What do you mean. I can beat someone to death with a game console, shoot them with a gun, burn them with gasoline, beat them with a baseball bat, or punch them in the throat over and over again.
In each case, I'm the one doing the killing. Guns just make killing easier.
She stomps mushrooms, shoots fireballs, and has demolished at least a dozen of my nice barrels with a massively oversized hammer.
"If video games effected behavior, after playing pac-man we'd all be running around in the dark, popping pills, and listening to repetitive, electronic music" - I forget who said this. It does sound like a lot of my weekends a few years back:)
I think that technically the Congress can do little else besides legislate morality.
The main problem with this thread, is no one seems to understand what the term "legislating morality" commonly applies to. Since all laws are an application of ethics, the term "legislating morality" has no meaning interpreted literally, especially for people who don't differentiate between morals and ethics. The common use of the term, however, applies to laws that don't mediate a social conflict, but only apply to an individual's own choices. For example, you have the right to fire a firearm. I have a right to live. When you shoot me, your right conflicts with mine and the law mediated the conflict with a law against armed assault or murder. This is an application of ethics, but is not what the term "legislating morality" normally applies to. Now, you have the right to fire a firearm. You do so on your own property, shooting religious symbols and the American flag. Your rights are not in conflict with anyone else's rights and what you do does not effect society at all. A law that says you can't shoot crosses or the American flag would be "legislating morality" because the only purpose of the law is to force you to behave morally, not to resolve a societal conflict.
In common usage the term "legislating morality" really means passing a law that only enforces morality and does not resolve a conflict between the rights of others as well.
I would assert that we would never have been able to develop those things to their full potential (or at all in the case of nuclear) without fossil fuels.
That was yesterday, this is today. Because something was useful in the past, does not mean we should keep using it.
There have been wars faught when govenrments have finally pushed the taxes to the point where people couldn't afford essentials or luxury items in the past... Tea, spices... You don't have to be an economist that is on an oil company payroll, you just have to be an economist that payed attention in highschool history class.
Most of what you list are attempts to replace a good or service with another good or service that does not provide the same benefits. This is an attempt to create a superior alternative.
You cannot come up with a single example of such a tax that has worked as intended. I'm not thinking this trough very far? You're not thinking at all.
Actually, taxes on polluting industries have reduced the amount of air pollution in the US by 70% from levels in the past. I'd say it works just fine.
The terrorists will hate us no matter what we do. Rights for women, sexual freedom, etc - the militant Islamist is primarily concerned about the 'decadancy' of the west, and how it is 'corrupting' them. As long as we're broadcasting pr0n, they're going to hate us, and the breeding of new terrorists will continue. Really, there are only three choices - fight, convert to Islam, or live a life of dhimmitude.
You're 100% wrong. Hate is not the same thing as disapproval. Most muslims and a lot of christians disapprove of pornography. How many of them are willing to give up their life by strapping a bomb to their chest and running into a crowded business to kill themselves to make a statement against it? Very, very few. In order to drive someone to such extremes you have to make them very angry and afraid. A good way to do that is by invading their home, blowing up random buildings, killing their young niece with a bomb, publishing pictures of your sexual abuse of the citizens you arbitrarily arrested, ridiculing their religion, building a dozen huge military bases in their land, looting their treasury, selling off all the businesses to foreigners, hiring foreigners to supply you with goods the locals specialize in, disrupting water and electricity, randomly raiding town and arresting everyone in a certain age bracket, and giving weapons to both enemies across the border and local religious extremist groups who you appoint as police.
You've made the same mistake almost everyone does. You've dehumanized the enemy. "They're terrorists, not people." This is wrong. They are people just like you, and if a foreign power did the same thing to the US you'd probably be willing to do a lot to get some payback on them too. Your assertion that Islam is any more violent than christianity is absurd. Muslims can and do live peaceably alongside people of other religions and I've seen some really selfless acts by muslim clerics in the last decade, to try to stop violence against christians who had wronged them. It is not like when someone converts to Islam they instantly become an inhuman monster that wants to drink the blood of our good, clean, white christian babies. It takes a lot to drive any person to desperate acts of violence. We've done a fine job of driving as many people as possible to that state. I've always assumed that that was part of the plan, to make a new enemy against which we can wage a perpetual war and regain the level of government interference and corruption that we had in the worst parts of the cold war.
Or as another person put it, "dropping bombs on people makes them mad? Who knew?"
I guess by buying someone out, they get to use the name, with brings in customers, but I really don't see the big draw.
This is exactly it. Both Voodoo and Alienware built up a brand name. Most people don't understand the technical parts of computers, so they rely upon brands. Even before Dell bought Alienware, they started selling crappy, re-branded white boxes at exorbitant prices and people bought them. If you spend a few years building a reputation and you are unscrupulous, you can use that brand to sell cheap crap with really high margins. Big companies look at that and think, "I can make the margins even better and use my big distribution chain to cut those costs and make a fortune here." It usually doesn't last. Already the word has spread in most circles that Alienware is no longer "good."
HP is a big enough company that if they put out a real gaming machine, with really good specs for a good price, I'm sure it wouldn't go unnoticed.
Yeah, but it does not work as well as you'd think. Dell got little traction with their elite line of gaming machines, simply because they were Dells.
Having said that, what's with all the big companies wanting to get into gaming PCs? That's a very small market, and with all the consoles coming out with HD, I don't see PC gaming getting a larger market (although I don't know if it will shrink).
You think HD is a big difference between PC gaming and console gaming for most people? Nope. PCs let you play online, and using the computer mom and dad bought you for school. Consoles let you use the TV and play with multiple people on the same machine and display without hassle. They are stupid simple and cheap and have no margin, that is for the games.
I foresee both markets continuing to slowly grow. There is room for convergence, but I don't see ti happening until the average PC becomes that digital hub and outputs to the TV and stereo in the average person's home.
