I find your comment on affirmative action to be very interesting; that people assumed you only got the job because you were black.
I'm wondering if other blacks have faced this issue in schools and in the workplace?
Is affirmative action perhaps more damaging than helpful for those blacks that are fully qualified for their school and job? Is affirmative action still needed? What is your opinion on this matter and would you have made it through university and into the workplace, if there would have been no such thing as affirmative action?
What we need is not more corporate responsibility but rather more individual responsibility.
What is needed is a system where the actual wrongdoers are punished.
Take the Firestone case for example. Who will be punished in that case? Primarly
the stockholders, even if they didn't do anything wrong (except perhaps buying
shares in the wrong company).
Remember, companies don't make decisions, people do. And those people who make
a decision, knowing that tens of people will die because of their decision,
they should be punished.
If individual employee knew they could go to jail because of their wrongdoings
they would be much more inclined to do the right thing. Currently, the worst
that could happen to you if you do something terribly wrong as an employee,
is that you will be sacked. The current system relies too much on firms to police
themselves. Laws on corporate crime often make the accountability of individuals
insufficiently clear. This needs to be changed.
A very good exception to the current system on corporate crimes are laws on
the enviroment. If a company breaks those laws, a criminal liability is assigned
to the top managers of the company. We need those kinds of laws against more
types of corporate crimes.
Perhaps this is little late... but I can't resist answering his comments.
>>Would you buy hamburgers from McDonalds if the
>>company also sold crack
>Could you stop them if they did? And would the
>other 90% of sheeple in America continue to buy
>McDonalds b/c they cant read/dont care? Would
>you let these same people set the co-ordinates
>on the Space Shuttle???? no - why should we just
>let the sheeple-mob steer us all into oblivion?
You touch upon a very interesting point. You are basically saying that you
don't trust the people. If you can't trust your fellow citizens, whom are you
going to trust? And at the same time you are saying that "90% of sheeple
in America can't read/don't care?" you are asking for "business
to come to town-hall style meetings and be accountable to the public".
The same public that can't read and doesn't care?
>>Shell now has a human right commissioner and
>>most ads from that company state how nice the
>>company is to the environment and to it's worker
>Are you on drugs? So they put some asshole in a
>title and shove propaganda down your throat and
>you think all is well? You think they have
changed one fucking bit?
Well, Amnesty International does think Shell is trying to improve. From an
Amnesty International report
on Nigeria: "In its approaches in recent years to Shell and other transnational
companies [other oil companies] with significant investments in Nigeria, Amnesty
International has appealed to them to acknowledge their responsibility to do
all they can to uphold human rights under the UDHR. Only Shell has done so to
date."
Shell was heavily attacked for their stance in Nigeria so it is understandable
that they have responded to those concerns. When your stock price begins to
fall because of your human rights record you have to do something.
And Amnesty International is not the only NGO that thinks Shell is trying to
improve it's human rights record. Urmi Shah of Human Rights Watch believes
Shell is moving in the right direction on the human rights front.
>Would you buy hamburgers from McDonalds
>if the company also sold crack
>>Could you stop them if they did?
Yes, I could stop them, with little help from the "sheeple-mob".
The campaign against Shell was pretty effective. So was the campaign
against Nike for employing children in it's factories. And so was the campaign
against soccer ball producers in Pakistan.
>>A corporation is a body, formed by people, that
>> is authorized by law to act as a single person
>When thousands of people act on behalf of a
> corporation it is no one person who is acting
> 'evil or bad'. The problem lies in the motivations,
> what people are forced to do to feed themselves.
> They are compeled to act on the corporations
> behalf to further its interests. There is no debate
> what the 'interests' of the corporation are: profit.
> Always.
Correct, the objective of every corporation is profit, the more profit, the
better. But do you have a better system? Do you want all the corporations to
be owned by the government, or perhaps you have even better solution? Besides,
every society has rules to control the behavior of both people and corporations.
Perhaps you will just say that corporations will bend the rules and bribe the
governments. If you really think so, then please tell that to all the corporations
that have had their actions blocked for some reason by the European Union:)
>The worlds transnationals are all alike
> - what the hell are you thinking? There
>are none that I would consider moral and
> just. Literally zero. Besides, capatalism
> ends in collusive monopolistic mega-corps
> all acting to preserve there collective best
> interests. They will collectively oppose
> anything that may force them to become
> accountable and responsible.... I suppose
> youve never heard of RIAA/MPAA?
Yes, I have heard of RIAA/MPAA. In fact I've been following the copyright and
fair rights issues for a quite a while.
Even though I don't agree with RIAA/MPAA I don't find them immoral and evil.
I do in fact believe there are quite a few good multinational companies. What
do you have against IBM, HP, Oracle, Volvo, Compaq, Lucent, Dell, Xerox, Fedex,
Kodak, Cisco to name a few?
You may disagree with them on some issues and their products may be trash. But
to say those companies are immoral is just not correct. Heck, even Microsoft
has done a lot for humanity, even though Windows is crap and they are a monopoly.
Besides, most companies today are accountable to the public. They have to comply
with laws in America and EU and they have to answer for their wrongdoings in
the media and before shareholders meetings. And Ford has certainly suffered
because of the Firestone incident. And so has Shell because of their Nigeria
incident.
>>>The internet is being dismantled by people
>>> who want to stop paying anything to
>>> produce any content but make you pay
>>>everytime you access the same old content,
>>>over and over, because its gravy, all gravy.
