what you say is exactly right: movies should only make money in theatres, and should be free online
i could put it on youtube, and get money from advertising clicks. or charge the odd bird who wants it on dvd $10. or i rent a theatre, take out advertising, and sell tickets. in other words, i make my money in theatres, or i make it via ancillary revenue streams. that's it. no enforcement, no policing, no legal force or warping of common sense/ how the internet functions need apply
you say this model doesn't support modern production costs?
oh yeah: how much did avatar cost to produce? and how much money has avatar made in theatres so far? pfffft
you say avatar isn't typical of revenue? ok, so then what are we paying for in the pre-internet model? we're supposed to give corporate welfare to moviemakers who make bad movies nobody wants to see?
howabout this crazy wacky "communist" thinking of mine: if the movie is good, producers recoup their investment in theatres. if the movie sucks, then they lose money. end of fucking story. the point is, what i am advocating is not some techno anarchist bullshit. what i'm advocating for is called PURE CAPITALISM. meanwhile, you are not defending capitalism from "information wants to be free man" technohippies. you are defending oligopolies and monopolies from pure capitalism, which is what i am advocating for. monopolies and oligopolies are just as poisonous to the free market as stalin and mao, friend. so fuck the studios and their crocodile tears over how the itnernet has killed their dvd aftermarket. boo fucking hoo. warner brothers needs to learn how to make movies like the actual warner brothers made movies in the silver screen era
there will be no dearth of movies or culture because of this "new" model... aka, how moviemaking functioned for decades before the age of the vhs tape. the vhs tape/ dvd which the movie industry fought. fought because this CASH COW they thought in the 1980s was going to destroy them: morons then, morons now about the internet
there will just be a dearth of bad movies. i did not know direct-to-dvd was a movie making model worth saving. here's my tiny violin for steven seagal and uwe boll. adios blockbuster video. boo fucking hoo
and you're absolutely right: some aesop's fable is in order here, for you and the mpaa/ riaa/ other ip assholes:
"The Dog and the Bone" is a fable ascribed to Aesop. According to the story, a dog was carrying a bone over a bridge. Looking down into the water, the dog saw its own reflection, which looked to him like another dog carrying another bone. Wanting the other dog's bone as well as his own, the dog opened his mouth to bark at the "other" dog it saw, but in doing so, the dog dropped his own bone into the river, where it was gone for good. In some versions the dog falls into the water and struggles to swim to shore, whereupon he loses his grip on the bone and sees it float downstream.
The sad, hungry dog learned the hard lesson that, by being greedy, one risks what one already has.
the world is changing friend. adapt. or die. your choice
the quote/ bkr1'sr observation is spot on about the problem with those married to the pre-internet model of intellectual property
it's the equivalent of marie antoinette saying "let them eat cake" when told starving parisians don't have bread: the guy is so clueless as to real world labor, he actually and sincerely believes that not being paid for writing a song 23 years ago places him in the same category as modern slavery
that this man thinks a song from 1987 should still be earning him money
yes, LEGALLY, he has a case, but morally and philosophically, he just seems like a giant asshole
fact: there are no morally or philosophically coherent grounds that a song from 1987 should anyone anything. really
and if you believe otherwise, you very much are a good definition of what is wrong with this world, in terms of a stunning display of greed backed up with force, overwhelming the common good
"It was the most evil of evil Rick Roll scripts too -- worse than any that anyone has used to get me in the past."
correct me if i'm wrong, but rickrolling implies its just rick astley singing about how he won't let you down, right?
so what the heck is he referring to in the quote above? did they distribute 1080p video of ballmer in his underwear singing karaoke and throwing chairs?
speaking of which, a GIS for ballmer is not exactly flattering
there's a certain amount of ego going on. for example, nixon made a point to have all of his white house discussions taped, down to the most mundane stuff, like where he would eat for dinner, but where he also freely and many times said extremely sensitive things. its aggrandizement: "i'm so important, let's tape everything i say so historians of the future can hang on my every word"
Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster "permissiveness," and said that "it breaks the family." But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases -- like interracial pregnancies, he said. "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white," he told an aide, before adding, "Or a rape."
