Maybe the sane people in the US now have some useful ammo to tell the RKBA nutcases where to go - your 2nd amendment grants the right to keep and bear arms. It says nothing about any right to buy or sell or trade them.
(BTW, your constitution also says your federal government also has the power to regulate interstate commerce so inter-state arms trafficking could have been shut down years ago).
Why is, taking advantage of stupid people against the law.
Because the kind of people who take advantage of the stupid are criminal scum who are a menace to everyone.
They're also destructive to society, the kind of people who turn places into cultural shitholes (where nobody sane would want to live) that might otherwise be kind of nice. america, for one really obvious example. americans can be nice people but they let their scum run the place, probably due to the non-stop propaganda about freedom that they don't have (and never will - it isn't for the likes of them, anyway - freedom's reserved for their ruling classes)
More importantly, if lowlife scamming vermin are caught and imprisoned on the small cons, that'll stop 'em before they have a chance to move up in the world and become bankers.
the possibility that the people/person behind the project may be lying springs to mind.
No, on second thoughts, you're right and i'm completely wrong, there's no such thing as a dishonest businessman....on an unrelated topic, would you like to help me get my bridge-buying company kick-started? for a $10 donation you get to walk on the bridge once. for $100 you get one of the paving stones engraved with your initials, or your full name for $1000.
you're absolutely right, stupid is unfixable. no law is ever going to prevent stupidity, same as no law is ever going to prevent someone from being robbed or killed.
that's no reason to let criminal scum get away with their crimes.
laws don't prevent crime, they don't even deter crime. they do allow for punishment of offenders when they're caught.
you know what's even more stupid? letting conmen get away with their crimes because you think their victims deserve it.
people shouldn't have money if they don't want to get robbed, women should wear burqas if they don't want to get raped, pedestrians should stay home if they don't want to get killed by a drunk driver, and so on.
it's their own fault. they deserve it.
it's good to know we have such an upstanding citizen to let us know who the worthy and unworthy are.
Your attitude is exactly what is wrong with american business ethics.
'caveat emptor' is not a description of a legitimate business model, it's a fucking warning.
People who are stupid or ignorant or ill-informed or just plain conned by slick salesmen DO NOT DESERVE TO BE RIPPED OFF.
And those who do the ripping off are criminals who deserve jail time.
Also, aside from the criminality of ripping people off, even a staunch libertarian type should be able to see that deceptive exploitation of information asymmetry like this inevitably leads to a lemon market, which is bad for everyone: if you can't trust the market at all, the only rational option is to treat everyone as a scammer (and scam or be scammed) or not to play at all.
Kickstarter enables a style of capitalist parasitism that was previously only available to huge corporations to be scaled so that it's accessible to small-time scammers as well as the giant fraudsters:
Privatise the profit, socialise the risk and expense.
That's not all there is to kickstarter or to kickstarter projects but it's easy to see why it is attractive to such parasites - the crowd-funding model has most of the benefits of the stock market without the anti-scammer regulations and without having to give annoying outsiders (aka shareholders) a share in what they're funding.
probably because yank english retains some oddities from the dialects spoken by the small groups of 17th century religious nutters that founded many of the original colonies.
that origin explains some of the major flaws with yankland, found especially in the jesusland regions, so it probably explains this minor one too.
Unlike the speed of a graphics card, caring about whether a car can do 130mph on a public highway (what's that. about 210km/h?) is something only for arseholes who don't give a shit about the risk of killing other people with their selfish indulgences.
Practically, you're never going to drive on a highway at more than about 100-120 km/h or ~60-~67mph (typical legal maximums in many countries), or maybe 120-140 km/h (~73 - ~86mph) for short stretches of straight road where you guess there aren't any cops or speed cameras.
(and even then you're an arsehole - you're wasting fuel and putting other lives at risk. and all for no noticable difference in travel time)
so, who gives a shit whether a car can go 50% faster than you're ever going to drive it? it's just a petrol-head version of wanky gadget fetishism...except that other forms of techno-fetishism aren't dangerous to other people.
My numerological and astrological calculations clearly show that Steve Jobs's next incarnation will be as a kitten that I'm going to purchase from a pet shop in suburban Melbourne (NO, I'm not going to say exactly where) in July 2017.
