First of all there is no such thing as federal law in Denmark. The country is far too small, so all lawmaking is made on a national level, with a certain level of ad-hoc rule for county mayors and other local institutions. Secondly the court does not make, only enforce law. All laws are made in the parliament. Those laws might be corrupt, but even though I dislike the current government, I do not think we should put it down to anything but either ideology or incompetence. You should note my country also has an infamous 'deep'-linking law, basically making it illegal to systematically link to the deeper parts of another website (making e.g. Google News illegal).
And I'm taking what the summary (and article) says with a grain of salt. I might not have been clear, but what I called the 'I, Robot' approach is what I consider interactive adverts taken too far; Embedding advertisements so deep into the product that it detracts significantly from the experience. In my example it was a movie, but cell phones and SMS-spam would be similar cases of limiting value.
A beer commercial might be watched voluntarily on Youtube. Google Adsense doesn't try to claim attention on a web-page. These are the only types of commercials I see nowadays exactly because I use methods such as the original parent points out. If any product or service tries to go too far in getting my attention to drift away from the experience I actually want, then I actively avoid both the product that functions as an advert-platform AND the advertised product.
The alternative is of course to make advertising that isn't annoying. That way there would be no need of blocking it. Google Adsense and beer commercials come to mind as examples of non-annoying ads.
Not that I say that that the 'I, Robot' approach wouldn't also be taken, but ads on the OS level would be just one more reason not to use Windows.
These artists make far more than they would be able to make with a standard record deal. They might not be able to live solely off the income from their music, but if every person I knew who could sing or play an instrument could make a decent income on that alone, then the rest of the workforce would be a great deal smaller.
Many artistic people would rather die than be prevented from using their talents. If there was even a slight chance of getting money to buy a cup of coffee, or even just get appreciated, that could be enough for them to put it out on the net. A lot of that stuff would be terrible of course, just like videos on Youtube or drawings on Deviantart can be horrible, but as long as a search will lead you to the good stuff, then the traditional businesses will die out slowly.
Just to clarify; Magnatune offers the possibility to pay between 5 and 18 dollars, with the standard set at 8 dollars. They claim the average purchase to be 8,3 dollars to my recollection.
I have no idea how people bought these phones, but if Apple required you to sign a form promising not to use anything but AT&T for six months, then you wouldn't really be able to claim independence from the lock-in agreement.
I guess it is ethical hacking to check a friend or family members computer for security holes using nmap, but I also find it sad that many people don't know what hacker originally meant. Still, you have to accept the reality. Hacker is considered a bad term in mainstream society, and putting 'ethical' in front of it makes it easier to explain that it can also mean something good.
My mistake. I formed my views on libertarians from those people with "air-time". Since libertarianism isn't a term I'm used to in the political scope of where I live, I didn't really have any other place to form my opinion.
I guess 'libertarian' is just one more term suffering from over-simplification.:)
Yes, I know. Liberal politicians have a tendency to either become social-democrats or conservatives once they gain power, but that doesn't change that the word 'liberal' still means 'individual civic and economic freedom' outside the USA. Libertarians just tend to take these essential ideas to an extreme and use them in ways and cases that would make most people cringe, which is why it is called ultra-liberalism.
To put it another way, I have the same attitude towards libertarianism as I have towards Richard Dawkins ideas of new-atheism. I'm an atheist, but his views are in many ways so far from mine, that I might as well consider him the spiritual leader of just another religion.
Actually it is because the kindergarden (børnehaver) are very common in Denmark. I had read an article about one earlier today, so it was the first that popped into my mind. And I'm by no way authoritarian (I'm social-liberal-green, where liberal is in the non-US sense), I just dislike extremism and consider the libertarian ideals as unrealistic as that of anarchism (eg. in an anarchy everybody is free to suppress others, so the system is self-destructive).
In my eyes libertarianism merely creates a different kind of authoritarian regime, and instead of following that endless cycle of revolution/counter-revolution, it would be easier to have a system where _all_ institutions of power (including the private sector) is held back by checks and balances to insure the 'commonhood' of average citizens can live a life of freedom from oppression and secure that they decide how their lives should be lived.
I can attest that libertarians (or ultra-liberals as we tend to call them where I live) are considered only a few pennies short of insane, but I can easily understand why they are prevalent in the American (USA) society.
First of all there is a historic precedent of ridiculing the left wing. During the Cold War so much anti-socialistic propaganda was spewed out in America, that the word has clear negative association. Calling national healthcare "socialized-medicine" is a good example of how anything non-private is considered bad form.
Secondly there is the obviously flawed democratic system in the United States and the bureaucratic problems of a large state also seen in the EU. It is hard to trust the state with any responsibility when corruption, surveillance and incompetence is rife. It is however important to note that large corporations face the same problems of large states, and that many anti-authoritarian geeks dismiss libertarianism for this very reason (libertarians want deregulation, but deregulation means that "evil" becomes a market-advantage for many corporations)
The third reason I can think of is the obvious focus on individual performance, which goes a bit further in the US than in even the rest of the western world. In Denmark, where I live, the focus is more on the symbiosis of individual and society than on how the individual can deal with society. I get the feeling that geeks/nerds in the US are particularly against acknowledging the values of humanity as a group animal, and only focus on its downsides.
Personally I can't see anything wrong with a large public sector. It can be as decentralized as the private sector, giving grants to institutions and general guidelines on what should be accomplished, but letting the actual governance be done by, in the case of a kindergarden, the parents and the pedagogues/day-care workers.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all there is no such thing as federal law in Denmark. The country is far too small, so all lawmaking is made on a national level, with a certain level of ad-hoc rule for county mayors and other local institutions.
