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Apple Patents "Enforceable" Ad Viewing On Devices
Rexdude writes "Apple has filed a patent that forces users to interact with an ad. FTFA: 'Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn't simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.'" We've been
following this story for awhile now but it seems to have broken into the mainstream.
Hello Apple? I have a problem with my iPhone. Every time it shows an advertisement, the screen gets smashed. Can you help?
This is my sig.
Like most companies, Apple doesn't use half of their patents. Hopefully, this will be one of those unused ones.
What has changed since the last story about Apple's advertising patent?
Actually, I'm in full support of this particular patent. As long as they don't actually use it themselves, don't license it, and vigorously enforce it.
Moreover, I would not purchase any product made by a company that produces this device. With a few compatriots, we'll solve this problem.
College Humor had Volkswagen ads I liked. They were amusing, and there was a 5 second "This video brought to you by Volkswagen" or something before the video.
College Humor later had another sponsor that demanded a 35 second mandatory viewing BEFORE the video played. I don't recall who. I do recall they annoyed me and I didn't care for their product; I'd buy from their competitors if I did.
If the ads piss you off, the product pisses you off. Fuck that. Don't buy shit that's advertised through irritation.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
That's funny - Microsoft is doing something along the same lines. I guess you have to do what you can to make a buck, times being what they are.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
- This is 911.
* Help, I am being attacked!
- Hold on sir, I will <click>
iPhone:
Video of security-spray followed by the question "Would this product have helped in your situation?"
Ansver: Yes
- <click> Sir, are you still there?
- Sir?
- hello?
* gurgle, gurgle. (bloody mess on ground...)
Odious. Simply odious. Why do you yanks have this sort of nonsense?
Yes, this can be done. Technically quite easily (perhaps circumventable by a few). The real question is whether a seller/advertiser would _want_ to. The purpose behind advertising to to attract customers and stimulate sales. This requires creating a positive buzz (feelgood) about the product or service. Locking a machine is unlikely to do this.
OTOH, this technology could easily be used in cases where goodwill is less desired (less user choice) like corporate computed-based training requirements.
You WILL like this iPod ad.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
This is basically the same story that was posted some time ago or am I missing something?
...why I no longer buy and am never likely again to buy any products made by Apple.
It increasingly seems like the major software companies are determined to use any CPU cycles wrung out of Moore's law beyond 2005 levels exclusively for their own benefit, leaving us with our 3 ghz 1 gb machine, and quite content. This sort of nonsense removes the primary benefit of a computer, which is its ability to do things for you without your input. Now it does things for someone else, and it requires your input.
Go Apple. Now people have to pay to put that crap on their device and thus are less likely to do it. I do not wish to see such "enforceable" adds so I can simply avoid Apple and go with vendors who don't commit brain rape on their users.
I'm reminded. Distinctly. Of those websites which bring up a huge ad and force you to click skip before you can see the content.
Obviously that's not prior art though, as it's on a web page, not a device!
I saw this last week, and I am trying to figure out why. It destroys all usablity of the device. Can you imagine to dial 911 and have an AD block it. Or watching a video and having it interupted by ads that you have to click through
so I am scratching head as to why apple patented this. If they ever used it they would lose whatcustomers they have.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I'm sure that apple will stop putting this annoyware into their products if enough people get angry about it. I'm sure as hell not going to buy any product that contains this junk.
Think Different!
It must have been a slow decade. If computers are all about problem solving, then what problem did the iPod or iPhone solve? I can tell you one it created, the world's garbage dumps will be filling up with them soon.
but I swear, that if Apple puts a "feature" into the iPhone which lets Big Media lock up my device on paid content a la a DVD player, I will break my AT&T contract, throw the device in the trash and buy a Droid. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that many technical and semi-technical iPhone users would do likewise.
and do not license it to anyone else.
Keep this technology exclusively to yourself.
Apple devices already says "it just works", now they can say "it just work like a TV"
Buy a campaign of competitor's product using this technology to advertize it.
Massive profit.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
This is just wrong on so many levels and should be stricken down.. Apple the good gone to apple the bad - people should boycott all apple products just for this patent alone....
They will probably just use this to offer 'alternative revenue models' to things like Ipod software updates. Instead of paying $10 every six months to keep your Ipod Touch software current they will offer you the 'opportunity' to download the ad-supported version which will quiz you periodically about the 'zinger' at the end of the most recent Mac Vs PC ad spot.
See, what's the harm in that?
Why can't people see that Apple is evil? Seriously, at what level of bend over and take it does it start to hurt enough to want it to stop? What is the line that will get the fanboy's to realize that they do just as much evil stuff as microsoft or any other company in tech? Does shiny and simple really outweigh everything else? I expect to get flaimed and modded down, but I really want to know, how much is too much, what would it take for the iMasses to see the real iJob and wake up?
Reality: "Apple has filed a patent application..."
I don't see this technology as being bad at all.
Suppose Apple would like to give away a free or reduced-price iPhone, for instance. A user not willing to pay for the ad-free iPhone would now be a potential customer if they were willing to deal with periodic advertisements with Apple recouping the lost hardware profits from the advertising. From a consumer's point of view, this is just another option: if you don't want to pay for or use ad-subsidized hardware, pay for the ad-free version or buy something else.
I've seen too many UNIX people move to MAC-OS for my liking. I was one of them, and now I am realizing my mistake and turning around. We need to keep plugging at GNOME and KDE (I don't have a dog in that fight, although I use KDE). Because pretty soon, I think we're going to want to run it on laptop hardware. I'm already unhappy with some features in Snow Leopard, and am making the move to building my Linux laptop. Adware built into a pre-compiled kernel without access to source?
Fuck you Jobs.
There's no app for that.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
This is actually a good thing: it means that no other product is allowed to enforce ads!
This is excellent, it means that people will slowly turn away from Apple:
- what is the best thing about this new i?
- it forces you to see ads, no other device can do this
- thanks, I won't ever buy your device
Great, patent it, the less companies actually USE this crap, the better :) And I never used any Apple products so far so I'm FREE! Yay.
It seems like there's a market for a company that makes products like Apple but without being evil.
any startups want to tap it?
Guess why I don't play DVDs on a DVD player...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
There is often a psychological gulf between US and UK advertising. Often US advertising is based around insecurity and fear: if you don't buy this you will continue to smell/have bugs grow in your crotch/put off the opposite sex/have your neighbors laugh at you/be unAmerican. One can imagine all too well that a sizeable part of the population, forced to view such ads, will react as desired. It is less likely to work in Europe, where there is far more distrust of corporations and official-sounding messages (partly because of our bad history in the first half of the 20th century.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
because I really am starting to see Apple in bed more and more with Hollywood.
One of the few things that makes over the net movies more agreeable to me is that unlike blu-ray I do not have to skip past ads for eight other movies, if they allow me to skip. (fortunately some blu ray players don't enforce it)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Assuming your customers are advertisers, rather than the poor fools who are buying the devices. This is only a patent, not a product, so maybe they won't actually do it. I find it instructive, when looking at a company, to think to yourself "Who are the *real* customers?". The customer is "always" right. If you get a device that behaves like this, you know you're not the real customer and you can't expect to be taken seriously by the company you bought it from.
it is a dupe of..
