It's not to get a rise out of htem, it's to demonstrate to a small minority of radicals that their extreme religious beliefs do not trump the free speech of others, and that the attempts of extremists to kill and censor such speech will not be tolerated by the world community.
Maybe it's both. Getting the rise out of them also helps to marginalize them (at least for most reasonable people). It might have the counter effect of generating support with already sympathetic groups, but it's really hard to justify killing someone because they draw a picture and call it your prophet.
Of course, you may be entirely right and I'm giving way too much credit to those participating...
I respect the Muslim religion, just as I respect Christianity, Buddhism*, etc.
I don't. Adults having imaginary friends sounds more like a serious mental condition that needs professional treatment, not respect.
I'm Buddhist and have no imaginary friends. Maybe there's some sects that do, but I don't. Things are what they are, nothing more, nothing less. I find Occam's Razor to be quite close to my Buddhist philosophy.
Like some have stated here, there are many schools of Buddhism and their beliefs vary, but in general Buddha is not seen as a deity. It may refer to the historic Gautama Buddha, the concept of Buddha nature or a human that has attained supreme enlightenment. None of these are deities. Other beings in Buddhism, such as the Devas, are closer to what is referred to as deity in other religions, but not quite.
Yeah... I always get a kick out of my hardcore Christian (someone can have fun with that phrase... maybe there's a Jimmy Swaggart joke there) friends when they call me a "Buddha-worshiper." They don't seem to be able to grasp that if they chuck their superstitious dogma, they've got almost the same thing in their book.
Other than the judicial appointments, and not even those entirely, most of the other stuff came out of Congress. The president just signs or vetoes.
The president is an easy target because most everyone knows who holds the office. Congress has the real power and most people couldn't tell you who their representative is.
I'm not saying Bush/Obama didn't/doesn't suck or whatever. I'm just saying, the system insulates us fairly well from their sucking if we don't have an equally or greater sucking Congress.
My greatest problem with copyright abuse by the RIAA/MPAA is simply how they nickel and dime you. Every decade or so a new format comes out and they roll around in new income without even doing anything (well, remastering is very little). That bothers me. It seems like the opposite of a capitalistic system where you're supposed to be rewarded for producing something--in this case entertainment content.
No. Capitalism is all about being rewarded without producing something. It's about being paid based on what you own. This is perfectly in line with that.
The real system that you're thinking of is the free market. A free market doesn't have copyrights, patents or any other mechanisms to create scarcity where it doesn't exist.
I disagree, the large companies tend to back whomever is favored to win when they don't have a "preferred" (someone they have a relationship with) candidate. That should tell you something about the similarities of the politics between both major parties, as perceived by companies who can/do spend tens of millions analyzing politicians.
Exactly... It's not the party they're supporting. It's the system that pretends to "regulate," but really is just about making sure the politicians get a big enough cut to let big business keep rolling and prevent the smaller guys from having any chance of entering the market.
The party stuff is just there to keep us distracted enough to not notice that they're all for sale to the highest bidder. BP may get slapped around in public for a little while, but when the heat is off later, they'll all be nice, cozy buddies once again.
This is why medical research should be publicly funded and public property.
I sure as hell don't want to rely on the government to figure out how to fix a problem. Is there anything they've out-innovated the private sector at? I suppose you could argue space technology, but most of that is because of the laws that prevented a lot of the private work from being done.
How about we just do away with the patents and make the process to get new drugs to market faster and more efficient? It seems to me the answer is less government involvement, especially if your goal is innovation.
Skepticism is always warranted with an industry as large, corrupt, but ultimately essential as the pharmaceutical industry.
Reminds me of government... the same government that just created health care laws that severely prevent cheaper drugs from being imported to compete with the big pharmaceutical industry...
Size is our enemy... whether it's companies or governments, the bigger they are, the more they can and will screw us...
So, how come Laissez-Faire, don't-tell-corporations-how-to-run-themselves, deregulation didn't stop this from happening? It doesn't make any sense! I mean BP is an oil company. Can you guys help me blame this on Big Government?
Deregulated != unregulated. And why didn't the regulation of coal mines keep those miners from losing their lives despite the number of failed inspections leading up to it? Regulation doesn't work either.
