If it meant a person who has more money than sense, why does it get applied to equipment?
I don't get the connection. But then again I have several grand worth of camera kit, and never plan on making a cent on it (though it would be nice). Why? Because I love the hobby. I know people who spent huge amounts of money on their cars, but will never race/drive professionally either. I know people, as well, who spent huge amounts of money on their computer and hardware, who will never use it for crunching data on anything more important than video games. I could go on, but won't. I don't see a lack of sense there.
There comes a point when pure consumer level stuff won't allow you to do what you want to do anymore, so you have to either quit or pony up some extra cash to get where you want. There is nothing wrong with this. And actually this has helped drive consumer level computer hardware for some time (enthusiast level chips and cards can be considered prosumer, to some extent).
In the future I can see myself spending at bit more on camera gear, when my skill eventually hits the hardware enforced limits, or I branch out into different areas. I have no problem with this, and I don't see it reflecting on my "sense", since I have the cash, and can spend it. If not on something I enjoy, then what should it be spent on?
Bad, sadly, the camera in every tablet or phone is mostly crap. Or at least I've never encountered on that comes anywhere near my old, cheap, Canon (much less my DSLR, obviously). This isn't saying that gadget cameras are all pointless, just that jubilation is a bit of an odd emotion over them. And that being jubilant over megapixels is a bit odd, since its an increasingly pointless metric.
Megapixels, btw, is a stupid metric. My old Canon digital camera has 5.4 megapixels and takes a picture leagues above my phone. Why? Long answer: optics and physics; short answer: my camera is designed to be a camera, and my phone is just, basically, a pinhole camera. Actually increasing megapixels after a certain limit, while not increasing sensor size, actually degrades image quality. Which is why DSLRs are probably going to be moving past their current sensor size (APS-C, mostly) in the next couple of years.
Compared to how much content there is now it can hardly be said to have thrived during that time except by the most disingenuous of arguers.
More stuff doesn't necessarily mean better. A lot of things I loved about the early Web (not Internet, since thats a different bag of fish) are now long gone. I miss home rolled content, and people trying their hand at web pages. Yes, Geocities was often hideous, but it was far better than Facebook. The amount of content has probably decreased over time, while the amount of commercial dreck has increased. Part of this, admittedly, is due to the amount of complexity in actually having a page now, grey background link lists are pretty much unacceptable, we need flash and java, and billions of arcane bits of CSS to be taken seriously now. Hell look at Slashdot now, versus then.
I'm not really sure if today's Web is better than yesterday's.
Not being related to them helped, but then again I was a 12-13, so talking to random strangers in my age group was awesome. Oddly, I might have hopped on the early Web to avoid trolls.
Also, I was a weird kid (as were most of us, I presume). My dad collected old computer stuff from Honeywell for us to play with. We played DnD (neighbors dad used to work for TSR). My neighbors mom had the PC in our neighborhood and we killed times playing StarCon and some old adventure games like Kings Quest. I had a C64 with two shoe boxes of pirated tapes and floppies. I was BBSing by the time I hit junior high, in part because a move, and in part because the community there was much better than any group of kids I personally knew. My little gang as a kid were all proto-nerds.
With the exception of email, these are not the things that make the internet popular.
I disagree. I think its the social aspects that drew people in. Yes, having access to information is always a plus, and was a constant feature of the early internet. But I remember, as a kid, not having the same feeling of "wow" from Gopher as I got from early Compuserve and AOL chat, or when I discovered Newgroups. But then again I was a kid, so what would have made me use it is very different than what would have my parents use it (which they didn't until the late 90's early 00's.). I think the only real use I had for the internet was Telnet for MUDs up until the early late 90's. Not very information rich, those.
Even with services like AOL, I still didn't abandon BBSs as my primary "online" activity until they finally all mostly died off locally (and our free print computer mag -- Computer Buyer, I think -- stopped even listing numbers). I still miss the localness of BBSs, and the modern internet hasn't quite ever managed to capture the sense of community.
AOL chat was definitely what actually drew me into the early internet, though. AOL was crap, but the chat was a gateway drug.
Legal and moral or ethical are not even close to the same thing. Legal (as in it is currently law) and Constitutional are not the same thing either. The government is not right by default. Just because you legally can do something does not mean you should.
Having a majority of our ethically and morally dubious congress critter say something is hunky dory does not make it so.
Further, and I said this before, how the hell am I supposed to trust the government if I'm not allowed to know anything? Should I trust them based off of tautology?
We are trustworthy, because we are trustworthy? Trust us.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which people like you think is evil, actually is stronger on US Persons than previous law
Right, a secret court as an example of how much my government cares about freedoms. You might be right. But we will never be able to know since it is... erm... secret. Without any oversight or transparency, I'd rather error on the side of malfeasance than "trust" (which our government is sourly lacking). Only morons trust the government because it says you can trust it.
I wish people like you could just for a day see the work that the various pieces of the IC actually do.
Yep... trust us, we're the good guys. I don't believe any claim not backed by solid, hard, evidence. The government isn't an exception, hell I demand MORE evidence just because of our governments truly shitty track record (woo, torture!, woo, destroy habeas corpus!, woo secret warrants, woo USA PATRIOT ACT!). Telling me something is very different than proving something. And sure, its for my own good. Right. THIS IS MY GOVERNMENT. I tell them what is for my own good, and not the other way around. Arrogant pricks.
Yes, I knew a guy in Iraq (in the IC community) who witnessed the "IC" community torturing random (and presumably innocent) Iraqis for information. I knew a guy who was in Abu Ghraib right before the shit hit the fan (who got punished for that again? Peons, or those responsible?). I've know a large enough amount of people in the military (both in and out of the "IC" area) to have my faith severely degraded in their super-human abilities. I'm guessing the non-military IC community is just as bad, since they have huge amounts of power, and no culpability.
