Re:What the internet needs is less stupid people
on
Search Engine Payola
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· Score: 1
I'm really not sure if you're agreeing with me or not. *grin*
Either way, you raise some very good points, and I agree the REAL solution is that people need to THINK. My major issue is with people who say "Well, I can think, but we should enact laws to protect those who don't."
I don't have a problem protecting those who CAN'T protect themselves, but I refuse to protect those who CAN and simply DON'T.
How many times do businesses say "we did nothing illegal" to justify unethical behaviour that they just happened to try and hide from everyone?
The problem with trying to regulate and legislate everything is when does it stop?
You can't legislate morality and ethics (though it's often tried).
To me, the search engine can be compared to a random "Information Stand" put up on a corner somewhere. You learn which ones give good information and which don't, and avoid the ones that don't. We don't need laws that say "You can't set up an information stand unless you agree to these conditions on what 'good' information is". If you hit the bad one, and take their advice without crosschecking it (or asking your friends/associates which ones they use), well... it's your own damn fault.
So a tobacco company could load a search engine with links to "reports" about how there is no proof that smoke is bad for your lungs.
Absolutely. If you want to go after someone for publishing bad information, fine... that's a different argument.
A car company could buy up enough ad space through fake companies so that reports on how its SUV tips over at 10 MPH are buried in the "search results."
And you, as the customer
The customer? What have I paid? I've simply accessed a server and asked it for information. Where is it written that there is an expectation that that information is absolutely reliable and untainted? Unless the provider of the search engine has explicitly stated that their results are untainted and reliable, they should be suspect - the almighty Google included.
I'm not saying that every kind of enforcement is possible, but that at least if a society requires businesses to behave honestly, they protect society's right to penalize a dishonestly run business when they catch one.
I agree with this so strongly it hurts. However, I suspect you and i have different ideas of how a society ought to punish said business. In cases like this, you punish that business by withholding your business from them, their sponsors, and anyone else you care to rope into their side of the field. It's not about passing laws, it's about social and economic pressure that encourages companies to do "the right thing".
I don't agree with the actions of these search engines, but I certainly don't wish them be made criminal. We have enough laws that we don't enforce as it is. Laws preventing this would be unenforcable anyway, since you'll never get every little country with Net access to agree (and you'll just be generating a co-location industry for them in process).
Re:public utility vs private company
on
Search Engine Payola
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· Score: 3, Insightful
and we also need enforcable laws which name the conditions under which you can call your service a "search engine."
That's what we need! More laws!
Laws passed where? Your local city council? County legislation? State? Federal? Global? Enforcable how?
We don't need laws. We don't need regulations. We don't need to chase down unscrupulous "search engine" providers who muck with their results to prefer their sponsors.
The 'Net is a funny thing... since it's SO easy to get from one search engine to another (as opposed to say, only being able to buy milk at the one supermarket in town), people will naturally migrate towards the one that suits them best. That might be something like Google that tends NOT to preference their sponsors, or something like Yahoo that does. But we certainly don't need laws to "protect" the surfing public.
Yeah, right. And I'm not a Microsoft fan by any means, but I do own a Windows box. Same thing. Hypocrites like you just sicken me.
And anonymous cowards like you sicken me. If you feel the need to attack me, at least log in.
That said, I'll take obvious bait and respond.
Not being a Microsoft fan does not make me their supporter nor enemy. I choose the best solution for the job. For my desktop, that's OSX. For my wife's desktop, that's OS9. For my servers, that's Linux. And... for a game console, that's the XBox IMHO.
It doesn't matter what's inside. The Dreamcast isn't a PC, but you can run Linux on it. The hardware may resemble, and in fact may in cases be used like, a PC... but it's not sold as a PC, it's usage is not like a PC, and it's therefore NOT A PC. It's a game console. You can hack it to do whatever you want, but it's still a game console.
The XBOX is a game *console*. It's perfectly reasonable to maintain a closed standard. What MS is trying to do is make sure they get their licensing fees from "official" peripheral manufacturers, instead of having their profits dried up by cheap Taiwanese knockoffs.
When another company does things to try and protect their market share, it's reasonable. When Microsoft does it, it's inherently evil. Remember, Microsoft does *NOT* have a monopoly on the console market, and has to claw it's way into contention.
I'm not a Microsoft fan by any means (MacOS, MacOS X, and Linux all run my household servers/desktops), but I do own an XBox.
I believe the "duh" was in reference to "The outcome will only affect Pennsylvania but the issues at hand may eventually reach the US Supreme Court."
Since both sides have such an important stake, it's likely that the loser will appeal it to the US Supreme Court. It will also affect other states even if it doesn't reach the US Supreme Court, since other states and entities will use (at least in part) the findings of Pennsylvania to support their own cases.