> you didnt address his point: That big business
> will simply change/buy laws to extend copyright
> so they dont have to create new content...
>and force everyone who does out of business...
This comment is quite ridiculous. Media companies make the most money from
new or recent content. Do you see Disney, WB, Paramount, etc. trying to sell
their many excellent old movies. No, you don't; instead you see them marketing
their new and terrible movies every single year. I don't even see book publishers
heavily marketing their old books, and I don't expect to see this change in
the coming years. This phenomena hasn't changed yet, even when at the same time
copyrights has been extended from 25 to more than 90 years today. Do you really
think media companies will suddenly begin to market their old warez just because
the copyright will be extended even further?
Media companies don't even have that immense clout. They are being attacked
heavily by Congress and many NGOs for violence in their movies and TV shows
(perhaps you agree with those attacks?). And do you really think the media companies,
with perhaps 100 billions in total revenues, have more influence on the government
and congress than the much bigger computer industry [or any big industry for
that matter]? The computer industry isn't that successful in it's campaigns
for more visas for foreign workers and for less export regulations for encryption.
>Big American Corporations have WAY to much
>power and WAY too little public accountability.
>I dont want to 'vote with my dollars' - this simply
>allows them to predicate their 'money is the only
>thing that matters' system - fuck that: I want
>business to come to town-hall style meetings
>and be accountable to the public, you dont
>satisfy the public - your out of business (or
>something similar, I may not have the right
>mechanism - but you get the idea...)
Perhaps you are right, maybe corporations do have too much power. If you want
to fix that, the right place to start is with campaign financing reform, just
like John McCain is asking for.
But your town hall solution is pretty weak as you have yourself pointed out
(90% of Americans are "sheeple-mob").
And using your logic ("you dont >satisfy the public - your out of
business") media companies that produce material that the public doesn't
like (Hustler, Nazi books, communist books, etc.) would go out of business.
I'm pretty sure no movie company would have dared to produce a movie like Natural
Born Killers or Lolita because every town hall meeting would have found those
movies to be immoral.
The major political systems here and abroad, are republican systems parliementary
systems or monarchic. These are all more alike than not. (If you have to RUN
for office or STAND for it or get knighted for it, its still the same. Its NOT
democratic. Get that foolishness right out of your head.)
And I suppose you have a solution to this problem? You don't? - I then suggest
you read this
article.
Corporations will justify anything for the bottom line. Corporations have
absolutely no morals, no conscience and neither heart nor head. They
don't care, they really DON'T CARE about how many people get killed, maimed
and ruined by their corporate lack of conscience.
Let's begin by checking what a corporation is. A corporation is a body, formed
by people, that is authorized by law to act as a single person. So a corporation
is basically a group of people. If those people are immoral then the corporation
will be immoral and vice-versa. Many of our fellow residents of Earth are immoral
and evil, but I don't believe the majority of shareholders of big companies
is evil. Let's, however, assume that the owners and executives of a given company
are immoral (evil?) and don't care if people get killed etc. Who are
going to stop this big bad company? The consumers, of course! You must remember
that you, the consumer, also have responsibility. If you buy products
made by company you find evil, then it is your duty to stop buying products
from that company. This strategy has worked pretty well over the years. Nike,
for example, has improved the working conditions in it's factories because of
public outcry. Shell now has a human right commissioner and most ads from that
company state
how nice the company is to the environment and to it's worker, just because
of a "little incident" in Nigeria.
Corporationism can readily weigh profits versus the volume of lawsuits resulting
from injuries caused by the products of shoddy workmanship. Some corporations do this. If you don't like it, don't buy products from
that company again and get your friends and family to do the same. Show that
you care.
Corporationism can readily sell crack to kids while forcing them to fuck
for food and shove me and thee to wage-slave jobs in the "maquiadoras" by rationalizing
that they are merely "filling a need." I don't know where you heard this. Selling crack to kids is illegal, no
matter if you are a corporation or an individual. And I don't see much difference
in an individual selling crack and a corporation selling crack. At least, the
same company would have a hard time breaking into other markets than the "crack
market" because of public opposition. Would you buy hamburgers from Mc'Donalds
if the company also sold crack?
The internet is being dismantled by people who want to stop paying anything
to produce any content but make you pay everytime you access the same old content,
over and over, because its gravy, all gravy. Now, I don't think all the free content on the Net will just disappear just
because some corporations will decide to charge for content.
This only works if you are trying to "protect"
information of little value. Because if it's worth
going after, I will write a script or program
which looks exactly like a valid browser to your
little script. Referrer and all. People have got
to realize that neither end of the HTTP
transaction has any control over the other end,
and that either end can lie its sool head off
without detection.
Yes, it's not hard to fake to referer information (a friend of mine did exactly that to get information from an online database). But do you really think Microsoft would have done that if Ticketmaster had employed this trick on their website? And I don't think Slashdot nor any "important" site would fake the referer information.
Besides, most people don't even know how to get around these things.
Links in one way or another have existed for a long time, not just on the Internet
but also on paper in the form of references.
But the difference with links on the Internet is that you can easily prevent
others from linking to a page on your site. You don't laws to do this, you just use the already available technology to do it.
By utilizing the "refferal" information you can prevent anyone from linking
to a given page on your website. You just need to create a little script that
checks whether the person arrived at the given page from another page on your
website (or from a page on a website that has permission to deep-link to your
site).
If instead someone arrived at a page on your site by following a link from some
other site, you could easily send him to the frontpage of your site.
The law isn't the biggest threat to fair use. Technology is.
