Only reason it's a big deal is because Apple used to advertise OS X "doesn't get PC viruses." So when a Mac gets one, now everyone jumps on it with a/. article to show apple was wrong.
Well, it's still true that OS X doesn't get Windows viruses. Perhaps a tautology, but true nonetheless....
More accurately, OS X does get and can spread Windows viruses to other Macs and Windows machines... however, OS X is unaffected by them. Virus is yet another class of software that, these days, still only works on Windows thanks to Microsoft listening to their insane user-base that keeps insisting it needs backwards compatibility to run outmoded, outdated 20yr old software that in reality no one still uses... though they still insist that they do and somehow haven't yet heard of this new fangled trend in computing, the virtual machine. The only reason for virus scanning software on a Mac is to help protect Windows machines from other Windows machines.
I know its overly popular these days to call any malware, trojan or other malicious bit of software a virus, but they really dont meet the definition. Frankly, I cant think of a real virus being released in quite some time. Which just seems lazy to me.
Once installed, the virus opens a backdoor allowing the attacker on the...
Right, it's not a virus and it certainly doesn't open any backdoor, either, unless the malware authors also work for Apple and slipped that one by the QA and security audit guys during the last OS X build. This is misrepresenting what it's probably actually doing, merely initiating a connection to a Chinese server. But using the term "backdoor" makes the summary author sound 1337 and the attackers sound even more nefarious, even if it isn't even close to an accurate description of reality. The OP has done more damage to Slashdot's credibility than any trojan will ever do to OS X.
The start of WarGames... let's see IIRC... Mr. Blonde nearly ended Leo McGarry because he didn't want to press the Big Red Button®... and it turned out the launch command was just an exercise, so it's a good thing Mr. McGarry had a conscience and didn't end the world, but they replaced all the silo monkeys with old blinking light props from Star Trek anyway, which set the stage for Skynet, the A.I. created by Cyberdyne Systems for SAC-NORAD, which we find out the following year regarded all humans as a threat; not just the ones on the other side, and decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination. Its too bad we didn't just let Joshua keep playing the game... Skynet wouldn't have had a chance against the WOPR.
Why should workers with flu-like symptoms have any such legislation? I don't care what country they come from, if they're sick they should stay home and get better, otherwise pandemic is inevitable.
There is ordnance, and there is exploding ordnance. There is no such thing as exploded ordnance. I wonder if the bits of complex aggregated supernova that wrote the summary looks up at the night sky and ponders the twinkling unexploded nova and the stunning unexploded supernova until the extremely undissipated gas cloud rises.
Oh, well you know for insulin and the pancreas they killed around 10,000 in London, Ontario alone just trying to figure out what was going on.
The more you know...but if your morals are getting in the way of saving the life of type 1 diabetics. I understand, try a starvation diet, it's much the same thing.
The problem with a never ending and profitable drug treatment is that is kind of removes the incentive to develop a cure.
What you're missing is that Apple really first released the iPad in September of 2007, but in the smaller form of the iPod Touch... because that's all an iPad is, just bigger. 9" LCD screens were available then, and obviously so were the processors, wireless interfaces, batteries and touch capacitive screens. If the iPod Touch hardware worked in 2007, the iPad would have worked, too... and Apple could have released it then because the technology to release something like the iPad was readily available in 2007!! But Apple kept their plans secret and waited until they perfected their interface and design, until there was an ecosystem of developers and software to support their marketing plan for iPad. Two and a half years the competition had the same parts available to them to release anything like iPad yet did not. It is only after iPad appears that there is even any notable market for tablets... prior to iPad, this massive demand hardly existed. I think it is far more likely that once the competition saw that demand, they took liberties in their designs in order to take advantage of the momentum Apple had cultivated, than that they were really independently planning on releasing these new iPad-like tablets anyway. I think this explanation is far simpler than your design-for-humans argument.
It seems obvious to me and anyone that isn't crusading against Apple that within 2 months of the iPhone's release, every smartphone looked just like it, and within months of the iPad's release, the same thing happened. Prior to iPad all tablet computers were tablet versions of Windows PCs, but suddenly after iPad is unveiled all tablets look and work just like iPad, with a Springboard-like interface and physical design features that are so close to iPad many non-techies will have trouble telling the difference, and the non-techies are the market majority... that's where most of the sales will be.
