With services such as iTMS there really is no excuse for piracy, I agree. DRM still makes me uncomforable, but I think it is a necissary stop-gap measure, until some other solution comes about that makes both parties happy comes about. Also I agree that most cases of piracy is nothing but morons wanting something for nothing, and justifying it ad hoc, especially when solutions exist such as used CD stores, and iTunes like services.
But, as to your 3 legs, I think they all are resultant from actual problem from the record labels idea of what their buisness should be, when the market is more and more deciding the opposite. It is broken, and because of this problems arrise on the level that they do.
I really wish people would lay off the dogma, both the RIAA, and the average pro-piracy/.er. Both are going for the untenuable solution, and missing the idea of compromise. It seems that in cases of polarization, the only good solution pisses off both parties.
To be brash, I really don't care waht the designers want, outside of their cash for my pruchase (in in online games, fairness). I don't like being punished for the acts if pirates, I payed my $50, and I don't understand why I need to be targetted as a potential pirate.
You are correct, I do wish there were people who were doing it for legitimate uses. But there is no way to distiguish between the a legit no-CD, and an illegal no-CD. It is a mess, since I can't blame the producers of games for copyright protection schemes thanks to the prevelance of piracy, but I really can't be mad at no-CD hacks either (in legit uses).
A very large and signifigant proportion of people downloading No-CD hacks are doing so for legal activities. There is not a single game I play that does not have a No-CD hack on it, and every single one of them were purchased by me legally. I don't see where your ethics apply, I'm sure the crackers new that the No-CD cracks are used pretty much equally by those who wish to play validly, and those who "warez" games.
Now if your talking about serials, then I agree. But No-CDs, nope. A No-CD patch is a multi-use technology, and made as such.
I'm not trying to troll or flame here, I just want to play devil's advocate here. Nor do I fully endorse piracy, etc... I haven't pirated a CD in years (unless you count downloading, then buying when I get to a record store (none near my house), or funds), not because of moral issues, or idealogical resons, but because disks are better soundwise, and more flexible, and some CDs have good jacket/liner art which is worth having (the new Thom Yorke CD for example).
Stolen, ehem, I mean "shared" music? Grow up folks. It's kinda silly when you pretend this is all right. Spare me your lawyering. You're getting a product that is traditionally paid for, without the permission of the folks you traditionally pay, and you're not paying for it. I don't care if the RIAA, Mettalica, and EMI all suck big donkey dick, you know it's not quite right, don't you? Do I need to send Jimminy Cricket over to your house?
The problem I have with your argument is that it seems to follow the "it is wrong because it is against the law" format, which is fallacious (like "the bible is true because the bible says so"). Perhaps it shouldn't be wrong to pirate music, couldn't it be seen as a form of protest against the policies of the companies (and regulators in their pockets)?
People who abstain from getting music (legally or illegally) are not seen as potential customers, they are not even considered in planning, by abstaining you are a non-entity, so your value in this problem is null. By pirating you at least make yourself a potential customer. So perhaps if a critical mass of people stole music, then it would show that the problem is unfixable for trying to cling to an aging buisness model (and legal enforcement). Piracy can be seen as a pressure play, and eventually it would be seen as more profitable to address the problems in such a way to make it unnecissary.
Were the huge amount of people who violated prohibition wrong in doing so? No, violation proved it a bad policy. Yes, there were bad consiquences, but in the long run it proved actually good.
Yes, piracy is somewhat stealing... But not quite, it is different enough to warrent a seporate term "piracy". Stealing equals a loss of profit at each instance, whereas piracy equals a potential loss of profits at each instance, where there is no actual physical loss, and the only loss can be judged by an unknowable quality called "intent" (as in "to purchase").
But then again, sadly, this is not the mindset of most pirates, they do want something for nothing, and don't have the actual goal of pressuring the system to change by nonconformity. These people are doing something wrong (probably), where those doing it as protest might be doing something right. The ends justify the means, etc...
This is true, but I was thinking in the more immediate human terms. For all my stored documents and files I do keep them in the ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) but I know these are useless in normal day-to-day life. If I ask a freind to meet me at the bar, they would be very confused by "Meet me at Twenty Oh-Six, Oh-Eight Oh-three".
Though I have run into the MM-DD / DD-MM problem before, it would be nice to standardize normal speech too. Sadly this will never happen.
