For the past century, the technology required to make quality informatic products (whether movies, recorded music, software, or published books) required large amounts of capital to get started, so big companies had an immense advantage.
The march of progress, however, makes it easier and easier to create, market and distribute such content, enabling individuals and small companies to produce their own, and even make money in the process (no matter how ideological you are, there always lurks that bottom line).
Whether indy labels, free music archives, independent filmmakers, or global enclaves of thousands of hackers making free software, these independent types are starting to provide content with more creativity and variety than was ever possible under the media behemoths. Soon they'll give the Big Guys a real run for their money.
Of course, the Internet accellerates this trend a thousandfold. For Big Media, the Internet is Pandora's box, but for the rest of us, it's our Prometheus.
Sooner or later, this independent effort will force all content providers, big and small to provide their wares at reasonable prices, and the Big Guys will feel the pinch... especially when the rest of the world realizes that they don't even need to pirate anything anymore, due to the proliferation of free and low-cost content.
Although Big Media knows they need us, their dirty little secret is, We don't need them.
Can I sell an improved version of the Player's Handbook under their D20 license? No. Can I compete with their core rules while still leveraging the available third-party source material as a result? No.
The D20 license is akin to SCSL: you get to look at the source, and if you make complementary products, great. If you want to make and distribute core changes, though, HOW DARE YOU!
"The other great effect of Open Gaming should be a rapid, constant improvement in the quality of the rules. With lots of people able to work on them in public, problems with math, with ease of use, of variance from standard forms, etc. should all be improved over time. The great thing about Open Gaming is that it is interactive -- someone figures out a way to make something work better, and everyone who uses that part of the rules is free to incorporate it into their products. Including us."
Remember, this is a proposal. If this thing ever gets off the ground, I for one will count myself lucky.
Yeah. If you check the "Remember this decision" checkbox, then your acceptance or refusal of the current cookie applies to all cookies on the site, until you remove them from your always- accept/reject list.
Lynx also has a similar feature, where you can choose to always or never allow cookies from a given domain (and AFAIK Lynx had it first).
Now, if only there were a feature to reject all offsite cookies and images...
If they're anything like me, and that's a big if, a lot of the people who are attracted to Open Source (whether for ideology or the wholesome goodness of market competition) are also the types who are drooling over D&D 3e.
This, if anything, makes the prospect of buying 3e even more tantalizing, since not only would I be purchasing an incredibly cool product, I'd be rewarding a company for its openness and fair competitive spirit.
Do I really want to learn another way of doing things?
Even if you only plan on solving a particular problem a certain way, it almost always pays to know "another way of doing things". Otherwise, you could go through life without realizing that you've been tackling a given problem in a suboptimal manner.
Suppose one day you decided to write your own library similar to GTK or Qt? I don't know about you, but I would certainly be interested in knowing the different ways that each one solved various problems, and I'd also rather have experience programming in both so I know which solutions work best in practice, and which ones need to be replaced by something completely new.
It seems like the only real use of CSS is to make sure people in Japan can't play the movie if they buy it in the [States], or some such nonsense.
What governmental body could resist the temptation to help the DVD CCA with that goal. Whether by maintaining national borders or keeping certain movies in or out of certain regions, the conflict created by maintaining these obsolescent political boundaries is what gives the 20th century nations their power.
They feel that they need to restrict the flow of information, just as they restrict the flow of people. Only by keeping people afraid of some unknown external "enemy" can today's governments hold onto power. They built their nations on force and bloodshed, on top of the corpses of their foes, and it's coming back to haunt them.
(Preaching to the choir?: )
The global Internet gives us an incredible opportunity to erase xenophobia and decentralize information. Corporations and national governments, especially the large, abusive kind, are terrified of this idea.
They realize that the unrestricted flow of information could create the kind of world they've always feared: a world run by people, not artificial constructs like corporations and governments (that is, the kind of government that is called "the government", instead of being thought of as the true representative of the popular will).
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And I thought tape drives were obsolete!
on
Scotch Tape Storage
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· Score: 2
I don't know about anybody else, but quite frankly this scares the dickens out of me! If they can take previously registered domain names, what comes next? The whole etoy fiasco would be nothing compared to what this could lead to.
No, no, no, no, no!
This is an example of the new rules working.
The new rules make it harder to take away a domain name, by requiring that domain name owners have no legitimate reason for having their domain name, and that they are deliberately using it in bad faith.
"The whole etoy fiasco" would not have happened under these new rules.
"If everyone knows that there's DNA in that there pigeon, it makes it a lot easier to find than if they don't even know that you're transmitting DNA via rabies-infected fowl."
