They priced me out of their market finally. I was a machead for a decade, but my income dropped, they raised prices and introduced OSX, all at the same time,do it just priced me right on out. I can't run osx on older hardware, I couldn't run it on the then semi-expensive mac laptop I had that was only a few years old(1400PB), so I just struggled by with what I had, then one day a friend handed me a couple of redhat disks, and having some old x86 junkers hanging around I tried it out, and it worked fine. It was smooth and fast and had a lot of decent apps,and ran swell on my old junk, so I got hooked. Then I found out about the whole open source philosophy(no, I had no clue previously), so I switched to linux for those two reasons.
IF Mac had offered a more reasonably priced machine at the time (they were heading there but quit, right about exactly when they switched to the tablelamp version of imac), I probably would never have switched, and never really investigated open source or linux. As it is, I was more disappointed on Mac going to a unixy system then sticking with a much more secure system which was classic. I've never cared all that much about CLI, always liked and used GUI as much as possible, but I am reluctantly learning dribs and drabs as I need to. I still think Mac classic was by far the easiest for people to use OS, the most secure (in terms of automatically secure with a default install and not needing much else to keep it that way), and the hardware was always top notch. Just too pricey for me now.
With linux, an older real cheap or free generic system and a cheap set of disks give me what I consider to be "near" top of the line computing experience, for my purposes anyway. After dropping thousands over the years on computers, I just got tired of it, really tired of it.. I still have all but one of my personal computers going all the way back, they all still work. I got tired of expensive obsolesence.
For surfing, email, listening to some net streams, blah blah blah, you simply no longer have to keep faked out into the expensive hardware upgrade cycle, at least if you don't want to be. Next year I might drop 100$ on a used machine that's better, or just get a mobo/cpu/ram bundle, and that's about it. If you don't do gaming, or anything much exotic like intensive graphics development, or things of that nature, there is no practical need for most people to have this new hardware, either macs or commodity x86. We hit a nadir of diminishing returns for mostpeople compared to cost several years ago, roughly around Mac G3 era, pentium II era, and linux will run just dandy on either of those two platforms for most peoples purposes. I think people are better off just upping their ram than buying a new machine, that and get broadband, that does more to speed up things than anything else. I also think that the industry doesn't care that windows is so buggy and crappy, because it literally sells new machines for them! I have seen several people just get so frustrated with windows machines being constanly hosed for them no matter what they did, that they went and bought new ones, just to see if they were any better! No lie! Just the other day down the street this lady I know got some brand new compaq bundle. Reason? she installed something and it borked her CD drive! I was flabbergasted. I was taking over a gift of an old pentium I built for her son, for his birthday, he sees it and goes "COOL, now I got TWO computers!" I had no idea. I asked her why she didn't just call me and have me help her either fix or replace the drive, she just didn't want to fool with the old one anymore, she just wanted new, in the hopes something like that wouldn't happen! I guess some people don't mind spending the loot, but really, her older one was working fine for her purposes(some medical transcription jazz that works with corel whatever), it just had a 25$ part break, or windows something made it not work. I'm not enough of a windows analyst to decipher arcane bugs with the stuff, most
...please, I was around and watched it live,I've spent no telling how many days-not hours but days-researching it. I was home sick from school when it happened, the first time I ever missed any school, we had a serious coup d'etat in 63, and the perps got away with it. clean away with it, then we had a whiteeash commission cover it up. The government ignores the constitution, I can site example after example. The supremem court refuses to hear critical cases in favor of creampuff cases. We have serious chronic vote fraud going on for years and years. We have legislation from the bench, and even worse than that, legislation from unelected bureaucrats, being enforced.
I guess if you consider fascism orderly, OK, I'll concede, you win. It's completely orderly by a dictionary definition, as in "new world" orderly. I'll switch to "honest, open, fair, reasonable, equitable" for my description, we don't have those as applied to government any longer.
Our government is none of those things, and the checks and balances exist in theory only for the most part.
in US terms. And also you have to take into concideration, that manufactured goods tend to have a more similar price than a dissimilar price as you go around the world. there are some differences, but not nearly as profound as housing and food, those vary a lot more, everythi8ng else is closer to a world price. Just because county xyz has a median income of 500$ say, doesn't automatically make a new cadillac be 350$ there, which it would by your analogy with the US. correct? A good point? This applies to most goods that have to be imported there, so basically he has to make do with mostly junk in order to do his inventions, as at that salary he can't get much. Notice he was using an 80 VW for his electric car, and I bet he bought that 5th hand after it was completely totally wore out on their rough roads there. He developed the skin static potential radio because even a 10 or 20$ radio is probably too expensive for mass adoption. And so forth. His housing costs and food are probably cheaper, after that, he has to pay almost what we pay for manufactured goods, and I don't know what electrical power costs,for his shop. I have a good idea what he had to pay for the solar panels unless he got them donated, as I own a solar rig myself, and 6 panels and a charge controller would be close to a half a years pay for him, minimum,going to 9 months or a complete year, at a 2400$ years pay schedule, depending on their size.
He is not rolling in dough, and a half a million comparison is using statistics between the US and afghanistan is inappropriate in this instance if you compare all his costs of living and development. Really, he does a lot on still a shoestring budget,even for afghanistan, it's a very low figure for someone of his obvious capabilities and intellect and what he's been able to pull off. Heck, 2400$ wouldn't get a random haliburton VP out of bed to count his money this week from just one government padded contract.
IF we can get an article or topic posted that relates exactly to the issues I wanted to bring up, I'll post them there. In the meantime, as the only compromise I have available, if I see a reference to where someone has clearly compromised themselves, and admitted to it, I feel completely justified in pointing that out and re-emphasizing it, and in relating it to the over all situation of compromised ethics and practicalities as it appears with and on the onternet. We have a sub section called YRO,and a big part of that to me is to discuss how the rights of minority users of the web are constantly stymied over the years based on a relatively few large corporations dominance of browsers, OSes, file standards, etc. although that is changing now, it's precisely from people getting frustrated with the lack of action, most of the time based on "money" concerns as in "well, I know this sucks, but I'm going to do it anyway because...". I think if more people dealt with what they know is right in a more consistent manner, we would all eventually be much better off. the opposite is to always excuse it, over and over again. And the reason I mentioned money is preceisly because that's what I read here, either in the direct or in the alluded-to. it's a constant refrain, why don't "they" do such and such better, always wanting some vague other guy to do something different, but when it comes to doing it yourself, well that always seems to be mostly ignored, because of money/business concerns. My rant revolved around which is it, is it more important to have better solutions and more universal freedom, or is it more important to always default to what is the most practical money wise this week and this quarter? I don't bring up the subject of money, they do! I just pointed out there is a lot more hypocrisy posted here than most want to admit to. It's OK for "the other guy"to do such and such, it's Ok for "them"people to change, but when it comes to this generic "me" guy, well, all of a sudden money comes into the picture.
