Only if they use their collusion to force other players out of the marketplace, and even then there are conditions to what could be considered a trust violation.
Businesses in the US organize and cooperate all the time, from the signing of patent licensing agreements, to enrolling in organizations like the RIAA and Chamber of Commerce, to agreements to sell each others' own goods and services without fear of the anti-trust hammer.
that doesn't mean that there is no valid concept of universal morality. It is ALWAYS wrong to treat one gender/class/race as less than human.
I'll just play Devil's Advocate for a little while (my other comments in this article should show I agree with you) and ask.. how is it, or who defines what treatment is "less than human?" That's a vague term that gives a lot of wiggle room. Some would say that Foxxconn is subhuman treatment, while others would claim it's a luxury compared to what they came from. Where is the line drawn, and who should make those decisions in non-relative morality?
Cultural relativism allows us to acknowledge the positive things they guys did, while understanding why they simultaneously engaged in something we see as 100% unacceptable.
As another pointed out, that's not cultural relativism. Cultural relativism would be saying "That was a different time and civilization back then, who are we to say that their owning of slaves was bad?" The attack on cultural relativism is the statement that slavery was bad in any society, that it can be considered an evil regarless of the civilization.
"Less than satisfactory" according to white, paternalistic Americans who frequent Whole Foods.
Sorry to stereotype here, but let the Chinese figure out what is satisfactory or not.
How extremely convenient that arguement is for the white, paternalistic exploiters who take advantage of working conditions that most Western nations have eliminated because they're barbaric. "Oh, better than working in the fields" isn't self-serving at all.
But then, because of the very high costs of building a product like this in these other areas, the end product would cost a great deal more than it does now. No one would buy a 2000$ iphone, and then all of those people in these far flung hypothetical jobs of yours would lose their jobs.
A ridiculous number of people in the US have already lost their jobs because we outsourced all our jobs. We were told "Yes, but all those people will get better jobs instead," better jobs that never materialized.
When Foxxconn has to put up suicide nets between buildings to try to catch jumpers, then I start to question the accuracy of the "official" suicide numbers.
Those are still deplorable conditions. How very very convenient it is for these successful companies to be able "lift up the workers" in countries like China using factories with working conditions that would get the managers real jail time if they tried implementing them in a Western First-World country. So convenient that they can pay them pennies and force them into obscene hours and factory housing because anything is better than nothing, right?
So what happened to all the hippies from the 60s who were going to get into govt and legalize pot? Oh right they got paid instead.
It's also possible that they were only a small minority of the 60s generation, but since they were so "colorful" they had undue attention paid to them.
Yes: They want all the advantages of selling physical products (scarcity driving prices up) plus all the advantages of selling binary data licenses (zero copying cost) but whine when these advantages also come with drawbacks, like that pesky First Sale doctrine.
I don't think scarcity of physical products does anything for game prices. They're set to whatever game studios believe people will pay. Online and offline, they're usually the same price. Occasionally the offline game box costs more to pay for shipping, store overhead, and the physical cost of materials, but usually I'll see a new game for sale in the store for $59.99, and on Steam it'll be the same price.
The idea that buying a game used is ethically just one step up from piracy is spreading
No it's not. Maybe that idea took root in corporate boardrooms, but the average person, the average man on the street has no issues with the first sale doctrine. They have no issues with person A giving up the ability to use a game to sell to Person B. Corporate re-education, not that any of that is heard by anyone apart from hardcore gamer circles, cannot overcome the instinctual feeling that selling items is morally kosher.
No one outside of the executive teams (and maybe IP lawyers) actually believe that used games (or movies, or CDs for that matter) is close to piracy.
You are correct, it was indeed Apollo 1. I should google before trusting my memory.
I think it was the fact that Apollo 1, the very first, was more a blow to public morale. At least they had all those Mercury missions earlier to boost confidence.
Muncton also advocated that every man, woman and child in the United States should be tested monthly for AIDS and anyone detected with signs of an infection should be "permanently removed from the population". He a right-wing conservative crackpot.
