underclass, but it is a machine for re-enforcing class and hierarchy by making an underclass existence more tolerable.
It reduces wealth disparity by moving some of the wealth from the top to the bottom. This does prevent an eventual revolution and is to the advantage of both the wealthy and the poor as well as promoting stability. It certainly is not perfect, but it sure beats an unstable system where things get worse and worse and then their is a violent revolution and who knows what type of government emerges each time.
"Capitalism" is a term invented by Karl Marx, and doesn't objectively describe any real-life ideology or economic construct.
Bullshit. Capitalism is a well defined term used by economists around the world. It refers to economies where private individuals control industry/markets instead of the government.
In reality, all system of economic production could be called capitalism, in that the means of production are in the hands of a small minority.
The defining factor is if those hands are private of government. It also distinguishes itself from socialism (government control of a market, funded by the people as a whole) of communism (shared control of a market or of expenses by a collective, operating within a larger capitalist market).
Your thinking is flawed because you assume that capital owned by a state elite class is somehow less "capitalistic" than capital owned by an industrialist/entrepreneur.
Buy a dictionary. That's the definition of capitalism.
State intervention is not an alternative to extreme capitalism.
State intervention is one of the two alternatives to extreme capitalism. When the state takes tax dollars and builds roads, that is socialism that benefits everyone, using money taken in larger shares from the wealthy. When your family shares a car instead of each buying their own, that is communism, mitigating extreme capitalism with resource sharing.
State intervention is a form of extreme capitalism.
State intervention, by definition, is not capitalism.
However, state-education and nationalistic brainwashing has convinced people that the state-elite are somehow not a capitalist class, when it is the very epitome of it.
State education is an example of socialism. It is just that the education is fairly poor, so most people don't understand the distinction.
Western Europe and the United States have about the same amount of capitalism. On the Index of Economic Freedom (which is p
Actually, that is only half of the idea. What good does it do to society for an inventor to be able to talk about an idea if the government prevents anyone else from implementing it, ever? To society an idea that can't be used is the same as an idea they don't know, so unless such ideas eventually become the property of society, there is no justification for patents.
Of course patents expire and so, theoretically, do copyrights. The question then becomes determining the ideal amount of time for these types of IP to be granted their monopoly so that society benefits as much as possible. It has to be enough so that inventors will patent their ideas and profit, but no longer. The problem with current laws is that they are written not for the people, but for the powerful. The powerful are the same as the wealthy, so if you gain wealth from a patent, you can use that wealth to change the laws to favor you more than society... and that is exactly what has happened to IP laws.
Therefore, suggesting that you should be free to take my idea is tantamount to saying that you should be free to come along and knock down my house.No it isn't. Most people recognize the right to own real property as a basic human right. They also recognize the right to free expression and liberty, which IP laws are an artificial restriction of. A person taking your idea is their natural right, and the only justification for stopping them is if the case can be made for benefiting society as a whole. So if I want to knock down your house, the onus is on me to prove that it will benefit society as a whole (immanent domain or because is is a fire hazard and might burn down the block and kill a lot of people). If I want to copy your idea, the onus is on you to prove society can be benefitted more by letting you have an exclusive right to exploit that idea for a short time.
I think you're taking the term "property" too literally. Property can be cars or yachts or stock certificates. I agree no one has the inherent right to land or any other wealth, but what you're not taking into account is that your ability to study and work and make money is tied very strongly to the wealth of your parents. The primary determining factor for wealth is not how hard you work, but how wealthy your parents were. When you are born indebted and grow up without proper nourishment or education and spend your entire life working very long hours of physical labor resulting in your being exhausted all the time, there is little hope that you can advance your station in life.
In a truly fair world, all children would receive all the same benefits in life, including nutrition, education, free time, and beginning wealth. That is a hard ideal to achieve, but it is the most fair way people to begin life.
