And that's pretty sad, because the ideal of the Olympics is something worth protecting.
Not really. The modern olympics began as a bunch of rich twits promoting the idea of 'amateurism', which was a neat trick to restrict the games to rich twits who didn't need to get paid. The original classism was soon accompanied by nationalism. There's really nothing respectible about the Olympics at all.
If there was ever such a stupid rule, the networks would just switch to directly providing cable companies and satellite TVs with their signal, and eliminate their affiliate stations altogether
Good, that would leave room for more ethical companies to broadcast.
The FCC really only has say over transmission over the air/i>
That's easily solved. The public interest demands that anything broadcast over the public airwaves resides in the public domain. No public domain, no license to broadcast. Entirely within the capabilities of the FCC.
Based on this logic, the people on street corners selling crack are also blameless
Quite true. People on the street corner selling crack are filling a demand at significant risk to themselves. They're not only blameless, but they're better people than the politicians who forced the commerce onto the street corner.
Look, it doesn't matter if there's a market for something bad, or why that is.
You're assuming that crack and prostitution are both bad. That's not true.
You mean a Raspberry pi with an Apple II emulator? Apple probably could sell something like that, but not for the kinds of margins they are used to. Commodore and Atari have licensed reproductions, the C64 DTV and Atari 2600 flashback, which were fairly successful. But neither of them are the most profitable company in the world right now. Apple wouldn't bother, they want people to forget about the times that Apple was an open, engineer driven company anyway.
What is likely happening here is that Amazon has a file of "Stairway to Heaven" in 256kbps on their server, and in order to save space everybody who uploads their own personal copy of "Stairway to Heaven" has it substituted with Amazon's version
There hae been at least 7 releases of Stairway to Heaven on CD. If I have the one from 1985, can I be assured that I won't be getting the remaster from 1994, or vice versa?
There's also the bit about paying the arbitration fees (yes, I read the fine print go away) that tells me they're doing this more in a CYA move than because they've decided to be evil.
They're not doing this to be generous. They're doing that because arbiters know who signs the checks.
That's $20,000,004 that's not in the offending party's pockets anymore. Don't you think that's going to affect their behavior more than a $200 arbitration settlement?
If a company fucks me over, I don't care how much the lawyers get. Just fuck them over back. That's the point of the class action.
If AT&T doesn't like how the arbiter decides, they can just shop around for one they do like. The arbiter knows that repeat business is dependent on deciding in AT&T's favor more often than not. How am I supposed to get a fair hearing then? They can afford to offer what sounds like generous terms because they know it's unlikely that they'll ever have an arbitration agreement go against them.
The reason to go class action isn't to recoup your expenses. It's for when the losses were too small to bother recouping, but you still want to punish the comany. How much time are you actually going to spend trying to get that $50 back? It's gone, the best thing to do is punish the company. Class action is going to be far more effective at that than arbitration. That's the whole reason companies keep pushing for it.
Things like Tent City suck, and we like when our criminals get sent there.
What about the innocent, but accused? You did know that the majority of Tent Citie's population are merely accused and awaiting trial, right?
But I'm wasting my time. You're exactly the kind of authoritarian asshole that keeps any sort of sensible person out of Phoenix. I hope you get falsely accused of a crime in August.
Despite attempts to depict him otherwise (sometimes by himself!), Romney comes across as a moderately competent political moderate.
I generally consider Mitt Romney to be a thoroughly dishonest political $DEITY-knows-what. These are the only political positions I've actually seen him consistently take: 1. Taxes should be lower, especially on rich people. 2. I'm not Barack Obama. In particular, I'm white.
Everything else seems to me to be up for grabs, and vary from hour to hour depending on who he's talking to.
Isn't that exactly what the GP post said? Those two positions are exactly what characterizes a moderately competent political moderate in the US.
At this point, as crazy partisan as things have gotten, I'm pretty sure everyone in their right minds has already decided where they stand in the fall.
