If judges do understand these issues it's probably a result of some all-expense-paid vacation that lobbying groups in the private sector like to call educational 'seminars', and I like to call 'brainwashing' or 'bribery'. I'm a bit cynical, though.
Doesn't answer my question...
on
Review: K-PAX
·
· Score: 2
The only thing I'm wondering about this movie, after seeing the commercials with Spacey reading an animals mind, is whether or not this is another stupid 'extraordinary human/alien does corny magic tricks for audience' movie. When's the last time a movie with any mention of aliens, portrayed them in any sort of psychological way? If I were to believe hollywood, I would say that most alien lifeforms are pretentious freaks who should be immediately enslaved and forced to serve as interpreters to more interesting species; such as dolphins. What movie bothers to explain how or why most alien life has been given the powers of superman? Or how their superior minds somehow overcame the violent tendencies they charge us with; instincts that would've initially been necessary for the survival of their species (evolution is a dangerous road). Anyway, enough rambling. A good alien movie would be 90% exploration of life and culture on an alien planet, with the final 10% showing the arrival of freakish humans in a roving '4-wheeler'.
Mr. Public is quite likely to have a computer, and quite likely to learn a lot by using it. A 'we're smarter than them' mentality isn't going to help anything. If this community really does care about 'our rights online' maybe they should be in places where John Q. Public hangs out, telling him why he should care.
Anyway, I'm veering of topic. I just know that I used to be a computer illiterate AOL user, and it was online activism in the Nader campaign, and then here on Slashdot that woke me up from the dreamy, free, unchallenged democratic paradise I thought I was lounging around in. Although, it was not being able to play Quake online that got me off AOL. But I sure learned to hate'em even more afterwards! And if some of the short-and-to-the-point arguements that are made here against MS, or AOL, or the DMCA, were made in an AOL chatroom, they'd have a much larger impact.
I probably should've left the SSSCA spin out of it entirely, because that's only part of it. To take another perspective, show me any company that gets so much free advertisement on Slashdot. Moreover, besides Linux, what gets such decidedly positive coverage? You can see from the search I linked that there are tons of Sony product stories, and very few even mildly negative ones. The mainpage right now has 2 stories about Sony products that were apparently so newsworthy that the various other sections like 'toys' and 'technology' just couldn't contain them.
I'm not the type to go off on a diatribe about how 'bad slashdot has gotten' and how it's 'sold out', but I'm starting to feel like while reading the site, I have to dodge commercials for Sony products. One day I'm reading about a 'call to arms' against the SSSCA and the record industry that's pushing it, the next day I'm passing over "news stories" that scream hooray Sony! Sony being one of the largest parts of the RIAA, and representing a very large amount of political contributions. Feh.
I think the biggest affect would be psychological. The net would cease to be an icon of 'freedom unfiltered', or whatever you wanna call it. People would be as afraid to open their minds to alternatives, or say something society would see as 'abnormal' or immoral, as they are in their offices and homes right now. In my opinion the FBI, CIA, and NSA are fascist organizations made up of people who actually have good intentions; fascist as overbearing mother who thinks she's just protecting her kids. But anyway, whatever the case, the intimidation factor is going to hit every wired American. Even if a person's day consists of browsing the depths of AOL chat rooms, I would think that this would create some small overtones of 'now the feds are watching me download porn'.
I won't even be as compromising as the other response; the fact is that no one needs to be in your yard, and if the country is to operate on a day to day basis, people need to fly. I better metaphor would be a company that does something stupid like making car tires that explode randomly.
By the way, anyone else wondering where the bailout money is for the people who airlines supposedly 'had' to fire after the 11th? Pfft.
By the way, who would know more about this subject than a US Senator? (quotes were also linked). Would it convince you to know that there are CEO's who've spoken out about it? Saying they're tired of being extorted; political bribery is all but a necessity to keep up with competitors who 'donate' and get special treatment. And why do you think the private sector would continually shove money at politicians if they weren't buying something? If they weren't, spending those millions of dollars every year for nothing, might be a good hint that they're in the wrong line of work. You could always follow the trail yourself, but at the very least I would ask that you actually back your statement up. If there's anything on this earth I know about, it's this, and what you've said amounts to "You're wrong but I'm not going to tell you why. You're ignorant, go back to school."
