Chops

I couldn't agree more. The only reason I could imagine someone wanting this is for a searchable collection, like the Objectivism Research CD. Even printing it out, it would still be more expensive in printer paper than to buy a used copy for $3. And reading thousands of pages on-screen would be a painful experience indeed. I can understand students' desire to pirate $100 text books, but to pirate a paper-back, it just seems like a complete waste of time. As for the piracy thing in general, many (if not most) of the torrent/piracy sites like that are hosted in countries that have weaker IP laws. Recently, there was a 2-week-long trial over The Pirate Bay, for which the verdict will be delivered in a month.

My wife is as close to an Objectivist as I know, though she has some traits that are non-Objectivist.

Ahh, I see. I didn't realize it wasn't just OO.net hosted here. Have you given any thought to Cloud Computing? I host all my sites myself also (maintaining something like 12-13 servers), but if I was starting fresh, I think I would choose to use something like Slicehost.com or Mosso.com rather than dealing with the hardware and potential downtimes myself.

Only if the sessions are stored in memory. By default, PHP stores the sessions on the hard drive and doesn't really suck down the memory much. I can't speak for IIS and ASP as I haven't worked with those in years. RAM is even more critical for database servers. I was thinking the same thing.

This site uses that much processing power? How many pageviews does this do? What are the current specs?

Let's not forget the nonsense of speaking random syllables which is claimed to be holy spirit talking directly through the individual. I guess it's a Pentecostal thing.

What course?

Very awesome!

She actually plays Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator, and she's bloody phenomenal in that. She's great in everything I've ever seen her, and I'm convinced she'd be the perfect Dagny.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html A good article, though it does link briefly Libertarianism with Objectivism.

Dinosaur Comics is an odd one to really appreciate the humor of it. It's pretty dry. It is kind of a satire on altruism, so it seems. Dinosaur Comics rarely has much in the way of a real message, more just observations of sorts and T-Rex trying to figure stuff out. I think, in this case, he's merely pointing out the conflict between self interest and altruism and how letting someone in in traffic actually can be selfish, which by altruism's standard would make someone a bad person. The author isn't exactly saying that it's actually bad, only observing the conflict (keep in mind T-Rex is usually confused, so him thinking he's a bad person for this may be a statement about it, but I wouldn't read TOO deeply into it). Overall, it's a good comic, and I quite enjoy the strip (I follow it when it updates several times a week).

Not sure if any of you follow Dinosaur Comics, but today's comic touches on rational self-interest briefly, though doesn't come to the right assessment. So close, yet so far.

That is truly epic, Todd. By extension then, the only person who is not a slave is the person who doesn't have to work at all for the rest of his life, doing whatever we wishes, whenever he wishes, without any consequences. That is, the only person who is "free" is the only person freed from causality and anyone bound by causality is a slave, according to your premise that being required to "doing things you don't want to do" = slavery, whether those requirements are man made (physical force, violence) or metaphysical (the need to work to subsist oneself).

Government exists not to protect against coercion, but to protect against the violation of rights. Coercion does not necessarily constitute a violation of rights, though in most situation it does (you rarely have to coerce someone to not kill). Notice how most of the arguments from the others in this thread use the term "violation of rights", while you keep coming back to "coercion." "Coercion" is not primary, "rights" are primary (within the context of this discussion, of course). This seems to be the source of the disconnect.

A law is not an initiation of force when it does not violate rights. For example: one does not have the right to murder, therefore a ban on murder is not a violation of rights, and does not constitute an initiation of force. A law is an initiation of force when the law itself violates rights, i.e. taxes, regulation.

A friend and I did pretty much the same thing in High School, though on a much smaller scale (we only sold a 24-pack of Mt Dew every day). We used the lunch money from our parents to buy the soda and then effectively doubled our daily money to get bigger lunches. It was fun while it lasted.

I liked the trailer but wasn't sure if I was planning on seeing this one in the theaters (as far as the animated movies go, I was more looking forward to "The Tale of Despereaux"). On your recommendation though, I think I'll take the wife to see it.

My wife introduced me to Atlas Shrugged back when we were dating, and while she's not an Objectivist, she agrees with many tenets of Objectivism, enough so that we had a number of Rand quotes on love in our wedding ceremony, and even had a Rand quote at the bottom of the program. It was pretty much the best wedding ever.

I was a Republican, because I believed that the Republican party actually advocated capitalism and smaller government.

Welcome. I, too, am curious about the vegan diet.

I wrote in my parents for president and VP. So, practically speaking, I abstained, for the reasons presented in other threads: I cannot in good conscience give support to either candidate in the form of a vote.

We've got two hugely different topics being discussed here. Time for a split?

History is repeating itself with Dead Space (though not NEARLY at the same scale as the Spore Backlash). I actually REALLY want this game, but the DRM is turning me off something fierce.

I completely agree.

The Sherman Act of 1890 was the first major swing toward statism. Before that though, there were still other taxes and eminent domain among others. So never was it laissez faire, but it was pretty close, all things considered.