Fantastic reasoning. Really. Except that at no time has Iraq ever used weapons against the United States of America. On the other hand, America has invaded Iraq not once, but twice, and even now holds it as a 21st century colony.
From the actual evidence available, it would appear that the United States is far more dangerous than any Arab state, and should be disarmed of its 'weapons of mass destruction' immediately. Weapons that actually exist in the real world, compared to the Iraqi weapons - which exist only in the fevered imaginations of certain deranged individuals.
Hey, fuckwit, you apparently missed the point. The law doesn't grant any freedom or protection not available prior to it's passing; all it does is deprive one group of freedom in order to appease the malicious desires of another.
Here, I'll speak slowly: law - takes - away - freedom. Law - protects - no one. Law bad.
Apparently the geneticists are wrong and we did, indeed interbreed with neanderthals.
Personally, I'd rather live in a country where sometimes a community (be it a township or the entire nation) decides that certain activities cost society too much.
What a bullshit argument. There is no guarantee in the Constitution, either explicit or implicit, for laws protecting 'society'. Laws in this nation have but one purpose, and one purpose alone: to protect the INDIVIDUAL.
'Society' is the fallback fantasy argument of the rampant liberal moron, serving much the same purpose as 'for the chilllldreeeen!' does for the rampant consersative moron. It's designed to shut down all argument by declaring that anyone who opposes idea/measure/proclamation X is against 'society', and is therefore the incarnation of evil.
There is no fucking 'society'. It's a fantastical construct, nothing more. Laws made to protect a non-existent entity are ridiculous in the extreme, as anyone with half a brain can see if the rub a few neurons together for longer than two or three seconds.
The laws which ban smoking purport to protect 'society', but in fact there entire purpose is to deprive others of freedom. As pointed out, when people had the freedom to smoke in bars or restaurants, non-smokers had the freedom to go elsewhere. Now non-smokers still have exactly the same freedom they had before, but smokers have been deprived of the freedoms they used to enjoy. One group has stripped the other of rights simply because the pissy little shits who have a pole up their ass about smoking enjoy making smokers miserable, no matter the ultimate application of the law.
Fucking little pricks.
Having once been in the restaurant business, I'll take the smokers over the non-smokers any day of the week. The smokers were not only far less uptight, but it being MY GODDAMN BUSINESS I'm the only one who gets to decide what the fucking rules are. If you don't like it, go eat somewhere else, you non-smoking pricks. If there are enough of you I'll go out of business, or some non-smoking restaurant will open up to accommodate your whining self-centered asses - if not, you'll just have to eat at home. And that is called CAPITALISM, you socialist jerkwads.
Goddamn, but America these days is just chock full of fuckers who insist on telling everyone else how to live, and are more than willing to pass laws punishing them (with malicious glee) if they refuse to comply with some shithead's view of How Things Should Be (TM). Soon I won't be able to scratch my ass in public without being convicted of some crime passed 'for the good of society'.
Or perhaps 'for the chiiilllldren!'. It's all the same thing.
...some geeks dramatic, self-involved narration of what people do every day (i.e., generally called "quitting") is worthy of Slashdot headlines? And concerning the article itself, just about the only factoid I could derive from it was that someone has read a bit too much Gibson, and taken it to heart.
I think it would be my fault for signing the contract, really....
So Rumpelstiltskin was really just screwed out of an honest contract, eh? I mean, the bitch agreed to hand over her first-born, then cheated to get out of her keeping her word....
The lack of money, however, does. The lack of money can lead to living in piss-poor conditions, or being homeless, or not having enough food to eat. The lack of money, in many places in the world, can lead to death.
When one is simply concerned with scraping enough together to feed one's family, the question of 'happiness' is irrelevant. These questions come *after* the basics have been taken care of.
What justification do you have for pirating the retail stuff?
The adventure of sailing on the high seas? Tangling with IP frigates and trading full broadsides? Swinging on lines to the deck of the enemy ship to do battle, cutlass to cutlass? Getting the hot chick after winning a particularly tough fight?
