Nothing immoral about sex, nothing immoral about a free consentual business transaction
What about the morality of having sex with "Johns" when you know you have a communicable disease? Is it moral to demand double the agreed-upon price, after the transaction, under threat of blabbing to the guy's wife? Is it moral to take that money and spend it on drugs that you know were stolen from a pharmacy? Are the pimps "moral?"
You make it sound like we're talking about educated, professional sex technicians or something. We're not. We're talking about uneducated, disease-plagued, drug-addicted teenagers who don't know how to shake the multiple monkeys on their backs.
So I agree with the grandparent poster. Prostitutes are most definitely not beacons of morality.
The issue isn't what the certificates do and do not mean, the issue is the ethicalness of these companies issuing any kind of certificate at all to criminal enterprises in return for money,
How do you propose Verisign discern whether or not a company is a "criminal enterprise?" Should it be a question on the application form? Do the CEOs of "criminal enterprises" always wear black? Walk around petting hairless cats named "Mr. Bigglesworth?"
To take a more serious tone, how can anyone tell the difference between a legitimate small business and a "criminal enterprise" that hasn't broken any laws yet?
and their failure to instantly revoke the certificates as soon as it becomes clear that the site is being used for criminal purposes.
I'm not sure what neck of the woods you're from, but around here, we have a legal construct known as "due process." Innocent until proven guilty. How would you propose to define when it has "become clear" that the site is being used for criminal purposes? As soon as the media publishes allegations? When the authorities begin investigating those allegations? When the authorities lay charges? At what point has it become "clear" that what the company is doing is illegal?
Not everything is as black and white as you seem to believe.
If all the headlines are "Muslims have taken hostages in..." or "A radical Islamic group exploded...", then people become conditioned to believe that Muslims and Islam are violent when they really aren't.
When's the last time a large, organized group of Christian "extremists" hijacked 4 planes and smashed them into Islamic icons? Kidnapped innocent people and videotaped their beheadings? Raped young girls as punishment for their brother's adultery? Murdered Muslim athletes during the Olympics? Mailed Anthrax to anyone? Smashed bombs into Iranian military ships? Blew up embassies belonging to Middle Eastern nations? etc. etc. etc....?
Sure, "all religions have a few nuts," but why does it seem that Muslim extremists are so drastically more violent than the extremists of other religions? And why does there seem to be so many more of them, proportionally? Is it likely that a vast media conspiracy is suppressing stories about all the violent Christian/Jewish/Buddhist activities throughout the world? And with this vast, Information Superhighway, somehow those stories still aren't making it to us?
Or is it possible that there really are more violent actions carried out in the name of Islam than any other religions? Dare I say, "all other religions combined"?
When you can't tell the difference between extremists and true followers of a religion.
I knew this argument would come up eventually. Please cite for me a few examples of "extremist" Christians, Buddhists, Taoists, Jews, or whatever other religion you want, "acting out" so violently, in such large numbers, over such a trivial issue?
While you're correct that every relgion has its extremists, why is it that Islam seems to have so many more "extremists," proportionally, than any other religion? And why do they seem to get so much more incredibly violently riled up over issues than other religions would?
Computer terminology is rife with this kind of stuff. Look at "Cut" and "Copy." "Copy" copies it to the clipboard. "Cut" cuts it. And copies it to the clipboard. What? And I suppose "Paste", logically, removes it from the clipboard? Nope, it leaves it there. Oooooo Kaaaaay.....
How about RAM vs. ROM? ROM is RAM, it's just read-only RAM. It's RO-RAM. How about my hard drive? Yep, that's RAM too. It's simply persistent RAM, as opposed to the volatile RAM that lives in sticks on your motherboard. Or how about this old classic I used to get all the time when working in the computer lab:
Student: "There's a problem with my hard disk." (Hands me a 3.5" floppy) Me: This isn't a hard disk, it's actually a floppy disk." Student: (Clearly confused) "But... it's hard." Me: "I know. I didn't pick the names."
Then there's all the obvious latent sexuality in computers and Unix, RAM, hard/floppy, touch, mount, unzip, etc. etc.
The "Theory of the Big Bang" is at the least how it should be described. NASA is a scientific organization. They should not be trying sell ideas but do strict science.
A concept does not get to graduate from the title "theory" until it has been conclusively proven using a well-structured scientific method. Some things simply do not lend themselves to the scientific method, and thus can never be "proven," even though we know them to be true and accept them as fact. Here are some widely-accepted "theories":
The Theory of Gravity
The Theory of Relativity
The Theory of Flight
The Theory of Evolution
The Theory of The Big Bang
Many of these things are not commonly referred to with their "theory" qualifier, even though they have never technically passed the scientific method (and never can be, due to their nature). Yet they are all accepted as fact by the vast majority of reputable scientists who are even remotely familiar with the subject field.