Give me transparency and oversight, and I will give you trust.
. Except we live in a society based on the rule of law. I feel sad for you
Again, where is the proof? I'm not allowed to know of any abuses, nor any consequences for them... So I'm supposed to blindly trust my government? Because... well... we're AMERICA, and we're the BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, because WE ARE AMERICA. Right.
Living in a world where you hate your own government, and believing they're all out to get you, when in reality they don't care
Do they care? Care to offer any proof? Oh, sure they care about my safety, just like a mamma cares about her babies (sadly they aren't my mom, and I'm not a baby). Sure, they don't care about me because I'm a small fish, and a law abiding citizen who isn't a threat. But I also care about the rights of people who are threats, and might not be law abiding. I care about EVERYONE'S rights, since thats the point. Rights don't just apply to me, they also apply to people I don't like. Further, the government should never be trusted without proof, ever. Power without consequence is not good for lil' old innocuous me. A small, and healthy, dose of paranioa is. Keeping the government feeling threatened (especially super secret, non-transparent, spooks) is REALLY good for me (and the rest of us, even those people who I don't like or agree with).
Furthermore, people said the same things as you during McCarthyism, and the reign of Mr. Hoover, and the era of black listing. Obviously the secret spooks are keeping us safe from whatever the secret spooks want to keep us safe from... and we'll never know. Or at least won't know for decades after it can no longer potentially embarrasses those in power. Or so history teaches.
I'm not paranoid. I don't think my government hates me (they don't give a shit, which is also a problem). I also know respect is earned. And abuses happen, even systemic ones.
...my State government has been telling us we are running short of freshwater and the farmers need it. If that be the case, I would rather see the water on the crop, not in the gutter in front of my house.
Every time my state says things like this I giggle and use more superfluous water. Why? I live in Arizona, and find it unconscionable that cotton farmers should get some sort of moral priority over normal citizens (cotton is a very water intensive crop, and we're in a state with very little water). The same goes for other water intensive industries here.
That said, we have a xeriscaped yard (if we wanted grass we wouldn't have continued to live in the desert), and our toilets are completely useless (which might waste more water).
He wants to manipulate something that many people find useful to be less useful for them just so he can make some more money. He thinks his business is more important than a large deadly historical accident, he wants to manipulate search engines to get his way. What is there to be sympathetic to? Sure, I feel bad that he isn't doing as good as he thinks he should be, and yes having a camp ground which shared in a big disaster must suck. But he lost that sympathy once he decided his interests are more important that those of the majority, and decided that he has the magical right to manipulate search engines to his favor.
A bigger question, though, is which is more important or relevant? Your vacation to Tienanmen Square, or the events that happened there? Also, from a search engine's perspective, which is more relevant to more searchers? Are more people trying to look up historic events, or planning a trip?
My snarky answer (its late) is; your vacation plans are pretty much completely irrelevant next to the events in historical Nuremberg. Those events (the laws, and the later trials) effected far more of the world than your vacation ever will, and are vastly more important than you finding cheap lodging without having to type in a couple extra words into a search. Ditto for Tienanmen Square.
Also, while I'm on the snark train, I don't feel one small shred of pity for the director of this camp ground. Sure, it sucks to be him, but that is life. Google generally ranks things according to relevance, and I'm guessing there is more interest (and hence more Page Rank) in the disaster than in his little camp ground. Nothing wrong with that. Google doesn't exist to ensure this guy stays in business or pulls a profit, nor should they.
Ah... Sorry for jumping on your case then, I will eat my humble pie and like it. You had a couple trigger words in there that made me shortcut to my typical response to internet male WASP paranoia, which is getting frightfully common these days.
I agree with you, then. I don't think that what your saying is a race/gender/religious issue though. Any criticism, on anything, is a perceived attack these days. If I point out a perceived flaw in your chosen political alignment, I'm magically a communist or fascist (and thus not worth listen to). If I point out flaws in Obama I'm a racist because its the quickest and easiest way to kill an argument, if the president was white I'd suddenly turn into a corporatist, fascist, neo-con (which isn't as efficient at killing arguments, but still works). If the president was a Republican, I'd be quickly labeled a communist or socialist (and if he was Bush, anti-American). This is especially true with criticizing the governmental policies of Israel ("Nazi!, Anti-Semite!"), or at leas this was one of the more obvious cases until Obama, as you point out. Its more a case of "discredit the person, not the argument" than having protected races or such.
It is common when critiquing the various religious and cultural associations against gay marriage, as well. I've been called anti-Christian several times, and have been told that I'm actively trying to persecute them over a difference of opinion. No group is innocent of this.
There was no indication that Ravi had any problem with his roommate's sexual orientation - in fact it seems he was okay with it.
Agreed. I don't really say any gay bashing, or onus against gays here. Ravi is a jerk, and an asshole. He probably had no intention to have his roommate commit suicide as well. I'm not sure there is a crime here. I suspect there should be one, but I'm not sure what. The prosecutor, I'm guessing, is shoe horning in the hate crime status to ramp up the consequences to suit the consequences of the (potential) crime. Which is probably not the appropriate thing to do.
This whole "cyberbullying" / "hate crime" meme is all about an attempt to off-limit certain types of speech
I doubt there is a conspiracy lurking here. Don't get me wrong, I'm generally against hate crime laws, or special protections for minorities, but I can see where the advocates for such things come from. We Americans have a very bad track record (and still generally do) at treating anyone but white, male, straight, Christians as equals. We have a strong history of being assholes to anyone not like us. We have a very strong trend of not recognizing the rights people slightly different than us (and the 51% of the population who aren't men). This is coupled with out history of being, and glorifying, idiotic, bigoted, rednecks, and endorsing old-boy networks and turning our backs on some truly heinous things. So we DO need to be vigilant, and we should be very careful to NEVER tolerate bigots, racists, homophobes (which is a bit silly of a term, since it isn't fear that's the problem, its violence and hate), and we, as a society should go out of our way to make these people feel unwelcome.