My rant was this, why is it easy here to make the other guy change, to insit on it, to recommend it, to be vocal about it, when anyone "you" won't change the exact second it impacts you or your companies "bottom line" this week? For example, it is pretty universal here to recommend that peole switch browsers, but all of a sudden it's "wrong" to suggest that web develope A or B switch how they write code in the first place, because if they switch it will be "too impractical and cost them money". Can you see the hypocrisy now? I think it's both an exact observation and an exact opinion based on the obversation, and it revolves around money and the lack of conviction to "put your money(or lack of it in some future manner theoretically) where your mouth is". The coinversation was in general terms, not in specifics, but i dare anyone to assert that the observations are incorrect. you can rerad them here almost daily, especially with webmasters, small medium and large, almost always they say "well, we'd like to be able to do such and such this way, but ya know, IE is the dominant browser and..." See? That's the truth isn't it? Just generally speaking, it occurs more often than not? And it does occur because of money, the lack of courage to risk the possibility of a short rtrange drop in income in order to keep perpetuating writing restrictive code that goes to support a monopolistic corporation, and to support other less free formats and artifical standards. And if it's not about money, what else is it about then, if someone codes to a standard they righteously believe is sub par and ill advised? Which is it, what do you call that?
Now, conversely, if they have the opinion that what they are doing is the *best* way to code, based on the code itself and not the money, that's a different story, I'll agree with them then, but if they code to what they believe to be of a lesser standard, merely for money, I'll call shenanigans and hypocrisy. And I don't want to de evolve in to minutiae of exceptions to the rule, I am speaking in general terms here.
The patriot act wasn't voted in? Provisions in the second and third weren't voted in? Of course they were. Unless we are talking about different things.
Sorry about calling you a neocon if you aren't of course, I'll admit to unnecessary flaming there.
As to an orderly election, it might happen, but it depends on what you call or classify as "orderly". If it's only the two monopoly parties on the publics airwaves in the so called national debates, like it was last time, I wouldn't even get close to calling that orderly. I think if a candidate can get legally listed on the ballot in the majority of the states, they should be in the broadcasted debates, at a bare minimum. If you can classify corporate bribes disguised as campaign contributions paid to politicians as "orderly" I'd have to object to that assertion. And look at what just happened, the records of outright foreign lobbyists "aren't available" in common electronic form, because it would "crash the system". These aspects and more to our political system and as it applies to elections are not in any way orderly to my way of thinking. And then if you want to get into blackbox no trail, no reasonable audit, no legitimate verification styled voting, I'd classify that as outright indications of fraud and malfeasance, the exact opposite of orderly.
... open records laws and sunshine laws for government. Society decided it was a good idea. Commercial Broadcasters have been granted a license, a permission, to monopolize a certain frequency in order to provide programming for their corporations profit, but also to be of the general publics benefit. Now I am against censorship, but I am pro "of the general publics benefit" as well, so this is a dilemma. I have long been a critic, generally speaking now, of broadcasters dismal news coverage,their LACK of honest news coverage to be more accurate, as well as content selection. For instance,and what has been almost universally complained about here, clear channels almost complete lock in, especially with the higher wattage stations across the country. They are already "forced" -it's a joke really- to go through what has turned into a rubber stamped "review" procedure to be eligible to renew their licenses, but that has rarely resulted in any station or network being not renewed. And it's a bear to be able to provide any alternative programming. the review procedure was supposed to be the check and balance on that, but it'snever worked, practically speaking.
So, based on the pros and cons, I tend to think this is a better thing than not. I know a lot here will focus on indecency complaints, personally I haven't seen or heard much of any indecency on over the air radio or tv, although I find it ludicrous that violence is never classified as indecent or x rated, whereas even mild sexuality is. Yes, I know the x ratings are for movies. Just using it conversationally as a descriptor. I am way more concerned about their news covereage, and how they perpetuate outright FUD constantly and keep up their propogandizing brainwashing for the benefit of two political parties and large international corporations, and get away with it completely, year after year. That to me is deserving of a little "censorship" right out of their "licenses".
Now if we had a much more restrictive set of guidelines as it applied to a commercial broadcasting corporation, and a much more liberal first amenment applies approach to how we granted licenses to individuals for community radio and TV, I would have a different opinion, but we don't, so I fall on the need for access to their tapes if you wish to make a complaint. They want the license to print money generation after generation, they can conform to some guidelienes, and keeping a tape is not that restrictive of a guideline. If they profit from the publics trust, there needs to be fees and restrictions applied to them, forcing them to keep master tapes and to provide copies seems reasonable enough as a compromise. Frankly, I'd rather see mandated timeout rules,licenses that do in fact expire with no rubber stamping automatic renewal, so as to give new broadcasters a chance, and for the allowing of many more "legal" low power radio and television stations. In other words, turn over a much larger portion of the available spectrum to not for profit broadcasters, so that real first amendment may be applied to named humans. Phase the transition in over say a 5 year period. Humans need more freedom, corporations need a lot more restrictions and less freedom to keep gouging and avoiding responsibility in providing broadcasts that really *are* in the publics interests, IMO. The *public* is a lot more than a specific common denominator advertising designed set of demographics. A lot of the *public* now feels left out in what's on the air, they are forced by the current restrictions to listen to cookie cutter programming for the most part, and for various reasons, the lack of choice can lead to dissatisfaction and calls for censorship which in reality are just calls for something besides the "standard" formula programming that is there to view or hear.
...like this guy. The world needs more people like him. And he's doing it on a paltry 200 dollars a month, which I am sure is a lot over there, but still. When you think of what 200$ does in the US or any western nation, he's a champ.
And I'll add my cybervote, slashdot needs an icon of this guy whenever we are discussing something new and freely offered out there.
getting in the faces of policy makers, bigshots? Been there, done that. That's part of protest, Protest isn'tall about marching, it's about doing something differently than what you see as the problem area. Sometimes it means organizing a boycott, sometimes it means organizing a letter writing campaign, some times it means getting interviews with the bigshots, sometimes it means using jiournalism to expose fraud and abuse, sometimes it's hand holding an insider whistleblower and giving them the resources they need to go forward with the exposure of 'wrongness". It's all of the above and more, you got a big problem with that? People AREN'T supposed to do things for the better? People are supposed to always do whatever makes them more money, even if they know it's stupid, wrong, or both?
Your choice, you chose obviously to make money your God and to worship it, and you will do anything for money, that's all I get from your reply. do anything for money, and that's it. If it makes you more money, it must be right. anything else is your quote "hippie shit". I think some of the old black grandmas I walked with would be amused to be called a hippie. Back then the word didn't exist, the closest was probably "beatnik" anyway. of course, if you knew any history you would know that, but I bet your history lessons got lost as you were too busy making money, probably what, dealing? theft from your employer?
See, works both ways. I can assume whatever I want about you, even though I know nothing personal about you. What? That's illogical? Yes, it is, too bad you started it.
Let me put it simpler:
If you can justify compromising your integrity and intelligence for small sums of money, what would you do for a much larger sum? If you can look yourself in the mirror and know you did something you thought was wrong, but you did it anyway, for basically money, what does that make you? if you do it all the time, eventually what will happen?
It's a legitimate topic, and a legitmate opbservation. Geeks and nerds need ethics too, it's not just "corporations"or "governments" that need to clean up their act.
I like stuff, I like gadgets, I work and use moeny, but I don't worship them. I don't worship money or make it the most important thing in my life. I don't encourage that behavior in others.I know here it'smore important to make more money, I just happen to disagree, i think some times it's better to make less money and do the right thing, no matter what the right thing happens to be at the time.
That's my opinion, I read yours,and it's pretty clear,so we can agree to disagree on it. Have fun with your money, I hope it serves you well. If you have children, be sure to teach them that money, over all other things, is the most important thing ever.