I see the ruling as a victory for IP, not another case of patents stifling innovation. The design of iPad is not obvious, and until very recently, Apple was notorious for getting to market with technology that is usually a year behind cutting edge, and gets a lot of grief for that. What sets Apple apart isn't their technology, it's the effort they put into their industrial design, which is considerable. Samsung was selling tablets for 18 years that looked nothing like iPad, and then suddenly there is no other way a tablet could be designed except just like iPad... it is a tremendously suspicious coincidence.
Perhaps the ban is too punitive, perhaps a more equitable ruling would be that Samsung should be allowed to sell Galaxy, but should compensate Apple for ripping them off, but Samsung took that gamble. Had Samsung won this case it would be effectively legitimizing what is essentially a counterfeit technology product, and that is not the way to go.
Apple already spent 10 years suing Microsoft over "look-and-feel".
Right. They really screwed up on that one. Windows is Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC's) intellectual property. They should have either sued DEC or reported this to the US Attorney General to prosecute Microsoft for corporate espionage, but at the time no one outside Microsoft realized that Dave Cutler and the entire DEC engineering team that designed NT took all DEC's source code with them when they left DEC for Microsoft.
And here we have a Samsung digital photo frame that looks very much like an iPad. The "sleek featureless design with rounded corners" idea predates the iPad and iPhone by a long way.
Perhaps, but it doesn't predate Apple's design patent for the iPad, filed in 2005. And the Samsung photo frame is not a mobile device as it is anchored to a powercord, is incapable of displaying anything but static photos, so it doesn't do video, and it has no touch interface. It doesn't compete with any product Apple has ever released... which is why Apple didn't sue them over it for infringing on their design patent: it isn't a tablet computer. If it had been a tablet computer... I believe Apple would have sued them. I'm not sure I see the point of bringing up the Samsung photo frame... what about it? Looks like the iPad but its not a tablet? I don't get it.
I believe that the reason Apple hasn't sued Samsung over their 2006 photo frame, even though it appears strikingly similar from the front and the filing for Apple's design patent was filed a year before Samsung's photo frame was released, is because the photo frame would not and could not compete with the unreleased iPad because it isn't a mobile tablet computer... its a powercorded non-video capable static display without a touch interface for digital photo's and nothing more. I don't understand what the point is in making comparisons... these are different devices for different purposes. The iPad and the Galaxy, however, are competing products, and thus in the case of the Galaxy it makes sense for Apple to protect their intellectual property.
Your attempt to use the powerful rhetoric of your people to persuade me or others will not help you.
I don't know if that's true, since I didn't bother to read
Obviously, you must be very well informed. Why did you even bother posting a response? You should try to avoid these kinds of compulsions.
Go read the iPad patent.
Go read the ruling,... if you are able. It's unfortunate that you lack any awareness by not reading anything, but maybe if you apply yourself you'll be able to gleem some understanding of how the world actually works.
What's particularly innovative about the ipad design? Like what's so innovative that it deserves a patent? (i personally believe the ipad to be an innovative device, i just don't see what's so special about its design)
Samsung's innovation is substantial... they used to actually have innovation. But looking at their history its obvious that if it wasn't for Apple, they likely wouldn't have changed the designs of their tablets which, prior to the iPad 2010 release, were completely different:
Here is Samsung's early tablet, the 1992 Pen Master Not too bad for 1992!
Fast forward to 2006... we have the Samsung Q1 Also, not a bad offering at the time... but, again, completely different than iPad, in 14 years Samsung's basic tablet design has not really evolved much, besides the advancement in the underlying technology, they added some buttons to the bezel... a new innovation.
Moving forward to 2011, we have the Samsung Series 7 Convertable. Just a glance reveals the impact iPad's 2010 release had on Samsung design... even with a keyboard, the new tablet is far more similar to iPad's design than previous Samsung tablet designs, though it still runs a newer version of Windows, the bezel width has decreased and the buttons have disappeared.
As for Samsung's current offering, we have the Samsung Galaxy! The bezel width has expanded from the design of the Series 7, and Windows is replaced with a version of Android that is not all that different from iOS. Here it is with Apple's iPad: side by side
I'll leave it up to the discriminating slashdotter to decide if Samsung has possibly encroached on any of Apple's design patents, even if a legal expert and the only authority that matters has already conveniently done this for us (but what could they possibly know that slashdotters don't!).
