The point the GP post was trying to make was that casually throwing around the words "good and evil" is really uncalled for. Face it, MS only makes software. They aren't starting wars in other countries, they aren't employing slaves to dig up diamonds, they aren't pumping poisons into the groundwater to save $2. These are the thing that most people reserve the word evil for. MS is a monopoly that engages in unfair business practices that hurt its competitors. You can call that unethical, illegal, and maybe even immoral, but calling it evil just dilutes the meaning of what's truly evil.
Your comparisons to "support are troops!" only seeks to further polarize the issue, and really ads nothing to the conversation.
Any argument is partially based on trust. You simply can't look up every statistic, challenge every statement because it's just impractical. This is what the people who cry "ad hominem! ad hominem!" at every turn seem to miss. If the guy smells and dresses funny that really has no bearing on whether you trust his facts, or even willing to listen to him. If the person in question is dis-trustful or his motivations are in question, that's quite relevent.
There's obviously nothing about video or computer games that makes them inherently part of youth culture. The problem is that anyone say over 45 only saw kids playing them when they came out, so they just assumed it was a kids thing. None of these people have friends that play video games (since I'd bet most of them don't have friends under 38 or so), and the only people THEY see playing them is their kids.) They of course assume that videogames are a kids thing, even though that's obviously incorrect. Any person they hear of that plays videogames must be some kind of weirdo, since in their mind videogames are like playing with childrens toys.
Many people live rather sheltered lives outside the things they personally experience. As an example: recently I was talking about taking off my front bike tire to mount it on my car rack, and my 66 year old mother looked like I was from another planet. They didn't have quick release when she was a kid, and she hasn't ridden a bike for probbably 30 years. Even though quick release has been popular for at least 20 years, and you see people using it fairly often it was alien technology to her.
This seems like going overboard a bit. Most companies rely on people feeling they're a good company. As soon as the customer can't trust a company, that company is going to have problems.
What really surprises me is that Audi is willing to go after a few people that've "fooled the dealer" and in the process generate a lot of bad press for themselves. Who wants to think their car company are a bunch of cops, roaming around public websites just to try to find out if you may have done something to void your warranty? I'm sure Audi will lose a lot more in lost sales than it will with the few people that they caught. It won't stop people from replacing the chip in their car and bringing it in for service either, it'll only stop people from talking about it on audiworld.
I think what happened at Tiananman Square was a tragedy, but now imagine what would happen if you were to stop a US tank.. Even cops could shoot you if you didn't "freeze" right away.
Well, I guess I'm not so jaded yet that I think the US military would actually run over a single unarmed man after all the craziness had mostly died down. I'd say that tank man was a troll while the camera man was just waiting to catch the pictures.
That's really hard to believe. The camera man was a western journalist filming inside his hotel room many blocks away. Tank man had no way of knowing he was being filmed. There was certainly no setup ahead of time. The fact that he actually STOPPED the tank meant something.
Absolutely. And that's the same thing that people around the world saw from the picture and video as well. It's an extremely iconic picture to have one unarmed average joe stop a tank. It's literally one man against the state.
It always seems there's this finger pointing from Europe about how the crazy Americans have limited freedom again. Well this time Europe has struck first.
This is a global problem with governments, not a single wacko government out of control. It really scares me that the western world is really moving more toward the restrictive policies of China than China is moving towards freedom.
If I find the address of a person online and send an email to the person with a question - technically I'm spammer: I sent an unsolicited email. I sent an unsolicited email.
I don't know where you got this definition of spam, but I've never heard anyone until now claim that as a definition. Spam has always been mass mailing of unsolicited email, not asking one person a question. Do the rules change if I send 10,000? If so, this is not consistent with the core of free speech.
How is that not consistent? If I get a megaphone and start blasting my message at a baseball game that's a lot different from talking to the guy sitting next to me. I'm certain that the megaphone at a baseball game would not be protected free speech, but talking to one guy is.
And that trumps the rights of the Chinese government. I think all people have a right to a certain amount of privacy and freedom of speech, and I think China violates those rights. Obviously China is still going to do what it likes, and the United States shouldn't and can't directly interfere with that. But going to the other extreme with an isolationist mentality ignores the fact we live in a global world. Trade policies of the US should certainly be influenced by how China treats its people. China doesn't need anyones permission to act like a totalitarian regime. But then again the US doesn't need anyones permission to suspend favored nation trading status either. China lives in the global world too, and with that comes being influenced in the choices it makes.
