But the dev team recommended that people not switch if they didn't need to. That's a bit different than Microsoft doing everything it can to force people to switch.
I don't think cops should make up laws and enforce them, but yes, I think police have the same right to refuse illegal or unreasonable orders as anyone else.
If their judgment and morals match the community they will keep the job, if not they'll move on to other work, like anyone else.
This isn't to say that it'd be just to fake evidence protecting the pot smokers, just that it would be fine and moral for the officer to say to his boss that he wasn't going to participate in enforcing a law that he thought was harmful. The people need to know if it's hard to stomach enforcing our laws - maybe it's a sign they need to change.
Anything else is to suggest that the police are slaves, having no free will. They certainly can and should exercise their discretion, even if they end up being dismissed for doing so in a way we deem incorrect.
Shut your hole, retard. Your pathetic conflation with race is ruined because police officers are voluntary members of the group, as opposed to blacks who are grouped by skin color. A group of people in a single job, especially when they have a history of solidarity, can legitimately be discussed as a group.
Further, nobody said that every cop is guilty, but that the police *will* fuck with you. That much is a fact. It's obvious to anyone over the age of three that police corruption is out of control. While not every cop is dirty, the ones who will stand up to the corruption are one in a million.
We'd be fine with crimes committed by individual police, as long as they were pursued and punished like crimes committed by anyone else. The plain fact of the matter is that they are not. Until this is remedied, the police are the enemy because they have the power to destroy your life at a whim, and you have absolutely no recourse. Every officer might be nice, or might be a prick, and the system trusts them absolutely. That system, the police, absolutely can not be trusted because of ANY specific instances where the police collude to protect the guilty or punish the innocent.
That every honest police officer doesn't immediately turn on the crooks and thugs they work with just goes to show how honest they really aren't. If police could be trusted, the whole system would work to champion, above anything else, abuse of that very system by those entrusted with running it.
Serpico was potentially the only worthwhile person to wear blue. Almost every other cop would cover up a crime or frame a civilian to save another officer. The proof is that they aren't providing evidence for the crimes we know are going on. When officers come forward to put everyone who testified on that site I linked to out of work, if not behind bars, I'll re-evaluate them.
The good police have an obligation to remove the bad police, or they become bad police themselves.
Now ask yourselves, how many officers would 1) refrain from giving a fellow officer a deserved ticket for speeding, 2) lie about another officer doing this to save them from punishment.
On the CopsWritingCops.com forum there were one or two officers who didn't engage in giving a TOTAL blanket pass to all police officers in ALL circumstances. Every other cop there thought it was absolute treason to your fellows to cite them on any crime, especially traffic related. The whole site was geared around pointing out honest cops for abuse until they'd turn dishonest.
These days they'd find Serpico before he turned them in and kill him.
Honest cops should look at the CWC forum as an affront to them. These crooked cops are ruining their respect. In there were honest cops they'd rat this organization out and we'd have every one of these thugs behind bars on a corruption charge. Until they do, I assuming there aren't many honest cops.
And there are many other forums out there that verify members to make sure they're officers. Imagine the shit on those forums.
but I don't stand outside the window watching people either.
But you do stand outside (sometimes) and look at houses. The reason you don't see naked people when doing this is that most of them draw that privacy screen when they're naked, not when they think a camera might be coming, and thus are invisible from the street.
we agree that the boundaries of privacy are set by a combination of the viewee indicating a desire for privacy and the viewer respecting that desire.
Right.
And this case is about photographers having to assume, groundlessly in 99.3% of cases, that they shouldn't take pictures of houses because the people in them may not know to close a curtain.
If a thin curtain is enough, why isn't the fact that I'm inside my house enough?
Because you've gone and built those darned transparent panels into the house, thus making the inner bit NOT PRIVATE until you close the curtains.
Think how rude you're being. Seriously. With the implication that it's your right to demand that your house, built right smack on a public street, not be photographed or even looked at too closely, because you don't feel like closing a curtain, and yet feel compelled to walk around nude but do not wish to be seen.
How about my right to demand that anything visible from a public street be publicly visible? To demand that if you're doing something that I can't let my kid photograph, that you at least draw a courtesy screen in front of it?
Their religious people are as crazy as ours. Our crazies (Cat-licks, etc) want everyone in the world to join their religion. That's why our (Western) past has so many religious wars - as everyone fought for and achieved some piece (even if only an armed stand-off) between the sky-fairy factions. When one of these groups arms itself, it has generally gone to war in the name of establishing its religious dominion. Ditto Mohamadanians.
Militant muslims *are* trying to convert everyone in the world - or kill them trying. Like many other religions have been trying since their inception.
Once you believe in a magical man in space who brings us all back to life (the good ones anyways) it's not a big stretch to believe he needs the souls of the unbelievers. And that it's not a (real) crime to do it.
If nobody was religious and I produced a Koran, or Bible, and professed to believe in it more than life itself, I would be called crazy. But with this nonsense floating around everywhere nobody sees it for what it is: A batshit insane persons manifesto for controlling the world through violence and brainwashing.
Osama BL's a self-declared devout follower of this "cleanse the unbeliever nonsense". His stated goal might be the USA out of SA, and that may even honestly be the biggest thing on his radar, but that doesn't mean that his religion hasn't taught him (and 50% of the co-religious populations who support him) to use violence to keep going that extra step and just deal with us unbelievers once and for all.
Admit it, if OBL won a military victory over anyone, they'd be under space-ghost law the next day, having heads lopped off for talking to women. Taliban style. (Which is Chinese style, with more sex-crime craziness and no organ harvesting.)
The fact that a religious murderer desires a certain political outcome does not imply that his violence will stop if he gets it. In fact, winning has a way of encouraging people. Today it's the USA out of SA, tomorrow what, Jews out of the world?
However, there was a picture of the button and it was clearly marked and well within the reach of anyone who might care to push it. It stands to reason it would have been moved if abuse was at all a problem. Certainly, such a placement in the U.S. is simply not even attempted.
Where else would you place the emergency-call button? On the ceiling?
Here we have emergency call buttons, silent and not, every little distance along buses and LRT, as well as in the stations. All buttons are VERY obviously marked, and easily pressed by everyone.
