We know from experience that some things are harmful to society, and we prohibit them by making them illegal. No-one may commit these acts lawfully, even if they have never violated the law before.
Some of these laws arise as protections of basic rights - actions that violate the rights of another are illegal (murder, fraud, theft, trespass, assault, imprisonment). Other laws are variations of "basic crimes" made possible by new technology (embezzlement, computer fraud, forgery). There is no ability on the part of the government to arbitrarily say that something is bad or harmful and make it illegal.
The reason that I make the distinction of personal arms is that the intent of the second amendment is to allow people to defend themselves, a nuke does not fit that intent - an assault riffle does.
Yep, and as a consumer I won't be buying any Macrovision protected DVDs until I see reviews from reputable sources that let me know they work correctly in all 3 of the DVD players I have.
I have been bit so many times by copy protection that I regularly put off buying software I'm interested in until the issues get shaken out and I no longer buy new music in non-digital format.
I guess it is too much to hope for that if this format does cause problems with existing DVD players that it costs them a lot more than 4% of their sales. People will probably just accept problems with the same baffled acceptance that they always seem to.
And who judges responsibility and public interest?
Exactly. The founders of the US knew what they were doing, they knew that powerful special interest groups and politicians would want to change things for their own short term interest, so they made certain rights inviolable.
The risk of people doing bad or stupid things is part of freedom.
Obviously in the real world we have laws that lay out what is and is not acceptable, but we don't preemptively remove rights from people - if someone violates the law, then we can remove those rights from them.
A nuke is not a personal arm, I'd argue that a crewed anti-aircraft weapon, anti-personel mine, nerve gas, or a tank is not either. Aside from those sorts of distinctions the right to bear arms is absolute.
The thing that is really offensive here is that the parent poster just made the day of a ton of people with an excellent joke and loses at least 3 karma on the deal. Yeah I know karma, shmarma and all that - but why can't slashdot do what seems like some fairly simple coding to make it so even if you don't gain karma from 'Funny', you can only lose karma if the post itself goes below the score you posted it at. While they were at it they might make it so 'Overrated' is only an option on posts that are above their initial score.
Short answer: yes. Long answer is that an unrestrained press can do damage to members of the public, but overall an informed public is as essential to public liberty as the right to bear arms.
The reason I brought up property rights is because they are not an unambiguous good either, but essential for the creation of wealth. In the exact same way a free press is not an unambiguous good, but is essential to create and maintain freedom in a nation.
The concept of not revealing confidential sources isn't some high and mighty ethical concept; in fact, it's a rather selfish one: at some level, it ensures them more sources in the future. It makes them more effective as a journalist.
The basic premise of capitalism is that selfishness is the most effective means of encouraging an activity. Since a free and informed press is viewed as a public good, the confidentiality of sources becomes just as "high and mighty" a concept as property rights or due process.
In an interview preceding his speech, Wolf told The Associated Press that computer networks at U.S. organizations are like medieval castles, each protected by different-size walls and moats.
He then proceeds to add traffic cops, building standards, and interconnectedness to the mix and try to maintain the castle analogy.
I know that analogy and metaphor can be a powerful tool in helping people understand systems, but it is painful to watch a speaker twist and manipulate their explanations trying to fit things into the framework they decided to use.
It also makes me wonder if the speaker is intentionally misleading his audience.
It isn't illegal, but it is arrogant, not really haggling - more like classic carrot and stick. At the very least this kind of strong arm move could backfire and encourage the other party to determine how fast they could re-employ those 800 people in the native software industry, maybe even one based on OSS. That would not only resulting in lost business for MS, but give the Danish government additional incentive to resist software patents.
Oooh, aren't we fancy Mister "toss all those old saved games". The proper answer according to the programmers of many of the games I've played is to do nothing, blindly load the now badly formated chunk of memory, and then crash the game trying to use it. The user will eventually figure out the problem, so make sure to wipe out their preferences in one of the crashes - to give em something to remember you by.
I didn't say that the CC companies bore the cost, I said that they view it as a cost of business - with the customer ultimately paying the cost of fraud.
This thing is really out of hand. Of course, it's going to cost credit card companies millions of dollars when bogus bills start bouncing, and that's probably when the powers that be finally wake up and address the problem.
Fraud is a cost of business to credit card companies, the only way that the credit card companies would actually pay the price here would be if people actually stopped using them. Short of that drastic and unlikely occurrence any level of theft and fraud will be absorbed and paid by the customer.
Of course there is that, I'm more worried about people who should know better accepting a conspiracy theory involving Bush or Kerry without evidence, solely because they know that the leader of the *other party* is a blackhearted villain who stomps puppies and wants to murder the poor and sell their organs to unsuspecting pie shops.
Rationality has been removed from anything political in America and our new collective love for demagogues worries me a lot more than conspiracies.
