Junk fax laws are valid because the technological solution is too complex. Not that it helped me any -- I get several junk faxes per day, and the "removal" numbers are usually bogus.
The technological solution to stop spam is also too complex. The fact that major ISPs and corporations that invest untold sums are unable to stop spam makes that clear. Besides, I want people to stop stealing bandwidth, storage, and time now, not in five or ten years.
This is a perfect example of the problems with your laws. Spam is just one of numerous possible types of "bad" e-mail. Under your scheme, you would have to pass a law for each one.
I don't feel that it is difficult at all. Make it illegal to use an automated means to compose and send e-mail to anyone without their explicit permission. Basically, if you didn't type the message by hand, you better have permission to send it.
You don't have to address the purpose, content, or anything else that characterizes the nature of the communication.
The correct solution is the transitive trust model, where recipients can decide for themselves what they want to receive.
I disagree. I don't know what e-mail I want to receive now or in the future. Am I supposed to know that bob@anyisp.net is going to e-mail me to ask if I still have that telescope for sale? Am I expected to predict that tom@anotherisp.com is going to e-mail me with a question about my web page?
All that digital signatures tell me is who sent the message, not whether I want to receive it. I don't know if candy@somecompany.com is a spammer or someone who wants to know about the drive bracket I designed for the i-opener (though with that address, I have a suspicion).
I choose software. Software is the future of everything.
I've been in software development since the late 1970's and professionally for over 20 years. Software complexity has given us programs that are an order of magnitude less stable and secure than what we took for granted 20 years ago. Trying to build AI into e-mail clients and servers (so that they can intuit what mail you wish to receive) sounds like a way to make a simple, reliable application much less so.
That said, I think that digital signing, encrypted e-mail, and identification and authentication of clients and servers is the way that e-mail should go. Now if we can only keep Microsoft and AOL from trying to turn e-mail into an interactive, multimedia experience, we'll do okay.
But you have to agree not to use long sequences of rhetorical questions
They were not rhetorical and I welcome your answers. In fact, I'd still like to know whether you think that the junk fax laws should be repealed and why.
Telephone suffers from specific technical problems that make it difficult to screen without humans continuously expending effort.
Same with e-mail. Most people could not install and configure something like spamassasin. There are millions of users who barely grasp how to operate their e-mail client or the Hotmail web site. They have to retrieve their mail -- sometimes incurring air-time or long distance charges -- and then look at it to decide whether it's spam or not.
Even if you have caller-ID and can recognize the name, you still have to get up and look at the box.
Why not have a modem with caller-ID and a computer set up to screen calls based on caller ID info, time of day, etc.? You seem to believe that normal citizens should invest tens, if not hundreds, of hours each learning about, installing, configuring, and maintaining spam-filtering software (which won't even work for people using web-based e-mail). This hardly seems different.
Existing systems like spamassassin [taint.org] (which filters over 20 spams a day for me) are proof alone.
They are proof alone that you do not understand the problem. You may not have seen the spams, but they weren't delivered for free by Internet Faeries. The bandwidth, server, and storage costs were passed on to you by your ISP. I love boldface to make a point.;-)
What about when the "product" or "service" is completely free? Spam that attracts visitors to banner-supported web sites, or politically motivated spam?
The cost of the product or service is irrelevent. When they send you unsolicited bulk e-mail, it's theft.
As to politically motivated spam, I had an interesting exchange with former Clinton Press Secretary Mike McCurry (who favors exceptions in spam laws for political speech). Do you have any idea how many people run for offices? Every presidential election brings nut-cases out of the woodwork. There are thousands of marginal candidates that run for offices all over the country. Does each one have a right to spam you?
Yes, assuming your particular country has a constitution, ANY problem can be constitutionally regulated.
I think you misunderstood my meaning. I meant that, without running afoul of the existing U.S. Constitution, deceptive commercial spam can be regulated (per the Central Hudson test.)
Mail servers should automatically reject messages from unvalidated senders.
Well, that's not how e-mail works and it's not going to be changed any time soon -- no matter what hindsight has taught us. We have standards for e-mail in use by millions of users and computers all over the world. It is an unacceptable burden to require all Internet participants to acquire, install, and configure new e-mail sofware just so we don't pass laws to limit spam.
Please, think carefully before invoking Big Brother to solve your problems!
Using the term "Big Brother" (from Orwell's 1984) is simply inflammatory. From now on, please use "the government" when referring to the government.
Sending e-mail should not be a crime!
