Mn my G3 900 ibook I can play Quake 3 with acceptable frame rates at maybe 800 x 600 with an old school mobile radeon 32 meg card. While not stunning presumably the intel integrated card is better than a 32 meg mobile from 3 years, ago, i.e. very acceptable for a very casual gamer such as myself? Any Windoze review of frame rates of these intel graphics chip out there?
Who said restraining cooperations has to be done by the state? I would say the state far from restraining cooperations worst excesses often acts like the corporations protection service keeping protesters and direct action people from stopping corporations worst abuses. I am far more interested in the people directly checking the power of corporations through boycotts, education and direct action blockades like the 1999 anti WTO protests in Seattle. And no I don't care about Explorers search bar or, whatever, either I think there are far bigger fish to fry like corporations killing innocent people discharging serious pollutants into the water where they think they can get away with it, and clear cutting old growth forests here and in Canada which not only does tremendous ecological damage but often leads to flooding and landslides that do serious damage to peoples houses. Serious damage that would be a big oh well, just try to prove causality and make me pay damages or stop cutting in a Libertarian system which would leave individuals at an extreme disadvantage compared to the vast resources of corporations.
I'm talking about justice for rape victims and punishing those responsible for the environment where rape occurs, is that so difficult to understand? Apparently so for apologists for wrong doing within private organizations. I say to Libertarians, keep denouncing the government you do a good job at that, and shut your pie hole when it comes to corporations, your squiring around with sophistry about RAPE that has occurred on the factory floors of Nike production facilities only makes you look like incredibly big assholes. THAT's what I mean by the "corrosive effect of greed." Greed is corrosive on peoples morality, it makes greedy people have fundamental double standards regarding responsibility when it comes to public v.s. private actors.
That's what Jesus meant when he said (paraphrasing) that it's easier to drive a camel through a needles eye than for a rich man to get to heaven. You don't have to be religious to realize that Jesus guy had some good ideas. He saw through both the large war mongering state of Rome with it's half crazed tin pot emperors that threw "lesser" people to the lions based on childish whims (sound familiar) and it's rich inhabitants that benefited from that power and corruption. Yes Bush and oil companies I'm talking about you.
I've personally had experience with Scotia California where the houses are owned by Pacific Lumber. This makes it very hard for loggers who would like to get a more ethical job than cutting old growth Redwoods from leaving, because their house is owned by their employer and their are few jobs available in Scotia that aren't Pacfic Lumber related. THAT is the "freedom" you get under the unbridled greed engendered by a pure Libertarian mentality. And Scotia is not the only one here is a list of other company towns in the U.S.
"List of present company towns
* Bagdad, Arizona, owned by Phelps Dodge Corporation
* Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Bay Lake, Florida, and the Reedy Creek Improvement District located within Walt Disney World and owned by The Walt Disney Company
* Morenci, Arizona, owned by Phelps Dodge Corporation
* Newhalem, Washington, owned by Seattle City Light
* Scotia, California, largely owned by the Pacific Lumber Company (PALCO)
* Port Gamble, Washington, owned by Pope Resources
* Irvine, California, largely owned by The Irvine Company"
Ding, ding, ding... Give this human a cigar. Most Libertarians would like nothing better than to be the OWNER of a company town if they could. If they could CONTROL the lives of their workers and extract maximum profit from them throughout their lives you would see their "liberty" rhetoric fly right out the window. And no Libertarians this isn't some failure of the government, most company towns were in the wild west where the influence of the state was nill.
Note also the USSR was in essence one giant company town as well. As I said in the original great, great, great, great grandfather post any large organization whether it's fundamental basis of organization is the greed engendered by the possibility of unlimited property ownership, or the power that a large state gives itself cannot be trusted. The goal should be dencentralization and breaking power relationships, not supporting states or "private enterprise," just because.
As a bonus breaking down large organizations would lead to a more sustainable way of life. We are not going to be able to continue to grow our use of resources forever on a finite planet. To think that's possible is a fantasy dreamed up by economists, whose charts expand forever, an infinity that does not exist in our bounded physical world.
Then they are engaging in false advertising if what they really mean is 1.5/mb/s only if you use 750k/bps two hours a day then that's what I want as the advertised capacity. If I went to the bank to withdrawal my money and I was told it wasn't there I'd be pissed. Similarly if my bandwidth isn't really there I'll be pissed too. We need something like FDIC for bandwidth, or to sue the telecoms for false advertising.
I guess this sort of answers the tracking cookie question. You can either have a cookie free system and no automatic logins or tracking cookies and no automatic login. Perhaps it's time for spybot like program for Macs and Linux just to remove tracking cookies?
