If the competitors are adhering to the contracts, then at least their particular workers aren't getting shafted (or at least not as badly), and flow-on effects happen (hopefully).
If they all ignore us, then we invest our money elsewhere and feed some other countries' workers. Hopefully their workers will then see the benefits that could've been theirs and stand up for themselves. As you said, there's plenty of excess labour and it's not our problem to solve, but at least we can show that it is solvable, there is a better life out there, and that we're cut from a different cloth to their current masters.
Less profit in the short term. Which sadly is all that many can be bothered to be interested in. In the long-term, it achieves three goals: sets an example, keeps our own feet on the high road, and just as importantly it avoids feeding the bully. That way lies an even worse fate.
And sure, they can sell to other less scrupulous countries. But we're a big market to just go ignore, and ignoring us means their competitors would be getting our money instead.
"Seriously, the US is supposed to keep its nose out of everybody's business... but now we're supposed to set the example. So which is it? Do we starve them by not buying their products or do we exploit them by buying them?"
The third choice is that we specify in our contracts with foreign manufacturers that they are to use type X methods (safe but more expensive) than type Y methods (cheaper but poisonous to the workers) and that we are willing to pay the premium involved.
Yes, some of them could still lie and use Y while claiming X was used, but we can test and check and at least we'd still be setting the right example rather than the wrong one. And if we actually refused to turn a blind eye to violators, and actually took our business only to those who behaved ethically, then we'd be helping them help themselves and doing so without sticking our noses in.
"they still need to stand up and defend themselves."
Sure they do. But when we're telling their bully, "here's the next payment, we don't care so long as we get our shiny toys", we are siding with their bully and that makes it a lot harder for them.
"Its' not strange. The kid has a history of criminal acts, and the people he communicates with, online, encourage this behavior. The judge is simple trying to remove him fro that situation. It's far better the putting him in prison."
If he'd been communicating with those people offline, would you find it acceptable for the judge to ban him from using his mouth and ears?
Note that he wasn't banned from communicating with *certain people* via socnet/im/etc, he was banned from communicating with *anyone* via those methods, with restrictions so severe that he basically couldn't use a computer at all without breaking the court order.
It used to be that the two main reasons claimed for game prices sucking in Australia was the cost of shipping and the poor exchange rate... with online distribution and the Aussie dollar at near-parity with the US dollar, neither of those should apply...
"The problem is even big brother can't handle merely the volume of gunshots, making these systems thoroughly useless."
That's because big brother is both incompetent and lacks sufficient compute power. Only one of those two variables needs to change.
When bb's system can detect a gunshot, correlate conversation and movement, and throw up a pic, bio and updating realtime location of the shooter, even an incompetent bb might handle the rest.
Seems to me that all of those technical problems can be solved with a sufficient density of mic arrays and accompanying compute power. And given the rate of technological advancement, I doubt such would be all that high a bar, if it is even now.
(long stare)... You actually believe that? Just for one example to the contrary, the CSIRO had to fight tooth and nail to get the big corps to finally pay up for exploiting the CSIRO's patents on wireless technology, and it had government resources to back it up in court. Do you really think a corporation - an entity designed to be selfish - wouldn't steamroll some lone inventor if it thought that was the most profitable route?
you can't name me a single solitary industry which government controls every aspect of it, including marketing, distribution, R&D, and everything else (which is the definition of socialism.)
For whatever it's worth, from my (outside) perspective, when it comes to the industries and government of the United States it's hard to tell where some of them end and the other begins, and some US laws - and government officials - are rather obviously "bought". It may still be a constitutional federal republic in many ways, but I suspect it's pretty much a plutarchy in places underneath.
Hmm. The United States: Constitutional Federal Republic (ongoing major subversion: Multiple Plutarchies).
If he used the official White House contact form to send the email, he won't have a copy. I've used it, you don't get a copy sent to you. Nada. Anyone could call the President a prick or even send death threats from your IP and you'd be none the wiser.
"Making threats against the President, credible or otherwise, IS a crime in this country"
If only we had, oh, something like, a concept called "intent", which authorities could consider when deciding whether someone was actually making a real threat or just being young, foolish and harmless.
"All in all this is basically a slap on the wrist for a slap-on-the-wrist-worthy offense"
Perhaps I'm just odd, but I don't consider a lifetime sentence restricting travel - even if it was to a country I'd have no current intention of visiting - a slap on the wrist.
