Where I come from installing untested, unstable software on thousands of computers across the world, interrupting scientists trying to do Real Work is considered Cutting Edge Research and Worthy of Big Grants. I don't understand the system... I just do what I'm told.
The MPAA wants us to believe that region coding only existance is to allow them to release movies at different times in different parts of the world.
Even if we take the argument at face value, why do we, the consumer, care? Welcome to Free Trade. Free Trade may have down sides, but one up side should be that if my local retail chain refuses to provide me with a legal product I should be able to import a copy from elsewhere.
Heck, before Dennis Riche and C, buffer overrun bugs basically did not exist. There is no O/S before UNIX that was vulnerable to smashing the stack.
That's just wrong.
One is perfectly able to create a buffer overrun bug in assembly (or machine code). C simply fails to protect against an already present potential problem. I'm certain that there where OSes that allowed stack smashing attacks; I'm sure every once in a while those early operating systems had software crash because of that bugs. However, we don't hear much about those attacks because those operating systems were long dead and buried because stack smashing became a common attack. Unix evolved, has been reborn a few times, and generally lived on, so we see its weaknesses today.
I was thinking more of a website being able to track things such as search requests.
What's wrong with that? I find such information extremely useful as a webmaster. I get a sense of what people are looking for. I maintain a site about number encoding (pretty much just driver's license numbers at the moment. The section of my site discussing the algorithm for Wisconsin used to be broken into two pages. Thanks to referrer logs I learned that many people searching for "wisconsin driver's license number" ended up on the second, less useful page. By breaking the page up into two parts I had confused Google and visitors ended up on an unnecessary diversion. That information allowed me to tweak things (folding the second page into the first) to improve my visitor's experiences.
Similarly my referrer logs suggest that many visitors to my "Microsoft Visual C++ Tips and Tricks" are searching for certain "magic numbers" like "0xFDFDFDFD". I really need to reorganize the page some to make it easier for people to find the section discussing those numbers; my logs make it clear that it's a popular topic.
Maybe in theory there is some risk, but it's a small risk and the benefit of referrer information is just so big.
Seems to work well enough from here, but on a slightly offtopic note, should anyone actually honour the referer header anymore? It's a horrendous privacy flaw.
Horrendous privacy flaw? The heck? The only potential privacy flaw is that some stupid web site might encode private data using a GET request (a Bad Idea), and you might move from there to another untrustworthy site. But in the vast majority of cases all the web site learns is where you came from. Is that such a terrible secret? Getting a general sense of where people are coming from can be quite helpful for improving your web pages, understanding your audience, and reacting to changing circumstances (Am I under a DDOS attack, or did Slashdot link to me?).
On a related note, if you're concerned about it, feel free to switch it off. A few people doing so really isn't a big deal. And if everyone actively choses to do it, so be it, but I think the web will be worse for it. If you run into problems accessing some poorly designed sites, I'm willing to yield that perhaps you should automatically set the referrer to the page you're retreiving (but I'd suggest visiting less brain-dead sites). But please don't change the referrer to something arbitrary like "Field protected by Outpost (http://www.RETARD-SOFTWARE-VENDER-NAME-HERE.com/) " You're just making a nuisance for the guy examining the logs. Don't be rude. The standard makes the field optional, if it bothers you, just don't send it.
Besides, what possible monatery damages could there be to the GPLed project? It's not that the offending company is taking away income from the open source community.
They potentially took away financial gain. Copyright law recognizes that "the term 'financial gain' includes... the receipt of other copyrighted works." The deal is that you can have rights beyond basic copyright in exchange for your providing your derivative, copyrighted source code. It's very similar to the damages when someone downloads an album illegally instead of purchasing the music legally.
You might also be able to argue that you've damaged my reputation. If I expected to gain publicity and fame through my software, your using my software without credit (and what non-stupid copyright infringer would give credit) deprives me of that publicity. It's a much iffier argument, but plausible.
That said, many groups would be happy if the infringer just stopped distribution. This has consistently been the FSF's policy when persuing infringers.