"Firefox has two handy options with cookie settings that are worth being aware of: When enabling cookies you can choose to allow cookies "for the originating website only". You can also choose to delete all cookies when Firefox closes. The former setting blocks advertiser tracking cookies from companies such as Doubleclick, used to follow you around the Internet to watch your "consumer behavior". The latter setting blocks permanent cookies, which will prevent websites from tagging you with a permanent ID marker, but it will also mean that websites cannot save your password or personal preference settings."
Yes I think you are right about the tracking cookies and yes I don't like them. And yes I'm sure they are on my Mac as well. Is there any tool for removing tracking cookies from Firefox on Macs and Linux boxes? I think this a fairly serious and as far as I know overlooked problem on *nix boxes.
P.S. Sorry to jump on you for a joke I just don't find people getting hung, shot and having their lives ruined by oil spills in Nigeria all that funny. Still a jokes, a joke my bad.
Libertarian dude sed: "they lie to take our property" in an excellent post about government lies and liberty. And I do mean that with genuine respect, you are on, clear, and to the point when you talk about the government.
But here is the dirty little secret of Libertarians, property is their central organizing principle and given a hypothetical choice between more property and less freedom, or less property and more freedom (say a native American society without a formal government and no property ownership) I dread that they would chose property over freedom. Remember that boys and girls the next time you see a Libertarian talking bout freedom, they love it, but they love material things more.
That "they lie to take our property" was the key that immediately identified you to me as a "Libertarian", but the problem as this dialog has shown is that you are really more properly called propertarians and this propertarians philosophy distorts your thinking when it comes to assigning responsibility to actors within private corporations. You are so wedded to your property that you cannot fathom property owners EVER doing wrong, this is an achieles heel that will come back to haunt you again and again.
Anarchists are the people who come the closest to respecting your freedom both from governments and from abusive corporations. Perhaps we will never have a truly anarchist society, but the closer we get to minarchism combined with the people actively checking the power of corporations the closer we will get to true freedom.
P.S. To Zeno I know you are actually probably trying to confront Nike's hypocrisies of exploiting looser local laws, my response was just to make it clear that we should be focusing on the individuals doing the acts and not the culture they do them in. If we focus on the culture they do them then relativism comes into play and people can use that to try to slip out of responsibility for their actions and I don't want to see that happen.
Why is everyone a relativist about local laws? Rape is wrong period, end of story and the rapists themselves, the owners of the subcontracted factories and Nike for slipshod human rights monitoring of the contractors they chose ALL ought to be held responsible for it happening. In the same way that Rumsfeld, the commander at Abu Gharib, and the individual soldiers who did the torturing ought to be held responsible for the torture that took place there. That case probably seems pretty clear to Libertarians, why does the moral clarity suddenly slip when private entities are involved? Could it be your vaunted defense of freedom is mere raw rank self interest and cheap labor conservatism? Please tell me it's not so and that you have consistent principles you apply to both public and private organizations.
Of course if it wasn't Shell exploiting the people of Nigeria it would be Exxon doing the exploiting or some other corporation dumbass that's exactly my point that corporations as a large powerful organization aren't trustworthy. Your fishy red herring tactics when talking of corporate malfeasance compared to the clarity of your denunciations of government malfeasance shows you are stretching. And yes if it's the corporation engaging in the horrible action it's their responsibility don't try to pawn off actions ordered directly by the head people on the ground in Nigeria of Shell off on someone else like the local government. That argument makes as much sense as me saying if I murder someone that it's the responsibility of the cop (local government) to stop it and that I bear no responsibility for the murder which is clearly absurd. After all as a Libertarian I'm sure you'd scream like a stuck pig if a welfare recipient tried to pawn off their responsibility for their status on "society." Buck up and be a man and admit Shell is the responsible party and is wrong to pursue the murder of innocent people in Nigeria. Responsibility doesn't magically disappear because the person who ordered it is high in the hierarchy of a corporation and is pursing the murder for corporate profit. Again it's this sort of weasly Bill Clintonesque style of argument when Libertarians are confronted with the corrosive consequences of unchecked greed that make it so that I will never call myself a Libertarian despite my respect for Ron Paul, Paul Craig Roberts and other Libertarian thinkers.
Bzzzzt... have you ever used a mac or are you just talking shit? You most certainly do have to enter a root level password to modify the firewall. Do I really need to post a screen shot of the sudo gui asking for the password?
"You quote Shell using the local police and/or military for their purposes. Were I a local, I would blame the government here; just as the company that wants my land to build a hotel on is not at fault, the government is at fault if they allow it to be taken."
