As an anarchist living in a geographic location which some delusionals have labeled "The United Stated of America" (boy, is that name ironic) I would like to point out that the people here have no sense of humor when it comes to politics.
Well, except for the election of Bush, Jr. That was a joke of global proportion.
I can imagine. It makes me so sad that those who are timid and/or lack imagination work so hard to hold us back. I makes me want to write a song. A song about a world without the three pillars of existing order: the church, the state and private property.
Maybe it would go like this:
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You, you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You, you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as one
or you live in a state where there aren't gov't granted monopoly regions (are there still any?)
You repeat misinformation about the industry (although probably only because of ignorance, not malice). You complain about the industry. Then go on to explain how you continue to purchase the full price service and how well it works for you.
What are you trying to tell us, AC?
The Telecommunications Act of 1996, on a federal level, outlaws exclusive franchise agreements for cable companies for the entire US. There hasn't been a government granted "monopoly" on cable anywhere in the United States of America for going on 15 years now. But you state the opposite of the truth; specifically, you state that there is amost nowhere in the USA without a "gov't granted monopoly". Everyone in the USA lives in a state where there are zero goverment granted cable monopolies (except when the municipality itself is the monopoly - meaning a city/county owned cable system).
There is a groupthink to hate on cable companies and this "monopoly" misinformation seems to get repeated in every thread about a cable company, dispite being demonstrably false. You are repeating some nonsense you like to believe without regard to things like facts.
The limitaion of no Sat TV is something you chose when you decided on your condo. You admit there is DSL but you prefer cable internet. The internet service is now full price and you chose to keep the service at that price. The service seems to work for you and provides not only internet but TV from third parties via said internet.
I don't like how expensive my favorite whisky is. However, I like good whisky and pricey or not, it is worth every penny.
So, is your repsonse that Comcast is a monopoly because while there are competitors, they are more expensive? It that what you think a monopoly is? So, if Ferrari has the faster cars at the better price, but you could get a Ford or Toyota that was less powerful and more expensive, then Ferrari would have a monopoly?
I don't think the word "monopoly" means what you think it means.
No actually Comcast is operating on Local Government property (roads) using a monopoly issued by the Government. There is no privacy or rights involved. It's all Government endorsed.
In fact your local government could revoke Comcast's monopoly and hand it to some other CATV provider (cox, cablevision, time-warner,etc) anytime it wishes.
What is this goverment issued monopoly status of which you speak? Exlcusive franchise agreements you say? Don't you realize that they were outlawed by the Telecommunication Act of 1996? Federal law makes them criminal and there hasn't been an exclusive cable franchise agreement in the United States of America for 15 years. Are you just repeating something you heard from a friend? Where did you get your "facts"?
Which of course is why comcast generously bribes the politicians.
>>>Censorship can only be performed by a government.
Or a monopoly (phone, cable, electricity utility) given the power BY the government to censor.
I am with you on the bribery point. I think the collusion of big business and goverment is reprehensible and rampant. I don't think anyone missed todays news about former FCC Chairperson Magaret Atwell Baker becoming a paid lobbyist for Comcast-NBC just four months after she was involved in approving their merger. That is digusting and yet we sit here and take it.
But, again, what monopoly are you talking about? Do you not have satellite and DSL as options where you live. And if not, how is that any fault of the cable company? You might as well have said that Magneto and his rogue mutants are to blame as both statments are pure fiction and demonstrably false.
The is a huge groupthink for hating the cable company. Unfortunately, many arguments for this hatred are misinformation, not fact. If the franchise agreement isn't exclusive, if there are phone, internet and TV competitors offering products/services in the same area then answer me this (and let me apologize in advance for the yelling): How in fucking hell is that a monopoly?
I have a beautiful screen shot of a virus warning pop-up that occurred on my computer. The HTML perfectly recreated the look and feel of a Windows XP message box. The biggest thing that tipped me off that it wasn't legit was that I was running GNU/Linux and KDE 3 as the windows manager. A perfectly recreated XP look still fails when you aren't running windows on the computer showing the pop-up.
How is a normal, non-techie computer user expected to tell the difference? I have been asked this by the sales staff at work. "How do I know if it is real?" One of them actually paid the $50 for the Antivirus XP 2010 walware or whatever it was called. I honestly don't know what to tell them. Does anyone else have an opinion about how to teach non-techies to spot bullshit pop-ups?
You didn't need to correct the AC. His arguments were Strawman and no one paid the AC any attention. ACs are just barely ranked above trolls and you shouldn't feed the ACs either. Nice post though. Both of them.
On a positive note, my four year old daughter knows her way around Ubuntu as well. She even knows how to logon with her own username and password. Anyone have anecdotal evidence that preschool aged boys can use Ubuntu or is it just girls?
