You could feel free to offer some other service, or perhaps you could go to someone who was willing to give you a bite to eat for oral sex, or find someone who would be willing to give you a bite to eat, just to keep the first person from getting anal sex, let alone, someone who would be willing to give you something in exchange for doing something useful. In fact, there are a great many ways that a person with some creativity can manage to eat without being anally raped, even under your system. In older times, the king owned everything, yet there weren't long lines outside the castle of people waiting to get anally raped for their supper, and we all know what wonderful people royalty were/are, so it wasn't because the king felt their pain. In addition, you are assuming that being anally raped is beneficial to you. I don't want to question your sexuality (hey, that's your business), but personally, I don't think that getting ass-slammed for food is beneficial.
As an aside, how did you come by having nothing, unless the government took it away from you, in the first place?
So you mean to tell me that there aren't any people living in "rather primitive and generally not too nice conditions" with the full benefit of centralized government?!? In fact, one can very easily make the argument that, historically, the societies that have the highest standards of living are precisely those that have the least amount of government involvment.
Secondly, if government is such a wonderful mechanism to achieve everything that we want, then why is it always mandatory? There is nothing in the ideology of libertarianism that states that people can't form voluntary alliances. You can't say the same for those people who don't want the government's "help".
Exactly how does not having clothes interfere with your right to life? Nudists seem to manage quite well without it, as do the few remaining tribal folks. Same for shelter, unless, you think that nomads and homeless people are dead. As for food, how can you stipulate, that someone who spends their life in the production of food, owes any of it to you? Doesn't your own socialist philosophy require that you "mix your labor" with it?
In fact, to get to the core of the discussion, the socialist requires that others provide for them, and be forced to do so, if necessary. The libertarian does not. The libertarian ideal is that people should cooperate when it is to their MUTUAL benefit. Socialism, on the other hand, forces people to cooperate via the business end of the government. Hence, maybe you should be a little less dependent on using the power of government to force other to follow your advice, and provide you with all the luxuries that you seek, before starting to sound like a lazy fanatical thug.
Um, what gives you the "right" to food, clothing, shelter, and medicine? Are those people who are engaged in the manufacture of those products and services your slaves? Why not a right to free music, free sex, and free insert_whatever_you_want_here? You should really think about differentiating between "rights" like (life, speech, etc), and consumer products.
Well thank you for the informative response, comrade. As a prototypical socialist, I assume that using various slanders like "crazy" and "stupid" is considered an adequate substitute for meaningful logic. I find it utterly remarkable how, someone who holds to a philosophy that people should be responsible for their own actions and not rely upon a nanny state to force conformity, is considered deranged. As for your definition of libertarianism, well, I don't remember any libs stating anything about the solutions to your mental problems, except that they are invariably easier to come by when the government is not pointing a gun at your head dictating theirs to you.
You vastly overestimate the Pennsylvanian electorate. Like a previous poster stated, we're quite accustomed to being fucked by our state and local governments. Remember this is state that spawned Tom Ridge and Rick Santorum. Give 'em an "Iron", throw a couple mill to USAir, put slots at the race tracks, and they'll let you ream 'em nonstop.
Or perhaps they are from people who don't think of people as jew vs gentile, and just think madmen like Sharon (whose past and present actions are just as bad as any other two bit, murderous dictator) should be just as deserving of being subject to "regime change" and be "disarmed", like his Islamic counterparts. A killer, who justifies his violence with religous fanaticism, is still a blight to the world, whether he kills under "orders" of Allah or Yahweh.
This may not really be on-topic, but you seemed to have a lot of disdain for anyone who might have a lot of ideas but no resources to carry out those ideas.
Justification enough for our discriminatory war against pot, if you ask me.:-)
The CEO of GE might not give a crap, but the CIO who's mistakenly thinks that reputation and credibility would be serverely damaged does. You have to remember that a lot of these people attended board meetings and told a bunch of technically illiterate rich people that M$ would be a cheaper, easier to maintain, and easier to use platform than whatever unix/vms variant they were using at the time. Now, they would have to go into this same board room, and tell them that a cheaper in the long run, more expensive in the short run (training costs, conversion costs, etc) solution would be to switch to a free unix like os, while damn well knowing that most board members (and other executives) are only concerned with present costs. I'm not an executive, but I can certainly recall many occaisions that I had to do things that I (and my boss) knew would be more expensive in the long run, but cheaper in the short run simply because it would look better on the current year's balance sheet... "We'll worry about that in next year's budget..."
