That would only be true if companies were complete monopolies and purchasers were FORCED to buy their products at a specific time... Neither is true.
If Samsung and LG raise prices, their competitors will benefit, getting more sales, AND consumers will see that prices are a bit high, and opt not to buy a new device with an LCD screen.
so how do you think they were able to fix the prices in the first place?
Parent is right on the money on this one. As there is no actual living person liable in corporations (only the corps assets themselves) mixed with the sole motivation of making money, decisions to act immorally or illegally become business decisions.
for instance illegal dumping of waste material: if the cost of dumping illegally combined with the risk of being caught and the approx. resulting fine are lower than the costs to dump waste properly and legally then any suit in their right mind would go the cheaper way.
without person liability, it all comes down to a simple "less than" equation.
same here. nvidia all the way. what do I care about 5fps more and 10 bucks less? I care about spiffy drivers that do their job and do it well. especially under linux.
having said that, I don't claim to be fully up to date on the ati-linux-driver-front. have things changed or is it still a major hassle to even get basic things (3d acceleration, videos, etc) working?
yeah, as much as I'd like to argue with you and call your pets and loved ones names, you're basically right.
piracy behaviour, in some ways, supports and correlates to what you're saying - if people can pirate a program that costs 500 bucks (vista something great corp does magic version) or 'pirate' a program that costs nothing to begin with (generally anything oss), people will usually choose the program that costs "teh bazillions", even if the costly version is vastly inferior to the free alternative (or vice versa). it's all about the price tag, not the functionality.
for instance, if bentleys were suddenly sold for 100 bucks, who would still buy them?
and if you had the choice to have a ferrari or a bentley for free (as in yummy beer) and then sell it on the second hand market (previous conditions apply), which one would you choose?
the business world might have a differential opinion, but this is mostly because corps usually go the legal way. having said that, guess who subsidizes the major players.
just don't google bukkake or hentai.
but, yeah, I get your point, there are still safe havens. granted./. being one of the very few.
you know what I like about genmay.net or somethingawful.com? they once spearheaded the development that the net is now witness to. I visited them regularly for my local and esoteric laugh.
but then that shit hit mainstream - it was just the logical conclusion to the net. now "tits or gtfo" is common - same as 1337 once was a marker, now it's public and even grounds for bemusement. "OMG EPIC FAIL!" is common lingo. and all these people have in common is a general interest for the net. they aren't programmers or admins (devs or IT specialists, for those just joining us).
maybe I'm an elitist prick. maybe I just holding on to a past that once was - but one thing I know for sure, the future that I hoped for 10 years ago is surely not the present we have today.
I'm probably a tad drunk to fully comprehend your post, subtleties and all (and I will gladly return in 16 hours to post soberly), but to this point, my point is, that working with technology should become second nature to a person, along with reading and writing.
within the next few years & decades, there will be nothing as important as the internet (and/or technologies that build upon) and the communication possibilities it offers.
and that is exactly why I am pissed off, that people always learn less and less how technology actually works.
when I was 9 or so, I knew how the radio & tv worked.actually, I even knew the basics of computers.
only as soon as you understand how a technology works and what it actually does, can you reap it's full benefits.
the internet and even using a computer in general requires that you can write and read. tv and radio do not have this requirement.
dark web.. oh geez. eternal September has only just started.
aparently the world at large loves to shit on standards and practices.
it's been a while since search engines actually returned results I was looking for. google, yahoo, msn, metacrawler,.. they all want my money. "-com" + adblock doesn't really help anymore. I'm so sick and tired of the net. it once was the best thing that ever happened to the world. now it's the hyper-communication tool for fart jokes and perversion.
guess that tells you a lot about humanity.
here goes -1 ott, but teach war, it's more profitable than peace.
:-P
oh and just to generally chime in;
I absolutely despise the general idea, that programs and data is served and saved subject to some corps choosing.
