skap35

An eye for an eye. If I steal $100 from someone the judge would make me pay back $100. If I take someone's life I have to pay for it with my own life. What's wrong with that? And no, prison would not be torturous at all. If I had a choice between death and life in prison I would take prison in an instant. Why would you think prison would be worse than death anyway? Afterall, how many people on death row drag out the appeals process while rotting in prison?

So competition (in this case competition to make honor roll) is a bad thing? I wonder if this idiot is going to be consistent in his case and ban all athletic activities as well. And lets not forget things like marching band competitions either. Last time I checked, publishing the names of student athletes who succeed is also a common tradition. Speaking of that, does anyone rememeber the story about another high school that cancelled the football team because they had a losing season? The logic was similar to this case...since the football players had a bad season it gave them low self esteem.

Could you expand on this? How does Bush's tax cuts take more from the wealthy? And if that's true then why are the democrats so against it. I always thought they supported taxing the hell out of the rich. I'm not familiar with the details of his tax cuts...my guess it was something like a tax cut for the middle class at the expense of the wealthy or something? What a perfect little paradox that is.

Sure, it's good that we ban exports like this, but how will this have any effect? Something tells me that iPod demands are fairly small in such a poverty-stricken country.

I was taught about Objectivism long before I actually knew what "Objectivism" was. My parents and grandparents taught me certain Objectivist concepts in a somewhat informal way. My first direct encounter with Rand was in high school. We had to read Anthem and The Giver and write about which one we agreed with. Of course, my semi-Objectivist upbringing led me to agree with Anthem. The next Rand encounter I had was in college when I decided to read The Fountainhead. The only reason I read it was because I knew her philosophy was the basis of my upbringing and I was curious. Needless to say, reading that book was like looking into a mirror. I already felt strongly about everything she addressed, and after reading that I went on to read a few of her other books. I guess I had a somewhat unique introduction to Objectivism. My grandfather had a talk show (mainly in Detroit) where he advocated Objectivism. As a result, my parents taught it to me since a very young age. The only problem with that is my parents are also Catholic. So I was raised with many Objectivist ideas mixed with Christianity. I didn't "filter out" all the religious teachings until I decided to start reading Rand and making decisions for myself. Basically my parents believed in Objectivism except when it came to believing in God. I think I had an advantage that other kids didn't have in this case...but at the same time I was also taught things that I had to eventually reject.

This should tell you everything you need to know: http://www.toysfortots.org/about_toys_for_...d_evolution.asp. Here is how the charity is setup: "In the late 1980s, the Marine Corps determined that a non-profit charity was needed as an integral part of the overall national Toys for Tots program. Based on this need, the Secretary of Defense, in August 1991, authorized the Marine Corps to recognize and work with a charity committed to supporting Toys for Tots. Based on this approval, the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation became an operational organization in September 1991 and has been the fund raising and support organization for the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program since that date." The way that's phrased, it sounds like Toys for Tots is actually run through a private charity, and the Marine Corps Reserves just work through it. So it doesn't sound like the government is actually running a non-profit or anything.

That is awesome...but one thing confuses me. How can it be sold in China at all? I would have thought that anything by Rand would have been banned years ago.

Yes, thank you! As soon as I saw the dems win I new this kind of crap was going to start happening. The really sick thing about this is he is only doing it to try and make Republicans look bad. If people think Iraq is so bad that we might need to bring back the draft then they might just blame Bush for it...repeatedly trying to destroy our freedom for his own political gain, it's a classic move out of the Democrats' playbook...and we can look forward to at least 2 more years of these kinds of attacks. I guess I understand Peikoff's fears about the Republicans. But I simply didn't think it was as much of a threat as the kinds of things the Democrats will do...

In the course areas you listed in your other post, your poem is right on. That is actually one area of school that I thoroughly disliked. I remember a Nazi history class I took where the professor would occasionally insert comments into his lecture comparing the Nazis to Bush and the Republicans. I have a bunch of other stories like that too. Fortunately for me though, my major kept me out of the liberal arts buildings most of the time so that sort of thing didn't happen too often. I was a Computer Science major so I had a lot of science, programming, and engineering type classes as well. In this area my school was very good. In fact, my internet security professor uses Ayn Rand during the computer ethics section of the course. I was very pleased when he started talking about Atlas Shrugged. I still have to disagree with you though. The problems you described are dependent on which school you go to and what your major is. College was extremely valuable to me despite the few bad experiences I had. It basically comes down to learning who the bad professors are that try to teach that crap and just try to avoid them. High school was fairly worthless though. I remember constantly getting in trouble with my parents because I would spend all my time learning computer programming at the expense of my schoolwork. I did that for a reason: I knew they were teaching me worthless garbage so I decided to educate myself until it was time to get into college. That decision actually paid off. I would have had a *much* harder time in college if I hadn't studied what *I* wanted to study in high school.