Nobody in their right minds would vote for either Romney or Obama, unless they are already multi-millionaires. For the rest of us, it doesn't matter. They are both owned by the uber rich.
You're assuming that governments are just, and will care that your data is not actually encrypted. In reality, they will assume that anything that looks like encrypted data is encrypted, and you damn well better be able to decrypt it for them.
It's not that they expect extra pay for extra work, it's that they wait until you are desperate to get something done
So the problem isn't that they demand bonuses during crunch times. It's that they don't do the work you pay for.
It's like the corporations creating artificial DVD regions coding or DRM to maximize profits. And just like the corporations doing it, it hurts the average person.
So it's just like the US, but instead of being the privilege of an elite few, everyone can get a piece of the action. I'm not seeing how that is actually worse for the average person. I certainly have a better chance of becoming a government functionary than I do the CEO of a major corporation.
In short, since I can't have a society without corruption I might as well have a society where I can benefit from the corruption. It's hard to moralize about corruption on the part of your employees when the people running the company (and the country) are likely throwing up even larger roadblocks to make even greater personal profits. Why shouldn't I throw up my own roadblock and get a cut of that?
To pick a politically hot topic: Are gun control laws about to become as obsolete as banning cryptography, where the genie is out of the bottle & can't be stuffed back in?
What makes you think they couldn't ban encryption? It would be a lot easier than gun control actually. Encryption is easy to detect. There are legitimate uses for encryption, but the government can just enforce the use of encryption with a back door for the government. Any encrypted data that isn't accessible through this back door would be tracked back to the ISP and the account holder imprisoned.
Would it be perfect? No, but neither is gun control, the war on drug users, or other authoritarian initiatives.
Slashdot Mirror
And that's pretty sad, because the ideal of the Olympics is something worth protecting.
Not really. The modern olympics began as a bunch of rich twits promoting the idea of 'amateurism', which was a neat trick to restrict the games to rich twits who didn't need to get paid. The original classism was soon accompanied by nationalism. There's really nothing respectible about the Olympics at all.
If there was ever such a stupid rule, the networks would just switch to directly providing cable companies and satellite TVs with their signal, and eliminate their affiliate stations altogether
Good, that would leave room for more ethical companies to broadcast.
It's nice that Americans can watch the Olympics without a television licence, but this means you're stealing from the licence fee payers.
Exactly how much is stolen by each VPN user?
And? So what? How does that harm the public?
The FCC really only has say over transmission over the air/i>
That's easily solved. The public interest demands that anything broadcast over the public airwaves resides in the public domain. No public domain, no license to broadcast. Entirely within the capabilities of the FCC.
Based on this logic, the people on street corners selling crack are also blameless
Quite true. People on the street corner selling crack are filling a demand at significant risk to themselves. They're not only blameless, but they're better people than the politicians who forced the commerce onto the street corner.
Look, it doesn't matter if there's a market for something bad, or why that is.
You're assuming that crack and prostitution are both bad. That's not true.
You mean a Raspberry pi with an Apple II emulator? Apple probably could sell something like that, but not for the kinds of margins they are used to. Commodore and Atari have licensed reproductions, the C64 DTV and Atari 2600 flashback, which were fairly successful. But neither of them are the most profitable company in the world right now. Apple wouldn't bother, they want people to forget about the times that Apple was an open, engineer driven company anyway.
I find that Windows 98 on my PII 266 is snappier than XP on my C2D. Just the UI, that is.
Vintage computers will basically perform the same function (gaming) with more style. No, emulators don't cut it.
What is likely happening here is that Amazon has a file of "Stairway to Heaven" in 256kbps on their server, and in order to save space everybody who uploads their own personal copy of "Stairway to Heaven" has it substituted with Amazon's version
There hae been at least 7 releases of Stairway to Heaven on CD. If I have the one from 1985, can I be assured that I won't be getting the remaster from 1994, or vice versa?