Don't most ISPs in the western world have similar government imposed retention and intrusion legislation that they have to abide by?
I don't know about other governemnts, but there's certainly no data retention laws for ISPs in the United States. I'm not certain if email has been ruled to be covered by privacy laws, but I'd certainly hope so.
There's some requirements about email for publically traded companies through a new law called Sarbanes-Oxley. Even that I'm not sure if there's specific requirements for retention though.
The only data retention laws I know of in the US are actually on the Government itself. This information belongs to the people, and the government destroying it is seen as an afront to democracy. That's been the law of the land for a while.
There was a really excellent episode of frontline that aired this week that covered that very topic. Anyone over the age of 20 or so surely remembers the guy who stopped the tank in Tienamen Square. Of course if you google for "Tienamen Square" in China you get no images of Tank Man. In the rest of the world you get multiple images.
It always bothers me when someone makes big claims about something, but doesn't present any evidence to back it up. I don't know much about how good 128bit AAC is compared to the original CD, but simply claiming that it loses subtle nuances doesn't do anything to prove that. It's VERY easy to fool yourself, and so-called "audiophiles" have been proven to have fooled themselves time and time again. As an example shortly after CDs came out there was a claim that putting a green marker around an audio CD makes it sound better. Anyone that knows anything about digital technology knows this claim is simply ridiculous. It's about as valid as saying that sprinkling magic blessed sand around your television will improve its reception. Another embarresment is the "monster cable" myth. It's easy to fool yourself, especially when the differences are "subtle and nuanced". That's not to say that it isn't possible that 128bit AAC isn't nearly indistinguishable from CDs. I can definitely hear artifacts in some 128 bit MP3 files (not all). But I guess I'll believe double blind listening tests before I'll believe unsubstantiated claims.
The other thing I've heard multiple times is that artists receive a much better deal on iTunes than they do with record companies. Haven't many artists switched to iTunes for this very reason? I don't see any hard evidence posted of music deals from different artists, so this just sounds like a rant by some blogger.
So, does anyone that believes either of these claims willing to dig up some evidence for it? Neither claim is so ridiculous that it's outside the realm of reality, but without evidence each claim is simply a meaningless statement.
I'm quite sick of this irrelevent, and unsubstantiated claim. If it's stronger, so what? People self regulate the amount of drug they use, So people stop smoking it earlier. This kind of crap is just propadanda from the DEA.
I honestly don't know what the point that you're trying to make is. I largely agree with the facts you've presented, but what is it you're using them as evidence for?
So... how many people in excess of typical norms have to die before they realize this was a bad can of worms to open?
How many people have to use alcohol responsibly before you realize that for the vast majority of people it's not "a bad can of worms to open"? Sorry if I seem a tad against the idea... but I think alchohol is a waste of time and money that could better be used to improve oneself and the society in which they live.
Spoken by someone that's probbably never had a hard day and needed to relax. Do you seriously work all the time on improving yourself and society, or do you need a break now and again? Movies, television, computer games, and the internet could all be considered by some "a waste of time and money that could be better used to improve oneself". We human beings need stress reduction. Many of us choose to drink a moderate amount to do so. If alcohol doesn't do it for you, great, don't drink. But if you can't see the benefits for responsible people who use it, you're just plain blind.
Explicitly stating these philosophical beliefs and teaching a little about the history of philosophies that underly science *in the science classroom* would be a great benefit to discerning what is really science, and what is pretending to be science, but is really at most a philosophy.
I don't have any problem with that, and I think it would probbably strengthen peoples understanding of what science is. But saying ID is simply a minor change in the philosophy of science simply isn't true. ID is an attempt to slip religion under the door of science. Science says that nature is testable and falsifiable. But science also goes and does the testing and falsifying as well. Could there be phenomenon that aren't testable and falsifiable? I guess, but in what sense is something that's not even testable real? I think in no sense is it real.