And do you honestly think that Shell wouldn't have hired mercenaries to do the same thing if that had been cheaper or easier? As the record obviously shows Shell as a company is quite willing to do ANYTHING to continue their operations in the Niger delta. The point is, is that Shell is quite willing to kill innocent people to continue it's oil drilling operation in Nigeria. It is exactly this sort of case that makes me mistrust Libertarians despite their excellent well honed admirable contempt they hold towards the state. When it comes to HORRIBLE deeds committed by corporations suddenly Libertarians are as slippery as Bill Clinton talking about what the meaning of is, is... Lets see some more honesty here, BOTH corporations and governments will commit horrible deeds when they think they can get away with it, only by holding BOTH corporations and governments to merciless scrutiny and calling them on their bad deeds will we see any decency, liberty, and a sustainable way of life. Making apologetics for the owners of Nike's production facilities quite literally raping their own employees only makes you look like an asshole, which is really too bad because your original post about not trusting the government not to misuse DNA data was quite excellent. I no more trust Nike to subcontract to other private shoe making corporations that will respect human rights than I do the government to hold my DNA data or my phone records. NEITHER the government, nor Shell, Nike, Haliburton, Bechtel, Microsoft, Monsanto, Maxxam, Wal-Mart, Exxon, etc have earned my trust by engaging in consistent ethical behavior. If you wern't blinded by your Libertarian ideology you would be more honest and admit that, yet for you suddenly crimes become non crimes when committed by private corporations. THAT is why I have some respect for Libertarians outspokenness about the evils of government but do not consider myself to be a Libertarian.
Please apply the same high standards to the conduct to private organizations that you apply to governments, thank you.
No one makes you use Safari on a Mac, I use Firefox. Camino and Opera are other possibilities under OS X. Yes Firefox may be bloated and slow but it's pretty secure and I like the flexibility of plugins. I haven't had any problems with malware or any successful attacks against my OS X box and notebook since switching 3 years ago. The same would be true of Linux or BSD I'm sure. A Windows box on the otherhand I notice will pick up at least a dozen pieces of malware according to adaware or spybot search and destroy after just a couple of days of web surfing and yes that's with a firewall and Firefox.
As the consumer of the end products of multinational corporations in the belly of the empire of course you are living large, and the people making crap for you in the third world, not so much...
For example Shell in Nigeria:
"Oil Spills
Although Shell drills oil in 28 countries, 40% of its oil spills worldwide have occurred in the Niger Delta10. In the Niger Delta, there were 2,976 oil spills between 1976 and 199111. In the 1970s spillage totaled more that four times that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez tragedy12. Ogoniland has had severe problems stemming from oil spillage, including water contamination and loss of many valuable animals and plants. A short-lived World Bank investigation found levels of hydrocarbon pollution in water in Ogoniland more than sixty times US limits13 and a 1997 Project Underground survey found petroleum hydrocarbons one Ogoni village's watersource to be 360 times the levels allowed in the European Community, where Shell originates14.
Pipelines and construction
The 12 by 14 mile area that comprises Ogoniland is some of the most densely occupied land in Africa. The extraction of oil has lead to construction of pipelines and facilities on precious farmland and through villages. Shell and its subcontractors compensate landowners with meager amounts unequal to the value of the scarce land, when they pay at all. The military defends Shell's actions with firearms and death: see the Shell Police section below.
Health impacts
The Nigerian Environmental Study Action Team observed increased "discomfort and misery" due to fumes, heat and combustion gases, as well as increased illnesses15. This destruction has not been alleviated by Shell or the government. Owens Wiwa, a physician, has observed higher rates of certain diseases like bronchial asthma, other respiratory diseases, gastro-enteritis and cancer among the people in the area as a result of the oil industry16.
The Shell Police and the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force
Both Shell and the government admit that Shell contributes to the funding of the military in the Delta region. Under the auspices of "protecting" Shell from peaceful demonstrators in the village of Umeuchem (10 miles from Ogoni), the police killed 80 people, destroyed houses and vital crops in 199017. Shell conceded it twice paid the military for going to specific villages. Although it disputes that the purpose of these excursions was to quiet dissent, each of the military missions paid for by Shell resulted in Ogoni fatalities18. The two incidents are a 1993 peaceful demonstration against the destruction of farmland to build pipelines and, later that year, a demonstration in the village of Korokoro19. Shell has also admitted purchasing weapons for the police force who guard its facilities, and there is growing suspicion that Shell funds a much greater portion of the military than previously admitted. In 1994, the military sent permanent security forces into Ogoniland, occupying the once peaceful land. This Rivers State Internal Security Task Force is suspected in the murders of 2000 people20. In a classified memo, its leader described his plans for "psychological tactics of displacement/wasting" and stated that "Shell operations are still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken."21 Since the Task Force occupied Ogoniland in 1994, the Ogoni have lived under constant surveillance and threats of violence. The Nigerian military stepped up its presence in Ogoniland in January of 1997 and again in 1998 before the annual Ogoni Day celebrations."