Dude, being a pirate is waaaaay cool. Just ask Johnny Depp.
The false argument that "I can pirate this because I would not have purchased it" is a rationalization to attempt to justify a crimal act, pure and simple.
Copyright violation is neither piracy nor theft. It is a civil matter, not a criminal one. If you have a problem with this I'm sure you can either a) change the law to make copyright violation a criminal offense, or b) move to some other country, one where your blather actually makes some sense.
"Dilution of the value of the product", my ass. Time to take some economics courses, boy.
Oh, and by the way - *there is no such thing as intellectual property*. It's just another buzzword brought to you by our friends in Corporate America. In fact, according to the Constitution, it's an oxymoron - neither a copyright nor a patent is every treated, in any way, like actual physical property.
Which should be obvious to you. Stealing your couch is a criminal offense called 'theft'; violating your copyright is a civil matter, one I'll never go to jail for.
The question has nothing to do with morality but with damages. These are two entirely separate issues.
What the college student has done, in this example, may be immoral or illegal. But given the assumption that the student wouldn't purchase the software whether it was available for copying or not, it is quite reasonable to state that the actual damages to the companies in question amount to - nothing.
Any fines applied to the student will be punitive in nature, and the proceeds will go to the state for violating the law - not the 'wronged' businesses. Which is as it should be since the businesses suffered no harm.
However, the *idea* that information should be free can be applied to more than voyeurs and perverts, and you run roughshod over those others by generalizing. Of course, asking some people not to make ignorant blanket statements is like asking career criminals not to break the law.
Which is precisely my point. "Information wants to be free" isn't applied to copyrights and patents; it's applied to whatever the asshole who sings the slogan decides it should be applied to. A gross generalization which encompasses whatever his little heart desires, as if it were, in some twisted, freakish way, a virtue.
These are the same sorts of people who insist that public figures, like actors, have no right to privacy *simply because they're public figures*. Hey, "information wants to be free", especially if I want to act like a voyeur with respect to someone else's life, a sad, demented creature who lives off the gossip generated by others. Just another member of the Enquirer crowd.
But "information wants to be free", right? And if you object, certainly you have some nefarious, illegal deeds you're trying to hide?
I suppose he might very well be entertaining, to the typical frat boy. But to someone who's actually gotten beyond the 'duuuude!' stage of life his characterization of women is vile.
He's a prick, pure and simple. A prick who thinks he's funny. A prick that other pricks think is funny, it looks like. But a prick, nonetheless.
The issue isn't whether or not Joe User has the 'right' to run a compromised system, but whether *you* have the right to force him to patch *his* system, especially without his knowledge (which, by the way, constitutes criminal trespass).
You don't. It's that simple. If this is beyond your comprehension then I pity your understanding of 'freedom' and 'private property'.
And any asshole can claim that thing x, which he doesn't approve of, is a 'public danger'. No matter how you phrase it, a compromised system presents no 'danger' to anyone; it's a pain in the ass, to be sure, but not a 'danger' by any stretch of the imagination. Never has a DDOS attack resulted in harm, or even the threat of harm, to any human being.
If you want a solution, there's a very simple one: notify Joe that his system has been compromised and provide him with the instructions to fix it. If he refuses to do so, notify his provider and ask them to refuse service. If the provider isn't a complete fuckwit, the provider will do so.
Joe has his freedom and preserves ownership of his private property, you put an end to Joe's cantankerous refusal to stop being a tool of script kiddies. No criminal trespass required, no scumbag stealth tactics needed. End of story.
forcing Joe User to keep his system up to date with the latest patches is a good thing for all of us
What a crock of shit. 'Forcing Joe User'? I guess the fact that it happens to be Joe User's machine that *he* paid for doesn't amount to squat, eh? Joe User doesn't get a choice because he's too fucking stupid to find his ass with both hands anyway?