That would present quite a challenge, especially since rabies only infects mammals.
I guess it all depends on exactly how much DNA tampering you're willing to do...
"Another favorite steganographic method of mine is to encode data into graphic images, for example, taking a bitmapped image and using a key to encode data onto each pixel, say by incrementing the red RGB value of each pixel by 1 where appropriate. It would be exceedingly difficult to detect that a message even contained data, let alone extracting it without the key."
Now, that is interesting. Of course, if you have a pristine copy of the original image, couldn't you just get the message by using some diff-type method, or does this method have a higher security-to-obscurity ratio than you give it credit for?
"A method to transmit and receive electromagnetic waves which comprises generating opposing magnetic fields having a plane of maximum force running perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating a heat source along an axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating an accelerator parallel to and in close proximity to the heat source, thereby creating an input and output port; and generating a communications signal into the input and output port, thereby sending the signal at a speed faster than light. "
Three words:
I
want
one.
Then again, the fact that it disrupts space-time and breaks the laws of physics may jeopardize the device's chance at FCC compliance...
Oh well... as long as it's compatible with my antigrav pods, my time transporter, and my ACME Junior Scientist Home Alchemy Kit(TM), then I guess I'll still get one.
Of course, I'll be ordering it online (can you imagine the sales tax on these things?)
Why do we as a society even need companies to provide our entertainment?
I refuse to believe that in the absence of commercial entertainment there wouldn't be millions of people with the creativity and initiative to provide content to the world as a hobby, simply for the joy of creation and having their work appreciated.
(Yeah, I know. That idea's almost as crazy as thinking that we could have quality software if people freely shared their source code! Oh, wait a minute...)
With the march of technological progress making the creation of "professional quality" entertainment within the reach of the masses, and the collaborative and distributionary medium of the Internet, we could have a richness of culture unparallelled at any point in history.
The existence of controlling, giant media conglomerates is holding back what could be the Digital Renaissance.
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An innocuous gizmo? I think not...
on
Date Pagers
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· Score: 2
These devices are probably the single most cunning way devised to get users to truthfully reveal their personal details.
These pagers could be a marketer's dream!
Just have the users give out their mailing address when they register for the service, then mail back a card to confirm activation (and to confirm that they were honest when they gave their address!).
Also, when they register, you, the hypothetical evil marketer, program their pager units based on the details they have mailed to you!
They want to ensure the best matches, so they'll be compelled to answer your questionaire truthfully, and the only reason you wouldn't let them directly program their own units would be to make sure they send you several pages of detailed personal information.
Then, as they merrily go about their now-slightly-less-lonely-than-before lives, you (still the hypothetical marketing scum) use their mailing address and their extremely detailed private information to send highly targeted ads to them in order to aggressively market even more of your products.
Or, if you're even lazier and less scrupulous than that, then you can simply sell off their mailing addresses and their personal info to other companies, making a pretty penny in the process!
So, what consumer privacy safeguards exist in Japan? Is there any way that the people who buy these pager-things can be sure that the company will respect their personal information?
"Remember, this is the same organization that tried to trademark the term 'open source'."
Personally, I think it's a pity that opensource.org didn't succeed in ensuring "open source" would only be used to refer to open source products.
At least, the way I see it, it's not a free speech issue, but rather a truth in advertising issue.
And call me naive, but I don't think they had any sinister goals in mind when they tried to trademark it.
The only good thing that may have come out of their failure to trademark a "descriptive term" is that they set a judicial precedent that can be used in the future to keep BigMeanGreedyCo, Inc. from trademarking the same thing. In theory at least.
(Then again, this post may reflect my pro-ESR bias, since I thoroughly enjoy the Jargon file and nethack, and fetchmail checks all my POP accounts every 900 seconds. So bear with me. Also keep in mind that this post is 95% opinion, so don't expect me to submit a mathematical proof or anything.)
Of course, U.S. politicians won't listen to that argument. Instead, they'll blindly stick to a "this is America, it can't happen here" attitude and then sit there stupidly, helplessly as our beautiful economy crashes and burns.
While consumers' desire of stuff they don't really need is good for the economy, a government that wants things it doesn't really need is not.
As other posters have mentioned, there are states which don't even have sales tax.
In these states, where the main differences between shopping locally and shopping out of state is that the latter also adds a shipping fee, plus the time spent waiting for the order to arrive, shopping locally is obviously the more advantageous deal, and supporting local businesses is a no-brainer.
With the lack of a sales tax, consumers' purchasing power is increased as well, which means more cash flowing into local businesses.
And more cash in local businesses means they have more income which means more tax revenues for the state.
