DOWN WITH CORPORATIONS! DOWN WITH GLOBALISATIONS!, but have you actually stopped and considered how idiotic you actually sound. *sigh*.
Wow, that's a particularly stupid strawman you're beating there.
Silly me, I thought paying taxes to fund the government to pass regulations for drilling/industry was supposed to reduce risk, letting me buy shopping bags without dooming the planet. Evidently we should have tolerated the drilling for all non-consumer reasons (fuel for war) and yet have known not to ask for luxuries. Bad consumers. Bad. Those bags are what's killed us, not decades of industry lobbying and government corruption and lies.
Had it been clear how badly the government has handled the issue before the spill (despite attempted citizen oversight) or how lax BP's safety procedures were, asking for that shopping bag would have been unreasonable. But we were continually assured, by the government and industry, that reasonable steps were being taken - which we now know to be a lie.
The dirty little secret however is this. We as a modern society cannot maintain our current way of life, progress, and technological advancement without the Corporation.
Nice religion you have there.
Such social collective apparatuses are necessary to manage the many abstract layers of social interaction.
Sure, collective social apparatus are needed, but that doesn't imply the 'such' part.
It's pure, calculated, and with complete disregard for the individual. But, from the stand-point of another corporation on the receiving end, such behavior is completely and totally acceptable.
No, from the point of anyone allowed to externalize their costs. If they were billed for the human and environmental damage they inflicted they wouldn't disregard it.
We could avoid most of the problems with corporations if we'd treat them like any other social organization. Instead of diffusing blame, they amplify and share blame.
Currently if you're mad at BP we act like there's nothing to do but complain to the corporate HQ. But if you're mad at the KKK, or the democrats, you direct your ire at the entire organization.
If we fined every element, management, workers, stockholders, equally we'd establish a requirement for good governance. Instead people shove responsibility one thinly veiled step away but expect to share the profits.
I trusted that Bush and the military knew what they were doing...
Of course. When they claim there's some really dangerous reason to go to war you assume they're telling the truth... The first few times it happens in your life.
And I want to make this exceptionally clear. Innocent people die in war. That's part of what makes wars suck. But the people we went to go kill in Afghanistan WERE, if only by association and support, responsible for 9/11. Ignore that and I think you need to read the article some more.
Ignore that? I'll call you a fucking imbecile if you believe it.
The people of Afghanistan, in general, are no more guilty for OBL and 9/11 than you are for Timothy McVeigh.
You obviously have no idea what Afghanistan was like. His neighbors didn't exactly know what he was planning (it was a secret!) or have power to do anything about it. To call that guilty by association would be like blaming you for ongoing violence in Detroit.
I fought that as hard as I could and it didn't seem to make a damned bit of difference.
Your tax money is paying for war, and it's being inflicted on at least one innocent country if not two.
Did you refuse to pay taxes? Did you drive over a military recruiter? Bomb an army or government building? Sabotage military or industrial equipment?
Because unless you did you didn't try as hard as you could have. Certainly not half as hard as an Iraqi who had just watched Collateral Murder happen in front of him would hope...
Or, did you expect the Afghanis around OBL to use only legal methods to stop him before his attacks? Leaflets, posting stern opinions, getting political?
So I'm sorry if I sound a bit calloused, it's been a rough decade.
Yeah, we've had it rough. Here in Easyville.
Osama killed three thousand, Bush killed many hundreds of thousands in retaliation.
When I think of ranting I tend to think of something more like you're doing, where you've got a preconceived notion (in your case, what he means) and you're doing your best to tell him what he thinks.
As I pointed out above and in my other posts, I respond to what he wrote and not to what you claim was supposedly in his head when he did so. And what he wrote is self-contradictory and nonsensical.
Sure sure, but you were the one ranting, raving and disgorging copious amounts of spittle.
It is you in fact who attempts to parse and interpret his drivel in a favorable light because of your preconceived notions which apparently enable you to "understand" sentences that negate each other.
Yes, that's because I try to understand the person I'm talking with. Taking something they're saying and twisting it into something they didn't mean is a good way to score points but it's not a good way to show them they're wrong because they didn't mean whatever I'm attacking.
Apparently I failed to tune into his "sympathetic brain waves", no? Is that what you mean by "seem to"?
No, by "doesn't seem to be against" I meant "doesn't seem to be crazily against any and all at the expense of everything else". Presumably he sees a difference between administrivia and large problems like rampant printing of money. You know... can pick his battles.
He claimed (direct quote, emphasis mine) that: "Any deviation from a self-balancing equation of economics will lead to an eventual collapse of some sort. Economies balance themselves out, our attempts at interfering by government or any other forces will always fail in the long term (a period of time comparable to a long life span)."
I responded to what he wrote and what he wrote is utter nonsense.
You mean you literally cannot parse what he said there? Or just that when contrasted against him not caring about some minor banking regulation (in a discussion of massive economic manipulation) you think you can show it to be contradictory?
And as he said there's a difference between an authority setting the equivalence of some artificial units and creating the money from scratch.
I'd prefer shorter copyright terms and no DMCA but I'd also say just scrapping the DMCA is "fine" even though it implies I'm okay with the current long terms. Given more time, and an invitation instead of an attack, I could clarify.
Yes, it is incredibly sloppy to contradict yourself twice in a paragraph, but that's all the more reason to think he doesn't mean that you think he means.
As I pointed out above and in my other posts, I respond to what he wrote [...] And what he wrote is self-contradictory and nonsensical.
You very carefully respond to only a tiny fraction of what he says. I showed you're completely contradictory in my first post (ranting about ranters). Should I have just stopped there? Is that all you are, a logical contradiction in time?
you've got a preconceived notion (in your case, what he means) and you're doing your best to tell him what he thinks.
It is you in fact who attempts to parse and interpret his drivel in a favorable light because of your preconceived notions which apparently enable you to "understand" sentences that negate each other.
My only preconceived notion is that he has a point, even if wrong. You keep saying his view is inconsistent which is very unlikely compared to there being a language barrier, him being a bad writer, or simply wrong, you being illiterate or unwilling to try, etc.
Okay, his quote is: the economy is not a closed system, new inventions for example, new discoveries or improvements create new economic niches. The system is closed by the boundaries of accessible world
When you give any additional costs or drawbacks, I'll address them. I'm still waiting.