That would certainly turn me away from using Apple products in a hurry! Here's hoping Apple filed that patent only to block others from doing this. This is the kind of thing that I would expect to come out of Micro$oft, MPAA, or RIAA.
The very people that use Apple's products do so to get away from this sort of intrusion. While I'm writing, I don't want to be interrupted at all by anything! To have this sort of intrusion into my my workspace on a regular basis would cause a loss of productivity on my part. As any programmer can tell you, after one simple interruption of your thought process it can take up to 20 or more minutes to get one's attention back on track.
I will certainly be a bit more cautious with system upgrades in the future. That would suck to be too quick to upgrade an iPhone or OS X, only to find that Apple has included this technology in it.
Whew! This water sure is cold!
...it's just the beginnings of synergy!
...there will be a quiz later.
goat sex floats, but relevant inf., with even a remote hint of any possibility of offending other atheists, must be 'hidden'/.deleted post haste.
phewww
flash, pdfs ...
Heck, even Microsoft has prior art - system modal dialog boxes have been around for ages. UAC is just the latest example.
...and that is why concealed carry permits were created.
A gun can be viewed as a "device". Just you wait untill your gun plays the axe-deoderant music and prevents you from firing untill you have simulated the use of a roll-on deoderant by wiping the gun under your arm.
I don't recall who. I do recall they annoyed me and I didn't care for their product; I'd buy from their competitors if I did.
Patronizing an advertiser's competitors isn't always practical because not every market is competitive. For example, if an energy company advertises in such an annoying manner, and that company provides electricity or natural gas to your city, where will you get your energy? If both the local cable company and the local phone company advertise in such an annoying manner, how do you plan to get Internet access?
I buy my phone, I buy my time to use the phone on someones network. An now some Smiling Show Off says no, not yet? I just have one question to Apple, "The 'Droid works on Sprint, the iPhone doesn't? No problem?"
Will it un-freeze if I throw it against a wall?
How about if I return it to Apple for being defective?
where failure to consume is frowned upon, if not outright treasonous.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Apple is different in that they do care about the user experience, almost to the detriment of all else. Microsoft is happy to bombard you with prompts, popups and whatnot, and that's just the operating system! Just this morning I get to my computer and I've got a "there are unused icons on your desktop" message that simply will not go away until I click on it, which then starts the "cleanup wizard" that I can cancel. I can prevent this from happening with a registry tweak, you're right, but why do I need to do that at all? If I have something on the desktop, it's because I put it there, regardless of how often it gets used.
I would find it a really weird departure from Apple's general user-focused strategy to suddenly demand they respond to ads; I see it more as a patent land grab that, if anything else, just adds to the number of patents a company can say it has.
That said, if I started to get bombarded with crap from Apple like I do from the various wintel companies, then I will happily take my business elsewhere. I use Apple products because they do what I want without getting in my way...the second either of those tenets are gone, I'm gone.
If you buy a device, you should NOT be forced to deal with advertising.
I buy an FM radio, but all stations have advertising on them. (Yes, NPR pledge drives count as advertising.) So I am forced to either deal with advertising or not use the radio.
I buy a TV, but all stations have advertising on them. (Yes, PBS pledge drives count as advertising.) So I am forced to either deal with advertising or not use the TV.
... as anyone who's played the free version of the gameshows on http://www.wedigtv.com/ will know. The ads freeze until you click / click-and-drag some vaguely relevant object on the screen, along the lines of "Click the bottle of cleaning spray to make it spray the kitchen counter and see the grease vanish!")
Yup, the mugger does not know who would be carrying a concealed weapon and who would not be. So they shoot everyone. Meanwhile deluded types think they are holding off the M1 A1 Abrams Tank owning, bazooka making, M15 trained army and marines with their little pipsqueak like a Beretta.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
and I hope they use this patent themselves, and license it widely so that it permeates the advertising landscape. It will be a huge boost to FOSS and Open Hardware. Also, it will erode the DMCA, making it effectively unenforceable in many cases. After all, what jury in the country would convict a fellow citizen for hacking an end-run around something so odious and universally despised?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
if you don't want to pay for or use ad-subsidized hardware, pay for the ad-free version
I have relatives who pay for cable television, yet there are still ads. What's the ad-free version of cable news or cable sports?
or buy something else.
If an ad-subsidized product undercuts the market to the point where everybody else either licenses Apple's patent or leaves the market, what should I buy instead? At some point, to avoid being annoyed by advertisements, one has to leave behind most of the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first.
After what they did to the tethering I don't think I'm buying any other Apple product. That really annoyed me. As if they weren't crippled enough right out of the box, the so called "updates" cripples them even more!
Hi, I'm an Mac, (well, an iPhone) and I get more crippled every time you update the software so you can do less and less stuff every day! F0ck Them!
hacks and the like, such as jail-breaking etc, they are sure encouraging things that beg for it. One thing Apple should be learning is that their stuff is not as un-hackable etc as they would like to have people believe. Another thing they should be learning is that pissing people off is a poor business model.
How is this different than those webpages that have the initial full page ad that you must click through to get to the main page? In this case the "device" is my computer. Now of course I can still do other things on my computer, but for all intents and purposes I can't do anything with that browser window until I click through the ad.
Ho ho ho. Aren't you glad you bought an iPhail now?
So how well do the before and after statistics in locations around the world that have changed their firearm policies support your assertion?
- In AD 2010...
- War was beginning...
- What happen?
- We get Kenyan...
- Somebody set up us the Dems
- What??
- Main screen turn on...
- It's you!
- A shout out to you gentlemen...
- You all have acted...stupidly.
- But don't jump to conclusions.
- All your base are belong to us.
- You are on the way to socialism!
- What you say??
- You have no chance to survive - make your time.
- Vote out "Libs"
- Impeach "Libs"
- For Great Justice!
Bad enough even if confined to product/brand advertising.
But it could also be used for political/special interest agendas.
Click below for continuing NBC.COM coverage of the military response on Klendathu in the Quarrantine Zone.
......[YES]......[YES]
Citizen, would you like to know more?
Amazingly evil stuff, I love it!
I also would never touch an item with such a 'feature', forget about buying something like that.
You can't handle the truth.
Does this patent mean Nokia can't use it on the N900 (and successors)? if so, "Good, well done Apple." Tough shit iPhone users though.
Max.
License it to Microsoft and Palm and then fail to employ it in any iStuff.
Does my tank need a concealed carry permit for me if I close the hatch?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Really, there are many more and often better alternatives to pretty much everything that Apple sells. I can see no reason why I would feel the need to be abused by stuff I've paid for and have it tell me what to do.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
This is 911.
Help, I am being attacked!
Hold on sir, I will--
Sir, are you still there?
Sir? Hello? Gurgle, gurgle.
(Bloody mess on ground...)
Congratulations, you win our haiku contest!
