Yes, cheap it is if you don't calculate the follow up costs which probably account for the vast majority of the total costs.
Where do you leave the garbage for the next few thousand years? Who pays for that?
Stick it in a hole in the ground in some remote location until we figure out what to do with it. The technology already exists to recycle a significant portion of produced nuclear waste, so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that we'll be able to do quite better even just a decade or so in the future. Nuclear may not be "clean" in the sense that it causes no pollution or has no environmental effects (no existing power source can boast this), but it does have the advantage of waste that is easy to sequester.
You Americans are funny. On the one hand you turn al pale if someone just mentions the word "socialism" but on the other hand stuff like that has to be handled by the society. Or do you seriously expect ANY company to be able to guarantee the safe disposal of nuclear waste for thousands of years? No company will even exist long enough.
Not all Americans are afraid of "socialism," and we're always moving closer towards it even if some elements of society rage loudly against it. Even though most people actually want some form of socialism, they just don't know it as a result of poor education and a desire to believe it's still the Wild West. I would argue that it's abjectly stupid to put critical infrastructure into the hands of a for-profit institution, even more so when the infrastructure in question has particularly destructive failure modes which are almost inevitable in an environment of greed (i.e. I don't want to see my dams flood regions, areas contaminated/destroyed by gas/coal/nuclear plant explosions, etc. just so some executive can take an extra cruise vacation this year).
So whenever something blows up it's the tax payer that has to cough up the money to fix whatever is left to be fixed.
All the more reason that these things should be controlled by an agency concerned with public safety, not the bottom line so that they don't "blow up" in the first place (not that nuclear reactors do).
Already forgotten Chernobyl? Yes, I know it was a faulty russian power plant and personell made mistakes. Gladly the American nuclear power plants run flawlessly and Americans never make mistakes... You guys were just lucky so far!
Chernobyl was more than that; they deliberately disabled safety features on a reactor design that was already inherently unsafe. So there is more to it than just luck. With modern reactor designs, you pretty much have to set out to cause a meltdown, and you'll be fighting safety features every step of the way.
Clean? What happens if one of those things blows up? It's not exactly unlikely that a terrorist snatches an air plane and this time maybe decides that "landing" on a reactor near New York might be a good idea. What then? suddenly it's not all that clean anymore but the most dirty way to produce energy. Yes, I know, nuclear power plants are shielded against air plane crashes. Ever tested that? What happens of one of the huge Airbus 380 crash into it? Is the shielding prepared for that too? Forgotten 9/11 as well? I doubt that anyone expected those towers to collapse either - still it happened.
Modern plants are built with containment structures with multiple layers of walls 2-3 meters thick of reinforced concrete. I have no doubt that if a plane crashes into one it will do significant damage that will force a plant shutdown (even just for safety reasons with the containment structure compromised--the reactor would probably not miss a beat). That's a far cry from the idea that a plane crashing into one is going to cause a nuclear explosion. More importantly, you were right to bring up 9/11. As a result of that incident, if a p
You can't prove a negative. I thought you'd be smart enough to know that.
By arguing against scientific consensus, I thought you'd be smart enough to understand simple falsifiability. Actually, I'm not that harsh; the problem is a lack of education in the scientific process and logical thought, that is, you lack knowledge, not necessarily intelligence. However, if you clearly do not understand these things, what business have you arguing subjects in which you have no qualification?
In science, you make observations and then formulate a theory that explains those observations. Someone else could come in and prove that your theory is incorrect or incomplete by showing a counterexample. Let's break down what spun said:
Seeing as how the scientific consensus is that there is a link between CO2 and global warming, YOU are the one who needs to prove there isn't one
He basically said "Seeing as how the scientific consensus is that [A], YOU are the one who needs to prove [NOT A]." Let's substitute in the conjecture "all swans are white" for A. We get "Seeing as how the scientific consensus is that all swans are white, YOU are the one who needs to prove that not all swans are white." Clearly, this is something you can prove by a simple demonstration of one black swan.
If you think C# is 'better' than Java then you are a shitty programmer. Neither one of them has anything that really is impressive over the other, outside of the IDE itself. Stop blaming the language, its not the problem. Its possible for a language to make certain things a little easier, but once you reach a certain point the additions to a language are of trivial advantage to a good programmer. They may help out less experienced or talented developers who can't figure out how to do the same thing without a special language construct for it, but for the experienced they end up the same.
Bullshit. If you think that "fully reified generics, lambdas and closures, arbitrary monadic comprehensions and Hindley-Milner type inference" has not added some impressive usability and expressiveness to the language, then it is you who is either the shitty programmer or one who does nothing more complex than some widgets that move data in and out of a database with a raw SQL call.
It's not always about providing a language construct to solve a problem for untalented developers. Can you not see how something like "var minors = people.Where(p => p.Age < 18);" is much more expressive than the alternatives? By your logic, I would write something like that because I'm too stupid to write:
function getMinors(List<Person> people) {
List<Person> minors = new List<Person>();
for (int i = 0; i < people.Count; i++) {// foreach is stupid
if (people[i].Age < 18) minors.Add(people[i]);
}
return minors;
}
Or worse, just inline it. A quick anonymous function provided by the lambda in the.Where() is much more concise and can be very quickly implemented and is immediately 100% clear to all those reading it. If you think maintainability is not of critical importance... I'll refer you to my previous comment about programmers and the complexity of programs they write. And that's the most trivial use of a lambda function.
So you're a "wacko" if you disagree with the poor "science" presented in that article? The author says:
Let's start with CO2. Activists tell us that man-caused CO2 is creating global warming. However, only 3 percent of CO2 comes from people. The rest comes from oceans, animals and Ryan Seacrest.
OK, true enough. However, the conclusion (it's only 3%, obviously that's not enough to do anything) is not only wrong, it has no scientific basis. Since when is it scientific to just say "oh that's a small number, can't be significant?" Seems to me a good starting point for "significant" would be "exceeds the ability of the ecosystem to absorb the increased emissions."
As a result of this natural balance, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would have changed little if human activities had not added an amount every year. This addition, presently about 3% of annual natural emissions, is sufficient to exceed the balancing effect of sinks. As a result, carbon dioxide has gradually accumulated in the atmosphere, until at present, its concentration is 30% above pre- industrial levels.
-- http://www.gcrio.org/ipcc/qa/05.html
Feel free to dance around your Kool-Aid jug if it makes you feel better.
Since when is the middle the halfway distance between a complete nutjob and someone who is less of a nutjob? Since when does solving a problem mean taking everybody's opinion, then cutting the differences in half?
They can't even get enough support from their own side. What sort of problems do they have when they can't even make deals with fellow Democrat senators?
Corruption? Greed? The more "moderate" the Democrat, the more easily they will be swayed by other "moderate" views backed up by "moderate" contributions.