Ramming a code change down Joe User's throat without his consent is a violation of Joe's property rights - a violation neither you nor Microsoft has any business 'enforcing'. At least not in a free country, you arrogant little twerp.
And if you start in on some half-assed 'greater good' argument, I'd suggest you hie yourself off to some socialist backwater where moral blackmail is considered a virtue, not a root cause of evil.
Well, it may look similar but SuSe's YAST tool actually works, and generally doesn't break anything in the process. So underneath the hood - nope, nothing like the MS patching scheme.
But you can never say that violent video games have no effect or no influence whatsoever on the individuals that play them
In science the burden isn't on a person to disprove a causal effect, but rather to *prove* a causal effect (or more accurately, to connect the dots in a fashion that indicates, statistically, that such a relationship is very likely to exist).
I don't have to prove to anyone that video games have no effect on actual, real-world behavior. It's up to *you* to prove that they do. So far no one has managed to do this, at least not in an accredited peer-reviewed journal. A number, however, have tried.
deviant sexual behavior needs to be strongly supressed
In a supposedly free country 'deviant sexual behavior' is a matter between the participants, and not the purview of the neighbors. You might be into S&M, which I personally find pretty twisted, but I don't have any right to pass a law outlawing your kinky antics.
There is real danger in a young teen who sees too much sex doing it himself
Yeah, I certainly thought that was a danger back when I was a teen! Sex = bad, mmmkay? Just say no! Or is it 'don't stop'? I get those two confused.
due to instincts and hormones
Forgetting, of course, that simple desire and the will to act on it just *might* have something to do with teens fucking each others brains out. It wasn't 'instinct' and 'hormones' that did the trick for me when I was a kid; it was the fact that pussy was better than anything else on the face of the Earth. I doubt this has changed much in the intervening years for kids today, as it's still true for me even at my advanced age.
As an Oregonian I can tell you for a certainty that this thing will never pass - or, if it did, Oregonians will repeal it with the initiative petition process faster than you can say 'Big Brother'.
Historically, Oregonians - the natives, at least, if not the imports - are a cantankerous lot who fundamentally distrust both the government and their representatives. They tend to be quite pig-headed and stubborn and refuse to let their government interfere too much in their lives. This is why, for example, despite overwhelming legislative support the sales tax has failed at least EIGHT times; the Right to Die law was passed TWICE, because the first time the legislature refused to honor it (and the second time were forced by the courts to do so); and despite the asshole comments of folks from other states, we STILL won't allow people to pump their own gas even though the state keeps trying to convince us that this would be a good thing.
In fact, we so distrust the government and it's ability to fuck us over at the drop of a hat that we passed a measure that denies our legislature the right to raise property taxes. In order to get such a tax increase, a measure has to be passed at the local level, and has to be approved by a majority of the voters. If less than 50% of the voters actually vote, it's assumed that the tax isn't supported and it automatically LOSES, even if a majority of those who did vote pass it (called, erroneously, the 'double majority' vote).
This is the state we're talking about. The only state in the union that so despises its own politicians that it strips of them of the right to tax, then makes it damned near impossible to raise taxes in an alternative fashion. The only state in the union that regularly incorporates initiative petition measures directly into the state Constitution, because it's commonly assumed that the legislature will alter and pervert the law if this *isn't* done.
And now Slashdot thinks that Oregonians would actually put up with this crap? Pause here while I laugh my ass off; we're eminently used to our idiot politicians doing stupid things - that's why we so often reject what they do, bypass them with initiative petitions, and sometimes recall the bastards when they annoy us too much.
If such a thing were passed (and the legislature might do this - like I said, they have a track record of ignoring the citizens in favor of monied insterests and increasing their own power) it would be rejected in a heartbeat. And, most likely, the backlash would be a rollback and reduction of the current gas tax as 'punishment' for pulling something this stupid. The natives *will not* tolerate a measure that smacks of surveillance, nor will they bend to this kind of 'threat' to increase the gas tax.