YOU don't killed and exploited by private corporations, others not so much.
Or Nike in Indonesia:
"JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Workers at nine Indonesian factories under contract by U.S. sportswear giant Nike say they have either suffered or have witnessed sexual and verbal abuse.
Well said and a reason I respect Libertarians although I do not consider myself one. And why don't I consider myself a Libertarian? Because big private corporations ALSO work hard to screw us and the world over, do Microsoft, Enron, Nike, Global Crossing, and large oil companies ring a bell? The real problem is allowing any large organization public OR private control over your life either physical or economic. And yes we may be reliant on corporations for computers, medicine, etc, and the government for roads and other infrastructure, but the goal should be to give large organizations the absolute minimum control over our lives we need to survive.
Libertarians who fail to realize the corrosive effects of private greed are blind, and leftists who fail to realize the terrible power of the state to oppress us are also blind.
It's not that there are no vulnerabilities, all complex code contains multiple vulnerabilities, it's that Macs being set up with a user level account as opposed to Windows default admin account are much less liable to being actually exploited. The same can of course be said for most Linux distros which are also set up with a default user level account.
Vista will probably help IF it's ever released and as I read on here on slashot the way Vista handles admin tasks (at least in it's current release state) involves an infuriating number of dialog boxes. I'll stick with my mac for now so I can just get some work done (shrug).
I guess this is what I get for responding to a troll.
And actually Bin Laden doesn't even hate us because of our freedom but because many Muslim's are sick of our troops stationed in Saudi Arabia (now quietly gone) and our support of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territory. Yeah those are some hard facts to face up to, but if we really want to stop terrorism that's the reality. Now I'm not saying Bin Laden is right to kill innocent people for his beliefs, no one should physically harm another for their beliefs, but understanding where the anger ACTUALLY comes from is the first step to figuring out how to deal with terrorists. George Bush's fantasies about terrorism or Iraq's role (NOT) in terrorism are 100% unhelpful.
Ironically in your hatred of our freedom you aren't even really like Bin Laden but Bush's cartoon stereotype of Bin Laden.
Bravo, that was a bracing dose of reality for your average suburban sheltered middle class to upper middle class slashdoter. And no not all of course, but be real that's the way the geek demographic skews. And yes I am poor and have lived in the ghetto next to housing projects at Hunter's Point and in the Lower Haight in San Francisco so I do know how it goes thank you very much.
I'll take my chances with the crooks and terrorists rather than submitting to ubiquitous surveillance. It would be more than a little ironic to have fought the cold war for 50 years only to wind up with Stasi style pervasive surveillance. For all their neo "conservative" rhetoric people who present this sort of argument have a remarkably collectivist view that the security of the collective is more important than the individual. Perhaps that's because many neo-cons started out as Trotskyists?
"The Trotskyist pedigree of neoconservatism is no secret; the original neocon, Irving Kristol, acknowledges it with relish: "I regard myself to have been a young Trostkyite and I have not a single bitter memory." Nor is there any doubt about the influence - one might almost say hegemony - of "former Communists" on the post-war conservative movement. Just read the words of one neocon, Seymour Martin Lipset:
From the anti-Stalinists who became conservatives - including James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Irving Kristol - the Right gained a political education and, in some cases, an injection of passion. The ex-radicals brought with them the knowledge that ideological movements must have journals and magazines to articulate their perspectives. In 1955, for example, William F. Buckley, Jr., launched National Review at the urging of Willi Schlamm, a former German Communist. In its early years, National Review was largely written and edited by the Buckley family and a handful of former Communists, Trotskyists, and socialists, such as Burnham and Chambers. It played a major role in creating the Goldwaterite and Reaganite New Right and in stimulating an anti-Soviet foreign policy.
Worthy of note is that while ex-Stalinists tended to denounce their Communist roots vehemently, neoconservatives like Kristol and Schwartz remain at least wistfully fond of Trotsky. It's also worth noting that the neoconservative preoccupation with exporting social democracy abroad through war and mercantilism reflects the original split between Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky argued that there could not be "socialism in one country" but rather that the revolution had to be truly international. And so the neoconservatives push for "human rights" and social democratic governments to be imposed on Serbia, for example, by force of arms."
Did the communists win the cold war after all under guise of "conservatism?" How "conservative" are they really as state centralists who have little regard for individual freedom and privacy?
Slashdot Mirror
Mn my G3 900 ibook I can play Quake 3 with acceptable frame rates at maybe 800 x 600 with an old school mobile radeon 32 meg card. While not stunning presumably the intel integrated card is better than a 32 meg mobile from 3 years, ago, i.e. very acceptable for a very casual gamer such as myself? Any Windoze review of frame rates of these intel graphics chip out there?