I want to make it clear that it is not your cable company keeping you from buying individual channels.
90% of TV channels are owned by one of seven large media conglomerates. Viacom, for instance, owns Comedy Central, Logo, BET, Spike, TV Land, Nick@Nite, Nickelodeon, TeenNick, Nick Jr., MTV, VH1, MTV2, Tr3Ìs, CMT, Palladia. The cable companies cannot buy just one network and they are contractually required to group certain channel in certain ways. If the cable company doesn't agree to Viacom's terms, then no Nick, no MTV, no Spike. It is an all or nothing proposition.
How long do you think a cable company will stay in business if they don't have Nick or MTV? No Comedy Central?
The media companies hold the scarce resource (the channels and content) and they dictate the terms. One of those terms is that the cable company cannot a-la-cart the channels.
Don't blame the cable company, blame Viacom, Disney, National Amusements, News Corporation, Time Warner, General Electric and Sony.
I don't mean to rant, just trying to educate.
Don't like it? Write your congress-person, pay them more than the media company lobbyists do or boycott mass media. But don't blame the wrong group.
I would like to point out that it is the grown-ups that have poisoned the water, the air, the soil. Created a social security system that is not sustainable and boils down to stealing from their children and grandchildren. They have gladly militarized the planet. They have allowed IP laws to become a draconian bastardization of what they were intended. They have fucked this planet up. Grown-ups are willfully ignorant of this. They rationalize and lie to sustain their selfish lives. They consume far more than they contribute.
The grown-ups need to sit the fuck down and shut their filthy mouths. The kids are cleaning your mess up and we don't want to hear a peep out of you.
You do realize that the psychiatric grouping of deseases called "schizophrenia" include many different physical illnesses that may be completely unrelated, right?
You realize that negative symptom form and positive symptom form of schizophrenia can be completely different in their underlying physical causes and are only the same desease in the minds of the psychiatrist/psychologist? You realize that the old person with an atrophied brain and a young person with a chemical imbalance show different symptoms of schizophrenia because they don't have the same desease? One has negative symptoms because he is missing large portions of brain tissue and the other has positive symptoms because his intact brain is not working correctly. Both are called "schizophrenia" even though they are different illnesses.
You do realize we are still in a dark age when it comes to psychiatry, right?
We just had a respectful, rational discussion. I read your response and better understand your point of view than I did before. We were both polite and earnest in our communication. I pleasantly feel as if I have stepped through the looking glass.
I want to respond to the fanboi comment. I am not a fanboi of Sony's. I am however a huge fan of the PS3.
I was a PC gamer for years. Never bought an Xbox, PS or PS2. I did buy a Gamecube for my son. The last console I purchased new that I intended to play was the Sega Genesis.
I was tired of "chasing the dragon", by which I mean the constant upgrading of the PC to play the next generation of games. It was time to buy a console.
The Wii wasn't an option as it was not intended for gaming on an HDTV. The 360 wasn't an option because the crime cartel that created it will not get my dollar. PS3 had a Cell in it, was an HD next-gen console and had nothing to do with Microsoft.
So, I can pick from little evil Sony's console, big evil Microsoft's console, stick with PC gaming (again supporting Microsoft) or not game at all. I chose the PS3. Blu-ray, Cell processor and, most importantly of all, not Microsoft.
The rootkit thing is fucked up, I agree. One might consider that the rootkit was only possible because Microsoft's OS was insecure and that they are partly to blame as well. Microsoft shipped a virus on their OS install disk but you give that a pass. They pushed a patch that changed their OS to allow a single, specially crafted image on a website to root your machine to help Federal law enforcement to install spy software on PCs.
Does you altruism keep you from running Windows? If not, why? How do you rationalize the double standard? If you don't see it as a double standard, why do you think that it is not one?
Summary: Sony is less evil than Microsoft and the PS3 is the superior machine, hence my appreciation of that console over its competitors.
P.S. If you boycott Sony and Microsoft, both, you have the moral high ground and I lose this debate.
Slashdot Mirror
Jumped ship to what? Not the Wii.
What is the other option, as the Wii is not a current generation system?
The choices are PS3, PC Gaming or an Xbox2? Let me rephrase that. The choices are Sony, Microsoft or Microsoft.
I pick Sony. You pick Microsoft. Both companies do some evil shit. We are both sleeping with the devil.
Possibility: Neither of us is gaming with a moral company with top notch security practices.
Do you agree with that possibility?
Yes, he is.
States - not Stated.
Spell check trolling myself.
As an anarchist living in a geographic location which some delusionals have labeled "The United Stated of America" (boy, is that name ironic) I would like to point out that the people here have no sense of humor when it comes to politics.
Well, except for the election of Bush, Jr. That was a joke of global proportion.
