So, what did the credit card companines do? They took their enourmous profits and paid for immense lobbying to get a law passed to insure they get their money even if you file for bankruptcy.
The laughable part of the new bankruptcy law is that no one is required to file for bankruptcy, and you can't get blood out of a turnip. If you have a house secured by a mortgage, yeah - you can save your house if you file. You could also just blow off all your creditors except the mortgage bank, pay just your house payment, and keep all your stuff you bought on unsecured credit. 7 years later, the written-off credit card accounts disappear from your credit report. You will suffer no sanctions, other than having a hard time getting credit for 7 years. There is no reason to file for bankruptcy unless you stand to lose your home without it. And if you can make your mortgage payment by defaulting on everything else, why bother with bankruptcy? They aren't going to throw you in debtor's prison. They aren't going to take your plasma TV. And, your spendthrift habits made possible the gainful employment of a lot of Circuit City and Starbucks people, not to mention the local sales taxes that went into your home county's coffers.
MBNA does that too. Gmail flags their official correspondence as a phishing attempt, and I cannot find a reason to disagree. It looks just like a phishing attempt. The only mention of MBNA is in the body. The links in the body go to a site creditcardaccess.com or something hokey like that - looks just like a phishing site. The From: header comes from some other domain, that also isn't readily identified with MBNA. I reported it to their abuse department for all the good that it will do. I told them I agreed with Gmail that the messages look suspicious, and that I did not trust them enough to open them or click on any links.
Banks make money selling you fraud protection, credit bureau monitoring and all that rot. Why would they want to cut off this revenue stream? The threat of fraud makes more money for them. This is the free market at work. Since capitalism is the most ideal economic system, it follows that the bank fraud situation that results is also optimal. We simply cannot do any better than what the Invisible Hand can do.
Copyright is a legal device, not a law of nature. We don't need any more stinking analogies, the matter is already perfectly clear: Infringement is not theft, it's infringment.
My theory? This apparent contradiction in plotlines may have been why Lucas cut the scene of Yoda peacefully arriving on Dagobah.
Your theory is that George Lucas (a) recognized a continuity error and then (b) decided to eliminate it from the film? I ain't buying it. Neither of those things have ever happened before, and it's very unlikely that both would occur for the first time together.
Type the following into google. Liberal News, Socialist News, Communist News, and Conservative News. Then merrily wander your way over to your favorite podcasting website and just pick through the various news types you can pick.
Now compare the viewership of those sites to the viewership of TV news. Now compare the opinions expressed on those sites to the opinions expressed on TV news, and the opinions expressed in public opinion polls. Which are more similar to each other?
I didn't know there was something wrong with creating a product and trying to protect the investment you made in it.
There isn't, and no one suggested there was (apart from you). But to address your strawman anyway, protecting your investment is an inherently socialist process. Since it is society that is protecting your investment, society ought to get something out of doing that. Else, why should society bother protecting your investment? What's in it for us? If your doodad is so useful, somebody else will invent it, so we cannot be satisfied with the mere use of your invention as compensation for giving you exclusive rights. We could withhold exclusive rights and the thing would get invented anyway, since it is so useful.
And if your invention is not that useful, what is it you want from us, again?
Hmmmm.... still opens up a Winzip window for each archive, and I have to click Extract on each one, then close the window. But thanks for the tip. I wish it had worked.
Actually, you can do that in Windows. If you do search for files, you can select the files in the results page, and do any sort of action you would do to typical files.
No shit. But they are all zip files, and you want to extract them all to a folder, preserving relative pathnames.
Now what? Got a few hours set aside to click on Winzip dialog boxes? You will need it. That's my point. It's even uglier if they are all doc files and you want to change the string "ACME Corp." to "MEGA Corp." in each one. No GUI makes this easy to do. No GUI lets you do this as an unattended operation. The shell both makes it easy, and lets it run unattended.