We might've been watered down by the influx of Californians in recent years, but if we're still pig-headed enough to resist both our own politicians and the snide comments of every fuckwit tourist who visits when it comes to something as trivial as who can pump gas, you can bet that as major as this won't fly for a moment.
Instead of wasting time on a move like this, I'd rather see efforts being made to *reduce* maximum copyright times to something reasonable - like 10 years. Or at least the 14 + 14 set out originally by the framers.
I can't imagine that much of anything, other than some literature and art, would be worth anything after 50 years. As is, many technological doodads fall by the wayside in 10, replaced by better mousetraps or other forms of technology altogether. And all evidence points to an ever-increasing rate of technological advancement, not a slowdown or stabilization, so in 50 years even a period of 10 years will seem ludicrous.
...ATI has my business now. I've been hankering after their screaming monster card anyway (although I don't know how useful it'd be on a 1.4 ghz gaming machine), and this deal with nvidia only confirms my suspicion that they can't be trusted to accurately report the performance of their product.
Already have. I disconnected my land line and got a cell service instead. It's illegal to make a sales call to a cell service because the caller has to pay for the call; it isn't illegal to make a sales call to a land line because, through bizarre contortions of the law, you're assumed to be 'inviting' these calls, unless you specifically request otherwise, - *even though you're still paying for the goddamned service*.
You'll note that in neither case is the free market at work. In fact, whether land line or cell the free market is pretty much fucked (although less so with the cell). In an actual free market I'd be able to program in a 'white list' of numbers and automatically reject all other calls, or forward them to voicemail. It would be *my choice and my choice alone* which would determine who could and could not call me, through the simple expediency of programming a white list (or providing one to the supplier). As is, I have to rely on the damned law to do the job that the market would otherwise do.
Regardless, no human being has the right to bother me - to waste my time without paying me for it - unless I specifically grant them that right. *That's capitalism, pure and simple*. Spammers, whether they be the scumbags that run telemarketing, email, or snail mail operations, are the antithesis of the free market: they demand my time, whether I wish to provide it or not, and refuse to pay me for it.
Sounds like they're a bunch of fucking communists, if you ask me. Communists and con men all wrapped up into the same package. But isn't that redundant?
- it's my phone and I'm paying for the service. With that in mind it's perfectly reasonable to assume that I get to decide who gets to call. If I tell someone to fuck off, then they better damn well fuck off.
- it's my email and my internet access. I get to decide to can send me mail using the services *I* pay for. In a capitalist society this is a perfectly reasonable expectation. Only a communist motherfucker would insist that I give everyone equal time on *my* dime.
- it's my mailbox and it's my postal service. The postal service does not belong to spammers, nor do I have any recognizable alternative to said post office. One would think, given no alternatives other than the government agency that I supposedly control as a citizen of the United States, I could dictate an end to spam. Funny, I can't.
And, by the way, you are *required* to have a receptacle on your property for mail delivery. This is a *law*. Funny thing, that.
- most of all, it's *my* time. Neither you nor anyone else has any business wasting it unless you're willing to pay whatever fee I set. This too is good capitalism; in fact, excellent capitalism.
Unfortunately for all of us, capitalism has very little to do with 21st century America. It had little to do with America prior to the 21st century, but even less so now. If we lived in a truly capitalist society I'd actually have the rights I listed above, as a logical extension of the free market. If anything, I'd have even more rights, provided by the tooth-and-nail competition of competing services all tripping over themselves to steal away customers, with the elimination of harrassment by low-life scumbags as a selling point for those services.
Slashdot Mirror
Fantastic reasoning. Really. Except that at no time has Iraq ever used weapons against the United States of America. On the other hand, America has invaded Iraq not once, but twice, and even now holds it as a 21st century colony.
From the actual evidence available, it would appear that the United States is far more dangerous than any Arab state, and should be disarmed of its 'weapons of mass destruction' immediately. Weapons that actually exist in the real world, compared to the Iraqi weapons - which exist only in the fevered imaginations of certain deranged individuals.
