> I wonder if these legal types are ever going to actually blame this on the actual people who are sharing
Like the drug war! If you arrested everyone in the US who had committed a drug crime (including smalltime possession and use, the drug equiv of sharing a few Metallica files), you'd arrest an amount of people that equals the population of Texas, Arkensaw and Colorado. (Sorry if I misspelled any of those.. I'm not American.:)
If they went after the people sharing, half of the computer users in the US would be locked up. To say nothing of 'casual' copyright infringement (I used a.gif from Amazon of a cover of a "for Dummies" book, modified it, and gave it to my dad for Christmas.) I mean, things are screwed up right now, because the laws are made to claim damages from a centralized few victims with money, not to hold a public at large accountable for their behaviour.
What/i/ wonder is when we'll start making laws that reflect the behaviour of society again, not laws that reflect the greed of an elite few.
The timing is perfect. You relied on a technology to fight censorship (not social climate and social responsibily.. ), and the next/. story is all about your misplaced faith.
Difficult to reverse is only as strong protection as you perceive it to be. Reality and faith in technology are worlds apart, as evidenced by the current top/. story. Now you have people who don't use your encryption technology (as no technology is absolutely universally adopted, and usage goes down as power of technology goes up generally, in relation to the complexity of use of said technology.), and frankly, don't even think censorship is an issue because we've relied on a technology to cover our traditional social wants.
Call me a luddite, or whatever, but your faith in technology as a solution for social problems is grossly misplaced. There exist extremely few cases where the problems created by a technology were not equal (if not more difficult to identify and attribute to the perpetrating technology) to the solutions it was designed to solve. The real loss is that the social resposibilty fades in social behaviour as reliance on that technology grows.
He's exactly right. Any technology that does +A also does -A. Censorship is faster and easier than ever.. if anything, the net makes it harder to keep critical thinking 'underground' until it reaches some kind of social critical mass. Critical thinking is now easily found and identified, and censorship is exercised in far more subtle ways than outright silencing.
BTW, censorship is only half of what a pwoer elite needs to mold the thinking of it's citizens. Authority to punish works in a kind of pro-active way.. as critical thinkers are silenced and charged with 'anti-whatever' offences, it works to silence others who were considering taking the risk of being critical.
What's sad is that we now rely on technology to fight censorship - as individuals, we imagine these great devices we are creating alleviate the need for people to take a social resposibility to stand up to censorship of critical thinking. As it stands, we're only hoping that those designing the technologies are doing it with our values in mind, which has increasingly not been the case. One day we will wake up, and find out we have nobody to blame but ourselves for not remaining vigilent against the the ever-present ever-greedy power elite (and I'm talking about the companies here.. the government simply has legal grounds to be puppets these days. It really isn't their fault that there are few laws to protect government from the infleunce of big business.)
Yes, the Internet allows anyone to be heard, but it also allows authority to identify and silence in far more precise and quick ways - the activism and critical thinking is so centralized that it is easily squashed.
Chalk one up for human error. You either misread (sometimes you check for yes, sometimes you uncheck for yes, sometimes you check for no, sometimes you uncheck for no.. ) the form or the list was cross-linked with another list you opted into.
If EVERYONE who'd hit no was getting spam, APC (not sure who they are, but if they are a legit customer facing business, its good enough for the sake of this point) would either be under a lawsuit or, in the very least, well enough known to do this such that/. would have been all over their butt a long time ago. Believe me, companies are *extremely* sensitive about this kind of thing - and the bigger they are, the more sensitive they attempt to be. Its quite possible your entry slipped onto the opt-in list through a bungled db-merge or something, and that the reply was offensive because the know-nothing customer rep gets 500 mails a day from people who/did/ opt-in who now claim to have opted out. (Did you know companies record their phone customer care, not to hold their employees accoutable, but to make sure that when people lie ("I did not switch my mutual funds to that account last week! I want a refund!"), the company can proove that there are far more people who intentionally attempt to lie about their interactions with companies than innocents who've accidentally slipped through some procedural cracks in process and operations.)
Just a reminder, you may simply be one in a million, and that its hard to be polite to that one when 999,999 others are lying outright.
hey man, I agree. Thats why I pointed out that his rights are variable.
However, I disagree with nobody working for free. Its simply, totally, untrue. Lots of people work for free, and the problem is, we've come to believe that work you do for free isn't 'work' at all (making music, helping the needy, joining the army, whatever). So why is that? Well, it's pretty simple: we consider anything produced under the guise of unpaid work as intrinsicly worthless, as this system would fall apart if people were willing to write the Top 40 for free (or probably more accurately, consumers started to find music they like that was being made for free). Watch advertising, culture, media.. you can see there is a large amount of implicit distain for anything produced without the intent of making money off of it. (Witness MS's attitude towards Linux as 'evil for humanity'.) Unfortuanetely, it's a point of contention that is impossible to proove under the axioms of current overboard capitalism.
> I'm skeptical. I don't think that circuit boards are so particularly dangerous.
Sigh.... no wonder they stopped teaching history in the USA. I think its the only place in the world where you can justify a shirking of responsibily by saying, "I don't think thats true."
