I've already approached several left wing think tanks and offered them volounteer techtime.
I would imagine that helping folks in developing nations would pique my humanitarian interests as well.
Re:Vigilante Corporations
on
Ebay vs. Musician
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· Score: 3, Insightful
eBay isn't worried about the police.
eBay is worried about being sued.
why do we know this? if eBay was tipped off that this guy was doing something illegal, why didnt they call the cops?
The answer? They dont give a rats ass about catching criminals, they only dont want to be sued. So any 'policing' they do will operate on a level of reasoning that centres purely around "will we get into trouble for this" instead of "is this person committing a crime that is illegal as stated by the law?"
Letting companies police themselves is tantamount to letting them draw up a new legal code while they'reat it; a legal code that maximizes profits instead of ensures the public safety and good. If companies can prevent people from living regular lives (since you need to interact with companies to live), then we might as well through the whole court system out and all write checks to whoevers got the biggest lawyers breathing down eBay's back.
Discrimination based on *any attribute*, from skin colour to "are you selling content which at a superficial level appears to be more expensive to verify the legality of that content rather than prevent you from selling it in the first palce".. they're both methods of profiling the population and limiting freedom of people not based on the code of law but rather on generic risk/reward calculations. Do you really want to be denied service because you happen to own or be doing something which *might* be illegal? ("Honestly, Home Depot, I'm buying this crowbar to build a shed, not to break into homes!".. "Sorry, we only sell to 'approved' customers and youre not on the list.")
eBay should turn this guy over to the authorities or shut the fuck up and let him sell. Anything else simply invalidates the very function and purpose of our judicial system (to curb the freedoms of those who break the law in order to prevent them from offending in the future, and to offer an opportunity of reabilitiation.)
> So what happens if a serial killer wants to sell human flesh soup online? Or someone starts pimping 12 year old girls?
You're not really this myopic right?
The serial killer gets arrested. No more auction for him. But the point is, Ebay tips off the authorities. If the guy is doing something illegal, he should go to jail, not lose access to his auction. Who gives a shit about the auction if the guy is breaking the law? Maybe we should just get rid of courts all together and let companies let you decide what you can and cannot do.. after all, its getting incresingly difficult if not impossible to *live* without interacting with companies, so if they start restricting the freedoms of potential criminals (cant buy a car, cant use the bus), these company-judged criminals will be able to live a normal life and will be 'incarcerated' by virtue of their inability to purchase services and goods. (Hey.. and capital punishment could just be grocery stores refusing to sell food to these people!)
Here is a situation where this guy is being judged for something he has done which *might* be illegal. The proper thing to do is for ebay to contact the authorities. Whats that? They wont do that? Then why the hell are they stopping his auction?
If the guy is doing something illegal, he should be arrested. It is not up to private companies to regular behaviour they suspect is illegal; it is simply their duty to report it.
Imagine if postal companies opened up every package they got and refused to ship it they suspected they might get sued for shipping it. Shitloads of legit mail would never get sent, and yet, if people were doing anything illegal, nobody would go to jail. The reason they'd do that is to avoid liability themselves; they wouldn't have any interest in actually reporting the bahaviour to the authorities and using the justice system so nicely depicted on currency as one of the hallmarks of western freedom and democracy.
Our countries are built on the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty'.. if companies start being the partial jury, thats really no different than your government restricting your freedoms on assumption alone instead with proper due process. Its a very slipperly slope you seem more than happy to walk down.
As for "please direct me back to a time when a business wasn't able to police itself?".. okay, so the sniper might turn out to be an army man. Should Chrysler 'police itself', and refuse to sell cars to military personal on suspicion that they might break the law in the future using what they sold him? Of course not, thats discrimination. See how long Chryslers "Hey cmon, cant we police our business" argument holds up in the eyes of public opinion..
Thats not a little fucked up in your mind?
Re:It's not just individuals...
on
Ebay vs. Musician
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I only meant doesnt/cant, as in *wont*.:) Samples have become an integral part of music (James Brown's drummer get sampled in a nearly inaudible backbeat in one out of every 50 pop songs), so while you obviously _can_ create music without samples, their use wont wane for that reason.
At any rate, the classical greats were sampling each other (including 2 or 3 bars from each others' works verbatim) all the time, so I shouldn't even talk about it like its new. Its been around for hundreds of years, so I guess what I meant is that sampling isn't going away.
And since it isn't going away, then indie artists should be held to the same legal standards as big label artists as it pertains to sampling.