Let's consider where this is going and where it's come from:
software companies, as DRM (p.ex. of games) demonstrates in an acute example, want us to abide by their rules (latest EA forum-foul-up a great example - next to all that DRM BS). be it games, video, audio, software - they want to dictate the terms to us. now, what do I do as a major software dev, really fucking keen on money, who knows that cracking software can't so easily be stopped? I force users to be inspected by my watchful eye. I'd start off simple.. maybe have some software check for legitimate installations. then, I'd convince everyone, that they can save energy bills and general investment costs by shelling out for a UMPC. upon that, I'd offer my lightweight software that doesn't need an install on some 4gig SSD. the next step? what next step? it's all about details now! we feed them OUR software, only once they've bought it. they may use it, according to our TOS, which, in time, will include all kinds of irrational and draconian crap, like "your data is ours and we can snoop at will", or "we're cooperating with anything the feds chuck at us - actually, tell ya what - we'll just hand over your data now without being asked!".
actually, this isn't the worst part. the worst part, is that local PCs can (and supposing enough support, will) become useless without an uplink(although I HIGHLY doubt OSS will die of this.). I dunno - maybe I'm crying for the path my youth took and the path youths won't take again under these circumstances - but only being able to fuck around with a system when it's connected to the net and otherwise having a pretty useless box is an appalling situation.
fuck it - I'm savvy enough. personally, I don't care. but let's face facts here. year of the loonix has come and gone 20 times (although I'm hopeful for this year with UMPCs:) - the majority of users stick to m$ or nowadays bad apples. my real fucking gripe is that people won't necessarily instinctively learn how maths and logic work, but how microsoft works. in first instance, one might surmise "so fucking what, it's all about how they use a PC". but who'll care to read a man? who'll care to understand how it works? how something is actually installed?
windows already makes it "hard" enough to understand the way it works. and now we add to thinking, that a computer works the way windows dictates? it's wrong.. IT'S WROOONG!
meh, I'm done for now. alcohol needs my attention.
ugh, enough already. google & youtube have censored it all. whether it's as trivial as beautiful agony vids on youtube, sucking chinese censor cock to get a market share or giving commercial sites more facetime; it's all about the buck.
seeing as you don't get that, I'm not surprised you see a difference between advertising and propaganda. same shit, different "smile".
maybe you can understand these words: don't put all your eggs in one basket.
asimov is WAY too late. 3 laws implies that there is some kind of global robot treaty. imho, the only way this will happen is that there's a war fought along the lines of wwi with robots. an extreme strain on resources and a fight characterized by, or aiming for, the total destruction of another nations resources, economy, and, upon that, man-power.
only once a major war has had two equally 'superior' opponents pinned against each other, both realizing, that chucking money and steel at one another isn't going to change anything, some such treaty can be created.
I believe asimov didn't realize the future of warfare. the bigger and specialized stick has been a doctrine since wwii - but armies of the world have only just begun to implement this. while I know the british army has always relied on superior training and experience (possibly matched only by the israelis - probably trained by the brits, as are they all..), the american army does anything and everything it can, especially since the iraq war (upon the commanders-in-chief understood what a media war actually is), to be as technologically advanced as possible. I remember reading research papers back in '97-'99 that were talking about computer-driven apcs and smart tanks. the americans have even developed the mini-comm-tank. it's used for field-ops communication. it's a mini-tank, like 7 inch by 5 inch, has tracks, a big battery, an antennae and functions as a relay. it helps communication in caves or heavily built up areas with high interference.
I seem to have rambled on a tad; my point is we are at the very beginning of warfare including robots and AI. unmanned drones, being flown by an RAF pilot 100 miles away in iraq (and since the new skynet satellite is up, even further, maybe even from england), is just the very beginning.
imagine how a program feeds you a grayed out menu function - that's your first law.
proprietary programs always fulfill the needs of their creator first.
On another note: Forgive the Godwin, and correct me if I am wrong, but don't some European countries have criminal penalties for displaying a swastika even in the form of satire or parody?
yes, most prominently, and possibly the only one, germany. swastikas and generally nazi symbols which have glorifying character are forbidden. satire, parody and historical uses are legal. for instance "der untergang" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/) can show swastikas and do the heil hitler thingy. In contrast, the german version of the movie eurotrip (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356150/) had the scene cut out, where the german kid drew himself a hitler mustache and paced like a nazi. games like return to castle wolfenstein aren't sold in germany. also, it's is illegal to deny the holocaust and can lead to imprisonment.
yeah, this is an absolute deal-breaker for me. I was willing to put up with the privacy concerns, but not having total control over hardware I bought is just too much. if all they're referring to is malicious programs like trojans, virii, etc, then fine. but it looks like they'll be killing "I'm Rich" apps and anything not condoned by our new cell-phone overlords.
