Ok look, the difference between libraries and copying media is that when a library gives out a book, they no longer have that book. They are not making copies, and thus copyright does not apply. Lending a book is, likewise, the same. Making a copy of a DVD is not the same because you are creating a new copy! It's all well and good to debate the usefulness of copyright and to be pissed at the RIAA, but at least try to get the basic fundamentals correct so you don't look like a moron.
I don't know who you're debating with, but most of the people I talk with who are against "illegal immigrants" actually want loosened immigration restrictions so that a lot of these people who are here illegally can enter legally. I've heard calls for migrant visas and working holiday visas. Some of the most conservative guys I know also want a program to give green cards to foreign students studying science and engineering in the states.
I'm sorry that you live around a bunch of racist fucks, but a lot of people, including myself, want more immigration and less illegal immigration. Hell, at the very least, I'd like to avoid having to wait 200+ days just to bring my fiance in to get married.
Whether or not its mandated doesn't mean the amount we're spending is justified. We spend a fairly absurd amount of our GDP on our military compared to other countries. A good portion of that is spent so that we can project our power around the globe, due to WW2 and the Cold War, in large part. Some would argue that amount of militarization is no longer necessary, and that its better to let our allies take a larger responsibility in defending themselves. 9% of our budget is nothing to scoff at.
I really had no problem with the dimensional-travel aspect of it. My problem with it is that they ignored the things that made Trigger great.
Dual and triple techs were a huge part of that game, and they basically reduced it to a gimmick that you stumble on maybe once or twice in the game. Trigger had a small cast of unique characters with unique abilities. Cross blew that cast up and compensated by making the characters too similar in their abilities. The number of characters watered down the plot, and the same-ness of the abilities watered down the gameplay. In Trigger you had to take into account the position of the enemies, and choose an ability with the right area-of effect. It wasn't rocket science, but it was fresh in a world of jRPGs that mostly had you line up on either side of a battlefield and allowed you to attack one or all of the enemies. Cross went running away from a relatively unique formula back into old-and-stale.
Trying new things isn't bad, but you have to make it work. As a stand-alone game it would be OK. Not great, but not terrible. The problem is that they took things out of Chrono Trigger that made the game markedly worse, and then didn't bother to make the new mechanics work well in their own right.
That's not to say its a bad game. Its an imperfect game, but had a lot of virtues. Dropping about 30-35 of the characters, streamlining and strengthening the plot around those characters, and then bringing back dual/triple techs and unique abilities would have made Cross a worthy successor to Trigger. The game, as it is, is not.
I have the soundtrack, and yes the music is great. I agree with your assessment basically. Its not a bad game, but it doesn't capture what made Chrono Trigger great, so when you compare the two it comes up.. lacking.
I kinda liked Chrono Cross as its own game, but as a sequel to Chrono Trigger? No. I have to agree with the posters above.
Dual and Triple techs were so sparse you could play the entire game and never use one. They threw in FOURTY characters, which means you had a lot of characters that were worthless to the plot, and a lot of characters with trivial backstories that diluted the plot. To deal with the over-abundance of playable characters, they watered down the magic system so that everyone shared the same spells, bar 3 unique abilities per character. This is in stark contrast to Trigger.
For the most part, Chrono Trigger doesn't come into play, until the end of the game where they throw in "oh, and the bosses you're fighting are related to Trigger!" The plot was needlessly convoluted. The whole dragon thing was just... meh; it was trying too hard.
Overall, it felt like they took an average jRPG, tacked on some Chrono Trigger backstory, and then called it a sequel. Most Chrono Trigger fans that I've talked to agree on this point.
My experience with setting up Windows XP boxes with limited users is that a lot of software will just work. For those that don't, FileMon and RegMon will help you figure out where it is trying to write. You will have to add excludes for explorer because, for some reason, it access the registry and file system at an ungodly rate. Oh, and my experiences were that there was a fairly even split between OSS and proprietary software working correctly. I'd say that Macromedia can go die in a fire, as they were a particularly bad offender, but they merged with Adobe so... I guess Adobe can go die in a fire now? Hopefully its better now.