I miss this fight. Many a time getting drunk with my british friends picking on each other dialect, but then drunkedness makes us all equal incomprehensable. Good times.
Actually there are different names for each dialect, from American standard, to British standard, and all points in between.
Everyone in the US says "August 2nd" or "December 31st."
Er.. You have proof of this? Luckily I have counterproof, I often say "It's the second of August" (Or DD of MM), interchangably with "Its August second" (or MM of DD). So thus I have one case to disprove your universal statement.
And if I ask what day it is, I find the actual day more informative. Wednesday is more important than "the second", which is more important than "August", which is more important than "2006".
The problem is relavence. The most important feature of the date is the day, followed by the month, only rarely does the year confuse us. With YYYY-MM-DD, the first feature is the year, which is the least useful.
The European system makes the most sense, but I really could care less, it never has lead to much more than momentary confusion.
Actually it is American English, a seperate dialect from British English. It isn't bastardized, its just different to relfect culture. I'm sorry, but the English have no claim to the master dialect (whatever that means), they speak flawless British, and we flawless American. The term "bastardize" is meaningless.
Sorry, I got in massive fights with my british friends in college over this, with them arguing the sepremacy of their tongue (they are called the english, and speak english, therefore their language must be pure!), and me making fun of their inferiority complex.
Its frightening, I agree. And I live in the US, so I'm even more frightened. How can people here not even know something as fundamental as how Europe writes their date/time/temp? I'm not sure if that is sarcasm, or genuine disbelief. I'll get back to you.
I have tried setting up my computer to be more "european", and found it impossible to adapt, with everything in the US system around me, there was no frame of reference. Though I did keep my computer in 24 hour (military) time, it makes more sense, and gets rid of that odd feeling you get when napping, and waking at 7:00 when the sun is rising/setting and having no clue whether you should be off to work, or should get more sleep. But even this is difficult to pick up, how do you tell a friend who grew up on 12-hour, that you will meet them at 14:00, what are they to make of this? Same problem with the more sane Celsius and Metric system, right now it is 33c outside, what does this mean? (that was rhetorical) Granted in a perfect world the US would join the rest of the world and drop the archaic measurment systems, but I don't see it happening.
As for MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY, or even YYYY/MM/DD... Who cares? None of them are really more sane or logical than the others. Either way today is not 2/8/6 (or even 8/2/6) since this isn't the year 6, it is 2006, which is truncated as "06".
Its nice to see disagreement, or at least misunderstanding disipate in this discussion, I agree (mostly) with your view of assistance, and I see your stance on unions, I think our difference in opinion comes from the fact your more optimisitic about the mechanisms of capitalism and corporate culture than I. Sadly dialogue is rare in politics, so you never even see this much progress.
As for the productivity metric, I don't think I'm capable of agreement. It seems too... Darwinistic. And this has a vast potential of abuse, what if the un-or-underproductive are deemed dead-weight, holding back productive society, would it then be acceptible to remove them? The comparison of people to animals, I find rather distasteful, and I think it has been a common declaration before any great atrocity.
And I think your view might change if you ever had one as a child, or sibling. Granted there are extremes in this, there is a program for the mentally ill (Downs, schizophrenia, etc) in my area, where thanks to government subsidies the owner can afford 30 antique cars, and a very large house in the posh area of town. This mismanagment scares me, obviously the system is flawed.
But, I think, it is the goverment jobs to care for, or at least try to ensure the wellbeing, of all memebers of society, no matter how fit they are in capitalism. I think there are times when the Government must buck individual's wills and do what is best for society as a whole, and for good or ill the un-to-underproductive are members of society. It would be good of private interests cared for them, but we undervaluate the powers of pure greed, especially in todays society where all we can think about is ourselves, and how much money we have.
I mean investment in the standard financial sense with research, input, and risk of profit or loss for the investors
I worry about this idea, of humanitarianism for the ends of personal gain. It risks exploitation, and the dehumanization of the people any action would be geared to help. What if there comes a point where it is not profitable (or even against the best interests) of the improving party, yet the poor community(s) are still sub-par? It seems it is in the best interests to only increase welfare to the point of production, and never to the point where the poor would be equal in eduction, or potential for earning. On some level I think there needs to be an egalitarian end for all improvement, that we elevate these people to the potential for our levels.
i don't think the time for unions ever end, in theory. Exploitation is a long term feature of capitalism, and unions are needed as a balance. I'm not endorsing socialism, I just realize that capitolism urges pure egotism, and the devaluation of labor to maximize profit. These trends need a foil to keep things fair for the worker. Granted unions can go terribly wrong (teamsters, for example), but they are needed. As to a check on the unions, no clue.
