so, any human activity other than fighting, eating or reproducing requires a belief in god? the implications are astounding.
What you basically do here is take my assertion - which is a nakedly obvious parody of your original assertion about theists - and act as if I mean it literally... even though I plainly state in the very next paragraph that "I don't actually believe the statement immediately above."
But you ignored that. You ignore the fact that my statement "they are are judgemental dumbasses" refers to the kind of theist who would, if I may again quote myself, "assert that anyone who does not believe in a God or gods can only be a moral relativist."
To put it another way, and hopefully improve the chances of my point penetrating your terminally softened brain, I am saying - follow along now - that THEISTS - that's people who believe in a God or gods - who would make the assertion that "atheists are incapable of recognizing ethical conduct and moral opinion since their "moral" code is little more than threat-avoidance/reward-driven behaviour" - are "judgemental dumbasses." The reason I believe this is because it would be a ridiculous and gross simplification of the universe of thought that comprises atheist and agnostic belief systems.
You totally missed what I was saying, in fact you turned my statements completely upside down, reversing their meanings, because you DIDN'T LISTEN. You didn't read or try to understand what I was saying. Because YOU already knew what I thought, because I had identified myself as a "theist," thus placing myself in the company of other intellectual lightweights like George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King Jr., Blaise Pascal, Sir Isaac Newton, Leo Tolstoy, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Dag Hammarskjold, C.S. Lewis, Thomas Aquines, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, Albrecht Duerer, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, Samuel Johnson, J.S. Bach, George Handel, Albert Schweitzer, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Michael Faraday, Lord William Kelvin, John Adams, Pattrick Henry, and Desiderius Erasmus. And a host of other idiots like that. Theists, jeesh, wotta bunch of losers.
What do you call a person who judges a person based on assumptions about their belief system rather than what they actually say?
You call that person a judgemental asshole.
You, sir, are a judgmental asshole.
the sanctions that accompany the belief in any morality-dictating supernatural force (viz. god) is nothing more than duress or bribery motivating various activities.
i fail to see what you find judgemental about that statement.
Here is what I find judgemental about that statement, and I will cut it up into teeny tiny pieces on your plate so you stand a chance of getting it through your clenched-closed little mind. What is judgemental about that statement is that you take the billions of people who believe, in some capacity, in God or gods, and decide that you can, in one pithy statement, summarize ALL of our beliefs. We're all just running away from the punishment of hell or striving after the reward of heaven. To demonstrate what a ridiculous generalization this statement was, I restated it with a slight twist, making the gross generalization that without God, there was only evolution to believe in as the guiding force for human behavior, and therefor all behavior of atheists was guided by reproductive or survival instincts. Now, I'm really worried that you're going to get this wrong, so I want to make this totally clear: I DON'T BELIEVE THAT. I know, because I have an open mind and LISTEN to what people say, that there is a whole galaxy of ways to believe in the universe that do not involve the belief in a god. I do not consider these beliefs automatically invalid because they happen to differ in some respects from my own. I do not make gross, sweeping assumptions about their attendant beliefs based on only one factor of their beliefs (whether or not they believe in gods). Only a judgemental asshole would do that.
Like you.
Get it now? It is not your CONCLUSION I am dismissing as judgemental - it is your PREMISE. People like you are intellectually identical to the worst sort of bible-thumping, hellfire-n-damnation spewing fundamentalist: you're incapable of seeing past your own narrow beliefs.
theist: one who believes in the existence of a god or gods
atheists are incapable of recognizing ethical conduct and moral opinion since their "moral" code is little more than threat-avoidance/reward-driven behaviour (as their understanding of human conduct recognizes only evolutionary forces i.e. survival- and reproduction- inspired behavior).
Although I fall into the very, very, very broad category of "theist" I don't actuall believe the statement immediately above. But you will find plenty of "theists" who will, in fact, assert that anyone who does not believe in a God or gods can only be a moral relativist. Why do they assert this? Because they are are judgemental dumbasses. And so are you.
Oh you're exaggerating. You only have to be identified by the one number, six hundred three score and six, and you have the option of receiving the character on either your forehead or your hand!
Hmmm, no, you are not wrong. We are on the wrong road and change is necessary. I was not kiddng above - I do frequently contact my legislators on these issues, I do support artists that choose a rational approach to copyright, and I do boycott the UMGs and Sonys of this world.
This being said, I think the very real issues you are discussing need to be separated in the political arena from the less-than-justifiable surge of illicit file-trading which is what entitites like the RIAA really care about. Unfortunately, things like Cringely's suggestions - that we all bootleg Debbie Does Dallas ten million times and trade it around to make a point (and clog up the judicial system) blurs the distinction between the reasonable objections to recent changes in copyright law (copyright extension and the DMCA) and unreasonable objections (I should be able to trade a hundred thousand copies of this hit CD single I bought if I want to!). We would be making a lot more progress if we stuck to defending the defensible.
"If you do it publicly, it is exactly like Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of the bus."
Now that is SO full of shit.
"a backup copy of copyrighted, encrypted content which you have legally purchased"
I would agree this would be a far more justifiable action of protest and might do some good. It is not, however, the action Cringely proposes.
And let's just get real, Malcolm X. The reality is that there is a large contingency of individuals who's main goal in file sharing, encryption cracking and digital duplication is not merely time or format shifting. What these people are doing is violating legally defined copyrights on a massive scale. And as long as this illegal, and in my opinion immoral activity is the real center of the whole debate, legitimate free speech and user rights issues will get short shrift.
