Well for starters that's a terrible example - Half-Life 2 is a single player game, so a subscription doesn't make any sense (unless you meant HL2-DM, which is fun, but not subscription-worthy). As for XBL, well it's more like $50 a year I believe (I live in the UK so don't know US prices...unless it was some other $ you were talking about) but even then it's $4.15/month to play ALL YOUR GAMES ONLINE. You start charging $5/month on every game, and it would soon mount up (heck, if you played 3 multi-player games...say MW2, BFBC2 and Halo 3...that would add up to $15/month or $180/year) and people already complain about the price of XBL (I can't say I like it, but it's so small a price I don't complain - I pay begrudgingly). MMOs are different, as the servers not only have to host the games, but store the stats, items etc so on the scale it's done on is almost a necessity, and MOST people don't play more than one MMO at a time purely because of the time you have to pump into them.
In that case maybe you should try something else other than smoke. I'm not sure what, but I'd be surprised if there isn't some other, safer alternative (not steam, but some other gas/vapour).
Exactly - I think the patent is specifically the shape and configuration of the indicator lights to represent multiple things (4 quadrants that can display controller number, flash and spin, and has a button in the middle)
Even that much is enough to get addicted. Not a heavy enough addiction to cause you any obvious discomfort, but enough to make you slightly down etc, so when you do smoke you feel good (assuming of course you do it fairly regularly, rather than once a month or so...if you can go days without one, but you still generally do it every day, you probably have at least some level of addiction). Of course there's bound to be some legitimately pleasant sensations associated with the smoking itself (it is a depressant after all, so will relax you can make you calmer etc), but it would be interesting to know how much of it is due to satiation of the withdrawal symptoms (will vary depending on the level of the symptoms) and how much is purely the effect of the chemicals. Regardless, why do you smoke? How can it possibly be worth it considering the health problems associated with it? Is it really that nice of a thing to do?
@brian_tanner: I did a double take there - read that link as Alan Carr...a slightly different person.
I agree, the pics should be out there. However, I think it should be the choice of the family. If they want to raise awareness about it, they can release them, but they should have the right to privacy if they choose.
Oh, I agree with you, and I wasn't saying that if someone did something that they consider moral, someone else can't/shouldn't consider it immoral. What I was saying is that DNS-and-BIND shouldn't* have said "Europeans are right, Americans and Chinese are wrong" as it implies some kind of non-relative morality. You, or any other person may believe that such thing exists, especially if you believe in a god or gods. Even if you do though, unless it can be demonstrated that what you hold to be moral corresponds to said objective moral code, as well that the moral code is actually objective and truly exists, there is no justification* for stating that "it is so" rather than "this is what I think".
*This is also an opinion/personal and not objective truth.
In slave owning cultures, I would say that forced intercourse would likely not be considered rape, as the culture would consider the slave as property not a person (or property first, person second). Likewise honour killing in such societies would not be considered murder, but a separate act. I tried to make the distinction between murder and killing, but it is difficult to define. I think a good definition which would cover multiple cultures would be intentional killing outside of bound X. X would be just as personal as any other moral. For example, we in the west don't generally consider killing on behalf of the nation for an army murder, but not everyone agrees. Similarly, for most people in the west, killing to maintain honour would not fall within X, but would to some, and would in many other cultures. In both circumstances murder is considered immoral, but how murder is defined is different. Really, even murder doesn't have to be considered immoral, but if it weren't then a culture would soon die out or change their views.
Also, you seem to be missing a distinction between personal morals and moral consensus. While a single person my agree with the morals employed by the Chinese govt. that does not mean that it is generally considered to be right. I'm not quite sure what you mean by different rules for different people, but you seem to be suggesting some absolute moral structure, which defines what is right and wrong (a deity?). Without such a thing nothing is morally inferior to anything else except in consensus, and even that is part of the super-culture that is humanity. The world considers America > China (generally speaking), but that does not mean that it is absolutely true.