By incapable of work, I mean the disabled, both physically and mentally, and not the lazy or unintelligent. It is rather easy to tell with physical, at least (in most cases).
As for the people who really can't and can never work or contribute anything of value, I don't think it's really in society's interests to help those people. Charities exist for that sort of thing, for people to contribute on a voluntary basis.
I can't even understand this. I don't value the productivity of society above individuals, nor can I. Even the incapible have value as humans, even if they don't translate into money/product. I say this because they can suffer, think, and feel, and thus are of equal value to any other one of us. When we judge people by synthetic merit (production) we open the door for exploitation on a large scale. Are people such as Bill Gates (insert evil rich person of the week instead, if you want) better than anyone else? Human worth should never be judged by monitary worth, I know it is, but this is a problem with the system.
Not that any of my positions are fixed in stone, I'm open for viable solutions, as long as they perserve human dignity, and equality (in a deeper sense than mere monitary worth).
Sorry for taking so long to reply, weather happens.
I agree, the a comfortable wage, reguardless of effort, is a terrible idea. But I think there should be some attempt to better the wage for people struggling at poverty level, and below. This shouldn't be a free lunch, for just the reasons you state. There is a great disparity between classes (I really don't like that term, it has too many hardline Marxist conotations). I, unlike the typical slashbot, don't think that poverty is the poors fault, completely. Yes, there are lazy people, but a vast majority of the poor have been dealt a bad hand, or just don't know how to live in more mainstream society (think of poor rural areas, or inner city ghettos).
Some of the problems are the fault of corporate America, completely. It gets harder and harder to find a mid level job that offers above 39 hours/week (and thus benefits) or isn't long-term temp, which is coupled with the drug companies, and medical industry's (at least here in America) greed, which means that even a small bout of illness, or injury, can cripple a typical poor or lower middle class family.
We have lost any sense of commitment to society as a whole, we are more worried about ourselves. It seems we have forgotten completely that we are part of society, and benefit from it too.
Sorry for the tangent.
I'm not saying there should be some massive Marxist revolution, or such. We have seen how nonfunctional they are, the only results are a greater inequality, and loss of personal freedom. We need many smaller, and less drastic, fixes. For one (and for this I will be flamed) we need to bring back Unions and other workers rights organizations, and strive to keep them from emulating the Teamsters Union, which gave a bad name to all unions reguardless of their works. We need to find an incentive to make it good for corporations to pay a living wage (and by living wage, I mean in todays economy, and not the mid 80s). And, in the case of alienation, the mentally ill, and the other drivers of base poverty, we need to find some humane form of social service to care, or rehabilitate them, and we need an atmosphere where we feel it our responsibility to do so. Notice the term "free lunch" was never mentioned, though it might be necissary in those cases in which the poor and incapible of work. And hopefully in the middle of this process our society realizes the inherent worth of its artists and poets, and gives them what many would call a free lunch today in our under-to-non-appreciation of cultural pursuits.
So how do we do this? No idea. We just need more dialogue and action.
Wow, that does explain the large amount of Art, Music, and english majors I know. It is pretty much known that an art degree is about as good as no degree, but this poor morons persist in persuing thier dreams at the expense of money. All the time and money I invested in my liberal arts degree (philosophy) was a waste of time, and I must have been stupid not to look at how much money I could be making in something souless, like business.
I'm glad there is an equal amount of disdain coming from the other direction, where people in the more liberal feilds laugh at the "pratical" ones as a bunch of greedy, heartless, capitalist sheep. Congratulations, your ambition will lead you to money, alienated kids, and eventually a heart condition.
I think where you fail is postulating that mere need and hardship entitle one to get 'free stuff'.