Get over it, it's true; thats not up for debate, and frankly, I'm upset I wasted my time contending your limited indivual-centric world view in light of staggering social costs to the power of 'economic goodness'.
I don't know if you remember or not, but (relatively) modern economies were formalized and implemented in order to improve the quality of life. If you really think a tee-totalled land and serious health concerns deserve a back seat to a good business, you're defeating the original purpose of money.
Your ideology, successful by virtue on being made on the backs of others, has been sold successfully (and its certainly easier to sell in countries with little personal freedom such as China) to these people, who are all too happy to sell out their local neighbours for the almighty buck. You forget that the same mechanisms and resources that allowed the USA and Canada to raise their standard of living depended on many things that other nations and geographies do not have. In other words, making a buck in many other corners of the globe does more to destabilize the standard of living (nevermind increasing the wealth gap among citizens) and destroy the environment than would occurr if some countries (including mine) respected that their dirty ideologies and computer parts affect other societies and economies in far more adverse fashions than they do domestically. I mean, do you really think Africa woke up one morning to discover that the vfast majority of their drinking water was suddenly undrinkable, through some perverse act of god? No, it was people going, "Well, they're taking their shit, so they'll only have themselves to blame in the end." (Ironoically, NA probably likes it this way, as it keeps these areas under our economic thumb under the ongoing empty promise of helping them 'develop' out of their [sic] problems.) Cultures and political setups are like kids, at least when it comes to new toys (technologies, ideologies, etc). Other countries see everything on TV (and other media outlets) that works for America (remember that many other societies' only opportunity to judge and evaluate what living in the US is like is through episodes of Friends and Baywatch.. ). The impedus should be on the US and Canada, et al to understand that just because another country/wants/ something, and claims it/understands/ something.. doesn't mean that they do, in which case the more ethical action is to discourage access. your point regarding your kids (which I agree, is the best way to go about things) is simply not possible on the scale of countries and political and economic systems. Education is near impossible between cultures, because the axioms of social behaviour and value systems are so far apart that neither side and truely and effectively judge whether the other culture truely can handle something forgeign resposibily. In this case, the ethical behaviour is to be conservative in one's analysis of another culture, and for the benifit of everyone, err on the side of conservation, safety and non-action. (As an aside, if the US absolutely can't sufficiently handle what they're consuming domestically, I think thats a larger problem what will go unrecognized so long as other parts of the world try to turn a buck on their cast off garbage.)
I might sound a tad isolationist, but lets just say that there care cases where most of the above is a non-issue. But there are cases where it IS an issue.
Then again, I suspect you'll just say, "I'm skeptical." Nuthin' like self-serving axioms.
> If China doesn't see it as a problem then why the hell should we?
hahaha. I love it.
1. Story might somehow implicate the US as slightly less than innocent.
2. People go on about how fucked up China is with human rights abuses.
3. People go on about how if China doesn't see anything wrong with it, why should they.
The hypocracy is beautiful. Keep it comin'. The US has to send an army into every country that isn't sufficiently 'free'.. while dumping their garbage in potentially one of the most unfree countries.
And some Americans continue to wonder why their country has a repulation for being internationally ethical when it's purely self-serving. (Not that any government is an angel, but the words co-operation, compromise or sacrifice are considered dirty words as soon as there is some suggestion that the US might have room to alter their policies for the better.)
We've see the 'right' for copyright holders to make a living off a creation go from 20 years to 70 years after their death (ensuring that their kids needn't have a creative bone in their body).
The word 'right' is thrown around like so much water these days.. but I charge that what we call 'rights' these days are simply state-backed laws pushed by the Disneys.
Same with patents. Your 'right' used to be 5 years. Now it's 20. Up until patent laws, it wasn't a 'right', and yet, shit still got invented.
Start thinking about what you call 'rights', and why you consider them 'rights'. Who taught you that they were 'rights'? I think we all have rights to water, food, a place to live, and freedom of speech. I do not consider getting wealthy off inventions a 'natural right'. You may, but we certainly have no way to epirically proove what is a natural right, either way.
Let me know when you have kids, so I can give them my leftover smokes 'n beer.
I think the point is, if China is going to harm their (our) environment with this stuff, we should stop selling it to them.
Your 'buyer beware' argument only works up until that 'buyer' is someone you care about. Clearly, you don't care too much for (the government of, I hope) China, so your argument is likely biased to begin with, but you have to accept an ethical responsibility for providing access to things that certain societies are not fit or experienced enough to handle maturely. (Or lack the proper infrastructure to handle.)
Probably the funniest thing is, if you hate the government so much, and knowledge that its a totalitarian regime, and accept that the garbage is indeed hurting the/people/ of China (not the government), why are you so glib to furthur put them at a disadvantage? You're being just as discompassionate about the citizens of China as you claim the totalitarian government is. So why is your stand any more ethical and righteous than that of the Chinese Government?
First you bash their government, saying the people don't deserve it, and then you shrug your shoulders and keep feeding the people of China your shit. Your disregard for Chinese citizens with respect to this issue is just as blatent (if on a smaller scale) as that of the Chinese Government according to you.