"Money has little to do with it (believe it or not..). Campaign financing is a very heavily regulated thing, and its not so simple as a lobbyist or group giving money to the congressman. Most people blame it on that, since they just dont know any better."
That's just silly. I don't need to listen to Russ Feingold to know that money is a very big part of it; and that campaign financing is, in fact, an unregulated thing. Oh sure, if you go out and donate through the normal channels you fall under federal limits for 'hard money'. But what most entities do is make an end run around the democratic obstacles and funnel money through non-federal accounts, while screaming "Hey, you can't regulate this! I have a first amendment right to bribe elected officials!" And so, year by year, a loophole becomes niagra falls.
You've gotta be kidding me. When's the last time you read any story at all about people gaining rights? The bills will pass, and when the public returns to it's complacent existence the 'Sunset' section will be amended to extend the time, or remove the time restriction completely. It'll be done just as easily as the moratorium on internet taxes was just extended 2 years.
By the way, can you point out any section in any of this legislation that would've prevented what happened? You would probably have to read it first; but then again, if any American who was paying attention at school on the day they talked about that 'bill of rights' thing had bothered to read it, they would be quick to oppose it. It's hard to sustain silly things like 'equality' when you're passing legislation that allows immigrants to be held indefinitely. Maybe the statue of liberty should say "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, so that we may finger-print, strip-search, and imprison them until their desire for freedom is verified."
Privacy, by the way, is considered a basic human right by the United Nations.
Agreed. I probably had a different interpretation of 'instrument' than I should have. I'm not really even sure what context the quote was in. I know Dee Hock's point, but I'm not sure he meant that corporations should be something like an arm of the government either.
By definition corporations are instruments of government (and government is an instrument of the people, so corporations exist to serve the people). Hell, a 'corporate charter' is what makes a business a corporation as I understand it; and that's given by the government. The government isn't perfect, and it doesn't help that people tend not to do their civic duty by keeping it in check, but a democratic government isn't a bad thing. How would you suggest corporations which are just as powerful, and in fact, wealthier than most governments, be kept in check without a governing body to control them? Would you trade an oppressive government obsessed with greed and power for an oppressive group of multinational corporations -- obsessed with greed and power? We would be returning to the pre-union days where 1 out of 3 factory workers is eventually killed or mutilated on the job because, when business interests are the top priority, safety requirements aren't cost-effective.
"What we are seeing on television are not really party conventions, where representative delegates come to confer and choose, rather, these are basically now corporate trade shows for the delegates, while the main show is behind closed doors at big dollar soft money fund-raisers, and those soft money contributions, make no mistake, are setting the agenda for the American congress, and for the United States as a whole.
So, my friends, these conventions are both examples and symbols of a broader problem. We have devolved from a representative democracy to a corporate democracy in this country. This is not a system of one person one vote, or one delegate one vote, but a system of one million dollars, one million votes. It is a system of legalized bribery and legalized extortion."
This is slightly on topic; it's something that made me laugh and I'm reminded of it anytime I hear of this subject. The short description; a response on Declan's politechbot to "Citizens Against Government Waste", an MS-funded 'grassroots organization' (pfft), from Roblimo. He made an observation that's been made before; that the Government would save a lot of money if they weren't paying for Windows licenses. I'd just never imagined it could be made at such a perfect moment, to such a perfect audience as a farcical group of Washington watchdogs who claim that their struggle for an end to the MS antitrust case is only part of their desire to combat Government waste. And of course the icing on the cake is that CAGW never replied. Anyway, here's CAGW's original press release and here's Roblimo's response.
If what you're really worried about is holding the hands of stupid people, wouldn't the logical reaction be that we don't need Microsoft holding peoples hands and showing them what should be used to run their files? I mean, if individual responsibility were your concern I would think you'd say 'let people figure out what runs an.mp3 themselves, it's not Microsoft's responsibility to hold these peoples hands just because they're too stupid to set a default program themselves.'