I disagree. I think that people are suffering, and it is our duty to help.
rant
I'm getting sick of/. looking at efficiency, gaining power, etc etc and completely ignoring the human aspect. We all are people before we are mere wage earners. I don't give a rats ass how well someone makes money, or if their efficiency is good, I think it more important that they have a decent standard of life, some meager happiness, and a warm place to go to the bathroom. Screw the rest, humanity comes before profits, ALL THE TIME. If not, it should be enforced, since obviously those who have the opposite bent are boreder-line sociopaths./rant
I know you overstated for a point. I did likewise, as a point and argument against your statement.
I doubt its as bad as you make it out, though there still is a problem, I don't think it critical.
The solution probably comes through activism, and education. If people (the poor few who care enough to vote) would stop voting for who/what ever the television tells them to vote, and actually vote from their convictions and goals. This requires education, and a developed sense of agency, the former is now hampered by plummeting budgets, drugs (not crack, Ridalin), inept teachers of the blindly liberal touchy feely type. And the latter is hurt by our increasing commercial conditioning as good consumers (where thinking is bad).
We need more opinions, loud ones, in the idea market (not the internet, since there is little oppurtunity to reach those not already agreeing/searching for x opinion). We need more angery (educated) liberals pressing their agenda, more educated conservatives, and more educated libertarians/greenies/or what ever else fringe alt views can raise their voice in an adult manner. Debate brings abuses to light, and our avatars of debate (the big media) is broken, hence the need for a real grassroots action (again, not online).
People need to get over their petty ideological distractions (I don't like Bush, but I voted for him since he won't take my guns away/allow abortion/etc). The problems are three-fold:
The government has dilluded itself to thinking its an end in itself Religion is breeding morons distracted from the problems of the here and now And Corporations are gaining more and more control over our lives (via culture/government and technology)
The solution to these issues... Hell if I know. Probably getting pissed off and doing something about 1 or all of them, instead of whining on online forums.
I am an optimist though, I think perhaps our grandchildren will be mad enough to fight, our children are lost already, and we are pretty much useless.
Fry's is Krogers out west. Imagine the confusion living in a place with both So I'm going to go buy some IDE cable and 15 feet of CAT-5 at Fry's", "Could you pick me up some eggs, while your there?" "Eggs?!"
Understood, I didn't mean to seem harsh, or like a Firefox booster (its so hard not to be after years of bosting it to my friends and fam as the best thing since sliced bread).
I could list a ten pages of major beefs I have with Firefox (the memory "feature" is number one, followed by the fact that it still just sucks on a Mac), but it does seem that, as far as fixing goes, it is the best out there. Perhaps Opera is better, but who knows what goes through their heads.
Part of the problem, come to think of it, might be the OSS idea of "fix it yourself", which seems to be almost gone in the Moz camp, but it must still have left a scar.
At times like this, I'm glad at being a southpaw, the num-keys and arrow keys work fine for me. The first thing I do is remap to the arrow keys, and then I have a full glorious keyboard for mapping.
When Halo came out, it let all my console buddies feel good about themselves, until I got them to get UT, or until Halo came out on PC, then they got to feel bad.
I love it, I play like a slightly retarded inbred step child who had his thumbs bitten off by some sort of rabid gerbil when I have my hands wrapped around an XBox contoller, but give me a mouse and I am god.
I don't think the Wii will make this any different.
Actually people complain about MS finding and then NOT fixing security holes. Look at the update record of their browser, compaired to FF, Firefox has about a week to a month fix rate, MS has about 1 year to never fix rate. People also complain that IE is UNFIXABLE due to its dependance on Active-X, which basically gives malware a pass to the kernel.
Firefox finds bug, fixes bug, no news here.
I really have no qualms about Firefox fixing a bug, it shows that their on it. Nobody claims that OSS is bug free, or security risk free, since this is impossible, from closed or open software. Code is a complex beast, like the hydra, you chop off one bug/security hole, and you probably open up more. That is intrinsic in coding, and design. The difference is the flexability of OSS, where bugs are easily seen, and easily remedied.
When the market share hits critical mass, things should get fun, though. But the openess of OSS still will keep it from reaching IE proportions. And shame on those who think that Firefox = security, the internet is still a bad place, no matter what you run. Good software is no substitute for intelligence, ever.
Many of the problems of the Un could be fixed if you gave it teeth. Pretty much what you said, but the talking nature of the UN sort of fights against it effectivness. Granted it is a good thing to come up with a well reasoned action, but at times speed becomes important, as does doing un-popular actions. How many attrocities have gotten UN lip-service (for years) but no action?