I would love to have a moon base but there is no point in having a base
there at this time. What should the residents of the base do - collect rock
samples?
What I would like to see is a moon base AFTER perhaps 50 years when (if?) fusion
power has become reality.
On the Moon there is a plenty of of helium-3 (not much of it here on Earth)
which is an essential ingredient for effective controlled fusion power. If we
will somehow find a way to make controlled fusion a reality, a moon base will
be well worth it and indeed quite profitable. And when you start having that
kind of operation in space the rest will follow. But this will not happen until
after 50 or even 100 years.
Until then we should dedicate our resources to [limited] research in space,
we should send probes to all of the planets in the solar system, investigate
the asteroid belt, build a new space telescope to replace Hubble (as is currently
being done), and [my favorite] continue with the current deep-space
research, planet finding and such.
Perhaps we could even send a manned mission to Mars in 20 years, if it won't
be too expensive.
What we don't need at this time is another 100 billion mission that has no
clear goal. It is quite enough that we are already spending 100 billions or
so on Alpha, a space station that will never be really useful. We certainly
don't need another mess like that.
If there is any place in the solar system we should explore in the next few
years, it is Pluto. Why, you may ask?
The reason is quite simple, after 2020 or so, Pluto's atmosphere will freeze
solid. And it will be frozen for many decades. It is either now or after a very
long time that we have the possibility to do any serious research on Pluto,
the most exotic place in our Solar system. And exotic it is; for example, because
of the gravitational forces of its moon Charon, we might find volcanos there,
but not the usual ones, but rather volcanos pouring molten water, ammonia and
nitrogen. A truly alien world, if you ask me.
We can go to Mars any time but visiting Pluto is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Yes, this is a bit of a stretch.
But nonetheless, Congress has been using the same kind of logic for a long time, enacting laws on matters that in some way interfere with interstate commerce, without any complaints from the Supreme Court.
It's just a little bit strange when the Supreme Court, all of a sudden, just changes it's mind.
The Supreme Court hasn't exactly been making mistakes for the last 60 years. They
have just had a little bit different understanding of the constitution than the
current court (that is, 5 of the 9 justices). I wouldn't exactly call that mistake.
What is very important in the laws is "equal justice". If you apply different
standards from case to case it isn't exactly equal justice, is it? Especially if you have different standards because of the political views of the justices.
I'm not saying reversing the Dred Scott decision was wrong but it's a little
bit different to reverse a single decision (especially if it's old; old precedents
don't have the same value as new ones).
On the other hand it's rather drastic to suddenly stop doing what you have been
doing constantly for 60 years as with the interstate commerce clause. The court
has always gived Congress a lot of freedom interpreting that clause, now it
just suddenly stops doing that with a 5 to 4 decision.
As for the original subject, whether congressmen should be denied holding public
office if they propose unconstitutional laws. I think it's rather obvious why
it's illogical when you have these kind of cases.
OK, answer me this. If Rape falls under "Interstate commerce", What doesn't?
The rationale could likely be extended to any action that has economic impact
of any sort. Rather extends the limits of Congress, doesn't it?
This is exactly why it was struck down.
But one must also remember that the tradition of interpreting the constitution
this broadly is quite old. This has been done for more than 60 years without
any complaints by the Supreme Court.
But now, suddenly the Supreme Court decides to reverse this tradition and rule
that there are indeed limits to the interstate commerce clause.
That the Supreme Court (in a 5 to 4 ruling) just decided to ignore it's former rulings is just as
much judicial activism as when the Warren Court "found" that the abortion right
was granted in Constitution. It is just very sad that the courts have become this political.
Btw. The Supreme Court didn't really back away from this tradition in the
Violence Against Women case but rather in a case in '95 that involved a law
Congress had enacted that forbade students to bring guns to school. Congress
though that was somehow related to interstate commerce:-) but the Supreme Court
did not.
The court then just used the same reasoning in the rape case.
The constitution is not something that is firm and steadfast. It is very broadly worded and subject to interpretion. Congress just interpreted the interstate commerce clause more broadly (and not for the first time) than the Supreme Court. And 4 of the 9 Supreme Court's judges did indeed think that rape does interfere with interstate commerce.
You don't get it, do ya? There was no way knowing this would be struck down.
There have been tons of laws enacted by Congress on issues that don't interfere directly with interstate commerce. Those laws weren't struck down.
The current Supreme court just isn't as liberal in it's interpretion of the Constitution as the former courts. It was even a very narrow ruling, 5 to 4. So 4 judges of the Supreme court did think rape interferes with interstate commerce.
It would not have been possible for Congress to predict the outcome of this case unless it could have read the minds of the Supreme Court's justices.
Congress thought the widespread problem of violence against women did affect
the economy. So based on the interstate commerce clause Congress should have
the power to regulate violence against women.
Ever since the New Deal, Congress has interpreted the interstate commerce clause
just as broadly (that is; if something remotely affects interstate commerce we can control it). The current Congress just did the same thing as had been done many times since the New Deal.
What Congress is supposed to do is this: "Congress shall have power... to
regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with
the Indian Tribes." Congress is only supposed to govern on the issues included in the above clause,
so it doesn't matter whether rape is against the constitution if it isn't somehow
related to foreign nations, interstate commerce or Indian Tribes. So of course
Congress tried to make it look like rape interferes with interstate commerce.
Btw., all the states already have some laws against rape, so the 14th amendment
didn't matter in this case at all. Congress just wanted it possible to sue the alleged raper in federal court.