Having an uberbox combining these mildly related things is an interesting idea. Picture if you will if someone created an uber-box-receiver with built in cd player, tape deck, amplifier, and even comes with some nifty speakers. Oh, such things already exist. And while they can be useful (they're often a great deal), they're decidedly mediocre. Trying to merge everything into one box means that the one box is a jack of all trades, but master of none. It might make a nice base system, but if you can afford it you'll want to consider dedicated stereo components. Trying to unify things too early (video game systems and digital television records are still changing rapidly) will lead to unified devices that become obsolete too rapidly (like early unified receivers that lack a CD player, or don't have an input for hooking you DVD player into).
>For those of you that are just too f-ing short sided and must
twist everything around to make it an attack on our leader and our country, I
only have one thing to say to you: Get the hell out if you dislike it here so
much. We don't need you, nor do you deserve any of the benefits or freedoms
that you get for living in MY country.
It's my country too. Learn to fucking share.
Yes, I hate George W. Bush. I think he's a spineless fucking coward, an
idiot, and a puppet. I think he's ruining OUR country.
But I'm not going to leave. I live the United States of American and I love
my country. Leaving our country just because you hate its leader would be the
easy, unpatriotic action. Instead I choose to remain, to do what I can do
improve my country. That's patriotism. Our forefathers didn't decide that
they hated England and moved somewhere else. They fought to improve things,
even when it meant a revolution. Fortunately they instituted a democracy and a
free press so we can fight to improve our country every day without needing to
pull out our guns.
Big clue-by-four. Those thousands of protestors you occasionally hear about? Those aren't people who hate their country. They know perfectly well where the border is. No, those are patriots who fear that the country that they love is under attack from the inside and are working to defend it.
So sorry, we're not going anywhere. That you think this is a "agree or
leave" situation shows that you have no fucking idea what this country is
about.
Since our forefathers are deceased, I'll be disgusted with you on their behalf.
Nevermind if Bush really wanted oil he could of just lifted the sanctions.
Erm... no. If the sanctions were lift Iraq would likely have fulfulled existing commitments and agreements with other nations. It was just those agreements with, say, France, that caused lots of people to discredit France's arguments arguments against the war.
By invading and replacing the government the existing agreements can easily be broken. Furthermore, you can argue "to the victors go the spoils" and offer sweetheart agreements for your local businesses.
I'm not saying that this is the case, in fact I don't believe it to be the case. I'm just putting forth that it's plausible.
Or how about that story from the NYTimes where Saddam offered Bush all his oil if he didn't attack, yet Bush still went forward with Operation Iraqi Freedom?
Saddam may not have been a real threat to the United States, but he was darn well a Bad Man who would lie through his teeth to save his own skin. Trusting a promise under duress from Saddam would be stupid, no matter who you are. Furthermore, at that point it clearly looks like extortion, "Give us your oil or we invade." That would never have flown. All in all, it was never a real option.
Or why didn't we take Iraq's oil during the first Gulf War?
Oh, that one's easy. Bush Sr. isn't an idiot. Bush the first gathered a coalition of powerful nations including many in the middle-east to repel and Iraqi invasion. He did his job and stepped away. He understood that the war would get much, much more difficult if we actually counter-invaded. Not only would we be fighting on our enemies terroritory, potentially facing the guerilla warfare we face today, but many of his allies would have condemned the action.
Perhaps there is a slight difference between driving through large, generally habitated area and travelling over one of the largest and most hostile wilderness areas on the planet?
If you're going to take extreme risks, you have to take extreme precautions. Only having 2 hours of reserve fuel on a 30 hour flight is no taking an extreme precaution. Failing to plan in advance what happens if you have to land early is not taking an extreme precaution.
The researchers were plenty generous; he was feed, kept warm, and will be sent home. Even that is very generous, especially given the tight margins that they live on themselves.
This pretty much summarizes all of your misconceptions about the UN:
And I won't go into how the members of the UN aren't elected and are appointed and aren't out to better the world but (usually) to their country.
Ummmm, duuh. That's why the title for the human being who sits behind
the "UNITED STATES" placard is "Ambassador". Like all of our ambassadors he
is appointed and it is his job to represent our country. Strictly speaking,
Ambassador Negroponte isn't a member of the UN. The United States is a member
of the UN. Ambassador Negroponte is our representative to the UN. Like the
rest of our Ambassadors, our Federal Judges, and many other positions in our
country, he's appointed, not elected.