There's also the bit about paying the arbitration fees (yes, I read the fine print go away) that tells me they're doing this more in a CYA move than because they've decided to be evil.
They're not doing this to be generous. They're doing that because arbiters know who signs the checks.
That's $20,000,004 that's not in the offending party's pockets anymore. Don't you think that's going to affect their behavior more than a $200 arbitration settlement?
If a company fucks me over, I don't care how much the lawyers get. Just fuck them over back. That's the point of the class action.
If AT&T doesn't like how the arbiter decides, they can just shop around for one they do like. The arbiter knows that repeat business is dependent on deciding in AT&T's favor more often than not. How am I supposed to get a fair hearing then? They can afford to offer what sounds like generous terms because they know it's unlikely that they'll ever have an arbitration agreement go against them.
The reason to go class action isn't to recoup your expenses. It's for when the losses were too small to bother recouping, but you still want to punish the comany. How much time are you actually going to spend trying to get that $50 back? It's gone, the best thing to do is punish the company. Class action is going to be far more effective at that than arbitration. That's the whole reason companies keep pushing for it.
That's the old America. Business practices supercede the law in modern America.
That's what happens when people realize the fruits of unbridled capitalism.
That's what I came to say. Add a single player scenario, playable offline, and you'll get my money. Don't, and you won't. Simple as that.
Things like Tent City suck, and we like when our criminals get sent there.
What about the innocent, but accused? You did know that the majority of Tent Citie's population are merely accused and awaiting trial, right?
But I'm wasting my time. You're exactly the kind of authoritarian asshole that keeps any sort of sensible person out of Phoenix. I hope you get falsely accused of a crime in August.
The portrait that the national media likes to paint of Arizona is fairly inaccurate
Two words: Joe Arpaio.
Isn't that exactly what the GP post said? Those two positions are exactly what characterizes a moderately competent political moderate in the US.
At this point, as crazy partisan as things have gotten, I'm pretty sure everyone in their right minds has already decided where they stand in the fall.
Nobody in their right minds would vote for either Romney or Obama, unless they are already multi-millionaires. For the rest of us, it doesn't matter. They are both owned by the uber rich.
You're assuming that governments are just, and will care that your data is not actually encrypted. In reality, they will assume that anything that looks like encrypted data is encrypted, and you damn well better be able to decrypt it for them.
It's not that they expect extra pay for extra work, it's that they wait until you are desperate to get something done
So the problem isn't that they demand bonuses during crunch times. It's that they don't do the work you pay for.
It's like the corporations creating artificial DVD regions coding or DRM to maximize profits. And just like the corporations doing it, it hurts the average person.
So it's just like the US, but instead of being the privilege of an elite few, everyone can get a piece of the action. I'm not seeing how that is actually worse for the average person. I certainly have a better chance of becoming a government functionary than I do the CEO of a major corporation.
In short, since I can't have a society without corruption I might as well have a society where I can benefit from the corruption. It's hard to moralize about corruption on the part of your employees when the people running the company (and the country) are likely throwing up even larger roadblocks to make even greater personal profits. Why shouldn't I throw up my own roadblock and get a cut of that?
To pick a politically hot topic: Are gun control laws about to become as obsolete as banning cryptography, where the genie is out of the bottle & can't be stuffed back in?
What makes you think they couldn't ban encryption? It would be a lot easier than gun control actually. Encryption is easy to detect. There are legitimate uses for encryption, but the government can just enforce the use of encryption with a back door for the government. Any encrypted data that isn't accessible through this back door would be tracked back to the ISP and the account holder imprisoned.
Would it be perfect? No, but neither is gun control, the war on drug users, or other authoritarian initiatives.
People do *NOT* have any natural right to anonymity when they are in any sort of public place.
Correct, but the people do have the right to demand that the government refrain from tracking them. Remember who the sovereign is.
the best question to ask in this case is what are you doing that you require such privacy?
None of your damned business.