Regulation just means some of the profits have to be funneled to politicians. It doesn't mean people will never do bad things. It just means that when they do, politicians will say it's not regulated enough... which is politician speak for, "we want a bigger share of the profits."
As for how to blame this on big government, without the protectionist policies of "regulation" most of these big corporations would crumble under the pressure of smaller, more efficient competition. When congress is handing out new regulations, the lobbyists are there to make sure enough of them create substantial barriers to competition making it impossible for anyone that's not already a big player in the game to get in.
I never understand how people are distrustful of multitudes of multi-billion dollar companies fighting each other for money, but perfectly comfortable with a multi-trillion dollar government that has a perfect monopoly and can kill you if it deems that necessary. Both are made up of people. You give people enough power, there going to do corrupt things in their own interest. Surely you're not suggesting government is without faults? Or does that depend on who's residing at 1600 Penn Ave? If so, that's an even better reason to not trust them.
We're nowhere near laissez-faire. We never have been. If we were, government wouldn't even recognize corporations as entities. That's the kind of liberal I am. I don't want my government to recognize anything but individuals. And, if any individual didn't practice due diligence and caused this spill, they should be locked up for life for theft of the diminished value of everything impacted.
Regardless... you can't act like there is no government regulation here. And, you can't pretend that government regulation does anything but give the guys with the lawyers a new back door way to screw us while the honest little guys are shutout of the game because of it.
Microsoft does have a monopoly, an illegal monopoly that was acquired via a number of seriously dirty moves, deliberately violating the law in order to remove consumer choice.
As someone that hasn't had a Windows machine in my home for over 7 years, despite having more than adequate computing resources, I find that statement questionable in accuracy. I'm far from a MS fan and do my best to demean their products at every opportunity. However, they have not put me in a position in which I have no alternative, but to use those products.
Just because the people that don't get tech simply stick with what their machine comes with doesn't mean they don't have the choice. They just don't understand that they do or why they should choose something else.
Do you understand what the term monopoly means, and that having a monopoly in a particular area is not, in and of itself, against the law? It's the manner in which you achieve your monopoly status, and what you do with it once you have it that counts. I don't see Google suing competitors out of existence, although they've certainly snapped up a number of startups, generally for technologies that they need for their own products. Sure... they're damn serious competition to anyone wanting to enter the search and online advertising business, but it's because millions upon millions of people have decided that Google does what they want. It's not because of backroom deals with hardware manufacturers to only ship Google's products. That's Microsoft's way.
If, as a company, you are not trying to make the environment difficult for your competitors to take/keep market share, you're not doing your job properly. The real problem here is that we have a system that allows the crooked deals and lawyers to factor into determining who wins and loses. There are NO REAL monopolies without government making it so.
Putting data into peoples hands whoa aren't experts often leads to bad things.
Especially when you have the data and get to use it to define what "experts" means...
Without the data being public, is everyone agreeing with the conclusions? Do you think hiding it makes the conclusions more credible?
Idiots will be idiots with or without information (i.e. Intelligent Design). If you hide it, people that actually know what the data means, but have no access, have reason to doubt. If you publish it and it's correct, your support base becomes stronger and your opposition loses anyone that can credibly make a claim to understanding the research.
Hiding because, "people can't understand and will think the wrong thing," just makes your position seem quite suspicious. With such a contentious subject, it does even moreso.
I don't think that's what he was saying. He's saying this will lend itself to overly simplistic interpretations.
That happens everyday on both sides of the issue with or without the data. The whole problem with the subject is that it's become a political topic and so now everyone is an expert.
Of course, that fact won't stop the flaming. And regardless of which side you're on, the politicians that agree with you will ensure that not enough will be done in either direction to deal with or not waste resources on the problem/non-problem.
They'll carve out plenty of power for themselves under the guise of "fixing" something anyway, though.
Can you see why the FDA has some reservations about opening the flood gates on medicines and procedures like that? People will bankrupt themselves trying to stay alive or to keep loved ones alive when someone claims there is a chance. What the FDA generally does is determine if that chance is there and if they would be better off with it. Sure, some experimental treatments and medications should have a fast track, but there should still be some safe checks that stop people like me from making a fortune because you lived two weeks longer over a process that is no more effective then not stepping on a crack to avoid breaking you mothers back.