I wasn't meaning that generally, but in relation to the topic of health care, which is how it was used by the parent to my comment. It may apply to other topics as well, but that's not what was being discussed. I wasn't calling Americans generally inexplicably stupid, but pointing out that over here, that is how it appears in relation to this issue. This is also not representative of Americans, but of the Americans who are against the health care bill. It just so happens that they are the ones how we hear the most about, as the debate seems split down the middle, and they oppose what is generally accepted over here.
I think when talking about Assassin's Creed II that's slightly wrong. I own many games with online based DRM (many of them EA games from when they still did that), and those don't bother me too much. The limited activations are annoying, but a tool has been released by EA to restore activations, so unless your computer dies or you forget to de-authorize a game, you essentially have infinite installs. However, Assassin's Creed II I had on pre-order, but canceled when I heard about the DRM. I am anti-DRM, but that is not why I canceled. I canceled because just looking at the system they are using, I could see that there would be problems. My internet sucks - it is slow and unreliable, and there is nothing I can do about it. As a result, I am fairly certain I would have more than average problems playing this game. That, and I could see the server outages coming. Did I pirate the game? No. I want to play it, and may pick it up at some point if it's cheap, but even then I'm reluctant. Since the save games are all in the cloud, when (and I do mean when) they shut down the servers, the game is dead, and I'm not sure I want to play it enough to support that.
I think the secular society thing is as much a result of things like that as anything else. Religion used to be in control (supposed divine right to rule etc), so when the Europe ousted it's monarchies (fully in most cases, but the same is true of the remaining neutered ones like the UK and the Netherlands) we wanted rid of both religion and heredity controlling power.
I agree with your first sentence, but your second one not so much. It is a very blanket statement to say that, since morals are not universal, but personal. Some things can pretty much be agreed upon as immoral: murder (note, not simply killing); rape; abuse of power etc. but everything else is entirely based upon circumstance. If you are brought up in a culture where personal possession is meaningless for example, then stealing cannot be considered immoral.
Regardless, I'm not sure that many Americans do think that universal health care would be a bad thing, they just don't want to fund it through their taxes, so don't support it. They likely see it as something along the lines of "if people want health care, they should work to pay for it". It is a very capitalist model, but not necessarily immoral. I myself don't agree with it, and see it as pure selfishness pretty much, but I am a product of my surroundings as well, and having been brought up by fairly liberal parents in the UK (where we have universal heath care) it is almost inevitable that I feel the way I do.
The legitimacy of voting thing; yeah, that's pretty much wrong if you accept democracy as good, but I'm sure that not everyone agrees. It definitely isn't FAIR for hereditary rule etc, but I'm sure there are those that think it's better regardless of the fairness.
as for "Europeans consider Americans as inexplicably stupid". Yeah, we pretty much do, but then we are coming from a background in monarchy (true monarchy I mean, not like the monarchy in the UK) where the "ruling class" had ultimate power, which was partially tied to the church. Therefore we tend to strongly believe in a secular society, and one where the distribution of power is more even. America seems to have lost some of that by being free by default.
Lack of skill, knowledge and expertise perhaps? Just because someone is on slashdot does not mean that they are a programmer, or if they are a programmer are familiar enough with the code to do anything about it in a timely manner.
I myself would love to be able to contribute to Firefox, but my meager knowledge of Java, Haskel and PHP don't really qualify me to, and I'm not about to learn C++ just to fix a crashing bug or bugs which will likely be fixed before I'm even passed learning the basics, and I highly doubt the parent is either.
BTW, I fully intend to learn C++ at some point, but that point isn't now, that's all. Also, I don't seem to have any crashing problems with Firefox...maybe I'm just lucky.
That's pretty much how they're able to explain the "utopia" that is the federation - there is no (monetary) value to property, so essentially it's similar to socialism or comunism, but it works as greed cannot have any effect.
^This^. Makes you wonder how it'd be done though - in browser or as part of the OS. Euther way the price will increase slightly to pay for the licencing fee (if it is in OS then it could be a specific fee, if in browser then it'll be an invisible price increase). As for Google, they make enough money from advertising to support development of all the software they make. I'm sure they'd just go the same route for the licencing.
