This wasn't teen angst, which is what you're talking about. Teen angst does not lead one to kill a hobo and then smear shit on him. I mean, it can make you kill a hobo, but shit-smearing? Even the emo kids think that's crazy.
It's important to remember that she mentions he has a brother who is turning out just fine, even despite the hell that this kid has put the whole family through. So they did something right somewhere along the line. No, they probably were far from perfect, but 90% of people are capable of coming out of an imperfect family without killing someone.
And forget the "counseling" they tried, too. The only hope for that kid was probably serious psychiatric meds, IF we've found anything that helps with sociopathic behavior (I'm not up on that particular disorder or treatments).
Reading that letter nearly made me cry. That's just about every parent's (or future parent - I've worried about such things myself and I won't have kids for a couple more years) worst nightmare, a situation where you just have no control over how your kid is turning out at all. At least they can look at his brother and say, "well, we must have been doing something right."
Are you saying that none of those companies have any patents on any of the technology in their phones? And there is nothing at all that differentiates their phones from each other? Sure, to me all cel phones are alike and I just take whatever I get for free. But if I were the type to spend $200 on my phone, I'm sure I'd be paying attention to tiny details that set them apart from one another.
Or I could give you the answer right now: if you don't bring your product to market anyway, you're not gonna sell it at all.
But you also won't have any of the costs associated with bringing a product to market, nor will you have any risk of losing money on it at all.
Apparently, all the makers of identical products (bottled water springs to mind, not to mention generical pharmaceuticals) realize this too.
Those are two interesting and very, very different examples. Bottled water, on the one hand, required little to no real innovation (to the point where I seriously doubt it was ever patentable) and is probably pretty cheap to make. There is also very little brand loyalty (despite the brands' best efforts), which makes it much easier for new players to get in because nobody cares what label is on the bottle they grab. It's also a huge seller, so the market can easily support new minor players.
Generic pharmaceuticals share a lot of the same properties. They require no innovation at all, nor any of the R&D costs associated with the brand names. But here's the question: If the original pharmaceutical company could not have the exclusive patent for seven years, would they have ever put in the several millions of dollars necessary to create the original drug? If the generics showed up within a year, let's say, the original company may never have been able to turn a profit, and so wouldn't be in the business to start with. And if they hadn't spent all that money to create the drug in the first place, the generic manufacturers would have nothing to sell either. Their business depends on the ability of the original company to make a profit before the patent expires.
Because having first-mover advantage is actually worth much more. Besides, if your innovation is such that it can be copied by a dozen competitiors the very next day, it probably wasn't much of an innovation in the first place.
Of course, the next day thing was hyperbole. But how long does it take to make a profit on something that cost quite a bit in money and manpower to create, assuming you are the only provider of it? A month? Six months? A year? Several years? I'm sure it varies from product to product - but chances are good that in a lot of cases, a copycat would be possible faster than you'd like it to be. And if they happen to design a more eyecatching box, they might steal more of your profits than you expected. The question is, how much risk are people willing to take when they have a great idea? And how much risk is society willing to take that that risk is too high and will cause innovations to never see the light of day?
It is rooted in the belief that good ideas are too precious to be kept solely by an individual seeking profit.
But without any patents, what would be the motivation for that individual to share their idea at all? Bringing an idea to fruition as an invention takes a lot of work. If you know that the day after your product goes to market, a dozen other identical ones will be on the shelf next to it, why bother? Sure, some people are altruistic or just doing it for the fun of it - but many people have a zillion other things to deal with that will take priority if their invention won't see much of a profit for them.
I'm not arguing for software patents necessarily, and I'll fully admit that there are a ton of problems with the US's patent system. But remember that often the best way to get that innovation out where people can benefit from it is to ensure that the innovator will make a profit.
You can buy the spiral fluorescents at a variety of color temperatures. In fact, I learned what color temperatures were just so I could get the right ones. I happened to buy "bright white"s the first time I got the spirals, knowing that I wasn't big on "soft white" and just grabbing the other one I saw. I love them. But then I accidentally bought "daylight" ones and my room turned blue. I forget now what the temperatures are that correspond to these categories (of the bulbs sold at Home Depot), but 90% of the spiral bulbs are Soft White, since many people buy Soft White incandescents, and it's hard to find ones that are cooler anywhere but Home Depot. The oscillations I have no clue about, but these definitely don't feel like the big fluorescents at stores and offices. We did once get one bulb with a buzz, but HD replaced it.
I don't have a biology background, but I do know quite a lot about rats, having owned them for six years and researched them extensively.