I'd rather save lives and be poor than let people die becoming rich.
Is that so? I hope you practice what you preach. "Rich" is quite subjective. A programmer making $35k/year in the US is "rich" by Bangalore standards. Should that programmer volunteer to send his job overseas, so that 2 or 3 Indians can be employed for the same money, thus allowing them to support their families while the US programmer is "poor"?
Can I assume that you survive by eating the bare minimum of what you need to sustain you, while donating all the rest of your food to the local food bank? Can I assume that the few clothes you own are ragged and torn, since you would never indulge in something as frivolous and selfish as buying new clothes, when your old ones keep you warm enough? Can I assume you share a leaky, moldy basement apartment with 4 other martyrs, and you send all your spare cash to feeding the hungry in Africa?
Get off your horse, you self-righteous hypocrite. If you live in the west, then you are already very "rich" by world standards. The very fact that you're using a computer right now demonstrates that you are in the wealthiest 10% of the entire planet. Why did you take the time to write that post, when you could have been down at the local soup kitchen helping feed the homeless, or at the library reading to/educating blind children?
It's easy to talk big when you're still living off mommy and daddy's handouts, and you don't have to put your money where your mouth is. Even easier, when you hide that same mouth, Mr. "Anonymous Coward."
Well if a city can take someones home to get higher taxes, what is to stop it from being taken and given away for the greater good? In fact that is one eminent domain seizure I can whole heartedly agree with
"Forced charity" is called taxation. What you're advocating is a property tax rate of 100%; that is, the entire value of the home. The fact that you "wholeheartedly agree" with such a scheme leads me to believe you're not a homeowner. Moreover, you appear to hold those who are homeowners in deep contempt, for some reason.
My post stated that PRACTICING homosexuality is a choice
Don't hide behind pedandtic semantics. It is a cowardly argument to suggest that people can be homosexual as long as they don't actually have sex with other people of the same sex. You're saying that people are born gay, but they choose whether or not to act on it. Are you seriously going to claim that if someone isn't "practicing" homosexuality, then they're not homosexual? I'm heterosexual, but if I'm not "practicing" heterosexuality at this very moment, does that make me asexual?
Like it or not, homosexuals CHOOSE to practice homosexuality.
False. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to justify such an outlandish statement. Did you "choose" to be straight when you turned 12? I didn't. I just was. It was already ingrained in me. Likewise with homosexuals. Think about it: why would anyone CHOOSE to be gay, knowing the sorts of abuse and prejudices they'd face?
It's not a choice. So your whole argument is shot to hell. Prejudice against homosexuality is exactly like prejudice based on race, gender, eye color, or any other arbitrary trait over which one has no control.
If you had to choose between having a virus that both destroys your personal files and compromises your system or a virus that only destroys your personal files, which would you pick?
Why can't I pick an option that doesn't destroy ANY of my files?
This is one thing that has always bothered me about the *NIX mindset: the boastful claim that viruses are confined to a user's data files, and cannot corrupt the actual underlying operating system itself.
So what! Who gives a crap about the OS? I've got the OS sitting right there on a CD on my desk. It's the user data that is the really valuable, irreplaceable stuff anyway. Who runs a computer just to sit there and us OS utilities all day? "Geez, that virus destroyed ALL my thesis files, but thank goodness 'ls' still works!"
Am I missing something? In my opinion, "viruses can only trash your data, but not the OS" is not really that much to brag about for an OS. The OS is easily replaceable. The data is not. Can someone explain to me why Unix geeks brag about this like it's a positive thing? Why aren't we focusing on protecting user data at all costs, and viewing the OS as replaceable?
Why is it so hard for people to understand the proper usage of the word "literally?" For example, in this case, your usage is incorrect. The article was not "literally" saying "Slavery is Freedom." If it had, then you could have copied-and-pasted a direct quote from the article containing the words "Slavery is freedom."
Figuratively != Literally
"I was moving the refrigerator and I literally broke my back." This means the guy is not exaggerating about how heavy the appliance was, but rather, received an actual diagnosis from a certified health professional that he had in fact suffered a fractured vertebrae.
Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine. It bugs me when people use "literally" as hyperbole, when the very existence of the word is intended to disambiguate between hyperbole and events that actually happened exactly as described. Don't think I'm picking on you, or that you're the only offender. Yours is merely a convenient example of the perfectly wrong use of the word.
My dad actually kept in a spare freezer several hearts wherein there was the distinctive "X" from the razor tipped arrow where he made those excellent shots.
That's not normal. I'd keep an eye on your dad, if I were you.
He showed me how logging was destroying the forests where we hunted. People really don't realize what logging companies are doing.