I bet, anyway, that you're not going to do a damn thing about any of it, are you? Did you write your representatives in Washington? Have you boycotted the major publishing companies' music? Do you support local self-publishers who produce unencumbered CDs? or do you just piss and moan on Slashdot (four out of four of the above list for me, Dr. King.) Let me know when you're headed for the police station to let them know you backed up your DVDs.
I think there is also some confusion about the definition of evolution here.
On one side, you have the undeniable fact of selective and genetic processes modifying the nature of living organisms. It happened, it is happening now, it can be measured, it is being measured. Evolution is happening.
Then there are two separate but related issues - the origin of life on earth and the mechanism of evolutionary change. Some people would hold that the pure evolution of proto-organisms on Earth from inorganic (not in the chemistry sense of containing carbon but in the sense of arising from non-living systems) raw materials, and the belief that natural selection is the sole force driving evolution, are just as much facts. They aren't. The true origin of life is still a very dignificant question, and we simply don't have the thermodynamic understanding of how our genes interact with our environments to form developing organisms to say with assurance that the only source of species on this planet is, as papa Darwin would have it, natural selection.
For all we know the course of evolution (for example, the drive towards creatures with increasingly complex neural structures) was somehow thermodynamically built in or introduced into the genome of very early organisms, with natural selection being merely an adjunct to the process. How and why? Why, by pure-thought-energy aliens from the fifth dimensional continuum, of course.
And what is the origin of THESE organisms? hell, don't ask me - I'm just the pawn of trans-dimensional space aliens, fercryin'outloud...
I've got a big problem with the extension of logic you're suggesting, however.
Protesting a war, or demonstrating against an injustice or the violation of a civil leberty, is one thing.
Even if you are effectively breaking the law, it is for the sake of a greater principle which should transcend that law.
Illegally duplicating and distributing a movie is not in the same arena as marching against institutionalized racism. It is a petty crime with no moral value whatsoever.
I am neither a coward nor lazy. But I'm not going to bother turning myself into the cops unless I have a worthwhile crime to commit.
The basic issue is pretty simple: free doesn't work very well as a business model for for-profit companies. You need to be able to provide some kind of value-add that people will pay for if you're going to make it. What are the alternatives? Pop-ups, Spy-ware, and Scum-Ware - of which this is the scummiest I've heard of yet. What's next? a software component that actually automatically programs your computer to steal candy from babies?
Kazaa, Morpheus et. al. are a simple concept: try to take advantage of people's enourmous predisposition to violate copyright laws via digital technology to skim some cash by any means whatsoever. It's a rotten business model and a rotten way to behave and it isn't much of a surprise that the rotten people responsible for it are as dishonest to their users as they are about what their software is really used for ("now don't use this to illegally copy protected media, kids, wink wink nod nod").
unfortunately this is impossible without DeCSS and DeCSS is illegal... oh say, you who were asking what the point of an open video codec was? This is why.
I think you're wrong, I think you're looking at the process from too short-term and narrow of a point of view. The beauty of open source is that it creates a basis for the way certain things should be: to wit, that the fundamental architectures of how we digitize media should be a free, open standard so that we can concentrate on what's worth selling (services that organize and deliver content and devices that play it). Having any degree of proprietary encumbrance on a media codec is the equivalent of patenting the alphabet or the left-right up-down orientation of conventional english text. It's just stupid, it serves no purpose.
At worste, it doesn't do any harm. At best, it may serve as the basis for a resonable, sensible multi-media platform at last. So what's your problem? It's not like anyone is making you use it.
There are a couple issues in this posting and article I think people should pay attention to... First off, like so much to do with emergent technologies, NYT is dishing some very weak-ass reporting: I mean, the statement "But now, largely because of tough actions by the record companies to combat free music sites" is basically just some hot air and a couple of anecdotes (who decides exactly who the "downloading cognoscenti" are anyway?
The other thing I think should really be payed attention to is, who's the clear winner (among the pay-for services) here:
"EMusic, possibly the most popular music-subscription service (60,000 registered users), offers unlimited and unrestricted access. The downloads are fast, the audio is of good quality, there is no waiting, and most important, the odds of ending up with a virus that will destroy a teenager's homework folder are next to none. But because EMusic places no restrictions on the songs, major labels -- even Universal, whose corporate parent owns it -- have been reluctant to license their music. Working around this, EMusic is trying to attract fans of specific independent labels and niche genres, like electronic dance music and punk."
This is a GOOD thing, this is what pay to download services on the internet should be about. Better access for people who might not drive enough product to justify distributing CDs all over the world, a chance to check out new music that's more cost-effective than the CD single. Now if these bands REALLY get smart they'll also start allowing royalty-free internet radio streaming* and non-mainstream music can REALLY start the long, slow, inevitable process of kicking the Biz's ass by way of simply being more damn efficient. My lips to God's ears, man...
*(y'all who are gonna come on and tell me you can't do that are wrong, okay, you're stupid and you don't know the law. Copyright law and the first amendment say that anybody can stream whatever information they want FREE OF CHARGE AND FREE FROM ROYALTY CHARGES provided the person who controls the copyright gives them permission. The minimum royalty charges in the new internet radio laws ONLY apply when you start playing music that is registered through one of the royalty processing services, as long as everything you play is by private arrangement with the copyright holder you NEVER need to register as an internet radio station and therefor you never need to pay anyone a dime. There would have to be some seriously draconian and first-amendment shredding legislation to pave the way for anything else... nothing even close to that has been on the table yet.)