But the congressmen didn't know they were breaching the constitution.
Roosevelt was the one who extended the scope of federal law with his New Deal.
The Supreme Court didn't like the New Deal at first (it considered the it unconstitutional),
but it finally backed down because of public pressure.
This liberal interpretation of the constitution has then continued ever since, it
thrived under Chief Justice Warren's Supreme Court, and to some extend even to
this day.
The current Supreme Court, however, is much more conservative in it's view
of the constitution than both President Roosevelt and Chief Justice Warren.
They struck down the Violence Against Women Act because they couldn't find anything
about rape in the interstate commerce clause in the constitution and because they couldn't see how rape interferes with interstate commerce.
This is, however, against all precedent set by the Supreme Court between the
New Deal until present day, precedents which gave Congress a broad choice deciding
what issues could be subjected to the interstate commerce clause.
What I'm basically saying is that those congressmen who proposed the Violence
Against Women Act couldn't have known that it would be struck down. It isn't
fair to punish them for the Supreme Court's judicial activism.
I totally disagree with you. There are so many grey areas in the US constitution
that can be interpreted one way or the other.
Some people (including the Supreme Court) say the US constitution makes it illegal
to ban abortions. Many (most?) constitutional scholars wouldn't agree with that
interpretation.
Another example would be the recent liberal Violence Against Women Act
which attempted to make rape a federal crime based on the interstate commerce
clause of the constitution. I'm sure most people don't see rape (even though
it's a terrible crime) as an issue that interferes with interstate commerce.
The Supreme Court did not think so either.
What was strange about the Court's ruling was that the Supreme Court interpreted
this interstate commerce clause totally differently than it had done since the
New Deal. So those congressmen that proposed the Act had no way of knowing that
the Supreme Court would strike it down.
Would you really want to bar those congressmen from holding public office just
because of this misstep?
You are wrong. Web censorship can work, it can block sexual sites. The problem is that it blocks a lot more than just porn. That is really the main issue (one censorship software I have tested even blocked Alice in Wonderland and some chapters of the Bible).
But everything on a.xxx TLD would be 'porn'; if someone decides to put a website there, there would be no question about whether it should be blocked or not
I can't see how this accomplishes anything if there are plenty of porn sites available that end in.com instead of.xxx. This would only give parents and politicans false sense of security and ultimately they would find out that this doesn't really prevent their kids from seeing porn on the Internet and would demand that everything on the Net except.xxx to be a kid safe area. You see where I'm getting at?
This could lead to much more censorship as sites such as Geocities, Yahoo and AOL (which do offer some sexual content) would be forced to become kid safe. Not to mention all the sites that offer advice on sex, sites that offer arty nude photographs etc. (is Playboy a pornographic magazine or rather an erotic one?).
There are just so many grey areas, what one person calls art other can call pornography.
And I certainly don't want those grey areas to be pushed into the.xxx zone.
The.xxx/.sex solution is in fact no solution at all. It would only create
more problems and a false sense of security.
Do you really think current sex site operators, Playboy.com, Hustler.com etc.
would just roll over and give up their precious domain names?
And even if you would somehow devise a forwarding solution so that "guests"
to playboy.com would be forwarded to playboy.sex (and therefor blocked) you
would still not have solved the sex on the Net problem. There are literally
thousands of sites that "may" offer sexual content but are yet, not primarily
sex sites, such as Geocities and Yahoo and even AOL, people can have personal
webpages with "artistic" images of Britney Spears.
And should NSI maintain some kind of censorship policy so that it would only
allow companies to have.com if they promised to offer no sexual or harmful content?
So no matter if we had.xxx domains we would still need filters to prevent
minors to see all this filthy sex on the Net.
This doesn't really have to be a hoax.
When PS2 was first released in Japan it couldn't be exported out of Japan because
of some regulations that were in place exactly to prevent too powerful computers
to get in hand of rogue states. There were a lot of news stories on this topic
at the time, here
is one for example.
So I imagine someone in the Iraqi military must have read one of those news stories
and decided it must be worth a try:)
>One of the main reasons Motorola dominates the
>market is because of their vastly superior
>products. While Nokia phones are trendy fashion
>objects, anyone who wants a darn good fuctional
>phone gets a StarTac and never looks back.
Ahem, the issue isn't mobile phones but two way radios, an entirely different thing.
By the way, Startac is just too fragile for my taste.
Yes, it is wrong of people to boast about their advantages and mankind should be more humble than it currently is. And of course we shouldn't see us as greater beings just because we have access to better technology than other people.
But that doesn't concern this good Finn's comment. All he said was "Nobody uses checks [in Finland]. I doubt they even exist in this country." I, for one, don't consider his statement to be that ridiculous, of course this is an obvious overstatement, but an overstatement that clarifies the reality. In Finland, and most of Scandinavia, hardly anyone uses checks, they just aren't part of the daily life there, though they certainly exist.
His point wasn't to glorify Finland or himself, he was just saying that in other parts of the world, there are alternatives to credit cards and micropayment systems like PayPal. In order to survive, Paypal must face those alternative payment systems and win. It just isn't enough for Paypal to conquer America.