Insight and opinion embedded in humor is fine, but standard practice is to label it as humor - in print it is far too easy to be misunderstood. In the case of this article the humor falls pretty flat (so flat that there is a question of whether it is humor) and detracts from the expression of the opinion.
Agreed, but political conspiracies are seldom small and simple - the conspiracy theories that are commonly tossed about would have to be massive byzantine things run by precognitive geniuses.
It almost seems like there is a sustainable "subscription but you keep a copy of the content you like" model that as an added benefit could sidesteps record labels. New music doesn't come out fast enough to make a subscription service worth it to me, new performances of music come out all the time. A service that does the standard album catalogue releases but also released 10 concerts a month (or whatever number works) and let people keep copies of their favorites might actually work for business and customer.
Agreed, both sides definitely had their propaganda machines ready to go on this - I'm just saying that conspiracy is the least likely explanation for the incident itself.
I believe there are actual conspiracies, but I believe they are so complicated and likely to fail in an embarrassing way that they are rare. Either side could have made gains here, but actually setting something like this up would have been incredibly risky - even an apathetic populace might take notice of propaganda games being played with nuclear weapons security.
Of course I understand that. I'm pointing out that most event engineering and spin are based on natural opportunity and that, despite the fact that partisans are always willing to suspect the worst about their opponents, conspiracy is the least likely explanation for any series of events. America has become so polarized that each side of the ideological divide is always ready to believe the worst of anyone who doesn't believe what they do.
That does not refute conspiracy claims - just points out that you should not rush to believe in a conspiracy just because it involves people that you disagree with.
Exactly, even with cable TV the consumer could tape their favorite shows and have all the content, the subscription model depends on customers continuing to want new content. This model is just inconvenient and silly - like most DRM it works in the fevered imagination of marketing and fails the "will this irritate the customer" test.
replacing american bashing with france and germany bashing.... go eat some freedom fries
Uhm, no - I was making the point that the tactic has been commonly used in the West since there have been institutions large enough and sophisticated enough to benefit. It has probably been used in Rome, China, Persia, Greece, and so on. The flaw that causes us to accept an agreeable big lie is part of human nature - not part of some fundamental flaw in Americans.
...or maybe the Ninja forces of the Liberal Elite or the Bitch Droids of the Ann Coulter Army are impurifying your precious bodily fluids in such a way to make you make you believe that.
The same people who laugh off as "conspiracy nonsense" any whisper of secret manipulation by leaders they approve of will gleefully impute the most ludicrous and blackhearted motives to those that they do not. I believe this was a pretty simple SNAFU that was blown out of proportion and stamped down on a little hard to make a point, these kind of things happen often enough naturally that there is no reason to believe the incident was engineered by one side or the other.
Excellent post, but it ignores is availability of GPS or Galileo. I'm sure that question is being considered by BR and has been solved by other systems that use a satellite system - but I do have to wonder how much of the lower running/maintenance costs are needed to solve it.
Americans believe what they want to believe no matter what the facts are.
History also shows that any lie that is repeated enough becomes indistinguishable from the truth.
The Big Lie was invented by the French in the 12th century and made infamous in modern times by the Germans. I don't think the problem is uniquely American.
Slashdot Mirror
(annoying, no?)
and the last two PR responses were definitely on the shirty side.
Some of these laws arise as protections of basic rights - actions that violate the rights of another are illegal (murder, fraud, theft, trespass, assault, imprisonment). Other laws are variations of "basic crimes" made possible by new technology (embezzlement, computer fraud, forgery). There is no ability on the part of the government to arbitrarily say that something is bad or harmful and make it illegal.
The reason that I make the distinction of personal arms is that the intent of the second amendment is to allow people to defend themselves, a nuke does not fit that intent - an assault riffle does.
Yep, and as a consumer I won't be buying any Macrovision protected DVDs until I see reviews from reputable sources that let me know they work correctly in all 3 of the DVD players I have.
I have been bit so many times by copy protection that I regularly put off buying software I'm interested in until the issues get shaken out and I no longer buy new music in non-digital format.
I guess it is too much to hope for that if this format does cause problems with existing DVD players that it costs them a lot more than 4% of their sales. People will probably just accept problems with the same baffled acceptance that they always seem to.
Exactly. The founders of the US knew what they were doing, they knew that powerful special interest groups and politicians would want to change things for their own short term interest, so they made certain rights inviolable.
A nuke is not a personal arm, I'd argue that a crewed anti-aircraft weapon, anti-personel mine, nerve gas, or a tank is not either. Aside from those sorts of distinctions the right to bear arms is absolute.
