DigitalShadow

Members
  • Posts

    1314
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by DigitalShadow

  1. Nah, Mahone was right. There was a bit of a negative sarcastic tone in my statement. Wasn't 100% serious though :)
  2. Not too long ago there was a similar scandal with Best Buy's "Geek Squad" I believe. They even used a server to share with the other employees the "spoils" of what they found on customers' hard drives. If my PC is so broken that I can't fix it myself, I don't trust some teenager with an A+ hardware certification to do any better.
  3. That is probably a good idea :) I still believe government should be reasonably responsible for health care, similar to the extent that it is responsible for education. I don't necessarily believe that the government should "run" either of those institutions, but I think it is for the better as a society if the government helps out with those things even if people can't normally afford them. I think it is reasonable for the government to provide a minimal health care insurance, or at least some mechanism of funding the health care of people who can't afford it. I don't really have time to read 1018 pages of a health care bill, so for the sake of argument, I'll take your word on the things it says. Also, to clarify, are all these things you mention simply possible conditions of getting this "free" coverage? If so, that still doesn't infringe on your personal liberty because even if you don't follow those, the worse case is ending up having to completely pay for your own health insurance, just like you do now. If that plan does give the government the power to limit things like that for everyone, even people opting out of its coverage, which I find unlikely, I would also say it is anti-14th amendment. I would also like to point out though that it is very unlikely that the government could mandate things like calorie or fat limits. It's difficult enough for people to accurately monitor calorie and fat intake even when they are trying, I can't even imagine trying to enforce something like that and if the government really wanted to ban extremely unhealthy products, couldn't they already (theoretically) do that through the FDA? The feeling is mutual.
  4. That seems like a bit of a stretch to me. No matter what government health care plan is put in place, there will always be private providers and options to take care of yourself. For example, even though the government runs the educational system, if you really don't like it there are still privately run schools that you can send your child to. How exactly would the government providing a minimum amount of health care to people infringe on your personal liberty?
  5. I don't believe the government should completely "take over" health care, but I do believe it should contribute to maintaining the health of citizens.
  6. First, I think you mean the 10th amendment. Second, I still don't see how that explicitly prohibits any type of health care program.
  7. I'm saying that in my opinion it is the responsibility of a government to spend tax money to attempt to keep people alive, whether that means pulling someone out of a burning building or treating cancer in someone who couldn't otherwise afford it. Show me where in the constitution it says the government shouldn't help out with health care and I'll agree with you. The constitution is a wonderful framework, but it does not go into detail on what tax dollars should or should not be spent on.
  8. Whether a vote is silenced because the person died or cast by an uneducated person, either way you are messing with the democratic process. If death is a natural process with nothing to do with government, why does government get involved public safety, or do you think the government should stay out of that too? Why do we have a tax funded police force and firefighters that save lives if it is so far removed from government?
  9. And living breathing human beings are not a necessary requirement for government? Uneducated individuals may very well cast an uneducated vote, but a dead person, educated or otherwise, doesn't cast any vote. I know you disagree, but in my opinion, spending tax money to keep your citizens alive and well is just as necessary as spending tax money to educate them.
  10. I admire your attitude, but I don't think there's really any option to vote for that fully shares either of our opinions :) If you go to Walmart and get some bad produce... oh well, don't go there next time. If you trust your child's education to a corporation, you may not know you've been shortchanged until its too late, plus changing schools would mean uprooting your child from all their friends and that's assuming there even is another viable option nearby. I'm not saying a competition driven system would be inherently worse than a government run system, but they both have their benefits and downfalls I think. The root of our disagreement is whether the government is responsible for maintaining the health of its population or not. We can agree to disagree there. Your example, while emotionally compelling, could also just as easily be applied to government funding education which you seem to support. In your mind is it alright to put a gun to the head of a single neurosurgeon and ask for money to educate your 10 kids, but not alright to do the same for a medical procedure?
  11. I've heard of those concepts but never seen it explained quite so succinctly.
  12. I definitely see more where you are coming from now. I agree to some extent, but I also think that running all schools as businesses whose primary goal is to make a profit could certainly have some other adverse affects on education. Whether it would be worse than the mess we have now, I really don't know. As for health care, I do think it is much like education in that a government should have some responsibility in providing it to their citizens.
