In October 2007, Chief U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno sealed court documents submitted by Thompson in the Bar case that depicted "gay sex acts." Thompson's submission prompted U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan on to order Thompson to show cause why his actions should not be filed as a grievance with the court's Ad Hoc Committee on Attorney Admissions, Peer Review and Attorney Grievance, but the order was dismissed after Thompson promised not to file any more pornography. Thompson then sent letters to acting U.S. Attorney General Peter Keisler and U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter demanding that Jordan be removed from his position for failing to prosecute Florida attorney Norm Kent, who Thompson claimed had "collaborated" with the Bar for 20 years to discipline him.
In February 2008, the Florida Supreme Court ordered Thompson to show cause as to why it should not reject future court filings from him unless they are signed by another Florida Bar member. The Florida Supreme Court described his filings as "repetitive, frivolous and insult[ing to] the integrity of the court," particularly one in which Thompson, claiming concern about "the court's inability to comprehend his arguments," filed a motion which he called "A picture book for adults", including images of "swastikas, kangaroos in court, a reproduced dollar bill, cartoon squirrels, Paul Simon, Paul Newman, Ray Charles, a handprint with the word 'slap' written under it, Bar Governor Benedict P. Kuehne, a , Ed Bradley, Jack Nicholson, Justice Clarence Thomas, Julius Caesar, monkeys, [and] a house of cards." Thompson claimed that the order "wildly infringes" on his constitutional rights and was "a brazen attempt" to repeal the First Amendment right to petition the government to redress grievances. In response, he sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, referring to the show-cause order as a criminal act done in retaliation for his seeking relief with the court.
On March 20, 2008, the Florida Supreme Court imposed sanctions on Thompson, requiring that any of his future filings in the court be signed by a member of The Florida Bar other than himself. The court noted that Thompson had responded to the show cause order with multiple "rambling, argumentative, and contemptuous" responses that characterized the show cause order as "bizarre" and "idiotic."
That's just a taste of that Thompson's madness, and boy is it delicious...
I can't imagine a web with no Javascript. It's like using half of the web.
Yeah, which is usually the half of the web you actually want. You know, as opposed to all the other bullshit tracking, 'traffic monetizing' scripts that are all over the corporate web now...
To give an example, my former local news site of choice, Madison.com, had a complete redesign a few weeks ago that they talked up. "Oh, it's going to be so much better and more modern, the comments will be much better, etc"...what they neglected to tell everyone was that they were adding a shit-load more tracking services (which, thanks to NoScript, I was able to block) and on top of that, they threw up a fucking paywall, because you know all the tracking cookies and Facebook Connect bullshit they are earning money on, not to mention the ad impressions, and not to mention the shady shit they pulled on their iOS/Android app where they place their in-app ads right next to often used links, like the link to post a comment, thus capturing probably thousands of accidental ad-clicks they shouldn't have, all that wasn't enough, now they have to limit you to 5 articles a month (unless you subscribe to the local paper...yeah, right, who the hell pays money for a fucking newspaper these days?). Well, unless you have NoScript running, then it doesn't work and you can look at all the articles you want, just like everyone could before the all those "improvements".
I will grant that Javascript adds a lot of functionality to the web, but it's abuse has made me treat all JS as suspect until I can ascertain if it's implementation is for functionality or turning me into a product to be sold. I see no moral dilemmas whatsoever with using NoScript to block all of that bullshit and selectively allow what I actually feel are worth the compute cycles to be run on my machine, because it's still my fucking machine. If they don't like it, that's fine, they can do like a lot of sites are doing these days and basically have their site return blank pages if JS is disabled...but in truth, when they get that ridiculous with the shit, I just stop using their site and find another one. It's not like there aren't alternatives out there, after all.
If anyone should be blamed for the fact that Adblock is becoming ubiquitous these days (and NoScript is starting to, as well, something I encourage as much as possible), it's the people that abused internet ads (and later JS) in the first place. If I hadn't have finally gotten sick and goddamned tired of click-jacking "punch the monkey" horseshit I likely never would have added Adblock and NoScript to my browser in the first place.
Agreed. I also try to provide citations for the "citation needed" tags when I run across them, and often times it's a simple matter of searching the fucking sentence that was tagged in Google. It takes barely more time than it does to edit the article and insert the tag, but that wouldn't be as fun as dismissing it out of hand, I guess.