This, again, doesn't mean I agree with these laws, or especially their applicability here.
Also our society has pretty much proven that we can no longer be expected to be civilized to one another, which does make some people desperate for any solution, including legal ones. I don't agree with them, at least on the solution, but again I can see why they want it. I think society, not the government, should make these people's lives a living hell.
Heterosexuals and fat people are fair game (as Michelle Obama's campaign has made clear [beliefnet.com]), as are pretty much all white people, and old people, too (ageism is never criticized as hateful or bullying, for instance).
Oh yes, my life as a hetero white male is SO TOUGH, especially compared to those privileged gay people. Just the other day I had a bunch of nice Christian fundies scream at me that I'm going to hell because I live with a woman. I hear that the gays, the blacks, the Mexicans, and a coalition of skinny Muslim women are about to throw all the straight white Christian men into camps!
Xenophobia is stupid. No one is out to get you. As a straight white guy, I can't even recall the last time I was discriminated against. I'm not aware of any time in my life, actually. Sure, I've had issues with people (socially, not legally), but that was 100% because of choices I made (which is why I don't feel too bad about obese people, though I'm not aware of any actual discrimination there either), so I'm at fault.
Note that criticism of Christian beliefs, and those of Mormons, Catholics, and often even Jews is defended as legitimate and never considered "bullying", no matter how inflammatory and hurtful the rhetoric used against them.
Actually I can criticize anyone's faith I damn well want to, it isn't' a crime, and no one has ever been prosecuted for it. Sure, it might not be socially acceptable, but that is different. As an atheist, I've gotten plenty of flack for criticizing Christians. Hell, there is around 100 fundamentalist churches within a mile of my house (no exaggeration), and my girl friend has been threatened with physical assault for having a bumper sticker saying "honk if you think I'm Jesus". Poor Christians.
This is a truly frightening development, that will lead inevitably to the erosion of free speech to such a degree that the only thing recognized as "free speech" will be a narrowly-defined set of "approved speech".
How many people have been arrested for stating "I don't like Gays/Women/Blacks/Mexicans/Hindus/Muslims"? You can be a bigot and a xenophobe vocally all day long, and no one will knock down your door. Our society, to its credit, will look down on you, and people will ostracize you... but to me that is called progress. It makes hopeful, actually.
I never stated that big companies shouldn't exist...
Though the PC chip makers fall pretty squarely into the area I complain about. You have giant, monolithic Intel; scrappy slightly less monolithic (and some could say occasionally teetering) AMD, and the always potentially a contender ARM, and then a few little guys working niche markets. Intel could be said to be a bit big for their britches, and possibly the market would look better if they were trimmed back a bit. If AMD ever folded, the CPU market would be pretty horrible for customers. Same in GPU land, with monolithic Nvidia, and scrappy AMD.
Yes, there will never be thousands of CPU makers thanks to the massive logistics (just like telecoms), but we could stand to have a bit more lively a market.
Yes, scale does come into play, and can be necessary for some types of service, but I think even Pfizer could probably survive being trimmed back (and would probably be better for society in that state). How much does Pfizer spend on socially useless, or even harmful, things? Advertising (BUY VIAGRA, BE HIP!), lobbying, suing the crap out of other companies and individuals, patent trolling and farming, etc... If, as the OP stated, they were forced to be socially responsible (I'm not advocating this, though I agree with the premise, the practice is a bit of a thorny one though), they probably could be just as useful without all the baggage.
Hell Pfizer managed to spend a metric shit-ton of cash inventing a disease, selling it to us, and thus creating an artificial need for Viagra, which is something that only less than 1% of the population might actually need.
The bigger question, though, is the constant need for corporate growth actually necessary? Outside of shareholder value and increasingly silly market forces, does growth actually matter? I'm slowly noticing that in every sector of business you end up with two megacorps, one with a huge market share, the other with a slightly smaller, but nonetheless monolithic, one, and then a couple fringe/niche underdogs. I don't actually know if this is healthy. If capitalism hinges on compitition (as someone in this topic said), then it seems that capitalism's ultimate goal is to swallow itself.
All that said, I again don't quite agree with the main premise. The world would be a better place, probably, if everything turned into a socially oriented non-profit, but doing so would require laws that are pretty disagreeable, and ultimately people do have the right to be greedy as long as their is no direct harm to others. This is fine. I do think we should all find some issue though with the idea that corporations soley exist to make a profit and increase shareholder value, though. Especially since these corporations have the ability to pass laws, and now spend infinite sums of money endorsing friendly politicians. If we want them to be "people", they should have all the same responsibilities as people, and be held to the same moral/ethical standards.
Because you don't get to be the size of Pfizer by giving up all your profits.
For the sake of argument; why does anyone need to be the size of Pfizer? Or, to provide a more clearly negative example, Monsanto? I actually find that to be a flaw in the system.
So at what point did your life begin? Can I harvest you for stem cells?
Can anyone actually answer that first question? Credibly, and relatively incontrovertibly, without resorting to subjective views? I don't beleive in God, so all the religious answers are unconvincing to me (I don't have a soul, only James Brown knows), so a convincing answer will have to hinge on the biological development of human features, such as a brain, nervous system, the ability to suffer, etc... For stem cells this issue is pretty much moot though, since there is no nervous system, and generally not even a realistic potential to develop into an actual human being since they are unused cell masses.
As for the second; sure, if it doesn't kill me or interrupt my ability to function. If I was an unused, and unwanted, mass of unconscious undifferentiated cells, sure, harvest away.
How can you actively deny the existence of something that you don't think exists? I'm an atheist: God never even really enters my thoughts, after the first couple of years (of questioning religion) the whole thing was moot.
