It's a more open society all around, and privacy simply for the sake of privacy never made sense as a value anyway.
I see you have never had a stalker....or been the victim of identity theft....or been accused of a crime you didn't commit because you "fit the description"...
Google is an international corporation. Surely if it can afford to pay an army of lawyers to fight this guy, it could have paid one lawyer before launching Gmail to make sure the name wasn't trademarked.
When was the last time you voted a CEO out of his job because the company provided poor service? That power is usually reserved for the shareholder class, who are frequently not even the company's customers or are ever affected by poor customer service.
When was the last time you, personally, had a hand in holding any corporate executive responsible for ANYTHING bad they did? "Not buying their product" doesn't count. We're talking about monopolies (health care).
On the other hand, much of Congress was just held accountable last election by the people it failed.
The only difference I am seeing between the Irish back in the 1800s and South Americans today is that the Irish had a way to enter legally, whereas the South Americans today basically do not.
Both groups were fleeing something (whether it be poverty or religious persecution).
Both groups pretty much stayed "among their own." It has always been rare for first-generation immigrants (especially older ones) to learn English upon arriving, and this has been true throughout history. By the third generation or so, English speaking is widespread. This is also true today.
Both groups were, in general, coming here to work.
Talk about fair! Todays immigrants just want the same chances immigrants years ago got.
If your only problem with these folks is that they're here illegally, the solution is simple: Make them all legal. I think 12 million fewer criminals in this country is a great thing, and amnesty would do just that, instantly.
Sure you can argue against amnesty by pointing out how unfair it is for everyone waiting in line already. But this is a pretty flimsy argument. Make the wait one week for those already in line and two weeks for everyone else. Problem solved.
I don't think anyone deserves squat, no matter what side of the line they were born on. So there goes your analogy.
All we "deserve" is the right to make something of ourselves should we choose to.
But there's another reason that I don't think your analogy works: I don't believe the USA is anything like a private home. We've historically welcomed anyone who wanted to come make a better life for themselves. Why, all sorts of characters were streaming into the country throughout its history. My ancestors were Irish, almost as hated in the 1800s as the Mexicans are today, but they were grudgingly let in because of the (IMHO correct) belief that people who want to make a better life for themselves tend to succeed, and sometimes also make a better life for everyone around them.
Nowadays, the legal gates are all but shut. Do you think Juan Carlos can just waltz into the US consulate in Mexico, plop down the paperwork and application fee that he saved a year for, and say "I'd like to go to the United States legally, to make a better life for myself" ???
After the agents behind the counter stop laughing they'll explain to him that unless Juan is sponsored by an employer or has a rich family already living in the USA and is willing to wait years, his chances of getting in legally are precisely zero.
This is not what I think the USA is all about. It shouldn't be some private, exclusive, gated community that you have to have the "right pedigree" to enter. I've seen societies like this and I don't want to have anything to do with them.
I guarantee you that the people who run DailyKos, MoveOn, etc. have FBI files and their actions are closely monitored and scrutinized. I would bet my life on it. As someone else mentioned, it's not paranoia if you can point to a clear pattern of historic abuse.
While nobody is springing out of the shadows and "disappearing" them, you can rest assured that if the government can abuse whatever information it is gathering on its domestic enemies in some surreptitious way, it will.
So, you're arguing that one group of poor people who don't pay income taxes deserves educational training, medical care and job training, but another group of poor people who don't pay income taxes don't deserve them, simply because they were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line?
POOR PEOPLE, on the other hand, are a burden on the health system (a number of emergency rooms in California hospitals closed because bills were not being paid), are unsafe drivers (number of hit-and-run accidents by unlicensed and uninsured drivers has skyrocketed in California), drain resources in the education system (some districts are over made up of over 70% illegal aliens), all the while not contributing one dime to the infrastructure that supports them (since they don't pay taxes because they have no INCOME).
I won't even start on the failure rates of POOR PEOPLE in the public school system compared to other minorities, or the criminal statistics for POOR PEOPLE
See, you can level every single one of your complaints at "poor people," too. Perhaps you should start crusading against poverty in general in your state, rather than engaging in a which hunt against people who's only other crime is "not getting the right paper stamped".
So make it a 1 week wait for the people already "in line" and 2 weeks for the ones given "amnesty". That way nobody cuts in front of you in this invisible line.
The process is currently too slow for legal immigration, and impossible for people illegally here. Anything's got to be better than this.
