Microsoft would help a LOT of people in a LOT of countries by lowering the cost of Windows so that new PC's could be affordable for more people. They don't, and your argument is invalid. In fact, the only viable low cost alternative for developing nations is to go with Linux and Microsoft are actively attempting to kill it.
Naah, the only viable low cost alternative for developing nations is to go with bootleg copies of Windows... Which I understand Microsoft, on some level, is all for, since it lets them remain dominant. When a major business becomes rich in a poor country, MS can lean on them to buy licenses, it all works out quite nicely (except for people trying to push Linux based on it's affordability)
So it would show up as a lot of connections to various IP's, not one single bannable IP.
But if you can probe the server's port to see if it is a peek-a-booty proxy, you could just ban on-the-fly the way most irc servers ban open proxy machines... I don't know if it's possible to test for peek-a-booty or not, though.
Group-think is what gets lemmings to walk over cliffs. There are only individuals, everything else is just a convenient abstraction.
Actually, Group-think is what leads humans to believe that lemmings walk over cliffs; It's a bit of misinformation mostly spread by a disney film. (still shown in schools, afaik.)
I admit that it was a few years since I studied the theory of relativity, but I belive it is you who don't know your physics.
Either I've been suckered by an elaborate multi-person troll, or you're both arguing the same thing: travel fast and the people back home are a hell of a lot older than you when you get back, but you aren't much older at all.
Although I was under the impression that teh Edge of the Universe was defined by photons travelling at the speed of light away from the big bang, and that it is therefore impossible to ever catch up to them...
The few primitive tribes still untouched by civilization in the jungles of South America would look up at the heavens, and certainly not think about Pepsi.
Well, there will probably always be technology that can accelerate harder/travel faster than humans can handle, so we could launch the new technology 'patch' unmanned at high acceleration/velocity to rendezvous with the colonists mid-voyage and speed them up... they'd still be ahead of a human-speed mission that waited for the new stuff. If the unthinkable happens to earth, or propusion technology plateus, they'd just plod along until they got there...
If I wouldn't let my hypothetical 10 year old watch Saving Private Ryan or Pulp Fiction, why can the local Blockbuster store rent them the latest splatter videogame without my consent?
They can't, because you're awake enough to keep your hypothetical 10 year old out of the Blockbuster without you knowing about it. Or failing that, if you're really that worried, fax the Blockbuster a note not to rent things to your kid without your permission; I knew (scary) parents that did this sort of thing, it works as well as the law can be expected to (which is mostly but not completely)
Video games do affect the individual that is playing. The same with movies. Arguing that violent video games do not increase violent tendencies in a person is like arguing that puzzle games do not increase problem-solving skills.
Violent skills, maybe, but violent tendencies are more a symptom of humanity than anything else...
My kid isn't going to take a gun to school unless they buy it for themselves.
Yikes, I sure hope that isn't the biggest obstacle standing between your kid and shooting someone... For no other reason that he could probably get a gun if he really wanted it right now, and will certainly be able to someday in the not-distant future. (Cold Dead Fingers and all that)
If the parent wants the child to own a Mature rated game, the parent can go with the child to purchase it. Same goes for R rated movies. It's the same damn thing [...] This isn't going to get struck down, people. There's nothing wrong with it. Face the fact that until you're 18, there are some decisions your parents get to make for you. That's always been the case.
Nuts to that.
For starters, I'm sick of having to carry around "papers" and pull the damn thing out to prove I'm old enough to do/see/drink something.
Secondly, the ages are absurd. They are so out of line with what kids (rightly) do anyway that it's not even funny--For hell's sake, I was shown R rated movies in *school* quite a bit before I was 17, and nobody thought anything of it at the time! And don't get me started on drinking...
Thirdly, have you ever considered that letting your kids out of the house unsupervised *is* parental consent? I seriously doubt my parents were ever unaware of my location (at least to the extent of not knowing what other adult was watching me) for the hours(?) it takes to rent a violent game and play it, not to mention getting access to an unwatched game console and TV until I was well old enough for that to be the least of their worries, and it's not like my parents were terribly strict at all... Quite the opposite, the psycho strict parents that actually didn't want their poor sheltered 18 year old kids seeing "bad" things kept quite enough watch on them to pretty much succeed at keeping them from developing any social skills at all.
Fourthly, have you considered the effect the "assume no consent unless the parent is present" laws have on the kids' respect for legitimate law? You know *something* rubs off when your parents don't mind their 17 year old son being out after curfew, just don't get caught. Or setting reasonable limits on the drinking habits of a 19-year old, with the obvious disregard for the ludicrously strict rules politicians have decided are appropriate (and the tacit approval of more serious deception, such as the venerable fake ID).