I guess I'm playing the waiting game again. neo freerunner doesn't have high speed net and I get the impression the openmoko dev-community is pretty small.
believe it or not, microsoft's minime on some half-decent phone is the most appealing to me now.
well, until my k800i breaks.
count me out. count me the fuck out.
I remember some vacuum cleaner company from europe somewhere, probably sweden, which introduced its product to the states. They ran this big ad campaign with a pic of their product and in big letters beneath it "it sucks!". I don't think they sold too well.
I absolutely agree. In my particular case, though, ego-googling brings up like 5 entries and they're all me. I might actually be one of those few, that do have a unique name. Apart from when registering a domain, I have never ever given out my real name on the net. I've always used similar aliases. Furthermore I've never let them come into contact with each other, for instance using the same email with two different aliases. The name isn't really the important bit though. Of course they'd love it, if they could know as much as possible and use our real name as entry info, but fact of the matter is, that the account itself is more important. That's what gives you usage information, not the name.
I think this is the point where we can all agree, as the OP hints at, that the actual problem is the web 2.0 thingy. Not only does the community supply the information, but it also rectifies false entries. Google, to name one big fish, has been doing this for literally years. Search results, that get the most clicks, get linked to the most, appear to have the most information get more face time with the searcher. Another example was their image tagging, which had two users enter tags for images as to classify them. Ultimately it failed, as the scope was too large, which is basically the same reason wikis, for instance, have so much trouble with false entries and misleading information.
Of course obfuscating information, re-obfuscating and basically confusing the hell out of everyone can help, but in time it will kill your credibility and label you a troll. AS the OP implies, the problem is the whole community, standing as one, dragging each other in by peer pressure. And as long as people get blinded by "pretty" and "necessary" web2.0 sites added with a little "I don't have anything to hide", we're up a certain creek without a certain tool. In conclusion, I suppose the only effective way to combat these sites is by complaining. Or wait until the users have learned & grown enough to not volunteer all their information to the net. Fat chance though.
..and a streaming client, a system that can run linux and do a whole bunch of other stuff too.
imho it's not a good financial decision to buy a standalone BD player.
sure, sure, money is an incentive, whatever walk of life. But I keep on getting the impression many people are forgetting or don't even know how greedy the RIAA actually is; Artists get ripped off majorly. somewhere around 95% of the revenue artists create is sucked up by the RIAA. The money isn't tied up in costs to produce the media, marketing, distribution or anything like that - it wanders into the pockets of the fat cats. If the RIAA is paying the artists less, it's because they're making a small percentage of their millions less. Many well-known musicians have been known to live close to the poverty line!
I hardly turn up for any classes at uni, if it's not mandatory. I find it extremely boring to sit through a lecture that takes two hours which I could read up on at home in half the time. sitting through a lecture has so much resistance - getting to uni, sifting through the crowd, all the chattering going on during the lecture, etc etc. waste of time.
well yes and no,
you're totally correct, but miss one point (in essence more of an elaboration I would like to add):
governments don't care about one crackpot (or many of them). what they care about is if one (or a group of) "crackpots" actually have it in their power to change anything. now this can start off simply by being able to reach a large audience or it can go as far as being able to wage world war 3.
it's a threat assessment, which most usually does not start on the net, but rather by doing some nice old fashioned recce & research.
so, yeah, the people they check up on are select, but the way they select isn't the net.
if you actually want to know (spoilers ahead) the credit crunch will be/is the actual spark.
who cares about some unimportant region fighting for independence? sure, it's a big deal at dinnertime watching the news-
sure, many freedom fighters / terrists will grasp the opportunity, just like they're doing now in China and Iraq. but then I think about the oil & gas Georgia exports and I get Iraq flashbacks. Black Sea pipeline and whatnot..