Do you know how much it costs to file a protectable patent? How long it takes to get it filed? How useless it is under 'umbrella patents'? How useless it is without a good lawyer?
There is very little the small fry can do. Thats why we call them small frys.
Your uncles mistake was not an expensive one (unless he paid for the court battles, but that was his perogative to seek repayment.) He didn't lose anything in losing the IP royalties.
One last question.. do you think he would have invented WordStar if there was no money behind inventing it? Thats not a loaded question, I'm simply curious.
I just have to say how impressed I am with anything KDE related. They seem to really always make sure they have the horse in front of the cart, when it comes to their libraries and subsystems.
I've done a few things with QT and KDE (before KParts, unfortuantely), and I was blown away by the cleanliness of the architecture of KDE's codebase and subsystems.
KParts in action is extremely cool.
BTW, I suppose ActiveX controls are the Windows equivilent (they communicate over COM and DCOM as I recall?).. while I can't speak for the technical equivilences, I can say that they simply don't seem to get used enough in the Windows world.. ie, that centralized functionality seems to run counter the competative software marketplace, which is a real shame.
I think KParts, technical superiority/inferiorities not withstanding, is far more useful because open source developers are far more interests in centralizing functionality and more likely to attempt to reduce redundancy in codebases and application bases. That's why I think KDE is such a winner, and will benifit from a componant based archecture far more in the long run. (IE is a componant too, and MS claims they can't even 'unglue' it from the OS.. haha, whats the point of componants then?:P)
> Government isn't interested in even seeming to keep such entities in check.
Look around man. This is because people keep telling the government to get less powerful, to collect less taxes, to get bigger campaigns, to not worry about soft donations, and to trust the market.
There is no us vs. them. Don't blame the company, blame your neighbour who's obviously more pro-market than you.
I'm not pro-market, but shit dude, everyone has been suckered. Peruse/. and look at the replys to posts demanding regulation. People honestly think its a bad thing. Poor people.
Well, there goes your theory (as I've eschewed my karma now that we're totally off topic).
Who cares about Karma. I care about my right to say something that I mean, and not be berated for it unless there is overwelming public opposition to my post. There wasn't. You're the only one (vocally) opposing it, so you could have moderated it.. except, wait, I guess since karma is useless, you don't care about your ability to moderate, and thus have probably been banned from mod'ing?
You're decieving yourself if you think my opinions rest on their 'karma value'.
Screw karma. It's a telling sign that I've trolled here and there, been OT more times than I can count, post what I think, not what I think will get me karma, and I still have 50 karma. Oh, and this. I think you're the (vocal, admittedly) minority here..
Ok, peace out. No furthur discussion until you want to discuss things without already having formed your opinion about me. You'll inevitably win that kind of argument, since you know me better than I do, but the victory won't get you anything more than the imaginary wonders of/. karma.
I'm stating public support for the man's opinion. If you think thats a 'me too' crapflood, I have to wonder what the point of the internet is. A black hole for opinions? Where simple 'I agree' posts are not welcome, and public support for opinions are nearly impossible to gauge? And arn't you wasting bandwidth and being redundant in posting a "down with 'me too's" post?
Lighten up bub. I'm sure the mods will do what's appropriate.
> The power of suggestion is not the power of authority.
(-1, Naive)
A suggestion is simply a kindly worded threat. Imagine the BSA: "Patent software." Europe: "No" BSA: "Okay, time to find out how many pirated copies of Office you're using...."
> how could you possibly get data back to the server without the user knowing it
He says refresh and 'tricking' the user are the only ways (on form submits.) Wrong.
dynamic.php:
<script> data data data do do calc calc var me = answer; document.write("<script src='http://myserver.com/donate.js?answer=" + encode(me) + "'></scr"+"ipt>"); <\script>
That sends some data to the client, does some client side cals, and sends the data back to my server (although I have to respect the max limit of data one can send via form posts, but its the same with his more obvious methods.)
This is done all the time to count impressions in the advertising world. In fact, in a sense, advertising tracking online is already leech computing in some implementations.
BTW, the.. " as a close of the top level script tag.
Record companies are making one simple mistake. People who like big name artists need their music 'pushed' onto them, a la radio and charts, and MTV and yadda yadda.
There is no way the artists that make it big with the casual listeners, those who need to be told what to like, what is next, who is big, will make it big in an evironment where the listener must go out and 'pull' music from interactive sites.
We should have gotten some stats from Napster.. like, how much of the music they were pushing around were big label artists. I'd venture that big names didn't do to well in an environment that encourages the discovery of new music.
Discovery and self-education, is, of course, the bane of media big business.
> The first time you saw someone download something from Napster/GNUtella/whatever, you had a pang in your gut that said "Isn't there something wrong with this?" It's called guilt.
More telling is that, those who didn't, obviously dont value what they're downloading. (IE, even if they enjoy it, it still tells us that music is too expensive these days.)
I see my prediction regarding how ill suited economy of scale is to cultural commodities is holding true....
However, as property rights (and increasingly intellectual rights) are state-enforced, *lawful* posession of property is 9/10 of ownership.
