Dude, most of these, excluding Google, are already out of business or do not have any land-line outgoing call capability, which is what a lot of people use Skype for (cheap overseas calls to family etc).
Some "alternatives" these are. You should check your "solutions" before posting them.
It is also possible to have a system whereby justice occurs in the end as a result of the pre-set rules of the Universe and a large enough amount of repetitions (re-incarnations and the like).
It is also possible that such conditions do not require an omni-potent creator, merely one with great foresight or even just a random chance at the outset of things.
It didn't happen, at least for any practical purposes. DNA "evidence" begs immediately questions about the source of the DNA (even if it was his, it could be his hair on a videotape). Modern technology combined with the sort of budgets the US has at its disposal and absolute desperation/fixation its upper echelons had on Bin Laden render any pictures or videos woefully insufficient as "evidence" (particularly in digital original format). And there is bound to be very few unbiased eyewitnesses (more like zero).
These factors combined rendered the actual body the only sort of evidence that could withstand scrutiny. Even delaying the "burial" by freezing him (and to Hell with "Islamic tradition") would have been a better choice.
As it stands I can only conclude that one of the following is the case: the whole thing was a desperate PR stunt, they got a wrong guy and realized it after the announcement was made, they massacred him beyond recognition - even with dental records, he is captured alive and they want to torture him to death in secret - at which point the US is in the same category as Al-Queda and should be treated as such by all civilized people, i.e. as a criminal pariah whose agents and citizens should be shot on sight everywhere and imprisoned for life if they manage to surrender.
None of these options are what one would call a "victory" for the US. The "burial at sea" has by its lone self effectively negated any positive effects of this whole operation could have had. What's worse, it did so permanently and irreversibly.
Except, of course, it is in the best financial interest of both the "lawmakers" and the "law enforcement" (not to mention all the private ex-cop/ex-military contractors involved) to lower the speed limit further. More revenue that way and the "voter" has no real recourse anyhow (corporate stooge A vs corporate stooge B). The usual arguments about how "speed kills" and "fuel economy" can be successfully utilized all the way down to speed somewhere around 0mph.
So, let the good times (for a select few at the expense of many) roll!
Right. Poor wittlle innocent "angels" all and they just don't know what they are doing, the witless darlings! But when they cross that one second past midnight on their 14th birthday in this country, oh wait 16 in that country, no wait, 18 in that one over there, no wait 21 in... anyhow, then they will become fully capable of "consent", just like that! From Age of Drooling Ignorance and Complete Dependence on Their Betters, to the Age of Wizened Wisdom! One second flat! I wonder if there are any special effects, like lightning or howling winds or something that surely must attend such a momentous occasion, no?
As to porn, you've apparently never attended a school with 10 year old boys.... and then people wonder why all the "laws" are so fucked up? I would venture to guess that reality not being a consideration in their crafting has something to do with it....
Somewhere, someone made money, or did it to share the exploitation. Either motivation exploits children.
Yes, particularly photo-shopped pictures and hand-drawn cartoons, all of which are now a criminal offense in most countries, a natural and logical consequence of the "thoughtcrime" "logic" you are so fond of. And then there is the "self-inflicted" "molestation" of kids with webcams and cell-phone cameras, who "exploit" themselves, for which, according to the likes of you, they need to be punished.
The actual damage, of course, has nothing whatsoever with any pictures but with actual physical assaults on actual children, ratio of which to all the pictures in circulation is well below 1%. You of course assume, like all demagogues, that all kids are innocent "angels" and not by any chance complete perverts by age 9, an idea which as anyone who's been a kid and who is not a total hypocrite can attest to having no connection to reality whatsoever. It is just that most "holier than thou" types work hard on their selective amnesia.
But then there are extra-judicial powers to be had, billions of dollars to be wasted and cushy government careers with 6-figure salaries to be enjoyed by thousands of "cyber-crime" "investigators". Not to mention that sexual gratification from destroying all the lives of all these "undesirables" whom they randomly finger and the contents of whose decrepit, virus-infected PCs provide such a gold mine of "evidence".
And that "evil" you speak of? That's people who think like you. And you. Evil.
You can communicate whatever you want to communicate. What you cannot do is reproduce someone else's work.
I finally realized that you are here to offer us the titillating game of trying to count how many self-contradictions you can cram into your posts!
So here we go: self-contradiction #1 above: reproducing for others is a form communication! Therefore if I can "communicate whatever I want to communicate" I can also communicate my reproductions, no?
You can make your own semi-conductor, but you cannot make a Xeon X5560. That belongs to Intel.
Self-contradiction #2: You claim that what I do belongs to Intel, but you claim that Intel is not restricting what I do! Which is it?
They developed it and they patented it.
Therefore they get to control what I do, even though I have not agreed to any relationship with them of any kind, no? The description of such an arrangement is: "master-slave".
You can sign whatever song you want to sing, but you cannot perform Nirvana's greatest hits.
Self-contradiction #3: You claim (just a few sentences earlier) that "I can communicate whatever I want to communicate" and yet here you say that I cannot communicate a song by Nirvana.