Yeah, other than the costs I covered in my last post. [...] writing, trying, and enforcing new law [...]
The costs of prohibition of any sort are pretty plain. Given your intentional stubbornness and the games you like to play I'll assume you're being a aqua-phobic horse here and there's no way to actually satisfy your request.
If you don't think that taking actual steps to fix the problem is useful there isn't much to say.
There are many non-intrusive ways to limit people purchasing the entire stock - such as a simple rule of one purchase per time through the line, or one every fifteen minutes.
And no, I at least wouldn't be complaining. I'd be laughing that their over-hyped, artificially short-supplied launch strategy bit them in the ass. Apple intentionally cultivates this hype among the true believers that would lead to someone standing in line for days or paying a huge premium for early access so they have only themselves to blame for having to enact anti-scalping rules to deal with it. The users have themselves to blame for being stuck with AT&T just to better enable Apple's surprise release, etc.
So go ahead and explain, how does making CID spoofing illegal harm anyone? [...] I understand your argument about a false sense of security, but that's the only kind we have.
Ummm, no. Real security is possible, even it involves acknowledging some limitations. Making CID spoofing illegal, like any other band-aid, prompts people to believe they're safe instead of making sure they're safe.
If the government wanted to make people safe they'd start a "Get a name, look up the number, and call the person back" campaign. I personally installed modems that had this capability built into them back in the early 90s - they'd ID a person by CID or a password, hang up, and call them back at a pre-programmed number.
Outlawing CID spoofing just means two charges against the hacker you aren't going to catch, where one would have been enough, but no actual steps toward catching them or protecting systems.
What's the "bill" associated with it?
The same as the bill associated with banning scanners that can monitor cellphones. An actual large bill associated with writing, trying, and enforcing new law and a hidden cost paid by all users of radios that are now more crippled and expensive than before. Also the life-destroying consequences of needless or mistaken prosecution. A more complex legal code.
And, of course, the actual cost of the security violations left unstopped. What cost does homeopathy have beyond the sticker price?
Not to mention, I believe you to be 100% wrong. People currently assume CID to be 100% secure. So working to make it more secure doesn't promote a false sense of security. People already have it,
Sure, most people also vaguely expected cell-phones were secure. But the law enabled companies to claim they were, because equipment to listen to them was now illegal.
There's a difference between thinking something is secure and simply not knowing of problems. People may not know of a flaw but still be wary, and thus safe. But if they're told there isn't a problem they won't be careful.
so making it more secure provides a net increase in security, not a decrease as you assert.
But making it illegal isn't making it more secure at all. There is no increase, net or otherwise. It simply hides the problem, and that is always insecure.
Don't you think it's about time you, as the side arguing for increased legislation, offered even one good reason to believe that it would help, let alone enough to justify the expense and drawbacks?
There are several confusions here. I think you mean performative, not tautological. Tautologies are *not* universal. They are highly specific to a given formal system. If it were tautology, it would also be trivial.
The "What X does is the 'X nature'" statement is universal, because it is tautological. It offers no predictive power and thus is a trivial statement, but all I was saying is that it's not a subjective Western viewpoint. The Chinese government is going against human nature. (Not to say they aren't also following their own human nature...)
A Chinese person would have no trouble understanding our incredible TotC panic - just tell them the first person to stop pretending to panic gets blamed. It's just the hate-topic of the week.
I just don't buy it. That explanation seems far more artificial than the fact that naive and well-intentioned people are being exploited for their support because they do believe it will help preserve the innocence of children.
Did I say they weren't being manipulated? The USA actually had cause to worry about some communists in the 50s too... The best panics are always born out of a core of something real. Eurasia has to exist, or at least been rumored to before today, before you can whip up a really good hate about it.
I can certainly know that "think of the children" is the motivation for some Americans. All I need to do is ask them.
Two problems with that. One, like with communists in the 50s, everyone would say they're a worry even if they personally didn't care simply to avoid being different. Two, the people who do panic about their kids aren't necessarily the ones who shape policy.
The fear itself is real, and sometimes justified, but disconnected from the actual things done in its name.
Assuming that there is a Chinese mindset is hardly controversial. Every culture has norms. I'm not sure why you would assume otherwise.
Actually, it is controversial. You can't average emotion or views. And anyways, China is far too diverse to have a mindset. (What's the average of North and South America combined?) The best you can do with groups like that is statistical predictions.
The communism scare or the think-of-the-kids scare appear to be nation-wide and all-consuming, especially to someone whose only information about us is our politicians and media, but they really aren't relevant in the day-to-day life of the people.
If you asked a "man on the street" he wouldn't, unprompted, be thinking about danger to the children at all. But if you brought up a hot-button issue like net censorship he'd think of it in terms he'd heard before, likely polarized ones he got from TV.
This "Chinese people focus on family" thing is blatant government propaganda. Like a Soviet poster showing a village pitching in to buy a tractor by giving up their personal luxuries.
What I'm suggesting is why the fake one works. And you are wrong. You need to understand why the fake one works in order to start to diffuse it.
The false story works so well because there is no defense against it. Children, they are defenseless and cute. And family, it raised you, dude. Knowing the specific arguments helps you avoid pitfalls in debates, but by the time you're talking to them in their terms you've already lost.
What you need to understand are the landmines, such as that in the USA Freenet is politically associated with kiddy porn. But that's how you avoid their false topic, not debate it.
So far, as best as I can tell, your explanation imputes far too much self-awareness to those being manipulated.
I don't think anyone is really aware of how they're being manipulated to hate Eurasia. And even if they would hate it naturally, how much it's being used as a scapegoat for unrelated things.
you need to understand why people will accept it. [...] So what other reason might it be? That's what I'm trying to figure out.
Inertia? The joy of righteous mob rule? The stupid being led by the corrupt? Santa?
I think you missed his point. I think he's saying that, in the way nothing is 'outside' thermodynamics, no country is 'outside' economics and free to just do arbitrary things.
If you print twice as much currency you don't have twice as much value.
He doesn't seem to be against regulation, like the HK money example, just against popular but useless policies.
For a while the USA had a free ride in that they could manipulate their currency and gain real value from the changes - now that the foreign economy has diversified from dollars somewhat their changes are illusory - based on their own perceptions of their stability instead of actual global purchasing power.
