"During the election, about 95% of African-Americans voted for Barack Hussein Obama due solely to the color of his skin."
And during the last election, about 90% of African Americans voted for Kerry. And the time before that about 90% of them voted for Gore. And before that for Clinton.
In short, you're a racist moron, who never objected to 43 previous presidents all happening (very coincidentally I'm sure) to be white males.
"Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against non-Blacks."
In that case, they should also serve as a measurement of European-American racism against Blacks.
But instead you seem to consider the white vote unbiased and racism-free. You can't keep even your own arguments from shooting you in the foot.
"If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama."
In that case 65% of white people should also have supported Obama.
"At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race."
No, if 65% of both whites and blacks had voted for Obama, Obama would have won even easier than he did now.
You moron.
"Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American."
You've all already been doing that, you moron. Do you think you're gonna convince anyone who actually *ever* voted for a black person, EVER?
Do you think that a string of 43 white male Christian presidents has ever been a coincidence?
Now you're using a supposed African-American racism (there does exist racism in the African-American community as it exists in all communities) to justify the voting pattern you've ALWAYS been following.
Or do you think that it was only a coincidence that a nation that has been in majority white Christian had previously only voted for white Christian presidential and vice-presidential choices?
I doubt you've EVER bothered defending for voting a string of white Christian male presidential candidates before.
"Voting on the basis of skin is quite acceptable by the standards of today's moral values."
And when hasn't it been acceptable for *you*, you moron? When was the last time you voted for a black or Asian or Hispanic presidential candidate?
The vast majority of black people have also voted for white people for president though, in past elections. I very much doubt the reverse holds true for you.
"The fact that it is not a physical object that they will personally find missing means nothing."
It means the world. It means your act of supposed "stealing" doesn't actually increase unhappiness or cause inconvenience to anyone, like acts of traditional theft do. That's an important distinction, when your pleasure doesn't benefit someone but atleast it doesn't harm them either.
As for "service fee" -- I'd normally agree with you, except that I think that a world where everyone read books freely and they then rewarded voluntarily the authors they preferred would actually mean much more money going to the creators themselves.
I know for example that I've often hesitated before buying books because of their monetary costs. If I could buy them freely, and then reward my favourite authors, I assure you those get much more money from me, than the mere cents they end up receiving now for each purchase. And the books would spread more widely, as I could email my favourite ones to all my friends.
But the attitude needs change. The attitude ought become "read freely first, pay if you like it later".
"I would like to see statistics on all these direct payments to authors/musicians/game developers that slashdotters say they donate to after pirating stuff."
Yes, I would like to see some statistics too, but as you say, the lack of Paypal buttons diminishes our power to make our desired model possible.
I've donated to webcomics like Gunnerkrigg Curt or Penny && Aggie that were already offered for free, but e.g. Terry Pratchett would have earned much more money from me if he also had a Paypal button available. Instead I was morally forced to buy his "Nation" from fictionwise com, instead of being content with my eMule copy (which was much more readable as it suffered from no DRM). Which means that instead of dollars, he ended up getting mere cents from my purchase, as most of the money went to publishers that offered no additional value *at all*.
So who was doing the stealing here? Me from Pratchett for downloading a DRM-free copy AND buying a useless one from fictionwise.com, or his publishers for depriving both me and Pratchett of the money they took?
"You're depriving them of reward for the hard work they put into creating the material."
No, they no longer own the copyright. The publishing company owns the copyright. And the company didn't create the material, the value it added was about the PRINTING (which I no longer require in most cases) and the DISTRIBUTION (which I'm now paying my ISP and phone company for).
If I like a writer's work, I'm very likely to reward him via a Paypal donation. But not if I had to pay for his book in advance, before reading it.
I can do much more good for the author if I download his books for free, and I then reward the ones I like through a Paypal donation. Much more money will be going to many more creators then, than by enriching companies that no longer provide any additional value at all.
