1) Most copyright laws are outdated and ill suited to account for digital content
2) The international nature of digital distribution makes dealing with varying copyright laws a huge pain in the ass
3) 1984 should be public domain (everywhere); it makes me wonder if it might be in Apple, Amazon, and B&N's best interests to lobby to have the Mickey Mouse Protection Act repealed or rewritten. Although this sounds promising, the thought makes me sad because I have no hope of the government passing laws because that's what the citizens want, the only hope for positive legislative change is that it benefits a large corporation somehow (e.g. the fight against SOPA).
They're being punished for their smug attitudes for owning shiny baubles made in an unethical manner.
Just because your bauble isn't shiny doesn't mean it was manufactured in an ethical manner.
Also, when have being fashionable and being socially conscientious gone hand-in-hand? The last company to take this much shit for Chinese labor was Nike in the 90s, when they were at the height of fashionable. I get what you want to say - "Steve Jobs was a hippy," as if that somehow obligates Apple as a company to only make their computers out of 100% recycled goods and hemp fiber, all manufactured here in the U.S. by unionized workers.
Concerning smug attitudes: I'm choking on the vile clouds of smug emitting from your post. You can still be a smug asshole and not own any Apple products.
I agree. Fox and MSNBC are the two extremists with CNN in the center. The problem with CNN is that they're so conscious of being centrist that they're wishy-washy on everything. They bring in talking heads that refuse to ever admit being wrong who'll take shots at each other and the moderators refuse to step in and call a spade a spade when one of the talking heads says something blatantly misleading or wrong unless there's some statistic they can refer to to maintain their objectivity. While I think the pursuit of objectivity is a good thing, CNNs anchors seem so determined to prove their objectivity with each and every sentence that they create a sort of political correctness that makes their broadcasts just as uninformative as Fox and MSNBC.
As a liberal, I agree with much of what is said on MSNBC but I refuse to watch it because their anchors resort to the same type of fallacious arguments Fox News uses. To me, it doesn't matter if what you're saying is correct if it's not backed up by cohesive logic, honesty regarding bias or conflicts of interest, and is free from inflammatory remarks. If a news station has an agenda, especially one it's not upfront and honest about, it's not a news station. Both Fox News and MSNBC have agendas they prioritize before presenting objective news (in this regard CNN has the right idea, just poor execution) - they want to cater to their niches and the top brass of both organizations is arrogant enough to believe that they can sway public opinion, the truth be damned.
I get my news from the internet and I watch the Daily Show (also on the internet) to see what type of shenanigans the traditional news outlets are up to without having to actually watch them.
I live by Wright Pat and they did a lot of testing on drones and stuff before they were well known and commonly used in the Air Force. At that time, people around here actually had a more logical basis for believing in aliens than anyone has for ID. While I always believed the UFOs were just stuff that Wright Pat was testing I didn't find it shocking when these sightings convinced people of alien life.
ID, unlike UFOs from Wright Pat, has yet to be identified to exist as anything other than a severally flawed theory that doesn't conform with empirical observation. The greatest lie about ID is that it's an attempt to explain natural phenomenon. It's not. It's an attempt to disregard natural phenomena as a subset of some greater whole that cannot be observed. The best analog to ID is the Hindu notion of Maya - that what we think of as reality is an illusion, and we cannot possibly learn about the rest of reality by studying the illusion (kind of like The Matrix).
ID is straight up anti-intellectualism and those ideas have no place at a scientific institution like NASA. I believe this guy had the right to believe in ID and work at NASA, as much as the thought makes me queazy, but he had no right to evangelize the idea around the workplace. I'm a Christian and I find the whole idea of ID to be revolting. Being religious doesn't necessitate being irrational.
A jail is a local level holding facility, usually used by a city or county. If you're arrested for being drunk and disorderly in public and you're thrown in the drunk tank, you're in jail. If you commit some type of misdemeanor that lands you a 90-day sentence, you'll serve that in jail. A jail is commonly a part of a police station.
