You got to be kidding me right? I'm saying they timed it. The court adjourned on July 27th. They couldn't find a day to announce it other than two days before the mid-term U.S. election - say after the election or a month or so ago? I agree with giving people the benefit of the doubt but that doesn't mean you have to be stupid.
Free labor so newspaper corporations don't have to actually pay for investigative journalism? If I was a CEO of a news corporation, I'd think this was a brillant idea too. It's the equivalent of reality TV for newspapers.
It's one thing to contribute to a project with an free license that everyone can benefit from. This kind of cooperation might one day save the world.
I don't see any harm in being in a corpoation run community such as Slashdot and making some off the cuff remarks. It's a kind of social exchange.
It is something else entirely to spend time working for a corporation, sharing your expertise and time, that is then claimed as intellectual property of that corporation. It is the height of stupidty and shows you don't value your time.
It's a variation on the old formula used in academic publishing. Researchers employed by universities publish in corporate journals (a priviledge) and those same universities have to pay enormous fees to subscribe to those journals. Sometimes they pay the salaries of editors for these publications and for the time of people involved in peer-review. It's great for the middle man, but it is a rip off for the universities and their faculty - not to mention it actually stifles access to important research.
So, yeah. Let's all run right out and do this shall we?
The definition of dictator is a : a person granted absolute emergency power; b : one holding complete autocratic control; c : one ruling absolutely and often oppressively.
Further, he is definitely claiming power and using it based on a framework of emergency that goes by the label of the "war on terror". He, and especially people under him like Cheney, believe that that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries. That's pretty close to an understanding that believes itself to have absolute emergency power, i.e., a dictatorship - given certain conditions (which in this case are vague).
Get your news from multiple and diverse news outlets and any reasonably intelligent person can sort out the bullshit from the facts...
The implicit and erroroneous assumption in your argument is that the truth or the facts of the matter are available. Can you tell me where the secret prisons are that the U.S. government is using? Can you tell me about the black operations programs that have been set-up? Can you tell me about the secret deals that happened in back offices that gave contracts to companies working in Iraq and provided kickbacks to U.S. politicians?
I would be naive to believe that these things weren't occuring. However, I don't know any of the details, because the U.S. government has a decided interest in not keeping me informed on these topics - and others that I am not aware enough to name here. In fact, they have an interest in decieving me and the rest of the world - like when President Bush claims the U.S. doesn't do torture (defined as anything that might cause severe organ failure or some other perversion of the language).
The difference is that the public is paying for it, and it isn't information. It's advertising and public relations; two businesses the government shouldn't be in.
I was waiting for some kind of "God save the males" when you switched it up and played the "manly men are a ridiculous stereotype" card. But for all that is holy, can you explain how birth control/abortion has to do with anything - much less getting married or having offspring? It's not the quantity; it's the quantity, my friend, and you only need to have one or two children to pass on your genetics.
2. "He broke a law, he should go to jail." The court system should be mandated to tell the jurors in all trials about their right to nullify terrible laws. Jury nullifaction is more than a priviledge, it is a right even greater than serving on a jury.
Judges in every court room I have been summoned to for jury duty have explicitly stated that the jury is only there to determine the facts of the case and pass a judgment based on the law. You are made to swear (or affirm) under oath that you will follow the judge's direction on this matter.
It is also obvious that the jury selection process itself is designed to eliminate anyone that might actually understand that the jury can not only decide whether the law was broken based on facts, but they can also decide whether finding someone guilty of that crime is a just application of the law.
One example: I was in the jury box and asked whether I would convict someone of battery for touching someone's toe. If someone were told not to touch someone else's toe and they did anyway, it meets the legal definition of battery. I was the only person of a jury pool of 50 that stated I would not pass a guilty verdict based on the facts of the case - because it is obviously unjust to give someone a felony conviction for this kind of trivial offense. The judge angrily informed me that it was his responsibility to sentence. I, and others, were to stick to the facts and do what we are told.
I wouldn't take any comfort from the possibility of jury nullification. The people that tend to get picked tend to be weak and unexceptional - the Joe Six Packs of the world.