What the heck are you talking about? I didn't see anything in his comment suggesting him feeling more powerful or omnipotent because of this advanced banking system. I don't see anyone complaining when Americans talk about, for example, how superior their computer industry is [which it certainly is]. I only hope you don't feel inferior because Finland has a better banking system than USA.:)
Finland isn't even the only country that maintains this advanced banking system, my country (Iceland) has also had online banking for perhaps 10 years, and I haven't seen people using checks for years now (though they still exist, I think). Use of cash has also declined rapidly in the last few years after the introduction of direct debit cards, which almost everybody has. We have also had the ability to deposit money directly and instantly into other's people's accounts, and pay our bills, through the Internet for years, and more recently through WAP enabled mobile phones. This isn't because my country or nation is superior in any way (though many in my country like to think so:)), but rather because we have very few commercial banks, who maintain a sort of central banking system, which makes all of this possible.
The situation in the other Nordic countries is probably quite similar.
Slashdot Mirror
I find your comment on affirmative action to be very interesting; that people assumed you only got the job because you were black.
I'm wondering if other blacks have faced this issue in schools and in the workplace?
Is affirmative action perhaps more damaging than helpful for those blacks that are fully qualified for their school and job? Is affirmative action still needed?
What is your opinion on this matter and would you have made it through university and into the workplace, if there would have been no such thing as affirmative action?
Take the Firestone case for example. Who will be punished in that case? Primarly the stockholders, even if they didn't do anything wrong (except perhaps buying shares in the wrong company).
Remember, companies don't make decisions, people do. And those people who make a decision, knowing that tens of people will die because of their decision, they should be punished.
If individual employee knew they could go to jail because of their wrongdoings they would be much more inclined to do the right thing. Currently, the worst that could happen to you if you do something terribly wrong as an employee, is that you will be sacked. The current system relies too much on firms to police themselves. Laws on corporate crime often make the accountability of individuals insufficiently clear. This needs to be changed.
A very good exception to the current system on corporate crimes are laws on the enviroment. If a company breaks those laws, a criminal liability is assigned to the top managers of the company. We need those kinds of laws against more types of corporate crimes.
Perhaps this is little late ... but I can't resist answering his comments.
>>Would you buy hamburgers from McDonalds if the
>>company also sold crack
>Could you stop them if they did? And would the
>other 90% of sheeple in America continue to buy
>McDonalds b/c they cant read/dont care? Would
>you let these same people set the co-ordinates
>on the Space Shuttle???? no - why should we just
>let the sheeple-mob steer us all into oblivion?
You touch upon a very interesting point. You are basically saying that you don't trust the people. If you can't trust your fellow citizens, whom are you going to trust? And at the same time you are saying that "90% of sheeple in America can't read/don't care?" you are asking for "business to come to town-hall style meetings and be accountable to the public". The same public that can't read and doesn't care?
>>Shell now has a human right commissioner and
>>most ads from that company state how nice the
>>company is to the environment and to it's worker
>Are you on drugs? So they put some asshole in a
>title and shove propaganda down your throat and
>you think all is well? You think they have
changed one fucking bit?
Well, Amnesty International does think Shell is trying to improve. From an Amnesty International report on Nigeria:
"In its approaches in recent years to Shell and other transnational companies [other oil companies] with significant investments in Nigeria, Amnesty International has appealed to them to acknowledge their responsibility to do all they can to uphold human rights under the UDHR. Only Shell has done so to date."
Shell was heavily attacked for their stance in Nigeria so it is understandable that they have responded to those concerns. When your stock price begins to fall because of your human rights record you have to do something.
And Amnesty International is not the only NGO that thinks Shell is trying to improve it's human rights record. Urmi Shah of Human Rights Watch believes Shell is moving in the right direction on the human rights front.
>Would you buy hamburgers from McDonalds
>if the company also sold crack
>>Could you stop them if they did?
Yes, I could stop them, with little help from the "sheeple-mob". The campaign against Shell was pretty effective. So was the campaign against Nike for employing children in it's factories. And so was the campaign against soccer ball producers in Pakistan.
>>A corporation is a body, formed by people, that
>> is authorized by law to act as a single person
>When thousands of people act on behalf of a
> corporation it is no one person who is acting
> 'evil or bad'. The problem lies in the motivations,
> what people are forced to do to feed themselves.
> They are compeled to act on the corporations
> behalf to further its interests. There is no debate
> what the 'interests' of the corporation are: profit.
> Always.
Correct, the objective of every corporation is profit, the more profit, the better. But do you have a better system? Do you want all the corporations to be owned by the government, or perhaps you have even better solution? Besides, every society has rules to control the behavior of both people and corporations. Perhaps you will just say that corporations will bend the rules and bribe the governments. If you really think so, then please tell that to all the corporations that have had their actions blocked for some reason by the European Union :)
>The worlds transnationals are all alike
> - what the hell are you thinking? There
>are none that I would consider moral and
> just. Literally zero. Besides, capatalism
> ends in collusive monopolistic mega-corps
> all acting to preserve there collective best
> interests. They will collectively oppose
> anything that may force them to become
> accountable and responsible.... I suppose
> youve never heard of RIAA/MPAA?
Yes, I have heard of RIAA/MPAA. In fact I've been following the copyright and fair rights issues for a quite a while.
Even though I don't agree with RIAA/MPAA I don't find them immoral and evil. I do in fact believe there are quite a few good multinational companies. What do you have against IBM, HP, Oracle, Volvo, Compaq, Lucent, Dell, Xerox, Fedex, Kodak, Cisco to name a few?
You may disagree with them on some issues and their products may be trash. But to say those companies are immoral is just not correct. Heck, even Microsoft has done a lot for humanity, even though Windows is crap and they are a monopoly.
