Find one Democratic President who's spent more money he didn't have than any of the last three Republican Presidents. That would be...noone. Oops.
The Republicans have campaigned on their superiority to the Democrats on their spending and economic records, and I'm still trying to figure out why. 2/3 of the national debt was amassed during the last three Republican Presidents. Clinton didn't run the debt in eight years that Bush Sr. ran in four (and he ran the least debt of the three RPs). Clinton had the benefit of the economy, which of course doesn't help, because of the/. sig (the economy has done better under the worst Democratic President than under the best Republican President).
The claim that anyone would have spent themselves silly doesn't seem to hold, because only the Republicans have shown themselves equal to that task. Since they have spent a good deal of the past decades complaining about the spending that they have been most qualified at undertaking, they are either hypocritical or stupid.
Social Security is a problem, and one Clinton or the Democrats did nothing about. On the other hand, making SS reliant on the entity (the stock market) it was instituted to secure savings from doesn't seem like the smartest policy on the planet. Of course, removing money from the system (to invest in the stock market) while it is reliant on current income to pay current recipients without raising taxes and then saying that future and current SS recipients won't lose money seems to require mathematical legerdemain that is beyond my capacity to understand. In this case, to keep SS solvent without cutting it (which would probably sink the stock market) taxes are probably the best solution (in concert with raising the retirement age). They aren't always the best solution, but they may be in this case.
At some point, "blame the user" becomes tired. Yes, he should have had backups, and/or the originals stored somewhere secure. Better/different virus protection would also help. However, at some point, the blame has to fall on the people that point this together. Tying the OS to its applications and making them all have authority with one another is the low point. Done to control and manipulate customers, as well as make usage easier, it makes any security hole threatening. When DRM hits and the users gets locked out of his computer while the spammers and virus writers get access, the cries will only get louder. Yes, there are bad people out there, but giving them the keys to the front door and the location of my wallet without telling me probably isn't a good way to help users secure themselves.
I don't maintain my car myself. I'm lazy enough to get my oil changes done, and it's easy enough to keep basic tabs on my car that I can use it. If my car required 30 min. of maintenance a day to run, and running around to get parts and software upgrades, I probably would find a way to use it a lot less, and lots of people would give their cars up entirely. If computers are expected to be used by everyone, then it isn't reasonable to expect people to put more work into their computers than into their cars or pets. Computers are tools - people want them to just work, or to require a minimal amount of effort to work. Computers sold to the majority of people don't do this, and then everyone's suprised when users get frustrated. For most people, computers aren't fun in and of themselves, but for what they allow us to do. If you want to sell to the mass market, you need to make what they can use, rather than complain that they aren't competent enough to use what's there.
1) "well-regulated" doesn't refer to the right to bear arms - the need for a well-regulated militia is the reason why the right to bear arms should not be infringed. The first clause explains, rather than constrains, the second.
2) the militia noted were organized by state - they weren't organized a a single force. Why might that be? Well, one good reason was so that the states could retain power in case the federal gov't got despotic. Geographic considerations and political organization factor in as well, but if defense of the US is the only reason to use militias, it doesn't make sense.
The point of the Constitution was to limit the rights of the government, not those of its people. The Bill of Rights exists solely to express the rights of the people, not the government, and not to limit those rights.
although with voting booths the DRM is "invisible" (meaning it's not spelled out). The ways votes can be manipulated are hard to see and hard to find out - if everyone's guns stop working, a lot of people will know, fast. I don't like computer voting because there are easier and more transparent ways to get rapid and simple voting procedures and because the companies implementing it may be neither trustworthy nor competent. That just wasn't the issue here.
As I said to someone else on this thread, I believe that the point of the 2nd Amendment is to allow people to take arms against a government when it gets out of control. Since many of those who have died violent deaths have suffered the at the hands of their governments (and without having done anything to deserve them), it seems that inhibiting governments from acting badly and from taking too much power might be a good idea. The safety aspects (and whether US society is safer with many guns than with fewer) - you can decide. It has worked OK.
I'm liberal - I trust government more than lots of things - but I don't trust it infinitely, and when people have guns, I think that governments are more likely to behave themselves. (although, sometimes, that seems like just a theory, and a bad one....)
if DRM is a bad idea for software....
on
Smart Guns are Coming
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· Score: 3, Insightful
why is it good for guns?
Maybe I'm cynical, but if every gun sold has to have electronic/computer receivers, might governments have keys to disable guns with those receivers? In some cases, that would negate the rights that gun ownership is supposed to secure, by removing checks on the ability of governments to take those rights. If government became despotic (as it often did when the words you quoted were written), the only mitigating factor was the ability of citizens to arm themselves against it. Negate that, and governments could do whatever they want, a state of affairs that the Constitution was designed to prevent.
The technology has good and safe uses, but it puts a lot of powers in the hands of people who can't be trusted with that much power - which is to say, anyone.
The ability to monitor random individual movements sans warrant changes the expectation of privacy one has in public substantially. While everyone could do this, the cost (and the number of people required) limits it to almost no one, and so people expect that their schedules, etc. are private. When the police can monitor anyone without warrant, the expectations of what one can do in public change considerably. The legal approval allows its use in many more circumstances than previously expected. If its use becomes widespread, the "expectations of privacy" change, and thus the actions one can take in public and thus the rights one has also change. Hence, YR (everywhere).