I run a small mail server, mostly providing mailing lists to the automotive community. While my lists weren't affected (I have reasonable anti-spam rules in place), a server in Taiwan was spamming every address it could find in my domain with dozens of unique spam per day.
The usual ip tracing ensued and I tracked it back to a small ISP. Hoping that I would reach someone who spoke (or wrote) English, I sent a copy of my logs and an explanation to "postmaster@", "abuse@", "webmaster@", and any other address I could think of. Amazingly enough, after about 12 hours, I received a reply (in somewhat broken English) asking for more logs, and a confirmation of the time zone I was using in my logs (UTC, for what it's worth). After I replied, I received an appology that one of their "clients" had bothered me and assured me it would be taken care of.
To this date, I have not received another piece of spam that I have attributed to that ISP. I realize that this is the exception and not the rule, but I thought it was worth noting that there really are reasonable sysadmins "over there".
How is this product any different than any other product released? Sure, they're the first ones sold, but... they're still just a product being sold by a company. You get whatever warranty is granted to you by the company (or otherwise mandated by law), and the same with liability. The company will be liable according to the laws and regulations in the place where they're sold.
Sure it'll work. I'm just look at Adobe - you can protect PDF documents from being copied, printed, used in other applications... er... wait a minute. Nevermind.
Yes, I know the Federal Register is printed on high-acid toilet paper. I am assuming they print one good copy on rag bond. I could be wrong about that.
You just proved *my* point.
There's nothing that says that a given document must exist in only one medium. For longevity's sake, sure use whatever kind of archival grade paper is appropriate, heck chisel it into stone tablets for all I care. The issue here is not about how to best preserve this document for the next 300 years, but how to most effectively distribute it to a large number of locations.
Sure, you and I have computers. So does over half of the population of the U.S. That leaves a lot of people however who don't have access to the medium, thereby depriving them of important governmental information. So, I imagine that anything they "publish" also has to be in dead-tree print.
But is the government going to send these huge paper copies out to these computerless individuals? No, of course not. These documents will be available for review in public places - courthouses, public libraries, etc. Since these facilities already have computers (mostly, anyway) persons unable to view the CDROMs would only have to pop down to their local public library and browse the ones provided to them there. It's the same trip they'd have made for the paper copies, too.
Because that's not what the the law says to do. The issue needs not to be "We don't want to follow the law because it costs too much and we shouldn't have to", but "We think this law in it's present form is not in the best interest of the American people, so let's start the ball rolling to change it."
IANAL, but it shouldn't take much more than a federal judge issuing an order allowing the DELAY of publication while the legal issues of the method is resolved.
No, I get it. The point I was making (in a roundabout way) was that if you're going to make an argument, at least do it clearly and not muddy the waters will irrelevant data.
Of course, I don't think the point of the CopyCat project was to develop a revolutionary method of cat production.
Precisely. If you're going to question the morals of cloning in general, fine, argue that... but arguing that it's bad BECAUSE that species is already plentiful is just plain silly.
People who would clone their cat rather than adopt another one disgust me. According the article, the new cat probably won't look the same anyway! And whether it will behave the same is also questionable. So in other words, it is both unethical and pointless to clone your cat.
Let me get this straight... Your summary suggests that the ethical considerations involved here have to do with the availability of other cats, not anything to do with the actual cloning process. That said, do you support human cloning since the pool of adoptable babies is so small?
What we consider a Right to Privacy stands in incredibly shaky ground, made all the more shaky by the many people who assume it's more well-grounded than it actually is. I would love to see an actual Constitutional Right to Privacy, which exactly what that means spelled out in detail, but it of course will never happen.
As pointed out by many others, the rights not explicitly enumerated as being forfeit are retained by the people.
Adding these specific *inclusions* only serves to reinforce the mistaken assumption that unless explicity protected, rights are somehow not protected. Quite the opposite is true. Unless explicitly forfeit, all rights are protected.
Well, at least until you change the way our government is structured, a Supreme Court interpretation *IS* the Constitution. Case law, the use of previous courts findings in support of your own, is a cornerstone of our legal system. The Supreme Court by it's very nature is the FINAL authority on the interpretation of our laws. Of course, the PEOPLE are the final authority on what laws are passed (or repealed), and what portions of the Constitution are amended, but while a law or regulation exists, the Supreme Court defines and clarifies the parameters of our law.
Argue the concept of a "living Constitution" all you want, but until you change the way we're structured, you can't cry foul at it's implementation.
Take a look at Griswold vs. Connecticut, as resolved by the Supreme Court in 1965. The Court ruled that the fourth amendment, as combined with several other factors, does in fact guarantee a basic right to privacy.
As I have stressed to others in other threads, PLEASE do some research before deciding what rights you do or do not posses. How can you defend your rights if you don't even know what they are?
in fact, it's quite legal but increasingly repugnant to the citizenry who wants fair elections in the future.
