Pure capitalism will ALWAYS collapse to a static state. Pure capitalism is not democratic. It's facist. This is not in the best interests of the people - it's in the best interests of whoever is lucky enough to get on top. This is why we regulate capitalism, with varying degrees of success. Okay, sure, Bill and MS managed to make a very successfull buisness. They deserve some sort of reward for that. They have SHITLOADS of money - do they deserve to be able to keep on making shitloads of money, forever, or at some point to we reign them back, tell them they had thier ride, and it's someone elses turn now?
Remember: it's okay to have a monopoly. It's not okay to use that power to keep anyone from ever competing with you.
Nice touch with the red-baiting, by the way, but you should remember that alot of the people reading slashdot these days don't have the Bid Red Russia image that we used to. You should have related it to terrorism somehow, instead.
Lets say you own a company. Given the option, would you rather a) be able to make money by recycling the same product, with no real incentive to issue bugfixes or otherwise respond to customer satisfaction, because there's no competition, or b) keep your company lean and mean, because you've got alot of competition out there that will eat you the second you fall behind the curve?
Re:Deux Ex "Special Limited Edition"
on
Worst Buy
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· Score: 2
They do this at EB, too - there's a rack of demo games, generally for a couple bucks each. However, they aren't clearly labeled as demos, I had to ask a sales rep what they were and why they were so cheap.
Having worked in retail, this actually sounds ALOT like someone who came into the store, got refused the price, and then proceeded to be really loud and annoying, probably refusing to leave, until the manager called the police. People who do this often throw down any sort of minority card they can. It's possible this is a genuine case of discrimination, of course, but purely from the quotes in the article it sounds more like an annoying, abrasive, disruptive customer.
I placed an order for one via the website, and got an email saying they had canceled the order, a coupon for a discount on future orders, and no money changed hands - since it was a preorder, they don't charge until they ship. I'm not sure of the policy with physical stores, but if any of them allowed people to PAY in advance, at the listed price, I'd say they're pooched.
BTW- the way this bill is written, it looks like it condones sending sexual advertisement emails to minors, so long as they are properly marked.In bed.
The Flash Gordon moguls are sterotypical "evil asians" as popularized in the pulp media of the time, which was during WW2 (Japanese, but looking more Chinese, because nobody could be bothered to tell the difference between different types of asians). So if they're based on the Flash Gordon ones, then they're... second-hand racist? I suppose. I also fail to see how anyone can fail to see the (intentional) racism in the Flash Gordon, and, for that matter, most of the entertainment of the time.
I've had the same sort of problems with all creative prodcuts, although my SB live value gave me the least trouble - but when I could no longer get driver updates without paying 10 bucks for a CD with thier stupid app on it, I gave up and got a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz instead - it's great.
Well, there's mandatory and then theres "mandatory". Kinda like social security numbers. Legally, you aren't obligated to give that to anyone but the IRS, and then only for tax purposes. But just TRY and go through life without giving it out to anyone else - it's possible, but it's a serious pain in the ass.
Also - when we (well, I) talk about privacy from the government, it's not that I don't want the data existing - I simply don't want anyone (except me) to have trivial access to it, and I want to be able to see it and know who knows what about me. Currently, your own personal information is protected as IP by the companies who "own" it - essentially, YOU don't get privacy, but they do. Thats wrong, and the UK laws on this make alot more sense.
I agree with most of your points, but, honestly, I'm alot more likely to buy a program that I find useful if I actually sit and use it and make it part of my routine - something I won't do with a feature limited demo, or a demo with a very short time limit. Most of the software I use on a regular basis I used for months before I finally decided to pay for it, and the stuff I used for a couple weeks and then ditched is the stuff with the annoying nag screens, limited features, etc.
Interesting - absent work and other outside influences, I also gravitate toward being nocturnal. And it's _HARD_ for me to get up in the morning after 8 hours, whereas if I go to sleep around 4 am and sleep till 10, I'm refreshed and alert. I had no idea this was actually studied and classified - do you have any links where I can find out more about this sort of thing?
In a momentary fitof insanity,I installed windows XP last night and noticed that one of the options when you install IIS is the "Terminal Services ActiveX demo website" which apparently uses and ActiveX control to give full access to your machine to anyone viewing your sample website. I thought about this for a while and decided it might be cool, given appropriate security precautions on the site.