How often do you do something like this in the shell:
for file in `find . -name \*.[ch] -print` ; do mv $file/var/backup; done
I have yet to see a GUI that allows me to select files in this manner, and perform the same operation on all of them. A large collection of archive files that need to be unpacked is usually quite difficult to do in a timely manner on Windows, or in any KDE or Gnome desktop. Oh, you can use the GUI filemanager in Windows or Unix to find files whose names match a pattern, but how do you apply the same operation to each one? In Windows, you will get a new Winzip window opening for each archive, and you will have to operate the controls for each file: extract, close window; extract, close window; extract, close window - over and over and over. What makes it even worse is all the repetitive mouse movement required to hit all the buttons. The extract dialog pops up over here, the close button is over there... you end up moving your mouse around excessively just to land on the controls. Click click click click click click click. I get sick of it.
Suggesting that the corners of the screen ought to do something is right out of the stone age, too. Stop making me move my mouse cursor all over the place. I hate that.
To get the taskbar to stop popping up when an application sends notice, disable autohide. Now its up all the time, and it won't interrupt you. Furthermore, your maximized apps will not overlap it. Peace prevails.
Gmail uses an ActiveX control to give IE the functionality it is missing, but which Firefox and Opera are not: standards-compliant DHTML and CSS support.
On those modern browsers, and you don't need any plugins to use Gmail. But IE is quite old. You would also need a plugin to use Gmail with Mosaic, or Spyglass. Get a modern browser, problem solved.
Heck, even this "bill/law" would be too much for us in the USA.
The USA has had similar laws with respect to the Olympics for some time now.
The Olympic trademarks protected by statute (36 U.S.C. 220506(c)) include: the name "UNITED STATES OLYMPIC COMMITTEE"; the symbol of the International Olympic Committee, consisting of five interlocking rings; the words "Olympic, " "Olympiad" and "Citius Altius Fortius," and also the words "Paralympic," "Paralympiad," "Pan-American" and "America Espirito Sport Fraternite," or any combination of these words; the emblem of the United States Olympic Committee, consisting of an escutcheon having a blue chief and vertically extending red and white bars on the base with five interlocking rings displayed on the chief; and the symbols of the International Paralympic Committee and the Pan-American Sports Organization, consisting of a torch surrounded by concentric rings.
Not just trademark law, but a special statute protects the Olympic trademarks.
By statute, the USOC may file a civil action against any person if that person, without consent of the USOC, uses the Olympic trademarks for the purpose of trade, to induce the sale of any goods or services, or to promote any theatrical exhibition, athletic performance, or competition. A showing of actual consumer confusion, or even a likelihood of such confusion, is not necessary for the USOC to prevail.... The USOC is also not required to show that an unauthorized use of the Olympic trademarks is occurring in connection with goods or services similar to those on which the USOC has previously authorized use.
Basically, the USOC owns these words and symbols exclusively, by Act of Congress. The UK is merely "harmonizing" with the USA.
There is no law of biogenesis that says life cannot arise from non-life.
The law of biogenesis was formulated by Pasteur and some of his contemporaries to refute the idea of spontaneous generation, where it was supposed that mice, maggots, bacteria and other creatures arose spontaneously from the material - stored food, rotting flesh, etc. - in which they were usually found.
If you want to call that "abiogenesis" go right ahead. The law of biogenesis as Pasteur meant it states that all life arose from previous life. That obviously rules out divine intervention and any other artificial or supernatural origin.
Dude, you are such a lost cause. I totally discredited your source by showing it can say ANYTHING AT ALL, anytime after you cite it. You rebut this by showing me ANOTHER Wikipedia entry!
Wikipedia is not an authority on anything. Blogs are not an authority on anything. Google searches are not definitive. If a lot of people thought the world was flat and wrote about in their blogs and on websites, Google searches would turn up a lot of hits on pages claiming flat-earth viewpoints were valid.
The law of biogenesis was discredited almost a century ago. No one uses it anymore. You have a hard time finding this out on Google because there are so many uninformed ID and creationit nitwits prattling on about the "law of biogenesis" and its alleged importance. Go to the library, stay off the internet. But be warned: you may learn something you won't want to.
Talk Origins is nothing short of a vent for atheistic evolutionists and you know it.
I don't know any such thing. I use it all the time as a handy collection of references to help support the scientific position on this controversy.