It's unfortunate, but consider how many investors run their portfolio. Profits dip between quarters... SELL, SELL, SELL!!!, which drops the stock price, which causes further devaluation of the company, which causes more people to sell their stocks at a lower price. It doesn't matter to most investors (the smart ones, of course, being the exception), that the reason that profits dropped was because the company was making a long term investment in their future. Considering that the largest share holders of a company are its board members, they have the most to lose if the stock prices drop (even if only temporarily).
Scientific and technilogical endeavors don't necessary need to know the exact time, as much as the need an exact measure of duration. Most scientific formulas and principles deal with delta t (as in tn - t0) not whether the t0 was at 11:59:38.2748575 or whether t0 was at 11:59:47.2348301. The concept of a "clock" is purely for human convience. If it weren't, then there would be no need for daylight savings time, and in fact, DST would be detrimental to scientific measurements because twice a year, we'd have to rederive all of our formulas (except in Arizona, where, I guess, all the American scientist would have to live).
No, things still work, we just won't know exactly when they'll work. Although, your statement about needing to stick to accurate standards in order for things to work may, in fact, explain why M$ products fail so frequently and unpredictably.:-)
Not if King George has his way. By not gleefully indulging in his latest Iraqi bloodshed for oil program, your country has demonstrated sympathy for oil competetors (...oops, I mean terrorists), and henceforth shall be considered part of the axis of evil, which apparently means any nation that fits 2 criteria:
1. Doesn't allow US businesses (especially ones that contributed to his campaign fund) to gut and pillage its national resources with impunity.
2. Doesn't possess sufficient defenses to actually repel an illegal corporation (... oops, I mean coalition) invasion.
BTW, we sleep with an existence empty of the terror of bombs falling from the sky, as well. It's the planes falling from the sky, piloted by future generations of "liberated" Iraqi children that scares us shitless.:-) But don't worry citizens of the world. In every empire, I'm sure these words have been uttered at least once...
"Whaddya mean there's a shitload of them at the city gates, and they look really pissed?!? I thought they enjoyed us killing them off, raping their women, and looting everything of value...gurgle...thud."
Make no mistake, I find the concept of child pornography (and other forms of child exploitation... toy commercials, xianity, high school, Disney, McDonalds, Nike, MTV, etc) appalling, and at best, unbecoming a civilized, thinking, and considerate human being. However, I must admit that I find your typical American attitude of "You merely not agreeing with me justifies violence" ALMOST equally appalling, which is why I'm pretending to be a European, because idiots like you completely justify the phrase "ugly american". But then again, this is more tough talk from an AC, so obviously you don't have much convictions in your beliefs, or you would at least put your handle on it.