Nobody tampers with them. Why? Cameras I'd assume.
I see broken payphones (handset ripped off) sometimes, but very rarely in a transit station. Presumably that cameras and cops thing again.
I'm just saying that your anecdote suggests a reason but doesn't provide any evidence. There are many possibilities, politeness being only one, others being cameras, deliberate loose standards to write a "Japanese are so polite (we should be too)" email (blown out of proportion to prove a pre-existing notion), etc.
As for the rest, I'm not talking about bans or any such thing, just simple politeness. The existence of rude people does not excuse further rudeness on a massive scale.
What is as rude as someone who picks a trivial and reasonable thing and demands that nobody do it in their presence? I know a lady who loudly (until you stop) demands that nobody discuss spiders in her presence, even if she joined a group already discussing them.
Sure, we could "respect" her and stop, or we could continue doing perfectly reasonable things and she could learn to help herself.
The only thing we have to even suggest that photography is rude is 1) the claim it steals souls and 2) people who are cranky and for no good reasons want everyone else to hate the thing they hate.
Assuredly there is NOBODY except these groups insisting that people stop photography. Nobody with a valid point would make those demands because a valid point would be, by definition, one that was about a valid injury - even if only a social one. By identifying an injury it could be addressed properly, not with a band-aid. (Such as banning photography to prevent terrorism, as we see cops in the USA doing.)
Anyone who thought publishing bad pictures was rude would simply say that. They'd realize that cameras take both kinds of photos and wouldn't want to ban photography. They'd preach publisher's discretion.
Anyone who didn't want their privates seen by others (genitals, or collectibles) would already understand not to let other people see them. A camera is just an extension of that. They'd only object to hidden cameras and other tricks.
Anyone with security concerns wouldn't stop the taking of photos (what better way to identify a target?) they'd try to cover up the sensitive area so that you couldn't see the flaw, let alone photograph it. They wouldn't be happy to see a photographer, but only because they knew they still weren't inconspicuous.
Anyone who actually had a problem would be bringing the problem forth, not the solution. This guy has already decided that Streetview (and photography in general) must stop. He'll now invent every reason under the sun, including the mythical Japanese sensitivity to photographs, to prove the justness of his cause. I've also heard it claimed in similar circumstances that the Australian people's history of lots of personal space makes them more violated by photos than a sardine-can person from other countries. Black, and white, presented as proof of the same thing.
As for the pictures on you speak of, to turn the tables, can you document in any way that they were taken on the fly without any sort of permission? That the people in them and the owners of the homes do not consider it incredibly rude?
That no permission was given can only be implied by the number of photos, the number of people, businesses, and homes in those photos
There's a big difference between asking the user before allowing any app to use the GPS and a blacklist preventing ones Apple deems to be unsafe, regardless of your ruling.
The fact that you do not understand this seriously calls into question the sanity of those who modded you informative.
You can pay me to write a patch for Slashdot or another open source project but you couldn't pay to have a patch written for a closed-source project. Not everyone codes, but everyone uses money.
Have you ever played Hearts the card game? Do you know what happens when one person controls the point cards for the entire round? Everyone else loses. Often the only way to prevent this is to lose a trick intentionally, taking unwanted points but breaking their control. It costs you points, and everyone else is glad they didn't have to make the sacrifice, but it saves you in the long run.
It's a reasonable analogy for markets and monopolies. It might be more trouble to get a Linux-friendly PC, or a more open music player, but if everyone just bought the apparent winner we'd be stuck with the first passable product, locked into a world of buying software for our phones for instance.
Besides, what's the chance that a revocation list or something won't be used to bar legitimate use of products like iPhones in the near future? Software is fragile enough already, I dislike the idea of companies building in more backdoors.
Even if hackers don't abuse it, and Apple doesn't abuse it, will the courts refrain? Think of Oblivion (the RPG). The "hack" to get topless female characters caused its rating to be changed. I'd be annoyed to have bought it and then found it revoked after Apple decided they didn't sell Adults-Only games, for instance. Would Apple fold before a lawsuit from someone saying "Think of the children!"?
The disabling mechanism isn't going to sit idle, and it's your phone. What parts of it are you willing to let people disable?
Oh yeah, because a simplistic revocation mechanism is actually going to prevent malware. However, it is guaranteed to stop otherwise legitimate applications that Apple wants to censor.
Apple cares about who? Isn't the story that corporations care about nobody but corporations, etc?
Well, whatever. I just know that if we discover that they did have this revocation mechanism and its purpose was simply as petty as letting them revoke legit software, that you Mac supporters would be in here, explaining why it's a good thing.
Personally, I think the $12 flashlight app's purpose is in driving adoption of similar but open platforms. Obviously a $12 program that makes the screen go white is a rip-off, but that's more Apple's fault for not including easy scriptability than the app's author's fault for actually filling a need.
This adds to the cost of the iPhone, if I want it to do all the cool things.
This whole pay-for-source is why I dropped Palm. It always had a very payware mentality. People would charge for any little thing. A program to change the volume? $5. A checklist program? $15. Second Life, though totally unrelated to PDAs, suffers from the same thing IMHO. A payment engine exists so people sell the crappiest things, not giving anything away for fear of not making some pittance on it. It killed the participatory feeling in the culture. Contrast this with GPLed software, where people WANT to give you the source code.
As great as the iPhone could be, nothing can be truly great unless you can script it with Ruby. I'm happier with a Nokia n810 than an iPhone, especially since the iPhone requires a $1500 contract and the n810 allows me to make free calls over wifi.
Best of all, I can display my own gem on the screen, saving $1000 each time I do it. I'll BE rich!
You didn't get it. They don't want to dictate laws.
Oh, sure. He talks about how the community culture prevents photos, uses an example of police coming and arresting someone who didn't follow the norms, and you don't think that they're looking to dictate the law.
The respect for privacy in resident areas is something the Japanese usually respect without laws.
Really? Do you have any evidence for this? Anything outside of the letter?
This is the point where your bias (and that of others in this discussion) shows up: in your opinion if they are in the open air, they have to be aware that they can be photographed, filmed or just looked at. This is simply not the case in Japanese culture, where you can count on the mutual agreement, that even if somebody is able to take pictures of you and your home - he simply doesn't do it. This is THEIR reality.