I actually don't remember the Marle/Crono/Lucca scene. What was it?
And I have to agree that it was kind-of a lame sequel. They took out a lot of the mechanics that made Crono trigger so interesting and swapped in a Pokemon-style get-all-40-characters-lol thing. The fact that there were only a handful of dual/triple techs and that they were basically worthless pretty much killed Cross as a sequel in my mind.
Well ideally kids that are at-risk for the vaccine shouldn't be given it. I'm not a doctor, so I don't know if there's a way to screen. Herd immunity is all well and good - because if your kid is at risk, he can not take the vaccine and still be safe. It's just when too many people opt-out that there's a problem.
As far as science is concerned, I seem argumentative, but I really agree with you that too many people treat it as a religion. Its not. If the lady had some solid evidence, then by all means we should look into it. Science is a process, and part of that process is to question our conclusions when new evidence comes to light.
I agree with second opinions - but that means you shouldn't trust *a* doctor, not doctors in general. If you are sick, then doctors are your best bet for getting healed. Get a second opinion, or even a third.
Unfortunately, people extend this idea to the point where they don't trust any doctor and think all doctors are elitists. Its the same with scientists. Unfortunately, we have a huge anti-intellectual kick here in the US. A frightening number of people truly believe that the "wisdom of the common man" beats out those years of research and education, and to insist otherwise is elitist.
So yeah, don't treat science as a religion, but don't think it has nothing to offer. I think we agree on that point. My only disagreement is that I don't think that we should humor the autism debate unless they have some new evidence to bring forth.
So, despite your rhetoric about just sharing opinions, you're going to belittle me for not sharing yours? And no, I do understand your concept. I just think its wrong. Its VERY clear that you don't understand mine, as you're shoehorning my argument into the standard libertarian rhetoric. Suffice to say, I am not an authoritarian, I'm not a republican, I don't think I'm your king, I do understand the libertarian philosophy very well, and I think that its a huge load of steaming bullshit because I *do* understand it very well.
My position is that societies are based upon shared responsibility; a sort-of social contract if you will. It is from this contract that rights are derived. You can claim that rights just exist as much as you want, but short of a society to protect those rights, or compensate you when those rights are violated, any debate about whether they exist is academic.
If I come and enslave you, then all your sophistry about how you have a right to your body is moot: you really won't have time to think about it much while you're working in the coal mines. You can claim they exist even if they are violated, but if a hypothetical society does not "recognize your rights," then the end-result is the same as if they did not exist. Nor do they exist in nature: if I kill the bear and take its land, and no-one is around to stop me, then that bear's land is mine.
Rights exist because we want them to exist, and we want them to exist because they are beneficial to our society. A lot of people would consider this heresy, but I consider it a sobering dose of reality: my rights are only mine if I work to keep them.
No, I don't think majority rule is always good, which you'd know if you cared to read any of my posts. I don't think its always bad either. That's why I support forms of government which work on representative democracy, but have built-in forms of checks based on the social contract of rights. Nor do I think I have a right to dictate everything in your life, as you accused me of (via the word authoritarian).
But being allowed in society carries responsibilities. If you don't uphold these, then you are removed from society. We call this "prison." One of those responsibilities is to respect the rights of others. In turn, society has a responsibility to you: to protect your rights from others. And that's what it boils down to: shared responsibility. And we engage in this because it increases our survival chance.
To what level your responsibility ends is a matter of debate. Libertarians believe in a very limited personal responsibility towards society, and a somewhat limited responsibility of society towards them. They pretty much believe in little-to-no responsibility towards society, but expect society to respect and protect certain rights. They hold property to be the ultimate "right." The right to life equates to the right to not be murdered.
