I know the thread has moved on significantly but…what? Stem cell research has nothing to do with the killing of human zygotes that were destined for anything else other than the trashcan. Advocates for the scheme are hardly holding guns to womens’ uterii and threatening to pull the trigger unless they give up their unborn child. Most of the stem cells for such a scheme would come from the discard piles from IVF clinics. All I see neigh-sayers doing is discriminating against paraplegics by depriving them a chance to use all their limbs again.
Adult stem cells may be adequate for some purposes, but I think its a bit naive to say that one is a complete replacement for the other; depriving scientists the opportunity to fully explore the field means that any potential gains are automatically lost, and your theory becomes self-serving (since embryonic stem cells never get to do anything because nobody is allowed to research them, whereas adult stem cells are developed far beyond what embryonic stem cells can achieve).
There’s some similarities to Ghost in the Shell: SAC (1st Gig), but not nearly on that scale (yet…).
Yeah, and that’s the problem with making statements like “all pirates are stealing”, because its not true in all cases. Everyone is different, and everyone’s motivations for ‘stealing’ are different, regardless of what some people seem to think.
I did a year of Criminology at uni, and one of the examples that we were given was that of stealing a car. Now, people have a lot of different reasons for stealing a car, but from a top-down perspective (i.e. law makers) all people care about is the fact that a crime has been committed (and the motive has little bearing on how the crime is viewed, at least in the community). Now, from a bottom-up perspective, there are actually a lot of reasons why people might steal a car; some steal them for subsistence (i.e. they need it to survive); some steal them for shits and giggles (i.e. joy-riding); some steal them as initiation into gangs; others steal them because they recognise that they can never own one, but society pressures them into ‘obtaining’ one through other means.
The overall message is this: Viewing people as merely ‘criminals’ ignores the more subtle nuances that explain their behaviour, and means that it becomes extremely difficult to apply any kind of effective solution. Unless the actual causes of piracy are addressed (e.g. over-pricing, stupid copy protection, lackluster quality, availability, etc) then we’re doomed to continue through this ridiculous copy protection game of hoop-jumping, where non-pirates are forced to comply with ridiculous regulations while those who download games can subvert them completely.
But the question is: If they don’t want to spend their $50 given that they can download the game, would they spend it if they couldn’t? If the answer is no, then there is no loss. If yes, then your point stands.
However, this comes back to what I was talking about before. If you (as in, an officious bystander) regards all pirates as the same, then you seriously distort the picture of what you’re dealing with. As soon as we all recognise that people have different motivations for pirating and that they all require different solutions, the sooner we can move on.
An obvious solution to those suffering from economic lethargy would be to either reduce the price of said games, or make it comparatively impractical (i.e. incentivise buying the game by making it impractical to download) to download. Either way, you actually get them to spend their money, rather than just hoarding it to spend on other things that they can’t download, like bread or electricity bills.
