You don't have a graphic designer, then. You have a failed painter or sculptor who got their associate's degree in Photoshop.
Graphic design--and graphic designers--are no more referenced by those characteristics than are programmers referenced by the grossly fat, bearded, smelly guy who writes uncommented obfuscated code with no line breaks.
If your graphic designers are handing you that drek, find some new graphic designers.
What worries me is the possibility that corporations could have effectively the same amount of power, with none of the public scrutiny, accountability, or mission to "protect" (at least in theory) those they watch.
What public scrutiny? Do you know what the NSA is doing? Do you thing your drunk, philandering senator knows? Or even cares?
This is a dangerous attitude--whereas a corporation could learn all about you, the worst they'll do with the information is use it to sell you more bric-a-brac, and if you discover that they're invading your privacy, you can at least sue them.
If the government is gathering this data, it can use it to take, with force, everything you own because you smoked a joint in 1963. Plus, if you find out the government is invading your privacy, you can only... well... you can only grease up your sphincter to help with the penetration. And, depending on how you find out what the government is doing, they can shoot you.
Corporations do bad things, but the worst things are done by governments, not corporations. Even the worst things done by corporations are done by the government at the corporations' behest (vis. DMCA).
On the face of it, you're right. But law/lawyers is somewhat different in this respect: it bleeds over to affect everybody through the power of government.
A law is different from an ADA guideline. A law has the enforcement power of the government behind it, and has the reach far beyond the baliwick of lawyers into any other profession they choose.
Anyway, the Constitution and Bill of Rights weren't drawn up by lawyers--they were drawn up by a wide variety of men, from all kinds of professions. Laws written by lawyers tend to be understandable only by lawyers:)
"Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents... Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without a belief in a devil."
"Non-profit" is not neccessarily a pre-requisite; you can find satisfaction at any job where you are working towards a defined goal. I don't mean Vision Statement-type goals ("Enhance shareholder value!"--"Yeah, I'm enhancing shareholder value by surfing for pr0n with one hand while the other is...")
I think this is part of the reason why people like to become contractors so much. You come in, you're handed a project with an end goal, and you drive towards that goal as fast as you can.
If your job is a never-ending series of Total Quality meetings; staff reorgs; or learning new (yet ironically byzanntine) procedures for requisitioning a new toner cartridge, you will tire quickly and grow cynical even faster.
This is why a mobile employment force is so powerful--you're free to find a job that satisfies you. Those jobs are almost never "get paid for doing nothing", because (most) humans desire to grow and learn. Satisfying jobs tend to be challenging, and the companies with those jobs tend to be good ones.
The deed is not the point. I submit that this device is no different than selling printing plates of US paper money. You have yet to address this.
Your argument has remained unaltered, and it was never convincing.
Fanatics are rarely convinced. They are only ignored or physically defeated. I don't expect this to be any different.
Tell me why the device cannot be used as part of an amateur development system.
Holy cow, are you thick. I never said it couldn't be a part of an amateur development system. I said that it isn't it's primary use. It can't be--there just flat out aren't enough developers to make a $144 developer device sufficiently profitable to make the effort.
I've been a commercial programmer since 1978. Programming is not that hard, after the first couple of decades.
<python type="monty">Well, I lived with my 14 brothers and sisters in a shoebox in the middle of the road! ("You had a shoebox?!?")</python>
I can believe it--you show the same obstinacy, pointless literalism, and tunnel vision of most programmers. Or, you're just a poor programmer--bad programming is indeed quite easy to do.
You shouldn't fucking care what other people do with their stuff, and there shouldn't be stupid laws telling you how you can and can't use your stuff.
This is too easy. I hope that you're just being a dick, and not thinking that you're actually being eloquent.
There shouldn't be laws telling you how you can and can't use a gun? Like, "you can't kill people"? How about "I can't rob you of your wallet"?
If I intend to kill you, but don't succeed, do I get to walk? How about if I intend to rob you, but fail?
This guy intends to aid theivery, sophist arguments aside, and he intends to make a buck off it. Nintendo is protecting their investments. You're just mad because you won't be able to steal stuff anonymously, and without consequence. Boo fucking hoo. Buy the goddamn games.
I can't keep pounding this through your head. I'll try just once more, then I'm abandoning you as a lost cause.