I suppose the last one is a lesson, though. It's not enough to teach your children that there are rules to be followed, but also there are rules to be disregarded, as well...
I'm not quite familiar with the messy details of x86, but does reading from a disk cache operating on extended/expanded memory entail that overhead, too? It doesn't seem like you'd need more than the 640k or whatever to run a reasonably tight http server, so all you would want to do with the RAM is buffer the pages off disk, so you wouldn't need to screw with the overhead of >1MB memory in your program (or is that just moving the problem into the disk cache driver?)
Blending the sig ad with the karma whore link list, cute. Too bad slashdot doesn't let you have unmatched tags (i assume) or you wouldn't even need that gap in there...
But you don't steal Arrowhead water later once you decide that's the one you like. There is no free music that substitutes for the music you want, just like there is no free water that substitutes for the Arrowhead water you want.
My point is that bottled water is selling conveninece, water here and now in a convienent container. It is indistinguishable from water you can make yourself with a nice filter (or if you're lucky, straight from the tap). Copying music is not equivalent to sneaking a bottle out of a store, it's equivalent to buying a filter and filling the bottle yourself.
Therefore you decide to take what you want because there are few, if any, legal ramifications. Lack of enforcement does not make something legal.
I'm not arguing it's legal. I don't really care. Laws which cannot or will not be enforced should be modified or repealed, though, as they serve no useful purpose.
While nobody is entitled to a business model (by nature) they are entitled to do business (by law.)
Sure, I buy CDs all the time. They are welcome to sell more, fine-o. It's when they decide my personal copying is unfair competition that i get irked.
You are correct - if you live a society that is in total anarchy. If you live in a society that recognizes any type of copyright and trademark rights then you're wrong - legally wrong.
Lack of copyright is hardly a state of Anarchy. Copyright laws didn't interfere with the rights of ordinary citizens when duplication equipemnt was too expensive for ordinary people to own--It was a way of protecting publishers from each other. Now it just gets in the way.
Trademark laws are not relevant to this discussion.
You actually have a right to expect protection if you live in the U.S. and you copyright your work and you put it out on the Internet.
Yeah, right, whatever. As a practical matter, I am not so foolish as to pin my financial security on issues of technical legality. If the RIAA & co. can't manage to protect its copyright, what chance do I have?
Your main problem is that you wish to derive the benefits of living in a society you chose to live in, but do not wish to be bound by the rigid tenants (laws)of that society. This is a common problem among humans. [...] Please abide by the laws and constraints of your society.
I get along quite well in my society. I would do much worse if I deluded myself into thinking that the laws are an accurate description of morality or even the rules of society.
Reality is more complex than laws. Even if you choose to strictly adhere to every one of the laws (which would be quite impressive), you should at least be aware of the limits of law to provide you actual protection, at least for your own personal and financial safety.
--
Benjamin Coates
Re:That crash you hear is society crumbling...
on
The Crime of Sharing
·
· Score: 1
A product is being sold (not given away) and people have found a way to get that same product without paying.
That is wrong.
Baloney. I can sell water (lots of people do), but I don't go around trying to sue people for getting water without paying for it. Why? because the value water-sellers are selling is distribution and quality control; rainwater is free but I get neither.
The fact that I may or may not be depriving someone of an income doesn't even enter the picture; nobody is entitled to a business model or a line of work.
It is a highly novel idea that the moral wrong in stealing is getting something for nothing instead of depriving someone else of property.
Just admit it to yourself and your friends and everyone here on/. that you prefer to take things that are not yours
It's no more mine than it is anyone elses'. Information 'products' I produce are mine as long as I keep them confidential; once they get out into public circulation, I'm not foolish enough to believe I can control two other people who wish to transfer it between them. Why would they?
I buy CDs when it is convienent. I listen to the radio when it is convenient. I download music when it is convienent. If the recording industry wants more of my money, they can have it... all they have to do is be competitive with other ways of getting the same thing.
A ticket is more than just an object; its a contract between you and London Underground. Part of that contract states that your ticket is not for resale.
Yeah, and the MS EULA says you can't sell bundled software either.
I saw Phil Zimmermann speak a few years ago and Phil spoke about how technical infrastructures rarely go away. There are no laws mandating 120 volts @ 60 cycles in the US. It's just an infrastructure that's in place, that will likely not go away, ever.