I can totally understand your sentiment, but at the same time, I can understand being frustrated by the pedantic "citation needed" bullshit, it's just more of of that deliberately obtuse affectation that makes it so hard to have a productive conversation these days. That guy didn't want any citations so he could learn something, he wanted a citation so he could find some reason, ANY reason, to refute it. This is how all controversial posts are here on slashdot anymore. Hell, that's how controversial subjects are ANYWHERE these days, not just here. So many people don't ask for citations for proof anymore, they ask for citations so they can attack them and reinforce their own presuppositions. From the start, that guy was antagonistic towards the idea that OnStar could be being used illegitimately, something that has been in the news many times over the last few years. I doubt a citation from the goddamned FBI themselves saying they do exactly what is being claimed here would have been accepted as fact.
That sucks, man. I have a friend that is stuck on a schedule similar to yours; she's most efficient from early afternoon to about dawn, and then she crashes from 5-6 AM until sometime in the early afternoon. It's not as severe as your case, but she's also got a reputation for sleeping through every alarm, phone call, she'll wake-up momentarily when someone physically shakes her awake but then drifts off again not long after unless said person stays there until she's ambulatory. When she was going to school, she would go days without sleeping at all because she just couldn't sleep at night, no matter how tired she was; once she passed the early afternoon point, she was up until dawn. She was pretty heavily medicated for a while to try and help get her on a normal schedule, but while it did basically knock her on her ass and allow her to sleep, she never really "woke up", either, shuffling around like a zombie most of the day, which obviously is just as much an impediment to getting an education as going 40+ hours without sleep on a regular basis...
It's caused her a lot of problems in her personal life, not to mention her career. She's ended up having to settle for a 3rd shift job in textiles manufacturing, despite the fact that it pays pretty shitty and she's way over-qualified for it, because every job she got that was actually appropriate to her education and background was a typical 9-5 and she was pretty much useless for most of the day. She's happier now that she's not having to routinely go to work on 2 hours or less sleep (if at all), but she'd obviously be much happier if she could get a job that pays her what she's worth.
That yields a dramatically better return on investment, and is (I think) the reason developers are less willing to support the latest (or multiple) Android versions.
That and the fact that the return with Android apps is tied directly to the quality of the app and it's popularity, whether it's the free, ad-driven version of an app or a paid one. You can't get away with writing clones of fart noise generators and wallpaper-changing apps and still make some money on Android as you can on iOS. I know that's a bit simplistic, but as a non-developer it seems like its definitely got to be a motivating factor. If your app can make it into the iOS app store, somewhere, globally, people are going to plunk down their dollar to buy it; even if it's complete dogshit you're going to make a little money at first until word gets out. With Android you have to give people a reason to plunk down that dollar from the outset. You really need to produce a good, quality app that stands above the crowd or else your app is going to get buried with the rest of the crap.
I read the comic adaptations of the first 20 or so episodes back when I was still collecting comics, but honestly they didn't really grab me, either. Unless there's something deep and meaningful in the actual show that the comics weren't able to convey...
A thousand times this. I cannot blame Google for these fragmentation problems when it's pretty clear that the carriers are deliberately holding back the newest OS updates to force people to purchase new hardware, not to mention the tons of crapware most of the carriers insist on shoving into every corner of every Android device.
Well, I can blame Google for not doing more to stop the carriers from playing those games, but I doubt it would do any good, as that level of deference seems to be reserved for Apple.
Google should just start making plans to jump into the telecom space as a service provider, as they seem to be exploring with Google Fiber on the ISP front, but I doubt that will happen. I mean, how fast would Google end up testifying before Congress again before they even tried? "We've gotta stop this 'free, ad-driven' bullshit at all costs! It's goddamned communism!!! Buy the new iPhone, the official smartphone of U.S. Congress!! (TM)"
Still, the post-Burton, pre-Nolan Batman's were fucking shit-tacular. I'm actually more insulted by those movies now that I know that someone that purported to actually give a shit about the characters was involved in the production. Before I could chalk it up to Hollywood humping another property to death because it has no soul or sense of when to quit while ahead, but now I wonder if we weren't just being trolled or something.
