"Finally, if evolution is truly something that's been happening for billions of years - where are the intermediate species? Why don't we see any today? Why aren't there any in the fossil record? "
If this is what the author of the book said, then he's either ignorant or a lying charlatan, because there are many existing transitional animals such as some species of snakes and cetaceans which have vestigial pelvises and legs inside their bodies. The fossil record also contains _many_ examples of such transitional species (both plants and animals).
"My understanding of the ID is simply that certain complexed structure of life couldn't have randomly happened so it was by design of some intelligent being."
That is indeed what they claim, but said claim contains a logical fallacy:
If complexity is evidence of intelligent design, then the designer (which, by virtue of possessing intelligence is extremely complex) must itself have been intelligently designed, and that designer, also intelligent and therefore complex, must also have been intelligently designed, and so on. So using complexity as evidence of intelligent design leads to an infinite regression of designers.
To avoid the infinite regression, we must therefore postulate an extremely complex system (i.e. an intelligent designer) which was not itself intelligently designed. Unfortunately, the presence of a complex entity which wasn't intelligently designed nullifies the assertion that complexity is evidence of intelligent design by introducing a situation where this clearly isn't true.
The ID people can't have it both ways. Complexity either is evidence of intelligent design, in which case there must be an infinite series of intelligent designers each of which designed the next designer, or it isn't evidence of intelligent design because it says a complex entity can exist without being designed.
"It is well established that Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth."
The link you provide only cites one writer who wasn't a Christian, i.e. Josephus, and the two passages that mention Jesus (the Christian one -- Josephus mentions several other people with the same name because it was a very common one) are by no means universally accepted as having been written by Jesephus himself.
"This is a computer. This is an Apple label. This is the label on the computer, making it an Apple-labeled computer."
I suggest you check up on the meaning of a hyphen that connects two words to see why this is not a valid interpretation.
"Note that the (almost certainly unenforceable) EULA doesn't even require a legitimate Apple label, only that the computer be labeled as an Apple."
1) If the EULA is, as you claim, unenforceable, why would you bother to pay for OS X instead of downloading one of the many pirate versions that are available?
2) It specifically uses the same hyphenated term, which under modern English usage rules (i.e. the agreed upon ones rather than your private invented version), has a single meaning; a computer that has been labelled by Apple.
"While lawyers could get their groove on by suing anyone who tried to sell the results, they'd have a hard time suing me for marking up my own personal computer."
The EULA isn't intended as a vehicle for suing individual users, but has the following function:
1) They can sue companies who attempt to distribute non-Apple computers with OS X on them.
2) It means they don't have to support anyone who installs it on non-Apple hardware.
"I don't think the "direct threat" approach is going to work with China in this circumstance, since the system appears able to absorb that kind of attack"
It's not actually a case of them absorbing it so much as threats having the opposite effect to the desired one. The concept of "face" is very important in Chinese culture, and a quick way to lose it is by letting one's self be intimidated, so threatening them is an excellent way of ensuring that they immediately become stubborn and intractable.
"US sells the most arms based on "value". That's absurd. I do not see AR-15s and M-16s being adopted by third world armies everywhere. "
Military arms (which is what people mean when they talk about international arms salesI include a lot more than hand guns and rifles, and some of those items are extremely costly.
"Now all the Chinese need is an equal dose of cynicism about their own leaders and culture, and they will be fine."
What makes you think that there aren't vast numbers of Chinese who are cynical about their government (local and national)? The fact that a country which strictly controls communications hasn't let us know about such things doesn't mean they don't exist.
"I got a couple of stickers when I bought Leopard. I assure you I am free to sell them."
There is indeed nothing to stop you selling Apple's own stickers (or those made by licensed third parties, of which there are several).
"While you may choose to read it that way, that is clearly not the only valid interpretation."
Please suggest another valid interpretation (with "valid" in this context meaning that it complies with modern English usage of first letter capitalisation and hyphenation).
"The Japanese leadership lied to the Japanese ppl and told them the Americans were monsters that would torture the women and children if captured"
And American propaganda told the US population that "Japs" were subhumans who were only good when dead. There's an article at this link (scroll down until you reach a box with a link titled "We Boiled The Flesh Off Enemy Skulls)" which gives a pretty good idea of how entrenched the idea of Japanese as "untermenschen" became in the US:
"by 1930, notions of Wilsonian self-determination meant military force in support of colonialism was no longer seen as appropriate behavior by the international community."