Native American tribes also used swastikas, as well. In fact, it was the sanskrit symbol for "Good Fortune". Here's a link with a little history about non-nazi uses of the glyph
http://www.geocities.com/angryindian/page5.html
So what you're saying is that monopolies should be immune to free market pressures? i.e. if the demand does not support the cost, then legislate the cost. Like so many others have already said time and time again, if people aren't willing to pay $15 for a CD, then quite frankly, your CD costs too much, or people don't feel that you're giving them $15 worth of service. Point blank, that's capitalism. Technically, I can steal anything, but I'll only buy that which I feel is worth the price. If the market determines that your music is only worth the cost of a blank CD and the fraction of the personal ISP costs it takes to download it, then that's all your product is worth, end of story. If the margins aren't high enough to support the costs of your manufacturing and distribution infrastructure, you go out of business, or you change your business model in order to become profitable. That's how it's supposed to work in a free market system. Markets are supposed to evolve, not be stagnated by illicit legislation in order to keep things conducive to your business model, so that you can maximize your profit. The problem is not with music piracy. That is just a symptom of market that has not been able to evolve because of an illegal monopoly/cartel. If RIAA companies can't make money selling physical CDs because the market dictates higher demand for online music services, then they shouldn't sell physical CDs anymore. They should create a killer online site, and let you rip and burn your way to nirvanha. You say it costs money to create such a site, then you subsidize the site with advertisements. If you can't get enough advertizing dollars, then your site isn't pulling in as many customers, so you need to make your site more appealing to the customers, so that they choose your site over another (better selection, higher bandwidth, discounts on other products... i.e. work a deal with amazon so that people who purchase a book after coming from your site gets a 5% discount... free shipping, what have you). Don't want to deal with the interactive web site, then put a commercial at the beginning of the song, or after the third song, or however your marketing dept decides is the way to maximize the value of the ad to the people that you sold it to. What if Bob's fly by night doesn't do that, then a.) he probably doesn't have the selection you do because the bandwidth and storage facilities cost him money, and if he's giving it away for free, then he doesn't have the captial to compete with your selection. b.) you could offer other incentives to lure customers (like a better compression algorithm... yeah they have to sit through 60 secs of commericial, but it takes 1/2 the time to download a CD). Don't want to do the online deal, fine, then develop a more compact media that holds more music. If I can buy a device for a hundred bucks that will play a media that hold oodles more music, then the market will decide whether the added convience is worth the cost. Like I've said before, this is supposed to be a market economy geared toward maximizing progress and efficiency, not a system solely to ensure profits for large corporations using outdated business models. If you innovate and create demand, you thrive. If you stagnate, you go out of business. If the market will only support one Brittany Spears (for some reason BS always seems to be present in this discusion:-)), and not one Brittany Spears and 30 wannabes, then that model thrives and makes profit. It may seem cruel, but no one ever said capitalism wasn't. I can't say this enough times, our market system wasn't designed to ensure profit, it was designed to ensure progress and the evolution of business, using profit as the motivation for further innovation. RIAA companies aren't evolving, so consequently they should (and eventually will) go extinct.
1.) Obviously you didn't have to install any software on your winblows box or upgrade a driver, and considering that they find a new security flaw every 8 seconds, I find it hard to believe that you could run a secure machine for 6 months without a reboot. The ONLY times I've ever had to reboot any of my linux boxen is a.) hardware upgrade/failure and b.) kernel upgrade/tweaking.
2.) Allow me to break your bubble, but I do have to reboot my w2k machine and my xp machine at least once a month because of a lockup, and the other developers in my dept do the same. Perhaps you'd like me to send you some pictures of BSODs , or mpgs demostrating lockups with current newspapers in the pic (kinda like kidnappers do), so that you can in fact see that if you use your microcrap pc for anything other than ASP development, systems failures are not the mythical beasts that you imagine they are.
3.) Ask any competent m$ sys admin (or at least as competent as they get), what the first solution to any m$ problem is... you guessed it, bounce the box.
4.) I find it highly ironic that a microslop lackey is talking about os bloat.
5.) When was linux a unix? I may be incorrect, but I believe it's a unix-like os, not a true blue unix variant.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, now I get it!!! This is all just a sarcastic troll. Oh yes, of course, the complete and total denial of reality and the ludicrous blind faith in redmond is really just a parody of the typical m$ user. Hah, hah, you got me. Kudos to you.
They do leave themselves very little work, and with 11 of the last 13 appointments being made by republican administrations, the work seems confined to granting constitutional rights of rape, pillage, and plunder to large politically contributing corporations.
Ideally, although not in actual practice, Congress is supposed to represent the people or public domain, if you will. When our Congress conspired with the holders of copyrights, it was, in a legal sense, both parties agreeing to changing the terms of the aforementioned contract. The problems arise because Congress doesn't competently represent the public domain or its best interests, which is obviously the case, and probably always has been the case, we just weren't taught that in our candy coated history books. The situation is not so much, "our lawyers never agreed to that", as much as it is "our lawyers were bribed to agree with that". As much as I depise the law, and subsequent decision, TECHNICALLY, it was within the power of Congress to make, and within the power of the SC to uphold. Like I said earlier, the problem is not with the validity of the law, but the fact that Congress is supposed to a body representing the common interest, and clearly it is not. Congress should have never enacted such a law because it was a perverse detriment to the people. But then again, as we all know, Congress always has a funny way of determining what is in the best interests of the people when large sums of corporate campaign dollars, and outright bribes are involved.