I don't understand why people think this. I have a bunch of friends who are Iraq vets and they've all told me the same thing. The media's take on the war isn't even close to being accurate. They all say it's not nearly as bad as it's being made out. So either the Democrats are lying to me (it wouldn't be the first time) or a bunch of Marine Corp and Army vets are lying. Gee, I wonder which one is telling the truth... That was a stupid move to get rid of him. First it was obviously a move to appease the Dems and it was also done at the expense of the military. Not only does it validate their cause in the minds of the enemy, but the timing was also very poor. The new guy will only have two years to get anything done before there is another change in management.

Generally speaking no, but there are certain charities that I would be willing to donate to if I have some extra cash and if I feel like it. I certainly do not consider it my duty or obligation. I'd donate to things that I consider worthwhile or to organizations that have helped me (e.g. veterans, cures for diseases, boy scouts/girl scouts (b/c I was a scout), etc). On two occasions I've also given money to a homeless person. The ONLY reason I did so is because in each case they were kids and minors basically aren't capable of making good choices (if it was an adult I probably would not have given him anything). There are certain organizations that I would NEVER donate to, however. Any welfare-like program or any organization that tries to lay a guilt trip on me. In those cases they typically cite altruism as their reason for existing, which obviously contradicts Objectivism.

I'm reading Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and there is a passage that doesn't seem right to me. In The Roots of War chapter (page 38 of the centennial edition): The first two wars in this period that come to mind are the Civil War and the Spanish American War. The only thing I can think of is that she meant that Capitalism never caused a war. If I'm interpreting that wrong can anyone tell me what she means by this?

Yeah I found Norton to be pretty buggy. Back when I still used it I found a somewhat amusing bug. I never exploited this, I just stumbled across it by accident. It seems that you can easily renew your subscription by simply uninstalling and reinstalling the app. Since "new installs" come with a free one year subscription it just assumes you aren't doing a reinstall and just creates a brand new subscription for you. I'm not sure if that still works, but it gave me the impression that if they can't even get their subscription model free of such an obvious bug I wonder how reliable the rest of the product is...

Unfortunately the Pope issued an official apology this morning. This is very disappointing to me because I thought for a short time that someone was actually willing to stand up to this violent religion. The thing that gets me *really* mad about his apology is this: Catholic leader quotes a text that refers to Islam as evil. He didn't even claim it to be his own opinion! So in reaction the Islamic world burns effigies of the Pope and firebombs non-Catholic churches. umm, doesn't that validate the Pope's quote? And Muslims say that his apology isn't enough! So according to Muslims not only can you not make obvious observations about Islam, you can't even quote anyone who says that. *sigh* it looks like I can safely dismiss the Pope as yet another Islamic appeaser. Oh well, at least his statement was nice while it lasted. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14871562/

Here is something that really made me mad about this ruling: The definition of insanity is that you don't know that what you did was wrong. When Yates murdered her kids, she called 911 and said "I just did something bad." Call me crazy, but doesn't that indicate that she knew that what she did was wrong? She admitted at the time of the murder that she knew it was wrong, yet somehow the court thinks she didn't know what she was doing.

You could always just pay for college the way I did. I had a Stafford loan to basically pay for tuition, and my parents took out a Parent Plus loan which paid for living expenses. They took out the loan on condition that I pay them back once I graduate and get a job. Now that I have one, I pay their monthly bill for that loan, even though it's in their name. The reason you don't qualify for work study is because of the way you filled out your FAFSA. What you need to do is not claim yourself as a dependent of your parents. If you aren't a dependent, then your parents' income will not play against you when they calculate your aid eligibility. Although, there's no way you could pay for expenses with work study since they only pay minimum wage. It might help, but I wouldn't plan on depending on that for living though. They typically don't give you enough hours either. I had a work study job for a period in college and it was basically just good for a little extra spending money. There is another option that I was considering while in school. My parents were having some financial problems and had trouble making loan payments (my dad was going to school at the same time I was, so cash flow was low and bills were high). I seriously considered ROTC since they pay 100% of your tuition. The only reason I decided against it is my parents threw a fit (they didn't want to see their only kid going to Iraq I guess).

If you have Microsoft Office 2003, there is excellent OCR support in there. It's part of the MS Document Imaging tools. We use it through the COM library where I work and it does great on printed text. The only complaint I have is that it has horrible problems with handwriting. If there is a signature on a paper it sometimes will freeze during the OCR process. But if you are only scanning text, it works great.