Note the mention of groups of guerrilla soldiers, including Osama Binladen, being funded by the CIA. I know that the CIA was later prohibited from hiring terrorists, and I have to wonder whether section 815 of the Combating Terrorism Act of 2001 isn't exploiting the emotional response after a terrorist attack to weaken or completely remove restrictions on funding the type of people who hijacked these planes; to supposedly combat a terrorist leader who was apparently trained and strengthened by the same funding. The only discrepancy I see is that 815 allows this practice for 'intelligence' purposes, but forgive me for thinking it could easily be abused as a loophole to fund terrorists for any purpose. If it were, you can bet it'd be 25 years later before an FOIA request had the CIA's activities declassified.
I like how they, for no apparent reason, tied the SWG teaser into a download from doubleclick.net. Will I be expected to sign up for the game through doubleclick also? As far as I'm concerned, this is a criminal organization that bribes and lobbies it's way out of legal trouble. Why not just have the mafia handle the subscriptions? Does anyone have a mirror for the movie?
I'm no expert on the process, but I'm fairly certain that elected officials take an oath to preserve freedom, democracy, and the bill of rights. Following the attacks, supporters of what would amount to a policed-state, or a country under martial law (where the intelligence arm of the government would act as the military force), haven't even bothered to mask their intentions. They simply say things like, 'US citizens will need to lose certain freedoms in order for our agenda to be met'. This example is a little extreme; but it seems as much a contradiction as hitler sitting in the oval office, and running this democracy according to his interpretation of the constitution. The kinds of proposals being made in the house and the senate aren't just crossing a line, they're pissing all over the line. Particularly, legislation dealing with immigrants who've simply been suspected of illegal activity borders on fascism. I suspect that most politicians who support these measures, or have already voted to pass them, haven't even had the patience to actually read what they're writing into law. If they do know what they're doing, they should be removed from office.
Personally I would prefer something along the lines of what Ralph Nader suggested in the 2000 election; a 'none of the above' choice on all ballots. It's almost idiotic that we can call this a democratic process when the president is elected by %17 of the eligible voters -- while %50 of them sit at home; either half of them don't care, or they've decided that lobbyists and six-figure 'donations' (see also: bribes) have really made their role almost non-existent. The idea of a 'none of the above' choice is simple; if more people vote 'none' than any other choice, no one wins, and the election restarts -- possibly with the candidates being re-chosen.
Oh that's right! Thank you for reminding me! Well, surely the humane and noble response to the death of innocent people is the murder of other innocent people in the name of killing terrorists who could just as easily be brought to justice without eradicating whatever town they happen to be in.
Slashdot Mirror
If judges do understand these issues it's probably a result of some all-expense-paid vacation that lobbying groups in the private sector like to call educational 'seminars', and I like to call 'brainwashing' or 'bribery'. I'm a bit cynical, though.
The only thing I'm wondering about this movie, after seeing the commercials with Spacey reading an animals mind, is whether or not this is another stupid 'extraordinary human/alien does corny magic tricks for audience' movie. When's the last time a movie with any mention of aliens, portrayed them in any sort of psychological way? If I were to believe hollywood, I would say that most alien lifeforms are pretentious freaks who should be immediately enslaved and forced to serve as interpreters to more interesting species; such as dolphins. What movie bothers to explain how or why most alien life has been given the powers of superman? Or how their superior minds somehow overcame the violent tendencies they charge us with; instincts that would've initially been necessary for the survival of their species (evolution is a dangerous road). Anyway, enough rambling. A good alien movie would be 90% exploration of life and culture on an alien planet, with the final 10% showing the arrival of freakish humans in a roving '4-wheeler'.
So much available information..........*drools*
Mr. Public is quite likely to have a computer, and quite likely to learn a lot by using it. A 'we're smarter than them' mentality isn't going to help anything. If this community really does care about 'our rights online' maybe they should be in places where John Q. Public hangs out, telling him why he should care.
Anyway, I'm veering of topic. I just know that I used to be a computer illiterate AOL user, and it was online activism in the Nader campaign, and then here on Slashdot that woke me up from the dreamy, free, unchallenged democratic paradise I thought I was lounging around in. Although, it was not being able to play Quake online that got me off AOL. But I sure learned to hate'em even more afterwards! And if some of the short-and-to-the-point arguements that are made here against MS, or AOL, or the DMCA, were made in an AOL chatroom, they'd have a much larger impact.