---
"What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up," Nixon said. At another point he said: "It may be they have a death wish. You know that's been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries."
ah that wacky nixon. i wonder what if tweets today will look equally crude in the future
the nazis and the east german stasi were fanatically meticulous record keepers. pol pot and the soviets kept voluminous records. the chinese commnist party and iran's military junta are studious record takers
so when you say " there are major temptations to just not keep records of stuff that is inconvenient unless there's a specific action to tell you otherwise", i assert the exact opposite is true. there's no impulse to hide anything. in fact, the impulse is to record everything
this is because the impulse to hide something is to assume someone thinks they are doing something wrong. but at the highest echelons of power, in any country, in any era, you are not talking about people with small egos. and no one up there thinks they are doing anything wrong. and in fact, many rulers in the heights of power pretty much think they decide what right and wrong is. they got that high in power for a reason: they firmly believe the absolute justification of their beliefs. you don't climb the rungs of power if you have misgivings and secret doubts, that just drains your drive to succeed
therefore, no rulers see record keeping as a threat. in fact, many of them see record keeping as just good business: future writers of future history books need to know what great thoughts they were thinking at the time and how bright is the sunlight that shines out of their asshole: a nod to the future glorification of their wonderous legacy
there ARE cameras everywhere. i live in times square. there are probably video logs of me coming and going in every direction i've ever gone in the last 4 years
who fucking cares? what the hell are they going to do with this info? how can it be used to hurt me? in what way does this info damage me or could possibly damage me? i await your "minority report" style fantasy sequences
if you want to win this fight, you are going to have to convince me and the other 99% of the population that just doesn't fucking care. you haven't convinced me. so you, and you're 100 paranoid schizophrenic friends are all alone in a sea of ten million of us who have better things to worry about. not because we don;t care about our privacy, but because some details about our lives that are "private" are perfectly pointless and useless. the cameras in times square are not pointed at my bathroom or my bedroom
"1984" is a vaguely amusing piece of fiction. not the fucking future. get a life, realize real life is not a b-level high anxiety hollywood movie. no one fucking cares about this info about you, and no one fucking cares that someone has this info about them, because the info is useless. the info will not be abused because it can't be abused: there's no coherent way to abuse it in any coherent way which coherently hurts you
there you go: your high anixety is met with pure and simple ambivalence. good luck in trying to scare us all with your paranoia. we understand the ramifications and the implications. we're completely unimpressed. welcome to the reality of our horrible future: an uncaring populace
how can we not see senator palpatine and agent smith are right around the corner!?
pfffffft
fucking fanboys with too much fiction and not enough reality
put it this way: woman walks naked down the street, and everyone who walks by her, she expects them not to see her
sound reasonable?
that's the essence of your "noble" fight
simple: if you want something private DON'T TYPE IT INTO GOOGLE. if you don't want to be seen naked, DON'T WALK DOWN THE STREET NAKED
do you understand me yet?
i EXACTLY agree with you that we shouldn't barricade in our homes... by coming to the simple realization and acceptance of the fact that when you go into public, pointless information about you is made public. in other words, to go into public, to not barricade yourself in your house, you can:
a. expect the government to give you vast protections concerning the abuse of the random pointless bits of info about you on the street (where you are, what you're wearing, the expression on your face, etc.). stuff no one really cares about and the government in no way can protect you from
b. expect of simple reality that merely existing leads to you leaking random detritus and fluff about you. issues of "privacy" that have no value to you, and you have concluded shouldn't bother you. issues of "privacy" that are inevitably disclosed as a simple matter of living your life, and in no way compromise weaken or embarrass you
feel me now?
some people DO barricade themselves as shut ins. not because the uberoverlords are compiling your ultimate subjugation, but because they suffer from mental illness levels of anxiety and paranoia. all i'm asking you is to accept that to worry about some of the random fluff that is disclosed about your life, simply as an act of living to your life, is harmless and inevitable, unless you want to admit to mental illness, extreme anxiety about being violated over pointless info about you that simply leaks out as a simple exertion of living a normal life
simple as that. no legal or moral arguments are involved, its beyond that level of consideration
if you walk down the street, you don't have any privacy, right? i mean, in terms of people know you are walking down the street: you are in public. there is no rational expectation of privacy for you to expect when doing that, correct?