That is the evil of Communism, when you think everything belongs to everyone, individuals have nothing and the government owns everything.Evil is a subjective term, and the word "communism" has had its meaning so badly distorted, especially in the US, that it should probably pass out of use except as an economic term. Government ownership of everything, by the way, would be extreme socialism, not communism. Anarchism is, well, fairly useless as a practical concept and lets just ignore it.
The main problem with extreme capitalism is "it takes money to make money." This is formally known as the wealth condensation principal. The more money you have, the faster you can acquire money. If I inherit a million bucks from my parents and you inherit nothing, well I can live my entire life doing no work and collecting interest from the loans I give to you and other people so you can buy a home. Basically, it is rewarding circumstance of birth over merit, and that is exactly the reason extreme capitalism cannot be a sustainable system. Economists attempt to balance out wealth condensation using inheritance taxes and progressive wealth taxes combined with socialist programs to redistribute this wealth to the poorest people or among all people. The main problem is wealth is also power and so laws are changed and rewritten primarily by the wealthy, who tend to favor their own interests and constantly undermine said process without regard for the economic and societal collapse it eventually brings about.
Actually, their are widely varying opinions amongst industrialized nations. Much of Europe, for example, places societal rights higher than individual rights, not recognizing, the "right" of people to profit based upon heredity. This is reflected in taxation designed to cancel out wealth condensation and/or high inheritance taxes that attempt to return property and wealth to society as a whole for redistribution, when the current owner passes away. This is a sliding scale, with these measures being taken in different measure in different nations, but little of that has to do with the ethical/moral conventions or economic theory.
Economists will tell you, hereditary property rights provide an economic advantage to those people, leading to more and more wealth consolidating into the hands of fewer and fewer people. The wealth of your parents is the #1 most important factor for how wealthy you will be. It is NOT primarily based upon merit or how hard you work. Those are exceptions, not the rule for society. Without intervention, extreme capitalism collapses under its own weight when the poor rebel and forcibly redistribute the wealth, with a lot of pain, suffering, injustice, and instability at the same time. Philosophers and moralist scoff at the idea that because you have deed to some land for historical reasons, you have any more right to it than others. You likely only have that deed because you were lucky enough to be born to a family with more wealth than others.
Many societies have tried to abolish property rights, and massively redistribute property.Many societies have tried to redistribute property rights, with varying degrees of "success". All of which depends upon how you define success. Is the US where 50% of the people have no net wealth at all and 2% of the people have nearly 50% of the wealth a success? Is it a success when you consider that not even one in a hundred of that 2% of people were not born to parents already in that wealth bracket?
Morality is measured in the effects of those property rights, and right now no-one has come up with a system of abolishing property rights that doesn't result in mass-murder and mass-poverty.I think you're ignoring taxes. If you have to keep paying society for land, you don't truly own it. If you have to pay larger portions of your wealth as your total wealth increases, how is that "fair" and more importantly, is that respecting your right to own property or is it charging you for that so called right?
What results in mass-murder and mass-poverty is not respect for property rights, but attempting to craft an extreme economy, extreme in any direction. An economy that is too capitalist, collapses just as horrifically as one that is too socialist. What lasts are societies that manage to balance capitalism, socialism, and communism in such a way that they maintain stability. (Note: I use the terms capitalism, socialism, and communism in their definitions within economics, not politics or as a synonym for "bad" as speech writers tend to.) Wealth does not condense making individual merit worthless, but neither does wealth immediately disperse, likewise making individual merit worthless.
Comparing societies in this light, the US has recently been moving more and more towards extreme capitalism and wealth condensation, where the wealthy are not taxed heavily enough to compensate society for the earning advantages their inherited wealth affords them. It has not yet come to a head as it did in the great depression and new deal, but it is certainly headed that way. If you're looking for an example of a more balanced and stable economy/society, look to the European countries with the high standards of living.