Making the claim that creation has an intelligent creator, but at the same time claiming that evidence for the creator is inherently untestable is more than a simple change to the assumptions of science, it's a complete uphevel and self-contradiction of science. It's obviously much more in tune with religion than philosophy. If people want to teach it in a religion class along with other creation stories, that's fine. But the current fundamentalists want to teach it in a science classroom as a replacement for evolution. This is the current context of the ID debate. Claiming that it's merely a change in the underpinnings of the philosophy of science really misses the mark on several levels.
It's hard enough to get the much less addictive and less harmfull drugs like Marijuana that people have used for thousands of years to be legal. Making some new alcohol like substance legal as a recreational drug would be near impossible.
Really, if alcohol didn't have the added guise of also being a food, and being impossibly easy to create on your own it'd be illegal now.
Sony would have us believe that they only care about the consumers here, and just want to deliver the best product they possibly can. I think that's a load of malarky. Sony has essentially admited that the delays are due to blu-ray, which ads really nothing to the gaming experience. It's not about gamers, the best product possible, or even the gaming division of Sony. The reason Sony has included blu-ray is simply to try to gain a foothold in the HD-TV vs Blu-Ray battle, at the expense of everyone else.
Frankly I don't really care as I'm not a gamer. But it does bother me to hear this kind of spin coming out of anyone.
As another poster pointed out, that's one of the perks of having a very common name. Googling reveals almost nothing about you.
As far as the WSJ is concerned, I'd guess they asked him if they could print his real name. I don't think this guy is exactly naive when it comes to the media, so if he wasn't comfortable with his name getting out in a more public way I doubt he'd have done the interview. He's already become somewhat of a public figure, so it's really not analogous to publishing the names of (for instance) rape victims.
That's not to say the media isn't a bunch of scumbags that'll ruin someones life for a dollar. The worst example of this I can remember is when various Chicago newspapers published the name (and was it even the address?!) of the guy who "lost" a baseball playoff game by catching a foul ball or whatever he did wrong.
It seems to me that for someone to be concerned about shielding his children, etc
Do you drink? Do you want children to drink? I guess you're concerned about alcohol then. Do you think someone that works for Anheuser-Bush shouldn't shield their kids from alchohol because they work for an industry that sells it?
There's such a thing as age appropriateness. I fail to see how there's anything inconsistant here. and that people who find out won't let their kds play with his because they don't like his business, and this bothers him
He's protecting his kids from the intolerant people of the world. Wouldn't it bother anyone if neighbors went so far as to punish your kids because they didn't approve of you? That seems like more of a problem with the neighbors. They don't have to like him, or what he does, but banning their kids from associating with his kids is just bigotry.
I know exactly zero people. (But then again, maybe I know a lot of people and just don't know it). This story is interesting because there's just not a lot of coverage of people that work in pornography outside of the scandalous stories about models destroying their lives with drug addictions. I don't have any problem with porn, but I'd be equally interested in a story about a spammer (which I do have a problem with) and what he tells his family and friends what he does.
Face it. People that work in industries not officially approved of by society (but which the majority of the populace have bought at some point) is fascinating. Your attempt to generisize it through person X and Industry Y really misses the point. I don't know any person Xs who work for Industry Y. If most people did, this story would be rather boring.
It's because the word planet isn't really a scientific word. There's no hard point where something becomes a planet and where it's not a planet. Words like planet are really just our own convienent language definitions. Arguing about whether something is a planet or not is a little like arguing whether something is a chair or not. It only matters based upon useage.
A pixel is small, but nowhere near subatomic. It's measured only in microns
By atomic, the author means it cannot be divided further. This was the original meaning of atom. Atomic is a word used in computer science to indicate an operation that can't be interrupted. It either happens completely, or doesn't happen at all.
Use words that add meaning to what you're trying to say. Don't use words that subtract meaning from what you're trying to say. Calling layoffs "realignments" and difficult people as "challenging" is obviously just doubletalk nonsense designed to hide what's real. But value-added and total cost of ownership are phrases that actually convey meaning that other phrases/words don't.
Also, don't abuse these words either. Know what they actually mean and when to use them. There's plenty of people that don't know what they mean and throw them out like buzzwords. Maybe that's why the original poster thinks all corporate speak is a load of dingoes' kidneys.
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Thanks for the dictionary definition. Unfortunately dictionaries are a guide to how people use language, not definitive.