Copyright violation isn't stealing. It isn't depriving anyone of any object, physical or informational, at all.
"If you want to make point, boycot abusive companies, don't continue using their products,"
Yes, I was like you recently, thinking that only abuses of copyright were a problem. In truth, in the informational age, all copyright is a massive problem, as the companies nowadays don't provide ANYTHING of value for the items they want to be paid for -- neither transport and distribution, nor printing, nor anything at all.
Copyright-dependent companies have now become mere parasites on the artists and the consumers both.
His kangaroo trial was conducted by Iranian-supported vichys at Iran's urging, not America's, as evidenced by the fact his executioners were cheering for Iranian ally Sadr at the time of the.
Indeed Americans kept on refusing to surrender Saddam to the Iraqi court for the longest time -- until it became impossible for them to keep on refusing it while claiming to consider the Iraqi government legitimate.
But the will behind Saddam's execution was an Iranian one, not an American on.
No, I guess in your own universe police officers are always paragons of virtue, even when they straightforwardedly admit their corruption in networking sites.
It's the badge you see. To people like you, it's like the Knighthood of old. How dare mere peasants challenge their betters. How dare mere peasants bring evidence of their betters' own words.
You keep on trying to stifle discussion by repeating the same sentence in a twenty different ways to tire your opposition out.
You've not yet stated a single fact that is contradictory to what I've stated. E.g. you say "So, this woman's lesbian profile getting her banned by one or two other users is NOT uncommon and NOT some conspiracy to stifle alternative lifestyles on Live." -- somehow I don't remember calling it either uncommon or a "conspiracy". I merely called it bigoted.
But you keep on accusing me of saying things I never claimed, just to present me as ignorant. And for all you claim about how I'd find life more enjoyable if I was more like you, it's you who seem to depend on defending Microsoft to find life enjoyable.
Any particular reason why you keep repeating the same phrase in twenty different ways, believing you'll convince anyone by sheer repetition of the same inanity?
"Enforcing the TOS is not bigotry."
That depends on the TOS, and it depends on how selectively it is enforced.
"If it offends someone, YOU GET BANNED."
Do you have any proof for that (that one single individual being offended for ANY reason is sufficient to get another user banned), or are you just talking out of your ass again?
Another anti-scientific moron who doesn't undestand that because a definition is arbitrary that doesn't mean it CAN BE UTTERLY RANDOM, as it would have to be for Pluto to be called a planet but Eris not to be called one.
"The meaning of a word like planet is arbitrary. It means what the consensus says it means. There is no right or wrong answer."
Yes, there might not be "right" answer and "wrong" answers, but there are good answers and there are bad answers.
And the bad answers are those answers that are given with no regards whatsoever to consistency. The bad answers are those answers that are given for all the wrong reasons.
What is the Illinois senate attempting to do with this proclamation? Claim that Pluto is a more significant body than Eris? If so, they're WRONG. Claim that it has more in common with e.g. Neptune than with Makemake? If so, they're WRONG.
If an elected group of people decide that Pluto is a planet(which changes absolutely NOTHING),
Yes, it bloody well does change something. It creates the idea that Pluto shares more things in common with the 8 planets, than with Eris or Ceres or Haumea or Makemake.
But ofcourse you don't care about facts, you don't care about reality, you don't care about proper scientific education, you only care about the "snobbishness" instead.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
"Who are a bunch of snobbish scientist?"
The issue isn't WHO, (it's you who reveal yourserf a snob by asking that question), the issue is WHAT. And the answer is THAT THEY ARE CORRECT.
Pluto isn't a planet. Pluto should never have been called a planet. DEAL.
And the fucking government doesn't have a job trying to dictate science to scientists.
"Equating me, who you don't know from Adam, as a bigot"
Actually I equated you to people who are apologists for bigotry.
