So what do you propose? Allowing large corporations and businesses to contribute as much as they want to whatever politician they want to buy today? Yeah, that'll solve the problem of incumbents or whoever has the most money winning elections all the time, won't it?
And current campaign finance reform has changed things ever so much, hasn't it?
The problem is the political speech of individuals as much as it is the "political speech" of corporations that have much more money and power than any individual.
I fail to see the problem here. The Constitution guarantees free speech; it doesn't say that all speech has the right to be heard equally. You aren't promised any such thing.
I could understand TV and radio ads that cost more than say.... $5,000 because you could argue that the average person couldn't be behind that.
I don't. Free speech applies to the rich just as much as it does to the poor. Placing arbitrary monetary limits on the acquisition of airtime is a form of censorship, even if said censorship is a cause for rejoicing amongst pseudo-liberals.
What part of the Constitution grants the federal government any power whatsoever over the airwaves? According to the 10th Amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
And no, the interstate commerce clause *cannot* be used to justify whatever federal power you have a hard-on for, despite historical precedent. Amendments trump original clauses, by definition.
Can't say I have any more faith in the MPAA waking up and smelling the coffee than I do the RIAA. If you've actually worked with the powerhouses in the industry you'll know that they value control far more than they do money, and despise everything internet-related precisely because it strips them of some of that control. This is an industry where execs regularly torpedo projects with huge promise and/or ratings just because someone working on the project has pissed them off. Money has very little to do with it so long as a certain minimal amount keeps rolling in (and sometimes not even then).
Don't look at this through rose-colored glasses. Execs in the movie and TV industries are some of the biggest egomaniacs alive. If anyone is looking to distribute movies/TV via BitTorrent it'll be some small house outside the mainstream that can't get their films into theaters. The big guys will never follow suit; they'll take the RIAA path and try to legislate/intimidate p2p into oblivion.
my landlord cannot drop by at any time of the day simply because he owns the land
That's part of the contract the landlord enters into by becoming a landlord in the first place. Don't try to confuse the issue by conflating unrelated topics. Nobody's talking about breaking the law, unless your law includes the right to whine about the LEGAL rules that others decide to make on THEIR property.
Don't like it? Then leave. That's where your choice in the matter begins and ends.
In David Brin's "Earth" (science fantasy, but a good read anyway) a percentage of the citizens commonly walked around wearing small cameras, recording/transmitting live everything they saw. In the book these citizens were complete assholes, trying to force everyone else to conform with their narrow moral views, but in our world it could also be used to record the actions of authorities and use those transmitted recordings to keep abuses in check. Which is why at some point I'm sure you'll see legislation banning these devices from use in public places, as even bulkier camcorders are tripping up authority-types who like to break the law and lie in court to cover their asses (RNC being the last big example I can think of). No way, no how is the government going to allow the citizens to surveil *them* with the ease that it surveils *us*.
Mark my words - you heard it hear first, on Slashdot. The legislation will come up, and it will be passed. I give it six, seven years at most.
Their descendants will miss the money, but so what? Inheritance is the most unfair, un-earned income imaginable.
I earned the money - not you. I paid taxes on the money - not you. I decide what the hell I'm going to do with my money - not you. And if that means that I want to give it all to my kids so that they don't have to work a day in their lives, that's my business - not yours.
What's unfair here is that some of my neighbors think they have the right to divvy up and distribute *my* property against my wishes. Now *that* is bullshit.
You're absolutely right: I don't believe in property taxes. A property tax is just another way of saying you don't own your land, you rent it from the government. I have a big, big problem with that.
I agree with you. I have a hell of a time seeing why someone earning $400,000/year should pay ten times as much in taxes as somebody earning $40,000/year. They certain don't consume ten times as much in public services, so why are they paying ten times the amount in taxes?
However, a national sales tax is just about the stupidest fucking tax scheme I've heard of yet. I'll jump on the bandwagon to roll back taxes and reduce the size of government (libertarian, wouldn't you know) but I won't buy in to some horseshit about a sales tax being 'more fair'. It sure as hell isn't, by any stretch.
