The Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine is is small organization with a clear political agenda; note its inclusdion in the following, clearly political listing:
http://www.vix.com/objectivism/organizations.html
I have little faith in a petition crafted and directed by an organization with a clear political motivation.
>You're a degreed scientist who has read a bunch of reports instead of doing your own research/thinking on the issue.
I'm sorry I mentioned that I have a degree, my only point is that I have some insight into what scientific consensus means. The original post was saying we needed to wait for a scientific consensus. I believe one already exists.
I present the reports as a way for non-scientists to review the evidence and scientific consensus. As stated I have been reading scientific analysis, both for and against the theory fo the greenhouse effect, for 10 years, and have used my knowledge of science and the scientific community to judge the research of others. I'm not sure what you're suggesting I do - take my own climatological data? Build a computer model? Obviously I have to consume this kind of research second-hand. The resources I presented represent valid analysis of solid research.
>You're just a media blowhorn sporting a degree as a badge of elitism over people who are putting original thought to the subject instead of believing everything they read.
"Badge of elitism?" Whatever. I offer a credential to put my opinion is some sort of context. I don't believe everything I read - I analyze what I read and make an opinion based on the best evidence I have available to me.
I think the most telling thing about the response to my post (by far the most active discussion I've ever been a part of) is the preponderance of people like you who attack, with little or in your case no scientific justification, the evidence I present, but provide no contrary evidence that can be independently verified. I am citing major scientific organizations dedicated specifically to understanding these questions. You are citing nothing. Give me some links, big mouth - show me current, published scientific opinion by any group with credentials even approaching those of the National Academy of Sciences or the World Meteorological Organization. It's easy enough to spout off and say I'm full of shit, let's see you prove it.
The theory of global warming is based on much more than 20 years data. We have direct measurements going back more than a hundred years and indirect measurements that allow us to make educated guesses going back millenia.
Second, when we see (as we do) an anomolous increase in temperature, and when our best theories and computer models support the theory that these temperature increases are consistent with changes caused by greenhouse gasses, then it behooves us to take the very real possibility that the greenhouse effect is real into account as we determine how to address our energy and resource development policies.
Since someone asked I just wanted to point out that I have a first rate science degree that I'm proud of. I think I was clear and accurate in stating that it didn't make me an expert.
But I firmly disagree with your characterization of my conclusions. I beleive that a review of the resources I presented leads to a dispassionate opinion that the most qualified bodies and representatives of the scientific consensus present a unified opinion about global warming. There are always dissenting views but we have to make our decisions on what the best-supported opinions of the broadest consensus of experts tell us.
What I'm arguing against here is the opinion that belief in and concern about human-exacerbated global warming is merely a political one. I feel this opinion is erroneous. The majority of scientific evidence in support of the these beliefs and concerns are political value-neutral and motivated by the best available interpretations of objective scientific evidence.
I'm sure the residents of New Orleans and every other sea-port and island in the world will find the lyrics of Love and Rockets to be a great comfort to them as rising sea levels consume their cities. I don't think the world is going to end - I was responding only to a false assertion that there is not a general scientific consensus that global warming is real and a growing scientific consensus that human activities are largely to blame.
Your "philosophical" attitude is short-sighted and ignorant. the reality of the situation is that most of the effects of global warming we can predict are going to be detrimental to our standard of living. Rising seas means less land. Rising temperatures will contribute to die-offs of sea ecosystems, reducing worldwide food supplies. Rises in diseases are likely. There is a reasonable possibility that more severe weather will result. Global warming exacerbates ozone depletion (in addition many ozone destroyers are also greenhouse gasses) which increases skin cancer rates. I'm not pushing some philosophical program to save the world, or leave it unchanged. But its worth thinking seriously about the costs that global warming is likey to incur
The degree is a Bachelor's, the discipline is Chemistry, and the institution is the University of MN at Morris, widely recognized as one of the finest public education institutions in the United States.
This does not make me an expert in climate change (nor did I claim to be one); I think it does give me a valid claim to consider myself a scientist and to express an opinion on general scientific evidence and what constitutes a scientific consensus.
This would be a great point of view if it wasn't so full of shit. I am a degreed scientist (I'd like to know what you are) who has been following science news about global warming for close to a decade. In that time what I have seen is story after story, report after report, that affirms that global warming is occurring and, increasingly, that human activity is indicated in it's cause.