I can imagine. It makes me so sad that those who are timid and/or lack imagination work so hard to hold us back. I makes me want to write a song. A song about a world without the three pillars of existing order: the church, the state and private property.
Maybe it would go like this:
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You, you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You, you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as one
or you live in a state where there aren't gov't granted monopoly regions (are there still any?)
You repeat misinformation about the industry (although probably only because of ignorance, not malice). You complain about the industry. Then go on to explain how you continue to purchase the full price service and how well it works for you.
What are you trying to tell us, AC?
The Telecommunications Act of 1996, on a federal level, outlaws exclusive franchise agreements for cable companies for the entire US. There hasn't been a government granted "monopoly" on cable anywhere in the United States of America for going on 15 years now. But you state the opposite of the truth; specifically, you state that there is amost nowhere in the USA without a "gov't granted monopoly". Everyone in the USA lives in a state where there are zero goverment granted cable monopolies (except when the municipality itself is the monopoly - meaning a city/county owned cable system).
There is a groupthink to hate on cable companies and this "monopoly" misinformation seems to get repeated in every thread about a cable company, dispite being demonstrably false. You are repeating some nonsense you like to believe without regard to things like facts.
The limitaion of no Sat TV is something you chose when you decided on your condo.
You admit there is DSL but you prefer cable internet.
The internet service is now full price and you chose to keep the service at that price.
The service seems to work for you and provides not only internet but TV from third parties via said internet.
I don't like how expensive my favorite whisky is. However, I like good whisky and pricey or not, it is worth every penny.
So, is your repsonse that Comcast is a monopoly because while there are competitors, they are more expensive? It that what you think a monopoly is? So, if Ferrari has the faster cars at the better price, but you could get a Ford or Toyota that was less powerful and more expensive, then Ferrari would have a monopoly?
I don't think the word "monopoly" means what you think it means.
No actually Comcast is operating on Local Government property (roads) using a monopoly issued by the Government. There is no privacy or rights involved. It's all Government endorsed.
In fact your local government could revoke Comcast's monopoly and hand it to some other CATV provider (cox, cablevision, time-warner,etc) anytime it wishes.
What is this goverment issued monopoly status of which you speak? Exlcusive franchise agreements you say? Don't you realize that they were outlawed by the Telecommunication Act of 1996? Federal law makes them criminal and there hasn't been an exclusive cable franchise agreement in the United States of America for 15 years. Are you just repeating something you heard from a friend? Where did you get your "facts"?
Which of course is why comcast generously bribes the politicians.
>>>Censorship can only be performed by a government.
Or a monopoly (phone, cable, electricity utility) given the power BY the government to censor.
I am with you on the bribery point. I think the collusion of big business and goverment is reprehensible and rampant. I don't think anyone missed todays news about former FCC Chairperson Magaret Atwell Baker becoming a paid lobbyist for Comcast-NBC just four months after she was involved in approving their merger. That is digusting and yet we sit here and take it.
link: http://www.freepress.net/press-release/2011/5/11/free-press-blasts-comcast-fcc-merger
But, again, what monopoly are you talking about? Do you not have satellite and DSL as options where you live. And if not, how is that any fault of the cable company? You might as well have said that Magneto and his rogue mutants are to blame as both statments are pure fiction and demonstrably false.
The is a huge groupthink for hating the cable company. Unfortunately, many arguments for this hatred are misinformation, not fact. If the franchise agreement isn't exclusive, if there are phone, internet and TV competitors offering products/services in the same area then answer me this (and let me apologize in advance for the yelling): How in fucking hell is that a monopoly?
I have a beautiful screen shot of a virus warning pop-up that occurred on my computer. The HTML perfectly recreated the look and feel of a Windows XP message box. The biggest thing that tipped me off that it wasn't legit was that I was running GNU/Linux and KDE 3 as the windows manager. A perfectly recreated XP look still fails when you aren't running windows on the computer showing the pop-up.
How is a normal, non-techie computer user expected to tell the difference? I have been asked this by the sales staff at work. "How do I know if it is real?" One of them actually paid the $50 for the Antivirus XP 2010 walware or whatever it was called. I honestly don't know what to tell them. Does anyone else have an opinion about how to teach non-techies to spot bullshit pop-ups?
You didn't need to correct the AC. His arguments were Strawman and no one paid the AC any attention. ACs are just barely ranked above trolls and you shouldn't feed the ACs either. Nice post though. Both of them.
Not as well as it has for Haliburton's share holders.
Don't feed the AC troll.
On a positive note, my four year old daughter knows her way around Ubuntu as well. She even knows how to logon with her own username and password. Anyone have anecdotal evidence that preschool aged boys can use Ubuntu or is it just girls?
I want to make it clear that it is not your cable company keeping you from buying individual channels.