Besides, most companies today are accountable to the public. They have to comply with laws in America and EU and they have to answer for their wrongdoings in the media and before shareholders meetings. And Ford has certainly suffered because of the Firestone incident. And so has Shell because of their Nigeria incident.
>>>The internet is being dismantled by people
>>> who want to stop paying anything to
>>> produce any content but make you pay
>>>everytime you access the same old content,
>>>over and over, because its gravy, all gravy.
> you didnt address his point: That big business
> will simply change/buy laws to extend copyright
> so they dont have to create new content...
>and force everyone who does out of business...
This comment is quite ridiculous. Media companies make the most money from new or recent content. Do you see Disney, WB, Paramount, etc. trying to sell their many excellent old movies. No, you don't; instead you see them marketing their new and terrible movies every single year. I don't even see book publishers heavily marketing their old books, and I don't expect to see this change in the coming years. This phenomena hasn't changed yet, even when at the same time copyrights has been extended from 25 to more than 90 years today. Do you really think media companies will suddenly begin to market their old warez just because the copyright will be extended even further?
Media companies don't even have that immense clout. They are being attacked heavily by Congress and many NGOs for violence in their movies and TV shows (perhaps you agree with those attacks?). And do you really think the media companies, with perhaps 100 billions in total revenues, have more influence on the government and congress than the much bigger computer industry [or any big industry for that matter]? The computer industry isn't that successful in it's campaigns for more visas for foreign workers and for less export regulations for encryption.
>Big American Corporations have WAY to much
>power and WAY too little public accountability.
>I dont want to 'vote with my dollars' - this simply
>allows them to predicate their 'money is the only
>thing that matters' system - fuck that: I want
>business to come to town-hall style meetings
>and be accountable to the public, you dont
>satisfy the public - your out of business (or
>something similar, I may not have the right
>mechanism - but you get the idea...)
Perhaps you are right, maybe corporations do have too much power. If you want to fix that, the right place to start is with campaign financing reform, just like John McCain is asking for.
But your town hall solution is pretty weak as you have yourself pointed out (90% of Americans are "sheeple-mob").
And using your logic ("you dont >satisfy the public - your out of business") media companies that produce material that the public doesn't like (Hustler, Nazi books, communist books, etc.) would go out of business. I'm pretty sure no movie company would have dared to produce a movie like Natural Born Killers or Lolita because every town hall meeting would have found those movies to be immoral.
Try to come up with a better logic next time.
Now, let's address your concerns.
The major political systems here and abroad, are republican systems parliementary systems or monarchic. These are all more alike than not. (If you have to RUN for office or STAND for it or get knighted for it, its still the same. Its NOT democratic. Get that foolishness right out of your head.)
And I suppose you have a solution to this problem? You don't? - I then suggest you read this article.
Corporations will justify anything for the bottom line. Corporations have absolutely no morals, no conscience and neither heart nor head. They don't care, they really DON'T CARE about how many people get killed, maimed and ruined by their corporate lack of conscience.
Let's begin by checking what a corporation is. A corporation is a body, formed by people, that is authorized by law to act as a single person. So a corporation is basically a group of people. If those people are immoral then the corporation will be immoral and vice-versa. Many of our fellow residents of Earth are immoral and evil, but I don't believe the majority of shareholders of big companies is evil.
Let's, however, assume that the owners and executives of a given company are immoral (evil?) and don't care if people get killed etc. Who are going to stop this big bad company? The consumers, of course! You must remember that you, the consumer, also have responsibility. If you buy products made by company you find evil, then it is your duty to stop buying products from that company. This strategy has worked pretty well over the years. Nike, for example, has improved the working conditions in it's factories because of public outcry. Shell now has a human right commissioner and most ads from that company state how nice the company is to the environment and to it's worker, just because of a "little incident" in Nigeria.
Corporationism can readily weigh profits versus the volume of lawsuits resulting from injuries caused by the products of shoddy workmanship.
Some corporations do this. If you don't like it, don't buy products from that company again and get your friends and family to do the same. Show that you care.
Corporationism can readily sell crack to kids while forcing them to fuck for food and shove me and thee to wage-slave jobs in the "maquiadoras" by rationalizing that they are merely "filling a need."
I don't know where you heard this. Selling crack to kids is illegal, no matter if you are a corporation or an individual. And I don't see much difference in an individual selling crack and a corporation selling crack. At least, the same company would have a hard time breaking into other markets than the "crack market" because of public opposition. Would you buy hamburgers from Mc'Donalds if the company also sold crack?
The internet is being dismantled by people who want to stop paying anything to produce any content but make you pay everytime you access the same old content, over and over, because its gravy, all gravy.
Now, I don't think all the free content on the Net will just disappear just because some corporations will decide to charge for content.
Yes, it's not hard to fake to referer information (a friend of mine did exactly that to get information from an online database). But do you really think Microsoft would have done that if Ticketmaster had employed this trick on their website? And I don't think Slashdot nor any "important" site would fake the referer information.
Besides, most people don't even know how to get around these things.
Links in one way or another have existed for a long time, not just on the Internet but also on paper in the form of references.
But the difference with links on the Internet is that you can easily prevent others from linking to a page on your site. You don't laws to do this, you just use the already available technology to do it.
By utilizing the "refferal" information you can prevent anyone from linking to a given page on your website. You just need to create a little script that checks whether the person arrived at the given page from another page on your website (or from a page on a website that has permission to deep-link to your site).
If instead someone arrived at a page on your site by following a link from some other site, you could easily send him to the frontpage of your site.
The law isn't the biggest threat to fair use. Technology is.