"Is YOUR interpretation of offensive going to override the person making the complaint? why? Because you're so much more enlightened than than the "redneck who hates lesbians"? "
Yes, that's exactly the reason why. Because they're the bigots, not me. Your moral relativism is utterly unappealing to me.
"Where does the line stop? You make exceptions and the rules no longer apply."
I don't want ANY exceptions to be made. I want Microsoft to clearly state one way or another whether homosexuality is forbidden or not.
Once Microsoft's rules are clear, then the rest of us can determine whether to boycott its services or not. But until that time, Microsoft's rules remain intentionally fuzzy, and therefore the services it provides remain ambiguous, and therefore we as CONSUMERS can't make an informed decision.
"The key here is GAMING"
And I'd be all OK with Microsoft stating that to provide ANY personal information is strictly forbidden. But if it provides the capability for personal profiles, then it cheated its customers by then forbidding them to profile their person.
There's a difference between discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, and discriminating on the basis of gender.
Society has accepted e.g. separate facilities on the basis of gender. It has rejected separate facilities on the basis of race.
This either way has has nothing to do with the issue at hand since we're not speaking about Microsoft providing separate Xbox accounts for gay/lesbians.
"Bitching about it won't turn it into a Rosa Parks-esque incident."
If you were around back then, you'd be arguing "our bus, our rules, and if Rosa doesn't like it, she can walk"
What, do you think *your* kind of people, with your lame flimsy excuses in support of the right to bigotry weren't around back then? Do you think that EVERYONE agreed with Rosa Parks back then?
"This is a non-issue. You can bitch all you want, but it's still a non-issue."
If their service was free, yes it would be a non-issue. But since they're selling their service, irrationally and bigotedly changing its rules, affects all their customers.
"I'm not not a US resident, but the idea that in the next, say, 20 years any nation will be be better prepared than the US to launch space weapons is downright laughable."
Perhaps you haven't noticed that other nations already have more extensive space programs than the US does, and are indeed better prepared to launch *anything* up there, to the point that USA is becoming dependent on the Russian Soyuz.
The funding of military has protected me and my ancestors from:
- British invasion (1812-1814) - Mexico invasion (1860s and 1910s) - German invasion (1940s) - Japanese invasion (ditto) - and so on.
Invasions which wouldn't have happened if those other nations' people weren't funding them with their own tax money, you mean?
Not to mention America's own wars of aggression, against e.g. Mexico or Vietnam
Were *those* taxes "legitimate" or "illegitimate"?
And if we decide that taxes for the military are illegitimate in the case of aggression, does that mean that current US taxes for the military are illegitimate because they were used to attack Iraq?
Defense of a homeland is a legitimate tax, especially since the U.S. Constitution gives direct authority for navies and armies.
Ah, how parochial. We're not then discussing actual "legitimacy" in regards to human rights, we're discussing about the constitutionality thereof in one particular country of the world.
Mind you, on the whole I agree with you that an RIAA tax would be a tax meant to enrich a single cartel, etc, etc, not much different than mafiosos. I just tend to feel that there exist much bigger taxes already with no better moral justification than that.
Let me get this straight: taxing people 40$ a year to fund the music/arts business is illegitimate law.
But the taxes you've been paying so far, e.g. to fund the military/industrial complex, and military operation you might not agree with, those ones are legitimate taxes?
Your logic doesn't seem very consistent to me. Indeed it seems to me that Ghandi and MLK would be more likely to protest the funding of wars rather than the funding of music. You seem the other way around.
Slashdot Mirror
"During the election, about 95% of African-Americans voted for Barack Hussein Obama due solely to the color of his skin."
And during the last election, about 90% of African Americans voted for Kerry. And the time before that about 90% of them voted for Gore. And before that for Clinton.
In short, you're a racist moron, who never objected to 43 previous presidents all happening (very coincidentally I'm sure) to be white males.
"Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against non-Blacks."
In that case, they should also serve as a measurement of European-American racism against Blacks.