so now you know why a billion trillion government laws will never change the fact that if you type "i like otter porn" in google on an open wire leading out of your house, you've just freely chosen to make that info not private, as if you freely chose to walk down the street: its an open wire. whose listening in? your isp? google? hackers? why do you expect WHAT YOU PUT ON AN OPEN WIRE to have the same level of protection as what you do in behind a closed door? it simply makes no rational sense. and the question is completely beyond the realm of social policy, legality, or morality. its simply logistical pat and simple fact
there is a difference between the government or google looking in the window or setting up cameras in your bedroom to watch what you do with otters (not ok), and you, for some reason, expecting the same level of privacy when YOU PUT THE INFO OUT ON AN OPEN LINE LEADING OUT OF YOUR HOUSE DIRECTLY CONSCIOUSLY POINTED AT GOOGLE
there is this psychological disconnect that goes on with the internet: people do it in their homes, so they think of it as "private". when, unlike what you do in the bedroom or the bathroom, there is a wire leading out of your house that you FREELY AND VOLUNTARILY provide information to
simple inescapable truth: if you want something to stay private KEEP IT PRIVATE. sharing info with a corporate entity is something you CHOOSE to do. and no law is going to undisclose what you have FREELY chosen to disclose to a second party. its a question completely beyond governmental policy and legality and cuts to impossible expectations on your part
i understand what you are saying: that just because i don't care about it, doesn't mean everyone doesn't care about it
except we're not talking about say, my habits in the bedroom. in other words, a subject matter most anyone would want to keep private. we're talking about something that most people genuinely do not care about
so the issue is you are working uphill: there is no massive outcry here, no one is going to attempt to change the laws of the land or help you do that, because no one cares. such that you are in for a very lonely, very long, certain to fail effort to keep something private that no one really considers private. rather, i will openly question your rationale for considering this data about you so important to you, and ask you to just get the fuck over it. i openly and genuinely challenge you to provide with the world with a logical basis for why this data about you is so damn important for you to keep private
if it were something genuinely embarrassing that were being revealed, i would side with you. but as it is, its your tv watching habits, which i just don't fucking care about, and no one else cares about, and so you are going to have hard time convincing anyone else to care as well
perhaps you should reconsider on what basis you value these pointless details of your life. simply do not see any grounds to get worried or to agitate for change. tempest in a teapot
I'd say it's more interesting to use chocolate to measure the speed of fat....and that explains why you are eating valentine's day chocolates by yourself
life can of course evolve in a myriad ways, and rna might very well be unique to earth alone
however, what if the rna template for retrieval/ storage is actually just floating out there, everywhere, ubiquitously? the earth, and all celestial bodies, are constantly seeded from/ seeding everything else
you say "It's unlikely that RNA is the universal carrier for genetic information". how can you be certain? you'd have to tell me for certain there is no rna floating out there, and that rna can only possibly have been created right here on earth. currently you have no cause for saying that your speculation: rna is unique to earth, is any less or more speculative than my speculation: rna is everywhere
i am openly admitting that my words are conjecture, speculation. but you need to admit to yourself that saying rna is unique to earth is also equally speculative an assumption
so somebody knows all the tv shows you watch. ok, so fucking what?
the question is not that somebody has profiled your viewing habits, but that you consider such effluvia about you to be some sort of vital intrinsic part of your identity, worth protecting, worth fighting for, or worth even caring about
i don't know about you, but when making a list of private facts about my identity, what i watch on tv doesn't even remotely enter the realm of relevancy. and no i'm not some "i don't watch tv" weirdo, i watch a lot of tv
i just don't care if anyone knows what i watch, because i don't particularly consider that information about myself remotely valuable or interesting
if, as we sample more planetary, asteroid, and interstellar matter, that we simply find RNA everywhere?
that RNA simply permeates the entire universe: in the oort cloud, on europa, on ceres, in interstellar dust, in the data sent back to from probes to other stars/ exoplanets, etc
that life is not unique to earth, and that life is pretty much inevitable wherever the conditions are right. we got used to the fact that earth is not the center of the universe, and then that our star isn't even that notable. as we discover more exoplanets, we'e beginning to come to grips with the ho hum mundane facts of the existence of millions of planets. yet right now we operate on the assumption life on earth is this rare unique thing native to here. really?