But that's not what the UW letter says. From the letter, which was posted by an AC to this thread:
The RIAA is now sending colleges and universities a letter for each instance they find of a student illegally downloading material from the internet and requesting the university to identify the individual student and forward the letter to him or her.
Emphasis mine.
The way I read it, the RIAA is requesting that UW itentify the students, and the university decided that it will. Obviously, they are straying from your "standard procedure."
What a time to not have mod points. You are spot on.
It's not the case of "We have freedom, they don't!" It's more of a "We have one kind of freedom and one kind of government control, they have different kinds of freedom and government control." It's about time we all stop thinking in black-and-white terms.
Perhaps part of the reason for this is that we have become (well, the middle class, anyway) much wealthier in the last 10 - 15 years
As another poster mentioned, we have not generally become wealthier lately. Except for a very small, privileged minority, real wages have been steadily declining. It's just that we are consuming more and saving less.
The interesting question is, why are we consuming more, while our ancestors generally were just as satisfied and happy (perhaps even moreso) with their low level of product consumption?
Because it's impossible to communicate with your friends and family without a mobile phone, right? So, before the early 1990s, we've all been living in communication-less isolation bubbles?
I generally don't trust surveys, but I believe this one.
Ask anyone (especially an American) whether they'd give up TV for the rest of their lives for $1,000,000. I doubt you'd find many "yes" answers, and TV doesn't even hold any social or "communicate with family" value whatsoever.
Dell and HP provided some model legislation that was used as the basis for the bill
I'm not naive--I know it happens all the time, but I still get the shivers every time I read things like this. Am I the only one uncomfortable with the concept of corporations drafting laws?
I wonder what our country's founding fathers would have thought of the newspapers of their time reporting "This bill, drafted by the Honourable East India Company, and passed by Congress..."
Are you (and all of your other fellow apologists in this thread) really THAT callous? Even if those workers made that maximum of $4 per day, I still make more in one month than they do in a year.
Please do some googling for the terms "real exchange rate" "big mac index" and "cost of living" and get back to us. I don't care that I make 15x what a Chinese worker makes because my home and food cost 15x as much as well.
It's like those late-night "charity" commercials: OMFG!! So-and-so only makes A DOLLAR A DAY!!!! Yea, well that dollar goes a really long way in Bumblefuckistan.
You claim the sequels are "better." In what way? Graphics, sure. I'll give you that. But people don't play games to drool over the DirectX10 vertex shader procedural textured 100,000 polygon models. The actual game is what's important. There might be a different storyline, but essentially sequels and originals are the same game. Same controls, same basic subgoals, same winning conditions.
You mentioned Doom and Doom II. What a perfect example. Same games. Shoot the bad guys, get through the maze. Besides technology and story content, the entire first person shooter genre hasn't fundamentally changed at all since Wolfenstein 3D. Gimmicks have tacked on to each branch in the family tree, but they're all essentially the same game.
I pine for the days where game developers actually had imaginative and interesting new ideas. Look at any video game store today, or any list of the top selling games, and all you will see are sequels, expansion packs, and "brand extension" titles.
How many more fucking Tom Clancy Rainbow Sixes do we really need? Another Command And Conquer?? Final Fantasy XIXXI Super Mega Ultra Neon Advance? SimCity 50000?
Rule of thumb: If the video game's title has a number or a colon (:) in it, it's probably unimaginative pap.
Eventually some other insurance company will probably pick up the pace and find some way to offer these people insurance without outrageous prices
That's a BIG "probably". Talk to someone who is unable to get any kind of private medical insurance at all from any company at any price, due to some red flag in their medical history.
In the U.S.A. being un-insurable is pretty much a sentence to eventual bankruptcy should an illness strike.
You still can't get reliable, quality cell service in many populated areas in the U.S.A. yet the government is providing service so soldiers can chat on their RAZRs in Garblockistan?
Should this be a "Good to see where our priorities are" rant, or a "Yaay, the private sector sure solves all problems!" rant?
Slashdot Mirror
It's a more open society all around, and privacy simply for the sake of privacy never made sense as a value anyway.
...or been the victim of identity theft. ...or been accused of a crime you didn't commit because you "fit the description" ...
I see you have never had a stalker.
Google is an international corporation. Surely if it can afford to pay an army of lawyers to fight this guy, it could have paid one lawyer before launching Gmail to make sure the name wasn't trademarked.
No excuse.