I could give a shit what the site says. The site could say that it's for "easy oven cleaning". You think they're going to say on the site "Here is our Super-Piracy Device! Get Free Games! Woot!"?
There are reasons why developer-versions of consoles are so expensive: there are not that many developers in the world. Programming is hard. Programming games is very hard. Programming and getting a Nintendo license to distribute is very hard and very expensive.
This device costs $144. If he wants to make any money at all, he has to sell a lot of them. Is he going to sell to those few thousand developers? Sure--he'll sell to those and, maybe, make a few thousand dollars. What about the millions of broke, greedy, or broke and greedy teenagers? Don't you think he sees them as his primary market? Not developers, Just Plain Folks, who will be using it--not as a "development" device--but to get games for free.
Is the light dawning? I've explained it in a myriad of ways. One of them should be sinking in. If not, well... I hope your genes are recessive.
As for casual privacy being too easy... how is that any easier (cost wise, considering the prices of the equipment), than buying a 70$ CD burner and 50 cent media?
Poor example. The activity that goes on with CD-R is widely varied--backups, cheap transmittal medium, piracy... there are all kinds of activities. A great majority of them are perfectly legal. A CD burner will backup data one day, save Usenet pr0n the next, make a compilation audio CD the next, and blatenly rip off Shania Twain the next.
There are three activities with the Flash Linker: backup of carts (which is, after all, what gamers have been screaming for for decades. That's sarcasm, for those not paying attention), development of games (yeah, there are millions and millions of GBA developers out there. that's why he's selling them for so cheap), and outright piracy.
Let's play What Is More Likely!
The device costs $144 for the Linker and a 64MB flash cart (number pulled from earlier post). What is more likely?
he's just a generous soul, and wants to provide a cheap development platform for the few thousands of GBA developers who want to make Yet Another Snake Game.
he's been plagued with cosmic rays that flip the bits in his carts, and they're constantly going bad on him, so he wants to provide a way for people to back up their carts so they, too, can be protected by cosmic rays.
he's got this device that allows teenagers to get whatever GBA game they want for free. He gets a letter from NOA who are pissed as hell that their revenue stream is in such danger, and he pleads to Slashdot, simultaneously getting support from a horde of blind fanatics against the DMCA, regardless of the matter, and super-valuable free-publicity. He sells to millions of greedy teenagers who couldn't program "Hello world".
You're not paying attention. Or you're deliberately ignoring the facts. Or--this is possible--you're just dumb.
The device allows you to dump a ROM onto your hard drive. The Flash carts allow you to dump from your HD to the cart, and play it in your GBA. For the cost of the Linker and one cart, you can rent GBA games from Blockbuster, copy them, then return them. You have the game forever. Or (more likely), you download the ROM from some w4r3z-asshole site.
That's what bothers Nintendo, and rightly so. They've already had to write off China as a one-disk country, they don't want to do the same to the USA.
So what you are saying is that you can take something that has a legitimate use, and use it illegally? My goodness, that is amazing.
No. If you'd remove your head from the hive-mind's ass, you could see it.
This device's primary use is for illegally copying games. It is not primarily for developers, nor is it for backing up your carts. Somehow, developers are still able to make GBA games without this device, and somehow we managed to live for some 25 years without cart backups. You can deceive yourself all you want. Waving a potential legitimate use in front of a device who's principle use is illegal is sophistry.
Again, I bring up the example of plates to make counterfeit money. You can say "they are pieces of art, not illegal tools". You can say "they make great paper weights". You can even say "I just use them to crack nuts"--it doesn't matter. Their principle use is to make illegal counterfeit money, and claiming that they are anything else is embarassingly stupid.
The same applies here. You can claim anything you want, but the device's main purpose is to get games for free, beyond the cost of the device itself. Nintendo would be insane to just allow the thing to be sold.
You're confusing your blind hatred of the DMCA (which is bad legislation) with what is legal, illegal, right, or wrong. If the DMCA was only used for cases like this, I'd be perfectly content with the law. This is what the law was designed to prevent: punks ripping off a company beneath the guise of "backup purposes" or "developer machines". It's laughable.
The DMCA is being used for other, stupid things, and that is wrong. The law is stupid and wrong. But Nintendo, in this case, is 100% right. If you weren't so self-deceiving, you could see it too.
You probably should read the guy's site and learn all the facts before you flap your idiot gums.