A prison is a state level holding facility. If you commit a felony like steal a car, for example, you'll go to jail until you go to trial. Once you're found guilty and sentenced you'll be sent to prison. There are also federal and military prisons.
There's no difference between "never finished" and "did not complete," the author was just avoiding a redundancy.
So he needs a citation of someone speculating the same thing he's speculating? Or perhaps he should back it up with statistics pulled from some bogus study some Sociology grad student composed. A logical statement doesn't require a citation.
Personally, when discussing social issues I think statistics and research get in the way. A person's anecdotal experiences are probably more informative than Sociological research, which is impossible to make objective. At least with anecdotes people take it with a grain of salt instead of masquerading as a source of authority because 9 out of 10 people answered 'blah blah blah' on a survey issued by some ambitious grad student.
If we're talking hard science then I fully understand asking for a citation or describing a way to set up a replicable experiment. The greatest failing of Sociology and Psychology is the incorrect assumption that human behavior can be reduced to a hard science.
How do you really expect this guy to provide a citation that proves that most criminals are criminals because they have no other options? How would one answer that question using hard science? Survey prison inmates? That's fails because survey = bullshit science. He might be able to provide a citation with some figures to back up that ex-cons have a difficult time finding work, but, why? You have to be pretty detached from society to not know this is true.
though I'd rather be a janitor than a nurse but that's just me
I think this quote says a lot about society, in many ways. I'd rather be a janitor than a nurse, too. Even if nurses were paid much more than they are and janitors paid slightly less.
I've recently read a study which said that being better off is associated with lack of empathy, lack of a sense of right and wrong, and lack of self reflection.
Stop making conclusions off/. headlines. If you would have actually read that study or read the comments on that story then you would know that the methodology was bunk and the study shouldn't be used to make conclusions about anything.
Also, your argument that it may be better for them to be petty criminals than bankers is equally weak. Let's rewind 150 years and use that argument: "It's probably better that they remain slaves, after all, they can't hurt anyone chained up like that."
If you're going to comment: 1) Know what the fuck you're talking about 2) Take a formal logic class, preferably both deductive and inductive 3) Don't ask flamebait questions under posturing as legitimate concerns.
The fact that black people live this lifestyle has nothing to do with the fact that they're black and everything to do with the fact that they're poor. You're not describing black people, you're describing poor people. I don't know a single black person who feels the type of us vs. them mentality you describe, and judging by your post I think it's safe to say that I'm much more familiar with black Americans and those who suffer from poverty in general. Blacks just tend to live in poverty because of historical circumstances.
Yes, our education system is so inadequate and so weighted against the poor that we are breeding a criminal class. Yes that correlates to black people because black people tend to live in poverty. But when discussing the problems facing education, poverty, and crime discussing race is counter-intuitive. The white kid in the projects with an unemployed mother and imprisoned father is just as disadvantaged as his black neighbor. The fact of the matter is race matters less and less these days. The problem with that is because it has nothing to do with black upward mobility and everything to do with white downward mobility. Those white families who were blue-collar, middle class a generation or two ago are falling into poverty and becoming a part of the criminal culture.
It seems that we agree that education is the only solution, but I think your tirade about race is misplaced and fruitless. What you seem to think is black culture isn't black culture, it's criminal culture. When you label it as black culture, not only are you being inaccurate, but you're inciting racism by blaming a people. When you label it criminal culture, you're being more accurate and you're condemning a behavior, not a skin tone.
That's the sad part about colleges these days -- they don't seem to teach critical thinking any more, where most students get by on regurgitation. And, Obama definitely is a byproduct of this.
Yeah, those damn Harvard graduates and their lack of critical thinking. Why don't you think critically about that one?