The very notion that I should not violate your rights is a moral one. To legislate that I cannot violate your rights is to legislate morality. Morality is not defined by privateness. Morality is involved anytime you invoke the word "should," or its cognate, "rights."
No. No. No. The rights are morals, well technically ethics in this case. Traditionally, resolving conflicts between one person's rights and another is not considered "legislating morality" because it is simply the law judging the relative merits of already established ethical principals. What is "legislating morality" is passing laws that don't resolve such a conflict, but simply impose a behavior upon another. Technically, all laws are enforcing a moral or ethical belief (thus everything would be legislating morality making the term meaningless), but theoretically the government's job is to allow society to function, not to standardize morality or behavior. Thus, when a behavior is considered immoral or unethical by some, but does not effect anyone else the government should theoretically, keep their grubby paws out of it. When they don't, we say they're "legislating morality."
You seem to have taken a rather common, but IMO indefensible, position that "morals" are things that are personal, private, and subjective;
You're mistaken. I agree that the term could have been better named, but it was not. Sorry, but that is what evolved as a name for the action I'm describing and it has been in common use for decades.
The illustration is simple: Suppose I have the power to violate your rights as often as I want, without consequence. Provide me a non-moral reason why I should refrain. (Note: "Law" doesn't count...
Well, technically, laws are ethics, not morals so the laws do count, but ignoring that for the moment, you've simply mistaken my intention. I'm not arguing that any laws are not based upon ethics. I'm arguing that the term "legislating morality" does not actually refer to simply applying a law that enforces an ethical belief, but refers to a law that ONLY enforces an ethical belief, and does not in any other way resolve a societal problem (since the action does not effect any other member of society).
I contend that morals either exist, and apply everywhere, or they do not exist, and they apply nowhere. You can't have it both ways.
The thing is, your assertion does not conflict with mine and in no way invalidates what the term "legislating morality" means to the common culture. The term "speed bump" is not a bump made out of speed, regardless of how unintuitive you may think that. Your problem is not that you are failing to comprehend the ethics of the situation, but simply that you're not understanding what the term means in popular culture.
As I see it, the key word here is "your". If some random stranger starts rubbing their pelvis against my body I'm going to be like "Keep your pelvis off my body!" but if my wife were to do that then my response would be quite different.
I think a lot of people are confused as to what the term "legislating morality" means. Every person and society has moral beliefs. In the US, we have an agreed upon set of basic beliefs.. They include, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, etc. That does not mean those rights or any other rights are unlimited. One person's freedom of speech is unlimited right up until it infringes someone else's rights. The classic example is yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Your freedom of speech is limited in that it does not trump everyone else's right to life and doing that often resulted in people dying. The adage I quoted in a different post is "your right to freely swing your fist ends when it reaches my face."
There are all sorts of laws that prevent one person from infringing another's rights. For example, a law against armed assault stops one person from exercising their right to own and use a firearm in such a way that it takes away the rights of someone else to live. That is not what the term "legislating morality" is usually used to refer to. Legislating morality would be passing a law that stops another person from doing something that does not infringe the rights of another, because of moral beliefs. For example, a law banning the killing and eating of dogs, is legislating morality. Killing and eating a dog hurts no one, except the dog, which in our legal system has very limited rights. Or passing a law that stop people from masturbating, would be legislating morality. Passing a law to ban hunting is legislating morality.
Both the Republican and Democratic party legislate morality.
Passing a ban on public smoking is not legislating morality. A person's right to smoke ends the moment their smoke poisons another person and infringes on their right to life. People do die as a result of second hand smoke causing cancer. Banning smoking in your own home, however, would be legislating morality as it only harms you.
Getting back to the original question of whether liberal morals are more based on science than conservative morals, it depends how extreme the morals are.
For some reason the term "liberal" has become synonymous with Democrat in this country, even though the democrats are only moderately liberal. Liberal, is quite simply, maximizing liberty. By definition "liberalism" does not legislate morality because the maximum amount of liberty is when laws only resolve the conflict of rights, not actions that don't influence someone else's rights.
Not to leave out the liberals, money doesn't grow on trees and there do need to be very real limits on the health services that a society provides it members.
Technically, liberalism rejects socialism, although more often than not a given party adheres to a mix of the two. Mostly I think we differ in how things are defined. Agree that most of the things you assert are consistent in terms of science. I even agree with a lot of your opinions about societal structure. I just think you need to pay attention to what "legislating morality" and "liberalism" mean.
A lot of people find that such discussions would terribly offensive and harmful to the social order.
So?
It's also easy to find scientific data which will prove just about anything.
You're making a fundamental error. There is no such thing as "scientific data." Data is data. Science is a process of collecting and evaluating data and ideas to determine objective truth. Science does not often "prove" anything, it indicates things with varying degrees of certainty.
It could be because of small sample size or faulty data, but if you pick and choose the information you'll get what you want.
If you're picking and choosing data, you're not following the scientific method, ergo, you're not supporting science at all. You're supporting lying and calling it science. Luckily, the scientific method has checks for this, so when someone else tries to replicate your study or confirm it by another study which is scientific the truth will come to light.
If someone has a grudge against blacks/homosexuals/women/men/heterosexuals/whites... they can probably find a study that demonizes them.
A study that demonizes anything but demons is not science. A study can indicate untrue or even true but offensive things. If it is an accurate study, good we want to know. If not, it will be disproved.
Where would you draw the line about debate? Are there discussions which should not take place?
All of your arguments can be summed up as, "people who do not adhere to the scientific method can make shit up and tell lies. Should we still let them speak and where?"
Freedom of speech is essential for science. Let them say anything they want, but also make sure to loudly demonstrate when their study is discredited and how many discredited studies that person has forwarded.
Exactly. I don't vote for either party at it irks me when I hear Dems say "Keep your morals off my body!" when referring to abortion or drugs and then demand universal healthcare or public smoking bans because it's the moral/humane thing for the government to do.
