DavidV

Please enlighten us on what content you're talking about and why it's "obviously" religious.

For everyone who is wondering what the hell this person is talking about, the Aggie Review was a conservative paper that I became webmaster of about two years ago. I made a new website for the paper just in time to see it completely fall apart and be quickly fogotten. Subsequently, a new conservative paper arose in my school, for which I wrote several articles, but which seems to have run out of steam as well. (Meanwhile, the lefist paper at my huge "conservative" state school is thriving.) In any case, the Review website originally had its own forum, but after the paper collapsed, I pointed a "forum" link here. The two sites have no relation to each other, and as you can see for yourself, neither promotes mysticism in any way. For the record, I don't think there's anything wrong with writing for a conservative paper (my editorials have been published in many), though I'd have qualms about running one, as our guest pointed out. After the Review collapsed, my Objectivist club briefly considered taking it over, but we gave up on the idea after not being able to find enough writers. Guest, if you're looking for someone to blame, I suggest you consider the nihilism and multiculturalism that pervades college campuses today.

I'm leaning towards agreeing with you, though I still pondering the issue. Incidentaly, I'm currently hosting the AynRandChat website, and you will often find me lounging around #AynRand. And no, the "management" has not changed a bit.

I don't see what real service your site offers. Sure, it's easy to register, but why would anyone pay $25 just to see someone's profile? This forum offers that for free, and we can actually get to know each other by studying philosophy together rather than simply being "admirers." Don't get me wrong, I think a "community-building web site" is a great idea -- that's why I started this one. I just don't think yours offers nearly enough for the cost of membership.

I signed up my club for the list a month ago, and I've been really enjoying the posts. Now, I just have to convince our club to spend most of our yearly budget on it...

On second thought, "scam" is not the best word since it implies fraud, so I'll use the more pc "economically-challenged business model."

Other than the dating service (which I haven't seen) I'm skeptical. This looks like little more than a scam so far, as it offers 2 articles (which seem to be copied and pasted from some other site) and little usefull content.

I saw this question at #AynRand: "Do you think you can be honestly, genuinely certain and also wrong?" What do you think? I'm still sorting out my thoughts on the issue, so I'll post my comments shortly.

I’m unclear on just what the concept subsumes. The closest thing to a definition of “property” I can find is in CUI, p122. Ayn Rand defines “property rights” as “Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort should be private property – by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort.” Would this be a correct definition of “property”: “An object or idea created or discovered by the application of mental and physical effort to make it a value to a rational being’s life.” So, a potentially valuable object in nature doesn’t become property until someone derives a value from it, right? Or is it just “unclaimed property” until then? Also, under this definition, any valuable idea we think up becomes our property. But this sometimes conflicts with the legal definition of property – for example, we can’t profit from an invention we think up on our own if there is already a patent on it. Also, we can’t profit from any scientific laws or abstract ideas we invent (such as the philosophy of Objectivism.) Sure, you could sell books about it, but someone is free to write and profit from your abstract ideas as well. Finally, when you do get a patent for something, you may only do so for a limited amount of time. Obviously, this is because it is impractical and in fact impossible to enforce all instances where a person derives a benefit from a value another individual has created. Does this mean that moral ideals must be compromised by practical considerations in the realm of politics? If so, it would seem that we have a moral obligation to “pay” even when practical considerations prevent that obligation from being enforceable. Let me give an example: I owe a great debt to Ayn Rand for improving my life by providing me with a rational philosophy. I don’t think this means that I should send bags of $ to AR even if she was still alive, but do I have some sort of non-material debt – such as promoting her philosophy? I certainly do spend time and money to promote Objectivism, but I do because of the various benefits I derive from doing so -- my intellectual education, the friends I make, the value of a more rational society, etc. What do you think?

RadCap, you're wrong about just one thing: As administrators, Ash and I can ban anyone, regardless of whether they’re registered. So just message me with the IP address, and I’ll take care of it. Btw, at Steve’s request, I blocked a particularly obnoxious poster earlier today. I looked into his IP address, and found out that he was accessing our forum from the “Commonwealth of Kentucky Dept. of Information Systems.” I have a feeling that if his boss saw the language he used on this forum, (not to mention how he was spending his time at work) he might be looking for a job right now. If he decides to come back to us, don’t delete the post and let me know – and I’ll make life particularly unpleasant for him.

theDude, I just read your post. Well said!