Balls. All these arguments are full of it. This guy is not attempting to create logically perfect syllogism. He is simply giving his view on the reasoning behind seeking to interfere with the distribution of child pronography. And he's perfectly correct. Your "argument" is lame because while you find air in EVERYONE's home, you do not find child pornography on everyone's computer. You're on crack if you believe there is not a causal correlation between the desire to own child pornography and the propensity to sexually abuse children. It is not of course a 1 to 1 correlation. But it is sufficient to justify continued and constant efforts to track down the distribution of this filth and jump on the people who trade it with both feet.
More to the point, if it is real child pornography is produced through the abuse of children and I would argue that anyone supporting shares the guilt of this abuse.
Anyway, this guy hardly needs to "justify" his actions. He is working on behalf of law enforcement and as long as his methods of searching are legal he has all the justification he needs. Because when "people who ar[e] turned on by kiddie porn" start owning kiddie porn then they no longer simply "have a problem," - they have criminal material in their possession and deserve to be arrested.
You people baffle me. I am liberal as they come (well, maybe not as they come...) and a huge advocate of privacy, first amendment, and the bill of rights (have you written an enraged letter to your representatives about the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act yet? If not, get the hell off Slashdot and do something worthwhile yah little yapper!), but when there are so many who deserve to have their abused freedoms defended, why weaken my public case by jumping on the least defensible example I can find? There's a difference between being zealous for freedom and just picking stupid battles. Y'all are just being contrary for the sake of it. Focus, people, focus!
More importantly, why haven't you written a journal entry since April?
I'm worried you haven't... well, you know... since then.
Do you need some advice on supplemental fiber?
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And I would agree this was a strategically reasonable vote in some places. I was 100% confidant Gore would take MN even if the Greens had totally unprecedented success... I also knew the Greens had a pretty fair chance at getting major party status in that race. I didn't have to make a difficult decision on Gore, so I didn't.
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"What sort of brain injury would you need to make Nader Commander In Chief?"
Dunno. Didn't have a lot of fear of the outcome, frankly. I voted for the sake of major party status for greens in MN, spreading out the campaign finance wealth a tiny tiny bit (better than nothing? Hard to say, but...) Cynical voting but there it is, my other options seemed to be Gore (supporting forgone conclusion in MN), Bush (not in this lifetime baby) or Pat Buchanan ('nuff said and his "party" already has major status in MN thanks to "I ain't got time to bleed" who I didn't vote for either, incidentally). All throwaways basically. I stand by my choice but I certainly would prefer to have better options.
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Wow, thank you for making exactly the point I was striving for. I wouldn't have believed that someone would actually stumble into the same logical fallacy as my friends, despite the fact that I make it so clear, so I'll spell it out nice and slow for you, ya' nimrod.
First off, Greens in Florida did not in any way shape or form "cost Al Gore the election." Your statement assumes that AL Gore "deserved" these people's votes, that they "denied" him the votes he somehow had a "right" to, which is patently absurd. Sure, you can argue that Greens SHOULD have voted for Al Gore, hell, you can argue that Republicans and Libertarians should have voted for Al Gore. You could argue that vast numbers of Floridian fogeys should have figured out how to work their damn ballot instead of accidentally voting for Pat Buchannan, that Florida Democrats should have realized the Ballot was confusing and blocked it before it was approved, or that Jeb Bush should have been eaten alive by wild dingos at birth. You could argue that the Supreme Court shouldn't have called the election how and when they did, you could argue that our country should apply the popular rather than the electoral vote count for choosing its leader, or that Al Gore really should have been able to take Tennessee, all things considered. You could argue that while the Republican party has coddled its lunatic fringe by keeping pressure on wack religious issues and such, the Democratic party has essentially alienated it's own lefty wackos by drifting more and more consistently to the center.
But no, you blame a tiny percentage of voters who chose to vote their consciences rather than their fear. It's their fault! Ignore the whole point I made that I voted in the firm (and may I point out wholly correct) knowledge that there were not enough Greens in MN to tip the balance against Gore (what with our modern optical voting machines and all...). Just ignore my explanation of strategic voting... namely, that my vote accomplished something (major party status for Greens in MN) while your vote for Gore, my fine little friend, accomplished dick. That's D-I-C-K. Didn't matter. You threw it away.
You also seem to be missing the fact that what I'm essentially arguing is that, aside from a few "hot-button" issues that keep dips like you on the hook, the DFL and the GOP have become indistinguishable corporate-funded power-trading PR machines, and the only solution to this is to vote against corporate funded candidates. This is called a long-range approach. If you haven't twigged to the fact yet, your knee-jerk fear-based short-term approached is having the impact that EVERY SINGLE YEAR it takes more and more money to get elected and therefor every year the wealthy minority of individuals have more and more influence on American politics. It gets worse and worse and pinhead little yappers like you keep DOING THE SAME THING, saying "yes I approve of wealthy individuals and corporations defining the two viable choices for me in representing my interests in every government position through direct investment and I will demonstrate this by voting for one of these two choices under all circumstances," and then, so help me, getting self righteous about it to boot!
If this is your definition of "assinine" and "irresponsible" I shudder to imagine what your political philosophy sounds like. Oh, and if yer gonna use them big words like "asinine" ya might wanna learn to spell it, you idiot.
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WARNING - mostly relevant to USA, sorry ya' damn foreigners...
Question: how do you vote? It's a serious, not a rhetorical, question.