So where does all of this end? If they can steal my bandwidth, time, and storage with spam, what's next? Should we repeal the junk fax law so that they can steal my expensive thermal paper, too? Should we take restrictions off of telemarketers so that they can call me collect and mis-identify themselves? Why not just let businesses advertise by throwing a brick through my window with a flyer attached ("Window broken? Call A&A Glass for a free repair estimate..."). While we are at it, maybe the USPS should deliver anonymous-sender advertising at no cost and just force me to pay the postage on delivery -- since that's analogous to what happens with spam.
Commercial speech does not (and should not) enjoy the same level of protection as non-commercial speech. In Central Hudson Gas & Electric v Public Service Commission the Supreme Court announced a test for evaluating commercial speech regulations that would be used in many subsequent cases. The Central Hudson test recognizes the constitutionality of regulations restricting advertising that concerns an illegal product or service, or which is deceptive. For all other restrictions on commercial speech, the Court's test requires that the government show that the regulation directly advances an important interest and is no more restrictive of speech than necessary.
Preventing the theft of millions of dollars from U.S. citizens and businesses represents an important interest and making e-mail advertisers use opt-in, correctly identify themselves, and provide automated systems for address removal is no more restrictive than necessary. When a sender falsifies e-mail header information and provides a forged from:/reply-to: address, that's deceptive and passes the aforementioned Central Hudson test as speech which can be constitutionally regulated.
I avoid nVidia products on Linux because they lock up their driver core in a proprietary binary.
You are seeing a classic conflict between open source and commercial products. If nVidia were to open-source their driver code, they would immediately expose any and all of their strengths and weaknesses.
Their competition could use that information to tune benchmarks to make them unfavorable to nVidia (by relying heavily on areas of weakness in the nVidia code.) The competition could also use performance techniques nVidia driver engineers have worked long hours to create.
I would rather have a high-quality closed source driver than no driver or a low-quality open source driver that is missing all of the company's proprietary performance techniques.
Besides which, if you're only using audio cues to figure out where people are on the slopes you're a jackass anyway...that'd be like only looking straight forward in your car or walking on the road, and only being able to avoid accidents when people start honking like mad.
Skiers rely on being able to say "on your left" or "on your right" when they come up behind someone who is going slower. They say it, you cut in front of them, and the crash ensues. You can't turn your head 180 degrees, so don't give me that "I don't need to hear anything" bullshit. In your car, you have rear view mirrors. You don't have them on snowboards or skis.
Great idea. Put on a $1000 jacket with an expensive MiniDisc player into the pocket, put on your headphones, and then go snowboarding.
I can just see it now. You don't hear the skier/boarder behind you and you cut him off. You both wipe out hard. You're lying in the snow with headphones 15 feet behind you (entangled with your goggles) -- the cable still around your neck, the MiniDisc player crunched, and your $1000 jacket's keypad mysteriously non-functional.
Do us all a favor and don't get the radiation shielded pants. We don't need you breeding.
Re:may god forgive him for what he has unleashed
on
The First Smiley :-)
·
· Score: 2
How are we supposed to put smileys into parenthesis (like:))?:))? looks like some guy with a double chin and a huge sperm swimming around on his chest.
I should write a guide to spotting a troll. Hitler / Nazi references, anyone?
Just cut the name-calling and address the question at hand. Nazi references are used because they are extreme and make a point.
When a government wants something, they'll find a supplier. If no suppliers exist, non-democratic governments will force someone to build what they are looking for.
I can see it now: Slave labor camps of thousands of workers being forced to make thousands of Cisco router clones. Programmers slaving away without sodas or coffee, copy the Cisco features while adding functionality to allow the filtering and spying features. The horror! The absurdity.
So let's take this back to my original point:
I believe that your line of reasoning drove the businesses that built the Nazi death camps: "If we don't sell them gas chambers, some other business will..."
Is that your point or not? Are you saying that the companies that designed and built the gas chambers in the Nazi death camps did nothing wrong because "when a government wants something, they'll find a supplier."
People like you in the U.S. government are partly responsible for a meddling foreign policy that has brought terrorists to our very doorstep. If the U.S. would mind its own business once in awhile (like Canada), we would have far less problems.
Yes. Let's ignore human rights violations, mass murders, Saddam gassing entire villages to death, China jailing people for expressing their beliefs, Palestinian suicide bombers killing women and children in marketplaces, etc. You're the type of person who hears someone screaming for help and then looks the other way. Criminals love your kind.
You've got a lot of nerve calling me a troll and then claiming that 'we asked for it' in regards to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001.
Corporations, OTOH, are not here to act as an ethical mouthpiece. They are here to employ citizens, make money, and follow the government's rules.