Max
Hey, fuckwit, you apparently missed the point. The law doesn't grant any freedom or protection not available prior to it's passing; all it does is deprive one group of freedom in order to appease the malicious desires of another.
Here, I'll speak slowly: law - takes - away - freedom. Law - protects - no one. Law bad.
Apparently the geneticists are wrong and we did, indeed interbreed with neanderthals.
Max
Personally, I'd rather live in a country where sometimes a community (be it a township or the entire nation) decides that certain activities cost society too much.
What a bullshit argument. There is no guarantee in the Constitution, either explicit or implicit, for laws protecting 'society'. Laws in this nation have but one purpose, and one purpose alone: to protect the INDIVIDUAL.
'Society' is the fallback fantasy argument of the rampant liberal moron, serving much the same purpose as 'for the chilllldreeeen!' does for the rampant consersative moron. It's designed to shut down all argument by declaring that anyone who opposes idea/measure/proclamation X is against 'society', and is therefore the incarnation of evil.
There is no fucking 'society'. It's a fantastical construct, nothing more. Laws made to protect a non-existent entity are ridiculous in the extreme, as anyone with half a brain can see if the rub a few neurons together for longer than two or three seconds.
The laws which ban smoking purport to protect 'society', but in fact there entire purpose is to deprive others of freedom. As pointed out, when people had the freedom to smoke in bars or restaurants, non-smokers had the freedom to go elsewhere. Now non-smokers still have exactly the same freedom they had before, but smokers have been deprived of the freedoms they used to enjoy. One group has stripped the other of rights simply because the pissy little shits who have a pole up their ass about smoking enjoy making smokers miserable, no matter the ultimate application of the law.
Fucking little pricks.
Having once been in the restaurant business, I'll take the smokers over the non-smokers any day of the week. The smokers were not only far less uptight, but it being MY GODDAMN BUSINESS I'm the only one who gets to decide what the fucking rules are. If you don't like it, go eat somewhere else, you non-smoking pricks. If there are enough of you I'll go out of business, or some non-smoking restaurant will open up to accommodate your whining self-centered asses - if not, you'll just have to eat at home. And that is called CAPITALISM, you socialist jerkwads.
Goddamn, but America these days is just chock full of fuckers who insist on telling everyone else how to live, and are more than willing to pass laws punishing them (with malicious glee) if they refuse to comply with some shithead's view of How Things Should Be (TM). Soon I won't be able to scratch my ass in public without being convicted of some crime passed 'for the good of society'.
Or perhaps 'for the chiiilllldren!'. It's all the same thing.
Max
...some geeks dramatic, self-involved narration of what people do every day (i.e., generally called "quitting") is worthy of Slashdot headlines? And concerning the article itself, just about the only factoid I could derive from it was that someone has read a bit too much Gibson, and taken it to heart.
Yeah, 'cyberpunks' rule. Phhhhpht!
Max
We already know that one: Microsoft!
Max
I think it would be my fault for signing the contract, really....
So Rumpelstiltskin was really just screwed out of an honest contract, eh? I mean, the bitch agreed to hand over her first-born, then cheated to get out of her keeping her word....
Max
Money has little to do with happiness.
The lack of money, however, does. The lack of money can lead to living in piss-poor conditions, or being homeless, or not having enough food to eat. The lack of money, in many places in the world, can lead to death.
When one is simply concerned with scraping enough together to feed one's family, the question of 'happiness' is irrelevant. These questions come *after* the basics have been taken care of.
Max
What justification do you have for pirating the retail stuff?
The adventure of sailing on the high seas? Tangling with IP frigates and trading full broadsides? Swinging on lines to the deck of the enemy ship to do battle, cutlass to cutlass? Getting the hot chick after winning a particularly tough fight?
Dude, being a pirate is waaaaay cool. Just ask Johnny Depp.