Fair enough.
However, if a convict cannot vote, perhaps it is time to say that a convicted monopolist corporation cannot contribute money for some term.
I have no problem with enacting legislation which allows just this kind of punishment. It's not likely to happen (until the soft money system is overhauled and dries up), but it's a good idea.
My main argument to most of these comments is that the attitude seems to be "Microsoft is bad, therefore anything they do that I don't like is probably illegal, so let's hang them out to dry without a trial".
As I've said elsewhere, I'm not anywhere near a Microsoft supporter. I no longer own any hardware running Microsoft products. That said, I don't jump on the bandwagon mentioned above.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm really not sure if you're agreeing with me or not. *grin*
Either way, you raise some very good points, and I agree the REAL solution is that people need to THINK. My major issue is with people who say "Well, I can think, but we should enact laws to protect those who don't."
I don't have a problem protecting those who CAN'T protect themselves, but I refuse to protect those who CAN and simply DON'T.
The problem with trying to regulate and legislate everything is when does it stop?
You can't legislate morality and ethics (though it's often tried).
To me, the search engine can be compared to a random "Information Stand" put up on a corner somewhere. You learn which ones give good information and which don't, and avoid the ones that don't. We don't need laws that say "You can't set up an information stand unless you agree to these conditions on what 'good' information is". If you hit the bad one, and take their advice without crosschecking it (or asking your friends/associates which ones they use), well... it's your own damn fault.
Absolutely. If you want to go after someone for publishing bad information, fine... that's a different argument.
The customer? What have I paid? I've simply accessed a server and asked it for information. Where is it written that there is an expectation that that information is absolutely reliable and untainted? Unless the provider of the search engine has explicitly stated that their results are untainted and reliable, they should be suspect - the almighty Google included.
I agree with this so strongly it hurts. However, I suspect you and i have different ideas of how a society ought to punish said business. In cases like this, you punish that business by withholding your business from them, their sponsors, and anyone else you care to rope into their side of the field. It's not about passing laws, it's about social and economic pressure that encourages companies to do "the right thing".
I don't agree with the actions of these search engines, but I certainly don't wish them be made criminal. We have enough laws that we don't enforce as it is. Laws preventing this would be unenforcable anyway, since you'll never get every little country with Net access to agree (and you'll just be generating a co-location industry for them in process).
That's what we need! More laws!
Laws passed where? Your local city council? County legislation? State? Federal? Global? Enforcable how?
We don't need laws. We don't need regulations. We don't need to chase down unscrupulous "search engine" providers who muck with their results to prefer their sponsors.
The 'Net is a funny thing... since it's SO easy to get from one search engine to another (as opposed to say, only being able to buy milk at the one supermarket in town), people will naturally migrate towards the one that suits them best. That might be something like Google that tends NOT to preference their sponsors, or something like Yahoo that does. But we certainly don't need laws to "protect" the surfing public.
Caveat emptor.
Does this mean it'll be bringing quality Sweedish-made products at bargain prices?
And anonymous cowards like you sicken me. If you feel the need to attack me, at least log in.
That said, I'll take obvious bait and respond.
Not being a Microsoft fan does not make me their supporter nor enemy. I choose the best solution for the job. For my desktop, that's OSX. For my wife's desktop, that's OS9. For my servers, that's Linux. And... for a game console, that's the XBox IMHO.
Go away, little man.
It doesn't matter what's inside. The Dreamcast isn't a PC, but you can run Linux on it. The hardware may resemble, and in fact may in cases be used like, a PC... but it's not sold as a PC, it's usage is not like a PC, and it's therefore NOT A PC. It's a game console. You can hack it to do whatever you want, but it's still a game console.
The XBOX is a game *console*. It's perfectly reasonable to maintain a closed standard. What MS is trying to do is make sure they get their licensing fees from "official" peripheral manufacturers, instead of having their profits dried up by cheap Taiwanese knockoffs.
When another company does things to try and protect their market share, it's reasonable. When Microsoft does it, it's inherently evil. Remember, Microsoft does *NOT* have a monopoly on the console market, and has to claw it's way into contention.
I'm not a Microsoft fan by any means (MacOS, MacOS X, and Linux all run my household servers/desktops), but I do own an XBox.
I believe the "duh" was in reference to "The outcome will only affect Pennsylvania but the issues at hand may eventually reach the US Supreme Court."
Since both sides have such an important stake, it's likely that the loser will appeal it to the US Supreme Court. It will also affect other states even if it doesn't reach the US Supreme Court, since other states and entities will use (at least in part) the findings of Pennsylvania to support their own cases.
I run a small mail server, mostly providing mailing lists to the automotive community. While my lists weren't affected (I have reasonable anti-spam rules in place), a server in Taiwan was spamming every address it could find in my domain with dozens of unique spam per day.