You don't see a fundamental difference between laws that stop you from taking an action (abortion, drugs) that effects no one else and a law that stops you from hurting others (public smoking)? Traditionally one person's rights end when another persons rights begin. You have the right to smoke and kill yourself, just so long as you don't poison me in the process, because that is violating my rights. The old adage is "your right to swing your fist freely, ends when that fist encounters my face."
Sorry, you have to choose whether it's ok to legislate morality.
The term "legislating morality" generally means passing laws to stop others from doing things, not because they infringe someone else's rights, but because you don't want them to be able to do that thing regardless of its effect or lack thereof on others. Passing a law stopping masturbation would be legislating morality. Masturbation does not infringe upon anyone else's rights. Passing a law to ban murders is not legislating morality, because it is stopping one person from infringing the rights of a second person.
As for universal healthcare, I've never, ever heard anyone argue that it should be instituted on moral grounds. I've heard it argued that it should be instituted for practical reasons or for economic reasons, but never moral. What would that argument even be?
it may sound pathetic by the standards of other countries, but other most other countries are smaller and have a higher population density.
We pay more money in government subsidizes to fund our internet access than most other countries and have slower, more expensive service. Take a look at Sweden. They pay less per person to internet access providers both in taxes and in fees. They have about the same population density. Their connections are an order of magnitude faster and more reliable. Like it or not, for the hundreds of billions of tax dollars we handed out to these companies, they've given us crap.
do you also complain about the fact that 10,000 acre farms in nebraska don't have cable access and town water?
Did we grant a monopoly on cable and water to a company then give them billions after they promised to deliver it to everyone?
In all fairness, try the same thing in Exposé. Depending on your resolution, you will likely have to mouse over each window to get the title bar text as a description (which may not even tell you much) to get any idea what the window contains.
Actually, I have 20 windows open right now and there were only two I have to mouse over to distinguish between (using expose). This partly because four of those windows are terminals and I color code them (dark green, dark red, dark blue, dark grey) to make this task easier. The problematic windows are the finder or Windows explorer ones. When very small, they all look the same. The Window's solution has the potential to keep them larger, but obscures the right side of the window, the only part that differs. I tried the new Vista feature, but it really does seem a lot slower to me, at least initially.
There are plenty of areas currently served by FiOS that aren't "very urban locations." Read.
Almost every area they offer it is very urban and that offering is pretty sparse. It covers selected cities within less than half of US states. Sorry, but that is just pathetic by the standards of many other countries.
They would have to purchase licenses to run Windows on the laptop, so, yes, they would be paying Microsoft to promote their product.
If MS would not give them a laptop with Windows installed, I'd be very surprised. I know Apple gives them to movie and TV productions. In any case, wherever they acquired the laptop, there is about a 99% chance it came with Windows already installed.
Fine, there have been plenty of broken promises from phone companies (and, I believe, cable providers, satellite providers, and others) over the years. 7 million homes also might be a little optimistic. But FiOS is really, exists in plenty of homes already, and is much more real than many of those other technologies were at the times the promises were made.
Maybe you should read the above book. The number of homes with decent high speed internet in the US is pathetic. Compare, for example, the internet service in Sweden. It is faster, more reliable, lower cost, and each citizen paid much less than each American citizen has in government subsidies. They also have about the same population density. Sorry, but the US is falling behind the world, except in a small number of very urban locations. I'm happy you have good service, but don't mistake the situation in new York for most of the US. I've lived in three of the ten largest cities in the US and in each place I had a choice of a crappy cable service bundled with Cable TV I don't want or an incredibly expensive DSL line bundled with a phone service I don't want.
They probably would have to pay Microsoft for product placement
Since when does the maker of a primetime TV show pay the maker of a product to include it onscreen? It is almost invariably the other way around. Sales of Reese's Pieces tripled when the Movie E.T. came out and showed E.T. eating them, when M&M did not pay the advertising cost to include their product.
they need to have the right to use it without worrying about being sued because it's proprietry and they like to not have to give thousands of dollars and coppies of the script over to people so the whole show doesn't get pulled for creating a negative image of software. The only thing that amazes me is that more people aren't doing this
I think you've got this a bit backwards. Apple often gives free laptops to television shows and movies to be used on screen as advertising. More likely the thought was either "this looks cool" or "Microsoft said they wouldn't pay us to include a screenshot of Windows." Possibly the thought was, "after this episode how much do you think MS will pay us to stop showing cool people using Linux? How much will they pay to stop us mentioning it is Linux in the script?"
Except the claim of this bill is that they are NOT taxing gasoline.
Yeah, I'm not familiar with the politics behind this. I was responding to why the issue of taxing oil companies for the damage they do crossed with a typical libertarian stance of government non-interference, is not really ethical.
Consumers WILL pay. However, since it won't be an official gas tax, it will look like it is the oil companies charging more instead of a tax on consumers.
The other benefit of this is most of the burden of this tax is borne by non-Californians. It is basically a big money funnel from other states/countries. When the cost at the pump is paid by a Floridian, but the tax money goes to California, well California wins. Thus it is doubly sneaky.
Even if you do support a gas tax to fund alternative energy sources, how effective and honest do you think this program is going to be when the whole system is based on a giant lie to the electoriate? How much faith do you put into government supervision when the legislation itself is designed to fool the voters?
To be honest, I have more faith in marketing than I do in the rational decision making ability of the average voter. Oil companies are spending piles of cash to convince the people of how to vote, using equally dishonest taxes. Who do you suppose will fund the ad campaign on behalf of all those children getting lung cancer from the pollution? Well, the venture capitalist who want to make money on alternatives will, but their pockets are not quite as deep. This law is designed to be marketing in and of itself.
In a perfect world, or even a slightly less corrupt one, I'd be outraged by dishonest representation of a tax. As it is, this might just be the lesser of these evils though.
Using the word 'direct' to describe an indirect effect does not make the effect any more direct. You get bonus sleezeball points for the tourist trade in Alaska comment, which is so clearly not even close to what I was talking about when I was talking about indirect benefits that it isn't even funny.
