I don't disagree with the thrust of your post. My previous post for instance used "is" rather than "was", "that" rather than "than", etc. But, it is also clear that I tried to at least meet you half way - and tried to make it as lucid as possible.
Minor spelling and grammar issues? Sure. Run on sentences? Depends. Want to write like Joyce or Dickens? Save it for your next novel and skip Slashdot.
I think the parent makes a good point though that being concerned about these things - about the details, thinking about the reader and doing what we can to write a good post is definitely something I associate with geek culture. However, I think you can go to far with it as well. It's all a mtter of where we draw those lines I guess.
Your post is a logical fallacy. Easy enough to demonstrate that there is at least a fourth option - defining "better" so it includes a wide variety of societial measures, which is what is typically done when one is comparing countries. While I wait for your next post that will provide a comparison of the relative levels of domestic surveillance in Sweden as compared to the United States, I'll provide some of the more traditional metrics that are used to make country comparisons.
Sweden U.S Infant mortality rate 2.76/1,000 6.43/1,000 HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate .1% .6% Income distribution - Gini index 25 45 Inflation rate 1.4% 2.5% Public Debt 46.4% of GDP 64.7% of GDP Life expectancy at birth 80.51 years 77.85 years
Source: CIA Factbook
The CIA Factbook isn't a particularly controversial source, and I can think of others ranging from the UNICEF to the UN.
I know it is fun to pretend that people you don't agree with are in a logically inconsistent position. But, it actually reflects poorly on you when you pretend it is the case when it isn't.
Correct spelling and grammar is central to communicating effectively. Sure, people make mistakes, and mistakes should be tolerated - especially in a forum like Slashdot. However, arguing for toleration is different that your argument, which is these mistakes don't matter. They do matter. Mistakes in spelling, grammar, logic, in facts and so forth waste people's time and typically indicate bad ideas and poorly constructed arguments.
I judge everyone by the quality of their work. Janitors by the cleanliness of the room they have cleaned. Programmers by the quality of their code. Chefs by how good the food is that they make. Same goes for Slashdot posts - the quality of which depends not just on having an idea but on communicating it effectively. Everyone has ideas. It's a given. Being able to share that idea with someone else or act on it is hard.
Attempts to make it easier by downplaying the importance of those things that make for a good post and are hard to do - such as correct spelling when there is no spell check - actually makes what is already hard, even harder. It shifts the responsibility to the reader to figure out what you are saying, and if you cannot take responsibility for your part in effective communication as a writer, then I respectfully submit that you shouldn't write. It would save people the time noticing misspellings and all the other things that indicate that your post wasn't worth reading in the first place.
The point of advertising is to influence someone to buy a product. There was a day in television advertising when they did what you are proposing - when there were three networks. Even then you did audience segmentation by the type of audience a particular television show had and showed ads that might be of interest to that audience. There is a reason "soap operas" are called soap operas and TV was the center piece of so-called mass media. You are right, this is a different approach, but you are essentially arguing for an even older "mass-media" approach to advertising that has been dead for at least a decade or two.
Use your example, buying a placement for a Lexus ad to someone who is interested in and has the time to watch "three fat kids on a webcam lip-syncing to The Safety Dance" is probably a waste of money - which if you were an advertiser, you would be unlikely to buy or if you would buy it, then it would have to be real cheap. However, if you knew a particular person watching had a household income above $150,000 and recently had been doing searches for car reviews, then you have something an advertiser is interested in and would pay a premium for - privacy and other considerations aside.
If Google is going to make enough money to cover their costs, they are going to have to offer advertising of the second, more valuable type. The model you propose would mean they would get buried - fast.
That IT does not provide it is likely a function of; A) prevented by security concerns/laws/policy at the top, B) not affordable, practical or do-able within current infrastructure, C) does not actually constitute a *justifiable* need or benefit, and so on.
This comment says it all. Why should I have to justify my need to IT - especially after you have just explained how IT is not at the table anywhere and has no basis from which to make a judgment? IT should present options and talk about the technical considerations - when IT is vetting my need, that's sign one that you have a problem.
I'll go further and say the "and so on" can be anything from - "damn that sounds like work, let's make up some bullshit about why we can't do it" to flat-out power-trippin'. I've been in situations where I know there are no security concerns (you think I don't have contacts in IT, both in and out of the company?), could pay for it, and had an important problem I was trying to solve, and had IT management try every excuse they could think of not to do it. It happened, when I pushed hard enough which only goes to show that there is a lot of "and so on" out there that is the problem.
I should also say that I've worked with great IT folks. Once you have a relationship and they understand that I can take no for an answer - so long as you can explain why in a way that doesn't trip off my bullshit filter, we tend to get along great. But man, I've been lied to so many times - on real basic things too - that I tend to go in real skeptical.