Key phrase being, "when functioning correctly". The trouble is the patent system *cannot* function correctly in this scope. It no longer achieves its reason for existence - to promote the sciences and the useful arts - because the feedback mechanisms inherent to its design do not scale to this level with an overall positive output. That there are still some success stories does not excuse all the failures. It has become a window-breaker.
Failure to recognise this, is sad; refusing to recognise this, is corruption.
So would this be a demonstration of GIGO in the legal arena? Logical steps (court process) arriving at a socially undesirable conclusion (prevention of resource transfer) because the initial parameters were garbage (allowing licenses to forbid resale for no reason other than to profiteer by artificially limiting resource availability)?
There are seven billion people on earth. Almost two billion of them use the internet. At 10 USD per purchase, that's a mere 0.00375% of the internet buying his game, and that's *after* news of the game went "viral".
If you skim through the rest of this/. thread you'll also find comments about it being a kind of first-person equivalent of an old game called Dwarf Fortress, which has something of a cult following; ergo, he found an unfulfilled niche market.
As for why PayPal is the issue here - maybe it's the part where "if they conclude that there is funny business involved, they will keep the money." That's a very unethical stance, and I don't know what country you're in but in mine it also happens to be illegal.
I suspect at least one problem with the idea of sneaking filtering into the NBN is that much of the opposition to filtering is coming from the same technical sector that would be needed to design and build it.
Freedom to decide I'm not going to be the one to provide the soapbox for your speech is also a right.
The same Amendment that guarantees your freedom of speech also guarantees the freedom of the press (e.g. Rackspace) to decide for themselves whether they'll publish it.
As an Australian watching the slow fall of Uncle Sam into schizophrenia, I wish he could realise that these "D" and "R" voices in his head are the same voice... and entirely fictional.
If you check out the visualisation, which colour-codes the time travel methods involved, you'll see Woody Allen's 'Sleeper' gets a mention... (grey lines are the "Deep Freeze" method).
Slashdot Mirror
If the competitors are adhering to the contracts, then at least their particular workers aren't getting shafted (or at least not as badly), and flow-on effects happen (hopefully).
If they all ignore us, then we invest our money elsewhere and feed some other countries' workers. Hopefully their workers will then see the benefits that could've been theirs and stand up for themselves. As you said, there's plenty of excess labour and it's not our problem to solve, but at least we can show that it is solvable, there is a better life out there, and that we're cut from a different cloth to their current masters.
Less profit in the short term. Which sadly is all that many can be bothered to be interested in. In the long-term, it achieves three goals: sets an example, keeps our own feet on the high road, and just as importantly it avoids feeding the bully. That way lies an even worse fate.
And sure, they can sell to other less scrupulous countries. But we're a big market to just go ignore, and ignoring us means their competitors would be getting our money instead.
The third choice is that we specify in our contracts with foreign manufacturers that they are to use type X methods (safe but more expensive) than type Y methods (cheaper but poisonous to the workers) and that we are willing to pay the premium involved.
Yes, some of them could still lie and use Y while claiming X was used, but we can test and check and at least we'd still be setting the right example rather than the wrong one. And if we actually refused to turn a blind eye to violators, and actually took our business only to those who behaved ethically, then we'd be helping them help themselves and doing so without sticking our noses in.
Sure they do. But when we're telling their bully, "here's the next payment, we don't care so long as we get our shiny toys", we are siding with their bully and that makes it a lot harder for them.
If he'd been communicating with those people offline, would you find it acceptable for the judge to ban him from using his mouth and ears?
Note that he wasn't banned from communicating with *certain people* via socnet/im/etc, he was banned from communicating with *anyone* via those methods, with restrictions so severe that he basically couldn't use a computer at all without breaking the court order.
Australia's version of VAT is the GST. It's 10%.
It used to be that the two main reasons claimed for game prices sucking in Australia was the cost of shipping and the poor exchange rate... with online distribution and the Aussie dollar at near-parity with the US dollar, neither of those should apply...
That's because big brother is both incompetent and lacks sufficient compute power. Only one of those two variables needs to change.
When bb's system can detect a gunshot, correlate conversation and movement, and throw up a pic, bio and updating realtime location of the shooter, even an incompetent bb might handle the rest.