It's not my opinion, it's called reality. When you're outside, you're liable to be photographed, possibly by people so far away you can't see them, perhaps even from space. You don't have to like this, but you need to realize that it can happen.
North Americans have a culture of shame around masturbation, but everyone does it. The Japanese have a culture of shame around looking too closely at your neighbors, but do you really think nobody looks?
And there is hardly anything stupid about it.
Yeah, except the whole inability to adjust to reality. The photos are being taken, already by the people who want to invade your privacy, and maybe also by innocent uses like Streetview that potentially could invade your privacy, but are also being run by people who do, on request, blur out indecent pictures they've happened to capture.
So instead of working with Google to publish these pictures and help everyone, they'd rather reward the secret abusers of the system by letting them have their pictures and prevent legal and non-abusive photography.
Hardly anything stupid at all.
The point is: it is only stupid because of your cultural bias.
Wrong. It's stupid because it is delusional. The author claims to speak for a whole people, but is unaware of logical contradictions in his own argument. His folksy description of urban life does nothing to bolster his call for the prevention of non-abusive photography as a way of actually achieving his stated goal, leaving you to the conclusion that he merely wants everyone to do things his way.
In other words, cultural distance from our lives, 0. He's an example of the people who want to ban everything. He's claiming a unique cultural POV which nobody else can understand - just like everyone does.
I'm arguing that society should value privacy in a similar way.
Society does value privacy. That's why there are laws against me using technological means to spy on your house from where you don't expect me - such as using telephoto lenses or listening gear. There are laws that prevent me recording you in places where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as anywhere you can't be seen by anyone walking down the street, etc.
You don't have the power to project this bubble of "Stop taking pictures and looking, I'm coming down the street!" everywhere you go. We use the phrase "in public" to indicate the times when you don't have an expectation of privacy. Note that if you traveled in a limo, for instance, the interior of the vehicle would count as a private location, so this is really quite flexible.
You're confusing privacy with secrecy. Privacy often depends on other people's voluntary restraint - that's why you hear about "respecting people's privacy".
No, I "respect" your privacy by not trying to break it. A thin curtain indicating your intention of being private is enough, even if I could see you through it by using an IR camera. But when you're in public you aren't being private, so I'm not breaking anything. But stop and deploy even a thin nylon tent and go in, indicating your desire not to see in, and I'll respect that. I won't go stick my eyes up to the vent and try to look in and a policeman would rightfully censure me for doing so if he caught me. But once you come back out of the tent you're back in public.
It's worse because more people are affected.
It's not worse because there's a photo of my house, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people feel this way. In fact, we put numbers on most of the buildings I've ever lived in to make them easier for people to find.
No, my privacy isn't lessened but yours is.
No, because I haven't ever been private while standing in the window of my house. Cameras make this more obvious, but do not change the fact. Streetview is a wake-up, that I should understand what areas truly are private and act accordingly.
there's no anonymity in numbers because the database is searchable.
Searchable by anyone who knows anything about you. To the other 5.999999 billion people you're just another one of the monkeys. Even if someone saw your photo randomly through a nudity-search they wouldn't be looking at YOU, just an anonymous monkey.
The people that do know your name or address and could find you on Streetview could already look it up at the library and come take a picture, hire a PI to do it, hire an artist to draw your house, or hire a notary to testify to what he saw, etc. They know where you live, a low-res street view of your house isn't going to help them at all.
How many people need a photo of my house?
I think I'd be negligent if I bought property in an area and hadn't looked at the neighborhood for a few blocks in each direction. Or rented property. Or went somewhere to a neighborhood I hadn't seen and didn't feel safe being lost in. Your house could be part of the anonymous backdrop of this.
Sure, with computer searches your info could be queried and hover over this photo, "John Doe, Age, Sexual Preference, Youtube videos..." but the same would be true of everyone.
Streetview won't reduce the number of other people taking pictures.
It sure would. I'd still take photos if I lived there, but for the other reasons I listed I'd be perfectly happy viewing the area on Streetview rather than trying to take good photos of the whole area.
I care if he follows me around photographing everything I do
Me too. But I think that should be covered under harassment/stalking laws, and perhaps a newsworthiness criteria for publication. (
Did you try a google search? "pre-paid legal review", etc. You shouldn't have trouble finding the negative comments.
As for my "claim", I think you need remedial reading comprehension class. I did not claim your actions were illegal, I said that some of the other people involved made the broad claim that someone in your position was likely to be committing some sort of crime by knowingly and fraudulently representing a MLM scam.
What part do you want proof of? That people bad-mouth PPL? That some claim PPL supporters are committing crimes by pushing a pyramid scheme? That some speech can be illegal?
As for your lack of interest, all I can say is that you must be a profoundly incurious person. I'm always looking for a way to test things, and one great way to test PPL would be to ask them of their flaws/legal gray areas. If they're honest they'll list a bunch of things, if they aren't honest they'll brush the question off.
If you called them up before getting into business hopefully they'd explain the relevant laws. Perhaps your business involves selling, so they should advise you of the limits of the claims you can legally make, etc. Even if your work is 100% legal, they should still advise you of the correct paperwork to remain that way.
Honestly, I'm curious. If they could answer that question fairly and are honest, then who cares about the MLM nature - just don't be a seller. But I don't want to sign up to check. If you'd be willing to use your month's time, or some of it, to approach them about this I'd love to hear what they say.
The use of the word natural often makes a distinction between human and not human. [...] are artificial and therefore bad.
But that's my point. The word is used that way, but doesn't actually mean that. The connotations implied let you figure out that the word the speakers are usually using is closer to immoral "... for not living properly".
There is no indication that human population will suffer a Malthusian catastrophe as a result of living above the constraints of hunter/gatherer food production.
Rather, there is EVERY indication that the human population would suffer Malthusian catastrophe, IF the food supply failed. There is no indication that this MUST happen.
However, as the parent poster said, the population isn't "supposed to be" this high. Nobody engineered this, we're all flying blind. We make our "supposed to"s, by growing enough food to prevent disaster, not by debating the cruelty of Malthusian logic.