Unfortauntely, it doesnt happen that way. I've had indie musician sites refuse to host some of my stuff because they *suspect* that that distorted, garbled sample of some dude talking at the beginning of my track is going to land them in legal hot waters. Like the copyright holder is going storm into their offices with laywers for something he recorded 30 years ago, and demand compensation for saying 6 words in a row in some creative copyright-holding way. *smirk*
But yeah, didn't mean doesnt/cant. I meant wont.:)
Re:It's not just individuals...
on
Ebay vs. Musician
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· Score: 5, Interesting
What was very interesting, at:
http://www.negativland.com/riaa/dowesue.html
was the bit about Top 40 artsits only clearing samples you can recognize.
Its not like it surprises me, but thats some good argumentative fodder should you be talking to proponants of *air-tight* copyright laws.
That is, music doesn't/can't get made without samples, and even the big players dont clear all their samples.. so why should the little players?
of how a super-anal IP climate pretty much just hurts those trying to break into the market.
The RIAA should just rename itself 'The Trustworthy Music Initiative'. The more strongarm RIAA gets, and the more fear they seed.. nobody is going to run/approve/host indie boy's audio bits unless they've been signed off by a big label.
What, again?! Sorry, whats the difference between printing false and misleading articles and you printing wildly presumptuous, snap-to-conclusion denouncements? Can we get a little of that 'censorship for good' you describe and apply it to you?!
Man, following you around these threads, you're the Zack De La Rocha of the system! Its like, you dont Rage Against the Machine, you Rage For the Machine!
I'll try one last time, since you oh-so-thorughfully blurted the "supply/demand" buzzword somewhere back a few threads amongst so much gobbledygook.
If you knew any musicians, you'd know there was a demand to reduce the power of the RIAA somewhat and restore some semblance of power to artists. Janis is supplying that demand, and will probably make more money in doing so than being silent. You can, if you want (although I question your ability to expose yourself to information that may dilute your self-affirming babbling,) confirm that there's a demand, because that demand has been articulated in everything from trade papers to the mainstream press. (Why do I always get the feeling youre rewriting reality in your head as you read these words?)
So there you go, Janis is actually being the perfect little capitalist.
But I must admit, you have a compelling argument, which is, lets see here:
1) janis sucks 2) janis sells nothing 3) janis doesnt work as hard as me 4) janis makes my stomach turn 5) you can never go wrong sucking the ideological dicks of authority figures (mostly financial authorities with you, I suspect) because if you can close your mind enough to believe that the almighty dollar is absolute, constitant and eternal proof of intrinsic worth and value, you can never be proven wrong! aha! You've found the loophole in the act of rational discourse! You've found the unbeatable argument (along with millions of other people too intellectually lazy to brave the shades of grey).. congratulations!
a) Janis turns a profit. b) Janis still sells records.
Didn't want to shatter your perfect little argument there, but hey, thems the breaks.
I dont know what to say about 98% of the other stuff youre saying, considering that most of its seems to be pure conjecture and disillusioned reductions.. although I can probably conclude that:
a) youre somewhat bitter with life? b) you dont like your job very much? (otherwise you probably wouldn't spend so much effort trying to portray other people as having it cushy compared to you?)
Which leaves me with: I dont think Janis cares too much what you think of her, so why waste your time rambling on when clearly you have so much hard work to do?
Doesnt matter; they were at the top, and thats enough to "prove", according to Mr. Free Market, that they made the best food at some point.
Of course, what he fails to recognize, much like how rabid anti-abortioners 'fail' to recognize killing people for killing people is still killing people, is that quantity sold is a function of quality *and* price; and furthur more, that cheaply made, cheaply sold shit often sells better than less cheaply made good shit. The *only* way to measure quality is through analysis, since the market has never demonstrated any preference to selecting quality over quantity or value, nor for that matter, not be subject to the forces of marketing.
Hell, I can put him in touch with money making CEOs if he likes, probably his heros, who could demonstrate that the advertising market wouldn't exist if products outsold each other based on quality alone. Alas, anyone that sticks to an absolute like that (".. thats the _law_.. ") sounds about as capable of objective reasoning as a religious fundamentalist.
How do you know she doesn't? In fact, your whole rant appears to be some self-affirming fabricated construct of what you perceive her life to be.
More importantly, if your main problem is that she whines too much, and doesn't do anything about it, why the fuck are you whining on/. about it instead of mailing her your grievances personally? I mean, am I the only one who detects the irony here? Why dont you stop whining and do something about what you're whining about?
> Why don't these fuckups just bite the bullet and admit that their records don't sell because their records are crap?
Yawn.. I can assure you that they arnt the slightest bit interested in selling millions of records. What they are interested, however, is to avoid sucking the very well paid dicks you seem to eager to suck. Unfortunately for you, lots of people are willing to suck the dicks' of the rich and famous (read: the multimillion disc sellers), so just pray they're still rich by the time you reach the front of the line. (Of course, this won't be a problem so long as they dont release any crap like Joni Mitchell or Tom Petty did, right?)