Well, really it's an argument against devices having storage (be it internal e.g a hdd, or removable, e.g. an SD card) which is mountable, and having mountable storage be able to autorun. It has nothing specific to do with flash or removable storage, but storage in general. The same thing could happen on a CD if someone managed to hide it in a master copy used for production. The iPhone being closed prevents it from happening via an SD card, but if you can hide malware on it's internal memory a similar thing could happen.
Think yourself lucky you get that. I get 1mbps down, 256kbps up on a good day, and there is next to no chance of me getting fibre even as soon as you (I don't live in a town, or even a village to be fair). I don't have the "other peoples conversations" problem on the phone though.
Same here. Google text ads don't bother me in the slighest.
I do wonder though, are the ads Ars use generally pay-per-view or pay-per-click? If they are pay-per-click, I doubt anyone who uses ad-blockers would be clicking them anyway.
This means less regulations (for corporations), less taxation (for corporations), less government (translation: less social spending), privatisation of public services, etc.
In short, the common people pay more taxes and receive less from the State, the corporations and the ultra-rich are free to fuck everybody in the ass and make all the money they want.
This sounds rather a lot closer to the American uber-capitalist model than the European liberal one. While it is certainly a description of some parties in the right wing, it is not a description of liberalism, but infact closer to conservativism (is that a word?) which is pretty much (from what I understand) the same as the Republicans in the US, and is most certainly a good description of the Conservatives here in the UK.
Also you have to remember, polotics is not a single one-dimansional left-right scale but is at least two-dimensional, if not three-dimensional. Liberalism pretty much applies to all major parties in the west, be they conservative or "liberal" as it describes views on personal freedoms and the like, whether it is predominantly one view or not. I doubt you find may conservatives who would say people shouldn't have the right believe/disbelieve in whatever religion they wish - they would probably get angry if it were really public and open etc as they would feel it was "changing things for the worse" though. I think a good anaolgy would be the Conservative and Labour parties in the UK. The Conservatives basically want to lower public spending, lower taxes and re-jig the taxes so that the rich stay rich (it's not what they say, but it's obviously their goal), while Labour promotes higher taxes for higher public spending, and a somewhat opposite tax policy. Both would be considered liberal (or social liberal to be more precise) but thier views on economics are very different, and that is what defines them. Both would best be described as centre or centre-left, with Labour being more left. The Conservatives are essentially conservative+social liberal, while Labour are basically socialist+social liberal.
Just out of interest, how is the USA free, but the UK not? Are you meaning things like freedom of speech which are compromised (to a point) by things like the illegality of incitement of racial hatred?
Regardless, I think in practice the USA and UK are about the same for freedom, even if in theory they are not.
Um, no. That may be how it works in practice, but in theory (and what socialism is itself) that is not the case. The idea of socialism is essentially everyone is equal, so deserves equal opportunity. That is where things like universal heath care come from (just because you were born without any particular talents, so can't do a high payed job doesn't mean you should have less of a chance of surving, or a lower quality of life).
It essentially narrows the gap between rich and poor, by making it less important (but not irrelevent - if you can do something that others can't you are still compensated) and distributes power more evenly among everyone, not just those who happen to have money (in practice, often through heredity).
What you seem to be desribing is more akin to Stalins Soviet Union (rather than Lenins). Stalin was clearly a dictator who preached socialist/communist ideals, but what he did was far from being either.
1) certainly applies, and here in the UK more-so. Why? Well here it is illigal to bypass copy protection or DRM of any kind regardless of the purpose. In the US I believe you are allowed to rip DVDs or CDs for personal use (i.e. to transfer them to your portable media player or whatever) under fair use laws. However, in the UK it is technically illigal to do even for that reason. I think it is technically legal to download tracks etc as long as you own the CD, providing it is equal or lower quality (an MP3 almost certainly is) as YOU havn't bypassed the protection. Oh well at least when people get sued for that kind of thing here they get somewhat more reasonable charges (in the thousands maybe, rather than hundreds of thousands/millions).
