Legally charged? To me "charged" implies "charged with a crime", but character assassination isn't a crime; it would be Libel (or Slander) which is a tort. It would be fun, though, if users sued the programmer -- and in my opinion, yes, he is liable. At a minimum he should apologize and refund the purchase price to all affected users.
Oh, is that what Canadians tell themselves? That's cute.
(I'm just flamebaiting, man. Canada does a lot of things right, but allowing a foreign royal to rule/reign is embarrassing and shockingly out of line with what is otherwise a pretty well-run Canadian government. I have similar disregard for the UK itself. Royalty is a disgusting and anachronistic institution.)
"if officials would have allowed the hand count he requested."
Right. They never should have allowed the hand count he requested. Obviously they should have conducted a complete count of all votes -- something that was never done before the election was certified. When that count was done, after the inauguration, we learned positively that the corrupt and illegal action by Republican back-room operators did in fact steal the election rightly won by Gore, who received the most votes in Florida. Nobody disputes this fact, including you. Focusing on Al Gore's political maneuvering is a hand-waving tactic used to ignore the fact that the majority (plurality) of Floridians voted for Gore.
The only reasonable action for Florida to have taken was to carefully and dutifully count every vote. All other proposals were unreasonable, including Gore's proposed partial recount, and including the unconstitutional and corrupt decision to not count all the votes and just to allow a political appointee to illegally declare her party the victor.
Under a full recount of all votes, Gore won.
Thus my conclusions. I think it is quite the correct conclusions.
1. Society recognizes problem with unregulated market segment 2. Society asks market to please regulate itself 3. Market tries to come up with a solution 4. Market decides, hey, fuck customers and ethics, it's all about the Benjamins suckas! 5. Legal regulation
Having reached step 4, we can now move on to step 5. I am glad about this. Congressional action will merely extend the protections currently enjoyed by Americans to the realm of targeted advertising. Sometimes legal action isn't required. For instance, the movie industry has successfully used their rating system to satisfy the public and stop Congress from getting involved. Sadly, only rare industries do that successfully.
Why bother to cite facts when cited facts don't sway ideological nincompoops like yourself?
Here's your fucking cite, jackass. It's a widely known FACT trivially discovered by a Google search that a four-year-old could do in less time than it takes you to stretch when you wake up.
Wow, and yet Gore STILL got more votes than Bush in Florida, only to have them not counted by a conspiracy between corrupt election officials and corrupt Supreme Court justices.
My thanks go to the Washington Post and other fine newspapers for establishing this fact, so that nobody in the future will ever consider Bush 's first term to be legitimate:
Cut shashdyke some slack. He was just trying to squeeze in a comment which was quick to type with a thin sheen of insightfulness in order to get upmods, so he could take some mod points later this week and troll with them. You can't blame him for that. Oh, wait, you CAN blame him for that? Oh, okay well then downmod him I guess.
"It's staggering how much wealth was created in the deflationary period, that the following inflationary period took so long to destroy it all."
Ha, man, look if we can't even agree that there is more wealth now than in the 19th century, we won't find common ground. Good luck with your theories.
My suggestion is not to do that. Instead, charge. Charge me one or two pennies for your article. Give me the first paragraph and then *click* for a penny or two, or even less than a penny if you have high volume.
You just described a "value added product". You took a product (someone's article) and added value (a convenient summary). You made money on the added value, and the other person still makes money on their original product. That describes almost everything in the economy.
You might not realize it, but rubber-tree farmers don't get a cut of Goodyear's profits. Still, they get paid for their rubber.
Everyone saying "paywall" is correct. The missing piece of the puzzle is the ability to pay for the content. When will I be able to click a link saying "Pay 2 cents to read the rest of the article?". CLICK! Done. That is a technology issue and we've been talking about it since the Clinton years. Why hasn't anyone been able to crack that problem yet? My two pennies are waiting!
"making it very difficult for individual sites to survive on ad revenue."