Yet copyright law does not stop the hundreds of cover bands that play in bars every weekend
Patent falsity #1: They all pay fees to various "artist agencies" lest they are in violation. Oh, you did not know that, did you? Then just so you know: your dentist's office and that elevator company pay also for "public performance" of music, lest they get raided by RIAA.
Nobody is going to come beat you over the head if you want to play some Zepplin on your guitar at a backyard party.
Patent falsity #2: kindergartens and schools get "beaten over the head" over what kids sing at their "performances" for the parents. See for example.
However if you want to redo the songs and press a CD, you need to pay the people who came up with them in the first place.
Illogical assumption #1: I have to pay for their "labour" yet they do not have to pay for any "labour" of thousands of people who came up with all the innovations in music dating all the way back to Ancient Egypt. So the last one is the sucker, no?
Conversely, if I don't pay, what makes you think that someone will pay me? What if don't even ask for money?
If you don't want to pay, find something else to play. I mean, if you're such a creative type, what's the problem? Make your own music.
Self-contradiction #4: if I can "communicate whatever I want to" then how come you are deciding what music I can play?
I'm not claiming that people have a right to control others. They do have a right to seek compensation from those who steal from them. Our society works based on contracts. Our legal system determines which contracts are reasonable and enforceable, and which ones aren't. The fact of the matter is that someone who copies a song never entered into a contract with anyone. They are bucking the system. That's fine. They are entitled to. Just like they're entitled to whine when they're fined. Not liking the rules does not exempt a person from them.
Bonus points if you can count how many patently false and self-contradictory ideas are in this passage!
Hint: its more than three and less then twenty (but not much).
I hereby suggest we call it the slaver philosophy, because the basis of argument is that you have a right to control others if you feel you can describe some benefit arising from it.
This is very insightful.
For some time now I felt that there is an intrinsic link between the "intellectual property" scam and attempts at a new kinds of enslavement and that is the very reason why great many people, including myself, have such an instinctively negative reaction to the idea. I have presented many arguments in my other posts on the topic to that effect over the years. And as the time progresses and I give more thought to it, this feeling is becoming stronger all the time.
Sometimes however one encounters a statement that acts as a focal point for all the others to coalesce around. Yours was one such.
Slavery? Right. Being expected to pay for music makes you a slave. Seriously?
Quite so, I am afraid. Your "precondition" for these vaunted "creative activities" of yours is that we submit to strict controls of what we can say, sing or write down. The term for it is: slavery. The fact that our would be master also lets us physically roam about does not change this in any way.
Put in another way, if the precondition of your "contributing" to our society is that everyone else has to do what you tell them, i.e. be enslaved by you, then the price for your "contribution" is far too high, thank you very much. We will somehow squeak by without your earth shattering, no doubt, "contributions". Most of us that is, for the other kind you should check out some BDSM dating sites.
How are recording studios, engineers and everyone else involved in the PRODUCTION of music, akin to those supporting slavery?
Their income depends upon restricting natural freedoms (i.e. freedom to communicate with one another) of not only their "customers" but also all the bystanders and they utilize the power of the state, including violence, to enforce their control.
Slavery. Simple as that.
What rights are being stripped from you by expecting you to pay 99 cents to listen to some music, as many times as you want?
My right to communicate freely. If I sing that song to an audience, I am in violation of my master's rules. If I play this song to an audience, I am in violation. If I transmit this song to a friend, I am in violation.
Furthermore, if I hear that song through someone's window and, thanks to my savant memory, I can play it back to some friends of mine, I am in violation. Note that in this last case I did not even ask for the song to be played to me.
Etc and so on.
On the other hand, when you steal music, you're stripping the artist, composer, sound engineer, et al of their right to make a living from their labor.
There is no such thing as a universal "right" to be compensated for labour. Otherwise you would be paying me for my cleaning my house. The only labour that is being compensated is the one which someone is agreeing to pay for, before hand.
On the other hand the right to freely communicate is the very basis of civilization and the litmus test of other freedoms in the supposedly "free" societies.
Who is the slave driver now? Oops, did I just flip the script on you? Yup, that's right.
No, you only made yourself look more stupid.
When you steal from an arist, you are enslaving them. You are telling them that they are worthless, and that their contributions of music (or movies) are worthless. Good job buddy.
It is usually a lost cause to point out to a slavery advocate that his definition of "steal" diverges somewhat from the norm, but I will do that anyway: get a dictionary.
As to "worth" of art, its in the eye of the beholder. In fact usually what me mean by "art" is something a person wishes to propagate free of charge as far and as wide as possible since the whole point is to communicate one's expression of one's state of mind to others. Trying to make others pay for it is somewhat counter-productive to the idea.
But then there is something called "kitsch" which is the domain of people trying to make a buck by pretending to be artists...
If you have a problem with the DISTRIBUTION mechanism, come up with another one.... Come up with a better mouse trap...
Here we go again. No, the problem is not distribution but your attempts at controlling what people communicate to one another. Information by its very nature is distributed by sharing it.
What you want is a method for artists (as opposed to charlatans and middlemen) to be gi
When I'm willing to cooperate? You're the uncooperative one who apparently believes that you do not need to compensate people for their time. I notice how you conveniently left out of your reply any mention to all of the people who make a living producing music, and their entitlement to be compensated for their time.