I understand the issues. Some people think controlling information gives them more power (typically behavior of less competent people). Some people think their little corners of the company or few executives are more important than everyone else (which is ok, so long as you can tell them to get stuffed when it matters). I understand IT has its own agenda (but IT management should realize that their bread gets buttered by the people using IT services - a fact frequently forgotten).
I think the customer-centric analogy is perfect for IT. Without it, the safest answer is always no. Except, this behavior is why people set-up their own servers, use outside consultants, etc. that don't involve IT, and more to the point, it means IT isn't doing its job.
There are a number of problems that come with a charge back model. For one, it makes you into just another vendor. If you charge me for email, why shouldn't I just use Google (I know why not, but to the person signing the checks it may seem like an unnecessary expense)? Two, it means limited ability to strategically deploy IT services. You only can get what people have the foresight to budget for - and most business units are not terribly savvy on the technology front, which is where IT should come in as consultant and partner. Etc. Etc.
I won't say it isn't hard. It is hard. But, there are a lot of people (particularlly in IT management) that aren't even trying to do a good job, and they need to stop getting away with it.
It is funny how people always talk about the best scenario when it comes to IT - like people using gmail instead of work email (leaving out important details like the corporate system is Lotus Notes) or something stupid happening. Rarely do people in IT talk about how they often don't even know what the business problems are for the company, divisions, units and work groups they are providing services for.
Even for those problems that they are aware of, frequently problem solving takes a back-seat to the problems of structure within IT itself (well, the desktop team has to approve it after they get the purchase order for the technology liasion and then it needs to go to the network team for approval before I can do anything), silly procedural rules designed for no-trust situations which ironically create zero trust because of their application (any time we do a change you need to send me two emails the first saying "I've checked the code in pre-production and it should be promoted...blah blah blah), IT arrogance (we do not provide that service and you can't go elsewhere for it), etc.
Sure, people ask for and do stupid things and IT needs to be careful with tracking changes and such - but there is a lot of flat out lying (because it is convenient) and other bullshit that goes on because IT departments forget who their customers are.
I disagree with you. To demonstrate, I think the most unambiguous case is self-reflection - where you are judging your own behavior. Self-reflection is an important part of a spiritual life and it is an instance of judging.
Pride comes into the equation when we judge inaccurately in a way that inflates our perception of importance beyond the actuality - if we attribute more to ourselves than to others, if we assume an infalliability in our judgment that rightly belongs to God, etc. I believe this is why you hear so much about humility - which is an underestimation of our importance - as an antidote.
However, judge we must. Without judgment, you can have no morality, no basis to differentiate between good and evil, and no basis for community (especially a spiritual community - which is necessary to the spiritual life to temper individual mistakes and to discern God's continuing revelation).
My sense is that Mark 4:24 and the related quotes from the other gospels is that it is about the basic moral principle of being careful to apply the same standard by which you judge others to yourself. I think it is a mistake to read it that we should not judge at all - but rather that we should judge fairly and not be hypocrites.
The reductio argument for your position is that if we are unable to judge, then it would mean that we must tolerate behaviors such as murder, torture, lying, sexual abuse and so forth. I think this is an obvious problem with your position, and I think Jesus himself speaks rather loudly that this is not the case with his actions in Matthew 21:12.
That said, I agree with the spirit of your post. Loving one's neighbor as oneself means sharing relevant information - such as the Wii is web-enabled and all that entails, but it also means searching our heart to discern the difference between loving concern for one's neighbor and judging them as if we were God - and doing our best to act in accordance with the former.
I thought two guys actually did the ads and Creative Meetings were when account management tells you your ads won't sell, the client has left for another agency and you are therefore fired, and so forth. Nothing creative happens in Creative Meetings either...
I'm sure you are good at what you do. The problem here is that, being on the business side, I should be coming to you with my business problem that has a technical solution, and you should help me find the right technical solution that will work based on your experience instead of forcing me to come up with ideas that are outside my expertise and then shooting them down.
I typically don't have this problem because I make sure that either I know or I know other people who know what the issues are for my problem and I come prepared to any discussion I have with an IT person. This typically means I understand the technical issues, I have the budget, and I know the political situation well enough that I am fairly certain I can get it done - whether you want me to or not. Most people aren't like me - which is why you can get away with just saying no.
I've worked with some great IT people. Once we get past the bullshit, most people realize that I present interesting technical problems and will deal with all the business side administrative nonsense for them (being outside IT has distinct advantages). However, there are still plenty of people in IT that want to play games, and I either avoid them (outsource the work around them, find other people that will help me internally, etc.), go over their heads or find other means to get what I need done.
The advantage of getting my solutions from IT people outside the company is that it is clearly understood that I am the customer, and they only have my business as long as they are helping me. When outside vendors get bad customer service, I get another vendor - which is essentially what I'm doing when I go outside the company. If you don't think of people like me as a customer - despite the fact we are internal clients - you are ultimately going to pay for it with your job.