Ditto. I don't know whether I'd call it a blessing or a curse, but my circadian rhythms must be extremely strong or something because I wake up at the same time every day, give or take a few minutes, get hungry at the same time every day, get tired at the same time every day...and my work hours are random and somewhat sporadic, so it's not due to any external factor I can discern. Using these 'landmarks', I can usually tell what time it is within 15 minutes or so. Wasn't always like this, I was a grand champion sleeper when I was younger, but since I hit my mid-20's it's like my internal alarm clock is set to go off at 6 AM no matter what. Even if I'm up late working on a project or something, come 6 AM I'm waking up.
Numerical date, forget it. I caught myself writing the year 2009 on a form the other day. Why the hell my brain served up 2009 as the current year, I have no idea...
They could just be using iPad as the only name they know of for a new fangled flat computer.
This. I saw it myself with iPod; working at CompUSA back in the day, I'd say 75% of people would come in looking for an 'iPod' and then ask me why I was only showing them the ones Apple made and not the Sansui's, Samsungs, Zunes, and all the other branded ones. When I'd point out that they asked for an iPod, they'd respond "Yeah, but I don't necessarily just want the Apple iPods...these other iPods are much cheaper" while they're sitting there with an iRiver in their hands.
I would have to educate them that iPod is a specific product only made by Apple, and what they were actually looking for was an MP3 player, or later, when they started being able to play video and such, a digital media player. Still, a decent percentage would respond "Yeah, but everyone just calls them iPods anyway", and then I would have to fight the overwhelming urge to tell them, "No, actually, only fucking ignoramuses call them all iPods."
Among the technologically illiterate, iPod is pretty much a genericized trademark at this point. It doesn't even stop there; I've had people use the term iPhone to describe any smartphone and, yes, iPad to describe any tablet, albeit not nearly as much as the iPod thing, but that's just a matter of time, honestly.
But nobody uses the shit sandwich that is Safari. I literally know not a single OSX user that doesn't use Chrome or Firefox as their main browser and would remove Safari if it was possible, much like pretty much everyone I know with a Windows machine would dump I.E. in a second if that were possible.
Yeah, really. I don't know about you guys, but I kinda like the fact that my employer can't force me to live in a fucking on-site dormitory so he can come and press me to work an additional 12 hour shift on top of my already 70 hour work week so that we can fill a rush order of another few thousand units.
It's hysterical how many people bitch and complain with a straight-face about our regulations, especially our labor regulations, knowing full fucking well that if their own employer did the same thing to them they would go thermonuclear in a second. I've seen people go into a passive-aggressive rage over the fact that the person who drank the last of the coffee didn't make another pot and now they have to spend that precious 3 minutes doing so themselves before they can get their cup, usually on their 3rd 10-minute coffee break of the morning.
If the person bitching about those regulations isn't willing to work as a Chinese slave-laborer themselves, they need to shut the fuck up. It's like they don't even realize what a fucking hypocrite they are...either that, or they don't care.
They (and especially the most indignant among them) should be happy to pay a little more to keep the work local; after all, they're demanding that others do it.
Abso-fucking-lutely. Look at how many people out there gladly pay the Apple Tax for devices that are really not that different, on a fundamental level, from their competitors (and before I get screamed at over that, Apple obviously agrees, otherwise we wouldn't be watching this patent war bullshit unfold at every turn). If they're willing to spend extra because it's got a shiny case and "It Just Works! (TM)(R)(C)" then I see no reason why Made In America wouldn't be a selling point, especially these days.
The concept of it being "cheaper" to hire people in other countries is bullshit, anyway, because it depends on ignoring very real costs that are put off on those developing countries. If we paid the real cost of manufacturing in China, to include the future cost of environmental clean-up, not to mention the social ills that come along with those sweatshops, then I doubt it would really be that much cheaper to manufacture overseas. The costs go so far beyond the typical rants about hourly wages and regulations that don't allow factories to dump the byproducts of electronics manufacturing (noxious shit) into the environment like they do over there...
Can't have it both ways because DMCA safe harbor limits the ability of a rights holder to recover damages.