The last I heard these were in "optional" sections, not in deprecated ones. That is to say, MS can and probably will use them in new documents they create, but others won't be required to implement them to meet the spec. Of course this still means documents will slightly "break" when switching between applications and as such still undermines the ability of OOXML to bring all the benefits of a truly open standard. For that matter, since OOXML has not yet been fully implemented by anyone, there is no reason for such a clause to be in the spec if it won't be in newly created documents.
The term makes me smile. It is actually much more descriptive and less confusing than the one MS invented.
No problem. I hope it was useful to you.
But, I don't see how those restrictions can be reconciled with the first amendment, as it is currently written. "Congress shall make no lawI see where you're coming from, but I just don't think it is a practical way to interpret the constitution. It is no more clear than "the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Obviously if someone exercises one right and at the same time deprives another of a different right it needs to be resolved justly. We either have to reconcile any discrepancy or the document fails. Maybe they should have included "save in that it protects a different right enumerated here" but that would have weakened the document and missed the purpose that all rights are supposed to belong to the people inherently unless specified otherwise. It also misses, that for the most part, mitigating conflict between citizens and states is supposed to be the only types of laws that are constitutional (sans a few specific exceptions).
All I am saying is that if people want to limit rights, they should have to change the constitutional amendments..Then all the rights in the bill of rights need to be changed... something I sure don't want our current crop of politicians doing. (Note this is an appeal to consequences and not a logical argument as to why the constitution does not need to be amended.)
...not have a judge insert "meaning" into the amendments, like has been done for almost all of them.Actually it is the legislature that writes laws that may or may not be constitutional, it is the judges that rule if they conflict with the constitution. This has been going on from the very beginning of our constitution with libel and slander laws on the books and enforced both before and after the bill of rights was written and without those who wrote the bill of rights seeing a conflict. Judges also look for indirect attacks, like where the government monitoring everything everyone reads is an indirect attack on freedom of speech (since speech is no good if no one can hear you).
In this case the judges simply ruled that the law was constitutional because it was mitigating two protected rights from different individuals, protected by different parts of the constitution. Certainly you would not favor a system where it was legal for a mafia don to order you killed nor would you prefer the bill of rights was "amended" by our politicians to "fix" this problem? I agree the constitution is very poorly interpreted by politcos these days and that is a real problem, but it is important to understand where they're ignoring the constitution out of convenience and where they're resolving valid conflicts within it's bounds
Why? Why would I want a word processing document printed at home to be laid out slightly differently when I print it at work? How is that an advantage instead of a huge pain in my ass?
Because your setup at home is probably different from your setup at work. Different printers, different margins, different fonts, etc. Depending on the situation, your home printer may well be physically incapable of producing identical output to your work printer (different hardware margins, for example).
You're making assumptions. Usually they can both print identically and when they can't that can be handled when printing. I suppose you think word processing documents should switch to black and white when your default printer only does black and white too?
Exactly. Which is why the layout of that content is going to change depending on what the printer is capable of outputting.
Except in the past it has changed regardless of what the printer can output, because MS Word defaulted to using versions of the fonts the printer has installed, even when all fonts are present on both computers. In this day and age of network printers and laptops, it seems absurd to try to "pre-resolve" printing issues when the word processor does not even know which printer you will end up using. If you printer can't handle outputting a document exactly, let it tell you when you try to print and until then, don't worry about it.
PDF is not appropriate for all uses.
It is, however, appropriate for the case I gave as an example.
What? You wrote "If you want a document to look the same regardless of where it is viewed, use something like a PDF." How is that not the use case I was just saying it is not appropriate for? I want a document to look the same to everyone and be editable by them. PDF doesn't work, for that I need A WORD PROCESSING FORMAT!!!! It's not like this is an unusual use case, it happens at work all the time.
For example, when I check a document into SVN and I want multiple people to collaborate on it, all making edits. Why the hell is it useful for one person to tweak the fonts to get them to fit properly on their printer, only to have the other people change them back to work on a different printer?
Because person 2's printer might not be setup the same as person 1's printer.