As far as stereotypes, I reported a simple fact. [the emergency-button]
It's a fact? Which station? All stations? Define abused? Is there a camera pointed at the button?
Without more details your fact is a Friend-Of-A-Friend story about Japan. I've heard similar things attributed to Canada, such as people not locking doors, and upon examination it turns into a city size issue instead of the general nature of people from that country.
Is your fact factual, and does it say what you think it says?
I accepted based on what he said, his explanation, and what others have said that the attitude he expressed is more common in Japan.
Have you looked for any proof that people who aren't primed by this thread or his posting actually feel this way? Looked for photos of people's laundry hanging from their balcony? Looked for evidence of non-Japanese photographers reporting more resistance to street photography?
That search was an example (with the space). On the first few pages there are 5-10 pictures that show people or houses in a similar way to Streetview. Search for Tokyo neighborhoods and other similar searches for more proof.
However, whatever your cultural expectations, you must also cope with reality. Banning Google Streetview isn't going to keep the pictures from existing. It might make people better to win a fight for their beliefs, but the people who truly invade their privacy will continue to take secret pics and the really embarrassing ones will still end up on the web. It'd be a hollow victory. The only thing different will be the entire middle-ground of fair and non-exploitative use (Streetview, etc) that was shutdown as part of this futile war.
The real solution is to recognize that your new Japanese cameras are changing old Japanese neighborhoods. Perhaps you are more reluctant to walk past a window naked if you might be photographed, but perhaps that's a sign your neighborhood needs more curtains...
He isn't claiming it's illegal. That's the whole point. He's claiming that it's going against the culture of Japan.
I know. My point is that your being arrested here isn't an indication of its illegality, so I don't see why we should assume that a Japanese photographer would be arrested for anything other than a typical abuse of police power - not some cultural element.
If this really was the police reacting to rude people, they'd educate the people and let them go. That they are being arrested indicates either actual laws being broken, simple abuse of power, or perhaps most likely, mistaken assumptions on the part of the person complaining.
therefore his view on the situation is far more relevant than yours.
He claims to speak for a majority of Japanese, but a simple google search for photos by Japanese people, or themselves, their neighborhoods, and houses, provides evidence that he does not.
I claim to speak for nobody except the right-thinking people in the world. For what it's worth, I've checked with them both, they say they agree.
He claims to represent people and does not, I merely claim to be right, and am, about him not being representative of the Japanese people as a whole, and thus the issue not a cut and dried one of one culture vs another.
Or rather, everything we do is natural. If beaver dams are natural, so are farms and hydro-electric plants.
That said, there's no higher power which wants a high human population. We are under the same constraints as other animals - a lack of food will cause mass die-offs if sudden. There's no "supposed to" that says we should have six-billion people. This isn't a number we reached because it was a good idea, but the consequence of sex being so much fun. There's nothing except luck and effort keeping us here.
Thank you, that is the reason we don't censor his views - people like you wouldn't be able to shred their views as they deserve if they were hidden.
If we kicked him off the internet or otherwise censored him he'd only go fuel hatred in meatspace, if we start a culture of mocking racists he'll be out of business no matter where he goes.
If we purchased food locally it'd be better. We'd drive the price sky-high, and end up having to subsidize people who were now priced out of the market, but at least that money would go to setting up food imports. Eventually the price would go down, especially as local farmers started producing, which they could afford to do with foreign money paying them, and there'd be a economy buying other goods, providing other people (not farmers/food suppliers) with their own earnings and thus food.
Instead we ship in food, by government fiat not economic incentives, destroying any hope of the local farmer of being paid, and thus any effort on his part to feed more than his own family.
Worse, we do this by cooperating with the local thugs. We'd all be far better off if the UN assumed a mandate to provide food and medical attention to all innocent people, over the dead bodies of their oppressors if need be, and would simply take the supplies to the people. Instead we bribe the governments (dictatorships) to give their people some food, but in doing so supply the food (money) to the government that they use to remain in power.
Really, you couldn't do worse things for Africa than "we" already do if you tried.
There are two cakes, that's what's making it confusing.
The first cake is the right to full control of something you buy. Digital works aren't the issue here, the word "buy" is. A sale is a specific legal thing, if you want to retain rights to the thing, don't sell it, use one of the appropriate tools like a lease or rental.
The second cake is that digital works are different. You can't deny it. I can't simply duplicate a computer the way I can duplicate a video, or text file. Trying to use copyright law to legislate away the ability to duplicate information not only is futile, but ultimately will stifle our society.
The purpose of copyright law is to enrich society, both by making new works available, but also by increasing society's coffers via the creator. I'm all for helping society, and rewarding the people who help society, but I can see that our current copyright laws aren't helpful. Creators aren't getting money and people aren't getting useful works, upon which to base future works, etc. DRM is curtailing the usefulness of modern works. Walt Disney created so much wealth by being able to leverage his animation by animating classic stories, saving costs and presenting everyone's favorite works. That's good, but we need to consider the next Walt Disney who will come along and introduce something new based on the works of those who've preceded them. In trying to collect every golden egg we've killed off the "public domain" goose.
Maybe your assumption that 500k people wanted to buy the game was wrong.
If I have $100 a year for games, and buy two games, how would it change the situation if I also pirated a bunch of other games? No more money would be made, nor would any be lost.
But wait - it gets worse. When the law is not upheld honest people start to wonder why exactly they inconvenience themselves by following it.
And that's the problem with laws and rules. They're fundamentally inadequate to guide our every behavior, when they don't do any good people start to break them, and that undermines the whole system. We let the system of laws quash our rights to judge right and wrong for ourselves, and then complain when people find any loophole to abuse. If the only rule was "Do what you won't be ashamed to hear someone telling people that you did" we'd have a much more just society.
We can keep using the phrase "piracy" and pretend that everyone really would steal from content creators, or we can wake up and realize that a right to limit publication (in the interests of making the author more money) might not be the best system. Especially since copying information became literally millions of times easier since the law was created. Legislate away the tide if you must, but realize that you'll get more benefit from looking for new ways to fund creators than in more ways to detect/punish those who do not.
Slashdot Mirror
But the dev team recommended that people not switch if they didn't need to. That's a bit different than Microsoft doing everything it can to force people to switch.