Damnation! If only there were another way to profit from the production of a good, other than to give it away for free and put an ad on it! Oh, humanity, why is there no other model for monetizing a useful product? How long must we suffer without any way to, say, directly trade the useful product for an exchangeable unit of value! Lo, we should pray that someday somebody invents the economic concept of "buying things"! Until then, yes, we must make sure that people can make money from ads!
"What ended up happening is that we let the Federal Reserve rob us via inflation and let corporations force us into a race to the bottom for wages as we spent more than we could really afford because it was hard to find quality investments with Wall street robbing people blind."
No, what ended up happening is that we all decided that we wanted all the fancy material goods of the modern world, and we all had to work to get them. In fact, women had to start working too, to afford these awesome new things. Many families (but a minority of the total) do decide to live at a lower standard of living, and work fewer hours.
The way it turned out is that people largely enjoy their productive careers and find them satisfactory. Some people don't, and they might work less. You don't have to work very hard today to feed and clothe yourself, and some people only work that hard.
Your rant about the Fed is poppycock. It's conspiracy-theory fodder, total nonsense. It's not all a big conspiracy to steal from you, dude, it's actually a bunch of smart people doing the best they can. There is plenty of legit criticism without resorting to this kind of claptrap:
"rob us via inflation"
"force us into a race to the bottom for wages"
"forcing people to work for no particularly good reason"
Nobody is forced to work, dude. Quite the opposite.
I assume you meant 'from conception', because that is when the genetic uniqueness is established. I just don't see that as an important marker of humanity.
Cells from the fetus remain in the mother's body for the rest of her life. Are each of those unique organisms worthy of the legal status of Human? To me it is nonsense to equate my humanity with the humanity of a few cells, but that is a widespread notion.
If one genetically unique cell is all it takes to be a human, then my now-pregnant wife deserves tens of thousands of tax credits, one for each of our child's cells which remain in her body. Eighteen years from now, each of them assumes the right to vote in elections.
Also, a person who develops cancer now has a genetically unique lump of cells in his body. The cells grow together and are different from the cells around them. Does the person get a tax credit for those cells? Is the person prosecutable for murder when he has the cells surgically removed?
All of these are nonsense suggestions, exactly and precisely the same as suggesting that an embryo is morally or legally equivalent to an adult human being. My point is that there is no precise line where live 'begins', life is a continuous thing, going back into time. We have a useful illusion of individuality so we have to draw legal lines around that individuality, and the clearest place for us to draw that line is with birth. These are tough questions which is why people disagree about them, and they are important questions which is why people feel strongly about them.
Does it? Like, any inflation, even the low inflation enjoyed in most modern economies? The economies that have done pretty well since the Enlightenment? The same economies which allow you the free time to complain about inflation on Slashdot? I don't know. Those economies have done pretty well from my perspective here.
"Those who are working have their hourly wage reduced by inflation"
Yes! Thus the incentive to find better work -- a great strength of modern economic management. Well put! Wait, did you think that was a problem?
"there are fewer and fewer businesses and eventually there are no more people who want to or can hire"
I don't even know what this means. Inflation causes there to be fewer businesses and workers? Did you pull that out of the air, or did you read that on a blog with blinking text? If you look around at the economy you live in, you'll see that statement doesn't reflect reality.
Slashdot Mirror
Legally charged? To me "charged" implies "charged with a crime", but character assassination isn't a crime; it would be Libel (or Slander) which is a tort. It would be fun, though, if users sued the programmer -- and in my opinion, yes, he is liable. At a minimum he should apologize and refund the purchase price to all affected users.
Oh, is that what Canadians tell themselves? That's cute.
(I'm just flamebaiting, man. Canada does a lot of things right, but allowing a foreign royal to rule/reign is embarrassing and shockingly out of line with what is otherwise a pretty well-run Canadian government. I have similar disregard for the UK itself. Royalty is a disgusting and anachronistic institution.)
