The E.U. is the world's biggest democracy, except maybe India.
When the EU gives its parliament legislative power, then perhaps it can start being considered for "democratic" status. Until then, however, it remains a trade organization.
It all depends on what you mean by "democracy". Before you can discuss the term, you need to define it.
You can define it such that no nations are democracies. No "democracy" I know of gives the right of vote to infants, so, clearly, a large segment of the population is disenfranchised. Not good in a proper democracy.
On the other hand, you can define it so that it covers nations that are not generally considered democracies. You could enfranchise only a small percentage of your population, such as, perhaps, "only people who were born here and whose parents and grandparents were born here". Would this be a democracy? Would it depend on how many recent immigrants there were?
Was the US a democracy before women got the right to vote?
As the number of US citizens getting disenfranchised through comitting felonies increases, will the US gradually stop being a democracy?
Modern democracies like to make a point out of not being "mob rules" or a "tyranny of the majority". The result of this is that it is considered healthy for a democracy to give unproportional power to minority groups (citizens in sparsely inhabited areas, ethnic minorities, etc.) and curbing the power of the simple majority. But in a true democracy, it should be one man one vote and the majority _should_ rule, shouldn't it?
In a "pure" democracy (i.e., the majority rules supreme), an ethnic white majority of, say, 51%, could decide to kill the 49% minority of blacks. Nothing should be able to stop them, because if it did, then the people wouldn't actually be ruling and it wouldn't be a democracy. In most current democracies, however, there are a large number of barriers in place to stop this from happening and most people consider this a good thing.
As for the alleged disenfranchisement of all of DC's inhabitants; living in the capital is in itself a very powerful position. If the US is a well-functioning democracy, they are more able than most to launch demonstrations and protests that will resound in the corridors of power. Take a quick look at the history of France and the power of Paris to change the course of its history if you doubt this. The king may have been supreme ruler, but it was a really bad idea for him to piss off the people of his capital. And this was in a time when public protest was not, in general, very well received.
I don't think that the ability to overpopulate your country should grant you more rights.
What you're implying is that the US should be ruled by Bill Gates, Donald Trump and a few hundred other wealthy folks. After all, the fact that "the people" has bred like rabbits shouldn't grant them any rights, right? While I've always wondered how meritocracy would fare on a larger scale, this does seem to me a bit of a dangerous experiment.
As a historical reason, this is reasonably correct. It does not serve as any kind of justification, however, once this ownership is challenged. What you need in this debate is justification for maintaining the status quo, not an explanation of how we got here in the first place.
Well, then let them build their own network! No, being serious here - there is a way to solve all of this. Someone needs to develop their own DNS-like system and while they are at it develop a alternative to HTTP (because this is what we are really talking about here isn't it folks, "teh web"). When they get this new system up and running they can just go ahead and run it on our TCP/IP networks if they'd like (for a fee). By no means however is this going to take DNS control from us here in the states, ours would just exist along side "theirs".
The necessary protocols tend to be open and free of licensing issues. Setting up an alternative network involves getting the wiring up (and it's there already - that's how these nations have net connections in the first place) and organizing national DNS systems.
It's not that this cannot be done, it's rather that going for a unilateral approach like this is likely to result in massive disruptions and chaos and this isn't a desirable outcome. It would be the internet equivalent of breaking off diplomatic relations, and no-one starts off negotiations by using their strongest weapon right off the bat. In stead, they start by trying to seek a diplomatic solution with compromises that everyone can live with.
From a US viewpoint, if "everyone else" is dead set on getting more international control over the net, then this is most certainly going to happen. The only question is how, exactly, it will happen. If the US play along, they might be able to effect a smooth transition in which many of their own interests are maintained. If they do not, then "everyone else" is likely to get together and build a network that works for them, then start using that. The US will necessarily follow, since it is completely unacceptable for a large number of US businesses to be locked out of the rest of the world, but when this happens, it will be entirely on the terms of those who built this new network.
Of course, the US may be gambling that the rest of the world isn't quite _that_ insistent and that they'll cave once they realize the US aren't interested in playing. And perhaps they're right - this rebellion has all the hallmarks of posturing for now.