No, I am not trolling, and perhaps you missed my point, which I will condense. I am seeing more and more an obvious trend for people to always compromise their postions based on money. it's the little things, then you notice the larger ones, all the way to very important ones. it starts with people saying along the lines of "ya know, I knew I shouldn't have written this code, or I know that this is broken but most people want it broken because they don'tknow what non broken is" or"my boss told me to do such and such from marketing pressures, I knew it was going to do this x-wrong thing but I had to do it, my job ya know". and such like. I read that ALL the time here on slashdot, and that one little post got my dander up,it dawned on me I had read hundreds of those "little compromises", it was the tipping over point for me on this accepted and tolerated and almost expected ingrained weenieness to always default to the excuse "well, I need the money" as if that excuse is always valid and that that's the most important thing in the world.
I find that attitude plenty disturbing, and I do NOT think my rant was out of line, in fact, I know it made a lot of people uneasy, because they know in their hearts they have compromised themselves-done wrong-when they knew they shouldn't, and they used "money"as an excuse.
In other words, choice of an image format or a browser was immaterial to my intent and what I wrote, I was using it as one example of many I have seen here, and because we haven't had a full bore ethics in life and business thread here (that I have seen, I apologize if I missed it) I just stuck it in where my nature and inclination combined with the circumstance to let it fit. And sorry if it wasn't taken that way instead of the excessive fixation on the stupid image format, which is trivial.
It's the accumulation of huge numbers of day to day to day trivial compromises that add up to a not so trivial "compromised" human, and the accumulation of compromised humans that add up to corrupt businesses and governments-and societies.
And it all goes back to love of money over all else, lack of courage in even simple matters, and the williness to excuse behavior that anyone "you" knows to be wrong.
Is that an important subject, or what? I think it is, but it gets no coverage does it? Maybe some, very rarely,but not much anyway. "stuff that matters" is relative, one of the things that matter to THIS nerd right here is that I noticed a shockingly casual group-acceptance of doing bogus things, over a long period of time. I point it out, it's that simple.
They make "industrial" grade keyboards (and computers) that are designed to work in very dirty conditions. I guess you can google for them. I never used them, but have seen a few, but I don't know any brand names to recommend.
I sloshed some stuff, can't remember now, might have been iced coffee, onto a mac keyboard a long time ago. I took it ouside and opened it up and blasted it out with a hose and let it sun dry for aday. It worked fine then.
I've seen in in the dumb mechanical world too. Machines are alive, I just know it! I had a little italian sportscar once,a raggedy old fiat, but I liked it. Anyway, I SWEAR it was alive and female and jealous. It worked great all the time until "date night" for zogger. Go to pick up my date, it would break down. Never missed.
... penetration or a simple DDoS attack. No one is immune from DDoS if the other guy has more bandwith than you do to use, doesn't matter the OS I would imagine.. Although with akami you would think that would be hard to pull off. Perhaps it was a big state sponsored attack? The details have been meagre.
... if the employee owns all that stuff, and one day with no notice his job gets ourtsourced, at least he already has all that stuff, very useful for looking for another job. if you get canned,and your weekly income drops to zero, and you then have to increase your expenses by getting a phone and net connection, etc just to look for a job, then that would sucketh. If you are already using that and it's been budgeted in to your "lifestyle", then it's not much more. Besides, what geek doesn't want his own cellphone and computer and broadband connection?????? If your employer gives you *duplicates* of them, fatcity,use 'em, if they don't, you still want your own anyway.
... the boss pays for and provides the larger and more expensive tools. For instance,a 150$ trim mower I buy, a 40,000$ tractor he buys. A 125$ string trimmer I buy, he popped for a 900$ one for heavier jobs. He pays for all the fuel I use, diesel and gas, and he pays for any maintenance parts, but I do the repairs, if possible. I guess a rough analogy is my fuel is like your bandwith, so in this case the employer pays for it.
And I bet my take home is a lot less than most peoples. Every job I ever had I mostly had to buy tools for. That's how it works. Nowadays they will play off the threat to outsource the white collar workers job, or bring in a "legal" h1b worker, in the blue collar world you get threatened with an illegal immigrant to take your job, or they ship your job to china or someplace like that.
This job I am lucky, he's good about tools and some bennies, so -so on pay, but job security is high if you stick with the job and don't be a slacker or complainer and can work self motivated with minimum supervision. I always task myself MORE work than what is expected, hence I get a better deal than most of his other employees, who don't last long, especially with the provided tools, which let me do my job easier. Small tools I would have anyway, so I'm not shy about using them for the occassional smaller job where they fit better.
I guess it boils down to how much you want the job, whether you can get another one easily that will pay you more and give you more benefits, including employer mandated and provided equipment. And if it's mandated, it's deductable usually if you have to buy it. If your employer wants more signs of loyalty by the workers taking up some of the tool costs, are they matching it by providing better pay, working conditions, guarantees on employment for the longer term, anything along those lines? It works both ways near as I can see. You have to also look, if the company is in trouble and needs to cut costs across the board, has management given up anything fairly, or is it just the employees/non owners feeling the brunt? That would make an attitude difference as well if it was only one sided against your favor. I'd be looking for another job on the side then, before they implode.
this describes the world of illusion captain pike lived in when he was borken up and in his wheelchair, in the original ST. What was his love lifes characters name? I remember her "illusionary" face, and her "reality" face but don't recall her name right now.
too bad the cartoon didn't continue, with the employee going on and starting his own business and doing things the ethical way. yep, he probably makes less money in the beginning, so what? It is not flighty to want something a bit better, to change some modalities to reflect an evolution in business, government, how you arrange your own affairs. I never suggested people should be lazy or not work,and just somehow magically all their needs and wants would be met. That's nuts, I agree. Just that they shouldn't follow orders that go against what they know to be more correct, more intelligent, or more ethical. And if they fail to do that over just that weeks check, they will constantly keep sucking it down and get more and more into a morass where all they are is in essence no better than a medieval serf, even if they live in this century and work in a modern office or factory or government agency. You either work to the best of your native ability and your best set of ethics, or you compromise..for money usually. If that is in software and what you code, then that is merely one potential example of millions, I was using the example to address the larger issue. I apologise if that wasn't made more clear. And if you want to just make fun of me or allege I am saying something I am not, you are free to do so, but understand, I have walked the walk, I just don't complain about issues, and if it inconveniences me, so be it, I'll do it again. If it costs me some money, I don't care. I do not worship money. I use money,I work for money, but it is way down my list of lifes priorities, and I won't compromise my ethics or intelligence in exchange for money.
of course, I would probably PAY money if I could run a first draft post with zero typos or misspellings;)
my post has ver5y, vewry little to do with a trivial software matter, hardly nothing. I used it to make a larger point, to get people to think how their accumulated actions build on themselves.
And, it did make a difference. Ask the people who are more-free now if the accumulated actions of a minority made a difference to make everyone better off in the long run. One person can make a difference, especially if by their actions they might influence some others. One person being complacent, going along to get along, always shoving off problems for someone else to deal with, leads to stagnation and the rule of the bully and the criminal, in business, in government, on the internet, in your neighborhood-everywhere. You start being a non victim by stopping being a victim, on a small matter or a large matter. You just say "no" to trading money for being a victim.
