That is not a corporations job. They're one and only job is to make money for their shareholders.
I don't see how that statement is a necessary and unavoidable part of capitalism. Capitalism is just an economic system that relies on people freely making economic transactions with each other. It does not inherently require the concept of "shareholders" and even the idea that a corporation needs to have owners is not absolute - a corporation is just a relationship between employees and customers, it does not need to have owners any more than the marriage between a man and his wife needs to somehow be owned by someone. There are lots of (unfortunately, small) businesses that do serve their customers, but we can, and should, support them.
Because there are 6.7 billion people on a planet which can only sustain 4-5 billion, and we need to be practicing now if we want to be prepared for when we have to expand to new real estate.
"My personal highlight is the Pakistan hockey player (a group who were the subject of another separate BBC faux pas this weekend) who bears a striking resemblance to our own dear Queen"
The separate faux pas in question was the tweet:
BBC tennis commentator: "The opening fixture of the Olympic hockey tournament is India v Pakistan. That should be explosive"
Having read over the post you so vehemently disagree with five times, I fail to see where he even states that he is against copyright law. He convincingly argues that copyright has no basis in morality and is simply "an entitlement bestowed temporarily in exchange for publishing creative work". Copyright is solely a necessary evil put in because, as you say, creating stuff is expensive and people need to have a chance at a profit. That's all he's saying - that the right to copy is being restricted by law for practical reasons.
And of course almost all your objections ignore the fact that these events have all occurred with the consent of the legislator you voted for. That's very different then when things occur by an unelected monarch and a parliament which one can't vote.
The legislator I voted for? What if I voted against him and he still inflicted all the aforementioned infringements on freedom on me? There's nothing less wrong about having your rights taken away because 52% of the population like it that way than because one person likes it that way - your rights are gone either way. Democracy is supposed to prevent rights from being taken away in the first place, not to justify their removal.
The economic system of 19th century Britain was made possible by the fact that minorities were oppressed? I fail to see how that's an integral part of the economy, and why, if we have to have some group serve as an underclass, we can't decide who the underclass is based on the people's merits (ie. high school dropouts working in McDonalds, like what we have now) rather than their race.
As for worker protections, finally we're getting into actual arguments here. I, however, would argue that worker protections, in general, are a bad thing. They deny workers the right to work at wages low enough to compete with third world countries, so we're stuck relying on manufacturing in China while our workers are unemployed. What situation would you rather be in, unemployment or a choice between a $4/hour job and unemployment?
You're right, it was only limited by technical means. But we are not talking about 19th century government, we are talking about 19th century freedom. It doesn't matter how the freedom arose, we are talking about the result. Obviously, if we're going to return to this freedom we'll have to figure out a way of doing so that does not involve abandoning all technological progress since the telephone, but it's the result that matters.
All you're doing is taking my ambiguously phrased words "not important issues" and wedging yourself in there to ridiculous extremes. You clearly have no arguments against my main point, which your last post didn't reply to at all, so you're trying to misdirect me.
Congratulations, you've attacked me with an ad hominem while completely bypassing my main point. So let me reiterate it for you:
Race, gender and sexual orientation equality were not the cultural norm in the 19th century. They are in the 21st century. So if we were to go back to the 19th century way of government, we would not have to take back the inequality found in 19th century life. We can have the best of both worlds.
Take off the pink colored glasses, will you, it was only good if you were rich, white, straight and male.
Race, gender and sexual orientation equality were not important issues back then. If we were to return to this '19th century libertarianism', we would have all the good parts as well as all of our modern equality. As for being rich, no economic system in the world has solved that particular problem.
All laws automatically repeal themselves after 25 years and must then be renewed under the same processes as those for passing a new law. That would get rid of all the anachronistic ones.
imposing penalties for refusing to divulge passwords
This is a compliance issue. In certain circumstances it is entirely appropriate for people to be required to comply with police. I suppose next you'll be complaining that people have to pull over to the side of the road when a policeman pulls them over.
default penalties for people who refuse drug and alcohol testing
Again, a compliance issue. There's no assumption of guilt anywhere.
Privacy is more important than "compliance issues". There's no privacy lost in pulling over, so it's acceptable to require it. Giving up your passwords and submitting to testing, however, are major infringements on privacy, so requiring them is unacceptable. Understand now?
It's a spammer running a script. The sentence in the comment has been posted already in the discussion, and it just reposted it to look more like a legitimate comment, to encourage people to click the link.
Nah, they get it. They also get that decentralization does not serve them. In order to gain power, you need to have a center so you can position yourself as the center (see the caveman days: society was very decentralized, and there was very little social inequality, once we got cities we started to get kings). The phone companies like power, so, much like the RIAA, they want to keep the old ways of doing things going for as long as possible.