Who said restraining cooperations has to be done by the state? I would say the state far from restraining cooperations worst excesses often acts like the corporations protection service keeping protesters and direct action people from stopping corporations worst abuses. I am far more interested in the people directly checking the power of corporations through boycotts, education and direct action blockades like the 1999 anti WTO protests in Seattle. And no I don't care about Explorers search bar or, whatever, either I think there are far bigger fish to fry like corporations killing innocent people discharging serious pollutants into the water where they think they can get away with it, and clear cutting old growth forests here and in Canada which not only does tremendous ecological damage but often leads to flooding and landslides that do serious damage to peoples houses. Serious damage that would be a big oh well, just try to prove causality and make me pay damages or stop cutting in a Libertarian system which would leave individuals at an extreme disadvantage compared to the vast resources of corporations.
I'm talking about justice for rape victims and punishing those responsible for the environment where rape occurs, is that so difficult to understand? Apparently so for apologists for wrong doing within private organizations. I say to Libertarians, keep denouncing the government you do a good job at that, and shut your pie hole when it comes to corporations, your squiring around with sophistry about RAPE that has occurred on the factory floors of Nike production facilities only makes you look like incredibly big assholes. THAT's what I mean by the "corrosive effect of greed." Greed is corrosive on peoples morality, it makes greedy people have fundamental double standards regarding responsibility when it comes to public v.s. private actors.
That's what Jesus meant when he said (paraphrasing) that it's easier to drive a camel through a needles eye than for a rich man to get to heaven. You don't have to be religious to realize that Jesus guy had some good ideas. He saw through both the large war mongering state of Rome with it's half crazed tin pot emperors that threw "lesser" people to the lions based on childish whims (sound familiar) and it's rich inhabitants that benefited from that power and corruption. Yes Bush and oil companies I'm talking about you.
I've personally had experience with Scotia California where the houses are owned by Pacific Lumber. This makes it very hard for loggers who would like to get a more ethical job than cutting old growth Redwoods from leaving, because their house is owned by their employer and their are few jobs available in Scotia that aren't Pacfic Lumber related. THAT is the "freedom" you get under the unbridled greed engendered by a pure Libertarian mentality. And Scotia is not the only one here is a list of other company towns in the U.S.
_ present_company_towns
"List of present company towns
* Bagdad, Arizona, owned by Phelps Dodge Corporation
* Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Bay Lake, Florida, and the Reedy Creek Improvement District located within Walt Disney World and owned by The Walt Disney Company
* Morenci, Arizona, owned by Phelps Dodge Corporation
* Newhalem, Washington, owned by Seattle City Light
* Scotia, California, largely owned by the Pacific Lumber Company (PALCO)
* Port Gamble, Washington, owned by Pope Resources
* Irvine, California, largely owned by The Irvine Company"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town#List_of
Put that in your Libertarian pipe and smoke it... grand parent post.
Ding, ding, ding... Give this human a cigar. Most Libertarians would like nothing better than to be the OWNER of a company town if they could. If they could CONTROL the lives of their workers and extract maximum profit from them throughout their lives you would see their "liberty" rhetoric fly right out the window. And no Libertarians this isn't some failure of the government, most company towns were in the wild west where the influence of the state was nill.
Note also the USSR was in essence one giant company town as well. As I said in the original great, great, great, great grandfather post any large organization whether it's fundamental basis of organization is the greed engendered by the possibility of unlimited property ownership, or the power that a large state gives itself cannot be trusted. The goal should be dencentralization and breaking power relationships, not supporting states or "private enterprise," just because.
As a bonus breaking down large organizations would lead to a more sustainable way of life. We are not going to be able to continue to grow our use of resources forever on a finite planet. To think that's possible is a fantasy dreamed up by economists, whose charts expand forever, an infinity that does not exist in our bounded physical world.
Then they are engaging in false advertising if what they really mean is 1.5/mb/s only if you use 750k/bps two hours a day then that's what I want as the advertised capacity. If I went to the bank to withdrawal my money and I was told it wasn't there I'd be pissed. Similarly if my bandwidth isn't really there I'll be pissed too. We need something like FDIC for bandwidth, or to sue the telecoms for false advertising.
I guess this sort of answers the tracking cookie question. You can either have a cookie free system and no automatic logins or tracking cookies and no automatic login. Perhaps it's time for spybot like program for Macs and Linux just to remove tracking cookies?