I've quit several jobs before, costing me immediate money and certainly incionceniencing me, when i was ordered to do something I thought was either stupid or unethical or both. You either do the right thing, or ignore it for money. If money is more important to you, then so be it, that's your choice in the matter. If you righteously and truly believe what you are being oprdered to do si in the best interests of your short term customers, long term customers, your company and your own conscience, then go for it, you are doing the right thing. If you compromise your beliefs for mere moneym, then I think that is wrong and unethical. Every person needs to decide that for themselves. And my main point is, if people refuse to adhere to a doctrine like that over trivial matters, then chances are high they will really compromise themselves over the more important matters.
We get the bosses, employers and government we deserve, by our actions OR by our inactions.
I see this all the time here "I can't do such and such even though I knew it was the right thing to do because of"...money. It's always money is the most importnt thing, money, convenience, not wanting to rick any boats. The US is a nation based on a radical concept that was never tried before effectively anyplace else, you stand up for what you believe in, in small matters, medium matters,and in large matters. My point goes right back to a small matter, and just looking at society. People accumulate putting up with hundreds of "small matters" they know in their hearts are just wrong. It makes it easier to fake yourself out and put up with the larger wrong matters. You have to start someplace, and smaller is usually easier.
If that viewpoint offends, like I said, too bad, it's my true feelings. I see story after story where people talk about putting up with crap, being forced to do what they don't want to do because they know it's stupid or unethical, or something else that they know is just plain "wrong", yet they still do it. I'm supposed to think that's good, shoot em an "attaboy!" over that? Nope, not gonna do it. I think it's an erroneous concept, and it leads to more problems, not less problems in the long term.
and your neocon schemes have been exposed for what they are, a fascist takeover. If you support them, you deserve whatever happens to you. For a hint, go back and research what happened to the brownshirts-the neocons of their era and region- once their usefulness was no longer needed.
you do realise I was commenting on the fact that sometimes it is better to do the currently impractical thing, if a long range better goal is of interest to you? I was using my examples, which are real, in an atrempt to literally shame some recognition and some minimal level of courage of this fact into people, to show that being afraid for your profits over such a trivial matter as a differing image format is..trivial. It is not any longer "inconvenient" in the slightest for any websurfer to stay stuck with a propietary web browser that seeks restrictions on what you use the web for, when the alternatives are at most three clicks away. It is short sighted stupidity. Even on dialup modems it is just not that hard to download and install a superior alternative. We used to have webpages that displayed a simple text message, such as "this website is optimised for.."such and such, usually a display resolution or a particular browser past a certain release number. There is no reason webpages can't be still doing that, and incorporating a link to a superior browser, superior in many ways in fact. You are doing your potential customers/visitors a favor by turning them on to a better web browser, as it is a more worthy goal to do so, if you are concerned with anything like a long term goal of improving the web in general. And to be afraid of a temporary loss of money for a longer term goal, one that will most likely make you more money in the future, is short sighted illogical business sense. If people can be impractically inconcnveninced to help bring about change for the better on very important topics,such as my original examples, than it is outright weenie cowardice to be "afraid to do it" on trivial matters such as politely informing your web page viewers they will get a better and more secure surfing experience by using a superior browser. If our society has de evolved into such...outright cowardice and weenieness, than perhaps we deserve to be dictated to by a few corporations which seek to dominate everyone's computer experience. Perhaps people now are just so brainwashed to not go against the convenient norm that any deviation from that norm is just too scary for them to even contemplate, let alone implement. Yes, an image format is a trivial deal, that's why I was making righteous fun and using sarcasm and examples of other instances of going against the norm, the "practical real world", where it was of much more importance.
To be afraid to suggest to someone, your web page viewer, that perhaps they would be better off with another browser because you might lose a sum of money, is to me, cowardice, and also a long range business impracticality. That is my opiniopn, others may have other opinions, but I'll call "weenie coward" and "bad long range business planning" when I see it, and in this case, I definetly see it.
Here it is again, "weenie coward" and "bad long range business sense".
No wonder we have so much political wrongness going on now. People are cowards on inconsequential things, calling it "impractical",so how are they going to deal with *important* consequential things? The answer is "they won't". Weenies. A society of cud chewing, mooing, herd following drones, taught to never think for themselves or to go against some artifical "norm" dictated to them by some greedy assholes and by insane governments. Order followers, content to be lead around by the nose, to always do what they are told to do, to accept a shit sandwhich and to be trained to repeat "mmm, mmm good!" every time it shows up on their plate. Weenies, lead around by the nose by a handful of big corporations and a corrupt bribed and blackmailed government. Wimps.
And if your company/corporation/government insists you be a wimp or a coward or a retard, spit in their face and go do something else, that's what a real human with just a smidgen of integrity of courage would do.
If that offends anyone, too bad, it was intended to shame and offend.
I guess me marching in civil rights demos and taking the gas was of no use, because in the practical real world, black people were treated as non human sub standard citizens, by the majority. I guess me marching in the anti war and anti draft marches was illogical, as you know it's the states right to concoct wars based on uttered untruths, and to place people into involuntary servitude in order to..push some agendas, and this was the default position of the majority at the time. I guess me demonstrating and lobbying against some corporate polluters was impractical, because at the time almost all the corporations just dumped whatever toxic waste they wanted to anyplace they felt like it. Over 95% of them did so. they were the "practical majority". You were going against the norm then if you sought changes or did something different, it was impractical to do so, you had to struggle harder in 'the real world" to make a point, your "side" was barely 5%, so we shouldn't have done that, according to your logic.
You see, that was "the real world" back then, the "practical" world. It was "impractical" to go against thw societal norm, and in that case it was physically impractical, as you could have been gassed, beat, arrested, serve jail time, and etc. So heaven forbid you have some internet surfer be inconvenienced by a semi non standard format on your web page,you or your corporation might suffer some "inconvenience" in your profits or something. Your profits are obviously of more worth to you, so go ahead, protect your profits, that is your right.
Let's always leave things exactly as they are now, let's none of us ever go against the norm, it is impractical, we might lose money,and as we all know, money is the most important thing in the known universe,95% of the people agree, nothing is as important as money, all other aspects of society should revolve around money, it's accumulation and restriction in as many diverse ways as can be imagined. Let's all "work" for a small number of large corporations, always seek to do those things that are dictated to us by our "betters" in those corporations and pseudo legitimate governmental agencies, because they, having the most money,and the most "practical" power and influence currently, must always surely know a better way to do anything, correct? I mean, they are the majority, so they must be "correct".
This law, if passed, will destroy the internet as we know it. It won't eliminate it, but it will destroy the most important aspects of it, the ability for any human to contact any other human and to transfer thoughts and ideas either in real time or in a time shifting manner.
It has very little to do with music copying and sharing, although that is what their words say. It WILL be used in a number of ways to regulate and surveille and restrict the internet far beyond what is going on now. The globalist fascists will push this one strongly, just watch it. It is completely in line with other fascistic legislation passed recently such as patriot acts 1, 2 and 2.5, and the "homeland security" act. They are using file sharing as the red herring to get it passed. Look at the act, remove the idea of music/movie file sharing, just concentrate on the technological aspects of it, then you can see it. It CAN and WILL be used by prosecutors to apply to any number of *things* as relates to the internet as we know it today, just like they are already applying provisions of the patriot act to crimes outside of factual political terrorism.