While his anti-AGW screeds certainly correlate with right-wing conservatives, the above is about as left-wing as you can get. He's just a crack-pot all around.
Re:Probably was the best course of action
on
EU ACTA Chief Resigns
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Some 'hippies' from that era are now Big Business themselves, directly making deal with government leaders.
The pot smokers of that 60s eventually had kids, but those parents come up with all sorts of BS reasons for why it was ok for them to smoke, but not their kids. Those same hypocrites will also change their business ways now that they actually have some money in the game.
OK, but what is he going to do next? If he feels so strongly about this, why did he not remain in his position and use that power more constructively? This isn't likely to be put in front of the E.U. parliament before June so who is this going to notice this 'falling on my sword act' apart from those who already oppose this, i.e. Slashdotters and the like.
Sometimes you are put into a token position where you have no real power, where no one has to answer to you and you can enact no policies. Not uncommon in, say, a sham investigation. In that case his only power is to resign in the most public and shaming manner possible.
Perhaps because the connector is inconveniently large. How exactly doesn't HDMI work every time without fail? It's the same signal, no?
Even though DVI technically supports it, I think most people here think "unprotected DVI" and "HDCP-protected HDMI." It's the HDCP that makes HDMI somewhat flakey. I have a PS3, a Tivo, and an HDMI switcher from Monoprice, and the the video handshaking breaks rather often, and I'm pretty sure it's due to HDCP. If the handshaking is successful, then the video is perfect until the next time I need to switch. After trying out different switchers and different fixes, the official answer that Monoprice gave me is that HDMI is just finnicky and that sometimes devices just won't communicate with each other, and the only to know is to test all three devices (player, switch, and display) to see if that particular combination is compatible.
I've heard that DisplayPort is technically superior, but at this point it's not going to be catching up, at least not in the mainstream
It depends, on the computer video side, the industry is pretty firmly moving towards DisplayPort (all high-end nvidia cards are DisplayPort now) and HDMI is almost nonexistent.
But on the A/V side it's exactly the opposite, TVs, projectors, Blu-Ray players, all HDMI. No DisplayPort.
It remains to be seen which will win in the long run or if both standards will end up surviving, but HDMI has a big head start.
Good CRTs were, until very recently, the monitors to use for those who work in color-accurate space. Calibration was a hassle, but it was possible, unlike with Apple/Dell/HP monitors. Fortunately HP's pricey Dreamcolor has finally allowed for a fully-calibratible LCD display.
This is of course ignoring the fact that if CA actually survived on its own for more than six months the US would invade and force them back into the Union.
That's not that hard, you arm all eastern Californians with shoulder-mounted RPG launchers to shoot down the helicopters that try to pass over their mountains. The military will be stymied and will eventually leave California alone.
(I had to read a fucking aweful book for a college class once called Ecotopia written in the 70s about a fictional sessession of California and Oregon which very quickly become an ecological and hippie-based utopian society and, I'm not kidding, the above was the only military strategy that was mentioned. That little actual thought was put into it should tell you how much thought was put into solving the rest of society's problems)
Hell, California has enormous mountain ranges that build up a snowpack whose runoff we subsist off of for the rest of the year. And while LA and San Diego get a lot a bit of water from external sources, those external sources as often as not are from Northern California. The North vs South water wars probably fuel much of the "split the state" arguements that we see every so often.
Slashdot Mirror
In America, we'd call that an antitrust violation
Only if they use their collusion to force other players out of the marketplace, and even then there are conditions to what could be considered a trust violation.
Businesses in the US organize and cooperate all the time, from the signing of patent licensing agreements, to enrolling in organizations like the RIAA and Chamber of Commerce, to agreements to sell each others' own goods and services without fear of the anti-trust hammer.
that doesn't mean that there is no valid concept of universal morality. It is ALWAYS wrong to treat one gender/class/race as less than human.
