I don't think the issue is as simple as that. US companies get certain benefits from being incorporated in the US such as low corporate tax rates.
There is little advantage. The corporate tax rate is zero in many countries. The amount of red-tape around running a corporation is steadily rising (heard of Sarbanes-Oxley?). You may remember the uber-lefties threatening to move to Canada, should Bush win in 2004. Well, Microsoft is not threatening, it is just moving... This is still a great country, but it much worse (and less attractive to visitors, BTW) due to the post-9/11 hysteria...
... wants to become a US citizen and wins the lottery
Aren't you glad, your ancestors have won that lottery? Oh, wait, there was not any... Being healthy, non-criminal, and knowing a living-earning trade was enough to enter this country in the first half of the 20th century. And before that, there were no limits at all (other than the cost of the ticket).
If they don't want to be a citizen, they can work in their own country.
What about the millions, who do want to become a citizen, but can't win the lottery? We still have huge swathes of unsettled land. Our population density is four times less, than China's. Dying towns offer free land to people willing to move in...
But this is not a matter of Economics. This is a matter of Human Rights — as Americans learn in kindergartens, everybody's creator-given rights include Pursuit of Happiness. Being able to live anywhere they can afford, and work for anyone who would hire is certainly a legitimate pursuit.
And if you are concerned about them taking up our social programs, then don't give it to them. Don't give it to anyone undeserving, in fact... New Orleans — the city of huge "low income" housing projects — has seen its Hispanics population more than triple from 15K to 50K after Katrina. These fresh immigrants all happily come to work on the reconstruction. Meanwhile, the residents of those housing projects collect government subsidies doing little... Which of the two groups of people would you rather have as fellow citizens?
there is a shortage of people who are interested in being paid next to nothing.
Because it is our birthright to be paid, what we demand. And if some lowly Thai, Indian, Ecuadorian, or Ukrainian are willing to work for 50% of that (and send 10% to their parents back home), well, something must be wrong about them!
Hardware quality is the key here. It may not matter, if the application is even 30% faster on x86. But if the motherboard is buggy, or the parallel port is flaky, or cable can fluctuate, or the video card can get loose (early AGPs anyone?) — it is death. Even if the probability of it ever happening is very low, the costs will be devastating. Thus the expectation (probabilty times cost) of the loss is still lower than the cost.
I've heard of machines, where the CPUs or memory can be replaced without shutting down — 15 years ago (Sequoia)... Meanwhile, some controllers and OSes still don't fully support hard-disk replacement, or even network cable unplugging — today...
And until the decent defenders of copyright start distinguishing between theft and infringement, my mixing them together with despicable RIAA shills will remain perfectly fair.
The difference between theft and infringement is irrelevant to the discussion, because the infringement is just as harmful to the rightful owners of the intellectual property, as the theft is to those of the tangible property.
They are equally harmful to the rest of the society too. Because of thieves we must burden ourselves daily with locks, keys, alarms, chains. Similarly, the infringers force us to deal with DRM and other fair-use preventing implementations.
Thus the terms can be used interchangibly without too much of a stretch.
I don't even see RIAA "shills" as "despicable". They are doing their work, fighting for their employer's rights...
The term comes from an essay by Henry David Thoreau. His crime was nothing larger than failure to pay a tax, one which he could well afford to pay.
He was protesting against slavery and the Mexican war. To use the same term to describe a "battle" against a non-governmental organization in a fight for entertainment of all things, is, on one hand, a sign of a very substantial quality of life improvement, and, on the other, that of how silly your complaints and cheek-puffing really is...
It is arguable that the long term effect of perpetual copyright is an erosion of our other freedoms.
That the tangible property (mobile and real estate) remains perpetually owned — passed from generation to generation and/or sold — without ever coming into "public domain" (unless abandoned) was never seen as somehow eroding personal freedoms.
So, I don't think, what you are saying is even arguable. It certainly is not a sure thing, as the grand-parent has claimed.
I think you're seriously mis-representing the opinions of copyright reformists. Or rather, you're combining the arguments of the copyright reformists along with the anarchists and along with the "I just want free stuff" crowd. This is not a fair way to represent those groups.
Until the noble reformists start debating/fighting/condemning the lowly thieves on this and other forums, my mixing them together will remain perfectly fair...
The extent to which moral disagreement with copyright justifies civil disobedience is debatable.
The use of the very term is offensive. "Civil disobedience" evokes memories of people like Sakharov and Gandhi. Using it over access to entertainment is a misnomer.