If you're looking for good examples of how one can avoid encroaching on Apple's designs, look at Apple's Mac Mini and its competition. PC manufacturers have offered a multitude of small PCs that perform similarly to the Mac Mini without having to resort to copying it outright. They have innovated a plethera of attractive designs that don't even come close to looking like the Mini while still retaining a small desktop footprint. The point here is that it can be done... the design of the iPad is not the only possible design for a tablet... Samsung themselves have proved that, yet they have aparently abandoned the idea of innovating their tablet design any further.
what you are promoting is total control over individuals, starting with total control of their own primal property - their bodies.
False. That is precisely what I am arguing agaist, slavery. What I am promoting is the individual, rich or poor. How much for the left hemisphere of your brain? What you are failing to see is that your body, your arms and legs, and your organs are you.
If it takes $50,000 to remove a kidney, then its worth AT LEAST that much. Why should all the profit go to the doctor?
If it takes $1000 to remove your wisdom teeth, are your teeth now worth that much? If it costs $75 to remove a wart, is the wart then worth $75? The value is in the care you receive, not in the material you are removing.
- deserving, nondeserving, save the fairness bullshit.
Your argument is contradictory. If fairness is bullshit, then it matters not if we just take your organs and pay you what we want, if anything at all.
You say it is choice, but I say that it is obviously discrimating against the poor because the rich never sell their organs. If you can buy someone else's organs, then someone else can buy yours. If organs have legitimate market value then there will be crime. I think we already have enough violent crime without giving even more incentive to the unscrupulous.
no, but if a doctor is charging you 50 grand to take my kidney after I am dead, why shouldnt I be able to sell one while I am alive and pocket that 50 grand (or a portion of that?)
The doctor isn't charging me for your kidney! He charges for his expertise. If it was your kidney that was being priced, then why don't I just steal your kidney and keep the 50K for myself? Don't you see once you make organs a commodity, they are like any other, subject to the pressures of the market... and crime. People don't steal things that can't be readily turned around for profit, but all things that have a market value, sooner or later, are stolen. It's one thing to lose your wallet in a mugging... quite another to lose the business end of your renal system.
The problem is that human organs are not a normal commidity.
Yes they are. You only think they are not normal because they are scarce.
That is absurd. Did you even read my post? The reason is that I believe that people are not mere objects to be priced and traded.
Thousands of good organs go into graves and crematoriums everyday, because there is no incentive to do otherwise.
Then how is it we have any organs donated whatsoever? The incentive is there (and I realize this may confuse you) but it is not monetary; it is humanitarian, to treat people as ends themselves and not means to an end. Do you not see the value in humanitarian goals? The problem with your argument is that ultimately it arrives at the acceptability of slavery, that people are commodities to be priced and traded like any other. All commodities are regarded equally by rich and poor alike: clean water, food, shelter, and even precious metals are the same to everyone. Except that the rich never sell their organs, only the poor do it.
So let me put it to you: How much for your kidney and part of your liver? Why is your kidney worth more than someone else's? If you hesitate for a second at the thought of giving up an organ at the market rate, then your argument is the same as that of the psychological egoist. If you won't sell your own organs then neither can you expect anyone else.
Borg was "a completely weak opponent", not winning a single set in nine matches in 1991 and 1992.
You kind of missed the whole story there.
Between 1974 and 1981 he won 11 Grand Slam singles titles.
That can't be easy.
Borg hadn't played professional tennis in ten years after being nearly unbeatable between 78-81 and had a 41 match winning streak until his upstart rival McEnroe was finally able to stop him in the 81 Wimbledon final. Though he assimilated a huge number of fans by 1983, the pressures of the constant drive to win took its psychological toll, and he shocked the world with his early retirement. He actually went more than a few years without playing any tennis whatsoever. Even though he came back fit and fast, his comeback was a disaster possibly because of his age and his decision in his final tournaments to ignore the advantages of the newer universally adopted technology; he insisted on playing with a wooden racket. Björn was not of Borg... iirc he was of Sweden.
And that is the way the world should work. People should be able to use money to buy things they want, encouraging more people to supply them. The problem here is that we have decided this shouldn't apply to organs, so the supply is severely restricted. If organs were treated like a normal commodity they would be far more plentiful because way more people would be donors.