Wikipedia's mission, OTOH is to create a non-political, opinion-less source of information.
That's why I clarified the opinion that the so-called "law of biogenesis" was still considered valid. It isn't. That's a fact, as much as anything on Wikipedia is a fact.
You modified Wikipedia to support your worldview
I modified it to better reflect reality, and to discourage you from citing it as an authority (whuch it is not). Now what are you left with? Your entire argument rested on that Wikpedia entry. I have shown beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is unwise. Now what? Your argument lies in ruins.
I guess you'll just have to accept it on faith. But that isn't science.
The Argument from Wikipedia is about as convincing as Argument from Dictionary.com. Just who are you trying to convince? Lurkers who don't follow links? Why do you suppose that only creationist websites and skeptics debunking them show up on a search for "law of biogensis?" Where are the biology websites?
You must know that no one has to provide any credentials in a subject of interest to post a Wikipedia article on that topic, right? I have half a mind to edit out that particular non-sequitur from the Wiki site. If my editorial submission is accepted, will you withdraw your claim?
Talk.Origins is every bit as credible as Wikipedia. Its source material is derived from public input, just like Wikipedia. But Talk.Origins also has actual biologists with doctorate degrees and research experience contributing source material on biological topics, who also provide their C.V. to readers. Who knows what qualifications the Wikipedia submitters have?
I want to see you cite some actual biologists who say they use the "law" in their research. Nothing else matters. If biologists don't use it, then it isn't a law of biology.
It isn't a Law in the sense of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is what you wish to imply.
I'll see your Wikipedia and raise you one Talk.Origins:
There is no law of biogenesis saying that very primitive life cannot form from increasingly complex molecules.
We can go on all day, if you want, but all you will find are websites by creationsist misusing Pasteur's pronouncement, and skeptic websites debunking the creationist screeds. Conspicuously lacking from the search results are links to websites defining or discussing the so-called "law of biogenesis" in the context of biological research. Biologists simply do not recognize any such "Law." Only creationsist make a big deal out of it.
So I can still easily maintain that there is no such "law of biogenesis" that guides or describes biological research. Show me otherwise, and I'll recant.
Abiogenesis goes against the biological law of Biogenesis, the observable fact that life only comes from other life.
There's no such law. This is creationist rhetoric. It is a political and religious statement, not a scientific one.
To believe in abiogenesis is to break the law of Biogenesis.
There's no such law. Proposing that life arose from non-life breaks nothing.
abiogenesis hasn't been proven (and I believe it cannot be)
Your belief is proof of nothing. It might be demonstrated. Even if it never is, it still has nothing to do with evolution, which is the theory biologists are using to study life. Biologists do not use the "law of biogenesis" or ID theory to study life. This is why ID does not belong in the science class. Scientists simply aren't doing ID. Should we teach cooking in political science class, too? May as well.
thus you're either believing in an unproven theory that breaks natural law (unnatural), or a theory that says something outside Earth's natural laws caused life to exist in the first place (extra-natural).
Nonsense. No law says life can only come from life. There is no law of biogenesis, outside of ID circles.
If we can't explain life through natural law, then why are we trying to force a single theory down everyone's throat: that life somehow formed from non-life.
This has nothing to do with evolution. Furthermore, no one is forcing this idea down anyone's throat. I really wish you religious types would lay-off the sexual hyperbole. It creeps me out that because science does not embrace your myths, you think that's comparable to being orally raped. Knock it off!
As far as evolution goes -- forgive me if it came across as 'muddying the waters', wasn't my intention...
Excuse me - that is the entire intention of ID, to muddy the waters.
Abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution, but thanks for trying to muddy the waters.
Did you know that ID accepts evolution?
Did you know ID proponents constantly conflate abiogenesis and evolution? They do.
Generally, the idea is that life had to come from somewhere, and since life always comes from other life (observable, provable fact of nature), then life must've come from some non-natural force.
Your conclusion that life must have come from non-natural sources appears out of thin air, unsupported by any previous declarations.