However, if you look back in time, during the feudal system, farmers 'owned' common land to which they had family rights. They used it, they worked it, but they didn't _possess_ it, per se. (That is, there was no need for an authoritative force to control access to it; such details were administered co-operatively by the farmers who used it to suit the needs of the community best. The land was shared, and those who abused the land were punished and shunned.) After Adam Smith did his thing, this 'ownership' was revoked by feudal lords (via the installation of hedges to prevent farmers from using this land), and they 'posessed' it. Then, using Adam Smith and Locke's drabblings, they claimed 'ownership' of it. It is a common misconception that this fundamental shift in social attitudes to property rights was little more than a natural progression of a commodity based economy. (Heck, you wern't even allowed to own land. As with labour, land was considered such a basic right that it was considered by the people of the time as something which should not be left to the market.)
Just don't forget that under capitalism, anything unclaimed can become 'owned' by way of posession. This was not neccessarily the way in which other societies and economies worked, so it's not exactly a truism outside of capitalism.
What you are missing is that people turn immoral under the immense pressure of turning profits.
I refuse to accept that all these 'immoral' corperations do not have sufficient internal checks and balances that would prevent one immoral's actions among moral workers.
More so, in stroking the desire to grow in wealth, people sell out other people. It's the same old ying and yang.. when the jackpot is richer, people are more likely to kill each other over it.
All of this doesn't even consider that immoral acts by companies are made up of tons of specialized actions by individuals, none of which are 'immoral' on their own. (It's not immoral for me to make a gun. If my company cannot survive without Jeff the saleman selling it, then it's not even particularly immoral for him to sell it.. cause it's already made!) The immoral 'sum' is greater than its parts in organized social structures.
Finally, regulation, and it's many ambiguous interpretations, has worked many times in many places for many industries. We only remember the 'bad cases'. Heck, Enron makes a pretty compelling case of de-regulation run amock (although, unfortunately, the blame will probably be asssigned to unethical behaviour, and left at that.)... its what happens when powerful forces attempt to provide basic services. What confuses me is that we attempt to set up political checks and balances to ensure one single interest cannot dominate the political landscape (witness the Senate, the Supreme Court, and Congress), and yet, the populus has swallowed the story from big business about how checks and balances in the economy would be suicide.
Every single IMF loaner (save Poland) has seen their GDP lower following deregulation of many of their basic services, and their economy suffer as a result of foreign investors attempting to turn profits on their most basic (include water) services. Those countries which have successfully staged economic growth in the last 20 years (India, for one) have done so through domestic regulation. Note: regulation. Not communism.:) I'm all for the more luxury inconsequential markets to go at each other tooth and nail, but leave my freakin basics alone. I'm talking to the companies here. Governments may work slowly and inefficiently, but at least there are some laws that say they have to go about their work in a somewhat public way, and allow me the curtousey to vote with my mind instead of my wallet.
Dummy. Comeptition leads to redundant infrastructure and corperate (read: private) operations protected by private company laws. If you only knew how often companies were happy to screw 70% of their consumers (cause usually 70% of your customers are about 10% of your profits), you probably wouldn't feel the same way.
Also:
- private interests are motivated to keep health problems going. Private interests basically say, "Shit, we're out of a business if people don't keep getting sick." So, the system encourages health problems, because they are good for business
- private interests lead to redundnant infrastructure. This is why US health care is 40% more expensive than in Canada.
- your doctors and nurses are making more money than Canadian doctors and nurses, which runs contrary to your 'efficient use of resources' bullshit. (Poor Adam Smith, if he only knew how bastardized his writings are int his day and age by the zealots) Incidentally, when Canadians complain about waits, its only because our doctors are going down to the States to work, because they make more because they charge more and because health care is more expensive, with a profit margin to worry about
Go back to living buddy. Stop trying to think, or you'll find out just how expensive neurosurgery is in the US. Our health care is rediculously cheap here (BTW, our postal and courier services are state run here too, and we enjoy the second cheapest postal rates in the world.)
I feel so sorry for people who use that 'best use of resources' line. Stop regurgitating shit when we have a good 20 years now of evidence pointing out how wrong it really is.
> IGN is the biggest bunch of cube fanboys on the planet
There's is a big difference between being a fanboy, and having your opinions bought. Sure they're fanboys, but look at the GC reviews. Non-objective fanboys (and 'advertising' publications) usually keep all the reviews above, say, 70% or something.
The fact that I have to pay them to read the reviews only confirms that they dont rely soley on the income of game promotion to publish, which goes a long way in allowing them to remain objective. How much they love hammers and refuse to use any other tool is outside the scope of the information I'm looking for.
In short, there's nothing wrong with being a fanboy, as long as you arn't so blinded that you think *anything* in your franchise of choice is god's gift to the market.
Would you expect Scientific American not to love science too much? If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I just want to have relationships with entities who are not being paid by a hammer maker, is all.