Or are you really unaware that we can still see all your ranting, raving and disgorging copious amounts of spittle over this very idea in all these posts right above?
When I think of ranting I tend to think of something more like you're doing, where you've got a preconceived notion (in your case, what he means) and you're doing your best to tell him what he thinks.
Well tangentially at first. Al-queada does have it's roots there and had support from the Taliban. And we needed to smack someone up alongside the head after 9/11.
So it's more important to kill innocent people, while going after unrelated people, to appear "on top of it" than to actually be effective or useful?
Actually hunting down a connected and funded terrorist cell is difficult, and destroying the nation that they hide under is a lot easier.
You wouldn't believe who sounds like a terrorist right now...
I guess I'm more of a realist then you. The Nazis defined what it meant to be Fascists like soviet Russia defined what Communism meant. Karl Marx is spinning in his grave, the ivory towers may disagree, and some french hippies will argue, but Communism is tied to the hip to Stalin.
You choose to be wrong because it's popular?
I acknowledge that much of what people talk about as communism, for instance, is really Stalin and the USSR but I feel no need to sink to that level when replying.
But we're really just bickering about semantics here.
Any idea why that keeps happening to you?
The next wave of market correction that will hit,
Well sure, the next crisis will always be coming.
No, the next crisis doesn't have to be looming. If we didn't go with the "print money" option we might actually solve something for once.
I'd rather have a job and some cash rather then be on the street and broke when it hits.
We could have let the companies involved go bankrupt and/or charge them for their fraud and used the bailout money directly for the people hurt by the changes instead of used to prop up the companies that screwed up in some Reagan-esque trickle-down plan.
How long until we're bailing out BP as well?
Now, my government might be broke instead, but it's at least big enough and powerful enough to not worry about collection agencies breaking it's kneecaps.
You really seem to believe in this "too big to fail" thing.
You said, and I quote: "Why do we correct only the behavior of the bully when the behavior of the victim is just as much at fault?"
Quote fail.
But, I do agree with the jist of it.
Aggressive dogs, even little ones, pick on the same people who get bullied by other people. You could correct an infinite number of bullies and the victim would only find more, even house-pets, who would dominate them.
Either this is true of all criminal activity, or none of it; either an adult victim of a crime is to blame for failing to defend himself, or a kid isn't either. Which one is it?
What's with jerks trying to force you into yes/no questions when they don't take time to fully understand what you're saying?
If we could do only one, helping the victims would, IMHO be more useful.
In a very real sense only you are to blame for what happens to you. Fall off a ledge - you shouldn't have been up there without ropes. Killed by a drunk driver - you should have had better situational awareness and buffer zones. Mugged - shouldn't have been in a dangerous area alone.
Yes, the mugger/bully is also to blame for hurting you, but that's only useful some of the time. You can't blame the ledge, or gravity, and it doesn't matter if you blame the drunk. They can be punished but it's not going to help you. You've already been injured, or not, based on your own personal tools and abilities.
And I'm not suggesting "chastising" a bully. [...] A bully needs to be crushed;
And it's that attitude that gets rid of bullies. If you're willing to act like that, perhaps not physically but at least by standing up for yourself emotionally and seeking help, you won't be bullied.
Self-reliance is all nice and good. Now tell me: what happens when you teach a victim to defend himself? Why, the bully simply seeks another one. And then you teach that next victim, and the next one, and so on...
And now you've got a stream of unbullyable people in the school/etc who help stop bullies and train other victims.
...Until you realize that you've tought everyone how to fight, including the wolves. And so we're right where we started, only this time the kids are better equipped to harm each other.
Bullies already could fight and use weapons, it's what made them the bad guys.
The training doesn't have to be in knife-fighting or something useful to bullies though. There are a lot of training systems and weapons/tactics which are far more defensive than offensive. A bad-guy with a tazer isn't half the threat a bad-guy with a sniper-rifle is.
For schoolkids most anti-bullying wouldn't cover fighting at all. Blocks and defenses, etc, but not attacks. Most kids couldn't pull them off and they aren't as useful as escaping unharmed and coming back with authority.
Most muggings, rapes and murders happen where we can't see them. That's pretty much a precondition for pulling a succesful crime. Why are you treating bullying specially?
I want to help potential rape and mugging victims too. Like victims of childhood bullying they often give off signals that let them be selected from the crowd as easy victims, and often don't understand how their actions often cause their attacks or worsen them (letting the attacker take them to a second location, for example).
We should ask what the potential rape victim wants to wear before they go out so that if it's a "short skirt" they can also be armed and educated.
Yes, a safe society is ideal but it's not here yet and you are.
And I'm not suggesting "chastising" a bully. Chastising is something you do to a cookie thief or other relatively harmless offence.
Unfortunately much bullying is harmless, in other contexts. You can't tell the difference between "nice shirt" in harmless jest and as pa
And conservative legislators are always trying to strip freedoms under the auspices of protection - from liberals, commies, teenagers, etc.
Really, all politicians are trying to grab all available power and will use whatever hot-buttons they think are the strongest even if they're totally unrelated.
Your definition of human is based on a very modern set of Western, specifically European, ideas about human nature.
No. It is tautological and thus universal. Human nature is as humans do.
Humans obviously wish to speak or the government would not need to censor them.
nor am I pleading cultural relativism (as I explicitly stated and you completely ignored)
Yeah, I saw that. I was pointing out the errors in the "that's a western viewpoint", not suggesting that you thought the opposite viewpoint was right.
I'm not trying to justify anything. So, get off your freakin' high horse and pay attention.
I know, chill. But you are legitimizing it by discussing it as being anything other than political spin.
But "think of the children" works here. And I was describing why "the need for a harmonious society" works in China.
And I was saying that Think-of-the-Children does not work here - or at least while to does it's not because of any special liking for the children. It's not a magical phrase, it's the one were given endlessly in hope it'll become magic. It only works when people properly panic and stop thinking about the reason.
A Chinese person would have no trouble understanding our incredible TotC panic - just tell them the first person to stop pretending to panic gets blamed. It's just the hate-topic of the week.