But if we install the infrastructure now, we get to control how it works. Insead of a mysterious Big Brother, we can make a "spying infrastructure" that, allows anyone (not just the governement) to see just what the spies can see. We can make an infrastructure with auditing and accountability, and hopefully it will have the inertia to survive and keep a "big brother" style one away.
What if I buy CD A, and you buy CD B, and we each MP3 our CDs, and exchange the files. That's a trade, no money has changed hands between us, but the end result is that the supplier has sold half of what it would have otherwise done, and you and I have both profited at their expense.
Anytime you do something yourself that you could pay a company to do yourself, you are profiting at their expense. If I make myself a hamburger, that's one less hamburger Burger King would have sold me... Do I owe them something?
What is probably wrong is deliberately diverting money from London Underground by sharing or re-selling a ticket that you bought, knowing that the person that you are giving the ticket to could buy one. I said "probably" just in case I am regurgitating IP Propaganda®.
It seems to me that if I bought a ticket for unlimited rides for one day, and only need it for half a day, I am entitled to resell or give away the unused portion to someone else who only needs to ride the latter half of the day... Just as I could reasonably sell half of anything that is only available in quantity (4 eggs, anyone?).
Jumping the turnstile is another matter... I won't go so far as to call it stealing, but I suppose it's dishonest.
Yeah, the whole sharing-ideal is great. But if the rightful owner doesn't want to share it, that's it. The choice of sharing or not should still be his, not so?
And it is, if I don't want to reveal something (an idea, or a program, or a song, whatever), I am free to keep it a secret or to only reveal it to people I have an arrangement to keep secrets with.
It's when I say that I have a right to control what two other people do with something I created and gave away that I'm being unreasonable.
The term piracy has been around for so long that when somebody uses the term 'pirate' my first instinct is to think of software piracy. People do not hear the word piracy and equate the people involved to murderers on the high seas - I do not know where the word originally came from, but I do know that it is now ubiquitous, and accepted by the public to mean the illegal distribution of software.
I don't know about you, but usually equate 'piracy' with manufacturing duplicate movies, CDs, whatever that are sold as legal (or "don't ask") originals, usually in volume. Applying it to people that give away a few free copies of something for friends always seemed quite unfair to me.
So by advocating the reduction of the power of government you're advocating a reduction of the power of the people. I take that personally as I am one of those people.
Do I know you? Have I ever met you? Do I have any assurance that you are at all competent at doing anything?
And yet you do not seem to find it absurd that you (as part of "the people") should have power over me.
And don't give me some line about corporations... I don't recall corporations ever telling me what to do (well, that's not really true. I don't recall ignoring what corporations tell me to do ever causing a problem for me)
individual people, and and not-for-profit groups can not compete with the cash generated by a large corporation.
Behind every rich corporation is a bunch of rich people with a shared income source and each other's cell phone numbers. Making these people do things as coordinated individuals instead of a corporation will change nothing.
make all elections 100% publicly funded (I believe that england does this and each candidate can only spend something like 10,000 pounds), ban any political advertizing by any non candidate which mentions, depicts or hints where a particlar candidate or party stands on an issue.
So, force people to vote by how tall the politician is or how easy to remember his name is? Paid issue advertising is a good thing, it lets people know what a politician's history/position on an issue is, because the conventional media sure isn't any help there...
I'm worried about the people that think themselves underemployed, which appears to mean that they believe themselves superior to other people and that labor and retail sales are beneath them.
(from the article)
"Here I am throwing mail with an MBA. I was totally embarrassed. I'm just grateful that my daughter is still too young to understand how tough this is for me."
I mean, look at that attitude problem. I wonder how he treats his coworkers, since he appears to believe his job is only appropriate for sub-humans.
Don't get me wrong, I know it sucks to not be doing what you want to do, but there is more than that here... I get the feeling that if these people didn't let their job descriptions and salaries define their worth as a human being, they'd be happer with what life throws their way and better prepared to make the most of it.
But then, I have a job, and pretty much the one I want at that, so the above is easy for me to say...
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, nothing happened, nobody was killed, it's all just a big lie, right?
--
Benjamin Coates
Microsoft would help a LOT of people in a LOT of countries by lowering the cost of Windows so that new PC's could be affordable for more people. They don't, and your argument is invalid. In fact, the only viable low cost alternative for developing nations is to go with Linux and Microsoft are actively attempting to kill it.