I would also point out that outside vendors don't have the same insight into the problems of the business and the technical constraints as someone internally. It's not a decision I make lightly. However, I would rather work with someone that is helping me than someone that only knows how to say no - irrespective of thier limitations. I hate complancency and most IT departments are complacent. I, too, am pretty jaded - but from the other side.
I've never asked for root access, nor would I want it. The last thing I want to do is someone else's job.
But the fact is that I often have had the need for software and access rights that are quite different from the general needs of most people in the organizations I have worked for - things related to doing my job better, ranging from installing software tools most people don't need, establishing shared group email accounts, web based survey tools, proxy servers, etc.
Nine times out of ten, the people in the IT department want to play some kind of bullshit game - often lying about what can or cannot be done. I'm a reasonable man with reasonable expectations, but it seems that most people in IT cannot be bothered to try to find a solution because it is easier to say, "No."
The news there is that people like me find a way - whether it means using outside vendors to supply what we need, busting people's balls in the IT department until it gets done, or what have you. If you are the guy that wants to tell me that my group cannot have a shared group email account because there is no single person responsible for it hiding behind some bullshit Sarbanes-Oxley interpretation/excuse (while you have a Help Desk email account that works exactly like I need our shared account to work), you deserve every headache people like me give you.
If you believe that investigative reporting is important for the public interest, then you need to have some kind of protections in place, a shield law if you will, that enables journalists to do their work without running the risk of turning into a police informant. If you don't have these protections in place, then the public will never find out about secret NSA wiretapping or you will miss stories on elements of society like sexual slavery that most of us know nothing about.
Reporters get asked for sources all the time and most times it is not a problem. However, confidentiality is something that is as important in the journalism space as it is with our legal space and journalists need some form of protection in order to do their job and pursue the public interest. Sure, justice in a particular case is also in the public interest, but investigative journalism should not be used as a surrogate for law enforcement. Doing so, perverts their role and limits the range of stories they can cover and that we hear about.
You might be served by checking out the political compass of the U.S. election. The dimension that you are missing is authoritarian vs. libertarian. There are plenty of right and left wing people with a libertarian bent that would agree with your position. In fact, classic Liberalism places liberty as the primary political value. The people you are talking about are the Stalins and the the Thatchers of the world - which has very little to do with where they happen to fall on the left and right portion of the political spectrum.
Common sense is lost when your major parties and governments around the world all field candidates that sit in the same quadrant - right, authoritarian.
Does being able to purchase products cheaply at Wal-Mart because they are made with child and slave labor abroad or by prison labor here in the U.S. mean that my boat has been lifted? You would rather be a poor American than a rich person elsewhere - perhaps because at least here even poor people can get in on the exploitation? It's a pyramid scheme, just because you can't see all the levels don't mean they aren't there.
I agree that there is inherent injustice in free markets. The model is based on assumptions and circumstances that typically do not exist in the real world. I also think that it is damaging because there are many externalities and costs that cannot be factored into the price ranging from pollution, human exploitation, destruction of important societial values such as reciprical responsibility, etc.
Granted it is difficult to evaluate these things, but we need to do what we can to make an honest assessment and to choose alternatives, as appropriate. Simply subscribing to free market fundamentalism as a faith is a grievous misstep that unfortunately many make.
You know what I find most interesting about comments like yours? It is the false dichotomy. Why not say instead,
"Is there an alternative? Do you know of an economic system in which the strong take less advantage of the weak? Put up or shut-up."
But I also know why you didn't go that route. Because the answer is that of course there are alternatives and that many of these alternatives are better for the population as a whole. It is so self-evident that by asking that question you would sound silly.
So, you went instead with the dichotomy either come up with a system where advantage is never taken or be satisfied with what we have. I'd respond that systems, by definition, can be taken advantage of. The people in a position to take advantage? They are, again by definition, the strong. The feature of "free markets" that I was pointing to is that it specifically devalues economic safeguards designed to protect the weak and by so doing, creates and justifies environments of organized robbery and tyranny.
Of course I know it was sarcasm. I just made the point because there are people, as evidenced by the replies to my post, that don't acknowledge the truth the sarcasm was pointing to - so I wanted to bring it out with a little more clarity.
Actually, I'm not describing laissez-faire or anarcho-capitalism. When people use the term "free market", they usually aren't concerned about those elements that define it in its idealized form - no barriers to entry or exit, homogeneous products, mobility of productive resources, many small buyers and sellers, etc. The way it is generally used is to imply freedom - primarily from government intervention. It is used to justify everything from robber baron capitalism to organized crime. The latter is basically the situation you describe.
Free market means a place where the strong take advantage of the weak. Rich of the poor. Employers of employees. Developed nations of less developed nations. On ever level the story is the same, and the people praising free markets are typically those that are with the strong directly benefiting. Don't believe the hype.