I would love to have a moon base but there is no point in having a base there at this time. What should the residents of the base do - collect rock samples?
What I would like to see is a moon base AFTER perhaps 50 years when (if?) fusion power has become reality.
On the Moon there is a plenty of of helium-3 (not much of it here on Earth) which is an essential ingredient for effective controlled fusion power. If we will somehow find a way to make controlled fusion a reality, a moon base will be well worth it and indeed quite profitable. And when you start having that kind of operation in space the rest will follow. But this will not happen until after 50 or even 100 years.
Until then we should dedicate our resources to [limited] research in space, we should send probes to all of the planets in the solar system, investigate the asteroid belt, build a new space telescope to replace Hubble (as is currently being done), and [my favorite] continue with the current deep-space research, planet finding and such.
Perhaps we could even send a manned mission to Mars in 20 years, if it won't be too expensive.
What we don't need at this time is another 100 billion mission that has no clear goal. It is quite enough that we are already spending 100 billions or so on Alpha, a space station that will never be really useful. We certainly don't need another mess like that.
If there is any place in the solar system we should explore in the next few years, it is Pluto. Why, you may ask?
The reason is quite simple, after 2020 or so, Pluto's atmosphere will freeze solid. And it will be frozen for many decades. It is either now or after a very long time that we have the possibility to do any serious research on Pluto, the most exotic place in our Solar system. And exotic it is; for example, because of the gravitational forces of its moon Charon, we might find volcanos there, but not the usual ones, but rather volcanos pouring molten water, ammonia and nitrogen. A truly alien world, if you ask me.
We can go to Mars any time but visiting Pluto is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Yes, this is a bit of a stretch.
But nonetheless, Congress has been using the same kind of logic for a long time, enacting laws on matters that in some way interfere with interstate commerce, without any complaints from the Supreme Court.
It's just a little bit strange when the Supreme Court, all of a sudden, just changes it's mind.
What is very important in the laws is "equal justice". If you apply different standards from case to case it isn't exactly equal justice, is it? Especially if you have different standards because of the political views of the justices.
I'm not saying reversing the Dred Scott decision was wrong but it's a little bit different to reverse a single decision (especially if it's old; old precedents don't have the same value as new ones).
On the other hand it's rather drastic to suddenly stop doing what you have been doing constantly for 60 years as with the interstate commerce clause. The court has always gived Congress a lot of freedom interpreting that clause, now it just suddenly stops doing that with a 5 to 4 decision.
As for the original subject, whether congressmen should be denied holding public office if they propose unconstitutional laws. I think it's rather obvious why it's illogical when you have these kind of cases.
This is exactly why it was struck down.
But one must also remember that the tradition of interpreting the constitution this broadly is quite old. This has been done for more than 60 years without any complaints by the Supreme Court.
But now, suddenly the Supreme Court decides to reverse this tradition and rule that there are indeed limits to the interstate commerce clause.
That the Supreme Court (in a 5 to 4 ruling) just decided to ignore it's former rulings is just as much judicial activism as when the Warren Court "found" that the abortion right was granted in Constitution. It is just very sad that the courts have become this political.
Btw. The Supreme Court didn't really back away from this tradition in the Violence Against Women case but rather in a case in '95 that involved a law Congress had enacted that forbade students to bring guns to school. Congress though that was somehow related to interstate commerce :-) but the Supreme Court
did not.
The court then just used the same reasoning in the rape case.
The constitution is not something that is firm and steadfast. It is very broadly worded and subject to interpretion.
Congress just interpreted the interstate commerce clause more broadly (and not for the first time) than the Supreme Court. And 4 of the 9 Supreme Court's judges did indeed think that rape does interfere with interstate commerce.
You don't get it, do ya? There was no way knowing this would be struck down.
There have been tons of laws enacted by Congress on issues that don't interfere directly with interstate commerce. Those laws weren't struck down.
The current Supreme court just isn't as liberal in it's interpretion of the Constitution as the former courts. It was even a very narrow ruling, 5 to 4. So 4 judges of the Supreme court did think rape interferes with interstate commerce.
It would not have been possible for Congress to predict the outcome of this case unless it could have read the minds of the Supreme Court's justices.
Congress thought the widespread problem of violence against women did affect the economy. So based on the interstate commerce clause Congress should have the power to regulate violence against women.
Ever since the New Deal, Congress has interpreted the interstate commerce clause just as broadly (that is; if something remotely affects interstate commerce we can control it). The current Congress just did the same thing as had been done many times since the New Deal.
What Congress is supposed to do is this: ... to
regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with
the Indian Tribes."
"Congress shall have power
Congress is only supposed to govern on the issues included in the above clause, so it doesn't matter whether rape is against the constitution if it isn't somehow related to foreign nations, interstate commerce or Indian Tribes. So of course Congress tried to make it look like rape interferes with interstate commerce.
Btw., all the states already have some laws against rape, so the 14th amendment didn't matter in this case at all. Congress just wanted it possible to sue the alleged raper in federal court.
Roosevelt was the one who extended the scope of federal law with his New Deal. The Supreme Court didn't like the New Deal at first (it considered the it unconstitutional), but it finally backed down because of public pressure.
This liberal interpretation of the constitution has then continued ever since, it thrived under Chief Justice Warren's Supreme Court, and to some extend even to this day.
The current Supreme Court, however, is much more conservative in it's view of the constitution than both President Roosevelt and Chief Justice Warren.
