Religion as a tool to manipulate the base goes back to the beginning. True. In fact, manipulating the base goes back to the beginning, and using religion as a tool is completely a corollary to this fact. The persistent need (not necessarily yours, just using your post as a springboard) to associate religion with all the bad deeds done in its name is shortsighted. Human nature is to exploit and manipulate, to coerce and to steal. That these things have been done while using religion as an excuse is reprehensible, but should not be enough to motivate ill-will against religion itself. Corruption is everywhere, and we should not be any more surprised to find it within the ranks of organized religion than than within national militaries or local government.
Yup, thought so. I think the mantra can be amended to "screwing the musicians is OK when I do it, but not when others do."
There's also the issue that when you download the song, you aren't depriving the artist of any money, just a potential sale; and I refuse to believe that there is a one-to-one ratio between potential and actual revenue lost, because I.... have a friend... who has downloaded oodles of stuff that he would never, ever, ever have thought to buy in a store, risking $25 of his hard-earned dollars on something that might be crap. But changing the royalties from 8% to 7% (or whatever), and thus increasing by the same margin the amount of money available to you as the RIAA, actually is taking money out of the pockets of artists.
File-sharing might be wrong on the whole, but I don't think it can be compared to the RIAA's actions here, dollars-and-cents-wise.
Direct links to both, to save the effort of filling in bogus info on the pre-download registration forms. Note that there's a EULA you're supposed to be agreeing to before downloading these:
You're right on the money - for anyone interested, it's called The Front, season 4 episode 19. The scene in question is about fourteen minutes in, although Lisa and Bart are walking with Roger Meyers (the I&S exec), not Grandpa.
But by including a designer I think ID is adding a whole lot of complexity based on assumnptions which don't seem to be very valid.
True enough - but why is it that we are "including" a designer? Why is the default stance to assume that there is no designer? I understand this from a historical perspective; the backlash against institutionized Christianity, and people rebelling intellectually against anything that smacks of the church once again controlling every aspect lives. But especially among those who preach Logic as the be-all-and-end-all (and perhaps rightfully so), I find it frustrating that the philosophical/religious belief in a supreme designer is viewed as a lesser assumption than the belief in no designer.
I think that the debate about ID/Creationism/etc. being included alongside evolutionary theory in schools is important, but irrelevant to me personally. My biggest beef is the lack of respect from both camps, whenever a "reasonable exchange of ideas" takes place. The evolutionists are all satan's spawn, out to steal our children's faith. And the ID/creationists are all fundy cultists, driven by their exclusivist faith to force their dated beliefs on the public. I'm tired of open discussions being soured by thinly veiled insults and outright, unjustified arrogance.
The problem with your analogy is that the cost to a courier service of checking each and every package sent to Mr. X would quicky get out of hand, whereas the cost to an ISP of filtering out all content from someporndomain.com is minimal - especially if the blacklist is being provided by the state. Whether or not the burden should be placed on the ISPs is certainly up for debate, but if the state is willing to burden most/all of the cost of implementing this plan, then what's the harm? And if the ISPs aren't the right choice for this kind of initiative, then who/what is? To say that attempting to protect minors from unsuitable material (while not affecting the average user) is "just wrong" in your mind seems like a bit of an overreaction.
In fact, how is this any different from cable providers allowing subscribers to specifically block channels? Or even casinos allowing addicted gamblers to register with security, so they don't have the option of entering and being exposed to a gambling environment? In a free speech society, we have to recognize that everyone has a right to speak their mind. But we also need to recognize that they don't have the right to force everyone to listen. Content can and should be censored at the discretion of the individual listener, whether the content in question be spam, hate literature, porno, or whatever.
It seems to be more wood and cement than stone, according to the BBC article...
But the New Zealand group had to eschew the ancient in constructing the henge as even with modern building equipment, the henge would have taken too long to construct and would have been too expensive.
Instead the society's team concocted pillars and lintels from wooden frames, covered those with cement board and wire mesh and sprayed concrete over the structure.