A "moderate" [party] member is pretty much by definition someone that mostly agrees with the party, but not on everything. And yet you're trying to claim that Democrats are 100% in unison in general (which is pretty ridiculous, given their history of being rather fractured) but this one issue is just so extreme that they can't even get Democrats to support it.
If you were someone with Republican interests, and had the opportunity to buy a Republican or a Democrat sitting on the fence, which would you buy? Buy the Republican and maybe you get party unity and can say "look, all of the Republicans oppose this, it must be bad." Buy the Democrat on the other hand, and now you can say "look, the Democrats can't even get their own party members to support it, it must be really bad." To uninformed and unthinking viewers of the debate, that sounds right to their gut, so now you've won more mindshare than you otherwise might have. In other words, you get more bang for your buck by buying out your opposition.
Yeah... I'm gonna have to repeat jo_ham: "I'm sorry, what? You're making no sense."
Apple doesn't do backwards compatibility? I'm pretty sure that they do provide backwards compatibility for a reasonable length of time and provide transition guides. Take the article on Preference Panes, for example (the developer docs are filled with this stuff):
Snow Leopard introduces several system-wide features that preference panes should support. Preference panes should be 64-bit, utilize garbage collection, and support sudden termination. For transition purposes, Snow Leopard will support 32-bit preference panes from developers outside of Apple. For 32-bit preference panes, garbage collection is not required, and support for sudden termination is “opt-in.” For 64-bit preference panes, garbage collection is a required feature and sudden termination is enabled by default. It is strongly recommended that all new preference panes be 64-bit, as support for 32-bit preference panes is not guaranteed in the future.
In other words, you are strongly encouraged to upgrade to 64-bit code as 32-bit support will eventually be dropped. In the meantime though, there is still backwards compatibility with 32-bit code and you can even take advantage of the newer features in old code.
In light of that I'm assuming you mean "there's no assumption that the code you wrote back in the 90's for 16-bit operating systems will still work in 2009." I for one am glad OS X's APIs are not fetid with ancient cruft like can be found in the Win32 API.
Of course, all this has nothing to do with the current situation. Did you even read the forum post? Or even the summary?
If it goes on like this, MacOS support may be discontinued as of VLC 1.1.0. There is nobody to make the necessary updates to the MacOS support code, for instance to support the new VLC video output architecture.
If there are zero Mac developers working on VLC, just who is going to make the necessary tweaks and create the builds for new versions? That's all that's being talked about. Feature freeze. Bug-fix freeze. No releases. No developers. The current VLC 1.0.3 that I have running will continue running "until the end of time."
What you're saying just doesn't make sense on any level. It doesn't have anything to do with any operating system, even; it's a project-based observation. If no one is working on the project, it's "dead." If tomorrow all the Windows VLC devs switch to work on the Mac version, people would be talking about the Windows port "dying."
And therein lies a substantial portion of the confusion around this issue. Conservative Christian types (of the sort that oppose gay marriage) generally only refer to a person as "homosexual" if they participate in same-gender sexual activity; on the other hand, the pro-gay-marriage supporters refer to "homosexuality" as some ingrained, unchangeable genetic trait.
To be clear, I was referring to the distinction between homosexuality as an inclusive term and homosexuality as an exclusive term. That is, by one definition a bisexual is both homo- and hetero-sexual (describing someone as homosexual would not preclude them from having heterosexual desires as well, by this usage). The other definition, being exclusive, would mean a homosexual is someone with only same-sex attraction.
Furthermore, I'm not so sure; your own church defines homosexuality as more than just participation in homosexual sex:
Homosexual problems, according to popular church vernacular, are defined as "homoerotic thoughts, feelings or behaviors."[17] In describing people with homosexual feelings, the church will often say they have same-gender attractions.
Which is pretty much in line with how everyone uses the term.
What I think you're really referring to is the difference between orientation and preference. I visualize this as two sliding scales which can (but shouldn't, or at least not to any great degree) operate independently. Using myself as an example, as a bisexual my orientation marker would be somewhere near the middle while my preference marker could be said to be farther on the "gay side" given my current choice of partner.
You'll note that I did use the word "choice" there because I partially agree with you there, at least with respect to preference. I don't think you have much (if any) choice in your orientation; I certainly never asked to find men with rippling muscles attractive, I just do. Preference you have significantly more leeway because it is a result of your conscious thought, but I contend that the greater the distance between your two markers when overlapped, the greater your risk for psychological symptoms. Someone like myself might not experience too much of a hardship by choosing at completely heterosexual lifestyle as I would still have an outlet for my sexual desires. Someone at the far end of the scale on the homosexual side might have a significantly harder time since they would be suppressing the entirety of their sexual identity and not a mere portion.
So, there's where I agree with you. Where I disagree with you is that the manner in which you present the choice is a bit of a nonstarter. You seem receptive to the idea that homosexuality is a something you can at least be born with a predisposition to, but then go on to say that you can (and should) choose to not be that way. To me, that's just as ridiculous as me saying that you might have been born heterosexual but should choose not to engage in your desires (due to overpopulation or whatever fanciful reason I might come up with). If you wanted to prove to the world that sexual behavior is a choice, you could go out right now and find some man (sorry, I'm running under the assumption you are male) to be your lover and partner. Is that really a realistic choice for you though? Could you ever feel proud and fulfilled in your life by going against who you understand yourself to be?
Have you watched TV lately? Virtually every new TV show has a gay character, and they all go to great lengths to have every other character on the show be as accepting as possible of that gay person's lifestyle - and they go to great lengths to make the viewers accept the person's lifestyle as well. It's a very short jump from implicit acceptance to encouragement.
OSC used to provide support for his arguments. Now he makes unsubstantiated claims.
I'm glad you recognize when someone spouts off unsubstantiated filth, but why do you then ignore it when you agree with what he's saying? How can you call him "level-headed" in response to that tripe?
Already any child with any kind of sexual attraction to the same sex is told that this is an irresistible destiny, despite the large number of heterosexuals who move through this adolescent phase and never look back.
If you're attracted to members of the same sex, then by definition you are not heterosexual (or at least not exclusively so, depending on which definition you use). If you were "homosexual" and are now "heterosexual," then in truth you are probably bisexual and have simply repressed your homosexual desires. As if repressing something on the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs could ever be a good idea.
Already any child with androgynous appearance or mannerisms -- effeminite boys and masculine girls -- are being nurtured and guided (or taunted and abused) into "accepting" what many of them never suspected they had -- a desire to permanently move into homosexual society.
In other words, society will bend all its efforts to seize upon any hint of homosexuality in our young people and encourage it.
Umm, what? No boy or girl wants to move into "homosexual society," whatever that is. They want to be treated with respect like everyone else. Taunting and abuse is supposed to drive them closer to the thing that made them the target of that abuse in the first place? I think not. Instead they repress who they are and act like someone else in an attempt to fit in (why are teen suicide rates significantly higher for homo/bisexuals, again?).