The problem is that human organs are not a normal commidity. Money doesn't and shouldn't give you the right to someone's organs. Money doesn't make you more deserving of the right to live any more than money makes you more deserving of death. If you believe that if you are rich enough then you should be allowed to pay for the right to have, say, the organs that will be available once someone is taken off life support, you are not only putting pressure on a situation that already has deep ethical concern for the doctor and the patient's family, what you are in effect saying is that if you are rich enough, you should be allowed to pay to kill someone. To put it another way, if you believe it is ethical for you to be able to pay to have some available organ, then you must believe it is perfectly ethical that I can pay to prevent you from getting said available organ. Ultimately the argument for an organ market is an egocentric one, and it doesn't meet the criterial of universalization, meaning that what you wish is not applicable to all under similar circumstances, and it therefore cannot be ethical.
said Meredith Chin, Facebook's manager of product communications. 'I'm seeing this whole meme around the idea that it's us pushing...
Can someone please explain to me wtF she's babbling about? Did I, yet again, miss another round of an occasionally hilarious meme, further isolating me from the collective consciousness of my people?
Your astounding ignorance is only overshadowed by the readily verifiable innacuracy of your misguided beliefs and your impressive ability to confabulate. Your impotence to provide any rational statements that counter my own is underscored by your inevitable and predictable ad hominem insults. Employing fallacy in a perverse attempt to make some insignificant point serves only to weaken your already immaterial argument.
Slashdot Mirror
Only reason it's a big deal is because Apple used to advertise OS X "doesn't get PC viruses." So when a Mac gets one, now everyone jumps on it with a /. article to show apple was wrong.
Well, it's still true that OS X doesn't get Windows viruses. Perhaps a tautology, but true nonetheless....
More accurately, OS X does get and can spread Windows viruses to other Macs and Windows machines... however, OS X is unaffected by them. Virus is yet another class of software that, these days, still only works on Windows thanks to Microsoft listening to their insane user-base that keeps insisting it needs backwards compatibility to run outmoded, outdated 20yr old software that in reality no one still uses... though they still insist that they do and somehow haven't yet heard of this new fangled trend in computing, the virtual machine. The only reason for virus scanning software on a Mac is to help protect Windows machines from other Windows machines.
I know its overly popular these days to call any malware, trojan or other malicious bit of software a virus, but they really dont meet the definition. Frankly, I cant think of a real virus being released in quite some time. Which just seems lazy to me.
Once installed, the virus opens a backdoor allowing the attacker on the...
Right, it's not a virus and it certainly doesn't open any backdoor, either, unless the malware authors also work for Apple and slipped that one by the QA and security audit guys during the last OS X build. This is misrepresenting what it's probably actually doing, merely initiating a connection to a Chinese server. But using the term "backdoor" makes the summary author sound 1337 and the attackers sound even more nefarious, even if it isn't even close to an accurate description of reality. The OP has done more damage to Slashdot's credibility than any trojan will ever do to OS X.
Liberty.
Self-rule.
Pro-choice.
A Freman not a Serf to be ordered about by the Congressional lords' random wishes.
The absence says more than the presence...
- Fremen warning
The thing was written with salt
-Freman saying
Like the knowlege of your own being, the sietch forms a firm base from which you move out into the world and into the universe.
- Freman Teaching
Never to forgive-never to forget.
- Fremen Maxim
The surest way to keep a secret is to make people belive they already know the answer.
- Ancient Freman Wisdom
Four things cannot be hidden – love, smoke, a pillar of fire, and a man striding across the open bled.
- Freman Wisdom
Truth suffers from too much analysis.
- Ancient Fremen Saying
You should never be in the company of anyone with whom you would not want to die.
- Fremen Saying
When the center of the storm does not move, you are in its path.
- Ancient Freman Wisdom
You have damp hands!
-Freman curse
You missed the start of War Games, right?
The start of WarGames... let's see IIRC... Mr. Blonde nearly ended Leo McGarry because he didn't want to press the Big Red Button®... and it turned out the launch command was just an exercise, so it's a good thing Mr. McGarry had a conscience and didn't end the world, but they replaced all the silo monkeys with old blinking light props from Star Trek anyway, which set the stage for Skynet, the A.I. created by Cyberdyne Systems for SAC-NORAD, which we find out the following year regarded all humans as a threat; not just the ones on the other side, and decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination. Its too bad we didn't just let Joshua keep playing the game... Skynet wouldn't have had a chance against the WOPR.