Naah, the only viable low cost alternative for developing nations is to go with bootleg copies of Windows... Which I understand Microsoft, on some level, is all for, since it lets them remain dominant. When a major business becomes rich in a poor country, MS can lean on them to buy licenses, it all works out quite nicely (except for people trying to push Linux based on it's affordability)
--
Benjamin Coates
So it would show up as a lot of connections to various IP's, not one single bannable IP.
But if you can probe the server's port to see if it is a peek-a-booty proxy, you could just ban on-the-fly the way most irc servers ban open proxy machines... I don't know if it's possible to test for peek-a-booty or not, though.
--
Benjamin Coates
Group-think is what gets lemmings to walk over cliffs. There are only individuals, everything else is just a convenient abstraction.
Actually, Group-think is what leads humans to believe that lemmings walk over cliffs; It's a bit of misinformation mostly spread by a disney film. (still shown in schools, afaik.)
--
Benjamin Coates
I admit that it was a few years since I studied the theory of relativity, but I belive it is you who don't know your physics.
Either I've been suckered by an elaborate multi-person troll, or you're both arguing the same thing: travel fast and the people back home are a hell of a lot older than you when you get back, but you aren't much older at all.
Although I was under the impression that teh Edge of the Universe was defined by photons travelling at the speed of light away from the big bang, and that it is therefore impossible to ever catch up to them...
--
Benjamin Coates
'COKE ADDS LIFE!'
The few primitive tribes still untouched by civilization in the jungles of South America would look up at the heavens, and certainly not think about Pepsi.
--
Benjamin Coates
If that doesn't make any sense, search for "Naylor" on this page.
Well, there will probably always be technology that can accelerate harder/travel faster than humans can handle, so we could launch the new technology 'patch' unmanned at high acceleration/velocity to rendezvous with the colonists mid-voyage and speed them up... they'd still be ahead of a human-speed mission that waited for the new stuff. If the unthinkable happens to earth, or propusion technology plateus, they'd just plod along until they got there...
--
Benjamin Coates
If I wouldn't let my hypothetical 10 year old watch Saving Private Ryan or Pulp Fiction, why can the local Blockbuster store rent them the latest splatter videogame without my consent?
They can't, because you're awake enough to keep your hypothetical 10 year old out of the Blockbuster without you knowing about it. Or failing that, if you're really that worried, fax the Blockbuster a note not to rent things to your kid without your permission; I knew (scary) parents that did this sort of thing, it works as well as the law can be expected to (which is mostly but not completely)
--
Ben Coates
Don't listen to the hypersensitives, you are not part of the problem. Grow up and vote, we need more sane people in that demographic.
--
Benjamin Coates
Video games do affect the individual that is playing. The same with movies. Arguing that violent video games do not increase violent tendencies in a person is like arguing that puzzle games do not increase problem-solving skills.
Violent skills, maybe, but violent tendencies are more a symptom of humanity than anything else...
--
Benjamin Coates
OT reply to an OT post, but whatver.
My kid isn't going to take a gun to school unless they buy it for themselves.
Yikes, I sure hope that isn't the biggest obstacle standing between your kid and shooting someone... For no other reason that he could probably get a gun if he really wanted it right now, and will certainly be able to someday in the not-distant future. (Cold Dead Fingers and all that)
--
Benjamin Coates
If the parent wants the child to own a Mature rated game, the parent can go with the child to purchase it. Same goes for R rated movies. It's the same damn thing [...] This isn't going to get struck down, people. There's nothing wrong with it. Face the fact that until you're 18, there are some decisions your parents get to make for you. That's always been the case.
Nuts to that.
For starters, I'm sick of having to carry around "papers" and pull the damn thing out to prove I'm old enough to do/see/drink something.
Secondly, the ages are absurd. They are so out of line with what kids (rightly) do anyway that it's not even funny--For hell's sake, I was shown R rated movies in *school* quite a bit before I was 17, and nobody thought anything of it at the time! And don't get me started on drinking...
Thirdly, have you ever considered that letting your kids out of the house unsupervised *is* parental consent? I seriously doubt my parents were ever unaware of my location (at least to the extent of not knowing what other adult was watching me) for the hours(?) it takes to rent a violent game and play it, not to mention getting access to an unwatched game console and TV until I was well old enough for that to be the least of their worries, and it's not like my parents were terribly strict at all... Quite the opposite, the psycho strict parents that actually didn't want their poor sheltered 18 year old kids seeing "bad" things kept quite enough watch on them to pretty much succeed at keeping them from developing any social skills at all.