Futhermore, how can anyone possibly say that society encourages homosexuality? In the US, half the population thinks that God created you solely for the purpose of being abused by them. Whether that be restriction of rights, social ostracism, psychological abuse through "conversion camps," physiological abuse through sterilization, or simply good ol' fashioned "beat the queer to death." Oh yes, homosexuals feel as if society is "bending all its efforts" to encourage them, let me tell you.
Now, there is a myth that homosexuals are "born that way," and we are pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody, somewhere, must have proved it.
No, no one has proved anything but then again you don't go around "proving" much of anything in science, let alone in a field as nondeterministic as human behavior. However, there is plenty of evidence for a strong genetic component to homosexuality such as, oh I don't know, just about every mammalian species studied in any depth.
In fact what evidence there is suggests that if there is a genetic component to homosexuality, an entire range of environmental influences are also involved. While there is no scientific research whatsoever that indicates that there is no such thing as a borderline child who could go either way.
Of course environment will affect the behavior and development of an animal. If it didn't, we wouldn't have priests claiming to be celebate and/or heterosexual while molesting little boys. And yeah, of course there are "borderline children who could go either way." I like sex with men just as much as I like it with women (actually, it's a bit more complicated than that but I'll spare you the details of my sexual desires). The "B" in "LGBT" isn't there for nothing. Of course I'm quite aware that to someone like OSC, a bisexual is not someone with homosexual desires, they're simply a confused heterosexual. He is so rabid in his hatred of homosexuality tha
Forgive my ignorance, but since you brought up Birthers (had to look that one up) and the Obama birth certificate thing: was a birth Certificate finally produced?
Ignorance is one thing, it can be fixed. Willful ignorance, is a much more serious problem. With an extremely simple search you could have saved yourself the trouble of writing a four paragraph post filled with vague references to shadowy figures that pull strings to get a black man elected.
I'm sure you're incredibly busy though and have many more posts to make so, please, allow me.
Without wishing to start a flame war, I've noticed that this blind allegiance to one's boss is very common in America. I have no idea why a people that so value their independence is so supine in the work place.
It's quite simple, really. Most people in America are desperately dependent on their employers. In general, we don't make enough money to save a meaningful amount of money so many people end up living "paycheck to paycheck." If you're fired and you don't have an immediate fallback job, or family and friends to bail you out, or are one of the few with enough savings to last you during a job search, then you could easily lose everything. Losing your job probably will also mean losing your health insurance. Technically, you can use COBRA to keep it but that will probably mean paying as much as 5 times more than you currently are (e.g. I currently pay a bit over $100/mo for my insurance. If I were to pay the full cost without my employer, it would cost nearly $600/mo). That also doesn't apply if your employer goes out of business or just decides to stop covering employees and cancels their policy. The kinds of things that can happen without health insurance are mostly obvious and have been covered ad nauseum so I'll skip it.
In short, most Americans can't afford to be fired so will do whatever it takes to please their boss (who, in most states in the US, can fire you for any reason).
I'm so glad someone said it. People need to stop worrying about healthcare when there's this huge threat from Iran, and people need to stop worrying about Iran when we have people dying without healthcare. Get some perspective people!
And how about those WoW artists and writers who should be working on bugs instead of making the next expansion pack just to make more $$$ for Blizzard. It's outrageous.
Al Gore also happens to be full of shit, and willing to use any piece of research - proven, disproven, or unconfirmed - to prove his point. Just look at his movie, it has been so punched full of holes it puts swiss cheese to shame. He also hasn't done a lick of studying on his own, he goes and picks out whatever research fits his agenda and flys that in his private jet around the world.
Perhaps. I honestly don't know enough about his specific topics which may or may not have been "punched full of holes," so I'll take your word for it and put it on my list of things to research.
He also tells people to cut their consumption, reduce their carbon footprint, yadda yadda yadda, but his own carbon footprint (not counting his private jets, mind you) is 20-30 times higher than the average American's. I'd be surprised if he even recycles. Throw in his private jet rides - which are COMPLETELY unneccesary, going commercial would drastically cut the pollution his jets cause - and he is in a league of pollution few people in the world can touch.
Again that might be true about his carbon footprint, but I can't say since I haven't analyzed his total consumption of resources. However, if we assume that it's true, it seems to me he'd need only convince 300 people to reduce their carbon footprints by a mere 10% to "balance" his. If we presuppose that his significantly higher carbon footprint is a requirement to bring his message to a wide audience, his actions could yield a net reduction in the average American carbon footprint.
He has an agenda, and he's using global warming as a tool.
Which is? It seems to me that his agenda is promoting environmental causes with a primary goal of reducing human impact on global warming. You claim to be enlightened on this issue, so what is his real agenda and how is global warming being used as a tool in the pursuit of that agenda?
But people like Al Gore piss me off, and trying to portray him as someone who has "been studying and involved with global research since the late 1960's" is bullshit. He had a college class once, that's about all the studying he has done on the subject,
Really? He spoke about environmental topics (particularly global warming) while a representative, a Senator, and on into his vice-presidency. He wrote a book about environmental conservation, was involved with the creation of the Kyoto, and produced a widely-praised documentary. He's even testified before Congress on the subject of global warming. All of this things require at least a cursory amount of research (in truth, quite a bit more), so I think it's ridiculous to say that he hasn't studied the subject at all.
The rest has been agenda pushing via politics
And? This seems like a truism to me. I assume you're referencing this ominous "agenda" for which his decades of championing the environmental causes is a mere facade. But... he's a politician... politics is sort of their thing.
and that is nothing like what scientists do when they study the climate.
No, of course not. He's not a scientist or a climate researcher, nor did I ever make such a claim. My purpose was never to make an argument claiming that Al Gore is some kind of a savior or has a knowledge of the subject to put him on par with climate researchers. It was simply to refute the idea that his ignorance of the subject is on par with that of Sarah Palin.
Like it or not, Al Gore has been involved with the environmental and global warming movements for decades and has received his information from the researchers doing the actual study of the climate. Has he twisted or selectively presented the facts at times? Undoubtedly, he is a politician, after all. He's still vastly more qualified to comment on global warming than Sarah Palin, who is not qualified to comment on any scientific subject as far as I can tell (which is not to disparage her other accomplishments--what little reading I have done on her suggests that she is a competent administrator).
Umm, seriously? Al Gore has been studying and involved with global warming research since the late 1960's. If you were to surprise Sarah Palin with this question: "what is the difference between climate and weather?" do you think she could give a satisfactory answer on the spot?
Al Gore may not be an authoritative source himself but he is one of the biggest figureheads in the fields of environmentalism and global warming research. Guess where he gets his information.
taboo (plural taboos)
1. An inhibition or ban that results from social custom or emotional aversion.
Taboo != "bad idea"
Example: In some families, it is taboo to discuss sex. Why? There is no logical reason for this, it is only because social custom dictates that one not talk about their sexuality openly and this often leads people to having a negative emotional response to even thinking about that.