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Maybe THAT's what all those people were doing when that crazy lady threw the sledgehammer through the screen.
We've been following this story for awhile now but it seems to have broken into the mainstream.
... many readers of slashdot can't move on without demonstrating that they have dutifully noticed the grammatical error.
If I want to buy something, I'll buy it. If I am interested in your product, I'll check it out. I do not like it when people come up to me to cram things down my throat unrequested. This is even worse. I have already bought a product, do not compel me into watching more stupid assed ads to buy more crap. That's what's wrong with the US now. We are inundated with advertising by companies trying to sell us more crap. There is no more public space anymore where people can be free from the influence of companies. I like Apple, but I think this is a step in the wrong direction. Everytime I see this kind of advertising I cannot help but to think of the Josie and the Pussycats movie.
My car tells me to put my seatbelt on, turn on my lights when it's dark, activate my wipers when it rains, and my satnav blanks the screen when in motion so I don't become distracted by staring at it. Hell, I can turn off the lights on my stereo if I think they're too bright.
Yeah, this was going nowhere. I just wanted to tell everyone that I just bought a new car. Wooo! The tenuous link? It has iPod connectivity. Thankfully, though, it also plays from USB pen drives so I can skip all of the fanboi-ism.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
What a really good reason NOT to buy an apple-- anything.
I hate people and devices that try to force me to look at ads.
If I wasn't interested in the first place, I'm sure as heck not gonna be interested if you FORCE me to do it.
FUCK APPLE.
As to your second point, the nutjobs that think they're going to outlast the oppressive government and create a Libertarian Utopia aren't planning to do that with 9mm's. They're the reason that people feel the need for Assault weapons bans and gun registry's.
So, uhh... yeah. Fairly well.
This patent is great news! It means that this obnoxious behavior will be limited to the iPhone.
That movie ruined a good book. It doesn';t even deserve to carry the title "starship troopers"
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I seriously doubt Apple is going pepper unbypassable ads all through the iPhone interface. More than likely they are blue-skying their own take on Hulu or some other optional video service. So if one doesn't use the ad-supported features then the ads won't be seen. I also suspect that Apple will be happy, more than happy, to license this patent under less than draconian terms to other content providers. So the iPhone won't be rendered a banner ad flashing brick and the idea won't be safely locked up in such a way that any other phone becomes an oasis from it.
What I'm guessing is that Apple are perhaps going to introduce a new version of Mac OS X (either full version or trimmed for iPhone/iPod Touch/"iTablet," or perhaps both) that includes advertising if you get it for free (or at a reduced price), and no advertising at full price. The advertising, in other words, will subsidize the cost of Apple's R&D for future operating systems (and/or hardware). Just a thought--it seems a logical money-making and "best-of-both-worlds" step to me.
But if Apple actually protects this one, and doesn't license it out to other companies... then I may have to change my mind. I will never be bothered by ads on the Apple products I will never own! Go Apple!
They may force my player to play it, but they can't make me watch it.
DVDs have gone to far already by forcing the playback of -coming attractions- over and over and over years after those movies were released. I rip them and never see them again.
This behavior really pisses me off. My children shouldn't be subjected to 15 minutes of ads before a Disney DVD movie. I know, I know, I didn't "buy the movie", I just bought a license to view it in the provided way until the scratches prevent viewing it anymore. The studios want it to scratch sooner than later, since a crying child has more power than the USA nuclear arsenal to make something happen.
It has gotten to the point that we put the DVD in and play it, but don't turn on the TV. After dinner (60 min later), we go to chpt 1 and see just the movie, unless I've already ripped it and put it on the media player already.
Yeah, smart move. What a compelling device feature. Uh huh... it will compel me to smash it, run it over with my vehicle, burn it, shred it, and finally FLUSH IT.
Yeah, this is pure marketing genius.
I'm all in favor. I hope Apple uses this heavily with the restrictive media they distribute through iTunes, and I hope they license it broadly to all other distributors of restrictive media. It would be most excellent if this winds up on virtually every bit of restrictive media.
Why? Because if that happens, people will start to see -- in a very personally tangible way -- how much restrictively licensed media sucks. The cost of consuming licensed media will be frustration, and more people will turn to liberally licensed media. As that happens, they will see how good it is. There is a wealth of really outstanding stuff out there being put out without restriction, based on gift-economics and self-promotion. It is already working on a small scale, and the more people who get driven away from restrictive media, the larger the audience for liberal media.
Restrictive media is poisonous to our culture. The best way to kill it is to let its own toxins attack itself. As it becomes tangibly diseased, fewer people will want to touch it. They will stop giving money to the hostile copyrightists, and they will wither. Their budgets for purchasing votes and talking points in Congress will dry up, and slowly the scales will be lifted from the eyes of the public and the representatives.
Restrictive media will kill itself if we let it, and it has too much power to allow itself to be killed any other way. So three cheers for Apple for being an unwitting pawn in hastening that demise.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
A pre-emptive boycott of Apple seems a bit premature, doesn't it?
But given the amount of anger expressed here (which I agree with by the way) in the unlikely event that Apple, or anyone else, were to make a product that had mandatory viewing of ads, clearly they would instantly jeopardize their cool corporate image.
Apple products are popular because they work cleanly and, in most cases, make people happy, though I've had my share of bad experiences. If they were so foolish as to throw that all away, they'd crumble, fast.
This is already off topic, but just to clarify how off topic all of this is:
Most people in support of removing guns won't be convinced of those in support of keeping them and vice versa. The reason is because the two are (usually) arguing two very different topics.
The gun removal side is arguing the side of "results first". If you remove guns from a society you are almost certain to see a reduction in gun deaths statistically. There are accidents, crimes of passion, etc. Guns are more lethal than say, knives, in the hands of a novice so mistakes or attacks that may have killed with a gun may only maim with a knife.
The statistics usually favor legislation to remove guns for this reason.
Unfortunately, this is what people in engineering call a "stop gap" or "jury rigged" fix. It fixes a symptom, but does not cut across the root cause. There are still deaths, there are still accidents, there are still stupid people, and there are even people who still get guns illegally.
These actions do not discount the improvement, but it is an improvement with does remove individual freedoms without actually solving the problem.
It is a matter of motivation. I support any and all legislation which legitimately improves the human condition while actively encouraging individual responsibility for engaging in that improvement. If people stop killing each other because you have removed the means by which they can do so, you have not helped them. They are not engaged in the improvement, they are being controlled like children. You may stop a few accidents, but the root cause remains.
We need to write laws and encourage a society of responsibility, not of control.
That advertising is, if not desirable, at least neutral. The people likely to want such a service are people with little disposable income, i.e. poor people. We already know which advertisers queue up to sell to them. Mortgage scammers, loansharks, job adverts that turn out to be for sex work, cheap junk food. Your suggestion looks all right at first, but targeted ads of the sort you propose are mainly aimed at the sort of people who would be happily able to afford an ad-free phone, and have the nous to be predisposed to ignore targeted advertising. And one ad per half hour of talk time is ridiculous: at current phone rates, and given the value of an individual listening to an ad over the phone network, it would be more like half an hour of ads for one minute of talk. This won't be used for making calls.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
How could anyone think that a cool Technology Company like Apple could be evil? Unless you try to jailbreak your iPhone so you can use some app the Apple store rejected. Or now unless you want to skip through some obnoxious & offensive commercial. All Corporations are Evil - it's just that with some you find out later than others.