There are a number of apps that pre-compile to bytecode and then feed that to the intepeter. This removes one of the compile steps (code can be compiled and executed on the fly in perl, and you won't see any gain if you try to do stuff like that). I believe this is what perl2exe does - it bundles the inteperter and the perl bytecode, but not the full compiler.
Rights aren't something that people can give you. That's a privledge. I have the right to do whatever I want with my internet connection, any limiting of that is a limitation on my rights. Some of those limitations may be reasonable limitations in the interests of providing QoS to everyone. I don't mind those. Others may be limits so that the ISP makes more money off me. That I mind, especially when they insult my intelligence by pretending that it's MY fault that thier buisness model was wrong.
Appropriate response: "Due to changes in the Internet market place, we are no longer able to offer unlimited service, and we will now be throttling connections over (X) GB per month. If you choose, you may sign up for our advanced user plan..." blah blah blah. I'll be annoyed, because I like free stuff, but I'll understand and I'll deal.
Poor response: "Our users are stealing from us by using too much bandwidth, even though we sold it to them, so we will be blocking ports that some of the applications that might use lots of bandwidth might be using."
I'm about to giveyou instructions on how to commit a crime in Germany:
Paint Swastikas in all the windows of your house.
There you go, simple as that. If I cared more, I could even post you links where you can buy paint and stencils. This is as much "information to allow you commit a crime" as publishing information on how to destroy railroad tracks is.
It's morally bankrupt to make broad laws with the promise that you'll only use them "on the bad people" anyway. You should ALWAYS judge a law by the extreme case to which it could apply, not the medium case which it's being touted as a solution for.
How about because, while thats a valid philosophy, it reflects neither reality nor the philosophy commonly subscribed to in America?
When you buy something, you own it. This is true of movies as well - when you buy a ticket, you aren't buying the concert. You're buying a "something", which you may then do whatever you want to. One of the things you do with it is exchange it for a service (watching the movie). You could also give or sell it to someone else, and they can recieve the service instead (yes, I know scalping is restricted, but the essence remains the same).
Now, when you sell me a book, I OWN that book. You've transfered the property rights to me. I can do whatever I want with it, including sell it. The same applies to video games, video tapes, anything. The content industries don't like this because a service-based model is MUCH more profitable. In fact, NOBODY likes anyone owning things, because it's always more profitable to lease them to people, as we are moving more and more toward that model. Thankfully, people in America tend to be very possessive about property rights and it's not likely we'll be moving to this model for physical objects very soon.
If you like paying for things you don't own, thats great, and have fun with it. I hope you also never move and sell your house, and that garage space for all your cars doesn't get too expensive.
Re:Fear is the mind-killer
on
e-Denounce
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· Score: 2
If something wants me to worship it, it better have a damn good reason. The parable of the man on the roof is as good of evidence for the non existence of God, the existence of Buddha, or the existence of Bob as it anything else. In fact, what it more or less teaches is that you should do things for yourself and not rely upon supernatural intervention - essentially that even if God exists, he's not relevant.
Personally, my viewpoint is that even if the Christian god does exist, I wouldn't worship Him - read the bible. I don't put up with that kind of game-playing crap from people, I won't put up with it from a God.
Thinking about this a bit, I suspect that there is such a clause in the filming permit - it's not neccesarily intended to protect advertising, but, guessing by the working in the suit, it probably says that you must accurately depict the cityscape of Time Square - which Sony is taking to cover thier billboards.
Your ability to make those judgments about trust, and to change them if circumstances warrant, is what's at stake here. what if those conspiracy theories about Symantec engineers writing viruses in order to promote their own products are true? You'd want to be able to re-evaluate who you trust, right?
Here's something to keep in mind. You know how whenever an article comes up about unethical behavior by a corporation, someone always brings up the fudiciary responsibility thing? About how companies HAVE to make money, and they can be held liable if they don't do everything in their power to make money? Are you sure you want a company like that in charge of, well, anything? (Come to think of it, doesn't this mean if Symantec ISN'T driving sales of Norton AV by releasing viruses, they should be?)