Slashdot Mirror
Well for starters that's a terrible example - Half-Life 2 is a single player game, so a subscription doesn't make any sense (unless you meant HL2-DM, which is fun, but not subscription-worthy). As for XBL, well it's more like $50 a year I believe (I live in the UK so don't know US prices...unless it was some other $ you were talking about) but even then it's $4.15/month to play ALL YOUR GAMES ONLINE. You start charging $5/month on every game, and it would soon mount up (heck, if you played 3 multi-player games...say MW2, BFBC2 and Halo 3...that would add up to $15/month or $180/year) and people already complain about the price of XBL (I can't say I like it, but it's so small a price I don't complain - I pay begrudgingly). MMOs are different, as the servers not only have to host the games, but store the stats, items etc so on the scale it's done on is almost a necessity, and MOST people don't play more than one MMO at a time purely because of the time you have to pump into them.
In that case maybe you should try something else other than smoke. I'm not sure what, but I'd be surprised if there isn't some other, safer alternative (not steam, but some other gas/vapour).
Exactly - I think the patent is specifically the shape and configuration of the indicator lights to represent multiple things (4 quadrants that can display controller number, flash and spin, and has a button in the middle)
Even that much is enough to get addicted. Not a heavy enough addiction to cause you any obvious discomfort, but enough to make you slightly down etc, so when you do smoke you feel good (assuming of course you do it fairly regularly, rather than once a month or so...if you can go days without one, but you still generally do it every day, you probably have at least some level of addiction). Of course there's bound to be some legitimately pleasant sensations associated with the smoking itself (it is a depressant after all, so will relax you can make you calmer etc), but it would be interesting to know how much of it is due to satiation of the withdrawal symptoms (will vary depending on the level of the symptoms) and how much is purely the effect of the chemicals. Regardless, why do you smoke? How can it possibly be worth it considering the health problems associated with it? Is it really that nice of a thing to do?
@brian_tanner: I did a double take there - read that link as Alan Carr...a slightly different person.
I agree, the pics should be out there. However, I think it should be the choice of the family. If they want to raise awareness about it, they can release them, but they should have the right to privacy if they choose.
Oh, I agree with you, and I wasn't saying that if someone did something that they consider moral, someone else can't/shouldn't consider it immoral. What I was saying is that DNS-and-BIND shouldn't* have said "Europeans are right, Americans and Chinese are wrong" as it implies some kind of non-relative morality. You, or any other person may believe that such thing exists, especially if you believe in a god or gods. Even if you do though, unless it can be demonstrated that what you hold to be moral corresponds to said objective moral code, as well that the moral code is actually objective and truly exists, there is no justification* for stating that "it is so" rather than "this is what I think". *This is also an opinion/personal and not objective truth.
In slave owning cultures, I would say that forced intercourse would likely not be considered rape, as the culture would consider the slave as property not a person (or property first, person second). Likewise honour killing in such societies would not be considered murder, but a separate act. I tried to make the distinction between murder and killing, but it is difficult to define. I think a good definition which would cover multiple cultures would be intentional killing outside of bound X. X would be just as personal as any other moral. For example, we in the west don't generally consider killing on behalf of the nation for an army murder, but not everyone agrees. Similarly, for most people in the west, killing to maintain honour would not fall within X, but would to some, and would in many other cultures. In both circumstances murder is considered immoral, but how murder is defined is different. Really, even murder doesn't have to be considered immoral, but if it weren't then a culture would soon die out or change their views.
Also, you seem to be missing a distinction between personal morals and moral consensus. While a single person my agree with the morals employed by the Chinese govt. that does not mean that it is generally considered to be right. I'm not quite sure what you mean by different rules for different people, but you seem to be suggesting some absolute moral structure, which defines what is right and wrong (a deity?). Without such a thing nothing is morally inferior to anything else except in consensus, and even that is part of the super-culture that is humanity. The world considers America > China (generally speaking), but that does not mean that it is absolutely true.
I wasn't meaning that generally, but in relation to the topic of health care, which is how it was used by the parent to my comment. It may apply to other topics as well, but that's not what was being discussed. I wasn't calling Americans generally inexplicably stupid, but pointing out that over here, that is how it appears in relation to this issue. This is also not representative of Americans, but of the Americans who are against the health care bill. It just so happens that they are the ones how we hear the most about, as the debate seems split down the middle, and they oppose what is generally accepted over here.