In both of your examples, there are clear and well-known reasons not to engage in either eating raw pork or incest.
When viewed from the "taboo as social custom" standpoint, I'm inclined to agree with FatSean. If the only reason you have for supporting a position is "that's the way it's always been done," then it's probably not the right position. At the very least, you're going to be hard pressed to show "tradition" as hard, logical evidence.
First off, there is no law 1 and law 2. Its two sections of the same law [www.kum.dk].
Great, even better. It's not a complex, unintended interaction between two disparate laws with different intentions, it's just a poorly written law that (apparently) contradicts itself.
Second, the law is the Danish implementation of the EU Copyright Directive [wikipedia.org] which mandates that subscriber countries implement it exactly as its been implemented, i.e. circumvention is illegal EVEN THOUGH it makes some other rights unexercisable.
Yes, the EU Copyright Directive says basically the same thing as the Danish implementation with regards to personal copies:
Article 5 (2) Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the reproduction right provided for in Article 2 in the following cases: (b) in respect of reproductions on any medium made by a natural person for private use and for ends that are neither directly nor indirectly commercial, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation which takes account of the application or non-application of technological measures referred to in Article 6 to the work or subject-matter concerned;
No Danish judge is going to repeal that.
The EU is not the same as the US Federal government. No, a single Danish judge is not going to repeal an EU directive, but a ruling could shed light on a troubling issue possibly eventually leading to a change in the wording.
Interestingly, however, the EU Copyright Directive states this in the preamble (my emphasis added):
Whereas: (52) When implementing an exception or limitation for private copying in accordance with Article 5(2)(b), Member States should likewise promote the use of voluntary measures to accommodate achieving the objectives of such exception or limitation. If, within a reasonable period of time, no such voluntary measures to make reproduction for private use possible have been taken, Member States may take measures to enable beneficiaries of the exception or limitation concerned to benefit from it. Voluntary measures taken by rightholders, including agreements between rightholders and other parties concerned, as well as measures taken by Member States, do not prevent rightholders from using technological measures which are consistent with the exceptions or limitations on private copying in national law in accordance with Article 5(2)(b), taking account of the condition of fair compensation under that provision and the possible differentiation between various conditions of use in accordance with Article 5(5), such as controlling the number of reproductions. In order to prevent abuse of such measures, any technological measures applied in their implementation should enjoy legal protection.
Since the rightsholders have never shown any intention of voluntarily doing anything, the judge could in fact do something about it: provide a recourse via exemption to Danish citizens. More likely though, I suppose, is that the judge would give the rightsholders the opportunity to "voluntarily" provide enabling measures for the beneficiaries. Sounds like a win-win to me, if I'm being objective (I actually think DRM is one of the most obscene abuses of law I've seen in my--admittedly short--adult life).
Civil disobedience can be used to force a test of a law, or to call attention to an unjust law.
Yes, I believe that's exactly what I said.
The latter is what is happening here, but there are any number of asshats here on Slashdot that seem to be implying that because the laws seem to conflict, one of them is going to get struck down. I'm just saying thats not the case. The only thing this guy is doing is making
Do you actually have a point to make or are you just going to sit around repeating what we already know as if it added some value to the conversation?
Here's what we know:
Law 1 states that you can make a copy of a DVD.
The only way to do so is to decrypt the content
Law 2 states that you cannot decrypt the content of the DVD.
Since it is illegal to decrypt the contents of the DVD and that is the only way to make a copy, it is therefore impossible to legally create a copy of the DVD.
We quite understand that the legal system has not crashed as a result of this, and we understand that certain parties would like to be pricks and debate about whether there is even a conflict.
don't kid yourself that what this guy did wasn't illegal.
Which is the point of this whole article: No one is. The Slashdot article is entitled "Danish DRM Breaker Turns Himself In To Test Backup Law." He himself knows what he did is illegal and turned himself in to the authorities. This is also known as civil disobedience and its purpose is to test laws that are unjust or unclear.
Assuming this makes it to trial, the judge will give a ruling in which he will either uphold the laws as-is (providing clarity as in, "yes, the intention of law 2 was to covertly remove the right guaranteed by law 1") or will make an exception to allow the free exercise of the right provided for in law 1, removing the injustice.
The only thing this study is likely to be used for outside of the realm of research is a talking point for some conservative radio or television show.
Up next: We've talked about it before, about how these online games can lead to social probelms, and now a new study shows that people playing online games often form groups that resemble *violent gangs*. We'll talk with our experts to learn how this might be affecting your children. More after the break.
But after we all find out that one person viewing some copyrighted work is worth about $0.01, how are they ever going to claim in court that a single unauthorized copy of "their" work cost them over a $100,000?
Of course not. I'm not even sure why you would even suggest that unless your ignorant about how digital media works.
Really? You deliberately ignore Kethinov's meaning when he said "making a copy of your car, should I have the means" and you're surprised when someone shoves it back in your face?
my physical property rights allows me to prevent you from accessing my file regardless of how digital it is or how easy you think making a copy could be.
Quite right; of course if I never had access to the file in the first place, I couldn't have made a copy of it. If I had access to it, I'm not violating your property rights by looking at it since you have given me access. Furthermore, copying it does not violate your property rights since I have not altered your file in any way, nor have I deprived you of your property by taking it away from you. What I have done is violate your copyright, assuming you own the copyrights on that file. Please note that copyright does not equal property right.
I'm not sure why you're so fixated on "your" property and people violating that property. No one is talking about hacking into your computer or assaulting your home to make a copy of some silly file. We're just trying to get you to understand that physical property rights by definition cannot apply to something that is not physical: information. Maybe you get the warm fuzzies from knowing that your car is different from my car even though they are the exact same make and model because yours has a speck of dirt somewhere, but it doesn't apply to information. If you download a song you purchased from somewhere that has a bit pattern of 11011...11101 and I instead "pirate" it, it still has that same bit pattern of 11011...11101. I have not violated anyone's property rights simply because I'm now in possession of that bit pattern. At worst I've violated the copyrights of the artist of that song.
The car analogy just falls flat on it's face as well as your attempt to refute my refuting of it.
Of course. You're likely to see any argument or analogy as having fallen flat on its face if you just stick your fingers in your ears and yell "na na na, I'm not listening!"
So, in your mind, what happens when someone copies a song is the following: the encoded music file is run through a decoder, the output of which is analyzed by a tone processor to produce sheet music which is then provided to a band/orchestra with all parts filled and all members exhibiting the same level of skill as the original performer. This new replica music group performs the song and their output is recorded onto a new medium which is engineered and mastered before finally being transcoded down into a new portable media file format. All this happens as opposed to me just reading a stream of 1s and 0s and writing them down in a new location in the exact same order?