Why should workers with flu-like symptoms have any such legislation? I don't care what country they come from, if they're sick they should stay home and get better, otherwise pandemic is inevitable.
even some types of unexploded ordnance
There is ordnance, and there is exploding ordnance. There is no such thing as exploded ordnance. I wonder if the bits of complex aggregated supernova that wrote the summary looks up at the night sky and ponders the twinkling unexploded nova and the stunning unexploded supernova until the extremely undissipated gas cloud rises.
Oh, well you know for insulin and the pancreas they killed around 10,000 in London, Ontario alone just trying to figure out what was going on.
The more you know...but if your morals are getting in the way of saving the life of type 1 diabetics. I understand, try a starvation diet, it's much the same thing.
The problem with a never ending and profitable drug treatment is that is kind of removes the incentive to develop a cure.
What you're missing is that Apple really first released the iPad in September of 2007, but in the smaller form of the iPod Touch... because that's all an iPad is, just bigger. 9" LCD screens were available then, and obviously so were the processors, wireless interfaces, batteries and touch capacitive screens. If the iPod Touch hardware worked in 2007, the iPad would have worked, too... and Apple could have released it then because the technology to release something like the iPad was readily available in 2007!! But Apple kept their plans secret and waited until they perfected their interface and design, until there was an ecosystem of developers and software to support their marketing plan for iPad. Two and a half years the competition had the same parts available to them to release anything like iPad yet did not. It is only after iPad appears that there is even any notable market for tablets... prior to iPad, this massive demand hardly existed. I think it is far more likely that once the competition saw that demand, they took liberties in their designs in order to take advantage of the momentum Apple had cultivated, than that they were really independently planning on releasing these new iPad-like tablets anyway. I think this explanation is far simpler than your design-for-humans argument.
I apologize for my ugly words... not cool.
It seems obvious to me and anyone that isn't crusading against Apple that within 2 months of the iPhone's release, every smartphone looked just like it, and within months of the iPad's release, the same thing happened. Prior to iPad all tablet computers were tablet versions of Windows PCs, but suddenly after iPad is unveiled all tablets look and work just like iPad, with a Springboard-like interface and physical design features that are so close to iPad many non-techies will have trouble telling the difference, and the non-techies are the market majority... that's where most of the sales will be.
I see the ruling as a victory for IP, not another case of patents stifling innovation. The design of iPad is not obvious, and until very recently, Apple was notorious for getting to market with technology that is usually a year behind cutting edge, and gets a lot of grief for that. What sets Apple apart isn't their technology, it's the effort they put into their industrial design, which is considerable. Samsung was selling tablets for 18 years that looked nothing like iPad, and then suddenly there is no other way a tablet could be designed except just like iPad... it is a tremendously suspicious coincidence.
Perhaps the ban is too punitive, perhaps a more equitable ruling would be that Samsung should be allowed to sell Galaxy, but should compensate Apple for ripping them off, but Samsung took that gamble. Had Samsung won this case it would be effectively legitimizing what is essentially a counterfeit technology product, and that is not the way to go.
Apple already spent 10 years suing Microsoft over "look-and-feel".
Right. They really screwed up on that one. Windows is Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC's) intellectual property. They should have either sued DEC or reported this to the US Attorney General to prosecute Microsoft for corporate espionage, but at the time no one outside Microsoft realized that Dave Cutler and the entire DEC engineering team that designed NT took all DEC's source code with them when they left DEC for Microsoft.
So smart guy
Gee... I really want you to like me... but since you're trolling me I'll simply direct you to the court ruling and tell you to go fuck yourself.
And here we have a Samsung digital photo frame that looks very much like an iPad. The "sleek featureless design with rounded corners" idea predates the iPad and iPhone by a long way.