Atheists actively deny God in the same way that Christians are constantly actively denying the existence of unicorns. Hint: They aren't. To actively deny something, I'd have to first consider it. I don't.* Are people actively denying the truth of the Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars, or Twilight, or the full corpus of Shakespeare, or every other system of belief that they don't currently hold (i.e. Do Christians constantly actively deny Allah?), or is it more a questing of just not even considering?
Again, as an atheist, I hardly ever even think about religion in my day to day life. God barely ever enters my mind, and generally only when it is a topic of discussion. It just isn't part of my life, it never crosses my mind. Or at least not in the same sense as a an actual believer. Thus "actively" is a bit of a silly phrase.
* This is putting things a bit harshly, I suppose most rational atheists are actually just agnostics who assign a very low probability to the existence of gods. If a god, or God, showed up and gave me irrefutable proof of its existence... I most likely would agree with its existence and thus no longer be an atheist.
(which is as much what it's about as being able to 're-release' old works every dozen years or so in a new format with a slightly different length in order to obtain a new copyright, even though that ALSO breaks the spirit of copyright. (Just for clarification, adding, removing, or postprocessing a negligable amount of material in order to claim it's a newly derived creative work subject to it's own copyright.)
I actually would be fine with this, if copyright was sensible. The original work would lapse, and they could remaster it and claim a new copyright on the new version, this is fine since the new version would have to be significantly better than the old to actual profit from it since it competes with the old, free, public domain content. As it stands, though, this is just dumb and annoying.
Grrr... I wish big publishers, and their lobbies, would die.
So thanks a lot, pirates. (And I don't care if you call yourself a pirate, or insist it's copyright infringement, or whatever. That's all semantic nonsense. It's still wrong, it's still illegal, and it's still immoral. So stop arguing over what label you want to be applied to you.)
That all might be. But its gotten to the point where I just don't care anymore.
Furthermore the argument has gotten old, its just another "black or white" bunch of shit on both sides. The anti crowd is generally a bunch of unthinking moralizers, where the pro crowd are just throwing up week post hoc justifications to cover the actions they already do.
I personally think some piracy might be wrong, but I also think some might be completely moral, even if both are illegal. I have nothing against pirating things to format switch, I'm not ever going to buy another damn Beetles track, I've already bought them 600000 times (LP, Tape, CD, and NOW digital...), so screw you. I have nothing against "pirating" things I bought that are intentionally (DRM) or unintentionally broken. I have nothing against pirating things to "try before I buy", especially since I'm no longer allowed to make returns on items I purchase.
I have nothing against pirating media produced by dead people, or people who will never see a dime of profit from it (Go pirate the Beetles or Louis Armstrong, or H.P Lovecraft, or T.S. Eliot, they don't care). Hell, I don't even have anything against piracy of media over a certain age (lets say 15 years). This one is the most important, since it touches the center of the issue. Copyright isn't a right to perpetual profit, it is carrot to keep producers producing, that is it. It balances short term incentives to creators with the public good. Well it did, and that is its stated goal in the Constitution, we've decided that we value profit over public good along time ago, and the corporations have done a very good job of convincing us that their best interests (perpetual profits and control) somehow align with ours. They also have somehow made us believe that this is all for the good of the creators, while they continue to screw them (too) over at every chance.
Hell, I still don't even understand why we decided the authors and musicians should have to have real jobs. How is that a bad thing?
Further, and this might be a bit extreme, I'm slowing gravitating towards the idea of piracy as civil disobedience. I thought this was stupid a couple years ago, but I'm beginning to see the merit, or at least the psychological merit. But then again, if I had three wishes I would destroy all the media middle men, and force creators to cope.
Repeat after me; "The iPad is not an ereader...". It is a tablet that can handle books (just like all the various Android tablets, or old Windows tablets), not an ereader. Ereaders aim at a completely different segment of the market. I have both, a tablet (with Kindle and Nook software), and a dedicated ereader (a Nook). I use one for reading books, and the other for wasting time on Youtube...
Right now, B&N have a crappy ereader (the Kindle is vastly superior,
How so?
I tried both before getting one ( a Nook), and they were around 100% equivalent. There were some things the Kindle could do better (better battery, but the Nook's was good enough not to matter much to me, slightly better contrast, free intrusive ads), and some things the Nook could do better. It boiled down to a choice based on preference, not hardware or software. I picked the Nook because I like open standards (epub, and Overdrive), and I'd rather help B&N stay in business than help Amazon try to grab more sectors of the economy by their balls.
I live in an area with over 4 million people, and there are only 3 new bookstores remaining, B&N (who decided that bookstores should focus on toys instead of books lately), and two small independent ones. This is largely because of Amazon. I'd rather shop from any alternative than them, of late.
with all of that, i just have to ask, does your precious apple have a 'command line'? do you even know how to find it, or did they 'cut you off' from your freedom, and your human dignity? i just have to ask you, if you hit ctrl-alt-t on a mac, what happens? do mac users even know there is a command called 'ls'?
Er... OS X has a command line, and its almost as full featured as the ones in Linux and BSD (OS X sitting on top of a modified Unix kernel and all). Back when I pretty much exclusively used Macs I used Quicksilver with a plug in that allowed me to input terminal commands via a quick shortcut (i.e. [cmd]-[space] "ls") It was amazing, and so far there is no alternative to it on any other OS (grr... Windows or Linux needs Quicksilver, Adium, TextMate, and OmniOutliner; the only things I miss ab out OS X was the quality of the 3rd party software).
I know, you might have been being sarcastic. It is the internet, there is no way to tell sarcasm from ignorance.
Slashdot Mirror
If it meant a person who has more money than sense, why does it get applied to equipment?