"[R]eal scientists displaying real data..." I guess in your little fantasy world this doesn't include the World Meteorological Organization or it's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes scientists from a hundred countries, and has been developing the evidence that global warming is real since the 80's. I guees it doesn't include the National Acedemy of Science, which concluded last year that:
"The warming trend in global-mean surface temperature observations during the past 20 years is undoubtedly real and is substantially greater than the average rate of warming during the twentieth century. The disparity between surface and upper air trends in no way invalidates the conclusions that surface temperature has been rising."
I guess it doesn't include such publications as Science, Nature, Scientific American and Chemical & Engineering News (and literally hundreds of others which have all repeated the same conclusion: that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming is real.
The alternate opinion that you express is so phenomenally unsupported, so completely discredited by the overwhelming burden of valid scientific evidence, that it is espoused only by vested interests like power generation and conservative wackos like yourself. Practice what you preach and leave science to the scientists: you don't know what you're talking about.
http://www.sciam.com/2000/0800issue/0800epstein.ht ml
http://www.ucsusa.org/environment/0warming.html
http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/faq/index.html
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/
Educate yourself. Sea levels are rising. The permafrost is melting. Ozone depletion (yes, it IS linked to global warming) is worsening. And the planet is getting hotter. These are scientific facts that no amount of bullshit rhetoric will change. And it will affect us in purely negative ways in our lifetimes and in our children's lifetimes.
I'm sure at some point(s) this has been done to death here but I'm curious: what is the legal leverage the BSA uses to force businesses or institutions to carry out an audit? Is the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty something you sign away when you buy a piece of business software, or is the BSA simply using scare/intimidation tactics (i.e. "You can let us audit you or we'll get the cops to serve a warrant and then you'll REALLY be in trouble").
What is described in this story sounds to me like a private organization exercising what is essentially police power, which is always disturbing. Is anyone else envisioning all the great potential here for advertisements... Instead of all this peace, love and linux crap IBM and others should be making commercials about the potential of jack-booted thugs forcing an expensive and time-consuming audit down your throat for failing to comply (purely by accident, natch) with complicated and confusing licensing laws.
It's called an internet access charge. It's called the price of a decent computer. To get home access to the kind of content that would justify paying a premium for, you need to start with a computer set-up that will set you back around $1500 bucks. To get the reliable broadband access I need to enjoy that content in a reasonable manner will runs in the vicinity of $30 a month. So for a year I'm looking at over $1800 just to be connected to the content. Let's say people who have something better online than what I already get for free band together and offer a kick-ass subscription service for enhanced content at $7 a month. Now I'm pushing two thousand.
Meanwhile, I can get a very nice stereo 20" TV at $200, a Playstation 2 for $350, A Satellite TV unit and a year of premium access, plenty of sports, specialty channels and movies easily for $800. I still have enough left over to buy a dozen or so DVDs and games. I don't care how many neat flash animations and classic arcade hacks I can get with my enhanced content internet access - it doesn't stack up to the value of established technologies.
When I sit down in front of the TV I want to flip channels and find something to watch, or play a video game. I don't want to decide whether to pay a nickel to view a five page comic online. Online content is completely disorganized and the vast majority of it simply isn't worth a premium. Like most people I surf the net at work because I'm not ready to invest a significant chunk of money in the set-up to do it at home. But at work I couldn't take advantage of premium content because I have to be restrictive about time and content.
So stop blaming the surfers, and stop blaming payment systems. People pay premiums on enhanced content all the time - from small premiums for lousy porn access to large premiums for access to high-powered searchable databases like Lexis/Nexis. I have yet to come across a single thing on the internet I'd pay a premium for before I'd do without. If a whole bucnh of content providers got together and formed a network and offered an annual subscription deal along with a nicely turned out interface so I could easily find lots of content, well, it might be a different story. Welcome to the world of commerce, artists: It's not my job to come to you with credit card in hand. It's your job to come to me with a deal I can't refuse.
darwin eats stupid business models
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Webvan Out Of Gas
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· Score: 2
The baseline stupidity involved here is the belief that somehow the economic of product delivery would be significantly affected by a better ordering interface, which is the only innovation the internet provides in this instance.