I agree with you... up to a point. It's hard to ignore the steady increase in the amount of money being spent on elections and the consistent pulling of the teeth of any attempt at campaign finance reform (golly, remember way back before the "world changed..." you know, back before everybody learned that a)airplanes are flammable, b)tall buildings are easy targets, and c)there are a lot of people out there that really hate the USA? Remember way back before that, when we Americans were all so oblivious to the danger of somebody flying an airplane into us that we were actually getting a little tiny bit worked up about "campaign finance reform" for a little tiny while? Vaguely? No? Yeah, well it was a long time ago...)
Despite this almost everyone I know falls to the thinking that "if I don't vote for corporate sponsored candidate X corporate sponsored candidate Y will get eleceted... and that will mean the end of the world!" When I tell my friends that I've lost the belief that there is a substantive difference between DFLer and GOPers, (a SUBSTANTIVE difference, mind you... yes they have very different rhetorical platforms and will tend to split on certain key issues... abortion, for example...) they ger VERY ANGRY.
I had "liberal" friends who got VERY ANGRY at me for voting for Ralph Nader in the presdidential election... despite the fact that it was a sheerly strategic vote, to help increase minor party power in Minnesota, because I KNEW Gore would carry MN (freaking Mondale carried MN, okay? Dukakis carried MN) and so my vote had no impact on the outcome of the national election. They got ANGRY at me.
So, how do you vote? I vote strategically. Because the sad fact is that I can't find anyone to vote for that I think has a snowball's chance of getting elected who I would actually like to see elected. To be honest, most of the people I vote for would probably be lousy or at best inneffectual if they actually got elected. But at least a little tiny bit of federal cash gets put somewhere besides the epic battle of "Business as Usual" versus "Same Old Same Old."
I look at Bush the younger, who took his "he believes in the Federal government and I believe in the People" rhetoric to Washington and has proceeded to orchestrate the biggest Federal land grab for power at the expense of individual liberty (read the stinking P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, okay... and remember that only 1 Democrat, 1 Independent and Three conservative Republicans had the grapes to stand up for the constitution in the face of terrorism...) that has occurred in my lifetime. Like smaller government? Well you'll like the huge consolidation of federal power that will occur under the flag of "Homeland Security" (would someone please tell me when I started living in a homeland? I was certain I lived in nation...)
Or I look at Clinton and the Democrats... As dirty on Enron as any Republican, soft as warm butter on the environment, civil liberty, corporate reform. I love the way my friends who enjoy the occasional "mind altered" experience vote Dem because Democrats are Liberal and Liberals are more "Enlightened" in drug law reform... despite the fact that the most draconian anti-drug legislation of the last two decades was written by Democrats in a mad dash to prove they were "tough on crime..." and despite the fact that Bill Clinton signed legislation that, had it been in effect when his OWN BROTHER was convicted for cocaine posession, would have put him away for TWENTY YEARS. Jeezus, what the hell kind of people ARE these?
So, I continue to vote as strategically as I can to facilitate some foothold of independent action agains the corporate-sponsored "divide and conquer" strategy which has so effectively dismantled the relevance of representative democracy in this nation. Honestly, I'd like a better option, I really would. How do YOU vote?
I think both sides of this argument are overstating their case. Those who see this as some brave new world right around the corner are certainly being overly optimistic. On the other hand, those who see it as nothing but a PR stunt or some sort of industry conspiracy are not really thinking the issue through. Like any deeply established industry, automotive manufacturers are caught between the horns of the dilemma of inovating their current product base out of the market, thus providing vast markets for selling new products on one hand, and maintaining the status quo, which is the most profitable short term approach (as you avoid R & D expenses, manufacturing retooling costs, and convincing people to adopt a new product - let's face it, geeks are early adopters but there will be genuine resistance to eliminating the internal combustion engine from some).
"The twist: The Super MP3 will come with a tracking signature -- a digital fingerprint -- that will identify the PC that made it."
From the article. So, let me get this straight. The idea is we don't "feel" the "walls" of DRM, 'cause basically it's just quietly violating my privacy rather than telling me outright what it's trying to prevent me from doing.
Uh, so do you "feel the walls" of digital rights management when the RIAA makes your ISP shut down your service because some hacker spoofed the "digital fingerprint" on an illicit MP3, or hacked your computer and stole your legitimate MP3s, and then distributed them all over hell with KaZaa?
" 'People will pay for better MP3s,' said Henry Linde, Thomson Multimedia's vice president of new media business."
Now why the hell would I do that when I can get a better Ogg for free just by sitting around on my ass for a few more months?
"given that a vast majority of US households are without broadband, is this an idea before its time?"
Well... before your time, perhaps... but the fact is, If Warner Brothers is all set up to deliver online content (and they certainly are), why not offer it, even if it isn't convenient for most? Even if the scale of use is tiny I have to believe that they could net a profit considering that the product is just bits.
Honestly, a million bucks ain't all that much, in the world of major fundraising, so it could be very hard to say - there are a ton of people, even consdiering the most obvious candidates (i.e. more likely to be a Duke rather than a Stanford graduate).
A donor who really wants to stay anonymous can do so pretty effectively. Personally, I think we should respect their wish. It's rare someone will cough up this kind of a chunk of change for the more general and abstract public good, and if they would rather not be recognized (and end up having every ogg hacker or yahoo with some open licensing scheme they've hatched begging them for pocket change, we should let them be.
aah, they're just looking for excuses for a business model, you know?
Part of the mission is "to VERIFY Apollo and other landing sites" because there are still a few people out there who believe the Apollo program was a hoax.