I'll just play Devil's Advocate for a little while (my other comments in this article should show I agree with you) and ask.. how is it, or who defines what treatment is "less than human?" That's a vague term that gives a lot of wiggle room. Some would say that Foxxconn is subhuman treatment, while others would claim it's a luxury compared to what they came from. Where is the line drawn, and who should make those decisions in non-relative morality?
Cultural relativism allows us to acknowledge the positive things they guys did, while understanding why they simultaneously engaged in something we see as 100% unacceptable.
As another pointed out, that's not cultural relativism. Cultural relativism would be saying "That was a different time and civilization back then, who are we to say that their owning of slaves was bad?" The attack on cultural relativism is the statement that slavery was bad in any society, that it can be considered an evil regarless of the civilization.
"Less than satisfactory" according to white, paternalistic Americans who frequent Whole Foods.
Sorry to stereotype here, but let the Chinese figure out what is satisfactory or not.
How extremely convenient that arguement is for the white, paternalistic exploiters who take advantage of working conditions that most Western nations have eliminated because they're barbaric. "Oh, better than working in the fields" isn't self-serving at all.
But then, because of the very high costs of building a product like this in these other areas, the end product would cost a great deal more than it does now. No one would buy a 2000$ iphone, and then all of those people in these far flung hypothetical jobs of yours would lose their jobs.
A ridiculous number of people in the US have already lost their jobs because we outsourced all our jobs. We were told "Yes, but all those people will get better jobs instead," better jobs that never materialized.
When Foxxconn has to put up suicide nets between buildings to try to catch jumpers, then I start to question the accuracy of the "official" suicide numbers.
Those are still deplorable conditions. How very very convenient it is for these successful companies to be able "lift up the workers" in countries like China using factories with working conditions that would get the managers real jail time if they tried implementing them in a Western First-World country. So convenient that they can pay them pennies and force them into obscene hours and factory housing because anything is better than nothing, right?
So what happened to all the hippies from the 60s who were going to get into govt and legalize pot? Oh right they got paid instead.
It's also possible that they were only a small minority of the 60s generation, but since they were so "colorful" they had undue attention paid to them.
It's interesting that outsiders can see the inevitability of civil war isn't it?
Maybe they're young.
Or they have short memories.
But what we have today is nothing, nothing compared to the 60s and 70s.
Yes: They want all the advantages of selling physical products (scarcity driving prices up) plus all the advantages of selling binary data licenses (zero copying cost) but whine when these advantages also come with drawbacks, like that pesky First Sale doctrine.
I don't think scarcity of physical products does anything for game prices. They're set to whatever game studios believe people will pay. Online and offline, they're usually the same price. Occasionally the offline game box costs more to pay for shipping, store overhead, and the physical cost of materials, but usually I'll see a new game for sale in the store for $59.99, and on Steam it'll be the same price.
The idea that buying a game used is ethically just one step up from piracy is spreading
No it's not. Maybe that idea took root in corporate boardrooms, but the average person, the average man on the street has no issues with the first sale doctrine. They have no issues with person A giving up the ability to use a game to sell to Person B. Corporate re-education, not that any of that is heard by anyone apart from hardcore gamer circles, cannot overcome the instinctual feeling that selling items is morally kosher.
No one outside of the executive teams (and maybe IP lawyers) actually believe that used games (or movies, or CDs for that matter) is close to piracy.
You are correct, it was indeed Apollo 1. I should google before trusting my memory.
I think it was the fact that Apollo 1, the very first, was more a blow to public morale. At least they had all those Mercury missions earlier to boost confidence.
I take it you weren't yet born when Apollo 7 blew up.
Apollo 7 went off fine. Were you thinking of Apollo 1, where a cabin fire killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee?
Muncton also advocated that every man, woman and child in the United States should be tested monthly for AIDS and anyone detected with signs of an infection should be "permanently removed from the population". He a right-wing conservative crackpot.
While his anti-AGW screeds certainly correlate with right-wing conservatives, the above is about as left-wing as you can get. He's just a crack-pot all around.