but still, somehow a global economy crisis is a tad more important, no? I know where I'd put my hyper-inflated money.
oh, heh, I forgot my actual point:
a net-based government is in theory only more efficient in obtaining general opinion and "votes". it bumps efficiency to a maximum. no paper, no per-hand counting, no run-arounds for surveys.
in practice, you're inviting every black hat world-wide to fraud the vote and the polls. And at that point we're back to voting machines and the surrounding scandals.
sorry for the double post. I'm too drunk to find the edit button.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." -Sir Winston Churchill.
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Sir_Winston_Churchill/
Sure, democracy kinda works. But it wasn't democracy that gave us the constitution, which in my eyes, is so much more important than a "majority vote".
democracy, as soon as it gets down to simplicities, is 51% oppressing 49%. just to put that in words: the majority fucks over any minority as they please.
over here in Europe, we're not even so sure that our representatives are actually acting on behalf of the 51%. What say you, America?
as soon as the majority can be coerced (I study advertising, it really isn't that difficult), we're back to who has the most money and who can throw the best parties, sucking up to those people who donate the most money.
ya, this ain't news. but too many act like they don't know this.
anyhow, my favourite quote of the parent's link:
"It is proposed that government can be successful, and even vastly superior, if it has the direct participation of all of the governed. Open source governance incorporates the best features of direct democracy and tempers the drawbacks by use of a superior participation model and community structure."
Are we talking about a Grassroots Democracy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grassroots_democracy
oh, I get it! it's a government that lets the populace take part in it's decisions! Kinda like how democracy is (supposed to be).
Open source government is a government that listens to it's people.. in contrast to democracy (..?!)
I'm not bashing you personally, parent, but democracy isn't the A & O it makes out to be.
well, in soviet russia, I give you negative karma.
Slashdot Mirror
That would only be true if companies were complete monopolies and purchasers were FORCED to buy their products at a specific time... Neither is true.
If Samsung and LG raise prices, their competitors will benefit, getting more sales, AND consumers will see that prices are a bit high, and opt not to buy a new device with an LCD screen.
so how do you think they were able to fix the prices in the first place?
Parent is right on the money on this one. As there is no actual living person liable in corporations (only the corps assets themselves) mixed with the sole motivation of making money, decisions to act immorally or illegally become business decisions.
for instance illegal dumping of waste material: if the cost of dumping illegally combined with the risk of being caught and the approx. resulting fine are lower than the costs to dump waste properly and legally then any suit in their right mind would go the cheaper way.
without person liability, it all comes down to a simple "less than" equation.
here's a nice movie with more info on the subject: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/
same here. nvidia all the way. what do I care about 5fps more and 10 bucks less? I care about spiffy drivers that do their job and do it well. especially under linux.
having said that, I don't claim to be fully up to date on the ati-linux-driver-front. have things changed or is it still a major hassle to even get basic things (3d acceleration, videos, etc) working?
yeah, as much as I'd like to argue with you and call your pets and loved ones names, you're basically right.
piracy behaviour, in some ways, supports and correlates to what you're saying - if people can pirate a program that costs 500 bucks (vista something great corp does magic version) or 'pirate' a program that costs nothing to begin with (generally anything oss), people will usually choose the program that costs "teh bazillions", even if the costly version is vastly inferior to the free alternative (or vice versa). it's all about the price tag, not the functionality.
for instance, if bentleys were suddenly sold for 100 bucks, who would still buy them?
and if you had the choice to have a ferrari or a bentley for free (as in yummy beer) and then sell it on the second hand market (previous conditions apply), which one would you choose?
the business world might have a differential opinion, but this is mostly because corps usually go the legal way. having said that, guess who subsidizes the major players.
just don't google bukkake or hentai. /. being one of the very few.
but, yeah, I get your point, there are still safe havens. granted.
you know what I like about genmay.net or somethingawful.com? they once spearheaded the development that the net is now witness to. I visited them regularly for my local and esoteric laugh.
but then that shit hit mainstream - it was just the logical conclusion to the net. now "tits or gtfo" is common - same as 1337 once was a marker, now it's public and even grounds for bemusement. "OMG EPIC FAIL!" is common lingo. and all these people have in common is a general interest for the net. they aren't programmers or admins (devs or IT specialists, for those just joining us).
maybe I'm an elitist prick. maybe I just holding on to a past that once was - but one thing I know for sure, the future that I hoped for 10 years ago is surely not the present we have today.
