Not really though. Saying something does exist is not the same as saying something doesn't exist. If I said there are no such thing as purple monkeys who drive cars, the lack of evidence suggesting their existence would satisfy most people, especially as the claim is significantly outrageous. However, if I said there WERE purple monkeys who drive cars, people would become far more skeptical.
Lack of evidence that something exists IS a type of evidence that it doesn't exist. It's not full proof, of course, but if it's the only evidence one can go by, it's better to regard it than disregard it and claim the opposite. If that wasn't true, then all kinds of claims could be made including my purple monkey statement and it'd be just as reasonable to say "well, you can't prove it DOESN'T exist, so you're a fool for denying my claim that it does".
See, now we're just getting into semantics. If the discussion really should be whether or not copyright infringement is bad, why get hung up on definitions. I don't understand why people who pirate do this. They complain about the word steal, even though "stealing and idea" is a concept that's been around for a very long time. They complain about "pirate", even though pirate is merely a simple term we've created recently as it's easier than saying "downloaded software off the internet without paying for it." I suppose perhaps they complain because of the negative connotations applied to both terms, but I think that's a bit ridiculous. The fact is, such negative connotation would eventually come to any term you wanted to use, including copyright infringement. I could call it "puppy hugging" and eventually it'd still garner a negative connotation. "Gay" once meant "happy", right?
Basically, I think you're definition of the word "steal" is more narrow than it has historically been. As I said, stealing an idea is a concept that came around long before the internet. And my post was not offtopic at all. It was attempt to explain to you how human created social constructs can have legitimacy. "Thought as property" is a human created social construct. The use of property without consent is theft, regardless of it's tangibility. This is how it's defined. But again, it's really just semantics. If you want to call it "puppy hugging" to make yourself feel better, than so be it.
You don't buy that "social agreement" bullshit? So, what then, you live in a cabin in the woods all by your lonesome? If not, then you really DO buy it, cause it drives our lives. Kill someone? Go to jail. Grow up a child in America? Go to school. Destroy someone's property? Get sued and be forced to compensate. These are all social contracts enforced by people upon people.
You chose winking to illustrate how absurd the concept of ownership can be, as an analogy for copy right infringement. I agree, the concept of owning winking seems fairly ludicrous to me. But then, the concept of owning land probably seemed ludicrous at one time. The concept of owning airwaves probably seemed ludicrous at one time. The thought that I can be held liable for mere words might seem ludicrous, until you examine the reasons we've made it so. But we function as a society, and we set up social constructs to assure the prosperity and organization of that society. You can claim all you want that copy right infringement is a false institution. Technically, you'd be right. But that claim is meaningless given that so many other organization you partake of could be satisfied by the same reasoning. I doubt if someone murdered your wife you'd be comfortable with the claim that "crime and punishment is a false, man-made institution."
As for the specific point you made concerning the actual possession of an item, how does that work with land? Why is it that we allow a businessman to own a coal mine if he's not actually in the mine digging out coal? And what about my specific example concerning your summer home. Would you be fine letting others into your house without your consent during the winter? If you're not using it, then you've not lost possession, right?
But in truth, these examples are unnecessary. We've decided, as a society, that ideas can be owned. It's not a recent idea, either. It's easy to demonstrate historically. As a societal construct, it holds as much legitimacy as any other institution enforced only through human action. Perhaps owning a wink is a ludicrous idea. I'll concede to that point. But should owning a wink ever become necessary for the growth or well-being of society, then you can bet I'll be on board with the human construct built to enforce it. Hopefully, it'll never come to that. *wink
First, he conceded "BSA numbers are certainly overstated," so you're being a bit harsh.
Second, your assumption that "people who can't afford your software not paying for your software is not a lost sale" is a reductionist approach to the problem. Perhaps the person downloading the software cant afford it at the time, but could later. Their motivation to pay for it later is severely decreased if they've already obtained the product. Also, what about competition? Perhaps they couldn't afford the piece of software they had their eyes on, but could afford a lesser, even free copy of software that performed the same task? Ironically, the software pirate in this case hurting everyone as the cheaper software could be gaining a larger portion of the market, thus forcing the prices down in general, but instead denies the competing service the income.