My purchases and movements are public - someone following me could have access to them. However, that would require someone actually following me and gaining that knowledge. While one does expect actions done in public to be public, no one knows (or used to know, anyway) everything one has done in public - thus the expectation of privacy when the laws were written is different because it assumed human limitations. The aggregation of one's movement and actions elevates the expectation of privacy - it would require someone devoting their life to knowing yours, and so is an unreasonable expectation by the individual.
When Lexus offered to sell bulk telephone and address information, there was a large hue and cry because data that was public was aggrgated into a form that allowed someone with little difficulty to contact almost anyone. Obviously, a lot of people believed that the database violated their expectations of privacy, even though the data was public. While someone could have acquired that data, the aggregation (and to be fair, mass availability of cosequent data) violated the expectations of privacy for most people.
Individual actions in public have no expectation of privacy. Aggregated individual actions (cumulative descriptions or analysis of the actions of individual, particularly at levels of detail requiring dedicated personnel), however, seem to have precisely that expectation. The (public general) knowledge of surveillance capacities also affects what individuals do in what arenas - people don't expect someone to follow them for days on end, so even though they would expect someone to have seen some of their actions, they would not reasonably expect someone to have known their actions for weeks on end. The example quoted in the article description might not fit that because of the brevity of period (someone might follow you if you expose themselves to you), and the details are problematic, but there is an "expectation of privacy" - at some level - that differs for comprehensive or aggregated data from its constituent data points.
I don't know if "Identity theft" is legally theft, but I'll take a stab. Theft is taking someone else's proberty while depriving them of it as well. In illegal copying of music or movies, etc., the item being taken is the exclusive license to distribute and profit from a work - is this property? If it is, then mass distribution of a work might be considered theft, although not necessarily the copying. However, the "object" being "stolen" is a right, which usually isn't treated as a stolen object; objects exist independently of the involved parties, while the licence exists only within the bounds of an agreement between parties (the holder, the gov't, and the people).
Identity theft, however, fits the definition of theft better. The person using someone's else identity will prevent that person from doing what they should (based on their actions) be able to - by running up debts, the person misrepresenting himself deprives the misrepresented of the use of his identity. The identity is not a license from the gov't, but something existing independently of it (the gov't may validate it, but since people exist independently of it, their identity is not contingent on the gov't).
As the story on/. discussed, Intel and AMD seem to be going very quietly ahead with their Palladium-class chips - what about the presence of installed DRM on the new class of dual-core chips? If it's there, then you probably won't be accelerating your burning of anything to DVD by using the new chips.
while the distinction you're making is correct, you are in fact depriving the copyright holder of something - his legal right to control the distribution of his work. Copyright gives him a limited licence to control non-fair use distribution and copying of the work - without that licence there is far less incentive for many to produce the work. The person copying it has decided that they rather than the copyright holder should have that right - since the licence is exclusive, if someone takes it, they have in fact deprived the copyright holder of something.
This isn't to justify many of the questionable parts of copyright law or the RIAA's "logic" (or the inconsistency - taking artists' and users' copyright privileges is not theft but copying the music is) - but it is salient to note that people who copy music and set it out for mass distribution are doing something which fits the definition of "theft".
A Darwin Award is devoted to something similar. An Australian hotel (for some reason) had a contest to see who could drink the most - I don't think the "winner" survived.
While the concept of drinking for charity sounds fun, it would be a really unfortunate way to die (indirectly) from the tsunami. T
Forbidding children from doing these things (sex, drugs, alcohol) through the government hasn't made the problems these things create go away. Since alcohol, cigarettes, and sex all appear in advertising (either implied or explicitly), kids are simultaneously getting two messages: 1) Sex (or alcohol, or cigarettes, or video games) will make you happy/attractive/popular. 2)...but not for you. If making something forbidden has made fewer people want it, I'd like to know. Mostly, these policies and mindsets lead to people unable to deal with the things they want in a reasonable matter (or to know why they want them) - they deal with their desires subconsciously because the conscious knows the law, but the subconscious controls the desires, and usually wins. They can't analyze their desires, can't understand them, can't find reasonable ways to deal with them - they must either obey or disobey. Once people decide to pursue these desires, they are unlikely to be sensible about their actions, because people don't consume happiness in moderation; the rational that tells them when to stop has already been discarded and is out of the game.
The law will likely be hard to enforce (or, if actually enforced, will pull resources from enforcement of other laws). The law helps create more demand for violent games while being unlikely to hinder access to them. Kids that obey the law (or their parents) won't get the games, but those that don't will find ways to get them, and become more popular in the process (by providing access to the forbidden for others), thus ensuring an unhealthy feedback loop. (forbidden things will get you what you want, but only if you don't think about what you do want).
Finally, if parents care, kids are probably less likely to either want to play the games or to disobey their parents (if they have the money to do what they want). However, if they believe the gov't will prevent their child from gaining access to the games, they may not deal with it, and they will be hit with something they didn't see coming. Parents that don't care won't be able to stop them from getting the games (and aren't dealing with it now). I don't see this law being able to do what parents haven't been able to do before.
Those of us who don't have children still have to deal with the messes laws make of them. Making things forbidden to some and desirable for all only ensures unhealthy habits (and a society unable to deal reasonably with its desires) for years to come, the consequences of which are a "gift" to all.