Because it's difficult or impossible to define what exactly is "dangerous" speech. In fact, as soon as you start outlawing speech because it's "dangerous" rather than actually harmfull (and even that is hard to define) you quickly get into definitions of "dangerous" that include "works against the status quo".
For example, look at Napster - I dispute your argument that people wouldn't have broken those copyright laws anyway - how many people make copies of tapes for thier friends? It's simply that Napster allowed it on a SCALE that hadn't been seen before. And I'm somewhat of the argument that if the majority of people, when given the opportunity to break a law, would do so then we need to re-think the law. Especially when the result of breaking the law causes no direct harm to anyone.
However, rather than considering that we might want to re-think copyright law, into something more compatibile with modern technology, instead they simply drop even heavier bombs and try to legislate it out of existence.
This attitude toward speech is like the Victorian attitude toward sex - if you keep it in the dark where nobody can see it, we can all pretend it doesn't exist - but it still does. Keeping it in the open means that everyone knows it's there, and we can all talk about it. Yes, some people will abuse it - but I'd rather get hit by something I know about and can prepare for, than something which is kept secret and underground and that I don't even know about.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it's handy to have that tree view. That said, I use command line for 90% of my FTP needs. The other 10% I use EliteFTP (nagware, no ads).
Remember: it's okay to have a monopoly. It's not okay to use that power to keep anyone from ever competing with you.
Nice touch with the red-baiting, by the way, but you should remember that alot of the people reading slashdot these days don't have the Bid Red Russia image that we used to. You should have related it to terrorism somehow, instead.
They do this at EB, too - there's a rack of demo games, generally for a couple bucks each. However, they aren't clearly labeled as demos, I had to ask a sales rep what they were and why they were so cheap.
Having worked in retail, this actually sounds ALOT like someone who came into the store, got refused the price, and then proceeded to be really loud and annoying, probably refusing to leave, until the manager called the police. People who do this often throw down any sort of minority card they can. It's possible this is a genuine case of discrimination, of course, but purely from the quotes in the article it sounds more like an annoying, abrasive, disruptive customer.
I placed an order for one via the website, and got an email saying they had canceled the order, a coupon for a discount on future orders, and no money changed hands - since it was a preorder, they don't charge until they ship. I'm not sure of the policy with physical stores, but if any of them allowed people to PAY in advance, at the listed price, I'd say they're pooched.
BTW- the way this bill is written, it looks like it condones sending sexual advertisement emails to minors, so long as they are properly marked. In bed.
The Flash Gordon moguls are sterotypical "evil asians" as popularized in the pulp media of the time, which was during WW2 (Japanese, but looking more Chinese, because nobody could be bothered to tell the difference between different types of asians). So if they're based on the Flash Gordon ones, then they're ... second-hand racist? I suppose. I also fail to see how anyone can fail to see the (intentional) racism in the Flash Gordon, and, for that matter, most of the entertainment of the time.
I've had the same sort of problems with all creative prodcuts, although my SB live value gave me the least trouble - but when I could no longer get driver updates without paying 10 bucks for a CD with thier stupid app on it, I gave up and got a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz instead - it's great.
Also - when we (well, I) talk about privacy from the government, it's not that I don't want the data existing - I simply don't want anyone (except me) to have trivial access to it, and I want to be able to see it and know who knows what about me. Currently, your own personal information is protected as IP by the companies who "own" it - essentially, YOU don't get privacy, but they do. Thats wrong, and the UK laws on this make alot more sense.
I agree with most of your points, but, honestly, I'm alot more likely to buy a program that I find useful if I actually sit and use it and make it part of my routine - something I won't do with a feature limited demo, or a demo with a very short time limit. Most of the software I use on a regular basis I used for months before I finally decided to pay for it, and the stuff I used for a couple weeks and then ditched is the stuff with the annoying nag screens, limited features, etc.
Interesting - absent work and other outside influences, I also gravitate toward being nocturnal. And it's _HARD_ for me to get up in the morning after 8 hours, whereas if I go to sleep around 4 am and sleep till 10, I'm refreshed and alert. I had no idea this was actually studied and classified - do you have any links where I can find out more about this sort of thing?