I understand the logic behind the site, but why support a system that doesn't pay the bands?!?
A tiny minority is actually concerned about who is paid. The rest want to have convenient (illegal or not) access to songs, and ripping your own CDs is not convenient enough to many people.
**AA are trying to make it less convenient to download, instead of making it more convenient to rip or otherwise buy legitimately. They are foolish, but they are within their rights — however clumsy they are in enforcing them.
Then there is a vocal (on this site) minority of people, who justify "sticking it" to "the system" — the usual childish claptrap — who get more and more vocal with every rightful-but-clumsy step by the **AA. According to them, it is not quite stealing, and therefor is completely justified to produce unlimited copies of somebody else's intellectual property against the owner's will... Every once in a while, they will also claim, that it is the middlemen, who is deprived of revenue — as if that matters...
For every falsely accused granny there are hundreds of justly prosecuted copyright infringers, none of whom are reported on this example of objective journalism of a site.
Or anyone of you, anti-spam fighters — do you have a license to investigate, what ISP the spammer's IP-address belonged to?
No? Well, your investigations will not hold in court then... And performing these investigations is unlawful in itself — if this granny's "good lawyers" have their way. You'll need a license to use whois...
It's simple, and it works. So, of course, it's under threat from the Consumer Data Industry Association, which represents the Big Three credit bureaus.
If Apple chose to use GPL-derived code in it's products
And if jkrise chose steals petty cash [...]
See, asking a question implies an accusation. FSF has no evidence to accuse Apple of violating GPL. Zero — if they had any, they would've said so. But they ask the question anyway: "The iPhone is leaving people questioning: Does it contain GPLed software?"
The funny bit is that the only people who complain of "theft" are the middle men who do absolutely nothing of value to anyone and leach off of society.
Bullshit. Middlemen are providing ample value in most walks of life. In entertainment they let artists be artists and not worry their passionate heads with boring subjects like money and accounting.
Nor are the middlemen the only ones, who are complain of theft. Metallica are the most famous musicians, who made their opinion very well known, but others have gone to great length fighting piracy too — and making the music harder to enjoy for the rest of us, unfortunately. The obnoxiously inconvenient concepts of "DRM" — as well as locks/keys for millenia before that — are there to prevent/reduce theft.
Theft (and not quite theft, but pretty darn similar) are detrimental not only to the direct victims, but to the rest of the society. You blast the middlemen as "leaching off society", but don't seem to mind the true leachers. Heck, I suspect, you are one yourself...
BTW, identity of covert operatives is never an "open" secret.
People overtly working for a country's government abroad are all (rightly) presumed to be connected with that country's intelligence services anyway. Especially so for the embassy personnel — it is not like she was acting as a tourist, or wore a burqa trying to look like a local.
Yes, sexual harassment is a more serious crime (especially — at workplace, especially — by the head of the government), than "outing" such a person... There was no "treason", and what "outing" there was, it was not done by Mr. Libby. Lying under oath and otherwise obstructing justice are serious charges on their own, but, I suspect, you were a lot more lenient 8 years ago...
well, thats not exactly the same as covering up the deliberate ouster of a NOC agent, is it?
The question raised by the "frosty piss" was about the Administration's corruption. Well, issuing a full pardon after receiving a substantial monetary donation from a crooked businesman — what Clintons did — is a much more reliable evidence of corruption, than commuting the prison time (Libby still has to pay $250K and will remain a convicted felon — unless he wins the appeals after all) for a subordinate.
And, BTW, identity of agents like the one "ousted" is always an open secret. Clinton's own obstruction of justice stymied an investigation of a much more serious real crime of sexual harassment. Your outrage is about 8 years late...
As if nobody was ever robbed of their remaining cash soon after completing a cash transaction.
As if the correct change is always given.
As if a wrong bill (50 instead of 20, for example) has never changed hands.
As if counterfit money is not an ongoing problem for the last several centuries.
Keep it in perspective, people — a new technology does not need to be bulletproof to deserve a chance. It does not even have to beat an old one in all respects. Better in some respects and merely comparable in the others...
The system is grossly skewed towards the interest of the cart-owners, who abuse their control over the implements.
We have the right to take the carts away for our convenience (fair use) — and it is not "stealing", because we always plan to bring them back some day. It is stupid and unethical for the supermarkets to fight their customers over this, especially the single mothers (who have never gone shopping) among them.
SMAA (SuperMarket Association of America) and similar oppressive institutions world-wide will, no doubt, try to suppress this new invention, so all freedom-fighters must start mirroring the just released information on their computers.