Really, I could come up with a dozen or so other hypothetical arguments to show how ""people who can't afford your software not paying for your software" could still have negative affects on the company creating the software or the industry as a whole, but at the end of the day I doubt it will convince you. Beside, at the end of the day, even if I stipulated 100% that no negative economic impact was felt by piracy, there's still the principal. A person who contributes positively to society deserves to be compensated. A person who does not doesn't deserve to partake of those non-essential services. If you want software (or anything non-essential, for that matter), you should contribute something back.
"As an intangible thing that ceases to be scarce once first published, information doesn't belong to anybody, either. It cannot be anyone's property, regardless of any fictional legal constructions."
Sure it can. In the same way that physical property can. I mean, there's no real tangible reason a person should be able to own a piece of land. There's no natural construct keeping me from occupying someone's summer home in the winter. After all, as you said yourself, there's no physical loss in me doing so. The house will still be there for them in the summer, right? The only construct present to prevent me from doing that is the one created by our society. If a squirrel drops an acorn in the forest and another squirrel scoops it up, there's no court of law to determine who the rightful owner of the acorn is. But in human society, there is. Why? Because we recognize the efficiency and benefit of such a system.
The same could be said of intellectual property. It exists in the same manner, as a construct of our society, because in general our society agrees people who create intellectually valuable ideas deserve to be compensated for them, both to reward and to motivate. Is the system perfect? Doubtful. But I don't think "IP isn't real" is really a constructive argument. Unless you're willing to extend that logic to ALL societal constructs that don't exist naturally, then you might want to think of a different argument.
Wow. That's hilarious. I'm going to risk an off topic mod just to ask you if you pulled that quote from somewhere, or came up with it yourself. If it was truly original, than you, sir, must be Charlie Sheen, cause you're obviously winning.
Yeah, I know the cool thing to do on slashdot is to badmouth the American people and call them stupid and such. But I have to wonder, if the Chinese people are so happy with their government, then why is the government so paranoid about letting the people speak their minds? Surely, if some minority group called for the overthrow of the Chinese government, the majority would shout them out, right? Instead, China consistently suppresses dissent. That's not even a fact China tries to hide. Political prisoners? The Great Firewall? State-owned media?
You can badmouth the American people as much as you'd like. I'm sure you'll continue to rake in the +1 modifiers. But the fact is, I enjoy living in a country where I'm free to criticize the government and call for change, and I feel bad that the Chinese people don't have that same luxury, whether they've learned to cope with it or not.
Besides, it's often not the "happy majority" that draws my concern, but rather the oppressed minority that evokes my sympathy.
That's a pretty dystopian outlook. I doubt it would ever come to that. For one, the United States and China are very co-dependent for trade. China owns a significant portion of our debt. This means China's economy is directly effected by the value of the United States dollar. If the dollar drops, China loses money.
And if you think China could simply call in it's debt, you'd be wrong about that, too. Cashing in would dramatically increase the value of Chinese currency, which in turn would dramatically raise the prices on the products they export. Since China makes a lot of money exporting cheap goods, this would be devastating to China's economy.
The fact is, it's no longer a viable solution for large super powers to go to war with each other. Too much of trade is now intertwined at an international level, so-much-so that the success of one super power means the success of another. While I suppose there's a chance idealistic reasons could spur future conflict between the United States and China, it's extremely unlikely that economic reasons would. And in this day and age, economic reasons usually outweigh idealistic ones. Don't kid yourself, we didn't go into Iraq to remove a horrible dictator. We did it for the oil.
Not quite. True, you're in you're first year the second you're born, but you're also in your first decade. You're not in your second decade until ten years later, which would be 10 years 1 second. So for your ninth decade, it'd be 80 years 1 second. Not 79. It's easy to see if you just consider that you're still in your first decade when you're nine years old.