If you're going to make a car analogy, at least make one that exists in the same level of consciousness. A more appropriate comparison of copying "intellectual property" to copying a car would be obtaining a machine that could make an exact molecular duplicate of your vehicle (e.g. a Star Trek style replicator). Your car is scanned with no damage done to it, and the machine produces a perfect duplicate. This is exactly what happens on my computer. The original file is opened and the contents are copied into a new file somewhere else. The file has not been torn apart or damaged in any way, nor would anyone ever even know that the file had been copied without examining the filesystem journal.
I actually agree with you on this point: it's absolutely absurd that government continues to this day to meddle in an individual's private use of any substance (although, hasn't Obama said he's not going to enforce federal drug laws in states that say it's ok?). However, you ignored his point.
You suggested that if states didn't like the federal government arresting people for drug use, then the state senators could simply block any legislation the President wants to pass. His point was that this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you just block everything, you also prevent stuff that needs to go through which may also be stuff that the state considers more important than letting some people smoke some pot. It might be the right thing to do, but it's also a bit of a gamble. The President might call your bluff and then your senator looks like an ass for not supporting the people.
OK, I'll post without foul language (gosh I keep thinking Slashdot was an adult place--must have been all the goatse that threw me off).
Find a city where gay marriage is allowed and homosexuality has full legal protection.
Well that's the problem, now isn't it? Even when these things are made legal, they still exist in a lesser form to heterosexual marriage. It may be that way in the few states that have legalized gay marriage (like Vermont) but I do not live in those states nor have I conducted enough research to say with confidence that gay couples are equal to straight couples there.
There have been lawsuits against clergymen who won't marry gays, against churches that won't make space for such ceremonies,
I have not heard of such a thing happening but if it did, I'm sure the lawsuit fell flat on its face. If it didn't I'll come right out and say that while I support gay marriage, that by no means gives homosexuals or the government the right to dictate how a religion may view a practice or that it must perform a certain ritual on a certain set of people. That's just as wrong as saying gays don't deserve the same legal rights.
against church run orphanages that will not offer children to gay couples
I'm fairly certain that while the orphanage may be run by a religious institution, that organization is running it on the behalf of the government which entails certain rules and regulations that must be followed. If the government decides that children may be adopted by homosexual couples, it is discrimination for a government sponsored program to deny that right.
The debate in the west is about restricting the rights of other people to object.
No, it's not at all. What you're saying is that your right to object also includes your "right" to restrict the rights of others.
As I and others have said, no one really cares that you object or find it abominable that gays are having butt sex somewhere. Thank God we live in a country that your right to object is upheld. Perhaps soon we'll also live in a country where a person's right to declare their life partner is also upheld.
So like so many here, rather than debate you start with a bit of namecalling? Very nice.
I'm making the argument that you're a bigot in the hope that you see this and perhaps reconsider your views. Bigot
a person who is prejudiced in their views and intolerant of the opinions of others.
preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or experience
The term bigot seems an appropriate fit for the persona you have projected thus far. The only argument you had put forth was one not based on reason. Your argument was "they can't marry because they can't." If your only argument against something is that you don't like it, you're a bigot. I'm sorry if this offends you, that's just the definition. The reason I took your statement and substituted in race is that at this point it's well established that arguing against something based on race is bigotry. The argument is the same however: "you can't because you can't."
If the fact that you're a bigot bothers you, perhaps you should reflect on why you hold the beliefs you do. At least then you might have some evidence to support your oppressive beliefs.
FYI: Mantras are not a compelling state interest. Support the ideas of the mantra clearly, don't rely on it to be self describing.
Ask any average American and what's the one line they can recite or paraphrase from their own history? Probably this one from the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The fundamental principle, the one upon which we declared our right to separate from the Crown and form our own nation is that all men are created equal and have certain unalienable rights. I'd say it's a pretty compelling interest to hold onto that ideal, mantra or no.
To further tie this whole discussion into the racial debate and to show the similarities, what about the famous Loving v Virginia case which overturned all anti-miscegenation (that's anti-interracial-marriage to you and me) laws in the US ? In delivering the opinion of the court, Chief Justice Warren wrote:
The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.
Marriage is a "vital personal right," and one of the "basic civil rights of man." I don't see a * with a footnote reading "* except gay men." The highest court in our land ruled that discriminating against interracial marriage is unconstitutional not because "blacks are OK now" but because marriage is a fundamental right which must be provided equally to all. So why are we still having this debate? Seems to me like it was well resolved over 40 years ago.
And yet... that's not what is being advocated for by your own words... children are human beings and are largely unable to marry, married people are human beings and unable to marry (again, prior to termination of the previous one), human beings without sufficient vaccinations for certain diseases are generally unable to marry, most mentally infirm human beings are not able to marry, close blood adult relative human beings are not able to marry.
You left off pedophiles and goats. Seriously, why does gays marrying always have to lead to incest, pedophilia, and bestiality? The fact that we have different words for all these things should be the obvious clue that they are, in fact, quite different things, but I guess not.
Slashdot Mirror
Stick it in a hole in the ground in some remote location until we figure out what to do with it. The technology already exists to recycle a significant portion of produced nuclear waste, so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that we'll be able to do quite better even just a decade or so in the future. Nuclear may not be "clean" in the sense that it causes no pollution or has no environmental effects (no existing power source can boast this), but it does have the advantage of waste that is easy to sequester.
Not all Americans are afraid of "socialism," and we're always moving closer towards it even if some elements of society rage loudly against it. Even though most people actually want some form of socialism, they just don't know it as a result of poor education and a desire to believe it's still the Wild West. I would argue that it's abjectly stupid to put critical infrastructure into the hands of a for-profit institution, even more so when the infrastructure in question has particularly destructive failure modes which are almost inevitable in an environment of greed (i.e. I don't want to see my dams flood regions, areas contaminated/destroyed by gas/coal/nuclear plant explosions, etc. just so some executive can take an extra cruise vacation this year).
All the more reason that these things should be controlled by an agency concerned with public safety, not the bottom line so that they don't "blow up" in the first place (not that nuclear reactors do).
Chernobyl was more than that; they deliberately disabled safety features on a reactor design that was already inherently unsafe. So there is more to it than just luck. With modern reactor designs, you pretty much have to set out to cause a meltdown, and you'll be fighting safety features every step of the way.
Modern plants are built with containment structures with multiple layers of walls 2-3 meters thick of reinforced concrete. I have no doubt that if a plane crashes into one it will do significant damage that will force a plant shutdown (even just for safety reasons with the containment structure compromised--the reactor would probably not miss a beat). That's a far cry from the idea that a plane crashing into one is going to cause a nuclear explosion. More importantly, you were right to bring up 9/11. As a result of that incident, if a p
By arguing against scientific consensus, I thought you'd be smart enough to understand simple falsifiability. Actually, I'm not that harsh; the problem is a lack of education in the scientific process and logical thought, that is, you lack knowledge, not necessarily intelligence. However, if you clearly do not understand these things, what business have you arguing subjects in which you have no qualification?