I'm trying to explain why people think what they think
You don't know "they" think what you say anymore than you know a North American is actually thinking of the children. To assume that there is a Chinese mindset is silly. To assume it's the one the government is pushing is sillier.
because that's how you convince them to think otherwise.
That'd only be if you were debating them on the topic of "is family special". If you're discussing political issues you won't make any headway until you realize that the stated reason is not the real one.
You know the cost (based on excess supply) of power is cheap at night, right?
So yes, some people might go to work and charge up, but other people are going to charge at night for the savings. (I'm assuming here your work stops footing the bill and passes the daytime-rates on to you.)
I also assume billing for power will get more granular in the future as the tracking and accounting become easier and more variable rates make it more important.
It's not reasonable to dismiss the two-seater if the price difference is greater than the odd taxi fare. Similarly, it's not reasonable to dismiss a car with X range simply because 1/500th of your travels are longer.
This applies to everything - engine size, etc. People buy based on emotion and "could I ever need this?", not "is this worth it for my use?".
The problem is not that some people fail to defend themselves against sadistic psychopaths;
Actually, that is the problem. We can't be everywhere, preventing everything, and a lot of abuse looks kind from the outside so we wouldn't know to stop it.
Certainly we should stop what we see, but there's no substitute for self-reliance.
Why arrest any criminal when, clearly, someone allowing himself to become a victim is just as much to blame?
Sheeesh, it's called the slippery slope fallacy, not the sheer cliff fallacy. Try being a little less alarmist.
Much bullying doesn't happen where we can see, or reach a level where we can arrest or even chastise the bully. Only you are in a position to really protect you.
You are so interested in protecting your pet idea of lying for profit being a good thing that you won't listen to what anyone else has to say.
Are you on your meds? Because if not you must be a fucking imbecile.
Much Earlier:
Again, you are defending the people committing fraud. Why?
No, I'm advocating for a state of reality where we would have encrypted cellphones because the government hadn't just mandated that listening to calls is illegal.
I'm still just saying we shouldn't waste our money passing redundant and pointless laws that only leave us with a huge bill and a false sense of security. I don't know what kind of retard you'd have to be to think that protects criminals.
I know you're only acting from fear, but it's really your actions that help criminals. Prohibition was big business. Laws against cell-phone scanners just funded the smugglers who brought in foreign radios. Enforcement cost a fortune, having to buy crippled radios for more money really stunk, and nobody was any safer.
To stop fraud you have to prevent and punish fraud, the whole affair, not wearing a fake name tag. I know it's not the quick band-aid fix you wanted but at least it's not delusional.
And yes, the questions are loaded, they make you look like an idiot who supports criminals.
No, they make you look illiterate, and like a real asshole.
If I asked them to someone on the street, they'd answer them and move on, thinking that lying for profit is a bad thing.
If you asked your question to someone on the street they'd notice your awkward wording and the forced yes/no nature of it and they'd realize you're a kook pushing his special interest. I imagine they'd look for the camera.
I see one mind wishing to silence another mind. It just can't work that way... and it doesn't.
While I agree with you you do realize that this is a very Western viewpoint, right?
No, it's a very non-relative truth.
One mind wishing to silence another. True. China's denial of what it means to be human. True - they wouldn't be censoring if people weren't choosing to talk. "Cannot work." True - if only because we need to stop them to keep it from working.
justify many things including censorship.
Bringing up their justifications would be like someone trying to explain "think of the kids" based censorship as partly reasonable - if only to us - because we hold children in high regard. Not that we don't, but it's totally unrelated to the power grab it's used to justify.
That just ups the difficulty. You can't be quite as obvious. Yes, they always will prune some of those responses, but only at the cost of some real data.
When you get off that call you're not going to take a minute of silence in respect of the people who don't want to be bothered, you're going to jump right back on the phone and annoy another person. Quickly enabling you to get back to making money is what you want, not what we want.
If everyone would put five minutes into screwing with telemarketers we'd be rid of them.
To use your doorknob analogy, you want to forbid opening doors without authorization.
That's already the case.
No, it isn't. Opening an unlocked door to go through it can be against some laws in some cases. Simply turning a knob or swinging a piece of wood is not. For instance, opening an "employees only" door to call for help would not be trespassing.
The laws you assert are absurd are already on the books. That just indicates to me that you have no connection to reality.
Yes, for instance it is illegal to own a device capable of listening to cellular calls, despite that this makes it harder for the victims and easier for the attackers. It's fucking absurd.
Is passing untrue CID with the intent of deceiving someone a lie?
Wearing a fake name-tag as part of a crime is a lie but you don't see the criminalization of name-tag vendors.
If your concern is that people are committing a crime, relax. It's probably a crime without the CID spoofing, and the spoofing is probably evidence of intent. It doesn't need to be illegal, itself, for criminals to not be able to exploit it.
I wasn't aware you were a business executive with knowledge of how to run a successful company.
No, I'm an admin with an idea of what does not work with regards to net censorship. If you've got employees browsing inappropriate material you're never going to effectively block it so you've got to deal with them directly. Just blocking things is the sign of management who doesn't understand how big the internet is and what a pointless thing they're doing.
if you want to believe that the Fortune 500 are run by retarded weasels, then perhaps you should do some graduate research to find out why retarded weasles make such successful businessmen and you don't.
Successful businessmen, by definition, wouldn't be caught dead doing something so useless.
Comprehension fail. I said they are NOT a private company
Yes, you said that after comparing what the agency was doing to the practices of a private company.
No, I didn't. I said "we're the boss" referring to us (taxpayers presumably) paying for the operations of this department, which is operated on our behalf. We not only foot the bill for but are responsible for the actions of our government.
If I said, "don't water mea37, he's not a plant" that wouldn't mean I'm fond of the plant metaphor for you. It would mean exactly the opposite.
Micromanagement under the guise of oversight is still micromanagement.
Oh noes. Don't criticize the TSA or they won't have time to do such a good job!
It's funny how butthurt you are over the issue of citizen oversight into government. Do you have a cushy (possibly tax-subsidized) job you'd lose if your boss actually started paying attention?
Slashdot Mirror
DOWN WITH CORPORATIONS! DOWN WITH GLOBALISATIONS!, but have you actually stopped and considered how idiotic you actually sound. *sigh*.