Agreed. I've often came across people who thought DS2 wasn't scary at all, only to have them admit they played it on normal or even easy. I played it on a higher difficulty and found the game to be considerably intense. I don't know if "scary" is the right word, but "intense" definitely fits. There wasn't a moment in the campaign that I didn't feel vulnerable. I was almost always short on health and ammo. It really made those "cheap scares" other people talk about much more meaningful.
Yahtzee is a gaming pessimist. He's hilarious, and I look forward to his reviews every week, but he's so negative it's hard to take his reviews seriously. Yes, Dead Space had a very grotesque, non-subtle opening. But that didn't mean the rest of the game followed suit. Dead Space 2 was one of the most intense games I've played in years. I ALWAYS felt vulnerable, almost to a fault. It seems I went through most of the game with only a bit of health, and only a few shots left in my gun. Those shock scares seem a lot less redundant or trivial when you're always hanging on by a very thin thread. I really enjoyed that about the game.
But besides the actual encounters, Dead Space 2 had a very appealing atmosphere. The locations were diverse and interesting, taking you from a school to a unitology church to the soundless vacuum of space. And the sound design was some of the BEST sound design ever found in a game. Honestly, the subtle whispers, the far off rustling of loose debris, and even the near total silence of space punctuated by nothing more than the sound of your beating heart, ALL added to what is already a fairly intense experience. I really enjoyed Dead Space 2. It might not be the scariest game I've played all year (Amnesia: The Dark Descent, I'm looking at you). But it was one of the most fun.
It can be considered nanny-state, but not from the perspective that China is enabling parents the tools to monitor their kids, but more-so from the perspective that China is forcing companies to provide these tools. I'm not saying it's necessarily good or evil, after all even in America the government forces companies to do things to protect children, but it's still an apt description.
Or maybe they're just proud that they're good at the game? Maybe it has nothing to do with playing real music. Maybe you're reading too much into it. I've seen people who are really good at call of duty, and was fairly impressed with it. But I don't immediately disregard it with the claim that "they think they're actually shooting people." I'm pretty sure most of them realize that what they're good at is the GAME ITSELF, and not the subject the game emulates. The same is true with Rockband.
Besides, if you really look at all the posts in this thread, you won't see anyone making the claim that playing Rockband is equivalent to playing a real instrument. The only people who bring up real instruments when discussing rockband are people like you, who are for some reason are incredibly defensive of the game. Relax. Someone being good at a game isn't going to distract from you impressing people with a real guitar. There's no threat.
I think that comic strip pretty much captures my feelings about Rock Band. I don't know why guitar players are so defensive about Rock Band. I don't see anyone making comparisons between rock band and real guitars except for people who play real guitars. We get it guys. Rock band is not like playing a real instrument. Just like playing Madden is not at all like playing real football. But it's still fun. Why does it offend you so much that people are having fun? Move on with it.
The funny thing is, while guitar players bitch about Rockband, football players generally LOVE Madden. Wonder why there's such a difference of perception between these two groups.
Sure, but who cares? I don't EVER hear anyone who plays rockband comment that they expect to get chicks or look super cool while doing it. No, quite the opposite, I only ever seem to hear real guitar players bitching that playing a real guitar is so much cooler and that playing rockband is dumb and fake and blah blah blah... Fine. Great. Playing a real guitar is 100 times more awesome. I concede. You don't have to point that out EVERY TIME the game is being discussed. Just let us rockbanders have our fun in peace.
I think there was a time when that was true, but not really any longer. IT isn't quite the basement-dwelling, bitter social outcast draw it once was. Not to sound immodest, but I like to think I'm really good at interacting with users. And for the most part, I feel like my co-workers are pretty good at it too. We have a lot of friends in other departments.