"Firefox has two handy options with cookie settings that are worth being aware of: When enabling cookies you can choose to allow cookies "for the originating website only". You can also choose to delete all cookies when Firefox closes. The former setting blocks advertiser tracking cookies from companies such as Doubleclick, used to follow you around the Internet to watch your "consumer behavior". The latter setting blocks permanent cookies, which will prevent websites from tagging you with a permanent ID marker, but it will also mean that websites cannot save your password or personal preference settings."
http://www.jsware.net/jsware/foxtips.php3
Yes I think you are right about the tracking cookies and yes I don't like them. And yes I'm sure they are on my Mac as well. Is there any tool for removing tracking cookies from Firefox on Macs and Linux boxes? I think this a fairly serious and as far as I know overlooked problem on *nix boxes.
P.S. Sorry to jump on you for a joke I just don't find people getting hung, shot and having their lives ruined by oil spills in Nigeria all that funny. Still a jokes, a joke my bad.
Why wouldn't you click on the lock? We are talking about security, right security guy?
That's 1991 footnote 11 dumbass.
Libertarian dude sed: "they lie to take our property" in an excellent post about government lies and liberty. And I do mean that with genuine respect, you are on, clear, and to the point when you talk about the government.
But here is the dirty little secret of Libertarians, property is their central organizing principle and given a hypothetical choice between more property and less freedom, or less property and more freedom (say a native American society without a formal government and no property ownership) I dread that they would chose property over freedom. Remember that boys and girls the next time you see a Libertarian talking bout freedom, they love it, but they love material things more.
That "they lie to take our property" was the key that immediately identified you to me as a "Libertarian", but the problem as this dialog has shown is that you are really more properly called propertarians and this propertarians philosophy distorts your thinking when it comes to assigning responsibility to actors within private corporations. You are so wedded to your property that you cannot fathom property owners EVER doing wrong, this is an achieles heel that will come back to haunt you again and again.
Anarchists are the people who come the closest to respecting your freedom both from governments and from abusive corporations. Perhaps we will never have a truly anarchist society, but the closer we get to minarchism combined with the people actively checking the power of corporations the closer we will get to true freedom.
P.S. To Zeno I know you are actually probably trying to confront Nike's hypocrisies of exploiting looser local laws, my response was just to make it clear that we should be focusing on the individuals doing the acts and not the culture they do them in. If we focus on the culture they do them then relativism comes into play and people can use that to try to slip out of responsibility for their actions and I don't want to see that happen.
Why is everyone a relativist about local laws? Rape is wrong period, end of story and the rapists themselves, the owners of the subcontracted factories and Nike for slipshod human rights monitoring of the contractors they chose ALL ought to be held responsible for it happening. In the same way that Rumsfeld, the commander at Abu Gharib, and the individual soldiers who did the torturing ought to be held responsible for the torture that took place there. That case probably seems pretty clear to Libertarians, why does the moral clarity suddenly slip when private entities are involved? Could it be your vaunted defense of freedom is mere raw rank self interest and cheap labor conservatism? Please tell me it's not so and that you have consistent principles you apply to both public and private organizations.
Of course if it wasn't Shell exploiting the people of Nigeria it would be Exxon doing the exploiting or some other corporation dumbass that's exactly my point that corporations as a large powerful organization aren't trustworthy. Your fishy red herring tactics when talking of corporate malfeasance compared to the clarity of your denunciations of government malfeasance shows you are stretching. And yes if it's the corporation engaging in the horrible action it's their responsibility don't try to pawn off actions ordered directly by the head people on the ground in Nigeria of Shell off on someone else like the local government. That argument makes as much sense as me saying if I murder someone that it's the responsibility of the cop (local government) to stop it and that I bear no responsibility for the murder which is clearly absurd. After all as a Libertarian I'm sure you'd scream like a stuck pig if a welfare recipient tried to pawn off their responsibility for their status on "society." Buck up and be a man and admit Shell is the responsible party and is wrong to pursue the murder of innocent people in Nigeria. Responsibility doesn't magically disappear because the person who ordered it is high in the hierarchy of a corporation and is pursing the murder for corporate profit. Again it's this sort of weasly Bill Clintonesque style of argument when Libertarians are confronted with the corrosive consequences of unchecked greed that make it so that I will never call myself a Libertarian despite my respect for Ron Paul, Paul Craig Roberts and other Libertarian thinkers.
Yes it does appear that way, doesn't it? Makes you wonder in the tin foil hat crowd like http://infowars.com/ is so crazy after all?
Bzzzzt... have you ever used a mac or are you just talking shit? You most certainly do have to enter a root level password to modify the firewall. Do I really need to post a screen shot of the sudo gui asking for the password?
Libertarian dude sed:
"You quote Shell using the local police and/or military for their purposes. Were I a local, I would blame the government here; just as the company that wants my land to build a hotel on is not at fault, the government is at fault if they allow it to be taken."