More to the point, juries are a mechanism for people to feel comfortable with the fact that they weren't solely responsible for the decision or directly responsible for the sentence. It's the same reason why you have firing squads, multiple switches for the electric chairs and so forth. It allows people to absolve themselves of responsibility - that's the true purpose of the jury in our society. Justice? You can forget about it. The chances of getting a Peter Fonda these days are as good as nil.
What about the people's right to overthrow an oppressive ruler, say like George the III. You think that might have been a topic the founders where reflecting on when they wrote this document? I suspect that is exactly why this provision is in the Constitution and is why your interpretation doesn't square with it.
The elections in the U.S. are different from third world countries. Elections in the U.S. are by and large, worse. The U.S. has never been concerned about the integrity of elections, much less anything that could be described as free or fair by a third party observer.
You only have to look at Hiroshima & Nagasaki to know that countries with nuclear weapons are extremely dangerous. There's a reason that the Doom's Day Clock exists and stands at seven minutes to midnight and that reason is to remind people that are deluding themselves that eventually someone is going to use these things. We all are on the edge of extinction. So please, don't make light of the harsh reality.
Last time I checked, the fact that the First Amendment is in the Constitution doesn't count for a whole lot. Think free speech zones as one of many examples.
Meetings do result in useful things - like agreement. The problem is that most people don't know when they are necessary, who to invite, what work to do beforehand (and have others do), how to run them and how to follow-up. This is the reason why there are so many meetings and more than 90% are a waste of time - or worse, counter-productive.
If you want to see a meeting run well, try going to a Quaker Meeting for Business run by a competent clerk. I have and it completely changed my perspective on what meetings could do and how they should work. Check out the Wikipedia page on the Religious Society of Friends under Decision making among Friends for a brief description.
Companies don't have to make tangible products to have a viable brand. Google, itself, is the archetypical example. If you look at Interbrand's list, you could argue the same for Amazon, Yahoo and MTV.
Besides products, companies can provide a service that is distinctive in some way, which is exactly what YouTube does. Same goes for the other brands above. I think you can even make an argument that while IBM, in the past, was known more for products, they are clearly moving more towards a service model.
We could also flip the script a bit on this. All of your arguments would also apply to something like MySpace, but someone is clearly making money on purchasing that company as well. Again, it is a service (poor though it may be) with name recognition.
I should say that I don't see much evidence that YouTube is worth the price. However, I do recognize the value of intangible assets that have nothing to do with a code base, a server farm, products or other tangible assets. As other people have pointed out, Google's purchase of the company may also have network effects that will drive the intangible value of the company - such as distribution deals, press coverage of the site and so forth. These are also things you are not accounting for in your argument.
One of the most significant assets of any company are its brands. Interbrand does an evaluation every year where they estimate what the biggest brands are worth. Here's the top five: Coca-Cola ($67 billion), Microsoft ($56.9 billion), IBM ($56.2 billion), GE ($48.9 billion) and Intel ($32.3 billion).
Now, you can argue whether the YouTube brand is worth the price. But to argue that all they have is a brand - with the implicit assumption that brands are not worth anything at all - is simply wrong. Every day people pay more for the expectation of consistent quality and image. It's why people pay more for everything from Apple computers to Marlboro cigarettes. That's worth money, my friend.
Re:10 hours is a lot, really.
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Name one. Let's summarize the Objectivist philosophy from Rand's perspective:
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
Any reading of Ayn Rand's books will make it clear to the reader that she is not talking about man as a class being heroic beings - but specific men. It is also clear that there is a whole set of values as to what is "productive achievement" that are not based on rationality or on individually defined happiness. Where are Ayn's novels about men and women that have defined happiness as the pursuit of Epicurean pleasures, raising a family or religious saints? They don't exist because Ayn's "productive achievement" is a nice way of saying materialism. Materialism is man's noblest activity? Strip away the flowerly language and it is clear that Ayn's philosophy is easy rationalization for selfish asshats.