So "e-commerce" (silly term, IMO, but ubiquitous nonetheless) is not harming States' economies. Rather, high sales taxes are harming local businesses, lowering consumers' purchasing power, and overall dampening the local economies which means less revenue for the state and local governments.
And the perceived shortfall of revenue simply gets used as an excuse to raise sales taxes even further, which aggravates the problem rather than remedying it.
All this makes consumers even more interested in seeking out-of-state deals which cost less.
IMO, Tax-free Internet sales are a godsend for the consumer, and maybe to staunch the flow of cash out of state, states will have to make shopping locally a better deal, rather than trying to discourage interstate commerce.
Impeding or discouraging interstate commerce does not a happy economy make.
"All you have done is re-state the original poster's claims without substance."
I am the original poster! It's not like I just read my own post and shouted "me too". I just re-emphasized certain points I made in the original post which I think you didn't adequately address.
"In any case, you lay some heavy -- albeit unsubstantiated -- charges at the gnostics' feet. How, precisely, has the gnostic search for gnosis caused 'no end of pain, suffering, humiliation and torture'?"
You are correct in assuming that I meant the breed of gnosticism that strove to deny all worldly urges, and I must confess I didn't know that gnosticism came in 31 flavors.
But I wasn't attacking the gnostics themselves (frankly I could care less what some people want to deny themselves), but rather the particularly nasty strain of their philosophy which has been adopted by some of the more popular religions, which in turn seek to impose their rules on others.
As for the Puritans, while their culture of repression may be the main problem, they did burn people who were "different". (And The Scarlet Letter sucked!) So they're not exactly on my "cool people" list.
"All that aside, what you appear to be championing is a rather unsophisticated hedonism: Sex is good. Therefore whatever forbids sex is bad. Pleasure is good. Pain is bad. Therefore whatever increases pleasure is right. And whatever increases pain is wrong."
As opposed to, say, "Sex is dirty. Therefore whatever regulates sex, makes it more orderly and utilitarian is good. Pleasure causes decadence. Pain builds character. Therefore denying pleasure and enforcing pain are the only cure to our societal woes."
Frankly, I don't buy it. Your argument sounds just as simplistic, and a thousand times more harmful once it is boiled down to its essence.
"Most modern ethicists gave up on this approach to ethics about five minutes after they emerged from puberty."
Most modern ethicists don't worry me. It's the modern "moralists" that have the power to screw up society.
(And, as for "emerged from puberty", to which exit from puberty are you referring: death, or castration?)
You have shown a good deal of expertise and knowledge of religion, philosophy, ethics, etc. Is there any chance you could use your powers for good?
Hai Per Geeque (insert cute-yet-inflammatory catch-phrase here)
"So you are advocating another World War and millions of casualties because some French company no longer has a secret anymore and loses a few hundred thousand francs in profit?"
No, I'm advocating a show of force. The US as a political entity may be childish and aggressive, but it is neither as blind nor as stupid as it looks.
"Many have pointed this out before, and I'll point it out again. European agencies routinely spy on American companies, especially the French, who do it quite blantantly."
While that may be so, France is not the most powerful nation in the world, and hasn't been ever since a certain dimminutive Emperor was defeated.
The U.S., on the other hand, is the most powerful nation in the world. We've got power, but also the duty to use that power responsibly.
We could be setting a shining example of ethical government that the world could look up to, but instead we have, in essence, chosen to tell the world that anything goes, as long as you can get away with it.
The idea of banding together for protection against a powerful bully is neither "sensationalistic" nor "ridiculous". It's what any self-respecting nation would do.
Oh please you mean that ecconomic prosperity in the United States is a direct result of the fact that there is some high level spying going on? Last I checked there wasn't a public web page that listed various secret information from other countries and allows each and every business in the USA to get it when and if they please. Furthermore how do you plan to have a group of European nations beat up and bully the US? Strategically that would never work.
No. The US economic prosperity is due to various factors, although being the world superpower helps.
I'm just saying that if other nations got together they might have a shot at standing up to this abusive Collossus.
I don't "plan to have a group of European nations beat up and bully the US". I just think that if they stand together they have a shot at making the US reconsider its we-are-bigger-than-you-so-we-can-do-whatever-the-h ell-we-want-mwa-ha-ha mentality.
The US gov't. (yes, I know I always rant about the US gov't., but that's because they're Eeeeeeviiiillllll) applies this mentality to other nations as well as its own citizens. Any move to challenge the invincibility of this institution would help everybody on this planet, not just people outside the US.
I find it disturbing however, that all this electronic espionage is being used for the sole benefit of the upper, shall we say, Echelon of society...