It will take exactly 1 week for this to happen... Not to worry. In any case, I'd strongly recommend voting with your wallet away from such an intrusive and stupid system. Unless it is really free, in which case: please get as many devices as you can and then jailbreak them or simply use them as paperweights. This would teach them a lesson :-)
Who the hell cares about firearm homicides?
How much did all homicides change?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It has iPod connectivity
Oh crap, you're doomed. With this new patent you'll be happily driving along when all of a sudden your car stops, the seatbelt tensions around your neck and the iPod starts to say: "Now, just honk your horn twice and I'll order you a brand new Mac - you wouldn't want to annoy me, would you" (as the seatbelt gets ominously tighter).
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You don't really get the concept of deterrents do you?
Sorry, you mention "deterrents" in connection with concealed carry permits and I cannot help but think of the following quote.
Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret!
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
My first thought was "Apple patents products that nobody will buy.
Down the page in TFA, there's this interesting little snippet:
Mr. Jobs is directly connected to this particular patent application: his name is the first listed of the five inventors. This is a rarity, occurring only four times among the 30 applications on which he is co-inventor that have been published by the patent office since March 2008.
I hope Jobs has other things in mind than attempting to actually use this "feature".
Unfortunately, while that sort of works, there's still people buying from Apple.
So let me add a corollary:
Don't let your friends buy stuff from Apple either.
Of course, it still leaves me with the problem of their advertisements, or should I say, deceit-filled propaganda. What can I do about that?
Indeed. I'm a progressive, and the huge mistake that progressivism has constantly made in history is attempting to ban effects, not causes. Prohibition, gun bans, etc.
Even stuff like consumer and lending protection laws, which at least don't have any bad side effects, but are less useful than actual consumer education would be. Sometimes stopgaps are reasonable, but we really do need to get to the root of the problem: People have no idea how to manage their financial life.
Hell, education isn't the only solution. We could come up some cheap financial advisory industry. It's absurd that the legal and financial professions have priced themselves out of normal people being able to consult with them before doing major things.
And the right's not immune to it either, look at their little idiocy about illegal immigration. As long as you have a poor country, next to a rich company, where people can go and get much better jobs, you're going to have people doing that. As we can't do anything about the poor country, we don't want to do anything about the rich country, and we can't move our country, the only solution is, duh, not offer them jobs. Or, rather, crack down on people doing so. Instead we get 'law and order' nonsense.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Handguns are the great equalizer.
Without them, some people can injury and kill another person, without that other person being able to stop them. The strong can prey on the weak.
With handguns, all people can injury and kill others.
But this also means all people can fight back when the other person tries to do that to them.
It's a basic equality thing. If some people have the ability to hurt others (And some of that subset, in fact, does.), those others should also have that ability to hurt them back.
Laws forbidding concealed carry are essentially saying 'Everyone must be as weak as they look, so the strong know who they can threaten safely'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
All we have to do is wait, and the trend will change. Apple will eventually screw themselves.
Out of curiosity, how do you define "progressive?"
Hackers.
First thing I thought when I read the blurb. "Wouldn't this be a cherry target for hackers?"
Think about it. An entire API that can halt the whole damn system, pre-emptively appropriate the screen and audio resources, and interact with the user?
How about an application that notices whenever the tcp/ip stack sends out a DNS query to www.somebank.com and puts it's app on the screen over top of your browser? It's a spoof so it looks just like your banking webpage. "Please enter your name and password." Bingo - instant password grabber.
Brilliant notion Apple.
Here's a tip for the future. Whenever you think something is a good idea, imagine what the black hat hacker implications are. Always ask: What if this fell into enemy hands?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The problem with progressivism is that in your attempt to eliminate bad outcomes you destroy the crucial feedback that enables people to learn to be responsible.
It's great to provide food for people who are starving due to no fault of their own, but it's not such a good policy to feed someone who can't buy food because he just blew his entire paycheck on the slot machines. Good luck devising a government policy that helps the former while denying the latter.
That's why charity should happen on an individual or local basis. The decisions need to be made on a case-by-case distributed basis instead of being centralized.
Story of Apple talking to Entertainment/Hollywood/TV executives re monthly subscription fee....
This is the most likely scenario for their intent.
This would fit both the desktop and mobile devices.
Awesome. I don't buy Apple products. Now no one else can do this without paying Apple. Who's going to do that? I'll never have to deal with this. Awesome. Thanks, Apple.
You've just (re)invented the system modal dialog!
After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with iTunes in the far future and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science as well as some of the most obnoxious ideas for advertising ever invented, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil as a corporate policy.
“Fuck it,” said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, “we’re evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You’ll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It’s shiny and it’s pretty and it’s cool and it works. It’s not like you’ll go back to a Windows Mobile phone. Ha! Ha!”
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. “Our evil is better than anyone’s evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where’s your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We’ve worked hard on our evil! Our Zune’s as evil as an iPod any day! I won’t let my kids use a lesser evil! We’re going to do an ad about that! I’ll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole.”
“Of course, we’re still not evil,” said Sergey Brin of Google. “You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it’s not like you’re going to use Windows Live Search. Ha! Ha! I’m sorry, that’s my ‘spreading good cheer’ laugh. Really.”
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Oh great! Now everyone will HAVE to watch that old Big Brother ad.
Would apple seriously ever consider USING such a thing? It would be most terrible. But of course, apple is so obsessed with its image that I doubt they would ever employ this technology.
Of course, having a patent on this atrocious god-awful piece of work will effectively prevent other, less image-conscious vendors from doing similar things, which might mean (could it be?) less intrusive advertising on other platforms.
No, the movie was much better than the book, which was Heinlein's standard unreadable tripe. The movie on the other hand, while limited, had some interesting aspects, including the vision of a fascist-style world state. I've never been able to work out why people hate the movie so much.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
In the last 20 years more than 30 US states have enacted "shall-issue" laws. For someone with access to the relevant data it should be straightforward to answer the question, "Is the percentage of attempted muggings that end in murder greater now than in was in 1985?"
An add that appears filling your screen and then won't go away until you click on something.
So they've patented the pop-up add?
If I need their product and can't get their product elsewhere, why the fuck would they advertise?
Because even if you can't get their product elsewhere, your city can. Ads for services provided by a local monopoly aren't supposed to affect individuals' short-term buying habits as much as to influence the collective political opinion of a region so that residents don't try to A. convince their local utility regulator to shop around or B. elect politicians who oppose the industry's practices. Examples include the ads for "clean coal", "America's natural gas", the "Pickens plan" (wind power and CNG automobiles), etc.
if the OS is advt. as ad supported then its OK
Until all phones are advertised as ad-supported, in which case it would be difficult to figure out how to do without a phone.