No he doesn't. This whole idea that liberals want big government and republicans don't is ridiculous. It's never been true. It was a conservative president who sent us to war in Iraq. That's pretty big government. It's the conservatives that want to continue fighting a ridiculous war against Marijuana. It's the conservatives who continue to want to decide who is allowed to marry or serve in the military. And every time laws limiting police power (like Miranda rights) are put up for debate, who do you think sides with law enforcement over citizen's rights? Conservatives.
The REAL difference between liberals and conservatives is that they both are in favor of big government, but under different circumstances. Liberals want big government when it comes to social services like medicare and social security, or when it comes to regulation like environmental laws. Conservatives want big government to preserve what they consider to be the idealistic lifestyle and strip the rights of those who don't want to conform, like anti-drug anti-gay marriage laws, or their continual opposition to police over site with things like Miranda rights. They also want big government when they want to flex America's muscles (which usually has some big business implications).
Believe me, Hitler was not supporting big government because he was in favor of social services or commercial regulation. He was ALL about flexing Germany's muscles and attempting to control what he considered to be the idealistic lifestyle. Trying to equate Hitler to liberalism because he was for "big government" is a tired argument. Please stop doing it.
Or maybe we as "individuals" need to learn to be responsible for our own privacy and not expect others to tiptoe around our underwear when taking pictures in public. Don't know about you, but I'd rather not be sued by some nose-picking dickhead standing in the back of a family photo I've posted to Facebook. I might feel bad the guy is suddenly embarrassed and that I didn't notice he was there, but I'm not gonna feel responsible for it. Don't want to risk being caught picking your nose in public? Don't do it in public. Don't want to risk having your underwear photographed in public? Don't hang it in public.
Please stop trying so hard to dictate what "civilization" should be doing and put a little responsibility on the individual. Thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really though. Saying something does exist is not the same as saying something doesn't exist. If I said there are no such thing as purple monkeys who drive cars, the lack of evidence suggesting their existence would satisfy most people, especially as the claim is significantly outrageous. However, if I said there WERE purple monkeys who drive cars, people would become far more skeptical.
Lack of evidence that something exists IS a type of evidence that it doesn't exist. It's not full proof, of course, but if it's the only evidence one can go by, it's better to regard it than disregard it and claim the opposite. If that wasn't true, then all kinds of claims could be made including my purple monkey statement and it'd be just as reasonable to say "well, you can't prove it DOESN'T exist, so you're a fool for denying my claim that it does".
See, now we're just getting into semantics. If the discussion really should be whether or not copyright infringement is bad, why get hung up on definitions. I don't understand why people who pirate do this. They complain about the word steal, even though "stealing and idea" is a concept that's been around for a very long time. They complain about "pirate", even though pirate is merely a simple term we've created recently as it's easier than saying "downloaded software off the internet without paying for it." I suppose perhaps they complain because of the negative connotations applied to both terms, but I think that's a bit ridiculous. The fact is, such negative connotation would eventually come to any term you wanted to use, including copyright infringement. I could call it "puppy hugging" and eventually it'd still garner a negative connotation. "Gay" once meant "happy", right?
Basically, I think you're definition of the word "steal" is more narrow than it has historically been. As I said, stealing an idea is a concept that came around long before the internet. And my post was not offtopic at all. It was attempt to explain to you how human created social constructs can have legitimacy. "Thought as property" is a human created social construct. The use of property without consent is theft, regardless of it's tangibility. This is how it's defined. But again, it's really just semantics. If you want to call it "puppy hugging" to make yourself feel better, than so be it.
You don't buy that "social agreement" bullshit? So, what then, you live in a cabin in the woods all by your lonesome? If not, then you really DO buy it, cause it drives our lives. Kill someone? Go to jail. Grow up a child in America? Go to school. Destroy someone's property? Get sued and be forced to compensate. These are all social contracts enforced by people upon people.