No. I can't. It's not the FDA's job to consider the financial side of things. They're responsible for determining if it's safe enough to move into human trials. And, as far as I know, these sorts of experimental treatments are conducted free of charge (at least it was for my dad's cancer treatment).
The fact is, the FDA costs people's lives by having such a cumbersome, slow, bureaucratic process. And, that process contributes a lot to the cost of developing drugs, which is the whole argument big pharma uses for charging so much for their products. I'm not saying streamlining the process will help with the costs (especially since our new health care laws make it even more difficult to import lower cost drugs thanks to the big pharma lobbyists), but at least people will have the option of giving up their house and still having the need of one rather than still having a house that they get to leave to their estate.
There is no shortage of citizens that are capable of doing the job - they just have the problem of being a US citizen.
Cancel the program and make it impossible to ignore the citizen until there is a real problem (long-term & short-term unemployment under 2%). Make it so that permatemping/temporary work does not count towards that 2%. Then reinstate with a sufficient amount of people(whom are paid a wage that discourages bribery) to enforce that law.
When you hear "shortage" used to describe the amount of citizens in a needed part of the private sector(whether it is IT or most non-temporary forms of employment in the US), the source is lying through their teeth.
I've seen that argument a lot in this thread. "There are so many qualified Americans available for the jobs." I must be missing something that everyone else is aware of.
Everyone that I know that is worth employing, has had a job and no problems finding a new one in the past several years despite the economy. And, I'm fully aware of many that would be better suited to food service than IT that have had jobs the whole time. Maybe it's different elsewhere in the US, but as far as I can tell, there is a significant shortage of people capable of doing the job.
Just because someone has had a job for however many years doing some sort of development, it doesn't mean they're worth a damn at doing their job. American IT people are the worst at feeling entitled to special treatment despite consistent failures and sub-par work. I'm not saying the H-1B's are any better, but if I'm paying for garbage, I want to spend the least for it.
American's better learn that it's a global competition now, whether they like it or not. If you want top-dollar salaries, you better be prepared to put in top-dollar effort at being the best at your craft. You better keep learning. You better keep growing the value you add.
I'm sorry if people are unemployed. I was there myself a dozen or so years ago. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. I learned that if you want to stay employed, you better bring value like no one else. And, I've done my best to do that ever since, which has resulted in no involuntary unemployed time since.
It may sound callous, but you have to put up or shut up. It's a global economy now. Quit whining about international competition. It's only going to grow.
True, they just oppose a government powerful enough to do something to participate in it.
There, fixed that for you...
Libertarians don't believe in NO government... We simply believe that the purpose of government is to protect people's rights to life, liberty and property. Fraud is a violation of those rights.
Keep in mind, monopolies (the real kind, not the x company controls 60+% of y market that people like to whine about even though real alternatives exist) don't exist, but for government intervention. Without ridiculous government immigration policy, you don't have the sorts of things going on that the article describes.
Libertarians are completely against H-1B's. We're for opening the borders to any that wish to come and end these insane policies that perpetuate all of the abuses of human rights.
Human beings could exterminate all life on this planet if we wanted to.
I think you're underestimating just how resilient life is. Could we make it unlivable for us and many other creatures? Certainly. However, I seriously doubt we have the capacity to destroy ALL life on this planet.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't poke a bear with a stick - it never ends well.
Depends on who is doing the poking.
It also depends on what kind of bear and how long said stick is...
Koala bear with a 10 foot pole... You're probably ok... Unless it's his pole...
It's not to get a rise out of htem, it's to demonstrate to a small minority of radicals that their extreme religious beliefs do not trump the free speech of others, and that the attempts of extremists to kill and censor such speech will not be tolerated by the world community.
Maybe it's both. Getting the rise out of them also helps to marginalize them (at least for most reasonable people). It might have the counter effect of generating support with already sympathetic groups, but it's really hard to justify killing someone because they draw a picture and call it your prophet.