You shouldn't give citrus fruits to male rats, because the D-limonene in the peel interacts with the testosterone to cause kidney cancer. This isn't an issue with female rats.
By your logic, men shouldn't eat citrus. But the fact is, rats and mice aren't the same as humans. They are similar enough for many medical and behavioral experiments, but they do NOT have the same nutritional requirements as humans and do NOT react the same way humans do to every type of food. So the idea that rats react differently to potatoes than humans do is not some naive idea that only a non-biologist could possibly hold.
(For the record, you also shouldn't give rats carbonated beverages because they can't burp, anything sticky like peanut butter or honey because they have no gag reflex and can't cough if they start to choke, or blue cheese because the mold can be toxic to rats. Potatoes are fine, but NOT any green parts or eyes of potatoes, which contain a toxin.)
Perhaps I just believe that we haven't reached the limits of what science will someday be capable of proving. Good thing a lot of people have agreed with me over the years.
Do you believe anyone loves you? That's not currently scientifically provable, just like many "supernatural events."
And you seemed to miss the part in a previous post where I said I'm not Christian?
When you "use metaphors, analogies and allegories" to justify the persecution of gays, the stoning on women, the crusades, flying planes into buildings, manipulating people, taking their money, etc, then THAT IS A HORRIBLE LIE.
Those are all things that people did, not God. The previous post said that God would be lying if He used allegories etc. I would also argue that that still wouldn't make the metaphor or allegory itself a lie; a simple fact stated plainly can also be misinterpreted and used in evil ways.
somebody who believes something provably wrong an idiot
(Typo corrected as per your other post)
Of course that's okay. My point was that not all Christians believe in creationism, so why would you call those Christians idiots if they DON'T believe something provably wrong?
There's no reason to treat Christians or any other kind of religious fundamentalists
Again, my whole point is that not all Christians are fundamentalists. Did you just hit reply to a random post in order to post your rant, without reading what I'd actually written? I'm not defending fundamentalists or creationists at all - I'm pointing out that there are many Christians who are neither.
a) I'm not Christian, so I'm quite sure I'm not a good one.
b) My point is not that that's exactly what God did because it's what I would do. It's that the Bible not being a word-for-word account of exactly what happened during creation does not mean that it's all a lie, there are other alternatives. I presented one of them. Also, to show that if God did create the world and man through the processes currently identified by scientists, then maybe telling ancient man exactly what he did wouldn't have been the best route.
Of course, by what you say, those who claim to know that God created the world exactly word-for-word as it says in Genesis despite any evidence to the contrary are also not good Christians, which I would agree with.
Okay, here's a hypothetical situation for you. Pretend you're God for a minute. And pretend, for the sake of argument, that you used the Big Bang to create the universe and the process of evolution to create mankind. This is just pretend, remember, don't get up in arms about it.
Now let's say that you want to explain this to mankind. You want to let them know you created everything. But right now, they're at a point where they don't even have basic mechanics figured out, you know they'd never comprehend the big bang. And they are far from figuring out how traits are passed down. The intricate process of natural selection that you've so cleverly crafted would go over their heads.
So what do you do? Do you just not reveal yourself as creator until they've figured these things out? Personally, if I were God, I'd probably give them an allegorical account that they can understand but communicates the basic facts - I created the universe, created man, man has a special place in my heart, I gave man free will, and I'm a little upset that man has used that free will to turn away from me. I'd know that my humans would eventually figure out the details behind the allegory, that they're smart enough that I don't need to spoon feed them.
If you were God in that position, what would you do?
That's a false dichotomy. Many Christians are perfectly capable of reading Adam and Eve as an allegorical myth describing how men, after being given free will by God, used that free will to turn away from God, and God didn't like it. Only those who think the Bible can only be interpreted literally word-for-word or else it's all a lie think otherwise.
You can also be ultra-religious and not a creationist. My husband is a devout Lutheran, and he thinks creationism is as silly as anyone else. Creationism is obviously not fiscally conservative, but it is very religiously conservative. But ultra-religiously-conservative was a bit awkward for use in a summary.
They're not synonymous. Though if you really think that ALL Christians are either stupid or intellectually dishonest, there's probably not much I can do to change your bigotry (and those of whoever modded you Insighful).
The same thing happened to me with the Odyssey in the 9th grade. I wound up covering Romeo & Juliet twice, extra frustrating given that I really like a lot of Shakespeare but really not that play at all.
We can't say from this that Blackberries cause people to work longer hours, etc. Just that the same type of people who are likely to work longer hours are also likely to have Blackberries. Could be that those are the just the jobs that are likely to require one, or that people who are already workaholics are likely to jump at the chance to extend that.