No it doesn't. It limits the ability of a rights holder to recover damages unless they can prove the infringement was deliberate on the part of the site's owners. I know it's just such a pain in the ass when they have to back up their claims, but that's kinda the basis of our entire fucking legal system, the concept of innocence until guilt is proven.
The burden of defending IP should always lie with the IP holders. It's up to Joe Blow to defend his copyrights in court, why should a MAFIAA organization get the government to pick up the tab for their investigations when Joe Blow doesn't get similar consideration?
Oh, right. We're back to that "Corporations are not only people, but they're super people with more rights then real people" thing...
Government has many levels. There are pockets of sanity still left in this country, but they've been marginalized by the fucking crazies for a few decades now.
I'm proud of where I grew up, but where I grew up no longer exists. It's still physically there, but it's nothing like the neighborhood I grew up in, with the people I grew up with, and the sense of community that once existed there is long gone. Now people are more concerned about a mosque potentially going in than the fact that the number of people living under the poverty line in the area has exploded over the last 20 years. Our priorities are so fucking screwed up...
America has long been seen as the global champion of freedom and equality
Which is, of course, mainly due to American politicians repeating it over and over and over again, not necessarily because of anything we've actually done. Certainly not within any of our lifetimes...
I chalk it up to the last bit of Cold War propaganda that's still kicking around in the global collective consciousness. Give it another generation or two and, much like all the lessons learned during the Great Depression that have gone right the fuck out the window, it will all be forgotten...
Pretty much this. They needed to get the pirates using P2P again so that the new 6-strikes rules the ISPs are all implementing is actually enforceable, and they've got the deep pockets and the influence to do so.
The cat and mouse game will continue as it always has, but at least this way they get John Q. Taxpayer to shoulder the cost of protecting their IP...
There is no true 'left' in American politics anymore; there's the Democrats at the center, the Republicans on the right, with a few far-right groups like Libertarians thrown in for good measure.
Slashdot Mirror
Case in point, Jack Thompson:
In October 2007, Chief U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno sealed court documents submitted by Thompson in the Bar case that depicted "gay sex acts." Thompson's submission prompted U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan on to order Thompson to show cause why his actions should not be filed as a grievance with the court's Ad Hoc Committee on Attorney Admissions, Peer Review and Attorney Grievance, but the order was dismissed after Thompson promised not to file any more pornography. Thompson then sent letters to acting U.S. Attorney General Peter Keisler and U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter demanding that Jordan be removed from his position for failing to prosecute Florida attorney Norm Kent, who Thompson claimed had "collaborated" with the Bar for 20 years to discipline him.
In February 2008, the Florida Supreme Court ordered Thompson to show cause as to why it should not reject future court filings from him unless they are signed by another Florida Bar member. The Florida Supreme Court described his filings as "repetitive, frivolous and insult[ing to] the integrity of the court," particularly one in which Thompson, claiming concern about "the court's inability to comprehend his arguments," filed a motion which he called "A picture book for adults", including images of "swastikas, kangaroos in court, a reproduced dollar bill, cartoon squirrels, Paul Simon, Paul Newman, Ray Charles, a handprint with the word 'slap' written under it, Bar Governor Benedict P. Kuehne, a , Ed Bradley, Jack Nicholson, Justice Clarence Thomas, Julius Caesar, monkeys, [and] a house of cards." Thompson claimed that the order "wildly infringes" on his constitutional rights and was "a brazen attempt" to repeal the First Amendment right to petition the government to redress grievances. In response, he sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, referring to the show-cause order as a criminal act done in retaliation for his seeking relief with the court.
On March 20, 2008, the Florida Supreme Court imposed sanctions on Thompson, requiring that any of his future filings in the court be signed by a member of The Florida Bar other than himself. The court noted that Thompson had responded to the show cause order with multiple "rambling, argumentative, and contemptuous" responses that characterized the show cause order as "bizarre" and "idiotic."
That's just a taste of that Thompson's madness, and boy is it delicious...
I can't imagine a web with no Javascript. It's like using half of the web.
Yeah, which is usually the half of the web you actually want. You know, as opposed to all the other bullshit tracking, 'traffic monetizing' scripts that are all over the corporate web now...