The invisible hand of the market has been telling people that drinks and cigarettes will make them attractive, popular and sexy for a hundred years, at least. All the age restrictions have done is to insure that the children of today have a nice unhealthy attraction to them (mixed, of course, with a little self-loathing, so that you'll keep consuming even when you know the things that they seel are bad for you). Age restrictions make the games more desirable, because they're forbidden to them; those kids that have them will be more pouplar than those who don't, thus making the unhealthy connection between forbidden games and popularity. Since these laws depend on parents having complete control over their children's lives (like the drug ads say), a state of reality which exists only when the children are in the womb, they can't stop kids from getting them if they want them - they only stop good kids from getting them, while reinforcing the implied connection between the things kids of that age want (happiness, popularity, confidence) and the things that these people are selling. Is it any wonder why we can't deal with sex or alcohol in a mature way? This will be no different.
You can't simultaneously tell people that something is great and will do all of these neat things for you and then tell kids, "But you can't have this." and expect them not to want it. Doing this makes sense if you can enforce it without making something else worse; since I don't think they can, and the lure of the forbidden will only make these games more popular while making it harder for parents to deal with, I don't think this makes sense.
Harlan Ellison has multiple good stories about the TV industry, at least one of which discusses his experiences with it during the production of The Starlost, which was mangled into unrecognizability during its (short) run on TV. While Ellison received a writing award for the best script of the year for the opener, he had to avoid attempts by the studios to suborn him into scabbing. The story also describes the experiences of other authors who have had their work shredded on the gears of TV production (since Ellison might be viewed as cantankerous by people, he discusses others who might be considered more reasonable).
As Stephen King said in a summary of Ellison's The Glass Teat, TV is a teat, but one that exudes poisoned milk. While King intended the summary to refer to the viewers, it may refer well to those who try to write for TV. In the movies, very few books remain unscathed; often the conversion involves someting like body-snatching where the soul of the book is removed but the form remains. while at other times the movies aren't so kind. The list of writings smeared into gelatin by Hollywood in legion, and LeGuin probably should have known of them. Money is nice, and perhaps the hope of a wider audience for your works, but the latter is probably only a hope.
If you sell your books for money (I didn't RTA, so I don't know what her relationship to the miniseries was), experience should indicate that what they make will probably not be your work. If the money is good enough, that's OK, but don't expect integrity out of the production.
...then perhaps people would be more OK with it, because your logic holds. (People see movies with stars in them, thogh the stars change.) It doesn't, however, explain away the FF movie, Waterworld, The Postman, and (probably) Alexander - movies which failed and cost obscene amounts to fail. None of these movies had any real star power, yet all of them cost more than $80 M (The Postman was the cheapest, at $88 M). The only counterexample I can think of is T2, which was nicknamed Judgment Day because of the amount of time it would take to return its $96 M production cost. (Apparently, we've already been judged - I think it took 2 or 3 weeks to get its money back).
Movies with stars make some sense - at least people can see where the money went. Most of the great money losers have had no such obvious resources. It is one thing to fail trying something orginal which would be laudable, but that's not something Hollywood does well. Even if they were somehow trying to be original, you might want a little more control over the pursestrings - you don't start cutting lumber with the branch you're standing on. It made no sense to risk that much money, since by the time you were done, there was no chance to make it back. Looking at this as an untrained person, I have to wonder, "What the hell were they thinking?"
There is also the bonus that money spent on stars is not spent on writing, thus leading to movies that people see the first weekend (because of the star) and which then drop like a stone (because the story requires drug use by the viewers to gain any coherence). The SNL movies are very good at this (with lower-end, stars-in-training) - they write stories by committee, all of whom should have been committed to either a jail or an mental hospital. Movies without stars spent the money someplace - sometimes on nothing worthwhile, sometimes on a coherent plot and character development - hence the bias against movies with lots of stars.
I don't know about you, but ticket prices here in Columbus have only increased over the past few years as these commercials have increased as well, along with revenue. If the added commercials are subsidizing the movies, that would mean without them prices would go up and fewer people would see the movies; depending on the rate customers stop showiing and how fast ticket prices increase with decreasing customer flow, they might make more or less money or stay even. Of course, the commercials also help to drive away movie viewers, so they may cost money in the long run (probably not, but...). In addition, the benefit to me from watching a movie hasn't increased - I've stopped going because there's nothing I want to see. So, the goad of "if we didn't shove these commercials down your throat, this crap would cost even more" doesn't really sound like an effective tactic - if you make it more painful for your customers to give you their money, they will stop and give it to others instead.
A better approach might be to make movies that can actually make money - you know, movies that cost less than $150 M and that don't suck. The cost of hyping the movies and the cost of hiring big names wouldn't be wasted if they could actually write better stories, but they can't, and they don't really seem to care. Hollywood seems to breed and coddle incompetents and to reject people who can actually do their jobs, because otherwise their workers wouldn't need the "assistance" of untrained hacks mascarading as studio officials. Furthermore, studios are willing to give pliable incompetents large sums of money, a strategy which resulted in every major movie studio flirting with (or dating, or married to) bankruptcy at one time or another. Changing this might help their profitability more than throwing more ads (that your customers don't want) at your viewers.
This doesn't justify copyright infringement on any scale, but the more you decide that you have an inherent right to your customers' money and that they'll eat whatever crap you serve, the more your customers will feel justified in robbing you blind.