Whenever I do this, if the site does proceed to work fine with Safari as long as it claims to be IE, I then email their tech support explaining that their site works fine with Safari and they should stop turning away 15% of their potential visitors, most of whom don't know how to set their browser to pretend to be IE. I'm hoping that that email balances out the one more IE ping in their site stats. Heck, if enough people do do this to actually pump up their IE percentage, then that many emails would probably get on their nerves enough to have an effect.
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This wasn't teen angst, which is what you're talking about. Teen angst does not lead one to kill a hobo and then smear shit on him. I mean, it can make you kill a hobo, but shit-smearing? Even the emo kids think that's crazy.
Just a guess, but are the "bad seeds" in question both middle children, or youngest of two?
It's important to remember that she mentions he has a brother who is turning out just fine, even despite the hell that this kid has put the whole family through. So they did something right somewhere along the line. No, they probably were far from perfect, but 90% of people are capable of coming out of an imperfect family without killing someone.
Reading that letter nearly made me cry. That's just about every parent's (or future parent - I've worried about such things myself and I won't have kids for a couple more years) worst nightmare, a situation where you just have no control over how your kid is turning out at all. At least they can look at his brother and say, "well, we must have been doing something right."
Or I could give you the answer right now: if you don't bring your product to market anyway, you're not gonna sell it at all.
But you also won't have any of the costs associated with bringing a product to market, nor will you have any risk of losing money on it at all.
Those are two interesting and very, very different examples. Bottled water, on the one hand, required little to no real innovation (to the point where I seriously doubt it was ever patentable) and is probably pretty cheap to make. There is also very little brand loyalty (despite the brands' best efforts), which makes it much easier for new players to get in because nobody cares what label is on the bottle they grab. It's also a huge seller, so the market can easily support new minor players.
Generic pharmaceuticals share a lot of the same properties. They require no innovation at all, nor any of the R&D costs associated with the brand names. But here's the question: If the original pharmaceutical company could not have the exclusive patent for seven years, would they have ever put in the several millions of dollars necessary to create the original drug? If the generics showed up within a year, let's say, the original company may never have been able to turn a profit, and so wouldn't be in the business to start with. And if they hadn't spent all that money to create the drug in the first place, the generic manufacturers would have nothing to sell either. Their business depends on the ability of the original company to make a profit before the patent expires.
Because having first-mover advantage is actually worth much more. Besides, if your innovation is such that it can be copied by a dozen competitiors the very next day, it probably wasn't much of an innovation in the first place.
Of course, the next day thing was hyperbole. But how long does it take to make a profit on something that cost quite a bit in money and manpower to create, assuming you are the only provider of it? A month? Six months? A year? Several years? I'm sure it varies from product to product - but chances are good that in a lot of cases, a copycat would be possible faster than you'd like it to be. And if they happen to design a more eyecatching box, they might steal more of your profits than you expected. The question is, how much risk are people willing to take when they have a great idea? And how much risk is society willing to take that that risk is too high and will cause innovations to never see the light of day?
But without any patents, what would be the motivation for that individual to share their idea at all? Bringing an idea to fruition as an invention takes a lot of work. If you know that the day after your product goes to market, a dozen other identical ones will be on the shelf next to it, why bother? Sure, some people are altruistic or just doing it for the fun of it - but many people have a zillion other things to deal with that will take priority if their invention won't see much of a profit for them.
I'm not arguing for software patents necessarily, and I'll fully admit that there are a ton of problems with the US's patent system. But remember that often the best way to get that innovation out where people can benefit from it is to ensure that the innovator will make a profit.
You can buy the spiral fluorescents at a variety of color temperatures. In fact, I learned what color temperatures were just so I could get the right ones. I happened to buy "bright white"s the first time I got the spirals, knowing that I wasn't big on "soft white" and just grabbing the other one I saw. I love them. But then I accidentally bought "daylight" ones and my room turned blue. I forget now what the temperatures are that correspond to these categories (of the bulbs sold at Home Depot), but 90% of the spiral bulbs are Soft White, since many people buy Soft White incandescents, and it's hard to find ones that are cooler anywhere but Home Depot. The oscillations I have no clue about, but these definitely don't feel like the big fluorescents at stores and offices. We did once get one bulb with a buzz, but HD replaced it.
You shouldn't give citrus fruits to male rats, because the D-limonene in the peel interacts with the testosterone to cause kidney cancer. This isn't an issue with female rats.