I, on the other hand, believe in some personal responsibility towards society. I believe that its our responsibility to create a society in which people have some level of safety. I believe the right to life extends to expending at least some effort to protecting people who are sick, disadvantaged, and unlucky. I believe this should be limited. I also believe that its our responsibility to forgo some personal freedoms to achieve this: some property (taxes), some privacy (vaccines). In return, society's responsibility to protect you is greater; if you are poor and dying, then it has a responsibility to heal you.
So, to answer your question, no I don't think the doctor should work for free. I think we should all chip in a little. How much? That's up to debate, and I honestly don't know the answer. I think it should be the one that maximizes the benefit to society; not just along monetary means, but freedom, security, and other considerations. Its a hard optimization to make, because there's so many variables.
As far as being part of the majority, its not pompousness. I would gather that m
Myself. Contrary to popular belief, one can form their own opinions and beliefs without attaching themselves to someone famous.
I can't sum up my beliefs in this matter in this Slashdot post. I have given them a lot of thought, and actually constantly re-evaluate them. This isn't a forum in which I can correctly describe them. I will give a brief run-down anyway:
My position is that if you've chosen inaction, and I am directly harmed as a result of that, and not of my own actions, then you are to some degree culpable for that harm. I am not less harmed because you passively, rather than actively, endangered me.
To what degree of inaction, you ask? Well that depends on which group of people you hang around with. The libertarians would like to take this to the extreme: Don't have money to pay for doctors? You die in a ditch. Tough luck. The group of people I hang around with, which happens to be the majority, have decided that a different standard is appropriate. If you don't like our standards, you can leave. The fact that most places in this world are even less accepting of your point of view than I am is not my concern.
Contrary to popular belief, there are no such things as rights in nature. If you are fit enough, you survive. If not, you die. Groups of people, called societies, invented those, because it creates stronger societies which, in turn, increase our fitness. Societal rules which increase the living standard and sustainability of that society will propagate, while those which do not will stagnate. This may take a while, but it happens. The idea of "rights" which our societal rules are based on are slowly becoming more prevalent.
You are basically advocating a society that has no responsibility beyond the individual. I don't think such a society is very strong. I advocate that there is some degree of responsibility to others. This isn't something that can be quantified on, unless we create both our societies and see which survive. The world has steadily trended towards my interpretation.
Anyway, my position is that you can't postulate the existence of rights from thin air. "God-given" is a cop-out. Our idea of rights became popular because the philosophy increased the fitness of our society.
If the study was peer-reviewed and was scientifically sound, yes I would. Either the science is solid or it isn't. Truth doesn't become falsehood just because you don't like the person saying it. I'm not saying I wouldn't be suspicious of it, but if the research is valid then its valid. If its not, then we should sort that out in peer review.
If you are actively endangering others' right to life, then yes you deserved to be locked up. You like to prattle on about your rights, but are blithely ignorant to the rights of others. That makes you an asshole.
The anti-vaccers' study (singular) has been disputed on scientific grounds. The vaccers' has not. The source of funding implies that scrutiny should be given to a study, but it does not mean that the results are necessarily invalid. If the results are invalid, then they can be proven to be so scientifically.
The anti-vaccers has been disproven on scientific grounds, while the vaccers have not.
And seriously, there's nothing wrong with sponsoring a study if you feel that your point is justified, so long as the people you fund try to be non-biased, get their results peer-reviewed, and accept the conclusions instead of twist them. In the anti-vaccers case, this did not happen. In the vaccers case it did.
There's reason for caution and research if there's evidence. Autism rose along with certain vaccines. Mercury was a concern. We removed the mercury (and subsequently discovered that the autism rates didn't change). We did studies on the vaccines in question. The rise can be explained by simple correlation. Caution was exercised. The evidence suggests that there is no danger of autism from the vaccine.
What we're seeing in the anti-vaccine community is that the evidence is being dismissed, because, by golly they're scared and angry, and they'll be damned if they let evidence stand in the way of that.