Slashdot Mirror
They priced me out of their market finally. I was a machead for a decade, but my income dropped, they raised prices and introduced OSX, all at the same time,do it just priced me right on out. I can't run osx on older hardware, I couldn't run it on the then semi-expensive mac laptop I had that was only a few years old(1400PB), so I just struggled by with what I had, then one day a friend handed me a couple of redhat disks, and having some old x86 junkers hanging around I tried it out, and it worked fine. It was smooth and fast and had a lot of decent apps,and ran swell on my old junk, so I got hooked. Then I found out about the whole open source philosophy(no, I had no clue previously), so I switched to linux for those two reasons.
IF Mac had offered a more reasonably priced machine at the time (they were heading there but quit, right about exactly when they switched to the tablelamp version of imac), I probably would never have switched, and never really investigated open source or linux. As it is, I was more disappointed on Mac going to a unixy system then sticking with a much more secure system which was classic. I've never cared all that much about CLI, always liked and used GUI as much as possible, but I am reluctantly learning dribs and drabs as I need to. I still think Mac classic was by far the easiest for people to use OS, the most secure (in terms of automatically secure with a default install and not needing much else to keep it that way), and the hardware was always top notch. Just too pricey for me now.
With linux, an older real cheap or free generic system and a cheap set of disks give me what I consider to be "near" top of the line computing experience, for my purposes anyway. After dropping thousands over the years on computers, I just got tired of it, really tired of it.. I still have all but one of my personal computers going all the way back, they all still work. I got tired of expensive obsolesence.
For surfing, email, listening to some net streams, blah blah blah, you simply no longer have to keep faked out into the expensive hardware upgrade cycle, at least if you don't want to be. Next year I might drop 100$ on a used machine that's better, or just get a mobo/cpu/ram bundle, and that's about it. If you don't do gaming, or anything much exotic like intensive graphics development, or things of that nature, there is no practical need for most people to have this new hardware, either macs or commodity x86. We hit a nadir of diminishing returns for mostpeople compared to cost several years ago, roughly around Mac G3 era, pentium II era, and linux will run just dandy on either of those two platforms for most peoples purposes. I think people are better off just upping their ram than buying a new machine, that and get broadband, that does more to speed up things than anything else. I also think that the industry doesn't care that windows is so buggy and crappy, because it literally sells new machines for them! I have seen several people just get so frustrated with windows machines being constanly hosed for them no matter what they did, that they went and bought new ones, just to see if they were any better! No lie! Just the other day down the street this lady I know got some brand new compaq bundle. Reason? she installed something and it borked her CD drive! I was flabbergasted. I was taking over a gift of an old pentium I built for her son, for his birthday, he sees it and goes "COOL, now I got TWO computers!" I had no idea. I asked her why she didn't just call me and have me help her either fix or replace the drive, she just didn't want to fool with the old one anymore, she just wanted new, in the hopes something like that wouldn't happen! I guess some people don't mind spending the loot, but really, her older one was working fine for her purposes(some medical transcription jazz that works with corel whatever), it just had a 25$ part break, or windows something made it not work. I'm not enough of a windows analyst to decipher arcane bugs with the stuff, most
...please, I was around and watched it live,I've spent no telling how many days-not hours but days-researching it. I was home sick from school when it happened, the first time I ever missed any school, we had a serious coup d'etat in 63, and the perps got away with it. clean away with it, then we had a whiteeash commission cover it up. The government ignores the constitution, I can site example after example. The supremem court refuses to hear critical cases in favor of creampuff cases. We have serious chronic vote fraud going on for years and years. We have legislation from the bench, and even worse than that, legislation from unelected bureaucrats, being enforced.
I guess if you consider fascism orderly, OK, I'll concede, you win. It's completely orderly by a dictionary definition, as in "new world" orderly. I'll switch to "honest, open, fair, reasonable, equitable" for my description, we don't have those as applied to government any longer.
Our government is none of those things, and the checks and balances exist in theory only for the most part.
in US terms. And also you have to take into concideration, that manufactured goods tend to have a more similar price than a dissimilar price as you go around the world. there are some differences, but not nearly as profound as housing and food, those vary a lot more, everythi8ng else is closer to a world price. Just because county xyz has a median income of 500$ say, doesn't automatically make a new cadillac be 350$ there, which it would by your analogy with the US. correct? A good point? This applies to most goods that have to be imported there, so basically he has to make do with mostly junk in order to do his inventions, as at that salary he can't get much. Notice he was using an 80 VW for his electric car, and I bet he bought that 5th hand after it was completely totally wore out on their rough roads there. He developed the skin static potential radio because even a 10 or 20$ radio is probably too expensive for mass adoption. And so forth. His housing costs and food are probably cheaper, after that, he has to pay almost what we pay for manufactured goods, and I don't know what electrical power costs,for his shop. I have a good idea what he had to pay for the solar panels unless he got them donated, as I own a solar rig myself, and 6 panels and a charge controller would be close to a half a years pay for him, minimum,going to 9 months or a complete year, at a 2400$ years pay schedule, depending on their size.
He is not rolling in dough, and a half a million comparison is using statistics between the US and afghanistan is inappropriate in this instance if you compare all his costs of living and development. Really, he does a lot on still a shoestring budget,even for afghanistan, it's a very low figure for someone of his obvious capabilities and intellect and what he's been able to pull off. Heck, 2400$ wouldn't get a random haliburton VP out of bed to count his money this week from just one government padded contract.
IF we can get an article or topic posted that relates exactly to the issues I wanted to bring up, I'll post them there. In the meantime, as the only compromise I have available, if I see a reference to where someone has clearly compromised themselves, and admitted to it, I feel completely justified in pointing that out and re-emphasizing it, and in relating it to the over all situation of compromised ethics and practicalities as it appears with and on the onternet. We have a sub section called YRO,and a big part of that to me is to discuss how the rights of minority users of the web are constantly stymied over the years based on a relatively few large corporations dominance of browsers, OSes, file standards, etc. although that is changing now, it's precisely from people getting frustrated with the lack of action, most of the time based on "money" concerns as in "well, I know this sucks, but I'm going to do it anyway because...". I think if more people dealt with what they know is right in a more consistent manner, we would all eventually be much better off. the opposite is to always excuse it, over and over again. And the reason I mentioned money is preceisly because that's what I read here, either in the direct or in the alluded-to. it's a constant refrain, why don't "they" do such and such better, always wanting some vague other guy to do something different, but when it comes to doing it yourself, well that always seems to be mostly ignored, because of money/business concerns. My rant revolved around which is it, is it more important to have better solutions and more universal freedom, or is it more important to always default to what is the most practical money wise this week and this quarter? I don't bring up the subject of money, they do! I just pointed out there is a lot more hypocrisy posted here than most want to admit to. It's OK for "the other guy"to do such and such, it's Ok for "them"people to change, but when it comes to this generic "me" guy, well, all of a sudden money comes into the picture.
My rant was this, why is it easy here to make the other guy change, to insit on it, to recommend it, to be vocal about it, when anyone "you" won't change the exact second it impacts you or your companies "bottom line" this week? For example, it is pretty universal here to recommend that peole switch browsers, but all of a sudden it's "wrong" to suggest that web develope A or B switch how they write code in the first place, because if they switch it will be "too impractical and cost them money". Can you see the hypocrisy now? I think it's both an exact observation and an exact opinion based on the obversation, and it revolves around money and the lack of conviction to "put your money(or lack of it in some future manner theoretically) where your mouth is". The coinversation was in general terms, not in specifics, but i dare anyone to assert that the observations are incorrect. you can rerad them here almost daily, especially with webmasters, small medium and large, almost always they say "well, we'd like to be able to do such and such this way, but ya know, IE is the dominant browser and..." See? That's the truth isn't it? Just generally speaking, it occurs more often than not? And it does occur because of money, the lack of courage to risk the possibility of a short rtrange drop in income in order to keep perpetuating writing restrictive code that goes to support a monopolistic corporation, and to support other less free formats and artifical standards. And if it's not about money, what else is it about then, if someone codes to a standard they righteously believe is sub par and ill advised? Which is it, what do you call that?