90% of TV channels are owned by one of seven large media conglomerates. Viacom, for instance, owns Comedy Central, Logo, BET, Spike, TV Land, Nick@Nite, Nickelodeon, TeenNick, Nick Jr., MTV, VH1, MTV2, Tr3Ìs, CMT, Palladia. The cable companies cannot buy just one network and they are contractually required to group certain channel in certain ways. If the cable company doesn't agree to Viacom's terms, then no Nick, no MTV, no Spike. It is an all or nothing proposition.
How long do you think a cable company will stay in business if they don't have Nick or MTV? No Comedy Central?
The media companies hold the scarce resource (the channels and content) and they dictate the terms. One of those terms is that the cable company cannot a-la-cart the channels.
Don't blame the cable company, blame Viacom, Disney, National Amusements, News Corporation, Time Warner, General Electric and Sony.
I don't mean to rant, just trying to educate.
Don't like it? Write your congress-person, pay them more than the media company lobbyists do or boycott mass media. But don't blame the wrong group.
I would vote you up if I had the points but you are +4 already so I must not be alone.
The title of this article should really be "Who owns the website, the person that paid for it or the person using it as a free service?".
I would like to point out that it is the grown-ups that have poisoned the water, the air, the soil. Created a social security system that is not sustainable and boils down to stealing from their children and grandchildren. They have gladly militarized the planet. They have allowed IP laws to become a draconian bastardization of what they were intended. They have fucked this planet up. Grown-ups are willfully ignorant of this. They rationalize and lie to sustain their selfish lives. They consume far more than they contribute.
The grown-ups need to sit the fuck down and shut their filthy mouths. The kids are cleaning your mess up and we don't want to hear a peep out of you.
They gotta catch me first, now don't they?
Troll.
Yo mama is a girl . . .
Two wrongs do not make a right but, according to Aesop, "One bad turn derserves another."
The Fox and the Stork -> http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/19.html
Three internets divided by a chicken pot pie.
You do realize that the psychiatric grouping of deseases called "schizophrenia" include many different physical illnesses that may be completely unrelated, right?
You realize that negative symptom form and positive symptom form of schizophrenia can be completely different in their underlying physical causes and are only the same desease in the minds of the psychiatrist/psychologist? You realize that the old person with an atrophied brain and a young person with a chemical imbalance show different symptoms of schizophrenia because they don't have the same desease? One has negative symptoms because he is missing large portions of brain tissue and the other has positive symptoms because his intact brain is not working correctly. Both are called "schizophrenia" even though they are different illnesses.
You do realize we are still in a dark age when it comes to psychiatry, right?
You do? Good. I was just checking.
Your joking is bigotted and ignorant.
...
Schizoprenia and multiple personality *slash* dissociative identity disorder are two completely different things.
I realize, of course, that you didn't write the joke, but you did repeat it.
This is how is should read:
Roses are Red...
Violets are Blue
I'm schizophrenic...
And I wish that duck outside my window would quit reading my mind . . .
Sweet goddess!
We just had a respectful, rational discussion. I read your response and better understand your point of view than I did before. We were both polite and earnest in our communication. I pleasantly feel as if I have stepped through the looking glass.
I want to respond to the fanboi comment. I am not a fanboi of Sony's. I am however a huge fan of the PS3.
I was a PC gamer for years. Never bought an Xbox, PS or PS2. I did buy a Gamecube for my son. The last console I purchased new that I intended to play was the Sega Genesis.
I was tired of "chasing the dragon", by which I mean the constant upgrading of the PC to play the next generation of games. It was time to buy a console.
The Wii wasn't an option as it was not intended for gaming on an HDTV. The 360 wasn't an option because the crime cartel that created it will not get my dollar. PS3 had a Cell in it, was an HD next-gen console and had nothing to do with Microsoft.
So, I can pick from little evil Sony's console, big evil Microsoft's console, stick with PC gaming (again supporting Microsoft) or not game at all.
I chose the PS3. Blu-ray, Cell processor and, most importantly of all, not Microsoft.
The rootkit thing is fucked up, I agree. One might consider that the rootkit was only possible because Microsoft's OS was insecure and that they are partly to blame as well. Microsoft shipped a virus on their OS install disk but you give that a pass. They pushed a patch that changed their OS to allow a single, specially crafted image on a website to root your machine to help Federal law enforcement to install spy software on PCs.
Does you altruism keep you from running Windows? If not, why? How do you rationalize the double standard? If you don't see it as a double standard, why do you think that it is not one?
Summary: Sony is less evil than Microsoft and the PS3 is the superior machine, hence my appreciation of that console over its competitors.
P.S. If you boycott Sony and Microsoft, both, you have the moral high ground and I lose this debate.
The tao is what is being talked about. Although, any attemp to describe the tao will fail.
The map is not the territory.