I don't get the connection. But then again I have several grand worth of camera kit, and never plan on making a cent on it (though it would be nice). Why? Because I love the hobby. I know people who spent huge amounts of money on their cars, but will never race/drive professionally either. I know people, as well, who spent huge amounts of money on their computer and hardware, who will never use it for crunching data on anything more important than video games. I could go on, but won't. I don't see a lack of sense there.
There comes a point when pure consumer level stuff won't allow you to do what you want to do anymore, so you have to either quit or pony up some extra cash to get where you want. There is nothing wrong with this. And actually this has helped drive consumer level computer hardware for some time (enthusiast level chips and cards can be considered prosumer, to some extent).
In the future I can see myself spending at bit more on camera gear, when my skill eventually hits the hardware enforced limits, or I branch out into different areas. I have no problem with this, and I don't see it reflecting on my "sense", since I have the cash, and can spend it. If not on something I enjoy, then what should it be spent on?
.... You don't care about being able to use the CLI.... You have Windows and Apple's OS.
Er... Apple's OS has a very nice CLI, actually, it's called Bash. Windows shell is a bit weak, but there are pretty popular work-arounds (cygwin).
Bad, sadly, the camera in every tablet or phone is mostly crap. Or at least I've never encountered on that comes anywhere near my old, cheap, Canon (much less my DSLR, obviously). This isn't saying that gadget cameras are all pointless, just that jubilation is a bit of an odd emotion over them. And that being jubilant over megapixels is a bit odd, since its an increasingly pointless metric.
My Droid X has an 8.0 megapixel camera... Wow!
Megapixels, btw, is a stupid metric. My old Canon digital camera has 5.4 megapixels and takes a picture leagues above my phone. Why? Long answer: optics and physics; short answer: my camera is designed to be a camera, and my phone is just, basically, a pinhole camera. Actually increasing megapixels after a certain limit, while not increasing sensor size, actually degrades image quality. Which is why DSLRs are probably going to be moving past their current sensor size (APS-C, mostly) in the next couple of years.
Compared to how much content there is now it can hardly be said to have thrived during that time except by the most disingenuous of arguers.
More stuff doesn't necessarily mean better. A lot of things I loved about the early Web (not Internet, since thats a different bag of fish) are now long gone. I miss home rolled content, and people trying their hand at web pages. Yes, Geocities was often hideous, but it was far better than Facebook. The amount of content has probably decreased over time, while the amount of commercial dreck has increased. Part of this, admittedly, is due to the amount of complexity in actually having a page now, grey background link lists are pretty much unacceptable, we need flash and java, and billions of arcane bits of CSS to be taken seriously now. Hell look at Slashdot now, versus then.
I'm not really sure if today's Web is better than yesterday's.
Not being related to them helped, but then again I was a 12-13, so talking to random strangers in my age group was awesome. Oddly, I might have hopped on the early Web to avoid trolls.
Also, I was a weird kid (as were most of us, I presume). My dad collected old computer stuff from Honeywell for us to play with. We played DnD (neighbors dad used to work for TSR). My neighbors mom had the PC in our neighborhood and we killed times playing StarCon and some old adventure games like Kings Quest. I had a C64 with two shoe boxes of pirated tapes and floppies. I was BBSing by the time I hit junior high, in part because a move, and in part because the community there was much better than any group of kids I personally knew. My little gang as a kid were all proto-nerds.
With the exception of email, these are not the things that make the internet popular.
I disagree. I think its the social aspects that drew people in. Yes, having access to information is always a plus, and was a constant feature of the early internet. But I remember, as a kid, not having the same feeling of "wow" from Gopher as I got from early Compuserve and AOL chat, or when I discovered Newgroups. But then again I was a kid, so what would have made me use it is very different than what would have my parents use it (which they didn't until the late 90's early 00's.). I think the only real use I had for the internet was Telnet for MUDs up until the early late 90's. Not very information rich, those.
Even with services like AOL, I still didn't abandon BBSs as my primary "online" activity until they finally all mostly died off locally (and our free print computer mag -- Computer Buyer, I think -- stopped even listing numbers). I still miss the localness of BBSs, and the modern internet hasn't quite ever managed to capture the sense of community.
AOL chat was definitely what actually drew me into the early internet, though. AOL was crap, but the chat was a gateway drug.
Legal and moral or ethical are not even close to the same thing. Legal (as in it is currently law) and Constitutional are not the same thing either. The government is not right by default. Just because you legally can do something does not mean you should.
Having a majority of our ethically and morally dubious congress critter say something is hunky dory does not make it so.
Further, and I said this before, how the hell am I supposed to trust the government if I'm not allowed to know anything? Should I trust them based off of tautology?
We are trustworthy, because we are trustworthy? Trust us.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which people like you think is evil, actually is stronger on US Persons than previous law
Right, a secret court as an example of how much my government cares about freedoms. You might be right. But we will never be able to know since it is... erm... secret. Without any oversight or transparency, I'd rather error on the side of malfeasance than "trust" (which our government is sourly lacking). Only morons trust the government because it says you can trust it.
I wish people like you could just for a day see the work that the various pieces of the IC actually do.
Yep... trust us, we're the good guys. I don't believe any claim not backed by solid, hard, evidence. The government isn't an exception, hell I demand MORE evidence just because of our governments truly shitty track record (woo, torture!, woo, destroy habeas corpus!, woo secret warrants, woo USA PATRIOT ACT!). Telling me something is very different than proving something. And sure, its for my own good. Right. THIS IS MY GOVERNMENT. I tell them what is for my own good, and not the other way around. Arrogant pricks.
Yes, I knew a guy in Iraq (in the IC community) who witnessed the "IC" community torturing random (and presumably innocent) Iraqis for information. I knew a guy who was in Abu Ghraib right before the shit hit the fan (who got punished for that again? Peons, or those responsible?). I've know a large enough amount of people in the military (both in and out of the "IC" area) to have my faith severely degraded in their super-human abilities. I'm guessing the non-military IC community is just as bad, since they have huge amounts of power, and no culpability.