That gives me time to get the lawyers started on getting inheritance rights for reincarnations. Jobsy the kitten will deserve the best in life, and he's earned it already.
maybe i'm just weird but if i were looking for a diesel car, i'd just google for something like "diesel car" or similar (refining the search terms as required to filter out stuff i'm not interested in) and discover it that way.
that also makes it easier to find not just the existence of a given product but also consumer reviews of that product. the best time to find out a car (or anything) is a lemon is *before* you buy it.
b) it's a side effect of blocking javascript etc by default - i don't want web sites (especially advertising networks) running arbitrary code on my computer - spying on me and potentially installing trojans or other malware. I just want to view data, not run malware.
c) when i want to buy something, i go looking for it and dont want to be pestered about buying stuff otherwise. i loathe, detest, and resent being badgered by advertising. i just don't fucking want to know about it, hear about it, see it.
d) i never buy anything because of an ad.
e) in fact because of a and c above, the only affect seeing an ad is likely to have on me is to cause me to boycott the product and/or the company selling it if the ad is sufficiently annoying (and i have a fairly low threshold for being annoyed by the cretinously inane vulgarities that advertising scumbags think are clever or funny. i particularly despise ads that attempt to use soft porn to entice me to buy their worthless shit - i have nothing against porn in general, i just hate the cheap and nasty manipulation of using it in ads or marketing).
really, a pair of tits or whatever is not going to make me think your product is worth buying. it's going to make me think you're a manipulative scumbag.
I hate "branding" ads almost as much as porn ads - the ones that don't even mention a product but just do their best to engender feelings of loathing and contempt for the company/industry or whatever it is they're spamming. at least, that's how they work on me.
f) since advertising is predominantly pay-per-click and not pay-per-view my viewing ads is never going to generate any kind of revenue for the sites i visit.
g) OTOH for sites i actively participate in, my presence indirectly generates revenue because of all the other users who choose to view ads (for whatever reason - incomprehensible to me) that read the content i contribute. but that's not something i really care about. it's merely a co-incidence or a side-effect, not a reason.
h) i would rather not visit a site at all if there were some technical mechanism or annoyance (like interstitial ads) that attempted to force them on me. it's not like web sites are rare - there's millions of sites on the net and not one of them is worth being badgered by advertising for.
i) i don't watch TV much either and when I do, I mostly watch the non-commercial channels (ABC and SBS here in.au) because most of the shows on commercial channels are just hollywood style shit and other american cultural imperialism. The few shows I do like to watch on commercial TV I record with mythtv and skip the ads because, as i mentioned, I hate ads, they annoy the hell out of me.
mythtv also allows me to ignore TV for weeks or months at a time and then binge on watching TV for a few days (perhaps an entire season of a show). then i ignore it again for weeks.
j) my life is a lot more pleasant without the constant barrage of advertising noise.
If that's the case, then EA may have grounds to sue them for copyright infringement - without any need for nonsense about ownership of ideas.
I don't know or care either way.
What i do care about is scumbag corporations and their lawyers pushing the boundaries and making claims about copyright that are not backed up by law. Copyright does not cover ideas, never has, and indeed specifically excludes ideas from coverage. You can copyright a specific expression of an idea but not the idea itself.
9) lose the grub boot menu that allows you to dual boot 10) think about the hassle of replacing the MBR every time you want to boot a different OS and give up in disgust.
While it's easy to sympathise with small indie developers even they don't get to own an idea.
Zynga may be copying *ideas* from everyone but as long as they are writing their own implementation including creating their own artwork, they are legally entitled to do so. And *morally* entitled to do so too - nobody owns ideas, and the *ONLY* correct response to someone who claims that they do is "fuck off and die you worthless scumbag parasite".
BTW, indie devs have more to lose than big developers if ideas were copyrightable - they wouldn't be able to do *anything* without getting sued into oblivion by trolls like Zynga or worse.
Yep. That section of the article was a glaring contradiction to the rest of it.
The pharmaceutical industry is not an example of an industry that needs special patent protection. rather, it is an industry that needs to be nationalised.
pharmaceutical companies do very little actual research, anyway. That is done in (mostly government funded) universities. BigPharma gets involved only *after* there is a new drug 'invented', they buy up the patents to the research, and then spend the money required to complete the safety testing and bring it to market.
it seems to me that they're an unnecessary middle-man, they add nothing of value, they're just rent-seeking parasites. The public is already paying for the research, we should reap the benefits as well - the safety testing can and should be done by government-owned non-profits.
The private sector's role should be in mass-production and distribution of the end-product, with production performed according to strictly designed and enforced quality standards - much as the "generic drug" part of the industry works now.
i.e. once developed, tested, and approved for human use, *all* drugs should be "generic".
Slashdot Mirror
You're just jealous because Australia is a significant source of crappy stories, and some of them are extremely low quality.
Our crappy stories per capita ratio is truly astounding.
hmmm. i should write an article about this. I'm sure I can get it published.
Maybe the sane people in the US now have some useful ammo to tell the RKBA nutcases where to go - your 2nd amendment grants the right to keep and bear arms. It says nothing about any right to buy or sell or trade them.
(BTW, your constitution also says your federal government also has the power to regulate interstate commerce so inter-state arms trafficking could have been shut down years ago).
Because the kind of people who take advantage of the stupid are criminal scum who are a menace to everyone.