As far as general risks from vaccinations, we do know of allergic reactions and other complications. Those risks have been quantified, and a trade-off has been made. There is a fund for the extremely minuscule population of people who suffer bad reactions due to vaccines.
Your problem is that you have an overly-simplistic black-and-white view of how diseases spread. Diseases don't just spontaneously appear, and they don't stay the same disease forever. Vaccines are not perfect, and there is a failure rate.
If you have the one kid without the vaccine, and the vaccine rate is 99%, then in all likelihood that disease is not going to spread beyond the one kid. At best you may get one or two. But if you have 10% of the kids without vaccines, then there is a nice pool for that disease to spread. Because more kids are catching it, more people in general are exposed. Now that 1% starts coming into play. Enough people have the disease for enough time, and you may evolve strains that aren't stopped by the vaccination. You've now re-introduced the disease to the public. Congrats.
No-one cares whether that guy over there is vaccinated. What we care about is that the scare-mongering is causing people to avoid vaccination. If this gets bad enough, we will very likely see these diseases become big problems in the general population again.
Don't forget to quarantine those non-vaccinated people in HappyFunUniverse. Otherwise, the polio disease could evolve such that the vaccine is no longer effective.
So basically, there's a large body of evidence quantifying the risk. You, your wife, and your doctor chose to ignore the evidence, because you felt bad about it. Congrats for making emotional, rather than logical, decisions.
Slashdot Mirror
*sigh* *facepalm*
Ok look, the difference between libraries and copying media is that when a library gives out a book, they no longer have that book. They are not making copies, and thus copyright does not apply. Lending a book is, likewise, the same. Making a copy of a DVD is not the same because you are creating a new copy! It's all well and good to debate the usefulness of copyright and to be pissed at the RIAA, but at least try to get the basic fundamentals correct so you don't look like a moron.
I don't know who you're debating with, but most of the people I talk with who are against "illegal immigrants" actually want loosened immigration restrictions so that a lot of these people who are here illegally can enter legally. I've heard calls for migrant visas and working holiday visas. Some of the most conservative guys I know also want a program to give green cards to foreign students studying science and engineering in the states.
I'm sorry that you live around a bunch of racist fucks, but a lot of people, including myself, want more immigration and less illegal immigration. Hell, at the very least, I'd like to avoid having to wait 200+ days just to bring my fiance in to get married.
Whether or not its mandated doesn't mean the amount we're spending is justified. We spend a fairly absurd amount of our GDP on our military compared to other countries. A good portion of that is spent so that we can project our power around the globe, due to WW2 and the Cold War, in large part. Some would argue that amount of militarization is no longer necessary, and that its better to let our allies take a larger responsibility in defending themselves. 9% of our budget is nothing to scoff at.
Offer free porn to users that run it, and you'd get a huge number of people that would happily make it executable and sudo it.
Well this case its a company, not a government, deciding to force charity, but don't let that get in the way of your libertarian rage.
I really had no problem with the dimensional-travel aspect of it. My problem with it is that they ignored the things that made Trigger great.
Dual and triple techs were a huge part of that game, and they basically reduced it to a gimmick that you stumble on maybe once or twice in the game. Trigger had a small cast of unique characters with unique abilities. Cross blew that cast up and compensated by making the characters too similar in their abilities. The number of characters watered down the plot, and the same-ness of the abilities watered down the gameplay. In Trigger you had to take into account the position of the enemies, and choose an ability with the right area-of effect. It wasn't rocket science, but it was fresh in a world of jRPGs that mostly had you line up on either side of a battlefield and allowed you to attack one or all of the enemies. Cross went running away from a relatively unique formula back into old-and-stale.
Trying new things isn't bad, but you have to make it work. As a stand-alone game it would be OK. Not great, but not terrible. The problem is that they took things out of Chrono Trigger that made the game markedly worse, and then didn't bother to make the new mechanics work well in their own right.