If there were a sufficient market for home grocery delivery BEYOND the established need that is met by conventional grocery stores employing an interesting technological marvel known as the AUDIO TELEPHONE then grocery chains would have been developing it well in advance of the internet. Instead, if you look at the trends in groceries you see things going the other direction - less groceries offering delivery service, bagging service, even self-serve check-out is on the rise. A service where someone collects and fills your order and then delivers it to your door is clearly on the extreme opposite end of the spectrum from this trend. So what is it these internet entrpeneurs know that companies that have been in the grocery business for decades don't? NOTHING. Because they're fucking morons.
And yeah, yeah, you can say, hey, 'Jath, is it worth getting so up in arms about another stupid, moronic, idiotic internet business model that failed? Where do you think the tech stock meltdown that helped precipitate the current economic downturn came from? Every worthwhile tech business that took a beating in the market ought to send webvan.com an e-mail that says "thanks for ruining it for real companies, assholes." Nothing like a little stupidity and greed.
Dude, it was just a joke. Lighten up. It's not like I said anything at all about ideology or indeed Slashdot, except to imply that they attack Microsoft on a very regular basis, which I think is pretty self-evident.
a day without bashing Microsoft IS a day without Slashdot...
Re:Stupidity is Self Curing
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Eco-Terrorism
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· Score: 2
It would be easier to feel sorry for the poor widdle biotech/agritech conglomerates if they had not brought this backlash firmly down on their own heads. The key phrase here is "Arguably a lot more care needs to be taken." Unfortunately biotechnology has been pushed far faster than its potential dangers warrant. The big biotech companies have glossed details and bought influence right and left, have obstinately (and in the face of repeated contradictory evidence) insisted that there is no risk of unintended ecological or health consequences.
International conglomerates routinely engage in disinformation campaigns, gross exaggeration of reality and outright lies to push their points of view, in addition spending millions to influence politics. Excuse me if I don't feel like getting up in arms about Greenpeace or the Sierra Club stretching the facts to make people aware of issues that the industries responsible for them very much hoped would fly right under the radar of public scrutiny.
I am a degreed chemist, a reasonably well-educated person who follows biotech news fairly closely. I think GMO technology (who cares if you like the term? It's accurate) holds massive potential for benefitting humanity but like any powerful tool, it's clear that it could cause significant harm. I would like to see GMO projects receiving some kind of regulated oversight, I would like to see significantly more safety testing of GMO foods, and I certainly feel I have the right to know if what I'm consuming contains GMO products. The agritech/biotech industries are blocking all of these moderate requests.
The Starlink corn issue is instructive. A company produces a seed that results in a food product that is not approved for human consumption due to proven allergenic potential. The company fails to take any significant action to keep this food product segregated from human food products, or even to properly inform farmers that this is a necessity. The corn shows up in taco shells and the company gets crucified. Their response? They try to get their product an emergency exemption - with no justification except that dealing with the situation they created is going to cost them. Whether this corn is a true health danger is irrelevant. What is relevant is the incredible short-sightedness, failure to create appropriate safegaurds, and arrogance in the face of legitimate public concerns.
Companies that are staking their businesses on developing GMO technologies bear as much responsibility if not more for public backlash and potential slowdowns and interruptions of research as ecological organizations. When they start handling GMO responsibly they will find it much easier to reap its benefits.
This is bad because if you look at the real distribution of wealth in the market, you see that, like the economy in general, somewhere between 80-90% of it is owned by 5% of the population. That means that the political actions that corporations take are going to be overwhelmingly designed in favor of the wealthiest and smallest group of Americans. When a corporation spends a few million on politics, that cost is distributed not per shareholder, but per share. So joe nobody with a few dozen shares in his 401K is in for a penny, while Mr. Fatcat with his umpteen thousands of shares is in for a pound. So if its a choice between backing legislation that screws joe and strokes Mr. Fatcat, or vice-versa, do you think joe gets an equal voice?
I agree with many Libertarian principles but I think many are too quick to back the idea that we should extend the same rights to corporations as we do to individuals. I'm of the opinion that as we extend certain special rights to corporations (limited liability being the most significant), we have the right and should take the initiative to limit other rights - the right to spend money as a form of "free speech" being at the top of my list.