The usual ip tracing ensued and I tracked it back to a small ISP. Hoping that I would reach someone who spoke (or wrote) English, I sent a copy of my logs and an explanation to "postmaster@", "abuse@", "webmaster@", and any other address I could think of. Amazingly enough, after about 12 hours, I received a reply (in somewhat broken English) asking for more logs, and a confirmation of the time zone I was using in my logs (UTC, for what it's worth). After I replied, I received an appology that one of their "clients" had bothered me and assured me it would be taken care of.
To this date, I have not received another piece of spam that I have attributed to that ISP. I realize that this is the exception and not the rule, but I thought it was worth noting that there really are reasonable sysadmins "over there".
So if I come to your house and steal your TV, then take it home... I'm 9/10 of the way to owning it since I now have possesion?
While that statement might have SOME merit in SOME circumstances, it's certainly not absolutely blanket as you suggest.
How is this product any different than any other product released? Sure, they're the first ones sold, but... they're still just a product being sold by a company. You get whatever warranty is granted to you by the company (or otherwise mandated by law), and the same with liability. The company will be liable according to the laws and regulations in the place where they're sold.
Sure it'll work. I'm just look at Adobe - you can protect PDF documents from being copied, printed, used in other applications... er... wait a minute. Nevermind.
three ships. We put all the laborers on one, all the intellectuals on another, and...
(If you don't get it, don't moderate it)
You just proved *my* point.
There's nothing that says that a given document must exist in only one medium. For longevity's sake, sure use whatever kind of archival grade paper is appropriate, heck chisel it into stone tablets for all I care. The issue here is not about how to best preserve this document for the next 300 years, but how to most effectively distribute it to a large number of locations.
But is the government going to send these huge paper copies out to these computerless individuals? No, of course not. These documents will be available for review in public places - courthouses, public libraries, etc. Since these facilities already have computers (mostly, anyway) persons unable to view the CDROMs would only have to pop down to their local public library and browse the ones provided to them there. It's the same trip they'd have made for the paper copies, too.
Because that's not what the the law says to do. The issue needs not to be "We don't want to follow the law because it costs too much and we shouldn't have to", but "We think this law in it's present form is not in the best interest of the American people, so let's start the ball rolling to change it."
IANAL, but it shouldn't take much more than a federal judge issuing an order allowing the DELAY of publication while the legal issues of the method is resolved.
No, I get it. The point I was making (in a roundabout way) was that if you're going to make an argument, at least do it clearly and not muddy the waters will irrelevant data.
Precisely. If you're going to question the morals of cloning in general, fine, argue that... but arguing that it's bad BECAUSE that species is already plentiful is just plain silly.
Let me get this straight... Your summary suggests that the ethical considerations involved here have to do with the availability of other cats, not anything to do with the actual cloning process. That said, do you support human cloning since the pool of adoptable babies is so small?
That's a new one, at least.
As pointed out by many others, the rights not explicitly enumerated as being forfeit are retained by the people.
Adding these specific *inclusions* only serves to reinforce the mistaken assumption that unless explicity protected, rights are somehow not protected. Quite the opposite is true. Unless explicitly forfeit, all rights are protected.
Precisely my point. Well spoken.
01234567890123456789012345678900123456789012345
Well, at least until you change the way our government is structured, a Supreme Court interpretation *IS* the Constitution. Case law, the use of previous courts findings in support of your own, is a cornerstone of our legal system. The Supreme Court by it's very nature is the FINAL authority on the interpretation of our laws. Of course, the PEOPLE are the final authority on what laws are passed (or repealed), and what portions of the Constitution are amended, but while a law or regulation exists, the Supreme Court defines and clarifies the parameters of our law.
Argue the concept of a "living Constitution" all you want, but until you change the way we're structured, you can't cry foul at it's implementation.
Take a look at Griswold vs. Connecticut, as resolved by the Supreme Court in 1965. The Court ruled that the fourth amendment, as combined with several other factors, does in fact guarantee a basic right to privacy.
As I have stressed to others in other threads, PLEASE do some research before deciding what rights you do or do not posses. How can you defend your rights if you don't even know what they are?
The world existed before that verdict. So did Microsoft's contributions. Remember?
Fair enough.
I have no problem with enacting legislation which allows just this kind of punishment. It's not likely to happen (until the soft money system is overhauled and dries up), but it's a good idea.
My main argument to most of these comments is that the attitude seems to be "Microsoft is bad, therefore anything they do that I don't like is probably illegal, so let's hang them out to dry without a trial".
As I've said elsewhere, I'm not anywhere near a Microsoft supporter. I no longer own any hardware running Microsoft products. That said, I don't jump on the bandwagon mentioned above.