No, there are two of us. I was just having a similar debate in my industry, newspaper work. A copy editor, who also works as an adjunct professor, was arguing that today's young adults and teens aren't capable of telling the difference between user-generated media with no proper sourcing and news judgment, and professional, properly vetted journalism. I argued that we, as the mainstream media, weren't doing enough to make the difference obvious (or to make sure there really is a substantial difference). She could only fault the users; I thought it was pretty clear that we were the ones failing them.
Without rehashing the now-old argument about how consumers knew what they were purchasing and what price they were paying at the time... the company made customers upset, and now it's giving them $100 worth of free stuff. You're only throwing more money their way if you spend more than your $100 credit.
I've met many libertarians like the ones you describe, and many like the ones I describe (I am one).
My general philosophy: 1) The government's job is a very limited one. 2) We still all have a moral responsibility to make the world a better place.
So, by that, I mean I'd gladly boycott or protest something I find objectionable, but I wouldn't depend on government to make it illegal (unless there's a strong argument to criminalize the action as it directly violates someone's rights). I don't want government taking anyone's money for social programs, but I encourage people to give to charity. I don't believe in regulating hiring practices, but I'd refuse to work for or patronize any company with bigoted policies. And so on.
Not really. Libertarianism isn't all about "live and let live." It's more like "live and don't let the government interfere with your or anyone else's living."
Libertarians who fondly remember GI Joe wouldn't be hyopcrites if they, say, actively boycotted this movie and encouraged others to do so. They could still be upset over what's happening. They just wouldn't see any reason why the government should get involved.
I don't assume it. But if there aren't such businesses, you still don't get the right to dictate how other people act. You don't need to patronize any restaurant at all. They're private establishments with no obligation to you. They don't even have to exist - they can close down whenever they feel like it. It's up to them to decide what sorts of environments they provide. If those environments are attractive to many people, they'll thrive; if not, they'll fail.
Even before NJ passed its law against smoking in restaurants, I knew of restaurants and bars that had no-smoking nights, or were no-smoking all the time. If there's a reasonable demand, someone will meet it.
Inherent to any political philosophy that's based on ideals, not pragmatism, is the acceptance that sometimes society will be worse off in certain ways if the philosophy is followed. I'm a libertarian, but I don't believe a true free market would magically protect everyone - I recognize there's a risk of increased poverty and stratification (although I'm not convinced that's actually the inevitable result). I just think the government intervention needed to prevent it is MORE unjust than allowance of the natural processes that cause it. I don't see the government's role as to try and cure social ills; it's there to prevent people from violating one another's rights, and to prevent foreign invasion. Anything beyond that requires it to create some injustices in the name of addressing others.
You went out into a publicly accessible private place that has no stated policy against smoking. You knew it could happen, and you went there anyway.
If you hate smoking, as I do, patronize businesses that have no-smoking policies, or at least decently segregated no-smoking sections. You don't have any right to demand people conform to your expectations, nor do they have a right you conform to theirs. You can still chose, however, what environment you choose to place yourself in. And you can declare smoking off-limits in any property you control.
I could see a decent argument for making smoking illegal in publicly owned and operated facilities, however.
It's like some bad science fiction story set in the near-future, where automatons are used to enforce the will of idea-owning cartels, empowered by a government that passes laws with unintended though predictable consequences!
Thank god we have science fiction stories to warn us away from such dystopias.
1) Doesn't google/youtube have that clause in its ToS that says it's got a virtually unlimited right to use whatever you post in any way it likes? Does anyone more familiar with it an the relevant law know if that extends to partnerships with other companies, in this case VH1? If so, it sounds like they're in the clear.
2) And isn't the content specific to the show still protected copyrighted material? Some posters are claiming it's not, as a derivative work, but that doesn't sound right. Is every movie review that shows a clip then unprotected? Is every literary analysis that includes excerpts from the relevant literature (kept within the range of fair use) unprotected?
My gut, which admittedly never went to law school, says that VH1's making a bonehead move from a PR standpoint, but that the law's on its side. Sounds like a lawyer jumping the gun.
So Slashdot has an effective business model (due to those three factors and others), where manystart-ups have poor business models. This is someone else's problem why?
The BSD license does what it intends to do. It says it's alright if someone wants to go off and make a closed-source fork; no skin off the original project's nose. If the developers are OK with that, what's the problem?
If the goal is to ensure all third-party distribution of derived code releases source back into the wild, the BSD license is a poor fit. But that's not what the BSD license is about. Multiple licenses for multiple aims.
Hypothetically (I'm not on the service), because I can get the video right away, even if it's popular enough to cause a backlog in the regular DVD que, which itself is still going to move at the speed of the Post Office at best?
How about because I just rented the movie via the subscription service, and didn't know I'd like it enough to keep it until after a viewing? Why would I want to wait for the DVD (unless I really care about the extras) or go find it on a P2P service where my IP address can be tracked?
Of course, both of these uses go wholly against the spirit of the rental agreement (where your suggested manual deletion only goes against the letter of it), but hey, you asked.