Your arguments are just a thinly veiled excuse for why corporations should feel free to do anything they like to make a buck. Don't think about what you are doing. If it's not explicitly illegal, just do it.
Ethics is (surprise) subjective.
Ethics is not nearly so subjective as you claim. If it was, colleges could not teach courses in "business ethics." The courses would all be over in one day with the summary "do whatever you can to make money because ethics is subjective."
I don't need my government to tell me that it is morally wrong to help foreign governments track down, arrest, and kill people for expressing their beliefs. I have a moral compass. I know right from wrong. So do the people running Cisco and Yahoo!. They simply choose to let their corporate greed outweigh their sense of decency.
If the Krupp offices in the US started going out and executing Jews in America during 1939 they couldn't just say "Hey, we do this in Germany all the time!"
By your "logic", Krupp in Germany did nothing wrong when they used Jews as slave labor, starving them and working them to exhaustion, and finally sending them off to be killed in the gas chambers when they could work no longer. After all, this was legal and "ethics is (surprise) subjective." Krupp certainly followed your definition of what a business should do: "They are here to employ citizens, make money, and follow the government's rules."
What's it like going through life with no sense of right or wrong?
Nazi Germany had a need and the companies that built the gas chambers filled it. I suppose you view that as another example of capitalism at its finest.
If it was against US law for a company to support a goverment trying to take away rights of their people, thats a different story altogether!
There was a time when most U.S. companies had the moral fortitude to not only obey the letter of the law, but also to behave ethically.
This is probably going to sound like crazy talk to you, but there are more important things than making money. You might be able to make a fortune selling child-sized hancuffs to NAMBLA (The North American Man/Boy Love Association) members, but it would still be wrong -- even if it was legal. You might find Al Qaeda to be a willing buyer for fertilizer and diesel fuel, but that does not mean that you should sell it to them. You should be guided by higher principles than simply acquiring more money.
If you had supplied sandwiches to the vending companies that filled Enron's stomachs, should you too be arrested?
To use an example by another poster, this is much more like someone coming into a gun store and asking for a gun and ammo to be used to assasinate the President -- and the gun store supplying the items. Cisco was not some innocent party. They knew full well that their customer wanted the equipment to help them suppress, hunt-down, jail, and maybe even execute pro-democracy advocates.
unless you are trying to build some sort of fascist thought state.
That's exactly what the Chinese government is doing -- with the help of Cisco, Yahoo!, and other U.S. firms.
Cisco knows that if they didn't supply the hardware, someone else would. On a bigger scale, if no American company would supply the hardware, some business in another country would.
That kind of rationalization makes me sick. What happened to the concept of ethics? The fact that some bottom-feeder is willing to sell arms to Al Qaeda does not mean that Colt, Ruger, and Smith & Wesson should send sales reps over there to try to win the business.
I believe that your line of reasoning drove the businesses that built the Nazi death camps: "If we don't sell them gas chambers, some other business will..."
Something can be legal and unethical all at the same time.
Maybe it would be better if I responded to this troll with an analogy that Slashdot liberals can understand.
Troll? Slashdot liberals? The article I cited and quoted was from The Weekly Standard, which is a magazine aimed squarely at a VERY conservative audience. You don't read much, do you?
If you could find someone willing to fuck you, you would be a "fucking, clueless moron." Unless you've found a woman of incredibly low standards, you're only batting two out of three.
China's not the problem, here, not Cisco.
Bullshit. It's assholes like you that are the problem. Anything for a buck. If Al Qaeda wants to buy guns, ammo, and the components to make chemical and biological weapons, some greedy dick like you will sell the items to them and then disclaim all responsibility. If you thought that there was a market among pedophiles for crotchless panties in children's sizes, you'd be selling them. In fact, you probably just read that and thought it sounded like a great business plan.
Some of us have ethics. Don't get pissed off at us just because we have something you don't.
This article is a sickening insight into how corporate greed in the U.S. made it possible for China to filter the network and even catch and arrest dissidents.
To force compliance with government objectives--to ensure that all pipes lead back to Rome--they needed the networking superpower, Cisco, to standardize the Chinese Internet and equip it with firewalls on a national scale. According to the Chinese engineer, Cisco came through, developing a router device, integrator, and firewall box specially designed for the government's telecom monopoly. At approximately $20,000 a box, China Telecom "bought many thousands" and IBM arranged for the "high-end" financing. Michael confirms: "Cisco made a killing. They are everywhere."
And Cisco is not the only U.S. company in Beijing's pocket. Let's not forget our friends at Yahoo!