That doesn't count because Canada isn't a democracy. Democracies aren't ruled by foreign royalty.
My guess is that GP's guess is wrong.
"Why should the court have to treat Apple like a six year old child?"
Because... oh never mind.
"if officials would have allowed the hand count he requested."
Right. They never should have allowed the hand count he requested. Obviously they should have conducted a complete count of all votes -- something that was never done before the election was certified. When that count was done, after the inauguration, we learned positively that the corrupt and illegal action by Republican back-room operators did in fact steal the election rightly won by Gore, who received the most votes in Florida. Nobody disputes this fact, including you. Focusing on Al Gore's political maneuvering is a hand-waving tactic used to ignore the fact that the majority (plurality) of Floridians voted for Gore.
The only reasonable action for Florida to have taken was to carefully and dutifully count every vote. All other proposals were unreasonable, including Gore's proposed partial recount, and including the unconstitutional and corrupt decision to not count all the votes and just to allow a political appointee to illegally declare her party the victor.
Under a full recount of all votes, Gore won.
Thus my conclusions. I think it is quite the correct conclusions.
The plan is complete.
1. Society recognizes problem with unregulated market segment
2. Society asks market to please regulate itself
3. Market tries to come up with a solution
4. Market decides, hey, fuck customers and ethics, it's all about the Benjamins suckas!
5. Legal regulation
Having reached step 4, we can now move on to step 5. I am glad about this. Congressional action will merely extend the protections currently enjoyed by Americans to the realm of targeted advertising. Sometimes legal action isn't required. For instance, the movie industry has successfully used their rating system to satisfy the public and stop Congress from getting involved. Sadly, only rare industries do that successfully.
Congressionally approved treaty terms, of course. Where else?
Quite the contrary! We do follow our own laws, it's just that they are bad laws.
"No black, brown, poor, or college-educated middle-class people are are allowed to vote" is a bad law, but we are following it perfectly.
Why bother to cite facts when cited facts don't sway ideological nincompoops like yourself?
Here's your fucking cite, jackass. It's a widely known FACT trivially discovered by a Google search that a four-year-old could do in less time than it takes you to stretch when you wake up.
Wow, and yet Gore STILL got more votes than Bush in Florida, only to have them not counted by a conspiracy between corrupt election officials and corrupt Supreme Court justices.
My thanks go to the Washington Post and other fine newspapers for establishing this fact, so that nobody in the future will ever consider Bush 's first term to be legitimate:
No, then it wouldn't matter. And since that's not true, since it's only one party doing it, then it does matter.
Jesus fucking christ you get a +5 Insightful for trolling? Do your fucking job, moderators. That post is claptrap and flamebait.
"why should there be unsupervised "observers" standing around a polling place and potentially intimidating voters?"
Uh, I don't know, probably in order to do exactly the opposite of that.
Cut shashdyke some slack. He was just trying to squeeze in a comment which was quick to type with a thin sheen of insightfulness in order to get upmods, so he could take some mod points later this week and troll with them. You can't blame him for that. Oh, wait, you CAN blame him for that? Oh, okay well then downmod him I guess.
What do you mean that devices are getting dumber?
"It's staggering how much wealth was created in the deflationary period, that the following inflationary period took so long to destroy it all."
Ha, man, look if we can't even agree that there is more wealth now than in the 19th century, we won't find common ground. Good luck with your theories.
My suggestion is not to do that. Instead, charge. Charge me one or two pennies for your article. Give me the first paragraph and then *click* for a penny or two, or even less than a penny if you have high volume.
The *click* is the hard part, technologically.
Three users? Oh, so you are friends with my grandpa, grandma, and their neighbor Dorothy? Say hi to them for me!
You just described a "value added product". You took a product (someone's article) and added value (a convenient summary). You made money on the added value, and the other person still makes money on their original product. That describes almost everything in the economy.