On a more serious note, I think it's high time that people realized once and for all that U.S. spying is NOT to combat "terrorism" or whatnot, and realize that the privacy of hundreds of millions of people is being routinely violated.
Millions of people, both in the US and abroad, should be screaming for universal encryption, instead of complacently fearing "terrorism", or whatever flavor of the week the mainstream media shove down their throats.
Frankly, if I ran any of these European countries, you'd bet your ass that I'd immediately condemn this spying as a hostile act of aggression, and work out treaties with other nations explicitly naming any further spying as an act of war, and military alliances to give the treaties TEETH.
But then again, the US is the BAMF of all nations, so it'll probably have its way, just like it always does.
It's only a matter of time till the US stops being the policeman of the world, and starts being the police state of the world.
You fail to understand evolution, success in society is not a measure in this playing field. The only measure is having more children that survive to breed. Currently people that are sucessful in our society tend to have fewer children so in fact we are currently winnowing out the very factors that you believe in.
Actually, in my example, it was the unsuccessful in society who were evolving, not the successful.
Having much harsher living conditions (due to poverty and discrimination), and facing stiff competition from those who can afford to genetically modify their kids, these unmodified people will have to adapt and yes, evolve to survive.
And simply evolving higher rates of fertility won't help, since in most of these cases, resources such as food may be scarce for these people, putting these kids in direct competition with their own siblings. Which means that any beneficial mutations that give one kid an edge in outcompeting his brethren will be the ones passed on to future generations.
Any harmful genetic traits will disappear from this gene pool through natural selection so quickly that after a while you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the genes of an unmodified person and a genetically engineered one, except that the latter might show the disturbing regularity that marks most artificial things.
So, after several generations, we've got two groups, the genetially modified people, who show a disturbing homogenity and very little genetic variety, and the genetically unmodified, who have been evolving to the point where they could compete with the artificial people if they were given a fair chance.
But, being in power, the modified people would continue to discriminate (and due to centuries of systematic discrimination, the modified people would control nearly all the world's resources, or at least whatever resources are left), forcing the unmodified to evolve even more.
At this point, the genetically modified folks would have two major problems:
They've got hordes of natural people who are royally pissed at them. Of course, eventually governments (whether national or corporate) will try to send their armies of genetically-pumped supermen to genocidally eradicate them, and they'd be left bewilderedly wondering how their "invincible" soldiers keep getting beaten by these primitive bands of urban guerrillas.
Also, these genetically modified folks would have sacrificed a lot of the variety in their gene pool, meaning that if there's any major genetic crisis, they'd be screwed, and possibly extinct.
Of course, all this leaves the natural folks to reclaim their planet, and salvage the wreckage of the shining civilization to which they were denied entry for so long.
So, all in all, assuming we don't destroy ourselves, I think that this whole genetic engineering thing could have a net positive effect on humanity.;->
As for muscle and reflexes, I think that a certain level of tampering will remain legal. We'd see a generation of kids growing up with no genetic diseases, and everybody would have similar levels of physical strength, endurance and reflex, looks, etc.
Tampering with intelligence, on the other hand, is almost certain to be banned outright (obviously "rogue" nations won't care, and the US gov't will enhance their own soldiers secretly).
One thing that triggers fear in the masses is intelligence. Physical strength they can understand, but intelligence eludes them. So, they'd blindly legislate away their ability to mess with it, fearing a generation of wunderkind that would relegate them to the dustbins of history. (Intelligence is probably also the hardest thing to successfully modify, since the brain's so complex.)
What this means is that we'll see a stratification of our society into castes:
The kids of those who were naturally smart, who now benefit from genetic augmentation of their body.
The vast numbers of "average" people (when "average" starts to take on a completely new meaning!) who have genetic modifications and just dumbly go about their daily lives like nothing happened.
The unmodified. Those whose parents objected to their prenatal modification for one reason or another would grow up being teased, harrassed, and bullied for being "weak" or "different" (similar to Gattaca). However, they'd be so sick of it that within a generation or two, they'd all have ensured that their kids don't have to grow up in the same hell that they did. Also, it's hard to remain "unmodified" if anyone you could possibly mate with already has modified genes.
Finally, there's the people who are too poor to be able to afford these modifications. And that'd include a lot of people worldwide. They'd be placed at the bottom rung of the social ladder, and they'd be forced to compete with the "modified" on the merit of their own natural traits.
If (as in Gattaca) the "modified" automatically and prejudicially disdain all the unmodified people, then there would be very little interbreeding between the two groups. And if there were some genetic tag imprinted in anyone who was modified, this would be even more certain, since no matter how good your genes are, if you're natural, you're out of luck.