Wait a second. The cause/effect I discussed was you burn oil, the gas accumulates and causes more lung cancer. You now claim that you burn gas, this somehow allows me to live a luxurious lifestyle is a more direct and non-theoretical relationship? Pass that pipe on over here boy, I want a puff of what you're smoking.
I was talking about the indirect benefits of using fossil fuels, not theoretical indirect benefits of the indirect consequences of using fossil fuels.
Yes you were. You never showed that life would be any worse over all if we all used other fuel sources like nuclear or tidal. Thus your inherent assertion that my life would be less luxurious or more costly without oil is very theoretical and in my opinion, presumptuous.
Furthermore, tourism in Alaska would probably be harmed by global warming, and were it helped, it would be a boon to Alaskans, not to society.
You don't consider Alaskans part of society? Alaskans are people too you racist.
That's all well and good, but I don't know how you can expect anybody to know that in the context of this particular discussion. I am not sure how you can look at this thread and think that it is about taxing oil companies, and not about this particular law.
In your reading this thread, did you read the post to which I was responding? It talked about the ethics of taxing oil companies and soda companies, not this particular law. If you read the thread, I don't see how you could not know that is what we were discussing.
You mean the main benefit to the hypothetical plan that none of us knew you were talking about? This law is not your hypothetical plan.
I spoke in general about any plan to tax oil use.
Plenty of economists have shown how dumb your hypothetical plan is, even if you disregard the fact that every drop of oil that is produced will be consumed even if California, or all of Western Civilization stops consuming it.
Really, got some citations for that? Citations of economists not being bankrolled, by an oil concern I mean. Burning oil causes localized damage as much as global damage so moving the location of the burning would be of benefit. The more expensive that oil is, the less oil will be used overall, thus reducing the global problem. You don't seem to be thinking these things through very far.
But that was not what I was talking about. I was talking about how dumb *this* law is.
Then you are commenting in the wrong thread. I suspect, like most people, you picked it up at my comment modded to +5, made assumptions about what I was responding to, and your knee began to jerk.
My point was that Apple did not coin the term, not when the iPod was introduced.
Of course they didn't. It was coined by people referring to a process where almost everyone used iPods. It is derivative of their trademark.
There are the folks who say "pod" was adopted from "portable on demand" but I'm sure it's one of those acronyms where the word it spells, in this case something small with neat stuff inside, is really the important part.
That is a backronym invented by Creative to explain why the term podcasting did not refer just to iPods. They came up with the term as a marketing gimmick to try to make it seem like the term had less to do with iPods. Mr. Hammersley (who did invent the term) made it very clear in an interview that this was not the case.
But I don't see the value for anyone, except Apple and other corporations who've lawyered up, in allowing them to own words not coined by them and that are also simply part of the language.
Apple has never objected to anyone using the term podcasting and they never claimed to own it. They did claim it refers to iPods and is thus not appropriate for another company to claim as their own trademark, since consumers would be confused as to whether the only company allowed to use that term was or was not the one that also made iPods.
But letting them get away with monopolizing every "pod" out there is just plain silly.
That again is not what is happening here. They have never gone after any use of any term with "pod" in it that does not directly refer to iPods, which is their trademark. And for that case, they simply object to someone else claiming a monopoly on it.
At this rate they'll have to go back in time and sue the folks who made the movie about "pod people."
Maybe you should read the article so you know what is going on before going off half cocked like this. Apple is trying to stop a trademark from being granted to another company who wants exclusive right to the term "podcast ready" meaning Apple could not claim iPods as podcast ready without paying them. Given that podcast is derived from the term iPod and this is more than a little confusing to customers I'm all in favor of the trademark office agreeing with them.
But public transportation is good! Its for the children!....so they can all have cancer.
The danger from high concentration versus low concentrations makes for a good study, but it is pretty obvious fossil fuel burning is a cause of increased cancer and there are very high levels across most large cities, effecting big chunks of the populace. It is a real cost to society and individuals from others burning fossil fuels, even if they use none themselves.
They have all sorts of indirect beneficial factors too, and non-users reap those benefits.
We're not discussing indirect factors at all. Maybe fossil fuels release greenhouse gasses that increase global warming that benefit the tourist trade in Alaska. That is not really something we're in any position to judge. What we are in a position to judge is the direct health risks, pollution concerns, and other environmental hazards that are a direct result of fossil fuel use, not an indirect cost or benefit.
All that law does is allow supporters to feel a false sense of ethics, and fool gullible people. The law is completely unenforcable, and technically impossible not to violate.
I disagree, but this is unimportant in my opinion.
No, what it will do is increase the cost of oil produced in California, causing suppliers to buy elsewhere.
If they are taxing production and the cost of redeploying already deployed resources is not too high and they don't tax importation or energy transmission (as I read as part of a proposal) then that may be the practical effect. I've not studied this particular proposal in detail, nor do I plan to. I was speaking of justification and benefits of taxing oil use, not details of any implementation, for which I'm not really a qualified judge.
The only people who will benefit will be the private investors in companies that received public funds for alternative energy research.
The main benefit to such a plan is to provide incentive for less fossil fuel use, through increasing the cost to those who use it. If they do that and burn the cash, it will still be of some benefit.
Just a friendly FYI there pal: Bullshit harms everyone who has to listen to it. What a stupid statement. Oil is just oil, dude.
The harm oil brings to society include the risks of global warming, increased rates of cancer, increased rates of asthma, and a variety of pollution problems. For example, studies show that children living within 500 meters of a bus station are up to 12 times more likely to develop serious forms of cancer as a result of increased levels of carbon monoxide, 1,3-butadience, nitrogen oxides, and dioxins given off by fossil fuels. Are you telling me those children were not harmed?
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Whitebox != crappy unless you're using Bill & Ted's cheap motherboard of the week.
Ummm, if I thought that, why would I have said the boxes were both crappy and whiteboxes? Wouldn't that be kind of redundant?