There are people that create software, beta test software, classify images, submit bug reports and do a whole host of things that benefit companies. They do it for a wide variety of reasons. One of the best reasons is because often when we help, we are making the world we live in a better place to live and we are helping ourselves.
If the number of deaths by war were plotted over the course of human history you would see a a line that increased every year and each year the increase grew steeper. Around 1945, by coincidence I'm sure, the number of deaths by war has dropped to about a million per year and it has stayed there ever since.
It would be an interesting point, if true. However, I don't think your conclusion follows from it. If we were to suppose this was true, the question is why did it level out? You assume that nuclear weapons is the cause but I can think of others - the creation of the U.N., global trade, better medical technology, etc., any of which could have a correlation. It might also be an artifact of the methodology employed. It could be many other things. I would be interested in a source for your comment though. Would you care to provide one?
Other posters have addressed the old lie about the justification of American war crimes - from nuclear weapons to fire bombing civilian populations - and how they supposedly saved lives. They didn't, and we need to call them what they were - a reprehensible use of force. The bottom line is that weapons never make anyone safer. Weapons are a temptation for the weak, and eventually, they will be used and many people will die. Nuclear weapons are the poison pill that will eventually end civilization as we know it - with the death of many as the consequence.
Fantastic idea. I'd personally like to know where the $507 billion since 9/11 through FY2007E was and will be spent - with breakouts by mercenary wages, secret prisons, black operations, etc. Given how forthcoming this administration isn't with everything else it is doing from NSA spying on U.S. citizens to the use of the state secrets priviledge to fend off lawsuits aimed at getting them to provide more information, this can only be posturing for the upcoming election. Check out the Secrecy Report Card 2006 for an eye-opening discussion.
Most information that students use to write papers are paid for by their university libraries. They use a browser to access the content, but the IP rights have been paid for by the university.
The statement: "Statistically speaking, it's likely that a sizable percentage of these students..." is patently false. First, because you aren't actually citing statistics. Second, because of the point made above. Third, educational settings have special provision within copyright law of fair use that actually allows for what would be considered plagarism in other circumstances because it is necessary to actually cite works and quote from them in academic writing.
Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable. - Jean De La Fontaine (1621-1695), French poet, fabulist.
You will be judged because if you don't know how to show discretion in your own life, how will you know to show discretion in mine, where I to share any part of my life with you? Make no mistake, this is not about freedom to be you. It is about understanding that you squander yourself trying to connect to the whole world - and in doing so, potentially squander the lives of everyone that comes into contact with you.
The suggestion to block the newspaper's IP address so they cannot use Google - pretty much defines evil. That kind of behavior is what makes Microsoft so loathed in this forum, and here you are suggesting they should do it. If they went that route, what's to stop them from using the same tactic in other situations? Imagine Google didn't like something the company you work for is doing and cut off your access to their email, search or whatever. How would you personally feel about it? Does this strike you as good business practice? You need to think a little further on this issue.
I disagree with almost with everything in your post. Corporate environments tend to follow university practices because the so-called skilled labor gets a job and wonders why the corporation they work at is paying so much for X, doesn't use X and what have you. I know I personally was involved in changing some of the infrastructure of the company I worked at after college because they were practically stone age in their thinking - and still are. I didn't even work in the IT department.
Open source is not a money pot. It is simply a skill. It's like the introduction of computers. Everyone had to learn how to type - not just secretaries. However, the advantages were there to warrant the investment. It is the same with open source.
If you think the people that actually run the infrastructure the university needs are making minimum wage, are students/professors, or whatever, then you definitely don't know what you are talking about.
Universities, particularly the people that run them, aren't any less conservative than the people that run corporations. The difference is that they need to figure out how to roll out new services and do it will less money. Most corporations are simply fat and can afford to pay for some consultant or other company to fix their problems for them. Universities don't have that luxury.
The major problem is that the system can be gamed by profiling voters, media control (did you see that extended ad by the president that he did from the Oval Office a few days ago?) and so forth.
The so forth in the above would of course include not counting votes, voter intimidation, ballots that exclude third-parties and what have you.