I'm probably a tad drunk to fully comprehend your post, subtleties and all (and I will gladly return in 16 hours to post soberly), but to this point, my point is, that working with technology should become second nature to a person, along with reading and writing.
within the next few years & decades, there will be nothing as important as the internet (and/or technologies that build upon) and the communication possibilities it offers.
and that is exactly why I am pissed off, that people always learn less and less how technology actually works.
when I was 9 or so, I knew how the radio & tv worked.actually, I even knew the basics of computers.
only as soon as you understand how a technology works and what it actually does, can you reap it's full benefits.
the internet and even using a computer in general requires that you can write and read. tv and radio do not have this requirement.
dark web.. oh geez. eternal September has only just started.
aparently the world at large loves to shit on standards and practices.
it's been a while since search engines actually returned results I was looking for. google, yahoo, msn, metacrawler,.. they all want my money. "-com" + adblock doesn't really help anymore. I'm so sick and tired of the net. it once was the best thing that ever happened to the world. now it's the hyper-communication tool for fart jokes and perversion.
guess that tells you a lot about humanity.
here goes -1 ott, but teach war, it's more profitable than peace.
:-P
:) - the majority of users stick to m$ or nowadays bad apples. my real fucking gripe is that people won't necessarily instinctively learn how maths and logic work, but how microsoft works. in first instance, one might surmise "so fucking what, it's all about how they use a PC". but who'll care to read a man? who'll care to understand how it works? how something is actually installed?
oh and just to generally chime in; I absolutely despise the general idea, that programs and data is served and saved subject to some corps choosing.
Let's consider where this is going and where it's come from: software companies, as DRM (p.ex. of games) demonstrates in an acute example, want us to abide by their rules (latest EA forum-foul-up a great example - next to all that DRM BS). be it games, video, audio, software - they want to dictate the terms to us. now, what do I do as a major software dev, really fucking keen on money, who knows that cracking software can't so easily be stopped? I force users to be inspected by my watchful eye. I'd start off simple.. maybe have some software check for legitimate installations. then, I'd convince everyone, that they can save energy bills and general investment costs by shelling out for a UMPC. upon that, I'd offer my lightweight software that doesn't need an install on some 4gig SSD. the next step? what next step? it's all about details now! we feed them OUR software, only once they've bought it. they may use it, according to our TOS, which, in time, will include all kinds of irrational and draconian crap, like "your data is ours and we can snoop at will", or "we're cooperating with anything the feds chuck at us - actually, tell ya what - we'll just hand over your data now without being asked!".
actually, this isn't the worst part. the worst part, is that local PCs can (and supposing enough support, will) become useless without an uplink(although I HIGHLY doubt OSS will die of this.). I dunno - maybe I'm crying for the path my youth took and the path youths won't take again under these circumstances - but only being able to fuck around with a system when it's connected to the net and otherwise having a pretty useless box is an appalling situation.
fuck it - I'm savvy enough. personally, I don't care. but let's face facts here. year of the loonix has come and gone 20 times (although I'm hopeful for this year with UMPCs
windows already makes it "hard" enough to understand the way it works. and now we add to thinking, that a computer works the way windows dictates? it's wrong.. IT'S WROOONG!
meh, I'm done for now. alcohol needs my attention.
ugh, enough already. google & youtube have censored it all. whether it's as trivial as beautiful agony vids on youtube, sucking chinese censor cock to get a market share or giving commercial sites more facetime; it's all about the buck.
seeing as you don't get that, I'm not surprised you see a difference between advertising and propaganda. same shit, different "smile".
maybe you can understand these words: don't put all your eggs in one basket.
to be perfectly blank, it's happened LONG since - the north / south korean border, specifically the s. k. one is guarded by automated robots. basically they shoot at anything that moves in the DMZ.
prelim linky: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4425689.stm
googly: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=south+korea+border+robots
asimov is WAY too late. 3 laws implies that there is some kind of global robot treaty. imho, the only way this will happen is that there's a war fought along the lines of wwi with robots. an extreme strain on resources and a fight characterized by, or aiming for, the total destruction of another nations resources, economy, and, upon that, man-power. only once a major war has had two equally 'superior' opponents pinned against each other, both realizing, that chucking money and steel at one another isn't going to change anything, some such treaty can be created.