An "International community" that consisted largely of old colonial powers who'd already conquered the bits of the world they wanted, and puppet rulers whose self interest lay in supporting their imperial masters. This is why "military force in support of colonialism" prohibited uppity nations from getting ideas about having empires of their own, but permitted existing empires to use military force for brutally put down uprisings by natives who were fed up with being second class citizens in their own countries.
"It assumes that there is some definite, universal measurement of morality, which there is: the law."
A view that totalitarians throughout history would agree with wholeheartedly.
"Not everyone has to agree with every part of it, but by the same token, you may have people who do. It's supposed to be a one-size-fits-all template for morality."
Uncle Joe Stalin couldn't have said it any better than you. Bravo sir!
"If there is a crime that you believe isn't immoral, you are obliged to justify your belief."
Most of the regimes that have existed on this planet make it illegal to disagree with those in power, and by your measure, it would therefore also be immoral to voice such a belief, let alone attempt to justify it. Please enlighten us with a learned missive which resolves this apparently dilemma.
"Similarly, if there is a legal activity you believe is immoral (like my opinion of TPB's activities), then you are obliged to justify that belief as well."
How does one do so in a society whose laws prohibit free speech? It would clearly be an immoral act to break these laws, so once again, I await your doubtless ingenious solution to this dilemma.
"If this were illegal or fishy, Apple would be all over them like white on rice and crowing from the rooftops about it."
Why would Apple care if a company's selling cheap PC clones with a bundled boxed OS X that they've paid Apple for? The company's not pretending that these machines are Apple products, and Apple don't have to support users who don't comply with the system requirements printed on the box. They've therefore been paid whatever the trade price for a boxed OS X is, and if it fails to install or gets broken by an update, then tough, because they don't claim that it will work on systems that don't meet the printed specifications, and are under no obligation to ensure that it does so.
"There's nothing Apple could do to stop you from selling someone an unopened Leopard box, an Apple sticker, and installation instructions"
They would sue you out of existence for selling the Apple sticker because it's infringing their trademark. I say "would" rather than "could" here, because unlike copyrights and patents, a trademark can be lost if its owner doesn't defend it.
Note also that Apple's lawyers have been very precise with their wording, because "Apple-labelled computer" means a computer labelled by Apple (hence the use if the hyphen), not a computer that somebody who isn't Apple puts a sticker on.
"I have a retail copy of 10.4 (both Intel and PPC) right here on my shelf"
Every other boxed set of 10.4 was PPC only, so I'd hang on to yours because it's unique (Intel versions of 10.4 were included with machines, but not sold separately to anyone except you).
"I can't find the box right this second but I seem to remember it actually has the word "Upgrade" printed on it."
Mine was to hand, so I looked, and it doesn't say "Upgrade" anywhere. Furthermore, a ticket on the bottom of the box reads "OS X 10.4 Retail" just below the Apple product code, so people could be forgiven for assuming that it's not an upgrade.
"The funny thing is that they actually BELIEVE that these artists (less their managers/producers) deserve the amount of money they get."
Don't believe the industry's own propaganda about protecting the interests of artists, because the only people they think deserve any money is themselves. Artists a merely a vehicle for getting that money, and the companies do everything possible to approach their ideal of ending up with a situation where those artists actually owe them money after everything their accountants can come up with has been deducted from artist royalties.
Creative accounting that screws people out of royalties is a long-standing tradition in the entertainment industry, hence the fact that (for example) big movie stars and directors with clout insist on large up-front payments, because even the most successful movies neatly avoid paying any royalties or taxes by managing to bleed red ink after their accountants have spent a few months juggling the figures.
Obama's copyright changes in the link you provided seem to be promises to increase protection for copyright holders at home and abroad. This is pretty much in line with the voting record of both major US political parties, who only ever change copyright laws in ways that benefit corporations.
"But just because you can put the diagrams to build a nuclear bomb on the internet doesn't mean you should."
Because not being able to find plans on the Internet will obviously be a real barrier to anyone with the resources to build a working transportable nuclear device.
Slashdot Mirror
"If macroevolution were a fact of life we would still being seeing that process happen today. "
You are falling into the major logical fallacy of assuming that things we don't observe aren't happening.
"Finally, if evolution is truly something that's been happening for billions of years - where are the intermediate species? Why don't we see any today? Why aren't there any in the fossil record? "
If this is what the author of the book said, then he's either ignorant or a lying charlatan, because there are many existing transitional animals such as some species of snakes and cetaceans which have vestigial pelvises and legs inside their bodies. The fossil record also contains _many_ examples of such transitional species (both plants and animals).