You miss one small fact. Often, insurance companies do not have a negotiated rate. So, they get billed $18,325 and decide they are going to pay $1,375. Doing so, they run the risk of having the hospital or the physician involved deciding that they are not going to continue providing service for that price - and so you see people that belong to groups like HMOs getting the same treatment as people on Medicare/Medicaid or that are uninsured. That is, they have to go to state or local hospitals that will provide these services irrespective of whether they get paid for them or how much they get paid.
The bottom line is that there needs to be a much larger discussion on what is valuable in our society and the role of socialized medicine in it. You can't arbitrarily implement price controls and expect the system to function as it currently does. You will need to fundamentally change the structure. Now, there are many good arguments ranging from healthcare as a public good to privatized medicine providing high quality medical services. I don't care to debate the merits of the role of socialized medicine here (and clearly we already have a limited form of it due to necessity) - but you do have to recognize the problem is not as simple or simply solved as you pretend it is in your post.
Oh, so THAT's why OpenBSD is relatively secure. If more people started using it, I guess it would suddenly get less secure. Thanks for clearing that up.
Your comment gets at the issue that there are more exploits for more commonly used systems. Still, it may be that more secure systems may be used less because they are more difficult (or expensive or whatever) to use - same is probably true of security's component parts such as passwords, physical security, etc.
Given current theories of federal power (particularly executive power) that are bantered around, it is high time there was a larger discussion about states rights and the limits of federal power. Yes, states rights have been used by racists in the recent past. However, states rights are a classic way of defending against the federal government assuming undelegated powers. It is a discussion that needs to happen.
As far as the privacy point of view, you do understand the problem. Your whole argument is based on it. Having a fragmented system that makes it more difficult for law enforcement to do what they do, it limits the scale of abuse. Sure, smaller systems can be abused and are less monitored - but the potential for harm to society is also less.
You are asserting that the oversight is better, the system more efficient and so forth when it is centralized. I think inefficiency is an aid to privacy. I think a decentralized system reduces the potential harm to society relative to a centralized option. I think a government that asserts rights to disappear anyone at anytime as an enemy combatant and has secret programs for monitoring citizens does not need yet another tool at their disposal. So, yeah, your right on one thing - I think I'll pass on the national ID kool-aid.
The first task of a society that would have liberty and privacy is to guard against the misuse of physical coercion by the state and private parties. The second task is to guard against the softer forms of secret and manipulative control. Because these are often subtle, indirect, invisible, diffuse, deceptive, and shrouded in benign justifications, this is clearly the more difficult task.
Two decades later the hot-button cultural themes of threat, civil order, and security that Lewis emphasized are in greater ascendance and have been joined by the siren calls of consumption. If our traditional notions of liberty disappear, it will not be because of a sudden coup d'état. Nor will the iron technologies of industrialization be the central means. Rather, it will occur slowly, with an appeal to traditional American values in a Teflon- and sugar-coated technological context of low visibility, fear, and convenience.
We are not talking about manufacturing. Describing what people create as goods is probably at the heart of some of our society's problems. I also take exception to your idea that everything has to be looked at from a cost recovery or profit model. Electricity, telephone service, post offices and so forth all had a period where they were not profitable - but were developed by governments as a social good. We already have a model - you just can't see it from the framework you insist on using.
The advantage that you have here is that you are supporting the status quo. You are asserting that any change to IP has to give you all the things you value - and it needs to be proved before you try it. Not much incentive for me to spend time trying to think of a solution. Especially since I can also take the point of view of the status quo and watch how people will ignore the notion of IP because it doesn't make sense. I can afford to wait because there will be an IP crisis - and the harder you try to support old notions of IP in a changed environment, the more those laws will be ignored or broken.
I didn't say the New Standard was ideal - I simply made the point it is a different model.
Someone has to interpret the information and apply it meaningfully.
Not to mention the first part, knowing where to look, finding it and organizing it. Many people don't even know what the Internet is good for, the difference between a paid and unpaid service and where they might be better off doing something else - like getting on the phone.
....unless there are huge network effects or transition costs that would discourage switching to the alternate choice...
Pretty much defines software, don't you think?
I don't think most people care about whether their software is "free software" or not.
I don't disagree with your assessment. Linux is difficult, if you are a casual computer user. It doesn't run most of the software you can get at the store. It may or may not work with your new consumer electronic device. So on and so forth. I think Apple's OSX shows a Unix-workalike can be made user friendly. I think your comment above about free software is also true - right now. However, I think the minute that people are put in the position where free software enables them to do things that they cannot do on a proprietary system, they will start to care and if there are enough of those things to reach a tipping point, they will consider a switch - just like many people that found it easier to use Linux to learn about database design, programming or what have you.
...open source apps simply can't make this claim...
Free software apps frequently aren't cross-platform. I'd say that was a significant barrier to larger market share. I can't just download Gnucash onto a Windows machine - I have to already have some flavor of Linux on it. I'd say this was a common problem.