The device allows you to dump the game ROMs to your computer, then write from the computer to a flash device.
If you're talking about a couple of kids sharing games, I think they are more likely to simply exchange/trade cartridges than they are to drop $100-$200 so they can play one or two games.
That is not the problem here. The problem is renting the GBA game from Blockbuster, dumping the ROM, then you have the game for the cost of the rental. It doesn't cost $100/game, it costs $144 for the device with a flash cart, and you can have any GBA game in the world forever for the cost of a rental.
I'm no rocket scientist, but the economics don't make sense to me.
You certainly aren't a rocket scientist. You aren't even a rocket scientist's gardener.
From the documentation, the device also aids in the creation of new software. Many software tools fall into the category of being able to be abused for illegal purposes, much as a screwdriver or pliers can be construed to be burglary tools under the right circumstances.
Sophistry.
If you create plates from which counterfeit money can be printed, and call it "art", is that acceptable, or would you say "please, they're selling counterfeiting devices, not art, hang-em high".
You want to develop GBA games? I'm pretty sure Nintendo sells a developers kit. This guy wants to sell this device to teenagers across the country so they can "share" games. The law of supply and demand does not lie: there are more game players than developers, by several orders of magnitude. That is why a developers kit costs $K-bucks. This costs very little (I saw $144 somewhere above?). This is not a "developers" unit, it's a 31337 w4r3z d00d tool.
Everything a corporation does is not evil, and everything an individual does is pure.
Normally I don't bother with idiots, but you're special.
When you walk into a room that's been painted bright pink with orange highlights, you might say "Man, that's just rude!" Colloquialisms. Think "gag me with a spoon".
The respondant didn't have a real argument to my post, so he nitpicks my choice of words. And you, too, fail to understand, and decide to do the same. Thus you, too, should audit a creative writing class, or something.
I can't explain colloquialisms. If you can't parse the meaning, I can't dig you out of your morass of ignorance. Try auditing a creative writing class, or something.
You had a good idea, then you went all a-kilter there at the end.
Corporations are amoral. Their only purpose is to maximize shareholder value, i.e. sales and profits. If they act in a way that reduces their shareholder value, e.g. by acting "morally responsible", they can even be sued by their shareholders under certain circumstances.
This is true, insofar as it goes. A corporation can act in a moral way, if the corporation is set up that way, i.e. the board or CEO has decision-making powers of some latitude. If the shareholders don't like the decisions made by the board and/or CEO (e.g. they don't mind kids stiching Nikes is Absurdistan; or they are appalled at the thought).
But then you lose it altogether: That's why corporations need to be regulated. You just can't expect them to do the right thing, that would not only be idiotically naive, it would be fatal.
Speaking of idiotic naivité, assuming that the government can or will regulate a corporation any better than a corporation can regulate itself is pretty farfetched. The government can't evenregulate itself, much less manhandle thousands of corporations in any sane or reasonable manner.
If you think "but we can elect representatives to enact the regulations we think are best", you're engaging in the worst form of blind faith. If you couldn't convince a few thousand shareholders to vote out a morally bankrupt CEO, what makes you think you can convice some 30 million citizens to vote for representatives that will do the "right thing"?
Luckily in the US of A, we have the protected right of free speech, and you can protest a corporation's actions in a TV or radio or newspaper ad. Though, if this is any indication, that may change at any time.
I don't know how to answer this: is a wacko in one respect able to contribute in another? Evidence supports this, but the point is irrelevant.
In fucking Chomsky's case, I've already distanced myself from his linguistic and CS endeavors, since I am neither a linguist nor a computer scientist. I'm not commenting on either of these aspects. You keep dragging them up, regardless of the context, as if attempting to assuage the sting of defending a radical.
In case you missed it twice, the OP brought Chomsky up in terms of political discourse. Those are the parameters, not linguistics, not grammar, not CS, not fucking My Little Pony.
My original rant was how all Chomsky fanboys turn into dorm-room anarchists of one sort or another (sometimes, the timeline is reversed). You're the guy in the corner, frantically waving his hand, stammering, "But Teacher, Hitler was really good at accessorizing red and black! Isn't that worth something?"
(I know, Godwin's Law. Corollary be damned, I've ended the thread)
Do not question the Church of Slashdot. Whereas we routinely mock Creationists as the lunatic fringe, we do not hold with the questioning of the legitimacy of a project that one day may lead to the Faithful having sex with aliens. Just like on Star Trek (or Babylon 5, according to the Orthodox branch of the CoS).
