Bryan

I'm INTP. There was another thread on this a while back.

Don't consider me an expert on this issue, but I believe anything presented in public view is fair game to photograph or video tape. The only time concent is required from a person is if you are going to use their image for profit.

Dagny was at war with the guard, as he was acting as an agent for an evil government. Her goal was the get on the other side of the door at any cost, not to debate with the guard whether or not to let her pass.

What if a key witness in a criminal case just doesn't feel like testifying? Without his testimony, conviction is impossible. A criminal walks free just because somebody didn't want to spend a couple hours in court.

Just take a look at some of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings and drawings. It has been said that Ayn Rand based Roark's architecture loosely on his work.

They got on boats and headed west across an ocean to a place where they could create a new society with other people who's dominant philosophy was based on reason. When the government of the old society started to interfere too much, the people in the new society started to shoot them. And they kept shooting at them until the old government went back to the old country across the ocean. After being shot at, people in the old society realized, ironically, that the new society was right and adopted many of their political policies.

A lot of times in criminal cases, the state will take a pragmatic approach more than a just approach. If prosecutors feel there is a low probability of a conviction, sometimes criminals aren't even charged for crimes they commit (just ask John and Patsy Ramsey). If you feel that justice is not served criminally, you can always pursue the matter in a civil trail, where the burden of proof is easier to establish.

TPOTK, Why is prostitution such a touchy subject for you? Why are you so adiment to defend it? If you throw everything else involved with prostitution and reduce it to a service performed in exchange for money, it doesn't sound that bad. If you look at it like that, it's like dry cleaning or an oil change. But perhaps there is a little bit more to it than that....

I "stumbled" upon it at a bookstore one day, I was just browsing books in the technology section. There are two essays in the book that aren't on the website called, "How to Make Wealth" and "Mind the Gap" (connecting unequal distributions of wealth to the health of a society) that most Objectivists would love. For me, it was $15 well spent.

In response to the previous 5 or so posts about the pluses and minuses of specific programming languages I recommend the following website: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html. I'm currently reading a book by Paul Graham, called Hackers and Painters, that is essentially a collection of the some the essays on his website. He has some fairly insightful things to say about specific languages and language design. I specifically recommend reading The Hundred Year Language. There is also another essay in his book called, "Programming Langauges Explained", that is very good, but it's not posted on the wesite.

Best pun I've seen in at least 3 months, maybe 4 .

This is theft because, you are depriving someone of their property, specifically a portion of the bandwidth they paid for. If you have three unauthorized people surfing the internet on the connection you pay for, and you start downloading a file, it's possible that your download speed will be slower than if those people weren't using your connection.

This is a common error that a lot of people make especially when talking to Objectivists. This issue is fresh in my ahead with talk of a statewide smoking ban in "places of business" in Colorado. It is amazing how many people will abandon principles they claim to hold because they are for/against something concrete that contradicts them. This follows from the point you made about judging someone's character solely from their actions. You said, "a person is not their actions," but you asked for a character judgement based solely on the action of a couple selling videos of themselves having sex. And it wasn't even a specific couple, just a generalization. What kind of response did you expect? As for my personal opinion, I could conceive filming myself having sex with my girlfriend, but the film is sure as hell not something I would want to share with anyone else, let alone market on the internet. I have trouble understanding why anyone would want to do such a thing.

What is the difference between accepting money from one person to have sex with them or accepting money from a third party to have sex with someone else? Where do you draw the line between porn and prostitution? A disproportionate number of people in the sex industry (compared to the general population) are victims some sort of sexual abuse and suffer from some sort of addiction (sex/drugs/other). These people are not exactly model members of society. This is not the say that there aren't exceptions, I'm sure some people in the sex industry are well-adjusted, perfectly sane individuals. Trash? Possibly. Disturbed? Probably. A couple that I would want to double date with? Doubtful. BTW- What's up with your nickname? (Edited spelling: "excepting" changed to "accepting". SoftwareNerd)

Omit the ones that don't fit within the blue field.