and then the question would be: why RNA everywhere? how long has this been going on? where did it start? or for all practical purposes has it always been so and the ubiquity of panspermic RNA makes it pretty much a pat cosmological fact without discoverable cause or reason?
it would be a pretty awesome intersection of; astronomy, cosmology, theology, biology, and even mathematics/ physics/ information technologythat complexity is simply inevitable, and that information storage and retrieval is an emergent phenomenon intrinsic to the way physical laws inexorably play out... and that this is "God". deus ex machina
and it's entirely possible, as we keep looking
ok, sorry, i'll put down the marijuana. dude: have you ever looked at your hand? l mean REALLY look at your HAND
the moral argument: if someone is lazy, they don't deserve a wii or an iphone. and they won't get one. but that doesn't mean they deserve to die early of easily treatable diabetes for example
the investment argument: when you invest in the health of your community, it pays dividends to you in terms of: your own kids not getting diseases from sickly other people, your coworkers showing up and working instead of out on disability, the breadwinner actually able to work, so his kids don't wind up trying to burgle your car to feed themselves, etc
the philosophical argument: the money in your pocket is not some detachable entity, it is an intrinsic reflection of the value attached to it by the society you live in. as such, the va;ue of the money in your pocket goes down when you are part of a sick society. a society that takes care of itself is a rich society, and this inflates the cash in your pocket
the impetus to save costs: why spend $10,000 on the diabetes or heart attack when you can spend $100 on preventative medicine? such an imperative only exists in a system where prohibitive medicine is encouraged. our current system puts a premium on expensive and emergency care
the problem is that you would be outed, ostracized and otherwise derided
you defeat communism because it is ideologically inferior. you don't defeat communism with thuggery. let communists speak openly and without fear of reprisals with their views. and let them fall and fail on the incoherence of their flawed ideology
unfortunately, we see the same braying thuggery "socialism! socialism! bark! bark!" today as in the mccarthy era. as if socialism is anything but medicare, the interstate highway system etc.: there are plenty of times where socialism, such as with healthcare, just makes the most fucking sense. but opposition to issues (some issues, not all issues) where the socialist approach is superior amounts to nothing but the braying of sheep
so much of opposition to simple coherent logical progress amounts to zombified hordes of americans whipped up into unthinking opposition by demagogues and corporate shills, when if they actually thought about the fucking issues for a second, they would see socialism works far better for them than, for example, the bastard healthcare system we currently have. they decry government death panels, when currently they have corporations, whose job is to bring healthy financial returns to investors, rather than deliver quality healthcare to themselves. in other words, we currently have corporate death panels. fact: healthcare has infinite cost, and we all die eventually. so there is a triage of resources, no matter what the system we choose. there always will be. so would you rather that triage be done by a transparent government whose mandate is to keep you alive? or an opaque corporation whose job is to pay dividends? so why the hell do so many americans defy universal healthcare?
oh, you say the government will be an unwieldy bureaucracy? have you actually tried dealing with the ridiculous dance of paperwork between doctors, hospitals, hmos, etc? its MORE expensive and bureaucratic, the current system we have. socialized universal healthcare is not perfect, its simply BETTER than the current retarded system we have. admit it, and lose your ignorant fear of the scary word "socialism", and choose the superior option
"socialism! socialism! baaah baaah!"
its exactly the same as ignorant peasants whipped into an emotional irrational frenzy by religious madmen that there are witches about, doing evil things! and all they do is wind up killing some of their neighbors and friends, the same as they do when they oppose universal healthcare. the opposition to universal healthcare is the same as witchhunts in colonial times and the same as the mccarthy era- its not based on logic and reason, but based on fear of the unknown
kneejerk fearmongering of the word "socialist". without any respect as to logic behind the issues involved. that's the "debate" we have in the usa right now. pathetic
Slashdot Mirror
after TWENTY THREE YEARS, the recording should be open to all by this point as well
what you say is exactly right: movies should only make money in theatres, and should be free online
i could put it on youtube, and get money from advertising clicks. or charge the odd bird who wants it on dvd $10. or i rent a theatre, take out advertising, and sell tickets. in other words, i make my money in theatres, or i make it via ancillary revenue streams. that's it. no enforcement, no policing, no legal force or warping of common sense/ how the internet functions need apply
you say this model doesn't support modern production costs?