Max
The false argument that "I can pirate this because I would not have purchased it" is a rationalization to attempt to justify a crimal act, pure and simple.
Copyright violation is neither piracy nor theft. It is a civil matter, not a criminal one. If you have a problem with this I'm sure you can either a) change the law to make copyright violation a criminal offense, or b) move to some other country, one where your blather actually makes some sense.
"Dilution of the value of the product", my ass. Time to take some economics courses, boy.
Oh, and by the way - *there is no such thing as intellectual property*. It's just another buzzword brought to you by our friends in Corporate America. In fact, according to the Constitution, it's an oxymoron - neither a copyright nor a patent is every treated, in any way, like actual physical property.
Which should be obvious to you. Stealing your couch is a criminal offense called 'theft'; violating your copyright is a civil matter, one I'll never go to jail for.
Max
The question has nothing to do with morality but with damages. These are two entirely separate issues.
What the college student has done, in this example, may be immoral or illegal. But given the assumption that the student wouldn't purchase the software whether it was available for copying or not, it is quite reasonable to state that the actual damages to the companies in question amount to - nothing.
Any fines applied to the student will be punitive in nature, and the proceeds will go to the state for violating the law - not the 'wronged' businesses. Which is as it should be since the businesses suffered no harm.
Max
15% of the populace will never steal.
15% of the populace will steal most anything not nailed down.
The other 70% will pull false statistics out of their ass and use them in their sig.
Max
However, the *idea* that information should be free can be applied to more than voyeurs and perverts, and you run roughshod over those others by generalizing. Of course, asking some people not to make ignorant blanket statements is like asking career criminals not to break the law.
Which is precisely my point. "Information wants to be free" isn't applied to copyrights and patents; it's applied to whatever the asshole who sings the slogan decides it should be applied to. A gross generalization which encompasses whatever his little heart desires, as if it were, in some twisted, freakish way, a virtue.
These are the same sorts of people who insist that public figures, like actors, have no right to privacy *simply because they're public figures*. Hey, "information wants to be free", especially if I want to act like a voyeur with respect to someone else's life, a sad, demented creature who lives off the gossip generated by others. Just another member of the Enquirer crowd.
But "information wants to be free", right? And if you object, certainly you have some nefarious, illegal deeds you're trying to hide?
Max
He's an alpha-male who's entertaining.
I suppose he might very well be entertaining, to the typical frat boy. But to someone who's actually gotten beyond the 'duuuude!' stage of life his characterization of women is vile.
He's a prick, pure and simple. A prick who thinks he's funny. A prick that other pricks think is funny, it looks like. But a prick, nonetheless.
Max
The issue isn't whether or not Joe User has the 'right' to run a compromised system, but whether *you* have the right to force him to patch *his* system, especially without his knowledge (which, by the way, constitutes criminal trespass).
You don't. It's that simple. If this is beyond your comprehension then I pity your understanding of 'freedom' and 'private property'.
And any asshole can claim that thing x, which he doesn't approve of, is a 'public danger'. No matter how you phrase it, a compromised system presents no 'danger' to anyone; it's a pain in the ass, to be sure, but not a 'danger' by any stretch of the imagination. Never has a DDOS attack resulted in harm, or even the threat of harm, to any human being.
If you want a solution, there's a very simple one: notify Joe that his system has been compromised and provide him with the instructions to fix it. If he refuses to do so, notify his provider and ask them to refuse service. If the provider isn't a complete fuckwit, the provider will do so.
Joe has his freedom and preserves ownership of his private property, you put an end to Joe's cantankerous refusal to stop being a tool of script kiddies. No criminal trespass required, no scumbag stealth tactics needed. End of story.
Max
forcing Joe User to keep his system up to date with the latest patches is a good thing for all of us
What a crock of shit. 'Forcing Joe User'? I guess the fact that it happens to be Joe User's machine that *he* paid for doesn't amount to squat, eh? Joe User doesn't get a choice because he's too fucking stupid to find his ass with both hands anyway?