Slashdot Mirror
> I wonder if these legal types are ever going to actually blame this on the actual people who are sharing
.. I'm not American. :)
.gif from Amazon of a cover of a "for Dummies" book, modified it, and gave it to my dad for Christmas.) I mean, things are screwed up right now, because the laws are made to claim damages from a centralized few victims with money, not to hold a public at large accountable for their behaviour.
/i/ wonder is when we'll start making laws that reflect the behaviour of society again, not laws that reflect the greed of an elite few.
Like the drug war! If you arrested everyone in the US who had committed a drug crime (including smalltime possession and use, the drug equiv of sharing a few Metallica files), you'd arrest an amount of people that equals the population of Texas, Arkensaw and Colorado. (Sorry if I misspelled any of those
If they went after the people sharing, half of the computer users in the US would be locked up. To say nothing of 'casual' copyright infringement (I used a
What
The timing is perfect. You relied on a technology to fight censorship (not social climate and social responsibily .. ), and the next /. story is all about your misplaced faith.
/. story. Now you have people who don't use your encryption technology (as no technology is absolutely universally adopted, and usage goes down as power of technology goes up generally, in relation to the complexity of use of said technology.), and frankly, don't even think censorship is an issue because we've relied on a technology to cover our traditional social wants.
Difficult to reverse is only as strong protection as you perceive it to be. Reality and faith in technology are worlds apart, as evidenced by the current top
Call me a luddite, or whatever, but your faith in technology as a solution for social problems is grossly misplaced. There exist extremely few cases where the problems created by a technology were not equal (if not more difficult to identify and attribute to the perpetrating technology) to the solutions it was designed to solve. The real loss is that the social resposibilty fades in social behaviour as reliance on that technology grows.
Mod this guy up.
.. if anything, the net makes it harder to keep critical thinking 'underground' until it reaches some kind of social critical mass. Critical thinking is now easily found and identified, and censorship is exercised in far more subtle ways than outright silencing.
.. as critical thinkers are silenced and charged with 'anti-whatever' offences, it works to silence others who were considering taking the risk of being critical.
.. the government simply has legal grounds to be puppets these days. It really isn't their fault that there are few laws to protect government from the infleunce of big business.)
He's exactly right. Any technology that does +A also does -A. Censorship is faster and easier than ever
BTW, censorship is only half of what a pwoer elite needs to mold the thinking of it's citizens. Authority to punish works in a kind of pro-active way
What's sad is that we now rely on technology to fight censorship - as individuals, we imagine these great devices we are creating alleviate the need for people to take a social resposibility to stand up to censorship of critical thinking. As it stands, we're only hoping that those designing the technologies are doing it with our values in mind, which has increasingly not been the case. One day we will wake up, and find out we have nobody to blame but ourselves for not remaining vigilent against the the ever-present ever-greedy power elite (and I'm talking about the companies here
Yes, the Internet allows anyone to be heard, but it also allows authority to identify and silence in far more precise and quick ways - the activism and critical thinking is so centralized that it is easily squashed.
Chalk one up for human error. You either misread (sometimes you check for yes, sometimes you uncheck for yes, sometimes you check for no, sometimes you uncheck for no .. ) the form or the list was cross-linked with another list you opted into.
/. would have been all over their butt a long time ago. Believe me, companies are *extremely* sensitive about this kind of thing - and the bigger they are, the more sensitive they attempt to be. Its quite possible your entry slipped onto the opt-in list through a bungled db-merge or something, and that the reply was offensive because the know-nothing customer rep gets 500 mails a day from people who /did/ opt-in who now claim to have opted out. (Did you know companies record their phone customer care, not to hold their employees accoutable, but to make sure that when people lie ("I did not switch my mutual funds to that account last week! I want a refund!"), the company can proove that there are far more people who intentionally attempt to lie about their interactions with companies than innocents who've accidentally slipped through some procedural cracks in process and operations.)
If EVERYONE who'd hit no was getting spam, APC (not sure who they are, but if they are a legit customer facing business, its good enough for the sake of this point) would either be under a lawsuit or, in the very least, well enough known to do this such that
Just a reminder, you may simply be one in a million, and that its hard to be polite to that one when 999,999 others are lying outright.
hey man, I agree. Thats why I pointed out that his rights are variable.
.. you can see there is a large amount of implicit distain for anything produced without the intent of making money off of it. (Witness MS's attitude towards Linux as 'evil for humanity'.) Unfortuanetely, it's a point of contention that is impossible to proove under the axioms of current overboard capitalism.
However, I disagree with nobody working for free. Its simply, totally, untrue. Lots of people work for free, and the problem is, we've come to believe that work you do for free isn't 'work' at all (making music, helping the needy, joining the army, whatever). So why is that? Well, it's pretty simple: we consider anything produced under the guise of unpaid work as intrinsicly worthless, as this system would fall apart if people were willing to write the Top 40 for free (or probably more accurately, consumers started to find music they like that was being made for free). Watch advertising, culture, media
> I'm skeptical. I don't think that circuit boards are so particularly dangerous.
.... no wonder they stopped teaching history in the USA. I think its the only place in the world where you can justify a shirking of responsibily by saying, "I don't think thats true."