All of these nasty things you describe, have happened already — without "Real ID". The standardized federal identification card will not significantly contribute to the problem...
Yet, for some reason, it is the card, that raises the "papers, please" fear-mongering, rather than those "lists", you are justly complaining about.
Come to think of it, the Real ID might help alleviate those problems — listing more than a person's name and race makes little sense, because anything else is harder to verify (and employers can't ask for age either). Thus to deny the right Antonio Romero a job or an opportunity to open a bank account, the government denies these things to all Antonio Romeros.
A properly implemented Real ID could be used to simply check an applicant against all government databases in one go, without the would-be employer or banker even knowing, what they don't need to know.
And what the fuck would you do about it asshole? If it gets bad enough for an uprising, most of the ones doing the uprising will be able to outshoot upwards of 75% of cops and a good portion of the military as well.
No, dear. The most you'll do is burn a few cars, and smash a few store-fronts. And then your revolution will be televised — on your trials...
This isn't like a cop looking at your license plate and entering it in because you were breaking the law; this is going to be automatic. You walk by, you get scanned, and the terminal goes DING!
And it is wrong because?.. I'm anxious...
This country is far too comfortable, its citizens too selfish, too apathetic, too downright ignorant, for an uprising to arrive before a considerable number of further abuses do.
Uprisings are by far more abusive, than anything an elected government can do. If you try something stupid like an uprising, I promise, I'll get my fat ass off the couch, call my police, and proceed to whack some sense into your little head until they arrive...
This country has been this way for a long time — Roosevelt knowingly authorized illegal eavesdropping of suspected German saboteurs in 1940, for example. Yet any predictions of the "police state" arriving next year have remained just that — predictions...
What I don't understand is why people get so up in arms about requiring people to prove that they are eligible for the services for which they are applying.
Applicants do need to prove eligibility, there is no question about it. But the ID does not prove eligibility. It simply shows, who you are (authentication), rather than what you are entitled to (authorization).
And there are many other ways of proving, you are, who you say you are — requiring the Real ID is simply a way of twisting your arm into obtaining it.
The grave "Papers, please" fear-mongering is a bit overdone — plenty of reasonably free countries require citizens to carry IDs, and even America's States often require it for things like buying alcohol. But I dislike the Federal ID as well...
No, they just need to return the confiscated real estate to their rightful owners and/or their kin.
As for China being a worse offender — yes, indeed. Although I doubt, China's "terrible attrocities" match Castro/Guevarra's per-capita, it was a black day, when Clinton gave China a preferred trade status — temporary at first, then permanent in 2000...
US media was applauding him, and the illiberal heavy-weights like New York Times even criticized the few lawmakers, who tried to prevent the bill on those pesky "human rights issues".
Anyway, whatever the situation with China is/was, Cuba is a horrible regime, and should be kept under the pile of bricks until it either changes or collapses.
Slashdot Mirror
It will have worked, when a piece of Microsoft's code is opened for all to see. Wake me up then...
There is little advantage. The corporate tax rate is zero in many countries. The amount of red-tape around running a corporation is steadily rising (heard of Sarbanes-Oxley?). You may remember the uber-lefties threatening to move to Canada, should Bush win in 2004. Well, Microsoft is not threatening, it is just moving... This is still a great country, but it much worse (and less attractive to visitors, BTW) due to the post-9/11 hysteria...
Aren't you glad, your ancestors have won that lottery? Oh, wait, there was not any... Being healthy, non-criminal, and knowing a living-earning trade was enough to enter this country in the first half of the 20th century. And before that, there were no limits at all (other than the cost of the ticket).
What about the millions, who do want to become a citizen, but can't win the lottery? We still have huge swathes of unsettled land. Our population density is four times less, than China's. Dying towns offer free land to people willing to move in...
But this is not a matter of Economics. This is a matter of Human Rights — as Americans learn in kindergartens, everybody's creator-given rights include Pursuit of Happiness. Being able to live anywhere they can afford, and work for anyone who would hire is certainly a legitimate pursuit.
And if you are concerned about them taking up our social programs, then don't give it to them. Don't give it to anyone undeserving, in fact... New Orleans — the city of huge "low income" housing projects — has seen its Hispanics population more than triple from 15K to 50K after Katrina. These fresh immigrants all happily come to work on the reconstruction. Meanwhile, the residents of those housing projects collect government subsidies doing little... Which of the two groups of people would you rather have as fellow citizens?