To be fair, she probably meant objective information that Google is pretty good at finding.* If this girl was saying "I don't know who to vote for, I'll just Google it," then your anecdote would be more relevant and scary. In this case I'm assuming she meant something like Herron's formula that she's too lazy to memorize b/c she can look it up on her iPhone at any time. When I was in grade school I stored all the formulas like that in my TI-85 because memorization has never been a strength of mine. It didn't matter as long as I knew what formula to apply where.
Concerning your bit about freedom: Of course all political systems fail to fully foster freedom. True freedom is anarchy. Society is people sacrificing certain freedoms so that the group as a whole can benefit. Participation in society has little to do with anything - just by existing a society suppresses the rights of its population. Who is more free - the guy in a libertarian society who doesn't participate in government affairs at all or the guy in the socialist society who is an active member of the ruling party? I'd argue neither unless one of the societies is particularly tyrannical. The political system itself has less to do with liberty than the way it's implemented. If I live in Society X and it's run by a socialist dictator who works tirelessly to provide a stable government with quality education, health care, and fair market practices; am I not more free than Joe Shmoe in Society Y which is a capitalist democracy riddled with corruption, business monopolies, a piss-poor education system, and a market-driven health care system? Even if I don't have any civic participation with Society X and Joe Shmoe leads a political party in Society Y?
Be careful when talking about absolutes in government. For that is the way of the Sith (I couldn't help myself).
*personally, my first instinct is to Wiki things, but I've noticed the less one knows about science/logic/empiricism the less likely they are to trust Wiki. People tell me, "you know anyone can make anything up on Wiki" like there aren't any sources. It's pretty sad most people want a source of information they can take at face value. Or that they'll trust the first Google result over just going to Wikipedia and using the works cited to steer them in the right direction.
perhaps he was never really working for the FTC to begin with, in fact, I dont even believe that this man exists!
It's easy to dismiss a lot of concerns as paranoia. That's an easy, cheap-shot retort around here. But sometimes suspecting conspiracy is more logical than believing governments/corporations/lawyers at face value.
If I said, "I suspect the Russian elections were unfair," would you shoot back with that same old tin-foil retort?
This hire looks like a duck, it waddles like a duck, and it quacks like a duck. As far as I'm concerned, it's a duck unless someone can prove to me it's an ugly swan. This guy has used his position in government to help Microsoft - whether it was agreed upon or coordinated or whathaveyou is irrelevant because accepting money from them looks shady and is ethically questionable. It looks like graft, the money moves hands like graft, and if money could talk then it would sound like graft, too. I don't consider myself paranoid, just cynical. Especially when Microsoft and the government are involved.
I couldn't agree more. It fascinates how many bogus studies are thrown up on the/. frontpage and it starts up a huge debate. I was waiting for the first post to point out the poor methodology and how silly it is to draw any conclusions from this 'study.' The sad part is that your post, almost at the bottom of the page, is the first one I've seen with this conclusion. On the bright side, you've already been modded up.
It sucks that on the news for nerds site we're so often trolled by sensationalist, bullshit research that no one should take seriously. Anytime I see a headline that says "New Study Finds . .." I immediately reach for a grain of salt. Even in the rare cases where the methodology is sound, the results usually aren't reproduced before publication and no one considers that they may regress to the mean when the study is replicated over and over.
Motivation and intent are different things. In a hate crime murder and a non-hate crime murder the intent is the same: to kill. In a manslaughter, the intent to kill was not present even though that was the end result.
But motive shouldn't have anything to do with determining sentencing. The law exists to regulate behavior. The government has no business using the law to regulate attitudes. Hatred is a right of every citizen. It can't be taken away unless you give someone a lobotomy or drug them or brainwash them or something. So you can lock up a person, but you're liable to increase their hatred by doing that. Acting on your hatred in a violent manner can be forbidden by law, but it's the violence (an action) that's relevant to the law rather than the motivation.