Which "Social Contract", if I remember correctly there are 30 or so books with that title.
While I agree the so-called "anarcho-populism" view of the average slashbot is slightly frightening, outmoded thought on contracts is also slightly frightening. These views are not discussed because they are considered quaint by modern standards. It has been seen time and time again that people don't choose their government (only in rare times of revolution), they inheret their goverment. I have about as much control over the US, as I do my genetic legacy.
Whos to say who "overstepped" what? If some emergent democracy in the middle east vote away all their rights for a religious extremist govermnet, then what can be said? They choose repression? This seems odd.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, I was playing devil's advocate...
/.er. Both are going for the untenuable solution, and missing the idea of compromise. It seems that in cases of polarization, the only good solution pisses off both parties.
With services such as iTMS there really is no excuse for piracy, I agree. DRM still makes me uncomforable, but I think it is a necissary stop-gap measure, until some other solution comes about that makes both parties happy comes about. Also I agree that most cases of piracy is nothing but morons wanting something for nothing, and justifying it ad hoc, especially when solutions exist such as used CD stores, and iTunes like services.
But, as to your 3 legs, I think they all are resultant from actual problem from the record labels idea of what their buisness should be, when the market is more and more deciding the opposite. It is broken, and because of this problems arrise on the level that they do.
I really wish people would lay off the dogma, both the RIAA, and the average pro-piracy
To be brash, I really don't care waht the designers want, outside of their cash for my pruchase (in in online games, fairness). I don't like being punished for the acts if pirates, I payed my $50, and I don't understand why I need to be targetted as a potential pirate.
You are correct, I do wish there were people who were doing it for legitimate uses. But there is no way to distiguish between the a legit no-CD, and an illegal no-CD. It is a mess, since I can't blame the producers of games for copyright protection schemes thanks to the prevelance of piracy, but I really can't be mad at no-CD hacks either (in legit uses).
A very large and signifigant proportion of people downloading No-CD hacks are doing so for legal activities. There is not a single game I play that does not have a No-CD hack on it, and every single one of them were purchased by me legally. I don't see where your ethics apply, I'm sure the crackers new that the No-CD cracks are used pretty much equally by those who wish to play validly, and those who "warez" games.
Now if your talking about serials, then I agree. But No-CDs, nope. A No-CD patch is a multi-use technology, and made as such.
The problem I have with your argument is that it seems to follow the "it is wrong because it is against the law" format, which is fallacious (like "the bible is true because the bible says so"). Perhaps it shouldn't be wrong to pirate music, couldn't it be seen as a form of protest against the policies of the companies (and regulators in their pockets)?
People who abstain from getting music (legally or illegally) are not seen as potential customers, they are not even considered in planning, by abstaining you are a non-entity, so your value in this problem is null. By pirating you at least make yourself a potential customer. So perhaps if a critical mass of people stole music, then it would show that the problem is unfixable for trying to cling to an aging buisness model (and legal enforcement). Piracy can be seen as a pressure play, and eventually it would be seen as more profitable to address the problems in such a way to make it unnecissary.
Were the huge amount of people who violated prohibition wrong in doing so? No, violation proved it a bad policy. Yes, there were bad consiquences, but in the long run it proved actually good.
Yes, piracy is somewhat stealing... But not quite, it is different enough to warrent a seporate term "piracy". Stealing equals a loss of profit at each instance, whereas piracy equals a potential loss of profits at each instance, where there is no actual physical loss, and the only loss can be judged by an unknowable quality called "intent" (as in "to purchase").
But then again, sadly, this is not the mindset of most pirates, they do want something for nothing, and don't have the actual goal of pressuring the system to change by nonconformity. These people are doing something wrong (probably), where those doing it as protest might be doing something right. The ends justify the means, etc...
This is true, but I was thinking in the more immediate human terms. For all my stored documents and files I do keep them in the ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) but I know these are useless in normal day-to-day life. If I ask a freind to meet me at the bar, they would be very confused by "Meet me at Twenty Oh-Six, Oh-Eight Oh-three".
Though I have run into the MM-DD / DD-MM problem before, it would be nice to standardize normal speech too. Sadly this will never happen.
I miss this fight. Many a time getting drunk with my british friends picking on each other dialect, but then drunkedness makes us all equal incomprehensable. Good times.
