Two components of consumerism. The third one being psychological manipulation and the fourth one the financial trap. People don't need any of that for having a fulfilling life.
Returning on forests, a forest is a complex eco-system that can't be recreated once destroyed. What people call "reforestation" it's just planting a vast area of mono-culture that generates ecological disasters, not sustainable eco-systems. Additionally, such reforestation is been presented as a solution while in fact it's an excuse to allow more pollution and natural recourses destruction.
Energy is the base of everything. While artificial dependency on coal and oil isn't changed in favor of a new energetic model worldwide, earth will keep on being destroyed and the next generations will have all the right to accuse the current ones, us, of that crime.
Grammar checkers don't exist and the problem with spell checkers is that the user relies on it instead of paying attention. Naturally, errors will appear every time two distinct words, that both exists but with different meanings, are typed by mistake or/and inattention.
The tool I use the most it's an English-English dictionary. English-Portuguese digital dictionaries (I mean the free ones) are useless for everyone pretending to express himself slightly better than a five years old children.
Google "translator", at least regarding Portuguese-English, it's an anecdote.
I think capital punishment is justifiable if it's propertionate to the crime, just, swift, and secure.
Military laws are one thing, civilian laws a different one. I suppose that the thread refers to death penalty regarding civilian societies. In such case, death penalty is never justifiable for the following reasons.
The reason to be for penalties, in advanced civilized societies, has three objectives, all of them fundamental: a) To be a punishment for the individual so he doesn't commit the same behavior/practice again. b) To be an example for the other individuals so they don't do it. c) To be a way of rehabilitation so the once criminal can reintegrate into society again.
As obvious, death penalty contradicts the last objective - in fact, it is substituted by a primitive impulse, Revenge. It's not even clear if death penalty has any value regarding objective b). Ahh, it is reported to work very well regarding a)...
But there's more reasons against death penalty from a pure law point of view, its irreversibility in case of error being just the first one. The second problem would be indemnity in case of error, how much does your life values? And there's torture. All forms of death penalty are, as obvious, simultaneously a torture.
There's a third order of reason, which is more from philosophy of politics, has the State - basically just a concept - the right to kill the ones it represents? I think not.
And there's moral. To kill, in times of peace and out of legitimate self defense, it's morally wrong. Period. Therefore, no one should endorse the "State" to kill in his name.
That's the first problem, the industry has been trying to call "pirating" to what is nothing but technological evolution and, mainly, an evolution on old business models. Basically it's like pretending to forbid electric cars because someone wants to force people to buy gasoline at absurd high prices.
Torrents it's a good example for that. No one is pirating anything, people share small bit of data (that they are absolutely free to do it under any legislation), useless by itself, from hundreds or thousands of different sources worldwide and then a software is able to "mount" all those bits of data and give it sense. If there's any problem, it will be corporation's problem, not user's problem.
I hate wireless keyboards. Not only there's a delay between when we press and the letters appears in the screen but wireless keyboards always chose the worst time for getting out of battery and it uses to happen instantaneously.
It should be noted that even here in the "oppressive US" a lot of that stuff in the EULAs is felgercarb and everybody knows it.
Ok, ok... I know that America is not sooo bad as it seems...
The problem is that I don't see strong enough software consumer rights organizations. That's really the problem.
How can such organizations be strong with so many different partial laws, how can those organizations be strong without any laws worldwide (thanks God...) ? How can those organizations even operate according local (inexistent) laws? How can those organizations fight an army of lawyers financed by the most lucrative business in the world?
If you're contrasting that with the situation in America, you've been misinformed.
I couldn't care less for situation in America, Frenzie, it happens that many, (the majority?) of software for personal usage comes from the US.
It's inadmissible that softwares I bought can't be reinstalled again when old computers goes to trash and many other situations. So, I pirate them the most I can. Intelligent companies that actually gives a good service in exchange for fair payment, I prefer to buy their products. I still believe in the value of intellectual production.
By the way, confession also doesn't have any legal value here but I suppose it will have in the USA.
The funny thing about these software licences is that there's often a lot of crap in them that's not enforceable, depending on the country you're in.