They're also destructive to society, the kind of people who turn places into cultural shitholes (where nobody sane would want to live) that might otherwise be kind of nice. america, for one really obvious example. americans can be nice people but they let their scum run the place, probably due to the non-stop propaganda about freedom that they don't have (and never will - it isn't for the likes of them, anyway - freedom's reserved for their ruling classes)
More importantly, if lowlife scamming vermin are caught and imprisoned on the small cons, that'll stop 'em before they have a chance to move up in the world and become bankers.
the possibility that the people/person behind the project may be lying springs to mind.
No, on second thoughts, you're right and i'm completely wrong, there's no such thing as a dishonest businessman....on an unrelated topic, would you like to help me get my bridge-buying company kick-started? for a $10 donation you get to walk on the bridge once. for $100 you get one of the paving stones engraved with your initials, or your full name for $1000.
you're absolutely right, stupid is unfixable. no law is ever going to prevent stupidity, same as no law is ever going to prevent someone from being robbed or killed.
that's no reason to let criminal scum get away with their crimes.
laws don't prevent crime, they don't even deter crime. they do allow for punishment of offenders when they're caught.
you know what's even more stupid? letting conmen get away with their crimes because you think their victims deserve it.
people shouldn't have money if they don't want to get robbed, women should wear burqas if they don't want to get raped, pedestrians should stay home if they don't want to get killed by a drunk driver, and so on.
it's their own fault. they deserve it.
it's good to know we have such an upstanding citizen to let us know who the worthy and unworthy are.
Your attitude is exactly what is wrong with american business ethics.
'caveat emptor' is not a description of a legitimate business model, it's a fucking warning.
People who are stupid or ignorant or ill-informed or just plain conned by slick salesmen DO NOT DESERVE TO BE RIPPED OFF.
And those who do the ripping off are criminals who deserve jail time.
Also, aside from the criminality of ripping people off, even a staunch libertarian type should be able to see that deceptive exploitation of information asymmetry like this inevitably leads to a lemon market, which is bad for everyone: if you can't trust the market at all, the only rational option is to treat everyone as a scammer (and scam or be scammed) or not to play at all.
Kickstarter enables a style of capitalist parasitism that was previously only available to huge corporations to be scaled so that it's accessible to small-time scammers as well as the giant fraudsters:
Privatise the profit, socialise the risk and expense.
That's not all there is to kickstarter or to kickstarter projects but it's easy to see why it is attractive to such parasites - the crowd-funding model has most of the benefits of the stock market without the anti-scammer regulations and without having to give annoying outsiders (aka shareholders) a share in what they're funding.
only in yankland is the 'h' in 'herbs' silent.
probably because yank english retains some oddities from the dialects spoken by the small groups of 17th century religious nutters that founded many of the original colonies.
that origin explains some of the major flaws with yankland, found especially in the jesusland regions, so it probably explains this minor one too.
Unlike the speed of a graphics card, caring about whether a car can do 130mph on a public highway (what's that. about 210km/h?) is something only for arseholes who don't give a shit about the risk of killing other people with their selfish indulgences.
Practically, you're never going to drive on a highway at more than about 100-120 km/h or ~60-~67mph (typical legal maximums in many countries), or maybe 120-140 km/h (~73 - ~86mph) for short stretches of straight road where you guess there aren't any cops or speed cameras.
(and even then you're an arsehole - you're wasting fuel and putting other lives at risk. and all for no noticable difference in travel time)
so, who gives a shit whether a car can go 50% faster than you're ever going to drive it? it's just a petrol-head version of wanky gadget fetishism...except that other forms of techno-fetishism aren't dangerous to other people.
My numerological and astrological calculations clearly show that Steve Jobs's next incarnation will be as a kitten that I'm going to purchase from a pet shop in suburban Melbourne (NO, I'm not going to say exactly where) in July 2017.
That gives me time to get the lawyers started on getting inheritance rights for reincarnations. Jobsy the kitten will deserve the best in life, and he's earned it already.
maybe they could all be locked in a stadium for a week or so without sufficient food or water.
optionally shoot any who try to leave just in case they're up to no good.
i see what you're doing there. you're being funny by spelling 'subtle' as 'subtile'. and the excessive misplaced commas are a nice touch.
hilarious. retarded too, but mostly hilarious.
maybe i'm just weird but if i were looking for a diesel car, i'd just google for something like "diesel car" or similar (refining the search terms as required to filter out stuff i'm not interested in) and discover it that way.
that also makes it easier to find not just the existence of a given product but also consumer reviews of that product. the best time to find out a car (or anything) is a lemon is *before* you buy it.
i adblock everything because:
a) ads annoy the hell out of me
b) it's a side effect of blocking javascript etc by default - i don't want web sites (especially advertising networks) running arbitrary code on my computer - spying on me and potentially installing trojans or other malware. I just want to view data, not run malware.