By your logic, men shouldn't eat citrus. But the fact is, rats and mice aren't the same as humans. They are similar enough for many medical and behavioral experiments, but they do NOT have the same nutritional requirements as humans and do NOT react the same way humans do to every type of food. So the idea that rats react differently to potatoes than humans do is not some naive idea that only a non-biologist could possibly hold.
(For the record, you also shouldn't give rats carbonated beverages because they can't burp, anything sticky like peanut butter or honey because they have no gag reflex and can't cough if they start to choke, or blue cheese because the mold can be toxic to rats. Potatoes are fine, but NOT any green parts or eyes of potatoes, which contain a toxin.)
At least I'm not the only person whose posts you don't bother to read before you reply to them.
That may be true, but a plainly-stated fact can also be twisted for evil causes.
Do you believe anyone loves you? That's not currently scientifically provable, just like many "supernatural events."
And you seemed to miss the part in a previous post where I said I'm not Christian?
Those are all things that people did, not God. The previous post said that God would be lying if He used allegories etc. I would also argue that that still wouldn't make the metaphor or allegory itself a lie; a simple fact stated plainly can also be misinterpreted and used in evil ways.
Your arguments just keep getting less coherent.
"Lying" and "using metaphors, analogies, and allegories" are also not synonymous.
(Typo corrected as per your other post)
Of course that's okay. My point was that not all Christians believe in creationism, so why would you call those Christians idiots if they DON'T believe something provably wrong?
There's no reason to treat Christians or any other kind of religious fundamentalists
Again, my whole point is that not all Christians are fundamentalists. Did you just hit reply to a random post in order to post your rant, without reading what I'd actually written? I'm not defending fundamentalists or creationists at all - I'm pointing out that there are many Christians who are neither.
b) My point is not that that's exactly what God did because it's what I would do. It's that the Bible not being a word-for-word account of exactly what happened during creation does not mean that it's all a lie, there are other alternatives. I presented one of them. Also, to show that if God did create the world and man through the processes currently identified by scientists, then maybe telling ancient man exactly what he did wouldn't have been the best route.
Of course, by what you say, those who claim to know that God created the world exactly word-for-word as it says in Genesis despite any evidence to the contrary are also not good Christians, which I would agree with.
Now let's say that you want to explain this to mankind. You want to let them know you created everything. But right now, they're at a point where they don't even have basic mechanics figured out, you know they'd never comprehend the big bang. And they are far from figuring out how traits are passed down. The intricate process of natural selection that you've so cleverly crafted would go over their heads.
So what do you do? Do you just not reveal yourself as creator until they've figured these things out? Personally, if I were God, I'd probably give them an allegorical account that they can understand but communicates the basic facts - I created the universe, created man, man has a special place in my heart, I gave man free will, and I'm a little upset that man has used that free will to turn away from me. I'd know that my humans would eventually figure out the details behind the allegory, that they're smart enough that I don't need to spoon feed them.
If you were God in that position, what would you do?
That's a false dichotomy. Many Christians are perfectly capable of reading Adam and Eve as an allegorical myth describing how men, after being given free will by God, used that free will to turn away from God, and God didn't like it. Only those who think the Bible can only be interpreted literally word-for-word or else it's all a lie think otherwise.
You can also be ultra-religious and not a creationist. My husband is a devout Lutheran, and he thinks creationism is as silly as anyone else. Creationism is obviously not fiscally conservative, but it is very religiously conservative. But ultra-religiously-conservative was a bit awkward for use in a summary.
They're not synonymous. Though if you really think that ALL Christians are either stupid or intellectually dishonest, there's probably not much I can do to change your bigotry (and those of whoever modded you Insighful).
The same thing happened to me with the Odyssey in the 9th grade. I wound up covering Romeo & Juliet twice, extra frustrating given that I really like a lot of Shakespeare but really not that play at all.
We can't say from this that Blackberries cause people to work longer hours, etc. Just that the same type of people who are likely to work longer hours are also likely to have Blackberries. Could be that those are the just the jobs that are likely to require one, or that people who are already workaholics are likely to jump at the chance to extend that.
The RIAA's settlement representatives are in eastern Kansas? (That's the 913 area code...)
Whenever I do this, if the site does proceed to work fine with Safari as long as it claims to be IE, I then email their tech support explaining that their site works fine with Safari and they should stop turning away 15% of their potential visitors, most of whom don't know how to set their browser to pretend to be IE. I'm hoping that that email balances out the one more IE ping in their site stats. Heck, if enough people do do this to actually pump up their IE percentage, then that many emails would probably get on their nerves enough to have an effect.
Could you please name one person on earth who is smart by your standards (ie, is good at absolutely everything)?