"At stake, say supporters, are American jobs. Every free piece of content scraped to be sold, or given away, online takes money out of the pockets of record companies, movie producers and other content creators and their millions of employees.
Pharmaceutical companies, sports leagues and video-game makers have also voiced support.
"Especially in this time of economic recovery, we cannot stand by and watch while American companies and the jobs they support are being bled by foreign criminals who are taking advantage of a massive loophole in our law enforcement capabilities," wrote Steve Tepp, who works on counterfeiting and piracy issues for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "These illicit enterprises are not tolerated in the brick and mortar marketplace, so why would we allow them to flourish unchecked online?""
Rhetoric of SOPA supporters > Rhetoric of SOPA detractors, when it comes to winning public support. The message needs to be streamlined...
This started as an idea to save money on laundry. We've visited the offices of Dropbox, Twilio, PB Works; even new startup Piazza, and we always accepted free t-shirts because it means more to wear and less to wash. Our ambitious goal: Sell 25 startup tee shirts for $25 each from 25 of our favorite startups. "
"The denial of an objective moral law, based on the compulsion to deny the existence of God, results ultimately in the denial of evil itself...
The one who raises the question against God in effect plays God while denying He exists. Now one may wonder: why do you actually need a moral law giver if you have a moral law? The answer is because the questioner and the issue he or she questions always involve the essential value of a person. You can never talk of morality in abstraction. Persons are implicit to the question and the object of the question. In a nutshell, positing a moral law without a moral law giver would be equivalent to raising the question of evil without a questioner. So you cannot have a moral law unless the moral law itself is intrinsically woven into personhood, which means it demands an intrinsically worthy person if the moral law itself is valued. And that person can only be God.
Our inability to alter what is actual frustrates our grandiose delusions of being sovereign over everything. Yet t he truth is we cannot escape the existential rub by running from a moral law. Objective moral values exist only if God exists. Is it all right, for example, to mutilate babies for entertainment? Every reasonable person will say “no.” We know that objective moral values do exist. Therefore, God must exist. Examining those premises and their validity presents a very strong argument. "
I don't buy that argument. Basic morals is just a minimum requirement for a society. We need to work together as a community, so for it to work there has to be a set of rules. You can see the same with packs of lions or other types of animals.
Anti-social elements will not survive long on their own. People/animals who work together has a better chance of survival. Those who can't work with others, are therefore removed (gradually) from the gene pool.
Anyway, it is very dangerous to base morals on religion. Only religion can make someone say "It's wrong to kill people, unless they believe in another religion"... What is the moral basis for that? If you removed religion from politics, they would not be able to say that.
Good question :). In Dec '07 we had some soul-searching and radically changed our idea from an API (selling tickets) to a self-contained blogging widget.
We rebuilt the site and have been working with bloggers since the spring in an open beta. The public announcement could have come earlier -- we were mainly getting the pricing, billing & core feature set worked out (along with a rename -- BriteTix didn't make sense anymore).
There is a waiver for everything. Your recruiter will probably try to tell you that you can't get in but if you press the issue (or threaten to go to another recruiter who will complete waiver paperwork) you should be good.
But - Coasties have the hardest Basic of all forces. Coasties BMT makes the Marines' Crucible look like a tea party.
I don't think my little niece hike around the San Clemente mountain ranges with 100 pounds of gear for three days straight with only one night of sleep and three bags of MREs every Saturday with her little stuffed bears.
He isn't whining in the least bit. I think it's a perfectly fine Sunday night article, given how apparent it is to anyone reading TC's article comments how many people are especially critical of YC companies and YC itself.
It's true that YC companies receive more exposure than similarly-early non-YC companies. Well, that's one of the benefits. With YC acting as some sort of filter for minimum quality, blogs like TechCrunch know there's at least something worth looking at.
short summary: America, for its fear and litigious society, is neutering herself.
This does not nail it though on why the country is failing at Math & Science. Parental influence is the top correlation between children and success in school. It's not a surprise that 50% of STEM degrees are going to International students (who make up less than 10% of the general US student populous) -- their parents push them towards the most difficult degrees -- Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
Rhetoric of SOPA supporters > Rhetoric of SOPA detractors, when it comes to winning public support. The message needs to be streamlined...