Actually there are different names for each dialect, from American standard, to British standard, and all points in between.
Er.. You have proof of this? Luckily I have counterproof, I often say "It's the second of August" (Or DD of MM), interchangably with "Its August second" (or MM of DD). So thus I have one case to disprove your universal statement.
And if I ask what day it is, I find the actual day more informative. Wednesday is more important than "the second", which is more important than "August", which is more important than "2006".
The problem is relavence. The most important feature of the date is the day, followed by the month, only rarely does the year confuse us. With YYYY-MM-DD, the first feature is the year, which is the least useful.
The European system makes the most sense, but I really could care less, it never has lead to much more than momentary confusion.
Actually it is American English, a seperate dialect from British English. It isn't bastardized, its just different to relfect culture. I'm sorry, but the English have no claim to the master dialect (whatever that means), they speak flawless British, and we flawless American. The term "bastardize" is meaningless.
Sorry, I got in massive fights with my british friends in college over this, with them arguing the sepremacy of their tongue (they are called the english, and speak english, therefore their language must be pure!), and me making fun of their inferiority complex.
Its frightening, I agree. And I live in the US, so I'm even more frightened. How can people here not even know something as fundamental as how Europe writes their date/time/temp? I'm not sure if that is sarcasm, or genuine disbelief. I'll get back to you.
I have tried setting up my computer to be more "european", and found it impossible to adapt, with everything in the US system around me, there was no frame of reference. Though I did keep my computer in 24 hour (military) time, it makes more sense, and gets rid of that odd feeling you get when napping, and waking at 7:00 when the sun is rising/setting and having no clue whether you should be off to work, or should get more sleep. But even this is difficult to pick up, how do you tell a friend who grew up on 12-hour, that you will meet them at 14:00, what are they to make of this? Same problem with the more sane Celsius and Metric system, right now it is 33c outside, what does this mean? (that was rhetorical) Granted in a perfect world the US would join the rest of the world and drop the archaic measurment systems, but I don't see it happening.
As for MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY, or even YYYY/MM/DD... Who cares? None of them are really more sane or logical than the others. Either way today is not 2/8/6 (or even 8/2/6) since this isn't the year 6, it is 2006, which is truncated as "06".
Its nice to see disagreement, or at least misunderstanding disipate in this discussion, I agree (mostly) with your view of assistance, and I see your stance on unions, I think our difference in opinion comes from the fact your more optimisitic about the mechanisms of capitalism and corporate culture than I. Sadly dialogue is rare in politics, so you never even see this much progress.
As for the productivity metric, I don't think I'm capable of agreement. It seems too... Darwinistic. And this has a vast potential of abuse, what if the un-or-underproductive are deemed dead-weight, holding back productive society, would it then be acceptible to remove them? The comparison of people to animals, I find rather distasteful, and I think it has been a common declaration before any great atrocity.
And I think your view might change if you ever had one as a child, or sibling. Granted there are extremes in this, there is a program for the mentally ill (Downs, schizophrenia, etc) in my area, where thanks to government subsidies the owner can afford 30 antique cars, and a very large house in the posh area of town. This mismanagment scares me, obviously the system is flawed.
But, I think, it is the goverment jobs to care for, or at least try to ensure the wellbeing, of all memebers of society, no matter how fit they are in capitalism. I think there are times when the Government must buck individual's wills and do what is best for society as a whole, and for good or ill the un-to-underproductive are members of society. It would be good of private interests cared for them, but we undervaluate the powers of pure greed, especially in todays society where all we can think about is ourselves, and how much money we have.
I worry about this idea, of humanitarianism for the ends of personal gain. It risks exploitation, and the dehumanization of the people any action would be geared to help. What if there comes a point where it is not profitable (or even against the best interests) of the improving party, yet the poor community(s) are still sub-par? It seems it is in the best interests to only increase welfare to the point of production, and never to the point where the poor would be equal in eduction, or potential for earning. On some level I think there needs to be an egalitarian end for all improvement, that we elevate these people to the potential for our levels.
i don't think the time for unions ever end, in theory. Exploitation is a long term feature of capitalism, and unions are needed as a balance. I'm not endorsing socialism, I just realize that capitolism urges pure egotism, and the devaluation of labor to maximize profit. These trends need a foil to keep things fair for the worker. Granted unions can go terribly wrong (teamsters, for example), but they are needed. As to a check on the unions, no clue.