And look at all those chain makers and shackle providers, specialized shipping companies and auction houses who would go bust if slavery was abolished! They are entitled to be compensated for their time! They have kids to put through college, mortgages to pay down, yachts to buy...
You're selfish, and I'll even go so far as to say that you're a prick.
Damn, selfish, revolting slaves. Why won't they understand the rigors of commerce and submit peacefully to the rules of their betters!?
The reality is that nobody needs you. If you are not going to contribute to society, and instead just leech off of others, you're dead weight. You're the worthless member of the group.
Damn right, no one needs them abolitionists! What a menace to business! Why, whole plantations would go under if they had their way! Just think of the losses to productivity! They contribute nothing to society but whining about "rights" and "liberties" and the like poppy-cock! Not like a God-fearing plantation owner, who is personally responsible for clothing of thousands with his cotton!
the socially responsible solution is to come up with a different method.... Until then, you're full of shit and you're a troll.
Yea! Damn hippies. Unless they come up with a way to compensate all those businesses for their lost income, there is no abolishing of anything! Just think of the costs! I mean, we would, like, need to hire peons to work in the fields! Its insanity! What would happen to our profits!? What self-respecting gentleman would want to run a plantation then!?
Just as you say, a menace these thieves are, truly.
I would go further than that. Information is by definition a foundation of our conscious processes and all decision making. Subsequently, as any tyrant would tell you, controlling information is the surest path to controlling people.
And it gets worse: fundamentally, the intertwined ideas of "civilization" and "scientific progress" also depend on unrestricted sharing of information. Without that unrestricted flow, scientific progress grinds to a crawl. Knowledge becomes a privilege and soon the privileged become aristocracy. In fact, in ages past, the main distinction between aristocracy and peons was access to information.
These and other similar observation can lead to only one conclusion: those who seek to control the propagation of information (be it out of desire for power or out of greed) also seek to control you.
Thus the advocates of "copyrights", "patents" and the like are in fact proponents of slavery, no matter what misdirection or euphemisms they decide to use to put a smiley face on their activity or to make their opponents appear as "thieves" (who stole their own freedom from their "rightful" owners).
If they were rigged or rife with collusion, it would seem that I was unwittingly chosen to benefit from such unfairness, for what purpose I know not.
Its simply law of large numbers and probabilities combined with basic psychology.
You are very likely, due to the nature of such sites, which we already covered, both a beneficiary and a victim of things that go on there, but you simply do not perceive it being so due to your, by very nature of personal perception, very narrow sample of the data that comprises the whole of the process. Also one must take into account that the people truly victimized (i.e. to the point that they actually strongly object) comprise a minority on a typical site and as soon as they take action, they get kicked out and their voices muted as far as the site is concerned. And so unless you happen to have a personal relationship outside of the site, you'll never know.
This dynamics is very common. Lots of people get abused by large companies, like for example cellular carriers, and yet the number of customers lost is a tiny proportion of the customers kept by inertia, marketing gimmicks and so on. The level of "dissatisfaction" required to drop out of a social addiction, like incessant texting to friends or, say, playing online poker is quite high.
Certainly, as in any unregulated market, there are some shady operators and scams. But by doing research and reading about the experiences of other users at the sites at which one plays, one can avoid the majority of these disreputable sites.
As I tried to point out to you, there is no way to ensure even most basic "fairness" in most online games, simply due to the nature of communications and the technology involved. Even the best meaning casino operator is powerless to do so, and worse, his attempts at policing his casino would by definition lead to witch hunts (which is what you were proposing), making a mockery of the whole notion.
Its simply the dynamics of the thing.
So what you are really talking about here is perception of "shadiness", which can be a result of a successful campaign by a competitor or plain incompetence at public relations. Those who actually run shady operations are likely to appear the slickest and "safest" of all - its one of their top priorities, a prerequisite of the scam actually working.
Also, making money on poker is a rather curious thing.
That is, some people, due to combination of slightly better then average skill and copious amounts of plain dumb luck manage to get ahead in such environments. Unfortunately there is no way of telling how much the skill versus the dumb luck played a role.
A complete idiot, by pure chance, can win 1000s of poker games and then claim himself a poker genius. We will hear all about his great poker prowess, while a few millions of other idiots, following exactly the same procedure but not being so lucky we will never hear about. The idiot in question will then write inspirational books on the subject and become even richer selling his "The complete idiots guide to being a poker genius in 7 easy steps", gather cult-like following of religious zealots awed by his "genius" and things usually go down hill from there.
Such is the nature of large numbers and probabilities.
The same pattern is plainly visible in other places: stock market, Forex, various business ventures. In every case the people in question, always, without fail, smugly attribute all of their success to their "skill" and "foresight" and no one seems to ask basic questions about all the fortuitous chances stacked one upon another that made their "self made" success possible.
Frankly, since I am quite familiar with game theory, as far as my understanding of the mechanics of online poker goes, there is no such thing as a "winning strategy", only a "loss management" strategy, since most players will use the same card counting bots, bet calculators and pop-pseudo-psy
I can't even understand what you are trying to say.
My point is very simple: governments are entities desperate to continuously expand their power and as a side effect their size, which then requires ever more voracious financing.