Innocent before proven guilty is not an ideology. It is a pragmatic policy implemented because it is considered a lot worse for an innocent man to go to jail than for a guilty man to go free. There are places where the opposite is true: it's a lot less harmful for an employee to be locked out of the office than for a thief to be able to get in, and it's a lot less harmful to lose out on a relationship with a company that is trustworthy than it is to get screwed over by one that is not. In those places, guilty before proven innocent is the norm.
The way you write programs for Chrome OS is by making them web apps. That's the ONLY way to do it, and even Google can't make an exception for themselves if they want to, say, install Google Earth onto the OS. The browser in the OS is not only tightly integrated, but it's also the only way to interact with the OS (compare Windows 98 where you could still replace much of the IE functionality with Netscape). If Microsoft were to release IE as a web app, I'm sure Google would be quite happy about it.
Less than a single day is stale??! Oh no, I found out about a news item about a product which won't come out for some more months or even years 22 hours after some other people! I'd rather come here and read some meaningful discussion (that's where the substance is and has been for years, not the summary) so I can understand the significance of this than get some minimal 140 character news feed one day in advance.
1) Water at spring A has more calcium (a mineral) than water at spring B
2) Because of this, and some chemical processes, the water at spring A has a higher percentage of heavy water (deuterium oxide) than the water at spring B (this has a 50%+ chance of being incorrect, but let's stick with it for the example's sake)
3) Person X consumes water from spring A and person Y consumes water from spring B.
4) The metabolisms of the two persons break down the water and put it into the proteins in their respective cells.
5) Person X has more deuterium in his cells than person Y.
In short, it's not for Google to start correcting the unfairness of the tax system
Look. We have Google, a large corporation, standing up for the rights of its employees. They certainly consulted their lawyers, who probably them it was legally risky, but they went ahead anyway. And you're complaining about this? As far as I'm concerned, a company standing up for the rights of its employees should be praised, especially since it's risking a lawsuit by doing this. Most companies just operate to maximize profit, but that is not the way it should be.
This is the angle I can never figure out. Homosexuality isn't like robbery or assault, it doesn't affect anyone except for those that participate in it.
Logic and sanity have been kicked the bus ever since Prohibition and then the War on Drugs.
Slashdot Mirror
That is not a corporations job. They're one and only job is to make money for their shareholders.
I don't see how that statement is a necessary and unavoidable part of capitalism. Capitalism is just an economic system that relies on people freely making economic transactions with each other. It does not inherently require the concept of "shareholders" and even the idea that a corporation needs to have owners is not absolute - a corporation is just a relationship between employees and customers, it does not need to have owners any more than the marriage between a man and his wife needs to somehow be owned by someone. There are lots of (unfortunately, small) businesses that do serve their customers, but we can, and should, support them.
Explain to me why we need people in space again.
Because there are 6.7 billion people on a planet which can only sustain 4-5 billion, and we need to be practicing now if we want to be prepared for when we have to expand to new real estate.
Grizzly bears don't kill people, people kill people, with grizzly bears!
If rock is in the kind of state where you can breathe it, you'd better run fast, preferably away from the mountain.
Another hilarious screw-up:
"My personal highlight is the Pakistan hockey player (a group who were the subject of another separate BBC faux pas this weekend) who bears a striking resemblance to our own dear Queen"
The separate faux pas in question was the tweet:
Having read over the post you so vehemently disagree with five times, I fail to see where he even states that he is against copyright law. He convincingly argues that copyright has no basis in morality and is simply "an entitlement bestowed temporarily in exchange for publishing creative work". Copyright is solely a necessary evil put in because, as you say, creating stuff is expensive and people need to have a chance at a profit. That's all he's saying - that the right to copy is being restricted by law for practical reasons.
From Wikipedia:
"The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a constitutional republic and representative democracy"
It is a republic but it's a democratic republic.
And of course almost all your objections ignore the fact that these events have all occurred with the consent of the legislator you voted for. That's very different then when things occur by an unelected monarch and a parliament which one can't vote.
The legislator I voted for? What if I voted against him and he still inflicted all the aforementioned infringements on freedom on me? There's nothing less wrong about having your rights taken away because 52% of the population like it that way than because one person likes it that way - your rights are gone either way. Democracy is supposed to prevent rights from being taken away in the first place, not to justify their removal.
The economic system of 19th century Britain was made possible by the fact that minorities were oppressed? I fail to see how that's an integral part of the economy, and why, if we have to have some group serve as an underclass, we can't decide who the underclass is based on the people's merits (ie. high school dropouts working in McDonalds, like what we have now) rather than their race.
As for worker protections, finally we're getting into actual arguments here. I, however, would argue that worker protections, in general, are a bad thing. They deny workers the right to work at wages low enough to compete with third world countries, so we're stuck relying on manufacturing in China while our workers are unemployed. What situation would you rather be in, unemployment or a choice between a $4/hour job and unemployment?