I mean, what's next? Unless you are actually going to physically take these people with you to the moon, what are the chances that they will find one set of photos any more convincing than another. They'll simply say, hey - we already warned you how to fix all the mistakes you made the first time, and there's all this new fancy digital technology and so forth to boot. It's just a better fake!
I think I'll offer to dig up Elvis and Jim Morrison to underwrite my new excavation business!
And how. Every time I've had trouble assembling a product it has been a result of poorly written instructions, an attempt to crowd too many instructions into one document (if your chair is the prince edward, bentwood teak, or chersterfield light design, proceed to step Q, otherwise go on to step n...), poorly drawn pictures or mislabeling of parts. All things much more cheaply and easily addressed by spending a couple more days tweaking the simple paper instructions than by some goofed scheme of using throwaway microprocessors...
Well, from an educational institution's point of view, though...
What impresses me about this is that it exploits above all the brain's capacity to justify visual data... Rather than attempting the perfect visual justification through hardware or software. This "good enough for gub'mint work" approach is perfect for the job at hand - since most of us are blithely carrying a fantastic image-justifying supercomputer around on our shoulders.
Slashdot Mirror
The judgement, you humorless fuck, is in this:
so, any human activity other than fighting, eating or reproducing requires a belief in god? the implications are astounding.
What you basically do here is take my assertion - which is a nakedly obvious parody of your original assertion about theists - and act as if I mean it literally... even though I plainly state in the very next paragraph that "I don't actually believe the statement immediately above."
But you ignored that. You ignore the fact that my statement "they are are judgemental dumbasses" refers to the kind of theist who would, if I may again quote myself, "assert that anyone who does not believe in a God or gods can only be a moral relativist."
To put it another way, and hopefully improve the chances of my point penetrating your terminally softened brain, I am saying - follow along now - that THEISTS - that's people who believe in a God or gods - who would make the assertion that "atheists are incapable of recognizing ethical conduct and moral opinion since their "moral" code is little more than threat-avoidance/reward-driven behaviour" - are "judgemental dumbasses." The reason I believe this is because it would be a ridiculous and gross simplification of the universe of thought that comprises atheist and agnostic belief systems.
You totally missed what I was saying, in fact you turned my statements completely upside down, reversing their meanings, because you DIDN'T LISTEN. You didn't read or try to understand what I was saying. Because YOU already knew what I thought, because I had identified myself as a "theist," thus placing myself in the company of other intellectual lightweights like George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King Jr., Blaise Pascal, Sir Isaac Newton, Leo Tolstoy, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Dag Hammarskjold, C.S. Lewis, Thomas Aquines, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, Albrecht Duerer, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, Samuel Johnson, J.S. Bach, George Handel, Albert Schweitzer, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Michael Faraday, Lord William Kelvin, John Adams, Pattrick Henry, and Desiderius Erasmus. And a host of other idiots like that. Theists, jeesh, wotta bunch of losers.
What do you call a person who judges a person based on assumptions about their belief system rather than what they actually say?
You call that person a judgemental asshole.
You, sir, are a judgmental asshole.
the sanctions that accompany the belief in any morality-dictating supernatural force (viz. god) is nothing more than duress or bribery motivating various activities.
i fail to see what you find judgemental about that statement.
Here is what I find judgemental about that statement, and I will cut it up into teeny tiny pieces on your plate so you stand a chance of getting it through your clenched-closed little mind. What is judgemental about that statement is that you take the billions of people who believe, in some capacity, in God or gods, and decide that you can, in one pithy statement, summarize ALL of our beliefs. We're all just running away from the punishment of hell or striving after the reward of heaven. To demonstrate what a ridiculous generalization this statement was, I restated it with a slight twist, making the gross generalization that without God, there was only evolution to believe in as the guiding force for human behavior, and therefor all behavior of atheists was guided by reproductive or survival instincts. Now, I'm really worried that you're going to get this wrong, so I want to make this totally clear: I DON'T BELIEVE THAT. I know, because I have an open mind and LISTEN to what people say, that there is a whole galaxy of ways to believe in the universe that do not involve the belief in a god. I do not consider these beliefs automatically invalid because they happen to differ in some respects from my own. I do not make gross, sweeping assumptions about their attendant beliefs based on only one factor of their beliefs (whether or not they believe in gods). Only a judgemental asshole would do that.
Like you.
Get it now? It is not your CONCLUSION I am dismissing as judgemental - it is your PREMISE. People like you are intellectually identical to the worst sort of bible-thumping, hellfire-n-damnation spewing fundamentalist: you're incapable of seeing past your own narrow beliefs.
atheists are incapable of recognizing ethical conduct and moral opinion since their "moral" code is little more than threat-avoidance/reward-driven behaviour (as their understanding of human conduct recognizes only evolutionary forces i.e. survival- and reproduction- inspired behavior).
Although I fall into the very, very, very broad category of "theist" I don't actuall believe the statement immediately above. But you will find plenty of "theists" who will, in fact, assert that anyone who does not believe in a God or gods can only be a moral relativist. Why do they assert this? Because they are are judgemental dumbasses. And so are you.
Oh you're exaggerating. You only have to be identified by the one number, six hundred three score and six, and you have the option of receiving the character on either your forehead or your hand!