I don't think cops should make up laws and enforce them, but yes, I think police have the same right to refuse illegal or unreasonable orders as anyone else.
If their judgment and morals match the community they will keep the job, if not they'll move on to other work, like anyone else.
This isn't to say that it'd be just to fake evidence protecting the pot smokers, just that it would be fine and moral for the officer to say to his boss that he wasn't going to participate in enforcing a law that he thought was harmful. The people need to know if it's hard to stomach enforcing our laws - maybe it's a sign they need to change.
Anything else is to suggest that the police are slaves, having no free will. They certainly can and should exercise their discretion, even if they end up being dismissed for doing so in a way we deem incorrect.
Shut your hole, retard. Your pathetic conflation with race is ruined because police officers are voluntary members of the group, as opposed to blacks who are grouped by skin color. A group of people in a single job, especially when they have a history of solidarity, can legitimately be discussed as a group.
Further, nobody said that every cop is guilty, but that the police *will* fuck with you. That much is a fact. It's obvious to anyone over the age of three that police corruption is out of control. While not every cop is dirty, the ones who will stand up to the corruption are one in a million.
We'd be fine with crimes committed by individual police, as long as they were pursued and punished like crimes committed by anyone else. The plain fact of the matter is that they are not. Until this is remedied, the police are the enemy because they have the power to destroy your life at a whim, and you have absolutely no recourse. Every officer might be nice, or might be a prick, and the system trusts them absolutely. That system, the police, absolutely can not be trusted because of ANY specific instances where the police collude to protect the guilty or punish the innocent.
That every honest police officer doesn't immediately turn on the crooks and thugs they work with just goes to show how honest they really aren't. If police could be trusted, the whole system would work to champion, above anything else, abuse of that very system by those entrusted with running it.
Serpico was potentially the only worthwhile person to wear blue. Almost every other cop would cover up a crime or frame a civilian to save another officer. The proof is that they aren't providing evidence for the crimes we know are going on. When officers come forward to put everyone who testified on that site I linked to out of work, if not behind bars, I'll re-evaluate them.
Perhaps that if what you're saying doesn't offend anyone, you're not saying anything very controversial and thus perhaps not of much weight.
The good police have an obligation to remove the bad police, or they become bad police themselves.
Now ask yourselves, how many officers would 1) refrain from giving a fellow officer a deserved ticket for speeding, 2) lie about another officer doing this to save them from punishment.
On the CopsWritingCops.com forum there were one or two officers who didn't engage in giving a TOTAL blanket pass to all police officers in ALL circumstances. Every other cop there thought it was absolute treason to your fellows to cite them on any crime, especially traffic related. The whole site was geared around pointing out honest cops for abuse until they'd turn dishonest.
These days they'd find Serpico before he turned them in and kill him.
Honest cops should look at the CWC forum as an affront to them. These crooked cops are ruining their respect. In there were honest cops they'd rat this organization out and we'd have every one of these thugs behind bars on a corruption charge. Until they do, I assuming there aren't many honest cops.
And there are many other forums out there that verify members to make sure they're officers. Imagine the shit on those forums.
but I don't stand outside the window watching people either.
But you do stand outside (sometimes) and look at houses. The reason you don't see naked people when doing this is that most of them draw that privacy screen when they're naked, not when they think a camera might be coming, and thus are invisible from the street.
we agree that the boundaries of privacy are set by a combination of the viewee indicating a desire for privacy and the viewer respecting that desire.
Right.
And this case is about photographers having to assume, groundlessly in 99.3% of cases, that they shouldn't take pictures of houses because the people in them may not know to close a curtain.
If a thin curtain is enough, why isn't the fact that I'm inside my house enough?
Because you've gone and built those darned transparent panels into the house, thus making the inner bit NOT PRIVATE until you close the curtains.
Think how rude you're being. Seriously. With the implication that it's your right to demand that your house, built right smack on a public street, not be photographed or even looked at too closely, because you don't feel like closing a curtain, and yet feel compelled to walk around nude but do not wish to be seen.
How about my right to demand that anything visible from a public street be publicly visible? To demand that if you're doing something that I can't let my kid photograph, that you at least draw a courtesy screen in front of it?
No they don't (just), stop perpetuating THAT lie.
Their religious people are as crazy as ours. Our crazies (Cat-licks, etc) want everyone in the world to join their religion. That's why our (Western) past has so many religious wars - as everyone fought for and achieved some piece (even if only an armed stand-off) between the sky-fairy factions. When one of these groups arms itself, it has generally gone to war in the name of establishing its religious dominion. Ditto Mohamadanians.
Militant muslims *are* trying to convert everyone in the world - or kill them trying. Like many other religions have been trying since their inception.
Once you believe in a magical man in space who brings us all back to life (the good ones anyways) it's not a big stretch to believe he needs the souls of the unbelievers. And that it's not a (real) crime to do it.
If nobody was religious and I produced a Koran, or Bible, and professed to believe in it more than life itself, I would be called crazy. But with this nonsense floating around everywhere nobody sees it for what it is: A batshit insane persons manifesto for controlling the world through violence and brainwashing.
Osama BL's a self-declared devout follower of this "cleanse the unbeliever nonsense". His stated goal might be the USA out of SA, and that may even honestly be the biggest thing on his radar, but that doesn't mean that his religion hasn't taught him (and 50% of the co-religious populations who support him) to use violence to keep going that extra step and just deal with us unbelievers once and for all.
Admit it, if OBL won a military victory over anyone, they'd be under space-ghost law the next day, having heads lopped off for talking to women. Taliban style. (Which is Chinese style, with more sex-crime craziness and no organ harvesting.)
The fact that a religious murderer desires a certain political outcome does not imply that his violence will stop if he gets it. In fact, winning has a way of encouraging people. Today it's the USA out of SA, tomorrow what, Jews out of the world?
However, there was a picture of the button and it was clearly marked and well within the reach of anyone who might care to push it. It stands to reason it would have been moved if abuse was at all a problem. Certainly, such a placement in the U.S. is simply not even attempted.
Where else would you place the emergency-call button? On the ceiling?
Here we have emergency call buttons, silent and not, every little distance along buses and LRT, as well as in the stations. All buttons are VERY obviously marked, and easily pressed by everyone.