The point the GP post was trying to make was that casually throwing around the words "good and evil" is really uncalled for. Face it, MS only makes software. They aren't starting wars in other countries, they aren't employing slaves to dig up diamonds, they aren't pumping poisons into the groundwater to save $2. These are the thing that most people reserve the word evil for. MS is a monopoly that engages in unfair business practices that hurt its competitors. You can call that unethical, illegal, and maybe even immoral, but calling it evil just dilutes the meaning of what's truly evil.
Your comparisons to "support are troops!" only seeks to further polarize the issue, and really ads nothing to the conversation.
Any argument is partially based on trust. You simply can't look up every statistic, challenge every statement because it's just impractical. This is what the people who cry "ad hominem! ad hominem!" at every turn seem to miss. If the guy smells and dresses funny that really has no bearing on whether you trust his facts, or even willing to listen to him. If the person in question is dis-trustful or his motivations are in question, that's quite relevent.
There's obviously nothing about video or computer games that makes them inherently part of youth culture. The problem is that anyone say over 45 only saw kids playing them when they came out, so they just assumed it was a kids thing. None of these people have friends that play video games (since I'd bet most of them don't have friends under 38 or so), and the only people THEY see playing them is their kids.) They of course assume that videogames are a kids thing, even though that's obviously incorrect. Any person they hear of that plays videogames must be some kind of weirdo, since in their mind videogames are like playing with childrens toys.
Many people live rather sheltered lives outside the things they personally experience. As an example: recently I was talking about taking off my front bike tire to mount it on my car rack, and my 66 year old mother looked like I was from another planet. They didn't have quick release when she was a kid, and she hasn't ridden a bike for probbably 30 years. Even though quick release has been popular for at least 20 years, and you see people using it fairly often it was alien technology to her.
This seems like going overboard a bit. Most companies rely on people feeling they're a good company. As soon as the customer can't trust a company, that company is going to have problems.
What really surprises me is that Audi is willing to go after a few people that've "fooled the dealer" and in the process generate a lot of bad press for themselves. Who wants to think their car company are a bunch of cops, roaming around public websites just to try to find out if you may have done something to void your warranty? I'm sure Audi will lose a lot more in lost sales than it will with the few people that they caught. It won't stop people from replacing the chip in their car and bringing it in for service either, it'll only stop people from talking about it on audiworld.
I think what happened at Tiananman Square was a tragedy, but now imagine what would happen if you were to stop a US tank.. Even cops could shoot you if you didn't "freeze" right away.
Well, I guess I'm not so jaded yet that I think the US military would actually run over a single unarmed man after all the craziness had mostly died down.
I'd say that tank man was a troll while the camera man was just waiting to catch the pictures.
That's really hard to believe. The camera man was a western journalist filming inside his hotel room many blocks away. Tank man had no way of knowing he was being filmed. There was certainly no setup ahead of time.
The fact that he actually STOPPED the tank meant something.
Absolutely. And that's the same thing that people around the world saw from the picture and video as well. It's an extremely iconic picture to have one unarmed average joe stop a tank. It's literally one man against the state.
It always seems there's this finger pointing from Europe about how the crazy Americans have limited freedom again. Well this time Europe has struck first.
This is a global problem with governments, not a single wacko government out of control. It really scares me that the western world is really moving more toward the restrictive policies of China than China is moving towards freedom.
If I find the address of a person online and send an email to the person with a question - technically I'm spammer: I sent an unsolicited email. I sent an unsolicited email.
I don't know where you got this definition of spam, but I've never heard anyone until now claim that as a definition. Spam has always been mass mailing of unsolicited email, not
asking one person a question.
Do the rules change if I send 10,000? If so, this is not consistent with the core of free speech.
How is that not consistent? If I get a megaphone and start blasting my message at a baseball game that's a lot different from talking to the guy sitting next to me. I'm certain that the megaphone at a baseball game would not be protected free speech, but talking to one guy is.
And that trumps the rights of the Chinese government. I think all people have a right to a certain amount of privacy and freedom of speech, and I think China violates those rights. Obviously China is still going to do what it likes, and the United States shouldn't and can't directly interfere with that. But going to the other extreme with an isolationist mentality ignores the fact we live in a global world. Trade policies of the US should certainly be influenced by how China treats its people. China doesn't need anyones permission to act like a totalitarian regime. But then again the US doesn't need anyones permission to suspend favored nation trading status either. China lives in the global world too, and with that comes being influenced in the choices it makes.