...which in only an extremely remote and unconnected way holds the CEO or executives accountable for anything.
When was the last time you voted a CEO out of his job because the company provided poor service? That power is usually reserved for the shareholder class, who are frequently not even the company's customers or are ever affected by poor customer service.
When was the last time you, personally, had a hand in holding any corporate executive responsible for ANYTHING bad they did? "Not buying their product" doesn't count. We're talking about monopolies (health care).
On the other hand, much of Congress was just held accountable last election by the people it failed.
The only difference I am seeing between the Irish back in the 1800s and South Americans today is that the Irish had a way to enter legally, whereas the South Americans today basically do not.
Both groups were fleeing something (whether it be poverty or religious persecution).
Both groups pretty much stayed "among their own." It has always been rare for first-generation immigrants (especially older ones) to learn English upon arriving, and this has been true throughout history. By the third generation or so, English speaking is widespread. This is also true today.
Both groups were, in general, coming here to work.
Talk about fair! Todays immigrants just want the same chances immigrants years ago got.
If your only problem with these folks is that they're here illegally, the solution is simple: Make them all legal. I think 12 million fewer criminals in this country is a great thing, and amnesty would do just that, instantly.
Sure you can argue against amnesty by pointing out how unfair it is for everyone waiting in line already. But this is a pretty flimsy argument. Make the wait one week for those already in line and two weeks for everyone else. Problem solved.
Ever driven over the speed limit? That's also "disdain for our laws".
Anyway, how exactly do you define, "being American" and how do you know they don't want to also "be American"?
One of the reasons I'm in the USA is that I want to "make a buck". Does that make me less of a real American?
I don't think anyone deserves squat, no matter what side of the line they were born on. So there goes your analogy.
All we "deserve" is the right to make something of ourselves should we choose to.
But there's another reason that I don't think your analogy works: I don't believe the USA is anything like a private home. We've historically welcomed anyone who wanted to come make a better life for themselves. Why, all sorts of characters were streaming into the country throughout its history. My ancestors were Irish, almost as hated in the 1800s as the Mexicans are today, but they were grudgingly let in because of the (IMHO correct) belief that people who want to make a better life for themselves tend to succeed, and sometimes also make a better life for everyone around them.
Nowadays, the legal gates are all but shut. Do you think Juan Carlos can just waltz into the US consulate in Mexico, plop down the paperwork and application fee that he saved a year for, and say "I'd like to go to the United States legally, to make a better life for myself" ???
After the agents behind the counter stop laughing they'll explain to him that unless Juan is sponsored by an employer or has a rich family already living in the USA and is willing to wait years, his chances of getting in legally are precisely zero.
This is not what I think the USA is all about. It shouldn't be some private, exclusive, gated community that you have to have the "right pedigree" to enter. I've seen societies like this and I don't want to have anything to do with them.
I guarantee you that the people who run DailyKos, MoveOn, etc. have FBI files and their actions are closely monitored and scrutinized. I would bet my life on it. As someone else mentioned, it's not paranoia if you can point to a clear pattern of historic abuse.
While nobody is springing out of the shadows and "disappearing" them, you can rest assured that if the government can abuse whatever information it is gathering on its domestic enemies in some surreptitious way, it will.
So, you're arguing that one group of poor people who don't pay income taxes deserves educational training, medical care and job training, but another group of poor people who don't pay income taxes don't deserve them, simply because they were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line?
POOR PEOPLE, on the other hand, are a burden on the health system (a number of emergency rooms in California hospitals closed because bills were not being paid), are unsafe drivers (number of hit-and-run accidents by unlicensed and uninsured drivers has skyrocketed in California), drain resources in the education system (some districts are over made up of over 70% illegal aliens), all the while not contributing one dime to the infrastructure that supports them (since they don't pay taxes because they have no INCOME).
I won't even start on the failure rates of POOR PEOPLE in the public school system compared to other minorities, or the criminal statistics for POOR PEOPLE
See, you can level every single one of your complaints at "poor people," too. Perhaps you should start crusading against poverty in general in your state, rather than engaging in a which hunt against people who's only other crime is "not getting the right paper stamped".
Hah. I was going to reply to grandparent post, but you said it best. Bravo!
So make it a 1 week wait for the people already "in line" and 2 weeks for the ones given "amnesty". That way nobody cuts in front of you in this invisible line.
The process is currently too slow for legal immigration, and impossible for people illegally here. Anything's got to be better than this.