Yes, it's really terrible how people are cutting down all the trees, making it so people like your dad can't go in and kill all the animals anymore. What a shame. I mean, killing poor defenseless animals for fun is one thing, but what kind of nature-hating barbarian cuts down trees?
Don't go into debt. You need to decide what your priorities are- enjoying your job, or that new house
So I should save up the $250,000 to buy a house outright, instead of getting a mortgage? Where should I live in the meantime, while I'm saving it up? My parents' basement? With my wife and kids? (Hypothetical - I don't have kids. But you get my point).
The reality is you have to borrow money at some point in your life if you want to get your own home. The people who save up the money to buy a house outright are the extremely small minority. And even then, it's not a good idea, financially, because during the 15 - 20 years it takes them to save up enough for a home, they're paying rent in an apartment.
I live in a furnished studio apartment for a little over $300 a month
Absolutely impossible in any reasonably-sized city, in a region with an ample supply of tech employment.
Your food budget can easily be under $5 a day if you don't buy alcohol and you don't eat out.
Just plain wrong. It is simply not possible to eat a healthy diet on $5 per day. The daily meat and dairy requirements alone will put you way over that limit, not counting breads/cereals, wholegrains, fruits and vegetables. Meat is expensive. And necessary for a healthy diet.
If you eat a modest diet, and you do all your own cooking, and shop at a grocery store (never eating out), taking advantage of the occassional coupons, you may be able to get your monthly food budget down to a bare-minimum of $200. Any less than that, and you're depriving your body of the nutrients and vitamins it needs to be healthy. Yes, I'm well aware that you could eat Ramen noodles 3 times a day and save a bundle. But that's not healthy at all.
I was a teacher's assistant for some first-year programming courses too, and I caught my share of cheaters. One incident in particular will always stick out in my mind, however. I was grading some programming assignments, and I came across two, right next to each other, that were identical except for the names. The funniest part was that the cheater didn't even change the student ID on the first page - he only changed the name! They might have gotten away with it if they hadn't dumped both assignments in the bin at the same time, thus ensuring they'd be right on top of each other when I picked them up to grade them. But hey, if they were that smart, they probably wouldn't need to cheat in the first place, right?
An IP address is proof of NOTHING. Log files are not proof. Screen grabs are not proof.
You're confusing "evidence" and "proof." Everything you list there is evidence. Individually, they don't "prove" anything, but taken collectively, they can build a case against a defendent.
Who are the people that got your IP?
The ISP providing that very same Internet service, I presume.
A company working for the media company?
Well, given that most ISPs happen to be media companies, then yeah, it could very well have been a media company.
Can you say "conflict of interest"?
Not without laughing at you, no. If the ISP is a media company, and the user is stealing (oops, sorry, "infringing") copyrighted material through the access he/she is renting through that ISP/media company, then it's pretty absurd to suggest that he/she should get off scot-free, just because there may be a business relationship between the copyright owner and the parent company of the ISP.
Can you say "NOT police officers"
Uhm, where the heck do you think police officers get their evidence? They don't go into ComCast's network centers and grab the log files themselves. The subpeona them from the ISP, and the ISP's people get them for the cops.
Should I ever find myself in this situation, the court will be provided with "proof" of how the lead lawyer on their side downloads kiddie porn at 4:30 in the morning.
Now you're just talking nonsense, and demonstrating that you don't know anything at all about how due process, discovery, accountability, or any aspect at all of the legal system works.
The reason for this is that both Ford and Chrysler have killed off nonperforming brands
So has GM though. Chrysler killed off Plymouth, GM killed off Oldsmobile, and as far as I know, Ford hasn't killed off anything yet, have they? The pundits are saying Mercury is on life-support, but to the best of my knowledge, Ford hasn't officially announced the final nail yet.
Simply put, GM is having so much trouble meeting its pension obligations because no one will buy their cars without a deep discount.
The Chevy Cavalier was the #1 best selling car in Canada for several years running, yet GM was unable to parlay that marketshare dominance into huge profits. Don't get me wrong, I'm not here to defend GM's products. I think their vehicles are all cheap, flaky crap (with the notable exception of this one, which is just freakin' amazing). But it's been selling just as well or better than their competitors. So they should be in a comparable financial situation. Yet they're not. Why? Because of the pensions.
I'm not alone in this opinion; the pros all back me up:
"Now, as we all can see, pension and health care obligations are eating GM alive."
They're losing money because they're paying out benefits to employees that don't even work there anymore at a rate proportionally higher than their competitors.
and the shocking answer to who makes all the money? the middleman of course, the one selling this pipe-dream to the artist. The one putting locks on the music that keeps the fans from listening. See the lil' secret that all middlemen don't want people to know is that they have no discernable skill of their own
I disagree with this. First of all, it's not a single "middle man," but rather a very, very large team of experienced professionals that make an album come together. Someone had to write and score the music and lyrics (possibly with some input from the artist, though less and less so nowadays), design the cover art, advertise and promote the band, secure and arrange touring and performance contracts, record, master, and edit the music, manage and arrange CD printing, delivery, and distribution, take care of legal issues for the band, and on and on and on.