That's not to say its a bad game. Its an imperfect game, but had a lot of virtues. Dropping about 30-35 of the characters, streamlining and strengthening the plot around those characters, and then bringing back dual/triple techs and unique abilities would have made Cross a worthy successor to Trigger. The game, as it is, is not.
I have the soundtrack, and yes the music is great. I agree with your assessment basically. Its not a bad game, but it doesn't capture what made Chrono Trigger great, so when you compare the two it comes up.. lacking.
I agree, but in this case it's likely the money. I'm guessing they're worried about pirated apps.
I kinda liked Chrono Cross as its own game, but as a sequel to Chrono Trigger? No. I have to agree with the posters above.
Dual and Triple techs were so sparse you could play the entire game and never use one. They threw in FOURTY characters, which means you had a lot of characters that were worthless to the plot, and a lot of characters with trivial backstories that diluted the plot. To deal with the over-abundance of playable characters, they watered down the magic system so that everyone shared the same spells, bar 3 unique abilities per character. This is in stark contrast to Trigger.
For the most part, Chrono Trigger doesn't come into play, until the end of the game where they throw in "oh, and the bosses you're fighting are related to Trigger!" The plot was needlessly convoluted. The whole dragon thing was just... meh; it was trying too hard.
Overall, it felt like they took an average jRPG, tacked on some Chrono Trigger backstory, and then called it a sequel. Most Chrono Trigger fans that I've talked to agree on this point.
I find it helps if you imagine a laugh track playing as you read his posts.
My experience with setting up Windows XP boxes with limited users is that a lot of software will just work. For those that don't, FileMon and RegMon will help you figure out where it is trying to write. You will have to add excludes for explorer because, for some reason, it access the registry and file system at an ungodly rate. Oh, and my experiences were that there was a fairly even split between OSS and proprietary software working correctly. I'd say that Macromedia can go die in a fire, as they were a particularly bad offender, but they merged with Adobe so... I guess Adobe can go die in a fire now? Hopefully its better now.
I actually don't remember the Marle/Crono/Lucca scene. What was it?
And I have to agree that it was kind-of a lame sequel. They took out a lot of the mechanics that made Crono trigger so interesting and swapped in a Pokemon-style get-all-40-characters-lol thing. The fact that there were only a handful of dual/triple techs and that they were basically worthless pretty much killed Cross as a sequel in my mind.
I had always wondered if I should have accepted that job at Midway. Makes me feel better that I made the right decision.
Well ideally kids that are at-risk for the vaccine shouldn't be given it. I'm not a doctor, so I don't know if there's a way to screen. Herd immunity is all well and good - because if your kid is at risk, he can not take the vaccine and still be safe. It's just when too many people opt-out that there's a problem.
As far as science is concerned, I seem argumentative, but I really agree with you that too many people treat it as a religion. Its not. If the lady had some solid evidence, then by all means we should look into it. Science is a process, and part of that process is to question our conclusions when new evidence comes to light.
I agree with second opinions - but that means you shouldn't trust *a* doctor, not doctors in general. If you are sick, then doctors are your best bet for getting healed. Get a second opinion, or even a third.
Unfortunately, people extend this idea to the point where they don't trust any doctor and think all doctors are elitists. Its the same with scientists. Unfortunately, we have a huge anti-intellectual kick here in the US. A frightening number of people truly believe that the "wisdom of the common man" beats out those years of research and education, and to insist otherwise is elitist.
So yeah, don't treat science as a religion, but don't think it has nothing to offer. I think we agree on that point. My only disagreement is that I don't think that we should humor the autism debate unless they have some new evidence to bring forth.
Ah, right you are. My mistake.