Give me transparency and oversight, and I will give you trust.
. Except we live in a society based on the rule of law. I feel sad for you
Again, where is the proof? I'm not allowed to know of any abuses, nor any consequences for them... So I'm supposed to blindly trust my government? Because... well... we're AMERICA, and we're the BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, because WE ARE AMERICA. Right.
Living in a world where you hate your own government, and believing they're all out to get you, when in reality they don't care
Do they care? Care to offer any proof? Oh, sure they care about my safety, just like a mamma cares about her babies (sadly they aren't my mom, and I'm not a baby). Sure, they don't care about me because I'm a small fish, and a law abiding citizen who isn't a threat. But I also care about the rights of people who are threats, and might not be law abiding. I care about EVERYONE'S rights, since thats the point. Rights don't just apply to me, they also apply to people I don't like. Further, the government should never be trusted without proof, ever. Power without consequence is not good for lil' old innocuous me. A small, and healthy, dose of paranioa is. Keeping the government feeling threatened (especially super secret, non-transparent, spooks) is REALLY good for me (and the rest of us, even those people who I don't like or agree with).
Furthermore, people said the same things as you during McCarthyism, and the reign of Mr. Hoover, and the era of black listing. Obviously the secret spooks are keeping us safe from whatever the secret spooks want to keep us safe from... and we'll never know. Or at least won't know for decades after it can no longer potentially embarrasses those in power. Or so history teaches.
I'm not paranoid. I don't think my government hates me (they don't give a shit, which is also a problem). I also know respect is earned. And abuses happen, even systemic ones.
This is actually pretty heartening... It means the Government is far more competent than it looks.
Sadly I doubt this very much, though.
...my State government has been telling us we are running short of freshwater and the farmers need it. If that be the case, I would rather see the water on the crop, not in the gutter in front of my house.
Every time my state says things like this I giggle and use more superfluous water. Why? I live in Arizona, and find it unconscionable that cotton farmers should get some sort of moral priority over normal citizens (cotton is a very water intensive crop, and we're in a state with very little water). The same goes for other water intensive industries here.
That said, we have a xeriscaped yard (if we wanted grass we wouldn't have continued to live in the desert), and our toilets are completely useless (which might waste more water).
He wants to manipulate something that many people find useful to be less useful for them just so he can make some more money. He thinks his business is more important than a large deadly historical accident, he wants to manipulate search engines to get his way. What is there to be sympathetic to? Sure, I feel bad that he isn't doing as good as he thinks he should be, and yes having a camp ground which shared in a big disaster must suck. But he lost that sympathy once he decided his interests are more important that those of the majority, and decided that he has the magical right to manipulate search engines to his favor.
A bigger question, though, is which is more important or relevant? Your vacation to Tienanmen Square, or the events that happened there? Also, from a search engine's perspective, which is more relevant to more searchers? Are more people trying to look up historic events, or planning a trip?
My snarky answer (its late) is; your vacation plans are pretty much completely irrelevant next to the events in historical Nuremberg. Those events (the laws, and the later trials) effected far more of the world than your vacation ever will, and are vastly more important than you finding cheap lodging without having to type in a couple extra words into a search. Ditto for Tienanmen Square.
Also, while I'm on the snark train, I don't feel one small shred of pity for the director of this camp ground. Sure, it sucks to be him, but that is life. Google generally ranks things according to relevance, and I'm guessing there is more interest (and hence more Page Rank) in the disaster than in his little camp ground. Nothing wrong with that. Google doesn't exist to ensure this guy stays in business or pulls a profit, nor should they.
Ah... Sorry for jumping on your case then, I will eat my humble pie and like it. You had a couple trigger words in there that made me shortcut to my typical response to internet male WASP paranoia, which is getting frightfully common these days.
I agree with you, then. I don't think that what your saying is a race/gender/religious issue though. Any criticism, on anything, is a perceived attack these days. If I point out a perceived flaw in your chosen political alignment, I'm magically a communist or fascist (and thus not worth listen to). If I point out flaws in Obama I'm a racist because its the quickest and easiest way to kill an argument, if the president was white I'd suddenly turn into a corporatist, fascist, neo-con (which isn't as efficient at killing arguments, but still works). If the president was a Republican, I'd be quickly labeled a communist or socialist (and if he was Bush, anti-American). This is especially true with criticizing the governmental policies of Israel ("Nazi!, Anti-Semite!"), or at leas this was one of the more obvious cases until Obama, as you point out. Its more a case of "discredit the person, not the argument" than having protected races or such.
It is common when critiquing the various religious and cultural associations against gay marriage, as well. I've been called anti-Christian several times, and have been told that I'm actively trying to persecute them over a difference of opinion. No group is innocent of this.
There was no indication that Ravi had any problem with his roommate's sexual orientation - in fact it seems he was okay with it.
Agreed. I don't really say any gay bashing, or onus against gays here. Ravi is a jerk, and an asshole. He probably had no intention to have his roommate commit suicide as well. I'm not sure there is a crime here. I suspect there should be one, but I'm not sure what. The prosecutor, I'm guessing, is shoe horning in the hate crime status to ramp up the consequences to suit the consequences of the (potential) crime. Which is probably not the appropriate thing to do.
I think we crossed spears before.
This whole "cyberbullying" / "hate crime" meme is all about an attempt to off-limit certain types of speech
I doubt there is a conspiracy lurking here. Don't get me wrong, I'm generally against hate crime laws, or special protections for minorities, but I can see where the advocates for such things come from. We Americans have a very bad track record (and still generally do) at treating anyone but white, male, straight, Christians as equals. We have a strong history of being assholes to anyone not like us. We have a very strong trend of not recognizing the rights people slightly different than us (and the 51% of the population who aren't men). This is coupled with out history of being, and glorifying, idiotic, bigoted, rednecks, and endorsing old-boy networks and turning our backs on some truly heinous things. So we DO need to be vigilant, and we should be very careful to NEVER tolerate bigots, racists, homophobes (which is a bit silly of a term, since it isn't fear that's the problem, its violence and hate), and we, as a society should go out of our way to make these people feel unwelcome.