You might not realize it, but rubber-tree farmers don't get a cut of Goodyear's profits. Still, they get paid for their rubber.
Everyone saying "paywall" is correct. The missing piece of the puzzle is the ability to pay for the content. When will I be able to click a link saying "Pay 2 cents to read the rest of the article?". CLICK! Done. That is a technology issue and we've been talking about it since the Clinton years. Why hasn't anyone been able to crack that problem yet? My two pennies are waiting!
"making it very difficult for individual sites to survive on ad revenue."
Damnation! If only there were another way to profit from the production of a good, other than to give it away for free and put an ad on it! Oh, humanity, why is there no other model for monetizing a useful product? How long must we suffer without any way to, say, directly trade the useful product for an exchangeable unit of value! Lo, we should pray that someday somebody invents the economic concept of "buying things"! Until then, yes, we must make sure that people can make money from ads!
"What ended up happening is that we let the Federal Reserve rob us via inflation and let corporations force us into a race to the bottom for wages as we spent more than we could really afford because it was hard to find quality investments with Wall street robbing people blind."
No, what ended up happening is that we all decided that we wanted all the fancy material goods of the modern world, and we all had to work to get them. In fact, women had to start working too, to afford these awesome new things. Many families (but a minority of the total) do decide to live at a lower standard of living, and work fewer hours.
The way it turned out is that people largely enjoy their productive careers and find them satisfactory. Some people don't, and they might work less. You don't have to work very hard today to feed and clothe yourself, and some people only work that hard.
Your rant about the Fed is poppycock. It's conspiracy-theory fodder, total nonsense. It's not all a big conspiracy to steal from you, dude, it's actually a bunch of smart people doing the best they can. There is plenty of legit criticism without resorting to this kind of claptrap:
"rob us via inflation"
"force us into a race to the bottom for wages"
"forcing people to work for no particularly good reason"
Nobody is forced to work, dude. Quite the opposite.
I assume you meant 'from conception', because that is when the genetic uniqueness is established. I just don't see that as an important marker of humanity.
Cells from the fetus remain in the mother's body for the rest of her life. Are each of those unique organisms worthy of the legal status of Human? To me it is nonsense to equate my humanity with the humanity of a few cells, but that is a widespread notion.
If one genetically unique cell is all it takes to be a human, then my now-pregnant wife deserves tens of thousands of tax credits, one for each of our child's cells which remain in her body. Eighteen years from now, each of them assumes the right to vote in elections.
Also, a person who develops cancer now has a genetically unique lump of cells in his body. The cells grow together and are different from the cells around them. Does the person get a tax credit for those cells? Is the person prosecutable for murder when he has the cells surgically removed?
All of these are nonsense suggestions, exactly and precisely the same as suggesting that an embryo is morally or legally equivalent to an adult human being. My point is that there is no precise line where live 'begins', life is a continuous thing, going back into time. We have a useful illusion of individuality so we have to draw legal lines around that individuality, and the clearest place for us to draw that line is with birth. These are tough questions which is why people disagree about them, and they are important questions which is why people feel strongly about them.
"Inflation eventually destroys the economy"
Does it? Like, any inflation, even the low inflation enjoyed in most modern economies? The economies that have done pretty well since the Enlightenment? The same economies which allow you the free time to complain about inflation on Slashdot? I don't know. Those economies have done pretty well from my perspective here.
"Those who are working have their hourly wage reduced by inflation"
Yes! Thus the incentive to find better work -- a great strength of modern economic management. Well put! Wait, did you think that was a problem?
"there are fewer and fewer businesses and eventually there are no more people who want to or can hire"
I don't even know what this means. Inflation causes there to be fewer businesses and workers? Did you pull that out of the air, or did you read that on a blog with blinking text? If you look around at the economy you live in, you'll see that statement doesn't reflect reality.
"reliance on the past as a guide to the future"
I am willing to defend using evidence as a basis for understanding reality, if that is what you are trying to get at.