c) when i want to buy something, i go looking for it and dont want to be pestered about buying stuff otherwise. i loathe, detest, and resent being badgered by advertising. i just don't fucking want to know about it, hear about it, see it.
d) i never buy anything because of an ad.
e) in fact because of a and c above, the only affect seeing an ad is likely to have on me is to cause me to boycott the product and/or the company selling it if the ad is sufficiently annoying (and i have a fairly low threshold for being annoyed by the cretinously inane vulgarities that advertising scumbags think are clever or funny. i particularly despise ads that attempt to use soft porn to entice me to buy their worthless shit - i have nothing against porn in general, i just hate the cheap and nasty manipulation of using it in ads or marketing).
really, a pair of tits or whatever is not going to make me think your product is worth buying. it's going to make me think you're a manipulative scumbag.
I hate "branding" ads almost as much as porn ads - the ones that don't even mention a product but just do their best to engender feelings of loathing and contempt for the company/industry or whatever it is they're spamming. at least, that's how they work on me.
f) since advertising is predominantly pay-per-click and not pay-per-view my viewing ads is never going to generate any kind of revenue for the sites i visit.
g) OTOH for sites i actively participate in, my presence indirectly generates revenue because of all the other users who choose to view ads (for whatever reason - incomprehensible to me) that read the content i contribute. but that's not something i really care about. it's merely a co-incidence or a side-effect, not a reason.
h) i would rather not visit a site at all if there were some technical mechanism or annoyance (like interstitial ads) that attempted to force them on me. it's not like web sites are rare - there's millions of sites on the net and not one of them is worth being badgered by advertising for.
i) i don't watch TV much either and when I do, I mostly watch the non-commercial channels (ABC and SBS here in .au) because most of the shows on commercial channels are just hollywood style shit and other american cultural imperialism. The few shows I do like to watch on commercial TV I record with mythtv and skip the ads because, as i mentioned, I hate ads, they annoy the hell out of me.
mythtv also allows me to ignore TV for weeks or months at a time and then binge on watching TV for a few days (perhaps an entire season of a show). then i ignore it again for weeks.
j) my life is a lot more pleasant without the constant barrage of advertising noise.
do you have some kind of strange puppet fetish?
keep it in your bedroom, please.
If that's the case, then EA may have grounds to sue them for copyright infringement - without any need for nonsense about ownership of ideas.
I don't know or care either way.
What i do care about is scumbag corporations and their lawyers pushing the boundaries and making claims about copyright that are not backed up by law. Copyright does not cover ideas, never has, and indeed specifically excludes ideas from coverage. You can copyright a specific expression of an idea but not the idea itself.
i guess you thought you were making some kind of clever point by making a simple variation of what i posted.
sadly, you're nowhere near as clever as you think you are.
more importantly, you haven't disproved or even undermined my point. Instead, you've unwittingly (witlessly!) provided an example to support it.
9) lose the grub boot menu that allows you to dual boot
10) think about the hassle of replacing the MBR every time you want to boot a different OS and give up in disgust.
While it's easy to sympathise with small indie developers even they don't get to own an idea.
Zynga may be copying *ideas* from everyone but as long as they are writing their own implementation including creating their own artwork, they are legally entitled to do so. And *morally* entitled to do so too - nobody owns ideas, and the *ONLY* correct response to someone who claims that they do is "fuck off and die you worthless scumbag parasite".
BTW, indie devs have more to lose than big developers if ideas were copyrightable - they wouldn't be able to do *anything* without getting sued into oblivion by trolls like Zynga or worse.
Copyright doesn't cover ideas.
Zynga are, IMO, scum but they're not in the wrong here. EA are being arses by claiming to own an idea....EA are, IMO, scum too.
thankfully we have the wonderful world of javascript web apps to make modern computers perform as well as they did in 1990.
No, he was talking about cyberspace. The internet hadn't been invented in his day.
Yep. That section of the article was a glaring contradiction to the rest of it.
The pharmaceutical industry is not an example of an industry that needs special patent protection. rather, it is an industry that needs to be nationalised.
pharmaceutical companies do very little actual research, anyway. That is done in (mostly government funded) universities. BigPharma gets involved only *after* there is a new drug 'invented', they buy up the patents to the research, and then spend the money required to complete the safety testing and bring it to market.
it seems to me that they're an unnecessary middle-man, they add nothing of value, they're just rent-seeking parasites. The public is already paying for the research, we should reap the benefits as well - the safety testing can and should be done by government-owned non-profits.
The private sector's role should be in mass-production and distribution of the end-product, with production performed according to strictly designed and enforced quality standards - much as the "generic drug" part of the industry works now.
i.e. once developed, tested, and approved for human use, *all* drugs should be "generic".
Americans need to stop taking credit for the work of the USSR.