Chinese xenophobia has led many other U.S. companies to play similar games, but Yahoo! was particularly eager to please. All Chinese chat rooms or discussion groups have a "big mama," a supervisor for a team of censors who wipe out politically incorrect comments in real time. Yahoo! handles things differently. If in the midst of a discussion you type, "We should have nationwide multiparty elections in China!!" no one else will react to your comment. How could they? It appears on your screen, but only you and Yahoo!'s big mama actually see your thought crime. After intercepting it and preventing its transmission, Mother Yahoo! then solicitously generates a friendly e-mail suggesting that you cool your rhetoric--censorship, but with a New Age nod to self-esteem.
This is a sad reminder of how large American companies have abandoned the idea of corporate ethics. The Chinese government is probably arresting, and maybe executing, pro-democracy advocates based on the work of companies like Cisco and Yahoo!. The U.S. government should prosecute the bastards at Cisco and Yahoo! responsible for providing these tools to the Chinese government.
More accurately, he's threatening to sue them after inviting them to test his server. He's threatening legal action over an event that he explicitly invited.
Are you sure that he requested the test or did some other entity request the test? I admit that I was somewhat rushed when I read the article.
For one, the Danish antispam organization falsified an email header to gain access to my mail server.
Translation: His mail server is an open relay for anyone who forges a from: address using his domain name. No password, POP-before-SMTP or other identification and authentication mechanisms are used.
He's whining because his open relay was correctly listed as an open relay. And he's even suggesting a tresspass-to-chattels lawsuit against the group that properly identified his server as an open relay. What a dick!
Finally, something a Mac has a high enough frame rate to handling! He was probably inspired by first person shooter games that, on a Mac, look like a slide show.
Yeah, I know. Troll. Flamebait.
P.S. If you are a Mac user, don't get your panties in a twist and start posting benchmarks. It was just a joke.
My point is that every show that involves space, a ship, and men and women is bound to have relations hips somewhere in the story of the show.
No argument there at all and I don't object to that in either show. What I *personally* don't like about Farscape is that it's like the worst office politics; lots of back-stabbing, plotting, scheming, and deviousness. Maybe it's just human(oid) nature, but it's not something that I like to watch on TV on a recurring basis.
I'd much rather see a show that focused on mankind's good side: The quest for knowledge, admiration of science, the urge to explore, excitement and wonder at meeting the unknown head-on. Maybe I'm an idealist, but that's what Star Trek gives me (the exception being DS9, which I really never liked).
P.S. Star Trek has *NEVER* resorted to cheap titillation. They rely on solid characters like Seven of Nine and T'Pol.;-)
First, let me thank you for your cogent and reasonable reply. While we may never agree on what makes "art", I think we can agree on one thing:
Too many times, the scenes on Enterprise fail because I think Berman and crew did an absolute dismal job on setting the period of the show. This show is supposed to take place before kirk yet, at-a-glance I have problems placing it anywhere before any of the TOS Movies: this is a problem. If you are trying to set up a movie in the 1920s, having a 2001 Corvette show up in the frame is going to be a bit jarring. This happens to me whenever I see the NX01 on screen, which get in the way of me enjoying the show.
I think that this is a very valid criticism. I do think that it's important to recognize the set quality as a tough issue. ST:TOS had really cheesy sets and special effects. We have progressed way too far technically to buy into that any more. Just the blinky lights that made up a "computer" (e.g. M5) are now laughable.
That said, NX-01 seems far too "comfy" to be a first effort at a starship. The crew quarters are way too large and, in fact, larger than the ones on ST:TOS. The bridge is too spacious. The systems work too well. The sensors are far more capable than they should be. Weapons systems seem to have picked up pinpoint targeting that ST:TOS never showed. ST:TOS's sickbay had a bunch of gauges for vital functions. Enterprise has full patient visual body representations. The tricorders from ST:TOS were as big and bulky as an old portable cassette player. The ones on Enterprise are small, sleek, and capable. Communications seems to be perfected. There is never an issue establishing a video link between Enterprise and some never-before-seen alien species.
I think some things that would have made it a lot better would be making everything from warp speed to weapons systems more complex to operate, less reliable, and less effective. The handheld communicators should have been at least four times as big as the ones from ST:TOS. They should have had range and quality problems. Sickbay should be a lot less capable. The list goes on and on.
So, I wholeheartedly agree with your comments in this regard. Nonetheless, when evaluating the show in its own right, I find the characters, stories, and special effects to be compelling.
The only thing that is possibly making me look bad is the fact that I trying[sic] to educate you.