This being said, I think the very real issues you are discussing need to be separated in the political arena from the less-than-justifiable surge of illicit file-trading which is what entitites like the RIAA really care about. Unfortunately, things like Cringely's suggestions - that we all bootleg Debbie Does Dallas ten million times and trade it around to make a point (and clog up the judicial system) blurs the distinction between the reasonable objections to recent changes in copyright law (copyright extension and the DMCA) and unreasonable objections (I should be able to trade a hundred thousand copies of this hit CD single I bought if I want to!). We would be making a lot more progress if we stuck to defending the defensible.
Now that is SO full of shit.
"a backup copy of copyrighted, encrypted content which you have legally purchased"
I would agree this would be a far more justifiable action of protest and might do some good. It is not, however, the action Cringely proposes.
And let's just get real, Malcolm X. The reality is that there is a large contingency of individuals who's main goal in file sharing, encryption cracking and digital duplication is not merely time or format shifting. What these people are doing is violating legally defined copyrights on a massive scale. And as long as this illegal, and in my opinion immoral activity is the real center of the whole debate, legitimate free speech and user rights issues will get short shrift.
I bet, anyway, that you're not going to do a damn thing about any of it, are you? Did you write your representatives in Washington? Have you boycotted the major publishing companies' music? Do you support local self-publishers who produce unencumbered CDs? or do you just piss and moan on Slashdot (four out of four of the above list for me, Dr. King.) Let me know when you're headed for the police station to let them know you backed up your DVDs.
On one side, you have the undeniable fact of selective and genetic processes modifying the nature of living organisms. It happened, it is happening now, it can be measured, it is being measured. Evolution is happening.
Then there are two separate but related issues - the origin of life on earth and the mechanism of evolutionary change. Some people would hold that the pure evolution of proto-organisms on Earth from inorganic (not in the chemistry sense of containing carbon but in the sense of arising from non-living systems) raw materials, and the belief that natural selection is the sole force driving evolution, are just as much facts. They aren't. The true origin of life is still a very dignificant question, and we simply don't have the thermodynamic understanding of how our genes interact with our environments to form developing organisms to say with assurance that the only source of species on this planet is, as papa Darwin would have it, natural selection.
For all we know the course of evolution (for example, the drive towards creatures with increasingly complex neural structures) was somehow thermodynamically built in or introduced into the genome of very early organisms, with natural selection being merely an adjunct to the process. How and why? Why, by pure-thought-energy aliens from the fifth dimensional continuum, of course.
And what is the origin of THESE organisms? hell, don't ask me - I'm just the pawn of trans-dimensional space aliens, fercryin'outloud...
Protesting a war, or demonstrating against an injustice or the violation of a civil leberty, is one thing.
Even if you are effectively breaking the law, it is for the sake of a greater principle which should transcend that law.
Illegally duplicating and distributing a movie is not in the same arena as marching against institutionalized racism. It is a petty crime with no moral value whatsoever.
I am neither a coward nor lazy. But I'm not going to bother turning myself into the cops unless I have a worthwhile crime to commit.
Kazaa, Morpheus et. al. are a simple concept: try to take advantage of people's enourmous predisposition to violate copyright laws via digital technology to skim some cash by any means whatsoever. It's a rotten business model and a rotten way to behave and it isn't much of a surprise that the rotten people responsible for it are as dishonest to their users as they are about what their software is really used for ("now don't use this to illegally copy protected media, kids, wink wink nod nod").
I understand they're training ants to dig them up...
unfortunately this is impossible without DeCSS and DeCSS is illegal... oh say, you who were asking what the point of an open video codec was? This is why.
At worste, it doesn't do any harm. At best, it may serve as the basis for a resonable, sensible multi-media platform at last. So what's your problem? It's not like anyone is making you use it.
The other thing I think should really be payed attention to is, who's the clear winner (among the pay-for services) here:
"EMusic, possibly the most popular music-subscription service (60,000 registered users), offers unlimited and unrestricted access. The downloads are fast, the audio is of good quality, there is no waiting, and most important, the odds of ending up with a virus that will destroy a teenager's homework folder are next to none. But because EMusic places no restrictions on the songs, major labels -- even Universal, whose corporate parent owns it -- have been reluctant to license their music. Working around this, EMusic is trying to attract fans of specific independent labels and niche genres, like electronic dance music and punk."
This is a GOOD thing, this is what pay to download services on the internet should be about. Better access for people who might not drive enough product to justify distributing CDs all over the world, a chance to check out new music that's more cost-effective than the CD single. Now if these bands REALLY get smart they'll also start allowing royalty-free internet radio streaming* and non-mainstream music can REALLY start the long, slow, inevitable process of kicking the Biz's ass by way of simply being more damn efficient. My lips to God's ears, man...
*(y'all who are gonna come on and tell me you can't do that are wrong, okay, you're stupid and you don't know the law. Copyright law and the first amendment say that anybody can stream whatever information they want FREE OF CHARGE AND FREE FROM ROYALTY CHARGES provided the person who controls the copyright gives them permission. The minimum royalty charges in the new internet radio laws ONLY apply when you start playing music that is registered through one of the royalty processing services, as long as everything you play is by private arrangement with the copyright holder you NEVER need to register as an internet radio station and therefor you never need to pay anyone a dime. There would have to be some seriously draconian and first-amendment shredding legislation to pave the way for anything else... nothing even close to that has been on the table yet.)
Balls. All these arguments are full of it. This guy is not attempting to create logically perfect syllogism. He is simply giving his view on the reasoning behind seeking to interfere with the distribution of child pronography. And he's perfectly correct. Your "argument" is lame because while you find air in EVERYONE's home, you do not find child pornography on everyone's computer. You're on crack if you believe there is not a causal correlation between the desire to own child pornography and the propensity to sexually abuse children. It is not of course a 1 to 1 correlation. But it is sufficient to justify continued and constant efforts to track down the distribution of this filth and jump on the people who trade it with both feet.
