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Comment Re:Maybe in a different country (Score 2) 498

That happened because of the combination of 1) medical associations encouraging doctors to ask the questions (for guns alone, not for all things of similar dangerousness) and 2) doctors being mandatory reporters, so having a doctor tell you not to have guns is very intimidating because it's a half step towards losing your children.

Comment Re:Maybe in a different country (Score 1) 498

In this context, claiming lots of "children" are shot is used to imply that because they are children, they are innocent and the fault is of someone else who made the gun available or used it irresponsibly. It is dishonest to pick an age so high that they start getting shot because they are committing crimes rather than because someone left the gun out and it looked like a toy.

Comment Re:So what you're saying... (Score 1) 367

...is that they're basically taking an issue that most people either didn't really know about or didn't really care about too strongly, and are shoving it into everyone else's faces, so that they now have a reason to take a stance against it?

I wonder what you think of gay pride parades. Or even gay people kissing in public.

Comment Re:FedEx is a private business, isn't it? (Score 2, Insightful) 320

You don't seem to understand libertarianism. Libertarians believe that private actions should be legal. Libertarians do not believe that you should not complain about private actions.

Furthermore, in this case, if FedEx really is afraid of legal liability, or if the government is in other ways putting pressure on them, it's not a private action anyway. Government involvement is inherently not private.

But then I already said this.

Comment Re:Oh bullshit! (Score 4, Insightful) 320

You don't seem to understand libertarianism. Libertarians believe that private actions should be legal. Libertarians do not believe that you should not complain about private actions.

Furthermore, in this case, if FedEx really is afraid of legal liability, or if the government is in other ways putting pressure on them, it's not a private action anyway. Government involvement is inherently not private.

Comment Re:Darwin never suggested "survival of the fittest (Score 1) 249

What does this even mean?... the statement can only mean "survival of the survivers" which is a trivial obsurdity.

If I tell you a figure with three sides is a triangle, would you reply that since "triangle" is defined as a figure with three sides, I am really saying "a figure with three sides is a figure with three sides", and therefore I am not saying anything?

Comment Re:Overblown nonsense. (Score 4, Insightful) 99

Here's how you clearly put something in within the law: (1) You declare it public domain. (2) Now, keeping it there: You simply exercise a level of ethics even a 5 year old understands: You don't go back on your word, because (for one thing) that would make you a major fucktarded scumbag.

That doesn't work. Maybe a year later you get sued for something and the court orders that your copyright be transferred to the person suing you as compensation. Or you go bankrupt and your copyright is sold to your creditors. Or, instead of being sued, you die and the copyright goes to your heirs. And the new owner doesn't consider himself bound by your word.

Furthermore, even if none of that happens, it's still not equivalent to public domain because even if you keep your word, someone who wants to use your work has no way to read your mind and know that you're the kind of person who keeps his word. So he has to act as if you could withdraw permission at any time even if you never would.

Comment Re:Defaults (Score 1) 2

This is a bad idea.

1) This would teach users that when they are redirected to a page that offers malware cleaners and antivirus choices, they should download and install one. Most such pages are frauds, and the user won't understand the difference between the ISP sending them to the page and a banner ad or phishing email sending them to a similar-looking page,

2) Given the way that ISPs are actually run, encouraging ISPs to detect malware will lead to ISPs just detecting and banning all sorts of unusual activity. The ISP has probably not heard of a user running Linux, for instance, and would not care if all Linux users were detected as false positives or disconnected for refusing to run Windows virus scanners on their Linux boxes. And it's unlikely that the ISP has staff who would understand a Linux user's explanation of how his box is not actually running any malware.

3) If this was put into practice on a large scale, I would expect that shortly, the MPAA or similar groups would try to tell the ISPs that all torrenting is dangerous, malware-prone activity and should result in cutoffs.

Comment MP3 players? (Score 1) 391

I really wish I could find a decent MP3 player that is not a "purity of the original signal" type $1200 scam, and was not discontinued years ago.

The usual advice is "buy a cheap phone and don't use it as a phone". This fails because

  • most of them have horrible battery life (the 33 hours for this sounds fairly decent, if only it wasn't $1200)
  • there are so many models of phones out that it's hard to find a good selection of reviews for any specific one
  • They tend to have random gotchas (for instance, there are phones which don't let you use the non-phone features until you activate it as a phone)

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