Therefore sane societies restrict severely the scope of governmental power and set firm limits on what the governments can ever "regulate" or "oversee". Gambling, for example, is firmly outside of these limits.
Governments however, due to their desperate desire for ever more power, will use any tricks possible to breach these limits.
And one such standard trick is to get idiots in the populace to create manufactured "outrages" over some ridiculous nonsense or another, like for example lack of "fairness" in casinos, which then can be used by power-crazed governmental bureaucrats as a "justification" for yet another expansion of their power. You see, the populace "asked" for it.
This is how we ended up with this article on Slashdot and this is also how this discussion about government enforcing "fairness" in casinos started.
It could be random chance that a player has folded pocket kings to a preflop raise 5 times out of 2000 times in which he was dealt pocket kings. And each of those 5 times has been against the raise of 1 specific opponent.
Yes it could. That's probability for you. In fact it is more likely for this to be random chance than two players being that idiotically obvious, since the average cheater will be using easily available software to combat any such statistical traces anyhow. So you are bound to catch mostly victims of random chance and grandmas who thrill themselves with their "walk on the wild side" cheating over the phone in their $0.01 games. They will not have the software.
And there is the very slight possibility that such a player is innocent of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, there are patterns of play and "red flags" which can be used by competent personnel to determine instances in which it is virtually certain that cheating is going on.
As I said, gut feelings and "respect my authoritah!"
Your "competent personnel" has a snowflake-in-hell chance of actually catching cheaters with their fancy software and nearly 100% chance of beating up on random hapless bystanders and giggling grandmas.
Any site doing such would be quickly shunned by savvy poker players. Why would a site randomly redistribute money? There would be no gain for them.
Two words: Security Theater. Which is exactly what you have been proposing so far. Losing 10% of players in the effort to mislead the remaining 90% that the site is "secure" and "fair". Standard stuff.
Well, I suppose you are looking for 100% absolute "fairness" and anything else is unacceptable. In which case, the US Justice system, election procedures, legislative bodies, regulatory agencies and newspapers are
not "fair" either and should be abolished.
"Fairness" in real life and "fairness" in games of chance are completely unrelated things.
But since you are on the topic, the US "justice" system and "fairness" do not even intersect. In fact the US does not even have a justice system, misleading name notwithstanding, it has "legal" and "law enforcement" systems. Justice plays no role whatsoever in them.
I happen to think there is a difference, and quite a major difference at that, between a game or casino or table in which cheating is occurring in 50% of hands and one in which cheating occurs in 0.1% of hands.
In which case you better play only in high-security casinos where all the participants have been thoroughly searched before play. That is the only place where you can conceivably achieve that low level of cheating (assuming one of the players is not in cahoots with the staff).
And, as someone who derives his income from playing online poker,
I assume you are not a US citizen or resident then or else you've just asked for the US "justice" department to have a "word" with you... something about online gambling being utterly illegal in the US, severe criminal penalties and other some such trifles.
Fair: Their payout and odds are what they advertise.
Which they cannot guarantee in an online environment (which is also why online casino only advertise the "rake" but not the odds). What if two players at your virtual poker table are talking via Skype? Texting each other? The odds and payouts are now way out of kilter and there is nothing (nothing sane anyhow) the online operator can do about it.
Oh, the double irony! Note that he became an AC so that he could use his real account to down mod the post he was replying to, for that extra "oomph" of "civility" and "courage of convictions" .
Which is why it is my long standing policy to ignore derogatory ACs altogether, for they are usually just jerks abusing the moderation system.
... they can go through EVERY SINGLE HAND which those players have played against each other and look for unusual patterns of play...
Translation: they can engage in wild statistical guesswork and level unprovable accusations since random chance can produce exact same patterns, given enough repetitions (there are millions of games played every day at these sites). Following which these "fair" operators will ban players on the basis of their gut-feelings, which would remove any last vestiges of any "fairness" from the operation, should it exist there in the first place.
Many sites frequently confiscate the funds of players who have been discovered to have cheated and reimburse the victims of the cheating by splitting those funds among people who have lost money to the cheaters.
See above. What you meant to say was that they distribute funds from "people randomly accused of cheating based on utterly unprovable and inconclusive evidence" to those who whine the loudest. Fairness.
Clearly, it is impossible to eliminate 100% of cheating, either in a live or online setting.
Which also is why it is impossible to assure "fairness". QED.
But the incidence of cheating can be, and often is, reduced substantially by the game security departments of the leading online poker rooms. And such cheating as does occur can often be detected in the future and appropriate measures taken.
Unless you are speaking of people caught with transmitters in their shoes, all else is mere guesswork and reliance on absolute "authority" of the "security personnel" of the said casino. A fortuitous game pattern, no matter how unlikely, proof of cheating does not make! In fact most casinos, in their endless quest for "fairness" (this always cracks me up), often find "excessive" winnings invalid to the utter surprise of befuddled "cheaters" being man-handled out the door.
Talk about dishonest "comparisons". Roads are public infrastructure, ostensibly one of the core reasons for which governments exist.
Gambling is a wholly superfluous entertainment activity well outside any conceivably sane scope of governmental reach.