All I know is Frontline did this specific search inside China, and no images of Tank Man came up.
Don't most ISPs in the western world have similar government imposed retention and intrusion legislation that they have to abide by?
I don't know about other governemnts, but there's certainly no data retention laws for ISPs in the United States. I'm not certain if email has been ruled to be covered by privacy laws, but I'd certainly hope so.
There's some requirements about email for publically traded companies through a new law called Sarbanes-Oxley. Even that I'm not sure if there's specific requirements for retention though.
The only data retention laws I know of in the US are actually on the Government itself. This information belongs to the people, and the government destroying it is seen as an afront to democracy. That's been the law of the land for a while.
There was a really excellent episode of frontline that aired this week that covered that very topic. Anyone over the age of 20 or so surely remembers the guy who stopped the tank in Tienamen Square. Of course if you google for "Tienamen Square" in China you get no images of Tank Man. In the rest of the world you get multiple images.
It always bothers me when someone makes big claims about something, but doesn't present any evidence to back it up. I don't know much about how good 128bit AAC is compared to the original CD, but simply claiming that it loses subtle nuances doesn't do anything to prove that. It's VERY easy to fool yourself, and so-called "audiophiles" have been proven to have fooled themselves time and time again. As an example shortly after CDs came out there was a claim that putting a green marker around an audio CD makes it sound better. Anyone that knows anything about digital technology knows this claim is simply ridiculous. It's about as valid as saying that sprinkling magic blessed sand around your television will improve its reception. Another embarresment is the "monster cable" myth. It's easy to fool yourself, especially when the differences are "subtle and nuanced". That's not to say that it isn't possible that 128bit AAC isn't nearly indistinguishable from CDs. I can definitely hear artifacts in some 128 bit MP3 files (not all). But I guess I'll believe double blind listening tests before I'll believe unsubstantiated claims.
The other thing I've heard multiple times is that artists receive a much better deal on iTunes than they do with record companies. Haven't many artists switched to iTunes for this very reason? I don't see any hard evidence posted of music deals from different artists, so this just sounds like a rant by some blogger.
So, does anyone that believes either of these claims willing to dig up some evidence for it? Neither claim is so ridiculous that it's outside the realm of reality, but without evidence each claim is simply a meaningless statement.
I'm quite sick of this irrelevent, and unsubstantiated claim. If it's stronger, so what? People self regulate the amount of drug they use, So people stop smoking it earlier. This kind of crap is just propadanda from the DEA.
I honestly don't know what the point that you're trying to make is. I largely agree with the facts you've presented, but what is it you're using them as evidence for?
So... how many people in excess of typical norms have to die before they realize this was a bad can of worms to open?
How many people have to use alcohol responsibly before you realize that for the vast majority of people it's not "a bad can of worms to open"?
Sorry if I seem a tad against the idea... but I think alchohol is a waste of time and money that could better be used to improve oneself and the society in which they live.
Spoken by someone that's probbably never had a hard day and needed to relax. Do you seriously work all the time on improving yourself and society, or do you need a break now and again? Movies, television, computer games, and the internet could all be considered by some "a waste of time and money that could be better used to improve oneself". We human beings need stress reduction. Many of us choose to drink a moderate amount to do so. If alcohol doesn't do it for you, great, don't drink. But if you can't see the benefits for responsible people who use it, you're just plain blind.
Explicitly stating these philosophical beliefs and teaching a little about the history of philosophies that underly science *in the science classroom* would be a great benefit to discerning what is really science, and what is pretending to be science, but is really at most a philosophy.
I don't have any problem with that, and I think it would probbably strengthen peoples understanding of what science is. But saying ID is simply a minor change in the philosophy of science simply isn't true. ID is an attempt to slip religion under the door of science. Science says that nature is testable and falsifiable. But science also goes and does the testing and falsifying as well. Could there be phenomenon that aren't testable and falsifiable? I guess, but in what sense is something that's not even testable real? I think in no sense is it real.
