Where do you stop? Money forces bands into business, instead of just playing music for the enjoyment of all. Piracy is a tiny issue compared to the fundamentally warped priorities that the need for money forces musicians to adopt.
But the fact is that, in spite of these unreasonable constraints imposed on musicians (after all they aren't trained in or care about business for its own sake), some bands manage to survive and make enough money to play music. And that is worth celebrating.
Tha't ridiculously defeatist. The answer is laws, pure and simple. Recording peple without their knowledge *over the phone* is already illegal in most of the world. It would be trivial to extend such laws to the case of being filmed without consent as well. All we need is the will to do it, ie elect politicians with a spine, or at least a fear for their own privacy.
And before you say it, if people are willing to break the law to secretly film others, that will happen too. And I'm ok with that. Crime and punishment etc.
Being capable is not the point. Until they do, precarity is a fact of life, as is the fact that statistically most don't. So a postdoc's problems aren't anomalous, which is all I was intending to say.
Meh, those sorts of considerations are normal for most people who don't have much of an education. Precarious employment prospects aren't limited to postdocs, and they're not harder on postdocs than on others. In fact, a postdoc knows if he gets tired of this, he can "sell out" to industry and get a pretty cushy, albeit boring and pointless, job. Whereas people with a low standard of eduction know that there's absolutely nothing they can do about their own dismal prospects.
Business practice depends upon the power balance that exists. In a world where power balance isn't enforced, you get unfair contracts which both sides accept as normal. For example, in feudal societies there is a hierarchy which allows one side to renege an agreement while the other is punished for it.
You might say that our current societies are much more egalitarian, but that is a reflection of the state's will to enforce such egalitarianism, and is to some extent a historical anomaly. In places where the power of the state is weak, the vacuum is filled by warlords, and the interpretation of agreements is often ad-hoc, to the advantage of whomever is currently in the lord's favour.
That's right, when the bad guys know what people are up to, they have a head start in fucking them over. Viewed this way, perhaps the price you talk about is not too steep at all.
What most people don't understand about privacy is that your privacy is affected by the actions of others, especially if they like to do things out in the open for all to see and record.
Now that we know the nature and value of this particular transaction, it can be used as an anchor to help identify and trace other more questionable transactions by others. It's like a sudoku puzzle. There are many events in the life of bitcoin that are effectively known, and so the problem of identifying some other unknown events becomes much easier.
You can bet the NSA, and other similar agencies, have a list of all such known anchorpoints, to help the massive surveillance of bitcoin that they do already.
It is morally wrong because it requires intervention to prevent two parties
from engaging in what both deem is a mutually-beneficial contract.
This is patent nonsense, once you understand that a "mutually beneficial contract" is a fiction that already needs intervention to enforce. Contracts are pieces of paper with no value. They only have meaning and value because some government intervenes by deploying police with guns, and books with laws written in them, to prevent two parties from treating contracts as meaningless, which is what they naturally are in the absence of said enforcement.
There's no moral difference between a government that enforces contracts, and one that enforces a pay scale ratio, or any of a miriad other things.
Thing is, they don't need to wait until someone kills Bernanke to have a great propaganda tool against any cause. They can and will crank up the propaganda when it pleases them, all that's required is repetition, repetition, repetition throughout the media.
So by all means refrain from fighting back on anything if you like, it's a great way to stroke your ego thinking you're so important that you can give them a propaganda opportunity they *need*, and would *never* have had if *you* hadn't stood up for your principles.
Me, I do what I like. If I get fed up enough, I act accordingly. That's what men have done for centuries.
I think you're wrong. You're treating this as if each bitcoin being mined costs a fixed amount of resources to produce, so if I make you waste your resources on a single bitcoin that you won't be getting, then your losses would be bounded.
But each successive bitcoin takes more and more effort to produce. Suppose the next bitcoin takes 1 year to produce. Right before the year is up, you lose all the work you put in. That's a whole year's worth of resources. And when you start work all over again, the next one takes 2 years to produce. But meanwhile, the other guys have had 1 year head start on your bitcoin, so they'll have it mined when you're only half way there. And they'll make sure you waste the effort on that one, too. You might never mine another bitcoin (successfully) again.
"Nobody else was
really stepping up to the plate to help. If you never contributed anything to
it, you can't complain when something like this happens."
Actually, that raises the question why was it being put out there as
open source in the first place? If you're only putting out an open
source product _because_ you expect others to contribute, then your
priorities are fucked up.