The band shows up for a few hours on Tuesday and Wednesday to actually sing the songs that were written for them, then they go have unprotected sex with random groupies for the next 6 months while everybody else puts in 8 hour days making the entire album come together. So why in the hell should the artists get the lion's share of the profits? What makes them so special? The dozens, or even hundreds of other, "behind-the-scenes" people who worked on the album all worked much harder on the product, why should they get thrown the scraps that are leftover once the band gets the rich reward you seem to think they're entitled to?
In the case with GM, they failed to realize the benefit and demand for hybrid vehicles. How they missed this, and many other oportunities, is beyond me
Uh, no. GM was actually among the very first to jump on the alternative energy bandwagon with the EV-1, which came years before any Prius or Insight rolled off an assembly line.
GM is in trouble because of a crippling pension liability. In the past, GM offered very generous pension and benefit programs to attract top talent. It worked, but now those folks have retired and are reaping the (expensive) benefits of that generous pension plan, and it's putting a very real and serious strain on GM's bottom line. GM's competitors don't have such large pension liabilities handicapping their budgets, and thus are able to invest more in developing new products. GM needs to do something about their pensioners, and that's going to be extremely difficult to do.
Only if by "quality of life" you mean to include all of the worthless crap we buy that doesn't really improve our quality of life at all.
No, I meant things like housing, energy, and healthy food, with enough leftover to build up a sizeable nest egg big enough to sustain that level of quality of life indefinitely into one's retirement years. People in "poor" countries don't have such luxuries, and instead must share cramped housing with large numbers of siblings, and parents must give up their independence and rely on their children to support them in their old age.
It's not like the money is going to disappear - they're gonna spend it one way or another. Few people need a _reason_ to spend recklessly.
I'm not sure I agree. My Christmas budget is around $1500. That's a sizeable chunk of my income that I don't think I'd have otherwise spent, particularly since a lot of it (as you mentioned) comes out of credit that gets paid off later. I mean, I spend money on birthday presents and whatnot throughout the year, but the "Christmas rush" tends to get consumers caught up in the idea that "I've already got $800 on my Visa that I have no prayer of paying off this month, so I might as well get my brother the XBox 360 he really wants."
If it was money that was just sitting in my bank account, then I might agree that you have a point, and that the money "was going to be spent anyway." But I think the fact that so much Christmas shopping is financed with credit rebuts that theory by demonstrating that it is money that the consumers would not otherwise have spent. It's that credit that is driving our economy more and more, as income increases fall farther and farther behind housing and energy cost increases.
The material world has taken what should count as a joyous celebration of the birth of the son of your bhakti's god (time shifted to match the winter solstice, no doubt out of "respect" for those religions that held that as a holy day), and turned it into a day of worship of the jolly fat consumer of Coca Cola.
I think people who criticise the rampant "consumerism" of the holidays are short-sighted hypocrites who fail to realize that the only reason our quality of life is possible is precisely because of said consumerism. I'm sure you already know that the reason it's called "Black Friday" is because it's the time of year when retailers finally move out of the red and into the profitable black column on their balance sheets. But, don't you find it a little frightening that it doesn't happen until late November? Don't you think that our society is balancing on a pretty precarious economic cliff if we operate in a deficit for 11 months of the year, finally turning profitable in the last and final month?
Don't you see that if it weren't for the annual "shopping spree" ritual, the companies might night make it into the black at all? "So what," you may retort. On the face of it, who cares if The Gap or Tommy Hilfiger or whoever else makes huge profits. Well, our society is capitalist. Love it or leave it. The reason we all have clean water and working sewers and reliable power and cheap gas (yeah, that's right, I said cheap gas; look at every country in Europe and tell me I'm wrong) and a relatively stable society is because of our capitalist nature. If you don't like it, you're welcome to leave and be all altruistic and idealistic somewhere a little "redder" than North America. Enjoy your rice, and don't complain about not being able to afford meat.
We need people to spend foolishly. It's what allows us smart ones to get good jobs and make good money that we can spend sensibly and retire wealthy. We're capitalists. It is hypocritical to sit there on your $1500 laptop wearing name-brand clothing and deride the very system that affords you such luxuries.
