If I choose to sell my hot dogs to passerbys for $5.00, while the cart around the corner (and out of sight) sells the same thing for $0.50, do I have an obligation to tell them that they can save $4.50 by walking 15 feet? No. Of course not. It is not the hot dog guy's fault if the consumers are dupes/idiots/uninformed.
No, there is certainly no legal or ethical obligation to tell them squat. You shouldn't be too surprised, however, when angry customers who just rounded the corner come back and try to tell everyone else in line that they're being ripped off.
And to speak more candidly, I find your attitude disgusting. As people who are more informed of these issues than the general public, some of us feel a responsibility to try to impress upon them the importance of online privacy, among many other things. People don't deserve to be deceived simply because they are dupes/idiots/uninformed. If they choose to forfeit their privacy, so be it, but it should be an informed decision. And like it or not, we all must rely on one another to make informed decisions.
This argument would make sense if the allegedly immoral actions in question only affected those people who chose to partake in them (using drugs, extramarital sex, etc). In this case, another life is the sticking point, and you can't expect those who believe that the unborn are a human life to stand by and watch them be killed.
I really wonder why I always hear this sort of argument from some on the pro-choice side... it shows a complete and utter lack of understanding of the pro-life point of view (is this mutual?)
If they must legislate something, why not require every site with potentially evil material to use one of the content rating systems, like the ICRA, which at least MSIE and Netscape support.
"On the other hand, you have something like Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Bland single-player, unimaginative and buggy multiplayer, not really worth playing for more than a few hours, if that. (IMHO)"
Not meaning to be inflammatory, but is this a troll? RTCW had the least buggy multiplayer of any game I can think of at release.
Moving from fact to opinion, I won't dispute RTCW's bland single player, but Half-Life just doesn't cut it as a multiplayer engine for many of us who started gaming pre-HL - slow, jerky, and restrictive control. Not to mention the game's lag compensation was a joke for many months after release. Half-Life was a superb single-player game, but since its release Valve has done nothing besides fix bugs at a snail's pace, rehash multiplayer classics for their bastardized Quake engine, and milk third parties and mod developers for all the $$ they're worth. If it wasn't for the exceptional game design of Counter-Strike (which I personally don't enjoy, but to each his own), Valve might actually have finished TF2 by now instead of repackaging Half-Life a million times and cooking up hare-brained ideas like PowerPlay and Steam.
I share your frustration. This could be the nastiest spyware program ever to reach a mass audience, but it seems that some slashdot editors are unfamiliar with the very basic concept of magnitude.
Yes, greed is good for the economy and thus everyone living here. But don't fool yourself into thinking greed only becomes a problem in the presence of a powerful fed - it's a contributing factor to be sure, but I think it's more complex than that.
The people have been lulled into complacency by our easy lifestyle and corporate culture, and no longer hold corporations accountable for their actions. The people who care aren't numorous enough to make a difference (Slashdot boycotts, anyone?). The Fed's passive role is more damaging than its active role, allowing people to get away with things that they shouldn't be able to. Who in the federal government cares if Corporation X poisons Small Town Y's water?
I assert that instead of reducing the power of government as a whole, shifting power to local governments will increase corporate accountability. This must be coupled with true federal regulation of interstate commerce, to prevent local governments from bribing large corporations with tax incentives, lax environmental regulations, etc, and to keep corporations from demanding said bribes. This is akin to extortion, and recently happened here in Oregon, with Intel asking for special favors from the state to make it worth their while to build a new plant here rather than some other state that would be more accomodating to their bottom line. Hypothetically speaking, people shouldn't be forced to choose between jobs and safe water.
Mod chips that only exist for the playing of copied (or as we prefer to say, "backed-up") games have been around since the early days of the Playstation 1, but as the submission says, Sony didn't do anything about those. Who knows whether their present legal action represents a causal relationship with the new chips' capabilities, but it's a reasonable hypothesis.
I am a CS student, and my roommate is an art student. He's picked up 3D rendering skills quite fast and shows great potential, but the man cannot afford more than his K6-2 to do his rendering on (I guess he has too much pride to use some cpu time on my box). I'm not trying to justify warez here, but draw your own conclusions. The software must be learned somehow;)
Of course, another of my more well-off artist friends paid a grand for an educational-discounted version of 3DS MAX...
No offense intended because I agree with the spirit of your post, but some of us don't have the connections, can't get our foot in the door, or are beaten out by those who possess inferior skills but know how to market themself.