And just what is it that you thought you were teaching me about? The old saying that "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"? The fact that I alluded to that saying made it pretty clear that I was aware of it.
But I think I see a glimmer of hope somewhere in your vacuous cranium.
The other reply to your message put it so succinctly that I can hardly improve on it:
Good god, what do you have to fill the vacuum in your head, a potato?
Slashdot Mirror
Junk fax laws are valid because the technological solution is too complex. Not that it helped me any -- I get several junk faxes per day, and the "removal" numbers are usually bogus.
The technological solution to stop spam is also too complex. The fact that major ISPs and corporations that invest untold sums are unable to stop spam makes that clear. Besides, I want people to stop stealing bandwidth, storage, and time now, not in five or ten years.
This is a perfect example of the problems with your laws. Spam is just one of numerous possible types of "bad" e-mail. Under your scheme, you would have to pass a law for each one.
I don't feel that it is difficult at all. Make it illegal to use an automated means to compose and send e-mail to anyone without their explicit permission. Basically, if you didn't type the message by hand, you better have permission to send it.
You don't have to address the purpose, content, or anything else that characterizes the nature of the communication.
The correct solution is the transitive trust model, where recipients can decide for themselves what they want to receive.
I disagree. I don't know what e-mail I want to receive now or in the future. Am I supposed to know that bob@anyisp.net is going to e-mail me to ask if I still have that telescope for sale? Am I expected to predict that tom@anotherisp.com is going to e-mail me with a question about my web page?
All that digital signatures tell me is who sent the message, not whether I want to receive it. I don't know if candy@somecompany.com is a spammer or someone who wants to know about the drive bracket I designed for the i-opener (though with that address, I have a suspicion).
I choose software. Software is the future of everything.
I've been in software development since the late 1970's and professionally for over 20 years. Software complexity has given us programs that are an order of magnitude less stable and secure than what we took for granted 20 years ago. Trying to build AI into e-mail clients and servers (so that they can intuit what mail you wish to receive) sounds like a way to make a simple, reliable application much less so.
That said, I think that digital signing, encrypted e-mail, and identification and authentication of clients and servers is the way that e-mail should go. Now if we can only keep Microsoft and AOL from trying to turn e-mail into an interactive, multimedia experience, we'll do okay.
But you have to agree not to use long sequences of rhetorical questions
;-)
They were not rhetorical and I welcome your answers. In fact, I'd still like to know whether you think that the junk fax laws should be repealed and why.
Telephone suffers from specific technical problems that make it difficult to screen without humans continuously expending effort.
Same with e-mail. Most people could not install and configure something like spamassasin. There are millions of users who barely grasp how to operate their e-mail client or the Hotmail web site. They have to retrieve their mail -- sometimes incurring air-time or long distance charges -- and then look at it to decide whether it's spam or not.
Even if you have caller-ID and can recognize the name, you still have to get up and look at the box.
Why not have a modem with caller-ID and a computer set up to screen calls based on caller ID info, time of day, etc.? You seem to believe that normal citizens should invest tens, if not hundreds, of hours each learning about, installing, configuring, and maintaining spam-filtering software (which won't even work for people using web-based e-mail). This hardly seems different.
Existing systems like spamassassin [taint.org] (which filters over 20 spams a day for me) are proof alone.
They are proof alone that you do not understand the problem. You may not have seen the spams, but they weren't delivered for free by Internet Faeries. The bandwidth, server, and storage costs were passed on to you by your ISP. I love boldface to make a point.
What about when the "product" or "service" is completely free? Spam that attracts visitors to banner-supported web sites, or politically motivated spam?
The cost of the product or service is irrelevent. When they send you unsolicited bulk e-mail, it's theft.
As to politically motivated spam, I had an interesting exchange with former Clinton Press Secretary Mike McCurry (who favors exceptions in spam laws for political speech). Do you have any idea how many people run for offices? Every presidential election brings nut-cases out of the woodwork. There are thousands of marginal candidates that run for offices all over the country. Does each one have a right to spam you?
Yes, assuming your particular country has a constitution, ANY problem can be constitutionally regulated.
I think you misunderstood my meaning. I meant that, without running afoul of the existing U.S. Constitution, deceptive commercial spam can be regulated (per the Central Hudson test.)
Mail servers should automatically reject messages from unvalidated senders.
Well, that's not how e-mail works and it's not going to be changed any time soon -- no matter what hindsight has taught us. We have standards for e-mail in use by millions of users and computers all over the world. It is an unacceptable burden to require all Internet participants to acquire, install, and configure new e-mail sofware just so we don't pass laws to limit spam.