Regardless of your feeble thinking, SETI@Home is deserving of all your base.
Nice try, but you missed addressing my point and I still noticed, regardless of your diversionary tactics.
You are lumping good citations with bad citations, and claiming the aggregate means something important--which it most certainly does not. It merely means that fucking Chomsky is often cited, nothing more. Unless you ask each scientist or academician what their individual opinion of the man is, you have no idea outside of your silly little factoid.
Based on your method, I could say that most scientists and academicians think the Bible is an authoritative source--which I can also assure you that they do _not_ hold that belief.
Finally, you were not responding to my "lunatic" label I slapped on fucking Chomsky. You were making a feeble attempt to paint me as an intellectual defective because I don't kowtow to fucking Chomsky's lying anti-Semitism.
If you don't read Chomsky, I guess that means you don't read much at all. Chomsky is one of the ten most cited authors in history [emich.edu]... and then... The top ten cited sources during the period were: Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, Aristotle, the Bible, Plato, Freud, Chomsky, Hegel and Cicero."
I see. Perhaps Chomsky is as worthwile as Lenine, and as accurate as Marx?
What a ridiculous little factoid: do you base the worth of somebody's opinions on the number of times they've been cited? How about their accuracy?
Unlike you, I read fucking Chomsky and found him to be either an idiot, or deliberately self-deceiving--on his political views, anyway. I can't comment on linguistics or CS, because I am neither.
Maybe you should quit watching all thoe sitcom reruns and work on expanding your intellectual horizons. I recommend reading , including those authors with views you don't necessarily agree with.
Nice. Since I don't watch TV, you can take your smarmy condescension and shove it sideways.
Chomsky is undoubtably one of the most brilliant intellects of our time, the father of modern linguistics, and regardless of whether you like his political views, if you have not read his work in linguistics you only cheating yourself out of a whole universe of wonder.
"Undoubtably"? I doubt it. You're begging the question.
I dunno about linguistics. But, in case you missed it, the original poster isn't referencing fucking Chomsky in terms of linguistics. We're discussing his political views. Stop wandering afield.
Are radical anarchists all alike? [...snip...]
Try reading Chomsky
Yes. You are all alike. You all read fucking Chomsky.
God, are you all so desperate for acceptance that you'd subscribe to a lunatic's ravings just to belong to a group?
The only thing worse than Chomsky fanboys will be the Chomsky fanboys after he goes Tango Uniform. You addled idiots will never believe he choked on a fish bone, or whatever happens to make him assume room temperature. He'll be martyred in abstentia of facts. You'll be fucking insufferable then.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't have a graphic designer, then. You have a failed painter or sculptor who got their associate's degree in Photoshop.
Graphic design--and graphic designers--are no more referenced by those characteristics than are programmers referenced by the grossly fat, bearded, smelly guy who writes uncommented obfuscated code with no line breaks.
If your graphic designers are handing you that drek, find some new graphic designers.
What public scrutiny? Do you know what the NSA is doing? Do you thing your drunk, philandering senator knows? Or even cares?
This is a dangerous attitude--whereas a corporation could learn all about you, the worst they'll do with the information is use it to sell you more bric-a-brac, and if you discover that they're invading your privacy, you can at least sue them.
If the government is gathering this data, it can use it to take, with force, everything you own because you smoked a joint in 1963. Plus, if you find out the government is invading your privacy, you can only... well... you can only grease up your sphincter to help with the penetration. And, depending on how you find out what the government is doing, they can shoot you.
Corporations do bad things, but the worst things are done by governments, not corporations. Even the worst things done by corporations are done by the government at the corporations' behest (vis. DMCA).
Is that the same Laszlo that lives in the steam tunnels?
On the face of it, you're right. But law/lawyers is somewhat different in this respect: it bleeds over to affect everybody through the power of government.
A law is different from an ADA guideline. A law has the enforcement power of the government behind it, and has the reach far beyond the baliwick of lawyers into any other profession they choose.
Anyway, the Constitution and Bill of Rights weren't drawn up by lawyers--they were drawn up by a wide variety of men, from all kinds of professions. Laws written by lawyers tend to be understandable only by lawyers :)
"Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents... Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without a belief in a devil."
-- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
In addition:
It will ALWAYS be that way as long as we let the lawyers make the laws
This is probably the best advice ever.
"Non-profit" is not neccessarily a pre-requisite; you can find satisfaction at any job where you are working towards a defined goal. I don't mean Vision Statement-type goals ("Enhance shareholder value!"--"Yeah, I'm enhancing shareholder value by surfing for pr0n with one hand while the other is...")
I think this is part of the reason why people like to become contractors so much. You come in, you're handed a project with an end goal, and you drive towards that goal as fast as you can.
If your job is a never-ending series of Total Quality meetings; staff reorgs; or learning new (yet ironically byzanntine) procedures for requisitioning a new toner cartridge, you will tire quickly and grow cynical even faster.
This is why a mobile employment force is so powerful--you're free to find a job that satisfies you. Those jobs are almost never "get paid for doing nothing", because (most) humans desire to grow and learn. Satisfying jobs tend to be challenging, and the companies with those jobs tend to be good ones.
The deed is not the point. I submit that this device is no different than selling printing plates of US paper money. You have yet to address this.
Your argument has remained unaltered, and it was never convincing.
Fanatics are rarely convinced. They are only ignored or physically defeated. I don't expect this to be any different.
Tell me why the device cannot be used as part of an amateur development system.
Holy cow, are you thick. I never said it couldn't be a part of an amateur development system. I said that it isn't it's primary use. It can't be--there just flat out aren't enough developers to make a $144 developer device sufficiently profitable to make the effort.
I've been a commercial programmer since 1978. Programming is not that hard, after the first couple of decades.
<python type="monty">Well, I lived with my 14 brothers and sisters in a shoebox in the middle of the road! ("You had a shoebox?!?")</python>
I can believe it--you show the same obstinacy, pointless literalism, and tunnel vision of most programmers. Or, you're just a poor programmer--bad programming is indeed quite easy to do.
This is too easy. I hope that you're just being a dick, and not thinking that you're actually being eloquent.
There shouldn't be laws telling you how you can and can't use a gun? Like, "you can't kill people"? How about "I can't rob you of your wallet"?
If I intend to kill you, but don't succeed, do I get to walk? How about if I intend to rob you, but fail?
This guy intends to aid theivery, sophist arguments aside, and he intends to make a buck off it. Nintendo is protecting their investments. You're just mad because you won't be able to steal stuff anonymously, and without consequence. Boo fucking hoo. Buy the goddamn games.
I can't keep pounding this through your head. I'll try just once more, then I'm abandoning you as a lost cause.
I could give a shit what the site says. The site could say that it's for "easy oven cleaning". You think they're going to say on the site "Here is our Super-Piracy Device! Get Free Games! Woot!"?
There are reasons why developer-versions of consoles are so expensive: there are not that many developers in the world. Programming is hard. Programming games is very hard. Programming and getting a Nintendo license to distribute is very hard and very expensive.
This device costs $144. If he wants to make any money at all, he has to sell a lot of them. Is he going to sell to those few thousand developers? Sure--he'll sell to those and, maybe, make a few thousand dollars. What about the millions of broke, greedy, or broke and greedy teenagers? Don't you think he sees them as his primary market? Not developers, Just Plain Folks, who will be using it--not as a "development" device--but to get games for free.
Is the light dawning? I've explained it in a myriad of ways. One of them should be sinking in. If not, well... I hope your genes are recessive.
Poor example. The activity that goes on with CD-R is widely varied--backups, cheap transmittal medium, piracy... there are all kinds of activities. A great majority of them are perfectly legal. A CD burner will backup data one day, save Usenet pr0n the next, make a compilation audio CD the next, and blatenly rip off Shania Twain the next.
There are three activities with the Flash Linker: backup of carts (which is, after all, what gamers have been screaming for for decades. That's sarcasm, for those not paying attention), development of games (yeah, there are millions and millions of GBA developers out there. that's why he's selling them for so cheap), and outright piracy.
Let's play What Is More Likely!
The device costs $144 for the Linker and a 64MB flash cart (number pulled from earlier post). What is more likely?
Now, Which Is More Likely?
You're not paying attention. Or you're deliberately ignoring the facts. Or--this is possible--you're just dumb.