PS: What/where are Hyrule and Eagleland
Hyrule is a fictional country that uses the Rupee as its currency, from Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda video games. In my post, it represents any country whose monetary unit is called "rupee", such as India. Likewise, "Eagleland" is another fictional country intended to represent the United States. My point is that cable TV costs much more in "dollar" countries than "rupee" countries.
I can see it now - someone will remake the Baby-Shaker app so you can just shake your iphone to "shake off" the ads :-)
Give it some cool sound effects (toilet flush?), have it automatically send an email to the advertiser saying "I just flushed your ad without even seeing it courtesy of iToilet.app", and add the advertiser to a "Who Just Got Flushed?" page, with counters, a leaderboard, etc.
John Hodgman's looking better and better, and the skinny little "I'm an Apple" dweeb is looking more and more like a Cthulhu sock puppet.
Seriously, anybody so programmed that they'd fork out hard-earned money for a nasty, coercive piece of crap like this (whether it's a computer, a smart phone or whatever) ought to be punished without mercy. The problem is that if enough of the sheeple are so deperate for the latest tech toy that they buy into the system, the idea will catch on and pretty soon the rest of us will be looking at legal sanctions when we find ways to disable this kind of offensive crapware.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It's great to provide food for people who are starving due to no fault of their own, but it's not such a good policy to feed someone who can't buy food because he just blew his entire paycheck on the slot machines. Good luck devising a government policy that helps the former while denying the latter.
Indeed, that's the fine line that needs to be walked. Instead of trying to feed people without food, you try to feed people who have been laid off. (I.e., unemployment.)
Or you just feed children (I.e, WIC.)
Most of the complexities of welfare are an attempt to aim it at people in need, not people who don't have any money because of their own actions.
That's why charity should happen on an individual or local basis. The decisions need to be made on a case-by-case distributed basis instead of being centralized.
No, that introduces all sorts of personal prejudices in it.
Also, charity cannot possibly happen that way in cases of depressed areas of economic downturn. No one has any money to give to anyone.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
As long as Apple simply patents "evil" ideas, it seems like a win for me. This means that no other company can implement these ideas without paying licensing fees, which means that I will see less of these obnoxious schemes in products. In fact, the fact that Apple patented this idea, means that any iphone app I buy should be guaranteed not to do this, unless Apple produces it.
So until these ideas actually end up in a product, I won't be complaining.
Like puzzle games? Warehouse51 for iOS
I guess we disagree that political prejudices are better than personal ones.
I don't remember any examples from US history where people starved to death because private charity was overwhelmed. Do you have any particular cases you can point out?
Yeah, that's a sorta vague term, isn't it? OTOH, all political descriptions are sorta vague terms. ;)
I, personally, am along the lines of Woodrow Wilson (domestically) and FDR. Namely, I agree that the government should attempt to implement the FDR's 'Second Bill of Rights', although it's absurd to call those 'rights'. They should, however, be government goals.
Members of a political philosophies need to be very aware where that philosophy has failed in the past. (Something I fear the conservatives are about to learn the hard way.)
In the case of progressives, almost all progressive failures have been attempting to solve the entirely wrong thing.
For example, Prohibition was an attempt to solve the problem of men spending all their family's money on drink, and then being abusive towards their wives. (Modern people read about 'demon liquor' and laugh, but they don't know the context of that.)
That problem was actually solved with divorce (Another progressive concept) and the ability of women to earn their own money (Which was a liberal concept.), and the eventual recognition of spousal abuse as a serious problem. (Also liberal concept.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
do you think apple's legal department thought this thing up as a dare to see who could come up with the most offensive idea to slashdot?
-l
I don't care that the post is already at +5. Petition CowboyNeal to make it +6, because that is precisely how to get average schmoes to understand how digital restrictions are hurting them.
First of all, I don't acknowledge the term "DRM" or "Digital Rights Management," because that does not describe what it's used for. I call it a more layman-friendly "digital restrictions." The whole concept need to be reframed. When people hear "DRM," they think it's some kind of techno-jargon that they don't understand. Even if they find out what it stands for, they think, "Hey, it's to help me manage something, that's a good thing, right?" They need to understand that its sole purpose is restricting them from doing things with their digital stuff. Even if they choose not to do those things, they need to understand that DRM gives them nothing; its only function is to take away.
I tell people all the time about how unbelievably behind we are because of digital restrictions. "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could watch television on our iPhones? Well, there's no technical reason we can't; it's just that digital restrictions are stopping us." "Did you know that it would be trivially simple to write some slick software so that you could store every CD and DVD you own on a hard drive that costs less than $200 so that you could watch or listen to anything you want, anytime you want, without having to fool with the physical media? Well, we could, if it weren't for digital restrictions."
Now and then, I actually show people some of the stuff that I have and that I can do, given my technical know-how to rip DVDs and stream them to my television, load them on my iPhone, etc. When people "ooh" and "ahh" over it and ask me how they can do such things, I tell them, "Well, it's pretty hard right now, you have to really dig around to find the software and jump through a bunch of hoops to do it. Unfortunately, whenever anyone tries to write software to make it easier or publish such software in a legitimate way, they get sued out of existence by the people who don't want you to be able to do this without paying big bucks. (Or in many of cases, who simply don't want you to be able to do this at all.)
1. now we have the opportunity to get Payed to have an iPhone.
2. apple has now just put up a roadblock stopping other comanies from trying to something as stupid as this.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't remember any examples from US history where people starved to death because private charity was overwhelmed. Do you have any particular cases you can point out?
Erm...what are you talking about?
Homeless people don't die of starvation. That takes several days. They die of exposure.
I have no idea how many of them would die of starvation if they had not died of exposure, but it's worth mentioning that the most common cause of homeless death, after drugs, violence, and exposure, is cardiac arrest. So either they all coincidentally have bad hearts, or they're chronically malnourished, one of the causes of cardiac arrest.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
However in areas that do allow concealed carry, the fact that citizens might be carrying concealed is not secret at all. IANAM, but I would expect that if my chosen profession involved using force to compel someone to give me their money, I would pay attention to the probability of my targets being able to defend themselves. The ability of an armed citizenry to protect themselves make it very difficult for criminals like this to operate.
May be Apple will 'revolutionize' advertising with shiny, attractive ads in aqua avatar featuring John Hodgman or Will Ferell selling iPods and stuff and people will actually not mind paying extra for such a 'there's an ad for that' device. What do you know - stranger things have happened before, or not?
I prefer to evaluate the movie on it's own merits, rather than complain that it doesn't parrot the book perfectly. It's not a deep cerebral movie, but it's produced well enough to be immersive and fun (except, possibly, for the bizarre physics in the scene where Rico is standing atop the thrashing tanker.)
My wife doesn't like the movie, and can't get past the "extreme violence." She didn't see the strong parallels between the Global Federation and the 1940s era Nazis. Yes Virginia, the Nazis are the good guys. Maybe that's where the hate comes from.