Some 'hippies' from that era are now Big Business themselves, directly making deal with government leaders.
The pot smokers of that 60s eventually had kids, but those parents come up with all sorts of BS reasons for why it was ok for them to smoke, but not their kids. Those same hypocrites will also change their business ways now that they actually have some money in the game.
OK, but what is he going to do next? If he feels so strongly about this, why did he not remain in his position and use that power more constructively? This isn't likely to be put in front of the E.U. parliament before June so who is this going to notice this 'falling on my sword act' apart from those who already oppose this, i.e. Slashdotters and the like.
Sometimes you are put into a token position where you have no real power, where no one has to answer to you and you can enact no policies. Not uncommon in, say, a sham investigation. In that case his only power is to resign in the most public and shaming manner possible.
Sorry, I misspoke. Not truly active adapters, but they are bus-powered (and I've yet to see a brand without an extremely high failure rate).
DisplayPort can be converted to HDMI or single-link DVI with a cheap, passive adapter.
However, DisplayPort can be converted to dual-link DVI only with not-as-cheap, but universally shitty-quality active adapters.
Perhaps because the connector is inconveniently large. How exactly doesn't HDMI work every time without fail? It's the same signal, no?
Even though DVI technically supports it, I think most people here think "unprotected DVI" and "HDCP-protected HDMI." It's the HDCP that makes HDMI somewhat flakey. I have a PS3, a Tivo, and an HDMI switcher from Monoprice, and the the video handshaking breaks rather often, and I'm pretty sure it's due to HDCP. If the handshaking is successful, then the video is perfect until the next time I need to switch. After trying out different switchers and different fixes, the official answer that Monoprice gave me is that HDMI is just finnicky and that sometimes devices just won't communicate with each other, and the only to know is to test all three devices (player, switch, and display) to see if that particular combination is compatible.
I've heard that DisplayPort is technically superior, but at this point it's not going to be catching up, at least not in the mainstream
It depends, on the computer video side, the industry is pretty firmly moving towards DisplayPort (all high-end nvidia cards are DisplayPort now) and HDMI is almost nonexistent.
But on the A/V side it's exactly the opposite, TVs, projectors, Blu-Ray players, all HDMI. No DisplayPort.
It remains to be seen which will win in the long run or if both standards will end up surviving, but HDMI has a big head start.
Good CRTs were, until very recently, the monitors to use for those who work in color-accurate space.
Calibration was a hassle, but it was possible, unlike with Apple/Dell/HP monitors. Fortunately HP's pricey Dreamcolor has finally allowed for a fully-calibratible LCD display.
This is of course ignoring the fact that if CA actually survived on its own for more than six months the US would invade and force them back into the Union.
That's not that hard, you arm all eastern Californians with shoulder-mounted RPG launchers to shoot down the helicopters that try to pass over their mountains. The military will be stymied and will eventually leave California alone.
(I had to read a fucking aweful book for a college class once called Ecotopia written in the 70s about a fictional sessession of California and Oregon which very quickly become an ecological and hippie-based utopian society and, I'm not kidding, the above was the only military strategy that was mentioned. That little actual thought was put into it should tell you how much thought was put into solving the rest of society's problems)
Hell, California has enormous mountain ranges that build up a snowpack whose runoff we subsist off of for the rest of the year. And while LA and San Diego get a lot a bit of water from external sources, those external sources as often as not are from Northern California. The North vs South water wars probably fuel much of the "split the state" arguements that we see every so often.
This is exactly why we need much more research into life-extension methods and treatments.
That's fucking crazy.
If the extremely wealthy could expect to live to 2-300 years of age or more, then they'd take a much longer-term view of things
Maybe... even fucking crazy enough to work. Oh god, I can't believe I'm considering that as a positive. >_
Also, apparently he was so busy arresting illegal immigrants that hadn't committed any crimes
"Illegal immigrants that hadn't committed any crimes.." That phrase just makes no sense.