Scientists have discovered fossils of tropical animals in the Antarctic region. This means that at some point in history, the arctic and antarctic regions were lush, tropical habitats. And life went on. There was life all over the planet at that time. Humans will survive if the ice caps melt. Maybe some of the low-lying cities will have to be relocated, and some areas that are considered "inhabitable" now (the rockies, the permafrost zones) will become tropical habitats, but we'll adapt.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing immoral about sex, nothing immoral about a free consentual business transaction
What about the morality of having sex with "Johns" when you know you have a communicable disease? Is it moral to demand double the agreed-upon price, after the transaction, under threat of blabbing to the guy's wife? Is it moral to take that money and spend it on drugs that you know were stolen from a pharmacy? Are the pimps "moral?"
You make it sound like we're talking about educated, professional sex technicians or something. We're not. We're talking about uneducated, disease-plagued, drug-addicted teenagers who don't know how to shake the multiple monkeys on their backs.
So I agree with the grandparent poster. Prostitutes are most definitely not beacons of morality.
The issue isn't what the certificates do and do not mean, the issue is the ethicalness of these companies issuing any kind of certificate at all to criminal enterprises in return for money,
How do you propose Verisign discern whether or not a company is a "criminal enterprise?" Should it be a question on the application form? Do the CEOs of "criminal enterprises" always wear black? Walk around petting hairless cats named "Mr. Bigglesworth?"
To take a more serious tone, how can anyone tell the difference between a legitimate small business and a "criminal enterprise" that hasn't broken any laws yet?
and their failure to instantly revoke the certificates as soon as it becomes clear that the site is being used for criminal purposes.
I'm not sure what neck of the woods you're from, but around here, we have a legal construct known as "due process." Innocent until proven guilty. How would you propose to define when it has "become clear" that the site is being used for criminal purposes? As soon as the media publishes allegations? When the authorities begin investigating those allegations? When the authorities lay charges? At what point has it become "clear" that what the company is doing is illegal?
Not everything is as black and white as you seem to believe.
If all the headlines are "Muslims have taken hostages in..." or "A radical Islamic group exploded...", then people become conditioned to believe that Muslims and Islam are violent when they really aren't.
When's the last time a large, organized group of Christian "extremists" hijacked 4 planes and smashed them into Islamic icons? Kidnapped innocent people and videotaped their beheadings? Raped young girls as punishment for their brother's adultery? Murdered Muslim athletes during the Olympics? Mailed Anthrax to anyone? Smashed bombs into Iranian military ships? Blew up embassies belonging to Middle Eastern nations? etc. etc. etc....?
Sure, "all religions have a few nuts," but why does it seem that Muslim extremists are so drastically more violent than the extremists of other religions? And why does there seem to be so many more of them, proportionally? Is it likely that a vast media conspiracy is suppressing stories about all the violent Christian/Jewish/Buddhist activities throughout the world? And with this vast, Information Superhighway, somehow those stories still aren't making it to us?
Or is it possible that there really are more violent actions carried out in the name of Islam than any other religions? Dare I say, "all other religions combined"?
I'm against protesting, but I don't know how to show it.
We miss you, Mitch Hedberg!
When you can't tell the difference between extremists and true followers of a religion.
I knew this argument would come up eventually. Please cite for me a few examples of "extremist" Christians, Buddhists, Taoists, Jews, or whatever other religion you want, "acting out" so violently, in such large numbers, over such a trivial issue?
While you're correct that every relgion has its extremists, why is it that Islam seems to have so many more "extremists," proportionally, than any other religion? And why do they seem to get so much more incredibly violently riled up over issues than other religions would?
Computer terminology is rife with this kind of stuff. Look at "Cut" and "Copy." "Copy" copies it to the clipboard. "Cut" cuts it. And copies it to the clipboard. What? And I suppose "Paste", logically, removes it from the clipboard? Nope, it leaves it there. Oooooo Kaaaaay.....
... it's hard."
How about RAM vs. ROM? ROM is RAM, it's just read-only RAM. It's RO-RAM. How about my hard drive? Yep, that's RAM too. It's simply persistent RAM, as opposed to the volatile RAM that lives in sticks on your motherboard. Or how about this old classic I used to get all the time when working in the computer lab:
Student: "There's a problem with my hard disk." (Hands me a 3.5" floppy)
Me: This isn't a hard disk, it's actually a floppy disk."
Student: (Clearly confused) "But
Me: "I know. I didn't pick the names."
Then there's all the obvious latent sexuality in computers and Unix, RAM, hard/floppy, touch, mount, unzip, etc. etc.
A concept does not get to graduate from the title "theory" until it has been conclusively proven using a well-structured scientific method. Some things simply do not lend themselves to the scientific method, and thus can never be "proven," even though we know them to be true and accept them as fact. Here are some widely-accepted "theories":
Many of these things are not commonly referred to with their "theory" qualifier, even though they have never technically passed the scientific method (and never can be, due to their nature). Yet they are all accepted as fact by the vast majority of reputable scientists who are even remotely familiar with the subject field.