On the other hand, the part of your general argument I can't argue with is that it's pretty hard to justify people that don't take control of their as much of their lives as they possibly can. When people don't vote, or don't pay attention to how the politicians they vote for vote, don't read the mail their financial institutions send them because the print is small and it looks boring, don't pay any attention to how the corporations they work for and buy from behave.. Lack of sympathy is an understandable reaction. Anyway, I'm sorry I called you an idiot, and, uh, a simpleton, and suggested you listen to Rush Limbaugh... Final word?
I'll give you your point that most consumers don't protect themselves adequately and essentially "get what they deserve." I'll also give you your implicit point that I was being an asshole, although I'd say we're even at this point.
But you don't really answer my fundamental challenge, which is to answer why you are defending businesses that buy political influence under the table and interact with their customers in a way that is clearly intended to take advantage and deceive. Do you honestly think liberty is best served by a system where political influence is bought, and the result of the influence is that those who buy it get richer? You must be thrilled at the way our two party system uses money from corporations and the wealthy to exclude minor party contenders like Libertarians from the political process... after all, businesses should really be allowed to do whatever they want. It's not like we can't go ahead and buy the same rights.
Here's a scenario: You get a bad spot on your credit record due to a bank error. You're lazy about balancing your checking account so you don't notice it for a couple months. By the time you do, the bank has sold information about you to a commercial information clearinghouse. It takes a month to clear the mistake up with the bank... at which point you realize that you'll never be able to track down everywhere this bad information has ended up, as the clearinghouse has no contract with you and no motivation to disclose their customers.
Your bank enters into a business arrangement with an internet start-up. When their silly business model fails and they're gasping out the last of their venture capital funding, they sell all of the personal information they've amassed, including your records, with Spamorama Inc. Next time you open your e-mail you've got to sift through 2,000 porn ads, health fads, and bad financial offers.
But the little money the start-up makes is enough to keep them limping along... Until their weak firewall gets hacked, at which point a black-hat hacker has your address, phone numbers, e-mails, SSN, credit history... If you've ever known someone who got ripped off by someone getting a credit account in their names, you know that the credit provider comes on with the attitude and assumption of guilty until proven innocent. They're hard-pressed to prosecute but it can cause months and even years of headaches and screw up your credit rating - see scenario one for how even when you clear this up with the credit card company, you could still have bad paper about you floating around for years to come.
And on the more mundane level, ask yourself this simple question: Do you generally enjoy or dislike business solicitations that you do not initiate? As in, telemarketers, spam e-mail, and junk mail. Because the bottom line of all this is empowering corporations to try to sell you things you didn't ask for. The net result will be an increase in unsolicited come-ons. How would you like to waste your time today?
What garbage. "Companies should be able to do what they want to do?" Comapnies should do exactly what we fucking well tell them to do. The problem, since you ask, is that we now live in a society where the companies, which should be conveniences for improving our lives, are essentially writing the laws to their own benefit. The problem is that the more this happens, the more the basic principles of liberty are disrupted. The problem is that idiots like you are perfectly content to let companies pay our representatives to have more and better rights than we as individuals do. And the only justification you simpletons provide is that they are creating "value" in our society - which is patent bullshit since the only motivation of these companies is profits - which means charging us more than things are actually worth. Who benefits from this? The shareholders, who are overwhelmingly members of the richest 1%. Are you a member of this little group? If not then why the hell are you championing corporate rights to invade your privacy? Or maybe you live in Limbaugh-land, where Reaganomics work and all this value comes trickling down on us. The rest of us should maybe consider voting for some representatives that don't drop their pants on command every time some lobbyist waves a little money.
You should go work for the industry, Seraph. This argument is fine if you take a simplistic view of how DNA works, and assume that the effect of making radical and unnatural additions to the genome of an organism is only going to have the intended effect. And maybe this was a fine point of view when most assumed that you could point to one isolated piece of DNA and say that it was ultimately responsible for production of one compound. In the advent of our realization that we have far fewer genes than we previously thought, it's becoming ever more clear that we have a long way to go to understand how genes work to produce the incredible range of compunds that exist in nature's laboratory. And this means the possibility of unexpected, potentially unkown compounds in genetically engineered crops. And that warrants extensive testing.