And do you honestly think that Shell wouldn't have hired mercenaries to do the same thing if that had been cheaper or easier? As the record obviously shows Shell as a company is quite willing to do ANYTHING to continue their operations in the Niger delta. The point is, is that Shell is quite willing to kill innocent people to continue it's oil drilling operation in Nigeria. It is exactly this sort of case that makes me mistrust Libertarians despite their excellent well honed admirable contempt they hold towards the state. When it comes to HORRIBLE deeds committed by corporations suddenly Libertarians are as slippery as Bill Clinton talking about what the meaning of is, is... Lets see some more honesty here, BOTH corporations and governments will commit horrible deeds when they think they can get away with it, only by holding BOTH corporations and governments to merciless scrutiny and calling them on their bad deeds will we see any decency, liberty, and a sustainable way of life. Making apologetics for the owners of Nike's production facilities quite literally raping their own employees only makes you look like an asshole, which is really too bad because your original post about not trusting the government not to misuse DNA data was quite excellent. I no more trust Nike to subcontract to other private shoe making corporations that will respect human rights than I do the government to hold my DNA data or my phone records. NEITHER the government, nor Shell, Nike, Haliburton, Bechtel, Microsoft, Monsanto, Maxxam, Wal-Mart, Exxon, etc have earned my trust by engaging in consistent ethical behavior. If you wern't blinded by your Libertarian ideology you would be more honest and admit that, yet for you suddenly crimes become non crimes when committed by private corporations. THAT is why I have some respect for Libertarians outspokenness about the evils of government but do not consider myself to be a Libertarian.
Please apply the same high standards to the conduct to private organizations that you apply to governments, thank you.
No one makes you use Safari on a Mac, I use Firefox. Camino and Opera are other possibilities under OS X. Yes Firefox may be bloated and slow but it's pretty secure and I like the flexibility of plugins. I haven't had any problems with malware or any successful attacks against my OS X box and notebook since switching 3 years ago. The same would be true of Linux or BSD I'm sure. A Windows box on the otherhand I notice will pick up at least a dozen pieces of malware according to adaware or spybot search and destroy after just a couple of days of web surfing and yes that's with a firewall and Firefox.
As the consumer of the end products of multinational corporations in the belly of the empire of course you are living large, and the people making crap for you in the third world, not so much...
For example Shell in Nigeria:
"Oil Spills
Although Shell drills oil in 28 countries, 40% of its oil spills worldwide have occurred in the Niger Delta10. In the Niger Delta, there were 2,976 oil spills between 1976 and 199111. In the 1970s spillage totaled more that four times that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez tragedy12. Ogoniland has had severe problems stemming from oil spillage, including water contamination and loss of many valuable animals and plants. A short-lived World Bank investigation found levels of hydrocarbon pollution in water in Ogoniland more than sixty times US limits13 and a 1997 Project Underground survey found petroleum hydrocarbons one Ogoni village's watersource to be 360 times the levels allowed in the European Community, where Shell originates14.
Pipelines and construction
The 12 by 14 mile area that comprises Ogoniland is some of the most densely occupied land in Africa. The extraction of oil has lead to construction of pipelines and facilities on precious farmland and through villages. Shell and its subcontractors compensate landowners with meager amounts unequal to the value of the scarce land, when they pay at all. The military defends Shell's actions with firearms and death: see the Shell Police section below.
Health impacts
The Nigerian Environmental Study Action Team observed increased "discomfort and misery" due to fumes, heat and combustion gases, as well as increased illnesses15. This destruction has not been alleviated by Shell or the government. Owens Wiwa, a physician, has observed higher rates of certain diseases like bronchial asthma, other respiratory diseases, gastro-enteritis and cancer among the people in the area as a result of the oil industry16.
The Shell Police and the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force
Both Shell and the government admit that Shell contributes to the funding of the military in the Delta region. Under the auspices of "protecting" Shell from peaceful demonstrators in the village of Umeuchem (10 miles from Ogoni), the police killed 80 people, destroyed houses and vital crops in 199017. Shell conceded it twice paid the military for going to specific villages. Although it disputes that the purpose of these excursions was to quiet dissent, each of the military missions paid for by Shell resulted in Ogoni fatalities18. The two incidents are a 1993 peaceful demonstration against the destruction of farmland to build pipelines and, later that year, a demonstration in the village of Korokoro19. Shell has also admitted purchasing weapons for the police force who guard its facilities, and there is growing suspicion that Shell funds a much greater portion of the military than previously admitted. In 1994, the military sent permanent security forces into Ogoniland, occupying the once peaceful land. This Rivers State Internal Security Task Force is suspected in the murders of 2000 people20. In a classified memo, its leader described his plans for "psychological tactics of displacement/wasting" and stated that "Shell operations are still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken."21 Since the Task Force occupied Ogoniland in 1994, the Ogoni have lived under constant surveillance and threats of violence. The Nigerian military stepped up its presence in Ogoniland in January of 1997 and again in 1998 before the annual Ogoni Day celebrations."
http://www.essentialaction.org/shell/issues.html
YOU don't killed and exploited by private corporations, others not so much.