The UN is a place for all of the nations of the world, even ones who are at
each other's throats, can get together and try to work things about.
Convincing everyone to stick around is a tricky job and means you have to be
absolutely even handed, even if being even handed seems stupid. The big
picture is that it's important to keep these people talking so we can try and
move forward through peace. Judging a country evil and throwing them out isn't
going to convince them to shape up. They'll still be evil, but they won't be
talking to us. For example...
Where but the UN can countries with tons of human rights violations be on and chair commities to end human rights violations?
Anywhere where you want to be inclusive. Is it worth throwing them out and
risking the delicate political structure that brought them to the table? There
isn't any risk of these countries pushing some evil agenda through the
Commission. There are 53 member countries.
Do you think at least some of them might stop such an evil scheme?
Furthermore, who has the authority to judge the acceptability of a potential
member. Do we need a Commission on the Commission on Human Rights to screen
potential members? And a Commission on the Commission on the Commission to
screen them?
International politics is hard. Just getting everyone to the table is hard. Don't dismiss that effort out of hand.
The doubling up of energies on very similar projects (like Gnome and KDE) work against open source.... Why?.. Because all of the man hours spent building up Gnome were spent on KDE (or K-Office, Konquerer, etc), the code would be much tighter, with greater functionality.
I suppose true, but so what? That's competition.
I never hear any suggestion that the Microsoft team working on SQL Server should all start working on Oracle's database.
Most economists would argue that competition is a good thing, it's the way that bad ideas are weeded out, good ideas rise to the top, and in the long run optimial efficiency is reached. If anything the open source world is much more aggressively competitive than the proprietary software world.
Sell it at market price based on supply and demand
When multiple independent resellers keep their prices in lockstep, you should be suspicious. When a discount is offered for every product in a category except one, you should be suspicious. When just about every product in a store goes on sale at least occasionally, except those products from a single company, you should be suspicious. When you can't find price variations in the intensely competitive land of online sales, you should be suspicious.
Maybe the market for iPods has stabilized enough that the price can't come down through competition. But maybe Apple is engaging in price fixing. If someone is engaging in price fixing you no longer have a free market; supply and demand playing a balancing game. I don't know if Apple is playing dirty, but it would seem to warrant at least a bit of suspicion.
...in all HR meetings they always run propaganda on how this company values talent...
I'll just point out that "talent" can mean different things to different people.
In the porn industry the actors are called talent. And much like the porn industry you're getting screwed.
Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs.
If you hire and pay on the assumption that coding is low-skill, you'll end up with crap programmers generating crap software. Projects will usually go over budget, rarely meet customer expectations, and generally have a miserable experience.
Hmmm, now that I think about it, that matches the behavior of many large companies. They hire chimpanzees, then are shocked when all they get is chimp crap out of them.
Aaaah, the free market and short sighted capitalism, leading the world to the lowest common denominator...
The problem many people are having isn't that cell phones are fundamentally, the problem is that there are idiots using cell phones. But those same idiots drive recklesses, double-park, run cars without mufflers at 4 in morning, and engage in a host of other socially unacceptable activities. Would you ban cars because some people are idiots?
Specific silly objections:
But people use it in restaurants, and that's rude.. How is it rude? Many people specifically go to restaurants to talk with other people. Is taking to someone remotely fundamentally worse? If they're being too loud you do what you would do if someone was being loud talking to the companion: ask them to quiet down. Now, if you're dining with someone and that someone proceeds to take a call while you sit there, that's rude. But it's only rude to you. The answer isn't to disable the cell phone, the answer is to dine with non-rude people.
People use it movie theatres, and that's rude. Indeed it is. And the occasional gaggles of high school kids behind me laughing at the serious drama are also being rude. The answer? Tell them to shut up. Point out that if they want to continue their conversation they can do so from the lobby.
People use it in public, and that's rude. That's just surreal. Would you be complaining if their friend was instead standing right next to them talking? It's a public space, people talk, learn to live with it.