Yes. Because guns *DO* kill. Games don't.
What do you mean. I can beat someone to death with a game console, shoot them with a gun, burn them with gasoline, beat them with a baseball bat, or punch them in the throat over and over again.
In each case, I'm the one doing the killing. Guns just make killing easier.
She stomps mushrooms, shoots fireballs, and has demolished at least a dozen of my nice barrels with a massively oversized hammer.
"If video games effected behavior, after playing pac-man we'd all be running around in the dark, popping pills, and listening to repetitive, electronic music" - I forget who said this. It does sound like a lot of my weekends a few years back :)
I think that technically the Congress can do little else besides legislate morality.
The main problem with this thread, is no one seems to understand what the term "legislating morality" commonly applies to. Since all laws are an application of ethics, the term "legislating morality" has no meaning interpreted literally, especially for people who don't differentiate between morals and ethics. The common use of the term, however, applies to laws that don't mediate a social conflict, but only apply to an individual's own choices. For example, you have the right to fire a firearm. I have a right to live. When you shoot me, your right conflicts with mine and the law mediated the conflict with a law against armed assault or murder. This is an application of ethics, but is not what the term "legislating morality" normally applies to. Now, you have the right to fire a firearm. You do so on your own property, shooting religious symbols and the American flag. Your rights are not in conflict with anyone else's rights and what you do does not effect society at all. A law that says you can't shoot crosses or the American flag would be "legislating morality" because the only purpose of the law is to force you to behave morally, not to resolve a societal conflict.
In common usage the term "legislating morality" really means passing a law that only enforces morality and does not resolve a conflict between the rights of others as well.
I would assert that we would never have been able to develop those things to their full potential (or at all in the case of nuclear) without fossil fuels.
That was yesterday, this is today. Because something was useful in the past, does not mean we should keep using it.
There have been wars faught when govenrments have finally pushed the taxes to the point where people couldn't afford essentials or luxury items in the past... Tea, spices... You don't have to be an economist that is on an oil company payroll, you just have to be an economist that payed attention in highschool history class.
Most of what you list are attempts to replace a good or service with another good or service that does not provide the same benefits. This is an attempt to create a superior alternative.
You cannot come up with a single example of such a tax that has worked as intended. I'm not thinking this trough very far? You're not thinking at all.
Actually, taxes on polluting industries have reduced the amount of air pollution in the US by 70% from levels in the past. I'd say it works just fine.
Is this DRM movies? If so I hope that I can still buy them in the shop. I mean I really enjoy watching a movie now and then.
You know DVDs have DRM on them already, right?
The terrorists will hate us no matter what we do. Rights for women, sexual freedom, etc - the militant Islamist is primarily concerned about the 'decadancy' of the west, and how it is 'corrupting' them. As long as we're broadcasting pr0n, they're going to hate us, and the breeding of new terrorists will continue. Really, there are only three choices - fight, convert to Islam, or live a life of dhimmitude.
You're 100% wrong. Hate is not the same thing as disapproval. Most muslims and a lot of christians disapprove of pornography. How many of them are willing to give up their life by strapping a bomb to their chest and running into a crowded business to kill themselves to make a statement against it? Very, very few. In order to drive someone to such extremes you have to make them very angry and afraid. A good way to do that is by invading their home, blowing up random buildings, killing their young niece with a bomb, publishing pictures of your sexual abuse of the citizens you arbitrarily arrested, ridiculing their religion, building a dozen huge military bases in their land, looting their treasury, selling off all the businesses to foreigners, hiring foreigners to supply you with goods the locals specialize in, disrupting water and electricity, randomly raiding town and arresting everyone in a certain age bracket, and giving weapons to both enemies across the border and local religious extremist groups who you appoint as police.
You've made the same mistake almost everyone does. You've dehumanized the enemy. "They're terrorists, not people." This is wrong. They are people just like you, and if a foreign power did the same thing to the US you'd probably be willing to do a lot to get some payback on them too. Your assertion that Islam is any more violent than christianity is absurd. Muslims can and do live peaceably alongside people of other religions and I've seen some really selfless acts by muslim clerics in the last decade, to try to stop violence against christians who had wronged them. It is not like when someone converts to Islam they instantly become an inhuman monster that wants to drink the blood of our good, clean, white christian babies. It takes a lot to drive any person to desperate acts of violence. We've done a fine job of driving as many people as possible to that state. I've always assumed that that was part of the plan, to make a new enemy against which we can wage a perpetual war and regain the level of government interference and corruption that we had in the worst parts of the cold war.
Or as another person put it, "dropping bombs on people makes them mad? Who knew?"
I guess by buying someone out, they get to use the name, with brings in customers, but I really don't see the big draw.
This is exactly it. Both Voodoo and Alienware built up a brand name. Most people don't understand the technical parts of computers, so they rely upon brands. Even before Dell bought Alienware, they started selling crappy, re-branded white boxes at exorbitant prices and people bought them. If you spend a few years building a reputation and you are unscrupulous, you can use that brand to sell cheap crap with really high margins. Big companies look at that and think, "I can make the margins even better and use my big distribution chain to cut those costs and make a fortune here." It usually doesn't last. Already the word has spread in most circles that Alienware is no longer "good."
HP is a big enough company that if they put out a real gaming machine, with really good specs for a good price, I'm sure it wouldn't go unnoticed.
Yeah, but it does not work as well as you'd think. Dell got little traction with their elite line of gaming machines, simply because they were Dells.
Having said that, what's with all the big companies wanting to get into gaming PCs? That's a very small market, and with all the consoles coming out with HD, I don't see PC gaming getting a larger market (although I don't know if it will shrink).
You think HD is a big difference between PC gaming and console gaming for most people? Nope. PCs let you play online, and using the computer mom and dad bought you for school. Consoles let you use the TV and play with multiple people on the same machine and display without hassle. They are stupid simple and cheap and have no margin, that is for the games.