Wow, that's a particularly stupid strawman you're beating there.
Silly me, I thought paying taxes to fund the government to pass regulations for drilling/industry was supposed to reduce risk, letting me buy shopping bags without dooming the planet. Evidently we should have tolerated the drilling for all non-consumer reasons (fuel for war) and yet have known not to ask for luxuries. Bad consumers. Bad. Those bags are what's killed us, not decades of industry lobbying and government corruption and lies.
Had it been clear how badly the government has handled the issue before the spill (despite attempted citizen oversight) or how lax BP's safety procedures were, asking for that shopping bag would have been unreasonable. But we were continually assured, by the government and industry, that reasonable steps were being taken - which we now know to be a lie.
The dirty little secret however is this. We as a modern society cannot maintain our current way of life, progress, and technological advancement without the Corporation.
Nice religion you have there.
Such social collective apparatuses are necessary to manage the many abstract layers of social interaction.
Sure, collective social apparatus are needed, but that doesn't imply the 'such' part.
It's pure, calculated, and with complete disregard for the individual. But, from the stand-point of another corporation on the receiving end, such behavior is completely and totally acceptable.
No, from the point of anyone allowed to externalize their costs. If they were billed for the human and environmental damage they inflicted they wouldn't disregard it.
We could avoid most of the problems with corporations if we'd treat them like any other social organization. Instead of diffusing blame, they amplify and share blame.
Currently if you're mad at BP we act like there's nothing to do but complain to the corporate HQ. But if you're mad at the KKK, or the democrats, you direct your ire at the entire organization.
If we fined every element, management, workers, stockholders, equally we'd establish a requirement for good governance. Instead people shove responsibility one thinly veiled step away but expect to share the profits.
I trusted that Bush and the military knew what they were doing...
Of course. When they claim there's some really dangerous reason to go to war you assume they're telling the truth... The first few times it happens in your life.
And I want to make this exceptionally clear. Innocent people die in war. That's part of what makes wars suck. But the people we went to go kill in Afghanistan WERE, if only by association and support, responsible for 9/11. Ignore that and I think you need to read the article some more.
Ignore that? I'll call you a fucking imbecile if you believe it.
The people of Afghanistan, in general, are no more guilty for OBL and 9/11 than you are for Timothy McVeigh.
You obviously have no idea what Afghanistan was like. His neighbors didn't exactly know what he was planning (it was a secret!) or have power to do anything about it. To call that guilty by association would be like blaming you for ongoing violence in Detroit.
I fought that as hard as I could and it didn't seem to make a damned bit of difference.
Your tax money is paying for war, and it's being inflicted on at least one innocent country if not two.
Did you refuse to pay taxes? Did you drive over a military recruiter? Bomb an army or government building? Sabotage military or industrial equipment?
Because unless you did you didn't try as hard as you could have. Certainly not half as hard as an Iraqi who had just watched Collateral Murder happen in front of him would hope...
Or, did you expect the Afghanis around OBL to use only legal methods to stop him before his attacks? Leaflets, posting stern opinions, getting political?
So I'm sorry if I sound a bit calloused, it's been a rough decade.
Yeah, we've had it rough. Here in Easyville.
Osama killed three thousand, Bush killed many hundreds of thousands in retaliation.
When I think of ranting I tend to think of something more like you're doing, where you've got a preconceived notion (in your case, what he means) and you're doing your best to tell him what he thinks.
As I pointed out above and in my other posts, I respond to what he wrote and not to what you claim was supposedly in his head when he did so. And what he wrote is self-contradictory and nonsensical.
Sure sure, but you were the one ranting, raving and disgorging copious amounts of spittle.
It is you in fact who attempts to parse and interpret his drivel in a favorable light because of your preconceived notions which apparently enable you to "understand" sentences that negate each other.
Yes, that's because I try to understand the person I'm talking with. Taking something they're saying and twisting it into something they didn't mean is a good way to score points but it's not a good way to show them they're wrong because they didn't mean whatever I'm attacking.
Apparently I failed to tune into his "sympathetic brain waves", no? Is that what you mean by "seem to"?
No, by "doesn't seem to be against" I meant "doesn't seem to be crazily against any and all at the expense of everything else". Presumably he sees a difference between administrivia and large problems like rampant printing of money. You know... can pick his battles.
He claimed (direct quote, emphasis mine) that: "Any deviation from a self-balancing equation of economics will lead to an eventual collapse of some sort. Economies balance themselves out, our attempts at interfering by government or any other forces will always fail in the long term (a period of time comparable to a long life span)."
I responded to what he wrote and what he wrote is utter nonsense.
You mean you literally cannot parse what he said there? Or just that when contrasted against him not caring about some minor banking regulation (in a discussion of massive economic manipulation) you think you can show it to be contradictory?
And as he said there's a difference between an authority setting the equivalence of some artificial units and creating the money from scratch.
I'd prefer shorter copyright terms and no DMCA but I'd also say just scrapping the DMCA is "fine" even though it implies I'm okay with the current long terms. Given more time, and an invitation instead of an attack, I could clarify.
Yes, it is incredibly sloppy to contradict yourself twice in a paragraph, but that's all the more reason to think he doesn't mean that you think he means.
As I pointed out above and in my other posts, I respond to what he wrote [...] And what he wrote is self-contradictory and nonsensical.
You very carefully respond to only a tiny fraction of what he says. I showed you're completely contradictory in my first post (ranting about ranters). Should I have just stopped there? Is that all you are, a logical contradiction in time?
you've got a preconceived notion (in your case, what he means) and you're doing your best to tell him what he thinks.
It is you in fact who attempts to parse and interpret his drivel in a favorable light because of your preconceived notions which apparently enable you to "understand" sentences that negate each other.
My only preconceived notion is that he has a point, even if wrong. You keep saying his view is inconsistent which is very unlikely compared to there being a language barrier, him being a bad writer, or simply wrong, you being illiterate or unwilling to try, etc.
Okay, his quote is: the economy is not a closed system, new inventions for example, new discoveries or improvements create new economic niches. The system is closed by the boundaries of accessible world
The first part
When you give any additional costs or drawbacks, I'll address them. I'm still waiting.
Yeah, other than the costs I covered in my last post. [...] writing, trying, and enforcing new law [...]