"My understanding of the ID is simply that certain complexed structure of life couldn't have randomly happened so it was by design of some intelligent being."
That is indeed what they claim, but said claim contains a logical fallacy:
If complexity is evidence of intelligent design, then the designer (which, by virtue of possessing intelligence is extremely complex) must itself have been intelligently designed, and that designer, also intelligent and therefore complex, must also have been intelligently designed, and so on. So using complexity as evidence of intelligent design leads to an infinite regression of designers.
To avoid the infinite regression, we must therefore postulate an extremely complex system (i.e. an intelligent designer) which was not itself intelligently designed. Unfortunately, the presence of a complex entity which wasn't intelligently designed nullifies the assertion that complexity is evidence of intelligent design by introducing a situation where this clearly isn't true.
The ID people can't have it both ways. Complexity either is evidence of intelligent design, in which case there must be an infinite series of intelligent designers each of which designed the next designer, or it isn't evidence of intelligent design because it says a complex entity can exist without being designed.
"It is well established that Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth."
The link you provide only cites one writer who wasn't a Christian, i.e. Josephus, and the two passages that mention Jesus (the Christian one -- Josephus mentions several other people with the same name because it was a very common one) are by no means universally accepted as having been written by Jesephus himself.
"Perhaps I should have said: once the Chinese can freely express an equal dose of cynicism about their own leaders and culture, they will be fine."
Agreed.
" Music is a luxury good, while word processors (and most other open source software) aren't."
A great many of the features that are present in both FOSS and commercial software are luxuries, though.
"An organism doesn't change from one species to another."
Please cite some evidence for this assertion that doesn't require discounting things like the fossil record.
"I'm not saying that having a creator means there must be morality, I'm saying that since there is morality, there must be a creator."
An easy refutation of your claim is the fact that very small children don't display any morality whatsoever.
"This is a computer. This is an Apple label. This is the label on the computer, making it an Apple-labeled computer."
I suggest you check up on the meaning of a hyphen that connects two words to see why this is not a valid interpretation.
"Note that the (almost certainly unenforceable) EULA doesn't even require a legitimate Apple label, only that the computer be labeled as an Apple."
1) If the EULA is, as you claim, unenforceable, why would you bother to pay for OS X instead of downloading one of the many pirate versions that are available?
2) It specifically uses the same hyphenated term, which under modern English usage rules (i.e. the agreed upon ones rather than your private invented version), has a single meaning; a computer that has been labelled by Apple.
"While lawyers could get their groove on by suing anyone who tried to sell the results, they'd have a hard time suing me for marking up my own personal computer."
The EULA isn't intended as a vehicle for suing individual users, but has the following function:
1) They can sue companies who attempt to distribute non-Apple computers with OS X on them.
2) It means they don't have to support anyone who installs it on non-Apple hardware.
"I don't think the "direct threat" approach is going to work with China in this circumstance, since the system appears able to absorb that kind of attack"
It's not actually a case of them absorbing it so much as threats having the opposite effect to the desired one. The concept of "face" is very important in Chinese culture, and a quick way to lose it is by letting one's self be intimidated, so threatening them is an excellent way of ensuring that they immediately become stubborn and intractable.
"US sells the most arms based on "value".
That's absurd. I do not see AR-15s and M-16s being adopted by third world armies everywhere. "
Military arms (which is what people mean when they talk about international arms salesI include a lot more than hand guns and rifles, and some of those items are extremely costly.
"Now all the Chinese need is an equal dose of cynicism about their own leaders and culture, and they will be fine."
What makes you think that there aren't vast numbers of Chinese who are cynical about their government (local and national)? The fact that a country which strictly controls communications hasn't let us know about such things doesn't mean they don't exist.
"I got a couple of stickers when I bought Leopard. I assure you I am free to sell them."
There is indeed nothing to stop you selling Apple's own stickers (or those made by licensed third parties, of which there are several).
"While you may choose to read it that way, that is clearly not the only valid interpretation."
Please suggest another valid interpretation (with "valid" in this context meaning that it complies with modern English usage of first letter capitalisation and hyphenation).
"The Japanese leadership lied to the Japanese ppl and told
them the Americans were monsters that would torture the
women and children if captured"
And American propaganda told the US population that "Japs" were subhumans who were only good when dead. There's an article at this link (scroll down until you reach a box with a link titled "We Boiled The Flesh Off Enemy Skulls)" which gives a pretty good idea of how entrenched the idea of Japanese as "untermenschen" became in the US:
http://george.loper.org/trends/2002/Mar/65.html
"by 1930, notions of Wilsonian self-determination meant military force in support of colonialism was no longer seen as appropriate behavior by the international community."
