Maybe we need to create a religion where Facebook is categorised as an abomination against god, humanity and an insult to all right thinking people (I know, it's a stretch) and have Facebook take itself off the internet!
I'm a Tin-foil Hat wearing paranoiac? Because of my wild allegations?
That the Conservatives care little for the poorest members of society and instead develop laws and try to structure society to give the greatest rewards to those who already have?
How about their utter opposition to Labour's minimum wage legislation? Right now they've just scrapped a multi-million pound scheme to get training and jobs for young people, whilst proposing that the unemployed are subjected to Welfare for Work (scrubbing grafitti of walls and sweeping streets) in return for their benefits, which they've paid Nat Ins for and where they will be working for rates far below the minimum wage (a policy which they've imported from the US and which, I believe, the current US administration has described as ill-thought out and entirely undesirable).
Perhaps it's the 'neo-stalisist' Labour party you were referring to? The party which has implemented and tried to implement the greatest explosion in surveillance of the UK population's behaviour, communications and reading habits in the Western World, all the while removing the assumption of innocence (RIPA), habeas corpus, right to jury trials, etc?
Clearly I'm a "tin-foil-hat-wearing rabid paranoiac". Could I suggest you politely (if such a thing is possible) shove your gracious willingness "to withdraw this classification" up your arse?
As a spiritual supporter of the Pirate Party, I'm a little horrified to see someone holding such a senior position in the party speak in such an impolitic manner, alienating a supporter (myself) and possibly other potential supporters by casually dishing out slanderous comments and insults (albeit ones appended with gracious offers of withdrawal should the slandered party prove themselves worthy!)
I think that the Pirate Party and its cause has more to fear from your support, Peter, if this is any example of it, than from the Tories keeping new parties from power though their opposition to electoral reform.
>Together they moderate each others extreme policies....
We hope.
I really don't think the Tories are moderating anything, only being temporarily shackled.
It's worth remembering that the Tories vastly outnumber the LibDems and there are a vast army of old-school 'evil' walking-dead tories who I think view Cameron's charm as just they ticket they needed to get their heads round the door and start with bringing back the 'good old days' (of poverty and misery at the bottom and the quaffing of fine wines and cuban cigars at the top).
I suspect they see the LibDems as dupes they can exploit until they piss all over electoral reform and they get back to swinging between the Neo-Stalinist Big-Brother Labour party and their own Devil Take the Hindmost duopoly.
>Print news has always been funded primarily by advertising.
I think The Guardian is kept afloat by it's incredibly popular sister publication, Auto Trader. Which is, of course, all adverts.
If Murdoch the Terrible doesn't want to subsidise his print news operation with, I dunno, Fox Movies/TV, etc, maybe he should get out of the newspaper business (and do the world a great big fucking favour).
He will be undercut by others, but he'll also use his business model failure to attack the BBC: "Unfair competition! An honest businessman like me can't make a go of it with the likes of the BBC supplying news, with it's massive and unfair state subsidy! Do something about it Dave [Cameron (UK PM)] or I'll say nasty things about your party in my many, many [still bought, for some reason] print newspapers! Ya Fuckin' bitch! [The PMs of the UK all want to wiggle their bottoms suggestively for Murdoch].
Hopefully, there'll be enough other newspapers who haven't gone down this route of a paywall who will be able to discredit his (IMO) inevitable lies.
Alternatively, it's Nintendo's policy to discourage people from purchasing downloadable content from them.
If faulty hardaware results in the loss of purchases, it seems entirely reasonable that Nintendo be sued for the loss incurred. Small claims court. Assuminng there isn't some law about this on the statute covering this sort of thing.
>"Universal Iron rule of the Internet: Everyone would be happy to pay for X, but they're only willing to pay half of what's being asked. Songs are a buck? 50c please. Netflix is $10 a month? I'll only pay $5 a month, and only if there's a bigger selection. An iPad will be $999? Well I'd happily pay $500, and only if it isn't crippled with Apple's retard-o-platform!"