I foresee both markets continuing to slowly grow. There is room for convergence, but I don't see ti happening until the average PC becomes that digital hub and outputs to the TV and stereo in the average person's home.
The very notion that I should not violate your rights is a moral one. To legislate that I cannot violate your rights is to legislate morality. Morality is not defined by privateness. Morality is involved anytime you invoke the word "should," or its cognate, "rights."
No. No. No. The rights are morals, well technically ethics in this case. Traditionally, resolving conflicts between one person's rights and another is not considered "legislating morality" because it is simply the law judging the relative merits of already established ethical principals. What is "legislating morality" is passing laws that don't resolve such a conflict, but simply impose a behavior upon another. Technically, all laws are enforcing a moral or ethical belief (thus everything would be legislating morality making the term meaningless), but theoretically the government's job is to allow society to function, not to standardize morality or behavior. Thus, when a behavior is considered immoral or unethical by some, but does not effect anyone else the government should theoretically, keep their grubby paws out of it. When they don't, we say they're "legislating morality."
You seem to have taken a rather common, but IMO indefensible, position that "morals" are things that are personal, private, and subjective;
You're mistaken. I agree that the term could have been better named, but it was not. Sorry, but that is what evolved as a name for the action I'm describing and it has been in common use for decades.
The illustration is simple: Suppose I have the power to violate your rights as often as I want, without consequence. Provide me a non-moral reason why I should refrain. (Note: "Law" doesn't count...
Well, technically, laws are ethics, not morals so the laws do count, but ignoring that for the moment, you've simply mistaken my intention. I'm not arguing that any laws are not based upon ethics. I'm arguing that the term "legislating morality" does not actually refer to simply applying a law that enforces an ethical belief, but refers to a law that ONLY enforces an ethical belief, and does not in any other way resolve a societal problem (since the action does not effect any other member of society).
I contend that morals either exist, and apply everywhere, or they do not exist, and they apply nowhere. You can't have it both ways.
The thing is, your assertion does not conflict with mine and in no way invalidates what the term "legislating morality" means to the common culture. The term "speed bump" is not a bump made out of speed, regardless of how unintuitive you may think that. Your problem is not that you are failing to comprehend the ethics of the situation, but simply that you're not understanding what the term means in popular culture.
As I see it, the key word here is "your". If some random stranger starts rubbing their pelvis against my body I'm going to be like "Keep your pelvis off my body!" but if my wife were to do that then my response would be quite different.
I think a lot of people are confused as to what the term "legislating morality" means. Every person and society has moral beliefs. In the US, we have an agreed upon set of basic beliefs.. They include, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, etc. That does not mean those rights or any other rights are unlimited. One person's freedom of speech is unlimited right up until it infringes someone else's rights. The classic example is yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Your freedom of speech is limited in that it does not trump everyone else's right to life and doing that often resulted in people dying. The adage I quoted in a different post is "your right to freely swing your fist ends when it reaches my face."
There are all sorts of laws that prevent one person from infringing another's rights. For example, a law against armed assault stops one person from exercising their right to own and use a firearm in such a way that it takes away the rights of someone else to live. That is not what the term "legislating morality" is usually used to refer to. Legislating morality would be passing a law that stops another person from doing something that does not infringe the rights of another, because of moral beliefs. For example, a law banning the killing and eating of dogs, is legislating morality. Killing and eating a dog hurts no one, except the dog, which in our legal system has very limited rights. Or passing a law that stop people from masturbating, would be legislating morality. Passing a law to ban hunting is legislating morality.
Both the Republican and Democratic party legislate morality.
Passing a ban on public smoking is not legislating morality. A person's right to smoke ends the moment their smoke poisons another person and infringes on their right to life. People do die as a result of second hand smoke causing cancer. Banning smoking in your own home, however, would be legislating morality as it only harms you.
Getting back to the original question of whether liberal morals are more based on science than conservative morals, it depends how extreme the morals are.
For some reason the term "liberal" has become synonymous with Democrat in this country, even though the democrats are only moderately liberal. Liberal, is quite simply, maximizing liberty. By definition "liberalism" does not legislate morality because the maximum amount of liberty is when laws only resolve the conflict of rights, not actions that don't influence someone else's rights.
Not to leave out the liberals, money doesn't grow on trees and there do need to be very real limits on the health services that a society provides it members.
Technically, liberalism rejects socialism, although more often than not a given party adheres to a mix of the two. Mostly I think we differ in how things are defined. Agree that most of the things you assert are consistent in terms of science. I even agree with a lot of your opinions about societal structure. I just think you need to pay attention to what "legislating morality" and "liberalism" mean.
A lot of people find that such discussions would terribly offensive and harmful to the social order.
So?
It's also easy to find scientific data which will prove just about anything.
You're making a fundamental error. There is no such thing as "scientific data." Data is data. Science is a process of collecting and evaluating data and ideas to determine objective truth. Science does not often "prove" anything, it indicates things with varying degrees of certainty.
It could be because of small sample size or faulty data, but if you pick and choose the information you'll get what you want.
If you're picking and choosing data, you're not following the scientific method, ergo, you're not supporting science at all. You're supporting lying and calling it science. Luckily, the scientific method has checks for this, so when someone else tries to replicate your study or confirm it by another study which is scientific the truth will come to light.
If someone has a grudge against blacks/homosexuals/women/men/heterosexuals/whites ... they can probably find a study that demonizes them.
A study that demonizes anything but demons is not science. A study can indicate untrue or even true but offensive things. If it is an accurate study, good we want to know. If not, it will be disproved.
Where would you draw the line about debate? Are there discussions which should not take place?
All of your arguments can be summed up as, "people who do not adhere to the scientific method can make shit up and tell lies. Should we still let them speak and where?"
Freedom of speech is essential for science. Let them say anything they want, but also make sure to loudly demonstrate when their study is discredited and how many discredited studies that person has forwarded.