Of course, you may be entirely right and I'm giving way too much credit to those participating...
I respect the Muslim religion, just as I respect Christianity, Buddhism*, etc.
I don't. Adults having imaginary friends sounds more like a serious mental condition that needs professional treatment, not respect.
I'm Buddhist and have no imaginary friends. Maybe there's some sects that do, but I don't. Things are what they are, nothing more, nothing less. I find Occam's Razor to be quite close to my Buddhist philosophy.
Like some have stated here, there are many schools of Buddhism and their beliefs vary, but in general Buddha is not seen as a deity. It may refer to the historic Gautama Buddha, the concept of Buddha nature or a human that has attained supreme enlightenment. None of these are deities. Other beings in Buddhism, such as the Devas, are closer to what is referred to as deity in other religions, but not quite.
Yeah... I always get a kick out of my hardcore Christian (someone can have fun with that phrase... maybe there's a Jimmy Swaggart joke there) friends when they call me a "Buddha-worshiper." They don't seem to be able to grasp that if they chuck their superstitious dogma, they've got almost the same thing in their book.
Other than the judicial appointments, and not even those entirely, most of the other stuff came out of Congress. The president just signs or vetoes.
The president is an easy target because most everyone knows who holds the office. Congress has the real power and most people couldn't tell you who their representative is.
I'm not saying Bush/Obama didn't/doesn't suck or whatever. I'm just saying, the system insulates us fairly well from their sucking if we don't have an equally or greater sucking Congress.
Making it illegal to detect and record open-air RF is like making it illegal to see things.
Being that visible light is part of the EM spectrum, that's exactly what it's like...
Wow... just change some of the nouns and you could sound like Sarah Palin.
Extreme positions require extreme opponents to balance them out. If you can't find them, invent them.
That's the art of politics...
Has your life really been impacted by all this nonsense or do you "know" someone that has been?
My greatest problem with copyright abuse by the RIAA/MPAA is simply how they nickel and dime you. Every decade or so a new format comes out and they roll around in new income without even doing anything (well, remastering is very little). That bothers me. It seems like the opposite of a capitalistic system where you're supposed to be rewarded for producing something--in this case entertainment content.
No. Capitalism is all about being rewarded without producing something. It's about being paid based on what you own. This is perfectly in line with that.
The real system that you're thinking of is the free market. A free market doesn't have copyrights, patents or any other mechanisms to create scarcity where it doesn't exist.
I disagree, the large companies tend to back whomever is favored to win when they don't have a "preferred" (someone they have a relationship with) candidate. That should tell you something about the similarities of the politics between both major parties, as perceived by companies who can/do spend tens of millions analyzing politicians.
Exactly... It's not the party they're supporting. It's the system that pretends to "regulate," but really is just about making sure the politicians get a big enough cut to let big business keep rolling and prevent the smaller guys from having any chance of entering the market.
The party stuff is just there to keep us distracted enough to not notice that they're all for sale to the highest bidder. BP may get slapped around in public for a little while, but when the heat is off later, they'll all be nice, cozy buddies once again.
Hopefully, as a result of this disaster, the US will severely limit the ability of foreign companies to lobby in the US...
Placing limitations on lobbying kinda defeats the politicians' motivation for "regulation"...
This is why medical research should be publicly funded and public property.
I sure as hell don't want to rely on the government to figure out how to fix a problem. Is there anything they've out-innovated the private sector at? I suppose you could argue space technology, but most of that is because of the laws that prevented a lot of the private work from being done.
How about we just do away with the patents and make the process to get new drugs to market faster and more efficient? It seems to me the answer is less government involvement, especially if your goal is innovation.
Skepticism is always warranted with an industry as large, corrupt, but ultimately essential as the pharmaceutical industry.
Reminds me of government... the same government that just created health care laws that severely prevent cheaper drugs from being imported to compete with the big pharmaceutical industry...
Size is our enemy... whether it's companies or governments, the bigger they are, the more they can and will screw us...
So, how come Laissez-Faire, don't-tell-corporations-how-to-run-themselves, deregulation didn't stop this from happening? It doesn't make any sense! I mean BP is an oil company. Can you guys help me blame this on Big Government?