Let's say as a scientist, I design my machines to be fully rational with one exception: they will always obey my every command, no matter how irrational (e.g. I tell the machine to march off a cliff). When I'm not giving commands, the machine *is* a rational being. There is just this one restriction I've placed on its ability to reason. Given this restriction, does this make it irrational enough to not have rights? In other words should it be classified as a "machine" instead of a "rational being"? Even though it does think rationally most of the time. Since it generally does act rationally, would that be considered slavery since I am denying those rights through my design?

40GB should be more than enough. What I do is give most of my hard drive to Windows. I then configure Linux to read the Windows partition, so I can still access all my files from both operating systems. Based on this description I'm guessing you use Internet Explorer? Windows is only part of this sort of problem. IE is the other part. If you switch to a better browser like Firefox that should reduce the amount of viruses. Of course, switching all out to Linux is even better since most viruses/popups/trojans target Windows specifically. Remember there is a reason for this. Linux is designed for a server roll and it plays that part extremely well. Every one of my Linux servers run with *zero* maintenance for months, whereas my Win2k3 servers need to be rebooted every week. Windows on the other hand was designed with end-users in mind from the beginning, which is why it's so much easier to use. Both of these operating systems have completely different design goals and that's an important point to keep in mind when switching to Linux. Also Thaconos, it might be a good idea to pick up a Linux book so you don't jump into this completely blind. My personal favorite is UNIX: The Complete Reference. Even though it says UNIX, it actually covers any POSIX compliant OS (Linux is a POSIX OS), and it is generic enough to apply to basically any distro you choose. Also, a lot of Linux books will walk you through setting up a dual boot system.

I use Fedora Core 4, but version 5 is out now. I love it and the installation is really easy. I didn't even have to install any drivers, Linux automatically detected all my hardware. If you are new to Linux I would highly recommend setting up a dual boot configuration so you can still get into Windows when you need to. Don't just go "all out," because there will probably be at least a few times when you will need to get back into Windows. Also, Linux generally makes an assumption that you know what you are doing. So I would recommend easing yourself into it instead of dumping Windows right away.

That law is *really* annoying since I live in an apartment. I guess the logic behind it is that if you catch your apartment on fire from grilling, there is a good chance you will also catch your neighbor's place on fire as well. The problem with that logic is that according to the news there were only 8 apartment fires in Ohio in about the past 4 years from grilling, none of which caused much damage. In other words, this law is a classic example of idiot lawmakers not thinking things through. Luckily, something this stupid is practically unenforceable when you think about it, given that hardly any tenant I know is taking it seriously. I really think that this will either be repealed or cops will eventually give up on trying to enforce it. Looking around my apartment, almost every balcony has a grill on it. As a sidenote, one reason I think this is stupid for my apartment in particular is that everyone has wood fireplaces. If somebody is going to burn down the entire building which is more of a danger: a grill that can be turned off, or a fireplace? That's our tax dollars hard at work!

I don't know much about the details of Islam, so could you give some info on this?

arg, you beat me to it. I was going to say Christianity, which was one of the major causes of the decline of the Roman Empire and later caused Europe to fall into the Dark Ages (plus all the other problems with it). Then, of course the spread of Islam is a no brainer. But maybe a better one would be the spread of religion in general...I can think of countless tragic events in history that were caused at least partially by religion.

It's the same way where I work. Actually, the guy I replaced was fired for making that exact mistake. Everytime he made a mistake, instead of owning up to it he would try to cover it up. Then when a user went to complain to my boss, it would make him look bad because he didn't even know there was a problem. He did that one too many times and finally got canned. I've made a few mistakes at work, and as long as my boss is made aware of the problem then I won't get reprimanded. So yes, at least at my job it's very important to own up to your mistakes. Otherwise you might lose your job like the guy before me.

C++ is the industry standard language. The vast majority of software out there has been written in C++ as opposed to .NET. Also remember that .NET is Windows only for the most part (yes I know it is cross-platform on paper, but most non-Win OS's don't have it). If you ever plan to develop for any other operating system then you should not limit yourself to .NET. My current job requires me to develop mostly in VB.NET. But I still have several C++ projects that I maintain because they either aren't possible in a managed environment or are just plain easier in C++. Every language has its uses. .NET was designed to be a high level, RAD platform and MS has accomplished that goal very well. I love it for writing business applications. C++ has very different design goals, so in certain ways comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. C++ is meant to be closer to the system level. You mentioned distributed development as an interest, and I would say that C++ is certainly something to look into then. However, .NET also has some great distributed computing facilities. One of the projects I maintain at work uses VB.NET web services running on our servers with a front end running on client machines. We don't have to deal with any of the low-level aspects of communication between those nodes, which makes our lives much easier. Both of them have their advantages. Pick a language best suited to the problem. Another thought though since you are already a .NET developer. You might want to play around with managed C++. It's basically C++ combined with .NET.