Fourthly, have you considered the effect the "assume no consent unless the parent is present" laws have on the kids' respect for legitimate law? You know *something* rubs off when your parents don't mind their 17 year old son being out after curfew, just don't get caught. Or setting reasonable limits on the drinking habits of a 19-year old, with the obvious disregard for the ludicrously strict rules politicians have decided are appropriate (and the tacit approval of more serious deception, such as the venerable fake ID).
I suppose the last one is a lesson, though. It's not enough to teach your children that there are rules to be followed, but also there are rules to be disregarded, as well...
--
Benajmin Coates
I'm not quite familiar with the messy details of x86, but does reading from a disk cache operating on extended/expanded memory entail that overhead, too? It doesn't seem like you'd need more than the 640k or whatever to run a reasonably tight http server, so all you would want to do with the RAM is buffer the pages off disk, so you wouldn't need to screw with the overhead of >1MB memory in your program (or is that just moving the problem into the disk cache driver?)
--
Benjamin Coates
Blending the sig ad with the karma whore link list, cute. Too bad slashdot doesn't let you have unmatched tags (i assume) or you wouldn't even need that gap in there...
--
Benjamin Coates
But you don't steal Arrowhead water later once you decide that's the one you like. There is no free music that substitutes for the music you want, just like there is no free water that substitutes for the Arrowhead water you want.
My point is that bottled water is selling conveninece, water here and now in a convienent container. It is indistinguishable from water you can make yourself with a nice filter (or if you're lucky, straight from the tap). Copying music is not equivalent to sneaking a bottle out of a store, it's equivalent to buying a filter and filling the bottle yourself.
Therefore you decide to take what you want because there are few, if any, legal ramifications. Lack of enforcement does not make something legal.
I'm not arguing it's legal. I don't really care. Laws which cannot or will not be enforced should be modified or repealed, though, as they serve no useful purpose.
While nobody is entitled to a business model (by nature) they are entitled to do business (by law.)
Sure, I buy CDs all the time. They are welcome to sell more, fine-o. It's when they decide my personal copying is unfair competition that i get irked.
You are correct - if you live a society that is in total anarchy. If you live in a society that recognizes any type of copyright and trademark rights then you're wrong - legally wrong.
Lack of copyright is hardly a state of Anarchy. Copyright laws didn't interfere with the rights of ordinary citizens when duplication equipemnt was too expensive for ordinary people to own--It was a way of protecting publishers from each other. Now it just gets in the way.
Trademark laws are not relevant to this discussion.
You actually have a right to expect protection if you live in the U.S. and you copyright your work and you put it out on the Internet.
Yeah, right, whatever. As a practical matter, I am not so foolish as to pin my financial security on issues of technical legality. If the RIAA & co. can't manage to protect its copyright, what chance do I have?
Your main problem is that you wish to derive the benefits of living in a society you chose to live in, but do not wish to be bound by the rigid tenants (laws)of that society. This is a common problem among humans. [...] Please abide by the laws and constraints of your society.
I get along quite well in my society. I would do much worse if I deluded myself into thinking that the laws are an accurate description of morality or even the rules of society.
Reality is more complex than laws. Even if you choose to strictly adhere to every one of the laws (which would be quite impressive), you should at least be aware of the limits of law to provide you actual protection, at least for your own personal and financial safety.
--
Benjamin Coates
A product is being sold (not given away) and people have found a way to get that same product without paying.
/. that you prefer to take things that are not yours
That is wrong.
Baloney. I can sell water (lots of people do), but I don't go around trying to sue people for getting water without paying for it. Why? because the value water-sellers are selling is distribution and quality control; rainwater is free but I get neither.
The fact that I may or may not be depriving someone of an income doesn't even enter the picture; nobody is entitled to a business model or a line of work.
It is a highly novel idea that the moral wrong in stealing is getting something for nothing instead of depriving someone else of property.
Just admit it to yourself and your friends and everyone here on
It's no more mine than it is anyone elses'. Information 'products' I produce are mine as long as I keep them confidential; once they get out into public circulation, I'm not foolish enough to believe I can control two other people who wish to transfer it between them. Why would they?
I buy CDs when it is convienent. I listen to the radio when it is convenient. I download music when it is convienent. If the recording industry wants more of my money, they can have it... all they have to do is be competitive with other ways of getting the same thing.
--
Benjamin Coates
A ticket is more than just an object; its a contract between you and London Underground. Part of that contract states that your ticket is not for resale.
Yeah, and the MS EULA says you can't sell bundled software either.