You chose winking to illustrate how absurd the concept of ownership can be, as an analogy for copy right infringement. I agree, the concept of owning winking seems fairly ludicrous to me. But then, the concept of owning land probably seemed ludicrous at one time. The concept of owning airwaves probably seemed ludicrous at one time. The thought that I can be held liable for mere words might seem ludicrous, until you examine the reasons we've made it so. But we function as a society, and we set up social constructs to assure the prosperity and organization of that society. You can claim all you want that copy right infringement is a false institution. Technically, you'd be right. But that claim is meaningless given that so many other organization you partake of could be satisfied by the same reasoning. I doubt if someone murdered your wife you'd be comfortable with the claim that "crime and punishment is a false, man-made institution."
As for the specific point you made concerning the actual possession of an item, how does that work with land? Why is it that we allow a businessman to own a coal mine if he's not actually in the mine digging out coal? And what about my specific example concerning your summer home. Would you be fine letting others into your house without your consent during the winter? If you're not using it, then you've not lost possession, right?
But in truth, these examples are unnecessary. We've decided, as a society, that ideas can be owned. It's not a recent idea, either. It's easy to demonstrate historically. As a societal construct, it holds as much legitimacy as any other institution enforced only through human action. Perhaps owning a wink is a ludicrous idea. I'll concede to that point. But should owning a wink ever become necessary for the growth or well-being of society, then you can bet I'll be on board with the human construct built to enforce it. Hopefully, it'll never come to that. *wink
First, he conceded "BSA numbers are certainly overstated," so you're being a bit harsh.
Second, your assumption that "people who can't afford your software not paying for your software is not a lost sale" is a reductionist approach to the problem. Perhaps the person downloading the software cant afford it at the time, but could later. Their motivation to pay for it later is severely decreased if they've already obtained the product. Also, what about competition? Perhaps they couldn't afford the piece of software they had their eyes on, but could afford a lesser, even free copy of software that performed the same task? Ironically, the software pirate in this case hurting everyone as the cheaper software could be gaining a larger portion of the market, thus forcing the prices down in general, but instead denies the competing service the income.
Really, I could come up with a dozen or so other hypothetical arguments to show how ""people who can't afford your software not paying for your software" could still have negative affects on the company creating the software or the industry as a whole, but at the end of the day I doubt it will convince you. Beside, at the end of the day, even if I stipulated 100% that no negative economic impact was felt by piracy, there's still the principal. A person who contributes positively to society deserves to be compensated. A person who does not doesn't deserve to partake of those non-essential services. If you want software (or anything non-essential, for that matter), you should contribute something back.
"As an intangible thing that ceases to be scarce once first published, information doesn't belong to anybody, either. It cannot be anyone's property, regardless of any fictional legal constructions."
Sure it can. In the same way that physical property can. I mean, there's no real tangible reason a person should be able to own a piece of land. There's no natural construct keeping me from occupying someone's summer home in the winter. After all, as you said yourself, there's no physical loss in me doing so. The house will still be there for them in the summer, right? The only construct present to prevent me from doing that is the one created by our society. If a squirrel drops an acorn in the forest and another squirrel scoops it up, there's no court of law to determine who the rightful owner of the acorn is. But in human society, there is. Why? Because we recognize the efficiency and benefit of such a system.
The same could be said of intellectual property. It exists in the same manner, as a construct of our society, because in general our society agrees people who create intellectually valuable ideas deserve to be compensated for them, both to reward and to motivate. Is the system perfect? Doubtful. But I don't think "IP isn't real" is really a constructive argument. Unless you're willing to extend that logic to ALL societal constructs that don't exist naturally, then you might want to think of a different argument.
Here come the conspiracy theories.
200+ years later, this still hasn't happened. Anywhere. Maybe people should stop using this quote so much.
You sure?
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/less-versus-fewer.aspx
Wouldn't viewers be a mass noun? Whatever. Off topic anyway. Fairly certain no one was confused by the term "less".
Wow. That's hilarious. I'm going to risk an off topic mod just to ask you if you pulled that quote from somewhere, or came up with it yourself. If it was truly original, than you, sir, must be Charlie Sheen, cause you're obviously winning.