More to the point, if it is real child pornography is produced through the abuse of children and I would argue that anyone supporting shares the guilt of this abuse.
Anyway, this guy hardly needs to "justify" his actions. He is working on behalf of law enforcement and as long as his methods of searching are legal he has all the justification he needs. Because when "people who ar[e] turned on by kiddie porn" start owning kiddie porn then they no longer simply "have a problem," - they have criminal material in their possession and deserve to be arrested.
You people baffle me. I am liberal as they come (well, maybe not as they come...) and a huge advocate of privacy, first amendment, and the bill of rights (have you written an enraged letter to your representatives about the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act yet? If not, get the hell off Slashdot and do something worthwhile yah little yapper!), but when there are so many who deserve to have their abused freedoms defended, why weaken my public case by jumping on the least defensible example I can find? There's a difference between being zealous for freedom and just picking stupid battles. Y'all are just being contrary for the sake of it. Focus, people, focus!
I'm worried you haven't... well, you know... since then.
Do you need some advice on supplemental fiber?
And I would agree this was a strategically reasonable vote in some places. I was 100% confidant Gore would take MN even if the Greens had totally unprecedented success... I also knew the Greens had a pretty fair chance at getting major party status in that race. I didn't have to make a difficult decision on Gore, so I didn't.
Dunno. Didn't have a lot of fear of the outcome, frankly. I voted for the sake of major party status for greens in MN, spreading out the campaign finance wealth a tiny tiny bit (better than nothing? Hard to say, but...) Cynical voting but there it is, my other options seemed to be Gore (supporting forgone conclusion in MN), Bush (not in this lifetime baby) or Pat Buchanan ('nuff said and his "party" already has major status in MN thanks to "I ain't got time to bleed" who I didn't vote for either, incidentally). All throwaways basically. I stand by my choice but I certainly would prefer to have better options.
First off, Greens in Florida did not in any way shape or form "cost Al Gore the election." Your statement assumes that AL Gore "deserved" these people's votes, that they "denied" him the votes he somehow had a "right" to, which is patently absurd. Sure, you can argue that Greens SHOULD have voted for Al Gore, hell, you can argue that Republicans and Libertarians should have voted for Al Gore. You could argue that vast numbers of Floridian fogeys should have figured out how to work their damn ballot instead of accidentally voting for Pat Buchannan, that Florida Democrats should have realized the Ballot was confusing and blocked it before it was approved, or that Jeb Bush should have been eaten alive by wild dingos at birth. You could argue that the Supreme Court shouldn't have called the election how and when they did, you could argue that our country should apply the popular rather than the electoral vote count for choosing its leader, or that Al Gore really should have been able to take Tennessee, all things considered. You could argue that while the Republican party has coddled its lunatic fringe by keeping pressure on wack religious issues and such, the Democratic party has essentially alienated it's own lefty wackos by drifting more and more consistently to the center.
But no, you blame a tiny percentage of voters who chose to vote their consciences rather than their fear. It's their fault! Ignore the whole point I made that I voted in the firm (and may I point out wholly correct) knowledge that there were not enough Greens in MN to tip the balance against Gore (what with our modern optical voting machines and all...). Just ignore my explanation of strategic voting... namely, that my vote accomplished something (major party status for Greens in MN) while your vote for Gore, my fine little friend, accomplished dick. That's D-I-C-K. Didn't matter. You threw it away.
You also seem to be missing the fact that what I'm essentially arguing is that, aside from a few "hot-button" issues that keep dips like you on the hook, the DFL and the GOP have become indistinguishable corporate-funded power-trading PR machines, and the only solution to this is to vote against corporate funded candidates. This is called a long-range approach. If you haven't twigged to the fact yet, your knee-jerk fear-based short-term approached is having the impact that EVERY SINGLE YEAR it takes more and more money to get elected and therefor every year the wealthy minority of individuals have more and more influence on American politics. It gets worse and worse and pinhead little yappers like you keep DOING THE SAME THING, saying "yes I approve of wealthy individuals and corporations defining the two viable choices for me in representing my interests in every government position through direct investment and I will demonstrate this by voting for one of these two choices under all circumstances," and then, so help me, getting self righteous about it to boot!
If this is your definition of "assinine" and "irresponsible" I shudder to imagine what your political philosophy sounds like. Oh, and if yer gonna use them big words like "asinine"
ya might wanna learn to spell it, you idiot.
Question: how do you vote? It's a serious, not a rhetorical, question.
I agree with you... up to a point. It's hard to ignore the steady increase in the amount of money being spent on elections and the consistent pulling of the teeth of any attempt at campaign finance reform (golly, remember way back before the "world changed..." you know, back before everybody learned that a)airplanes are flammable, b)tall buildings are easy targets, and c)there are a lot of people out there that really hate the USA? Remember way back before that, when we Americans were all so oblivious to the danger of somebody flying an airplane into us that we were actually getting a little tiny bit worked up about "campaign finance reform" for a little tiny while? Vaguely? No? Yeah, well it was a long time ago...)