The high point of Congo (for those foolish enough to have seen it) were the SGI laptops in the abandoned base in the jungle. Unfortunately, they were also the only high point (by high, I mean above sea level)...
Roads, they use. Also, sewers and utilities (although only implicitly through whatever housing they have - and they pay for them, also implicitly). The military protects them - since they occupy US territory. Police - not unless they commit a crime - if you're here illegally, you're unlikely to call the police to report a robbery, because they'll ask for lots of info you don't have or which will get you sent home. Same with fire. Hospitals are the major item that illegal immigrants will use (and the major cost), and they're the main cost for legal residents as well.
If lack of contribution to society is the determinant of who should stay and who should go, there are a lot of others who need to leave based on economic contributions in addition to or even before illegal immigrants.
the people that established the US (while their concept of "people" was limited) believed that the rights we enjoy devolve to all - only we decided to implement them. If those rights don't exist for all, then they may eventually not exist for us (if they aren't inherent to being human but dependent on gov't, the gov't can take those freedoms away at will, which is why we are here in the first place). While I don't agree with Iraq (and don't trust W), the concept invoked by W of helping others to obtain freedom is not a bad idea, and may be the best defense of our own freedoms.
Illegal immigrants do pay taxes (sales tax, for starters) but can't use the benefits that money pays for - thus they may be a net gain, not a net loss. If you were looking for people who stay here but contribute nothing, there are many with no other justification other than place of birth for whom the right to stay here is included. While they generate many of the same difficulties as illegal immigrants, they consume lots of services, which makes such people almost certainly a net loss in terms of revenue. Some corporations act similarly, offshoring their headquarters to avoid tax here while reaping the benefits of a workforce, an infrastructure, and a financial system for which they did not pay. If you want "pay to play", then illegal immigration may not be the best place to start.
I think the problem with illegal immigration is that people who don't have any of the duties to maintain the society and the political system but who enjoy its freedoms may not recognize what those freedoms cost; of course, that could be said to be true of many of those with US citizenship as well...
The US has huge debts, both personal and governmental (the government's debts can be divided into what we've already spent and what we have promised to spend). People regularly spend money they don't have (credit cards) or money they are counting on as investments (home equity) on God knows what. So now we're supposed to spend even more so that we can get nice shiny gadgets that are bleeding edge now and will be dull as a pebble in six months? That feeling of "look, I'm so cool." is somewhat more transient than the "joy" of sitting on a sewer grate watching the US and world economies dissolve in a rain of debt.
If buying new gadgets doesn't add more debt, then money is coming from somewhere - the gadget we "should" be getting would be displacing whatever we're spending our money on now. No net gain there.
Bankrupting yourself (or the nation) seems like an awfully high price to pay to get cool new gadgets.
The problem with the above argument is not the lack of money in our educational system (as stated in the article blurb, we spend more than many of those who did better). Lots of neighborhoods spend money on education - the ones that need the help, however, don't. Many of the places that do poorly do so because the property owners don't have the money to pay for schools - the property is worth far less and so at the same rate of taxation it generates less money. The property is worth less because it is undesirable, and many of the reasons correlate with the people there not having any money or ways to get it. So it may not be unwillingness to spend the money that is the problem - the people who need the money don't have it, and so can't give it to the schools. Attempts to level out this disparity (at least in OH) haven't worked out very well (the OH motto - "We love education - so long as we don't have to pay for it.")
(This also neglects places like Washington, DC, where lots of money is spent but so badly that it goes for nought.)
Parents and community are more generally important - if they don't view education and achievement as valuable, then all the money in the world won't make the children think that time spent on school is worth it. As long as the parents believe that they are in a fantasyland where physical and fiscal reality cease to exist, schools will not have the ability to make children well-equipped to deal with a world that ruthlessly enforces both physical and fiscal realities. I think money is important for education, but I understand its effect on education less than those of community and parents.
If you can't be bothered to check your writing to see that it is easily understood by your readers, what makes anyone reading the email think that you actually thought hard about the content of the writing? If you can't be bothered to do easy little things, what makes one think that you've taken the time and effort to do the big and difficult tasks?
The point of writing is communication - if I have to get a translator and the fourteen-year-old "hacker" from down to the street to parse your writing, then I'm wasting a lot of time that could be spent on productive tasks. If you intend your writing as self-pleasuring, I'm sure there are some pornographic websites that will take your services. If you intend your writing to communicate actual thoughts and ideas, then you need to spend the time to do so clearly.
People want different things. Some want low prices - some of them are dishonest, but most aren't, but they have lots of demands. Some want knowledge and service. The advantage of diversified economy is that all of these people can be served at once. The downside is that sometimes we think we can have everything and not pay for it.
Best Buy chose to appeal to the customer base they now have. They didn't make money on knowing their products better or by treating customers well - they chose to make their money by promising lower prices and then trying to screw the more naive of those who show up. This works for a little while, but eventually people realize what you're doing, and behave accordingly. The people who want service or knowledge or low prices or just dignity go elsewhere (and they tell others to do the same), and BB gets the customers that only care about low prices, and who are willing to be evil to get them.
BB can't have it both ways. They made their money by being the lowest priced retailer for electronics and by being dishonest with their customers. People are behaving accordingly - they are getting the customers who are willing to be dishonest with them. If you play at screwing your customers, don't expect my sympathy when the favor is returned.