Universal Iron Rule of the Copyright Cartels: Our intangible assets are PROPERTY that must remain with us for time immemorial, we have the right to set the price in collusion with other cartels to extract maximum profit and price-fix. We will not compete with piracy or free because we have a monopoly: we are sovereign rulers and you will like it.
We will make you pay through the nose for digital products equalling or exceeding the price of physical goods, even though our costs are vastly reduced, because we are sovereign, and you will like it. We will buy and write laws, and whisper poison in the ears of the ignorant and gullible politicians and we will cripple new technologies so that we industries of the past may continue to be fat and prosperous despite the changes in technological reality.
Our profits shall remain guaranteed and anything which threatens them or dares suggest that they were temporary boons, will be ignored and condemned as untruthful.
We are powerful and rich middlemen and we will have no truck with reason.
Well, I hope you have an additional computer - you know to back up your iPad using iTunes, and for a host of other things that the iPad can't do itself, directly.
The iPad is not a laptop replacent, it's a satellite device (like the ipod/iphone/mp3 players, etc) that require a proper computer to function.
Re:Too much hysteria from the peanut gallery.
on
ACTA Treaty Released
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· Score: 1
Orlowski, the author, used to be a really interesting, insightful and entertaining journalist a few years ago, but at somne point he strayed over the guide rails and wandered off into the land of peurile labels and trolling where he transformed into Orlowski the Insult Comic Tech Journalist (where he is the joke rather than the joke-maker). Shame - when he makes the effort to not rely on such easy angles, and tries to be fair, he's still capable of very good writing. (Many of his articles at the Register don't even have comments enabled, because readers tear apart his lame biases and flamebait in seconds).
I guess the Register keeps him on, doing his schtick, because people want to see what crap he's spouting this time, and that results in page-views.
>"IMO there should be a fixed copyright term from the time of first publication. Death, no death, whatever. Nothing else matters."
What counts as "publication"?
Suppose I draw an image, it sits in my studio. Someone comes in and scans it and then uploads it, without my knowledge. They don't claim to be the author, or the owner of the image.
Did my copyright start when I drew it, or when it was put on public display? Perhaps I intended to never make the image public, but only to use it as research for other creations I intended to display.
(At the risk of answering my own, previous question) what protection do 'unpublished' works have? (currently it's copyrighted at the moment of *creation*).
They want to control what you see, because they want to control what you have knowledge of and they want to control what you have knowledge of becuase they want to control how you think; not necessarily so that you think like them (I mean, *they* will always justify their free and full access to information so they can make decisions for *you*) but so that you will think in ways that benefit them and their goals, vision and idea of how (other) people (and society) should be.
It's all about imposing control on others.
I came accross this quote today, and I think it's highly relevant to the whole debate on censorship, from a slightly different angle (and it's interesting, IMO, where it puts those in favour of censorship, spiritually speaking):
Believe nothing because a wise man said it. Believe nothing because it is generally held. Believe nothing because it is written. Believe nothing because it is said to be divine Believe nothing because someone else believes it. But believe only what you yourself judge to be true.
>If I had kept the receipt for my PS3 I might go after EB games for a refund.
In the UK, and I guess Europe, you don't need your receipt, just some proof somewhere and somehow that you bought from that company - credit card records, for instance.
It's interesting that you cite all these numerous failings (which they certainly are) as being PROOF that that person has no redeeming qualities - the person has these traits THEREFORE they can have no redeeming qualities. That isn't how it works.
Maybe if you try and look at these people another way (as an exercise only!):
they're doing the best they know how.
Yup. That's a shocking thought in some cases, but it doesn't make it any less true.
What I want to know is how do they deal with the inherent bias of materialistic western science (I suggest there is one).