Ironically, if the "unmodified" have harsh competition with the modified people, and practically no interbreeding between the two groups, then the unmodified would be forced to evolve at a much faster rate than the "modified", and within several generations, many of them would be naturally stronger, faster, smarter, etc. than the regulations allow the "modified" to become.
Moral of the story: if you mess with nature, make sure it doesn't return to bite you in the ass.
Or, one might argue a "sane" society is one in which people respected sex and understood its role, responsibilities and consequences, making modern society rather more delirious than sane.
I fail to see how respecting sex and understanding its role would make modern society "more delirious than sane".
The reason censorious societies are so obsessed with sex is because it's forbidden... it's seen as "dirty", taboo, and that makes it a thousand times more tantalizing than if it were treated as simply something natural.
Unfortunately, two fundamentally broken philosophies still exist in our society: Puritanism, which I'm sure we all know and love (picture particles of sarcasm leaping out of my mouth, condensing in the air and raining to the ground in solid form...), and gnosticism, the belief that "reality" is merely a test, and that all worldly urges and temptations must be avoided at all costs, and if they absolutely must take place (i.e. eating to live, or sex only for procreation) then absolutely no pleasure must be derived from them, for fear of placing one's immortal soul in dire peril.
The latter philosophy has been inducted into several popular religions, and along with the former (its bastard half-brother Puritanism), has, over the centuries, caused no end of pain, suffering, humiliation and torture to denizens of the Western world.
This brings a very serious question to mind:
By "Understood its role", i.e. the role of sex, are you referring to the role of sex as strictly procreation?
One could argue that the purpose of life is strictly procreation, but frankly, I plan on having some fun along the way. And the same goes for sex.
So, as I see it, sex is not just for procreation, but also for recreation.
And a society that takes a, shall we say, Fear Uncertainty and Doubt approach to sex is definitely a Bad Thing, or a symptom of something worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Erm... one of the items was too small to count as an entire entry...
on my "I Saw It on Slashdot and Now I Want One" list...
The march of progress, however, makes it easier and easier to create, market and distribute such content, enabling individuals and small companies to produce their own, and even make money in the process (no matter how ideological you are, there always lurks that bottom line).
Whether indy labels, free music archives, independent filmmakers, or global enclaves of thousands of hackers making free software, these independent types are starting to provide content with more creativity and variety than was ever possible under the media behemoths. Soon they'll give the Big Guys a real run for their money.
Of course, the Internet accellerates this trend a thousandfold. For Big Media, the Internet is Pandora's box, but for the rest of us, it's our Prometheus.
Sooner or later, this independent effort will force all content providers, big and small to provide their wares at reasonable prices, and the Big Guys will feel the pinch... especially when the rest of the world realizes that they don't even need to pirate anything anymore, due to the proliferation of free and low-cost content.
Although Big Media knows they need us, their dirty little secret is, We don't need them.
And they're scared.
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And I quote, from the article:
Remember, this is a proposal. If this thing ever gets off the ground, I for one will count myself lucky.
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Lynx also has a similar feature, where you can choose to always or never allow cookies from a given domain (and AFAIK Lynx had it first).
Now, if only there were a feature to reject all offsite cookies and images...
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This, if anything, makes the prospect of buying 3e even more tantalizing, since not only would I be purchasing an incredibly cool product, I'd be rewarding a company for its openness and fair competitive spirit.
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Even if you only plan on solving a particular problem a certain way, it almost always pays to know "another way of doing things". Otherwise, you could go through life without realizing that you've been tackling a given problem in a suboptimal manner.
Suppose one day you decided to write your own library similar to GTK or Qt? I don't know about you, but I would certainly be interested in knowing the different ways that each one solved various problems, and I'd also rather have experience programming in both so I know which solutions work best in practice, and which ones need to be replaced by something completely new.
(Sigh... if I only had the time...)
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What governmental body could resist the temptation to help the DVD CCA with that goal. Whether by maintaining national borders or keeping certain movies in or out of certain regions, the conflict created by maintaining these obsolescent political boundaries is what gives the 20th century nations their power.
They feel that they need to restrict the flow of information, just as they restrict the flow of people. Only by keeping people afraid of some unknown external "enemy" can today's governments hold onto power. They built their nations on force and bloodshed, on top of the corpses of their foes, and it's coming back to haunt them.
(Preaching to the choir?: )
The global Internet gives us an incredible opportunity to erase xenophobia and decentralize information. Corporations and national governments, especially the large, abusive kind, are terrified of this idea.
They realize that the unrestricted flow of information could create the kind of world they've always feared: a world run by people, not artificial constructs like corporations and governments (that is, the kind of government that is called "the government", instead of being thought of as the true representative of the popular will).