Similarly, greed is also a right of every citizen. If you act on your greed in a violent manner by robbing someone, you've done nothing illegal until you've acted in a violent manner. I would argue that far more and far worse crimes are motivated by envy and greed than by hatred. Furthermore, hatred is much more muddled: it's not always particularly clear whether a defendant in a hate crime case was driven by racial/homophobic hate or just hatred of the particular victim. Also, hatred can often be justified whereas greed cannot (if someone were to hurt your child, for example, your hatred for that person would probably be justified; but make no mistake, the emotion you feel is the exact same emotion a homophobe feels towards homosexuals).
From a moral standpoint, I can't see how one can claim that a violent act motivated by bigotry is any different than a violent act motivated by greed or a violent act committed on a whim. It's not like most violent criminals who are motivated by greed are Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread. How can you make the claim that being beaten for your race is worse than being beaten for your watch? How can one act deserve a greater punishment than the other when the acts themselves are the same?
Yeah, The King's Speech and Black Swan and There Will Be Blood and The Departed and No Country for Old Men and all the other recent Oscar grand slams really pandered to that whole War on Terror thing. . .
The Hurt Locker, Babel, and Syriana are the only films I can think of that received the Academy's attention that were based on these themes and they were all really good films. Being relevant is an important part of a story's emotional impact. However, if Oliver Stone would have won an award (or even been nominated) for World Trade Center, I would share your cynicism (and I haven't seen it or United 93 b/c to me their subject matter is shameless).
I agree and disagree. The main threats to Microsoft's business model is Linux and LibreOffice (or any other free office suit, really). The scariest thing, for Microsoft, about these things is that they're free. That's not small margin, that's no margin. Since Google facilitates open source by making platforms irrelevant, as you've pointed out, they're seen as a menace. But they're also a menace because they're a dominant player on the internet, which is where pretty much all computing has moved that's MS's business.
I think that given the fact that they have to compete against free products when it comes to servers and Office, they've been looking for a backup in high-margin markets. This means competing with Apple. Google. Sony. Motorola. Windows Phones and XBoxes. Tablet computers. Profit margins for software will always decrease until they hit zero. Depending on the sophistication and demand for the software, it may take certain certain things longer to drop to zero than others, but eventually only custom software will cost anything. I think Apple had the right model all along, they were just before their time, computers hadn't progressed to commodity status in the 80s and 90s. They were very much tied to one's job. Now our phones are computers and the internet has shat on exclusive platforms. Microsoft has to change their business model before LibreOffice sinks MS Office, before they lose their leverage with hardware manufacturers who won't want to pay shit for Windows licenses because Linux will be a suitable alternative.
I know it's popular to call Apple "a marketing company" around here, but it's gotten ridiculous. What started as a very sarcastic cheap shot has somehow become an accepted truth. Last time I checked, Apple makes their money by selling computers, phones, and other hardware. They make a little off software, too. I'm pretty sure if Apple somehow lost their iPhone market, they wouldn't be able to offset the loss by selling t-shirts with their logo on it.
But, yes, Sony could learn a lot from Apple's marketing strategies.
Or some people just learned how to use their bookmarks bar. I've known people who had Google as their homepage and they would search for Facebook.com and then click on the link Google gave them.
That's a poor comparison. When Anonymous becomes a publicly traded company that poses as a legitimate media player, then it would make sense. No shit Anonymous is breaking the law, that's what they do and they're doing so for a cause (whether it's justified or not is irrelevant, they seem to believe in it).
News Corp. eavesdropped on conversations for personal gain, oftentimes exploiting grieving families.
Selective outrage is certainly useful for the logical thinker who doesn't compare apples and oranges.
Slashdot Mirror
A couple thoughts your post inspired:
1) Most copyright laws are outdated and ill suited to account for digital content
2) The international nature of digital distribution makes dealing with varying copyright laws a huge pain in the ass
3) 1984 should be public domain (everywhere); it makes me wonder if it might be in Apple, Amazon, and B&N's best interests to lobby to have the Mickey Mouse Protection Act repealed or rewritten. Although this sounds promising, the thought makes me sad because I have no hope of the government passing laws because that's what the citizens want, the only hope for positive legislative change is that it benefits a large corporation somehow (e.g. the fight against SOPA).