You apparently believe that if government has a mandate to provide and care for basic public infrastructure, so it automatically also has the authority to intrude into every aspect of every activity by its citizens. Far wiser people, having foreseen such nonsense, attempted to embed limits in this quaint US document called "the Constitution" to prevent exactly this sort of idiotic "natural extension" of "authority" from roads to driveways to garages to living rooms to bedrooms and eventually to outhouses, lest unruly "subjects" (long since past "citizens") try to hide there from "oversight" and "regulation".
And who exactly "wants" this service? Not a vast majority of people actually doing the gambling as they all shy away from the "regulated" casinos, clearly.
You forgot all of these banksters engaging in far worse fraud and gambling (with other people's money to boot) to the tune of trillions of dollars, not to mention actual money laundering for actual, card-carrying members of Colombian and Mexican drug cartels!
But going after DoJ officials' cocktail-party-circuit buddies would be "looking back instead to the future" or some such.
Those eeevil online gambling sites (who take all the money that rightfully belongs in the "official's" pockets and those of their Las Vegas cronies), now there is an outrage!
A fair gambling establishment would ensure that no player was cheating the other players, and that the dealer was not favoring anyone.
Except it is completely impossible once Internet is involved. Online gambling (which is what we are discussing here) is by its nature prone to all sorts of collusion between players via alternate communication channels, insecurities in their computers that could allow other players to see their hand, etc and so on.
So unless you demand that all poker games are conducted in a particular physical location, attended in person after a thorough all-cavity search and full x-rays of all the participants, no "fairness" is even remotely assured.
In fact "fairness" cannot be expected in any practically feasible casino, lest the intrusive provisions would drive 99% of their clientele away.
You simply forgot that vast majority of people gamble casually and for entertainment. If assurances of "fairness" take away all their fun, they will find some other pasttime.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, most of these, excluding Google, are already out of business or do not have any land-line outgoing call capability, which is what a lot of people use Skype for (cheap overseas calls to family etc).
Some "alternatives" these are. You should check your "solutions" before posting them.
We're screwed.
Not entirely.
It is also possible to have a system whereby justice occurs in the end as a result of the pre-set rules of the Universe and a large enough amount of repetitions (re-incarnations and the like).
It is also possible that such conditions do not require an omni-potent creator, merely one with great foresight or even just a random chance at the outset of things.
It didn't happen, at least for any practical purposes. DNA "evidence" begs immediately questions about the source of the DNA (even if it was his, it could be his hair on a videotape). Modern technology combined with the sort of budgets the US has at its disposal and absolute desperation/fixation its upper echelons had on Bin Laden render any pictures or videos woefully insufficient as "evidence" (particularly in digital original format). And there is bound to be very few unbiased eyewitnesses (more like zero).
These factors combined rendered the actual body the only sort of evidence that could withstand scrutiny. Even delaying the "burial" by freezing him (and to Hell with "Islamic tradition") would have been a better choice.
As it stands I can only conclude that one of the following is the case: the whole thing was a desperate PR stunt, they got a wrong guy and realized it after the announcement was made, they massacred him beyond recognition - even with dental records, he is captured alive and they want to torture him to death in secret - at which point the US is in the same category as Al-Queda and should be treated as such by all civilized people, i.e. as a criminal pariah whose agents and citizens should be shot on sight everywhere and imprisoned for life if they manage to surrender.
None of these options are what one would call a "victory" for the US. The "burial at sea" has by its lone self effectively negated any positive effects of this whole operation could have had. What's worse, it did so permanently and irreversibly.
Except, of course, it is in the best financial interest of both the "lawmakers" and the "law enforcement" (not to mention all the private ex-cop/ex-military contractors involved) to lower the speed limit further. More revenue that way and the "voter" has no real recourse anyhow (corporate stooge A vs corporate stooge B). The usual arguments about how "speed kills" and "fuel economy" can be successfully utilized all the way down to speed somewhere around 0mph.
So, let the good times (for a select few at the expense of many) roll!
Any more brilliant ideas?
Right. Poor wittlle innocent "angels" all and they just don't know what they are doing, the witless darlings! But when they cross that one second past midnight on their 14th birthday in this country, oh wait 16 in that country, no wait, 18 in that one over there, no wait 21 in ... anyhow, then they will become fully capable of "consent", just like that! From Age of Drooling Ignorance and Complete Dependence on Their Betters, to the Age of Wizened Wisdom! One second flat! I wonder if there are any special effects, like lightning or howling winds or something that surely must attend such a momentous occasion, no?
As to porn, you've apparently never attended a school with 10 year old boys .... and then people wonder why all the "laws" are so fucked up? I would venture to guess that reality not being a consideration in their crafting has something to do with it....
Yes, particularly photo-shopped pictures and hand-drawn cartoons, all of which are now a criminal offense in most countries, a natural and logical consequence of the "thoughtcrime" "logic" you are so fond of. And then there is the "self-inflicted" "molestation" of kids with webcams and cell-phone cameras, who "exploit" themselves, for which, according to the likes of you, they need to be punished.