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mount: fs type scotchtfs not supported by kernel
Aha! Then it must be bogus!
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So this process, then, strips the patient of his natural immortality, I presume? ;)
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No, no, no, no, no!
This is an example of the new rules working.
The new rules make it harder to take away a domain name, by requiring that domain name owners have no legitimate reason for having their domain name, and that they are deliberately using it in bad faith.
"The whole etoy fiasco" would not have happened under these new rules.
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That would present quite a challenge, especially since rabies only infects mammals.
I guess it all depends on exactly how much DNA tampering you're willing to do...
"Another favorite steganographic method of mine is to encode data into graphic images, for example, taking a bitmapped image and using a key to encode data onto each pixel, say by incrementing the red RGB value of each pixel by 1 where appropriate. It would be exceedingly difficult to detect that a message even contained data, let alone extracting it without the key."
Now, that is interesting. Of course, if you have a pristine copy of the original image, couldn't you just get the message by using some diff-type method, or does this method have a higher security-to-obscurity ratio than you give it credit for?
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Three words:
Then again, the fact that it disrupts space-time and breaks the laws of physics may jeopardize the device's chance at FCC compliance...
Oh well... as long as it's compatible with my antigrav pods, my time transporter, and my ACME Junior Scientist Home Alchemy Kit(TM), then I guess I'll still get one.
Of course, I'll be ordering it online (can you imagine the sales tax on these things?)
And it had better get here before I order it!
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I refuse to believe that in the absence of commercial entertainment there wouldn't be millions of people with the creativity and initiative to provide content to the world as a hobby, simply for the joy of creation and having their work appreciated.
(Yeah, I know. That idea's almost as crazy as thinking that we could have quality software if people freely shared their source code! Oh, wait a minute...)
With the march of technological progress making the creation of "professional quality" entertainment within the reach of the masses, and the collaborative and distributionary medium of the Internet, we could have a richness of culture unparallelled at any point in history.
The existence of controlling, giant media conglomerates is holding back what could be the Digital Renaissance.
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These pagers could be a marketer's dream!
Just have the users give out their mailing address when they register for the service, then mail back a card to confirm activation (and to confirm that they were honest when they gave their address!).
Also, when they register, you, the hypothetical evil marketer, program their pager units based on the details they have mailed to you!
They want to ensure the best matches, so they'll be compelled to answer your questionaire truthfully, and the only reason you wouldn't let them directly program their own units would be to make sure they send you several pages of detailed personal information.
Then, as they merrily go about their now-slightly-less-lonely-than-before lives, you (still the hypothetical marketing scum) use their mailing address and their extremely detailed private information to send highly targeted ads to them in order to aggressively market even more of your products.
Or, if you're even lazier and less scrupulous than that, then you can simply sell off their mailing addresses and their personal info to other companies, making a pretty penny in the process!
So, what consumer privacy safeguards exist in Japan? Is there any way that the people who buy these pager-things can be sure that the company will respect their personal information?
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Personally, I think it's a pity that opensource.org didn't succeed in ensuring "open source" would only be used to refer to open source products.
At least, the way I see it, it's not a free speech issue, but rather a truth in advertising issue.
And call me naive, but I don't think they had any sinister goals in mind when they tried to trademark it.
The only good thing that may have come out of their failure to trademark a "descriptive term" is that they set a judicial precedent that can be used in the future to keep BigMeanGreedyCo, Inc. from trademarking the same thing. In theory at least.
(Then again, this post may reflect my pro-ESR bias, since I thoroughly enjoy the Jargon file and nethack, and fetchmail checks all my POP accounts every 900 seconds. So bear with me. Also keep in mind that this post is 95% opinion, so don't expect me to submit a mathematical proof or anything.)
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Of course, U.S. politicians won't listen to that argument. Instead, they'll blindly stick to a "this is America, it can't happen here" attitude and then sit there stupidly, helplessly as our beautiful economy crashes and burns.
While consumers' desire of stuff they don't really need is good for the economy, a government that wants things it doesn't really need is not.
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In these states, where the main differences between shopping locally and shopping out of state is that the latter also adds a shipping fee, plus the time spent waiting for the order to arrive, shopping locally is obviously the more advantageous deal, and supporting local businesses is a no-brainer.
With the lack of a sales tax, consumers' purchasing power is increased as well, which means more cash flowing into local businesses.
And more cash in local businesses means they have more income which means more tax revenues for the state.
So "e-commerce" (silly term, IMO, but ubiquitous nonetheless) is not harming States' economies. Rather, high sales taxes are harming local businesses, lowering consumers' purchasing power, and overall dampening the local economies which means less revenue for the state and local governments.