They're being punished for their smug attitudes for owning shiny baubles made in an unethical manner.
Just because your bauble isn't shiny doesn't mean it was manufactured in an ethical manner.
Also, when have being fashionable and being socially conscientious gone hand-in-hand? The last company to take this much shit for Chinese labor was Nike in the 90s, when they were at the height of fashionable. I get what you want to say - "Steve Jobs was a hippy," as if that somehow obligates Apple as a company to only make their computers out of 100% recycled goods and hemp fiber, all manufactured here in the U.S. by unionized workers.
Concerning smug attitudes: I'm choking on the vile clouds of smug emitting from your post. You can still be a smug asshole and not own any Apple products.
I agree. Fox and MSNBC are the two extremists with CNN in the center. The problem with CNN is that they're so conscious of being centrist that they're wishy-washy on everything. They bring in talking heads that refuse to ever admit being wrong who'll take shots at each other and the moderators refuse to step in and call a spade a spade when one of the talking heads says something blatantly misleading or wrong unless there's some statistic they can refer to to maintain their objectivity. While I think the pursuit of objectivity is a good thing, CNNs anchors seem so determined to prove their objectivity with each and every sentence that they create a sort of political correctness that makes their broadcasts just as uninformative as Fox and MSNBC.
As a liberal, I agree with much of what is said on MSNBC but I refuse to watch it because their anchors resort to the same type of fallacious arguments Fox News uses. To me, it doesn't matter if what you're saying is correct if it's not backed up by cohesive logic, honesty regarding bias or conflicts of interest, and is free from inflammatory remarks. If a news station has an agenda, especially one it's not upfront and honest about, it's not a news station. Both Fox News and MSNBC have agendas they prioritize before presenting objective news (in this regard CNN has the right idea, just poor execution) - they want to cater to their niches and the top brass of both organizations is arrogant enough to believe that they can sway public opinion, the truth be damned.
I get my news from the internet and I watch the Daily Show (also on the internet) to see what type of shenanigans the traditional news outlets are up to without having to actually watch them.
I live by Wright Pat and they did a lot of testing on drones and stuff before they were well known and commonly used in the Air Force. At that time, people around here actually had a more logical basis for believing in aliens than anyone has for ID. While I always believed the UFOs were just stuff that Wright Pat was testing I didn't find it shocking when these sightings convinced people of alien life.
ID, unlike UFOs from Wright Pat, has yet to be identified to exist as anything other than a severally flawed theory that doesn't conform with empirical observation. The greatest lie about ID is that it's an attempt to explain natural phenomenon. It's not. It's an attempt to disregard natural phenomena as a subset of some greater whole that cannot be observed. The best analog to ID is the Hindu notion of Maya - that what we think of as reality is an illusion, and we cannot possibly learn about the rest of reality by studying the illusion (kind of like The Matrix).
ID is straight up anti-intellectualism and those ideas have no place at a scientific institution like NASA. I believe this guy had the right to believe in ID and work at NASA, as much as the thought makes me queazy, but he had no right to evangelize the idea around the workplace. I'm a Christian and I find the whole idea of ID to be revolting. Being religious doesn't necessitate being irrational.
A jail is a local level holding facility, usually used by a city or county. If you're arrested for being drunk and disorderly in public and you're thrown in the drunk tank, you're in jail. If you commit some type of misdemeanor that lands you a 90-day sentence, you'll serve that in jail. A jail is commonly a part of a police station.
A prison is a state level holding facility. If you commit a felony like steal a car, for example, you'll go to jail until you go to trial. Once you're found guilty and sentenced you'll be sent to prison. There are also federal and military prisons.