Nobody tampers with them. Why? Cameras I'd assume.
I see broken payphones (handset ripped off) sometimes, but very rarely in a transit station. Presumably that cameras and cops thing again.
I'm just saying that your anecdote suggests a reason but doesn't provide any evidence. There are many possibilities, politeness being only one, others being cameras, deliberate loose standards to write a "Japanese are so polite (we should be too)" email (blown out of proportion to prove a pre-existing notion), etc.
As for the rest, I'm not talking about bans or any such thing, just simple politeness. The existence of rude people does not excuse further rudeness on a massive scale.
What is as rude as someone who picks a trivial and reasonable thing and demands that nobody do it in their presence? I know a lady who loudly (until you stop) demands that nobody discuss spiders in her presence, even if she joined a group already discussing them.
Sure, we could "respect" her and stop, or we could continue doing perfectly reasonable things and she could learn to help herself.
The only thing we have to even suggest that photography is rude is 1) the claim it steals souls and 2) people who are cranky and for no good reasons want everyone else to hate the thing they hate.
Assuredly there is NOBODY except these groups insisting that people stop photography. Nobody with a valid point would make those demands because a valid point would be, by definition, one that was about a valid injury - even if only a social one. By identifying an injury it could be addressed properly, not with a band-aid. (Such as banning photography to prevent terrorism, as we see cops in the USA doing.)
Anyone who thought publishing bad pictures was rude would simply say that. They'd realize that cameras take both kinds of photos and wouldn't want to ban photography. They'd preach publisher's discretion.
Anyone who didn't want their privates seen by others (genitals, or collectibles) would already understand not to let other people see them. A camera is just an extension of that. They'd only object to hidden cameras and other tricks.
Anyone with security concerns wouldn't stop the taking of photos (what better way to identify a target?) they'd try to cover up the sensitive area so that you couldn't see the flaw, let alone photograph it. They wouldn't be happy to see a photographer, but only because they knew they still weren't inconspicuous.
Anyone who actually had a problem would be bringing the problem forth, not the solution. This guy has already decided that Streetview (and photography in general) must stop. He'll now invent every reason under the sun, including the mythical Japanese sensitivity to photographs, to prove the justness of his cause. I've also heard it claimed in similar circumstances that the Australian people's history of lots of personal space makes them more violated by photos than a sardine-can person from other countries. Black, and white, presented as proof of the same thing.
As for the pictures on you speak of, to turn the tables, can you document in any way that they were taken on the fly without any sort of permission? That the people in them and the owners of the homes do not consider it incredibly rude?
That no permission was given can only be implied by the number of photos, the number of people, businesses, and homes in those photos
Now we just need the ability to search our lawmaker's houses. Once they're all safely in jail we'll revamp the system.
There's a big difference between asking the user before allowing any app to use the GPS and a blacklist preventing ones Apple deems to be unsafe, regardless of your ruling.
The fact that you do not understand this seriously calls into question the sanity of those who modded you informative.
Classic rebuttal. Too bad it misses the point.
You can pay me to write a patch for Slashdot or another open source project but you couldn't pay to have a patch written for a closed-source project. Not everyone codes, but everyone uses money.
Have you ever played Hearts the card game? Do you know what happens when one person controls the point cards for the entire round? Everyone else loses. Often the only way to prevent this is to lose a trick intentionally, taking unwanted points but breaking their control. It costs you points, and everyone else is glad they didn't have to make the sacrifice, but it saves you in the long run.
It's a reasonable analogy for markets and monopolies. It might be more trouble to get a Linux-friendly PC, or a more open music player, but if everyone just bought the apparent winner we'd be stuck with the first passable product, locked into a world of buying software for our phones for instance.
Besides, what's the chance that a revocation list or something won't be used to bar legitimate use of products like iPhones in the near future? Software is fragile enough already, I dislike the idea of companies building in more backdoors.
Even if hackers don't abuse it, and Apple doesn't abuse it, will the courts refrain? Think of Oblivion (the RPG). The "hack" to get topless female characters caused its rating to be changed. I'd be annoyed to have bought it and then found it revoked after Apple decided they didn't sell Adults-Only games, for instance. Would Apple fold before a lawsuit from someone saying "Think of the children!"?
The disabling mechanism isn't going to sit idle, and it's your phone. What parts of it are you willing to let people disable?
Oh yeah, because a simplistic revocation mechanism is actually going to prevent malware. However, it is guaranteed to stop otherwise legitimate applications that Apple wants to censor.
Apple cares about who? Isn't the story that corporations care about nobody but corporations, etc?
Well, whatever. I just know that if we discover that they did have this revocation mechanism and its purpose was simply as petty as letting them revoke legit software, that you Mac supporters would be in here, explaining why it's a good thing.
Personally, I think the $12 flashlight app's purpose is in driving adoption of similar but open platforms. Obviously a $12 program that makes the screen go white is a rip-off, but that's more Apple's fault for not including easy scriptability than the app's author's fault for actually filling a need.
This adds to the cost of the iPhone, if I want it to do all the cool things.
This whole pay-for-source is why I dropped Palm. It always had a very payware mentality. People would charge for any little thing. A program to change the volume? $5. A checklist program? $15. Second Life, though totally unrelated to PDAs, suffers from the same thing IMHO. A payment engine exists so people sell the crappiest things, not giving anything away for fear of not making some pittance on it. It killed the participatory feeling in the culture. Contrast this with GPLed software, where people WANT to give you the source code.
As great as the iPhone could be, nothing can be truly great unless you can script it with Ruby. I'm happier with a Nokia n810 than an iPhone, especially since the iPhone requires a $1500 contract and the n810 allows me to make free calls over wifi.
Best of all, I can display my own gem on the screen, saving $1000 each time I do it. I'll BE rich!
You didn't get it. They don't want to dictate laws.
Oh, sure. He talks about how the community culture prevents photos, uses an example of police coming and arresting someone who didn't follow the norms, and you don't think that they're looking to dictate the law.
The respect for privacy in resident areas is something the Japanese usually respect without laws.
Really? Do you have any evidence for this? Anything outside of the letter?