Funny, I've yet to come across a working environment where we do what 'right'. Usually we supply a solution for a demand in our marketplace.
Windows User A isn't smart enough to 'demand' trustworthy computing, so I don't believe they're doing it because users are asking for it. MS might be doing it because they think its the right way to win back frusterated users (or at least turn their customers' love/hate relationships into love relationships).. if it does indeed end all of the sketchy goings on of Windows User A's computing experience. I'm certainly willing to believe that thats a healthy portion of the justification of Palladiums development.
However, can you honestly tell me that MS doesn't smell the yumminess coming from owning the 'Word Format' of pop culture?
Granted, maybe they just think its 'right', in the sense that their tactics to own the.doc format of pop culture are the kind of tactics that leads to a healthy, progressive techological marketplace in which we all benifit by achieving maximum efficiency out of the resources available.. but thats the shakiest justification of them all. And the DOJ has already supposedly told them that it isn't true.
Perhaps the qualification is ".. something he believes in but which ultimately benifits the many over the very few."
If RMS's ultimate goal is to wield complete power over a populous, to the point of selectively exterminating a percentage of it, he sure isn't making enough friends to build the required army.
Which is to say, RMS' goals are altruistic. Even if on a personal level he's doing it for purely egotistical reasons, his end-game allows us more freedom, which I certainly support. The fact that he's willing to put himself on the hook (I'm sure hes aware of his public image) in order to preserve esotaric freedoms we should have, that he could probably keep (after all, its not like hes going to have to use Windows, right?) regardless of the outcome of this situation is commendable. I'm not sure how you could paint this otherwise.
Hitler, on the other hand, wanted to kill people.
I'd draw you a diagram, but I'm afraid you'll counter with "Hitler drew diagrams."
Aside from his goals being virtuous, in my opinion, you've certainly nailed the point (inadvertantly, I suspect) that the more important part is that the thing he believes in is your and my freedom.
Determination and aggressiveness is *nothing*. Working hard is *useless*. Unless those traits are applied towards improving our state of affairs and working on solutions to problems we've collectively identified in a society.
To that end, no, I don't admire those traits. I admire generosity, altruism, and a genuine desire to improve the quality of life (both physical and emotional, and more importantly, not at the expense of another group of people)... and of course, those who are determined and aggresively act on those traits and values. Hitler was very determined and aggressive. It seems to me that people only recognize the futility and uselessness of the means when the end is sufficiently horrendous. If those folks in power are using their detemination and aggressiveness to look out solely for themselves, I have more respect for welfare abusers. Again, this was my problem with the DMCA. You want to work hard to make life better? Great! You want to work a little to make life better? Awesome! You want to work hard to make your life better while trying to convince me that working for your own gain is the best way to work towards our collective gain? Get offa my continent.:)
That the conditions in place today may or may not be a direct result of those hard working people focusing on the wrong things spoils the 'thou shalt not force' argument. Whos to say we wouldn't have been building disabled-friendly buildings 40 years ago had our society been less focused on 'working hard' and instead more focused on 'working towards progress'.
All that said, sure, I'm idealistic, and I certainly dont have any fantasies of a gum-drop land whever everybody spends their days sacrificing for other people. However, I am a firm believer that those who attain power are there because they want power, not because they worked harder towards a goal everybody wanted, and only they got their. Everybody must sacrifice when you're inferior to somebody (cant go to the movies with friends when youre broke, for instance), but theres no self-checking mechanism from the top. The only thing they have to sacrifice is their time, but they already enjoy working hard to make themselves rich and/or powerful, so I havn't any qualms with the occasional mandated sacrifice. I do not believe that youd end up with the barren motivation-less society people seem to imply would result from some mandated responsibilities or accountabilities by those whove been fortunate or hard working enough to reach a position of wealth or power.
If equality is a goal, and mandating is too communist (ie, centrally set wealth distribution), why not search for a variation on capitalism which balances the motivation to generate wealth to the motivation of keeping your inferiors not too far behind with respect to opportunity (of which wealth is a part of?)
All I meant is that it was more important to legislate human behaviour to promote equality (ie, bring inferiors in line with superiors), and less important to legislate human behavior in cases where legislation is designed to superfluously protect (I say superfluously, because a copyright is a copyright, and theres no technical need to mandate behaviour of people in order to dissuade them from breaking an entirely law) those who already have an advatange (ie, ownership of the copyright.)