Go about your life. There's no problem to "work around" in the first place.
This isn't being foisted on anyone. It's not like you need an excuse to advertise your intent not to buy Apple products, but I suppose any opportunity will do. But how to reconcile this series of posts when "Apple gets a free pass on Slashdot"--even though every story has multiple comments modded to +5 making that very claim, and rarely is there any comment modded to +5 giving Apple a free pass for no reason.
Tell me, have you concluded that the world is ending in 2012 because you're heard some dubious conjecture? I suppose you have a simple workaround: stop buying Mexican and Central American products? After all, you can see no reason why you would feel the need to be killed and have a dead civilization decide when to end the world for you.
Whatver. The question is if the various federal anti-poverty programs have produced measurably better results than what existed prior.
How likely is a person to die (starvation, exposure, heart attack, whatever) because of economic downturn in 2009 as compared to 1929?
This whole thing reminds me of the movie "Hard Wired' with Val Kilmer , Cuba Gooding Jr. About a brain implant to enforce ads. yes you heard it Ads.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Um...a lot less? We now have unemployment, social security, etc.
Do we really even need stats about that?
I have no idea what sort of point you're trying to make, or what 'the question' is supposed to be.
Of course federal anti-poverty programs(1) have produced better results than the almost completely non-existent private charities that existed in the 1929.
1) I assume you mean 'charity'. Providing for the homeless is not 'anti-poverty'. Anti-poverty is trying remove people from poverty, not keep the poor from dying.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Yes.
In that case the evidence should be easy to locate. Also I'm not sure that the friends, relatives and churches that people relied on when they were in trouble back in the 19th and early 20th centuries are quite as non-existant as you claim.
Hey man, this is the new "cool". Apple is redefining "cool" (on which it holds the patent). Watch this catch on as other manufactures license this. Just image, you couldn't make a cup of coffee, turn on the lights, or use the toilet unless you watch the #!@&!! commercial first.
Cool Man. Really Cool. The new "Apple Cool"! The world brought to you by Apple, and their new motto: "Rotten to the Core!"
Satirizing the "military utopia" of the book instead of praising it probably is what pisses most people off.
I thought it was pretty obvious that the "good guys" weren't really (in the movie) on the side of good from the first time I saw it in the theater. The social commentary might have been a bit over the top when it came out but it is starting to get a bit too close to home in this "post 9/11 world"* that supposedly "changed everything"*.
*please imagine air quotes here. I don't personally believe that 9/11 changed anything aside from providing a good stump for politicians and a good excuse for government power grabs and other miscellaneous bad behavior.
Gosh, I dont know, maybe the total lack of the MI armor and capsules that kinda define a "cap trooper".
Oh and "Doogie Hauser, Phd", (deliberate mis-spell) talk about unpleasant memory http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065819/ (Great book too).
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
... but I would expect that if my chosen profession involved using force to compel someone to give me their money, I would pay attention to the probability of my targets being able to defend themselves. The ability of an armed citizenry to protect themselves make it very difficult for criminals like this to operate.
That is only applicable if said person is intelligent and rational enough to do so and even if they are, they may also understand that the probability of someone actually having a concealed carry permit, and having a weapon with them, is fairly low.
So while I agree that the potential for deterrent exists for the concealed carry permit to have any effect at the implied scenario, that potential must equal or exceed a significant portion of the other risks that said individual has already chosen to ignore and in practice it doesn't. In general, I think the conclusion that allowing carrying concealed weapons has a practical impact as a crime deterrent is a false one. i.e. The probability that someone close by, having a concealed weapon, and is willing to risk themselves, is less than the probability of, lets say, a police officer ( on or off duty but armed ) being close by.
With regards to the Second Amendment of the US Constitution and The Bill of Rights it states "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed". Note, it says "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" and not "the right of the individual to keep and bear arms". The Constitution makes the distinction between the rights of individuals ( e.g. Third Amendment ) and the rights of the people is several places.
So, while We the People have the right to bear arms, We the People also has the ability to determine the individuals who will have the privilege to represent We the People to exercise this right ( e.g. Police, Citizens who have completed a firearms safety course, etc. ) and who will not ( e.g. mentally imbalanced, criminals, etc. ). My take on a Right is that it cannot be denied. If you ( general ) want to stand by the argument that the right to bear arms is an individual one, then you argue that individuals that are mentally imbalanced, criminals, etc. and may also legally bear arms.
That's my position on the matter anyway
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Clearly the Australians do, as they just outlawed them.
Fuck off, prick.
That's the point. You may not have to. If, in exchange for watching a few advertisements a day, consumers were given a shiny new Apple iPhone300kTurbo for "free", or were given "free" cell service, that might be seen as an acceptable trade.
It benefits Apple by giving them evidence that those pricey advertisements they sell are reaching eyeballs.
Pure speculation on my part, btw. I have no inside knowledge (nor do I really care) about Apple's marketing or product plans.
Just reading the comments and it reminds me of the podcast security now. Every 10 minutes there was literally a 5 minute attempt to sell you a copy of gotomypc. Not once, or twice but literally > 10 times per episode. It is a pity because otherwise it would have been a good podcast. The adverts are that much that you grow to loath it.
Too much advertising and you grow to hate a product or service.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
If I could figure out how to mod something, I'd mod this up. Is there some hidden "how to do common user actions on Slashdot" page somewhere that I'm missing?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I have a feeling this device will become so annoying that it will make people stop using electronic devices and go outside and play and get exercise.. Heck, maybe some people's sex life will improve too, because I have a feeling that anything will be better than being randomly interrupted by a device to read an ad. Believe you and me, this device will become a hacker's playground.. :)
There's a patent for that.
Would a company be that stupid that they'd bother the user too damn much? I imagine they'd apply it at a low rate, e.g. 1 ad per hour, or 1 ad after the equivalent of an album/movie playback, or right at the start of a movie. I admit it would be annoying, but I imagine still quite a lot of people would put up with it if it's at a low enough rate. Granted, the companies would pay dearly to serve ads on such devices.
I suppose plenty of people have a high tolerance level. See how they put up with the Blue Screen Of Death; you'd suppose it's an ad for buying Microsoft products.
Now, I admit it will be seriously alarming if (when?) they figure out a way to serve ads directly to the brain and requiring user interaction...
My sig is better than your sig.
What "military utopia" would that be?
Or are you talking about some other book than "Starship Troopers" by RAH?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
they should sue comcast and force them to remove add from the guide.
Come on ad's on each page WTF.
The basic purpose of marketing in general, and advertising specifically, is to both inform your audience about the attributes of your product, but perhaps more crucially to get people to have a positive attitude about your product. People who put flyers for nail salons under the wiper blades of my car, for instance, are the sorts of folks who don't understand that later point. Leaving litter on my car for me to police annoys me. Putting your company's name and address prominently on an object that fosters annoyance demonstrates a certain lack of clarity on the object of the exercise.