There's no difference between "never finished" and "did not complete," the author was just avoiding a redundancy.
So he needs a citation of someone speculating the same thing he's speculating? Or perhaps he should back it up with statistics pulled from some bogus study some Sociology grad student composed. A logical statement doesn't require a citation.
Personally, when discussing social issues I think statistics and research get in the way. A person's anecdotal experiences are probably more informative than Sociological research, which is impossible to make objective. At least with anecdotes people take it with a grain of salt instead of masquerading as a source of authority because 9 out of 10 people answered 'blah blah blah' on a survey issued by some ambitious grad student.
If we're talking hard science then I fully understand asking for a citation or describing a way to set up a replicable experiment. The greatest failing of Sociology and Psychology is the incorrect assumption that human behavior can be reduced to a hard science.
How do you really expect this guy to provide a citation that proves that most criminals are criminals because they have no other options? How would one answer that question using hard science? Survey prison inmates? That's fails because survey = bullshit science. He might be able to provide a citation with some figures to back up that ex-cons have a difficult time finding work, but, why? You have to be pretty detached from society to not know this is true.
I'll take logic over statistics any day.
though I'd rather be a janitor than a nurse but that's just me
I think this quote says a lot about society, in many ways. I'd rather be a janitor than a nurse, too. Even if nurses were paid much more than they are and janitors paid slightly less.
I've recently read a study which said that being better off is associated with lack of empathy, lack of a sense of right and wrong, and lack of self reflection.
Stop making conclusions off /. headlines. If you would have actually read that study or read the comments on that story then you would know that the methodology was bunk and the study shouldn't be used to make conclusions about anything.
Also, your argument that it may be better for them to be petty criminals than bankers is equally weak. Let's rewind 150 years and use that argument: "It's probably better that they remain slaves, after all, they can't hurt anyone chained up like that."
If you're going to comment: 1) Know what the fuck you're talking about 2) Take a formal logic class, preferably both deductive and inductive 3) Don't ask flamebait questions under posturing as legitimate concerns.
There's a major flaw in your logic.
The fact that black people live this lifestyle has nothing to do with the fact that they're black and everything to do with the fact that they're poor. You're not describing black people, you're describing poor people. I don't know a single black person who feels the type of us vs. them mentality you describe, and judging by your post I think it's safe to say that I'm much more familiar with black Americans and those who suffer from poverty in general. Blacks just tend to live in poverty because of historical circumstances.
Yes, our education system is so inadequate and so weighted against the poor that we are breeding a criminal class. Yes that correlates to black people because black people tend to live in poverty. But when discussing the problems facing education, poverty, and crime discussing race is counter-intuitive. The white kid in the projects with an unemployed mother and imprisoned father is just as disadvantaged as his black neighbor. The fact of the matter is race matters less and less these days. The problem with that is because it has nothing to do with black upward mobility and everything to do with white downward mobility. Those white families who were blue-collar, middle class a generation or two ago are falling into poverty and becoming a part of the criminal culture.
It seems that we agree that education is the only solution, but I think your tirade about race is misplaced and fruitless. What you seem to think is black culture isn't black culture, it's criminal culture. When you label it as black culture, not only are you being inaccurate, but you're inciting racism by blaming a people. When you label it criminal culture, you're being more accurate and you're condemning a behavior, not a skin tone.
That's the sad part about colleges these days -- they don't seem to teach critical thinking any more, where most students get by on regurgitation. And, Obama definitely is a byproduct of this.
Yeah, those damn Harvard graduates and their lack of critical thinking. Why don't you think critically about that one?
To be fair, she probably meant objective information that Google is pretty good at finding.* If this girl was saying "I don't know who to vote for, I'll just Google it," then your anecdote would be more relevant and scary. In this case I'm assuming she meant something like Herron's formula that she's too lazy to memorize b/c she can look it up on her iPhone at any time. When I was in grade school I stored all the formulas like that in my TI-85 because memorization has never been a strength of mine. It didn't matter as long as I knew what formula to apply where.