One law is designed to bring (wrt physical mobility) inferiors up to equal levels with superiors, while the other is designed to (wrt to ownership of assets) push inferiors (those that don't own the copyright) even furthur down the ladder of equal opportunity.
I certainly agree we shouldn't allow justice to operately slowly on the basis of classism. Even us semisocialists realize you dont want to kill all wealth-generating motivation by continually removing people from the top of the food pyramid. Its more like, when you only have 24 hours in the day, effort should be more focused on bringing equality to those who dont have it instead of furthur solidifying the advantage some people have. Thats why I took exception to the original post and the comparison it made.
>Use your voting $$ by buying from those who accomodate you.
Ever heard of economy of scale? So, small % of population at a disadvantage, you punish them furthur by tossing their problems into the open market. They'll live more expensive lives than you are I.. as if being blind isn't bad enough!
Retrofitting existing buildings expensively is a good way to get building people to think about accessibility from the get go (which I gather was not the case in decades past.) and _also_ ensuring that if Wheelchair Bound Guy A wants to work at said company, he can if he wants to. Any other way (ie, only where its cheap!) and you're saying to the disabled, "Tough life you live.. but dont worry, we'll give you the opporunity to go the same places we go if its cheap and easy to do so."
Youre treating the 'accessibiliy' issue as a 'want'. Legislation is designed for a 'need'. I'm all for defining access to physical locations on a 'need' basis, since, if you're going to base your country on some notion of equal opporunity, you really dont get that in a market situation. I mean, where would the womans movement had gone had that been left soley to the market (hey, theres lots of women, and they like to spend money!) The answer is, a shitload slower, or not at all, since as humans, we often put our personal and social biases _ahead_ of the almighty buck.. often preventing progress or inhibiting the goal for equal opportunity.
>But why force web sites to simplify content and access so that another.00001% of the population has the same access?
Because thats what legislation like this is *for*, silly. When we decide a small % of the population, through no fault of their own, is at a disadvantage, I fully support mandating processes or technologies that attempt to even the score.
Why? You're disabled, and you have 20 friends on onlinecommunity.com or whatever. Sure, you can say some websites will cater to you, but that doesn't change the fact that where and what websites you visit can often depend on where your friends go.. therefore, alternative sites are often not really a vaiable alternative to a lack of accessibility.
It'd be like saying, "Well, the DMV in Utah isn't wheelchair accessible, but the one in Texas is. Its just too bad you need a Utah licence to drive here, but oh well, c'est la vie, huh?" Open market' approaches (ie, supply/demand) are usually bad ways to deal with these sorts of things, because choices made in a marketplace are not always (not even often, in my contention) made on the basis of offerings alone. Decisions in open markets are often based on interpersonal relationships, communication, and interoperability of the products or offerings in that market space.
Let me try an example: if some shitty ass car manufacturer realized that only way to stay profitable was to cater specifically to the disabled, it wouldn't be worth other car manufacturers to stick to accessibility guidelines, and the disabled would be forced to drive shitty cars just because the demand is too low for the market to support these people across the board.
Funny, I thought copyright functioned the same way regardless of online/offline. Ie, if its copywritten, dont copy it. If its not, feel free. The DMCA stipulates how *people* are supposed to function in cyberspace with respect to copyright. (Or not function, as is the case.)
Its a very important distinction, which is why I'm going all off-topic here.
That said, I personally agree with legislation to mandate or regulate accessibility online.
The DMCA protects the haves, which is why we didn't need that legislation.
This accessibility legislation would help the have-nots, which is the only reasonable excuse for additional legislation (ie, to help those that actually need it as opposed to want it.)
But, its true tho that on application-like sites (ie, obfuscated URLs) with img-only menus and no alt tags, itd be a bitch if you were blind. Fortunately, the very nature of graphical menus usually means there arn't *too* many choices, so I suppose trial-and-error becomes the fallback in those cases?
>I glanced over the thing and missed it thinking it was part of the clustering solution itself
Thats why its not Glance At The Fuckin Article (GATFA);) Couldn't resist.. I'm just joking, believe me I've done it a few times myself (and its sad that 'mysql' comes out everytime I try and type 'myself').
No argument there. If companies do the cash grab, then universities are kind of forced to do so, since prices for the equipment for research are going to be set by the market, including these wealthy drug companies. If companies get richer and richer, equipment makers can charge more, and universities find themselves unable to afford to continue leading edge research without following the lead of companies.
Slashdot Mirror
emusic.com
deals with about 650 'second tier' labels.
if you like hiphop (which I do), they have lots of good shit. check it out.
I won't subscribe to any of the big label stuff until i can burn without minimums.
I've already approached several left wing think tanks and offered them volounteer techtime.