But instead you seem to consider the white vote unbiased and racism-free. You can't keep even your own arguments from shooting you in the foot.
"If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama."
In that case 65% of white people should also have supported Obama.
"At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race."
No, if 65% of both whites and blacks had voted for Obama, Obama would have won even easier than he did now.
You moron.
"Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American."
You've all already been doing that, you moron. Do you think you're gonna convince anyone who actually *ever* voted for a black person, EVER?
Do you think that a string of 43 white male Christian presidents has ever been a coincidence?
Now you're using a supposed African-American racism (there does exist racism in the African-American community as it exists in all communities) to justify the voting pattern you've ALWAYS been following.
Or do you think that it was only a coincidence that a nation that has been in majority white Christian had previously only voted for white Christian presidential and vice-presidential choices?
I doubt you've EVER bothered defending for voting a string of white Christian male presidential candidates before.
"Voting on the basis of skin is quite acceptable by the standards of today's moral values."
And when hasn't it been acceptable for *you*, you moron? When was the last time you voted for a black or Asian or Hispanic presidential candidate?
The vast majority of black people have also voted for white people for president though, in past elections. I very much doubt the reverse holds true for you.
A strong secular leader like Saddam Hussein you mean?
Unless you are an Iranian, you have no business getting anyone in power over there.
"The fact that it is not a physical object that they will personally find missing means nothing."
It means the world. It means your act of supposed "stealing" doesn't actually increase unhappiness or cause inconvenience to anyone, like acts of traditional theft do. That's an important distinction, when your pleasure doesn't benefit someone but atleast it doesn't harm them either.
As for "service fee" -- I'd normally agree with you, except that I think that a world where everyone read books freely and they then rewarded voluntarily the authors they preferred would actually mean much more money going to the creators themselves.
I know for example that I've often hesitated before buying books because of their monetary costs. If I could buy them freely, and then reward my favourite authors, I assure you those get much more money from me, than the mere cents they end up receiving now for each purchase. And the books would spread more widely, as I could email my favourite ones to all my friends.
But the attitude needs change. The attitude ought become "read freely first, pay if you like it later".
"I would like to see statistics on all these direct payments to authors/musicians/game developers that slashdotters say they donate to after pirating stuff."
Yes, I would like to see some statistics too, but as you say, the lack of Paypal buttons diminishes our power to make our desired model possible.
I've donated to webcomics like Gunnerkrigg Curt or Penny && Aggie that were already offered for free, but e.g. Terry Pratchett would have earned much more money from me if he also had a Paypal button available. Instead I was morally forced to buy his "Nation" from fictionwise com, instead of being content with my eMule copy (which was much more readable as it suffered from no DRM). Which means that instead of dollars, he ended up getting mere cents from my purchase, as most of the money went to publishers that offered no additional value *at all*.
So who was doing the stealing here? Me from Pratchett for downloading a DRM-free copy AND buying a useless one from fictionwise.com, or his publishers for depriving both me and Pratchett of the money they took?
"You're depriving them of reward for the hard work they put into creating the material."
No, they no longer own the copyright. The publishing company owns the copyright. And the company didn't create the material, the value it added was about the PRINTING (which I no longer require in most cases) and the DISTRIBUTION (which I'm now paying my ISP and phone company for).
If I like a writer's work, I'm very likely to reward him via a Paypal donation. But not if I had to pay for his book in advance, before reading it.
I can do much more good for the author if I download his books for free, and I then reward the ones I like through a Paypal donation. Much more money will be going to many more creators then, than by enriching companies that no longer provide any additional value at all.
"Freedom of speech is not freedom to steal."
Copyright violation isn't stealing. It isn't depriving anyone of any object, physical or informational, at all.
"If you want to make point, boycot abusive companies, don't continue using their products,"
Yes, I was like you recently, thinking that only abuses of copyright were a problem. In truth, in the informational age, all copyright is a massive problem, as the companies nowadays don't provide ANYTHING of value for the items they want to be paid for -- neither transport and distribution, nor printing, nor anything at all.