Exactly. I don't vote for either party at it irks me when I hear Dems say "Keep your morals off my body!" when referring to abortion or drugs and then demand universal healthcare or public smoking bans because it's the moral/humane thing for the government to do.
You don't see a fundamental difference between laws that stop you from taking an action (abortion, drugs) that effects no one else and a law that stops you from hurting others (public smoking)? Traditionally one person's rights end when another persons rights begin. You have the right to smoke and kill yourself, just so long as you don't poison me in the process, because that is violating my rights. The old adage is "your right to swing your fist freely, ends when that fist encounters my face."
Sorry, you have to choose whether it's ok to legislate morality.
The term "legislating morality" generally means passing laws to stop others from doing things, not because they infringe someone else's rights, but because you don't want them to be able to do that thing regardless of its effect or lack thereof on others. Passing a law stopping masturbation would be legislating morality. Masturbation does not infringe upon anyone else's rights. Passing a law to ban murders is not legislating morality, because it is stopping one person from infringing the rights of a second person.
As for universal healthcare, I've never, ever heard anyone argue that it should be instituted on moral grounds. I've heard it argued that it should be instituted for practical reasons or for economic reasons, but never moral. What would that argument even be?
it may sound pathetic by the standards of other countries, but other most other countries are smaller and have a higher population density.
We pay more money in government subsidizes to fund our internet access than most other countries and have slower, more expensive service. Take a look at Sweden. They pay less per person to internet access providers both in taxes and in fees. They have about the same population density. Their connections are an order of magnitude faster and more reliable. Like it or not, for the hundreds of billions of tax dollars we handed out to these companies, they've given us crap.
do you also complain about the fact that 10,000 acre farms in nebraska don't have cable access and town water?
Did we grant a monopoly on cable and water to a company then give them billions after they promised to deliver it to everyone?
In all fairness, try the same thing in Exposé. Depending on your resolution, you will likely have to mouse over each window to get the title bar text as a description (which may not even tell you much) to get any idea what the window contains.
Actually, I have 20 windows open right now and there were only two I have to mouse over to distinguish between (using expose). This partly because four of those windows are terminals and I color code them (dark green, dark red, dark blue, dark grey) to make this task easier. The problematic windows are the finder or Windows explorer ones. When very small, they all look the same. The Window's solution has the potential to keep them larger, but obscures the right side of the window, the only part that differs. I tried the new Vista feature, but it really does seem a lot slower to me, at least initially.
There are plenty of areas currently served by FiOS that aren't "very urban locations." Read.
Almost every area they offer it is very urban and that offering is pretty sparse. It covers selected cities within less than half of US states. Sorry, but that is just pathetic by the standards of many other countries.
They would have to purchase licenses to run Windows on the laptop, so, yes, they would be paying Microsoft to promote their product.
If MS would not give them a laptop with Windows installed, I'd be very surprised. I know Apple gives them to movie and TV productions. In any case, wherever they acquired the laptop, there is about a 99% chance it came with Windows already installed.
Fine, there have been plenty of broken promises from phone companies (and, I believe, cable providers, satellite providers, and others) over the years. 7 million homes also might be a little optimistic. But FiOS is really, exists in plenty of homes already, and is much more real than many of those other technologies were at the times the promises were made.
Maybe you should read the above book. The number of homes with decent high speed internet in the US is pathetic. Compare, for example, the internet service in Sweden. It is faster, more reliable, lower cost, and each citizen paid much less than each American citizen has in government subsidies. They also have about the same population density. Sorry, but the US is falling behind the world, except in a small number of very urban locations. I'm happy you have good service, but don't mistake the situation in new York for most of the US. I've lived in three of the ten largest cities in the US and in each place I had a choice of a crappy cable service bundled with Cable TV I don't want or an incredibly expensive DSL line bundled with a phone service I don't want.
They probably would have to pay Microsoft for product placement
Since when does the maker of a primetime TV show pay the maker of a product to include it onscreen? It is almost invariably the other way around. Sales of Reese's Pieces tripled when the Movie E.T. came out and showed E.T. eating them, when M&M did not pay the advertising cost to include their product.
they need to have the right to use it without worrying about being sued because it's proprietry and they like to not have to give thousands of dollars and coppies of the script over to people so the whole show doesn't get pulled for creating a negative image of software. The only thing that amazes me is that more people aren't doing this
I think you've got this a bit backwards. Apple often gives free laptops to television shows and movies to be used on screen as advertising. More likely the thought was either "this looks cool" or "Microsoft said they wouldn't pay us to include a screenshot of Windows." Possibly the thought was, "after this episode how much do you think MS will pay us to stop showing cool people using Linux? How much will they pay to stop us mentioning it is Linux in the script?"
Except the claim of this bill is that they are NOT taxing gasoline.
Yeah, I'm not familiar with the politics behind this. I was responding to why the issue of taxing oil companies for the damage they do crossed with a typical libertarian stance of government non-interference, is not really ethical.
Consumers WILL pay. However, since it won't be an official gas tax, it will look like it is the oil companies charging more instead of a tax on consumers.
The other benefit of this is most of the burden of this tax is borne by non-Californians. It is basically a big money funnel from other states/countries. When the cost at the pump is paid by a Floridian, but the tax money goes to California, well California wins. Thus it is doubly sneaky.
Even if you do support a gas tax to fund alternative energy sources, how effective and honest do you think this program is going to be when the whole system is based on a giant lie to the electoriate? How much faith do you put into government supervision when the legislation itself is designed to fool the voters?
To be honest, I have more faith in marketing than I do in the rational decision making ability of the average voter. Oil companies are spending piles of cash to convince the people of how to vote, using equally dishonest taxes. Who do you suppose will fund the ad campaign on behalf of all those children getting lung cancer from the pollution? Well, the venture capitalist who want to make money on alternatives will, but their pockets are not quite as deep. This law is designed to be marketing in and of itself.
In a perfect world, or even a slightly less corrupt one, I'd be outraged by dishonest representation of a tax. As it is, this might just be the lesser of these evils though.