.. ). The impedus should be on the US and Canada, et al to understand that just because another country /wants/ something, and claims it /understands/ something .. doesn't mean that they do, in which case the more ethical action is to discourage access. your point regarding your kids (which I agree, is the best way to go about things) is simply not possible on the scale of countries and political and economic systems. Education is near impossible between cultures, because the axioms of social behaviour and value systems are so far apart that neither side and truely and effectively judge whether the other culture truely can handle something forgeign resposibily. In this case, the ethical behaviour is to be conservative in one's analysis of another culture, and for the benifit of everyone, err on the side of conservation, safety and non-action. (As an aside, if the US absolutely can't sufficiently handle what they're consuming domestically, I think thats a larger problem what will go unrecognized so long as other parts of the world try to turn a buck on their cast off garbage.)
Sigh
Get over it, it's true; thats not up for debate, and frankly, I'm upset I wasted my time contending your limited indivual-centric world view in light of staggering social costs to the power of 'economic goodness'.
I don't know if you remember or not, but (relatively) modern economies were formalized and implemented in order to improve the quality of life. If you really think a tee-totalled land and serious health concerns deserve a back seat to a good business, you're defeating the original purpose of money.
Your ideology, successful by virtue on being made on the backs of others, has been sold successfully (and its certainly easier to sell in countries with little personal freedom such as China) to these people, who are all too happy to sell out their local neighbours for the almighty buck. You forget that the same mechanisms and resources that allowed the USA and Canada to raise their standard of living depended on many things that other nations and geographies do not have. In other words, making a buck in many other corners of the globe does more to destabilize the standard of living (nevermind increasing the wealth gap among citizens) and destroy the environment than would occurr if some countries (including mine) respected that their dirty ideologies and computer parts affect other societies and economies in far more adverse fashions than they do domestically. I mean, do you really think Africa woke up one morning to discover that the vfast majority of their drinking water was suddenly undrinkable, through some perverse act of god? No, it was people going, "Well, they're taking their shit, so they'll only have themselves to blame in the end." (Ironoically, NA probably likes it this way, as it keeps these areas under our economic thumb under the ongoing empty promise of helping them 'develop' out of their [sic] problems.) Cultures and political setups are like kids, at least when it comes to new toys (technologies, ideologies, etc). Other countries see everything on TV (and other media outlets) that works for America (remember that many other societies' only opportunity to judge and evaluate what living in the US is like is through episodes of Friends and Baywatch
I might sound a tad isolationist, but lets just say that there care cases where most of the above is a non-issue. But there are cases where it IS an issue.
Then again, I suspect you'll just say, "I'm skeptical." Nuthin' like self-serving axioms.
> If China doesn't see it as a problem then why the hell should we?
.. while dumping their garbage in potentially one of the most unfree countries.
hahaha. I love it.
1. Story might somehow implicate the US as slightly less than innocent.
2. People go on about how fucked up China is with human rights abuses.
3. People go on about how if China doesn't see anything wrong with it, why should they.
The hypocracy is beautiful. Keep it comin'. The US has to send an army into every country that isn't sufficiently 'free'
And some Americans continue to wonder why their country has a repulation for being internationally ethical when it's purely self-serving. (Not that any government is an angel, but the words co-operation, compromise or sacrifice are considered dirty words as soon as there is some suggestion that the US might have room to alter their policies for the better.)
Because his rights are variable.
.. but I charge that what we call 'rights' these days are simply state-backed laws pushed by the Disneys.
We've see the 'right' for copyright holders to make a living off a creation go from 20 years to 70 years after their death (ensuring that their kids needn't have a creative bone in their body).
The word 'right' is thrown around like so much water these days
Same with patents. Your 'right' used to be 5 years. Now it's 20. Up until patent laws, it wasn't a 'right', and yet, shit still got invented.
Start thinking about what you call 'rights', and why you consider them 'rights'. Who taught you that they were 'rights'? I think we all have rights to water, food, a place to live, and freedom of speech. I do not consider getting wealthy off inventions a 'natural right'. You may, but we certainly have no way to epirically proove what is a natural right, either way.
Let me know when you have kids, so I can give them my leftover smokes 'n beer.
/people/ of China (not the government), why are you so glib to furthur put them at a disadvantage? You're being just as discompassionate about the citizens of China as you claim the totalitarian government is. So why is your stand any more ethical and righteous than that of the Chinese Government?
I think the point is, if China is going to harm their (our) environment with this stuff, we should stop selling it to them.
Your 'buyer beware' argument only works up until that 'buyer' is someone you care about. Clearly, you don't care too much for (the government of, I hope) China, so your argument is likely biased to begin with, but you have to accept an ethical responsibility for providing access to things that certain societies are not fit or experienced enough to handle maturely. (Or lack the proper infrastructure to handle.)
Probably the funniest thing is, if you hate the government so much, and knowledge that its a totalitarian regime, and accept that the garbage is indeed hurting the
First you bash their government, saying the people don't deserve it, and then you shrug your shoulders and keep feeding the people of China your shit. Your disregard for Chinese citizens with respect to this issue is just as blatent (if on a smaller scale) as that of the Chinese Government according to you.
