"intelligent design" is not scientific,and definitely NOT a theory. Its a philosophical construct at best, and belongs in a philosophy class.
As a Creationist, I happen to agree with you 100%.
Creation Science is built around the idea that if you start with the Bible as the source of your hypotheses, you should be able to find scientific evidence that is consistent with those hypotheses. If the evidence instead contradicts your hypothesis, then either your evidence is flawed, your interpretation of the evidence is flawed, or your interpretation of the Bible is flawed.
Intelligent Design, in contrast, does not start from the premise that the Bible is a literal historical document, because that would mean religion is involved. Instead, ID simply says that life is too complex to have evolved spontaneously on its own, therefore God must have done it. On the surface this sounds similar to Creation Science (both say God did it), but ID doesn't bring anything falsifiable to the table.
The question of whether or not God (or the FSM or space aliens) caused a particular event is not testable empirically, even if it is true. Creation Science doesn't try to test God's involvement, only the actual physical events described in the Bible (for example, that there was a global Flood around 2,000 BC or so that wiped out all humans and animals that couldn't fit in a really big boat). It doesn't look at whether the events described in Genesis were really caused by God, only whether or not they occurred as described (and the mechanics behind how they occurred).
Jail time is pretty harsh for any kind of IP crime. That's just it though; It's INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY crime. It's not tangible.
A copyright defines rights which are granted to somebody from the government. They use these rights to diminish competition and allow them to have an advantage to collect profits for a reasonable period of time. The period of time is certainly no longer reasonable IMO, but that is up for debate.
What is not really up for debate, is that violating these rights falls within the jurisdiction of the civil courts. It was never supposed to be a matter for criminal courts. The GP of your post tried pointing out that seemingly corrupt government entities have been responsible for turning into a criminal matter, what has always been a civil matter. Simply to give them the upper hand. They don't need to spend money in the court systems defending their intellectual property against minor violations.
I recently watched a special about prison systems. I am 32 years old right now. I can remember being 22 years old, but that seems to be as far away from me now as being 11 years old. 10 YEARS is a very LONG time. Assuming that you get 60 years of adult life in this world, 1/6th of that being taken away is a huge punishment.
It's easy to forget that. I'm all for the death penalty and harsh criminal convictions, but only for violent crime. IP infringement is not a crime that we need to take 10 years from somebody for. Let's not forget that we will spend anywhere between 300K and 400K as taxpayers to do it too. Is is really that cost effective for us to do this? To protect big media companies? To protect society, or our values?
I just don't think so. Maybe huge fines and 6 months in jail or prison might be adequate.
I am more concerned by the fact that turning this into a criminal matter has provided government and corporations the impetus to do away with our privacy and rights altogether simply to provide protection for a few companies profit margins.
Creation Science doesn't try to test God's involvement, only the actual physical events described in the Bible (for example, that there was a global Flood around 2,000 BC or so that wiped out all humans and animals that couldn't fit in a really big boat). It doesn't look at whether the events described in Genesis were really caused by God, only whether or not they occurred as described (and the mechanics behind how they occurred).
And this is precisely why it isn't science. Creationism says "God did it" without any way to test it. The conclusion is pre-determined. I know you realize that it isn't science, but I still shudder when I hear people call it "Creation Science? ID is creation science. They're not just similar, they're the same thing. Intelligent Design is just a different name.
If you recall the book that stirred controversy and went to the supreme court Of Pandas and People was originally a creation "science" book, but when the 1987 ruling that banned the teaching of creation science, Pandas was edited, replacing all instances of "Creation" with "Intelligent Design." The concepts are exactly the same, the arguments are exactly the same. Even though Intelligent Design does replace the Judeo-Christian God with a "fill in the blanks with whatever you want to believe" entity, the people pushing it are the same people that pushed creationism.
How does this myth stay alive? There were personal computers before Bill Gates: Macs. There were personal computers during the early rise of Microsoft: Macs, OS/2, Suns. There were personal computers throughout the Bill Gates glory days: Macs, Linux, (and Suns, kinda). And there are personal computers today. And there would have been personal computers without Bill Gates.
That's not to say his contributions are worthless, but let's not start patting him too hard on the back just because he's retiring. He used questionably ethical business practices to produce and sell products of questionable quality.
On the plus side, he's going to spend the rest of his life giving away enormous sums of money to charity - there's not much to dislike about that!
No he was not. As far as I can understand it he leaked material from the warez scene onto P2P.
Most (except probably a few unrespected crap groups) do not upload their material to P2P networks and don't want their material getting there. It is a security risk and it is exposing the scene.
These so called Uploaders on P2P torrent trackers are mostly people who have access to scene material in one way or another. Maybe just a crappy courier that isn't contributing or maybe someone who pays for leech or is hosting a server. Anyhow they are usually not respected individuals within the scene and upload things to P2P for either ideological reasons or just to get a bigger epenis.
Sorry for my rant but someone had to say it.
I would LOVE to see Ballmer on the way out instead of Bill. Most of what people really dislike about Microsoft is Ballmer's doing, Gates just didn't have the spine to stand up to him and reel him in.
It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.