He doesn't really say anything too substantial except for giving a reasonable explanation of why he doesn't like Greenspan anymore, not all of which had to do with the affirmative action quote. And he prefaced his remarks by saying that he wasn't sure of the context of the quote. But go ahead and leave that out because it doesn't support your point. I've seen the website that you quoted that article/essay/rant from before and frankly it's ridiculous. The guy has an entire website dedicated to the slander of Objectivism and prominent Objectivist intellectuals. I'm surprised that he hasn't registered the domain name ihateari.com. Why take anything he has to say seriously? It's like quoting a Republican about the Democratic party, or more accurately, a Libertarian about Objectivism.

Of the two situations you provided, connecting to an unsecured wireless network is much like the second. When I worked at McDonald's when I was in high school I would eat a chicken nugget out of the nugget drawer every time I walked by it. McDonald's didn't notice the loss from the nuggets I ate, but I was definitely stealing from them. On a particular network, there is a finite amount of bandwidth (just like there is a finite amount of chicken nuggets) provided by the ISP. If you are using the network to access the internet, you are occupying some of this bandwidth and it's unavailable to the person(s) who actually paid for it. These people may not notice the bandwidth you are using, but it's theft nonetheless. I learned the hard way in regard to a wireless network. I had a 4 computer network set-up to access the internet in an apartment I lived in. One day I checked the DHCP server and there were 7 computers connected! People in my apartment complex were leaching on my network. Maybe it was payback for all the chicken nuggets I stole .

Why would you quote Peikoff's "radio teaser" but not quote what he said when he got back from the break? How do you know that Peikoff didn't "bother to learn the context" of the quote? What was the quote? Given the shallow context that you have provided, businesses should be allowed to be racist in their hiring practices and suffer the negative consequences that result. And if the context you provided is correct, it would more than justify the things that Dr. Peikoff said (at least before he broke for commercial, since you left me in the dark about what he said after). No Objectivist supports affirmative action on any level, if Greenspan does and people connect him with Ayn Rand, it should be made very clear that Greenspan is not an Objectivist. All that being said, how does this Peikoff/Greenspan example you provide lead to your conclusion that as ARI labeling "people as 'in all contexts, evil/good.' "? Peikoff didn't say that Greenspan was evil, he said that he not be connected with Objectivism.

The problem that I have with the word is that atheist, meaning not theist, presupposing that being a theist is the default. The presupposition is not invalid though, because most people do believe in some sort of god. It's sad that one has to assert that they don't believe in a god, and not the other way around.

I don't think it is a well defined argument style as much as a direct argument to a concrete situation. Directly applied to the example you provided, it is true that we cannot just flip a switch and all of a sudden have a Laissez Faire Capitalist government tomorrow. Doing so would cause a huge societal collapse. Reducing the size and function of government to the way it should be is something that would take several years, possibly an entire generation. Perhaps you could provide some of the other examples we could examine them.

Using a mouse is another thing that I can't do left-handed. I think its because the first time I used a mouse in was on the right side of the keyboard.

Tom, You never cease to amaze me. You care to qualify the above statement? Stalin didn't live under socialism. Once again, you take something somebody completely out of context to make a nonsensical point for no reason whatsoever. I'm also amazed at your ability to broach the subject of your libertarianism. Moose says, "Well, seeing as how you're a libertarian," you say, "I’m not a member of the Libertarian Party." Did he say you were a member of the libertarian party? Why did you respond to his claim with a refutation of something he didn't say?

Theist's expand reality to include a reality in which a god can exist in. He's not here on Earth, he's not in space somewhere. He's in Heaven. where is this Heaven? It's somewhere else. Where? Just somewhere else.

I wouldn't be surpirsed if Bill Owens, the governor of Colorado (Rep.) runs for president in '08. As far as politicians go, he's not bad. He comes on a local radio show once a month and takes direct questions from callers and he answers them honestly and directly! A rare trait in our modern political world.

You should chage your name to Max Power! Sorry I just watched the Simpsons and then immediately read this thread, my brain hasn't switched gears yet. For irony's sake, I would stay named after a communist. I really could not imagine changing my name, regardless of what it was.