The other side is the fact that genetically modified crops are not necessary. The problems they purport to answer are caused not by limitations of existing unmodified organisms but by unsustainable farming practices, the loss of arable farmland to development, and the general profligacy, insolent greed, and wastefulness of the the most priviledged people of this world.
Little minded people like you suck. You've missed the whole point because you've been sucking on the corporate teat so long you can't even conceive of a world where people would control their own content. These profit-minded corporations get theirs by simultaneously ripping off artists and consumers. No, the Eno back-catalog is probably not going to show up for a quarter download any time soon. But if we worked together to create a reliable micropayment or shared subscriptions model payment scheme artists like the author WILL offer their work for much less than the shareholder driven content factories, because they'll still be cleaning up compared to the wage-slave work-for-hire wages they'd get working for Warner Brothers. Dipshits like you can keep paying 15 bucks for a CD that cost a dollar to produce. Try this logic on for size, pinhead: not all business requires shareholders to work: a very simple analysis will demonstrate the reality that shareholders ALWAYS diminish the real value of a business because they demand dividends. FOr capital intensive start-ups they are a necessary evil. For a comic book artist, musician, writer, etc., they are unecessary in an age where scalable electronic distribution is a viable option for anyone who can attract consumers.
I studied a lot of art history in college, and one thing I learned is that the art world can be very conservative. The idea that computers generated art can't be fine art is clearly ludicrous - and yet much of the mainstream art critique and art history world only started to really accept photography as a valid form of artistic expression. You can still find art history textbooks that don't mention photography at all.
Of course, it may be that your real problem is not your medium but your subject matter or treatment. If your stuff is cartoony or techy you'll have a hard time finding a serious art audience for it. It's basically a cliche that you can argue until the cows come home about what really makes something art, so don't waste your time trying to figure out whether what you do is art or not. Do what you like and seek a venue and audience that appreciates it.
Some Dumbass Writes:
>Even if this is obviously wrong, what freelance writers can step up against the big boys in court?
Well, if you would read the fucking story, apparently THESE freelance writers (you know - the ones who brought the lawsuit this story is about?) DID step up against the "big boys" (you know - NY Times, Time, Newsday - all the "losers" of the lawsuit - the one brought by freelance writers?) in court - that would be the Supreme Court - and won. Jesus you people are stupid sometimes.
And the answer is the MPAA won't give up because there is simply nothing in it for them except a loss of control. The tiny handful of people who want to run DVDs on Linux is insignificant compared to the potential market for consumer DVD players.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.vix.com/objectivism/organizations.html
I have little faith in a petition crafted and directed by an organization with a clear political motivation.
I'm sorry I mentioned that I have a degree, my only point is that I have some insight into what scientific consensus means. The original post was saying we needed to wait for a scientific consensus. I believe one already exists.
I present the reports as a way for non-scientists to review the evidence and scientific consensus. As stated I have been reading scientific analysis, both for and against the theory fo the greenhouse effect, for 10 years, and have used my knowledge of science and the scientific community to judge the research of others. I'm not sure what you're suggesting I do - take my own climatological data? Build a computer model? Obviously I have to consume this kind of research second-hand. The resources I presented represent valid analysis of solid research.
>You're just a media blowhorn sporting a degree as a badge of elitism over people who are putting original thought to the subject instead of believing everything they read.
"Badge of elitism?" Whatever. I offer a credential to put my opinion is some sort of context. I don't believe everything I read - I analyze what I read and make an opinion based on the best evidence I have available to me.
I think the most telling thing about the response to my post (by far the most active discussion I've ever been a part of) is the preponderance of people like you who attack, with little or in your case no scientific justification, the evidence I present, but provide no contrary evidence that can be independently verified. I am citing major scientific organizations dedicated specifically to understanding these questions. You are citing nothing. Give me some links, big mouth - show me current, published scientific opinion by any group with credentials even approaching those of the National Academy of Sciences or the World Meteorological Organization. It's easy enough to spout off and say I'm full of shit, let's see you prove it.
Second, when we see (as we do) an anomolous increase in temperature, and when our best theories and computer models support the theory that these temperature increases are consistent with changes caused by greenhouse gasses, then it behooves us to take the very real possibility that the greenhouse effect is real into account as we determine how to address our energy and resource development policies.
