Which, as recall, has not been proven to have any effect on anything. In fact Omega-3 is, IMHO, the new snake oil. It could have all sorts of benefits on everything from the heart and the brain to joints, only nobody's managed to back it up with a shred of evidence. And yet food manufacturers are putting it in everything they can and shouting "OMEGA-3!" from the rooftops.
More flim flam and snakeoil. Only now, thanks to your link, I can smile whenever that popsinto my mind because I know how close it is to genuine snake-oil:)/yah, I think the whole vitamin/suplement industry is a scam
The phrase "alternative knowledge" is in itself enough to set off the alarm bells.
It implies knowledge that is not tested with the scientific method. Knowledge that is unproven, often unproveable, but somehow still asserted as "true".
It is the enemy of progress and true knowledge and needs to be eradicated. There is no conspiracy of western medicine other than the conspiracy to sell more, which I agree goes to excess. We just require that treatments be proven to be useful before administration.
Rubbish like homeopathy has been shown several times over to have a success rate equal to that of a placebo - ie it does absolutely nothing. Yet still these charlatans sell their snakeoil and have a loyal army of morons like yourself who are all too keen to show off their "superior" intelligence and "open" minds by buying into this crap and being smug about it.
Here's the thing though - if it can't be proven under scientific scrutiny IT'S USELESS.
There have been a variety of studies. Oh, and nobody's stepped up to claim Randi's million yet.
It's fakery and/or delusion, like the rest.
Dyed in the wool materialists are not as bad because they are consistently proved right. I can't think of a single thing the flaky spiritualists have got right, EVER.
2. You also make the false assumption that if they couldn't get it free then you would have more paying customers. Not true. Not true in the least. Pirates buy MORE media than non pirates.
Yes, Iraq was all about regime change, all about removing saddam.
Always was, don't listen to those damn liberals who try and tell you you should remember so many years back to the "imminent threat to the west with WMDs" "seeking out nucleur capabilities" and "mobile chemical weapons lab" bullshit that was spewed. No, just listen to us, remember, it was about the iraqi people, always about the iraqi people. Go back to sleep america, your government is bringing freedom to the world.
And may I just say GREAT JERB!! On the the Iraq thing. What's the casualty count now (and no, I'm not talking about US and Coalition troops, I'm talking about the civillians that we're "bringing freedom to".
No, I don't believe for one second the US administration gives a fuck about the people of Iraq. And my post is referring to decades of history, not just these recent adventures. Take a look at some of the shit the US has pulled in south america and the middle east.
Afghanistan was revenge. Iraq was for god-knows-what, but the lies, the propaganda and the total clusterfuck it's become are not something you should be proud of your government for.
"I sell copies digital copies of my artwork online"
You sell bits and bytes. Not a good business model. Try selling prints or actual comics. maybe give the comic away for free like penny arcade. They make money through advertising and doing custom artwork.
"coping a digital copy is not stealing"
It's not, it's copyright infringement, an entirely seperate act, which is why we have diffent laws for it and different words for it. Stealing is where someone takes something and deprives other people of it.
"keeping up with the times"
This is a fair objection. The record labels(and movie studios) ignored digital music for a long time and now try to sell versions that restrict fair use. They are failing at selling in the modern world. This is no excuse for copyright infringement, but it is a fact.
"fair use"
Fair use needs to be protected. Copyright infringement is not fair use. Fair use is keeping backups and time/format shifting works you already have legal access to.
"but the truth is that everyone that is creating stuff today-artists, writers, musicians (and that includes writers of software too) is hurting badly because of the rampant pirating of our work."
Prove it. There have always been poor and struggling artists, convinced of the greatness of their own work, who have looked for reason's they are still poor. It's usually "they don't understand me" or "they have no soul" or " they just don't appreciate good art". Anything but "maybe my work is actually worthless". There are plenty of comic book guys (PA, scott adams) doing perfectly well for themselves.
"I wish the law is even stricter and anyone caught pirating anything be made to pay dearly. This includes taking any of the property they own(house, car, etc) and if they cannot pay send their ass to jail. Enough IS enough."
Then you're an asshole. And you clearly subscribe to the view that every infringement is a lost sale, which is patently false. Recent studies have shown that people who download music illegally buy more music than other folks, not less.