Using the word 'direct' to describe an indirect effect does not make the effect any more direct. You get bonus sleezeball points for the tourist trade in Alaska comment, which is so clearly not even close to what I was talking about when I was talking about indirect benefits that it isn't even funny.
Wait a second. The cause/effect I discussed was you burn oil, the gas accumulates and causes more lung cancer. You now claim that you burn gas, this somehow allows me to live a luxurious lifestyle is a more direct and non-theoretical relationship? Pass that pipe on over here boy, I want a puff of what you're smoking.
I was talking about the indirect benefits of using fossil fuels, not theoretical indirect benefits of the indirect consequences of using fossil fuels.
Yes you were. You never showed that life would be any worse over all if we all used other fuel sources like nuclear or tidal. Thus your inherent assertion that my life would be less luxurious or more costly without oil is very theoretical and in my opinion, presumptuous.
Furthermore, tourism in Alaska would probably be harmed by global warming, and were it helped, it would be a boon to Alaskans, not to society.
You don't consider Alaskans part of society? Alaskans are people too you racist.
That's all well and good, but I don't know how you can expect anybody to know that in the context of this particular discussion. I am not sure how you can look at this thread and think that it is about taxing oil companies, and not about this particular law.
In your reading this thread, did you read the post to which I was responding? It talked about the ethics of taxing oil companies and soda companies, not this particular law. If you read the thread, I don't see how you could not know that is what we were discussing.
You mean the main benefit to the hypothetical plan that none of us knew you were talking about? This law is not your hypothetical plan.
I spoke in general about any plan to tax oil use.
Plenty of economists have shown how dumb your hypothetical plan is, even if you disregard the fact that every drop of oil that is produced will be consumed even if California, or all of Western Civilization stops consuming it.
Really, got some citations for that? Citations of economists not being bankrolled, by an oil concern I mean. Burning oil causes localized damage as much as global damage so moving the location of the burning would be of benefit. The more expensive that oil is, the less oil will be used overall, thus reducing the global problem. You don't seem to be thinking these things through very far.
But that was not what I was talking about. I was talking about how dumb *this* law is.
Then you are commenting in the wrong thread. I suspect, like most people, you picked it up at my comment modded to +5, made assumptions about what I was responding to, and your knee began to jerk.
My point was that Apple did not coin the term, not when the iPod was introduced.
Of course they didn't. It was coined by people referring to a process where almost everyone used iPods. It is derivative of their trademark.
There are the folks who say "pod" was adopted from "portable on demand" but I'm sure it's one of those acronyms where the word it spells, in this case something small with neat stuff inside, is really the important part.
That is a backronym invented by Creative to explain why the term podcasting did not refer just to iPods. They came up with the term as a marketing gimmick to try to make it seem like the term had less to do with iPods. Mr. Hammersley (who did invent the term) made it very clear in an interview that this was not the case.
But I don't see the value for anyone, except Apple and other corporations who've lawyered up, in allowing them to own words not coined by them and that are also simply part of the language.
Apple has never objected to anyone using the term podcasting and they never claimed to own it. They did claim it refers to iPods and is thus not appropriate for another company to claim as their own trademark, since consumers would be confused as to whether the only company allowed to use that term was or was not the one that also made iPods.
But letting them get away with monopolizing every "pod" out there is just plain silly.
That again is not what is happening here. They have never gone after any use of any term with "pod" in it that does not directly refer to iPods, which is their trademark. And for that case, they simply object to someone else claiming a monopoly on it.
At this rate they'll have to go back in time and sue the folks who made the movie about "pod people."
Maybe you should read the article so you know what is going on before going off half cocked like this. Apple is trying to stop a trademark from being granted to another company who wants exclusive right to the term "podcast ready" meaning Apple could not claim iPods as podcast ready without paying them. Given that podcast is derived from the term iPod and this is more than a little confusing to customers I'm all in favor of the trademark office agreeing with them.
But public transportation is good! Its for the children! ....so they can all have cancer.
The danger from high concentration versus low concentrations makes for a good study, but it is pretty obvious fossil fuel burning is a cause of increased cancer and there are very high levels across most large cities, effecting big chunks of the populace. It is a real cost to society and individuals from others burning fossil fuels, even if they use none themselves.
They have all sorts of indirect beneficial factors too, and non-users reap those benefits.
We're not discussing indirect factors at all. Maybe fossil fuels release greenhouse gasses that increase global warming that benefit the tourist trade in Alaska. That is not really something we're in any position to judge. What we are in a position to judge is the direct health risks, pollution concerns, and other environmental hazards that are a direct result of fossil fuel use, not an indirect cost or benefit.
All that law does is allow supporters to feel a false sense of ethics, and fool gullible people. The law is completely unenforcable, and technically impossible not to violate.
I disagree, but this is unimportant in my opinion.
No, what it will do is increase the cost of oil produced in California, causing suppliers to buy elsewhere.
If they are taxing production and the cost of redeploying already deployed resources is not too high and they don't tax importation or energy transmission (as I read as part of a proposal) then that may be the practical effect. I've not studied this particular proposal in detail, nor do I plan to. I was speaking of justification and benefits of taxing oil use, not details of any implementation, for which I'm not really a qualified judge.
The only people who will benefit will be the private investors in companies that received public funds for alternative energy research.
The main benefit to such a plan is to provide incentive for less fossil fuel use, through increasing the cost to those who use it. If they do that and burn the cash, it will still be of some benefit.
Just a friendly FYI there pal: Bullshit harms everyone who has to listen to it. What a stupid statement. Oil is just oil, dude.
The harm oil brings to society include the risks of global warming, increased rates of cancer, increased rates of asthma, and a variety of pollution problems. For example, studies show that children living within 500 meters of a bus station are up to 12 times more likely to develop serious forms of cancer as a result of increased levels of carbon monoxide, 1,3-butadience, nitrogen oxides, and dioxins given off by fossil fuels. Are you telling me those children were not harmed?