I think when talking about Assassin's Creed II that's slightly wrong. I own many games with online based DRM (many of them EA games from when they still did that), and those don't bother me too much. The limited activations are annoying, but a tool has been released by EA to restore activations, so unless your computer dies or you forget to de-authorize a game, you essentially have infinite installs. However, Assassin's Creed II I had on pre-order, but canceled when I heard about the DRM. I am anti-DRM, but that is not why I canceled. I canceled because just looking at the system they are using, I could see that there would be problems. My internet sucks - it is slow and unreliable, and there is nothing I can do about it. As a result, I am fairly certain I would have more than average problems playing this game. That, and I could see the server outages coming. Did I pirate the game? No. I want to play it, and may pick it up at some point if it's cheap, but even then I'm reluctant. Since the save games are all in the cloud, when (and I do mean when) they shut down the servers, the game is dead, and I'm not sure I want to play it enough to support that.
I think the secular society thing is as much a result of things like that as anything else. Religion used to be in control (supposed divine right to rule etc), so when the Europe ousted it's monarchies (fully in most cases, but the same is true of the remaining neutered ones like the UK and the Netherlands) we wanted rid of both religion and heredity controlling power.
I agree with your first sentence, but your second one not so much. It is a very blanket statement to say that, since morals are not universal, but personal. Some things can pretty much be agreed upon as immoral: murder (note, not simply killing); rape; abuse of power etc. but everything else is entirely based upon circumstance. If you are brought up in a culture where personal possession is meaningless for example, then stealing cannot be considered immoral.
Regardless, I'm not sure that many Americans do think that universal health care would be a bad thing, they just don't want to fund it through their taxes, so don't support it. They likely see it as something along the lines of "if people want health care, they should work to pay for it". It is a very capitalist model, but not necessarily immoral. I myself don't agree with it, and see it as pure selfishness pretty much, but I am a product of my surroundings as well, and having been brought up by fairly liberal parents in the UK (where we have universal heath care) it is almost inevitable that I feel the way I do.
The legitimacy of voting thing; yeah, that's pretty much wrong if you accept democracy as good, but I'm sure that not everyone agrees. It definitely isn't FAIR for hereditary rule etc, but I'm sure there are those that think it's better regardless of the fairness.
as for "Europeans consider Americans as inexplicably stupid". Yeah, we pretty much do, but then we are coming from a background in monarchy (true monarchy I mean, not like the monarchy in the UK) where the "ruling class" had ultimate power, which was partially tied to the church. Therefore we tend to strongly believe in a secular society, and one where the distribution of power is more even. America seems to have lost some of that by being free by default.
Lack of skill, knowledge and expertise perhaps? Just because someone is on slashdot does not mean that they are a programmer, or if they are a programmer are familiar enough with the code to do anything about it in a timely manner. I myself would love to be able to contribute to Firefox, but my meager knowledge of Java, Haskel and PHP don't really qualify me to, and I'm not about to learn C++ just to fix a crashing bug or bugs which will likely be fixed before I'm even passed learning the basics, and I highly doubt the parent is either. BTW, I fully intend to learn C++ at some point, but that point isn't now, that's all. Also, I don't seem to have any crashing problems with Firefox...maybe I'm just lucky.
Now that's a party I can stand behind, screw Labour!
That's pretty much how they're able to explain the "utopia" that is the federation - there is no (monetary) value to property, so essentially it's similar to socialism or comunism, but it works as greed cannot have any effect.
^This^. Makes you wonder how it'd be done though - in browser or as part of the OS. Euther way the price will increase slightly to pay for the licencing fee (if it is in OS then it could be a specific fee, if in browser then it'll be an invisible price increase). As for Google, they make enough money from advertising to support development of all the software they make. I'm sure they'd just go the same route for the licencing.
OK, ignore that. I read but seemingly completelly ignored the first part of that post :s
You mean like the Texas school board?
Well, really it's an argument against devices having storage (be it internal e.g a hdd, or removable, e.g. an SD card) which is mountable, and having mountable storage be able to autorun. It has nothing specific to do with flash or removable storage, but storage in general. The same thing could happen on a CD if someone managed to hide it in a master copy used for production. The iPhone being closed prevents it from happening via an SD card, but if you can hide malware on it's internal memory a similar thing could happen.