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Find one Democratic President who's spent more money he didn't have than any of the last three Republican Presidents. That would be...noone. Oops.
/. sig (the economy has done better under the worst Democratic President than under the best Republican President).
The Republicans have campaigned on their superiority to the Democrats on their spending and economic records, and I'm still trying to figure out why. 2/3 of the national debt was amassed during the last three Republican Presidents. Clinton didn't run the debt in eight years that Bush Sr. ran in four (and he ran the least debt of the three RPs). Clinton had the benefit of the economy, which of course doesn't help, because of the
The claim that anyone would have spent themselves silly doesn't seem to hold, because only the Republicans have shown themselves equal to that task. Since they have spent a good deal of the past decades complaining about the spending that they have been most qualified at undertaking, they are either hypocritical or stupid.
Social Security is a problem, and one Clinton or the Democrats did nothing about. On the other hand, making SS reliant on the entity (the stock market) it was instituted to secure savings from doesn't seem like the smartest policy on the planet. Of course, removing money from the system (to invest in the stock market) while it is reliant on current income to pay current recipients without raising taxes and then saying that future and current SS recipients won't lose money seems to require mathematical legerdemain that is beyond my capacity to understand. In this case, to keep SS solvent without cutting it (which would probably sink the stock market) taxes are probably the best solution (in concert with raising the retirement age). They aren't always the best solution, but they may be in this case.
At some point, "blame the user" becomes tired. Yes, he should have had backups, and/or the originals stored somewhere secure. Better/different virus protection would also help. However, at some point, the blame has to fall on the people that point this together. Tying the OS to its applications and making them all have authority with one another is the low point. Done to control and manipulate customers, as well as make usage easier, it makes any security hole threatening. When DRM hits and the users gets locked out of his computer while the spammers and virus writers get access, the cries will only get louder. Yes, there are bad people out there, but giving them the keys to the front door and the location of my wallet without telling me probably isn't a good way to help users secure themselves.
I don't maintain my car myself. I'm lazy enough to get my oil changes done, and it's easy enough to keep basic tabs on my car that I can use it. If my car required 30 min. of maintenance a day to run, and running around to get parts and software upgrades, I probably would find a way to use it a lot less, and lots of people would give their cars up entirely. If computers are expected to be used by everyone, then it isn't reasonable to expect people to put more work into their computers than into their cars or pets. Computers are tools - people want them to just work, or to require a minimal amount of effort to work. Computers sold to the majority of people don't do this, and then everyone's suprised when users get frustrated. For most people, computers aren't fun in and of themselves, but for what they allow us to do. If you want to sell to the mass market, you need to make what they can use, rather than complain that they aren't competent enough to use what's there.
1) "well-regulated" doesn't refer to the right to bear arms - the need for a well-regulated militia is the reason why the right to bear arms should not be infringed. The first clause explains, rather than constrains, the second.
2) the militia noted were organized by state - they weren't organized a a single force. Why might that be? Well, one good reason was so that the states could retain power in case the federal gov't got despotic. Geographic considerations and political organization factor in as well, but if defense of the US is the only reason to use militias, it doesn't make sense.
The point of the Constitution was to limit the rights of the government, not those of its people. The Bill of Rights exists solely to express the rights of the people, not the government, and not to limit those rights.
although with voting booths the DRM is "invisible" (meaning it's not spelled out). The ways votes can be manipulated are hard to see and hard to find out - if everyone's guns stop working, a lot of people will know, fast. I don't like computer voting because there are easier and more transparent ways to get rapid and simple voting procedures and because the companies implementing it may be neither trustworthy nor competent. That just wasn't the issue here.
As I said to someone else on this thread, I believe that the point of the 2nd Amendment is to allow people to take arms against a government when it gets out of control. Since many of those who have died violent deaths have suffered the at the hands of their governments (and without having done anything to deserve them), it seems that inhibiting governments from acting badly and from taking too much power might be a good idea. The safety aspects (and whether US society is safer with many guns than with fewer) - you can decide. It has worked OK.
I'm liberal - I trust government more than lots of things - but I don't trust it infinitely, and when people have guns, I think that governments are more likely to behave themselves. (although, sometimes, that seems like just a theory, and a bad one....)
why is it good for guns?
Maybe I'm cynical, but if every gun sold has to have electronic/computer receivers, might governments have keys to disable guns with those receivers? In some cases, that would negate the rights that gun ownership is supposed to secure, by removing checks on the ability of governments to take those rights. If government became despotic (as it often did when the words you quoted were written), the only mitigating factor was the ability of citizens to arm themselves against it. Negate that, and governments could do whatever they want, a state of affairs that the Constitution was designed to prevent.
The technology has good and safe uses, but it puts a lot of powers in the hands of people who can't be trusted with that much power - which is to say, anyone.
I think that that would probably warrant a YRO.
The ability to monitor random individual movements sans warrant changes the expectation of privacy one has in public substantially. While everyone could do this, the cost (and the number of people required) limits it to almost no one, and so people expect that their schedules, etc. are private. When the police can monitor anyone without warrant, the expectations of what one can do in public change considerably. The legal approval allows its use in many more circumstances than previously expected. If its use becomes widespread, the "expectations of privacy" change, and thus the actions one can take in public and thus the rights one has also change. Hence, YR (everywhere).