I don't mean to sound bitter, because I'm sure all will be well with time - but especially in our current economy, making money just isn't that easy for many.
(Disclosure: I'm a CS student that had to haul boxes around at a warehouse last summer to pay for hacking toys)
We impose sanctions (occasionaly blockades) in order to break a country. That's the whole point. If millions of civilians are starving, why the fsck doesn't the leader make concessions with us?? Their leaders are the ones allowing them to starve, not us. Get your head out of your fairly-tale ass.
This makes sense when you're dealing with a humane government. Saddam has proven that he doesn't care if his people suffer, so long as he can blame it on us instead of him. In my opinion, the only moral choice is to drop the sanctions; we don't punish corrupt leadership by starving innocents.
To actually eliminate a bad government would require the use of force, which wouldn't sit well with public opinion. Better to let their kids die then ours.
Incidentally, the 5000+ that died in the WTC attack are a drop in the bucket compared to the allegedly 1.5 million in Iraq the last few years. When the numbers get that high, it's time to stop playing the blame game and look for a real solution.
The difference is this: your examples are all of government-provided services that the government has at least some control over.
The government does not and should not subsidize the music industry with taxes unless they also start regulating it. Public money shouldn't go to an entity that's not accountable to the public, or should at least be proportional to the amount of accountability we have.
I agree with you about 6.
Xenogears had a rediculously epic plot, and could have eclipsed FF6 as my favorite had the second disc not been such a let-down (sorry, you'll see:P)
I would like to point out that this has always been Lindzen's position and that, prior to serving on the academy committee, he had published several articles denying the existence of a pattern of global warming. He is not an unbiased observer and should not be considered the best or only resource of information on this subject.
The most that can be said about Lindzen's position is that the study by the committee failed to change his mind.
Lindzen's opinions are also discussed in one of the articles linked in this thread's parent: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/ A great article that talks about how scientists should be objective.
why there wasn't all sorts of legal trouble because of the similarity between MS Word and Corel WordPerfect. We're a lot less tolerant about IP then we used to be.
I found Shrek overrated
on
Reviews:Shrek
·
· Score: 1
spolers
The movie started out promising, and got me rolling more then a few times, but everything between the time the princess' secret is revealed to the end was utterly contrived and painful for me to watch. I was hoping for a somewhat original plot, but it turned out that the fact the protagonist is an ogre was just a gimmick. "Prince Charming" is a typical villian, Shrek is a very typical hero, and simply changing his physical appearance doesn't help much. The abundance of cliches in the last act almost ruined it completely for me.
The most annoying part was the Princess taking on "love's true form" as an ogre at the end. Besides being completely predictable, this destroyed any intention the movie may have had of being unique. The main crisis was all about Shrek and Fiona being too different for each other, and the ending was a cop-out reconciliation - "the two were the same after all, so it all works out!" - so much for love overcoming adversity (and, not to be too PC, avoiding any unpleasant racial differences).
All that said, I'm sure the kids who haven't seen variations on this plot a zillion times already will love the movie, and in fact there were enough chuckles and all-out gut-busters that I enjoyed it too (not to mention the jaw-dropping CGI). Given a choice though, I would have waited for rental.
There is no legitimate use for Napster, I agree. Napster users are willful copyright infringers, and Napster obviously condones it. It's a completely different situation.
Furthermore, I'm not saying Asus' cheating drivers should be illegal (another difference from the Napster analogy), but they market their product to competetive gamers, a market that doesn't take kindly to cheating. I'm not saying it should be illegal, I'm saying it's not cool of them to do this, and gamers don't take kindly to it. If there were legitimate uses for this so-called "innovation", things would be different.
"SeeThrough technology" has no legitimate use. ASUS themselves say:
There are three special weapons for ASUS VGA cards' users -- Transparent View, Wireframe View, and Extra Light. If you do not have an ASUS VGA card -- be careful! Never compete in the 3D games with anyone who has an ASUS VGA card. Because the only result is to loose.
This isn't about technology being evil because it can be used for evil. It's about a company showing no fucking respect to the gaming community and encouraging cheating to raise profits. Name some honest uses of this feature and I'll shut up. Otherwise, only get self-righteous about issues that you understand.
Under the organization's rules, Rambus was required to disclose that it had patents that potentially entitled it to royalties for DRAM and DDR DRAM. It didn't. Rambus, however, defended itself by stating that the rules were unclear and not enforced by JEDEC. Evidence uncovered during the case showed that JEDEC's enforcement procedures were less than perfect.