As for your work being entirely yours, well, this is a philosophical argument. One could attribute much of what goes into creating it and a large amount of what might make people want it to the rest of the culture around us, what has gone before, etc.
And don't forget, copyright is a work WE grant YOU. WE grant you copyright terms not because of some natural right but because it encourages you to produce and enrich the culture. Lately WE don't like those terms so much and are thinking about changing them. If that makes YOU less likely to produce artwork then we'll live with that and you'll have to find a real job.
"America in that past 20 years has constantly been making policy based on trying to be a good guy, and that just pisses people off because that's such a holier than thou attitude about things"
Are you really dumb enough to believe that?
America has been paying lip service to being the good guy whilst screwing with other countries' regimes, selling arms into unstable areas, invading and destabilising all sorts of places and all the whole preaching to the rest of the world about "freedom", "justice" and the "American Way", which it makes clear by its actions it doesn't believe in and only applies to US citizens. Even then it begrudges every liberty it has granted its own people.
Stop worshipping that damn flag and look at the actions of your country around the world. It's disgraceful and it really grates when when all you ever hear out of US politicians is how fucking great and blameless they are in the troubles of the world.
I mean god-damn all the good and evil, us and them rhetoric is simplistic and childish, yet you guys lap it up.
"Suppose my electorate is ten people with the following IQs: (7, 100, 110, 120, 110, 100, 105, 98, 100, 100)."
And that's where you fail. Intelligence within a population is usually modeled as a normal curve. Due to the large numbers of people involved the case of extreme sqewing you present is very very unlikely.
Frankly I don't trust the political opinions of most people over the average intelligence either. Their all too willing to vote for the one that looks trustworthy. Humans are dumb, tribal animals.
The current system is broken and unrepresentative. It's tribal to the extent that a seriously large proportion of the electorate will vote for and vocally defend "their" guy even if he's a corrupt, lawbreaking crook and attack the "other" guy even if he's a saint.
All the while ignoring that neither of them cares for anything other than keeping the profit flowing for themselves and their cronies.
Couple all that with the fact that 50% of the electorate are of below average intelligence anyway and can't be trsted to tie their own shoes let alone decide the future of the country, it seems ever more like a huge waste of time.
I do vote, but if someone offered me a beer not to do it, I'd take the beer.
That's why you have restrictions on what users can do with their machines, especially non technical users.
Oh, sorry Mr Marketing guy, you can't install new software, you don't need it.
No, you're not authenticated for full office network access mr homeworker, not until your machine's been fully scanned. Until then you can access your mail account and the web from this sandbox area.
Uh, no, mr software developer, you can't have root access to the main source repository...
There are many things you can do to protect yourself from the ID-10-T problem.
C'mon, an incoming firewall is a good start, but it's just that. You still need AV, Anti-malware is good. Spam filtering, individual machine firewalls, server security, access limits for users, restrictions on what can be attached to the network, a secure area with limited access for those whose laptops travel a lot...
...and wait, it won't be long before Gee-Dubya starts mailing his daughters and getting them to forward it straight to cheney, and vice versa.
He's the president, and his communications should be kept private until such time as they are deemed relevant to an investigation into corruption, illegal war, whatever.
US society already has high technology. Giving a poor kid an OLPC in North America may help him or her. Giving a poor kid an OLPC in someplace where they don't have computers available at the library down the street (which the kid never goes to because his parents and peers think libraries are for geeks and morons) will help that kid interface with the modern world and help bring up the whole country.
Now, I'm not saying poor folks in developed countries brought it upon themselves, or are willfully poor, but I do think that there is greater room for improvement across populations as a whole in other places.
That would fall foul of the regulations in several EU countries that phones must be unlockable by law, and that people are allowed to do it. All nice and legal. Apple would be the ones on the wrong side of the law if they tried to enforce their EULA.
"Besides, the society as a whole usually does not look at lawbreakers as heroes"
No, the US society really doesn't. To a suprising extent.
I went on a tour of Alcatraz recently, I found it utterly amazing that when the tour guide told us about the indian/student occupation of the island that took place after the closure of the prison. She explained about the fact it was a protest against the taking of indian land and how they'd declared that at the time.