Because it is our birthright to be paid, what we demand. And if some lowly Thai, Indian, Ecuadorian, or Ukrainian are willing to work for 50% of that (and send 10% to their parents back home), well, something must be wrong about them!
Keep them out of this country, I say!
Hardware quality is the key here. It may not matter, if the application is even 30% faster on x86. But if the motherboard is buggy, or the parallel port is flaky, or cable can fluctuate, or the video card can get loose (early AGPs anyone?) — it is death. Even if the probability of it ever happening is very low, the costs will be devastating. Thus the expectation (probabilty times cost) of the loss is still lower than the cost.
I've heard of machines, where the CPUs or memory can be replaced without shutting down — 15 years ago (Sequoia)... Meanwhile, some controllers and OSes still don't fully support hard-disk replacement, or even network cable unplugging — today...
The difference between theft and infringement is irrelevant to the discussion, because the infringement is just as harmful to the rightful owners of the intellectual property, as the theft is to those of the tangible property.
They are equally harmful to the rest of the society too. Because of thieves we must burden ourselves daily with locks, keys, alarms, chains. Similarly, the infringers force us to deal with DRM and other fair-use preventing implementations.
Thus the terms can be used interchangibly without too much of a stretch.
I don't even see RIAA "shills" as "despicable". They are doing their work, fighting for their employer's rights...
He was protesting against slavery and the Mexican war. To use the same term to describe a "battle" against a non-governmental organization in a fight for entertainment of all things, is, on one hand, a sign of a very substantial quality of life improvement, and, on the other, that of how silly your complaints and cheek-puffing really is...
That the tangible property (mobile and real estate) remains perpetually owned — passed from generation to generation and/or sold — without ever coming into "public domain" (unless abandoned) was never seen as somehow eroding personal freedoms.
So, I don't think, what you are saying is even arguable. It certainly is not a sure thing, as the grand-parent has claimed.
None of the above are in anyway endangered by **AA, nor defended by AllOfMP3 et al.
Yeah, Disney's choke-hold on Mickey-Mouse really had a chilling effect on all of our freedom-fighters...
Until the noble reformists start debating/fighting/condemning the lowly thieves on this and other forums, my mixing them together will remain perfectly fair...
The use of the very term is offensive. "Civil disobedience" evokes memories of people like Sakharov and Gandhi. Using it over access to entertainment is a misnomer.
A tiny minority is actually concerned about who is paid. The rest want to have convenient (illegal or not) access to songs, and ripping your own CDs is not convenient enough to many people.
**AA are trying to make it less convenient to download, instead of making it more convenient to rip or otherwise buy legitimately. They are foolish, but they are within their rights — however clumsy they are in enforcing them.
Then there is a vocal (on this site) minority of people, who justify "sticking it" to "the system" — the usual childish claptrap — who get more and more vocal with every rightful-but-clumsy step by the **AA. According to them, it is not quite stealing, and therefor is completely justified to produce unlimited copies of somebody else's intellectual property against the owner's will... Every once in a while, they will also claim, that it is the middlemen, who is deprived of revenue — as if that matters...
For every falsely accused granny there are hundreds of justly prosecuted copyright infringers, none of whom are reported on this example of objective journalism of a site.
Or anyone of you, anti-spam fighters — do you have a license to investigate, what ISP the spammer's IP-address belonged to?
No? Well, your investigations will not hold in court then... And performing these investigations is unlawful in itself — if this granny's "good lawyers" have their way. You'll need a license to use whois...
Be careful, what you wish for...
Puke...
Information wants to be free. Does not it?
And if jkrise chose steals petty cash [...]
See, asking a question implies an accusation. FSF has no evidence to accuse Apple of violating GPL. Zero — if they had any, they would've said so. But they ask the question anyway: "The iPhone is leaving people questioning: Does it contain GPLed software?"
That's FUD.
Bullshit. Middlemen are providing ample value in most walks of life. In entertainment they let artists be artists and not worry their passionate heads with boring subjects like money and accounting.
Nor are the middlemen the only ones, who are complain of theft. Metallica are the most famous musicians, who made their opinion very well known, but others have gone to great length fighting piracy too — and making the music harder to enjoy for the rest of us, unfortunately. The obnoxiously inconvenient concepts of "DRM" — as well as locks/keys for millenia before that — are there to prevent/reduce theft.
Theft (and not quite theft, but pretty darn similar) are detrimental not only to the direct victims, but to the rest of the society. You blast the middlemen as "leaching off society", but don't seem to mind the true leachers. Heck, I suspect, you are one yourself...