Making the claim that creation has an intelligent creator, but at the same time claiming that evidence for the creator is inherently untestable is more than a simple change to the assumptions of science, it's a complete uphevel and self-contradiction of science. It's obviously much more in tune with religion than philosophy. If people want to teach it in a religion class along with other creation stories, that's fine. But the current fundamentalists want to teach it in a science classroom as a replacement for evolution. This is the current context of the ID debate. Claiming that it's merely a change in the underpinnings of the philosophy of science really misses the mark on several levels.
It's hard enough to get the much less addictive and less harmfull drugs like Marijuana that people have used for thousands of years to be legal. Making some new alcohol like substance legal as a recreational drug would be near impossible.
Really, if alcohol didn't have the added guise of also being a food, and being impossibly easy to create on your own it'd be illegal now.
Sony would have us believe that they only care about the consumers here, and just want to deliver the best product they possibly can. I think that's a load of malarky. Sony has essentially admited that the delays are due to blu-ray, which ads really nothing to the gaming experience. It's not about gamers, the best product possible, or even the gaming division of Sony. The reason Sony has included blu-ray is simply to try to gain a foothold in the HD-TV vs Blu-Ray battle, at the expense of everyone else.
Frankly I don't really care as I'm not a gamer. But it does bother me to hear this kind of spin coming out of anyone.
As another poster pointed out, that's one of the perks of having a very common name. Googling reveals almost nothing about you.
As far as the WSJ is concerned, I'd guess they asked him if they could print his real name. I don't think this guy is exactly naive when it comes to the media, so if he wasn't comfortable with his name getting out in a more public way I doubt he'd have done the interview. He's already become somewhat of a public figure, so it's really not analogous to publishing the names of (for instance) rape victims.
That's not to say the media isn't a bunch of scumbags that'll ruin someones life for a dollar. The worst example of this I can remember is when various Chicago newspapers published the name (and was it even the address?!) of the guy who "lost" a baseball playoff game by catching a foul ball or whatever he did wrong.
It seems to me that for someone to be concerned about shielding his children, etc
Do you drink? Do you want children to drink? I guess you're concerned about alcohol then. Do you think someone that works for Anheuser-Bush shouldn't shield their kids from alchohol because they work for an industry that sells it?
There's such a thing as age appropriateness. I fail to see how there's anything inconsistant here.
and that people who find out won't let their kds play with his because they don't like his business, and this bothers him
He's protecting his kids from the intolerant people of the world. Wouldn't it bother anyone if neighbors went so far as to punish your kids because they didn't approve of you? That seems like more of a problem with the neighbors. They don't have to like him, or what he does, but banning their kids from associating with his kids is just bigotry.
I know exactly zero people. (But then again, maybe I know a lot of people and just don't know it). This story is interesting because there's just not a lot of coverage of people that work in pornography outside of the scandalous stories about models destroying their lives with drug addictions. I don't have any problem with porn, but I'd be equally interested in a story about a spammer (which I do have a problem with) and what he tells his family and friends what he does.
Face it. People that work in industries not officially approved of by society (but which the majority of the populace have bought at some point) is fascinating. Your attempt to generisize it through person X and Industry Y really misses the point. I don't know any person Xs who work for Industry Y. If most people did, this story would be rather boring.
It's because the word planet isn't really a scientific word. There's no hard point where something becomes a planet and where it's not a planet. Words like planet are really just our own convienent language definitions. Arguing about whether something is a planet or not is a little like arguing whether something is a chair or not. It only matters based upon useage.
A pixel is small, but nowhere near subatomic. It's measured only in microns
By atomic, the author means it cannot be divided further. This was the original meaning of atom. Atomic is a word used in computer science to indicate an operation that can't be interrupted. It either happens completely, or doesn't happen at all.
Use words that add meaning to what you're trying to say. Don't use words that subtract meaning from what you're trying to say. Calling layoffs "realignments" and difficult people as "challenging" is obviously just doubletalk nonsense designed to hide what's real. But value-added and total cost of ownership are phrases that actually convey meaning that other phrases/words don't.
Also, don't abuse these words either. Know what they actually mean and when to use them. There's plenty of people that don't know what they mean and throw them out like buzzwords. Maybe that's why the original poster thinks all corporate speak is a load of dingoes' kidneys.