She went to great lengths to try and explain to the (mostly american) crowd how, sometimes, criminal activity has an intent other than just vandalism and damage, and how sometimes, decades later, you can even look back and see what motivated them, even if it didn't justify breking the law.
That staggered me. That these people have such an awe for laws and lawmakers that they don't even consider that some people, in some circumstances, break the law as legitimate protest. No, they just write it off in their heads as the work of "criminals", "lawbreakers" and "vandals" and let history sort them out.
It's incredible, given the origins of the nation, that US society has sunk so far into the "authority is always right" mindset.
(in no way do I mean to imply other societies have not, before I get blasted with mindless patriotism by a flag-worshipper)
Oh yay, the primaries. More evidence of how entrenched this two party thing is with the US. You register as a certain type of voter and then you get to vote for which of your guys goes up against the other team's guy in a sort of mock election. All of this paid for by the taxpayer (IIRC?).
What a great system. Really.
What happens when your team have seven identical guys standing and their platform is pretty much the same as the other side? Because to outside observers, that's what the US has been getting for a hell of a long time.
It scares me that what seems important in the US is not the issues, but the propaganda against the other side and the unwillingness to even consider anyone but the big two parties for your vote because it means that the person you really don't like stands a better chance of getting in.
Face it, the republicans and democrats have got you over a barrel. "Vote for me or that rich warmonger/liberal coward will get in!"
Slashdot Mirror
Which, as recall, has not been proven to have any effect on anything. In fact Omega-3 is, IMHO, the new snake oil. It could have all sorts of benefits on everything from the heart and the brain to joints, only nobody's managed to back it up with a shred of evidence. And yet food manufacturers are putting it in everything they can and shouting "OMEGA-3!" from the rooftops.
:) /yah, I think the whole vitamin/suplement industry is a scam
More flim flam and snakeoil. Only now, thanks to your link, I can smile whenever that popsinto my mind because I know how close it is to genuine snake-oil
The phrase "alternative knowledge" is in itself enough to set off the alarm bells.
It implies knowledge that is not tested with the scientific method. Knowledge that is unproven, often unproveable, but somehow still asserted as "true".
It is the enemy of progress and true knowledge and needs to be eradicated. There is no conspiracy of western medicine other than the conspiracy to sell more, which I agree goes to excess. We just require that treatments be proven to be useful before administration.
Rubbish like homeopathy has been shown several times over to have a success rate equal to that of a placebo - ie it does absolutely nothing. Yet still these charlatans sell their snakeoil and have a loyal army of morons like yourself who are all too keen to show off their "superior" intelligence and "open" minds by buying into this crap and being smug about it.
Here's the thing though - if it can't be proven under scientific scrutiny IT'S USELESS.
There have been a variety of studies. Oh, and nobody's stepped up to claim Randi's million yet.
It's fakery and/or delusion, like the rest.
Dyed in the wool materialists are not as bad because they are consistently proved right. I can't think of a single thing the flaky spiritualists have got right, EVER.
1. It's not stealing, really.
2. You also make the false assumption that if they couldn't get it free then you would have more paying customers. Not true. Not true in the least. Pirates buy MORE media than non pirates.
Yes, Iraq was all about regime change, all about removing saddam.
Always was, don't listen to those damn liberals who try and tell you you should remember so many years back to the "imminent threat to the west with WMDs" "seeking out nucleur capabilities" and "mobile chemical weapons lab" bullshit that was spewed. No, just listen to us, remember, it was about the iraqi people, always about the iraqi people. Go back to sleep america, your government is bringing freedom to the world.
And may I just say GREAT JERB!! On the the Iraq thing. What's the casualty count now (and no, I'm not talking about US and Coalition troops, I'm talking about the civillians that we're "bringing freedom to".
No, I don't believe for one second the US administration gives a fuck about the people of Iraq. And my post is referring to decades of history, not just these recent adventures. Take a look at some of the shit the US has pulled in south america and the middle east.
Afghanistan was revenge. Iraq was for god-knows-what, but the lies, the propaganda and the total clusterfuck it's become are not something you should be proud of your government for.
"I sell copies digital copies of my artwork online"
You sell bits and bytes. Not a good business model. Try selling prints or actual comics. maybe give the comic away for free like penny arcade. They make money through advertising and doing custom artwork.