Now, there's a rather large gulf between getting a patent on an idea and implementing it. But if Apple, or anyone else, were to implement this idea, I can't imagine there'd be many advertisers stupid enough to say, "Wow! An advertising mechanism that pisses people off and forces them to know who was behind it! Sign us up!"
Product information and advice doesn't have to come in the form of a review. It could be a "What's New" newsletter, a consultant, an automated advisor, or a product demonstrator (who is currently also a salesperson).
And these "helpers" don't need to be (and often can't be) ad-funded. They are often funded by sales, direct or affiliate, which does create a huge conflict of interest. An alternative is funding consumer assistance from cashback money, and more arms-length manufacturer incentives.
In the news: Apple's iPod hit an all-time market share of 3% today, and is expected to dip even lower as iPod lovers abandon them in droves. Apple says it will not remove its much-hated mandatory advertising. Pictures at 11.
I know for sure I'd never go there again.
so, guys, how valuable is that patent, again?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I love my mac but this having to interact with an ad thing is garbage and a pan in the ***. Perhaps my boyfriend's new comp will be a dreadful p.c.
This behaviour is criminal. Even if they give the device away for free (like the article mentions), which they won't, it's still criminal. I realize that advertising on the web is probably a necessary evil, but for the most part lives don't depend on a particular web page loading. HOWEVER, there are times when lives do depend on other personal devices such as phones and GPS units. "Hello, this is ONSTAR. We have detected an impact against your vehicle and would like to call paramedics to the scene, but first a word from our sponsor..."
LMAO
LOL. I've never had my Macbook or iPhone "tell me what to do"... Are you retarded?
OS X is a UNIX operating system, so if unless you are a newb you know that it's still a 'nix and a rock solid OS that is totally fuckwithable -- new word.
This has to be something Apple found in a science fiction story from the 1950s.
I remember it.
The only place that Grandma could get away from advertising was jail, until she let slip to her son-in-law that that's why she kept getting herself arrested -- to get away from the cereal boxes that called to her from the shelf and wouldn't shut up til she poured some, etcetera etcetera. EVERYTHING was set up to force you to interact with the advertising.
Apple can't possibly support this notion as novel.
In the story, her son-in-law worked for an ad agency and at the end of the story was figuring out how to start advertising to the prison population, the last untouched market.
Someone's got to recognize this story, it's probably famous enought to overthrow that patent.
Stupid patent office examiners must not read any science fiction at all.
"horrify" says the CAPCHA -- damn AIs are everywhere nowadays.
I think it's a great opportunity to make money. As soon as Apple starts implementing it, short their stock.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
What is your take on nuclear weapons?
Don't quote me on this.
What good does a concealed weapon (in a holster on my side I assume?) do me when there's a gun 2 inches from my face or a even a knife point at my neck? None, there jack shit i can do without getting stabbed/shot.
How easy would it be for muggers (often the lowest end of the criminal spectrum and thus poor, unmotivated and unconnected) to get guns in places with no legal guns. I have only personal experience and common sense to aid me, but I've never been held up with a gun (only gun I've seen in person was on an armed police officer) and I don't imagine the average smack head who can't afford his next fix without mugging me, will be able to afford the couple of grand required to buy a re-fitted gun (only kind of gun that seems to enter UK illegally :s) off the larger crooks.
I do see your point - you prefer the option of self-protection in those few cases where the mugger might have a gun. Personally I'll most likely be handing my rather empty wallet over regardless of the weapon they're carrying (if they're unarmed then I'm up for a fight ofc) and I find the knowledge that I'm not going to be taken out by a co-worker gone postal, a kid that pinched daddy's gun or just any lone idiot that with a driving licence that waited 3 days to get his high-powered weapon before going nuts out the window of a car or high building; heavily outweighs the very rare situation of being held up by someone well off enough to afford a gun (and therefore well off enough to take part in more profitable crime than robbing me).
Basic supply and demand rules are keeping me safer (safer, not safe). Guns are rare here, the only folk that can afford them aren't using them to hold me up. The police may have a different view on this ofc - but then they chose their job, and they get a final salary pension after 10 years for that exact reason.
The Australians just outlawed homicides? Homicides in general or just firearm homicides?
I think if I was an Australian I'd be asking for my tax money back for the last few decades.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
What good does a concealed weapon (in a holster on my side I assume?) do me when there's a gun 2 inches from my face or a even a knife point at my neck? None, there jack shit i can do without getting stabbed/shot.
What on earth does that have to do with my comment. Handguns means that anyone can mug anyone. Handguns also mean that anyone can stop their mugger.
I have a better question for you:
If you are physically weak, what good does nothing do when you're thirty feet away from your mugger?
Anyone can invent scenarios where they lose. But without guns, if someone is weak, they always lose, and if they're strong, they always win.
It is much better for society if the weak and strong are randomized instead of the strong being able to glance around and figure out who they'll be able to force into doing what they want.
This isn't an argument about self protection. People could openly carry hunting rifles around for self protection, and it wouldn't do what I'm talking about.
This is an informational security argument. I am asserting that making 'people who it will be very hard to mug' into an unknown quality, there will be less muggings in general.
And, please, feel free to replace 'weak' with 'women' and 'mug' with 'rape' in this argument.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
They're really the same thing for countries, which is why it's amazingly goddamn stupid for the strongest countries in the world to use them to throw their weight around. Strong countries don't need nukes.
It's like a world where Chuck Norris starts carrying a gun, and no one else even thought of guns until he did. And now he runs around having to kick the butt of who looks like he might buy a guy, and a few people have managed to get them and lock themselves away in sniper nests so he can't come by and kick their ass.
Of course, I'm saying that as a member of ChuckNorristan. Probably if I was in one of the other countries I'd be saying 'Thank goodness we have a nuke and he can't attack us!'
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
In that case the evidence should be easy to locate.
It is not really my job to locate evidence for whatever point you're trying to make.
Also I'm not sure that the friends, relatives and churches that people relied on when they were in trouble back in the 19th and early 20th centuries are quite as non-existant as you claim.
You weren't talking about 'the 19th and early 20th centuries'.
You were talking about 1929. A year in which is was rather obviously determined that the rather scant private charities could not handle a large economic downturn. (And, hell, neither could existing government charities, but as they hardly existed, that wasn't really in question.)
And a year in which friends and relatives were also dropped into poverty. Perhaps there were big charity drives taking place in tent cities? (Okay, those didn't actually exist until later, but whatever.)
Mathematically, spending for 'charity' in the US is about about 12% of pure private charity, 28% with private organizations subsidized by the government, and about 60% pure government.
In 1929, you had roughly the same percent of donations to private charities as you do in the present day. Somewhere between 3%-5% of the GDP. Hence you had about the same 12% spending by private organizations, and maybe the same amount by the government, or a total of 25% of what we have currently, which proved to be nowhere near enough when actual disaster struck.
And, as I said earlier, those organizations were not designed to help 'the poor'. Private charities pre-1929 were things like orphanages and widow pension system and a church that might let a homeless person sleep in it. Maybe a boarding house where three or four down-on-their-luck people could live while looking for jobs. They were not soup kitchens, they were not homeless shelters.