This, again, doesn't mean I agree with these laws, or especially their applicability here.
Also our society has pretty much proven that we can no longer be expected to be civilized to one another, which does make some people desperate for any solution, including legal ones. I don't agree with them, at least on the solution, but again I can see why they want it. I think society, not the government, should make these people's lives a living hell.
Heterosexuals and fat people are fair game (as Michelle Obama's campaign has made clear [beliefnet.com]), as are pretty much all white people, and old people, too (ageism is never criticized as hateful or bullying, for instance).
Oh yes, my life as a hetero white male is SO TOUGH, especially compared to those privileged gay people. Just the other day I had a bunch of nice Christian fundies scream at me that I'm going to hell because I live with a woman. I hear that the gays, the blacks, the Mexicans, and a coalition of skinny Muslim women are about to throw all the straight white Christian men into camps!
Xenophobia is stupid. No one is out to get you. As a straight white guy, I can't even recall the last time I was discriminated against. I'm not aware of any time in my life, actually. Sure, I've had issues with people (socially, not legally), but that was 100% because of choices I made (which is why I don't feel too bad about obese people, though I'm not aware of any actual discrimination there either), so I'm at fault.
Note that criticism of Christian beliefs, and those of Mormons, Catholics, and often even Jews is defended as legitimate and never considered "bullying", no matter how inflammatory and hurtful the rhetoric used against them.
Actually I can criticize anyone's faith I damn well want to, it isn't' a crime, and no one has ever been prosecuted for it. Sure, it might not be socially acceptable, but that is different. As an atheist, I've gotten plenty of flack for criticizing Christians. Hell, there is around 100 fundamentalist churches within a mile of my house (no exaggeration), and my girl friend has been threatened with physical assault for having a bumper sticker saying "honk if you think I'm Jesus". Poor Christians.
This is a truly frightening development, that will lead inevitably to the erosion of free speech to such a degree that the only thing recognized as "free speech" will be a narrowly-defined set of "approved speech".
How many people have been arrested for stating "I don't like Gays/Women/Blacks/Mexicans/Hindus/Muslims"? You can be a bigot and a xenophobe vocally all day long, and no one will knock down your door. Our society, to its credit, will look down on you, and people will ostracize you... but to me that is called progress. It makes hopeful, actually.
I never stated that big companies shouldn't exist...
Though the PC chip makers fall pretty squarely into the area I complain about. You have giant, monolithic Intel; scrappy slightly less monolithic (and some could say occasionally teetering) AMD, and the always potentially a contender ARM, and then a few little guys working niche markets. Intel could be said to be a bit big for their britches, and possibly the market would look better if they were trimmed back a bit. If AMD ever folded, the CPU market would be pretty horrible for customers. Same in GPU land, with monolithic Nvidia, and scrappy AMD.
Yes, there will never be thousands of CPU makers thanks to the massive logistics (just like telecoms), but we could stand to have a bit more lively a market.
Yes, scale does come into play, and can be necessary for some types of service, but I think even Pfizer could probably survive being trimmed back (and would probably be better for society in that state). How much does Pfizer spend on socially useless, or even harmful, things? Advertising (BUY VIAGRA, BE HIP!), lobbying, suing the crap out of other companies and individuals, patent trolling and farming, etc... If, as the OP stated, they were forced to be socially responsible (I'm not advocating this, though I agree with the premise, the practice is a bit of a thorny one though), they probably could be just as useful without all the baggage.
Hell Pfizer managed to spend a metric shit-ton of cash inventing a disease, selling it to us, and thus creating an artificial need for Viagra, which is something that only less than 1% of the population might actually need.
The bigger question, though, is the constant need for corporate growth actually necessary? Outside of shareholder value and increasingly silly market forces, does growth actually matter? I'm slowly noticing that in every sector of business you end up with two megacorps, one with a huge market share, the other with a slightly smaller, but nonetheless monolithic, one, and then a couple fringe/niche underdogs. I don't actually know if this is healthy. If capitalism hinges on compitition (as someone in this topic said), then it seems that capitalism's ultimate goal is to swallow itself.
All that said, I again don't quite agree with the main premise. The world would be a better place, probably, if everything turned into a socially oriented non-profit, but doing so would require laws that are pretty disagreeable, and ultimately people do have the right to be greedy as long as their is no direct harm to others. This is fine. I do think we should all find some issue though with the idea that corporations soley exist to make a profit and increase shareholder value, though. Especially since these corporations have the ability to pass laws, and now spend infinite sums of money endorsing friendly politicians. If we want them to be "people", they should have all the same responsibilities as people, and be held to the same moral/ethical standards.
Because you don't get to be the size of Pfizer by giving up all your profits.
For the sake of argument; why does anyone need to be the size of Pfizer? Or, to provide a more clearly negative example, Monsanto? I actually find that to be a flaw in the system.
So at what point did your life begin? Can I harvest you for stem cells?
Can anyone actually answer that first question? Credibly, and relatively incontrovertibly, without resorting to subjective views? I don't beleive in God, so all the religious answers are unconvincing to me (I don't have a soul, only James Brown knows), so a convincing answer will have to hinge on the biological development of human features, such as a brain, nervous system, the ability to suffer, etc... For stem cells this issue is pretty much moot though, since there is no nervous system, and generally not even a realistic potential to develop into an actual human being since they are unused cell masses.
As for the second; sure, if it doesn't kill me or interrupt my ability to function. If I was an unused, and unwanted, mass of unconscious undifferentiated cells, sure, harvest away.