The costs of prohibition of any sort are pretty plain. Given your intentional stubbornness and the games you like to play I'll assume you're being a aqua-phobic horse here and there's no way to actually satisfy your request.
If you don't think that taking actual steps to fix the problem is useful there isn't much to say.
Enjoy your useless and redundant laws.
There are many non-intrusive ways to limit people purchasing the entire stock - such as a simple rule of one purchase per time through the line, or one every fifteen minutes.
And no, I at least wouldn't be complaining. I'd be laughing that their over-hyped, artificially short-supplied launch strategy bit them in the ass. Apple intentionally cultivates this hype among the true believers that would lead to someone standing in line for days or paying a huge premium for early access so they have only themselves to blame for having to enact anti-scalping rules to deal with it. The users have themselves to blame for being stuck with AT&T just to better enable Apple's surprise release, etc.
Re: CID Spoofing
So go ahead and explain, how does making CID spoofing illegal harm anyone? [...] I understand your argument about a false sense of security, but that's the only kind we have.
Ummm, no. Real security is possible, even it involves acknowledging some limitations. Making CID spoofing illegal, like any other band-aid, prompts people to believe they're safe instead of making sure they're safe.
If the government wanted to make people safe they'd start a "Get a name, look up the number, and call the person back" campaign. I personally installed modems that had this capability built into them back in the early 90s - they'd ID a person by CID or a password, hang up, and call them back at a pre-programmed number.
Outlawing CID spoofing just means two charges against the hacker you aren't going to catch, where one would have been enough, but no actual steps toward catching them or protecting systems.
What's the "bill" associated with it?
The same as the bill associated with banning scanners that can monitor cellphones. An actual large bill associated with writing, trying, and enforcing new law and a hidden cost paid by all users of radios that are now more crippled and expensive than before. Also the life-destroying consequences of needless or mistaken prosecution. A more complex legal code.
And, of course, the actual cost of the security violations left unstopped. What cost does homeopathy have beyond the sticker price?
Not to mention, I believe you to be 100% wrong. People currently assume CID to be 100% secure. So working to make it more secure doesn't promote a false sense of security. People already have it,
Sure, most people also vaguely expected cell-phones were secure. But the law enabled companies to claim they were, because equipment to listen to them was now illegal.
There's a difference between thinking something is secure and simply not knowing of problems. People may not know of a flaw but still be wary, and thus safe. But if they're told there isn't a problem they won't be careful.
so making it more secure provides a net increase in security, not a decrease as you assert.
But making it illegal isn't making it more secure at all. There is no increase, net or otherwise. It simply hides the problem, and that is always insecure.
Don't you think it's about time you, as the side arguing for increased legislation, offered even one good reason to believe that it would help, let alone enough to justify the expense and drawbacks?
There are several confusions here. I think you mean performative, not tautological. Tautologies are *not* universal. They are highly specific to a given formal system. If it were tautology, it would also be trivial.
The "What X does is the 'X nature'" statement is universal, because it is tautological. It offers no predictive power and thus is a trivial statement, but all I was saying is that it's not a subjective Western viewpoint. The Chinese government is going against human nature. (Not to say they aren't also following their own human nature...)
A Chinese person would have no trouble understanding our incredible TotC panic - just tell them the first person to stop pretending to panic gets blamed. It's just the hate-topic of the week.
I just don't buy it. That explanation seems far more artificial than the fact that naive and well-intentioned people are being exploited for their support because they do believe it will help preserve the innocence of children.
Did I say they weren't being manipulated? The USA actually had cause to worry about some communists in the 50s too... The best panics are always born out of a core of something real. Eurasia has to exist, or at least been rumored to before today, before you can whip up a really good hate about it.
I can certainly know that "think of the children" is the motivation for some Americans. All I need to do is ask them.
Two problems with that. One, like with communists in the 50s, everyone would say they're a worry even if they personally didn't care simply to avoid being different. Two, the people who do panic about their kids aren't necessarily the ones who shape policy.
The fear itself is real, and sometimes justified, but disconnected from the actual things done in its name.
Assuming that there is a Chinese mindset is hardly controversial. Every culture has norms. I'm not sure why you would assume otherwise.
Actually, it is controversial. You can't average emotion or views. And anyways, China is far too diverse to have a mindset. (What's the average of North and South America combined?) The best you can do with groups like that is statistical predictions.
The communism scare or the think-of-the-kids scare appear to be nation-wide and all-consuming, especially to someone whose only information about us is our politicians and media, but they really aren't relevant in the day-to-day life of the people.
If you asked a "man on the street" he wouldn't, unprompted, be thinking about danger to the children at all. But if you brought up a hot-button issue like net censorship he'd think of it in terms he'd heard before, likely polarized ones he got from TV.
This "Chinese people focus on family" thing is blatant government propaganda. Like a Soviet poster showing a village pitching in to buy a tractor by giving up their personal luxuries.
What I'm suggesting is why the fake one works. And you are wrong. You need to understand why the fake one works in order to start to diffuse it.
The false story works so well because there is no defense against it. Children, they are defenseless and cute. And family, it raised you, dude. Knowing the specific arguments helps you avoid pitfalls in debates, but by the time you're talking to them in their terms you've already lost.
What you need to understand are the landmines, such as that in the USA Freenet is politically associated with kiddy porn. But that's how you avoid their false topic, not debate it.
So far, as best as I can tell, your explanation imputes far too much self-awareness to those being manipulated.
I don't think anyone is really aware of how they're being manipulated to hate Eurasia. And even if they would hate it naturally, how much it's being used as a scapegoat for unrelated things.
you need to understand why people will accept it. [...] So what other reason might it be? That's what I'm trying to figure out.
Inertia? The joy of righteous mob rule? The stupid being led by the corrupt? Santa?
I think you missed his point. I think he's saying that, in the way nothing is 'outside' thermodynamics, no country is 'outside' economics and free to just do arbitrary things.
If you print twice as much currency you don't have twice as much value.
He doesn't seem to be against regulation, like the HK money example, just against popular but useless policies.
For a while the USA had a free ride in that they could manipulate their currency and gain real value from the changes - now that the foreign economy has diversified from dollars somewhat their changes are illusory - based on their own perceptions of their stability instead of actual global purchasing power.