I'm not saying that Western science is wrong, or invalid (not at all) but that it is inherently materialistic in it's outlook and in the tools it uses to measure things and test them. Is it EVER possible that the methodologies of science (as it now is) could ever validate 'spiritual' experience if it WERE true as a thing in itself, or is there an inherent bias that makes the methods and means of testing such things unfit for purpose: that it would always reduce any spiritual or transcendental experience to a physical, chemical or biological basis (and nothing more)?
Valid question?
Re:The other side of the coin to Regulatory Captur
on
The Short Arm of the Law
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
>Without patents, there wouldn't be a problem with kicking Pfizer out of Medicare
In that case, it sounds like a better way of achieving justice would be to seize their patent assets (some or all) and then nullify them.
Yeah, it's fast and slick, but if a toolbar came out for another browser that did what Chrome does, we'd all label it spyware and piss on it from a great height.
>A lot of activities and mental states which do not harm people are considered morally wrong. For example [...] coveting [...] envy, pride [...]
Say whut? You really think pride doesn't harm?
Pride: "An excessively high opinion of oneself; conceit." Essentially you think you're better than other people. And so you act and talk like that's the case, and in the process, you trample on people who're 'less worthy', to one extent or another. How is that NOT going to involve causing harm to others, and by extension, oneself?
Envy: "A feeling of discontent and resentment aroused by and in conjunction with desire for the possessions or qualities of another." How is that going to end in anything but something negative?
Same with coveting: "To feel immoderate desire for that which is another's." Yeah, that always ends well.
The very reason these things are considered immoral (though I'm not exactly sure I'd call them that) is because the are the causes of harmful actions; the seeds of behaviours that do not end well; that cannot end well if they are acted on.
Unless you mean that thinking them doesn't *directly* and immediately cause harm, by the very act of thinking them? But nobody ever meant they were immoral/harmful in that way.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe we need to create a religion where Facebook is categorised as an abomination against god, humanity and an insult to all right thinking people (I know, it's a stretch) and have Facebook take itself off the internet!
I'm a Tin-foil Hat wearing paranoiac? Because of my wild allegations?
That the Conservatives care little for the poorest members of society and instead develop laws and try to structure society to give the greatest rewards to those who already have?
How about their utter opposition to Labour's minimum wage legislation? Right now they've just scrapped a multi-million pound scheme to get training and jobs for young people, whilst proposing that the unemployed are subjected to Welfare for Work (scrubbing grafitti of walls and sweeping streets) in return for their benefits, which they've paid Nat Ins for and where they will be working for rates far below the minimum wage (a policy which they've imported from the US and which, I believe, the current US administration has described as ill-thought out and entirely undesirable).
Perhaps it's the 'neo-stalisist' Labour party you were referring to? The party which has implemented and tried to implement the greatest explosion in surveillance of the UK population's behaviour, communications and reading habits in the Western World, all the while removing the assumption of innocence (RIPA), habeas corpus, right to jury trials, etc?
Clearly I'm a "tin-foil-hat-wearing rabid paranoiac". Could I suggest you politely (if such a thing is possible) shove your gracious willingness "to withdraw this classification" up your arse?
As a spiritual supporter of the Pirate Party, I'm a little horrified to see someone holding such a senior position in the party speak in such an impolitic manner, alienating a supporter (myself) and possibly other potential supporters by casually dishing out slanderous comments and insults (albeit ones appended with gracious offers of withdrawal should the slandered party prove themselves worthy!)
I think that the Pirate Party and its cause has more to fear from your support, Peter, if this is any example of it, than from the Tories keeping new parties from power though their opposition to electoral reform.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tact
>Together they moderate each others extreme policies ....
We hope.
I really don't think the Tories are moderating anything, only being temporarily shackled.
It's worth remembering that the Tories vastly outnumber the LibDems and there are a vast army of old-school 'evil' walking-dead tories who I think view Cameron's charm as just they ticket they needed to get their heads round the door and start with bringing back the 'good old days' (of poverty and misery at the bottom and the quaffing of fine wines and cuban cigars at the top).