--
Benjamin Coates
I saw Phil Zimmermann speak a few years ago and Phil spoke about how technical infrastructures rarely go away. There are no laws mandating 120 volts @ 60 cycles in the US. It's just an infrastructure that's in place, that will likely not go away, ever.
But if we install the infrastructure now, we get to control how it works. Insead of a mysterious Big Brother, we can make a "spying infrastructure" that, allows anyone (not just the governement) to see just what the spies can see. We can make an infrastructure with auditing and accountability, and hopefully it will have the inertia to survive and keep a "big brother" style one away.
--
Benjamin Coates
What if I buy CD A, and you buy CD B, and we each MP3 our CDs, and exchange the files. That's a trade, no money has changed hands between us, but the end result is that the supplier has sold half of what it would have otherwise done, and you and I have both profited at their expense.
Anytime you do something yourself that you could pay a company to do yourself, you are profiting at their expense. If I make myself a hamburger, that's one less hamburger Burger King would have sold me... Do I owe them something?
--
Benjamin Coates
What is probably wrong is deliberately diverting money from London Underground by sharing or re-selling a ticket that you bought, knowing that the person that you are giving the ticket to could buy one. I said "probably" just in case I am regurgitating IP Propaganda®.
It seems to me that if I bought a ticket for unlimited rides for one day, and only need it for half a day, I am entitled to resell or give away the unused portion to someone else who only needs to ride the latter half of the day... Just as I could reasonably sell half of anything that is only available in quantity (4 eggs, anyone?).
Jumping the turnstile is another matter... I won't go so far as to call it stealing, but I suppose it's dishonest.
--
Benjamin Coates
Yeah, the whole sharing-ideal is great. But if the rightful owner doesn't want to share it, that's it. The choice of sharing or not should still be his, not so?
And it is, if I don't want to reveal something (an idea, or a program, or a song, whatever), I am free to keep it a secret or to only reveal it to people I have an arrangement to keep secrets with.
It's when I say that I have a right to control what two other people do with something I created and gave away that I'm being unreasonable.
--
Benajmin Coates
The term piracy has been around for so long that when somebody uses the term 'pirate' my first instinct is to think of software piracy. People do not hear the word piracy and equate the people involved to murderers on the high seas - I do not know where the word originally came from, but I do know that it is now ubiquitous, and accepted by the public to mean the illegal distribution of software.
I don't know about you, but usually equate 'piracy' with manufacturing duplicate movies, CDs, whatever that are sold as legal (or "don't ask") originals, usually in volume. Applying it to people that give away a few free copies of something for friends always seemed quite unfair to me.
--
Benjamin Coates
So by advocating the reduction of the power of government you're advocating a reduction of the power of the people. I take that personally as I am one of those people.
Do I know you? Have I ever met you? Do I have any assurance that you are at all competent at doing anything?
And yet you do not seem to find it absurd that you (as part of "the people") should have power over me.
And don't give me some line about corporations... I don't recall corporations ever telling me what to do (well, that's not really true. I don't recall ignoring what corporations tell me to do ever causing a problem for me)
--
Benjamin Coates
individual people, and and not-for-profit groups can not compete with the cash generated by a large corporation.
Behind every rich corporation is a bunch of rich people with a shared income source and each other's cell phone numbers. Making these people do things as coordinated individuals instead of a corporation will change nothing.
make all elections 100% publicly funded (I believe that england does this and each candidate can only spend something like 10,000 pounds), ban any political advertizing by any non candidate which mentions, depicts or hints where a particlar candidate or party stands on an issue.
So, force people to vote by how tall the politician is or how easy to remember his name is? Paid issue advertising is a good thing, it lets people know what a politician's history/position on an issue is, because the conventional media sure isn't any help there...
--
Benjamin Coates
I'm worried about the people that think themselves underemployed, which appears to mean that they believe themselves superior to other people and that labor and retail sales are beneath them.
(from the article)
"Here I am throwing mail with an MBA. I was totally embarrassed. I'm just grateful that my daughter is still too young to understand how tough this is for me."
I mean, look at that attitude problem. I wonder how he treats his coworkers, since he appears to believe his job is only appropriate for sub-humans.
Don't get me wrong, I know it sucks to not be doing what you want to do, but there is more than that here... I get the feeling that if these people didn't let their job descriptions and salaries define their worth as a human being, they'd be happer with what life throws their way and better prepared to make the most of it.
But then, I have a job, and pretty much the one I want at that, so the above is easy for me to say...
--
Benjamin Coates