I suppose this isn't quite as impressive as being solid rock, but with a budget of only 50 grand, this doesn't come as a surprise.
However, with the exception of carpooling, [Mr Benkler] acknowledges he is hard-pressed to find instances where sustained sharing of valuable things is prevalent in the world outside information technology. For most goods and services, sharing will remain the exception not the rule.
The sharing of scientific information is a much better example than carpooling. Isn't the whole idea of a carpool that each person either chips in for gas, or takes a turn at driving on different days of the week? How is this any different from people sharing an apartment, or even paying taxes to "share" roads and utilities, etc.? Modern P2P applications tend to work around the philosophy of "I'll share with you - will you share with me?", not "I'll share with you, but only if I get something out of it" - it's more of a hopeful expectation than an imperative. People share resources all the time, just not always as freely as happens with most P2P apps. This is probably why scientific knowledge and peer sharing have this overlap, and are both dissimilar from other economic resources; because they both involve sharing knowledge. Nothing is inherently lost if you share your knowledge, whereas sharing your food with someone means you lose some of your food, and even sharing your car means you lose your privacy on the drive to work.
Slashdot Mirror
There's also the issue that when you download the song, you aren't depriving the artist of any money, just a potential sale; and I refuse to believe that there is a one-to-one ratio between potential and actual revenue lost, because I .... have a friend... who has downloaded oodles of stuff that he would never, ever, ever have thought to buy in a store, risking $25 of his hard-earned dollars on something that might be crap. But changing the royalties from 8% to 7% (or whatever), and thus increasing by the same margin the amount of money available to you as the RIAA, actually is taking money out of the pockets of artists.
File-sharing might be wrong on the whole, but I don't think it can be compared to the RIAA's actions here, dollars-and-cents-wise.
How very sad! You are indeed correct. Should have cleared out my cookies before posting! :)
GTA
GTA2
Whois info for the above IP, since I didn't recognize it myself. I'm not sure why they're hosted 'offsite'.
You're right on the money - for anyone interested, it's called The Front, season 4 episode 19. The scene in question is about fourteen minutes in, although Lisa and Bart are walking with Roger Meyers (the I&S exec), not Grandpa.
True enough - but why is it that we are "including" a designer? Why is the default stance to assume that there is no designer? I understand this from a historical perspective; the backlash against institutionized Christianity, and people rebelling intellectually against anything that smacks of the church once again controlling every aspect lives. But especially among those who preach Logic as the be-all-and-end-all (and perhaps rightfully so), I find it frustrating that the philosophical/religious belief in a supreme designer is viewed as a lesser assumption than the belief in no designer.
I think that the debate about ID/Creationism/etc. being included alongside evolutionary theory in schools is important, but irrelevant to me personally. My biggest beef is the lack of respect from both camps, whenever a "reasonable exchange of ideas" takes place. The evolutionists are all satan's spawn, out to steal our children's faith. And the ID/creationists are all fundy cultists, driven by their exclusivist faith to force their dated beliefs on the public. I'm tired of open discussions being soured by thinly veiled insults and outright, unjustified arrogance.In fact, how is this any different from cable providers allowing subscribers to specifically block channels? Or even casinos allowing addicted gamblers to register with security, so they don't have the option of entering and being exposed to a gambling environment? In a free speech society, we have to recognize that everyone has a right to speak their mind. But we also need to recognize that they don't have the right to force everyone to listen. Content can and should be censored at the discretion of the individual listener, whether the content in question be spam, hate literature, porno, or whatever.
It seems to be more wood and cement than stone, according to the BBC article...
But the New Zealand group had to eschew the ancient in constructing the henge as even with modern building equipment, the henge would have taken too long to construct and would have been too expensive.Instead the society's team concocted pillars and lintels from wooden frames, covered those with cement board and wire mesh and sprayed concrete over the structure.
I suppose this isn't quite as impressive as being solid rock, but with a budget of only 50 grand, this doesn't come as a surprise.