I would imagine that helping folks in developing nations would pique my humanitarian interests as well.
eBay isn't worried about the police.
.. they're both methods of profiling the population and limiting freedom of people not based on the code of law but rather on generic risk/reward calculations. Do you really want to be denied service because you happen to own or be doing something which *might* be illegal? ("Honestly, Home Depot, I'm buying this crowbar to build a shed, not to break into homes!" .. "Sorry, we only sell to 'approved' customers and youre not on the list.")
eBay is worried about being sued.
why do we know this? if eBay was tipped off that this guy was doing something illegal, why didnt they call the cops?
The answer? They dont give a rats ass about catching criminals, they only dont want to be sued. So any 'policing' they do will operate on a level of reasoning that centres purely around "will we get into trouble for this" instead of "is this person committing a crime that is illegal as stated by the law?"
Letting companies police themselves is tantamount to letting them draw up a new legal code while they'reat it; a legal code that maximizes profits instead of ensures the public safety and good. If companies can prevent people from living regular lives (since you need to interact with companies to live), then we might as well through the whole court system out and all write checks to whoevers got the biggest lawyers breathing down eBay's back.
Discrimination based on *any attribute*, from skin colour to "are you selling content which at a superficial level appears to be more expensive to verify the legality of that content rather than prevent you from selling it in the first palce"
eBay should turn this guy over to the authorities or shut the fuck up and let him sell. Anything else simply invalidates the very function and purpose of our judicial system (to curb the freedoms of those who break the law in order to prevent them from offending in the future, and to offer an opportunity of reabilitiation.)
> So what happens if a serial killer wants to sell human flesh soup online? Or someone starts pimping 12 year old girls?
.. after all, its getting incresingly difficult if not impossible to *live* without interacting with companies, so if they start restricting the freedoms of potential criminals (cant buy a car, cant use the bus), these company-judged criminals will be able to live a normal life and will be 'incarcerated' by virtue of their inability to purchase services and goods. (Hey .. and capital punishment could just be grocery stores refusing to sell food to these people!)
.. if companies start being the partial jury, thats really no different than your government restricting your freedoms on assumption alone instead with proper due process. Its a very slipperly slope you seem more than happy to walk down.
.. okay, so the sniper might turn out to be an army man. Should Chrysler 'police itself', and refuse to sell cars to military personal on suspicion that they might break the law in the future using what they sold him? Of course not, thats discrimination. See how long Chryslers "Hey cmon, cant we police our business" argument holds up in the eyes of public opinion ..
You're not really this myopic right?
The serial killer gets arrested. No more auction for him. But the point is, Ebay tips off the authorities. If the guy is doing something illegal, he should go to jail, not lose access to his auction. Who gives a shit about the auction if the guy is breaking the law? Maybe we should just get rid of courts all together and let companies let you decide what you can and cannot do
Here is a situation where this guy is being judged for something he has done which *might* be illegal. The proper thing to do is for ebay to contact the authorities. Whats that? They wont do that? Then why the hell are they stopping his auction?
If the guy is doing something illegal, he should be arrested. It is not up to private companies to regular behaviour they suspect is illegal; it is simply their duty to report it.
Imagine if postal companies opened up every package they got and refused to ship it they suspected they might get sued for shipping it. Shitloads of legit mail would never get sent, and yet, if people were doing anything illegal, nobody would go to jail. The reason they'd do that is to avoid liability themselves; they wouldn't have any interest in actually reporting the bahaviour to the authorities and using the justice system so nicely depicted on currency as one of the hallmarks of western freedom and democracy.
Our countries are built on the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty'
As for "please direct me back to a time when a business wasn't able to police itself?"
Thats not a little fucked up in your mind?
I only meant doesnt/cant, as in *wont*. :) Samples have become an integral part of music (James Brown's drummer get sampled in a nearly inaudible backbeat in one out of every 50 pop songs), so while you obviously _can_ create music without samples, their use wont wane for that reason.
:)
At any rate, the classical greats were sampling each other (including 2 or 3 bars from each others' works verbatim) all the time, so I shouldn't even talk about it like its new. Its been around for hundreds of years, so I guess what I meant is that sampling isn't going away.
And since it isn't going away, then indie artists should be held to the same legal standards as big label artists as it pertains to sampling.
Unfortauntely, it doesnt happen that way. I've had indie musician sites refuse to host some of my stuff because they *suspect* that that distorted, garbled sample of some dude talking at the beginning of my track is going to land them in legal hot waters. Like the copyright holder is going storm into their offices with laywers for something he recorded 30 years ago, and demand compensation for saying 6 words in a row in some creative copyright-holding way. *smirk*
But yeah, didn't mean doesnt/cant. I meant wont.