Perhaps, but it doesn't predate Apple's design patent for the iPad, filed in 2005. And the Samsung photo frame is not a mobile device as it is anchored to a powercord, is incapable of displaying anything but static photos, so it doesn't do video, and it has no touch interface. It doesn't compete with any product Apple has ever released... which is why Apple didn't sue them over it for infringing on their design patent: it isn't a tablet computer. If it had been a tablet computer... I believe Apple would have sued them. I'm not sure I see the point of bringing up the Samsung photo frame... what about it? Looks like the iPad but its not a tablet? I don't get it.
I believe that the reason Apple hasn't sued Samsung over their 2006 photo frame, even though it appears strikingly similar from the front and the filing for Apple's design patent was filed a year before Samsung's photo frame was released, is because the photo frame would not and could not compete with the unreleased iPad because it isn't a mobile tablet computer... its a powercorded non-video capable static display without a touch interface for digital photo's and nothing more. I don't understand what the point is in making comparisons... these are different devices for different purposes. The iPad and the Galaxy, however, are competing products, and thus in the case of the Galaxy it makes sense for Apple to protect their intellectual property.
Blah blah blah blah
Your attempt to use the powerful rhetoric of your people to persuade me or others will not help you.
I don't know if that's true, since I didn't bother to read
Obviously, you must be very well informed. Why did you even bother posting a response? You should try to avoid these kinds of compulsions.
Go read the iPad patent.
Go read the ruling, ... if you are able. It's unfortunate that you lack any awareness by not reading anything, but maybe if you apply yourself you'll be able to gleem some understanding of how the world actually works.
What's particularly innovative about the ipad design? Like what's so innovative that it deserves a patent? (i personally believe the ipad to be an innovative device, i just don't see what's so special about its design)
Samsung's innovation is substantial... they used to actually have innovation. But looking at their history its obvious that if it wasn't for Apple, they likely wouldn't have changed the designs of their tablets which, prior to the iPad 2010 release, were completely different:
Here is Samsung's early tablet, the 1992 Pen Master
Not too bad for 1992!
Fast forward to 2006... we have the Samsung Q1
Also, not a bad offering at the time... but, again, completely different than iPad, in 14 years Samsung's basic tablet design has not really evolved much, besides the advancement in the underlying technology, they added some buttons to the bezel... a new innovation.
Moving forward to 2011, we have the Samsung Series 7 Convertable.
Just a glance reveals the impact iPad's 2010 release had on Samsung design... even with a keyboard, the new tablet is far more similar to iPad's design than previous Samsung tablet designs, though it still runs a newer version of Windows, the bezel width has decreased and the buttons have disappeared.
As for Samsung's current offering, we have the Samsung Galaxy! The bezel width has expanded from the design of the Series 7, and Windows is replaced with a version of Android that is not all that different from iOS. Here it is with Apple's iPad:
side by side
I'll leave it up to the discriminating slashdotter to decide if Samsung has possibly encroached on any of Apple's design patents, even if a legal expert and the only authority that matters has already conveniently done this for us (but what could they possibly know that slashdotters don't!).
If you're looking for good examples of how one can avoid encroaching on Apple's designs, look at Apple's Mac Mini and its competition. PC manufacturers have offered a multitude of small PCs that perform similarly to the Mac Mini without having to resort to copying it outright. They have innovated a plethera of attractive designs that don't even come close to looking like the Mini while still retaining a small desktop footprint. The point here is that it can be done... the design of the iPad is not the only possible design for a tablet... Samsung themselves have proved that, yet they have aparently abandoned the idea of innovating their tablet design any further.
what you are promoting is total control over individuals, starting with total control of their own primal property - their bodies.
False. That is precisely what I am arguing agaist, slavery. What I am promoting is the individual, rich or poor. How much for the left hemisphere of your brain? What you are failing to see is that your body, your arms and legs, and your organs are you.
If it takes $50,000 to remove a kidney, then its worth AT LEAST that much. Why should all the profit go to the doctor?
If it takes $1000 to remove your wisdom teeth, are your teeth now worth that much? If it costs $75 to remove a wart, is the wart then worth $75? The value is in the care you receive, not in the material you are removing.
- deserving, nondeserving, save the fairness bullshit.
Your argument is contradictory. If fairness is bullshit, then it matters not if we just take your organs and pay you what we want, if anything at all.