If you have a cell phone you're on a leash and always have to answer it. That's just a silly habit; break it. Get a phone with silent alertand leave it in vibrate mode all of the time. If you don't want to take a call now, just ignore it (on many phones you can hit hang-up and immediately shunt them to voice mail). If it might be important check the caller idea. Not important? Ignore it. Most cell phone plans come with free voice mail. Use it. If you have someone who gets pissy when you don't answer, politely explain that would rather not be on a leash to them. If they still insist you should answer they're rude, get more polite friends. (If it's your boss, get a new cell phone number and don't admit to your boss that you have it. I see no reason for my boss to have my cell phone number. If your boss is paying for the phone... well... high availability is probably what he's paying you for.)
There are plenty of good uses for cell phones, even in movie theatres. A friend of mine is a sysadmin and is on call every few weekends. He could simply sit at home all weekend, or he could take the chance that he might get a call while he's at a movie. If no call arrives, he enjoys the movie. If a call arrives it's unfortunate, but he knew the risk. He's very polite, when his work phone rings he immediately leaves the theatre to answer it.
Ultimately cell phone jammers are a crude solution that harms good users of cell phones as much as rude users. The answer is to educate and mock stupid users until they get the picture.
In my experience
both sides are right. In America people are born and bred thinking that
everyone is partisan and everyone actually
is partisan.
That's probably true, and unfortunate. However, it's only a slight mutation from a much more important viewpoint: You should never be forced to trust your government. If you're relying on non-partisan civil servants, ultimately you're trusting them. Maybe 99% of them are trustworthy, but it only takes one sleezebag to ruin everything. Unless you can somehow guarantee the neutrality of civil servants you're at risk from that one bad apple. So it's not that we should assume that everyone is partisan, it's that we shouldn't be forced to trust anyone.
In that session, Republican did press their advantage to gerrymander Texas congressional districts,
just as the Democrats had done every decade they were in charge of Texas.
Oh, well, then it's okay.
Screw assigning blame. No matter which side is doing it, it's bullshit.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and to the victor goes the spoils.
And might makes right.
A cliche isn't an argument.
There are many things to dislike about gerrymandering, but
the Supreme Court has ruled that it is prefectly legal and
constitutional as long as its not done for the purpose of racial
discrimination.
Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right. The Supreme Couty ruled that
slavery was legal at one point. Should previous generations simply have shrugged and said, "Hey, the Supreme Court says it's legal, I guess I can't complain"? If something is truly wrong you need to stand up against, even if it's legal.
I think the best idea is spidering websites. What if spamming meant inviting a massive DOS on your website?
The problem is that the website might not be the spammers.
Potential attack: Pick a target you want to DOS. Craft up a spammy looking email, include your target's URL in the message. Spam the hell of out the message. Watch target get crushed.
for the system to be an effective deterrant, it needs to be powerful to be dangerous. If it's dangerous there is a real risk of hitting innocent targets.
I'm so glad that the Tolkien estate has so much control over Hobbit derivatives. I'm sure that given the extended incentive provided by Congress, Tolkien is using the money he's still making to write yet more fiction for us to enjoy.
Oops, he's been dead for thirty years. Probably isn't going to be writing another book set in Middle Earth I guess.
The Hobbit was published in 1937. I think 66 years is plenty of time to recoop the his effort. I appreciate the intent of allowing copyright to pass on to one's heirs, but it's been 30 years since Tolkien died. Can't Christopher Tolkien create something of value himself to provide for himself? Heck, he's got to be doing well, and at 77 maybe it's time to retire and let the rest of the world enjoy a work you didn't actually create!
The
Founder's Copyrightstill covers 99% of the potential value of copyrighted works and manages to do it without putting culture under chains.
Someone explain to me how...basically ALL the problems of the world are America's fault and, China... commits various other human right abuses,
and the our "right-thinking left-wing friends" never say shit about it?
That's an easy one.
Liberals have been angry about China's human rights violations for a long
time. It's old news, it's foreign (related) news. As a result, it's gets
little to no coverage.
However, if someone even hints that just maybe the United States is making a
bad decision, it's easy to quote the person out of context (or even never quote
them at all) and paint them as being Anti-American. It's impressive sounding!
It's newsworthy! It may be bullshit, but it sells newspapers!