Within the United States, of course, real (and imagined) differences between the mainstream candidates are more greatly magnified. However, compared to other western democracies, especially those with a finely-tuned system of proportional representation, most mainstream political activity in the US is concentrated over a more narrow ideological range. We note too that conservative Democrats tend to have more in common with Republicans than with the liberals within their own ranks.
Given this, perhaps more conservative Democrats like Lieberman should join the party that more accurately reflects their views - i.e., the Repubican party - and dispense with creating a new party.
Slashdot Mirror
You got to be kidding me right? I'm saying they timed it. The court adjourned on July 27th. They couldn't find a day to announce it other than two days before the mid-term U.S. election - say after the election or a month or so ago? I agree with giving people the benefit of the doubt but that doesn't mean you have to be stupid.
Free labor so newspaper corporations don't have to actually pay for investigative journalism? If I was a CEO of a news corporation, I'd think this was a brillant idea too. It's the equivalent of reality TV for newspapers.
It's one thing to contribute to a project with an free license that everyone can benefit from. This kind of cooperation might one day save the world.
I don't see any harm in being in a corpoation run community such as Slashdot and making some off the cuff remarks. It's a kind of social exchange.
It is something else entirely to spend time working for a corporation, sharing your expertise and time, that is then claimed as intellectual property of that corporation. It is the height of stupidty and shows you don't value your time.
It's a variation on the old formula used in academic publishing. Researchers employed by universities publish in corporate journals (a priviledge) and those same universities have to pay enormous fees to subscribe to those journals. Sometimes they pay the salaries of editors for these publications and for the time of people involved in peer-review. It's great for the middle man, but it is a rip off for the universities and their faculty - not to mention it actually stifles access to important research.
So, yeah. Let's all run right out and do this shall we?
The definition of dictator is a : a person granted absolute emergency power; b : one holding complete autocratic control; c : one ruling absolutely and often oppressively.
While you could argue whether Bush, technically, meets the definition, there is plenty of evidence that he is trying to evade Congressional oversight, elimination of habeas corpus for detainees and immunity for torture, the use of signing statements to effectively nullify legislation, NSA spying on U.S. citizens and so forth that are clearly moves in that direction.
Further, he is definitely claiming power and using it based on a framework of emergency that goes by the label of the "war on terror". He, and especially people under him like Cheney, believe that that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries. That's pretty close to an understanding that believes itself to have absolute emergency power, i.e., a dictatorship - given certain conditions (which in this case are vague).
The implicit and erroroneous assumption in your argument is that the truth or the facts of the matter are available. Can you tell me where the secret prisons are that the U.S. government is using? Can you tell me about the black operations programs that have been set-up? Can you tell me about the secret deals that happened in back offices that gave contracts to companies working in Iraq and provided kickbacks to U.S. politicians?
I would be naive to believe that these things weren't occuring. However, I don't know any of the details, because the U.S. government has a decided interest in not keeping me informed on these topics - and others that I am not aware enough to name here. In fact, they have an interest in decieving me and the rest of the world - like when President Bush claims the U.S. doesn't do torture (defined as anything that might cause severe organ failure or some other perversion of the language).
The difference is that the public is paying for it, and it isn't information. It's advertising and public relations; two businesses the government shouldn't be in.
I was waiting for some kind of "God save the males" when you switched it up and played the "manly men are a ridiculous stereotype" card. But for all that is holy, can you explain how birth control/abortion has to do with anything - much less getting married or having offspring? It's not the quantity; it's the quantity, my friend, and you only need to have one or two children to pass on your genetics.
Judges in every court room I have been summoned to for jury duty have explicitly stated that the jury is only there to determine the facts of the case and pass a judgment based on the law. You are made to swear (or affirm) under oath that you will follow the judge's direction on this matter.
It is also obvious that the jury selection process itself is designed to eliminate anyone that might actually understand that the jury can not only decide whether the law was broken based on facts, but they can also decide whether finding someone guilty of that crime is a just application of the law.