Max
Re:Sales tax NOT regressive
on
Tracking Your Taxes
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I can't imagine how Oregonians would react to a national sales tax. We've rejected a state sales tax (pushed by most out-of-state non-citizen political groups) EIGHT TIMES now; and the last time it came to a vote it was so clearly the brainchild of non-Oregonian special interests that our legislators received quite a few threats should they think about putting the tax to a vote a ninth time. Needless to say the sales tax hasn't been referred to the polls since then.
I wonder how the citizens of the state would react if told that a sales tax was going to be imposed on them by the feds and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it. Twenty years ago I could've predicted a fairly violent response with relative certainty, but so many spineless pussies have transplanted themselves here I'm no longer so certain....
Companies, being fictional entities, don't have the capacity to give a shit. The people that run those companies do but choose not to, since they don't really give a damn whether you or live or die so long as they get a cut of your paycheck while you're still drawing breath.
Too many people blame faceless 'companies', 'corporations', or 'governments'. But let's remember: we're getting bent over and reamed by our neighbors. They're the ones fucking us over and fucking us up. Everyone who actively supports the organization that's screwing you is part of the problem whether they revel in it or willfully choose to ignore their complicity.
The ethics of the company, corporation or government is a reflection of its constituent members. If the organization acts maliciously it's because it's composed of malicious human beings - or at least a combination of the malicious and apathetic, and I'm not sure which of these two is morally more debased.
Fortunately what these asshats think is of no consequence. Unless Congress can rally/bully the states into repealing the First Amendment these surveys don't matter for shit.
We don't live in a democracy - something you should thank the gods for.
Damn, sounds like you and I worked in the same district.
The schools in my area did the same thing: threw out perfectly good older computers because they were too slow to run Win95/Win98, much less anything newer. I (surreptitiously) made deals with the poor bastards this duty devolved too (usually a teacher with too little time) to come pick up the equipment and do the job myself. I managed to 'recover' several hundred computers this way, along with enough replacement parts to last for years. Enough, at least, to keep two labs running in two different middle schools so long as they were using Linux and not Windows.
Had to do it on the sly, though. If the tech folks for the districts ever caught a whiff that two entire labs were running off of Linux and not their beloved Windows both places would've been swarmed, shut down, and torn apart within a day. The kids knew of course, but fortunately (or sadly, depending on your point of view) nobody ever listened to anything they had to say.
I ran into a similar situation when I took a couple years off to teach middle school. The tech department was adamantly pro-Windows, to the point where it seemed that the highest aspiration of these folks was to someday work for MS, or perhaps give Billy G. a blowjob, or both. Whenever the word 'Linux' was mentioned they began to froth at the mouth - much like a religious fanatic who can't stand the idea that their religion isn't the only one in the world.
I had my kids convert the Windows lab to a Linux one. The equipment was so old that Linux ran far more efficiently than Win95 did (forget about even installing Win2000 or XP, the computers didn't come close to meeting minimum requirements). I used KDE for the environment since it seems KDE is bound and determined to emulate Windows and that's what the kids were familiar with. Not, it turns out, that it mattered; kids are far more resilient and adaptable than adults are and they had no problem mastering the differences in a matter of days.
When the techs visited the lab they didn't even recognize the software that supposedly was a crass insult to their Lord and Savior, the Great Bill. They asked me - get this - what version of Windows I was running, and what 'skin' I was using. Since I didn't want my lab disassembled with a sledgehammer wielded by Windows zealots I told them it was Win98 with a skin that I had, erm, designed especially for the kids (snicker). They thought it was cool and asked me if I could give 'em a copy, which I promised I would (although I never delivered, of course).
Can't imagine what they thought when I moved on to other things and they were left with a lab full of computers which didn't recognize the Windows automatic updating service as a valid tool. But then they never got a service call once I converted the lab, so who knows? Those machines might still be running Linux without anyone the wiser.