I'd rather save lives and be poor than let people die becoming rich.
Is that so? I hope you practice what you preach. "Rich" is quite subjective. A programmer making $35k/year in the US is "rich" by Bangalore standards. Should that programmer volunteer to send his job overseas, so that 2 or 3 Indians can be employed for the same money, thus allowing them to support their families while the US programmer is "poor"?
Can I assume that you survive by eating the bare minimum of what you need to sustain you, while donating all the rest of your food to the local food bank? Can I assume that the few clothes you own are ragged and torn, since you would never indulge in something as frivolous and selfish as buying new clothes, when your old ones keep you warm enough? Can I assume you share a leaky, moldy basement apartment with 4 other martyrs, and you send all your spare cash to feeding the hungry in Africa?
Get off your horse, you self-righteous hypocrite. If you live in the west, then you are already very "rich" by world standards. The very fact that you're using a computer right now demonstrates that you are in the wealthiest 10% of the entire planet. Why did you take the time to write that post, when you could have been down at the local soup kitchen helping feed the homeless, or at the library reading to/educating blind children?
It's easy to talk big when you're still living off mommy and daddy's handouts, and you don't have to put your money where your mouth is. Even easier, when you hide that same mouth, Mr. "Anonymous Coward."
Well if a city can take someones home to get higher taxes, what is to stop it from being taken and given away for the greater good? In fact that is one eminent domain seizure I can whole heartedly agree with
"Forced charity" is called taxation. What you're advocating is a property tax rate of 100%; that is, the entire value of the home. The fact that you "wholeheartedly agree" with such a scheme leads me to believe you're not a homeowner. Moreover, you appear to hold those who are homeowners in deep contempt, for some reason.
My post stated that PRACTICING homosexuality is a choice
Don't hide behind pedandtic semantics. It is a cowardly argument to suggest that people can be homosexual as long as they don't actually have sex with other people of the same sex. You're saying that people are born gay, but they choose whether or not to act on it. Are you seriously going to claim that if someone isn't "practicing" homosexuality, then they're not homosexual? I'm heterosexual, but if I'm not "practicing" heterosexuality at this very moment, does that make me asexual?
Like it or not, homosexuals CHOOSE to practice homosexuality.
False. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to justify such an outlandish statement. Did you "choose" to be straight when you turned 12? I didn't. I just was. It was already ingrained in me. Likewise with homosexuals. Think about it: why would anyone CHOOSE to be gay, knowing the sorts of abuse and prejudices they'd face?
It's not a choice. So your whole argument is shot to hell. Prejudice against homosexuality is exactly like prejudice based on race, gender, eye color, or any other arbitrary trait over which one has no control.
If you had to choose between having a virus that both destroys your personal files and compromises your system or a virus that only destroys your personal files, which would you pick?
Why can't I pick an option that doesn't destroy ANY of my files?
This is one thing that has always bothered me about the *NIX mindset: the boastful claim that viruses are confined to a user's data files, and cannot corrupt the actual underlying operating system itself.
So what! Who gives a crap about the OS? I've got the OS sitting right there on a CD on my desk. It's the user data that is the really valuable, irreplaceable stuff anyway. Who runs a computer just to sit there and us OS utilities all day? "Geez, that virus destroyed ALL my thesis files, but thank goodness 'ls' still works!"
Am I missing something? In my opinion, "viruses can only trash your data, but not the OS" is not really that much to brag about for an OS. The OS is easily replaceable. The data is not. Can someone explain to me why Unix geeks brag about this like it's a positive thing? Why aren't we focusing on protecting user data at all costs, and viewing the OS as replaceable?
This is *literally* saying "Slavery is Freedom"
Why is it so hard for people to understand the proper usage of the word "literally?" For example, in this case, your usage is incorrect. The article was not "literally" saying "Slavery is Freedom." If it had, then you could have copied-and-pasted a direct quote from the article containing the words "Slavery is freedom."
Figuratively != Literally
"I was moving the refrigerator and I literally broke my back." This means the guy is not exaggerating about how heavy the appliance was, but rather, received an actual diagnosis from a certified health professional that he had in fact suffered a fractured vertebrae.
Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine. It bugs me when people use "literally" as hyperbole, when the very existence of the word is intended to disambiguate between hyperbole and events that actually happened exactly as described. Don't think I'm picking on you, or that you're the only offender. Yours is merely a convenient example of the perfectly wrong use of the word.
My dad actually kept in a spare freezer several hearts wherein there was the distinctive "X" from the razor tipped arrow where he made those excellent shots.
That's not normal. I'd keep an eye on your dad, if I were you.
He showed me how logging was destroying the forests where we hunted. People really don't realize what logging companies are doing.