He does not believe that authors/programmers have a moral right to the product of their own mind.
I think his key position is that "Cooperation is more important than copyright." I think he is arguing the impact of ownership on society has many negatives - particularly intangible ethical pollution. I tend to agree with RMS's point of view. Ownership has to be looked at from the point of view of its impact on society - and many of the negative impacts are intangibles that are considered externals from a strictly economic point of view.
...most [high tech startups] simply would not be able to even raise the funding that they needed without patents... Most software firms would not survive without copyright.
Again, this is because of the model in place. You can say the same about aerospace - except these firms get funding from government because the investment
Slashdot Mirror
I don't disagree with the thrust of your post. My previous post for instance used "is" rather than "was", "that" rather than "than", etc. But, it is also clear that I tried to at least meet you half way - and tried to make it as lucid as possible.
Minor spelling and grammar issues? Sure. Run on sentences? Depends. Want to write like Joyce or Dickens? Save it for your next novel and skip Slashdot.
I think the parent makes a good point though that being concerned about these things - about the details, thinking about the reader and doing what we can to write a good post is definitely something I associate with geek culture. However, I think you can go to far with it as well. It's all a mtter of where we draw those lines I guess.
Your post is a logical fallacy. Easy enough to demonstrate that there is at least a fourth option - defining "better" so it includes a wide variety of societial measures, which is what is typically done when one is comparing countries. While I wait for your next post that will provide a comparison of the relative levels of domestic surveillance in Sweden as compared to the United States, I'll provide some of the more traditional metrics that are used to make country comparisons.
.6%
Sweden U.S
Infant mortality rate 2.76/1,000 6.43/1,000
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate .1%
Income distribution - Gini index 25 45
Inflation rate 1.4% 2.5%
Public Debt 46.4% of GDP 64.7% of GDP
Life expectancy at birth 80.51 years 77.85 years
Source: CIA Factbook
The CIA Factbook isn't a particularly controversial source, and I can think of others ranging from the UNICEF to the UN.
I know it is fun to pretend that people you don't agree with are in a logically inconsistent position. But, it actually reflects poorly on you when you pretend it is the case when it isn't.
Correct spelling and grammar is central to communicating effectively. Sure, people make mistakes, and mistakes should be tolerated - especially in a forum like Slashdot. However, arguing for toleration is different that your argument, which is these mistakes don't matter. They do matter. Mistakes in spelling, grammar, logic, in facts and so forth waste people's time and typically indicate bad ideas and poorly constructed arguments.
I judge everyone by the quality of their work. Janitors by the cleanliness of the room they have cleaned. Programmers by the quality of their code. Chefs by how good the food is that they make. Same goes for Slashdot posts - the quality of which depends not just on having an idea but on communicating it effectively. Everyone has ideas. It's a given. Being able to share that idea with someone else or act on it is hard.
Attempts to make it easier by downplaying the importance of those things that make for a good post and are hard to do - such as correct spelling when there is no spell check - actually makes what is already hard, even harder. It shifts the responsibility to the reader to figure out what you are saying, and if you cannot take responsibility for your part in effective communication as a writer, then I respectfully submit that you shouldn't write. It would save people the time noticing misspellings and all the other things that indicate that your post wasn't worth reading in the first place.
The point of advertising is to influence someone to buy a product. There was a day in television advertising when they did what you are proposing - when there were three networks. Even then you did audience segmentation by the type of audience a particular television show had and showed ads that might be of interest to that audience. There is a reason "soap operas" are called soap operas and TV was the center piece of so-called mass media. You are right, this is a different approach, but you are essentially arguing for an even older "mass-media" approach to advertising that has been dead for at least a decade or two.
Use your example, buying a placement for a Lexus ad to someone who is interested in and has the time to watch "three fat kids on a webcam lip-syncing to The Safety Dance" is probably a waste of money - which if you were an advertiser, you would be unlikely to buy or if you would buy it, then it would have to be real cheap. However, if you knew a particular person watching had a household income above $150,000 and recently had been doing searches for car reviews, then you have something an advertiser is interested in and would pay a premium for - privacy and other considerations aside.
If Google is going to make enough money to cover their costs, they are going to have to offer advertising of the second, more valuable type. The model you propose would mean they would get buried - fast.
This comment says it all. Why should I have to justify my need to IT - especially after you have just explained how IT is not at the table anywhere and has no basis from which to make a judgment? IT should present options and talk about the technical considerations - when IT is vetting my need, that's sign one that you have a problem.
I'll go further and say the "and so on" can be anything from - "damn that sounds like work, let's make up some bullshit about why we can't do it" to flat-out power-trippin'. I've been in situations where I know there are no security concerns (you think I don't have contacts in IT, both in and out of the company?), could pay for it, and had an important problem I was trying to solve, and had IT management try every excuse they could think of not to do it. It happened, when I pushed hard enough which only goes to show that there is a lot of "and so on" out there that is the problem.