The thing that is really offensive here is that the parent poster just made the day of a ton of people with an excellent joke and loses at least 3 karma on the deal. Yeah I know karma, shmarma and all that - but why can't slashdot do what seems like some fairly simple coding to make it so even if you don't gain karma from 'Funny', you can only lose karma if the post itself goes below the score you posted it at. While they were at it they might make it so 'Overrated' is only an option on posts that are above their initial score.
Short answer: yes. Long answer is that an unrestrained press can do damage to members of the public, but overall an informed public is as essential to public liberty as the right to bear arms.
The reason I brought up property rights is because they are not an unambiguous good either, but essential for the creation of wealth. In the exact same way a free press is not an unambiguous good, but is essential to create and maintain freedom in a nation.
The basic premise of capitalism is that selfishness is the most effective means of encouraging an activity. Since a free and informed press is viewed as a public good, the confidentiality of sources becomes just as "high and mighty" a concept as property rights or due process.
He then proceeds to add traffic cops, building standards, and interconnectedness to the mix and try to maintain the castle analogy.
I know that analogy and metaphor can be a powerful tool in helping people understand systems, but it is painful to watch a speaker twist and manipulate their explanations trying to fit things into the framework they decided to use.
It also makes me wonder if the speaker is intentionally misleading his audience.
It isn't illegal, but it is arrogant, not really haggling - more like classic carrot and stick. At the very least this kind of strong arm move could backfire and encourage the other party to determine how fast they could re-employ those 800 people in the native software industry, maybe even one based on OSS. That would not only resulting in lost business for MS, but give the Danish government additional incentive to resist software patents.
Oooh, aren't we fancy Mister "toss all those old saved games". The proper answer according to the programmers of many of the games I've played is to do nothing, blindly load the now badly formated chunk of memory, and then crash the game trying to use it. The user will eventually figure out the problem, so make sure to wipe out their preferences in one of the crashes - to give em something to remember you by.
I didn't say that the CC companies bore the cost, I said that they view it as a cost of business - with the customer ultimately paying the cost of fraud.
Fraud is a cost of business to credit card companies, the only way that the credit card companies would actually pay the price here would be if people actually stopped using them. Short of that drastic and unlikely occurrence any level of theft and fraud will be absorbed and paid by the customer.
Rationality has been removed from anything political in America and our new collective love for demagogues worries me a lot more than conspiracies.
Insight and opinion embedded in humor is fine, but standard practice is to label it as humor - in print it is far too easy to be misunderstood. In the case of this article the humor falls pretty flat (so flat that there is a question of whether it is humor) and detracts from the expression of the opinion.
Agreed, but political conspiracies are seldom small and simple - the conspiracy theories that are commonly tossed about would have to be massive byzantine things run by precognitive geniuses.
Yeah, it reads like someone trying to imitate Dave Berry. The only thing confusing is that it is in "opinion" and not "humor".
It almost seems like there is a sustainable "subscription but you keep a copy of the content you like" model that as an added benefit could sidesteps record labels. New music doesn't come out fast enough to make a subscription service worth it to me, new performances of music come out all the time. A service that does the standard album catalogue releases but also released 10 concerts a month (or whatever number works) and let people keep copies of their favorites might actually work for business and customer.
I believe there are actual conspiracies, but I believe they are so complicated and likely to fail in an embarrassing way that they are rare. Either side could have made gains here, but actually setting something like this up would have been incredibly risky - even an apathetic populace might take notice of propaganda games being played with nuclear weapons security.
That does not refute conspiracy claims - just points out that you should not rush to believe in a conspiracy just because it involves people that you disagree with.
Exactly, even with cable TV the consumer could tape their favorite shows and have all the content, the subscription model depends on customers continuing to want new content. This model is just inconvenient and silly - like most DRM it works in the fevered imagination of marketing and fails the "will this irritate the customer" test.
Uhm, no - I was making the point that the tactic has been commonly used in the West since there have been institutions large enough and sophisticated enough to benefit. It has probably been used in Rome, China, Persia, Greece, and so on. The flaw that causes us to accept an agreeable big lie is part of human nature - not part of some fundamental flaw in Americans.
The same people who laugh off as "conspiracy nonsense" any whisper of secret manipulation by leaders they approve of will gleefully impute the most ludicrous and blackhearted motives to those that they do not. I believe this was a pretty simple SNAFU that was blown out of proportion and stamped down on a little hard to make a point, these kind of things happen often enough naturally that there is no reason to believe the incident was engineered by one side or the other.
Excellent post, but it ignores is availability of GPS or Galileo. I'm sure that question is being considered by BR and has been solved by other systems that use a satellite system - but I do have to wonder how much of the lower running/maintenance costs are needed to solve it.
History also shows that any lie that is repeated enough becomes indistinguishable from the truth.
The Big Lie was invented by the French in the 12th century and made infamous in modern times by the Germans. I don't think the problem is uniquely American.