To give an example, my former local news site of choice, Madison.com, had a complete redesign a few weeks ago that they talked up. "Oh, it's going to be so much better and more modern, the comments will be much better, etc"...what they neglected to tell everyone was that they were adding a shit-load more tracking services (which, thanks to NoScript, I was able to block) and on top of that, they threw up a fucking paywall, because you know all the tracking cookies and Facebook Connect bullshit they are earning money on, not to mention the ad impressions, and not to mention the shady shit they pulled on their iOS/Android app where they place their in-app ads right next to often used links, like the link to post a comment, thus capturing probably thousands of accidental ad-clicks they shouldn't have, all that wasn't enough, now they have to limit you to 5 articles a month (unless you subscribe to the local paper...yeah, right, who the hell pays money for a fucking newspaper these days?). Well, unless you have NoScript running, then it doesn't work and you can look at all the articles you want, just like everyone could before the all those "improvements".
I will grant that Javascript adds a lot of functionality to the web, but it's abuse has made me treat all JS as suspect until I can ascertain if it's implementation is for functionality or turning me into a product to be sold. I see no moral dilemmas whatsoever with using NoScript to block all of that bullshit and selectively allow what I actually feel are worth the compute cycles to be run on my machine, because it's still my fucking machine. If they don't like it, that's fine, they can do like a lot of sites are doing these days and basically have their site return blank pages if JS is disabled...but in truth, when they get that ridiculous with the shit, I just stop using their site and find another one. It's not like there aren't alternatives out there, after all.
If anyone should be blamed for the fact that Adblock is becoming ubiquitous these days (and NoScript is starting to, as well, something I encourage as much as possible), it's the people that abused internet ads (and later JS) in the first place. If I hadn't have finally gotten sick and goddamned tired of click-jacking "punch the monkey" horseshit I likely never would have added Adblock and NoScript to my browser in the first place.
Agreed. I also try to provide citations for the "citation needed" tags when I run across them, and often times it's a simple matter of searching the fucking sentence that was tagged in Google. It takes barely more time than it does to edit the article and insert the tag, but that wouldn't be as fun as dismissing it out of hand, I guess.
I can totally understand your sentiment, but at the same time, I can understand being frustrated by the pedantic "citation needed" bullshit, it's just more of of that deliberately obtuse affectation that makes it so hard to have a productive conversation these days. That guy didn't want any citations so he could learn something, he wanted a citation so he could find some reason, ANY reason, to refute it. This is how all controversial posts are here on slashdot anymore. Hell, that's how controversial subjects are ANYWHERE these days, not just here. So many people don't ask for citations for proof anymore, they ask for citations so they can attack them and reinforce their own presuppositions. From the start, that guy was antagonistic towards the idea that OnStar could be being used illegitimately, something that has been in the news many times over the last few years. I doubt a citation from the goddamned FBI themselves saying they do exactly what is being claimed here would have been accepted as fact.
Truth. Playing that fucking game required patience far beyond anything I was capable of mustering...
Should have taken the blue pill, dude...
That sucks, man. I have a friend that is stuck on a schedule similar to yours; she's most efficient from early afternoon to about dawn, and then she crashes from 5-6 AM until sometime in the early afternoon. It's not as severe as your case, but she's also got a reputation for sleeping through every alarm, phone call, she'll wake-up momentarily when someone physically shakes her awake but then drifts off again not long after unless said person stays there until she's ambulatory. When she was going to school, she would go days without sleeping at all because she just couldn't sleep at night, no matter how tired she was; once she passed the early afternoon point, she was up until dawn. She was pretty heavily medicated for a while to try and help get her on a normal schedule, but while it did basically knock her on her ass and allow her to sleep, she never really "woke up", either, shuffling around like a zombie most of the day, which obviously is just as much an impediment to getting an education as going 40+ hours without sleep on a regular basis...
It's caused her a lot of problems in her personal life, not to mention her career. She's ended up having to settle for a 3rd shift job in textiles manufacturing, despite the fact that it pays pretty shitty and she's way over-qualified for it, because every job she got that was actually appropriate to her education and background was a typical 9-5 and she was pretty much useless for most of the day. She's happier now that she's not having to routinely go to work on 2 hours or less sleep (if at all), but she'd obviously be much happier if she could get a job that pays her what she's worth.