So, despite your rhetoric about just sharing opinions, you're going to belittle me for not sharing yours? And no, I do understand your concept. I just think its wrong. Its VERY clear that you don't understand mine, as you're shoehorning my argument into the standard libertarian rhetoric. Suffice to say, I am not an authoritarian, I'm not a republican, I don't think I'm your king, I do understand the libertarian philosophy very well, and I think that its a huge load of steaming bullshit because I *do* understand it very well.
My position is that societies are based upon shared responsibility; a sort-of social contract if you will. It is from this contract that rights are derived. You can claim that rights just exist as much as you want, but short of a society to protect those rights, or compensate you when those rights are violated, any debate about whether they exist is academic.
If I come and enslave you, then all your sophistry about how you have a right to your body is moot: you really won't have time to think about it much while you're working in the coal mines. You can claim they exist even if they are violated, but if a hypothetical society does not "recognize your rights," then the end-result is the same as if they did not exist. Nor do they exist in nature: if I kill the bear and take its land, and no-one is around to stop me, then that bear's land is mine.
Rights exist because we want them to exist, and we want them to exist because they are beneficial to our society. A lot of people would consider this heresy, but I consider it a sobering dose of reality: my rights are only mine if I work to keep them.
No, I don't think majority rule is always good, which you'd know if you cared to read any of my posts. I don't think its always bad either. That's why I support forms of government which work on representative democracy, but have built-in forms of checks based on the social contract of rights. Nor do I think I have a right to dictate everything in your life, as you accused me of (via the word authoritarian).
But being allowed in society carries responsibilities. If you don't uphold these, then you are removed from society. We call this "prison." One of those responsibilities is to respect the rights of others. In turn, society has a responsibility to you: to protect your rights from others. And that's what it boils down to: shared responsibility. And we engage in this because it increases our survival chance.
To what level your responsibility ends is a matter of debate. Libertarians believe in a very limited personal responsibility towards society, and a somewhat limited responsibility of society towards them. They pretty much believe in little-to-no responsibility towards society, but expect society to respect and protect certain rights. They hold property to be the ultimate "right." The right to life equates to the right to not be murdered.
I, on the other hand, believe in some personal responsibility towards society. I believe that its our responsibility to create a society in which people have some level of safety. I believe the right to life extends to expending at least some effort to protecting people who are sick, disadvantaged, and unlucky. I believe this should be limited. I also believe that its our responsibility to forgo some personal freedoms to achieve this: some property (taxes), some privacy (vaccines). In return, society's responsibility to protect you is greater; if you are poor and dying, then it has a responsibility to heal you.
So, to answer your question, no I don't think the doctor should work for free. I think we should all chip in a little. How much? That's up to debate, and I honestly don't know the answer. I think it should be the one that maximizes the benefit to society; not just along monetary means, but freedom, security, and other considerations. Its a hard optimization to make, because there's so many variables.
As far as being part of the majority, its not pompousness. I would gather that m
Myself. Contrary to popular belief, one can form their own opinions and beliefs without attaching themselves to someone famous.
I can't sum up my beliefs in this matter in this Slashdot post. I have given them a lot of thought, and actually constantly re-evaluate them. This isn't a forum in which I can correctly describe them. I will give a brief run-down anyway:
My position is that if you've chosen inaction, and I am directly harmed as a result of that, and not of my own actions, then you are to some degree culpable for that harm. I am not less harmed because you passively, rather than actively, endangered me.
To what degree of inaction, you ask? Well that depends on which group of people you hang around with. The libertarians would like to take this to the extreme: Don't have money to pay for doctors? You die in a ditch. Tough luck. The group of people I hang around with, which happens to be the majority, have decided that a different standard is appropriate. If you don't like our standards, you can leave. The fact that most places in this world are even less accepting of your point of view than I am is not my concern.
Contrary to popular belief, there are no such things as rights in nature. If you are fit enough, you survive. If not, you die. Groups of people, called societies, invented those, because it creates stronger societies which, in turn, increase our fitness. Societal rules which increase the living standard and sustainability of that society will propagate, while those which do not will stagnate. This may take a while, but it happens. The idea of "rights" which our societal rules are based on are slowly becoming more prevalent.