The device allows you to dump a ROM onto your hard drive. The Flash carts allow you to dump from your HD to the cart, and play it in your GBA. For the cost of the Linker and one cart, you can rent GBA games from Blockbuster, copy them, then return them. You have the game forever. Or (more likely), you download the ROM from some w4r3z-asshole site.
That's what bothers Nintendo, and rightly so. They've already had to write off China as a one-disk country, they don't want to do the same to the USA.
No. If you'd remove your head from the hive-mind's ass, you could see it.
This device's primary use is for illegally copying games. It is not primarily for developers, nor is it for backing up your carts. Somehow, developers are still able to make GBA games without this device, and somehow we managed to live for some 25 years without cart backups. You can deceive yourself all you want. Waving a potential legitimate use in front of a device who's principle use is illegal is sophistry.
Again, I bring up the example of plates to make counterfeit money. You can say "they are pieces of art, not illegal tools". You can say "they make great paper weights". You can even say "I just use them to crack nuts"--it doesn't matter. Their principle use is to make illegal counterfeit money, and claiming that they are anything else is embarassingly stupid.
The same applies here. You can claim anything you want, but the device's main purpose is to get games for free, beyond the cost of the device itself. Nintendo would be insane to just allow the thing to be sold.
You're confusing your blind hatred of the DMCA (which is bad legislation) with what is legal, illegal, right, or wrong. If the DMCA was only used for cases like this, I'd be perfectly content with the law. This is what the law was designed to prevent: punks ripping off a company beneath the guise of "backup purposes" or "developer machines". It's laughable.
The DMCA is being used for other, stupid things, and that is wrong. The law is stupid and wrong. But Nintendo, in this case, is 100% right. If you weren't so self-deceiving, you could see it too.
You probably should read the guy's site and learn all the facts before you flap your idiot gums.
The device allows you to dump the game ROMs to your computer, then write from the computer to a flash device.
If you're talking about a couple of kids sharing games, I think they are more likely to simply exchange/trade cartridges than they are to drop $100-$200 so they can play one or two games.
That is not the problem here. The problem is renting the GBA game from Blockbuster, dumping the ROM, then you have the game for the cost of the rental. It doesn't cost $100/game, it costs $144 for the device with a flash cart, and you can have any GBA game in the world forever for the cost of a rental.
I'm no rocket scientist, but the economics don't make sense to me.
You certainly aren't a rocket scientist. You aren't even a rocket scientist's gardener.
Sophistry.
If you create plates from which counterfeit money can be printed, and call it "art", is that acceptable, or would you say "please, they're selling counterfeiting devices, not art, hang-em high".
You want to develop GBA games? I'm pretty sure Nintendo sells a developers kit. This guy wants to sell this device to teenagers across the country so they can "share" games. The law of supply and demand does not lie: there are more game players than developers, by several orders of magnitude. That is why a developers kit costs $K-bucks. This costs very little (I saw $144 somewhere above?). This is not a "developers" unit, it's a 31337 w4r3z d00d tool.
Everything a corporation does is not evil, and everything an individual does is pure.
Normally I don't bother with idiots, but you're special.
When you walk into a room that's been painted bright pink with orange highlights, you might say "Man, that's just rude!" Colloquialisms. Think "gag me with a spoon".
The respondant didn't have a real argument to my post, so he nitpicks my choice of words. And you, too, fail to understand, and decide to do the same. Thus you, too, should audit a creative writing class, or something.
I can't explain colloquialisms. If you can't parse the meaning, I can't dig you out of your morass of ignorance. Try auditing a creative writing class, or something.
DMCA or no, this device allows people to copy GBA games. Legally right or wrong, it's a pretty rude thing to do.
You think companies are making games for the mental excercise of it?
I hope you get shut down.
You had a good idea, then you went all a-kilter there at the end.
Corporations are amoral. Their only purpose is to maximize shareholder value, i.e. sales and profits. If they act in a way that reduces their shareholder value, e.g. by acting "morally responsible", they can even be sued by their shareholders under certain circumstances.
This is true, insofar as it goes. A corporation can act in a moral way, if the corporation is set up that way, i.e. the board or CEO has decision-making powers of some latitude. If the shareholders don't like the decisions made by the board and/or CEO (e.g. they don't mind kids stiching Nikes is Absurdistan; or they are appalled at the thought).
But then you lose it altogether:
That's why corporations need to be regulated. You just can't expect them to do the right thing, that would not only be idiotically naive, it would be fatal.