An "International community" that consisted largely of old colonial powers who'd already conquered the bits of the world they wanted, and puppet rulers whose self interest lay in supporting their imperial masters. This is why "military force in support of colonialism" prohibited uppity nations from getting ideas about having empires of their own, but permitted existing empires to use military force for brutally put down uprisings by natives who were fed up with being second class citizens in their own countries.
"Actually intellectual property was introduced around the 18th-19th century in europe. Patents around the 18th century. "
The earliest European patents we know of were issued in 1421 in Italy, and Henry VI of England granted one in 1449.
"It assumes that there is some definite, universal measurement of morality, which there is: the law."
A view that totalitarians throughout history would agree with wholeheartedly.
"Not everyone has to agree with every part of it, but by the same token, you may have people who do. It's supposed to be a one-size-fits-all template for morality."
Uncle Joe Stalin couldn't have said it any better than you. Bravo sir!
"If there is a crime that you believe isn't immoral, you are obliged to justify your belief."
Most of the regimes that have existed on this planet make it illegal to disagree with those in power, and by your measure, it would therefore also be immoral to voice such a belief, let alone attempt to justify it. Please enlighten us with a learned missive which resolves this apparently dilemma.
"Similarly, if there is a legal activity you believe is immoral (like my opinion of TPB's activities), then you are obliged to justify that belief as well."
How does one do so in a society whose laws prohibit free speech? It would clearly be an immoral act to break these laws, so once again, I await your doubtless ingenious solution to this dilemma.
"If this were illegal or fishy, Apple would be all over them like white on rice and crowing from the rooftops about it."
Why would Apple care if a company's selling cheap PC clones with a bundled boxed OS X that they've paid Apple for? The company's not pretending that these machines are Apple products, and Apple don't have to support users who don't comply with the system requirements printed on the box. They've therefore been paid whatever the trade price for a boxed OS X is, and if it fails to install or gets broken by an update, then tough, because they don't claim that it will work on systems that don't meet the printed specifications, and are under no obligation to ensure that it does so.
"There's nothing Apple could do to stop you from selling someone an unopened Leopard box, an Apple sticker, and installation instructions"
They would sue you out of existence for selling the Apple sticker because it's infringing their trademark. I say "would" rather than "could" here, because unlike copyrights and patents, a trademark can be lost if its owner doesn't defend it.
Note also that Apple's lawyers have been very precise with their wording, because "Apple-labelled computer" means a computer labelled by Apple (hence the use if the hyphen), not a computer that somebody who isn't Apple puts a sticker on.
"I have a retail copy of 10.4 (both Intel and PPC) right here on my shelf"
Every other boxed set of 10.4 was PPC only, so I'd hang on to yours because it's unique (Intel versions of 10.4 were included with machines, but not sold separately to anyone except you).
"I can't find the box right this second but I seem to remember it actually has the word "Upgrade" printed on it."
Mine was to hand, so I looked, and it doesn't say "Upgrade" anywhere. Furthermore, a ticket on the bottom of the box reads "OS X 10.4 Retail" just below the Apple product code, so people could be forgiven for assuming that it's not an upgrade.
Pervasive and continuous advertising even when people were asleep was a common feature of Dick's stories and books.
"The funny thing is that they actually BELIEVE that these artists (less their managers/producers) deserve the amount of money they get."
Don't believe the industry's own propaganda about protecting the interests of artists, because the only people they think deserve any money is themselves. Artists a merely a vehicle for getting that money, and the companies do everything possible to approach their ideal of ending up with a situation where those artists actually owe them money after everything their accountants can come up with has been deducted from artist royalties.
Creative accounting that screws people out of royalties is a long-standing tradition in the entertainment industry, hence the fact that (for example) big movie stars and directors with clout insist on large up-front payments, because even the most successful movies neatly avoid paying any royalties or taxes by managing to bleed red ink after their accountants have spent a few months juggling the figures.
"Advocates copyright reform.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/"
Obama's copyright changes in the link you provided seem to be promises to increase protection for copyright holders at home and abroad. This is pretty much in line with the voting record of both major US political parties, who only ever change copyright laws in ways that benefit corporations.
"But just because you can put the diagrams to build a nuclear bomb on the internet doesn't mean you should."
Because not being able to find plans on the Internet will obviously be a real barrier to anyone with the resources to build a working transportable nuclear device.