And the perceived shortfall of revenue simply gets used as an excuse to raise sales taxes even further, which aggravates the problem rather than remedying it.
All this makes consumers even more interested in seeking out-of-state deals which cost less.
IMO, Tax-free Internet sales are a godsend for the consumer, and maybe to staunch the flow of cash out of state, states will have to make shopping locally a better deal, rather than trying to discourage interstate commerce.
Impeding or discouraging interstate commerce does not a happy economy make.
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I am the original poster! It's not like I just read my own post and shouted "me too". I just re-emphasized certain points I made in the original post which I think you didn't adequately address.
"In any case, you lay some heavy -- albeit unsubstantiated -- charges at the gnostics' feet. How, precisely, has the gnostic search for gnosis caused 'no end of pain, suffering, humiliation and torture'?"
You are correct in assuming that I meant the breed of gnosticism that strove to deny all worldly urges, and I must confess I didn't know that gnosticism came in 31 flavors.
But I wasn't attacking the gnostics themselves (frankly I could care less what some people want to deny themselves), but rather the particularly nasty strain of their philosophy which has been adopted by some of the more popular religions, which in turn seek to impose their rules on others.
As for the Puritans, while their culture of repression may be the main problem, they did burn people who were "different". (And The Scarlet Letter sucked!) So they're not exactly on my "cool people" list.
"All that aside, what you appear to be championing is a rather unsophisticated hedonism: Sex is good. Therefore whatever forbids sex is bad. Pleasure is good. Pain is bad. Therefore whatever increases pleasure is right. And whatever increases pain is wrong."
As opposed to, say, "Sex is dirty. Therefore whatever regulates sex, makes it more orderly and utilitarian is good. Pleasure causes decadence. Pain builds character. Therefore denying pleasure and enforcing pain are the only cure to our societal woes."
Frankly, I don't buy it. Your argument sounds just as simplistic, and a thousand times more harmful once it is boiled down to its essence.
"Most modern ethicists gave up on this approach to ethics about five minutes after they emerged from puberty."
Most modern ethicists don't worry me. It's the modern "moralists" that have the power to screw up society.
(And, as for "emerged from puberty", to which exit from puberty are you referring: death, or castration?)
You have shown a good deal of expertise and knowledge of religion, philosophy, ethics, etc. Is there any chance you could use your powers for good?
Hai Per Geeque (insert cute-yet-inflammatory catch-phrase here)
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No, I'm advocating a show of force. The US as a political entity may be childish and aggressive, but it is neither as blind nor as stupid as it looks.
"Many have pointed this out before, and I'll point it out again. European agencies routinely spy on American companies, especially the French, who do it quite blantantly."
While that may be so, France is not the most powerful nation in the world, and hasn't been ever since a certain dimminutive Emperor was defeated.
The U.S., on the other hand, is the most powerful nation in the world. We've got power, but also the duty to use that power responsibly.
We could be setting a shining example of ethical government that the world could look up to, but instead we have, in essence, chosen to tell the world that anything goes, as long as you can get away with it.
The idea of banding together for protection against a powerful bully is neither "sensationalistic" nor "ridiculous". It's what any self-respecting nation would do.
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No. The US economic prosperity is due to various factors, although being the world superpower helps.
I'm just saying that if other nations got together they might have a shot at standing up to this abusive Collossus.
I don't "plan to have a group of European nations beat up and bully the US". I just think that if they stand together they have a shot at making the US reconsider its we-are-bigger-than-you-so-we-can-do-whatever-the-h ell-we-want-mwa-ha-ha mentality.
The US gov't. (yes, I know I always rant about the US gov't., but that's because they're Eeeeeeviiiillllll) applies this mentality to other nations as well as its own citizens. Any move to challenge the invincibility of this institution would help everybody on this planet, not just people outside the US.
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On a more serious note, I think it's high time that people realized once and for all that U.S. spying is NOT to combat "terrorism" or whatnot, and realize that the privacy of hundreds of millions of people is being routinely violated.
Millions of people, both in the US and abroad, should be screaming for universal encryption, instead of complacently fearing "terrorism", or whatever flavor of the week the mainstream media shove down their throats.
Frankly, if I ran any of these European countries, you'd bet your ass that I'd immediately condemn this spying as a hostile act of aggression, and work out treaties with other nations explicitly naming any further spying as an act of war, and military alliances to give the treaties TEETH.
But then again, the US is the BAMF of all nations, so it'll probably have its way, just like it always does.
It's only a matter of time till the US stops being the policeman of the world, and starts being the police state of the world.