I suspect they see the LibDems as dupes they can exploit until they piss all over electoral reform and they get back to swinging between the Neo-Stalinist Big-Brother Labour party and their own Devil Take the Hindmost duopoly.
Ha! Good find!
>Print news has always been funded primarily by advertising.
I think The Guardian is kept afloat by it's incredibly popular sister publication, Auto Trader. Which is, of course, all adverts.
If Murdoch the Terrible doesn't want to subsidise his print news operation with, I dunno, Fox Movies/TV, etc, maybe he should get out of the newspaper business (and do the world a great big fucking favour).
He will be undercut by others, but he'll also use his business model failure to attack the BBC: "Unfair competition! An honest businessman like me can't make a go of it with the likes of the BBC supplying news, with it's massive and unfair state subsidy! Do something about it Dave [Cameron (UK PM)] or I'll say nasty things about your party in my many, many [still bought, for some reason] print newspapers! Ya Fuckin' bitch! [The PMs of the UK all want to wiggle their bottoms suggestively for Murdoch].
Hopefully, there'll be enough other newspapers who haven't gone down this route of a paywall who will be able to discredit his (IMO) inevitable lies.
And we thought we defeated the Taliban. Who knew they just outsourced their illiberal puritanism to the Western democratic governments?
Is there any way to stop Chrome sending the info of the URLs you type into the address bar back to google, yet?
I guess the lesson is, if you really want to harass someone and get away with it, use the HR department as a proxy.
>"Cooking food is a peasant thing".
Cooking food, makes the energy in that food much more available to your body. It has nothing to do with social class.
Alternatively, it's Nintendo's policy to discourage people from purchasing downloadable content from them.
If faulty hardaware results in the loss of purchases, it seems entirely reasonable that Nintendo be sued for the loss incurred. Small claims court. Assuminng there isn't some law about this on the statute covering this sort of thing.
>"Universal Iron rule of the Internet: Everyone would be happy to pay for X, but they're only willing to pay half of what's being asked. Songs are a buck? 50c please. Netflix is $10 a month? I'll only pay $5 a month, and only if there's a bigger selection. An iPad will be $999? Well I'd happily pay $500, and only if it isn't crippled with Apple's retard-o-platform!"
Universal Iron Rule of the Copyright Cartels: Our intangible assets are PROPERTY that must remain with us for time immemorial, we have the right to set the price in collusion with other cartels to extract maximum profit and price-fix. We will not compete with piracy or free because we have a monopoly: we are sovereign rulers and you will like it.
We will make you pay through the nose for digital products equalling or exceeding the price of physical goods, even though our costs are vastly reduced, because we are sovereign, and you will like it. We will buy and write laws, and whisper poison in the ears of the ignorant and gullible politicians and we will cripple new technologies so that we industries of the past may continue to be fat and prosperous despite the changes in technological reality.
Our profits shall remain guaranteed and anything which threatens them or dares suggest that they were temporary boons, will be ignored and condemned as untruthful.
We are powerful and rich middlemen and we will have no truck with reason.
Well, I hope you have an additional computer - you know to back up your iPad using iTunes, and for a host of other things that the iPad can't do itself, directly.
The iPad is not a laptop replacent, it's a satellite device (like the ipod/iphone/mp3 players, etc) that require a proper computer to function.
Orlowski, the author, used to be a really interesting, insightful and entertaining journalist a few years ago, but at somne point he strayed over the guide rails and wandered off into the land of peurile labels and trolling where he transformed into Orlowski the Insult Comic Tech Journalist (where he is the joke rather than the joke-maker). Shame - when he makes the effort to not rely on such easy angles, and tries to be fair, he's still capable of very good writing. (Many of his articles at the Register don't even have comments enabled, because readers tear apart his lame biases and flamebait in seconds).
I guess the Register keeps him on, doing his schtick, because people want to see what crap he's spouting this time, and that results in page-views.
Coming to a 'liberal western democracy' near you, soon!
I just checked - I don't even have java installed on my machine anymore. Never come accross something that I need it for.