Please, think carefully before invoking Big Brother to solve your problems!
Using the term "Big Brother" (from Orwell's 1984) is simply inflammatory. From now on, please use "the government" when referring to the government.
Sending e-mail should not be a crime!
So where does all of this end? If they can steal my bandwidth, time, and storage with spam, what's next? Should we repeal the junk fax law so that they can steal my expensive thermal paper, too? Should we take restrictions off of telemarketers so that they can call me collect and mis-identify themselves? Why not just let businesses advertise by throwing a brick through my window with a flyer attached ("Window broken? Call A&A Glass for a free repair estimate..."). While we are at it, maybe the USPS should deliver anonymous-sender advertising at no cost and just force me to pay the postage on delivery -- since that's analogous to what happens with spam.
Commercial speech does not (and should not) enjoy the same level of protection as non-commercial speech. In Central Hudson Gas & Electric v Public Service Commission the Supreme Court announced a test for evaluating commercial speech regulations that would be used in many subsequent cases. The Central Hudson test recognizes the constitutionality of regulations restricting advertising that concerns an illegal product or service, or which is deceptive. For all other restrictions on commercial speech, the Court's test requires that the government show that the regulation directly advances an important interest and is no more restrictive of speech than necessary.
Preventing the theft of millions of dollars from U.S. citizens and businesses represents an important interest and making e-mail advertisers use opt-in, correctly identify themselves, and provide automated systems for address removal is no more restrictive than necessary. When a sender falsifies e-mail header information and provides a forged from:/reply-to: address, that's deceptive and passes the aforementioned Central Hudson test as speech which can be constitutionally regulated.
I avoid nVidia products on Linux because they lock up their driver core in a proprietary binary.
You are seeing a classic conflict between open source and commercial products. If nVidia were to open-source their driver code, they would immediately expose any and all of their strengths and weaknesses.
Their competition could use that information to tune benchmarks to make them unfavorable to nVidia (by relying heavily on areas of weakness in the nVidia code.) The competition could also use performance techniques nVidia driver engineers have worked long hours to create.
I would rather have a high-quality closed source driver than no driver or a low-quality open source driver that is missing all of the company's proprietary performance techniques.
Besides which, if you're only using audio cues to figure out where people are on the slopes you're a jackass anyway...that'd be like only looking straight forward in your car or walking on the road, and only being able to avoid accidents when people start honking like mad.
Skiers rely on being able to say "on your left" or "on your right" when they come up behind someone who is going slower. They say it, you cut in front of them, and the crash ensues. You can't turn your head 180 degrees, so don't give me that "I don't need to hear anything" bullshit. In your car, you have rear view mirrors. You don't have them on snowboards or skis.
Great idea. Put on a $1000 jacket with an expensive MiniDisc player into the pocket, put on your headphones, and then go snowboarding.
I can just see it now. You don't hear the skier/boarder behind you and you cut him off. You both wipe out hard. You're lying in the snow with headphones 15 feet behind you (entangled with your goggles) -- the cable still around your neck, the MiniDisc player crunched, and your $1000 jacket's keypad mysteriously non-functional.
Do us all a favor and don't get the radiation shielded pants. We don't need you breeding.
How are we supposed to put smileys into parenthesis (like :))? :))? looks like some guy with a double chin and a huge sperm swimming around on his chest.
Jeezus Christ - more than once in the same thread? Is that the best you can come up with?
Yes. Can you come up with a better example of an infamous evil government than that? If so, tell me and I'll be glad to use that as an example.
I should write a guide to spotting a troll. Hitler / Nazi references, anyone?
Just cut the name-calling and address the question at hand. Nazi references are used because they are extreme and make a point.
When a government wants something, they'll find a supplier. If no suppliers exist, non-democratic governments will force someone to build what they are looking for.
I can see it now: Slave labor camps of thousands of workers being forced to make thousands of Cisco router clones. Programmers slaving away without sodas or coffee, copy the Cisco features while adding functionality to allow the filtering and spying features. The horror! The absurdity.
So let's take this back to my original point:
I believe that your line of reasoning drove the businesses that built the Nazi death camps: "If we don't sell them gas chambers, some other business will..."
Is that your point or not? Are you saying that the companies that designed and built the gas chambers in the Nazi death camps did nothing wrong because "when a government wants something, they'll find a supplier."
People like you in the U.S. government are partly responsible for a meddling foreign policy that has brought terrorists to our very doorstep. If the U.S. would mind its own business once in awhile (like Canada), we would have far less problems.