You say it is choice, but I say that it is obviously discrimating against the poor because the rich never sell their organs. If you can buy someone else's organs, then someone else can buy yours. If organs have legitimate market value then there will be crime. I think we already have enough violent crime without giving even more incentive to the unscrupulous.
no, but if a doctor is charging you 50 grand to take my kidney after I am dead, why shouldnt I be able to sell one while I am alive and pocket that 50 grand (or a portion of that?)
The doctor isn't charging me for your kidney! He charges for his expertise. If it was your kidney that was being priced, then why don't I just steal your kidney and keep the 50K for myself? Don't you see once you make organs a commodity, they are like any other, subject to the pressures of the market... and crime. People don't steal things that can't be readily turned around for profit, but all things that have a market value, sooner or later, are stolen. It's one thing to lose your wallet in a mugging... quite another to lose the business end of your renal system.
The problem is that human organs are not a normal commidity.
Yes they are. You only think they are not normal because they are scarce.
That is absurd. Did you even read my post? The reason is that I believe that people are not mere objects to be priced and traded.
Thousands of good organs go into graves and crematoriums everyday, because there is no incentive to do otherwise.
Then how is it we have any organs donated whatsoever? The incentive is there (and I realize this may confuse you) but it is not monetary; it is humanitarian, to treat people as ends themselves and not means to an end. Do you not see the value in humanitarian goals? The problem with your argument is that ultimately it arrives at the acceptability of slavery, that people are commodities to be priced and traded like any other. All commodities are regarded equally by rich and poor alike: clean water, food, shelter, and even precious metals are the same to everyone. Except that the rich never sell their organs, only the poor do it.
So let me put it to you: How much for your kidney and part of your liver? Why is your kidney worth more than someone else's? If you hesitate for a second at the thought of giving up an organ at the market rate, then your argument is the same as that of the psychological egoist. If you won't sell your own organs then neither can you expect anyone else.
making the Borg into a completely weak opponent
Borg was "a completely weak opponent", not winning a single set in nine matches in 1991 and 1992.
You kind of missed the whole story there.
That can't be easy.
Borg hadn't played professional tennis in ten years after being nearly unbeatable between 78-81 and had a 41 match winning streak until his upstart rival McEnroe was finally able to stop him in the 81 Wimbledon final. Though he assimilated a huge number of fans by 1983, the pressures of the constant drive to win took its psychological toll, and he shocked the world with his early retirement. He actually went more than a few years without playing any tennis whatsoever. Even though he came back fit and fast, his comeback was a disaster possibly because of his age and his decision in his final tournaments to ignore the advantages of the newer universally adopted technology; he insisted on playing with a wooden racket. Björn was not of Borg... iirc he was of Sweden.
That's pretty much how the world works.
And that is the way the world should work. People should be able to use money to buy things they want, encouraging more people to supply them. The problem here is that we have decided this shouldn't apply to organs, so the supply is severely restricted. If organs were treated like a normal commodity they would be far more plentiful because way more people would be donors.
The problem is that human organs are not a normal commidity. Money doesn't and shouldn't give you the right to someone's organs. Money doesn't make you more deserving of the right to live any more than money makes you more deserving of death. If you believe that if you are rich enough then you should be allowed to pay for the right to have, say, the organs that will be available once someone is taken off life support, you are not only putting pressure on a situation that already has deep ethical concern for the doctor and the patient's family, what you are in effect saying is that if you are rich enough, you should be allowed to pay to kill someone. To put it another way, if you believe it is ethical for you to be able to pay to have some available organ, then you must believe it is perfectly ethical that I can pay to prevent you from getting said available organ. Ultimately the argument for an organ market is an egocentric one, and it doesn't meet the criterial of universalization, meaning that what you wish is not applicable to all under similar circumstances, and it therefore cannot be ethical.
said Meredith Chin, Facebook's manager of product communications. 'I'm seeing this whole meme around the idea that it's us pushing...
Can someone please explain to me wtF she's babbling about? Did I, yet again, miss another round of an occasionally hilarious meme, further isolating me from the collective consciousness of my people?
You have confirmed what I have known all along...
Facebook is actually an anti-social network.
Your astounding ignorance is only overshadowed by the readily verifiable innacuracy of your misguided beliefs and your impressive ability to confabulate. Your impotence to provide any rational statements that counter my own is underscored by your inevitable and predictable ad hominem insults. Employing fallacy in a perverse attempt to make some insignificant point serves only to weaken your already immaterial argument.