I probably should've left the SSSCA spin out of it entirely, because that's only part of it. To take another perspective, show me any company that gets so much free advertisement on Slashdot. Moreover, besides Linux, what gets such decidedly positive coverage? You can see from the search I linked that there are tons of Sony product stories, and very few even mildly negative ones. The mainpage right now has 2 stories about Sony products that were apparently so newsworthy that the various other sections like 'toys' and 'technology' just couldn't contain them.
I'm not the type to go off on a diatribe about how 'bad slashdot has gotten' and how it's 'sold out', but I'm starting to feel like while reading the site, I have to dodge commercials for Sony products. One day I'm reading about a 'call to arms' against the SSSCA and the record industry that's pushing it, the next day I'm passing over "news stories" that scream hooray Sony! Sony being one of the largest parts of the RIAA, and representing a very large amount of political contributions. Feh.
I think the biggest affect would be psychological. The net would cease to be an icon of 'freedom unfiltered', or whatever you wanna call it. People would be as afraid to open their minds to alternatives, or say something society would see as 'abnormal' or immoral, as they are in their offices and homes right now. In my opinion the FBI, CIA, and NSA are fascist organizations made up of people who actually have good intentions; fascist as overbearing mother who thinks she's just protecting her kids. But anyway, whatever the case, the intimidation factor is going to hit every wired American. Even if a person's day consists of browsing the depths of AOL chat rooms, I would think that this would create some small overtones of 'now the feds are watching me download porn'.
I won't even be as compromising as the other response; the fact is that no one needs to be in your yard, and if the country is to operate on a day to day basis, people need to fly. I better metaphor would be a company that does something stupid like making car tires that explode randomly.
By the way, anyone else wondering where the bailout money is for the people who airlines supposedly 'had' to fire after the 11th? Pfft.
By the way, who would know more about this subject than a US Senator? (quotes were also linked). Would it convince you to know that there are CEO's who've spoken out about it? Saying they're tired of being extorted; political bribery is all but a necessity to keep up with competitors who 'donate' and get special treatment. And why do you think the private sector would continually shove money at politicians if they weren't buying something? If they weren't, spending those millions of dollars every year for nothing, might be a good hint that they're in the wrong line of work. You could always follow the trail yourself, but at the very least I would ask that you actually back your statement up. If there's anything on this earth I know about, it's this, and what you've said amounts to "You're wrong but I'm not going to tell you why. You're ignorant, go back to school."
Yes, I do. It's defined and described through Buckley v Valeo in the links of my response.
That's just silly. I don't need to listen to Russ Feingold to know that money is a very big part of it; and that campaign financing is, in fact, an unregulated thing. Oh sure, if you go out and donate through the normal channels you fall under federal limits for 'hard money'. But what most entities do is make an end run around the democratic obstacles and funnel money through non-federal accounts, while screaming "Hey, you can't regulate this! I have a first amendment right to bribe elected officials!" And so, year by year, a loophole becomes niagra falls.
You've gotta be kidding me. When's the last time you read any story at all about people gaining rights? The bills will pass, and when the public returns to it's complacent existence the 'Sunset' section will be amended to extend the time, or remove the time restriction completely. It'll be done just as easily as the moratorium on internet taxes was just extended 2 years.
By the way, can you point out any section in any of this legislation that would've prevented what happened? You would probably have to read it first; but then again, if any American who was paying attention at school on the day they talked about that 'bill of rights' thing had bothered to read it, they would be quick to oppose it. It's hard to sustain silly things like 'equality' when you're passing legislation that allows immigrants to be held indefinitely. Maybe the statue of liberty should say "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, so that we may finger-print, strip-search, and imprison them until their desire for freedom is verified."
Privacy, by the way, is considered a basic human right by the United Nations.
Agreed. I probably had a different interpretation of 'instrument' than I should have. I'm not really even sure what context the quote was in. I know Dee Hock's point, but I'm not sure he meant that corporations should be something like an arm of the government either.
By definition corporations are instruments of government (and government is an instrument of the people, so corporations exist to serve the people). Hell, a 'corporate charter' is what makes a business a corporation as I understand it; and that's given by the government. The government isn't perfect, and it doesn't help that people tend not to do their civic duty by keeping it in check, but a democratic government isn't a bad thing. How would you suggest corporations which are just as powerful, and in fact, wealthier than most governments, be kept in check without a governing body to control them? Would you trade an oppressive government obsessed with greed and power for an oppressive group of multinational corporations -- obsessed with greed and power? We would be returning to the pre-union days where 1 out of 3 factory workers is eventually killed or mutilated on the job because, when business interests are the top priority, safety requirements aren't cost-effective.