By incapable of work, I mean the disabled, both physically and mentally, and not the lazy or unintelligent. It is rather easy to tell with physical, at least (in most cases).
I can't even understand this. I don't value the productivity of society above individuals, nor can I. Even the incapible have value as humans, even if they don't translate into money/product. I say this because they can suffer, think, and feel, and thus are of equal value to any other one of us. When we judge people by synthetic merit (production) we open the door for exploitation on a large scale. Are people such as Bill Gates (insert evil rich person of the week instead, if you want) better than anyone else? Human worth should never be judged by monitary worth, I know it is, but this is a problem with the system.
Not that any of my positions are fixed in stone, I'm open for viable solutions, as long as they perserve human dignity, and equality (in a deeper sense than mere monitary worth).
American law is much the same way. Especially when it comes to individual cases.
Kafka was ahead of his time in that... Its nice that one mans insanity becomes our societies status-quo.
Sorry for taking so long to reply, weather happens.
I agree, the a comfortable wage, reguardless of effort, is a terrible idea. But I think there should be some attempt to better the wage for people struggling at poverty level, and below. This shouldn't be a free lunch, for just the reasons you state. There is a great disparity between classes (I really don't like that term, it has too many hardline Marxist conotations). I, unlike the typical slashbot, don't think that poverty is the poors fault, completely. Yes, there are lazy people, but a vast majority of the poor have been dealt a bad hand, or just don't know how to live in more mainstream society (think of poor rural areas, or inner city ghettos).
Some of the problems are the fault of corporate America, completely. It gets harder and harder to find a mid level job that offers above 39 hours/week (and thus benefits) or isn't long-term temp, which is coupled with the drug companies, and medical industry's (at least here in America) greed, which means that even a small bout of illness, or injury, can cripple a typical poor or lower middle class family.
We have lost any sense of commitment to society as a whole, we are more worried about ourselves. It seems we have forgotten completely that we are part of society, and benefit from it too.
Sorry for the tangent.
I'm not saying there should be some massive Marxist revolution, or such. We have seen how nonfunctional they are, the only results are a greater inequality, and loss of personal freedom. We need many smaller, and less drastic, fixes. For one (and for this I will be flamed) we need to bring back Unions and other workers rights organizations, and strive to keep them from emulating the Teamsters Union, which gave a bad name to all unions reguardless of their works. We need to find an incentive to make it good for corporations to pay a living wage (and by living wage, I mean in todays economy, and not the mid 80s). And, in the case of alienation, the mentally ill, and the other drivers of base poverty, we need to find some humane form of social service to care, or rehabilitate them, and we need an atmosphere where we feel it our responsibility to do so. Notice the term "free lunch" was never mentioned, though it might be necissary in those cases in which the poor and incapible of work. And hopefully in the middle of this process our society realizes the inherent worth of its artists and poets, and gives them what many would call a free lunch today in our under-to-non-appreciation of cultural pursuits.
So how do we do this? No idea. We just need more dialogue and action.
Wow, that does explain the large amount of Art, Music, and english majors I know. It is pretty much known that an art degree is about as good as no degree, but this poor morons persist in persuing thier dreams at the expense of money. All the time and money I invested in my liberal arts degree (philosophy) was a waste of time, and I must have been stupid not to look at how much money I could be making in something souless, like business.
I'm glad there is an equal amount of disdain coming from the other direction, where people in the more liberal feilds laugh at the "pratical" ones as a bunch of greedy, heartless, capitalist sheep. Congratulations, your ambition will lead you to money, alienated kids, and eventually a heart condition.
Salut!
Looks at philosophy degree...
walks out of room.
I disagree. I think that people are suffering, and it is our duty to help.
rant
I'm getting sick of
I know you overstated for a point. I did likewise, as a point and argument against your statement.
I doubt its as bad as you make it out, though there still is a problem, I don't think it critical.
The solution probably comes through activism, and education. If people (the poor few who care enough to vote) would stop voting for who/what ever the television tells them to vote, and actually vote from their convictions and goals. This requires education, and a developed sense of agency, the former is now hampered by plummeting budgets, drugs (not crack, Ridalin), inept teachers of the blindly liberal touchy feely type. And the latter is hurt by our increasing commercial conditioning as good consumers (where thinking is bad).