Now, conversely, if they have the opinion that what they are doing is the *best* way to code, based on the code itself and not the money, that's a different story, I'll agree with them then, but if they code to what they believe to be of a lesser standard, merely for money, I'll call shenanigans and hypocrisy. And I don't want to de evolve in to minutiae of exceptions to the rule, I am speaking in general terms here.
Never claimed to be the best in grammar, spelling and in avoiding outright typing errors. Best I can do is say I'll try to do better.
The patriot act wasn't voted in? Provisions in the second and third weren't voted in? Of course they were. Unless we are talking about different things.
Sorry about calling you a neocon if you aren't of course, I'll admit to unnecessary flaming there.
As to an orderly election, it might happen, but it depends on what you call or classify as "orderly". If it's only the two monopoly parties on the publics airwaves in the so called national debates, like it was last time, I wouldn't even get close to calling that orderly. I think if a candidate can get legally listed on the ballot in the majority of the states, they should be in the broadcasted debates, at a bare minimum. If you can classify corporate bribes disguised as campaign contributions paid to politicians as "orderly" I'd have to object to that assertion. And look at what just happened, the records of outright foreign lobbyists "aren't available" in common electronic form, because it would "crash the system". These aspects and more to our political system and as it applies to elections are not in any way orderly to my way of thinking. And then if you want to get into blackbox no trail, no reasonable audit, no legitimate verification styled voting, I'd classify that as outright indications of fraud and malfeasance, the exact opposite of orderly.
... open records laws and sunshine laws for government. Society decided it was a good idea. Commercial Broadcasters have been granted a license, a permission, to monopolize a certain frequency in order to provide programming for their corporations profit, but also to be of the general publics benefit. Now I am against censorship, but I am pro "of the general publics benefit" as well, so this is a dilemma. I have long been a critic, generally speaking now, of broadcasters dismal news coverage,their LACK of honest news coverage to be more accurate, as well as content selection. For instance,and what has been almost universally complained about here, clear channels almost complete lock in, especially with the higher wattage stations across the country. They are already "forced" -it's a joke really- to go through what has turned into a rubber stamped "review" procedure to be eligible to renew their licenses, but that has rarely resulted in any station or network being not renewed. And it's a bear to be able to provide any alternative programming. the review procedure was supposed to be the check and balance on that, but it'snever worked, practically speaking.
So, based on the pros and cons, I tend to think this is a better thing than not. I know a lot here will focus on indecency complaints, personally I haven't seen or heard much of any indecency on over the air radio or tv, although I find it ludicrous that violence is never classified as indecent or x rated, whereas even mild sexuality is. Yes, I know the x ratings are for movies. Just using it conversationally as a descriptor. I am way more concerned about their news covereage, and how they perpetuate outright FUD constantly and keep up their propogandizing brainwashing for the benefit of two political parties and large international corporations, and get away with it completely, year after year. That to me is deserving of a little "censorship" right out of their "licenses".
Now if we had a much more restrictive set of guidelines as it applied to a commercial broadcasting corporation, and a much more liberal first amenment applies approach to how we granted licenses to individuals for community radio and TV, I would have a different opinion, but we don't, so I fall on the need for access to their tapes if you wish to make a complaint. They want the license to print money generation after generation, they can conform to some guidelienes, and keeping a tape is not that restrictive of a guideline. If they profit from the publics trust, there needs to be fees and restrictions applied to them, forcing them to keep master tapes and to provide copies seems reasonable enough as a compromise. Frankly, I'd rather see mandated timeout rules,licenses that do in fact expire with no rubber stamping automatic renewal, so as to give new broadcasters a chance, and for the allowing of many more "legal" low power radio and television stations. In other words, turn over a much larger portion of the available spectrum to not for profit broadcasters, so that real first amendment may be applied to named humans. Phase the transition in over say a 5 year period. Humans need more freedom, corporations need a lot more restrictions and less freedom to keep gouging and avoiding responsibility in providing broadcasts that really *are* in the publics interests, IMO. The *public* is a lot more than a specific common denominator advertising designed set of demographics. A lot of the *public* now feels left out in what's on the air, they are forced by the current restrictions to listen to cookie cutter programming for the most part, and for various reasons, the lack of choice can lead to dissatisfaction and calls for censorship which in reality are just calls for something besides the "standard" formula programming that is there to view or hear.
...like this guy. The world needs more people like him. And he's doing it on a paltry 200 dollars a month, which I am sure is a lot over there, but still. When you think of what 200$ does in the US or any western nation, he's a champ.
And I'll add my cybervote, slashdot needs an icon of this guy whenever we are discussing something new and freely offered out there.
getting in the faces of policy makers, bigshots? Been there, done that. That's part of protest, Protest isn'tall about marching, it's about doing something differently than what you see as the problem area. Sometimes it means organizing a boycott, sometimes it means organizing a letter writing campaign, some times it means getting interviews with the bigshots, sometimes it means using jiournalism to expose fraud and abuse, sometimes it's hand holding an insider whistleblower and giving them the resources they need to go forward with the exposure of 'wrongness". It's all of the above and more, you got a big problem with that? People AREN'T supposed to do things for the better? People are supposed to always do whatever makes them more money, even if they know it's stupid, wrong, or both?
Your choice, you chose obviously to make money your God and to worship it, and you will do anything for money, that's all I get from your reply. do anything for money, and that's it. If it makes you more money, it must be right. anything else is your quote "hippie shit". I think some of the old black grandmas I walked with would be amused to be called a hippie. Back then the word didn't exist, the closest was probably "beatnik" anyway. of course, if you knew any history you would know that, but I bet your history lessons got lost as you were too busy making money, probably what, dealing? theft from your employer?
See, works both ways. I can assume whatever I want about you, even though I know nothing personal about you. What? That's illogical? Yes, it is, too bad you started it.
Let me put it simpler:
If you can justify compromising your integrity and intelligence for small sums of money, what would you do for a much larger sum? If you can look yourself in the mirror and know you did something you thought was wrong, but you did it anyway, for basically money, what does that make you? if you do it all the time, eventually what will happen?
It's a legitimate topic, and a legitmate opbservation. Geeks and nerds need ethics too, it's not just "corporations"or "governments" that need to clean up their act.
I like stuff, I like gadgets, I work and use moeny, but I don't worship them. I don't worship money or make it the most important thing in my life. I don't encourage that behavior in others.I know here it'smore important to make more money, I just happen to disagree, i think some times it's better to make less money and do the right thing, no matter what the right thing happens to be at the time.
That's my opinion, I read yours,and it's pretty clear,so we can agree to disagree on it. Have fun with your money, I hope it serves you well. If you have children, be sure to teach them that money, over all other things, is the most important thing ever.