Absolutely. Most of software license's content (specially from American origin) are totally illegal in my country and the contracts themselves can be considered "leonine", which means with an huge disproportion about the rights between both parts and therefore can be considered null.
There's no such a thing as "you've signed, you've accepted" in law systems that originates mainly from the Roman concept of Law and not from some consuetudinary origin.
We are not free to do what we want and have the skills for. We are forced to do what brings in money. Stupid system.
Yes and it goes further than that. It models people's lives and expectations in a way that's not too much different from mind control. Mind control from birth until death.
Few people can get rid of this. This is probably the most important thing in life, the right to have our own lives. Governments are today part of the problem not of the solution.
Recent surveys have showed that 29% or more of people only mouth the words 'I believe' when asked and actually never go to church, read the Bible or live by His word. To what good end is believing if hate, sin and hypocrisy still rule believers lives?
Never go to church, read the Bible or live by His word are not synonymous of hate, sin and hypocrisy... There's a certain tendency in Europe for a more secular kind of religion and that's not a necessarily bad or censurable thing, very much the contrary.
The Catholic Church structures are realizing that such behavior doesn't make worst Catholics, people are focusing the importance of the Church at real important moments of their lives rather than just willing to show to others "look how I'm a good Catholic and go everyday to the church". That's certainly a good thing.
By "platform" I mean the several technical aspects (both hardware and software) that allows the content (our content, according T&C) to be posted. For example, imagine that the Administration receives a proposal to sell the platform to a third party. Do users have a voice about it or not? Another example, publicity. Can the Administration sell advertising space in the forum?
Please understand that I'm not trying to create difficulties and I very much appreciate all your effort but I'm increasingly worried with that kind of things that can suddenly alter the whole spirit of a digital community. MyOpera's attitude was enough for something I don't like.
While our agnostic/atheist friends keeps demanding (??) that God has the same attributes than the neighbor next door, therefore being perceived the same way, the problem with ..... will persist endless. A good thing that it only affects less than four percent of world's population...
In T&C/Responsibilities The DnDSA does not own material posted within the DnD forum, the material remaining the property and/or sole responsibility of the forum member who posted it. [...]
Very well. I presume that the platform itself belongs to someone (the Administration?) and, therefore, can be sold to someone at any moment. Is my interpretation correct?
I hate Terms and Conditions of any sort but these particular ones are special to me. Congratulations, we are near the best T&C running on the internet.
Why does everyone identifies freedom (or lack of it) with financial/economic status? Keep on doing that will make you money slaves the rest of your lives.
I had money, I lost all the money, I had money again, I lost all the money again... and so on and so on... I got tired of being a money slave, there's much better things on life to be lived than money. Freedom and passion (maybe antagonistic things, eh? ) are surely more important than money.
.I would also like to suggest that if you decide to make such a sticky thread, that we all (us regulars) make a concerted effort to visit this "Introduce Yourself"
Certainly I'll do it. Even more, I even will introduce myself...
Nothing better, when waiting for new "victims", than to turn ourselves into virgin blood, he he...
I don't know if this is the right place to post my question but since it's about Opera...
I had to move to an older computer that still has Opera 11.6 installed. Each time I open Opera, a dialog box opens asking if I want to update (to Opera 18). No, I don't. I'm not remembering where do I change settings so I don't get the message every time. I don't see any option for that at Preferences.
Probably because a negative range would turn into pathologic
The scale would be quite okay if agnosticism were centred at zero.
That's just the beginning of The Problem with Agnosticism. Just as we have these days the "new atheism", we also have the "new agnosticism". New agnosticism means a posture of indifference towards much more than just philosophical questions, it means simply I don't care, I don't want to know. It includes philosophical questions but also much more things.
That's not Agnosticism, Agnosticism means a certainty that is not possible to the human being to know if God exists. In others words, the ultimate truths and, very particularly - the existence of God, are not accessible to Men.
I used to be there until I realized the mistake and wrongness of the classical agnosticism.
Probably because a negative range would turn into pathologic
I see... agnostics are the "positive" ones... the higher the rank the more they get into perfection, meaning atheism. It must be the positiveness of "I don't know"...