I haven't seen the movie, but the plot sounded pretty empty to me. Perhaps I will try it out -- it can't be worse than all the garbage that comes these day. If you really liked it, I encourage you to submit a review at http://ObjectivismOnline.com/Review

It seems proper that when a parent chooses to have or adopt a child, that he or she provide for the child's survival and teach him to be self-sufficient until he can survive on his own. But why is that? Why does having children entail a contractual obligation to raise them? I think that finding the source of the moral obligation will be helpful in determining just what the extent of that obligation is.

Update: I modified a bunch of administrative and security options, mostly to lower security and give more power to moderators. I also made the warning system easier to use -- so please don't hesistate to warn any misbehaving posters. Also, I added a new "School" field to users profiles. Btw, There is a bug in the database system that causes this forum's database to be corrupted now and then. It happens rarely now, but if traffic goes up significantly, so will the corruption. Usually a quick repair will fix it without any lost data. If you get any errors, please notify me right away so I can fix it. In case I am not around to fix it, please go to the Control Panel at http://ObjectivismOnline.com/forum/admin.php (you may be unable to find the link if the forum is corrupt) and then SQL Management --> MySQL Toolbox, hit the Select All Tables checkbox, then "Optimize Selected Tables" in the drop box. The optimization should repair the forums, and it won't hurt even if there's nothing wrong. In the unlikely chance that any data is lost, please let me know so I can attempt to recover it. I’m working on fixing the bug, but the forum vendors blame the database, the database people blame the server, the server people blame Cpanel (the integration software) and the Cpanel people blame the forum software.

Yay! I'm glad that I kept the forum going during the long months of hibernation. I'm confident that the site will keep on growing, especially with help from some high profile links we've gotten recently. Btw, as the top poster, Ash is probably more responsible than anyone else for the recent growth.

I was about to sign the praises for MySQL, when the MySQL database behind this forum became corrupted and deleted a thread or two when I attemped to repair it. Nevertheless, I have stress-tested MySQL on my own pc with good results. It's performance is very impressive compared to much more expensive producs. It does support transactions and outperforms Postre on most small to medium queries and some large-queries. See some outdated benchmarks here. The newest versions (4.0 and 4.1) do even better

Sorry, the MySQL database got corrupted and deleted this thread when I tried to repair the DB. I re-created it, but forgot the original title.

I would recomend MySQL over PostreSQL for ease of use and installation. MySQL is only marginally less powerfull that Postgre but much easier to use. Let me know in more detail what software you have in mind for your announcements page...

Carrie, Yes, I have a blog at rationalmind.net I've added you to my list, so perhaps I'll message you sometime :-)

I think merging the two user tables would be very difficult, and personally, I'm not willing to put in work that would be required. It may be easier to put in an post-script that merely copies the profile from one to the other when someone registers. This comes with it own issues, of course. Setting up postnuke-based blog installs is easier -- though I offer a blog hosting service for $15 per year myself. It's not that I mind the competition, but anyone who is serious about blogging would probably be better of with a real, independent blog site rather than a page within postnuke. But, if you want to try to set up either of the above, message me with the permissions and info you need, and have at it.

The benefit of allowing bots is to make the site more visible to search engines, especially when someone searches for a topic we discuss. The minus is the privacy issue. Some people may not want this forum to come up when someone searches for them. Of course, you shouldnt be using your real name as your nick anyway...

Glad to see some interest in contributing to the site. If you have some new features in mind, or want to volunteer to add them, just ask me, and I'll give you all the relevant info. I would like to put some regular content on the main site, but I can't think of what it should be -- I already use my blog to speak my mind, and I'd like to limit the headlines on the main site to topics related to promoting Objectivism.

If you want to set up a blog for your club site, I'll be glad to help you out. (And that goes for everyone!)

If the music score is my biggest beef with an AS movie, it will be a joyous day indeed! As per my music tastes, there are the classics of course, but I have quite a few popular artists I like as well – such as Dave Mathews Band, Collective Soul, Bush, Tool, Garbage, and A Perfect Circle. I also like some of electronic, new-age, and techno artists out there, such as Daft Punk, Orbital, Enya, Bush, Steve Vai, and Joe Satriani.

Why not study it the thematic way it is initially done at OAC? That way students will get all the important issues without having to study history, which would take too much time in high school. I don't think it can or should be presented as a course on Objectivism OPAR-style becuase that method assumes a familiarity with the issues at hand and does not stress what the important conflicts are. A systematic OPAR-like presentation would work best for someone who is already familiar and motivated about the issues at hand.