No, I am not trolling, and perhaps you missed my point, which I will condense. I am seeing more and more an obvious trend for people to always compromise their postions based on money. it's the little things, then you notice the larger ones, all the way to very important ones. it starts with people saying along the lines of "ya know, I knew I shouldn't have written this code, or I know that this is broken but most people want it broken because they don'tknow what non broken is" or"my boss told me to do such and such from marketing pressures, I knew it was going to do this x-wrong thing but I had to do it, my job ya know". and such like. I read that ALL the time here on slashdot, and that one little post got my dander up,it dawned on me I had read hundreds of those "little compromises", it was the tipping over point for me on this accepted and tolerated and almost expected ingrained weenieness to always default to the excuse "well, I need the money" as if that excuse is always valid and that that's the most important thing in the world.
I find that attitude plenty disturbing, and I do NOT think my rant was out of line, in fact, I know it made a lot of people uneasy, because they know in their hearts they have compromised themselves-done wrong-when they knew they shouldn't, and they used "money"as an excuse.
In other words, choice of an image format or a browser was immaterial to my intent and what I wrote, I was using it as one example of many I have seen here, and because we haven't had a full bore ethics in life and business thread here (that I have seen, I apologize if I missed it) I just stuck it in where my nature and inclination combined with the circumstance to let it fit. And sorry if it wasn't taken that way instead of the excessive fixation on the stupid image format, which is trivial.
It's the accumulation of huge numbers of day to day to day trivial compromises that add up to a not so trivial "compromised" human, and the accumulation of compromised humans that add up to corrupt businesses and governments-and societies.
And it all goes back to love of money over all else, lack of courage in even simple matters, and the williness to excuse behavior that anyone "you" knows to be wrong.
Is that an important subject, or what? I think it is, but it gets no coverage does it? Maybe some, very rarely,but not much anyway. "stuff that matters" is relative, one of the things that matter to THIS nerd right here is that I noticed a shockingly casual group-acceptance of doing bogus things, over a long period of time. I point it out, it's that simple.
I hope that clarifies it for you.
last sunday.
But that has nothing to do with the post, does it?
You are in favor of compromising your intelligence and/or ethics for money, or you are not. I am not. You?
They make "industrial" grade keyboards (and computers) that are designed to work in very dirty conditions. I guess you can google for them. I never used them, but have seen a few, but I don't know any brand names to recommend.
I sloshed some stuff, can't remember now, might have been iced coffee, onto a mac keyboard a long time ago. I took it ouside and opened it up and blasted it out with a hose and let it sun dry for aday. It worked fine then.
I've seen in in the dumb mechanical world too. Machines are alive, I just know it! I had a little italian sportscar once,a raggedy old fiat, but I liked it. Anyway, I SWEAR it was alive and female and jealous. It worked great all the time until "date night" for zogger. Go to pick up my date, it would break down. Never missed.
... penetration or a simple DDoS attack. No one is immune from DDoS if the other guy has more bandwith than you do to use, doesn't matter the OS I would imagine.. Although with akami you would think that would be hard to pull off. Perhaps it was a big state sponsored attack? The details have been meagre.
... if the employee owns all that stuff, and one day with no notice his job gets ourtsourced, at least he already has all that stuff, very useful for looking for another job. if you get canned,and your weekly income drops to zero, and you then have to increase your expenses by getting a phone and net connection, etc just to look for a job, then that would sucketh. If you are already using that and it's been budgeted in to your "lifestyle", then it's not much more. Besides, what geek doesn't want his own cellphone and computer and broadband connection?????? If your employer gives you *duplicates* of them, fatcity,use 'em, if they don't, you still want your own anyway.
... the boss pays for and provides the larger and more expensive tools. For instance,a 150$ trim mower I buy, a 40,000$ tractor he buys. A 125$ string trimmer I buy, he popped for a 900$ one for heavier jobs. He pays for all the fuel I use, diesel and gas, and he pays for any maintenance parts, but I do the repairs, if possible. I guess a rough analogy is my fuel is like your bandwith, so in this case the employer pays for it.
And I bet my take home is a lot less than most peoples. Every job I ever had I mostly had to buy tools for. That's how it works. Nowadays they will play off the threat to outsource the white collar workers job, or bring in a "legal" h1b worker, in the blue collar world you get threatened with an illegal immigrant to take your job, or they ship your job to china or someplace like that.
This job I am lucky, he's good about tools and some bennies, so -so on pay, but job security is high if you stick with the job and don't be a slacker or complainer and can work self motivated with minimum supervision. I always task myself MORE work than what is expected, hence I get a better deal than most of his other employees, who don't last long, especially with the provided tools, which let me do my job easier. Small tools I would have anyway, so I'm not shy about using them for the occassional smaller job where they fit better.
I guess it boils down to how much you want the job, whether you can get another one easily that will pay you more and give you more benefits, including employer mandated and provided equipment. And if it's mandated, it's deductable usually if you have to buy it. If your employer wants more signs of loyalty by the workers taking up some of the tool costs, are they matching it by providing better pay, working conditions, guarantees on employment for the longer term, anything along those lines? It works both ways near as I can see. You have to also look, if the company is in trouble and needs to cut costs across the board, has management given up anything fairly, or is it just the employees/non owners feeling the brunt? That would make an attitude difference as well if it was only one sided against your favor. I'd be looking for another job on the side then, before they implode.
this describes the world of illusion captain pike lived in when he was borken up and in his wheelchair, in the original ST. What was his love lifes characters name? I remember her "illusionary" face, and her "reality" face but don't recall her name right now.
uhhhh, well, uh huh, whatever you say!
too bad the cartoon didn't continue, with the employee going on and starting his own business and doing things the ethical way. yep, he probably makes less money in the beginning, so what? It is not flighty to want something a bit better, to change some modalities to reflect an evolution in business, government, how you arrange your own affairs. I never suggested people should be lazy or not work,and just somehow magically all their needs and wants would be met. That's nuts, I agree. Just that they shouldn't follow orders that go against what they know to be more correct, more intelligent, or more ethical. And if they fail to do that over just that weeks check, they will constantly keep sucking it down and get more and more into a morass where all they are is in essence no better than a medieval serf, even if they live in this century and work in a modern office or factory or government agency. You either work to the best of your native ability and your best set of ethics, or you compromise..for money usually. If that is in software and what you code, then that is merely one potential example of millions, I was using the example to address the larger issue. I apologise if that wasn't made more clear. And if you want to just make fun of me or allege I am saying something I am not, you are free to do so, but understand, I have walked the walk, I just don't complain about issues, and if it inconveniences me, so be it, I'll do it again. If it costs me some money, I don't care. I do not worship money. I use money,I work for money, but it is way down my list of lifes priorities, and I won't compromise my ethics or intelligence in exchange for money.
;)
of course, I would probably PAY money if I could run a first draft post with zero typos or misspellings
my post has ver5y, vewry little to do with a trivial software matter, hardly nothing. I used it to make a larger point, to get people to think how their accumulated actions build on themselves.
And, it did make a difference. Ask the people who are more-free now if the accumulated actions of a minority made a difference to make everyone better off in the long run. One person can make a difference, especially if by their actions they might influence some others. One person being complacent, going along to get along, always shoving off problems for someone else to deal with, leads to stagnation and the rule of the bully and the criminal, in business, in government, on the internet, in your neighborhood-everywhere. You start being a non victim by stopping being a victim, on a small matter or a large matter. You just say "no" to trading money for being a victim.