Speaking of idiotic naivité, assuming that the government can or will regulate a corporation any better than a corporation can regulate itself is pretty farfetched. The government can't even regulate itself, much less manhandle thousands of corporations in any sane or reasonable manner.
If you think "but we can elect representatives to enact the regulations we think are best", you're engaging in the worst form of blind faith. If you couldn't convince a few thousand shareholders to vote out a morally bankrupt CEO, what makes you think you can convice some 30 million citizens to vote for representatives that will do the "right thing"?
Luckily in the US of A, we have the protected right of free speech, and you can protest a corporation's actions in a TV or radio or newspaper ad. Though, if this is any indication, that may change at any time.
I don't know how to answer this: is a wacko in one respect able to contribute in another? Evidence supports this, but the point is irrelevant.
In fucking Chomsky's case, I've already distanced myself from his linguistic and CS endeavors, since I am neither a linguist nor a computer scientist. I'm not commenting on either of these aspects. You keep dragging them up, regardless of the context, as if attempting to assuage the sting of defending a radical.
In case you missed it twice, the OP brought Chomsky up in terms of political discourse. Those are the parameters, not linguistics, not grammar, not CS, not fucking My Little Pony.
My original rant was how all Chomsky fanboys turn into dorm-room anarchists of one sort or another (sometimes, the timeline is reversed). You're the guy in the corner, frantically waving his hand, stammering, "But Teacher, Hitler was really good at accessorizing red and black! Isn't that worth something?"
(I know, Godwin's Law. Corollary be damned, I've ended the thread)
Dear unwashed heathen,
Do not question the Church of Slashdot. Whereas we routinely mock Creationists as the lunatic fringe, we do not hold with the questioning of the legitimacy of a project that one day may lead to the Faithful having sex with aliens. Just like on Star Trek (or Babylon 5, according to the Orthodox branch of the CoS).
Regardless of your feeble thinking, SETI@Home is deserving of all your base.
For Great Justice!
The Cleansed and Purified
Another fucking Chomsky fanboy. Stop wanking so much, you shriveled pusbag, and read a comic book instead. It's more accurate and more redeeming.
Nice try, but you missed addressing my point and I still noticed, regardless of your diversionary tactics.
You are lumping good citations with bad citations, and claiming the aggregate means something important--which it most certainly does not. It merely means that fucking Chomsky is often cited, nothing more. Unless you ask each scientist or academician what their individual opinion of the man is, you have no idea outside of your silly little factoid.
Based on your method, I could say that most scientists and academicians think the Bible is an authoritative source--which I can also assure you that they do _not_ hold that belief.
Finally, you were not responding to my "lunatic" label I slapped on fucking Chomsky. You were making a feeble attempt to paint me as an intellectual defective because I don't kowtow to fucking Chomsky's lying anti-Semitism.
I see. Perhaps Chomsky is as worthwile as Lenine, and as accurate as Marx?
What a ridiculous little factoid: do you base the worth of somebody's opinions on the number of times they've been cited? How about their accuracy?
Unlike you, I read fucking Chomsky and found him to be either an idiot, or deliberately self-deceiving--on his political views, anyway. I can't comment on linguistics or CS, because I am neither.
Maybe you should quit watching all thoe sitcom reruns and work on expanding your intellectual horizons. I recommend reading , including those authors with views you don't necessarily agree with.
Nice. Since I don't watch TV, you can take your smarmy condescension and shove it sideways.
Chomsky is undoubtably one of the most brilliant intellects of our time, the father of modern linguistics, and regardless of whether you like his political views, if you have not read his work in linguistics you only cheating yourself out of a whole universe of wonder.
"Undoubtably"? I doubt it. You're begging the question.
I dunno about linguistics. But, in case you missed it, the original poster isn't referencing fucking Chomsky in terms of linguistics. We're discussing his political views. Stop wandering afield.
Yes. You are all alike. You all read fucking Chomsky.
God, are you all so desperate for acceptance that you'd subscribe to a lunatic's ravings just to belong to a group?
The only thing worse than Chomsky fanboys will be the Chomsky fanboys after he goes Tango Uniform. You addled idiots will never believe he choked on a fish bone, or whatever happens to make him assume room temperature. He'll be martyred in abstentia of facts. You'll be fucking insufferable then.