Slashdot Mirror
As an aside, how did you come by having nothing, unless the government took it away from you, in the first place?
Secondly, if government is such a wonderful mechanism to achieve everything that we want, then why is it always mandatory? There is nothing in the ideology of libertarianism that states that people can't form voluntary alliances. You can't say the same for those people who don't want the government's "help".
Exactly how does not having clothes interfere with your right to life? Nudists seem to manage quite well without it, as do the few remaining tribal folks. Same for shelter, unless, you think that nomads and homeless people are dead. As for food, how can you stipulate, that someone who spends their life in the production of food, owes any of it to you? Doesn't your own socialist philosophy require that you "mix your labor" with it? In fact, to get to the core of the discussion, the socialist requires that others provide for them, and be forced to do so, if necessary. The libertarian does not. The libertarian ideal is that people should cooperate when it is to their MUTUAL benefit. Socialism, on the other hand, forces people to cooperate via the business end of the government. Hence, maybe you should be a little less dependent on using the power of government to force other to follow your advice, and provide you with all the luxuries that you seek, before starting to sound like a lazy fanatical thug.
Um, what gives you the "right" to food, clothing, shelter, and medicine? Are those people who are engaged in the manufacture of those products and services your slaves? Why not a right to free music, free sex, and free insert_whatever_you_want_here? You should really think about differentiating between "rights" like (life, speech, etc), and consumer products.
Well thank you for the informative response, comrade. As a prototypical socialist, I assume that using various slanders like "crazy" and "stupid" is considered an adequate substitute for meaningful logic. I find it utterly remarkable how, someone who holds to a philosophy that people should be responsible for their own actions and not rely upon a nanny state to force conformity, is considered deranged. As for your definition of libertarianism, well, I don't remember any libs stating anything about the solutions to your mental problems, except that they are invariably easier to come by when the government is not pointing a gun at your head dictating theirs to you.
Why am I not surprised that the socialist nutters popped out so quickly...
Its stench attracts carrion beetles and flesh flies to pollinate it.
Is this a plant or a politician?
You vastly overestimate the Pennsylvanian electorate. Like a previous poster stated, we're quite accustomed to being fucked by our state and local governments. Remember this is state that spawned Tom Ridge and Rick Santorum. Give 'em an "Iron", throw a couple mill to USAir, put slots at the race tracks, and they'll let you ream 'em nonstop.
Or perhaps they are from people who don't think of people as jew vs gentile, and just think madmen like Sharon (whose past and present actions are just as bad as any other two bit, murderous dictator) should be just as deserving of being subject to "regime change" and be "disarmed", like his Islamic counterparts. A killer, who justifies his violence with religous fanaticism, is still a blight to the world, whether he kills under "orders" of Allah or Yahweh.
This may not really be on-topic, but you seemed to have a lot of disdain for anyone who might have a lot of ideas but no resources to carry out those ideas.
Justification enough for our discriminatory war against pot, if you ask me.:-)
But you have to admit that there is a paralell between this case and the recent war in Iraq.
SCO: We know that there is SCO IP illegally included in the linux kernel, but we won't reveal what until the trial.
King George: We know that there are WMDs in Iraq, but we won't reveal what until after we've invaded.
The CEO of GE might not give a crap, but the CIO who's mistakenly thinks that reputation and credibility would be serverely damaged does. You have to remember that a lot of these people attended board meetings and told a bunch of technically illiterate rich people that M$ would be a cheaper, easier to maintain, and easier to use platform than whatever unix/vms variant they were using at the time. Now, they would have to go into this same board room, and tell them that a cheaper in the long run, more expensive in the short run (training costs, conversion costs, etc) solution would be to switch to a free unix like os, while damn well knowing that most board members (and other executives) are only concerned with present costs. I'm not an executive, but I can certainly recall many occaisions that I had to do things that I (and my boss) knew would be more expensive in the long run, but cheaper in the short run simply because it would look better on the current year's balance sheet... "We'll worry about that in next year's budget..."