Ramming a code change down Joe User's throat without his consent is a violation of Joe's property rights - a violation neither you nor Microsoft has any business 'enforcing'. At least not in a free country, you arrogant little twerp.
And if you start in on some half-assed 'greater good' argument, I'd suggest you hie yourself off to some socialist backwater where moral blackmail is considered a virtue, not a root cause of evil.
Max
Well, it may look similar but SuSe's YAST tool actually works, and generally doesn't break anything in the process. So underneath the hood - nope, nothing like the MS patching scheme.
Max
I'd suggest this as a suitable patch for Windows. Ever since I installed it I haven't had a single complaint about MS products.
Max
But you can never say that violent video games have no effect or no influence whatsoever on the individuals that play them
In science the burden isn't on a person to disprove a causal effect, but rather to *prove* a causal effect (or more accurately, to connect the dots in a fashion that indicates, statistically, that such a relationship is very likely to exist).
I don't have to prove to anyone that video games have no effect on actual, real-world behavior. It's up to *you* to prove that they do. So far no one has managed to do this, at least not in an accredited peer-reviewed journal. A number, however, have tried.
Max
deviant sexual behavior needs to be strongly supressed
In a supposedly free country 'deviant sexual behavior' is a matter between the participants, and not the purview of the neighbors. You might be into S&M, which I personally find pretty twisted, but I don't have any right to pass a law outlawing your kinky antics.
There is real danger in a young teen who sees too much sex doing it himself
Yeah, I certainly thought that was a danger back when I was a teen! Sex = bad, mmmkay? Just say no! Or is it 'don't stop'? I get those two confused.
due to instincts and hormones
Forgetting, of course, that simple desire and the will to act on it just *might* have something to do with teens fucking each others brains out. It wasn't 'instinct' and 'hormones' that did the trick for me when I was a kid; it was the fact that pussy was better than anything else on the face of the Earth. I doubt this has changed much in the intervening years for kids today, as it's still true for me even at my advanced age.
Max
As an Oregonian I can tell you for a certainty that this thing will never pass - or, if it did, Oregonians will repeal it with the initiative petition process faster than you can say 'Big Brother'.
Historically, Oregonians - the natives, at least, if not the imports - are a cantankerous lot who fundamentally distrust both the government and their representatives. They tend to be quite pig-headed and stubborn and refuse to let their government interfere too much in their lives. This is why, for example, despite overwhelming legislative support the sales tax has failed at least EIGHT times; the Right to Die law was passed TWICE, because the first time the legislature refused to honor it (and the second time were forced by the courts to do so); and despite the asshole comments of folks from other states, we STILL won't allow people to pump their own gas even though the state keeps trying to convince us that this would be a good thing.
In fact, we so distrust the government and it's ability to fuck us over at the drop of a hat that we passed a measure that denies our legislature the right to raise property taxes. In order to get such a tax increase, a measure has to be passed at the local level, and has to be approved by a majority of the voters. If less than 50% of the voters actually vote, it's assumed that the tax isn't supported and it automatically LOSES, even if a majority of those who did vote pass it (called, erroneously, the 'double majority' vote).
This is the state we're talking about. The only state in the union that so despises its own politicians that it strips of them of the right to tax, then makes it damned near impossible to raise taxes in an alternative fashion. The only state in the union that regularly incorporates initiative petition measures directly into the state Constitution, because it's commonly assumed that the legislature will alter and pervert the law if this *isn't* done.
And now Slashdot thinks that Oregonians would actually put up with this crap? Pause here while I laugh my ass off; we're eminently used to our idiot politicians doing stupid things - that's why we so often reject what they do, bypass them with initiative petitions, and sometimes recall the bastards when they annoy us too much.
If such a thing were passed (and the legislature might do this - like I said, they have a track record of ignoring the citizens in favor of monied insterests and increasing their own power) it would be rejected in a heartbeat. And, most likely, the backlash would be a rollback and reduction of the current gas tax as 'punishment' for pulling something this stupid. The natives *will not* tolerate a measure that smacks of surveillance, nor will they bend to this kind of 'threat' to increase the gas tax.