The actual damage, of course, has nothing whatsoever with any pictures but with actual physical assaults on actual children, ratio of which to all the pictures in circulation is well below 1%. You of course assume, like all demagogues, that all kids are innocent "angels" and not by any chance complete perverts by age 9, an idea which as anyone who's been a kid and who is not a total hypocrite can attest to having no connection to reality whatsoever. It is just that most "holier than thou" types work hard on their selective amnesia.
But then there are extra-judicial powers to be had, billions of dollars to be wasted and cushy government careers with 6-figure salaries to be enjoyed by thousands of "cyber-crime" "investigators". Not to mention that sexual gratification from destroying all the lives of all these "undesirables" whom they randomly finger and the contents of whose decrepit, virus-infected PCs provide such a gold mine of "evidence".
And that "evil" you speak of? That's people who think like you. And you. Evil.
I finally realized that you are here to offer us the titillating game of trying to count how many self-contradictions you can cram into your posts!
So here we go: self-contradiction #1 above: reproducing for others is a form communication! Therefore if I can "communicate whatever I want to communicate" I can also communicate my reproductions, no?
Self-contradiction #2: You claim that what I do belongs to Intel, but you claim that Intel is not restricting what I do! Which is it?
Therefore they get to control what I do, even though I have not agreed to any relationship with them of any kind, no? The description of such an arrangement is: "master-slave".
Self-contradiction #3: You claim (just a few sentences earlier) that "I can communicate whatever I want to communicate" and yet here you say that I cannot communicate a song by Nirvana.
Patent falsity #1: They all pay fees to various "artist agencies" lest they are in violation. Oh, you did not know that, did you? Then just so you know: your dentist's office and that elevator company pay also for "public performance" of music, lest they get raided by RIAA.
Patent falsity #2: kindergartens and schools get "beaten over the head" over what kids sing at their "performances" for the parents. See for example.
Illogical assumption #1: I have to pay for their "labour" yet they do not have to pay for any "labour" of thousands of people who came up with all the innovations in music dating all the way back to Ancient Egypt. So the last one is the sucker, no?
Conversely, if I don't pay, what makes you think that someone will pay me? What if don't even ask for money?
Self-contradiction #4: if I can "communicate whatever I want to" then how come you are deciding what music I can play?
Bonus points if you can count how many patently false and self-contradictory ideas are in this passage!
Hint: its more than three and less then twenty (but not much).
This is very insightful.
For some time now I felt that there is an intrinsic link between the "intellectual property" scam and attempts at a new kinds of enslavement and that is the very reason why great many people, including myself, have such an instinctively negative reaction to the idea. I have presented many arguments in my other posts on the topic to that effect over the years. And as the time progresses and I give more thought to it, this feeling is becoming stronger all the time.
Sometimes however one encounters a statement that acts as a focal point for all the others to coalesce around. Yours was one such.
Kudos.
Quite so, I am afraid. Your "precondition" for these vaunted "creative activities" of yours is that we submit to strict controls of what we can say, sing or write down. The term for it is: slavery. The fact that our would be master also lets us physically roam about does not change this in any way.
Put in another way, if the precondition of your "contributing" to our society is that everyone else has to do what you tell them, i.e. be enslaved by you, then the price for your "contribution" is far too high, thank you very much. We will somehow squeak by without your earth shattering, no doubt, "contributions". Most of us that is, for the other kind you should check out some BDSM dating sites.
Their income depends upon restricting natural freedoms (i.e. freedom to communicate with one another) of not only their "customers" but also all the bystanders and they utilize the power of the state, including violence, to enforce their control.
Slavery. Simple as that.
My right to communicate freely. If I sing that song to an audience, I am in violation of my master's rules. If I play this song to an audience, I am in violation. If I transmit this song to a friend, I am in violation.
Furthermore, if I hear that song through someone's window and, thanks to my savant memory, I can play it back to some friends of mine, I am in violation. Note that in this last case I did not even ask for the song to be played to me.
Etc and so on.
There is no such thing as a universal "right" to be compensated for labour. Otherwise you would be paying me for my cleaning my house. The only labour that is being compensated is the one which someone is agreeing to pay for, before hand.
On the other hand the right to freely communicate is the very basis of civilization and the litmus test of other freedoms in the supposedly "free" societies.
No, you only made yourself look more stupid.
It is usually a lost cause to point out to a slavery advocate that his definition of "steal" diverges somewhat from the norm, but I will do that anyway: get a dictionary.
As to "worth" of art, its in the eye of the beholder. In fact usually what me mean by "art" is something a person wishes to propagate free of charge as far and as wide as possible since the whole point is to communicate one's expression of one's state of mind to others. Trying to make others pay for it is somewhat counter-productive to the idea.
But then there is something called "kitsch" which is the domain of people trying to make a buck by pretending to be artists...
Here we go again. No, the problem is not distribution but your attempts at controlling what people communicate to one another. Information by its very nature is distributed by sharing it.
What you want is a method for artists (as opposed to charlatans and middlemen) to be gi
And look at all those chain makers and shackle providers, specialized shipping companies and auction houses who would go bust if slavery was abolished! They are entitled to be compensated for their time! They have kids to put through college, mortgages to pay down, yachts to buy ...
Damn, selfish, revolting slaves. Why won't they understand the rigors of commerce and submit peacefully to the rules of their betters!?