Who cares if we're not printing it? Not all word processing docs are ever printed, in fact a good portion aren't. I don't give a rat's ass if the people I'm collaborating with even have printers, I just want us to all be able to see and edit the same document we're working on. PDF is not appropriate. A word processing document from anything other than Word, is.
1. So what you see on screen is an accurate representation what comes out of your printer.
Which is shown as a print preview when you actually go to print and select a printer. Previous to that, your word processor doesn't actually know if you'll be printing on your home printer, the big laserjet at work, or the smaller color printer at work. For that matter, it doesn't know if you're going to take it to Kinkos. Changing the way it looks without that knowledge is just annoying.
2. So that when someone opens the document on a machine with different printing capabilities, what they see on their screen is also what will come out of their printer.
Except they don't because the word processor cannot accurately assess their printing capabilities, especially when there are multiple printers available.
Or, more succinctly, the whole point of having a WYSIWYG word processor in the first place. You are complaining because a program whose primary purpose is to make what you see on screen look the same as what will come out of the printer is doing exactly that.
No, I'm complaining because a certain
At which point it can scale or you can change the setting in your word processor to use a different sized paper (which you have to do in Word already). We're talking about printing the same document onto the same sized paper. Some versions of MS word screw this up, because they rely upon the fonts installed on the printer. This is a bug. Have you really drank the MS kool-aid so much that you believe this bug is a feature?
Generally the goal is profit, by one means or another. Linux boxes are regularly hacked to use as control channels for botnets. If it was easy, botnet operators would certainly add exploits for Linux and OS X to their worms, many of which already have numerous different ones they try against Windows. They also are fighting over machines with other botnet operators, so hitting say 6% of machines that no one else is targeting is a great proposition, if they can do it. The truth is, it is harder to get a functioning exploit to work on Linux, especially in an automated fashion, also many of the malware authors have much less experience coding for anything but Windows.
In recent years, malware has had several other means of making money, including mining machines for useful and profitable data, like account information, credit cards data, etc. This data is more prevalent and profitable on OS X than on Windows, since it cuts out the third world machines that don't have such useful info and instead targets the wealthiest people in Europe and the US. Still, there are no spreading worms or even real contenders. That isn't because of a lack of motivation, so it is another reason.
This is a stupid question.Nope. It is a very valid question and I've read papers by security experts attempting to figure out that same thing.
The question is if other platform vendors will put more effort into solving that problem than Microsoft has for Windows.
The main problem with windows is there are too many Windows users...This is nearly right, but not quite there. The problem with security on Windows is that Windows is a monopoly and so MS has little to no economic incentive to make sure malware is not a problem for those users. We'd likely see the same problem on any other platform that had monopoly influence, but if the market were competitive the problem would be solved. This could happen in several ways:
Basically I don't think the malware problem will be solved from the bottom up. Malware infected computers that have failed the consumer generally motivate the purchase of a new computer and paying MS for another Windows license, because really that is all that they sell in pretty much all retail stores. Being insecure is making MS money. Until that changes, why would we expect effective anti-malware solutions from them?
It is easy to blame Windows but windows has actually gotten fairly secure over the past decade. And it is nowhere as bad as it use to be.Windows differs from other OS's not in a lack of technical "solutions" for malware, but in that it does not have an appropriate level of security for the threat to which it is exposed. Regular Linux distros have security that works for stopping automated malware that threatens for most users. Ultra-secure workstations have SELinux and similar tools to lock them down and stop more direct threats. Only Windows users are regularly compromised, such that is a major inconvenience to the average user, because MS has just copied (often badly) security measures from other platforms without investing enough to have a truly working solution.
No, my argument is based upon someone else trying to claim what the original poster said does not apply because they believe the definition does not fit, for an unspecified reason and they assume it is derogatory, again for no reason specified.
Please address my examples specifically. How is referring to praying as telepathy inaccurate or derogatory?
The poster to whom I was describing was the one claiming the terms were inaccurate and derogatory and he is not the person who originally used them. We're all speaking English here and no one of us has more authority in that area than any other.