It's a theory that, like abiogenesis or the "lightning zapped primordial ooze, thus forming life", isn't provable and requires unnatural processes.
Scientific theories do not deal with unnatural processes. If it is a process accessible to scientific inquiry, by definition it is a natural process.
Calling something un-natural or super-natural is the same as declaring it to be inaccessible to scientific inquiry. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Any proposition invoking the supernatural is something other than science.
Slashdot Mirror
If it were me, I'd name the fork of Nessus "Known Space". Great name for a tool of discovery, that expands on the "Nessus" idea.
So, what did the credit card companines do? They took their enourmous profits and paid for immense lobbying to get a law passed to insure they get their money even if you file for bankruptcy.
The laughable part of the new bankruptcy law is that no one is required to file for bankruptcy, and you can't get blood out of a turnip. If you have a house secured by a mortgage, yeah - you can save your house if you file. You could also just blow off all your creditors except the mortgage bank, pay just your house payment, and keep all your stuff you bought on unsecured credit. 7 years later, the written-off credit card accounts disappear from your credit report. You will suffer no sanctions, other than having a hard time getting credit for 7 years. There is no reason to file for bankruptcy unless you stand to lose your home without it. And if you can make your mortgage payment by defaulting on everything else, why bother with bankruptcy? They aren't going to throw you in debtor's prison. They aren't going to take your plasma TV. And, your spendthrift habits made possible the gainful employment of a lot of Circuit City and Starbucks people, not to mention the local sales taxes that went into your home county's coffers.
Don't file, just Default!
MBNA does that too. Gmail flags their official correspondence as a phishing attempt, and I cannot find a reason to disagree. It looks just like a phishing attempt. The only mention of MBNA is in the body. The links in the body go to a site creditcardaccess.com or something hokey like that - looks just like a phishing site. The From: header comes from some other domain, that also isn't readily identified with MBNA. I reported it to their abuse department for all the good that it will do. I told them I agreed with Gmail that the messages look suspicious, and that I did not trust them enough to open them or click on any links.
Banks make money selling you fraud protection, credit bureau monitoring and all that rot. Why would they want to cut off this revenue stream? The threat of fraud makes more money for them. This is the free market at work. Since capitalism is the most ideal economic system, it follows that the bank fraud situation that results is also optimal. We simply cannot do any better than what the Invisible Hand can do.
Copyright is a legal device, not a law of nature. We don't need any more stinking analogies, the matter is already perfectly clear: Infringement is not theft, it's infringment.
Douglas Adams > Shadow Wrought
My theory? This apparent contradiction in plotlines may have been why Lucas
cut the scene of Yoda peacefully arriving on Dagobah.
Your theory is that George Lucas (a) recognized a continuity error and then (b) decided to eliminate it from the film? I ain't buying it. Neither of those things have ever happened before, and it's very unlikely that both would occur for the first time together.
Type the following into google. Liberal News, Socialist News, Communist News, and Conservative News. Then merrily wander your way over to your favorite podcasting website and just pick through the various news types you can pick.
Now compare the viewership of those sites to the viewership of TV news. Now compare the opinions expressed on those sites to the opinions expressed on TV news, and the opinions expressed in public opinion polls. Which are more similar to each other?
Looks like Mission Accomplished to me.
I didn't know there was something wrong with creating a product and trying to protect the investment you made in it.
There isn't, and no one suggested there was (apart from you). But to address your strawman anyway, protecting your investment is an inherently socialist process. Since it is society that is protecting your investment, society ought to get something out of doing that. Else, why should society bother protecting your investment? What's in it for us? If your doodad is so useful, somebody else will invent it, so we cannot be satisfied with the mere use of your invention as compensation for giving you exclusive rights. We could withhold exclusive rights and the thing would get invented anyway, since it is so useful.
And if your invention is not that useful, what is it you want from us, again?
Hmmmm.... still opens up a Winzip window for each archive, and I have to click Extract on each one, then close the window. But thanks for the tip. I wish it had worked.
Actually, you can do that in Windows. If you do search for files, you can select the files in the results page, and do any sort of action you would do to typical files.