Despite this almost everyone I know falls to the thinking that "if I don't vote for corporate sponsored candidate X corporate sponsored candidate Y will get eleceted... and that will mean the end of the world!" When I tell my friends that I've lost the belief that there is a substantive difference between DFLer and GOPers, (a SUBSTANTIVE difference, mind you... yes they have very different rhetorical platforms and will tend to split on certain key issues... abortion, for example...) they ger VERY ANGRY.
I had "liberal" friends who got VERY ANGRY at me for voting for Ralph Nader in the presdidential election... despite the fact that it was a sheerly strategic vote, to help increase minor party power in Minnesota, because I KNEW Gore would carry MN (freaking Mondale carried MN, okay? Dukakis carried MN) and so my vote had no impact on the outcome of the national election. They got ANGRY at me.
So, how do you vote? I vote strategically. Because the sad fact is that I can't find anyone to vote for that I think has a snowball's chance of getting elected who I would actually like to see elected. To be honest, most of the people I vote for would probably be lousy or at best inneffectual if they actually got elected. But at least a little tiny bit of federal cash gets put somewhere besides the epic battle of "Business as Usual" versus "Same Old Same Old."
I look at Bush the younger, who took his "he believes in the Federal government and I believe in the People" rhetoric to Washington and has proceeded to orchestrate the biggest Federal land grab for power at the expense of individual liberty (read the stinking P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, okay... and remember that only 1 Democrat, 1 Independent and Three conservative Republicans had the grapes to stand up for the constitution in the face of terrorism...) that has occurred in my lifetime. Like smaller government? Well you'll like the huge consolidation of federal power that will occur under the flag of "Homeland Security" (would someone please tell me when I started living in a homeland? I was certain I lived in nation...)
Or I look at Clinton and the Democrats... As dirty on Enron as any Republican, soft as warm butter on the environment, civil liberty, corporate reform. I love the way my friends who enjoy the occasional "mind altered" experience vote Dem because Democrats are Liberal and Liberals are more "Enlightened" in drug law reform... despite the fact that the most draconian anti-drug legislation of the last two decades was written by Democrats in a mad dash to prove they were "tough on crime..." and despite the fact that Bill Clinton signed legislation that, had it been in effect when his OWN BROTHER was convicted for cocaine posession, would have put him away for TWENTY YEARS. Jeezus, what the hell kind of people ARE these?
So, I continue to vote as strategically as I can to facilitate some foothold of independent action agains the corporate-sponsored "divide and conquer" strategy which has so effectively dismantled the relevance of representative democracy in this nation. Honestly, I'd like a better option, I really would. How do YOU vote?
I think both sides of this argument are overstating their case. Those who see this as some brave new world right around the corner are certainly being overly optimistic. On the other hand, those who see it as nothing but a PR stunt or some sort of industry conspiracy are not really thinking the issue through. Like any deeply established industry, automotive manufacturers are caught between the horns of the dilemma of inovating their current product base out of the market, thus providing vast markets for selling new products on one hand, and maintaining the status quo, which is the most profitable short term approach (as you avoid R & D expenses, manufacturing retooling costs, and convincing people to adopt a new product - let's face it, geeks are early adopters but there will be genuine resistance to eliminating the internal combustion engine from some).
From the article. So, let me get this straight. The idea is we don't "feel" the "walls" of DRM, 'cause basically it's just quietly violating my privacy rather than telling me outright what it's trying to prevent me from doing.
Uh, so do you "feel the walls" of digital rights management when the RIAA makes your ISP shut down your service because some hacker spoofed the "digital fingerprint" on an illicit MP3, or hacked your computer and stole your legitimate MP3s, and then distributed them all over hell with KaZaa?
" 'People will pay for better MP3s,' said Henry Linde, Thomson Multimedia's vice president of new media business."
Now why the hell would I do that when I can get a better Ogg for free just by sitting around on my ass for a few more months?
Well... before your time, perhaps... but the fact is, If Warner Brothers is all set up to deliver online content (and they certainly are), why not offer it, even if it isn't convenient for most? Even if the scale of use is tiny I have to believe that they could net a profit considering that the product is just bits.
A donor who really wants to stay anonymous can do so pretty effectively. Personally, I think we should respect their wish. It's rare someone will cough up this kind of a chunk of change for the more general and abstract public good, and if they would rather not be recognized (and end up having every ogg hacker or yahoo with some open licensing scheme they've hatched begging them for pocket change, we should let them be.
Part of the mission is "to VERIFY Apollo and other landing sites" because there are still a few people out there who believe the Apollo program was a hoax.
I mean, what's next? Unless you are actually going to physically take these people with you to the moon, what are the chances that they will find one set of photos any more convincing than another. They'll simply say, hey - we already warned you how to fix all the mistakes you made the first time, and there's all this new fancy digital technology and so forth to boot. It's just a better fake!
I think I'll offer to dig up Elvis and Jim Morrison to underwrite my new excavation business!
And how. Every time I've had trouble assembling a product it has been a result of poorly written instructions, an attempt to crowd too many instructions into one document (if your chair is the prince edward, bentwood teak, or chersterfield light design, proceed to step Q, otherwise go on to step n...), poorly drawn pictures or mislabeling of parts. All things much more cheaply and easily addressed by spending a couple more days tweaking the simple paper instructions than by some goofed scheme of using throwaway microprocessors...
What impresses me about this is that it exploits above all the brain's capacity to justify visual data... Rather than attempting the perfect visual justification through hardware or software. This "good enough for gub'mint work" approach is perfect for the job at hand - since most of us are blithely carrying a fantastic image-justifying supercomputer around on our shoulders.
Hmm, now to just extend it to MOVING pictures...