And from whence do these facts come, if not from the involved parties - who, like all human beings, are potentially prone to bias? Certain things are directly observable by a reporter, and certain aren't. But the very fact that those on various sides of an issue can come to radically different conclusions, and even make radically different observations, suggests the "facts" of a given issue aren't as simple to decipher as one would hope. Very few things in this world can boil down to inarguable, objective truths; and a great many things are newsworthy simply because there's debate in the first place.
And what makes you think sources involved in an incident are any less prone to bias and misreporting than the media? The media gets its accounts from involved sources, and most media really does make the effort to portray those accounts fairly; but when there's room for debate in an issue or even an observation, each side is prone to thinking of the other as slanted, and blames the media for acknowledging that account.
The problem is that city/rural is only one of many arbitrary ways to divide up clumps of expected interests. How about rich/poor? Black/white/other? Male/female? Educated/uneducated?
The electoral college and our system of congressional representation were based on the idea that geographical interests must be well-represented; but geography isn't the be-all end-all basis for personal politics, and building a representational government around the assumption that it is causes problems.
Absolutely equal representation might lead to tyranny of the masses, but anything else just amounts to endless second-guessing of the motivation behind people's interests.
And the current system promotes the interests of individuals in low-population areas over the interests of individuals in high-population areas. One vote doesn't equal one vote, which is a problem.
Oh please. The NYT does a whole range of things, from fluff to hard-hitting international journalism - from book reviews to government exposes, from quirky coverage of Adult Swim's Star Wars Project to insider political reporting. The diversity of coverage is part of what makes it a strong paper.
That its did this says nothing about the quality of its coverage of other items. You can't look at every use of a resource as wasteful just because it's not devoted to the single most important item of the day; the breadth of coverage is important too.
Re:The genius that is Microsoft...
on
MSN Censors Your IM
·
· Score: 4, Funny
The day I start picking my friends based on their responses to IM security issues will be a sad, sad day.
"Mom, I met a great girl. She's not very nice, and she's not very pretty, but she started using Jabber after the latest MSN fiasco. You'll love her. I'll have her message you; oh, but you'll have to switch of of AIM first, mom."
This speaks to an issue with there being too many inappropriate laws; it says nothing about the enforcement issue. One would hope enforcement of any law would be 100 percent effective, and that all laws would be entirely fair; relying on the first to be false because the second demonstrably is amounts to un ugly hack of the social contract.
Slashdot Mirror
No, there are two of us. I was just having a similar debate in my industry, newspaper work. A copy editor, who also works as an adjunct professor, was arguing that today's young adults and teens aren't capable of telling the difference between user-generated media with no proper sourcing and news judgment, and professional, properly vetted journalism. I argued that we, as the mainstream media, weren't doing enough to make the difference obvious (or to make sure there really is a substantial difference). She could only fault the users; I thought it was pretty clear that we were the ones failing them.
Without rehashing the now-old argument about how consumers knew what they were purchasing and what price they were paying at the time ... the company made customers upset, and now it's giving them $100 worth of free stuff. You're only throwing more money their way if you spend more than your $100 credit.
I've met many libertarians like the ones you describe, and many like the ones I describe (I am one).
My general philosophy:
1) The government's job is a very limited one.
2) We still all have a moral responsibility to make the world a better place.
So, by that, I mean I'd gladly boycott or protest something I find objectionable, but I wouldn't depend on government to make it illegal (unless there's a strong argument to criminalize the action as it directly violates someone's rights). I don't want government taking anyone's money for social programs, but I encourage people to give to charity. I don't believe in regulating hiring practices, but I'd refuse to work for or patronize any company with bigoted policies. And so on.
Not really. Libertarianism isn't all about "live and let live." It's more like "live and don't let the government interfere with your or anyone else's living."
Libertarians who fondly remember GI Joe wouldn't be hyopcrites if they, say, actively boycotted this movie and encouraged others to do so. They could still be upset over what's happening. They just wouldn't see any reason why the government should get involved.
I don't assume it. But if there aren't such businesses, you still don't get the right to dictate how other people act. You don't need to patronize any restaurant at all. They're private establishments with no obligation to you. They don't even have to exist - they can close down whenever they feel like it. It's up to them to decide what sorts of environments they provide. If those environments are attractive to many people, they'll thrive; if not, they'll fail.
Even before NJ passed its law against smoking in restaurants, I knew of restaurants and bars that had no-smoking nights, or were no-smoking all the time. If there's a reasonable demand, someone will meet it.
Inherent to any political philosophy that's based on ideals, not pragmatism, is the acceptance that sometimes society will be worse off in certain ways if the philosophy is followed. I'm a libertarian, but I don't believe a true free market would magically protect everyone - I recognize there's a risk of increased poverty and stratification (although I'm not convinced that's actually the inevitable result). I just think the government intervention needed to prevent it is MORE unjust than allowance of the natural processes that cause it. I don't see the government's role as to try and cure social ills; it's there to prevent people from violating one another's rights, and to prevent foreign invasion. Anything beyond that requires it to create some injustices in the name of addressing others.
You went out into a publicly accessible private place that has no stated policy against smoking. You knew it could happen, and you went there anyway.