What was very interesting, at:
.. so why should the little players?
http://www.negativland.com/riaa/dowesue.html
was the bit about Top 40 artsits only clearing samples you can recognize.
Its not like it surprises me, but thats some good argumentative fodder should you be talking to proponants of *air-tight* copyright laws.
That is, music doesn't/can't get made without samples, and even the big players dont clear all their samples
of how a super-anal IP climate pretty much just hurts those trying to break into the market.
.. nobody is going to run/approve/host indie boy's audio bits unless they've been signed off by a big label.
The RIAA should just rename itself 'The Trustworthy Music Initiative'. The more strongarm RIAA gets, and the more fear they seed
What, again?! Sorry, whats the difference between printing false and misleading articles and you printing wildly presumptuous, snap-to-conclusion denouncements? Can we get a little of that 'censorship for good' you describe and apply it to you?!
Man, following you around these threads, you're the Zack De La Rocha of the system! Its like, you dont Rage Against the Machine, you Rage For the Machine!
Go, rebel boy, go!
I'll try one last time, since you oh-so-thorughfully blurted the "supply/demand" buzzword somewhere back a few threads amongst so much gobbledygook.
.. congratulations!
If you knew any musicians, you'd know there was a demand to reduce the power of the RIAA somewhat and restore some semblance of power to artists. Janis is supplying that demand, and will probably make more money in doing so than being silent. You can, if you want (although I question your ability to expose yourself to information that may dilute your self-affirming babbling,) confirm that there's a demand, because that demand has been articulated in everything from trade papers to the mainstream press. (Why do I always get the feeling youre rewriting reality in your head as you read these words?)
So there you go, Janis is actually being the perfect little capitalist.
But I must admit, you have a compelling argument, which is, lets see here:
1) janis sucks
2) janis sells nothing
3) janis doesnt work as hard as me
4) janis makes my stomach turn
5) you can never go wrong sucking the ideological dicks of authority figures (mostly financial authorities with you, I suspect) because if you can close your mind enough to believe that the almighty dollar is absolute, constitant and eternal proof of intrinsic worth and value, you can never be proven wrong! aha! You've found the loophole in the act of rational discourse! You've found the unbeatable argument (along with millions of other people too intellectually lazy to brave the shades of grey)
Erm, a few points:
.. although I can probably conclude that:
a) Janis turns a profit.
b) Janis still sells records.
Didn't want to shatter your perfect little argument there, but hey, thems the breaks.
I dont know what to say about 98% of the other stuff youre saying, considering that most of its seems to be pure conjecture and disillusioned reductions
a) youre somewhat bitter with life?
b) you dont like your job very much? (otherwise you probably wouldn't spend so much effort trying to portray other people as having it cushy compared to you?)
Which leaves me with: I dont think Janis cares too much what you think of her, so why waste your time rambling on when clearly you have so much hard work to do?
Doesnt matter; they were at the top, and thats enough to "prove", according to Mr. Free Market, that they made the best food at some point.
.. thats the _law_ .. ") sounds about as capable of objective reasoning as a religious fundamentalist.
Of course, what he fails to recognize, much like how rabid anti-abortioners 'fail' to recognize killing people for killing people is still killing people, is that quantity sold is a function of quality *and* price; and furthur more, that cheaply made, cheaply sold shit often sells better than less cheaply made good shit. The *only* way to measure quality is through analysis, since the market has never demonstrated any preference to selecting quality over quantity or value, nor for that matter, not be subject to the forces of marketing.
Hell, I can put him in touch with money making CEOs if he likes, probably his heros, who could demonstrate that the advertising market wouldn't exist if products outsold each other based on quality alone. Alas, anyone that sticks to an absolute like that ("
>Why don't you?
/. about it instead of mailing her your grievances personally? I mean, am I the only one who detects the irony here? Why dont you stop whining and do something about what you're whining about?
How do you know she doesn't? In fact, your whole rant appears to be some self-affirming fabricated construct of what you perceive her life to be.
More importantly, if your main problem is that she whines too much, and doesn't do anything about it, why the fuck are you whining on
> In a free market, quality always rises to the surface.
.. which is how we know that McDonalds makes the highest quality food, right?
[ fighting from keeping milk from splurting from my nose laughing ]
Can I get an age count? How old are you, and what does your dad do for a living?
> Why don't these fuckups just bite the bullet and admit that their records don't sell because their records are crap?