Concerning your bit about freedom: Of course all political systems fail to fully foster freedom. True freedom is anarchy. Society is people sacrificing certain freedoms so that the group as a whole can benefit. Participation in society has little to do with anything - just by existing a society suppresses the rights of its population. Who is more free - the guy in a libertarian society who doesn't participate in government affairs at all or the guy in the socialist society who is an active member of the ruling party? I'd argue neither unless one of the societies is particularly tyrannical. The political system itself has less to do with liberty than the way it's implemented. If I live in Society X and it's run by a socialist dictator who works tirelessly to provide a stable government with quality education, health care, and fair market practices; am I not more free than Joe Shmoe in Society Y which is a capitalist democracy riddled with corruption, business monopolies, a piss-poor education system, and a market-driven health care system? Even if I don't have any civic participation with Society X and Joe Shmoe leads a political party in Society Y?
Be careful when talking about absolutes in government. For that is the way of the Sith (I couldn't help myself).
*personally, my first instinct is to Wiki things, but I've noticed the less one knows about science/logic/empiricism the less likely they are to trust Wiki. People tell me, "you know anyone can make anything up on Wiki" like there aren't any sources. It's pretty sad most people want a source of information they can take at face value. Or that they'll trust the first Google result over just going to Wikipedia and using the works cited to steer them in the right direction.
perhaps he was never really working for the FTC to begin with, in fact, I dont even believe that this man exists!
It's easy to dismiss a lot of concerns as paranoia. That's an easy, cheap-shot retort around here. But sometimes suspecting conspiracy is more logical than believing governments/corporations/lawyers at face value.
If I said, "I suspect the Russian elections were unfair," would you shoot back with that same old tin-foil retort?
This hire looks like a duck, it waddles like a duck, and it quacks like a duck. As far as I'm concerned, it's a duck unless someone can prove to me it's an ugly swan. This guy has used his position in government to help Microsoft - whether it was agreed upon or coordinated or whathaveyou is irrelevant because accepting money from them looks shady and is ethically questionable. It looks like graft, the money moves hands like graft, and if money could talk then it would sound like graft, too. I don't consider myself paranoid, just cynical. Especially when Microsoft and the government are involved.
I couldn't agree more. It fascinates how many bogus studies are thrown up on the /. frontpage and it starts up a huge debate. I was waiting for the first post to point out the poor methodology and how silly it is to draw any conclusions from this 'study.' The sad part is that your post, almost at the bottom of the page, is the first one I've seen with this conclusion. On the bright side, you've already been modded up.
It sucks that on the news for nerds site we're so often trolled by sensationalist, bullshit research that no one should take seriously. Anytime I see a headline that says "New Study Finds . . ." I immediately reach for a grain of salt. Even in the rare cases where the methodology is sound, the results usually aren't reproduced before publication and no one considers that they may regress to the mean when the study is replicated over and over.
See? Looks real enough, doesn't it?
No.
Motivation and intent are different things. In a hate crime murder and a non-hate crime murder the intent is the same: to kill. In a manslaughter, the intent to kill was not present even though that was the end result.
But motive shouldn't have anything to do with determining sentencing. The law exists to regulate behavior. The government has no business using the law to regulate attitudes. Hatred is a right of every citizen. It can't be taken away unless you give someone a lobotomy or drug them or brainwash them or something. So you can lock up a person, but you're liable to increase their hatred by doing that. Acting on your hatred in a violent manner can be forbidden by law, but it's the violence (an action) that's relevant to the law rather than the motivation.