That yields a dramatically better return on investment, and is (I think) the reason developers are less willing to support the latest (or multiple) Android versions.
That and the fact that the return with Android apps is tied directly to the quality of the app and it's popularity, whether it's the free, ad-driven version of an app or a paid one. You can't get away with writing clones of fart noise generators and wallpaper-changing apps and still make some money on Android as you can on iOS. I know that's a bit simplistic, but as a non-developer it seems like its definitely got to be a motivating factor. If your app can make it into the iOS app store, somewhere, globally, people are going to plunk down their dollar to buy it; even if it's complete dogshit you're going to make a little money at first until word gets out. With Android you have to give people a reason to plunk down that dollar from the outset. You really need to produce a good, quality app that stands above the crowd or else your app is going to get buried with the rest of the crap.
I read the comic adaptations of the first 20 or so episodes back when I was still collecting comics, but honestly they didn't really grab me, either. Unless there's something deep and meaningful in the actual show that the comics weren't able to convey...
A thousand times this. I cannot blame Google for these fragmentation problems when it's pretty clear that the carriers are deliberately holding back the newest OS updates to force people to purchase new hardware, not to mention the tons of crapware most of the carriers insist on shoving into every corner of every Android device.
Well, I can blame Google for not doing more to stop the carriers from playing those games, but I doubt it would do any good, as that level of deference seems to be reserved for Apple.
Google should just start making plans to jump into the telecom space as a service provider, as they seem to be exploring with Google Fiber on the ISP front, but I doubt that will happen. I mean, how fast would Google end up testifying before Congress again before they even tried? "We've gotta stop this 'free, ad-driven' bullshit at all costs! It's goddamned communism!!! Buy the new iPhone, the official smartphone of U.S. Congress!! (TM)"
Yeah, if people actually go back and read the Batman comics that were being written then, they're just as campy and ridiculous as the show.
Still, the post-Burton, pre-Nolan Batman's were fucking shit-tacular. I'm actually more insulted by those movies now that I know that someone that purported to actually give a shit about the characters was involved in the production. Before I could chalk it up to Hollywood humping another property to death because it has no soul or sense of when to quit while ahead, but now I wonder if we weren't just being trolled or something.
Ditto. I don't know whether I'd call it a blessing or a curse, but my circadian rhythms must be extremely strong or something because I wake up at the same time every day, give or take a few minutes, get hungry at the same time every day, get tired at the same time every day...and my work hours are random and somewhat sporadic, so it's not due to any external factor I can discern. Using these 'landmarks', I can usually tell what time it is within 15 minutes or so. Wasn't always like this, I was a grand champion sleeper when I was younger, but since I hit my mid-20's it's like my internal alarm clock is set to go off at 6 AM no matter what. Even if I'm up late working on a project or something, come 6 AM I'm waking up.
Numerical date, forget it. I caught myself writing the year 2009 on a form the other day. Why the hell my brain served up 2009 as the current year, I have no idea...
They see me trolling...
They could just be using iPad as the only name they know of for a new fangled flat computer.
This. I saw it myself with iPod; working at CompUSA back in the day, I'd say 75% of people would come in looking for an 'iPod' and then ask me why I was only showing them the ones Apple made and not the Sansui's, Samsungs, Zunes, and all the other branded ones. When I'd point out that they asked for an iPod, they'd respond "Yeah, but I don't necessarily just want the Apple iPods...these other iPods are much cheaper" while they're sitting there with an iRiver in their hands.
I would have to educate them that iPod is a specific product only made by Apple, and what they were actually looking for was an MP3 player, or later, when they started being able to play video and such, a digital media player. Still, a decent percentage would respond "Yeah, but everyone just calls them iPods anyway", and then I would have to fight the overwhelming urge to tell them, "No, actually, only fucking ignoramuses call them all iPods."
Among the technologically illiterate, iPod is pretty much a genericized trademark at this point. It doesn't even stop there; I've had people use the term iPhone to describe any smartphone and, yes, iPad to describe any tablet, albeit not nearly as much as the iPod thing, but that's just a matter of time, honestly.
But nobody uses the shit sandwich that is Safari. I literally know not a single OSX user that doesn't use Chrome or Firefox as their main browser and would remove Safari if it was possible, much like pretty much everyone I know with a Windows machine would dump I.E. in a second if that were possible.