Yes, it's really terrible how people are cutting down all the trees, making it so people like your dad can't go in and kill all the animals anymore. What a shame. I mean, killing poor defenseless animals for fun is one thing, but what kind of nature-hating barbarian cuts down trees?
Don't go into debt. You need to decide what your priorities are- enjoying your job, or that new house
So I should save up the $250,000 to buy a house outright, instead of getting a mortgage? Where should I live in the meantime, while I'm saving it up? My parents' basement? With my wife and kids? (Hypothetical - I don't have kids. But you get my point).
The reality is you have to borrow money at some point in your life if you want to get your own home. The people who save up the money to buy a house outright are the extremely small minority. And even then, it's not a good idea, financially, because during the 15 - 20 years it takes them to save up enough for a home, they're paying rent in an apartment.
I live in a furnished studio apartment for a little over $300 a month
Absolutely impossible in any reasonably-sized city, in a region with an ample supply of tech employment.
Your food budget can easily be under $5 a day if you don't buy alcohol and you don't eat out.
Just plain wrong. It is simply not possible to eat a healthy diet on $5 per day. The daily meat and dairy requirements alone will put you way over that limit, not counting breads/cereals, wholegrains, fruits and vegetables. Meat is expensive. And necessary for a healthy diet.
If you eat a modest diet, and you do all your own cooking, and shop at a grocery store (never eating out), taking advantage of the occassional coupons, you may be able to get your monthly food budget down to a bare-minimum of $200. Any less than that, and you're depriving your body of the nutrients and vitamins it needs to be healthy. Yes, I'm well aware that you could eat Ramen noodles 3 times a day and save a bundle. But that's not healthy at all.
I was a teacher's assistant for some first-year programming courses too, and I caught my share of cheaters. One incident in particular will always stick out in my mind, however. I was grading some programming assignments, and I came across two, right next to each other, that were identical except for the names. The funniest part was that the cheater didn't even change the student ID on the first page - he only changed the name! They might have gotten away with it if they hadn't dumped both assignments in the bin at the same time, thus ensuring they'd be right on top of each other when I picked them up to grade them. But hey, if they were that smart, they probably wouldn't need to cheat in the first place, right?
An IP address is proof of NOTHING. Log files are not proof. Screen grabs are not proof.
You're confusing "evidence" and "proof." Everything you list there is evidence. Individually, they don't "prove" anything, but taken collectively, they can build a case against a defendent.
Who are the people that got your IP?
The ISP providing that very same Internet service, I presume.
A company working for the media company?
Well, given that most ISPs happen to be media companies, then yeah, it could very well have been a media company.
Can you say "conflict of interest"?
Not without laughing at you, no. If the ISP is a media company, and the user is stealing (oops, sorry, "infringing") copyrighted material through the access he/she is renting through that ISP/media company, then it's pretty absurd to suggest that he/she should get off scot-free, just because there may be a business relationship between the copyright owner and the parent company of the ISP.
Can you say "NOT police officers"
Uhm, where the heck do you think police officers get their evidence? They don't go into ComCast's network centers and grab the log files themselves. The subpeona them from the ISP, and the ISP's people get them for the cops.
Should I ever find myself in this situation, the court will be provided with "proof" of how the lead lawyer on their side downloads kiddie porn at 4:30 in the morning.
Now you're just talking nonsense, and demonstrating that you don't know anything at all about how due process, discovery, accountability, or any aspect at all of the legal system works.
So has GM though. Chrysler killed off Plymouth, GM killed off Oldsmobile, and as far as I know, Ford hasn't killed off anything yet, have they? The pundits are saying Mercury is on life-support, but to the best of my knowledge, Ford hasn't officially announced the final nail yet.
Simply put, GM is having so much trouble meeting its pension obligations because no one will buy their cars without a deep discount.
The Chevy Cavalier was the #1 best selling car in Canada for several years running, yet GM was unable to parlay that marketshare dominance into huge profits. Don't get me wrong, I'm not here to defend GM's products. I think their vehicles are all cheap, flaky crap (with the notable exception of this one, which is just freakin' amazing). But it's been selling just as well or better than their competitors. So they should be in a comparable financial situation. Yet they're not. Why? Because of the pensions.
I'm not alone in this opinion; the pros all back me up:
They're losing money because they're paying out benefits to employees that don't even work there anymore at a rate proportionally higher than their competitors.
and the shocking answer to who makes all the money? the middleman of course, the one selling this pipe-dream to the artist. The one putting locks on the music that keeps the fans from listening. See the lil' secret that all middlemen don't want people to know is that they have no discernable skill of their own
I disagree with this. First of all, it's not a single "middle man," but rather a very, very large team of experienced professionals that make an album come together. Someone had to write and score the music and lyrics (possibly with some input from the artist, though less and less so nowadays), design the cover art, advertise and promote the band, secure and arrange touring and performance contracts, record, master, and edit the music, manage and arrange CD printing, delivery, and distribution, take care of legal issues for the band, and on and on and on.