But I firmly disagree with your characterization of my conclusions. I beleive that a review of the resources I presented leads to a dispassionate opinion that the most qualified bodies and representatives of the scientific consensus present a unified opinion about global warming. There are always dissenting views but we have to make our decisions on what the best-supported opinions of the broadest consensus of experts tell us.
What I'm arguing against here is the opinion that belief in and concern about human-exacerbated global warming is merely a political one. I feel this opinion is erroneous. The majority of scientific evidence in support of the these beliefs and concerns are political value-neutral and motivated by the best available interpretations of objective scientific evidence.
Your "philosophical" attitude is short-sighted and ignorant. the reality of the situation is that most of the effects of global warming we can predict are going to be detrimental to our standard of living. Rising seas means less land. Rising temperatures will contribute to die-offs of sea ecosystems, reducing worldwide food supplies. Rises in diseases are likely. There is a reasonable possibility that more severe weather will result. Global warming exacerbates ozone depletion (in addition many ozone destroyers are also greenhouse gasses) which increases skin cancer rates. I'm not pushing some philosophical program to save the world, or leave it unchanged. But its worth thinking seriously about the costs that global warming is likey to incur
This does not make me an expert in climate change (nor did I claim to be one); I think it does give me a valid claim to consider myself a scientist and to express an opinion on general scientific evidence and what constitutes a scientific consensus.
The comment I'm replying to here should not be modded -1. Please mod it up so it has the visibility it deserves
See for example"
http://www.ucsusa.org/environment/gw.faq.html#8
"[R]eal scientists displaying real data..." I guess in your little fantasy world this doesn't include the World Meteorological Organization or it's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes scientists from a hundred countries, and has been developing the evidence that global warming is real since the 80's. I guees it doesn't include the National Acedemy of Science, which concluded last year that:
"The warming trend in global-mean surface temperature observations during the past 20 years is undoubtedly real and is substantially greater than the average rate of warming during the twentieth century. The disparity between surface and upper air trends in no way invalidates the conclusions that surface temperature has been rising."
I guess it doesn't include such publications as Science, Nature, Scientific American and Chemical & Engineering News (and literally hundreds of others which have all repeated the same conclusion: that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming is real.
The alternate opinion that you express is so phenomenally unsupported, so completely discredited by the overwhelming burden of valid scientific evidence, that it is espoused only by vested interests like power generation and conservative wackos like yourself. Practice what you preach and leave science to the scientists: you don't know what you're talking about.
Evidence: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/climate/globalwarming. html#Q9
http://www.sciam.com/2000/0800issue/0800epstein.ht ml
http://www.ucsusa.org/environment/0warming.html
http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/faq/index.html
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/
Educate yourself. Sea levels are rising. The permafrost is melting. Ozone depletion (yes, it IS linked to global warming) is worsening. And the planet is getting hotter. These are scientific facts that no amount of bullshit rhetoric will change. And it will affect us in purely negative ways in our lifetimes and in our children's lifetimes.
What is described in this story sounds to me like a private organization exercising what is essentially police power, which is always disturbing. Is anyone else envisioning all the great potential here for advertisements... Instead of all this peace, love and linux crap IBM and others should be making commercials about the potential of jack-booted thugs forcing an expensive and time-consuming audit down your throat for failing to comply (purely by accident, natch) with complicated and confusing licensing laws.
Meanwhile, I can get a very nice stereo 20" TV at $200, a Playstation 2 for $350, A Satellite TV unit and a year of premium access, plenty of sports, specialty channels and movies easily for $800. I still have enough left over to buy a dozen or so DVDs and games. I don't care how many neat flash animations and classic arcade hacks I can get with my enhanced content internet access - it doesn't stack up to the value of established technologies.
When I sit down in front of the TV I want to flip channels and find something to watch, or play a video game. I don't want to decide whether to pay a nickel to view a five page comic online. Online content is completely disorganized and the vast majority of it simply isn't worth a premium. Like most people I surf the net at work because I'm not ready to invest a significant chunk of money in the set-up to do it at home. But at work I couldn't take advantage of premium content because I have to be restrictive about time and content.