Copyright-dependent companies have now become mere parasites on the artists and the consumers both.
His kangaroo trial was conducted by Iranian-supported vichys at Iran's urging, not America's, as evidenced by the fact his executioners were cheering for Iranian ally Sadr at the time of the.
Indeed Americans kept on refusing to surrender Saddam to the Iraqi court for the longest time -- until it became impossible for them to keep on refusing it while claiming to consider the Iraqi government legitimate.
But the will behind Saddam's execution was an Iranian one, not an American on.
"Europe doesn't import culture."
Everyone imports culture.
"Entertainment is not culture."
That's the most moronic thing you've said yet.
Clearly you live in such a parochial way that your culture is confined within your national borders.
Except that you obviously use the Internet. So you fail yet again from sheer self-contradiction.
No, I guess in your own universe police officers are always paragons of virtue, even when they straightforwardedly admit their corruption in networking sites.
It's the badge you see. To people like you, it's like the Knighthood of old. How dare mere peasants challenge their betters. How dare mere peasants bring evidence of their betters' own words.
You keep on trying to stifle discussion by repeating the same sentence in a twenty different ways to tire your opposition out.
You've not yet stated a single fact that is contradictory to what I've stated. E.g. you say "So, this woman's lesbian profile getting her banned by one or two other users is NOT uncommon and NOT some conspiracy to stifle alternative lifestyles on Live." -- somehow I don't remember calling it either uncommon or a "conspiracy". I merely called it bigoted.
But you keep on accusing me of saying things I never claimed, just to present me as ignorant. And for all you claim about how I'd find life more enjoyable if I was more like you, it's you who seem to depend on defending Microsoft to find life enjoyable.
Any particular reason why you keep repeating the same phrase in twenty different ways, believing you'll convince anyone by sheer repetition of the same inanity?
"Enforcing the TOS is not bigotry."
That depends on the TOS, and it depends on how selectively it is enforced.
"If it offends someone, YOU GET BANNED."
Do you have any proof for that (that one single individual being offended for ANY reason is sufficient to get another user banned), or are you just talking out of your ass again?
Another anti-scientific moron who doesn't undestand that because a definition is arbitrary that doesn't mean it CAN BE UTTERLY RANDOM, as it would have to be for Pluto to be called a planet but Eris not to be called one.
Please tell me you're kidding. I don't want to exist in the same universe with someone as stupid as you'd have to be otherwise.
"The meaning of a word like planet is arbitrary. It means what the consensus says it means. There is no right or wrong answer."
Yes, there might not be "right" answer and "wrong" answers, but there are good answers and there are bad answers.
And the bad answers are those answers that are given with no regards whatsoever to consistency. The bad answers are those answers that are given for all the wrong reasons.
What is the Illinois senate attempting to do with this proclamation? Claim that Pluto is a more significant body than Eris? If so, they're WRONG. Claim that it has more in common with e.g. Neptune than with Makemake? If so, they're WRONG.
If an elected group of people decide that Pluto is a planet(which changes absolutely NOTHING),
Yes, it bloody well does change something. It creates the idea that Pluto shares more things in common with the 8 planets, than with Eris or Ceres or Haumea or Makemake.
But ofcourse you don't care about facts, you don't care about reality, you don't care about proper scientific education, you only care about the "snobbishness" instead.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
"Who are a bunch of snobbish scientist?"
The issue isn't WHO, (it's you who reveal yourserf a snob by asking that question), the issue is WHAT. And the answer is THAT THEY ARE CORRECT.
Pluto isn't a planet. Pluto should never have been called a planet. DEAL.
And the fucking government doesn't have a job trying to dictate science to scientists.
"Equating me, who you don't know from Adam, as a bigot"
Actually I equated you to people who are apologists for bigotry.