They struck down the Violence Against Women Act because they couldn't find anything about rape in the interstate commerce clause in the constitution and because they couldn't see how rape interferes with interstate commerce.
This is, however, against all precedent set by the Supreme Court between the New Deal until present day, precedents which gave Congress a broad choice deciding what issues could be subjected to the interstate commerce clause.
What I'm basically saying is that those congressmen who proposed the Violence Against Women Act couldn't have known that it would be struck down. It isn't fair to punish them for the Supreme Court's judicial activism.
Some people (including the Supreme Court) say the US constitution makes it illegal to ban abortions. Many (most?) constitutional scholars wouldn't agree with that interpretation.
Another example would be the recent liberal Violence Against Women Act which attempted to make rape a federal crime based on the interstate commerce clause of the constitution. I'm sure most people don't see rape (even though it's a terrible crime) as an issue that interferes with interstate commerce. The Supreme Court did not think so either.
What was strange about the Court's ruling was that the Supreme Court interpreted this interstate commerce clause totally differently than it had done since the New Deal. So those congressmen that proposed the Act had no way of knowing that the Supreme Court would strike it down.
Would you really want to bar those congressmen from holding public office just because of this misstep?
You are wrong. Web censorship can work, it can block sexual sites. The problem is that it blocks a lot more than just porn. That is really the main issue (one censorship software I have tested even blocked Alice in Wonderland and some chapters of the Bible).
But everything on a .xxx TLD would be 'porn'; if someone decides to put a website there, there would be no question about whether it should be blocked or not
I can't see how this accomplishes anything if there are plenty of porn sites available that end in .com instead of .xxx. This would only give parents and politicans false sense of security and ultimately they would find out that this doesn't really prevent their kids from seeing porn on the Internet and would demand that everything on the Net except .xxx to be a kid safe area. You see where I'm getting at?
This could lead to much more censorship as sites such as Geocities, Yahoo and AOL (which do offer some sexual content) would be forced to become kid safe. Not to mention all the sites that offer advice on sex, sites that offer arty nude photographs etc. (is Playboy a pornographic magazine or rather an erotic one?). There are just so many grey areas, what one person calls art other can call pornography.
And I certainly don't want those grey areas to be pushed into the .xxx zone.
The .xxx/.sex solution is in fact no solution at all. It would only create
more problems and a false sense of security. .com if they promised to offer no sexual or harmful content?
Do you really think current sex site operators, Playboy.com, Hustler.com etc. would just roll over and give up their precious domain names?
And even if you would somehow devise a forwarding solution so that "guests" to playboy.com would be forwarded to playboy.sex (and therefor blocked) you would still not have solved the sex on the Net problem. There are literally thousands of sites that "may" offer sexual content but are yet, not primarily sex sites, such as Geocities and Yahoo and even AOL, people can have personal webpages with "artistic" images of Britney Spears.
And should NSI maintain some kind of censorship policy so that it would only allow companies to have
So no matter if we had .xxx domains we would still need filters to prevent
minors to see all this filthy sex on the Net.
This doesn't really have to be a hoax. :)
When PS2 was first released in Japan it couldn't be exported out of Japan because of some regulations that were in place exactly to prevent too powerful computers to get in hand of rogue states. There were a lot of news stories on this topic at the time, here is one for example.
So I imagine someone in the Iraqi military must have read one of those news stories and decided it must be worth a try
Incorrect. That movie was based on the Johnny Mnemic short story by William Gibson.
And that movie adaption was just terrible.
>market is because of their vastly superior
>products. While Nokia phones are trendy fashion
>objects, anyone who wants a darn good fuctional
>phone gets a StarTac and never looks back.
Ahem, the issue isn't mobile phones but two way radios, an entirely different thing.
By the way, Startac is just too fragile for my taste.
Defence is just as correct spelling as defense. This variant is mainly used in Britain though.
Yes, it is wrong of people to boast about their advantages and mankind should be more humble than it currently is. And of course we shouldn't see us as greater beings just because we have access to better technology than other people.
But that doesn't concern this good Finn's comment. All he said was "Nobody uses checks [in Finland]. I doubt they even exist in this country." I, for one, don't consider his statement to be that ridiculous, of course this is an obvious overstatement, but an overstatement that clarifies the reality. In Finland, and most of Scandinavia, hardly anyone uses checks, they just aren't part of the daily life there, though they certainly exist.
His point wasn't to glorify Finland or himself, he was just saying that in other parts of the world, there are alternatives to credit cards and micropayment systems like PayPal. In order to survive, Paypal must face those alternative payment systems and win. It just isn't enough for Paypal to conquer America.
What the heck are you talking about? I didn't see anything in his comment suggesting him feeling more powerful or omnipotent because of this advanced banking system. I don't see anyone complaining when Americans talk about, for example, how superior their computer industry is [which it certainly is]. :)
:)), but rather because we have very few commercial banks, who maintain a sort of central banking system, which makes all of this possible.
I only hope you don't feel inferior because Finland has a better banking system than USA.
Finland isn't even the only country that maintains this advanced banking system, my country (Iceland) has also had online banking for perhaps 10 years, and I haven't seen people using checks for years now (though they still exist, I think). Use of cash has also declined rapidly in the last few years after the introduction of direct debit cards, which almost everybody has.
We have also had the ability to deposit money directly and instantly into other's people's accounts, and pay our bills, through the Internet for years, and more recently through WAP enabled mobile phones. This isn't because my country or nation is superior in any way (though many in my country like to think so
The situation in the other Nordic countries is probably quite similar.