In science, you make observations and then formulate a theory that explains those observations. Someone else could come in and prove that your theory is incorrect or incomplete by showing a counterexample. Let's break down what spun said:
He basically said "Seeing as how the scientific consensus is that [A], YOU are the one who needs to prove [NOT A]." Let's substitute in the conjecture "all swans are white" for A. We get "Seeing as how the scientific consensus is that all swans are white, YOU are the one who needs to prove that not all swans are white." Clearly, this is something you can prove by a simple demonstration of one black swan.
More reading: Falsifiability
Bullshit. If you think that "fully reified generics, lambdas and closures, arbitrary monadic comprehensions and Hindley-Milner type inference" has not added some impressive usability and expressiveness to the language, then it is you who is either the shitty programmer or one who does nothing more complex than some widgets that move data in and out of a database with a raw SQL call.
// foreach is stupid .Where() is much more concise and can be very quickly implemented and is immediately 100% clear to all those reading it. If you think maintainability is not of critical importance... I'll refer you to my previous comment about programmers and the complexity of programs they write. And that's the most trivial use of a lambda function.
It's not always about providing a language construct to solve a problem for untalented developers. Can you not see how something like "var minors = people.Where(p => p.Age < 18);" is much more expressive than the alternatives? By your logic, I would write something like that because I'm too stupid to write:
function getMinors(List<Person> people) {
List<Person> minors = new List<Person>();
for (int i = 0; i < people.Count; i++) {
if (people[i].Age < 18) minors.Add(people[i]);
}
return minors;
}
Or worse, just inline it. A quick anonymous function provided by the lambda in the
OK, true enough. However, the conclusion (it's only 3%, obviously that's not enough to do anything) is not only wrong, it has no scientific basis. Since when is it scientific to just say "oh that's a small number, can't be significant?" Seems to me a good starting point for "significant" would be "exceeds the ability of the ecosystem to absorb the increased emissions."
Feel free to dance around your Kool-Aid jug if it makes you feel better.
Argument to moderation (logical fallacy)
Corruption? Greed? The more "moderate" the Democrat, the more easily they will be swayed by other "moderate" views backed up by "moderate" contributions.
A "moderate" [party] member is pretty much by definition someone that mostly agrees with the party, but not on everything. And yet you're trying to claim that Democrats are 100% in unison in general (which is pretty ridiculous, given their history of being rather fractured) but this one issue is just so extreme that they can't even get Democrats to support it.
If you were someone with Republican interests, and had the opportunity to buy a Republican or a Democrat sitting on the fence, which would you buy? Buy the Republican and maybe you get party unity and can say "look, all of the Republicans oppose this, it must be bad." Buy the Democrat on the other hand, and now you can say "look, the Democrats can't even get their own party members to support it, it must be really bad." To uninformed and unthinking viewers of the debate, that sounds right to their gut, so now you've won more mindshare than you otherwise might have. In other words, you get more bang for your buck by buying out your opposition.
Apple doesn't do backwards compatibility? I'm pretty sure that they do provide backwards compatibility for a reasonable length of time and provide transition guides. Take the article on Preference Panes, for example (the developer docs are filled with this stuff):
In other words, you are strongly encouraged to upgrade to 64-bit code as 32-bit support will eventually be dropped. In the meantime though, there is still backwards compatibility with 32-bit code and you can even take advantage of the newer features in old code.
In light of that I'm assuming you mean "there's no assumption that the code you wrote back in the 90's for 16-bit operating systems will still work in 2009." I for one am glad OS X's APIs are not fetid with ancient cruft like can be found in the Win32 API.
Of course, all this has nothing to do with the current situation. Did you even read the forum post? Or even the summary?
If there are zero Mac developers working on VLC, just who is going to make the necessary tweaks and create the builds for new versions? That's all that's being talked about. Feature freeze. Bug-fix freeze. No releases. No developers. The current VLC 1.0.3 that I have running will continue running "until the end of time."
What you're saying just doesn't make sense on any level. It doesn't have anything to do with any operating system, even; it's a project-based observation. If no one is working on the project, it's "dead." If tomorrow all the Windows VLC devs switch to work on the Mac version, people would be talking about the Windows port "dying."
To be clear, I was referring to the distinction between homosexuality as an inclusive term and homosexuality as an exclusive term. That is, by one definition a bisexual is both homo- and hetero-sexual (describing someone as homosexual would not preclude them from having heterosexual desires as well, by this usage). The other definition, being exclusive, would mean a homosexual is someone with only same-sex attraction.
Furthermore, I'm not so sure; your own church defines homosexuality as more than just participation in homosexual sex:
Which is pretty much in line with how everyone uses the term.
What I think you're really referring to is the difference between orientation and preference. I visualize this as two sliding scales which can (but shouldn't, or at least not to any great degree) operate independently. Using myself as an example, as a bisexual my orientation marker would be somewhere near the middle while my preference marker could be said to be farther on the "gay side" given my current choice of partner.
You'll note that I did use the word "choice" there because I partially agree with you there, at least with respect to preference. I don't think you have much (if any) choice in your orientation; I certainly never asked to find men with rippling muscles attractive, I just do. Preference you have significantly more leeway because it is a result of your conscious thought, but I contend that the greater the distance between your two markers when overlapped, the greater your risk for psychological symptoms. Someone like myself might not experience too much of a hardship by choosing at completely heterosexual lifestyle as I would still have an outlet for my sexual desires. Someone at the far end of the scale on the homosexual side might have a significantly harder time since they would be suppressing the entirety of their sexual identity and not a mere portion.
So, there's where I agree with you. Where I disagree with you is that the manner in which you present the choice is a bit of a nonstarter. You seem receptive to the idea that homosexuality is a something you can at least be born with a predisposition to, but then go on to say that you can (and should) choose to not be that way. To me, that's just as ridiculous as me saying that you might have been born heterosexual but should choose not to engage in your desires (due to overpopulation or whatever fanciful reason I might come up with). If you wanted to prove to the world that sexual behavior is a choice, you could go out right now and find some man (sorry, I'm running under the assumption you are male) to be your lover and partner. Is that really a realistic choice for you though? Could you ever feel proud and fulfilled in your life by going against who you understand yourself to be?
I'm glad you recognize when someone spouts off unsubstantiated filth, but why do you then ignore it when you agree with what he's saying? How can you call him "level-headed" in response to that tripe?
If you're attracted to members of the same sex, then by definition you are not heterosexual (or at least not exclusively so, depending on which definition you use). If you were "homosexual" and are now "heterosexual," then in truth you are probably bisexual and have simply repressed your homosexual desires. As if repressing something on the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs could ever be a good idea.