My purchases and movements are public - someone following me could have access to them. However, that would require someone actually following me and gaining that knowledge. While one does expect actions done in public to be public, no one knows (or used to know, anyway) everything one has done in public - thus the expectation of privacy when the laws were written is different because it assumed human limitations. The aggregation of one's movement and actions elevates the expectation of privacy - it would require someone devoting their life to knowing yours, and so is an unreasonable expectation by the individual.
When Lexus offered to sell bulk telephone and address information, there was a large hue and cry because data that was public was aggrgated into a form that allowed someone with little difficulty to contact almost anyone. Obviously, a lot of people believed that the database violated their expectations of privacy, even though the data was public. While someone could have acquired that data, the aggregation (and to be fair, mass availability of cosequent data) violated the expectations of privacy for most people.
Individual actions in public have no expectation of privacy. Aggregated individual actions (cumulative descriptions or analysis of the actions of individual, particularly at levels of detail requiring dedicated personnel), however, seem to have precisely that expectation. The (public general) knowledge of surveillance capacities also affects what individuals do in what arenas - people don't expect someone to follow them for days on end, so even though they would expect someone to have seen some of their actions, they would not reasonably expect someone to have known their actions for weeks on end. The example quoted in the article description might not fit that because of the brevity of period (someone might follow you if you expose themselves to you), and the details are problematic, but there is an "expectation of privacy" - at some level - that differs for comprehensive or aggregated data from its constituent data points.
I don't know if "Identity theft" is legally theft, but I'll take a stab. Theft is taking someone else's proberty while depriving them of it as well. In illegal copying of music or movies, etc., the item being taken is the exclusive license to distribute and profit from a work - is this property? If it is, then mass distribution of a work might be considered theft, although not necessarily the copying. However, the "object" being "stolen" is a right, which usually isn't treated as a stolen object; objects exist independently of the involved parties, while the licence exists only within the bounds of an agreement between parties (the holder, the gov't, and the people).
Identity theft, however, fits the definition of theft better. The person using someone's else identity will prevent that person from doing what they should (based on their actions) be able to - by running up debts, the person misrepresenting himself deprives the misrepresented of the use of his identity. The identity is not a license from the gov't, but something existing independently of it (the gov't may validate it, but since people exist independently of it, their identity is not contingent on the gov't).
As the story on /. discussed, Intel and AMD seem to be going very quietly ahead with their Palladium-class chips - what about the presence of installed DRM on the new class of dual-core chips? If it's there, then you probably won't be accelerating your burning of anything to DVD by using the new chips.
while the distinction you're making is correct, you are in fact depriving the copyright holder of something - his legal right to control the distribution of his work. Copyright gives him a limited licence to control non-fair use distribution and copying of the work - without that licence there is far less incentive for many to produce the work. The person copying it has decided that they rather than the copyright holder should have that right - since the licence is exclusive, if someone takes it, they have in fact deprived the copyright holder of something.
This isn't to justify many of the questionable parts of copyright law or the RIAA's "logic" (or the inconsistency - taking artists' and users' copyright privileges is not theft but copying the music is) - but it is salient to note that people who copy music and set it out for mass distribution are doing something which fits the definition of "theft".
A Darwin Award is devoted to something similar. An Australian hotel (for some reason) had a contest to see who could drink the most - I don't think the "winner" survived.
While the concept of drinking for charity sounds fun, it would be a really unfortunate way to die (indirectly) from the tsunami. T
Forbidding children from doing these things (sex, drugs, alcohol) through the government hasn't made the problems these things create go away. Since alcohol, cigarettes, and sex all appear in advertising (either implied or explicitly), kids are simultaneously getting two messages: 1) Sex (or alcohol, or cigarettes, or video games) will make you happy/attractive/popular. 2) ...but not for you. If making something forbidden has made fewer people want it, I'd like to know. Mostly, these policies and mindsets lead to people unable to deal with the things they want in a reasonable matter (or to know why they want them) - they deal with their desires subconsciously because the conscious knows the law, but the subconscious controls the desires, and usually wins. They can't analyze their desires, can't understand them, can't find reasonable ways to deal with them - they must either obey or disobey. Once people decide to pursue these desires, they are unlikely to be sensible about their actions, because people don't consume happiness in moderation; the rational that tells them when to stop has already been discarded and is out of the game.
The law will likely be hard to enforce (or, if actually enforced, will pull resources from enforcement of other laws). The law helps create more demand for violent games while being unlikely to hinder access to them. Kids that obey the law (or their parents) won't get the games, but those that don't will find ways to get them, and become more popular in the process (by providing access to the forbidden for others), thus ensuring an unhealthy feedback loop. (forbidden things will get you what you want, but only if you don't think about what you do want).
Finally, if parents care, kids are probably less likely to either want to play the games or to disobey their parents (if they have the money to do what they want). However, if they believe the gov't will prevent their child from gaining access to the games, they may not deal with it, and they will be hit with something they didn't see coming. Parents that don't care won't be able to stop them from getting the games (and aren't dealing with it now). I don't see this law being able to do what parents haven't been able to do before.
Those of us who don't have children still have to deal with the messes laws make of them. Making things forbidden to some and desirable for all only ensures unhealthy habits (and a society unable to deal reasonably with its desires) for years to come, the consequences of which are a "gift" to all.