oh yeah: how much did avatar cost to produce? and how much money has avatar made in theatres so far? pfffft
you say avatar isn't typical of revenue? ok, so then what are we paying for in the pre-internet model? we're supposed to give corporate welfare to moviemakers who make bad movies nobody wants to see?
howabout this crazy wacky "communist" thinking of mine: if the movie is good, producers recoup their investment in theatres. if the movie sucks, then they lose money. end of fucking story. the point is, what i am advocating is not some techno anarchist bullshit. what i'm advocating for is called PURE CAPITALISM. meanwhile, you are not defending capitalism from "information wants to be free man" technohippies. you are defending oligopolies and monopolies from pure capitalism, which is what i am advocating for. monopolies and oligopolies are just as poisonous to the free market as stalin and mao, friend. so fuck the studios and their crocodile tears over how the itnernet has killed their dvd aftermarket. boo fucking hoo. warner brothers needs to learn how to make movies like the actual warner brothers made movies in the silver screen era
there will be no dearth of movies or culture because of this "new" model... aka, how moviemaking functioned for decades before the age of the vhs tape. the vhs tape/ dvd which the movie industry fought. fought because this CASH COW they thought in the 1980s was going to destroy them: morons then, morons now about the internet
there will just be a dearth of bad movies. i did not know direct-to-dvd was a movie making model worth saving. here's my tiny violin for steven seagal and uwe boll. adios blockbuster video. boo fucking hoo
and you're absolutely right: some aesop's fable is in order here, for you and the mpaa/ riaa/ other ip assholes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dog_and_the_Shadow
the world is changing friend. adapt. or die. your choice
the quote/ bkr1'sr observation is spot on about the problem with those married to the pre-internet model of intellectual property
it's the equivalent of marie antoinette saying "let them eat cake" when told starving parisians don't have bread: the guy is so clueless as to real world labor, he actually and sincerely believes that not being paid for writing a song 23 years ago places him in the same category as modern slavery
off with her head, off with his head
someone made money off a song from 1992. so what?
yes, in today's legal environment, this is possible. but it's not a defensible status quo
that this man thinks a song from 1987 should still be earning him money
yes, LEGALLY, he has a case, but morally and philosophically, he just seems like a giant asshole
fact: there are no morally or philosophically coherent grounds that a song from 1987 should anyone anything. really
and if you believe otherwise, you very much are a good definition of what is wrong with this world, in terms of a stunning display of greed backed up with force, overwhelming the common good
on what morally or philosophically coherent grounds does it make any sense to you that a song from the 1987 should still be earning anyone any money?
you wrote
launch_missles ();
you meant
launch_missiles ();
mutually assured destruction saved!
"It was the most evil of evil Rick Roll scripts too -- worse than any that anyone has used to get me in the past."
correct me if i'm wrong, but rickrolling implies its just rick astley singing about how he won't let you down, right?
so what the heck is he referring to in the quote above? did they distribute 1080p video of ballmer in his underwear singing karaoke and throwing chairs?
speaking of which, a GIS for ballmer is not exactly flattering
http://images.google.com/images?q=ballmer
who would have guessed a GOOGLE image search wouldn't be flattering to steve ballmer?