You should put it out there because it might be genuinely useful to others. Don't pollute the open source world with half baked tools that will bitrot and cause people who search for genuine free alternatives to get confused. That actually causes damage by fracturing the communities around the problem domain.
TSA screeners often face physical and verbal attacks, but "there has never been
anything life-threatening before," Cox said.
Duh! The whole point of the TSA screeners is that they should face life-threatening danger. A bomb is life threatening and dangerous. A bomb that explodes is worse. If TSA screeners aren't going to be putting themselves in life-threatening situations they have no business being there at all. Come to think of it, just the last part.
The US doesn't need to point nukes directly on Britain. The British nuclear weapons have been bought from America, and contain secret self destruct codes that Uncle Sam can turn on anytime it wants to blow the UK up.
Nah, don't encourage him! This whole monolithic design is gonna land him with an F. He'd be much better off contributing to that Hurd project all the cool kids are into these days.
I'm sorry, but I have to correct you on your use of the word "secure" (I know, right?). While Google's infrastructure is no doubt secure, the technical security being meant is not the user's. It can't be, when a simple court order (or not even that) can trivially make the information accessible and searchable.
When people talk about wanting security, they don't mean that they want some third party company to securely protect the data it collects and to secure its own continued existence by cooperating with law enforcement agencies. What people mean is that they want their data to be secure against viewing, usage, and modification by all third parties - That includes (but is not limited to) Google and law enforcement.
The thing that makes health care special is that offering medical services for money is very close to exploitation, and it's very easy to cross the line. So it's important to have a lot of rules to prevent that from happening too frequently across the country.
The problem is that human nature being what it is, we are all addicted to life, and it is a well known fact that nearly all of us will do whatever it takes to preserve our own life and health if we think that is required.
So since this is a known fact, somebody who provides medical services can easily exploit that. They can charge whatever they like, ask for favours, etc., especially if they're literally offering a life saving alternative to a patient. And that (charging anything, knowing full well that the desperate clients will pay it) is exploitation. It is unethical, causes misery, and is bad for society as a whole.
So it's necessary to have many rules that prevent medical providers of all kinds from charging arbitrarily large amounts, and from giving preferential treatments in some cases (eg if two people need a heart transplant and only one heart is available, perhaps the wealthier candidate is willing to pay a bigger bribe, etc).
Similarly, calculating odds of medical conditions solely for maximizing profits is unethical (There are philosophically legitimate reasons for doing so however, such as optimizing available resources for the majority etc)
Nonsense. There is plenty of value in protecting uncompetitive businesses. The reason is that it brings self determination.
Suppose the most competitive cars were made by Asian manufacturers. If uncompetitive American makers weren't propped up, all vehicles on American roads would eventually be small, fuel efficient, and Asian. Instead of gas guzzling SUVs, like God intended. You wouldn't be able to *buy* big cars any more. And they'd probably put the steering wheel on the other side, forcing Americans to drive on the left, like Canada intended.
And there's nothing you could do about it, because no American car makers, because uncompetitive, because protection bad. M'kay?
Slashdot Mirror
But the fact is that, in spite of these unreasonable constraints imposed on musicians (after all they aren't trained in or care about business for its own sake), some bands manage to survive and make enough money to play music. And that is worth celebrating.
And yet, the wearer always looks like a douche. Go figure.
And before you say it, if people are willing to break the law to secretly film others, that will happen too. And I'm ok with that. Crime and punishment etc.
Being capable is not the point. Until they do, precarity is a fact of life, as is the fact that statistically most don't. So a postdoc's problems aren't anomalous, which is all I was intending to say.
Meh, those sorts of considerations are normal for most people who don't have much of an education. Precarious employment prospects aren't limited to postdocs, and they're not harder on postdocs than on others. In fact, a postdoc knows if he gets tired of this, he can "sell out" to industry and get a pretty cushy, albeit boring and pointless, job. Whereas people with a low standard of eduction know that there's absolutely nothing they can do about their own dismal prospects.
(*) A very fat one who's been around a long time.
Business practice depends upon the power balance that exists. In a world where power balance isn't enforced, you get unfair contracts which both sides accept as normal. For example, in feudal societies there is a hierarchy which allows one side to renege an agreement while the other is punished for it. You might say that our current societies are much more egalitarian, but that is a reflection of the state's will to enforce such egalitarianism, and is to some extent a historical anomaly. In places where the power of the state is weak, the vacuum is filled by warlords, and the interpretation of agreements is often ad-hoc, to the advantage of whomever is currently in the lord's favour.
That's right, when the bad guys know what people are up to, they have a head start in fucking them over. Viewed this way, perhaps the price you talk about is not too steep at all.