Do you know how much it costs to file a protectable patent? How long it takes to get it filed? How useless it is under 'umbrella patents'? How useless it is without a good lawyer?
.. do you think he would have invented WordStar if there was no money behind inventing it? Thats not a loaded question, I'm simply curious.
There is very little the small fry can do. Thats why we call them small frys.
Your uncles mistake was not an expensive one (unless he paid for the court battles, but that was his perogative to seek repayment.) He didn't lose anything in losing the IP royalties.
One last question
I just have to say how impressed I am with anything KDE related. They seem to really always make sure they have the horse in front of the cart, when it comes to their libraries and subsystems.
.. while I can't speak for the technical equivilences, I can say that they simply don't seem to get used enough in the Windows world .. ie, that centralized functionality seems to run counter the competative software marketplace, which is a real shame.
.. haha, whats the point of componants then? :P)
I've done a few things with QT and KDE (before KParts, unfortuantely), and I was blown away by the cleanliness of the architecture of KDE's codebase and subsystems.
KParts in action is extremely cool.
BTW, I suppose ActiveX controls are the Windows equivilent (they communicate over COM and DCOM as I recall?)
I think KParts, technical superiority/inferiorities not withstanding, is far more useful because open source developers are far more interests in centralizing functionality and more likely to attempt to reduce redundancy in codebases and application bases. That's why I think KDE is such a winner, and will benifit from a componant based archecture far more in the long run. (IE is a componant too, and MS claims they can't even 'unglue' it from the OS
Er, not poor people think it's a bad thing. Not poor as in money poor. Poor as in 'i feel sorry for them' poor.
> Government isn't interested in even seeming to keep such entities in check.
/. and look at the replys to posts demanding regulation. People honestly think its a bad thing. Poor people.
Look around man. This is because people keep telling the government to get less powerful, to collect less taxes, to get bigger campaigns, to not worry about soft donations, and to trust the market.
There is no us vs. them. Don't blame the company, blame your neighbour who's obviously more pro-market than you.
I'm not pro-market, but shit dude, everyone has been suckered. Peruse
Well, there goes your theory (as I've eschewed my karma now that we're totally off topic).
.. except, wait, I guess since karma is useless, you don't care about your ability to moderate, and thus have probably been banned from mod'ing?
..
/. karma.
Who cares about Karma. I care about my right to say something that I mean, and not be berated for it unless there is overwelming public opposition to my post. There wasn't. You're the only one (vocally) opposing it, so you could have moderated it
You're decieving yourself if you think my opinions rest on their 'karma value'.
Screw karma. It's a telling sign that I've trolled here and there, been OT more times than I can count, post what I think, not what I think will get me karma, and I still have 50 karma. Oh, and this. I think you're the (vocal, admittedly) minority here
Ok, peace out. No furthur discussion until you want to discuss things without already having formed your opinion about me. You'll inevitably win that kind of argument, since you know me better than I do, but the victory won't get you anything more than the imaginary wonders of
I'm stating public support for the man's opinion. If you think thats a 'me too' crapflood, I have to wonder what the point of the internet is. A black hole for opinions? Where simple 'I agree' posts are not welcome, and public support for opinions are nearly impossible to gauge? And arn't you wasting bandwidth and being redundant in posting a "down with 'me too's" post?
Lighten up bub. I'm sure the mods will do what's appropriate.
> The power of suggestion is not the power of authority.
...."
(-1, Naive)
A suggestion is simply a kindly worded threat. Imagine the BSA: "Patent software." Europe: "No" BSA: "Okay, time to find out how many pirated copies of Office you're using
Amen. All points agreed.
> how could you possibly get data back to the server without the user knowing it
.. " as a close of the top level script tag.
He says refresh and 'tricking' the user are the only ways (on form submits.) Wrong.
dynamic.php:
<script>
data data data
do do
calc calc
var me = answer;
document.write("<script src='http://myserver.com/donate.js?answer=" + encode(me) + "'></scr"+"ipt>");
<\script>
That sends some data to the client, does some client side cals, and sends the data back to my server (although I have to respect the max limit of data one can send via form posts, but its the same with his more obvious methods.)
This is done all the time to count impressions in the advertising world. In fact, in a sense, advertising tracking online is already leech computing in some implementations.
BTW, the
Record companies are making one simple mistake. People who like big name artists need their music 'pushed' onto them, a la radio and charts, and MTV and yadda yadda.
.. like, how much of the music they were pushing around were big label artists. I'd venture that big names didn't do to well in an environment that encourages the discovery of new music.
There is no way the artists that make it big with the casual listeners, those who need to be told what to like, what is next, who is big, will make it big in an evironment where the listener must go out and 'pull' music from interactive sites.
We should have gotten some stats from Napster
Discovery and self-education, is, of course, the bane of media big business.
> The first time you saw someone download something from Napster/GNUtella/whatever, you had a pang in your gut that said "Isn't there something wrong with this?" It's called guilt.
....
More telling is that, those who didn't, obviously dont value what they're downloading. (IE, even if they enjoy it, it still tells us that music is too expensive these days.)