Damn right, no one needs them abolitionists! What a menace to business! Why, whole plantations would go under if they had their way! Just think of the losses to productivity! They contribute nothing to society but whining about "rights" and "liberties" and the like poppy-cock! Not like a God-fearing plantation owner, who is personally responsible for clothing of thousands with his cotton!
Yea! Damn hippies. Unless they come up with a way to compensate all those businesses for their lost income, there is no abolishing of anything! Just think of the costs! I mean, we would, like, need to hire peons to work in the fields! Its insanity! What would happen to our profits!? What self-respecting gentleman would want to run a plantation then!?
Just as you say, a menace these thieves are, truly.
I would go further than that. Information is by definition a foundation of our conscious processes and all decision making. Subsequently, as any tyrant would tell you, controlling information is the surest path to controlling people.
And it gets worse: fundamentally, the intertwined ideas of "civilization" and "scientific progress" also depend on unrestricted sharing of information. Without that unrestricted flow, scientific progress grinds to a crawl. Knowledge becomes a privilege and soon the privileged become aristocracy. In fact, in ages past, the main distinction between aristocracy and peons was access to information.
These and other similar observation can lead to only one conclusion: those who seek to control the propagation of information (be it out of desire for power or out of greed) also seek to control you.
Thus the advocates of "copyrights", "patents" and the like are in fact proponents of slavery, no matter what misdirection or euphemisms they decide to use to put a smiley face on their activity or to make their opponents appear as "thieves" (who stole their own freedom from their "rightful" owners).
I started to reply to you but unfortunately I just run out of spare time to craft multi-page-mega-post replies. Maybe another time.
Its simply law of large numbers and probabilities combined with basic psychology.
You are very likely, due to the nature of such sites, which we already covered, both a beneficiary and a victim of things that go on there, but you simply do not perceive it being so due to your, by very nature of personal perception, very narrow sample of the data that comprises the whole of the process. Also one must take into account that the people truly victimized (i.e. to the point that they actually strongly object) comprise a minority on a typical site and as soon as they take action, they get kicked out and their voices muted as far as the site is concerned. And so unless you happen to have a personal relationship outside of the site, you'll never know.
This dynamics is very common. Lots of people get abused by large companies, like for example cellular carriers, and yet the number of customers lost is a tiny proportion of the customers kept by inertia, marketing gimmicks and so on. The level of "dissatisfaction" required to drop out of a social addiction, like incessant texting to friends or, say, playing online poker is quite high.
As I tried to point out to you, there is no way to ensure even most basic "fairness" in most online games, simply due to the nature of communications and the technology involved. Even the best meaning casino operator is powerless to do so, and worse, his attempts at policing his casino would by definition lead to witch hunts (which is what you were proposing), making a mockery of the whole notion.
Its simply the dynamics of the thing.
So what you are really talking about here is perception of "shadiness", which can be a result of a successful campaign by a competitor or plain incompetence at public relations. Those who actually run shady operations are likely to appear the slickest and "safest" of all - its one of their top priorities, a prerequisite of the scam actually working.
Also, making money on poker is a rather curious thing.
That is, some people, due to combination of slightly better then average skill and copious amounts of plain dumb luck manage to get ahead in such environments. Unfortunately there is no way of telling how much the skill versus the dumb luck played a role.
A complete idiot, by pure chance, can win 1000s of poker games and then claim himself a poker genius. We will hear all about his great poker prowess, while a few millions of other idiots, following exactly the same procedure but not being so lucky we will never hear about. The idiot in question will then write inspirational books on the subject and become even richer selling his "The complete idiots guide to being a poker genius in 7 easy steps", gather cult-like following of religious zealots awed by his "genius" and things usually go down hill from there.
Such is the nature of large numbers and probabilities.
The same pattern is plainly visible in other places: stock market, Forex, various business ventures. In every case the people in question, always, without fail, smugly attribute all of their success to their "skill" and "foresight" and no one seems to ask basic questions about all the fortuitous chances stacked one upon another that made their "self made" success possible.
Frankly, since I am quite familiar with game theory, as far as my understanding of the mechanics of online poker goes, there is no such thing as a "winning strategy", only a "loss management" strategy, since most players will use the same card counting bots, bet calculators and pop-pseudo-psy
My point is very simple: governments are entities desperate to continuously expand their power and as a side effect their size, which then requires ever more voracious financing.
Therefore sane societies restrict severely the scope of governmental power and set firm limits on what the governments can ever "regulate" or "oversee". Gambling, for example, is firmly outside of these limits.
Governments however, due to their desperate desire for ever more power, will use any tricks possible to breach these limits.
And one such standard trick is to get idiots in the populace to create manufactured "outrages" over some ridiculous nonsense or another, like for example lack of "fairness" in casinos, which then can be used by power-crazed governmental bureaucrats as a "justification" for yet another expansion of their power. You see, the populace "asked" for it.
This is how we ended up with this article on Slashdot and this is also how this discussion about government enforcing "fairness" in casinos started.
Rather straightforward, no?