I should also say that I've worked with great IT folks. Once you have a relationship and they understand that I can take no for an answer - so long as you can explain why in a way that doesn't trip off my bullshit filter, we tend to get along great. But man, I've been lied to so many times - on real basic things too - that I tend to go in real skeptical.
I understand the issues. Some people think controlling information gives them more power (typically behavior of less competent people). Some people think their little corners of the company or few executives are more important than everyone else (which is ok, so long as you can tell them to get stuffed when it matters). I understand IT has its own agenda (but IT management should realize that their bread gets buttered by the people using IT services - a fact frequently forgotten).
I think the customer-centric analogy is perfect for IT. Without it, the safest answer is always no. Except, this behavior is why people set-up their own servers, use outside consultants, etc. that don't involve IT, and more to the point, it means IT isn't doing its job.
There are a number of problems that come with a charge back model. For one, it makes you into just another vendor. If you charge me for email, why shouldn't I just use Google (I know why not, but to the person signing the checks it may seem like an unnecessary expense)? Two, it means limited ability to strategically deploy IT services. You only can get what people have the foresight to budget for - and most business units are not terribly savvy on the technology front, which is where IT should come in as consultant and partner. Etc. Etc.
I won't say it isn't hard. It is hard. But, there are a lot of people (particularlly in IT management) that aren't even trying to do a good job, and they need to stop getting away with it.
It is funny how people always talk about the best scenario when it comes to IT - like people using gmail instead of work email (leaving out important details like the corporate system is Lotus Notes) or something stupid happening. Rarely do people in IT talk about how they often don't even know what the business problems are for the company, divisions, units and work groups they are providing services for.
Even for those problems that they are aware of, frequently problem solving takes a back-seat to the problems of structure within IT itself (well, the desktop team has to approve it after they get the purchase order for the technology liasion and then it needs to go to the network team for approval before I can do anything), silly procedural rules designed for no-trust situations which ironically create zero trust because of their application (any time we do a change you need to send me two emails the first saying "I've checked the code in pre-production and it should be promoted...blah blah blah), IT arrogance (we do not provide that service and you can't go elsewhere for it), etc.
Sure, people ask for and do stupid things and IT needs to be careful with tracking changes and such - but there is a lot of flat out lying (because it is convenient) and other bullshit that goes on because IT departments forget who their customers are.
I disagree with you. To demonstrate, I think the most unambiguous case is self-reflection - where you are judging your own behavior. Self-reflection is an important part of a spiritual life and it is an instance of judging.
Pride comes into the equation when we judge inaccurately in a way that inflates our perception of importance beyond the actuality - if we attribute more to ourselves than to others, if we assume an infalliability in our judgment that rightly belongs to God, etc. I believe this is why you hear so much about humility - which is an underestimation of our importance - as an antidote.
However, judge we must. Without judgment, you can have no morality, no basis to differentiate between good and evil, and no basis for community (especially a spiritual community - which is necessary to the spiritual life to temper individual mistakes and to discern God's continuing revelation).
My sense is that Mark 4:24 and the related quotes from the other gospels is that it is about the basic moral principle of being careful to apply the same standard by which you judge others to yourself. I think it is a mistake to read it that we should not judge at all - but rather that we should judge fairly and not be hypocrites.
The reductio argument for your position is that if we are unable to judge, then it would mean that we must tolerate behaviors such as murder, torture, lying, sexual abuse and so forth. I think this is an obvious problem with your position, and I think Jesus himself speaks rather loudly that this is not the case with his actions in Matthew 21:12.
That said, I agree with the spirit of your post. Loving one's neighbor as oneself means sharing relevant information - such as the Wii is web-enabled and all that entails, but it also means searching our heart to discern the difference between loving concern for one's neighbor and judging them as if we were God - and doing our best to act in accordance with the former.
I thought two guys actually did the ads and Creative Meetings were when account management tells you your ads won't sell, the client has left for another agency and you are therefore fired, and so forth. Nothing creative happens in Creative Meetings either...
I'm sure you are good at what you do. The problem here is that, being on the business side, I should be coming to you with my business problem that has a technical solution, and you should help me find the right technical solution that will work based on your experience instead of forcing me to come up with ideas that are outside my expertise and then shooting them down.
I typically don't have this problem because I make sure that either I know or I know other people who know what the issues are for my problem and I come prepared to any discussion I have with an IT person. This typically means I understand the technical issues, I have the budget, and I know the political situation well enough that I am fairly certain I can get it done - whether you want me to or not. Most people aren't like me - which is why you can get away with just saying no.
I've worked with some great IT people. Once we get past the bullshit, most people realize that I present interesting technical problems and will deal with all the business side administrative nonsense for them (being outside IT has distinct advantages). However, there are still plenty of people in IT that want to play games, and I either avoid them (outsource the work around them, find other people that will help me internally, etc.), go over their heads or find other means to get what I need done.