You're right, it was only limited by technical means. But we are not talking about 19th century government, we are talking about 19th century freedom. It doesn't matter how the freedom arose, we are talking about the result. Obviously, if we're going to return to this freedom we'll have to figure out a way of doing so that does not involve abandoning all technological progress since the telephone, but it's the result that matters.
All you're doing is taking my ambiguously phrased words "not important issues" and wedging yourself in there to ridiculous extremes. You clearly have no arguments against my main point, which your last post didn't reply to at all, so you're trying to misdirect me.
Congratulations, you've attacked me with an ad hominem while completely bypassing my main point. So let me reiterate it for you:
Race, gender and sexual orientation equality were not the cultural norm in the 19th century. They are in the 21st century. So if we were to go back to the 19th century way of government, we would not have to take back the inequality found in 19th century life. We can have the best of both worlds.
The relative lack of government intrusion into every part of people's lives.
Take off the pink colored glasses, will you, it was only good if you were rich, white, straight and male.
Race, gender and sexual orientation equality were not important issues back then. If we were to return to this '19th century libertarianism', we would have all the good parts as well as all of our modern equality. As for being rich, no economic system in the world has solved that particular problem.
All laws automatically repeal themselves after 25 years and must then be renewed under the same processes as those for passing a new law. That would get rid of all the anachronistic ones.
imposing penalties for refusing to divulge passwords
This is a compliance issue. In certain circumstances it is entirely appropriate for people to be required to comply with police. I suppose next you'll be complaining that people have to pull over to the side of the road when a policeman pulls them over.
default penalties for people who refuse drug and alcohol testing
Again, a compliance issue. There's no assumption of guilt anywhere.
Privacy is more important than "compliance issues". There's no privacy lost in pulling over, so it's acceptable to require it. Giving up your passwords and submitting to testing, however, are major infringements on privacy, so requiring them is unacceptable. Understand now?
It's a spammer running a script. The sentence in the comment has been posted already in the discussion, and it just reposted it to look more like a legitimate comment, to encourage people to click the link.
Nah, they get it. They also get that decentralization does not serve them. In order to gain power, you need to have a center so you can position yourself as the center (see the caveman days: society was very decentralized, and there was very little social inequality, once we got cities we started to get kings). The phone companies like power, so, much like the RIAA, they want to keep the old ways of doing things going for as long as possible.
reducing their server to ruble.
I'm pretty sure hiring hackers in Russia is cheating.
Innocent before proven guilty is not an ideology. It is a pragmatic policy implemented because it is considered a lot worse for an innocent man to go to jail than for a guilty man to go free. There are places where the opposite is true: it's a lot less harmful for an employee to be locked out of the office than for a thief to be able to get in, and it's a lot less harmful to lose out on a relationship with a company that is trustworthy than it is to get screwed over by one that is not. In those places, guilty before proven innocent is the norm.
The way you write programs for Chrome OS is by making them web apps. That's the ONLY way to do it, and even Google can't make an exception for themselves if they want to, say, install Google Earth onto the OS. The browser in the OS is not only tightly integrated, but it's also the only way to interact with the OS (compare Windows 98 where you could still replace much of the IE functionality with Netscape). If Microsoft were to release IE as a web app, I'm sure Google would be quite happy about it.
22hrs stale tweet
Less than a single day is stale??! Oh no, I found out about a news item about a product which won't come out for some more months or even years 22 hours after some other people! I'd rather come here and read some meaningful discussion (that's where the substance is and has been for years, not the summary) so I can understand the significance of this than get some minimal 140 character news feed one day in advance.
1) Water at spring A has more calcium (a mineral) than water at spring B
2) Because of this, and some chemical processes, the water at spring A has a higher percentage of heavy water (deuterium oxide) than the water at spring B (this has a 50%+ chance of being incorrect, but let's stick with it for the example's sake)
3) Person X consumes water from spring A and person Y consumes water from spring B.
4) The metabolisms of the two persons break down the water and put it into the proteins in their respective cells.
5) Person X has more deuterium in his cells than person Y.
Hope that helps clear things up.
In short, it's not for Google to start correcting the unfairness of the tax system
Look. We have Google, a large corporation, standing up for the rights of its employees. They certainly consulted their lawyers, who probably them it was legally risky, but they went ahead anyway. And you're complaining about this? As far as I'm concerned, a company standing up for the rights of its employees should be praised, especially since it's risking a lawsuit by doing this. Most companies just operate to maximize profit, but that is not the way it should be.
This is the angle I can never figure out. Homosexuality isn't like robbery or assault, it doesn't affect anyone except for those that participate in it.
Logic and sanity have been kicked the bus ever since Prohibition and then the War on Drugs.