Umm, what? No boy or girl wants to move into "homosexual society," whatever that is. They want to be treated with respect like everyone else. Taunting and abuse is supposed to drive them closer to the thing that made them the target of that abuse in the first place? I think not. Instead they repress who they are and act like someone else in an attempt to fit in (why are teen suicide rates significantly higher for homo/bisexuals, again?).
Futhermore, how can anyone possibly say that society encourages homosexuality? In the US, half the population thinks that God created you solely for the purpose of being abused by them. Whether that be restriction of rights, social ostracism, psychological abuse through "conversion camps," physiological abuse through sterilization, or simply good ol' fashioned "beat the queer to death." Oh yes, homosexuals feel as if society is "bending all its efforts" to encourage them, let me tell you.
No, no one has proved anything but then again you don't go around "proving" much of anything in science, let alone in a field as nondeterministic as human behavior. However, there is plenty of evidence for a strong genetic component to homosexuality such as, oh I don't know, just about every mammalian species studied in any depth.
Of course environment will affect the behavior and development of an animal. If it didn't, we wouldn't have priests claiming to be celebate and/or heterosexual while molesting little boys. And yeah, of course there are "borderline children who could go either way." I like sex with men just as much as I like it with women (actually, it's a bit more complicated than that but I'll spare you the details of my sexual desires). The "B" in "LGBT" isn't there for nothing. Of course I'm quite aware that to someone like OSC, a bisexual is not someone with homosexual desires, they're simply a confused heterosexual. He is so rabid in his hatred of homosexuality tha
Ignorance is one thing, it can be fixed. Willful ignorance, is a much more serious problem. With an extremely simple search you could have saved yourself the trouble of writing a four paragraph post filled with vague references to shadowy figures that pull strings to get a black man elected.
I'm sure you're incredibly busy though and have many more posts to make so, please, allow me.
It's quite simple, really. Most people in America are desperately dependent on their employers. In general, we don't make enough money to save a meaningful amount of money so many people end up living "paycheck to paycheck." If you're fired and you don't have an immediate fallback job, or family and friends to bail you out, or are one of the few with enough savings to last you during a job search, then you could easily lose everything. Losing your job probably will also mean losing your health insurance. Technically, you can use COBRA to keep it but that will probably mean paying as much as 5 times more than you currently are (e.g. I currently pay a bit over $100/mo for my insurance. If I were to pay the full cost without my employer, it would cost nearly $600/mo). That also doesn't apply if your employer goes out of business or just decides to stop covering employees and cancels their policy. The kinds of things that can happen without health insurance are mostly obvious and have been covered ad nauseum so I'll skip it.
In short, most Americans can't afford to be fired so will do whatever it takes to please their boss (who, in most states in the US, can fire you for any reason).
I'm so glad someone said it. People need to stop worrying about healthcare when there's this huge threat from Iran, and people need to stop worrying about Iran when we have people dying without healthcare. Get some perspective people!
And how about those WoW artists and writers who should be working on bugs instead of making the next expansion pack just to make more $$$ for Blizzard. It's outrageous.
Perhaps. I honestly don't know enough about his specific topics which may or may not have been "punched full of holes," so I'll take your word for it and put it on my list of things to research.
Again that might be true about his carbon footprint, but I can't say since I haven't analyzed his total consumption of resources. However, if we assume that it's true, it seems to me he'd need only convince 300 people to reduce their carbon footprints by a mere 10% to "balance" his. If we presuppose that his significantly higher carbon footprint is a requirement to bring his message to a wide audience, his actions could yield a net reduction in the average American carbon footprint.
Which is? It seems to me that his agenda is promoting environmental causes with a primary goal of reducing human impact on global warming. You claim to be enlightened on this issue, so what is his real agenda and how is global warming being used as a tool in the pursuit of that agenda?
Really? He spoke about environmental topics (particularly global warming) while a representative, a Senator, and on into his vice-presidency. He wrote a book about environmental conservation, was involved with the creation of the Kyoto, and produced a widely-praised documentary. He's even testified before Congress on the subject of global warming. All of this things require at least a cursory amount of research (in truth, quite a bit more), so I think it's ridiculous to say that he hasn't studied the subject at all.
And? This seems like a truism to me. I assume you're referencing this ominous "agenda" for which his decades of championing the environmental causes is a mere facade. But... he's a politician... politics is sort of their thing.
No, of course not. He's not a scientist or a climate researcher, nor did I ever make such a claim. My purpose was never to make an argument claiming that Al Gore is some kind of a savior or has a knowledge of the subject to put him on par with climate researchers. It was simply to refute the idea that his ignorance of the subject is on par with that of Sarah Palin.
Like it or not, Al Gore has been involved with the environmental and global warming movements for decades and has received his information from the researchers doing the actual study of the climate. Has he twisted or selectively presented the facts at times? Undoubtedly, he is a politician, after all. He's still vastly more qualified to comment on global warming than Sarah Palin, who is not qualified to comment on any scientific subject as far as I can tell (which is not to disparage her other accomplishments--what little reading I have done on her suggests that she is a competent administrator).
Umm, seriously? Al Gore has been studying and involved with global warming research since the late 1960's. If you were to surprise Sarah Palin with this question: "what is the difference between climate and weather?" do you think she could give a satisfactory answer on the spot?
Al Gore may not be an authoritative source himself but he is one of the biggest figureheads in the fields of environmentalism and global warming research. Guess where he gets his information.
Taboo != "bad idea"
Example: In some families, it is taboo to discuss sex. Why? There is no logical reason for this, it is only because social custom dictates that one not talk about their sexuality openly and this often leads people to having a negative emotional response to even thinking about that.
In both of your examples, there are clear and well-known reasons not to engage in either eating raw pork or incest.
When viewed from the "taboo as social custom" standpoint, I'm inclined to agree with FatSean. If the only reason you have for supporting a position is "that's the way it's always been done," then it's probably not the right position. At the very least, you're going to be hard pressed to show "tradition" as hard, logical evidence.
Great, even better. It's not a complex, unintended interaction between two disparate laws with different intentions, it's just a poorly written law that (apparently) contradicts itself.
Yes, the EU Copyright Directive says basically the same thing as the Danish implementation with regards to personal copies:
The EU is not the same as the US Federal government. No, a single Danish judge is not going to repeal an EU directive, but a ruling could shed light on a troubling issue possibly eventually leading to a change in the wording.
Interestingly, however, the EU Copyright Directive states this in the preamble (my emphasis added):
Since the rightsholders have never shown any intention of voluntarily doing anything, the judge could in fact do something about it: provide a recourse via exemption to Danish citizens. More likely though, I suppose, is that the judge would give the rightsholders the opportunity to "voluntarily" provide enabling measures for the beneficiaries. Sounds like a win-win to me, if I'm being objective (I actually think DRM is one of the most obscene abuses of law I've seen in my--admittedly short--adult life).
Yes, I believe that's exactly what I said.
Here's what we know:
We quite understand that the legal system has not crashed as a result of this, and we understand that certain parties would like to be pricks and debate about whether there is even a conflict.