Deregulated != unregulated. And why didn't the regulation of coal mines keep those miners from losing their lives despite the number of failed inspections leading up to it? Regulation doesn't work either.
Regulation just means some of the profits have to be funneled to politicians. It doesn't mean people will never do bad things. It just means that when they do, politicians will say it's not regulated enough... which is politician speak for, "we want a bigger share of the profits."
As for how to blame this on big government, without the protectionist policies of "regulation" most of these big corporations would crumble under the pressure of smaller, more efficient competition. When congress is handing out new regulations, the lobbyists are there to make sure enough of them create substantial barriers to competition making it impossible for anyone that's not already a big player in the game to get in.
I never understand how people are distrustful of multitudes of multi-billion dollar companies fighting each other for money, but perfectly comfortable with a multi-trillion dollar government that has a perfect monopoly and can kill you if it deems that necessary. Both are made up of people. You give people enough power, there going to do corrupt things in their own interest. Surely you're not suggesting government is without faults? Or does that depend on who's residing at 1600 Penn Ave? If so, that's an even better reason to not trust them.
We're nowhere near laissez-faire. We never have been. If we were, government wouldn't even recognize corporations as entities. That's the kind of liberal I am. I don't want my government to recognize anything but individuals. And, if any individual didn't practice due diligence and caused this spill, they should be locked up for life for theft of the diminished value of everything impacted.
Regardless... you can't act like there is no government regulation here. And, you can't pretend that government regulation does anything but give the guys with the lawyers a new back door way to screw us while the honest little guys are shutout of the game because of it.
Too big to fail is not good for the economy, even if they got that way by being saints.
Neither's a government $14+ trillion in debt... even if they got that way by trying to be saints...
Sigh, it's not anti-capitalist to insist upon having unmanageably sized corporations broken up.
If only we could apply that standard to government...
Microsoft does have a monopoly, an illegal monopoly that was acquired via a number of seriously dirty moves, deliberately violating the law in order to remove consumer choice.
As someone that hasn't had a Windows machine in my home for over 7 years, despite having more than adequate computing resources, I find that statement questionable in accuracy. I'm far from a MS fan and do my best to demean their products at every opportunity. However, they have not put me in a position in which I have no alternative, but to use those products.
Just because the people that don't get tech simply stick with what their machine comes with doesn't mean they don't have the choice. They just don't understand that they do or why they should choose something else.
Do you understand what the term monopoly means, and that having a monopoly in a particular area is not, in and of itself, against the law? It's the manner in which you achieve your monopoly status, and what you do with it once you have it that counts. I don't see Google suing competitors out of existence, although they've certainly snapped up a number of startups, generally for technologies that they need for their own products. Sure ... they're damn serious competition to anyone wanting to enter the search and online advertising business, but it's because millions upon millions of people have decided that Google does what they want. It's not because of backroom deals with hardware manufacturers to only ship Google's products. That's Microsoft's way.
If, as a company, you are not trying to make the environment difficult for your competitors to take/keep market share, you're not doing your job properly. The real problem here is that we have a system that allows the crooked deals and lawyers to factor into determining who wins and loses. There are NO REAL monopolies without government making it so.
I hate MS, but they're far from a monopoly.
Putting data into peoples hands whoa aren't experts often leads to bad things.
Especially when you have the data and get to use it to define what "experts" means...
Without the data being public, is everyone agreeing with the conclusions? Do you think hiding it makes the conclusions more credible?
Idiots will be idiots with or without information (i.e. Intelligent Design). If you hide it, people that actually know what the data means, but have no access, have reason to doubt. If you publish it and it's correct, your support base becomes stronger and your opposition loses anyone that can credibly make a claim to understanding the research.
Hiding because, "people can't understand and will think the wrong thing," just makes your position seem quite suspicious. With such a contentious subject, it does even moreso.
I don't think that's what he was saying. He's saying this will lend itself to overly simplistic interpretations.
That happens everyday on both sides of the issue with or without the data. The whole problem with the subject is that it's become a political topic and so now everyone is an expert.