The invisible hand of the market has been telling people that drinks and cigarettes will make them attractive, popular and sexy for a hundred years, at least. All the age restrictions have done is to insure that the children of today have a nice unhealthy attraction to them (mixed, of course, with a little self-loathing, so that you'll keep consuming even when you know the things that they seel are bad for you). Age restrictions make the games more desirable, because they're forbidden to them; those kids that have them will be more pouplar than those who don't, thus making the unhealthy connection between forbidden games and popularity. Since these laws depend on parents having complete control over their children's lives (like the drug ads say), a state of reality which exists only when the children are in the womb, they can't stop kids from getting them if they want them - they only stop good kids from getting them, while reinforcing the implied connection between the things kids of that age want (happiness, popularity, confidence) and the things that these people are selling. Is it any wonder why we can't deal with sex or alcohol in a mature way? This will be no different.
You can't simultaneously tell people that something is great and will do all of these neat things for you and then tell kids, "But you can't have this." and expect them not to want it. Doing this makes sense if you can enforce it without making something else worse; since I don't think they can, and the lure of the forbidden will only make these games more popular while making it harder for parents to deal with, I don't think this makes sense.
Harlan Ellison has multiple good stories about the TV industry, at least one of which discusses his experiences with it during the production of The Starlost, which was mangled into unrecognizability during its (short) run on TV. While Ellison received a writing award for the best script of the year for the opener, he had to avoid attempts by the studios to suborn him into scabbing. The story also describes the experiences of other authors who have had their work shredded on the gears of TV production (since Ellison might be viewed as cantankerous by people, he discusses others who might be considered more reasonable).
As Stephen King said in a summary of Ellison's The Glass Teat, TV is a teat, but one that exudes poisoned milk. While King intended the summary to refer to the viewers, it may refer well to those who try to write for TV. In the movies, very few books remain unscathed; often the conversion involves someting like body-snatching where the soul of the book is removed but the form remains. while at other times the movies aren't so kind. The list of writings smeared into gelatin by Hollywood in legion, and LeGuin probably should have known of them. Money is nice, and perhaps the hope of a wider audience for your works, but the latter is probably only a hope.
If you sell your books for money (I didn't RTA, so I don't know what her relationship to the miniseries was), experience should indicate that what they make will probably not be your work. If the money is good enough, that's OK, but don't expect integrity out of the production.
...then perhaps people would be more OK with it, because your logic holds. (People see movies with stars in them, thogh the stars change.) It doesn't, however, explain away the FF movie, Waterworld, The Postman, and (probably) Alexander - movies which failed and cost obscene amounts to fail. None of these movies had any real star power, yet all of them cost more than $80 M (The Postman was the cheapest, at $88 M). The only counterexample I can think of is T2, which was nicknamed Judgment Day because of the amount of time it would take to return its $96 M production cost. (Apparently, we've already been judged - I think it took 2 or 3 weeks to get its money back).
Movies with stars make some sense - at least people can see where the money went. Most of the great money losers have had no such obvious resources. It is one thing to fail trying something orginal which would be laudable, but that's not something Hollywood does well. Even if they were somehow trying to be original, you might want a little more control over the pursestrings - you don't start cutting lumber with the branch you're standing on. It made no sense to risk that much money, since by the time you were done, there was no chance to make it back. Looking at this as an untrained person, I have to wonder, "What the hell were they thinking?"
There is also the bonus that money spent on stars is not spent on writing, thus leading to movies that people see the first weekend (because of the star) and which then drop like a stone (because the story requires drug use by the viewers to gain any coherence). The SNL movies are very good at this (with lower-end, stars-in-training) - they write stories by committee, all of whom should have been committed to either a jail or an mental hospital. Movies without stars spent the money someplace - sometimes on nothing worthwhile, sometimes on a coherent plot and character development - hence the bias against movies with lots of stars.
I don't know about you, but ticket prices here in Columbus have only increased over the past few years as these commercials have increased as well, along with revenue. If the added commercials are subsidizing the movies, that would mean without them prices would go up and fewer people would see the movies; depending on the rate customers stop showiing and how fast ticket prices increase with decreasing customer flow, they might make more or less money or stay even. Of course, the commercials also help to drive away movie viewers, so they may cost money in the long run (probably not, but...). In addition, the benefit to me from watching a movie hasn't increased - I've stopped going because there's nothing I want to see. So, the goad of "if we didn't shove these commercials down your throat, this crap would cost even more" doesn't really sound like an effective tactic - if you make it more painful for your customers to give you their money, they will stop and give it to others instead.
A better approach might be to make movies that can actually make money - you know, movies that cost less than $150 M and that don't suck. The cost of hyping the movies and the cost of hiring big names wouldn't be wasted if they could actually write better stories, but they can't, and they don't really seem to care. Hollywood seems to breed and coddle incompetents and to reject people who can actually do their jobs, because otherwise their workers wouldn't need the "assistance" of untrained hacks mascarading as studio officials. Furthermore, studios are willing to give pliable incompetents large sums of money, a strategy which resulted in every major movie studio flirting with (or dating, or married to) bankruptcy at one time or another. Changing this might help their profitability more than throwing more ads (that your customers don't want) at your viewers.
This doesn't justify copyright infringement on any scale, but the more you decide that you have an inherent right to your customers' money and that they'll eat whatever crap you serve, the more your customers will feel justified in robbing you blind.