Yes. Let's ignore human rights violations, mass murders, Saddam gassing entire villages to death, China jailing people for expressing their beliefs, Palestinian suicide bombers killing women and children in marketplaces, etc. You're the type of person who hears someone screaming for help and then looks the other way. Criminals love your kind.
You've got a lot of nerve calling me a troll and then claiming that 'we asked for it' in regards to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001.
Corporations, OTOH, are not here to act as an ethical mouthpiece. They are here to employ citizens, make money, and follow the government's rules.
Your arguments are just a thinly veiled excuse for why corporations should feel free to do anything they like to make a buck. Don't think about what you are doing. If it's not explicitly illegal, just do it.
Ethics is (surprise) subjective.
Ethics is not nearly so subjective as you claim. If it was, colleges could not teach courses in "business ethics." The courses would all be over in one day with the summary "do whatever you can to make money because ethics is subjective."
I don't need my government to tell me that it is morally wrong to help foreign governments track down, arrest, and kill people for expressing their beliefs. I have a moral compass. I know right from wrong. So do the people running Cisco and Yahoo!. They simply choose to let their corporate greed outweigh their sense of decency.
If the Krupp offices in the US started going out and executing Jews in America during 1939 they couldn't just say "Hey, we do this in Germany all the time!"
By your "logic", Krupp in Germany did nothing wrong when they used Jews as slave labor, starving them and working them to exhaustion, and finally sending them off to be killed in the gas chambers when they could work no longer. After all, this was legal and "ethics is (surprise) subjective." Krupp certainly followed your definition of what a business should do: "They are here to employ citizens, make money, and follow the government's rules."
What's it like going through life with no sense of right or wrong?
China had a need - cisco filled it !
Nazi Germany had a need and the companies that built the gas chambers filled it. I suppose you view that as another example of capitalism at its finest.
If it was against US law for a company to support a goverment trying to take away rights of their people, thats a different story altogether!
There was a time when most U.S. companies had the moral fortitude to not only obey the letter of the law, but also to behave ethically.
This is probably going to sound like crazy talk to you, but there are more important things than making money. You might be able to make a fortune selling child-sized hancuffs to NAMBLA (The North American Man/Boy Love Association) members, but it would still be wrong -- even if it was legal. You might find Al Qaeda to be a willing buyer for fertilizer and diesel fuel, but that does not mean that you should sell it to them. You should be guided by higher principles than simply acquiring more money.
If you had supplied sandwiches to the vending companies that filled Enron's stomachs, should you too be arrested?
To use an example by another poster, this is much more like someone coming into a gun store and asking for a gun and ammo to be used to assasinate the President -- and the gun store supplying the items. Cisco was not some innocent party. They knew full well that their customer wanted the equipment to help them suppress, hunt-down, jail, and maybe even execute pro-democracy advocates.
unless you are trying to build some sort of fascist thought state.
That's exactly what the Chinese government is doing -- with the help of Cisco, Yahoo!, and other U.S. firms.
Cisco knows that if they didn't supply the hardware, someone else would. On a bigger scale, if no American company would supply the hardware, some business in another country would.
That kind of rationalization makes me sick. What happened to the concept of ethics? The fact that some bottom-feeder is willing to sell arms to Al Qaeda does not mean that Colt, Ruger, and Smith & Wesson should send sales reps over there to try to win the business.
I believe that your line of reasoning drove the businesses that built the Nazi death camps: "If we don't sell them gas chambers, some other business will..."
Something can be legal and unethical all at the same time.
Maybe it would be better if I responded to this troll with an analogy that Slashdot liberals can understand.
Troll? Slashdot liberals? The article I cited and quoted was from The Weekly Standard, which is a magazine aimed squarely at a VERY conservative audience. You don't read much, do you?
You're a fucking clueless moron.
If you could find someone willing to fuck you, you would be a "fucking, clueless moron." Unless you've found a woman of incredibly low standards, you're only batting two out of three.
China's not the problem, here, not Cisco.
Bullshit. It's assholes like you that are the problem. Anything for a buck. If Al Qaeda wants to buy guns, ammo, and the components to make chemical and biological weapons, some greedy dick like you will sell the items to them and then disclaim all responsibility. If you thought that there was a market among pedophiles for crotchless panties in children's sizes, you'd be selling them. In fact, you probably just read that and thought it sounded like a great business plan.
Some of us have ethics. Don't get pissed off at us just because we have something you don't.
Ass
Well at least you signed your posting.
And Cisco is not the only U.S. company in Beijing's pocket. Let's not forget our friends at Yahoo!