.. I can assure you that they arnt the slightest bit interested in selling millions of records. What they are interested, however, is to avoid sucking the very well paid dicks you seem to eager to suck. Unfortunately for you, lots of people are willing to suck the dicks' of the rich and famous (read: the multimillion disc sellers), so just pray they're still rich by the time you reach the front of the line. (Of course, this won't be a problem so long as they dont release any crap like Joni Mitchell or Tom Petty did, right?)
Yawn
Funny, I've yet to come across a working environment where we do what 'right'. Usually we supply a solution for a demand in our marketplace.
.. if it does indeed end all of the sketchy goings on of Windows User A's computing experience. I'm certainly willing to believe that thats a healthy portion of the justification of Palladiums development.
.doc format of pop culture are the kind of tactics that leads to a healthy, progressive techological marketplace in which we all benifit by achieving maximum efficiency out of the resources available .. but thats the shakiest justification of them all. And the DOJ has already supposedly told them that it isn't true.
Windows User A isn't smart enough to 'demand' trustworthy computing, so I don't believe they're doing it because users are asking for it. MS might be doing it because they think its the right way to win back frusterated users (or at least turn their customers' love/hate relationships into love relationships)
However, can you honestly tell me that MS doesn't smell the yumminess coming from owning the 'Word Format' of pop culture?
Granted, maybe they just think its 'right', in the sense that their tactics to own the
Perhaps the qualification is " .. something he believes in but which ultimately benifits the many over the very few."
If RMS's ultimate goal is to wield complete power over a populous, to the point of selectively exterminating a percentage of it, he sure isn't making enough friends to build the required army.
Which is to say, RMS' goals are altruistic. Even if on a personal level he's doing it for purely egotistical reasons, his end-game allows us more freedom, which I certainly support. The fact that he's willing to put himself on the hook (I'm sure hes aware of his public image) in order to preserve esotaric freedoms we should have, that he could probably keep (after all, its not like hes going to have to use Windows, right?) regardless of the outcome of this situation is commendable. I'm not sure how you could paint this otherwise.
Hitler, on the other hand, wanted to kill people.
I'd draw you a diagram, but I'm afraid you'll counter with "Hitler drew diagrams."
Aside from his goals being virtuous, in my opinion, you've certainly nailed the point (inadvertantly, I suspect) that the more important part is that the thing he believes in is your and my freedom.
>years of determination and aggressiveness
... and of course, those who are determined and aggresively act on those traits and values. Hitler was very determined and aggressive. It seems to me that people only recognize the futility and uselessness of the means when the end is sufficiently horrendous. If those folks in power are using their detemination and aggressiveness to look out solely for themselves, I have more respect for welfare abusers. Again, this was my problem with the DMCA. You want to work hard to make life better? Great! You want to work a little to make life better? Awesome! You want to work hard to make your life better while trying to convince me that working for your own gain is the best way to work towards our collective gain? Get offa my continent. :)
Determination and aggressiveness is *nothing*. Working hard is *useless*. Unless those traits are applied towards improving our state of affairs and working on solutions to problems we've collectively identified in a society.
To that end, no, I don't admire those traits. I admire generosity, altruism, and a genuine desire to improve the quality of life (both physical and emotional, and more importantly, not at the expense of another group of people)
That the conditions in place today may or may not be a direct result of those hard working people focusing on the wrong things spoils the 'thou shalt not force' argument. Whos to say we wouldn't have been building disabled-friendly buildings 40 years ago had our society been less focused on 'working hard' and instead more focused on 'working towards progress'.
All that said, sure, I'm idealistic, and I certainly dont have any fantasies of a gum-drop land whever everybody spends their days sacrificing for other people. However, I am a firm believer that those who attain power are there because they want power, not because they worked harder towards a goal everybody wanted, and only they got their. Everybody must sacrifice when you're inferior to somebody (cant go to the movies with friends when youre broke, for instance), but theres no self-checking mechanism from the top. The only thing they have to sacrifice is their time, but they already enjoy working hard to make themselves rich and/or powerful, so I havn't any qualms with the occasional mandated sacrifice. I do not believe that youd end up with the barren motivation-less society people seem to imply would result from some mandated responsibilities or accountabilities by those whove been fortunate or hard working enough to reach a position of wealth or power.
If equality is a goal, and mandating is too communist (ie, centrally set wealth distribution), why not search for a variation on capitalism which balances the motivation to generate wealth to the motivation of keeping your inferiors not too far behind with respect to opportunity (of which wealth is a part of?)
All I meant is that it was more important to legislate human behaviour to promote equality (ie, bring inferiors in line with superiors), and less important to legislate human behavior in cases where legislation is designed to superfluously protect (I say superfluously, because a copyright is a copyright, and theres no technical need to mandate behaviour of people in order to dissuade them from breaking an entirely law) those who already have an advatange (ie, ownership of the copyright.)