So stop blaming the surfers, and stop blaming payment systems. People pay premiums on enhanced content all the time - from small premiums for lousy porn access to large premiums for access to high-powered searchable databases like Lexis/Nexis. I have yet to come across a single thing on the internet I'd pay a premium for before I'd do without. If a whole bucnh of content providers got together and formed a network and offered an annual subscription deal along with a nicely turned out interface so I could easily find lots of content, well, it might be a different story. Welcome to the world of commerce, artists: It's not my job to come to you with credit card in hand. It's your job to come to me with a deal I can't refuse.
If there were a sufficient market for home grocery delivery BEYOND the established need that is met by conventional grocery stores employing an interesting technological marvel known as the AUDIO TELEPHONE then grocery chains would have been developing it well in advance of the internet. Instead, if you look at the trends in groceries you see things going the other direction - less groceries offering delivery service, bagging service, even self-serve check-out is on the rise. A service where someone collects and fills your order and then delivers it to your door is clearly on the extreme opposite end of the spectrum from this trend. So what is it these internet entrpeneurs know that companies that have been in the grocery business for decades don't? NOTHING. Because they're fucking morons.
And yeah, yeah, you can say, hey, 'Jath, is it worth getting so up in arms about another stupid, moronic, idiotic internet business model that failed? Where do you think the tech stock meltdown that helped precipitate the current economic downturn came from? Every worthwhile tech business that took a beating in the market ought to send webvan.com an e-mail that says "thanks for ruining it for real companies, assholes." Nothing like a little stupidity and greed.
Oh and by the way, man, it's spelled HYPOCRISY.
a day without bashing Microsoft IS a day without Slashdot...
International conglomerates routinely engage in disinformation campaigns, gross exaggeration of reality and outright lies to push their points of view, in addition spending millions to influence politics. Excuse me if I don't feel like getting up in arms about Greenpeace or the Sierra Club stretching the facts to make people aware of issues that the industries responsible for them very much hoped would fly right under the radar of public scrutiny.
I am a degreed chemist, a reasonably well-educated person who follows biotech news fairly closely. I think GMO technology (who cares if you like the term? It's accurate) holds massive potential for benefitting humanity but like any powerful tool, it's clear that it could cause significant harm. I would like to see GMO projects receiving some kind of regulated oversight, I would like to see significantly more safety testing of GMO foods, and I certainly feel I have the right to know if what I'm consuming contains GMO products. The agritech/biotech industries are blocking all of these moderate requests.
The Starlink corn issue is instructive. A company produces a seed that results in a food product that is not approved for human consumption due to proven allergenic potential. The company fails to take any significant action to keep this food product segregated from human food products, or even to properly inform farmers that this is a necessity. The corn shows up in taco shells and the company gets crucified. Their response? They try to get their product an emergency exemption - with no justification except that dealing with the situation they created is going to cost them. Whether this corn is a true health danger is irrelevant. What is relevant is the incredible short-sightedness, failure to create appropriate safegaurds, and arrogance in the face of legitimate public concerns.
Companies that are staking their businesses on developing GMO technologies bear as much responsibility if not more for public backlash and potential slowdowns and interruptions of research as ecological organizations. When they start handling GMO responsibly they will find it much easier to reap its benefits.
I agree with many Libertarian principles but I think many are too quick to back the idea that we should extend the same rights to corporations as we do to individuals. I'm of the opinion that as we extend certain special rights to corporations (limited liability being the most significant), we have the right and should take the initiative to limit other rights - the right to spend money as a form of "free speech" being at the top of my list.
On the other hand, the part of your general argument I can't argue with is that it's pretty hard to justify people that don't take control of their as much of their lives as they possibly can. When people don't vote, or don't pay attention to how the politicians they vote for vote, don't read the mail their financial institutions send them because the print is small and it looks boring, don't pay any attention to how the corporations they work for and buy from behave.. Lack of sympathy is an understandable reaction. Anyway, I'm sorry I called you an idiot, and, uh, a simpleton, and suggested you listen to Rush Limbaugh... Final word?
But you don't really answer my fundamental challenge, which is to answer why you are defending businesses that buy political influence under the table and interact with their customers in a way that is clearly intended to take advantage and deceive. Do you honestly think liberty is best served by a system where political influence is bought, and the result of the influence is that those who buy it get richer? You must be thrilled at the way our two party system uses money from corporations and the wealthy to exclude minor party contenders like Libertarians from the political process... after all, businesses should really be allowed to do whatever they want. It's not like we can't go ahead and buy the same rights.