Crapware maybe, but unless it's gone horribly unreported (or I just havn't noticed, being in the UK and all) they don't carry botnets
Think yourself lucky you get that. I get 1mbps down, 256kbps up on a good day, and there is next to no chance of me getting fibre even as soon as you (I don't live in a town, or even a village to be fair). I don't have the "other peoples conversations" problem on the phone though.
Same here. Google text ads don't bother me in the slighest.
I do wonder though, are the ads Ars use generally pay-per-view or pay-per-click? If they are pay-per-click, I doubt anyone who uses ad-blockers would be clicking them anyway.
How is personal liberty for religion and "family values" a bad thing? More specifically, how is it in any way right-wing? The right are basically out to "preserve social order or traditional values" while the left "support for social change with a view towards creating a more egalitarian society". I really don't see how personal liberty towards ANY subject is counter to that.
This means less regulations (for corporations), less taxation (for corporations), less government (translation: less social spending), privatisation of public services, etc.
In short, the common people pay more taxes and receive less from the State, the corporations and the ultra-rich are free to fuck everybody in the ass and make all the money they want.
This sounds rather a lot closer to the American uber-capitalist model than the European liberal one. While it is certainly a description of some parties in the right wing, it is not a description of liberalism, but infact closer to conservativism (is that a word?) which is pretty much (from what I understand) the same as the Republicans in the US, and is most certainly a good description of the Conservatives here in the UK.
Also you have to remember, polotics is not a single one-dimansional left-right scale but is at least two-dimensional, if not three-dimensional. Liberalism pretty much applies to all major parties in the west, be they conservative or "liberal" as it describes views on personal freedoms and the like, whether it is predominantly one view or not. I doubt you find may conservatives who would say people shouldn't have the right believe/disbelieve in whatever religion they wish - they would probably get angry if it were really public and open etc as they would feel it was "changing things for the worse" though. I think a good anaolgy would be the Conservative and Labour parties in the UK. The Conservatives basically want to lower public spending, lower taxes and re-jig the taxes so that the rich stay rich (it's not what they say, but it's obviously their goal), while Labour promotes higher taxes for higher public spending, and a somewhat opposite tax policy. Both would be considered liberal (or social liberal to be more precise) but thier views on economics are very different, and that is what defines them. Both would best be described as centre or centre-left, with Labour being more left. The Conservatives are essentially conservative+social liberal, while Labour are basically socialist+social liberal.
Just out of interest, how is the USA free, but the UK not? Are you meaning things like freedom of speech which are compromised (to a point) by things like the illegality of incitement of racial hatred? Regardless, I think in practice the USA and UK are about the same for freedom, even if in theory they are not.
Um, no. That may be how it works in practice, but in theory (and what socialism is itself) that is not the case. The idea of socialism is essentially everyone is equal, so deserves equal opportunity. That is where things like universal heath care come from (just because you were born without any particular talents, so can't do a high payed job doesn't mean you should have less of a chance of surving, or a lower quality of life). It essentially narrows the gap between rich and poor, by making it less important (but not irrelevent - if you can do something that others can't you are still compensated) and distributes power more evenly among everyone, not just those who happen to have money (in practice, often through heredity). What you seem to be desribing is more akin to Stalins Soviet Union (rather than Lenins). Stalin was clearly a dictator who preached socialist/communist ideals, but what he did was far from being either.
1) certainly applies, and here in the UK more-so. Why? Well here it is illigal to bypass copy protection or DRM of any kind regardless of the purpose. In the US I believe you are allowed to rip DVDs or CDs for personal use (i.e. to transfer them to your portable media player or whatever) under fair use laws. However, in the UK it is technically illigal to do even for that reason. I think it is technically legal to download tracks etc as long as you own the CD, providing it is equal or lower quality (an MP3 almost certainly is) as YOU havn't bypassed the protection. Oh well at least when people get sued for that kind of thing here they get somewhat more reasonable charges (in the thousands maybe, rather than hundreds of thousands/millions).