i wonder what a bing image search for ballmer would... jesus what am i doing, better stop now before i run into rule 34
there's a certain amount of ego going on. for example, nixon made a point to have all of his white house discussions taped, down to the most mundane stuff, like where he would eat for dinner, but where he also freely and many times said extremely sensitive things. its aggrandizement: "i'm so important, let's tape everything i say so historians of the future can hang on my every word"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/us/politics/24nixon.html
ah that wacky nixon. i wonder what if tweets today will look equally crude in the future
the nazis and the east german stasi were fanatically meticulous record keepers. pol pot and the soviets kept voluminous records. the chinese commnist party and iran's military junta are studious record takers
so when you say " there are major temptations to just not keep records of stuff that is inconvenient unless there's a specific action to tell you otherwise", i assert the exact opposite is true. there's no impulse to hide anything. in fact, the impulse is to record everything
this is because the impulse to hide something is to assume someone thinks they are doing something wrong. but at the highest echelons of power, in any country, in any era, you are not talking about people with small egos. and no one up there thinks they are doing anything wrong. and in fact, many rulers in the heights of power pretty much think they decide what right and wrong is. they got that high in power for a reason: they firmly believe the absolute justification of their beliefs. you don't climb the rungs of power if you have misgivings and secret doubts, that just drains your drive to succeed
therefore, no rulers see record keeping as a threat. in fact, many of them see record keeping as just good business: future writers of future history books need to know what great thoughts they were thinking at the time and how bright is the sunlight that shines out of their asshole: a nod to the future glorification of their wonderous legacy
i didn't know what that was, so i looked it up
its apparently a novel from 1967, or a movie from 1976
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan's_Run
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan's_Run_(film)
meaning, the story title itself is an age test
having failed that test, i feel secure in my youngun status
meanwhile, if you knew what "logan's run" was off the top of your head, join aarp and get on with it ;-P
there ARE cameras everywhere. i live in times square. there are probably video logs of me coming and going in every direction i've ever gone in the last 4 years
who fucking cares? what the hell are they going to do with this info? how can it be used to hurt me? in what way does this info damage me or could possibly damage me? i await your "minority report" style fantasy sequences
if you want to win this fight, you are going to have to convince me and the other 99% of the population that just doesn't fucking care. you haven't convinced me. so you, and you're 100 paranoid schizophrenic friends are all alone in a sea of ten million of us who have better things to worry about. not because we don;t care about our privacy, but because some details about our lives that are "private" are perfectly pointless and useless. the cameras in times square are not pointed at my bathroom or my bedroom
"1984" is a vaguely amusing piece of fiction. not the fucking future. get a life, realize real life is not a b-level high anxiety hollywood movie. no one fucking cares about this info about you, and no one fucking cares that someone has this info about them, because the info is useless. the info will not be abused because it can't be abused: there's no coherent way to abuse it in any coherent way which coherently hurts you
there you go: your high anixety is met with pure and simple ambivalence. good luck in trying to scare us all with your paranoia. we understand the ramifications and the implications. we're completely unimpressed. welcome to the reality of our horrible future: an uncaring populace
how can we not see senator palpatine and agent smith are right around the corner!?
pfffffft
fucking fanboys with too much fiction and not enough reality
put it this way: woman walks naked down the street, and everyone who walks by her, she expects them not to see her
sound reasonable?
that's the essence of your "noble" fight
simple: if you want something private DON'T TYPE IT INTO GOOGLE. if you don't want to be seen naked, DON'T WALK DOWN THE STREET NAKED
do you understand me yet?
i EXACTLY agree with you that we shouldn't barricade in our homes... by coming to the simple realization and acceptance of the fact that when you go into public, pointless information about you is made public. in other words, to go into public, to not barricade yourself in your house, you can:
a. expect the government to give you vast protections concerning the abuse of the random pointless bits of info about you on the street (where you are, what you're wearing, the expression on your face, etc.). stuff no one really cares about and the government in no way can protect you from
b. expect of simple reality that merely existing leads to you leaking random detritus and fluff about you. issues of "privacy" that have no value to you, and you have concluded shouldn't bother you. issues of "privacy" that are inevitably disclosed as a simple matter of living your life, and in no way compromise weaken or embarrass you
feel me now?
some people DO barricade themselves as shut ins. not because the uberoverlords are compiling your ultimate subjugation, but because they suffer from mental illness levels of anxiety and paranoia. all i'm asking you is to accept that to worry about some of the random fluff that is disclosed about your life, simply as an act of living to your life, is harmless and inevitable, unless you want to admit to mental illness, extreme anxiety about being violated over pointless info about you that simply leaks out as a simple exertion of living a normal life
can you possibly imagine the horror of something similar?
or your info is not private
simple as that. no legal or moral arguments are involved, its beyond that level of consideration
if you walk down the street, you don't have any privacy, right? i mean, in terms of people know you are walking down the street: you are in public. there is no rational expectation of privacy for you to expect when doing that, correct?