Yeah, I know the cool thing to do on slashdot is to badmouth the American people and call them stupid and such. But I have to wonder, if the Chinese people are so happy with their government, then why is the government so paranoid about letting the people speak their minds? Surely, if some minority group called for the overthrow of the Chinese government, the majority would shout them out, right? Instead, China consistently suppresses dissent. That's not even a fact China tries to hide. Political prisoners? The Great Firewall? State-owned media?
You can badmouth the American people as much as you'd like. I'm sure you'll continue to rake in the +1 modifiers. But the fact is, I enjoy living in a country where I'm free to criticize the government and call for change, and I feel bad that the Chinese people don't have that same luxury, whether they've learned to cope with it or not.
Besides, it's often not the "happy majority" that draws my concern, but rather the oppressed minority that evokes my sympathy.
That's a pretty dystopian outlook. I doubt it would ever come to that. For one, the United States and China are very co-dependent for trade. China owns a significant portion of our debt. This means China's economy is directly effected by the value of the United States dollar. If the dollar drops, China loses money.
And if you think China could simply call in it's debt, you'd be wrong about that, too. Cashing in would dramatically increase the value of Chinese currency, which in turn would dramatically raise the prices on the products they export. Since China makes a lot of money exporting cheap goods, this would be devastating to China's economy.
The fact is, it's no longer a viable solution for large super powers to go to war with each other. Too much of trade is now intertwined at an international level, so-much-so that the success of one super power means the success of another. While I suppose there's a chance idealistic reasons could spur future conflict between the United States and China, it's extremely unlikely that economic reasons would. And in this day and age, economic reasons usually outweigh idealistic ones. Don't kid yourself, we didn't go into Iraq to remove a horrible dictator. We did it for the oil.
Wrong on point 1. Ten years after you are born, you are ten years old. Not sure why you're getting so confused.
Not quite. True, you're in you're first year the second you're born, but you're also in your first decade. You're not in your second decade until ten years later, which would be 10 years 1 second. So for your ninth decade, it'd be 80 years 1 second. Not 79. It's easy to see if you just consider that you're still in your first decade when you're nine years old.
Agreed. I've often came across people who thought DS2 wasn't scary at all, only to have them admit they played it on normal or even easy. I played it on a higher difficulty and found the game to be considerably intense. I don't know if "scary" is the right word, but "intense" definitely fits. There wasn't a moment in the campaign that I didn't feel vulnerable. I was almost always short on health and ammo. It really made those "cheap scares" other people talk about much more meaningful.
Yahtzee is a gaming pessimist. He's hilarious, and I look forward to his reviews every week, but he's so negative it's hard to take his reviews seriously. Yes, Dead Space had a very grotesque, non-subtle opening. But that didn't mean the rest of the game followed suit. Dead Space 2 was one of the most intense games I've played in years. I ALWAYS felt vulnerable, almost to a fault. It seems I went through most of the game with only a bit of health, and only a few shots left in my gun. Those shock scares seem a lot less redundant or trivial when you're always hanging on by a very thin thread. I really enjoyed that about the game.
But besides the actual encounters, Dead Space 2 had a very appealing atmosphere. The locations were diverse and interesting, taking you from a school to a unitology church to the soundless vacuum of space. And the sound design was some of the BEST sound design ever found in a game. Honestly, the subtle whispers, the far off rustling of loose debris, and even the near total silence of space punctuated by nothing more than the sound of your beating heart, ALL added to what is already a fairly intense experience. I really enjoyed Dead Space 2. It might not be the scariest game I've played all year (Amnesia: The Dark Descent, I'm looking at you). But it was one of the most fun.
It can be considered nanny-state, but not from the perspective that China is enabling parents the tools to monitor their kids, but more-so from the perspective that China is forcing companies to provide these tools. I'm not saying it's necessarily good or evil, after all even in America the government forces companies to do things to protect children, but it's still an apt description.
Can you post some good examples? I'm stuck behind a proxy at work and could use a good laugh.