(the speech)
This is slightly on topic; it's something that made me laugh and I'm reminded of it anytime I hear of this subject. The short description; a response on Declan's politechbot to "Citizens Against Government Waste", an MS-funded 'grassroots organization' (pfft), from Roblimo. He made an observation that's been made before; that the Government would save a lot of money if they weren't paying for Windows licenses. I'd just never imagined it could be made at such a perfect moment, to such a perfect audience as a farcical group of Washington watchdogs who claim that their struggle for an end to the MS antitrust case is only part of their desire to combat Government waste. And of course the icing on the cake is that CAGW never replied. Anyway, here's CAGW's original press release and here's Roblimo's response.
If what you're really worried about is holding the hands of stupid people, wouldn't the logical reaction be that we don't need Microsoft holding peoples hands and showing them what should be used to run their files? I mean, if individual responsibility were your concern I would think you'd say 'let people figure out what runs an .mp3 themselves, it's not Microsoft's responsibility to hold these peoples hands just because they're too stupid to set a default program themselves.'
I seem to be the only one with the immediate reaction of 'how long will it take Sony to sue this person?'
Note the mention of groups of guerrilla soldiers, including Osama Binladen, being funded by the CIA. I know that the CIA was later prohibited from hiring terrorists, and I have to wonder whether section 815 of the Combating Terrorism Act of 2001 isn't exploiting the emotional response after a terrorist attack to weaken or completely remove restrictions on funding the type of people who hijacked these planes; to supposedly combat a terrorist leader who was apparently trained and strengthened by the same funding. The only discrepancy I see is that 815 allows this practice for 'intelligence' purposes, but forgive me for thinking it could easily be abused as a loophole to fund terrorists for any purpose. If it were, you can bet it'd be 25 years later before an FOIA request had the CIA's activities declassified.
Oh, pshaw. Microsoft is only exercising it's god-given right to find new and innovative methods of disguising organized crime as legitimate business.
Of course. But I'm not as sure about neglecting to read legislative business being an impeachable offense as I am about violating civil rights.
I like how they, for no apparent reason, tied the SWG teaser into a download from doubleclick.net. Will I be expected to sign up for the game through doubleclick also? As far as I'm concerned, this is a criminal organization that bribes and lobbies it's way out of legal trouble. Why not just have the mafia handle the subscriptions? Does anyone have a mirror for the movie?
I'm no expert on the process, but I'm fairly certain that elected officials take an oath to preserve freedom, democracy, and the bill of rights. Following the attacks, supporters of what would amount to a policed-state, or a country under martial law (where the intelligence arm of the government would act as the military force), haven't even bothered to mask their intentions. They simply say things like, 'US citizens will need to lose certain freedoms in order for our agenda to be met'. This example is a little extreme; but it seems as much a contradiction as hitler sitting in the oval office, and running this democracy according to his interpretation of the constitution. The kinds of proposals being made in the house and the senate aren't just crossing a line, they're pissing all over the line. Particularly, legislation dealing with immigrants who've simply been suspected of illegal activity borders on fascism. I suspect that most politicians who support these measures, or have already voted to pass them, haven't even had the patience to actually read what they're writing into law. If they do know what they're doing, they should be removed from office.
Personally I would prefer something along the lines of what Ralph Nader suggested in the 2000 election; a 'none of the above' choice on all ballots. It's almost idiotic that we can call this a democratic process when the president is elected by %17 of the eligible voters -- while %50 of them sit at home; either half of them don't care, or they've decided that lobbyists and six-figure 'donations' (see also: bribes) have really made their role almost non-existent. The idea of a 'none of the above' choice is simple; if more people vote 'none' than any other choice, no one wins, and the election restarts -- possibly with the candidates being re-chosen.
Oh that's right! Thank you for reminding me! Well, surely the humane and noble response to the death of innocent people is the murder of other innocent people in the name of killing terrorists who could just as easily be brought to justice without eradicating whatever town they happen to be in.