The advantage of getting my solutions from IT people outside the company is that it is clearly understood that I am the customer, and they only have my business as long as they are helping me. When outside vendors get bad customer service, I get another vendor - which is essentially what I'm doing when I go outside the company. If you don't think of people like me as a customer - despite the fact we are internal clients - you are ultimately going to pay for it with your job.
I would also point out that outside vendors don't have the same insight into the problems of the business and the technical constraints as someone internally. It's not a decision I make lightly. However, I would rather work with someone that is helping me than someone that only knows how to say no - irrespective of thier limitations. I hate complancency and most IT departments are complacent. I, too, am pretty jaded - but from the other side.
I've never asked for root access, nor would I want it. The last thing I want to do is someone else's job.
But the fact is that I often have had the need for software and access rights that are quite different from the general needs of most people in the organizations I have worked for - things related to doing my job better, ranging from installing software tools most people don't need, establishing shared group email accounts, web based survey tools, proxy servers, etc.
Nine times out of ten, the people in the IT department want to play some kind of bullshit game - often lying about what can or cannot be done. I'm a reasonable man with reasonable expectations, but it seems that most people in IT cannot be bothered to try to find a solution because it is easier to say, "No."
The news there is that people like me find a way - whether it means using outside vendors to supply what we need, busting people's balls in the IT department until it gets done, or what have you. If you are the guy that wants to tell me that my group cannot have a shared group email account because there is no single person responsible for it hiding behind some bullshit Sarbanes-Oxley interpretation/excuse (while you have a Help Desk email account that works exactly like I need our shared account to work), you deserve every headache people like me give you.
If you believe that investigative reporting is important for the public interest, then you need to have some kind of protections in place, a shield law if you will, that enables journalists to do their work without running the risk of turning into a police informant. If you don't have these protections in place, then the public will never find out about secret NSA wiretapping or you will miss stories on elements of society like sexual slavery that most of us know nothing about.
Reporters get asked for sources all the time and most times it is not a problem. However, confidentiality is something that is as important in the journalism space as it is with our legal space and journalists need some form of protection in order to do their job and pursue the public interest. Sure, justice in a particular case is also in the public interest, but investigative journalism should not be used as a surrogate for law enforcement. Doing so, perverts their role and limits the range of stories they can cover and that we hear about.
You might be served by checking out the political compass of the U.S. election. The dimension that you are missing is authoritarian vs. libertarian. There are plenty of right and left wing people with a libertarian bent that would agree with your position. In fact, classic Liberalism places liberty as the primary political value. The people you are talking about are the Stalins and the the Thatchers of the world - which has very little to do with where they happen to fall on the left and right portion of the political spectrum.
Common sense is lost when your major parties and governments around the world all field candidates that sit in the same quadrant - right, authoritarian.
Does being able to purchase products cheaply at Wal-Mart because they are made with child and slave labor abroad or by prison labor here in the U.S. mean that my boat has been lifted? You would rather be a poor American than a rich person elsewhere - perhaps because at least here even poor people can get in on the exploitation? It's a pyramid scheme, just because you can't see all the levels don't mean they aren't there.
I agree that there is inherent injustice in free markets. The model is based on assumptions and circumstances that typically do not exist in the real world. I also think that it is damaging because there are many externalities and costs that cannot be factored into the price ranging from pollution, human exploitation, destruction of important societial values such as reciprical responsibility, etc.
Granted it is difficult to evaluate these things, but we need to do what we can to make an honest assessment and to choose alternatives, as appropriate. Simply subscribing to free market fundamentalism as a faith is a grievous misstep that unfortunately many make.
You know what I find most interesting about comments like yours? It is the false dichotomy. Why not say instead,
But I also know why you didn't go that route. Because the answer is that of course there are alternatives and that many of these alternatives are better for the population as a whole. It is so self-evident that by asking that question you would sound silly.
So, you went instead with the dichotomy either come up with a system where advantage is never taken or be satisfied with what we have. I'd respond that systems, by definition, can be taken advantage of. The people in a position to take advantage? They are, again by definition, the strong. The feature of "free markets" that I was pointing to is that it specifically devalues economic safeguards designed to protect the weak and by so doing, creates and justifies environments of organized robbery and tyranny.
Of course I know it was sarcasm. I just made the point because there are people, as evidenced by the replies to my post, that don't acknowledge the truth the sarcasm was pointing to - so I wanted to bring it out with a little more clarity.
Actually, I'm not describing laissez-faire or anarcho-capitalism. When people use the term "free market", they usually aren't concerned about those elements that define it in its idealized form - no barriers to entry or exit, homogeneous products, mobility of productive resources, many small buyers and sellers, etc. The way it is generally used is to imply freedom - primarily from government intervention. It is used to justify everything from robber baron capitalism to organized crime. The latter is basically the situation you describe.