One example: I was in the jury box and asked whether I would convict someone of battery for touching someone's toe. If someone were told not to touch someone else's toe and they did anyway, it meets the legal definition of battery. I was the only person of a jury pool of 50 that stated I would not pass a guilty verdict based on the facts of the case - because it is obviously unjust to give someone a felony conviction for this kind of trivial offense. The judge angrily informed me that it was his responsibility to sentence. I, and others, were to stick to the facts and do what we are told.
I wouldn't take any comfort from the possibility of jury nullification. The people that tend to get picked tend to be weak and unexceptional - the Joe Six Packs of the world.
More to the point, juries are a mechanism for people to feel comfortable with the fact that they weren't solely responsible for the decision or directly responsible for the sentence. It's the same reason why you have firing squads, multiple switches for the electric chairs and so forth. It allows people to absolve themselves of responsibility - that's the true purpose of the jury in our society. Justice? You can forget about it. The chances of getting a Peter Fonda these days are as good as nil.
What about the people's right to overthrow an oppressive ruler, say like George the III. You think that might have been a topic the founders where reflecting on when they wrote this document? I suspect that is exactly why this provision is in the Constitution and is why your interpretation doesn't square with it.
Ever consider that the change in attitude might be due to the new Google ownership?
The elections in the U.S. are different from third world countries. Elections in the U.S. are by and large, worse. The U.S. has never been concerned about the integrity of elections, much less anything that could be described as free or fair by a third party observer.
You only have to look at Hiroshima & Nagasaki to know that countries with nuclear weapons are extremely dangerous. There's a reason that the Doom's Day Clock exists and stands at seven minutes to midnight and that reason is to remind people that are deluding themselves that eventually someone is going to use these things. We all are on the edge of extinction. So please, don't make light of the harsh reality.
Last time I checked, the fact that the First Amendment is in the Constitution doesn't count for a whole lot. Think free speech zones as one of many examples.
Meetings do result in useful things - like agreement. The problem is that most people don't know when they are necessary, who to invite, what work to do beforehand (and have others do), how to run them and how to follow-up. This is the reason why there are so many meetings and more than 90% are a waste of time - or worse, counter-productive.
If you want to see a meeting run well, try going to a Quaker Meeting for Business run by a competent clerk. I have and it completely changed my perspective on what meetings could do and how they should work. Check out the Wikipedia page on the Religious Society of Friends under Decision making among Friends for a brief description.
Companies don't have to make tangible products to have a viable brand. Google, itself, is the archetypical example. If you look at Interbrand's list, you could argue the same for Amazon, Yahoo and MTV.
Besides products, companies can provide a service that is distinctive in some way, which is exactly what YouTube does. Same goes for the other brands above. I think you can even make an argument that while IBM, in the past, was known more for products, they are clearly moving more towards a service model.
We could also flip the script a bit on this. All of your arguments would also apply to something like MySpace, but someone is clearly making money on purchasing that company as well. Again, it is a service (poor though it may be) with name recognition.
I should say that I don't see much evidence that YouTube is worth the price. However, I do recognize the value of intangible assets that have nothing to do with a code base, a server farm, products or other tangible assets. As other people have pointed out, Google's purchase of the company may also have network effects that will drive the intangible value of the company - such as distribution deals, press coverage of the site and so forth. These are also things you are not accounting for in your argument.
One of the most significant assets of any company are its brands. Interbrand does an evaluation every year where they estimate what the biggest brands are worth. Here's the top five: Coca-Cola ($67 billion), Microsoft ($56.9 billion), IBM ($56.2 billion), GE ($48.9 billion) and Intel ($32.3 billion).
Now, you can argue whether the YouTube brand is worth the price. But to argue that all they have is a brand - with the implicit assumption that brands are not worth anything at all - is simply wrong. Every day people pay more for the expectation of consistent quality and image. It's why people pay more for everything from Apple computers to Marlboro cigarettes. That's worth money, my friend.
Any reading of Ayn Rand's books will make it clear to the reader that she is not talking about man as a class being heroic beings - but specific men. It is also clear that there is a whole set of values as to what is "productive achievement" that are not based on rationality or on individually defined happiness. Where are Ayn's novels about men and women that have defined happiness as the pursuit of Epicurean pleasures, raising a family or religious saints? They don't exist because Ayn's "productive achievement" is a nice way of saying materialism. Materialism is man's noblest activity? Strip away the flowerly language and it is clear that Ayn's philosophy is easy rationalization for selfish asshats.