I'm liberal. I know many, many liberals. I've never met a liberal who
hated America. Every liberal I know loves America and loves the ideas it
stands for. And every liberal I know feels that America should be a shining
beacon for liberty. As a shining beacon, we hold America to extremely high
standards. We fear that others are lowering the standards, degrading the
ideals of America. And so we complain about those actions taken in the name of
America. We do it because we love America and refuse to see it dragged into
the mire. We're trying to maintain American's moral high ground so that we can continue to pressure countries like China to improve.
In exchange for fighting to protect what we believe is best about America,
we're branded as "Blame America Firsters" (No, I don't blame America, I blame
you for fucking with America), and "Traitors".
You know, ever few years there is a big public scandel and we discover that some local police department has corrupt officers. Common sense suggests that there remain corrupt officers throughout the country. Do we dismiss out of hand the statements of the law enforcement community as a result? The same goes for, say, your elected officials. There have been and likely will continue to be dirty politicians; do I dismiss the statements of the US Congress out of hand?
There are
53 member countries
in the commission. Might any of Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, or even the United States have had a say? Are you implying that a majority of the member states are corrupt and actually condone human rights violations?
Slashdot Mirror
Where I come from installing untested, unstable software on thousands of computers across the world, interrupting scientists trying to do Real Work is considered Cutting Edge Research and Worthy of Big Grants. I don't understand the system... I just do what I'm told.
Even if we take the argument at face value, why do we, the consumer, care? Welcome to Free Trade. Free Trade may have down sides, but one up side should be that if my local retail chain refuses to provide me with a legal product I should be able to import a copy from elsewhere.
That's just wrong.
One is perfectly able to create a buffer overrun bug in assembly (or machine code). C simply fails to protect against an already present potential problem. I'm certain that there where OSes that allowed stack smashing attacks; I'm sure every once in a while those early operating systems had software crash because of that bugs. However, we don't hear much about those attacks because those operating systems were long dead and buried because stack smashing became a common attack. Unix evolved, has been reborn a few times, and generally lived on, so we see its weaknesses today.
What's wrong with that? I find such information extremely useful as a webmaster. I get a sense of what people are looking for. I maintain a site about number encoding (pretty much just driver's license numbers at the moment. The section of my site discussing the algorithm for Wisconsin used to be broken into two pages. Thanks to referrer logs I learned that many people searching for "wisconsin driver's license number" ended up on the second, less useful page. By breaking the page up into two parts I had confused Google and visitors ended up on an unnecessary diversion. That information allowed me to tweak things (folding the second page into the first) to improve my visitor's experiences.
Similarly my referrer logs suggest that many visitors to my "Microsoft Visual C++ Tips and Tricks" are searching for certain "magic numbers" like "0xFDFDFDFD". I really need to reorganize the page some to make it easier for people to find the section discussing those numbers; my logs make it clear that it's a popular topic.
Maybe in theory there is some risk, but it's a small risk and the benefit of referrer information is just so big.
Horrendous privacy flaw? The heck? The only potential privacy flaw is that some stupid web site might encode private data using a GET request (a Bad Idea), and you might move from there to another untrustworthy site. But in the vast majority of cases all the web site learns is where you came from. Is that such a terrible secret? Getting a general sense of where people are coming from can be quite helpful for improving your web pages, understanding your audience, and reacting to changing circumstances (Am I under a DDOS attack, or did Slashdot link to me?).
On a related note, if you're concerned about it, feel free to switch it off. A few people doing so really isn't a big deal. And if everyone actively choses to do it, so be it, but I think the web will be worse for it. If you run into problems accessing some poorly designed sites, I'm willing to yield that perhaps you should automatically set the referrer to the page you're retreiving (but I'd suggest visiting less brain-dead sites). But please don't change the referrer to something arbitrary like "Field protected by Outpost (http://www.RETARD-SOFTWARE-VENDER-NAME-HERE.com/) " You're just making a nuisance for the guy examining the logs. Don't be rude. The standard makes the field optional, if it bothers you, just don't send it.
They potentially took away financial gain. Copyright law recognizes that "the term 'financial gain' includes ... the receipt of other copyrighted works." The deal is that you can have rights beyond basic copyright in exchange for your providing your derivative, copyrighted source code. It's very similar to the damages when someone downloads an album illegally instead of purchasing the music legally.