Furthermore going on with historical points that do not describe current status, and then insisting in some abstract way that it does or that it should, is equally contrarian.I used both historical and current examples to demonstrate that christianity is very different in different places and times and such blanket statements about what its "main themes" are, are less than useful, especially when completely unsupported.
And you're also incorrect, he is trolling, and you're trying to defend him on the basis of your own belief that all of religion is hogwash.Wow, generalize much? You're making broad and completely incorrect assumptions about my religious beliefs. I said it is understandable to assert that religion is irrational, which is part of the definition. I never said it was "hogwash" or wrong, or anything else of the sort.
You don't have to lie to someone because they are offended by something that is meant to offend them. Notice I'm not telling you should grow a bigger brain because you misunderstood the fellow, I'm saying you did so deliberately and you should stop.I lied to no one. I asked some very pointed questions which both the person I was replying to and you have completely ignored. If you're going to have a coherent discussion you actually have to address my points specifically. Otherwise, it is naught but empty rhetoric.
Please go back and address my points logically and stop making assumptions about what I think and feel. The original poster had some very good points in showing ways in which christianity and scientology are similar and claiming to be persecuted or that such comments are trolling does nothing to logically disprove them.
I wasn't talking about what is constitutional, just what is enacted in our current laws, but I actually do believe such a law to be constitutional in the US. In order to explain why, I'll present a very exaggerated example, just so you can get the concept. Suppose I build a voice activated robot that disintegrates guns. If I were to say "robot destroy" it would disintegrate your firearm. Can it be illegal for me to say that command since there is no explicit exception in the bill of rights? Can it be legal for me to say that command since it would violate your second amendment right?
Basically what we're coming down to is conflicting civil rights. People have the inherent right to free speech, but they also have the inherent right to life and liberty. When those come into conflict laws are supposed to mitigate that conflict (and theoretically those should be about the only laws, constitutionally). To make the analogy more practical and even closer to what we're discussing, if a Mafia Don is caught on tape ordering his goons to go shoot you, should he be immune to prosecution because all he did was exercise his free speech? If a hit man invents a voice activated killbot does that mean he can kill all he wants since the constitution forbids creating a law that would make his action illegal?
To advocate criminal violence is the same in principal as both the examples I listed, differing only in degree. The courts have, so far, ruled that specifically inciting people to criminal violence against others compromises the rights of those others to live more than it compromises the rights of the person speaking. The old phrase is "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose."
If you can insert "little changes" into the amendment without actually amending it, then it can be changed to say anything.These aren't changes to the bill of rights, but rather laws mitigating conflicting rights granted by it. If you want a more detailed explanation just search the Web for "yelling fire in a theater" which is the classic example used for explaining this concept in law classes.
Why? Why would I want a word processing document printed at home to be laid out slightly differently when I print it at work? How is that an advantage instead of a huge pain in my ass?
Just like browsers should change the display of a web page to match *your* screen, not the screen of some web designer somewhere.Markup is a fine idea and works well for the Web. Word processing is not the Web. Word processing fits content to a page, a paper page for printing. It is nice to be able to customize how you view a simulation of that page on your screen, but there is no advantage to it printing differently on different computers and printers.
If you want a document to look the same regardless of where it is viewed, use something like a PDF.PDF is not appropriate for all uses. For example, when I check a document into SVN and I want multiple people to collaborate on it, all making edits. Why the hell is it useful for one person to tweak the fonts to get them to fit properly on their printer, only to have the other people change them back to work on a different printer? That is a stupid annoyance, not a benefit. You haven't presented a single use case where this is an advantage.
No, I'm not. Layout programs are for letting the user more exactly place content. There is absolutely no reason why a word processing document cannot be rendered exactly by each program and printed exactly by each device. If it does not, it is a bug.
If you want total control over presentation, use FrameMaker -- that's what it's for.No it isn't. Framemaker is primarily for longer documents than Word can handle easily and more features aimed at technical books and manuals. It does have better support for exact layout than say MSWord, but it also has worse support than something like InDesign or Quark.