If you hate smoking, as I do, patronize businesses that have no-smoking policies, or at least decently segregated no-smoking sections. You don't have any right to demand people conform to your expectations, nor do they have a right you conform to theirs. You can still chose, however, what environment you choose to place yourself in. And you can declare smoking off-limits in any property you control.
I could see a decent argument for making smoking illegal in publicly owned and operated facilities, however.
Had Lucas -modeled- the past to be compatible with the already-established future, it would have been fine.
Instead he established a future, established an inconsistent past, then screwed with new releases of the movies depicting the future to even it out.
It's like some bad science fiction story set in the near-future, where automatons are used to enforce the will of idea-owning cartels, empowered by a government that passes laws with unintended though predictable consequences!
Thank god we have science fiction stories to warn us away from such dystopias.
1) Doesn't google/youtube have that clause in its ToS that says it's got a virtually unlimited right to use whatever you post in any way it likes? Does anyone more familiar with it an the relevant law know if that extends to partnerships with other companies, in this case VH1? If so, it sounds like they're in the clear.
2) And isn't the content specific to the show still protected copyrighted material? Some posters are claiming it's not, as a derivative work, but that doesn't sound right. Is every movie review that shows a clip then unprotected? Is every literary analysis that includes excerpts from the relevant literature (kept within the range of fair use) unprotected?
My gut, which admittedly never went to law school, says that VH1's making a bonehead move from a PR standpoint, but that the law's on its side. Sounds like a lawyer jumping the gun.
Were you unhappy with the performance before you knew?
And all it governs is distribution. The end-user doesn't need a license to USE the software - only to become a distributor himself.
"They took my baby!" Heebie-jeebie hoo-ha scared all night.
And the first appearance of the Pinky? "Wow, huh. That looks tough. HOLYCRAPITSCOMINGHOLYCRAPITSCOMING!"
So Slashdot has an effective business model (due to those three factors and others), where manystart-ups have poor business models. This is someone else's problem why?
In Soviet Russia, allofmp3.com belonged to that guy.
What? What?
The BSD license does what it intends to do. It says it's alright if someone wants to go off and make a closed-source fork; no skin off the original project's nose. If the developers are OK with that, what's the problem?
If the goal is to ensure all third-party distribution of derived code releases source back into the wild, the BSD license is a poor fit. But that's not what the BSD license is about. Multiple licenses for multiple aims.
Hypothetically (I'm not on the service), because I can get the video right away, even if it's popular enough to cause a backlog in the regular DVD que, which itself is still going to move at the speed of the Post Office at best?
How about because I just rented the movie via the subscription service, and didn't know I'd like it enough to keep it until after a viewing? Why would I want to wait for the DVD (unless I really care about the extras) or go find it on a P2P service where my IP address can be tracked?
Of course, both of these uses go wholly against the spirit of the rental agreement (where your suggested manual deletion only goes against the letter of it), but hey, you asked.
And from whence do these facts come, if not from the involved parties - who, like all human beings, are potentially prone to bias? Certain things are directly observable by a reporter, and certain aren't. But the very fact that those on various sides of an issue can come to radically different conclusions, and even make radically different observations, suggests the "facts" of a given issue aren't as simple to decipher as one would hope. Very few things in this world can boil down to inarguable, objective truths; and a great many things are newsworthy simply because there's debate in the first place.
And what makes you think sources involved in an incident are any less prone to bias and misreporting than the media? The media gets its accounts from involved sources, and most media really does make the effort to portray those accounts fairly; but when there's room for debate in an issue or even an observation, each side is prone to thinking of the other as slanted, and blames the media for acknowledging that account.
The problem is that city/rural is only one of many arbitrary ways to divide up clumps of expected interests. How about rich/poor? Black/white/other? Male/female? Educated/uneducated?
The electoral college and our system of congressional representation were based on the idea that geographical interests must be well-represented; but geography isn't the be-all end-all basis for personal politics, and building a representational government around the assumption that it is causes problems.
Absolutely equal representation might lead to tyranny of the masses, but anything else just amounts to endless second-guessing of the motivation behind people's interests.
And the current system promotes the interests of individuals in low-population areas over the interests of individuals in high-population areas. One vote doesn't equal one vote, which is a problem.
On it! Thanks!
Oh please. The NYT does a whole range of things, from fluff to hard-hitting international journalism - from book reviews to government exposes, from quirky coverage of Adult Swim's Star Wars Project to insider political reporting. The diversity of coverage is part of what makes it a strong paper.
That its did this says nothing about the quality of its coverage of other items. You can't look at every use of a resource as wasteful just because it's not devoted to the single most important item of the day; the breadth of coverage is important too.
The day I start picking my friends based on their responses to IM security issues will be a sad, sad day.
"Mom, I met a great girl. She's not very nice, and she's not very pretty, but she started using Jabber after the latest MSN fiasco. You'll love her. I'll have her message you; oh, but you'll have to switch of of AIM first, mom."
This speaks to an issue with there being too many inappropriate laws; it says nothing about the enforcement issue. One would hope enforcement of any law would be 100 percent effective, and that all laws would be entirely fair; relying on the first to be false because the second demonstrably is amounts to un ugly hack of the social contract.