It's unfortunate, but consider how many investors run their portfolio. Profits dip between quarters... SELL, SELL, SELL!!!, which drops the stock price, which causes further devaluation of the company, which causes more people to sell their stocks at a lower price. It doesn't matter to most investors (the smart ones, of course, being the exception), that the reason that profits dropped was because the company was making a long term investment in their future. Considering that the largest share holders of a company are its board members, they have the most to lose if the stock prices drop (even if only temporarily).
Scientific and technilogical endeavors don't necessary need to know the exact time, as much as the need an exact measure of duration. Most scientific formulas and principles deal with delta t (as in tn - t0) not whether the t0 was at 11:59:38.2748575 or whether t0 was at 11:59:47.2348301. The concept of a "clock" is purely for human convience. If it weren't, then there would be no need for daylight savings time, and in fact, DST would be detrimental to scientific measurements because twice a year, we'd have to rederive all of our formulas (except in Arizona, where, I guess, all the American scientist would have to live).
No, things still work, we just won't know exactly when they'll work. Although, your statement about needing to stick to accurate standards in order for things to work may, in fact, explain why M$ products fail so frequently and unpredictably.:-)
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K Don't you mean Crow T. Robot, MS Server3K?
Not if King George has his way. By not gleefully indulging in his latest Iraqi bloodshed for oil program, your country has demonstrated sympathy for oil competetors (...oops, I mean terrorists), and henceforth shall be considered part of the axis of evil, which apparently means any nation that fits 2 criteria:
1. Doesn't allow US businesses (especially ones that contributed to his campaign fund) to gut and pillage its national resources with impunity.
2. Doesn't possess sufficient defenses to actually repel an illegal corporation (... oops, I mean coalition) invasion.
BTW, we sleep with an existence empty of the terror of bombs falling from the sky, as well. It's the planes falling from the sky, piloted by future generations of "liberated" Iraqi children that scares us shitless.:-) But don't worry citizens of the world. In every empire, I'm sure these words have been uttered at least once...
"Whaddya mean there's a shitload of them at the city gates, and they look really pissed?!? I thought they enjoyed us killing them off, raping their women, and looting everything of value...gurgle...thud."
Make no mistake, I find the concept of child pornography (and other forms of child exploitation... toy commercials, xianity, high school, Disney, McDonalds, Nike, MTV, etc) appalling, and at best, unbecoming a civilized, thinking, and considerate human being. However, I must admit that I find your typical American attitude of "You merely not agreeing with me justifies violence" ALMOST equally appalling, which is why I'm pretending to be a European, because idiots like you completely justify the phrase "ugly american". But then again, this is more tough talk from an AC, so obviously you don't have much convictions in your beliefs, or you would at least put your handle on it.
Native American tribes also used swastikas, as well. In fact, it was the sanskrit symbol for "Good Fortune". Here's a link with a little history about non-nazi uses of the glyph http://www.geocities.com/angryindian/page5.html
I wish I some mod points for this one...
So what you're saying is that monopolies should be immune to free market pressures? i.e. if the demand does not support the cost, then legislate the cost. Like so many others have already said time and time again, if people aren't willing to pay $15 for a CD, then quite frankly, your CD costs too much, or people don't feel that you're giving them $15 worth of service. Point blank, that's capitalism. Technically, I can steal anything, but I'll only buy that which I feel is worth the price. If the market determines that your music is only worth the cost of a blank CD and the fraction of the personal ISP costs it takes to download it, then that's all your product is worth, end of story. If the margins aren't high enough to support the costs of your manufacturing and distribution infrastructure, you go out of business, or you change your business model in order to become profitable. That's how it's supposed to work in a free market system. Markets are supposed to evolve, not be stagnated by illicit legislation in order to keep things conducive to your business model, so that you can maximize your profit. The problem is not with music piracy. That is just a symptom of market that has not been able to evolve because of an illegal monopoly/cartel. If RIAA companies can't make money selling physical CDs because the market dictates higher demand for online music services, then they shouldn't sell physical CDs anymore. They should create a killer online site, and let you rip and burn your way to nirvanha. You say it costs money to create such a site, then you subsidize the site with advertisements. If you can't get enough advertizing dollars, then your site isn't pulling in as many customers, so you