You might also be able to argue that you've damaged my reputation. If I expected to gain publicity and fame through my software, your using my software without credit (and what non-stupid copyright infringer would give credit) deprives me of that publicity. It's a much iffier argument, but plausible.
That said, many groups would be happy if the infringer just stopped distribution. This has consistently been the FSF's policy when persuing infringers.
Having an uberbox combining these mildly related things is an interesting idea. Picture if you will if someone created an uber-box-receiver with built in cd player, tape deck, amplifier, and even comes with some nifty speakers. Oh, such things already exist. And while they can be useful (they're often a great deal), they're decidedly mediocre. Trying to merge everything into one box means that the one box is a jack of all trades, but master of none. It might make a nice base system, but if you can afford it you'll want to consider dedicated stereo components. Trying to unify things too early (video game systems and digital television records are still changing rapidly) will lead to unified devices that become obsolete too rapidly (like early unified receivers that lack a CD player, or don't have an input for hooking you DVD player into).
It's my country too. Learn to fucking share.
Yes, I hate George W. Bush. I think he's a spineless fucking coward, an idiot, and a puppet. I think he's ruining OUR country.
But I'm not going to leave. I live the United States of American and I love my country. Leaving our country just because you hate its leader would be the easy, unpatriotic action. Instead I choose to remain, to do what I can do improve my country. That's patriotism. Our forefathers didn't decide that they hated England and moved somewhere else. They fought to improve things, even when it meant a revolution. Fortunately they instituted a democracy and a free press so we can fight to improve our country every day without needing to pull out our guns.
Big clue-by-four. Those thousands of protestors you occasionally hear about? Those aren't people who hate their country. They know perfectly well where the border is. No, those are patriots who fear that the country that they love is under attack from the inside and are working to defend it.
So sorry, we're not going anywhere. That you think this is a "agree or leave" situation shows that you have no fucking idea what this country is about. Since our forefathers are deceased, I'll be disgusted with you on their behalf.
Erm... no. If the sanctions were lift Iraq would likely have fulfulled existing commitments and agreements with other nations. It was just those agreements with, say, France, that caused lots of people to discredit France's arguments arguments against the war.
By invading and replacing the government the existing agreements can easily be broken. Furthermore, you can argue "to the victors go the spoils" and offer sweetheart agreements for your local businesses.
I'm not saying that this is the case, in fact I don't believe it to be the case. I'm just putting forth that it's plausible.
Saddam may not have been a real threat to the United States, but he was darn well a Bad Man who would lie through his teeth to save his own skin. Trusting a promise under duress from Saddam would be stupid, no matter who you are. Furthermore, at that point it clearly looks like extortion, "Give us your oil or we invade." That would never have flown. All in all, it was never a real option.
Oh, that one's easy. Bush Sr. isn't an idiot. Bush the first gathered a coalition of powerful nations including many in the middle-east to repel and Iraqi invasion. He did his job and stepped away. He understood that the war would get much, much more difficult if we actually counter-invaded. Not only would we be fighting on our enemies terroritory, potentially facing the guerilla warfare we face today, but many of his allies would have condemned the action.
If you're gettting your journals and conference proceedings for a nominal fee, you're clearly getting a much better deal than the rest of us.
Perhaps there is a slight difference between driving through large, generally habitated area and travelling over one of the largest and most hostile wilderness areas on the planet?
If you're going to take extreme risks, you have to take extreme precautions. Only having 2 hours of reserve fuel on a 30 hour flight is no taking an extreme precaution. Failing to plan in advance what happens if you have to land early is not taking an extreme precaution.
The researchers were plenty generous; he was feed, kept warm, and will be sent home. Even that is very generous, especially given the tight margins that they live on themselves.
It would have been a much better contingency plan if he'd asked for permission to use them as an emergency stop in advance.
Showing up somewhere where you are not welcome to ask for fuel from people who are on a very tight supply is a pretty crappy plan.