Now that we know the nature and value of this particular transaction, it can be used as an anchor to help identify and trace other more questionable transactions by others. It's like a sudoku puzzle. There are many events in the life of bitcoin that are effectively known, and so the problem of identifying some other unknown events becomes much easier.
You can bet the NSA, and other similar agencies, have a list of all such known anchorpoints, to help the massive surveillance of bitcoin that they do already.
This is patent nonsense, once you understand that a "mutually beneficial contract" is a fiction that already needs intervention to enforce. Contracts are pieces of paper with no value. They only have meaning and value because some government intervenes by deploying police with guns, and books with laws written in them, to prevent two parties from treating contracts as meaningless, which is what they naturally are in the absence of said enforcement.
There's no moral difference between a government that enforces contracts, and one that enforces a pay scale ratio, or any of a miriad other things.
So by all means refrain from fighting back on anything if you like, it's a great way to stroke your ego thinking you're so important that you can give them a propaganda opportunity they *need*, and would *never* have had if *you* hadn't stood up for your principles.
Me, I do what I like. If I get fed up enough, I act accordingly. That's what men have done for centuries.
Only in upper to middle class households. The lower classes / proletariat has always required women (even children) to work.
Heh, if you think women weren't an integral part of the workforce before 1970, you're dreaming.
(*) Google controls the "living" HTML.
But each successive bitcoin takes more and more effort to produce. Suppose the next bitcoin takes 1 year to produce. Right before the year is up, you lose all the work you put in. That's a whole year's worth of resources. And when you start work all over again, the next one takes 2 years to produce. But meanwhile, the other guys have had 1 year head start on your bitcoin, so they'll have it mined when you're only half way there. And they'll make sure you waste the effort on that one, too. You might never mine another bitcoin (successfully) again.
So Heisenberg wasn't a "team player" eh? Did he get fired?
Actually, that raises the question why was it being put out there as open source in the first place? If you're only putting out an open source product _because_ you expect others to contribute, then your priorities are fucked up.
You should put it out there because it might be genuinely useful to others. Don't pollute the open source world with half baked tools that will bitrot and cause people who search for genuine free alternatives to get confused. That actually causes damage by fracturing the communities around the problem domain.
Duh! The whole point of the TSA screeners is that they should face life-threatening danger. A bomb is life threatening and dangerous. A bomb that explodes is worse. If TSA screeners aren't going to be putting themselves in life-threatening situations they have no business being there at all. Come to think of it, just the last part.
The US doesn't need to point nukes directly on Britain. The British nuclear weapons have been bought from America, and contain secret self destruct codes that Uncle Sam can turn on anytime it wants to blow the UK up.
Nah, don't encourage him! This whole monolithic design is gonna land him with an F. He'd be much better off contributing to that Hurd project all the cool kids are into these days.
When people talk about wanting security, they don't mean that they want some third party company to securely protect the data it collects and to secure its own continued existence by cooperating with law enforcement agencies. What people mean is that they want their data to be secure against viewing, usage, and modification by all third parties - That includes (but is not limited to) Google and law enforcement.
Whereas I expect Google's engineers to fuck me over from just the implications of the implications of having my info.
The problem is that human nature being what it is, we are all addicted to life, and it is a well known fact that nearly all of us will do whatever it takes to preserve our own life and health if we think that is required.
So since this is a known fact, somebody who provides medical services can easily exploit that. They can charge whatever they like, ask for favours, etc., especially if they're literally offering a life saving alternative to a patient. And that (charging anything, knowing full well that the desperate clients will pay it) is exploitation. It is unethical, causes misery, and is bad for society as a whole.
So it's necessary to have many rules that prevent medical providers of all kinds from charging arbitrarily large amounts, and from giving preferential treatments in some cases (eg if two people need a heart transplant and only one heart is available, perhaps the wealthier candidate is willing to pay a bigger bribe, etc).
Similarly, calculating odds of medical conditions solely for maximizing profits is unethical (There are philosophically legitimate reasons for doing so however, such as optimizing available resources for the majority etc)
I I beg to differ.
Suppose the most competitive cars were made by Asian manufacturers. If uncompetitive American makers weren't propped up, all vehicles on American roads would eventually be small, fuel efficient, and Asian. Instead of gas guzzling SUVs, like God intended. You wouldn't be able to *buy* big cars any more. And they'd probably put the steering wheel on the other side, forcing Americans to drive on the left, like Canada intended.
And there's nothing you could do about it, because no American car makers, because uncompetitive, because protection bad. M'kay?