You are basically advocating a society that has no responsibility beyond the individual. I don't think such a society is very strong. I advocate that there is some degree of responsibility to others. This isn't something that can be quantified on, unless we create both our societies and see which survive. The world has steadily trended towards my interpretation.
Anyway, my position is that you can't postulate the existence of rights from thin air. "God-given" is a cop-out. Our idea of rights became popular because the philosophy increased the fitness of our society.
If the study was peer-reviewed and was scientifically sound, yes I would. Either the science is solid or it isn't. Truth doesn't become falsehood just because you don't like the person saying it. I'm not saying I wouldn't be suspicious of it, but if the research is valid then its valid. If its not, then we should sort that out in peer review.
If you are actively endangering others' right to life, then yes you deserved to be locked up. You like to prattle on about your rights, but are blithely ignorant to the rights of others. That makes you an asshole.
The anti-vaccers' study (singular) has been disputed on scientific grounds. The vaccers' has not. The source of funding implies that scrutiny should be given to a study, but it does not mean that the results are necessarily invalid. If the results are invalid, then they can be proven to be so scientifically.
The anti-vaccers has been disproven on scientific grounds, while the vaccers have not.
And seriously, there's nothing wrong with sponsoring a study if you feel that your point is justified, so long as the people you fund try to be non-biased, get their results peer-reviewed, and accept the conclusions instead of twist them. In the anti-vaccers case, this did not happen. In the vaccers case it did.
Measles and Rubella have been practically eradicated, but there are still isolated cases:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Rubella+cases+2008
This means that there is still a risk of resurgence if herd immunity drops enough. It isn't FUD, because the science is there to quantify the risk.
Someone pointed out this link, which I found illuminating:
http://www.thatsfuckingstupid.com/index.php/2008/11/just-a-quickie-you-wont-feel-a-thing/
There's reason for caution and research if there's evidence. Autism rose along with certain vaccines. Mercury was a concern. We removed the mercury (and subsequently discovered that the autism rates didn't change). We did studies on the vaccines in question. The rise can be explained by simple correlation. Caution was exercised. The evidence suggests that there is no danger of autism from the vaccine.
What we're seeing in the anti-vaccine community is that the evidence is being dismissed, because, by golly they're scared and angry, and they'll be damned if they let evidence stand in the way of that.
As far as general risks from vaccinations, we do know of allergic reactions and other complications. Those risks have been quantified, and a trade-off has been made. There is a fund for the extremely minuscule population of people who suffer bad reactions due to vaccines.
Your problem is that you have an overly-simplistic black-and-white view of how diseases spread. Diseases don't just spontaneously appear, and they don't stay the same disease forever. Vaccines are not perfect, and there is a failure rate.
If you have the one kid without the vaccine, and the vaccine rate is 99%, then in all likelihood that disease is not going to spread beyond the one kid. At best you may get one or two. But if you have 10% of the kids without vaccines, then there is a nice pool for that disease to spread. Because more kids are catching it, more people in general are exposed. Now that 1% starts coming into play. Enough people have the disease for enough time, and you may evolve strains that aren't stopped by the vaccination. You've now re-introduced the disease to the public. Congrats.
No-one cares whether that guy over there is vaccinated. What we care about is that the scare-mongering is causing people to avoid vaccination. If this gets bad enough, we will very likely see these diseases become big problems in the general population again.
*bangs head on desk*
Diseases evolve!
Don't forget to quarantine those non-vaccinated people in HappyFunUniverse. Otherwise, the polio disease could evolve such that the vaccine is no longer effective.
So basically, there's a large body of evidence quantifying the risk. You, your wife, and your doctor chose to ignore the evidence, because you felt bad about it. Congrats for making emotional, rather than logical, decisions.