Which is the point of this whole article: No one is. The Slashdot article is entitled "Danish DRM Breaker Turns Himself In To Test Backup Law." He himself knows what he did is illegal and turned himself in to the authorities. This is also known as civil disobedience and its purpose is to test laws that are unjust or unclear.
Assuming this makes it to trial, the judge will give a ruling in which he will either uphold the laws as-is (providing clarity as in, "yes, the intention of law 2 was to covertly remove the right guaranteed by law 1") or will make an exception to allow the free exercise of the right provided for in law 1, removing the injustice.
Yeah, I'm really getting sick of little old ladies wasting police time just because they got mugged.
Granny should hit the gym and fight back or just shut her fucking mouth.
But after we all find out that one person viewing some copyrighted work is worth about $0.01, how are they ever going to claim in court that a single unauthorized copy of "their" work cost them over a $100,000?
Warm, fresh baguettes are one of life's greatest pleasures; why would you have a cold, dry one? :( Ça, c'est la vrai calamité !
Really? You deliberately ignore Kethinov's meaning when he said "making a copy of your car, should I have the means" and you're surprised when someone shoves it back in your face?
Quite right; of course if I never had access to the file in the first place, I couldn't have made a copy of it. If I had access to it, I'm not violating your property rights by looking at it since you have given me access. Furthermore, copying it does not violate your property rights since I have not altered your file in any way, nor have I deprived you of your property by taking it away from you. What I have done is violate your copyright, assuming you own the copyrights on that file. Please note that copyright does not equal property right.
I'm not sure why you're so fixated on "your" property and people violating that property. No one is talking about hacking into your computer or assaulting your home to make a copy of some silly file. We're just trying to get you to understand that physical property rights by definition cannot apply to something that is not physical: information. Maybe you get the warm fuzzies from knowing that your car is different from my car even though they are the exact same make and model because yours has a speck of dirt somewhere, but it doesn't apply to information. If you download a song you purchased from somewhere that has a bit pattern of 11011...11101 and I instead "pirate" it, it still has that same bit pattern of 11011...11101. I have not violated anyone's property rights simply because I'm now in possession of that bit pattern. At worst I've violated the copyrights of the artist of that song.
Of course. You're likely to see any argument or analogy as having fallen flat on its face if you just stick your fingers in your ears and yell "na na na, I'm not listening!"
So, in your mind, what happens when someone copies a song is the following: the encoded music file is run through a decoder, the output of which is analyzed by a tone processor to produce sheet music which is then provided to a band/orchestra with all parts filled and all members exhibiting the same level of skill as the original performer. This new replica music group performs the song and their output is recorded onto a new medium which is engineered and mastered before finally being transcoded down into a new portable media file format. All this happens as opposed to me just reading a stream of 1s and 0s and writing them down in a new location in the exact same order?
If you're going to make a car analogy, at least make one that exists in the same level of consciousness. A more appropriate comparison of copying "intellectual property" to copying a car would be obtaining a machine that could make an exact molecular duplicate of your vehicle (e.g. a Star Trek style replicator). Your car is scanned with no damage done to it, and the machine produces a perfect duplicate. This is exactly what happens on my computer. The original file is opened and the contents are copied into a new file somewhere else. The file has not been torn apart or damaged in any way, nor would anyone ever even know that the file had been copied without examining the filesystem journal.
I actually agree with you on this point: it's absolutely absurd that government continues to this day to meddle in an individual's private use of any substance (although, hasn't Obama said he's not going to enforce federal drug laws in states that say it's ok?). However, you ignored his point.
You suggested that if states didn't like the federal government arresting people for drug use, then the state senators could simply block any legislation the President wants to pass. His point was that this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you just block everything, you also prevent stuff that needs to go through which may also be stuff that the state considers more important than letting some people smoke some pot. It might be the right thing to do, but it's also a bit of a gamble. The President might call your bluff and then your senator looks like an ass for not supporting the people.
Well that's the problem, now isn't it? Even when these things are made legal, they still exist in a lesser form to heterosexual marriage. It may be that way in the few states that have legalized gay marriage (like Vermont) but I do not live in those states nor have I conducted enough research to say with confidence that gay couples are equal to straight couples there.
I have not heard of such a thing happening but if it did, I'm sure the lawsuit fell flat on its face. If it didn't I'll come right out and say that while I support gay marriage, that by no means gives homosexuals or the government the right to dictate how a religion may view a practice or that it must perform a certain ritual on a certain set of people. That's just as wrong as saying gays don't deserve the same legal rights.
I'm fairly certain that while the orphanage may be run by a religious institution, that organization is running it on the behalf of the government which entails certain rules and regulations that must be followed. If the government decides that children may be adopted by homosexual couples, it is discrimination for a government sponsored program to deny that right.
No, it's not at all. What you're saying is that your right to object also includes your "right" to restrict the rights of others.
As I and others have said, no one really cares that you object or find it abominable that gays are having butt sex somewhere. Thank God we live in a country that your right to object is upheld. Perhaps soon we'll also live in a country where a person's right to declare their life partner is also upheld.
I'm making the argument that you're a bigot in the hope that you see this and perhaps reconsider your views.
Bigot
The term bigot seems an appropriate fit for the persona you have projected thus far. The only argument you had put forth was one not based on reason. Your argument was "they can't marry because they can't." If your only argument against something is that you don't like it, you're a bigot. I'm sorry if this offends you, that's just the definition. The reason I took your statement and substituted in race is that at this point it's well established that arguing against something based on race is bigotry. The argument is the same however: "you can't because you can't."
If the fact that you're a bigot bothers you, perhaps you should reflect on why you hold the beliefs you do. At least then you might have some evidence to support your oppressive beliefs.
Ask any average American and what's the one line they can recite or paraphrase from their own history? Probably this one from the Declaration of Independence:
The fundamental principle, the one upon which we declared our right to separate from the Crown and form our own nation is that all men are created equal and have certain unalienable rights. I'd say it's a pretty compelling interest to hold onto that ideal, mantra or no.
To further tie this whole discussion into the racial debate and to show the similarities, what about the famous Loving v Virginia case which overturned all anti-miscegenation (that's anti-interracial-marriage to you and me) laws in the US ? In delivering the opinion of the court, Chief Justice Warren wrote:
Marriage is a "vital personal right," and one of the "basic civil rights of man." I don't see a * with a footnote reading "* except gay men." The highest court in our land ruled that discriminating against interracial marriage is unconstitutional not because "blacks are OK now" but because marriage is a fundamental right which must be provided equally to all. So why are we still having this debate? Seems to me like it was well resolved over 40 years ago.
You left off pedophiles and goats. Seriously, why does gays marrying always have to lead to incest, pedophilia, and bestiality? The fact that we have different words for all these things should be the obvious clue that they are, in fact, quite different things, but I guess not.