Or Nike in Indonesia:
"JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Workers at nine Indonesian factories under contract by U.S. sportswear giant Nike say they have either suffered or have witnessed sexual and verbal abuse.
Laborers also say they were asked to work
Well said and a reason I respect Libertarians although I do not consider myself one. And why don't I consider myself a Libertarian? Because big private corporations ALSO work hard to screw us and the world over, do Microsoft, Enron, Nike, Global Crossing, and large oil companies ring a bell? The real problem is allowing any large organization public OR private control over your life either physical or economic. And yes we may be reliant on corporations for computers, medicine, etc, and the government for roads and other infrastructure, but the goal should be to give large organizations the absolute minimum control over our lives we need to survive.
Libertarians who fail to realize the corrosive effects of private greed are blind, and leftists who fail to realize the terrible power of the state to oppress us are also blind.
It's not that there are no vulnerabilities, all complex code contains multiple vulnerabilities, it's that Macs being set up with a user level account as opposed to Windows default admin account are much less liable to being actually exploited. The same can of course be said for most Linux distros which are also set up with a default user level account.
Vista will probably help IF it's ever released and as I read on here on slashot the way Vista handles admin tasks (at least in it's current release state) involves an infuriating number of dialog boxes. I'll stick with my mac for now so I can just get some work done (shrug).
I guess this is what I get for responding to a troll.
YOU hate us because of our freedom...
And actually Bin Laden doesn't even hate us because of our freedom but because many Muslim's are sick of our troops stationed in Saudi Arabia (now quietly gone) and our support of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territory. Yeah those are some hard facts to face up to, but if we really want to stop terrorism that's the reality. Now I'm not saying Bin Laden is right to kill innocent people for his beliefs, no one should physically harm another for their beliefs, but understanding where the anger ACTUALLY comes from is the first step to figuring out how to deal with terrorists. George Bush's fantasies about terrorism or Iraq's role (NOT) in terrorism are 100% unhelpful.
Ironically in your hatred of our freedom you aren't even really like Bin Laden but Bush's cartoon stereotype of Bin Laden.
Bravo, that was a bracing dose of reality for your average suburban sheltered middle class to upper middle class slashdoter. And no not all of course, but be real that's the way the geek demographic skews. And yes I am poor and have lived in the ghetto next to housing projects at Hunter's Point and in the Lower Haight in San Francisco so I do know how it goes thank you very much.
I'll take my chances with the crooks and terrorists rather than submitting to ubiquitous surveillance. It would be more than a little ironic to have fought the cold war for 50 years only to wind up with Stasi style pervasive surveillance. For all their neo "conservative" rhetoric people who present this sort of argument have a remarkably collectivist view that the security of the collective is more important than the individual. Perhaps that's because many neo-cons started out as Trotskyists?
h tml
"The Trotskyist pedigree of neoconservatism is no secret; the original neocon, Irving Kristol, acknowledges it with relish: "I regard myself to have been a young Trostkyite and I have not a single bitter memory." Nor is there any doubt about the influence - one might almost say hegemony - of "former Communists" on the post-war conservative movement. Just read the words of one neocon, Seymour Martin Lipset:
From the anti-Stalinists who became conservatives - including James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Irving Kristol - the Right gained a political education and, in some cases, an injection of passion. The ex-radicals brought with them the knowledge that ideological movements must have journals and magazines to articulate their perspectives. In 1955, for example, William F. Buckley, Jr., launched National Review at the urging of Willi Schlamm, a former German Communist. In its early years, National Review was largely written and edited by the Buckley family and a handful of former Communists, Trotskyists, and socialists, such as Burnham and Chambers. It played a major role in creating the Goldwaterite and Reaganite New Right and in stimulating an anti-Soviet foreign policy.
Worthy of note is that while ex-Stalinists tended to denounce their Communist roots vehemently, neoconservatives like Kristol and Schwartz remain at least wistfully fond of Trotsky. It's also worth noting that the neoconservative preoccupation with exporting social democracy abroad through war and mercantilism reflects the original split between Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky argued that there could not be "socialism in one country" but rather that the revolution had to be truly international. And so the neoconservatives push for "human rights" and social democratic governments to be imposed on Serbia, for example, by force of arms."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dmccarthy/dmccarthy23.
Did the communists win the cold war after all under guise of "conservatism?"
How "conservative" are they really as state centralists who have little regard for individual freedom and privacy?