Seems to me that all of those technical problems can be solved with a sufficient density of mic arrays and accompanying compute power. And given the rate of technological advancement, I doubt such would be all that high a bar, if it is even now.
Serious question: how did you so completely and utterly manage to miss the GP's point?
(long stare)... You actually believe that? Just for one example to the contrary, the CSIRO had to fight tooth and nail to get the big corps to finally pay up for exploiting the CSIRO's patents on wireless technology, and it had government resources to back it up in court. Do you really think a corporation - an entity designed to be selfish - wouldn't steamroll some lone inventor if it thought that was the most profitable route?
And a big multinational can patent them all, retain a legal firm to defend them, and call it pocket change. Lone inventor? Not so much.
For whatever it's worth, from my (outside) perspective, when it comes to the industries and government of the United States it's hard to tell where some of them end and the other begins, and some US laws - and government officials - are rather obviously "bought". It may still be a constitutional federal republic in many ways, but I suspect it's pretty much a plutarchy in places underneath.
Hmm. The United States: Constitutional Federal Republic (ongoing major subversion: Multiple Plutarchies).
Yes/no?
You may have a different definition of a "simple" google search than I. Care to provide an actual url?
The Sun is not the originator of the piece. Try http://www.bedfordshire-news.co.uk/News/Teen-is-banned-from-USA-over-Obama-hate-email.htm - the Sun is just one of many larger news outlets reposting it.
And if you - young, drunk and foolish - threaten the US President with a nasty email, you shouldn't be banned for life from an entire country.
Actually, the original article is from Bedfordshire News. http://www.bedfordshire-news.co.uk/News/Teen-is-banned-from-USA-over-Obama-hate-email.htm
If he used the official White House contact form to send the email, he won't have a copy. I've used it, you don't get a copy sent to you. Nada. Anyone could call the President a prick or even send death threats from your IP and you'd be none the wiser.
If he used the official White House contact form to send the email, he won't have a copy. I've used it, you don't get a copy sent to you.
If only we had, oh, something like, a concept called "intent", which authorities could consider when deciding whether someone was actually making a real threat or just being young, foolish and harmless.
Perhaps I'm just odd, but I don't consider a lifetime sentence restricting travel - even if it was to a country I'd have no current intention of visiting - a slap on the wrist.
Key phrase being, "when functioning correctly". The trouble is the patent system *cannot* function correctly in this scope. It no longer achieves its reason for existence - to promote the sciences and the useful arts - because the feedback mechanisms inherent to its design do not scale to this level with an overall positive output. That there are still some success stories does not excuse all the failures. It has become a window-breaker.
Failure to recognise this, is sad; refusing to recognise this, is corruption.
So would this be a demonstration of GIGO in the legal arena? Logical steps (court process) arriving at a socially undesirable conclusion (prevention of resource transfer) because the initial parameters were garbage (allowing licenses to forbid resale for no reason other than to profiteer by artificially limiting resource availability)?
There are seven billion people on earth. Almost two billion of them use the internet. At 10 USD per purchase, that's a mere 0.00375% of the internet buying his game, and that's *after* news of the game went "viral".
If you skim through the rest of this /. thread you'll also find comments about it being a kind of first-person equivalent of an old game called Dwarf Fortress, which has something of a cult following; ergo, he found an unfulfilled niche market.
As for why PayPal is the issue here - maybe it's the part where "if they conclude that there is funny business involved, they will keep the money." That's a very unethical stance, and I don't know what country you're in but in mine it also happens to be illegal.
I suspect at least one problem with the idea of sneaking filtering into the NBN is that much of the opposition to filtering is coming from the same technical sector that would be needed to design and build it.
Freedom to decide I'm not going to be the one to provide the soapbox for your speech is also a right.
The same Amendment that guarantees your freedom of speech also guarantees the freedom of the press (e.g. Rackspace) to decide for themselves whether they'll publish it.
And the day before Obama spoke, I had some pizza. The chain of events is undeniable!
Lisa called, she wants her rock back.
As an Australian watching the slow fall of Uncle Sam into schizophrenia, I wish he could realise that these "D" and "R" voices in his head are the same voice... and entirely fictional.
If you check out the visualisation, which colour-codes the time travel methods involved, you'll see Woody Allen's 'Sleeper' gets a mention... (grey lines are the "Deep Freeze" method).