"Is YOUR interpretation of offensive going to override the person making the complaint? why? Because you're so much more enlightened than than the "redneck who hates lesbians"? "
Yes, that's exactly the reason why. Because they're the bigots, not me. Your moral relativism is utterly unappealing to me.
"Where does the line stop? You make exceptions and the rules no longer apply."
I don't want ANY exceptions to be made. I want Microsoft to clearly state one way or another whether homosexuality is forbidden or not.
Once Microsoft's rules are clear, then the rest of us can determine whether to boycott its services or not. But until that time, Microsoft's rules remain intentionally fuzzy, and therefore the services it provides remain ambiguous, and therefore we as CONSUMERS can't make an informed decision.
"The key here is GAMING"
And I'd be all OK with Microsoft stating that to provide ANY personal information is strictly forbidden. But if it provides the capability for personal profiles, then it cheated its customers by then forbidding them to profile their person.
And which are the places supposedly "appropriate for it"?
You're not actually saying anything by saying "Mind the TIME and PLACE" without actually indicating what that time and place is supposed to be.
There's a difference between discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, and discriminating on the basis of gender.
Society has accepted e.g. separate facilities on the basis of gender. It has rejected separate facilities on the basis of race.
This either way has has nothing to do with the issue at hand since we're not speaking about Microsoft providing separate Xbox accounts for gay/lesbians.
"Bitching about it won't turn it into a Rosa Parks-esque incident."
If you were around back then, you'd be arguing "our bus, our rules, and if Rosa doesn't like it, she can walk"
What, do you think *your* kind of people, with your lame flimsy excuses in support of the right to bigotry weren't around back then? Do you think that EVERYONE agreed with Rosa Parks back then?
"This is a non-issue. You can bitch all you want, but it's still a non-issue."
If their service was free, yes it would be a non-issue. But since they're selling their service, irrationally and bigotedly changing its rules, affects all their customers.
Well then, we just need to increase the gravitational constant of the universe as well.
If you want a place that's less gay-friendly and less atheist-friendly, that's the day you'll become an IRANIAN, you idiot, not Canadian.
Why the hell would Canada want you?? Why the hell do you think it would be a better place for you than America?
"I'm not not a US resident, but the idea that in the next, say, 20 years any nation will be be better prepared than the US to launch space weapons is downright laughable."
Perhaps you haven't noticed that other nations already have more extensive space programs than the US does, and are indeed better prepared to launch *anything* up there, to the point that USA is becoming dependent on the Russian Soyuz.
The funding of military has protected me and my ancestors from:
- British invasion (1812-1814)
- Mexico invasion (1860s and 1910s)
- German invasion (1940s)
- Japanese invasion (ditto)
- and so on.
Invasions which wouldn't have happened if those other nations' people weren't funding them with their own tax money, you mean?
Not to mention America's own wars of aggression, against e.g. Mexico or Vietnam
Were *those* taxes "legitimate" or "illegitimate"?
And if we decide that taxes for the military are illegitimate in the case of aggression, does that mean that current US taxes for the military are illegitimate because they were used to attack Iraq?
Defense of a homeland is a legitimate tax, especially since the U.S. Constitution gives direct authority for navies and armies.
Ah, how parochial. We're not then discussing actual "legitimacy" in regards to human rights, we're discussing about the constitutionality thereof in one particular country of the world.
Mind you, on the whole I agree with you that an RIAA tax would be a tax meant to enrich a single cartel, etc, etc, not much different than mafiosos. I just tend to feel that there exist much bigger taxes already with no better moral justification than that.
Let me get this straight: taxing people 40$ a year to fund the music/arts business is illegitimate law.
But the taxes you've been paying so far, e.g. to fund the military/industrial complex, and military operation you might not agree with, those ones are legitimate taxes?
Your logic doesn't seem very consistent to me. Indeed it seems to me that Ghandi and MLK would be more likely to protest the funding of wars rather than the funding of music. You seem the other way around.