The high point of Congo (for those foolish enough to have seen it) were the SGI laptops in the abandoned base in the jungle. Unfortunately, they were also the only high point (by high, I mean above sea level)...
Roads, they use. Also, sewers and utilities (although only implicitly through whatever housing they have - and they pay for them, also implicitly). The military protects them - since they occupy US territory. Police - not unless they commit a crime - if you're here illegally, you're unlikely to call the police to report a robbery, because they'll ask for lots of info you don't have or which will get you sent home. Same with fire. Hospitals are the major item that illegal immigrants will use (and the major cost), and they're the main cost for legal residents as well.
If lack of contribution to society is the determinant of who should stay and who should go, there are a lot of others who need to leave based on economic contributions in addition to or even before illegal immigrants.
the people that established the US (while their concept of "people" was limited) believed that the rights we enjoy devolve to all - only we decided to implement them. If those rights don't exist for all, then they may eventually not exist for us (if they aren't inherent to being human but dependent on gov't, the gov't can take those freedoms away at will, which is why we are here in the first place). While I don't agree with Iraq (and don't trust W), the concept invoked by W of helping others to obtain freedom is not a bad idea, and may be the best defense of our own freedoms.
Illegal immigrants do pay taxes (sales tax, for starters) but can't use the benefits that money pays for - thus they may be a net gain, not a net loss. If you were looking for people who stay here but contribute nothing, there are many with no other justification other than place of birth for whom the right to stay here is included. While they generate many of the same difficulties as illegal immigrants, they consume lots of services, which makes such people almost certainly a net loss in terms of revenue. Some corporations act similarly, offshoring their headquarters to avoid tax here while reaping the benefits of a workforce, an infrastructure, and a financial system for which they did not pay. If you want "pay to play", then illegal immigration may not be the best place to start.
I think the problem with illegal immigration is that people who don't have any of the duties to maintain the society and the political system but who enjoy its freedoms may not recognize what those freedoms cost; of course, that could be said to be true of many of those with US citizenship as well...
The US has huge debts, both personal and governmental (the government's debts can be divided into what we've already spent and what we have promised to spend). People regularly spend money they don't have (credit cards) or money they are counting on as investments (home equity) on God knows what. So now we're supposed to spend even more so that we can get nice shiny gadgets that are bleeding edge now and will be dull as a pebble in six months? That feeling of "look, I'm so cool." is somewhat more transient than the "joy" of sitting on a sewer grate watching the US and world economies dissolve in a rain of debt.
If buying new gadgets doesn't add more debt, then money is coming from somewhere - the gadget we "should" be getting would be displacing whatever we're spending our money on now. No net gain there.
Bankrupting yourself (or the nation) seems like an awfully high price to pay to get cool new gadgets.
The problem with the above argument is not the lack of money in our educational system (as stated in the article blurb, we spend more than many of those who did better). Lots of neighborhoods spend money on education - the ones that need the help, however, don't. Many of the places that do poorly do so because the property owners don't have the money to pay for schools - the property is worth far less and so at the same rate of taxation it generates less money. The property is worth less because it is undesirable, and many of the reasons correlate with the people there not having any money or ways to get it. So it may not be unwillingness to spend the money that is the problem - the people who need the money don't have it, and so can't give it to the schools. Attempts to level out this disparity (at least in OH) haven't worked out very well (the OH motto - "We love education - so long as we don't have to pay for it.")
(This also neglects places like Washington, DC, where lots of money is spent but so badly that it goes for nought.)
Parents and community are more generally important - if they don't view education and achievement as valuable, then all the money in the world won't make the children think that time spent on school is worth it. As long as the parents believe that they are in a fantasyland where physical and fiscal reality cease to exist, schools will not have the ability to make children well-equipped to deal with a world that ruthlessly enforces both physical and fiscal realities. I think money is important for education, but I understand its effect on education less than those of community and parents.
you can't spell BCS without BS.
If you can't be bothered to check your writing to see that it is easily understood by your readers, what makes anyone reading the email think that you actually thought hard about the content of the writing? If you can't be bothered to do easy little things, what makes one think that you've taken the time and effort to do the big and difficult tasks?
The point of writing is communication - if I have to get a translator and the fourteen-year-old "hacker" from down to the street to parse your writing, then I'm wasting a lot of time that could be spent on productive tasks. If you intend your writing as self-pleasuring, I'm sure there are some pornographic websites that will take your services. If you intend your writing to communicate actual thoughts and ideas, then you need to spend the time to do so clearly.
...you have to play by Real World rules.
People want different things. Some want low prices - some of them are dishonest, but most aren't, but they have lots of demands. Some want knowledge and service. The advantage of diversified economy is that all of these people can be served at once. The downside is that sometimes we think we can have everything and not pay for it.
Best Buy chose to appeal to the customer base they now have. They didn't make money on knowing their products better or by treating customers well - they chose to make their money by promising lower prices and then trying to screw the more naive of those who show up. This works for a little while, but eventually people realize what you're doing, and behave accordingly. The people who want service or knowledge or low prices or just dignity go elsewhere (and they tell others to do the same), and BB gets the customers that only care about low prices, and who are willing to be evil to get them.
BB can't have it both ways. They made their money by being the lowest priced retailer for electronics and by being dishonest with their customers. People are behaving accordingly - they are getting the customers who are willing to be dishonest with them. If you play at screwing your customers, don't expect my sympathy when the favor is returned.