We might've been watered down by the influx of Californians in recent years, but if we're still pig-headed enough to resist both our own politicians and the snide comments of every fuckwit tourist who visits when it comes to something as trivial as who can pump gas, you can bet that as major as this won't fly for a moment.
Max
tell me the time or to tell me to fuck off
It's 12:45 p.m. And fuck off, already.
Max
Instead of wasting time on a move like this, I'd rather see efforts being made to *reduce* maximum copyright times to something reasonable - like 10 years. Or at least the 14 + 14 set out originally by the framers.
I can't imagine that much of anything, other than some literature and art, would be worth anything after 50 years. As is, many technological doodads fall by the wayside in 10, replaced by better mousetraps or other forms of technology altogether. And all evidence points to an ever-increasing rate of technological advancement, not a slowdown or stabilization, so in 50 years even a period of 10 years will seem ludicrous.
Max
...ATI has my business now. I've been hankering after their screaming monster card anyway (although I don't know how useful it'd be on a 1.4 ghz gaming machine), and this deal with nvidia only confirms my suspicion that they can't be trusted to accurately report the performance of their product.
Nor, it seems, can anyone else.
max
GET A PHONE THAT DOESN'T ALLOW SPAM!
Already have. I disconnected my land line and got a cell service instead. It's illegal to make a sales call to a cell service because the caller has to pay for the call; it isn't illegal to make a sales call to a land line because, through bizarre contortions of the law, you're assumed to be 'inviting' these calls, unless you specifically request otherwise, - *even though you're still paying for the goddamned service*.
You'll note that in neither case is the free market at work. In fact, whether land line or cell the free market is pretty much fucked (although less so with the cell). In an actual free market I'd be able to program in a 'white list' of numbers and automatically reject all other calls, or forward them to voicemail. It would be *my choice and my choice alone* which would determine who could and could not call me, through the simple expediency of programming a white list (or providing one to the supplier). As is, I have to rely on the damned law to do the job that the market would otherwise do.
Regardless, no human being has the right to bother me - to waste my time without paying me for it - unless I specifically grant them that right. *That's capitalism, pure and simple*. Spammers, whether they be the scumbags that run telemarketing, email, or snail mail operations, are the antithesis of the free market: they demand my time, whether I wish to provide it or not, and refuse to pay me for it.
Sounds like they're a bunch of fucking communists, if you ask me. Communists and con men all wrapped up into the same package. But isn't that redundant?
Max
Except that:
- it's my phone and I'm paying for the service. With that in mind it's perfectly reasonable to assume that I get to decide who gets to call. If I tell someone to fuck off, then they better damn well fuck off.
- it's my email and my internet access. I get to decide to can send me mail using the services *I* pay for. In a capitalist society this is a perfectly reasonable expectation. Only a communist motherfucker would insist that I give everyone equal time on *my* dime.
- it's my mailbox and it's my postal service. The postal service does not belong to spammers, nor do I have any recognizable alternative to said post office. One would think, given no alternatives other than the government agency that I supposedly control as a citizen of the United States, I could dictate an end to spam. Funny, I can't.
And, by the way, you are *required* to have a receptacle on your property for mail delivery. This is a *law*. Funny thing, that.
- most of all, it's *my* time. Neither you nor anyone else has any business wasting it unless you're willing to pay whatever fee I set. This too is good capitalism; in fact, excellent capitalism.
Unfortunately for all of us, capitalism has very little to do with 21st century America. It had little to do with America prior to the 21st century, but even less so now. If we lived in a truly capitalist society I'd actually have the rights I listed above, as a logical extension of the free market. If anything, I'd have even more rights, provided by the tooth-and-nail competition of competing services all tripping over themselves to steal away customers, with the elimination of harrassment by low-life scumbags as a selling point for those services.
Max