so now you know why a billion trillion government laws will never change the fact that if you type "i like otter porn" in google on an open wire leading out of your house, you've just freely chosen to make that info not private, as if you freely chose to walk down the street: its an open wire. whose listening in? your isp? google? hackers? why do you expect WHAT YOU PUT ON AN OPEN WIRE to have the same level of protection as what you do in behind a closed door? it simply makes no rational sense. and the question is completely beyond the realm of social policy, legality, or morality. its simply logistical pat and simple fact
there is a difference between the government or google looking in the window or setting up cameras in your bedroom to watch what you do with otters (not ok), and you, for some reason, expecting the same level of privacy when YOU PUT THE INFO OUT ON AN OPEN LINE LEADING OUT OF YOUR HOUSE DIRECTLY CONSCIOUSLY POINTED AT GOOGLE
there is this psychological disconnect that goes on with the internet: people do it in their homes, so they think of it as "private". when, unlike what you do in the bedroom or the bathroom, there is a wire leading out of your house that you FREELY AND VOLUNTARILY provide information to
simple inescapable truth: if you want something to stay private KEEP IT PRIVATE. sharing info with a corporate entity is something you CHOOSE to do. and no law is going to undisclose what you have FREELY chosen to disclose to a second party. its a question completely beyond governmental policy and legality and cuts to impossible expectations on your part
i understand what you are saying: that just because i don't care about it, doesn't mean everyone doesn't care about it
except we're not talking about say, my habits in the bedroom. in other words, a subject matter most anyone would want to keep private. we're talking about something that most people genuinely do not care about
so the issue is you are working uphill: there is no massive outcry here, no one is going to attempt to change the laws of the land or help you do that, because no one cares. such that you are in for a very lonely, very long, certain to fail effort to keep something private that no one really considers private. rather, i will openly question your rationale for considering this data about you so important to you, and ask you to just get the fuck over it. i openly and genuinely challenge you to provide with the world with a logical basis for why this data about you is so damn important for you to keep private
if it were something genuinely embarrassing that were being revealed, i would side with you. but as it is, its your tv watching habits, which i just don't fucking care about, and no one else cares about, and so you are going to have hard time convincing anyone else to care as well
perhaps you should reconsider on what basis you value these pointless details of your life. simply do not see any grounds to get worried or to agitate for change. tempest in a teapot
I'd say it's more interesting to use chocolate to measure the speed of fat. ...and that explains why you are eating valentine's day chocolates by yourself
although its far more interesting to use chocolate to measure the speed of digestion
life can of course evolve in a myriad ways, and rna might very well be unique to earth alone
however, what if the rna template for retrieval/ storage is actually just floating out there, everywhere, ubiquitously? the earth, and all celestial bodies, are constantly seeded from/ seeding everything else
you say "It's unlikely that RNA is the universal carrier for genetic information". how can you be certain? you'd have to tell me for certain there is no rna floating out there, and that rna can only possibly have been created right here on earth. currently you have no cause for saying that your speculation: rna is unique to earth, is any less or more speculative than my speculation: rna is everywhere
i am openly admitting that my words are conjecture, speculation. but you need to admit to yourself that saying rna is unique to earth is also equally speculative an assumption
so somebody knows all the tv shows you watch. ok, so fucking what?
the question is not that somebody has profiled your viewing habits, but that you consider such effluvia about you to be some sort of vital intrinsic part of your identity, worth protecting, worth fighting for, or worth even caring about
i don't know about you, but when making a list of private facts about my identity, what i watch on tv doesn't even remotely enter the realm of relevancy. and no i'm not some "i don't watch tv" weirdo, i watch a lot of tv
i just don't care if anyone knows what i watch, because i don't particularly consider that information about myself remotely valuable or interesting
if, as we sample more planetary, asteroid, and interstellar matter, that we simply find RNA everywhere?
that RNA simply permeates the entire universe: in the oort cloud, on europa, on ceres, in interstellar dust, in the data sent back to from probes to other stars/ exoplanets, etc
that life is not unique to earth, and that life is pretty much inevitable wherever the conditions are right. we got used to the fact that earth is not the center of the universe, and then that our star isn't even that notable. as we discover more exoplanets, we'e beginning to come to grips with the ho hum mundane facts of the existence of millions of planets. yet right now we operate on the assumption life on earth is this rare unique thing native to here. really?