People were, in fact, expected to get help from friends and family. (Incidentally, that was something that vastly contributed to black people being unable to pull themselves out of poverty, which is why I mentioned prejudices in private charity previously. Thanks to the segregation of society, black people could only turn to other black people, who also did not have money.)
This entire system fell to pieces when, suddenly, everyone was poor.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Odious. Simply odious. Why do you yanks have this sort of nonsense?
In the US there is this long-held myth, fed year after year by those who benefit from its proliferation, than anyone, if they work hard enough, can become as obscenely wealthy as the plutocrats which have purchased our legislature and plunder our populace in the most abusive manner their behavioral analysts have deemed is possible without eliciting armed rebellion.
This myth, that one day they can hold the whip and scream "MUSH!" at our elected representatives while unzipping their trousers to let their bounty "trickle down" upon the worthless peons, helps to keep the populace passive.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
People were also expected to work themselves out of destitution.
The current welfare system that exists right now doesn't really seem to be a great long term benefit to black people, unless your goal is to keep an entire segment of the population dependent and basically helpless (so that they keep voting for you).
The fact that we spend more of GDP now than we did in 1929 doesn't say anything about effectiveness.
What are we getting for all this money expended that we didn't have then?
You grab your iPhone to make a quick call. There's gotta be a party somewhere tonight. You see a glint of light as a mysterious sphere whizzes around a corner. Befiore you can react it extends a set of really nasty barbs that embed themselves in your forehead. A drill bit extends and starts slowly making it's way to your brain. Dual viewscreens deploy and start showing you the latest "I'm a Mac" commercial. You scream as the drill bit penetrates your scull and swiftly performs a lobotomy.
A year later. You're signing your latest iPaycheck over to Apple. If you're lucky there'll be some iChocolate iPudding in your latest packet of iFood. The vacant stare in your eyes reveals that you know you're elite. Apple lets you work in the iSphere factory.
People were also expected to work themselves out of destitution.
Yeah, which is a great theory until you actually see it in practice. It's called a 'workhouse'. They were horrific.
The current welfare system that exists right now doesn't really seem to be a great long term benefit to black people, unless your goal is to keep an entire segment of the population dependent and basically helpless (so that they keep voting for you).
As opposed to before welfare existed, post civil war, where black people were peons in the feudalism that was sharecropping?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The old system had problems.
The new system has about the same number of problems and costs a lot more.
Clearly the solution is that we need more.
What are we getting for all this money expended that we didn't have then?
Old people who are actually alive and have money to live on? Less tent cities? Less children starving to death?
Frankly, I think I demonstrated it when I pointed out that private charitable giving was roughly the same. People do not give less, or more, based on anything but their income.
And we've proven that society cannot function, during a depression, with that level of charitable giving.
If you want to argue that government charity hasn't done any good, than you provide some sort of statistics to that regard. I'm not going to sit here and have you constantly pester me to provide stats for you. You're the one walking around asserting that somehow charity was 'better' with a quarter of the money it had now, or even less, and that poor people were somehow better off back then.
And as I pointed out, you've managed to ignore black people, 10% of the entire population, and very poor, that certainly was not better off under 'private charity' that they had no access to. A snide remark about their current status does not actually change the truth of what I said.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I'm sure why the number of problems is relevant. Me flying to France by piloting a jet has numerically more problems (I don't have a jet and I don't know how to fly one.) than me flying to France by flapping my arms (That is not physically possible.)
I'm sure you're wanting me to fall into some trap where we start listing problems and you 'prove' that the current system has more. Well, of course. The bigger any system, the more problems you can list with it. The number of bugs on my computer vs. the number of bugs in my calculator does not prove my calculator is more useful.
Under the current system, more people are better off on average. And less people die. Less children die. Less older people die. Less laid off people die. And the same for living on the streets.
Hell, many of the homeless people that die now are the mentally ill, thanks to Reagan putting them all back on the streets. The system can't actually help people who are not competent enough to show up at the system for help. That has to be solved elsewhere.
Exclude them, only count competent people who actually attempt to get help and use the resources presented to them, and the system has a fairly good track record at actually keeping people alive and moderately well feed.
Although, like I said, many of the homeless are chronically undernourished. They eat enough to fill their (shrunken) stomachs, but don't quite get enough nutrients. So there's stuff that could be fixed, but, overall, the system is much better than it was.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
How do you know? Do you just take that on faith, or do you have a source of data that shows this?
What about the track record of getting those people to the point of not needing further assistance? What percentage of the total recepients are the "responsible" ones and what percentage are abusing the system?
You keep going back to the Depression but are we really comparing apples to apples?
That's like saying that FEMA should provide food, clothing and housing for people all the time because sometimes it is necessary after a particularly bad storm.
I'm not asserting that anything was better, just asking if spending four times the money (your number) has resulted in four times better results
Because you can always turn the device off.
If it can be schedule to occur at fixed intervals then there is not much to panic...
Anyway, they didn't act against Bush, and all they managed against Obama so far is clearing the shelves of ammo.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
How do you know? Do you just take that on faith, or do you have a source of data that shows this?
So, you've unaware of the average human lifespan getting longer?
What about the track record of getting those people to the point of not needing further assistance? What percentage of the total recepients are the "responsible" ones and what percentage are abusing the system?
You appear to be under the impression that all that spending is for unemployment or something.
No, a good deal of that is for social security, which people are not expected to get off or, or disability, which people are not expected to get off of, or medical or food aid to children of low income families. (Which hopefully they will get off of, but the aid itself it not designed to help that process.)
Also you seem to be unaware that all actual unemployment and poverty based welfare for adults is time limited. It all runs out.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I'm not asserting that anything was better, just asking if spending four times the money (your number) has resulted in four times better results
No, it's resulted in a lot better than four times the results. Because, like I said, organized private charity wasn't even directed in the same direction, and 'depending on neighbors' seems like a great plan until the plant closes or until four people in a town of a thousand all get some incredibly expensive disease at once.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
And you married her why?
I was unaware of any claim that all or part of this increase is due to government intervention.
If an ad-subsidized product undercuts the market to the point where everybody else either licenses Apple's patent or leaves the market
Isn't either the Free Market or Open Source supposed to prevent that?
Open source hasn't done a good job of selling hardware to a relevant fraction of the mass market. Case in point: The GP2X handheld is designed to run open source software, but it never really took off in the United States compared to the DS, PSP, or iPod Touch.
You probably haven't been given moderator points, in which case you can't mod anything yet - you're not missing it.
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Seemed like a good idea at the time ...
At first glance it's evil, but it depends on how it's used. As little as I use a cellphone, it might be worth watching an ad before every call if the iPhone only cost me $5. I'm sure it could be set up so that a 911 would bypass the ads. This might also be acceptable for a low cost macnetbook that cost you $25 and offers free access but makes you watch an ad every 15 minutes while you're answering your email.
People were mixing "read and test" with recreational content in the early 70s, letting people play tic-tac-toe on a Model 33 Teletype. I have to wonder how this patent is new.