Back when I was still into the religion thing, I had a Bible with footnotes that discussed translation issues and meanings of certain passages, citing original sources where appropriate. It outlined areas where there was disagreement about interpretation as well.
I can't remember what it was called, unfortunately, but I had considered it a step above some of the other bibles I had seen.
I don't think a lot of people feel that war is never an answer. However a lot of us feel that we spend far, far more on war than we actually need to, and that it'd be prudent to maybe focus on consolidating and reducing our forces to a defensive role.
Its frustrating when people act as if we want to get rid of it completely. Its also frustrating when people respond to nuanced criticism of our military spending with, "Well, funding the military is the federal government's job!" Of course it is, but that doesn't mean we need to spend quite so much.
In what way? Closed source says nothing about whether you actually use some of the very-bad laws on the books to prevent people from inspecting the workings of your program. Its perfectly possibly for me to write a closed-source program and not drag people to court for reverse engineering, and even write a license to that effect.
If I do not explicitly permit someone to distribute modifications of my software, that *would* fall under copyright law, but that's not covered by the analogy. In fact, its pretty difficult to come up with a car analogy that actually makes sense. Whether you view copyright as moral or not falls to your personal belief. My belief is that, despite Stallman's protestations, it is possible to distribute software under copyright morally, even though a lot of proprietary software vendors do not do so.
The GO's management of the Church's external affairs was notably deficient and many parishioners and staff began to suspect that matters for which the GO was responsible were not being dealt with in accordance with the teachings of Mr. Hubbard. In fact, by this time, the Guardian's Office had abandoned any pretense of following the principles described in Mr. Hubbard's writings.
Given that the doctrine of "Fair Game" came from Hubbard himself, this is bullshit. Hubbard's principles included harassment, character asssassination, and murder. I'd also like to point out this little tidbit
As early as 1960, L. Ron Hubbard had proposed that Scientologists should infiltrate government departments by taking secretarial, bodyguard or other jobs.[8]
That little [8] there is a citation, by the way. Looks like Hubbard was OK in principle with the actions of the GO. Scientology did a 180 on it when it became bad for PR. Forgive me if I don't take the words of a Scientology shill as anything more than the ramblings of a habitual liar.
I'm guessing that these kinds of comments are made by vegetarians who are more concerned about growing the ranks of their "organization" than preventing animals from being killed. To them, its about being a part of the "in group" as opposed to any actual productive results. You'll find those kinds of people in any sort of organization, and they tend to be the most annoying. I'm guessing that most vegetarians will either welcome this or have no opinion.
I work at a company where we have on-call rotations, with pager and everything. It was made explicitly clear during the interview and hiring process that this would be expected of me, and that I should consider my salary as reflecting this responsibility. Given that the salary was a good deal higher than typical jobs in the area, and expectations were stated up-front, I felt that this was fair.
If you're an independent contractor, then you definitely should be paid for those on-calls. Its unfathomable to me that someone can expect you to work without proper compensation.
I'd disagree with your point about movies. Yes, Hollywood does put out a lot of crap, but they also put out a decent number of good moves. Of those good movies, they are usually higher-quality than indie movies. And speaking of indie movies, how many of those were released under a permissive license (without copyright)?
And video games? That's a huge gaping hole that people tend to forget (or outright ignore). After all, the quality of FOSS/non-copyrighted video games is laughable when compared to games developed under copyright. I certainly haven't seen a single free game that has managed to convince me that non-copyrighted games will be able to fill the shoes of the current industry.
And of course, we haven't even touched the real problem with your argument: that you're equating copying today with copying hundreds of years ago. The ability to easily copy books and other materials wasn't even around until the printing press, and today's computers and digital media far exceed previous copying methods in terms of cost-savings and quality. As another poster pointed out, the invention of the printing press was followed shortly by the invention of copyright. Maybe the issue isn't as simple as you'd like to make it out?
That you'd trot out the tired, "Well, people were making stuff before copyright," argument without any sort of critical thinking, gloss over the works that current industries produce, and then even leave out an entire industry worth billions of dollars... well it doesn't say much for your argument.
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson
