Should doctors work for free? Should drug companies not be compensated for the work they put into making their products? Should a construction company build a new hospital, from scratch, with no reimbursement?
Health care has a dollar value because the things which comprise are not free. How twisted are you Europeans because you think, just because you don't pay for these things directly, that no one has to pay for them at all?
No one said the decision is easy. That's why it's so important to have living wills, so that your loved ones know what you expect and can be freed from making gut wrenching decisions when the time comes.
Someone who would do that to a kitten needs counseling, not a lifetime stigma that traps them into a certain class from which there is no escape. "Scarlet letters" just don't work.
But when it comes to animal abuse, I loose some of that rationality. Animal abusers are dangerous and cant be trusted.
At least you admit to being irrational. I score you full points for that honesty. But do you really think someone who keeps 24 cats in their house and lives in squalor should be on a public registry? Or what about someone who participated in blood sports that were legal in their own country before they moved here? The first deserves our pity, the second needs either a one-way ticket back home or a quick education on what's acceptable in their new homeland. Neither needs to be saddled with this bit (pardon the puns) all their lives.
Tens of thousands is nothing. The last time I worked on the frontlines, so to speak (now I support the tools that support the firewalls, rather than the firewalls themselves), at a medium-sized telecom company that shares a name with the OLPC laptop, we would get hit millions of times per day. And we'd shrug it off like it was nothing; because, well, it was nothing.
There's definitely a balancing act between having the police held accountable for their actions, and to maintain the privacy of people who are accused (but not yet, or possibly ever, convicted) of a crime. I don't know that the US system is better than Spain's or vice versa, but they both seem accomplish their stated goals.
You also have to remember that libel laws in the US work different than in Europe due to our First Amendment protections. As long as what you're writing is true, you can't be sued (at least not successfully) for writing it. And it is true that these guys were arrested on the charges at hand, so printing their names with their accusations is a protected action.
Again, it's not a question of which one is better, just that the two systems are designed with slightly different goals in mind.
You think the business model for the most successful economy on the planet is based entirely upon fraud and deceit? That tinfoil is for saving leftovers and cooking JiffyPop, you look silly with it on your head.
It would be better to enact your proposed restrictions when a politician was accused of not handling in the voter's best interest by any citizen three times.
There's already a formal method in place for voters to make it clear that a politician is not handling their best interests appropriately. It's called "voting".
- Compared to automobile usage, train usage in the US is nearly non-existent. - If you don't take care of anything it will fall apart. Or are you completely unfamiliar with the concept of entropy? - If heads of state in one country go to another country for their health care, the second country should not try to emulate the first in their health care decisions. - This is the only one you got right. You're responsible for your life, no one else. Stop asking for handouts and go be a man for once in your pathetic, miserable life.
Not in the US, they're not. Rail ridership is a small fraction of the ridership of cars, planes, even buses move more people.
Members of the world's political elite have the wealth and influence to buy good medical treatment? Wow, I guess that means the rest of us should just shut up and stop our bitching right?
Pretty much, yeah. Your health care is your own responsibility, not mine. So act like an adult and take care of yourself and quit your pathetic whining about how life isn't fair. It never has been and never will be.
Part of a free market means that those industries that best suit the needs of their customers will succeed. Trains, while they might satisfy some personal desire of yours, are not a popular choice of personal transportation in this country. Since no one uses them or cares about them, they fall apart. It's really not that difficult a concept to understand, one wonders why you marvel at it.
As for our health care system, as long as foreign politicians come here for their operations we can safely that, yes, we do have the best health care system in the world.
The GPL is, arguably, the most popular and most well-known open source license. Without strong copyright law protecting the rights of creators, the GPL could not exist, depending as it does on copyright enforcement to effect its clauses. So I'm not sure what world this lobbying group lives in where FOSS is incompatible with copyright.
You're right that the previous analogy was stretched too far. That happens with analogies, and taffy. But your new one has a flaw: the person painting the penis isn't doing so because they were invited to, they're doing it against the wishes of the building's owners.
A better analogy would be: you set up a large blank wall, and invite graffiti artists to come and spray paint on it. One of them paints a horrific scene that celebrates abusing people (pick your group, it doesn't matter for this discussion). The people who invited the artists are told by passers by that the scene is horrible and offensive and should be taken down. Yet, they do nothing until they receive a letter from a lawyer telling them they're in legal trouble (which they should've known was possible if their lawyers had ever bothered to check the local statutes). Then they proclaim their innocence and help the cops find the artist who drew the image.
Do you see the difference here? Google isn't the victim of a defacement. They actively sought people to post videos on their servers, and it turns out one of those videos broke a law in Italy. Now they're suffering the consequences of that action (allowing the video to be posted on their site in the first place).
I'm not now, nor have I ever, argued that this law is just. But it is what it is, and if you want to run a business anywhere it is your responsibility to know the laws that may affect you. Ignorance of the law, or claiming it's too hard to obey, is no excuse.
No, the user poster would be the person who mailed in a letter to the editor. Since Google owns the actual servers, they're the publisher. Besides which, Google is the one who decided to post the video without checking that all involved had signed their consent (they did so by making it possible for the user to upload videos that were instantly viewable by anyone and everyone in the first place).
It's really not that difficult, I'm not sure why you're having a hard time understanding this.
You won't get any arguments from me that the law is being unfair in this case. You seem to be conceding my main point, which was that Google violated the law and did so because they never bothered to find out what the law was in the first place.
Google made the video available and "broadcasted" it; that's what they were convicted of. Whether they were the original people to record it or upload it to their servers is irrelevant.
It doesn't matter what I feel or think, it matters what Italian law is. And apparently, under Italian law, the publisher of content is responsible for it. Now, you may think that's a boneheaded law, and I would agree with you. But it doesn't change Google's (or Slashdot's) responsibility to follow that law, and to accept the consequences if they do not.
This story is an excellent example of why Americans companies should not set up offices in other countries: their laws are not our laws, and you could be exposing your employees to bizarre trials for doing things that are perfectly legal here.
Bullshit. They own the site that hosted the video, they own the servers that sites runs, they own (or lease) the bandwidth that delivered the video out to the wider Internet. Whether they posted it or not they have some responsibility for the content of the video, according to Italian law.
Google's mistake here was to ignore local laws and customs, thinking "We work on the Internet, that makes everything different." Just like adding the words "...with a computer" shouldn't make a standard business process patentable, simply operating on the Internet doesn't make you above the law.
The question of whether the law in question is reasonable or not is an entirely different matter. But Google (and their execs) screwed up by ignoring that law in the first place.
Germany's per capita GDP (PPP) is $35,539. France's is $33,744. The UK is $35,400, Italy is $30,631, and Spain is $30,588. No other european nation is in the top ten of GDP worldwide. The EU as a whole is $30,513, not much less than Spain and Italy on their own.
By comparison, the US' GDP (PPP) is a healthy $47,440, 33% greater than Germany's.
Not to mention, how many of those apps were tracking the model releases accurately? How many may have had images of children inside them (unbeknownst even to the developers)? There are a lot of good reasons for Apple to remove these particular apps, appeasing feminists is just the lamest one they could've come up with.
Most European and Asian countries already have gas prices more than twice as high as ours. Just imagine the massive shift in capital to innovative startups that would have occurred over the last two decades had the US taxed gasoline appropriately. Imagine the massive private expenditures into developing consumer-grade alternative energy products. It's just mind-boggling to think what the US could do if it were as forward thinking as some other countries are.
Earlier in your post, you admitted that the US economy is stronger than all others. In fact, according to the CIA World Factbook, it's greater than the next three countries combined and is nearly as great as the entire continent of Europe combined. We're an economic powerhouse, there's no simply no disputing that.
However, after you acknowledge that fact, you then suggest we hobble our economy by introducing measures used in Europe. Tell me, if those measures are so wonderful, why is their GDP not higher than it is? Going by PPP, the GDP of the EU is a mere $270 billion more than the US, or roughly 1.89%, even though the EU has 62% more population than the US. If excessive taxation and rationing of gasoline were such a wonderful idea I would expect to see a greater disparity between the GDP of the US and the EU.
You can't expect the US to copy the economic systems of nations that simply can't compete with ours. That's just foolishness. If anything, Europe needs to copy our system if they want to compete successfully.
The considerations you listed really have nothing to do with some objective measure of "fairness". Rather, they have to do with attempts to limit the effects of war on a civilian population. Requiring soldiers to wear identifiable uniforms means you're going to kill only other soldiers, at least on purpose. If you kill all the prisoners, there's no reason for the other guy not to kill all of your guys who surrender. If you fly a flag of truce, then open fire, expect the same in return.
Again, it's not a question of what's fair, it's a question of how do we control the killers we're unleashing so they don't kill everyone and only kill those they're supposed to? It's a practical, not a moral, concern.
Slashdot Mirror
Should doctors work for free? Should drug companies not be compensated for the work they put into making their products? Should a construction company build a new hospital, from scratch, with no reimbursement?
Health care has a dollar value because the things which comprise are not free. How twisted are you Europeans because you think, just because you don't pay for these things directly, that no one has to pay for them at all?
No one said the decision is easy. That's why it's so important to have living wills, so that your loved ones know what you expect and can be freed from making gut wrenching decisions when the time comes.
Someone who would do that to a kitten needs counseling, not a lifetime stigma that traps them into a certain class from which there is no escape. "Scarlet letters" just don't work.
I like to think I am as objective as they come.
As do we all.
But when it comes to animal abuse, I loose some of that rationality. Animal abusers are dangerous and cant be trusted.
At least you admit to being irrational. I score you full points for that honesty. But do you really think someone who keeps 24 cats in their house and lives in squalor should be on a public registry? Or what about someone who participated in blood sports that were legal in their own country before they moved here? The first deserves our pity, the second needs either a one-way ticket back home or a quick education on what's acceptable in their new homeland. Neither needs to be saddled with this bit (pardon the puns) all their lives.
Tens of thousands is nothing. The last time I worked on the frontlines, so to speak (now I support the tools that support the firewalls, rather than the firewalls themselves), at a medium-sized telecom company that shares a name with the OLPC laptop, we would get hit millions of times per day. And we'd shrug it off like it was nothing; because, well, it was nothing.
There's definitely a balancing act between having the police held accountable for their actions, and to maintain the privacy of people who are accused (but not yet, or possibly ever, convicted) of a crime. I don't know that the US system is better than Spain's or vice versa, but they both seem accomplish their stated goals.
You also have to remember that libel laws in the US work different than in Europe due to our First Amendment protections. As long as what you're writing is true, you can't be sued (at least not successfully) for writing it. And it is true that these guys were arrested on the charges at hand, so printing their names with their accusations is a protected action.
Again, it's not a question of which one is better, just that the two systems are designed with slightly different goals in mind.
Should've said "largest" economy. Because you're right, going by growth China has the rest of the world beat hands down.
You think the business model for the most successful economy on the planet is based entirely upon fraud and deceit? That tinfoil is for saving leftovers and cooking JiffyPop, you look silly with it on your head.
It would be better to enact your proposed restrictions when a politician was accused of not handling in the voter's best interest by any citizen three times.
There's already a formal method in place for voters to make it clear that a politician is not handling their best interests appropriately. It's called "voting".
Jesus you're a moron.
- Compared to automobile usage, train usage in the US is nearly non-existent.
- If you don't take care of anything it will fall apart. Or are you completely unfamiliar with the concept of entropy?
- If heads of state in one country go to another country for their health care, the second country should not try to emulate the first in their health care decisions.
- This is the only one you got right. You're responsible for your life, no one else. Stop asking for handouts and go be a man for once in your pathetic, miserable life.
Trains not a popular mode of personal transport?
Not in the US, they're not. Rail ridership is a small fraction of the ridership of cars, planes, even buses move more people.
Members of the world's political elite have the wealth and influence to buy good medical treatment? Wow, I guess that means the rest of us should just shut up and stop our bitching right?
Pretty much, yeah. Your health care is your own responsibility, not mine. So act like an adult and take care of yourself and quit your pathetic whining about how life isn't fair. It never has been and never will be.
Part of a free market means that those industries that best suit the needs of their customers will succeed. Trains, while they might satisfy some personal desire of yours, are not a popular choice of personal transportation in this country. Since no one uses them or cares about them, they fall apart. It's really not that difficult a concept to understand, one wonders why you marvel at it.
As for our health care system, as long as foreign politicians come here for their operations we can safely that, yes, we do have the best health care system in the world.
You're right, we must crush the intolerant! If people aren't willing to open their minds to new ideas, we'll open their skulls for them, instead!
</sarcasm>
The GPL is, arguably, the most popular and most well-known open source license. Without strong copyright law protecting the rights of creators, the GPL could not exist, depending as it does on copyright enforcement to effect its clauses. So I'm not sure what world this lobbying group lives in where FOSS is incompatible with copyright.
Clearly, Italy agrees with you that Google is a publisher
I've been arguing what the law in Italy states, not my own opinion. Thank you for finally conceding that I've been entirely correct this entire time.
You're right that the previous analogy was stretched too far. That happens with analogies, and taffy. But your new one has a flaw: the person painting the penis isn't doing so because they were invited to, they're doing it against the wishes of the building's owners.
A better analogy would be: you set up a large blank wall, and invite graffiti artists to come and spray paint on it. One of them paints a horrific scene that celebrates abusing people (pick your group, it doesn't matter for this discussion). The people who invited the artists are told by passers by that the scene is horrible and offensive and should be taken down. Yet, they do nothing until they receive a letter from a lawyer telling them they're in legal trouble (which they should've known was possible if their lawyers had ever bothered to check the local statutes). Then they proclaim their innocence and help the cops find the artist who drew the image.
Do you see the difference here? Google isn't the victim of a defacement. They actively sought people to post videos on their servers, and it turns out one of those videos broke a law in Italy. Now they're suffering the consequences of that action (allowing the video to be posted on their site in the first place).
I'm not now, nor have I ever, argued that this law is just. But it is what it is, and if you want to run a business anywhere it is your responsibility to know the laws that may affect you. Ignorance of the law, or claiming it's too hard to obey, is no excuse.
No, the user poster would be the person who mailed in a letter to the editor. Since Google owns the actual servers, they're the publisher. Besides which, Google is the one who decided to post the video without checking that all involved had signed their consent (they did so by making it possible for the user to upload videos that were instantly viewable by anyone and everyone in the first place).
It's really not that difficult, I'm not sure why you're having a hard time understanding this.
You won't get any arguments from me that the law is being unfair in this case. You seem to be conceding my main point, which was that Google violated the law and did so because they never bothered to find out what the law was in the first place.
Google made the video available and "broadcasted" it; that's what they were convicted of. Whether they were the original people to record it or upload it to their servers is irrelevant.
Perhaps you feel Slashdot should be held liable
It doesn't matter what I feel or think, it matters what Italian law is. And apparently, under Italian law, the publisher of content is responsible for it. Now, you may think that's a boneheaded law, and I would agree with you. But it doesn't change Google's (or Slashdot's) responsibility to follow that law, and to accept the consequences if they do not.
This story is an excellent example of why Americans companies should not set up offices in other countries: their laws are not our laws, and you could be exposing your employees to bizarre trials for doing things that are perfectly legal here.
Google aren't the ones who posted the video
Bullshit. They own the site that hosted the video, they own the servers that sites runs, they own (or lease) the bandwidth that delivered the video out to the wider Internet. Whether they posted it or not they have some responsibility for the content of the video, according to Italian law.
Google's mistake here was to ignore local laws and customs, thinking "We work on the Internet, that makes everything different." Just like adding the words "...with a computer" shouldn't make a standard business process patentable, simply operating on the Internet doesn't make you above the law.
The question of whether the law in question is reasonable or not is an entirely different matter. But Google (and their execs) screwed up by ignoring that law in the first place.
Incorrect, Google is the publisher of the paper in this analogy. The ISP of any person accessing the video would be the delivery truck.
Germany's per capita GDP (PPP) is $35,539. France's is $33,744. The UK is $35,400, Italy is $30,631, and Spain is $30,588. No other european nation is in the top ten of GDP worldwide. The EU as a whole is $30,513, not much less than Spain and Italy on their own.
By comparison, the US' GDP (PPP) is a healthy $47,440, 33% greater than Germany's.
Not to mention, how many of those apps were tracking the model releases accurately? How many may have had images of children inside them (unbeknownst even to the developers)? There are a lot of good reasons for Apple to remove these particular apps, appeasing feminists is just the lamest one they could've come up with.
Most European and Asian countries already have gas prices more than twice as high as ours. Just imagine the massive shift in capital to innovative startups that would have occurred over the last two decades had the US taxed gasoline appropriately. Imagine the massive private expenditures into developing consumer-grade alternative energy products. It's just mind-boggling to think what the US could do if it were as forward thinking as some other countries are.
Earlier in your post, you admitted that the US economy is stronger than all others. In fact, according to the CIA World Factbook, it's greater than the next three countries combined and is nearly as great as the entire continent of Europe combined. We're an economic powerhouse, there's no simply no disputing that.
However, after you acknowledge that fact, you then suggest we hobble our economy by introducing measures used in Europe. Tell me, if those measures are so wonderful, why is their GDP not higher than it is? Going by PPP, the GDP of the EU is a mere $270 billion more than the US, or roughly 1.89%, even though the EU has 62% more population than the US. If excessive taxation and rationing of gasoline were such a wonderful idea I would expect to see a greater disparity between the GDP of the US and the EU.
You can't expect the US to copy the economic systems of nations that simply can't compete with ours. That's just foolishness. If anything, Europe needs to copy our system if they want to compete successfully.
The considerations you listed really have nothing to do with some objective measure of "fairness". Rather, they have to do with attempts to limit the effects of war on a civilian population. Requiring soldiers to wear identifiable uniforms means you're going to kill only other soldiers, at least on purpose. If you kill all the prisoners, there's no reason for the other guy not to kill all of your guys who surrender. If you fly a flag of truce, then open fire, expect the same in return.
Again, it's not a question of what's fair, it's a question of how do we control the killers we're unleashing so they don't kill everyone and only kill those they're supposed to? It's a practical, not a moral, concern.