...this isn't an academic conference but a marketing conference. The first is an attempt to share information and ideas between fellow researchers while they spend their nights boozing and banging teenage hookers on the taxpayer dime; the second is geared towards making the organizers money while the attendees (mostly executives and those trying to impress them) spend their nights boozing and banging teenage hookers on the company dime.
Why anyone would allow Linus, RMS or Alan to do their thinking for them is beyond me. These guys are coders, and coders are hardly known for being great thinkers.
Except that despite the yearly batch of nay-sayers foretelling the imminent demise of Moore's Law, only Gordon Moore has been spot-on about the law that bears his name.
So when the same Moore tells me his law is about to meet an abrupt end who do you think I'm going to pay attention to? Moore, or those former nay-sayers who're now spouting the opposite - that the Law will continue to hold?
A smart man knows where to lay his bets on this one.
I never thought anything could be worse than Voyager and remain on the air, and then Enterprise went and surprised me. The only plausible explanation I could come up is that Rick "everything I touch turns to shit" Berman had some really good blackmail material on the execs at the network.
...when no matter how hard they try, no matter how many laws they buy, no matter how many sleazy tactics they pull, the amount of music shared over the internet keeps *increasing* rather than decreasing. From 12-year-old girls to 72-year-old grannies, everyone seems to be getting in on the game and no amount of whining/threatening/suing by the RIAA is making so much as a dent in the traffic.
Seems it's time to re-evaluate the situation and see if the law - and perhaps someone's business model - is in need of change.
Slashdot Mirror
So what do you propose? Allowing large corporations and businesses to contribute as much as they want to whatever politician they want to buy today? Yeah, that'll solve the problem of incumbents or whoever has the most money winning elections all the time, won't it?
And current campaign finance reform has changed things ever so much, hasn't it?
The problem is the political speech of individuals as much as it is the "political speech" of corporations that have much more money and power than any individual.
I fail to see the problem here. The Constitution guarantees free speech; it doesn't say that all speech has the right to be heard equally. You aren't promised any such thing.
Max
I could understand TV and radio ads that cost more than say.... $5,000 because you could argue that the average person couldn't be behind that.
I don't. Free speech applies to the rich just as much as it does to the poor. Placing arbitrary monetary limits on the acquisition of airtime is a form of censorship, even if said censorship is a cause for rejoicing amongst pseudo-liberals.
Max
What part of the Constitution grants the federal government any power whatsoever over the airwaves? According to the 10th Amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
And no, the interstate commerce clause *cannot* be used to justify whatever federal power you have a hard-on for, despite historical precedent. Amendments trump original clauses, by definition.
Max
"
Can't say I have any more faith in the MPAA waking up and smelling the coffee than I do the RIAA. If you've actually worked with the powerhouses in the industry you'll know that they value control far more than they do money, and despise everything internet-related precisely because it strips them of some of that control. This is an industry where execs regularly torpedo projects with huge promise and/or ratings just because someone working on the project has pissed them off. Money has very little to do with it so long as a certain minimal amount keeps rolling in (and sometimes not even then).
Don't look at this through rose-colored glasses. Execs in the movie and TV industries are some of the biggest egomaniacs alive. If anyone is looking to distribute movies/TV via BitTorrent it'll be some small house outside the mainstream that can't get their films into theaters. The big guys will never follow suit; they'll take the RIAA path and try to legislate/intimidate p2p into oblivion.
Max
Right or wrong, I love seeing the current IP laws being used against corporate infringers of the GPL. Yep, payback is sweet.
Max
my landlord cannot drop by at any time of the day simply because he owns the land
That's part of the contract the landlord enters into by becoming a landlord in the first place. Don't try to confuse the issue by conflating unrelated topics. Nobody's talking about breaking the law, unless your law includes the right to whine about the LEGAL rules that others decide to make on THEIR property.
Don't like it? Then leave. That's where your choice in the matter begins and ends.