How can you actively deny the existence of something that you don't think exists? I'm an atheist: God never even really enters my thoughts, after the first couple of years (of questioning religion) the whole thing was moot.
Atheists actively deny God in the same way that Christians are constantly actively denying the existence of unicorns. Hint: They aren't. To actively deny something, I'd have to first consider it. I don't.* Are people actively denying the truth of the Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars, or Twilight, or the full corpus of Shakespeare, or every other system of belief that they don't currently hold (i.e. Do Christians constantly actively deny Allah?), or is it more a questing of just not even considering?
Again, as an atheist, I hardly ever even think about religion in my day to day life. God barely ever enters my mind, and generally only when it is a topic of discussion. It just isn't part of my life, it never crosses my mind. Or at least not in the same sense as a an actual believer. Thus "actively" is a bit of a silly phrase.
* This is putting things a bit harshly, I suppose most rational atheists are actually just agnostics who assign a very low probability to the existence of gods. If a god, or God, showed up and gave me irrefutable proof of its existence... I most likely would agree with its existence and thus no longer be an atheist.
(which is as much what it's about as being able to 're-release' old works every dozen years or so in a new format with a slightly different length in order to obtain a new copyright, even though that ALSO breaks the spirit of copyright. (Just for clarification, adding, removing, or postprocessing a negligable amount of material in order to claim it's a newly derived creative work subject to it's own copyright.)
I actually would be fine with this, if copyright was sensible. The original work would lapse, and they could remaster it and claim a new copyright on the new version, this is fine since the new version would have to be significantly better than the old to actual profit from it since it competes with the old, free, public domain content. As it stands, though, this is just dumb and annoying.
Grrr... I wish big publishers, and their lobbies, would die.
So thanks a lot, pirates. (And I don't care if you call yourself a pirate, or insist it's copyright infringement, or whatever. That's all semantic nonsense. It's still wrong, it's still illegal, and it's still immoral. So stop arguing over what label you want to be applied to you.)
That all might be. But its gotten to the point where I just don't care anymore.
Furthermore the argument has gotten old, its just another "black or white" bunch of shit on both sides. The anti crowd is generally a bunch of unthinking moralizers, where the pro crowd are just throwing up week post hoc justifications to cover the actions they already do.
I personally think some piracy might be wrong, but I also think some might be completely moral, even if both are illegal. I have nothing against pirating things to format switch, I'm not ever going to buy another damn Beetles track, I've already bought them 600000 times (LP, Tape, CD, and NOW digital...), so screw you. I have nothing against "pirating" things I bought that are intentionally (DRM) or unintentionally broken. I have nothing against pirating things to "try before I buy", especially since I'm no longer allowed to make returns on items I purchase.
I have nothing against pirating media produced by dead people, or people who will never see a dime of profit from it (Go pirate the Beetles or Louis Armstrong, or H.P Lovecraft, or T.S. Eliot, they don't care). Hell, I don't even have anything against piracy of media over a certain age (lets say 15 years). This one is the most important, since it touches the center of the issue. Copyright isn't a right to perpetual profit, it is carrot to keep producers producing, that is it. It balances short term incentives to creators with the public good. Well it did, and that is its stated goal in the Constitution, we've decided that we value profit over public good along time ago, and the corporations have done a very good job of convincing us that their best interests (perpetual profits and control) somehow align with ours. They also have somehow made us believe that this is all for the good of the creators, while they continue to screw them (too) over at every chance.
Hell, I still don't even understand why we decided the authors and musicians should have to have real jobs. How is that a bad thing?
Further, and this might be a bit extreme, I'm slowing gravitating towards the idea of piracy as civil disobedience. I thought this was stupid a couple years ago, but I'm beginning to see the merit, or at least the psychological merit. But then again, if I had three wishes I would destroy all the media middle men, and force creators to cope.
iBooks
Repeat after me; "The iPad is not an ereader...". It is a tablet that can handle books (just like all the various Android tablets, or old Windows tablets), not an ereader. Ereaders aim at a completely different segment of the market. I have both, a tablet (with Kindle and Nook software), and a dedicated ereader (a Nook). I use one for reading books, and the other for wasting time on Youtube...
Right now, B&N have a crappy ereader (the Kindle is vastly superior,
How so?
I tried both before getting one ( a Nook), and they were around 100% equivalent. There were some things the Kindle could do better (better battery, but the Nook's was good enough not to matter much to me, slightly better contrast, free intrusive ads), and some things the Nook could do better. It boiled down to a choice based on preference, not hardware or software. I picked the Nook because I like open standards (epub, and Overdrive), and I'd rather help B&N stay in business than help Amazon try to grab more sectors of the economy by their balls.
I live in an area with over 4 million people, and there are only 3 new bookstores remaining, B&N (who decided that bookstores should focus on toys instead of books lately), and two small independent ones. This is largely because of Amazon. I'd rather shop from any alternative than them, of late.
with all of that, i just have to ask, does your precious apple have a 'command line'? do you even know how to find it, or did they 'cut you off' from your freedom, and your human dignity? i just have to ask you, if you hit ctrl-alt-t on a mac, what happens? do mac users even know there is a command called 'ls'?
Er... OS X has a command line, and its almost as full featured as the ones in Linux and BSD (OS X sitting on top of a modified Unix kernel and all). Back when I pretty much exclusively used Macs I used Quicksilver with a plug in that allowed me to input terminal commands via a quick shortcut (i.e. [cmd]-[space] "ls") It was amazing, and so far there is no alternative to it on any other OS (grr... Windows or Linux needs Quicksilver, Adium, TextMate, and OmniOutliner; the only things I miss ab out OS X was the quality of the 3rd party software).
I know, you might have been being sarcastic. It is the internet, there is no way to tell sarcasm from ignorance.