There are people that create software, beta test software, classify images, submit bug reports and do a whole host of things that benefit companies. They do it for a wide variety of reasons. One of the best reasons is because often when we help, we are making the world we live in a better place to live and we are helping ourselves.
It would be an interesting point, if true. However, I don't think your conclusion follows from it. If we were to suppose this was true, the question is why did it level out? You assume that nuclear weapons is the cause but I can think of others - the creation of the U.N., global trade, better medical technology, etc., any of which could have a correlation. It might also be an artifact of the methodology employed. It could be many other things. I would be interested in a source for your comment though. Would you care to provide one?
Other posters have addressed the old lie about the justification of American war crimes - from nuclear weapons to fire bombing civilian populations - and how they supposedly saved lives. They didn't, and we need to call them what they were - a reprehensible use of force. The bottom line is that weapons never make anyone safer. Weapons are a temptation for the weak, and eventually, they will be used and many people will die. Nuclear weapons are the poison pill that will eventually end civilization as we know it - with the death of many as the consequence.
Fantastic idea. I'd personally like to know where the $507 billion since 9/11 through FY2007E was and will be spent - with breakouts by mercenary wages, secret prisons, black operations, etc. Given how forthcoming this administration isn't with everything else it is doing from NSA spying on U.S. citizens to the use of the state secrets priviledge to fend off lawsuits aimed at getting them to provide more information, this can only be posturing for the upcoming election. Check out the Secrecy Report Card 2006 for an eye-opening discussion.
Most information that students use to write papers are paid for by their university libraries. They use a browser to access the content, but the IP rights have been paid for by the university.
The statement: "Statistically speaking, it's likely that a sizable percentage of these students..." is patently false. First, because you aren't actually citing statistics. Second, because of the point made above. Third, educational settings have special provision within copyright law of fair use that actually allows for what would be considered plagarism in other circumstances because it is necessary to actually cite works and quote from them in academic writing.
You will be judged because if you don't know how to show discretion in your own life, how will you know to show discretion in mine, where I to share any part of my life with you? Make no mistake, this is not about freedom to be you. It is about understanding that you squander yourself trying to connect to the whole world - and in doing so, potentially squander the lives of everyone that comes into contact with you.
The suggestion to block the newspaper's IP address so they cannot use Google - pretty much defines evil. That kind of behavior is what makes Microsoft so loathed in this forum, and here you are suggesting they should do it. If they went that route, what's to stop them from using the same tactic in other situations? Imagine Google didn't like something the company you work for is doing and cut off your access to their email, search or whatever. How would you personally feel about it? Does this strike you as good business practice? You need to think a little further on this issue.
I disagree with almost with everything in your post. Corporate environments tend to follow university practices because the so-called skilled labor gets a job and wonders why the corporation they work at is paying so much for X, doesn't use X and what have you. I know I personally was involved in changing some of the infrastructure of the company I worked at after college because they were practically stone age in their thinking - and still are. I didn't even work in the IT department.
Open source is not a money pot. It is simply a skill. It's like the introduction of computers. Everyone had to learn how to type - not just secretaries. However, the advantages were there to warrant the investment. It is the same with open source.
If you think the people that actually run the infrastructure the university needs are making minimum wage, are students/professors, or whatever, then you definitely don't know what you are talking about.
Universities, particularly the people that run them, aren't any less conservative than the people that run corporations. The difference is that they need to figure out how to roll out new services and do it will less money. Most corporations are simply fat and can afford to pay for some consultant or other company to fix their problems for them. Universities don't have that luxury.
The so forth in the above would of course include not counting votes, voter intimidation, ballots that exclude third-parties and what have you.
Where would this moderate party be on the political compass map?
I really like this quote from the site:
Given this, perhaps more conservative Democrats like Lieberman should join the party that more accurately reflects their views - i.e., the Repubican party - and dispense with creating a new party.