Max
If you tell me to do something however that violates my human rights
If I tell you to do something you don't want to do, then leave. And don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Max
In David Brin's "Earth" (science fantasy, but a good read anyway) a percentage of the citizens commonly walked around wearing small cameras, recording/transmitting live everything they saw. In the book these citizens were complete assholes, trying to force everyone else to conform with their narrow moral views, but in our world it could also be used to record the actions of authorities and use those transmitted recordings to keep abuses in check. Which is why at some point I'm sure you'll see legislation banning these devices from use in public places, as even bulkier camcorders are tripping up authority-types who like to break the law and lie in court to cover their asses (RNC being the last big example I can think of). No way, no how is the government going to allow the citizens to surveil *them* with the ease that it surveils *us*.
Mark my words - you heard it hear first, on Slashdot. The legislation will come up, and it will be passed. I give it six, seven years at most.
Max
but you do not instantly become a dictator because you own some arbitrarily defined piece of land.
If you're on *my* property you've got exactly two choices:
a) follow my rules, or
b) get the hell off my property
There is no third option and you don't get a vote. The choice is the only thing you get to decide. Deal with it.
Max
Their descendants will miss the money, but so what? Inheritance is the most unfair, un-earned income imaginable.
I earned the money - not you. I paid taxes on the money - not you. I decide what the hell I'm going to do with my money - not you. And if that means that I want to give it all to my kids so that they don't have to work a day in their lives, that's my business - not yours.
What's unfair here is that some of my neighbors think they have the right to divvy up and distribute *my* property against my wishes. Now *that* is bullshit.
Max
So you don't believe in property taxes, or what?
You're absolutely right: I don't believe in property taxes. A property tax is just another way of saying you don't own your land, you rent it from the government. I have a big, big problem with that.
Max
I agree with you. I have a hell of a time seeing why someone earning $400,000/year should pay ten times as much in taxes as somebody earning $40,000/year. They certain don't consume ten times as much in public services, so why are they paying ten times the amount in taxes?
However, a national sales tax is just about the stupidest fucking tax scheme I've heard of yet. I'll jump on the bandwagon to roll back taxes and reduce the size of government (libertarian, wouldn't you know) but I won't buy in to some horseshit about a sales tax being 'more fair'. It sure as hell isn't, by any stretch.
Max
I can't imagine how Oregonians would react to a national sales tax. We've rejected a state sales tax (pushed by most out-of-state non-citizen political groups) EIGHT TIMES now; and the last time it came to a vote it was so clearly the brainchild of non-Oregonian special interests that our legislators received quite a few threats should they think about putting the tax to a vote a ninth time. Needless to say the sales tax hasn't been referred to the polls since then.
I wonder how the citizens of the state would react if told that a sales tax was going to be imposed on them by the feds and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it. Twenty years ago I could've predicted a fairly violent response with relative certainty, but so many spineless pussies have transplanted themselves here I'm no longer so certain....
Max
Companies, being fictional entities, don't have the capacity to give a shit. The people that run those companies do but choose not to, since they don't really give a damn whether you or live or die so long as they get a cut of your paycheck while you're still drawing breath.
Too many people blame faceless 'companies', 'corporations', or 'governments'. But let's remember: we're getting bent over and reamed by our neighbors. They're the ones fucking us over and fucking us up. Everyone who actively supports the organization that's screwing you is part of the problem whether they revel in it or willfully choose to ignore their complicity.
The ethics of the company, corporation or government is a reflection of its constituent members. If the organization acts maliciously it's because it's composed of malicious human beings - or at least a combination of the malicious and apathetic, and I'm not sure which of these two is morally more debased.
Max
Fortunately what these asshats think is of no consequence. Unless Congress can rally/bully the states into repealing the First Amendment these surveys don't matter for shit.
We don't live in a democracy - something you should thank the gods for.
Max
Damn, sounds like you and I worked in the same district.
The schools in my area did the same thing: threw out perfectly good older computers because they were too slow to run Win95/Win98, much less anything newer. I (surreptitiously) made deals with the poor bastards this duty devolved too (usually a teacher with too little time) to come pick up the equipment and do the job myself. I managed to 'recover' several hundred computers this way, along with enough replacement parts to last for years. Enough, at least, to keep two labs running in two different middle schools so long as they were using Linux and not Windows.