This is the point where your bias (and that of others in this discussion) shows up: in your opinion if they are in the open air, they have to be aware that they can be photographed, filmed or just looked at. This is simply not the case in Japanese culture, where you can count on the mutual agreement, that even if somebody is able to take pictures of you and your home - he simply doesn't do it. This is THEIR reality.
It's not my opinion, it's called reality. When you're outside, you're liable to be photographed, possibly by people so far away you can't see them, perhaps even from space. You don't have to like this, but you need to realize that it can happen.
North Americans have a culture of shame around masturbation, but everyone does it. The Japanese have a culture of shame around looking too closely at your neighbors, but do you really think nobody looks?
And there is hardly anything stupid about it.
Yeah, except the whole inability to adjust to reality. The photos are being taken, already by the people who want to invade your privacy, and maybe also by innocent uses like Streetview that potentially could invade your privacy, but are also being run by people who do, on request, blur out indecent pictures they've happened to capture.
So instead of working with Google to publish these pictures and help everyone, they'd rather reward the secret abusers of the system by letting them have their pictures and prevent legal and non-abusive photography.
Hardly anything stupid at all.
The point is: it is only stupid because of your cultural bias.
Wrong. It's stupid because it is delusional. The author claims to speak for a whole people, but is unaware of logical contradictions in his own argument. His folksy description of urban life does nothing to bolster his call for the prevention of non-abusive photography as a way of actually achieving his stated goal, leaving you to the conclusion that he merely wants everyone to do things his way.
In other words, cultural distance from our lives, 0. He's an example of the people who want to ban everything. He's claiming a unique cultural POV which nobody else can understand - just like everyone does.
I'm arguing that society should value privacy in a similar way.
Society does value privacy. That's why there are laws against me using technological means to spy on your house from where you don't expect me - such as using telephoto lenses or listening gear. There are laws that prevent me recording you in places where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as anywhere you can't be seen by anyone walking down the street, etc.
You don't have the power to project this bubble of "Stop taking pictures and looking, I'm coming down the street!" everywhere you go. We use the phrase "in public" to indicate the times when you don't have an expectation of privacy. Note that if you traveled in a limo, for instance, the interior of the vehicle would count as a private location, so this is really quite flexible.
You're confusing privacy with secrecy. Privacy often depends on other people's voluntary restraint - that's why you hear about "respecting people's privacy".
No, I "respect" your privacy by not trying to break it. A thin curtain indicating your intention of being private is enough, even if I could see you through it by using an IR camera. But when you're in public you aren't being private, so I'm not breaking anything. But stop and deploy even a thin nylon tent and go in, indicating your desire not to see in, and I'll respect that. I won't go stick my eyes up to the vent and try to look in and a policeman would rightfully censure me for doing so if he caught me. But once you come back out of the tent you're back in public.
It's worse because more people are affected.
It's not worse because there's a photo of my house, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people feel this way. In fact, we put numbers on most of the buildings I've ever lived in to make them easier for people to find.
No, my privacy isn't lessened but yours is.
No, because I haven't ever been private while standing in the window of my house. Cameras make this more obvious, but do not change the fact. Streetview is a wake-up, that I should understand what areas truly are private and act accordingly.
there's no anonymity in numbers because the database is searchable.
Searchable by anyone who knows anything about you. To the other 5.999999 billion people you're just another one of the monkeys. Even if someone saw your photo randomly through a nudity-search they wouldn't be looking at YOU, just an anonymous monkey.
The people that do know your name or address and could find you on Streetview could already look it up at the library and come take a picture, hire a PI to do it, hire an artist to draw your house, or hire a notary to testify to what he saw, etc. They know where you live, a low-res street view of your house isn't going to help them at all.
How many people need a photo of my house?
I think I'd be negligent if I bought property in an area and hadn't looked at the neighborhood for a few blocks in each direction. Or rented property. Or went somewhere to a neighborhood I hadn't seen and didn't feel safe being lost in. Your house could be part of the anonymous backdrop of this.
Sure, with computer searches your info could be queried and hover over this photo, "John Doe, Age, Sexual Preference, Youtube videos ..." but the same would be true of everyone.
Streetview won't reduce the number of other people taking pictures.
It sure would. I'd still take photos if I lived there, but for the other reasons I listed I'd be perfectly happy viewing the area on Streetview rather than trying to take good photos of the whole area.
I care if he follows me around photographing everything I do
Me too. But I think that should be covered under harassment/stalking laws, and perhaps a newsworthiness criteria for publication. (
Did you try a google search? "pre-paid legal review", etc. You shouldn't have trouble finding the negative comments.
As for my "claim", I think you need remedial reading comprehension class. I did not claim your actions were illegal, I said that some of the other people involved made the broad claim that someone in your position was likely to be committing some sort of crime by knowingly and fraudulently representing a MLM scam.
What part do you want proof of? That people bad-mouth PPL? That some claim PPL supporters are committing crimes by pushing a pyramid scheme? That some speech can be illegal?
As for your lack of interest, all I can say is that you must be a profoundly incurious person. I'm always looking for a way to test things, and one great way to test PPL would be to ask them of their flaws/legal gray areas. If they're honest they'll list a bunch of things, if they aren't honest they'll brush the question off.
If you called them up before getting into business hopefully they'd explain the relevant laws. Perhaps your business involves selling, so they should advise you of the limits of the claims you can legally make, etc. Even if your work is 100% legal, they should still advise you of the correct paperwork to remain that way.
Honestly, I'm curious. If they could answer that question fairly and are honest, then who cares about the MLM nature - just don't be a seller. But I don't want to sign up to check. If you'd be willing to use your month's time, or some of it, to approach them about this I'd love to hear what they say.
The use of the word natural often makes a distinction between human and not human. [...] are artificial and therefore bad.
But that's my point. The word is used that way, but doesn't actually mean that. The connotations implied let you figure out that the word the speakers are usually using is closer to immoral "... for not living properly".
There is no indication that human population will suffer a Malthusian catastrophe as a result of living above the constraints of hunter/gatherer food production.
Rather, there is EVERY indication that the human population would suffer Malthusian catastrophe, IF the food supply failed. There is no indication that this MUST happen.
However, as the parent poster said, the population isn't "supposed to be" this high. Nobody engineered this, we're all flying blind. We make our "supposed to"s, by growing enough food to prevent disaster, not by debating the cruelty of Malthusian logic.