Or are you really unaware that we can still see all your ranting, raving and disgorging copious amounts of spittle over this very idea in all these posts right above?
When I think of ranting I tend to think of something more like you're doing, where you've got a preconceived notion (in your case, what he means) and you're doing your best to tell him what he thinks.
Well tangentially at first. Al-queada does have it's roots there and had support from the Taliban. And we needed to smack someone up alongside the head after 9/11.
So it's more important to kill innocent people, while going after unrelated people, to appear "on top of it" than to actually be effective or useful?
Actually hunting down a connected and funded terrorist cell is difficult, and destroying the nation that they hide under is a lot easier.
You wouldn't believe who sounds like a terrorist right now...
I guess I'm more of a realist then you. The Nazis defined what it meant to be Fascists like soviet Russia defined what Communism meant. Karl Marx is spinning in his grave, the ivory towers may disagree, and some french hippies will argue, but Communism is tied to the hip to Stalin.
You choose to be wrong because it's popular?
I acknowledge that much of what people talk about as communism, for instance, is really Stalin and the USSR but I feel no need to sink to that level when replying.
But we're really just bickering about semantics here.
Any idea why that keeps happening to you?
The next wave of market correction that will hit,
Well sure, the next crisis will always be coming.
No, the next crisis doesn't have to be looming. If we didn't go with the "print money" option we might actually solve something for once.
I'd rather have a job and some cash rather then be on the street and broke when it hits.
We could have let the companies involved go bankrupt and/or charge them for their fraud and used the bailout money directly for the people hurt by the changes instead of used to prop up the companies that screwed up in some Reagan-esque trickle-down plan.
How long until we're bailing out BP as well?
Now, my government might be broke instead, but it's at least big enough and powerful enough to not worry about collection agencies breaking it's kneecaps.
You really seem to believe in this "too big to fail" thing.
There's a big difference between "won't use screwy editing to misrepresent" and "journalist".
But yeah, he does seem to have standards the guys interviewing him don't.
Is the USA a valid nation? They've got their own domestic spying, censorship, unjust wars, and failed elections.
You said, and I quote: "Why do we correct only the behavior of the bully when the behavior of the victim is just as much at fault?"
Quote fail.
But, I do agree with the jist of it.
Aggressive dogs, even little ones, pick on the same people who get bullied by other people. You could correct an infinite number of bullies and the victim would only find more, even house-pets, who would dominate them.
Either this is true of all criminal activity, or none of it; either an adult victim of a crime is to blame for failing to defend himself, or a kid isn't either. Which one is it?
What's with jerks trying to force you into yes/no questions when they don't take time to fully understand what you're saying?
If we could do only one, helping the victims would, IMHO be more useful.
In a very real sense only you are to blame for what happens to you. Fall off a ledge - you shouldn't have been up there without ropes. Killed by a drunk driver - you should have had better situational awareness and buffer zones. Mugged - shouldn't have been in a dangerous area alone.
Yes, the mugger/bully is also to blame for hurting you, but that's only useful some of the time. You can't blame the ledge, or gravity, and it doesn't matter if you blame the drunk. They can be punished but it's not going to help you. You've already been injured, or not, based on your own personal tools and abilities.
And I'm not suggesting "chastising" a bully. [...] A bully needs to be crushed;
And it's that attitude that gets rid of bullies. If you're willing to act like that, perhaps not physically but at least by standing up for yourself emotionally and seeking help, you won't be bullied.
Self-reliance is all nice and good. Now tell me: what happens when you teach a victim to defend himself? Why, the bully simply seeks another one. And then you teach that next victim, and the next one, and so on...
And now you've got a stream of unbullyable people in the school/etc who help stop bullies and train other victims.
...Until you realize that you've tought everyone how to fight, including the wolves. And so we're right where we started, only this time the kids are better equipped to harm each other.
Bullies already could fight and use weapons, it's what made them the bad guys.
The training doesn't have to be in knife-fighting or something useful to bullies though. There are a lot of training systems and weapons/tactics which are far more defensive than offensive. A bad-guy with a tazer isn't half the threat a bad-guy with a sniper-rifle is.
For schoolkids most anti-bullying wouldn't cover fighting at all. Blocks and defenses, etc, but not attacks. Most kids couldn't pull them off and they aren't as useful as escaping unharmed and coming back with authority.
Most muggings, rapes and murders happen where we can't see them. That's pretty much a precondition for pulling a succesful crime. Why are you treating bullying specially?
I want to help potential rape and mugging victims too. Like victims of childhood bullying they often give off signals that let them be selected from the crowd as easy victims, and often don't understand how their actions often cause their attacks or worsen them (letting the attacker take them to a second location, for example).
We should ask what the potential rape victim wants to wear before they go out so that if it's a "short skirt" they can also be armed and educated.
Yes, a safe society is ideal but it's not here yet and you are.
And I'm not suggesting "chastising" a bully. Chastising is something you do to a cookie thief or other relatively harmless offence.
Unfortunately much bullying is harmless, in other contexts. You can't tell the difference between "nice shirt" in harmless jest and as pa
And conservative legislators are always trying to strip freedoms under the auspices of protection - from liberals, commies, teenagers, etc.
Really, all politicians are trying to grab all available power and will use whatever hot-buttons they think are the strongest even if they're totally unrelated.
Your definition of human is based on a very modern set of Western, specifically European, ideas about human nature.
No. It is tautological and thus universal. Human nature is as humans do.
Humans obviously wish to speak or the government would not need to censor them.
nor am I pleading cultural relativism (as I explicitly stated and you completely ignored)
Yeah, I saw that. I was pointing out the errors in the "that's a western viewpoint", not suggesting that you thought the opposite viewpoint was right.
I'm not trying to justify anything. So, get off your freakin' high horse and pay attention.
I know, chill. But you are legitimizing it by discussing it as being anything other than political spin.
But "think of the children" works here. And I was describing why "the need for a harmonious society" works in China.
And I was saying that Think-of-the-Children does not work here - or at least while to does it's not because of any special liking for the children. It's not a magical phrase, it's the one were given endlessly in hope it'll become magic. It only works when people properly panic and stop thinking about the reason.
A Chinese person would have no trouble understanding our incredible TotC panic - just tell them the first person to stop pretending to panic gets blamed. It's just the hate-topic of the week.