Presumably, this is stored in an anonymous manner though? I assume that knowing the CC# (or its hash) won't give you the buyer's name? If so, it's far less insidious. They will only recognize you every time you buy something, and if you change your CC (or it gets renewed), they forget about you and start from scratch again.
All you can trust a large corporation to do is desire more money. IBM supports open source because wide adoption of open source would be beneficial to IBM's business model. If IBM can profit from wide-spread adoption of RFID, they will champion it. If IBM sees potential loss in wide-spread adoption of RFID, they will combat it. If neither is the case, they will ignore it. The only people in power who will look out for _your_ interests are those that you elect into public office. If RFID worries you, find an honest politician and vote for him. (Yes, I know that is a lot harder than just crossing one's fingers and hoping for IBM to bail us all out:-)
Theft has to do with having a possession at one instant and then being without that possession in the next instant, due to someone illegally removing the possession from you. This doesn't happen with copyright infringement. In fact, you're unlikely to ever find out it even took place.
It is a lot more like counterfeiting than it is theft. Counterfeiting is, in principle, just copyright infringement, except it's a special kind of copyright infringement that could bring down civilisation and so it carries penalties proportional to such consequences:-)
My argument isn't that they shouldn't be able to make a living, nor is it that you're necessarily entitled to get the product for free. My argument is that it's not theft. It's copyright infringement.
First, my argument is that copyright violation isn't theft. There is nothing in your post that attacks this argument. Second, your argument that the loss of one sale makes your effort naught is only true if you only had one potential customer and you lost this sale. If, on the other hand, you had 100 potential customers and you lost 50 of those sales, then presumably the 50 remaining sales still account for something more than naught. And, indeed, even if another 100,000 copied your product without paying, you would actually _still have_ the revenue from the 50 that did pay. The mind boggles at the very concept:-)
If a barber is cutting my hair, then most certainly he is cutting my hair for me specifically. How could he be cutting my hair for someone else? That just doesn't make sense if by "my hair" we mean hair that is actually on my head. He could presumably cut someone else's hair for someone else (namely for whoever whose hair it is that he's cutting) but that doesn't involve me at all so is of no interest to me. It makes little difference who it is, exactly, who ultimately loses money from my running off. If I'm not cheating the barber himself, I'm cheating his employer who is paying his wages. Identify theft sounds more like unlicensed borrowing than theft (and is most likely, technically, fraud), but it's not a field I have studied much so I wouldn't really know. Unlicensed copying isn't theft because you're not depriving the "victim" of something that they used to have but no longer have after your act. That someone chose to sink a lot of money into a development project doesn't in any way obligate you to give them any of _your_ money so your failure to do so isn't theft either.
Re:This sort of thing...
on
RIAA Sues a Child
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· Score: 5, Interesting
When someone cuts your hair, there is an actual person spending his own time attending to you specifically. When you run off, his time was spent for naught. This is why such an example might be called theft. When it comes to copyright infringement, it is usually you spending your time to make a copy onto your storage media. Noone has spent any of their time or resources on you specifically and so not paying them is nowhere near what can be called theft. The word is only used in an attempt to evoke an emotional response in the audience.
I have to wonder one thing. Isn't it possible that SM really is abuse?
Some times it will be, some times it will not. Like when you buy a used car, some times it's ok and some times it's fraud. Each case must obviously be judged on its own merits and in any case that's clearly illegal, the victim can resort to the legal system for satisfaction.
Violating the GPL is wrong because it attacks the freedom of other people, which is immoral. Pirating music is illegal, but for no good reason, so is not immoral. Therefore, the former gets bashed while the latter is ignored or even encouraged. This is hypocritical only if you subscribe to the world view that "illegal is always wrong and legal is always right", but I expect that many of the posters you refer to do not.
The responsibility of a private transportation industry isn't to transport lot of people for free. Their responsibility is to build an effecient system of transportation that meets the needs of the market. The benefit of a private transportation sector in an evacuation situation would have been to have a fleet of vehicles and an effecient organisation at the ready for when the govt needed to go shopping for transportation services. Whether they failed or succeeded at this depends entirely upon the extent to which the govt (local, state or federal) actually did request such services. If they did not, of course, then the blame lies elsewhere. If they did, then they would presumably find that a transport fleet honed by decades of fierce competition and innovation will be more effective at lower cost than what would have been the case had the industry been state run.