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Actually, in my example, it was the unsuccessful in society who were evolving, not the successful.
Having much harsher living conditions (due to poverty and discrimination), and facing stiff competition from those who can afford to genetically modify their kids, these unmodified people will have to adapt and yes, evolve to survive.
And simply evolving higher rates of fertility won't help, since in most of these cases, resources such as food may be scarce for these people, putting these kids in direct competition with their own siblings. Which means that any beneficial mutations that give one kid an edge in outcompeting his brethren will be the ones passed on to future generations.
Any harmful genetic traits will disappear from this gene pool through natural selection so quickly that after a while you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the genes of an unmodified person and a genetically engineered one, except that the latter might show the disturbing regularity that marks most artificial things.
So, after several generations, we've got two groups, the genetially modified people, who show a disturbing homogenity and very little genetic variety, and the genetically unmodified, who have been evolving to the point where they could compete with the artificial people if they were given a fair chance.
But, being in power, the modified people would continue to discriminate (and due to centuries of systematic discrimination, the modified people would control nearly all the world's resources, or at least whatever resources are left), forcing the unmodified to evolve even more.
At this point, the genetically modified folks would have two major problems:
- They've got hordes of natural people who are royally pissed at them. Of course, eventually governments (whether national or corporate) will try to send their armies of genetically-pumped supermen to genocidally eradicate them, and they'd be left bewilderedly wondering how their "invincible" soldiers keep getting beaten by these primitive bands of urban guerrillas.
- Also, these genetically modified folks would have sacrificed a lot of the variety in their gene pool, meaning that if there's any major genetic crisis, they'd be screwed, and possibly extinct.
Of course, all this leaves the natural folks to reclaim their planet, and salvage the wreckage of the shining civilization to which they were denied entry for so long.So, all in all, assuming we don't destroy ourselves, I think that this whole genetic engineering thing could have a net positive effect on humanity. ;->
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Tampering with intelligence, on the other hand, is almost certain to be banned outright (obviously "rogue" nations won't care, and the US gov't will enhance their own soldiers secretly).
One thing that triggers fear in the masses is intelligence. Physical strength they can understand, but intelligence eludes them. So, they'd blindly legislate away their ability to mess with it, fearing a generation of wunderkind that would relegate them to the dustbins of history. (Intelligence is probably also the hardest thing to successfully modify, since the brain's so complex.)
What this means is that we'll see a stratification of our society into castes:
Finally, there's the people who are too poor to be able to afford these modifications. And that'd include a lot of people worldwide. They'd be placed at the bottom rung of the social ladder, and they'd be forced to compete with the "modified" on the merit of their own natural traits.
If (as in Gattaca) the "modified" automatically and prejudicially disdain all the unmodified people, then there would be very little interbreeding between the two groups. And if there were some genetic tag imprinted in anyone who was modified, this would be even more certain, since no matter how good your genes are, if you're natural, you're out of luck.
Ironically, if the "unmodified" have harsh competition with the modified people, and practically no interbreeding between the two groups, then the unmodified would be forced to evolve at a much faster rate than the "modified", and within several generations, many of them would be naturally stronger, faster, smarter, etc. than the regulations allow the "modified" to become.
Moral of the story: if you mess with nature, make sure it doesn't return to bite you in the ass.
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I fail to see how respecting sex and understanding its role would make modern society "more delirious than sane".
The reason censorious societies are so obsessed with sex is because it's forbidden... it's seen as "dirty", taboo, and that makes it a thousand times more tantalizing than if it were treated as simply something natural.
Unfortunately, two fundamentally broken philosophies still exist in our society: Puritanism, which I'm sure we all know and love (picture particles of sarcasm leaping out of my mouth, condensing in the air and raining to the ground in solid form...), and gnosticism, the belief that "reality" is merely a test, and that all worldly urges and temptations must be avoided at all costs, and if they absolutely must take place (i.e. eating to live, or sex only for procreation) then absolutely no pleasure must be derived from them, for fear of placing one's immortal soul in dire peril.
The latter philosophy has been inducted into several popular religions, and along with the former (its bastard half-brother Puritanism), has, over the centuries, caused no end of pain, suffering, humiliation and torture to denizens of the Western world.
This brings a very serious question to mind:
By "Understood its role", i.e. the role of sex, are you referring to the role of sex as strictly procreation?
One could argue that the purpose of life is strictly procreation, but frankly, I plan on having some fun along the way. And the same goes for sex.
So, as I see it, sex is not just for procreation, but also for recreation.
And a society that takes a, shall we say, Fear Uncertainty and Doubt approach to sex is definitely a Bad Thing, or a symptom of something worse.
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