What do people use it for these days?
>"IMO there should be a fixed copyright term from the time of first publication. Death, no death, whatever. Nothing else matters."
What counts as "publication"?
Suppose I draw an image, it sits in my studio. Someone comes in and scans it and then uploads it, without my knowledge. They don't claim to be the author, or the owner of the image.
Did my copyright start when I drew it, or when it was put on public display? Perhaps I intended to never make the image public, but only to use it as research for other creations I intended to display.
(At the risk of answering my own, previous question) what protection do 'unpublished' works have? (currently it's copyrighted at the moment of *creation*).
They want to control what you see, because they want to control what you have knowledge of and they want to control what you have knowledge of becuase they want to control how you think; not necessarily so that you think like them (I mean, *they* will always justify their free and full access to information so they can make decisions for *you*) but so that you will think in ways that benefit them and their goals, vision and idea of how (other) people (and society) should be.
It's all about imposing control on others.
I came accross this quote today, and I think it's highly relevant to the whole debate on censorship, from a slightly different angle (and it's interesting, IMO, where it puts those in favour of censorship, spiritually speaking):
Believe nothing because a wise man said it.
Believe nothing because it is generally held.
Believe nothing because it is written.
Believe nothing because it is said to be divine
Believe nothing because someone else believes it.
But believe only what you yourself judge to be true.
-The Buddha.
>If I had kept the receipt for my PS3 I might go after EB games for a refund.
In the UK, and I guess Europe, you don't need your receipt, just some proof somewhere and somehow that you bought from that company - credit card records, for instance.
It's interesting that you cite all these numerous failings (which they certainly are) as being PROOF that that person has no redeeming qualities - the person has these traits THEREFORE they can have no redeeming qualities. That isn't how it works.
Maybe if you try and look at these people another way (as an exercise only!):
they're doing the best they know how.
Yup. That's a shocking thought in some cases, but it doesn't make it any less true.
What I want to know is how do they deal with the inherent bias of materialistic western science (I suggest there is one).
I'm not saying that Western science is wrong, or invalid (not at all) but that it is inherently materialistic in it's outlook and in the tools it uses to measure things and test them. Is it EVER possible that the methodologies of science (as it now is) could ever validate 'spiritual' experience if it WERE true as a thing in itself, or is there an inherent bias that makes the methods and means of testing such things unfit for purpose: that it would always reduce any spiritual or transcendental experience to a physical, chemical or biological basis (and nothing more)?
Valid question?
>Without patents, there wouldn't be a problem with kicking Pfizer out of Medicare
In that case, it sounds like a better way of achieving justice would be to seize their patent assets (some or all) and then nullify them.
Yeah, it's fast and slick, but if a toolbar came out for another browser that did what Chrome does, we'd all label it spyware and piss on it from a great height.
>A lot of activities and mental states which do not harm people are considered morally wrong. For example [...] coveting [...] envy, pride [...]
Say whut? You really think pride doesn't harm?
Pride: "An excessively high opinion of oneself; conceit." Essentially you think you're better than other people. And so you act and talk like that's the case, and in the process, you trample on people who're 'less worthy', to one extent or another. How is that NOT going to involve causing harm to others, and by extension, oneself?
Envy: "A feeling of discontent and resentment aroused by and in conjunction with desire for the possessions or qualities of another."
How is that going to end in anything but something negative?
Same with coveting: "To feel immoderate desire for that which is another's." Yeah, that always ends well.
The very reason these things are considered immoral (though I'm not exactly sure I'd call them that) is because the are the causes of harmful actions; the seeds of behaviours that do not end well; that cannot end well if they are acted on.
Unless you mean that thinking them doesn't *directly* and immediately cause harm, by the very act of thinking them? But nobody ever meant they were immoral/harmful in that way.
Kibibytes always makes me think of cat treats.
Is that what we want? More lolcats in our hardrives? Fuxxoring up our filesizes?