I thought it was olive trees
In a momentary fitof insanity ,I installed windows XP last night and noticed that one of the options when you install IIS is the "Terminal Services ActiveX demo website" which apparently uses and ActiveX control to give full access to your machine to anyone viewing your sample website. I thought about this for a while and decided it might be cool, given appropriate security precautions on the site.
There are a number of apps that pre-compile to bytecode and then feed that to the intepeter. This removes one of the compile steps (code can be compiled and executed on the fly in perl, and you won't see any gain if you try to do stuff like that). I believe this is what perl2exe does - it bundles the inteperter and the perl bytecode, but not the full compiler.
Olives come from grapes?
Appropriate response: "Due to changes in the Internet market place, we are no longer able to offer unlimited service, and we will now be throttling connections over (X) GB per month. If you choose, you may sign up for our advanced user plan..." blah blah blah. I'll be annoyed, because I like free stuff, but I'll understand and I'll deal.
Poor response: "Our users are stealing from us by using too much bandwidth, even though we sold it to them, so we will be blocking ports that some of the applications that might use lots of bandwidth might be using."
Paint Swastikas in all the windows of your house.
There you go, simple as that. If I cared more, I could even post you links where you can buy paint and stencils. This is as much "information to allow you commit a crime" as publishing information on how to destroy railroad tracks is.
It's morally bankrupt to make broad laws with the promise that you'll only use them "on the bad people" anyway. You should ALWAYS judge a law by the extreme case to which it could apply, not the medium case which it's being touted as a solution for.
Windows supports the encoding of URLs into AVI files in metadata somewhere (WMP files as well, of course). It's a media player "feature".
When you buy something, you own it. This is true of movies as well - when you buy a ticket, you aren't buying the concert. You're buying a "something", which you may then do whatever you want to. One of the things you do with it is exchange it for a service (watching the movie). You could also give or sell it to someone else, and they can recieve the service instead (yes, I know scalping is restricted, but the essence remains the same).
Now, when you sell me a book, I OWN that book. You've transfered the property rights to me. I can do whatever I want with it, including sell it. The same applies to video games, video tapes, anything. The content industries don't like this because a service-based model is MUCH more profitable. In fact, NOBODY likes anyone owning things, because it's always more profitable to lease them to people, as we are moving more and more toward that model. Thankfully, people in America tend to be very possessive about property rights and it's not likely we'll be moving to this model for physical objects very soon.
If you like paying for things you don't own, thats great, and have fun with it. I hope you also never move and sell your house, and that garage space for all your cars doesn't get too expensive.
Personally, my viewpoint is that even if the Christian god does exist, I wouldn't worship Him - read the bible. I don't put up with that kind of game-playing crap from people, I won't put up with it from a God.
Thinking about this a bit, I suspect that there is such a clause in the filming permit - it's not neccesarily intended to protect advertising, but, guessing by the working in the suit, it probably says that you must accurately depict the cityscape of Time Square - which Sony is taking to cover thier billboards.
Here's something to keep in mind. You know how whenever an article comes up about unethical behavior by a corporation, someone always brings up the fudiciary responsibility thing? About how companies HAVE to make money, and they can be held liable if they don't do everything in their power to make money? Are you sure you want a company like that in charge of, well, anything? (Come to think of it, doesn't this mean if Symantec ISN'T driving sales of Norton AV by releasing viruses, they should be?)
For example, look at Napster - I dispute your argument that people wouldn't have broken those copyright laws anyway - how many people make copies of tapes for thier friends? It's simply that Napster allowed it on a SCALE that hadn't been seen before. And I'm somewhat of the argument that if the majority of people, when given the opportunity to break a law, would do so then we need to re-think the law. Especially when the result of breaking the law causes no direct harm to anyone.
However, rather than considering that we might want to re-think copyright law, into something more compatibile with modern technology, instead they simply drop even heavier bombs and try to legislate it out of existence.
This attitude toward speech is like the Victorian attitude toward sex - if you keep it in the dark where nobody can see it, we can all pretend it doesn't exist - but it still does. Keeping it in the open means that everyone knows it's there, and we can all talk about it. Yes, some people will abuse it - but I'd rather get hit by something I know about and can prepare for, than something which is kept secret and underground and that I don't even know about.