  13. Yes, it is not "free" in the sense that it is still being paid for by someone, but to the family who would never be able to afford it if it were completely privatized, it is essentially "free." If you completely removed government from education, I do think that the competition would make the quality of education better but it would also deny education to many children whose parents either can't afford it or don't place a high enough value on their child's education to invest in it. I'm certainly no fan of bureaucracy or the public school system (I dropped out of high school), but I do believe that overall having a tax funded minimal educational system is beneficial to society, because without it there is virtually no hope for children of a poor family to become educated and make greater contributions to society than flipping burgers.
  14. I'm glad they clarified that, but unfortunately I think the public opinion damage is already done. News outlets are quick to pick up a story that casts the LDS church as oppressive against homosexuals, but the story of how it actually appears to have happened is much less "interesting" to the public so for the most part it will go unheard. Most non-LDS probably just saw a small new blurb about a homosexual couple being harassed near the temple and let that erroneously color their view of the church. I really do feel for the church in situations like these.
  15. I lived in central Illinois most of my life, but I don't really remember any local specialties. Obviously Chicago is known for its pizza, but Chicago is really a world away from the rest of Illinois.
  16. I vaguely remember that show, but I was pretty young when it came out. In researching it online, it doesn't look like an official DVD was ever released. From the Wikipedia article: As the snippet says, it appears Barth's Burgery offers a homemade DVD compilation that won't play in a dvd player for $14, but I don't know that I would trust a site like that. Alternatively you could do a google search for You Can't Do That on Television torrent, but it would probably be quasi-legal, so I won't post any links for that.
  17. I think a lot of people in the US are already more than a bit technophobic and all it takes is an incident like this to send them over the edge regardless of whether it was fixed or not. It's rather sad.
  18. And as I've posted before, I do not believe that the church or security guard acted unlawfully, nor have I made that claim. If the story happened as the couple presented it (which I do not believe is the case after seeing the police report), I personally believe the security guard would have been out of line, but I am fully aware of the rights people have regarding private property, and given the most likely scenario of how it actually played out, I believe the security guard behaved appropriately.
  19. If it is a chart for the Democrats' Health Care Plan, why was it made by republicans? Could it be that they purposely overcomplicated the flow chart and made it convoluted to give you the immediate impression it was bad? Nah, politicians would never do that. [/sarcasm]
  20. It's actually a pretty easy error. In hex values the exact number charged translates to 20 20 20 20 20 20 12 50 cents. 20 happens to be the hex value for a space character, so it looks like someone probably padded the number for the cost of something with spaces instead of 0's. The amazing part is that there aren't any checks that would catch something like that.
  21. Killing for revenge is unacceptable in my opinion, killing people who are continually breaking the law to the detriment of their fellow citizens and kill anyone who tries to stop them... that's a different story. Edit: I would say in this situation it is acceptable and probably necessary to use deadly force when trying to apprehend people who have shown they will kill you. I don't think they should be outright slaughtered by a military attack though unless they give military level resistance.
  22. I think it can work both ways. Like the article says, you could "slip into" marriage because you figure you are already living together, but you could also find out when you move in with someone that you actually can't stand them and avoid what would have been a horrible marriage. They probably should have also had another study asking how many times moving in before marriage helped them figure out it was a bad idea. That would give a better idea of the harm/good balance that moving in before marriage really does.
  23. Yes, public displays of affection are inappropriate at most religious sites, but something as vague as "public display of affection" can range from simply holding hands or giving a hug to being joined at the mouth. The extent of what went on that brought about this reaction is important. As I said earlier though even before your replies, other reports are more revealing toward what actually went on and I now seriously doubt it was an "innocent" mistake on the part of the couple.
  24. My posts are for the most part saying that if it was a simple peck on the cheek as the couple claims, the security guard was in my opinion out of line though perfectly within legal rights. My common sense also tells me that it is entirely possible for a security guard who is personally disgusted with any homosexual behavior to target a homosexual couple while ignoring heterosexual couples engaged in the same activities. That doesn't mean it was the case, but it shouldn't immediately be ruled out either. As more is revealed about the incident (thank you john doe), I think that you are probably right that there was more going on here and it's difficult to tell exactly what went on, but I don't think it went down as innocently the homosexual couple is stating.