This is a sad reminder of how large American companies have abandoned the idea of corporate ethics. The Chinese government is probably arresting, and maybe executing, pro-democracy advocates based on the work of companies like Cisco and Yahoo!. The U.S. government should prosecute the bastards at Cisco and Yahoo! responsible for providing these tools to the Chinese government.
More accurately, he's threatening to sue them after inviting them to test his server. He's threatening legal action over an event that he explicitly invited.
Are you sure that he requested the test or did some other entity request the test? I admit that I was somewhat rushed when I read the article.
For one, the Danish antispam organization falsified an email header to gain access to my mail server.
Translation: His mail server is an open relay for anyone who forges a from: address using his domain name. No password, POP-before-SMTP or other identification and authentication mechanisms are used.
He's whining because his open relay was correctly listed as an open relay. And he's even suggesting a tresspass-to-chattels lawsuit against the group that properly identified his server as an open relay. What a dick!
Finally, something a Mac has a high enough frame rate to handling! He was probably inspired by first person shooter games that, on a Mac, look like a slide show.
Yeah, I know. Troll. Flamebait.
P.S. If you are a Mac user, don't get your panties in a twist and start posting benchmarks. It was just a joke.
My point is that every show that involves space, a ship, and men and women is bound to have relations hips somewhere in the story of the show.
;-)
No argument there at all and I don't object to that in either show. What I *personally* don't like about Farscape is that it's like the worst office politics; lots of back-stabbing, plotting, scheming, and deviousness. Maybe it's just human(oid) nature, but it's not something that I like to watch on TV on a recurring basis.
I'd much rather see a show that focused on mankind's good side: The quest for knowledge, admiration of science, the urge to explore, excitement and wonder at meeting the unknown head-on. Maybe I'm an idealist, but that's what Star Trek gives me (the exception being DS9, which I really never liked).
P.S. Star Trek has *NEVER* resorted to cheap titillation. They rely on solid characters like Seven of Nine and T'Pol.
First, let me thank you for your cogent and reasonable reply. While we may never agree on what makes "art", I think we can agree on one thing:
Too many times, the scenes on Enterprise fail because I think Berman and crew did an absolute dismal job on setting the period of the show. This show is supposed to take place before kirk yet, at-a-glance I have problems placing it anywhere before any of the TOS Movies: this is a problem. If you are trying to set up a movie in the 1920s, having a 2001 Corvette show up in the frame is going to be a bit jarring. This happens to me whenever I see the NX01 on screen, which get in the way of me enjoying the show.
I think that this is a very valid criticism. I do think that it's important to recognize the set quality as a tough issue. ST:TOS had really cheesy sets and special effects. We have progressed way too far technically to buy into that any more. Just the blinky lights that made up a "computer" (e.g. M5) are now laughable.
That said, NX-01 seems far too "comfy" to be a first effort at a starship. The crew quarters are way too large and, in fact, larger than the ones on ST:TOS. The bridge is too spacious. The systems work too well. The sensors are far more capable than they should be. Weapons systems seem to have picked up pinpoint targeting that ST:TOS never showed. ST:TOS's sickbay had a bunch of gauges for vital functions. Enterprise has full patient visual body representations. The tricorders from ST:TOS were as big and bulky as an old portable cassette player. The ones on Enterprise are small, sleek, and capable. Communications seems to be perfected. There is never an issue establishing a video link between Enterprise and some never-before-seen alien species.
I think some things that would have made it a lot better would be making everything from warp speed to weapons systems more complex to operate, less reliable, and less effective. The handheld communicators should have been at least four times as big as the ones from ST:TOS. They should have had range and quality problems. Sickbay should be a lot less capable. The list goes on and on.
So, I wholeheartedly agree with your comments in this regard. Nonetheless, when evaluating the show in its own right, I find the characters, stories, and special effects to be compelling.
And just what is it that you thought you were teaching me about? The old saying that "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"? The fact that I alluded to that saying made it pretty clear that I was aware of it.
But I think I see a glimmer of hope somewhere in your vacuous cranium.
The other reply to your message put it so succinctly that I can hardly improve on it:
I reread my original post and was embarassed to see the title with the word "that" where the word "who" should have been. Let the snickering begin...
You honestly think misquoting someone is clever? You're a sad little person.
talk about crap...
Referring to your post, I assume.
Given your own pathetic lack of ability to handle even the most basic of colloquial phrases, you are just being a dick.
That I alluded to a saying while not quoting it directly does not mean that I do not know the saying, moron.
Please stop writing. It just makes you look bad.