I'm trying to explain why people think what they think
You don't know "they" think what you say anymore than you know a North American is actually thinking of the children. To assume that there is a Chinese mindset is silly. To assume it's the one the government is pushing is sillier.
because that's how you convince them to think otherwise.
That'd only be if you were debating them on the topic of "is family special". If you're discussing political issues you won't make any headway until you realize that the stated reason is not the real one.
You know the cost (based on excess supply) of power is cheap at night, right?
So yes, some people might go to work and charge up, but other people are going to charge at night for the savings. (I'm assuming here your work stops footing the bill and passes the daytime-rates on to you.)
I also assume billing for power will get more granular in the future as the tracking and accounting become easier and more variable rates make it more important.
It's not reasonable to dismiss the two-seater if the price difference is greater than the odd taxi fare. Similarly, it's not reasonable to dismiss a car with X range simply because 1/500th of your travels are longer.
This applies to everything - engine size, etc. People buy based on emotion and "could I ever need this?", not "is this worth it for my use?".
The problem is not that some people fail to defend themselves against sadistic psychopaths;
Actually, that is the problem. We can't be everywhere, preventing everything, and a lot of abuse looks kind from the outside so we wouldn't know to stop it.
Certainly we should stop what we see, but there's no substitute for self-reliance.
Why arrest any criminal when, clearly, someone allowing himself to become a victim is just as much to blame?
Sheeesh, it's called the slippery slope fallacy, not the sheer cliff fallacy. Try being a little less alarmist.
Much bullying doesn't happen where we can see, or reach a level where we can arrest or even chastise the bully. Only you are in a position to really protect you.
You are so interested in protecting your pet idea of lying for profit being a good thing that you won't listen to what anyone else has to say.
Are you on your meds? Because if not you must be a fucking imbecile.
Much Earlier:
Again, you are defending the people committing fraud. Why?
No, I'm advocating for a state of reality where we would have encrypted cellphones because the government hadn't just mandated that listening to calls is illegal.
I'm still just saying we shouldn't waste our money passing redundant and pointless laws that only leave us with a huge bill and a false sense of security. I don't know what kind of retard you'd have to be to think that protects criminals.
I know you're only acting from fear, but it's really your actions that help criminals. Prohibition was big business. Laws against cell-phone scanners just funded the smugglers who brought in foreign radios. Enforcement cost a fortune, having to buy crippled radios for more money really stunk, and nobody was any safer.
To stop fraud you have to prevent and punish fraud, the whole affair, not wearing a fake name tag. I know it's not the quick band-aid fix you wanted but at least it's not delusional.
And yes, the questions are loaded, they make you look like an idiot who supports criminals.
No, they make you look illiterate, and like a real asshole.
If I asked them to someone on the street, they'd answer them and move on, thinking that lying for profit is a bad thing.
If you asked your question to someone on the street they'd notice your awkward wording and the forced yes/no nature of it and they'd realize you're a kook pushing his special interest. I imagine they'd look for the camera.
You're obviously incapable of asking an unloaded yes/no question, McCarthy.
I see one mind wishing to silence another mind. It just can't work that way... and it doesn't.
While I agree with you you do realize that this is a very Western viewpoint, right?
No, it's a very non-relative truth.
One mind wishing to silence another. True.
China's denial of what it means to be human. True - they wouldn't be censoring if people weren't choosing to talk.
"Cannot work." True - if only because we need to stop them to keep it from working.
justify many things including censorship.
Bringing up their justifications would be like someone trying to explain "think of the kids" based censorship as partly reasonable - if only to us - because we hold children in high regard. Not that we don't, but it's totally unrelated to the power grab it's used to justify.
That just ups the difficulty. You can't be quite as obvious. Yes, they always will prune some of those responses, but only at the cost of some real data.
When you get off that call you're not going to take a minute of silence in respect of the people who don't want to be bothered, you're going to jump right back on the phone and annoy another person. Quickly enabling you to get back to making money is what you want, not what we want.
If everyone would put five minutes into screwing with telemarketers we'd be rid of them.
To use your doorknob analogy, you want to forbid opening doors without authorization.
That's already the case.
No, it isn't. Opening an unlocked door to go through it can be against some laws in some cases. Simply turning a knob or swinging a piece of wood is not. For instance, opening an "employees only" door to call for help would not be trespassing.
The laws you assert are absurd are already on the books. That just indicates to me that you have no connection to reality.
Yes, for instance it is illegal to own a device capable of listening to cellular calls, despite that this makes it harder for the victims and easier for the attackers. It's fucking absurd.
Is passing untrue CID with the intent of deceiving someone a lie?
Wearing a fake name-tag as part of a crime is a lie but you don't see the criminalization of name-tag vendors.
If your concern is that people are committing a crime, relax. It's probably a crime without the CID spoofing, and the spoofing is probably evidence of intent. It doesn't need to be illegal, itself, for criminals to not be able to exploit it.
I wasn't aware you were a business executive with knowledge of how to run a successful company.
No, I'm an admin with an idea of what does not work with regards to net censorship. If you've got employees browsing inappropriate material you're never going to effectively block it so you've got to deal with them directly. Just blocking things is the sign of management who doesn't understand how big the internet is and what a pointless thing they're doing.
if you want to believe that the Fortune 500 are run by retarded weasels, then perhaps you should do some graduate research to find out why retarded weasles make such successful businessmen and you don't.
Successful businessmen, by definition, wouldn't be caught dead doing something so useless.
Comprehension fail. I said they are NOT a private company
Yes, you said that after comparing what the agency was doing to the practices of a private company.
No, I didn't. I said "we're the boss" referring to us (taxpayers presumably) paying for the operations of this department, which is operated on our behalf. We not only foot the bill for but are responsible for the actions of our government.
If I said, "don't water mea37, he's not a plant" that wouldn't mean I'm fond of the plant metaphor for you. It would mean exactly the opposite.
Micromanagement under the guise of oversight is still micromanagement.
Oh noes. Don't criticize the TSA or they won't have time to do such a good job!
It's funny how butthurt you are over the issue of citizen oversight into government. Do you have a cushy (possibly tax-subsidized) job you'd lose if your boss actually started paying attention?