and then the question would be: why RNA everywhere? how long has this been going on? where did it start? or for all practical purposes has it always been so and the ubiquity of panspermic RNA makes it pretty much a pat cosmological fact without discoverable cause or reason?
it would be a pretty awesome intersection of; astronomy, cosmology, theology, biology, and even mathematics/ physics/ information technologythat complexity is simply inevitable, and that information storage and retrieval is an emergent phenomenon intrinsic to the way physical laws inexorably play out... and that this is "God". deus ex machina
and it's entirely possible, as we keep looking
ok, sorry, i'll put down the marijuana. dude: have you ever looked at your hand? l mean REALLY look at your HAND
the moral argument: if someone is lazy, they don't deserve a wii or an iphone. and they won't get one. but that doesn't mean they deserve to die early of easily treatable diabetes for example
the investment argument: when you invest in the health of your community, it pays dividends to you in terms of: your own kids not getting diseases from sickly other people, your coworkers showing up and working instead of out on disability, the breadwinner actually able to work, so his kids don't wind up trying to burgle your car to feed themselves, etc
the philosophical argument: the money in your pocket is not some detachable entity, it is an intrinsic reflection of the value attached to it by the society you live in. as such, the va;ue of the money in your pocket goes down when you are part of a sick society. a society that takes care of itself is a rich society, and this inflates the cash in your pocket
the impetus to save costs: why spend $10,000 on the diabetes or heart attack when you can spend $100 on preventative medicine? such an imperative only exists in a system where prohibitive medicine is encouraged. our current system puts a premium on expensive and emergency care
etc, etc
end the racketeering
http://prof77.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/health-insurance-is-now-racketeering-protection-money-extortion/
the problem is that you would be outed, ostracized and otherwise derided
you defeat communism because it is ideologically inferior. you don't defeat communism with thuggery. let communists speak openly and without fear of reprisals with their views. and let them fall and fail on the incoherence of their flawed ideology
unfortunately, we see the same braying thuggery "socialism! socialism! bark! bark!" today as in the mccarthy era. as if socialism is anything but medicare, the interstate highway system etc.: there are plenty of times where socialism, such as with healthcare, just makes the most fucking sense. but opposition to issues (some issues, not all issues) where the socialist approach is superior amounts to nothing but the braying of sheep
so much of opposition to simple coherent logical progress amounts to zombified hordes of americans whipped up into unthinking opposition by demagogues and corporate shills, when if they actually thought about the fucking issues for a second, they would see socialism works far better for them than, for example, the bastard healthcare system we currently have. they decry government death panels, when currently they have corporations, whose job is to bring healthy financial returns to investors, rather than deliver quality healthcare to themselves. in other words, we currently have corporate death panels. fact: healthcare has infinite cost, and we all die eventually. so there is a triage of resources, no matter what the system we choose. there always will be. so would you rather that triage be done by a transparent government whose mandate is to keep you alive? or an opaque corporation whose job is to pay dividends? so why the hell do so many americans defy universal healthcare?
oh, you say the government will be an unwieldy bureaucracy? have you actually tried dealing with the ridiculous dance of paperwork between doctors, hospitals, hmos, etc? its MORE expensive and bureaucratic, the current system we have. socialized universal healthcare is not perfect, its simply BETTER than the current retarded system we have. admit it, and lose your ignorant fear of the scary word "socialism", and choose the superior option
"socialism! socialism! baaah baaah!"
its exactly the same as ignorant peasants whipped into an emotional irrational frenzy by religious madmen that there are witches about, doing evil things! and all they do is wind up killing some of their neighbors and friends, the same as they do when they oppose universal healthcare. the opposition to universal healthcare is the same as witchhunts in colonial times and the same as the mccarthy era- its not based on logic and reason, but based on fear of the unknown
kneejerk fearmongering of the word "socialist". without any respect as to logic behind the issues involved. that's the "debate" we have in the usa right now. pathetic
because he doesn't use the shift key
anyway, so what do you think of google's embrace of html5?
i'm sorry, is that less important?
this world is full of mindless hate, but gee, thanks for adding more
because that would seem to be the most important fucking point, no?