I believe asimov didn't realize the future of warfare. the bigger and specialized stick has been a doctrine since wwii - but armies of the world have only just begun to implement this. while I know the british army has always relied on superior training and experience (possibly matched only by the israelis - probably trained by the brits, as are they all..), the american army does anything and everything it can, especially since the iraq war (upon the commanders-in-chief understood what a media war actually is), to be as technologically advanced as possible. I remember reading research papers back in '97-'99 that were talking about computer-driven apcs and smart tanks. the americans have even developed the mini-comm-tank. it's used for field-ops communication. it's a mini-tank, like 7 inch by 5 inch, has tracks, a big battery, an antennae and functions as a relay. it helps communication in caves or heavily built up areas with high interference.
I seem to have rambled on a tad; my point is we are at the very beginning of warfare including robots and AI. unmanned drones, being flown by an RAF pilot 100 miles away in iraq (and since the new skynet satellite is up, even further, maybe even from england), is just the very beginning.
imagine how a program feeds you a grayed out menu function - that's your first law.
proprietary programs always fulfill the needs of their creator first.
On another note: Forgive the Godwin, and correct me if I am wrong, but don't some European countries have criminal penalties for displaying a swastika even in the form of satire or parody?
yes, most prominently, and possibly the only one, germany. swastikas and generally nazi symbols which have glorifying character are forbidden. satire, parody and historical uses are legal. for instance "der untergang" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/) can show swastikas and do the heil hitler thingy. In contrast, the german version of the movie eurotrip (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356150/) had the scene cut out, where the german kid drew himself a hitler mustache and paced like a nazi.
games like return to castle wolfenstein aren't sold in germany.
also, it's is illegal to deny the holocaust and can lead to imprisonment.
..and a partridge in a pear tree..
yeah, this is an absolute deal-breaker for me. I was willing to put up with the privacy concerns, but not having total control over hardware I bought is just too much. if all they're referring to is malicious programs like trojans, virii, etc, then fine. but it looks like they'll be killing "I'm Rich" apps and anything not condoned by our new cell-phone overlords. I guess I'm playing the waiting game again. neo freerunner doesn't have high speed net and I get the impression the openmoko dev-community is pretty small. believe it or not, microsoft's minime on some half-decent phone is the most appealing to me now. well, until my k800i breaks. count me out. count me the fuck out.
+1 OMG
I remember some vacuum cleaner company from europe somewhere, probably sweden, which introduced its product to the states. They ran this big ad campaign with a pic of their product and in big letters beneath it "it sucks!".
I don't think they sold too well.
I absolutely agree. In my particular case, though, ego-googling brings up like 5 entries and they're all me. I might actually be one of those few, that do have a unique name. Apart from when registering a domain, I have never ever given out my real name on the net. I've always used similar aliases. Furthermore I've never let them come into contact with each other, for instance using the same email with two different aliases.
The name isn't really the important bit though. Of course they'd love it, if they could know as much as possible and use our real name as entry info, but fact of the matter is, that the account itself is more important. That's what gives you usage information, not the name.
I think this is the point where we can all agree, as the OP hints at, that the actual problem is the web 2.0 thingy. Not only does the community supply the information, but it also rectifies false entries. Google, to name one big fish, has been doing this for literally years. Search results, that get the most clicks, get linked to the most, appear to have the most information get more face time with the searcher. Another example was their image tagging, which had two users enter tags for images as to classify them. Ultimately it failed, as the scope was too large, which is basically the same reason wikis, for instance, have so much trouble with false entries and misleading information.