I see my prediction regarding how ill suited economy of scale is to cultural commodities is holding true
Well, it is by way of might.
However, as property rights (and increasingly intellectual rights) are state-enforced, *lawful* posession of property is 9/10 of ownership.
However, if you look back in time, during the feudal system, farmers 'owned' common land to which they had family rights. They used it, they worked it, but they didn't _possess_ it, per se. (That is, there was no need for an authoritative force to control access to it; such details were administered co-operatively by the farmers who used it to suit the needs of the community best. The land was shared, and those who abused the land were punished and shunned.) After Adam Smith did his thing, this 'ownership' was revoked by feudal lords (via the installation of hedges to prevent farmers from using this land), and they 'posessed' it. Then, using Adam Smith and Locke's drabblings, they claimed 'ownership' of it. It is a common misconception that this fundamental shift in social attitudes to property rights was little more than a natural progression of a commodity based economy. (Heck, you wern't even allowed to own land. As with labour, land was considered such a basic right that it was considered by the people of the time as something which should not be left to the market.)
Just don't forget that under capitalism, anything unclaimed can become 'owned' by way of posession. This was not neccessarily the way in which other societies and economies worked, so it's not exactly a truism outside of capitalism.
What you are missing is that people turn immoral under the immense pressure of turning profits.
.. when the jackpot is richer, people are more likely to kill each other over it.
.. cause it's already made!) The immoral 'sum' is greater than its parts in organized social structures.
... its what happens when powerful forces attempt to provide basic services. What confuses me is that we attempt to set up political checks and balances to ensure one single interest cannot dominate the political landscape (witness the Senate, the Supreme Court, and Congress), and yet, the populus has swallowed the story from big business about how checks and balances in the economy would be suicide.
:) I'm all for the more luxury inconsequential markets to go at each other tooth and nail, but leave my freakin basics alone. I'm talking to the companies here. Governments may work slowly and inefficiently, but at least there are some laws that say they have to go about their work in a somewhat public way, and allow me the curtousey to vote with my mind instead of my wallet.
I refuse to accept that all these 'immoral' corperations do not have sufficient internal checks and balances that would prevent one immoral's actions among moral workers.
More so, in stroking the desire to grow in wealth, people sell out other people. It's the same old ying and yang
All of this doesn't even consider that immoral acts by companies are made up of tons of specialized actions by individuals, none of which are 'immoral' on their own. (It's not immoral for me to make a gun. If my company cannot survive without Jeff the saleman selling it, then it's not even particularly immoral for him to sell it
Finally, regulation, and it's many ambiguous interpretations, has worked many times in many places for many industries. We only remember the 'bad cases'. Heck, Enron makes a pretty compelling case of de-regulation run amock (although, unfortunately, the blame will probably be asssigned to unethical behaviour, and left at that.)
Every single IMF loaner (save Poland) has seen their GDP lower following deregulation of many of their basic services, and their economy suffer as a result of foreign investors attempting to turn profits on their most basic (include water) services. Those countries which have successfully staged economic growth in the last 20 years (India, for one) have done so through domestic regulation. Note: regulation. Not communism.
Dummy. Comeptition leads to redundant infrastructure and corperate (read: private) operations protected by private company laws. If you only knew how often companies were happy to screw 70% of their consumers (cause usually 70% of your customers are about 10% of your profits), you probably wouldn't feel the same way.
Also:
- private interests are motivated to keep health problems going. Private interests basically say, "Shit, we're out of a business if people don't keep getting sick." So, the system encourages health problems, because they are good for business
- private interests lead to redundnant infrastructure. This is why US health care is 40% more expensive than in Canada.
- your doctors and nurses are making more money than Canadian doctors and nurses, which runs contrary to your 'efficient use of resources' bullshit. (Poor Adam Smith, if he only knew how bastardized his writings are int his day and age by the zealots) Incidentally, when Canadians complain about waits, its only because our doctors are going down to the States to work, because they make more because they charge more and because health care is more expensive, with a profit margin to worry about
Go back to living buddy. Stop trying to think, or you'll find out just how expensive neurosurgery is in the US. Our health care is rediculously cheap here (BTW, our postal and courier services are state run here too, and we enjoy the second cheapest postal rates in the world.)
I feel so sorry for people who use that 'best use of resources' line. Stop regurgitating shit when we have a good 20 years now of evidence pointing out how wrong it really is.
> IGN is the biggest bunch of cube fanboys on the planet
There's is a big difference between being a fanboy, and having your opinions bought. Sure they're fanboys, but look at the GC reviews. Non-objective fanboys (and 'advertising' publications) usually keep all the reviews above, say, 70% or something.
The fact that I have to pay them to read the reviews only confirms that they dont rely soley on the income of game promotion to publish, which goes a long way in allowing them to remain objective. How much they love hammers and refuse to use any other tool is outside the scope of the information I'm looking for.
In short, there's nothing wrong with being a fanboy, as long as you arn't so blinded that you think *anything* in your franchise of choice is god's gift to the market.
Would you expect Scientific American not to love science too much? If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I just want to have relationships with entities who are not being paid by a hammer maker, is all.