But that's not what the UW letter says. From the letter, which was posted by an AC to this thread:
The RIAA is now sending colleges and universities a letter for each instance they find of a student illegally downloading material from the internet and requesting the university to identify the individual student and forward the letter to him or her.
Emphasis mine.
The way I read it, the RIAA is requesting that UW itentify the students, and the university decided that it will. Obviously, they are straying from your "standard procedure."
What a time to not have mod points. You are spot on.
It's not the case of "We have freedom, they don't!" It's more of a "We have one kind of freedom and one kind of government control, they have different kinds of freedom and government control." It's about time we all stop thinking in black-and-white terms.
Perhaps part of the reason for this is that we have become (well, the middle class, anyway) much wealthier in the last 10 - 15 years
As another poster mentioned, we have not generally become wealthier lately. Except for a very small, privileged minority, real wages have been steadily declining. It's just that we are consuming more and saving less.
The interesting question is, why are we consuming more, while our ancestors generally were just as satisfied and happy (perhaps even moreso) with their low level of product consumption?
Because it's impossible to communicate with your friends and family without a mobile phone, right? So, before the early 1990s, we've all been living in communication-less isolation bubbles?
I generally don't trust surveys, but I believe this one.
Ask anyone (especially an American) whether they'd give up TV for the rest of their lives for $1,000,000. I doubt you'd find many "yes" answers, and TV doesn't even hold any social or "communicate with family" value whatsoever.
It's consumption addiction.
Dell and HP provided some model legislation that was used as the basis for the bill
I'm not naive--I know it happens all the time, but I still get the shivers every time I read things like this. Am I the only one uncomfortable with the concept of corporations drafting laws?
I wonder what our country's founding fathers would have thought of the newspapers of their time reporting "This bill, drafted by the Honourable East India Company, and passed by Congress..."
Are you (and all of your other fellow apologists in this thread) really THAT callous? Even if those workers made that maximum of $4 per day, I still make more in one month than they do in a year.
Please do some googling for the terms "real exchange rate" "big mac index" and "cost of living" and get back to us. I don't care that I make 15x what a Chinese worker makes because my home and food cost 15x as much as well.
It's like those late-night "charity" commercials: OMFG!! So-and-so only makes A DOLLAR A DAY!!!! Yea, well that dollar goes a really long way in Bumblefuckistan.
I don't know anyone with a "US" driver's license. I have a Virginia driver's license. Hopefully it will stay that way.
DUI is not a menial conviction. If you don't believe me, try convincing the families with loved ones who have been murdered by intoxicated drivers.
That's why vehicular manslaughter and murder are serious convictions. You haven't convinced anyone that DUI is not menial with that statement.
You claim the sequels are "better." In what way? Graphics, sure. I'll give you that. But people don't play games to drool over the DirectX10 vertex shader procedural textured 100,000 polygon models. The actual game is what's important. There might be a different storyline, but essentially sequels and originals are the same game. Same controls, same basic subgoals, same winning conditions.
You mentioned Doom and Doom II. What a perfect example. Same games. Shoot the bad guys, get through the maze. Besides technology and story content, the entire first person shooter genre hasn't fundamentally changed at all since Wolfenstein 3D. Gimmicks have tacked on to each branch in the family tree, but they're all essentially the same game.
I pine for the days where game developers actually had imaginative and interesting new ideas. Look at any video game store today, or any list of the top selling games, and all you will see are sequels, expansion packs, and "brand extension" titles.
How many more fucking Tom Clancy Rainbow Sixes do we really need? Another Command And Conquer?? Final Fantasy XIXXI Super Mega Ultra Neon Advance? SimCity 50000?
Rule of thumb: If the video game's title has a number or a colon (:) in it, it's probably unimaginative pap.
Eventually some other insurance company will probably pick up the pace and find some way to offer these people insurance without outrageous prices
That's a BIG "probably". Talk to someone who is unable to get any kind of private medical insurance at all from any company at any price, due to some red flag in their medical history.
In the U.S.A. being un-insurable is pretty much a sentence to eventual bankruptcy should an illness strike.
I think you are actually better off playing WoW on election day.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have an idiot serving as president today.
You still can't get reliable, quality cell service in many populated areas in the U.S.A. yet the government is providing service so soldiers can chat on their RAZRs in Garblockistan?
Should this be a "Good to see where our priorities are" rant, or a "Yaay, the private sector sure solves all problems!" rant?