No shit. But they are all zip files, and you want to extract them all to a folder, preserving relative pathnames.
Now what? Got a few hours set aside to click on Winzip dialog boxes? You will need it. That's my point. It's even uglier if they are all doc files and you want to change the string "ACME Corp." to "MEGA Corp." in each one. No GUI makes this easy to do. No GUI lets you do this as an unattended operation. The shell both makes it easy, and lets it run unattended.
for file in `find . -name \*.[ch] -print` ; do mv $file
I have yet to see a GUI that allows me to select files in this manner, and perform the same operation on all of them. A large collection of archive files that need to be unpacked is usually quite difficult to do in a timely manner on Windows, or in any KDE or Gnome desktop. Oh, you can use the GUI filemanager in Windows or Unix to find files whose names match a pattern, but how do you apply the same operation to each one? In Windows, you will get a new Winzip window opening for each archive, and you will have to operate the controls for each file: extract, close window; extract, close window; extract, close window - over and over and over. What makes it even worse is all the repetitive mouse movement required to hit all the buttons. The extract dialog pops up over here, the close button is over there... you end up moving your mouse around excessively just to land on the controls. Click click click click click click click. I get sick of it.
Suggesting that the corners of the screen ought to do something is right out of the stone age, too. Stop making me move my mouse cursor all over the place. I hate that.
To get the taskbar to stop popping up when an application sends notice, disable autohide. Now its up all the time, and it won't interrupt you. Furthermore, your maximized apps will not overlap it. Peace prevails.
Gmail uses an ActiveX control to give IE the functionality it is missing, but which Firefox and Opera are not: standards-compliant DHTML and CSS support.
On those modern browsers, and you don't need any plugins to use Gmail. But IE is quite old. You would also need a plugin to use Gmail with Mosaic, or Spyglass. Get a modern browser, problem solved.
Your post and the parent and this post are members of the parent post's group #5. There is no group 6 or 7.
The USA has had similar laws with respect to the Olympics for some time now.
Not just trademark law, but a special statute protects the Olympic trademarks.
See INTA for more info about this, and of course, the text of 36 USC 220506 itself.
Basically, the USOC owns these words and symbols exclusively, by Act of Congress. The UK is merely "harmonizing" with the USA.
There are six billion people who are practiced in the art of user interface design? I didn't know that!
There is no law of biogenesis that says life cannot arise from non-life.
The law of biogenesis was formulated by Pasteur and some of his contemporaries to refute the idea of spontaneous generation, where it was supposed that mice, maggots, bacteria and other creatures arose spontaneously from the material - stored food, rotting flesh, etc. - in which they were usually found.
If you want to call that "abiogenesis" go right ahead. The law of biogenesis as Pasteur meant it states that all life arose from previous life. That obviously rules out divine intervention and any other artificial or supernatural origin.
Dude, you are such a lost cause. I totally discredited your source by showing it can say ANYTHING AT ALL, anytime after you cite it. You rebut this by showing me ANOTHER Wikipedia entry!
Wikipedia is not an authority on anything. Blogs are not an authority on anything. Google searches are not definitive. If a lot of people thought the world was flat and wrote about in their blogs and on websites, Google searches would turn up a lot of hits on pages claiming flat-earth viewpoints were valid.
The law of biogenesis was discredited almost a century ago. No one uses it anymore. You have a hard time finding this out on Google because there are so many uninformed ID and creationit nitwits prattling on about the "law of biogenesis" and its alleged importance. Go to the library, stay off the internet. But be warned: you may learn something you won't want to.
Talk Origins is nothing short of a vent for atheistic evolutionists and you know it.
I don't know any such thing. I use it all the time as a handy collection of references to help support the scientific position on this controversy.
Wikipedia's mission, OTOH is to create a non-political, opinion-less source of information.
That's why I clarified the opinion that the so-called "law of biogenesis" was still considered valid. It isn't. That's a fact, as much as anything on Wikipedia is a fact.
You modified Wikipedia to support your worldview
I modified it to better reflect reality, and to discourage you from citing it as an authority (whuch it is not). Now what are you left with? Your entire argument rested on that Wikpedia entry. I have shown beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is unwise. Now what? Your argument lies in ruins.