I don't think it's illegal (yet) to install software for someone else, so I don't see how this would apply directly to the case. The installer installed the software, and is aware of the restrictions imposed on him by the EULA for doing so. There are no legal requirements put on the user by the installation EULA, unless the same EULA is displayed every time the software is launched. Since the user has no license restricions, him ignoring them is not illegal.
Even if your legislative system is only moderately functional, provoking unreasonable laws into having ridiculous consequences (as suggested here) can be a viable way of getting the original law amended to something more reasonable. As it stands, it wold probably suffice to hire in someone to do your software installation for you (aka "outsourcing") and thereafter claim that _you_ did not agree to any EULAs. You will have a receipt proving that someone else did the job. When they are dragged to court, they have a reasonable defense in that helping other people install software should be a legal business activity.
I remember seeing "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" (also TM I'm sure) when I was in the UK, but that's about it. In Norway, we either get only real butter or else our laws are so lax they can call even synthetic butter simply "butter":-)
It might be that I saw it in some US series or a movie as a bit of product placement. I am quite sure it was a satirical piece though, so probably not.
Actually, the box they are trying to check off is "open format". MS is working overtime to convince the world that any format that is based on XML is an open format. Of course, that makes about as much sense as claiming that any binary format that uses ASN.1 is open also, something which is clearly not the case. In the future, expect to see "open" formats from MS - look elsewhere for formats that actually _are_ open. Reminds me a bit of a product I must have seen in a sci fi movie once: "Real" "Butter" (TM) - which is clearly neither real nor actual butter:-)
Slashdot Mirror
The E.U. is the world's biggest democracy, except maybe India.
When the EU gives its parliament legislative power, then perhaps it can start being considered for "democratic" status. Until then, however, it remains a trade organization.
It all depends on what you mean by "democracy". Before you can discuss the term, you need to define it.
You can define it such that no nations are democracies. No "democracy" I know of gives the right of vote to infants, so, clearly, a large segment of the population is disenfranchised. Not good in a proper democracy.
On the other hand, you can define it so that it covers nations that are not generally considered democracies. You could enfranchise only a small percentage of your population, such as, perhaps, "only people who were born here and whose parents and grandparents were born here". Would this be a democracy? Would it depend on how many recent immigrants there were?
Was the US a democracy before women got the right to vote?
As the number of US citizens getting disenfranchised through comitting felonies increases, will the US gradually stop being a democracy?
Modern democracies like to make a point out of not being "mob rules" or a "tyranny of the majority". The result of this is that it is considered healthy for a democracy to give unproportional power to minority groups (citizens in sparsely inhabited areas, ethnic minorities, etc.) and curbing the power of the simple majority. But in a true democracy, it should be one man one vote and the majority _should_ rule, shouldn't it?
In a "pure" democracy (i.e., the majority rules supreme), an ethnic white majority of, say, 51%, could decide to kill the 49% minority of blacks. Nothing should be able to stop them, because if it did, then the people wouldn't actually be ruling and it wouldn't be a democracy. In most current democracies, however, there are a large number of barriers in place to stop this from happening and most people consider this a good thing.
As for the alleged disenfranchisement of all of DC's inhabitants; living in the capital is in itself a very powerful position. If the US is a well-functioning democracy, they are more able than most to launch demonstrations and protests that will resound in the corridors of power. Take a quick look at the history of France and the power of Paris to change the course of its history if you doubt this. The king may have been supreme ruler, but it was a really bad idea for him to piss off the people of his capital. And this was in a time when public protest was not, in general, very well received.
I don't think that the ability to overpopulate your country should grant you more rights.
What you're implying is that the US should be ruled by Bill Gates, Donald Trump and a few hundred other wealthy folks. After all, the fact that "the people" has bred like rabbits shouldn't grant them any rights, right? While I've always wondered how meritocracy would fare on a larger scale, this does seem to me a bit of a dangerous experiment.