Hell, they'll pay more even if it's not any better than the competition...Monster Cable stands as testament to that fact.
Yeah, really. I don't know about you guys, but I kinda like the fact that my employer can't force me to live in a fucking on-site dormitory so he can come and press me to work an additional 12 hour shift on top of my already 70 hour work week so that we can fill a rush order of another few thousand units.
It's hysterical how many people bitch and complain with a straight-face about our regulations, especially our labor regulations, knowing full fucking well that if their own employer did the same thing to them they would go thermonuclear in a second. I've seen people go into a passive-aggressive rage over the fact that the person who drank the last of the coffee didn't make another pot and now they have to spend that precious 3 minutes doing so themselves before they can get their cup, usually on their 3rd 10-minute coffee break of the morning.
If the person bitching about those regulations isn't willing to work as a Chinese slave-laborer themselves, they need to shut the fuck up. It's like they don't even realize what a fucking hypocrite they are...either that, or they don't care.
They (and especially the most indignant among them) should be happy to pay a little more to keep the work local; after all, they're demanding that others do it.
Abso-fucking-lutely. Look at how many people out there gladly pay the Apple Tax for devices that are really not that different, on a fundamental level, from their competitors (and before I get screamed at over that, Apple obviously agrees, otherwise we wouldn't be watching this patent war bullshit unfold at every turn). If they're willing to spend extra because it's got a shiny case and "It Just Works! (TM)(R)(C)" then I see no reason why Made In America wouldn't be a selling point, especially these days.
The concept of it being "cheaper" to hire people in other countries is bullshit, anyway, because it depends on ignoring very real costs that are put off on those developing countries. If we paid the real cost of manufacturing in China, to include the future cost of environmental clean-up, not to mention the social ills that come along with those sweatshops, then I doubt it would really be that much cheaper to manufacture overseas. The costs go so far beyond the typical rants about hourly wages and regulations that don't allow factories to dump the byproducts of electronics manufacturing (noxious shit) into the environment like they do over there...
Can't have it both ways because DMCA safe harbor limits the ability of a rights holder to recover damages.
No it doesn't. It limits the ability of a rights holder to recover damages unless they can prove the infringement was deliberate on the part of the site's owners. I know it's just such a pain in the ass when they have to back up their claims, but that's kinda the basis of our entire fucking legal system, the concept of innocence until guilt is proven.
The burden of defending IP should always lie with the IP holders. It's up to Joe Blow to defend his copyrights in court, why should a MAFIAA organization get the government to pick up the tab for their investigations when Joe Blow doesn't get similar consideration?
Oh, right. We're back to that "Corporations are not only people, but they're super people with more rights then real people" thing...
Government has many levels. There are pockets of sanity still left in this country, but they've been marginalized by the fucking crazies for a few decades now.
I'm proud of where I grew up, but where I grew up no longer exists. It's still physically there, but it's nothing like the neighborhood I grew up in, with the people I grew up with, and the sense of community that once existed there is long gone. Now people are more concerned about a mosque potentially going in than the fact that the number of people living under the poverty line in the area has exploded over the last 20 years. Our priorities are so fucking screwed up...
America has long been seen as the global champion of freedom and equality
Which is, of course, mainly due to American politicians repeating it over and over and over again, not necessarily because of anything we've actually done. Certainly not within any of our lifetimes...
I chalk it up to the last bit of Cold War propaganda that's still kicking around in the global collective consciousness. Give it another generation or two and, much like all the lessons learned during the Great Depression that have gone right the fuck out the window, it will all be forgotten...
Pretty much this. They needed to get the pirates using P2P again so that the new 6-strikes rules the ISPs are all implementing is actually enforceable, and they've got the deep pockets and the influence to do so.
The cat and mouse game will continue as it always has, but at least this way they get John Q. Taxpayer to shoulder the cost of protecting their IP...
Raise a fuss and it WILL get corrected.
Yeah, probably by levying a meaningless $800,000 fine.
There is no true 'left' in American politics anymore; there's the Democrats at the center, the Republicans on the right, with a few far-right groups like Libertarians thrown in for good measure.
Only problem would be that irresponsible users would fill the ocean with junk.
Too late...