People overtly working for a country's government abroad are all (rightly) presumed to be connected with that country's intelligence services anyway. Especially so for the embassy personnel — it is not like she was acting as a tourist, or wore a burqa trying to look like a local.
Yes, sexual harassment is a more serious crime (especially — at workplace, especially — by the head of the government), than "outing" such a person... There was no "treason", and what "outing" there was, it was not done by Mr. Libby. Lying under oath and otherwise obstructing justice are serious charges on their own, but, I suspect, you were a lot more lenient 8 years ago...
The question raised by the "frosty piss" was about the Administration's corruption. Well, issuing a full pardon after receiving a substantial monetary donation from a crooked businesman — what Clintons did — is a much more reliable evidence of corruption, than commuting the prison time (Libby still has to pay $250K and will remain a convicted felon — unless he wins the appeals after all) for a subordinate.
And, BTW, identity of agents like the one "ousted" is always an open secret. Clinton's own obstruction of justice stymied an investigation of a much more serious real crime of sexual harassment. Your outrage is about 8 years late...
... for buying stolen property.
Oh, yeah, right. Since the original authors got to keep their notes and recordings, it was not really stealing. Never mind...
As if nobody was ever robbed of their remaining cash soon after completing a cash transaction.
As if the correct change is always given.
As if a wrong bill (50 instead of 20, for example) has never changed hands.
As if counterfit money is not an ongoing problem for the last several centuries.
Keep it in perspective, people — a new technology does not need to be bulletproof to deserve a chance. It does not even have to beat an old one in all respects. Better in some respects and merely comparable in the others...
The carts are part of the culture.
The system is grossly skewed towards the interest of the cart-owners, who abuse their control over the implements.
We have the right to take the carts away for our convenience (fair use) — and it is not "stealing", because we always plan to bring them back some day. It is stupid and unethical for the supermarkets to fight their customers over this, especially the single mothers (who have never gone shopping) among them.
SMAA (SuperMarket Association of America) and similar oppressive institutions world-wide will, no doubt, try to suppress this new invention, so all freedom-fighters must start mirroring the just released information on their computers.
All of these nasty things you describe, have happened already — without "Real ID". The standardized federal identification card will not significantly contribute to the problem...
Yet, for some reason, it is the card, that raises the "papers, please" fear-mongering, rather than those "lists", you are justly complaining about.
Come to think of it, the Real ID might help alleviate those problems — listing more than a person's name and race makes little sense, because anything else is harder to verify (and employers can't ask for age either). Thus to deny the right Antonio Romero a job or an opportunity to open a bank account, the government denies these things to all Antonio Romeros.
A properly implemented Real ID could be used to simply check an applicant against all government databases in one go, without the would-be employer or banker even knowing, what they don't need to know.
No, dear. The most you'll do is burn a few cars, and smash a few store-fronts. And then your revolution will be televised — on your trials...
Dear, your rosy understanding of what police state really means fills me with comfort. Thank you for the reassurance.
And it is wrong because?.. I'm anxious...
Uprisings are by far more abusive, than anything an elected government can do. If you try something stupid like an uprising, I promise, I'll get my fat ass off the couch, call my police, and proceed to whack some sense into your little head until they arrive...
This country has been this way for a long time — Roosevelt knowingly authorized illegal eavesdropping of suspected German saboteurs in 1940, for example. Yet any predictions of the "police state" arriving next year have remained just that — predictions...
Applicants do need to prove eligibility, there is no question about it. But the ID does not prove eligibility. It simply shows, who you are (authentication), rather than what you are entitled to (authorization).
And there are many other ways of proving, you are, who you say you are — requiring the Real ID is simply a way of twisting your arm into obtaining it.
The grave "Papers, please" fear-mongering is a bit overdone — plenty of reasonably free countries require citizens to carry IDs, and even America's States often require it for things like buying alcohol. But I dislike the Federal ID as well...
No, they just need to return the confiscated real estate to their rightful owners and/or their kin.
As for China being a worse offender — yes, indeed. Although I doubt, China's "terrible attrocities" match Castro/Guevarra's per-capita, it was a black day, when Clinton gave China a preferred trade status — temporary at first, then permanent in 2000...
US media was applauding him, and the illiberal heavy-weights like New York Times even criticized the few lawmakers, who tried to prevent the bill on those pesky "human rights issues".
Anyway, whatever the situation with China is/was, Cuba is a horrible regime, and should be kept under the pile of bricks until it either changes or collapses.