This pretty much summarizes all of your misconceptions about the UN:
Ummmm, duuh. That's why the title for the human being who sits behind the "UNITED STATES" placard is "Ambassador". Like all of our ambassadors he is appointed and it is his job to represent our country. Strictly speaking, Ambassador Negroponte isn't a member of the UN. The United States is a member of the UN. Ambassador Negroponte is our representative to the UN. Like the rest of our Ambassadors, our Federal Judges, and many other positions in our country, he's appointed, not elected.
The UN is a place for all of the nations of the world, even ones who are at each other's throats, can get together and try to work things about. Convincing everyone to stick around is a tricky job and means you have to be absolutely even handed, even if being even handed seems stupid. The big picture is that it's important to keep these people talking so we can try and move forward through peace. Judging a country evil and throwing them out isn't going to convince them to shape up. They'll still be evil, but they won't be talking to us. For example...
Anywhere where you want to be inclusive. Is it worth throwing them out and risking the delicate political structure that brought them to the table? There isn't any risk of these countries pushing some evil agenda through the Commission. There are 53 member countries. Do you think at least some of them might stop such an evil scheme? Furthermore, who has the authority to judge the acceptability of a potential member. Do we need a Commission on the Commission on Human Rights to screen potential members? And a Commission on the Commission on the Commission to screen them?
International politics is hard. Just getting everyone to the table is hard. Don't dismiss that effort out of hand.
I suppose true, but so what? That's competition.
I never hear any suggestion that the Microsoft team working on SQL Server should all start working on Oracle's database.
Most economists would argue that competition is a good thing, it's the way that bad ideas are weeded out, good ideas rise to the top, and in the long run optimial efficiency is reached. If anything the open source world is much more aggressively competitive than the proprietary software world.
When multiple independent resellers keep their prices in lockstep, you should be suspicious. When a discount is offered for every product in a category except one, you should be suspicious. When just about every product in a store goes on sale at least occasionally, except those products from a single company, you should be suspicious. When you can't find price variations in the intensely competitive land of online sales, you should be suspicious.
Maybe the market for iPods has stabilized enough that the price can't come down through competition. But maybe Apple is engaging in price fixing. If someone is engaging in price fixing you no longer have a free market; supply and demand playing a balancing game. I don't know if Apple is playing dirty, but it would seem to warrant at least a bit of suspicion.
I'll just point out that "talent" can mean different things to different people. In the porn industry the actors are called talent. And much like the porn industry you're getting screwed.
If you hire and pay on the assumption that coding is low-skill, you'll end up with crap programmers generating crap software. Projects will usually go over budget, rarely meet customer expectations, and generally have a miserable experience.
Hmmm, now that I think about it, that matches the behavior of many large companies. They hire chimpanzees, then are shocked when all they get is chimp crap out of them.
Aaaah, the free market and short sighted capitalism, leading the world to the lowest common denominator...
The problem many people are having isn't that cell phones are fundamentally, the problem is that there are idiots using cell phones. But those same idiots drive recklesses, double-park, run cars without mufflers at 4 in morning, and engage in a host of other socially unacceptable activities. Would you ban cars because some people are idiots?
Specific silly objections:
But people use it in restaurants, and that's rude.. How is it rude? Many people specifically go to restaurants to talk with other people. Is taking to someone remotely fundamentally worse? If they're being too loud you do what you would do if someone was being loud talking to the companion: ask them to quiet down. Now, if you're dining with someone and that someone proceeds to take a call while you sit there, that's rude. But it's only rude to you. The answer isn't to disable the cell phone, the answer is to dine with non-rude people.
People use it movie theatres, and that's rude. Indeed it is. And the occasional gaggles of high school kids behind me laughing at the serious drama are also being rude. The answer? Tell them to shut up. Point out that if they want to continue their conversation they can do so from the lobby.
People use it in public, and that's rude. That's just surreal. Would you be complaining if their friend was instead standing right next to them talking? It's a public space, people talk, learn to live with it.
If you have a cell phone you're on a leash and always have to answer it. That's just a silly habit; break it. Get a phone with silent alertand leave it in vibrate mode all of the time. If you don't want to take a call now, just ignore it (on many phones you can hit hang-up and immediately shunt them to voice mail). If it might be important check the caller idea. Not important? Ignore it. Most cell phone plans come with free voice mail. Use it. If you have someone who gets pissy when you don't answer, politely explain that would rather not be on a leash to them. If they still insist you should answer they're rude, get more polite friends. (If it's your boss, get a new cell phone number and don't admit to your boss that you have it. I see no reason for my boss to have my cell phone number. If your boss is paying for the phone... well... high availability is probably what he's paying you for.)