Free market means a place where the strong take advantage of the weak. Rich of the poor. Employers of employees. Developed nations of less developed nations. On ever level the story is the same, and the people praising free markets are typically those that are with the strong directly benefiting. Don't believe the hype.
You miss one small fact. Often, insurance companies do not have a negotiated rate. So, they get billed $18,325 and decide they are going to pay $1,375. Doing so, they run the risk of having the hospital or the physician involved deciding that they are not going to continue providing service for that price - and so you see people that belong to groups like HMOs getting the same treatment as people on Medicare/Medicaid or that are uninsured. That is, they have to go to state or local hospitals that will provide these services irrespective of whether they get paid for them or how much they get paid.
The bottom line is that there needs to be a much larger discussion on what is valuable in our society and the role of socialized medicine in it. You can't arbitrarily implement price controls and expect the system to function as it currently does. You will need to fundamentally change the structure. Now, there are many good arguments ranging from healthcare as a public good to privatized medicine providing high quality medical services. I don't care to debate the merits of the role of socialized medicine here (and clearly we already have a limited form of it due to necessity) - but you do have to recognize the problem is not as simple or simply solved as you pretend it is in your post.
Oh, so THAT's why OpenBSD is relatively secure. If more people started using it, I guess it would suddenly get less secure. Thanks for clearing that up.
Your comment gets at the issue that there are more exploits for more commonly used systems. Still, it may be that more secure systems may be used less because they are more difficult (or expensive or whatever) to use - same is probably true of security's component parts such as passwords, physical security, etc.
Given current theories of federal power (particularly executive power) that are bantered around, it is high time there was a larger discussion about states rights and the limits of federal power. Yes, states rights have been used by racists in the recent past. However, states rights are a classic way of defending against the federal government assuming undelegated powers. It is a discussion that needs to happen.
As far as the privacy point of view, you do understand the problem. Your whole argument is based on it. Having a fragmented system that makes it more difficult for law enforcement to do what they do, it limits the scale of abuse. Sure, smaller systems can be abused and are less monitored - but the potential for harm to society is also less.
You are asserting that the oversight is better, the system more efficient and so forth when it is centralized. I think inefficiency is an aid to privacy. I think a decentralized system reduces the potential harm to society relative to a centralized option. I think a government that asserts rights to disappear anyone at anytime as an enemy combatant and has secret programs for monitoring citizens does not need yet another tool at their disposal. So, yeah, your right on one thing - I think I'll pass on the national ID kool-aid.
Perhaps you should do some more reading on the subject then, like the article Soft Surveillance: Mandatory Voluntarism and the Collection of Personal Data by Gary T. Marx. Here's a good quote:
We are not talking about manufacturing. Describing what people create as goods is probably at the heart of some of our society's problems. I also take exception to your idea that everything has to be looked at from a cost recovery or profit model. Electricity, telephone service, post offices and so forth all had a period where they were not profitable - but were developed by governments as a social good. We already have a model - you just can't see it from the framework you insist on using.
The advantage that you have here is that you are supporting the status quo. You are asserting that any change to IP has to give you all the things you value - and it needs to be proved before you try it. Not much incentive for me to spend time trying to think of a solution. Especially since I can also take the point of view of the status quo and watch how people will ignore the notion of IP because it doesn't make sense. I can afford to wait because there will be an IP crisis - and the harder you try to support old notions of IP in a changed environment, the more those laws will be ignored or broken.
I didn't say the New Standard was ideal - I simply made the point it is a different model.
Not to mention the first part, knowing where to look, finding it and organizing it. Many people don't even know what the Internet is good for, the difference between a paid and unpaid service and where they might be better off doing something else - like getting on the phone.
Pretty much defines software, don't you think?
I don't disagree with your assessment. Linux is difficult, if you are a casual computer user. It doesn't run most of the software you can get at the store. It may or may not work with your new consumer electronic device. So on and so forth. I think Apple's OSX shows a Unix-workalike can be made user friendly. I think your comment above about free software is also true - right now. However, I think the minute that people are put in the position where free software enables them to do things that they cannot do on a proprietary system, they will start to care and if there are enough of those things to reach a tipping point, they will consider a switch - just like many people that found it easier to use Linux to learn about database design, programming or what have you.
Free software apps frequently aren't cross-platform. I'd say that was a significant barrier to larger market share. I can't just download Gnucash onto a Windows machine - I have to already have some flavor of Linux on it. I'd say this was a common problem.
I think his key position is that "Cooperation is more important than copyright." I think he is arguing the impact of ownership on society has many negatives - particularly intangible ethical pollution. I tend to agree with RMS's point of view. Ownership has to be looked at from the point of view of its impact on society - and many of the negative impacts are intangibles that are considered externals from a strictly economic point of view.
Again, this is because of the model in place. You can say the same about aerospace - except these firms get funding from government because the investment