The band shows up for a few hours on Tuesday and Wednesday to actually sing the songs that were written for them, then they go have unprotected sex with random groupies for the next 6 months while everybody else puts in 8 hour days making the entire album come together. So why in the hell should the artists get the lion's share of the profits? What makes them so special? The dozens, or even hundreds of other, "behind-the-scenes" people who worked on the album all worked much harder on the product, why should they get thrown the scraps that are leftover once the band gets the rich reward you seem to think they're entitled to?
Sincerely curious.
In the case with GM, they failed to realize the benefit and demand for hybrid vehicles. How they missed this, and many other oportunities, is beyond me
Uh, no. GM was actually among the very first to jump on the alternative energy bandwagon with the EV-1, which came years before any Prius or Insight rolled off an assembly line.
GM is in trouble because of a crippling pension liability. In the past, GM offered very generous pension and benefit programs to attract top talent. It worked, but now those folks have retired and are reaping the (expensive) benefits of that generous pension plan, and it's putting a very real and serious strain on GM's bottom line. GM's competitors don't have such large pension liabilities handicapping their budgets, and thus are able to invest more in developing new products. GM needs to do something about their pensioners, and that's going to be extremely difficult to do.
Only if by "quality of life" you mean to include all of the worthless crap we buy that doesn't really improve our quality of life at all.
No, I meant things like housing, energy, and healthy food, with enough leftover to build up a sizeable nest egg big enough to sustain that level of quality of life indefinitely into one's retirement years. People in "poor" countries don't have such luxuries, and instead must share cramped housing with large numbers of siblings, and parents must give up their independence and rely on their children to support them in their old age.
It's not like the money is going to disappear - they're gonna spend it one way or another. Few people need a _reason_ to spend recklessly.
I'm not sure I agree. My Christmas budget is around $1500. That's a sizeable chunk of my income that I don't think I'd have otherwise spent, particularly since a lot of it (as you mentioned) comes out of credit that gets paid off later. I mean, I spend money on birthday presents and whatnot throughout the year, but the "Christmas rush" tends to get consumers caught up in the idea that "I've already got $800 on my Visa that I have no prayer of paying off this month, so I might as well get my brother the XBox 360 he really wants."
If it was money that was just sitting in my bank account, then I might agree that you have a point, and that the money "was going to be spent anyway." But I think the fact that so much Christmas shopping is financed with credit rebuts that theory by demonstrating that it is money that the consumers would not otherwise have spent. It's that credit that is driving our economy more and more, as income increases fall farther and farther behind housing and energy cost increases.
The material world has taken what should count as a joyous celebration of the birth of the son of your bhakti's god (time shifted to match the winter solstice, no doubt out of "respect" for those religions that held that as a holy day), and turned it into a day of worship of the jolly fat consumer of Coca Cola.
I think people who criticise the rampant "consumerism" of the holidays are short-sighted hypocrites who fail to realize that the only reason our quality of life is possible is precisely because of said consumerism. I'm sure you already know that the reason it's called "Black Friday" is because it's the time of year when retailers finally move out of the red and into the profitable black column on their balance sheets. But, don't you find it a little frightening that it doesn't happen until late November? Don't you think that our society is balancing on a pretty precarious economic cliff if we operate in a deficit for 11 months of the year, finally turning profitable in the last and final month?
Don't you see that if it weren't for the annual "shopping spree" ritual, the companies might night make it into the black at all? "So what," you may retort. On the face of it, who cares if The Gap or Tommy Hilfiger or whoever else makes huge profits. Well, our society is capitalist. Love it or leave it. The reason we all have clean water and working sewers and reliable power and cheap gas (yeah, that's right, I said cheap gas; look at every country in Europe and tell me I'm wrong) and a relatively stable society is because of our capitalist nature. If you don't like it, you're welcome to leave and be all altruistic and idealistic somewhere a little "redder" than North America. Enjoy your rice, and don't complain about not being able to afford meat.
We need people to spend foolishly. It's what allows us smart ones to get good jobs and make good money that we can spend sensibly and retire wealthy. We're capitalists. It is hypocritical to sit there on your $1500 laptop wearing name-brand clothing and deride the very system that affords you such luxuries.
Scientists have discovered fossils of tropical animals in the Antarctic region. This means that at some point in history, the arctic and antarctic regions were lush, tropical habitats. And life went on. There was life all over the planet at that time. Humans will survive if the ice caps melt. Maybe some of the low-lying cities will have to be relocated, and some areas that are considered "inhabitable" now (the rockies, the permafrost zones) will become tropical habitats, but we'll adapt.