Some please explain, how is a standards committe supposed to "enforce" disclosure rules? Either you abide by the rules, or you break them and get sued later, right?
"2) clones are denied certain rights through legislative action due to religious and other group's pressuring (try and argue with a straight face that Congress won't pass stupid, knee-jerk legislation affecting important issues)"
Who, exactly, is going to want to take rights away from clones? These clones aren't Frakenstein monsters - they're conceived normally, so they'll have a soul, and the religious groups will probably be the most steadfast defenders of their civil rights. Last I checked they were the ones concerned about the "sanctity of all human life"
You can get a good case for the Nomad Jukebox (and the PJB-100) from headphone.com, an audiophile site. Of course it's custom built, so not exactly cheap: http://www.headphone.com/ProductsBags/TheNomadBag. asp
Slashdot Mirror
If I choose to sell my hot dogs to passerbys for $5.00, while the cart around the corner (and out of sight) sells the same thing for $0.50, do I have an obligation to tell them that they can save $4.50 by walking 15 feet? No. Of course not. It is not the hot dog guy's fault if the consumers are dupes/idiots/uninformed.
No, there is certainly no legal or ethical obligation to tell them squat. You shouldn't be too surprised, however, when angry customers who just rounded the corner come back and try to tell everyone else in line that they're being ripped off.
And to speak more candidly, I find your attitude disgusting. As people who are more informed of these issues than the general public, some of us feel a responsibility to try to impress upon them the importance of online privacy, among many other things. People don't deserve to be deceived simply because they are dupes/idiots/uninformed. If they choose to forfeit their privacy, so be it, but it should be an informed decision. And like it or not, we all must rely on one another to make informed decisions.
This argument would make sense if the allegedly immoral actions in question only affected those people who chose to partake in them (using drugs, extramarital sex, etc). In this case, another life is the sticking point, and you can't expect those who believe that the unborn are a human life to stand by and watch them be killed.
I really wonder why I always hear this sort of argument from some on the pro-choice side... it shows a complete and utter lack of understanding of the pro-life point of view (is this mutual?)
If they must legislate something, why not require every site with potentially evil material to use one of the content rating systems, like the ICRA, which at least MSIE and Netscape support.
"On the other hand, you have something like Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Bland single-player, unimaginative and buggy multiplayer, not really worth playing for more than a few hours, if that. (IMHO)"
Not meaning to be inflammatory, but is this a troll? RTCW had the least buggy multiplayer of any game I can think of at release.
Moving from fact to opinion, I won't dispute RTCW's bland single player, but Half-Life just doesn't cut it as a multiplayer engine for many of us who started gaming pre-HL - slow, jerky, and restrictive control. Not to mention the game's lag compensation was a joke for many months after release. Half-Life was a superb single-player game, but since its release Valve has done nothing besides fix bugs at a snail's pace, rehash multiplayer classics for their bastardized Quake engine, and milk third parties and mod developers for all the $$ they're worth. If it wasn't for the exceptional game design of Counter-Strike (which I personally don't enjoy, but to each his own), Valve might actually have finished TF2 by now instead of repackaging Half-Life a million times and cooking up hare-brained ideas like PowerPlay and Steam.
I'm not well-traveled, but I know at least Shaq and Kobe live in California, as well as some Hollywood types.
I share your frustration. This could be the nastiest spyware program ever to reach a mass audience, but it seems that some slashdot editors are unfamiliar with the very basic concept of magnitude.
Yes, greed is good for the economy and thus everyone living here. But don't fool yourself into thinking greed only becomes a problem in the presence of a powerful fed - it's a contributing factor to be sure, but I think it's more complex than that.
The people have been lulled into complacency by our easy lifestyle and corporate culture, and no longer hold corporations accountable for their actions. The people who care aren't numorous enough to make a difference (Slashdot boycotts, anyone?). The Fed's passive role is more damaging than its active role, allowing people to get away with things that they shouldn't be able to. Who in the federal government cares if Corporation X poisons Small Town Y's water?
I assert that instead of reducing the power of government as a whole, shifting power to local governments will increase corporate accountability. This must be coupled with true federal regulation of interstate commerce, to prevent local governments from bribing large corporations with tax incentives, lax environmental regulations, etc, and to keep corporations from demanding said bribes. This is akin to extortion, and recently happened here in Oregon, with Intel asking for special favors from the state to make it worth their while to build a new plant here rather than some other state that would be more accomodating to their bottom line. Hypothetically speaking, people shouldn't be forced to choose between jobs and safe water.
mod dis shit up
Mod chips that only exist for the playing of copied (or as we prefer to say, "backed-up") games have been around since the early days of the Playstation 1, but as the submission says, Sony didn't do anything about those. Who knows whether their present legal action represents a causal relationship with the new chips' capabilities, but it's a reasonable hypothesis.