"coping a digital copy is not stealing"
It's not, it's copyright infringement, an entirely seperate act, which is why we have diffent laws for it and different words for it. Stealing is where someone takes something and deprives other people of it.
"keeping up with the times"
This is a fair objection. The record labels(and movie studios) ignored digital music for a long time and now try to sell versions that restrict fair use. They are failing at selling in the modern world. This is no excuse for copyright infringement, but it is a fact.
"fair use"
Fair use needs to be protected. Copyright infringement is not fair use. Fair use is keeping backups and time/format shifting works you already have legal access to.
"but the truth is that everyone that is creating stuff today-artists, writers, musicians (and that includes writers of software too) is hurting badly because of the rampant pirating of our work."
Prove it. There have always been poor and struggling artists, convinced of the greatness of their own work, who have looked for reason's they are still poor. It's usually "they don't understand me" or "they have no soul" or " they just don't appreciate good art". Anything but "maybe my work is actually worthless". There are plenty of comic book guys (PA, scott adams) doing perfectly well for themselves.
"I wish the law is even stricter and anyone caught pirating anything be made to pay dearly. This includes taking any of the property they own(house, car, etc) and if they cannot pay send their ass to jail. Enough IS enough."
Then you're an asshole. And you clearly subscribe to the view that every infringement is a lost sale, which is patently false. Recent studies have shown that people who download music illegally buy more music than other folks, not less.
As for your work being entirely yours, well, this is a philosophical argument. One could attribute much of what goes into creating it and a large amount of what might make people want it to the rest of the culture around us, what has gone before, etc.
And don't forget, copyright is a work WE grant YOU. WE grant you copyright terms not because of some natural right but because it encourages you to produce and enrich the culture. Lately WE don't like those terms so much and are thinking about changing them. If that makes YOU less likely to produce artwork then we'll live with that and you'll have to find a real job.
Nice example, but if you were really a consultant of any worth your communication skills (grammar, spelling) would be a lot better. They'd have to be.
And no, not all "bullies" go on to be losers in life, many end up as very successful CEOs.
"America in that past 20 years has constantly been making policy based on trying to be a good guy, and that just pisses people off because that's such a holier than thou attitude about things"
Are you really dumb enough to believe that?
America has been paying lip service to being the good guy whilst screwing with other countries' regimes, selling arms into unstable areas, invading and destabilising all sorts of places and all the whole preaching to the rest of the world about "freedom", "justice" and the "American Way", which it makes clear by its actions it doesn't believe in and only applies to US citizens. Even then it begrudges every liberty it has granted its own people.
Stop worshipping that damn flag and look at the actions of your country around the world. It's disgraceful and it really grates when when all you ever hear out of US politicians is how fucking great and blameless they are in the troubles of the world.
I mean god-damn all the good and evil, us and them rhetoric is simplistic and childish, yet you guys lap it up.
"Suppose my electorate is ten people with the following IQs: (7, 100, 110, 120, 110, 100, 105, 98, 100, 100)."
And that's where you fail. Intelligence within a population is usually modeled as a normal curve. Due to the large numbers of people involved the case of extreme sqewing you present is very very unlikely.
Frankly I don't trust the political opinions of most people over the average intelligence either. Their all too willing to vote for the one that looks trustworthy. Humans are dumb, tribal animals.
The current system is broken and unrepresentative. It's tribal to the extent that a seriously large proportion of the electorate will vote for and vocally defend "their" guy even if he's a corrupt, lawbreaking crook and attack the "other" guy even if he's a saint.
All the while ignoring that neither of them cares for anything other than keeping the profit flowing for themselves and their cronies.
Couple all that with the fact that 50% of the electorate are of below average intelligence anyway and can't be trsted to tie their own shoes let alone decide the future of the country, it seems ever more like a huge waste of time.
I do vote, but if someone offered me a beer not to do it, I'd take the beer.
That's why you have restrictions on what users can do with their machines, especially non technical users.
Oh, sorry Mr Marketing guy, you can't install new software, you don't need it.
No, you're not authenticated for full office network access mr homeworker, not until your machine's been fully scanned. Until then you can access your mail account and the web from this sandbox area.
Uh, no, mr software developer, you can't have root access to the main source repository...
There are many things you can do to protect yourself from the ID-10-T problem.