Had to do it on the sly, though. If the tech folks for the districts ever caught a whiff that two entire labs were running off of Linux and not their beloved Windows both places would've been swarmed, shut down, and torn apart within a day. The kids knew of course, but fortunately (or sadly, depending on your point of view) nobody ever listened to anything they had to say.
Max
I ran into a similar situation when I took a couple years off to teach middle school. The tech department was adamantly pro-Windows, to the point where it seemed that the highest aspiration of these folks was to someday work for MS, or perhaps give Billy G. a blowjob, or both. Whenever the word 'Linux' was mentioned they began to froth at the mouth - much like a religious fanatic who can't stand the idea that their religion isn't the only one in the world.
I had my kids convert the Windows lab to a Linux one. The equipment was so old that Linux ran far more efficiently than Win95 did (forget about even installing Win2000 or XP, the computers didn't come close to meeting minimum requirements). I used KDE for the environment since it seems KDE is bound and determined to emulate Windows and that's what the kids were familiar with. Not, it turns out, that it mattered; kids are far more resilient and adaptable than adults are and they had no problem mastering the differences in a matter of days.
When the techs visited the lab they didn't even recognize the software that supposedly was a crass insult to their Lord and Savior, the Great Bill. They asked me - get this - what version of Windows I was running, and what 'skin' I was using. Since I didn't want my lab disassembled with a sledgehammer wielded by Windows zealots I told them it was Win98 with a skin that I had, erm, designed especially for the kids (snicker). They thought it was cool and asked me if I could give 'em a copy, which I promised I would (although I never delivered, of course).
Can't imagine what they thought when I moved on to other things and they were left with a lab full of computers which didn't recognize the Windows automatic updating service as a valid tool. But then they never got a service call once I converted the lab, so who knows? Those machines might still be running Linux without anyone the wiser.
Max
...this isn't an academic conference but a marketing conference. The first is an attempt to share information and ideas between fellow researchers while they spend their nights boozing and banging teenage hookers on the taxpayer dime; the second is geared towards making the organizers money while the attendees (mostly executives and those trying to impress them) spend their nights boozing and banging teenage hookers on the company dime.
A world of difference, really.
Max
it doesn't matter whether it does or not as long as they think it does.
Hey, I'm sitting here thinking that you're my bitch. True or not, you'd better bend over and grab your ankles because I'm coming home, honey!
Max
Why anyone would allow Linus, RMS or Alan to do their thinking for them is beyond me. These guys are coders, and coders are hardly known for being great thinkers.
Max
Poor McVoy. Being oppressed by an evil open-sourcer trying to reverse engineer his product. Really, my heart just goes out to this downtrodden coder.
Perhaps he should look into employment with Microsoft. Seems to me he'd fit right in.
Max
Even coming from Gordon Moore.
Except that despite the yearly batch of nay-sayers foretelling the imminent demise of Moore's Law, only Gordon Moore has been spot-on about the law that bears his name.
So when the same Moore tells me his law is about to meet an abrupt end who do you think I'm going to pay attention to? Moore, or those former nay-sayers who're now spouting the opposite - that the Law will continue to hold?
A smart man knows where to lay his bets on this one.
Max
Does any real Sci-Fi fan care who is banging whom?
Those of us who like to fuck in real life do. Those of us who are still virgins living with Mom and Dad...probably less so.
Max
I never thought anything could be worse than Voyager and remain on the air, and then Enterprise went and surprised me. The only plausible explanation I could come up is that Rick "everything I touch turns to shit" Berman had some really good blackmail material on the execs at the network.
Thank christ that's over with.
Max
...when no matter how hard they try, no matter how many laws they buy, no matter how many sleazy tactics they pull, the amount of music shared over the internet keeps *increasing* rather than decreasing. From 12-year-old girls to 72-year-old grannies, everyone seems to be getting in on the game and no amount of whining/threatening/suing by the RIAA is making so much as a dent in the traffic.
Seems it's time to re-evaluate the situation and see if the law - and perhaps someone's business model - is in need of change.
(cue RIAA apologists)
Max