I am a CS student, and my roommate is an art student. He's picked up 3D rendering skills quite fast and shows great potential, but the man cannot afford more than his K6-2 to do his rendering on (I guess he has too much pride to use some cpu time on my box). I'm not trying to justify warez here, but draw your own conclusions. The software must be learned somehow ;)
Of course, another of my more well-off artist friends paid a grand for an educational-discounted version of 3DS MAX...
Okay, where do I apply?
No offense intended because I agree with the spirit of your post, but some of us don't have the connections, can't get our foot in the door, or are beaten out by those who possess inferior skills but know how to market themself.
I don't mean to sound bitter, because I'm sure all will be well with time - but especially in our current economy, making money just isn't that easy for many.
(Disclosure: I'm a CS student that had to haul boxes around at a warehouse last summer to pay for hacking toys)
To actually eliminate a bad government would require the use of force, which wouldn't sit well with public opinion. Better to let their kids die then ours.
Incidentally, the 5000+ that died in the WTC attack are a drop in the bucket compared to the allegedly 1.5 million in Iraq the last few years. When the numbers get that high, it's time to stop playing the blame game and look for a real solution.
arf
And even socialists would have a problem with it, since the RIAA is unaccountable to the public and unregulated by the government
The difference is this: your examples are all of government-provided services that the government has at least some control over.
The government does not and should not subsidize the music industry with taxes unless they also start regulating it. Public money shouldn't go to an entity that's not accountable to the public, or should at least be proportional to the amount of accountability we have.
I agree with you about 6. :P)
Xenogears had a rediculously epic plot, and could have eclipsed FF6 as my favorite had the second disc not been such a let-down (sorry, you'll see
A great article that talks about how scientists should be objective.
why there wasn't all sorts of legal trouble because of the similarity between MS Word and Corel WordPerfect. We're a lot less tolerant about IP then we used to be.
spolers
The movie started out promising, and got me rolling more then a few times, but everything between the time the princess' secret is revealed to the end was utterly contrived and painful for me to watch. I was hoping for a somewhat original plot, but it turned out that the fact the protagonist is an ogre was just a gimmick. "Prince Charming" is a typical villian, Shrek is a very typical hero, and simply changing his physical appearance doesn't help much. The abundance of cliches in the last act almost ruined it completely for me.
The most annoying part was the Princess taking on "love's true form" as an ogre at the end. Besides being completely predictable, this destroyed any intention the movie may have had of being unique. The main crisis was all about Shrek and Fiona being too different for each other, and the ending was a cop-out reconciliation - "the two were the same after all, so it all works out!" - so much for love overcoming adversity (and, not to be too PC, avoiding any unpleasant racial differences).
All that said, I'm sure the kids who haven't seen variations on this plot a zillion times already will love the movie, and in fact there were enough chuckles and all-out gut-busters that I enjoyed it too (not to mention the jaw-dropping CGI). Given a choice though, I would have waited for rental.
-mati
There is no legitimate use for Napster, I agree. Napster users are willful copyright infringers, and Napster obviously condones it. It's a completely different situation.
Furthermore, I'm not saying Asus' cheating drivers should be illegal (another difference from the Napster analogy), but they market their product to competetive gamers, a market that doesn't take kindly to cheating. I'm not saying it should be illegal, I'm saying it's not cool of them to do this, and gamers don't take kindly to it. If there were legitimate uses for this so-called "innovation", things would be different.
Your flame is pure strawman.
+5 Insightful??
It should have been moddded +5 Inciteful
"2) clones are denied certain rights through legislative action due to religious and other group's pressuring (try and argue with a straight face that Congress won't pass stupid, knee-jerk legislation affecting important issues)"
Who, exactly, is going to want to take rights away from clones? These clones aren't Frakenstein monsters - they're conceived normally, so they'll have a soul, and the religious groups will probably be the most steadfast defenders of their civil rights. Last I checked they were the ones concerned about the "sanctity of all human life"
-mati
You can get a good case for the Nomad Jukebox (and the PJB-100) from headphone.com, an audiophile site. Of course it's custom built, so not exactly cheap: http://www.headphone.com/ProductsBags/TheNomadBag. asp
-mati