Similarly, greed is also a right of every citizen. If you act on your greed in a violent manner by robbing someone, you've done nothing illegal until you've acted in a violent manner. I would argue that far more and far worse crimes are motivated by envy and greed than by hatred. Furthermore, hatred is much more muddled: it's not always particularly clear whether a defendant in a hate crime case was driven by racial/homophobic hate or just hatred of the particular victim. Also, hatred can often be justified whereas greed cannot (if someone were to hurt your child, for example, your hatred for that person would probably be justified; but make no mistake, the emotion you feel is the exact same emotion a homophobe feels towards homosexuals).
From a moral standpoint, I can't see how one can claim that a violent act motivated by bigotry is any different than a violent act motivated by greed or a violent act committed on a whim. It's not like most violent criminals who are motivated by greed are Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread. How can you make the claim that being beaten for your race is worse than being beaten for your watch? How can one act deserve a greater punishment than the other when the acts themselves are the same?
I think "adventure" is the word you were looking for.
Yeah, The King's Speech and Black Swan and There Will Be Blood and The Departed and No Country for Old Men and all the other recent Oscar grand slams really pandered to that whole War on Terror thing. . .
The Hurt Locker, Babel, and Syriana are the only films I can think of that received the Academy's attention that were based on these themes and they were all really good films. Being relevant is an important part of a story's emotional impact. However, if Oliver Stone would have won an award (or even been nominated) for World Trade Center, I would share your cynicism (and I haven't seen it or United 93 b/c to me their subject matter is shameless).
I agree and disagree. The main threats to Microsoft's business model is Linux and LibreOffice (or any other free office suit, really). The scariest thing, for Microsoft, about these things is that they're free. That's not small margin, that's no margin. Since Google facilitates open source by making platforms irrelevant, as you've pointed out, they're seen as a menace. But they're also a menace because they're a dominant player on the internet, which is where pretty much all computing has moved that's MS's business.
I think that given the fact that they have to compete against free products when it comes to servers and Office, they've been looking for a backup in high-margin markets. This means competing with Apple. Google. Sony. Motorola. Windows Phones and XBoxes. Tablet computers. Profit margins for software will always decrease until they hit zero. Depending on the sophistication and demand for the software, it may take certain certain things longer to drop to zero than others, but eventually only custom software will cost anything. I think Apple had the right model all along, they were just before their time, computers hadn't progressed to commodity status in the 80s and 90s. They were very much tied to one's job. Now our phones are computers and the internet has shat on exclusive platforms. Microsoft has to change their business model before LibreOffice sinks MS Office, before they lose their leverage with hardware manufacturers who won't want to pay shit for Windows licenses because Linux will be a suitable alternative.
There are places in the country where if you lose your job, you will have to move.
Or collect food stamps.
Check out other great stories with the nottrue tag: http://slashdot.org/tag/nottrue
My favorite is "Michigan Teen Creates Fusion Device."
I know it's popular to call Apple "a marketing company" around here, but it's gotten ridiculous. What started as a very sarcastic cheap shot has somehow become an accepted truth. Last time I checked, Apple makes their money by selling computers, phones, and other hardware. They make a little off software, too. I'm pretty sure if Apple somehow lost their iPhone market, they wouldn't be able to offset the loss by selling t-shirts with their logo on it.
But, yes, Sony could learn a lot from Apple's marketing strategies.
its being perverted into new, strange things and I'm not liking the directions its being pulled.
Ray Bradbury saw it coming. Fahrenheit 451.
Basically, it started as a forum. It's growing into a colosseum.
Or some people just learned how to use their bookmarks bar. I've known people who had Google as their homepage and they would search for Facebook.com and then click on the link Google gave them.
That's a poor comparison. When Anonymous becomes a publicly traded company that poses as a legitimate media player, then it would make sense. No shit Anonymous is breaking the law, that's what they do and they're doing so for a cause (whether it's justified or not is irrelevant, they seem to believe in it).
News Corp. eavesdropped on conversations for personal gain, oftentimes exploiting grieving families.
Selective outrage is certainly useful for the logical thinker who doesn't compare apples and oranges.