Your bank enters into a business arrangement with an internet start-up. When their silly business model fails and they're gasping out the last of their venture capital funding, they sell all of the personal information they've amassed, including your records, with Spamorama Inc. Next time you open your e-mail you've got to sift through 2,000 porn ads, health fads, and bad financial offers.
But the little money the start-up makes is enough to keep them limping along... Until their weak firewall gets hacked, at which point a black-hat hacker has your address, phone numbers, e-mails, SSN, credit history... If you've ever known someone who got ripped off by someone getting a credit account in their names, you know that the credit provider comes on with the attitude and assumption of guilty until proven innocent. They're hard-pressed to prosecute but it can cause months and even years of headaches and screw up your credit rating - see scenario one for how even when you clear this up with the credit card company, you could still have bad paper about you floating around for years to come.
And on the more mundane level, ask yourself this simple question: Do you generally enjoy or dislike business solicitations that you do not initiate? As in, telemarketers, spam e-mail, and junk mail. Because the bottom line of all this is empowering corporations to try to sell you things you didn't ask for. The net result will be an increase in unsolicited come-ons. How would you like to waste your time today?
What garbage. "Companies should be able to do what they want to do?" Comapnies should do exactly what we fucking well tell them to do. The problem, since you ask, is that we now live in a society where the companies, which should be conveniences for improving our lives, are essentially writing the laws to their own benefit. The problem is that the more this happens, the more the basic principles of liberty are disrupted. The problem is that idiots like you are perfectly content to let companies pay our representatives to have more and better rights than we as individuals do. And the only justification you simpletons provide is that they are creating "value" in our society - which is patent bullshit since the only motivation of these companies is profits - which means charging us more than things are actually worth. Who benefits from this? The shareholders, who are overwhelmingly members of the richest 1%. Are you a member of this little group? If not then why the hell are you championing corporate rights to invade your privacy? Or maybe you live in Limbaugh-land, where Reaganomics work and all this value comes trickling down on us. The rest of us should maybe consider voting for some representatives that don't drop their pants on command every time some lobbyist waves a little money.
>seems quite functional and very cool. I don't know - I did a search on pr0n and it only came up about 2% filthy smut.
The other side is the fact that genetically modified crops are not necessary. The problems they purport to answer are caused not by limitations of existing unmodified organisms but by unsustainable farming practices, the loss of arable farmland to development, and the general profligacy, insolent greed, and wastefulness of the the most priviledged people of this world.
Little minded people like you suck. You've missed the whole point because you've been sucking on the corporate teat so long you can't even conceive of a world where people would control their own content. These profit-minded corporations get theirs by simultaneously ripping off artists and consumers. No, the Eno back-catalog is probably not going to show up for a quarter download any time soon. But if we worked together to create a reliable micropayment or shared subscriptions model payment scheme artists like the author WILL offer their work for much less than the shareholder driven content factories, because they'll still be cleaning up compared to the wage-slave work-for-hire wages they'd get working for Warner Brothers. Dipshits like you can keep paying 15 bucks for a CD that cost a dollar to produce. Try this logic on for size, pinhead: not all business requires shareholders to work: a very simple analysis will demonstrate the reality that shareholders ALWAYS diminish the real value of a business because they demand dividends. FOr capital intensive start-ups they are a necessary evil. For a comic book artist, musician, writer, etc., they are unecessary in an age where scalable electronic distribution is a viable option for anyone who can attract consumers.
Of course, it may be that your real problem is not your medium but your subject matter or treatment. If your stuff is cartoony or techy you'll have a hard time finding a serious art audience for it. It's basically a cliche that you can argue until the cows come home about what really makes something art, so don't waste your time trying to figure out whether what you do is art or not. Do what you like and seek a venue and audience that appreciates it.
Well, if you would read the fucking story, apparently THESE freelance writers (you know - the ones who brought the lawsuit this story is about?) DID step up against the "big boys" (you know - NY Times, Time, Newsday - all the "losers" of the lawsuit - the one brought by freelance writers?) in court - that would be the Supreme Court - and won. Jesus you people are stupid sometimes.
And the answer is the MPAA won't give up because there is simply nothing in it for them except a loss of control. The tiny handful of people who want to run DVDs on Linux is insignificant compared to the potential market for consumer DVD players.