"Duh!"
C'mon, an incoming firewall is a good start, but it's just that. You still need AV, Anti-malware is good. Spam filtering, individual machine firewalls, server security, access limits for users, restrictions on what can be attached to the network, a secure area with limited access for those whose laptops travel a lot...
This is, is it not, pretty elementary stuff?
No, not increased regulation of industry, state ownership of major or all enterprise. Not welfare state, total control of all resources.
What hilliary is proposing (igf you have it right there) is still a HELL of a long way away from socialism.
As for state run healthcare, well, there's a bit of socialism I really like. Nothing wrong with picking and choosing the best bits in my opinion.
Is not a direction, it's a philosophy. If you want to call them (relatively) left, then that's cool. Socialists they are not.
Huh. Femocrats. Yeah, you can use that one.
For god's sake! the democrats are right wing, free market industrialists and professionals. JUST like the republicans.
Socialism is national healthcare, nationalised industries, nationalised housing, government control of resources.
The democrats and republicans are two very closely related flavours of free market conservatism (with a huge military/industrial bias).
You don't know what socialism is.
If it was WWII then germany and russia were enemies... surely?
So if a prussian (ie german, possibly polish) did it, then surely the results would have gone to the reich?
Perhaps I'd better actually RTFA!
...and wait, it won't be long before Gee-Dubya starts mailing his daughters and getting them to forward it straight to cheney, and vice versa.
He's the president, and his communications should be kept private until such time as they are deemed relevant to an investigation into corruption, illegal war, whatever.
I suppose they could have used east germans, but I think for something that impoatant they would have used their own people.
If you owe the bank 1000 dollars and can't pay, you're in trouble.
If you owe the bank a billion dollars and can't pay, they're in trouble.
US society already has high technology. Giving a poor kid an OLPC in North America may help him or her. Giving a poor kid an OLPC in someplace where they don't have computers available at the library down the street (which the kid never goes to because his parents and peers think libraries are for geeks and morons) will help that kid interface with the modern world and help bring up the whole country.
Now, I'm not saying poor folks in developed countries brought it upon themselves, or are willfully poor, but I do think that there is greater room for improvement across populations as a whole in other places.
That would fall foul of the regulations in several EU countries that phones must be unlockable by law, and that people are allowed to do it. All nice and legal. Apple would be the ones on the wrong side of the law if they tried to enforce their EULA.
How would it not be legal?
What would be illegal about using your iphone with your european phone contract?
Nothing, that's what. Apple might like to make it illegal, but that's a different matter.
"Besides, the society as a whole usually does not look at lawbreakers as heroes"
No, the US society really doesn't. To a suprising extent.
I went on a tour of Alcatraz recently, I found it utterly amazing that when the tour guide told us about the indian/student occupation of the island that took place after the closure of the prison. She explained about the fact it was a protest against the taking of indian land and how they'd declared that at the time.
She went to great lengths to try and explain to the (mostly american) crowd how, sometimes, criminal activity has an intent other than just vandalism and damage, and how sometimes, decades later, you can even look back and see what motivated them, even if it didn't justify breking the law.
That staggered me. That these people have such an awe for laws and lawmakers that they don't even consider that some people, in some circumstances, break the law as legitimate protest. No, they just write it off in their heads as the work of "criminals", "lawbreakers" and "vandals" and let history sort them out.
It's incredible, given the origins of the nation, that US society has sunk so far into the "authority is always right" mindset.
(in no way do I mean to imply other societies have not, before I get blasted with mindless patriotism by a flag-worshipper)
Oh yay, the primaries. More evidence of how entrenched this two party thing is with the US. You register as a certain type of voter and then you get to vote for which of your guys goes up against the other team's guy in a sort of mock election. All of this paid for by the taxpayer (IIRC?).
What a great system. Really.
What happens when your team have seven identical guys standing and their platform is pretty much the same as the other side? Because to outside observers, that's what the US has been getting for a hell of a long time.
It scares me that what seems important in the US is not the issues, but the propaganda against the other side and the unwillingness to even consider anyone but the big two parties for your vote because it means that the person you really don't like stands a better chance of getting in.
Face it, the republicans and democrats have got you over a barrel. "Vote for me or that rich warmonger/liberal coward will get in!"