One law is designed to bring (wrt physical mobility) inferiors up to equal levels with superiors, while the other is designed to (wrt to ownership of assets) push inferiors (those that don't own the copyright) even furthur down the ladder of equal opportunity.
I certainly agree we shouldn't allow justice to operately slowly on the basis of classism. Even us semisocialists realize you dont want to kill all wealth-generating motivation by continually removing people from the top of the food pyramid. Its more like, when you only have 24 hours in the day, effort should be more focused on bringing equality to those who dont have it instead of furthur solidifying the advantage some people have. Thats why I took exception to the original post and the comparison it made.
>Use your voting $$ by buying from those who accomodate you.
.. as if being blind isn't bad enough!
.. but dont worry, we'll give you the opporunity to go the same places we go if its cheap and easy to do so."
.. often preventing progress or inhibiting the goal for equal opportunity.
Ever heard of economy of scale? So, small % of population at a disadvantage, you punish them furthur by tossing their problems into the open market. They'll live more expensive lives than you are I
Retrofitting existing buildings expensively is a good way to get building people to think about accessibility from the get go (which I gather was not the case in decades past.) and _also_ ensuring that if Wheelchair Bound Guy A wants to work at said company, he can if he wants to. Any other way (ie, only where its cheap!) and you're saying to the disabled, "Tough life you live
Youre treating the 'accessibiliy' issue as a 'want'. Legislation is designed for a 'need'. I'm all for defining access to physical locations on a 'need' basis, since, if you're going to base your country on some notion of equal opporunity, you really dont get that in a market situation. I mean, where would the womans movement had gone had that been left soley to the market (hey, theres lots of women, and they like to spend money!) The answer is, a shitload slower, or not at all, since as humans, we often put our personal and social biases _ahead_ of the almighty buck
>But why force web sites to simplify content and access so that another .00001% of the population has the same access?
.. therefore, alternative sites are often not really a vaiable alternative to a lack of accessibility.
Because thats what legislation like this is *for*, silly. When we decide a small % of the population, through no fault of their own, is at a disadvantage, I fully support mandating processes or technologies that attempt to even the score.
Why? You're disabled, and you have 20 friends on onlinecommunity.com or whatever. Sure, you can say some websites will cater to you, but that doesn't change the fact that where and what websites you visit can often depend on where your friends go
It'd be like saying, "Well, the DMV in Utah isn't wheelchair accessible, but the one in Texas is. Its just too bad you need a Utah licence to drive here, but oh well, c'est la vie, huh?" Open market' approaches (ie, supply/demand) are usually bad ways to deal with these sorts of things, because choices made in a marketplace are not always (not even often, in my contention) made on the basis of offerings alone. Decisions in open markets are often based on interpersonal relationships, communication, and interoperability of the products or offerings in that market space.
Let me try an example: if some shitty ass car manufacturer realized that only way to stay profitable was to cater specifically to the disabled, it wouldn't be worth other car manufacturers to stick to accessibility guidelines, and the disabled would be forced to drive shitty cars just because the demand is too low for the market to support these people across the board.
Funny, I thought copyright functioned the same way regardless of online/offline. Ie, if its copywritten, dont copy it. If its not, feel free. The DMCA stipulates how *people* are supposed to function in cyberspace with respect to copyright. (Or not function, as is the case.)
Its a very important distinction, which is why I'm going all off-topic here.
That said, I personally agree with legislation to mandate or regulate accessibility online.
The DMCA protects the haves, which is why we didn't need that legislation.
This accessibility legislation would help the have-nots, which is the only reasonable excuse for additional legislation (ie, to help those that actually need it as opposed to want it.)
That makes sense.
But, its true tho that on application-like sites (ie, obfuscated URLs) with img-only menus and no alt tags, itd be a bitch if you were blind. Fortunately, the very nature of graphical menus usually means there arn't *too* many choices, so I suppose trial-and-error becomes the fallback in those cases?
>I glanced over the thing and missed it thinking it was part of the clustering solution itself
;) Couldn't resist .. I'm just joking, believe me I've done it a few times myself (and its sad that 'mysql' comes out everytime I try and type 'myself').
Thats why its not Glance At The Fuckin Article (GATFA)
if there are miniature people in miniature buildings driving miniature SUV's on it .. I'm packin my suitcase and leaving for another galaxy.
Or, barring that, could our planets swap all the SUVs?
No argument there. If companies do the cash grab, then universities are kind of forced to do so, since prices for the equipment for research are going to be set by the market, including these wealthy drug companies. If companies get richer and richer, equipment makers can charge more, and universities find themselves unable to afford to continue leading edge research without following the lead of companies.