America controls it because America built it.
As a historical reason, this is reasonably correct. It does not serve as any kind of justification, however, once this ownership is challenged. What you need in this debate is justification for maintaining the status quo, not an explanation of how we got here in the first place.
Well, then let them build their own network! No, being serious here - there is a way to solve all of this. Someone needs to develop their own DNS-like system and while they are at it develop a alternative to HTTP (because this is what we are really talking about here isn't it folks, "teh web"). When they get this new system up and running they can just go ahead and run it on our TCP/IP networks if they'd like (for a fee). By no means however is this going to take DNS control from us here in the states, ours would just exist along side "theirs".
The necessary protocols tend to be open and free of licensing issues. Setting up an alternative network involves getting the wiring up (and it's there already - that's how these nations have net connections in the first place) and organizing national DNS systems.
It's not that this cannot be done, it's rather that going for a unilateral approach like this is likely to result in massive disruptions and chaos and this isn't a desirable outcome. It would be the internet equivalent of breaking off diplomatic relations, and no-one starts off negotiations by using their strongest weapon right off the bat. In stead, they start by trying to seek a diplomatic solution with compromises that everyone can live with.
From a US viewpoint, if "everyone else" is dead set on getting more international control over the net, then this is most certainly going to happen. The only question is how, exactly, it will happen. If the US play along, they might be able to effect a smooth transition in which many of their own interests are maintained. If they do not, then "everyone else" is likely to get together and build a network that works for them, then start using that. The US will necessarily follow, since it is completely unacceptable for a large number of US businesses to be locked out of the rest of the world, but when this happens, it will be entirely on the terms of those who built this new network.
Of course, the US may be gambling that the rest of the world isn't quite _that_ insistent and that they'll cave once they realize the US aren't interested in playing. And perhaps they're right - this rebellion has all the hallmarks of posturing for now.
Presumably, this is stored in an anonymous manner though? I assume that knowing the CC# (or its hash) won't give you the buyer's name?
If so, it's far less insidious. They will only recognize you every time you buy something, and if you change your CC (or it gets renewed), they forget about you and start from scratch again.
All you can trust a large corporation to do is desire more money. IBM supports open source because wide adoption of open source would be beneficial to IBM's business model. If IBM can profit from wide-spread adoption of RFID, they will champion it. If IBM sees potential loss in wide-spread adoption of RFID, they will combat it. If neither is the case, they will ignore it. :-)
The only people in power who will look out for _your_ interests are those that you elect into public office. If RFID worries you, find an honest politician and vote for him. (Yes, I know that is a lot harder than just crossing one's fingers and hoping for IBM to bail us all out
Theft has to do with having a possession at one instant and then being without that possession in the next instant, due to someone illegally removing the possession from you. This doesn't happen with copyright infringement. In fact, you're unlikely to ever find out it even took place.
It is a lot more like counterfeiting than it is theft. Counterfeiting is, in principle, just copyright infringement, except it's a special kind of copyright infringement that could bring down civilisation and so it carries penalties proportional to such consequences :-)
My argument isn't that they shouldn't be able to make a living, nor is it that you're necessarily entitled to get the product for free. My argument is that it's not theft. It's copyright infringement.
First, my argument is that copyright violation isn't theft. There is nothing in your post that attacks this argument. :-)
Second, your argument that the loss of one sale makes your effort naught is only true if you only had one potential customer and you lost this sale. If, on the other hand, you had 100 potential customers and you lost 50 of those sales, then presumably the 50 remaining sales still account for something more than naught.
And, indeed, even if another 100,000 copied your product without paying, you would actually _still have_ the revenue from the 50 that did pay. The mind boggles at the very concept
If a barber is cutting my hair, then most certainly he is cutting my hair for me specifically. How could he be cutting my hair for someone else? That just doesn't make sense if by "my hair" we mean hair that is actually on my head. He could presumably cut someone else's hair for someone else (namely for whoever whose hair it is that he's cutting) but that doesn't involve me at all so is of no interest to me. It makes little difference who it is, exactly, who ultimately loses money from my running off. If I'm not cheating the barber himself, I'm cheating his employer who is paying his wages.