I guess you'll just have to accept it on faith. But that isn't science.
I just fixed the error in the Wikipedia article. Now it agrees with me. Still care to cite Wikipedia in support of your notions?
The Argument from Wikipedia is about as convincing as Argument from Dictionary.com. Just who are you trying to convince? Lurkers who don't follow links? Why do you suppose that only creationist websites and skeptics debunking them show up on a search for "law of biogensis?" Where are the biology websites?
Google search
You must know that no one has to provide any credentials in a subject of interest to post a Wikipedia article on that topic, right? I have half a mind to edit out that particular non-sequitur from the Wiki site. If my editorial submission is accepted, will you withdraw your claim?
Talk.Origins is every bit as credible as Wikipedia. Its source material is derived from public input, just like Wikipedia. But Talk.Origins also has actual biologists with doctorate degrees and research experience contributing source material on biological topics, who also provide their C.V. to readers. Who knows what qualifications the Wikipedia submitters have?
I want to see you cite some actual biologists who say they use the "law" in their research. Nothing else matters. If biologists don't use it, then it isn't a law of biology.
You just added that entry, didn't you?
It isn't a Law in the sense of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is what you wish to imply.
I'll see your Wikipedia and raise you one Talk.Origins:
We can go on all day, if you want, but all you will find are websites by creationsist misusing Pasteur's pronouncement, and skeptic websites debunking the creationist screeds. Conspicuously lacking from the search results are links to websites defining or discussing the so-called "law of biogenesis" in the context of biological research. Biologists simply do not recognize any such "Law." Only creationsist make a big deal out of it.
So I can still easily maintain that there is no such "law of biogenesis" that guides or describes biological research. Show me otherwise, and I'll recant.
Abiogenesis goes against the biological law of Biogenesis, the observable fact that life only comes from other life.
There's no such law. This is creationist rhetoric. It is a political and religious statement, not a scientific one.
To believe in abiogenesis is to break the law of Biogenesis.
There's no such law. Proposing that life arose from non-life breaks nothing.
abiogenesis hasn't been proven (and I believe it cannot be)
Your belief is proof of nothing. It might be demonstrated. Even if it never is, it still has nothing to do with evolution, which is the theory biologists are using to study life. Biologists do not use the "law of biogenesis" or ID theory to study life. This is why ID does not belong in the science class. Scientists simply aren't doing ID. Should we teach cooking in political science class, too? May as well.
thus you're either believing in an unproven theory that breaks natural law (unnatural), or a theory that says something outside Earth's natural laws caused life to exist in the first place (extra-natural).
Nonsense. No law says life can only come from life. There is no law of biogenesis, outside of ID circles.
If we can't explain life through natural law, then why are we trying to force a single theory down everyone's throat: that life somehow formed from non-life.
This has nothing to do with evolution. Furthermore, no one is forcing this idea down anyone's throat. I really wish you religious types would lay-off the sexual hyperbole. It creeps me out that because science does not embrace your myths, you think that's comparable to being orally raped. Knock it off!
As far as evolution goes -- forgive me if it came across as 'muddying the waters', wasn't my intention...
Excuse me - that is the entire intention of ID, to muddy the waters.
Abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution, but thanks for trying to muddy the waters.
Did you know that ID accepts evolution?
Did you know ID proponents constantly conflate abiogenesis and evolution? They do.
Generally, the idea is that life had to come from somewhere, and since life always comes from other life (observable, provable fact of nature), then life must've come from some non-natural force.
Your conclusion that life must have come from non-natural sources appears out of thin air, unsupported by any previous declarations.
It's a theory that, like abiogenesis or the "lightning zapped primordial ooze, thus forming life", isn't provable and requires unnatural processes.
Scientific theories do not deal with unnatural processes. If it is a process accessible to scientific inquiry, by definition it is a natural process.
Calling something un-natural or super-natural is the same as declaring it to be inaccessible to scientific inquiry. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Any proposition invoking the supernatural is something other than science.