Of course obfuscating information, re-obfuscating and basically confusing the hell out of everyone can help, but in time it will kill your credibility and label you a troll.
AS the OP implies, the problem is the whole community, standing as one, dragging each other in by peer pressure. And as long as people get blinded by "pretty" and "necessary" web2.0 sites added with a little "I don't have anything to hide", we're up a certain creek without a certain tool.
In conclusion, I suppose the only effective way to combat these sites is by complaining. Or wait until the users have learned & grown enough to not volunteer all their information to the net. Fat chance though.
..and a streaming client, a system that can run linux and do a whole bunch of other stuff too.
imho it's not a good financial decision to buy a standalone BD player.
they're insensitive clods!
http://xkcd.com/463/
sure, sure, money is an incentive, whatever walk of life. But I keep on getting the impression many people are forgetting or don't even know how greedy the RIAA actually is; Artists get ripped off majorly. somewhere around 95% of the revenue artists create is sucked up by the RIAA. The money isn't tied up in costs to produce the media, marketing, distribution or anything like that - it wanders into the pockets of the fat cats. If the RIAA is paying the artists less, it's because they're making a small percentage of their millions less. Many well-known musicians have been known to live close to the poverty line!
I hardly turn up for any classes at uni, if it's not mandatory. I find it extremely boring to sit through a lecture that takes two hours which I could read up on at home in half the time. sitting through a lecture has so much resistance - getting to uni, sifting through the crowd, all the chattering going on during the lecture, etc etc. waste of time.
well yes and no, you're totally correct, but miss one point (in essence more of an elaboration I would like to add): governments don't care about one crackpot (or many of them). what they care about is if one (or a group of) "crackpots" actually have it in their power to change anything. now this can start off simply by being able to reach a large audience or it can go as far as being able to wage world war 3. it's a threat assessment, which most usually does not start on the net, but rather by doing some nice old fashioned recce & research. so, yeah, the people they check up on are select, but the way they select isn't the net.
if you actually want to know (spoilers ahead) the credit crunch will be/is the actual spark. who cares about some unimportant region fighting for independence? sure, it's a big deal at dinnertime watching the news- sure, many freedom fighters / terrists will grasp the opportunity, just like they're doing now in China and Iraq. but then I think about the oil & gas Georgia exports and I get Iraq flashbacks. Black Sea pipeline and whatnot.. but still, somehow a global economy crisis is a tad more important, no? I know where I'd put my hyper-inflated money.
oh, heh, I forgot my actual point: a net-based government is in theory only more efficient in obtaining general opinion and "votes". it bumps efficiency to a maximum. no paper, no per-hand counting, no run-arounds for surveys. in practice, you're inviting every black hat world-wide to fraud the vote and the polls. And at that point we're back to voting machines and the surrounding scandals. sorry for the double post. I'm too drunk to find the edit button.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." -Sir Winston Churchill. http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Sir_Winston_Churchill/ Sure, democracy kinda works. But it wasn't democracy that gave us the constitution, which in my eyes, is so much more important than a "majority vote". democracy, as soon as it gets down to simplicities, is 51% oppressing 49%. just to put that in words: the majority fucks over any minority as they please. over here in Europe, we're not even so sure that our representatives are actually acting on behalf of the 51%. What say you, America? as soon as the majority can be coerced (I study advertising, it really isn't that difficult), we're back to who has the most money and who can throw the best parties, sucking up to those people who donate the most money. ya, this ain't news. but too many act like they don't know this. anyhow, my favourite quote of the parent's link: "It is proposed that government can be successful, and even vastly superior, if it has the direct participation of all of the governed. Open source governance incorporates the best features of direct democracy and tempers the drawbacks by use of a superior participation model and community structure." Are we talking about a Grassroots Democracy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grassroots_democracy oh, I get it! it's a government that lets the populace take part in it's decisions! Kinda like how democracy is (supposed to be). Open source government is a government that listens to it's people.. in contrast to democracy (..?!) I'm not bashing you personally, parent, but democracy isn't the A & O it makes out to be. well, in soviet russia, I give you negative karma.