Yes it could. That's probability for you. In fact it is more likely for this to be random chance than two players being that idiotically obvious, since the average cheater will be using easily available software to combat any such statistical traces anyhow. So you are bound to catch mostly victims of random chance and grandmas who thrill themselves with their "walk on the wild side" cheating over the phone in their $0.01 games. They will not have the software. And there is the very slight possibility that such a player is innocent of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, there are patterns of play and "red flags" which can be used by competent personnel to determine instances in which it is virtually certain that cheating is going on.
As I said, gut feelings and "respect my authoritah!"
Your "competent personnel" has a snowflake-in-hell chance of actually catching cheaters with their fancy software and nearly 100% chance of beating up on random hapless bystanders and giggling grandmas.
Two words: Security Theater. Which is exactly what you have been proposing so far. Losing 10% of players in the effort to mislead the remaining 90% that the site is "secure" and "fair". Standard stuff.
"Fairness" in real life and "fairness" in games of chance are completely unrelated things.
But since you are on the topic, the US "justice" system and "fairness" do not even intersect. In fact the US does not even have a justice system, misleading name notwithstanding, it has "legal" and "law enforcement" systems. Justice plays no role whatsoever in them.
In which case you better play only in high-security casinos where all the participants have been thoroughly searched before play. That is the only place where you can conceivably achieve that low level of cheating (assuming one of the players is not in cahoots with the staff).
I assume you are not a US citizen or resident then or else you've just asked for the US "justice" department to have a "word" with you ... something about online gambling being utterly illegal in the US, severe criminal penalties and other some such trifles.
Oh and IRS is right behind in line.
Go explain how "1 in 6 chance of winning" satisfies any of these.
You might however want to try for less spittle and vain-popping rage so that it does not prevent you from typing actual sentences.
Which they cannot guarantee in an online environment (which is also why online casino only advertise the "rake" but not the odds). What if two players at your virtual poker table are talking via Skype? Texting each other? The odds and payouts are now way out of kilter and there is nothing (nothing sane anyhow) the online operator can do about it.
Oh, the double irony! Note that he became an AC so that he could use his real account to down mod the post he was replying to, for that extra "oomph" of "civility" and "courage of convictions" .
Which is why it is my long standing policy to ignore derogatory ACs altogether, for they are usually just jerks abusing the moderation system.
Translation: they can engage in wild statistical guesswork and level unprovable accusations since random chance can produce exact same patterns, given enough repetitions (there are millions of games played every day at these sites). Following which these "fair" operators will ban players on the basis of their gut-feelings, which would remove any last vestiges of any "fairness" from the operation, should it exist there in the first place.
See above. What you meant to say was that they distribute funds from "people randomly accused of cheating based on utterly unprovable and inconclusive evidence" to those who whine the loudest. Fairness.
Which also is why it is impossible to assure "fairness". QED.
Unless you are speaking of people caught with transmitters in their shoes, all else is mere guesswork and reliance on absolute "authority" of the "security personnel" of the said casino. A fortuitous game pattern, no matter how unlikely, proof of cheating does not make! In fact most casinos, in their endless quest for "fairness" (this always cracks me up), often find "excessive" winnings invalid to the utter surprise of befuddled "cheaters" being man-handled out the door.
Talk about dishonest "comparisons". Roads are public infrastructure, ostensibly one of the core reasons for which governments exist.
Gambling is a wholly superfluous entertainment activity well outside any conceivably sane scope of governmental reach.
You apparently believe that if government has a mandate to provide and care for basic public infrastructure, so it automatically also has the authority to intrude into every aspect of every activity by its citizens. Far wiser people, having foreseen such nonsense, attempted to embed limits in this quaint US document called "the Constitution" to prevent exactly this sort of idiotic "natural extension" of "authority" from roads to driveways to garages to living rooms to bedrooms and eventually to outhouses, lest unruly "subjects" (long since past "citizens") try to hide there from "oversight" and "regulation".
So where is this "fairness" you speak of? What is "fair"? 1% "on average" of money changing hands? 2%? 67% 90%? [pull-the-number-out-of-my-ass]%?
What should the nanny government deem "fair" and enforce it, with violence as need be? Do tell.
And who exactly "wants" this service? Not a vast majority of people actually doing the gambling as they all shy away from the "regulated" casinos, clearly.
You forgot all of these banksters engaging in far worse fraud and gambling (with other people's money to boot) to the tune of trillions of dollars, not to mention actual money laundering for actual, card-carrying members of Colombian and Mexican drug cartels!
But going after DoJ officials' cocktail-party-circuit buddies would be "looking back instead to the future" or some such.
Those eeevil online gambling sites (who take all the money that rightfully belongs in the "official's" pockets and those of their Las Vegas cronies), now there is an outrage!
Except it is completely impossible once Internet is involved. Online gambling (which is what we are discussing here) is by its nature prone to all sorts of collusion between players via alternate communication channels, insecurities in their computers that could allow other players to see their hand, etc and so on.
So unless you demand that all poker games are conducted in a particular physical location, attended in person after a thorough all-cavity search and full x-rays of all the participants, no "fairness" is even remotely assured.
In fact "fairness" cannot be expected in any practically feasible casino, lest the intrusive provisions would drive 99% of their clientele away.
You simply forgot that vast majority of people gamble casually and for entertainment. If assurances of "fairness" take away all their fun, they will find some other pasttime.