There are plenty of good uses for cell phones, even in movie theatres. A friend of mine is a sysadmin and is on call every few weekends. He could simply sit at home all weekend, or he could take the chance that he might get a call while he's at a movie. If no call arrives, he enjoys the movie. If a call arrives it's unfortunate, but he knew the risk. He's very polite, when his work phone rings he immediately leaves the theatre to answer it.
Ultimately cell phone jammers are a crude solution that harms good users of cell phones as much as rude users. The answer is to educate and mock stupid users until they get the picture.
That's probably true, and unfortunate. However, it's only a slight mutation from a much more important viewpoint: You should never be forced to trust your government. If you're relying on non-partisan civil servants, ultimately you're trusting them. Maybe 99% of them are trustworthy, but it only takes one sleezebag to ruin everything. Unless you can somehow guarantee the neutrality of civil servants you're at risk from that one bad apple. So it's not that we should assume that everyone is partisan, it's that we shouldn't be forced to trust anyone.
Oh, well, then it's okay.
Screw assigning blame. No matter which side is doing it, it's bullshit.
And might makes right.
A cliche isn't an argument.
Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right. The Supreme Couty ruled that slavery was legal at one point. Should previous generations simply have shrugged and said, "Hey, the Supreme Court says it's legal, I guess I can't complain"? If something is truly wrong you need to stand up against, even if it's legal.
The problem is that the website might not be the spammers.
Potential attack: Pick a target you want to DOS. Craft up a spammy looking email, include your target's URL in the message. Spam the hell of out the message. Watch target get crushed.
for the system to be an effective deterrant, it needs to be powerful to be dangerous. If it's dangerous there is a real risk of hitting innocent targets.
Oops, he's been dead for thirty years. Probably isn't going to be writing another book set in Middle Earth I guess.
The Hobbit was published in 1937. I think 66 years is plenty of time to recoop the his effort. I appreciate the intent of allowing copyright to pass on to one's heirs, but it's been 30 years since Tolkien died. Can't Christopher Tolkien create something of value himself to provide for himself? Heck, he's got to be doing well, and at 77 maybe it's time to retire and let the rest of the world enjoy a work you didn't actually create!
The Founder's Copyright still covers 99% of the potential value of copyrighted works and manages to do it without putting culture under chains.
Penny Arcade on the iPod.
That's an easy one.
Liberals have been angry about China's human rights violations for a long time. It's old news, it's foreign (related) news. As a result, it's gets little to no coverage.
However, if someone even hints that just maybe the United States is making a bad decision, it's easy to quote the person out of context (or even never quote them at all) and paint them as being Anti-American. It's impressive sounding! It's newsworthy! It may be bullshit, but it sells newspapers!
I'm liberal. I know many, many liberals. I've never met a liberal who hated America. Every liberal I know loves America and loves the ideas it stands for. And every liberal I know feels that America should be a shining beacon for liberty. As a shining beacon, we hold America to extremely high standards. We fear that others are lowering the standards, degrading the ideals of America. And so we complain about those actions taken in the name of America. We do it because we love America and refuse to see it dragged into the mire. We're trying to maintain American's moral high ground so that we can continue to pressure countries like China to improve.
In exchange for fighting to protect what we believe is best about America, we're branded as "Blame America Firsters" (No, I don't blame America, I blame you for fucking with America), and "Traitors".
I love my country and want what's best for it.
Fuck you.
That's a personal attack and not a logical argument.
You know, ever few years there is a big public scandel and we discover that some local police department has corrupt officers. Common sense suggests that there remain corrupt officers throughout the country. Do we dismiss out of hand the statements of the law enforcement community as a result? The same goes for, say, your elected officials. There have been and likely will continue to be dirty politicians; do I dismiss the statements of the US Congress out of hand?
There are 53 member countries in the commission. Might any of Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, or even the United States have had a say? Are you implying that a majority of the member states are corrupt and actually condone human rights violations?