Of course, that fact won't stop the flaming. And regardless of which side you're on, the politicians that agree with you will ensure that not enough will be done in either direction to deal with or not waste resources on the problem/non-problem.
They'll carve out plenty of power for themselves under the guise of "fixing" something anyway, though.
I have to disagree. I'm far from a Microsoft fan, but they've never prevented me from running software on their products...
Nope... Not you, me or the malware producers...
Can you see why the FDA has some reservations about opening the flood gates on medicines and procedures like that? People will bankrupt themselves trying to stay alive or to keep loved ones alive when someone claims there is a chance. What the FDA generally does is determine if that chance is there and if they would be better off with it. Sure, some experimental treatments and medications should have a fast track, but there should still be some safe checks that stop people like me from making a fortune because you lived two weeks longer over a process that is no more effective then not stepping on a crack to avoid breaking you mothers back.
No. I can't. It's not the FDA's job to consider the financial side of things. They're responsible for determining if it's safe enough to move into human trials. And, as far as I know, these sorts of experimental treatments are conducted free of charge (at least it was for my dad's cancer treatment).
The fact is, the FDA costs people's lives by having such a cumbersome, slow, bureaucratic process. And, that process contributes a lot to the cost of developing drugs, which is the whole argument big pharma uses for charging so much for their products. I'm not saying streamlining the process will help with the costs (especially since our new health care laws make it even more difficult to import lower cost drugs thanks to the big pharma lobbyists), but at least people will have the option of giving up their house and still having the need of one rather than still having a house that they get to leave to their estate.
There is no shortage of citizens that are capable of doing the job - they just have the problem of being a US citizen.
Cancel the program and make it impossible to ignore the citizen until there is a real problem (long-term & short-term unemployment under 2%). Make it so that permatemping/temporary work does not count towards that 2%. Then reinstate with a sufficient amount of people(whom are paid a wage that discourages bribery) to enforce that law.
When you hear "shortage" used to describe the amount of citizens in a needed part of the private sector(whether it is IT or most non-temporary forms of employment in the US), the source is lying through their teeth.
I've seen that argument a lot in this thread. "There are so many qualified Americans available for the jobs." I must be missing something that everyone else is aware of.
Everyone that I know that is worth employing, has had a job and no problems finding a new one in the past several years despite the economy. And, I'm fully aware of many that would be better suited to food service than IT that have had jobs the whole time. Maybe it's different elsewhere in the US, but as far as I can tell, there is a significant shortage of people capable of doing the job.
Just because someone has had a job for however many years doing some sort of development, it doesn't mean they're worth a damn at doing their job. American IT people are the worst at feeling entitled to special treatment despite consistent failures and sub-par work. I'm not saying the H-1B's are any better, but if I'm paying for garbage, I want to spend the least for it.
American's better learn that it's a global competition now, whether they like it or not. If you want top-dollar salaries, you better be prepared to put in top-dollar effort at being the best at your craft. You better keep learning. You better keep growing the value you add.
I'm sorry if people are unemployed. I was there myself a dozen or so years ago. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. I learned that if you want to stay employed, you better bring value like no one else. And, I've done my best to do that ever since, which has resulted in no involuntary unemployed time since.
It may sound callous, but you have to put up or shut up. It's a global economy now. Quit whining about international competition. It's only going to grow.
True, they just oppose a government powerful enough to do something to participate in it.
There, fixed that for you...
Libertarians don't believe in NO government... We simply believe that the purpose of government is to protect people's rights to life, liberty and property. Fraud is a violation of those rights.
Keep in mind, monopolies (the real kind, not the x company controls 60+% of y market that people like to whine about even though real alternatives exist) don't exist, but for government intervention. Without ridiculous government immigration policy, you don't have the sorts of things going on that the article describes.
Libertarians are completely against H-1B's. We're for opening the borders to any that wish to come and end these insane policies that perpetuate all of the abuses of human rights.
+10 Funny...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw,_Georgia#Gun_law
Human beings could exterminate all life on this planet if we wanted to.
I think you're underestimating just how resilient life is. Could we make it unlivable for us and many other creatures? Certainly. However, I seriously doubt we have the capacity to destroy ALL life on this planet.
Just being nit-picky...