I've quit several jobs before, costing me immediate money and certainly incionceniencing me, when i was ordered to do something I thought was either stupid or unethical or both. You either do the right thing, or ignore it for money. If money is more important to you, then so be it, that's your choice in the matter. If you righteously and truly believe what you are being oprdered to do si in the best interests of your short term customers, long term customers, your company and your own conscience, then go for it, you are doing the right thing. If you compromise your beliefs for mere moneym, then I think that is wrong and unethical. Every person needs to decide that for themselves. And my main point is, if people refuse to adhere to a doctrine like that over trivial matters, then chances are high they will really compromise themselves over the more important matters.
...money. It's always money is the most importnt thing, money, convenience, not wanting to rick any boats. The US is a nation based on a radical concept that was never tried before effectively anyplace else, you stand up for what you believe in, in small matters, medium matters,and in large matters. My point goes right back to a small matter, and just looking at society. People accumulate putting up with hundreds of "small matters" they know in their hearts are just wrong. It makes it easier to fake yourself out and put up with the larger wrong matters. You have to start someplace, and smaller is usually easier.
We get the bosses, employers and government we deserve, by our actions OR by our inactions.
I see this all the time here "I can't do such and such even though I knew it was the right thing to do because of"
If that viewpoint offends, like I said, too bad, it's my true feelings. I see story after story where people talk about putting up with crap, being forced to do what they don't want to do because they know it's stupid or unethical, or something else that they know is just plain "wrong", yet they still do it. I'm supposed to think that's good, shoot em an "attaboy!" over that? Nope, not gonna do it. I think it's an erroneous concept, and it leads to more problems, not less problems in the long term.
and your neocon schemes have been exposed for what they are, a fascist takeover. If you support them, you deserve whatever happens to you. For a hint, go back and research what happened to the brownshirts-the neocons of their era and region- once their usefulness was no longer needed.
have a good day.
you do realise I was commenting on the fact that sometimes it is better to do the currently impractical thing, if a long range better goal is of interest to you? I was using my examples, which are real, in an atrempt to literally shame some recognition and some minimal level of courage of this fact into people, to show that being afraid for your profits over such a trivial matter as a differing image format is..trivial. It is not any longer "inconvenient" in the slightest for any websurfer to stay stuck with a propietary web browser that seeks restrictions on what you use the web for, when the alternatives are at most three clicks away. It is short sighted stupidity. Even on dialup modems it is just not that hard to download and install a superior alternative. We used to have webpages that displayed a simple text message, such as "this website is optimised for.."such and such, usually a display resolution or a particular browser past a certain release number. There is no reason webpages can't be still doing that, and incorporating a link to a superior browser, superior in many ways in fact. You are doing your potential customers/visitors a favor by turning them on to a better web browser, as it is a more worthy goal to do so, if you are concerned with anything like a long term goal of improving the web in general. And to be afraid of a temporary loss of money for a longer term goal, one that will most likely make you more money in the future, is short sighted illogical business sense. If people can be impractically inconcnveninced to help bring about change for the better on very important topics,such as my original examples, than it is outright weenie cowardice to be "afraid to do it" on trivial matters such as politely informing your web page viewers they will get a better and more secure surfing experience by using a superior browser. If our society has de evolved into such ...outright cowardice and weenieness, than perhaps we deserve to be dictated to by a few corporations which seek to dominate everyone's computer experience. Perhaps people now are just so brainwashed to not go against the convenient norm that any deviation from that norm is just too scary for them to even contemplate, let alone implement. Yes, an image format is a trivial deal, that's why I was making righteous fun and using sarcasm and examples of other instances of going against the norm, the "practical real world", where it was of much more importance.
To be afraid to suggest to someone, your web page viewer, that perhaps they would be better off with another browser because you might lose a sum of money, is to me, cowardice, and also a long range business impracticality. That is my opiniopn, others may have other opinions, but I'll call "weenie coward" and "bad long range business planning" when I see it, and in this case, I definetly see it.
Here it is again, "weenie coward" and "bad long range business sense".
No wonder we have so much political wrongness going on now. People are cowards on inconsequential things, calling it "impractical",so how are they going to deal with *important* consequential things? The answer is "they won't". Weenies. A society of cud chewing, mooing, herd following drones, taught to never think for themselves or to go against some artifical "norm" dictated to them by some greedy assholes and by insane governments. Order followers, content to be lead around by the nose, to always do what they are told to do, to accept a shit sandwhich and to be trained to repeat "mmm, mmm good!" every time it shows up on their plate. Weenies, lead around by the nose by a handful of big corporations and a corrupt bribed and blackmailed government. Wimps.
And if your company/corporation/government insists you be a wimp or a coward or a retard, spit in their face and go do something else, that's what a real human with just a smidgen of integrity of courage would do.
If that offends anyone, too bad, it was intended to shame and offend.
I guess me marching in civil rights demos and taking the gas was of no use, because in the practical real world, black people were treated as non human sub standard citizens, by the majority. I guess me marching in the anti war and anti draft marches was illogical, as you know it's the states right to concoct wars based on uttered untruths, and to place people into involuntary servitude in order to..push some agendas, and this was the default position of the majority at the time. I guess me demonstrating and lobbying against some corporate polluters was impractical, because at the time almost all the corporations just dumped whatever toxic waste they wanted to anyplace they felt like it. Over 95% of them did so. they were the "practical majority". You were going against the norm then if you sought changes or did something different, it was impractical to do so, you had to struggle harder in 'the real world" to make a point, your "side" was barely 5%, so we shouldn't have done that, according to your logic.
You see, that was "the real world" back then, the "practical" world. It was "impractical" to go against thw societal norm, and in that case it was physically impractical, as you could have been gassed, beat, arrested, serve jail time, and etc. So heaven forbid you have some internet surfer be inconvenienced by a semi non standard format on your web page,you or your corporation might suffer some "inconvenience" in your profits or something. Your profits are obviously of more worth to you, so go ahead, protect your profits, that is your right.
Let's always leave things exactly as they are now, let's none of us ever go against the norm, it is impractical, we might lose money,and as we all know, money is the most important thing in the known universe,95% of the people agree, nothing is as important as money, all other aspects of society should revolve around money, it's accumulation and restriction in as many diverse ways as can be imagined. Let's all "work" for a small number of large corporations, always seek to do those things that are dictated to us by our "betters" in those corporations and pseudo legitimate governmental agencies, because they, having the most money,and the most "practical" power and influence currently, must always surely know a better way to do anything, correct? I mean, they are the majority, so they must be "correct".
This law, if passed, will destroy the internet as we know it. It won't eliminate it, but it will destroy the most important aspects of it, the ability for any human to contact any other human and to transfer thoughts and ideas either in real time or in a time shifting manner.
It has very little to do with music copying and sharing, although that is what their words say. It WILL be used in a number of ways to regulate and surveille and restrict the internet far beyond what is going on now. The globalist fascists will push this one strongly, just watch it. It is completely in line with other fascistic legislation passed recently such as patriot acts 1, 2 and 2.5, and the "homeland security" act. They are using file sharing as the red herring to get it passed. Look at the act, remove the idea of music/movie file sharing, just concentrate on the technological aspects of it, then you can see it. It CAN and WILL be used by prosecutors to apply to any number of *things* as relates to the internet as we know it today, just like they are already applying provisions of the patriot act to crimes outside of factual political terrorism.