We need more opinions, loud ones, in the idea market (not the internet, since there is little oppurtunity to reach those not already agreeing/searching for x opinion). We need more angery (educated) liberals pressing their agenda, more educated conservatives, and more educated libertarians/greenies/or what ever else fringe alt views can raise their voice in an adult manner. Debate brings abuses to light, and our avatars of debate (the big media) is broken, hence the need for a real grassroots action (again, not online).
People need to get over their petty ideological distractions (I don't like Bush, but I voted for him since he won't take my guns away/allow abortion/etc). The problems are three-fold:
The government has dilluded itself to thinking its an end in itself
Religion is breeding morons distracted from the problems of the here and now
And Corporations are gaining more and more control over our lives (via culture/government and technology)
The solution to these issues... Hell if I know. Probably getting pissed off and doing something about 1 or all of them, instead of whining on online forums.
I am an optimist though, I think perhaps our grandchildren will be mad enough to fight, our children are lost already, and we are pretty much useless.
Fry's Food and Drug, not Fry's Electronics.
Fry's is Krogers out west. Imagine the confusion living in a place with both
So I'm going to go buy some IDE cable and 15 feet of CAT-5 at Fry's",
"Could you pick me up some eggs, while your there?"
"Eggs?!"
Understood, I didn't mean to seem harsh, or like a Firefox booster (its so hard not to be after years of bosting it to my friends and fam as the best thing since sliced bread).
I could list a ten pages of major beefs I have with Firefox (the memory "feature" is number one, followed by the fact that it still just sucks on a Mac), but it does seem that, as far as fixing goes, it is the best out there. Perhaps Opera is better, but who knows what goes through their heads.
Part of the problem, come to think of it, might be the OSS idea of "fix it yourself", which seems to be almost gone in the Moz camp, but it must still have left a scar.
At times like this, I'm glad at being a southpaw, the num-keys and arrow keys work fine for me. The first thing I do is remap to the arrow keys, and then I have a full glorious keyboard for mapping.
When Halo came out, it let all my console buddies feel good about themselves, until I got them to get UT, or until Halo came out on PC, then they got to feel bad.
I love it, I play like a slightly retarded inbred step child who had his thumbs bitten off by some sort of rabid gerbil when I have my hands wrapped around an XBox contoller, but give me a mouse and I am god.
I don't think the Wii will make this any different.
Actually people complain about MS finding and then NOT fixing security holes. Look at the update record of their browser, compaired to FF, Firefox has about a week to a month fix rate, MS has about 1 year to never fix rate. People also complain that IE is UNFIXABLE due to its dependance on Active-X, which basically gives malware a pass to the kernel.
Firefox finds bug, fixes bug, no news here.
I really have no qualms about Firefox fixing a bug, it shows that their on it. Nobody claims that OSS is bug free, or security risk free, since this is impossible, from closed or open software. Code is a complex beast, like the hydra, you chop off one bug/security hole, and you probably open up more. That is intrinsic in coding, and design. The difference is the flexability of OSS, where bugs are easily seen, and easily remedied.
When the market share hits critical mass, things should get fun, though. But the openess of OSS still will keep it from reaching IE proportions. And shame on those who think that Firefox = security, the internet is still a bad place, no matter what you run. Good software is no substitute for intelligence, ever.
Many of the problems of the Un could be fixed if you gave it teeth. Pretty much what you said, but the talking nature of the UN sort of fights against it effectivness. Granted it is a good thing to come up with a well reasoned action, but at times speed becomes important, as does doing un-popular actions. How many attrocities have gotten UN lip-service (for years) but no action?
To wax overly poliSci/philosophical..
Which "Social Contract", if I remember correctly there are 30 or so books with that title.
While I agree the so-called "anarcho-populism" view of the average slashbot is slightly frightening, outmoded thought on contracts is also slightly frightening. These views are not discussed because they are considered quaint by modern standards. It has been seen time and time again that people don't choose their government (only in rare times of revolution), they inheret their goverment. I have about as much control over the US, as I do my genetic legacy.
Whos to say who "overstepped" what? If some emergent democracy in the middle east vote away all their rights for a religious extremist govermnet, then what can be said? They choose repression? This seems odd.