Or maybe they're just proud that they're good at the game? Maybe it has nothing to do with playing real music. Maybe you're reading too much into it. I've seen people who are really good at call of duty, and was fairly impressed with it. But I don't immediately disregard it with the claim that "they think they're actually shooting people." I'm pretty sure most of them realize that what they're good at is the GAME ITSELF, and not the subject the game emulates. The same is true with Rockband.
Besides, if you really look at all the posts in this thread, you won't see anyone making the claim that playing Rockband is equivalent to playing a real instrument. The only people who bring up real instruments when discussing rockband are people like you, who are for some reason are incredibly defensive of the game. Relax. Someone being good at a game isn't going to distract from you impressing people with a real guitar. There's no threat.
I think that comic strip pretty much captures my feelings about Rock Band. I don't know why guitar players are so defensive about Rock Band. I don't see anyone making comparisons between rock band and real guitars except for people who play real guitars. We get it guys. Rock band is not like playing a real instrument. Just like playing Madden is not at all like playing real football. But it's still fun. Why does it offend you so much that people are having fun? Move on with it.
The funny thing is, while guitar players bitch about Rockband, football players generally LOVE Madden. Wonder why there's such a difference of perception between these two groups.
apparently not
Why all the hate? It's just a game. Do you get so angry at people who play racing games rather than trying to become an actual racer?
And that "kids from my generation" thing just screams "get off my lawn." Thought you should know that.
Sure, but who cares? I don't EVER hear anyone who plays rockband comment that they expect to get chicks or look super cool while doing it. No, quite the opposite, I only ever seem to hear real guitar players bitching that playing a real guitar is so much cooler and that playing rockband is dumb and fake and blah blah blah... Fine. Great. Playing a real guitar is 100 times more awesome. I concede. You don't have to point that out EVERY TIME the game is being discussed. Just let us rockbanders have our fun in peace.
I think there was a time when that was true, but not really any longer. IT isn't quite the basement-dwelling, bitter social outcast draw it once was. Not to sound immodest, but I like to think I'm really good at interacting with users. And for the most part, I feel like my co-workers are pretty good at it too. We have a lot of friends in other departments.
On the other hand, maybe I'm just fooling myself.
No he doesn't. This whole idea that liberals want big government and republicans don't is ridiculous. It's never been true. It was a conservative president who sent us to war in Iraq. That's pretty big government. It's the conservatives that want to continue fighting a ridiculous war against Marijuana. It's the conservatives who continue to want to decide who is allowed to marry or serve in the military. And every time laws limiting police power (like Miranda rights) are put up for debate, who do you think sides with law enforcement over citizen's rights? Conservatives.
The REAL difference between liberals and conservatives is that they both are in favor of big government, but under different circumstances. Liberals want big government when it comes to social services like medicare and social security, or when it comes to regulation like environmental laws. Conservatives want big government to preserve what they consider to be the idealistic lifestyle and strip the rights of those who don't want to conform, like anti-drug anti-gay marriage laws, or their continual opposition to police over site with things like Miranda rights. They also want big government when they want to flex America's muscles (which usually has some big business implications).
Believe me, Hitler was not supporting big government because he was in favor of social services or commercial regulation. He was ALL about flexing Germany's muscles and attempting to control what he considered to be the idealistic lifestyle. Trying to equate Hitler to liberalism because he was for "big government" is a tired argument. Please stop doing it.
Or maybe we as "individuals" need to learn to be responsible for our own privacy and not expect others to tiptoe around our underwear when taking pictures in public. Don't know about you, but I'd rather not be sued by some nose-picking dickhead standing in the back of a family photo I've posted to Facebook. I might feel bad the guy is suddenly embarrassed and that I didn't notice he was there, but I'm not gonna feel responsible for it. Don't want to risk being caught picking your nose in public? Don't do it in public. Don't want to risk having your underwear photographed in public? Don't hang it in public.
Please stop trying so hard to dictate what "civilization" should be doing and put a little responsibility on the individual. Thanks.