I fundamentally disagree with you. Give me one good reason why a word processing document should look different when viewed on different computers that have all the fonts used.
That's called a bug. Word processing files should look exactly the same across platforms and versions, with exceptions given for missing fonts or other referenced data. It should absolutely not change when you switch printers and as far as I know MS Word is the only program to have that problem.
PDF is for files you want to distribute and don't want to be easily editable. ODF is for files you want others to edit as well. DOC is deprecated and is for dealing with legacy versions of Word when you have to.
Actually the doctrine of the catholic church is that it actually transforms. It's called transubstantiation and that has been the case since the council of Trent. They do hem and haw over the difference between substantially present and physically present when it is referred to as cannibalism, but not in any logical way. The official doctrine is it is to be accepted as a "mystery" which cannot be explained by any human.
And no, I'm not a Bible thumper. Just someone who hates when Catholics get bagged on about mistaken(and sometimes flat out lies) beliefs about Catholic ceremonies.I'm not opposed to religion, but when the church makes official statements like "the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together" and then refuses to explain any more because it is a "mystery" well I think people should be given more than a little slack on their interpretation.
Ethically, the right to free expression ends when it infringes upon the rights of another person. Traditionally, slander and libel were considered such when they damaged the other person (such as causing problems getting a job or anything else provable). I think this is important to mention because most people don't understand the difference between a law that restricts freedom and a law that mediates conflicting freedoms between different people. As for people in the public view, laws are both more and less strict depending upon the damages. For example, lying about a politician in such a way that they lose an election is a greater crime in most jurisdictions, whereas lying about a regular person may well cost them nothing and cause no damages.
Not all restrictions on free expression are censorship. For example, a law against yelling "fire" in a crowder theater (classic example) simply weighs the right of the theater patrons to live without injury over another person's right to speak in an inaccurate way. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. So I agree with your sentiment. I just wanted to clarify the reasoning so it can be applied to the general case, not just to slander and libel.
Whereas not executing traitors who happen to be politicians has done so much good for others? They pass virtually the same, unconstitutional laws again and again with no repercussions. They intentionally lie to the people with no repercussions. Hundreds of thousands die as a result, and still nothing. Seems to be working great, huh?
Maybe you're keeping just on the safe side of 'incitement to illegal violence' line but you are clearly hostile to the current constitutional system in which politicians are not generally executed by kangaroo courts on trumped up treason charges.Who said anything about kangaroo courts or trumped up charges? Only you. Both I and the previous poster merely submitted our opinion that Bush is a traitor and that the courts should prosecute him for that using the established process of impeachment for sitting politicians.
Your assertions otherwise are empty and inflammatory.
Maybe you're the real traitor in that you advocate overthrowing that system and killing your political opponents.I see. Perhaps you'd be so good as to quote where I advocated overthrowing the "system" or where I stated anyone was my political opponent. Gee, I just mentioned applying the existing laws, including capital punishment for treason, which are already part of the system.
Don't be too surprised if the Secret Service are checking up on you if you say stuff like this - certainly they would be in the UK.Yeah, and that you bring it up is exactly why the US courts ruled that government monitoring was an infringement of free speech due to the "chilling effect" it had on people attempting to express themselves or access said speech.
First, praying can certainly be considered telepathy. You're communicating with another being remotely, using your mind. It fits the definition. Second, the catholic church and many others recognize a "trinity" where Jesus was one aspect of god, a "fragment" is not a misleading description. As to the alive versus dead versus both argument, it can be interpreted many ways, but is too vague to really argue any way in my opinion.
The entire religion revolves around this man being tortured to death in order to pay for all the nasty shit YOU have done to other people in your life, then walking out of the tomb alive. The religion of Christanity is a religion based on giving, sharing, being non-judgemental, and forgiving of others' faults.Actually, christianity as practiced in modern times has as much to do with the old testament as the new and with arbitrary restrictions laid down therein. You'll have a hard time finding a practicing christian who does not know the ten commandments or a christian priest who does not believe you are supposed to follow them.