Identify theft sounds more like unlicensed borrowing than theft (and is most likely, technically, fraud), but it's not a field I have studied much so I wouldn't really know.
Unlicensed copying isn't theft because you're not depriving the "victim" of something that they used to have but no longer have after your act. That someone chose to sink a lot of money into a development project doesn't in any way obligate you to give them any of _your_ money so your failure to do so isn't theft either.
When someone cuts your hair, there is an actual person spending his own time attending to you specifically. When you run off, his time was spent for naught. This is why such an example might be called theft. When it comes to copyright infringement, it is usually you spending your time to make a copy onto your storage media. Noone has spent any of their time or resources on you specifically and so not paying them is nowhere near what can be called theft. The word is only used in an attempt to evoke an emotional response in the audience.
US: I don't have a nose.
Hmmm . . . I could have sworn it was "I don't have a nose, you know what I'm saying?" . . .
I have to wonder one thing. Isn't it possible that SM really is abuse?
Some times it will be, some times it will not. Like when you buy a used car, some times it's ok and some times it's fraud. Each case must obviously be judged on its own merits and in any case that's clearly illegal, the victim can resort to the legal system for satisfaction.
Actually, it has been documented that soup nazis make excellent soup. I know it because I saw it on television.
Violating the GPL is wrong because it attacks the freedom of other people, which is immoral. Pirating music is illegal, but for no good reason, so is not immoral. Therefore, the former gets bashed while the latter is ignored or even encouraged. This is hypocritical only if you subscribe to the world view that "illegal is always wrong and legal is always right", but I expect that many of the posters you refer to do not.
Java (the language) isn't particularly central to it at least. They're basically trying to cash in on name recognition.
The responsibility of a private transportation industry isn't to transport lot of people for free. Their responsibility is to build an effecient system of transportation that meets the needs of the market.
The benefit of a private transportation sector in an evacuation situation would have been to have a fleet of vehicles and an effecient organisation at the ready for when the govt needed to go shopping for transportation services. Whether they failed or succeeded at this depends entirely upon the extent to which the govt (local, state or federal) actually did request such services. If they did not, of course, then the blame lies elsewhere.
If they did, then they would presumably find that a transport fleet honed by decades of fierce competition and innovation will be more effective at lower cost than what would have been the case had the industry been state run.
May I ask what CMM rating (if any) you guys are at?
Wouldn't they also lie when presented with a bribe? "Hmm ... what do I tell this guy to make him come back and give me more flowers later ...?" :-)
I don't think it's illegal (yet) to install software for someone else, so I don't see how this would apply directly to the case. The installer installed the software, and is aware of the restrictions imposed on him by the EULA for doing so. There are no legal requirements put on the user by the installation EULA, unless the same EULA is displayed every time the software is launched. Since the user has no license restricions, him ignoring them is not illegal.
Even if your legislative system is only moderately functional, provoking unreasonable laws into having ridiculous consequences (as suggested here) can be a viable way of getting the original law amended to something more reasonable.
As it stands, it wold probably suffice to hire in someone to do your software installation for you (aka "outsourcing") and thereafter claim that _you_ did not agree to any EULAs. You will have a receipt proving that someone else did the job. When they are dragged to court, they have a reasonable defense in that helping other people install software should be a legal business activity.
I remember seeing "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" (also TM I'm sure) when I was in the UK, but that's about it. In Norway, we either get only real butter or else our laws are so lax they can call even synthetic butter simply "butter" :-)
It might be that I saw it in some US series or a movie as a bit of product placement. I am quite sure it was a satirical piece though, so probably not.
Actually, the box they are trying to check off is "open format". MS is working overtime to convince the world that any format that is based on XML is an open format. Of course, that makes about as much sense as claiming that any binary format that uses ASN.1 is open also, something which is clearly not the case. In the future, expect to see "open" formats from MS - look elsewhere for formats that actually _are_ open. :-)
Reminds me a bit of a product I must have seen in a sci fi movie once: "Real" "Butter" (TM) - which is clearly neither real nor actual butter