need to make your site more appealing to the customers, so that they choose your site over another (better selection, higher bandwidth, discounts on other products... i.e. work a deal with amazon so that people who purchase a book after coming from your site gets a 5% discount... free shipping, what have you). Don't want to deal with the interactive web site, then put a commercial at the beginning of the song, or after the third song, or however your marketing dept decides is the way to maximize the value of the ad to the people that you sold it to. What if Bob's fly by night doesn't do that, then a.) he probably doesn't have the selection you do because the bandwidth and storage facilities cost him money, and if he's giving it away for free, then he doesn't have the captial to compete with your selection. b.) you could offer other incentives to lure customers (like a better compression algorithm... yeah they have to sit through 60 secs of commericial, but it takes 1/2 the time to download a CD). Don't want to do the online deal, fine, then develop a more compact media that holds more music. If I can buy a device for a hundred bucks that will play a media that hold oodles more music, then the market will decide whether the added convience is worth the cost. Like I've said before, this is supposed to be a market economy geared toward maximizing progress and efficiency, not a system solely to ensure profits for large corporations using outdated business models. If you innovate and create demand, you thrive. If you stagnate, you go out of business. If the market will only support one Brittany Spears (for some reason BS always seems to be present in this discusion:-)), and not one Brittany Spears and 30 wannabes, then that model thrives and makes profit. It may seem cruel, but no one ever said capitalism wasn't. I can't say this enough times, our market system wasn't designed to ensure profit, it was designed to ensure progress and the evolution of business, using profit as the motivation for further innovation. RIAA companies aren't evolving, so consequently they should (and eventually will) go extinct.
1.) Obviously you didn't have to install any software on your winblows box or upgrade a driver, and considering that they find a new security flaw every 8 seconds, I find it hard to believe that you could run a secure machine for 6 months without a reboot. The ONLY times I've ever had to reboot any of my linux boxen is a.) hardware upgrade/failure and b.) kernel upgrade/tweaking. 2.) Allow me to break your bubble, but I do have to reboot my w2k machine and my xp machine at least once a month because of a lockup, and the other developers in my dept do the same. Perhaps you'd like me to send you some pictures of BSODs , or mpgs demostrating lockups with current newspapers in the pic (kinda like kidnappers do), so that you can in fact see that if you use your microcrap pc for anything other than ASP development, systems failures are not the mythical beasts that you imagine they are. 3.) Ask any competent m$ sys admin (or at least as competent as they get), what the first solution to any m$ problem is... you guessed it, bounce the box. 4.) I find it highly ironic that a microslop lackey is talking about os bloat. 5.) When was linux a unix? I may be incorrect, but I believe it's a unix-like os, not a true blue unix variant. Wait a minute, wait a minute, now I get it!!! This is all just a sarcastic troll. Oh yes, of course, the complete and total denial of reality and the ludicrous blind faith in redmond is really just a parody of the typical m$ user. Hah, hah, you got me. Kudos to you.
No, he included a picture of Mikey.;-) Not yet copyrighted, I imagine.
They do leave themselves very little work, and with 11 of the last 13 appointments being made by republican administrations, the work seems confined to granting constitutional rights of rape, pillage, and plunder to large politically contributing corporations.
Ideally, although not in actual practice, Congress is supposed to represent the people or public domain, if you will. When our Congress conspired with the holders of copyrights, it was, in a legal sense, both parties agreeing to changing the terms of the aforementioned contract. The problems arise because Congress doesn't competently represent the public domain or its best interests, which is obviously the case, and probably always has been the case, we just weren't taught that in our candy coated history books. The situation is not so much, "our lawyers never agreed to that", as much as it is "our lawyers were bribed to agree with that". As much as I depise the law, and subsequent decision, TECHNICALLY, it was within the power of Congress to make, and within the power of the SC to uphold. Like I said earlier, the problem is not with the validity of the law, but the fact that Congress is supposed to a body representing the common interest, and clearly it is not. Congress should have never enacted such a law because it was a perverse detriment to the people. But then again, as we all know, Congress always has a funny way of determining what is in the best interests of the people when large sums of corporate campaign dollars, and outright bribes are involved.
My guess is that the author is a lawyer, and is sick of everybody knowing that they give bubonic plague epidemic envy.