As far as stereotypes, I reported a simple fact. [the emergency-button]
It's a fact? Which station? All stations? Define abused? Is there a camera pointed at the button?
Without more details your fact is a Friend-Of-A-Friend story about Japan. I've heard similar things attributed to Canada, such as people not locking doors, and upon examination it turns into a city size issue instead of the general nature of people from that country.
Is your fact factual, and does it say what you think it says?
I accepted based on what he said, his explanation, and what others have said that the attitude he expressed is more common in Japan.
Have you looked for any proof that people who aren't primed by this thread or his posting actually feel this way? Looked for photos of people's laundry hanging from their balcony? Looked for evidence of non-Japanese photographers reporting more resistance to street photography?
That search was an example (with the space). On the first few pages there are 5-10 pictures that show people or houses in a similar way to Streetview. Search for Tokyo neighborhoods and other similar searches for more proof.
However, whatever your cultural expectations, you must also cope with reality. Banning Google Streetview isn't going to keep the pictures from existing. It might make people better to win a fight for their beliefs, but the people who truly invade their privacy will continue to take secret pics and the really embarrassing ones will still end up on the web. It'd be a hollow victory. The only thing different will be the entire middle-ground of fair and non-exploitative use (Streetview, etc) that was shutdown as part of this futile war.
The real solution is to recognize that your new Japanese cameras are changing old Japanese neighborhoods. Perhaps you are more reluctant to walk past a window naked if you might be photographed, but perhaps that's a sign your neighborhood needs more curtains...
He isn't claiming it's illegal. That's the whole point. He's claiming that it's going against the culture of Japan.
I know. My point is that your being arrested here isn't an indication of its illegality, so I don't see why we should assume that a Japanese photographer would be arrested for anything other than a typical abuse of police power - not some cultural element.
If this really was the police reacting to rude people, they'd educate the people and let them go. That they are being arrested indicates either actual laws being broken, simple abuse of power, or perhaps most likely, mistaken assumptions on the part of the person complaining.
therefore his view on the situation is far more relevant than yours.
He claims to speak for a majority of Japanese, but a simple google search for photos by Japanese people, or themselves, their neighborhoods, and houses, provides evidence that he does not.
I claim to speak for nobody except the right-thinking people in the world. For what it's worth, I've checked with them both, they say they agree.
He claims to represent people and does not, I merely claim to be right, and am, about him not being representative of the Japanese people as a whole, and thus the issue not a cut and dried one of one culture vs another.
Or rather, everything we do is natural. If beaver dams are natural, so are farms and hydro-electric plants.
That said, there's no higher power which wants a high human population. We are under the same constraints as other animals - a lack of food will cause mass die-offs if sudden. There's no "supposed to" that says we should have six-billion people. This isn't a number we reached because it was a good idea, but the consequence of sex being so much fun. There's nothing except luck and effort keeping us here.
Thank you, that is the reason we don't censor his views - people like you wouldn't be able to shred their views as they deserve if they were hidden.
If we kicked him off the internet or otherwise censored him he'd only go fuel hatred in meatspace, if we start a culture of mocking racists he'll be out of business no matter where he goes.
If we purchased food locally it'd be better. We'd drive the price sky-high, and end up having to subsidize people who were now priced out of the market, but at least that money would go to setting up food imports. Eventually the price would go down, especially as local farmers started producing, which they could afford to do with foreign money paying them, and there'd be a economy buying other goods, providing other people (not farmers/food suppliers) with their own earnings and thus food.
Instead we ship in food, by government fiat not economic incentives, destroying any hope of the local farmer of being paid, and thus any effort on his part to feed more than his own family.
Worse, we do this by cooperating with the local thugs. We'd all be far better off if the UN assumed a mandate to provide food and medical attention to all innocent people, over the dead bodies of their oppressors if need be, and would simply take the supplies to the people. Instead we bribe the governments (dictatorships) to give their people some food, but in doing so supply the food (money) to the government that they use to remain in power.
Really, you couldn't do worse things for Africa than "we" already do if you tried.
There are two cakes, that's what's making it confusing.
The first cake is the right to full control of something you buy. Digital works aren't the issue here, the word "buy" is. A sale is a specific legal thing, if you want to retain rights to the thing, don't sell it, use one of the appropriate tools like a lease or rental.
The second cake is that digital works are different. You can't deny it. I can't simply duplicate a computer the way I can duplicate a video, or text file. Trying to use copyright law to legislate away the ability to duplicate information not only is futile, but ultimately will stifle our society.
The purpose of copyright law is to enrich society, both by making new works available, but also by increasing society's coffers via the creator. I'm all for helping society, and rewarding the people who help society, but I can see that our current copyright laws aren't helpful. Creators aren't getting money and people aren't getting useful works, upon which to base future works, etc. DRM is curtailing the usefulness of modern works. Walt Disney created so much wealth by being able to leverage his animation by animating classic stories, saving costs and presenting everyone's favorite works. That's good, but we need to consider the next Walt Disney who will come along and introduce something new based on the works of those who've preceded them. In trying to collect every golden egg we've killed off the "public domain" goose.
Maybe your assumption that 500k people wanted to buy the game was wrong.
If I have $100 a year for games, and buy two games, how would it change the situation if I also pirated a bunch of other games? No more money would be made, nor would any be lost.
But wait - it gets worse. When the law is not upheld honest people start to wonder why exactly they inconvenience themselves by following it.
And that's the problem with laws and rules. They're fundamentally inadequate to guide our every behavior, when they don't do any good people start to break them, and that undermines the whole system. We let the system of laws quash our rights to judge right and wrong for ourselves, and then complain when people find any loophole to abuse. If the only rule was "Do what you won't be ashamed to hear someone telling people that you did" we'd have a much more just society.
We can keep using the phrase "piracy" and pretend that everyone really would steal from content creators, or we can wake up and realize that a right to limit publication (in the interests of making the author more money) might not be the best system. Especially since copying information became literally millions of times easier since the law was created. Legislate away the tide if you must, but realize that you'll get more benefit from looking for new ways to fund creators than in more ways to detect/punish those who do not.