As for christianity being based on giving, sharing, and being non-judgmental... christianity is an adaptable religion and has adapted itself to cultures in different places and times. It has been so judgmental at times that it tortured and killed everyone who disagreed, and in fact such things still happen with murders of physicians who perform abortions and homosexuals being a not too rare occurrence in the US and very common in other parts of the world. You can claim preachers with expensive suits don't count, but that is just the "no true scotsman fallacy" and it is a sliding scale. Are catholic priests who perform mass with golden crosses really christians? What about small town preachers who own televisions and haven't given away all of their possessions? The truth is, they're all christians because that is the religion with which they self identify and while you may disagree with them, you can't ignore their influence... regardless of if they are not from the one, true "western reformed presbelutheren" faith.
If you're going to troll Christians, at lest get your facts straight.I don't think he was trolling at all. I think he was expressing his honest and very understandable opinion that all religions are making irrational and often incredible claims without presenting equally incredible proofs. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it is not a way in which scientology and christianity differ.
And yes, not only are there a lot of Christians at slashdot, a lot of scientests are Christians, Muslims, and Jews as well. Being deliberately offensive is trolling.He wasn't insulting your religion. Grow a thicker skin. If you can't see how someone can interpret praying to be a form of telepathy, then you're clearly not being objective. There is a difference between "things that might make you think about aspects of your religion rationally" and "being deliberately offensive." How is considering praying to be telepathy offensive? Is there anything wrong with telepathy as a word or concept? It is just communicating remotely using only thoughts. How does that threaten you and your beliefs in such a way that you're offended?
I don't really see that as a fundamental difference. As a money making scheme I could invent or adopt a religion and fleece believers I indoctrinated, browbeat, or frightened in a variety of ways. On way would be to get them to pay me to alleviate their fears and another would be to alleviate their fears and then use guilt and gratitude to get them to pay me. So long as I'm getting paid, this is just a matter of technique, not a fundamental difference.
You can ask the priest pretty much anything and guess what, you are likely to get halfway straight and honest answer, without coughing up hundreds of dollars.How do you know it is an honest answer? How do you know they truly believe instead of just claiming to for financial security? Certainly there have been christian preachers exposed in the past as being complete scam artists based upon their comments in private.
Further, most people don't really buy into the whole cannibalism thing or take everything the bible, especially the old testament, seriously.Most people pick and choose religious quotes and beliefs to support whatever they have already decided to believe. Some believe strictly in transubstantiation while others don't. Some "believe" strongly enough in fairly vague excerpts from the old testament that they feel it justifies their actions in beating a homosexual to death or burning down the house of a person of a alternate religion. For the most part, I find christians in the US know very little of what is in the bible and don't really care to. They have a set of beliefs formed as much from television depictions of their religion as anything else. For the most part they are fine people, but what they believe is cultural more than religious (in both good and bad ways).
Of course were making points on Slashdot so it must be the case that the most extreme members of anything == all the members of anything.You seem to have missed the point. Any religion can be interpreted in different ways and christianity is just as wacky and irrational as any other. It can and is exploited for profit just as much too. I'm in no way opposed to christianity. The example is pointing out a very common but rarely considered aspect of christianity. Personally, I have no objection to cannibalism from an ethical/moral perspective. I do have issues with murder and with cannibalism from a health perspective. Why are you reacting so strongly to cannibalism anyway? Is it just the social taboo? Really, what is fundamentally wrong with eating meat from other humans?
I've read the bible and think there are very valuable insights therein. I enjoy a good discussion of these things with a professional priest, because they have the time and education to discuss them in a less brain dead fashion than the average bloke. That said, if any priest wants to "convert" me, they'd better start from the position of having given away all their possessions, being destitute, and refusing to take gifts from others. If they aren't that convinced themselves, how can I trust them?