Secondly the court does not make, only enforce law. All laws are made in the parliament. Those laws might be corrupt, but even though I dislike the current government, I do not think we should put it down to anything but either ideology or incompetence. You should note my country also has an infamous 'deep'-linking law, basically making it illegal to systematically link to the deeper parts of another website (making e.g. Google News illegal).
And I'm taking what the summary (and article) says with a grain of salt. I might not have been clear, but what I called the 'I, Robot' approach is what I consider interactive adverts taken too far; Embedding advertisements so deep into the product that it detracts significantly from the experience. In my example it was a movie, but cell phones and SMS-spam would be similar cases of limiting value.
A beer commercial might be watched voluntarily on Youtube. Google Adsense doesn't try to claim attention on a web-page. These are the only types of commercials I see nowadays exactly because I use methods such as the original parent points out. If any product or service tries to go too far in getting my attention to drift away from the experience I actually want, then I actively avoid both the product that functions as an advert-platform AND the advertised product.
The alternative is of course to make advertising that isn't annoying. That way there would be no need of blocking it. Google Adsense and beer commercials come to mind as examples of non-annoying ads.
Not that I say that that the 'I, Robot' approach wouldn't also be taken, but ads on the OS level would be just one more reason not to use Windows.
These artists make far more than they would be able to make with a standard record deal. They might not be able to live solely off the income from their music, but if every person I knew who could sing or play an instrument could make a decent income on that alone, then the rest of the workforce would be a great deal smaller.
Many artistic people would rather die than be prevented from using their talents. If there was even a slight chance of getting money to buy a cup of coffee, or even just get appreciated, that could be enough for them to put it out on the net. A lot of that stuff would be terrible of course, just like videos on Youtube or drawings on Deviantart can be horrible, but as long as a search will lead you to the good stuff, then the traditional businesses will die out slowly.
Just to clarify; Magnatune offers the possibility to pay between 5 and 18 dollars, with the standard set at 8 dollars. They claim the average purchase to be 8,3 dollars to my recollection.
I have no idea how people bought these phones, but if Apple required you to sign a form promising not to use anything but AT&T for six months, then you wouldn't really be able to claim independence from the lock-in agreement.
Remember, if we don't keep everything secret, the terrorists will win!
I guess it is ethical hacking to check a friend or family members computer for security holes using nmap, but I also find it sad that many people don't know what hacker originally meant. Still, you have to accept the reality. Hacker is considered a bad term in mainstream society, and putting 'ethical' in front of it makes it easier to explain that it can also mean something good.
My mistake. I formed my views on libertarians from those people with "air-time". Since libertarianism isn't a term I'm used to in the political scope of where I live, I didn't really have any other place to form my opinion.
:)
I guess 'libertarian' is just one more term suffering from over-simplification.
Yes, I know. Liberal politicians have a tendency to either become social-democrats or conservatives once they gain power, but that doesn't change that the word 'liberal' still means 'individual civic and economic freedom' outside the USA. Libertarians just tend to take these essential ideas to an extreme and use them in ways and cases that would make most people cringe, which is why it is called ultra-liberalism.
To put it another way, I have the same attitude towards libertarianism as I have towards Richard Dawkins ideas of new-atheism. I'm an atheist, but his views are in many ways so far from mine, that I might as well consider him the spiritual leader of just another religion.
Actually it is because the kindergarden (børnehaver) are very common in Denmark. I had read an article about one earlier today, so it was the first that popped into my mind. And I'm by no way authoritarian (I'm social-liberal-green, where liberal is in the non-US sense), I just dislike extremism and consider the libertarian ideals as unrealistic as that of anarchism (eg. in an anarchy everybody is free to suppress others, so the system is self-destructive).
In my eyes libertarianism merely creates a different kind of authoritarian regime, and instead of following that endless cycle of revolution/counter-revolution, it would be easier to have a system where _all_ institutions of power (including the private sector) is held back by checks and balances to insure the 'commonhood' of average citizens can live a life of freedom from oppression and secure that they decide how their lives should be lived.
I can attest that libertarians (or ultra-liberals as we tend to call them where I live) are considered only a few pennies short of insane, but I can easily understand why they are prevalent in the American (USA) society.
First of all there is a historic precedent of ridiculing the left wing. During the Cold War so much anti-socialistic propaganda was spewed out in America, that the word has clear negative association. Calling national healthcare "socialized-medicine" is a good example of how anything non-private is considered bad form.
Secondly there is the obviously flawed democratic system in the United States and the bureaucratic problems of a large state also seen in the EU. It is hard to trust the state with any responsibility when corruption, surveillance and incompetence is rife.
It is however important to note that large corporations face the same problems of large states, and that many anti-authoritarian geeks dismiss libertarianism for this very reason (libertarians want deregulation, but deregulation means that "evil" becomes a market-advantage for many corporations)
The third reason I can think of is the obvious focus on individual performance, which goes a bit further in the US than in even the rest of the western world. In Denmark, where I live, the focus is more on the symbiosis of individual and society than on how the individual can deal with society. I get the feeling that geeks/nerds in the US are particularly against acknowledging the values of humanity as a group animal, and only focus on its downsides.
Personally I can't see anything wrong with a large public sector. It can be as decentralized as the private sector, giving grants to institutions and general guidelines on what should be accomplished, but letting the actual governance be done by, in the case of a kindergarden, the parents and the pedagogues/day-care workers.
Above comment was made my creation by the way.