In, like, your opinion. Assault is a crime in which a victim is at least threatened with violence, and this is clearly not the case. I know it is fashionable to brand anything "psychological abuse", but I've had a lot worse in school than this guy, and I somehow managed to survive. I know many people like myself. Calling the experience in the article an "assault" is ridiculous.
As a reasonable adult, particularly one who is aware of the situation with gay rights in the US, can you possibly tell me straight-faced that this couldn't possibly have had anything to do with the suicide?
As a reasonable adult, I can tell you with a high degree of confidence that it is premature to conclude that the person who jumped off the bridge did so solely because of the webcam incident. In my experience, it takes a lot more for a reasoning individual to jump off a bridge. There seems to be a lot of background missing about the person who killed himself to say anything with any degree of certainty.
Also, there is a lot of background to consider when you judge the charges. I think, for example, that it is quite possible that most of the outrage of the gay communities in New Jersey is not related to the case itself, but to the recent veto on a certain bill by a certain Republican governor.
Alas, I am not really that much interested in this case, except to point out the obvious -- that the usage of the "hate crime" laws is very obviously not appropriate here. That's why I'll stop here.
You should have read the second paragraph: A hate crime is a legal category used to described bias-motivated violence: "assault, injury, and murder". The "crimes" that are alleged to have occured are not violent. The person who jumped from the bridge did so by himself and, apparently, voluntarily, hence his death is classified as "suicide". There was no violence or threat of violence involved, hence no hate crime.
Last time I heard, the fucking Chinese courts are the only courts widely available in China. So, unscrupulous, dishonest and imperfect as they may be, they are still have the last word in this case.
This is only true if you equal "invasion of privacy" with "assault", and if you can show clearly that the intent of the spying was to effect violence, or fear of violence on the gay person. From the article in New Yorker I can't see either. All I see is a bigot taping a gay guy for the lulz. It is irresponsible, bigoted and stupid, but it is very far from a hate crime.
Depends on how you're measuring it. Since at the moment there is at least one court in China that has decided that Apple is in the wrong, this is a very strong indication that Apple used "intellectual property" over there illegally, i.e. stole it.
If and when this decision is reversed, I'll review my opinion on the matter;)
Are you implying that it is wrong for a company in possession of valuable "intellectual property" to sue the thieves of the sad property and recover damages? What will happen if a Chinese company tries to sell something called "IPAD" in the US I wonder?
If this is profitable, "the petroleum industry" will most likely not fight it, but adapt and probably become large investor and user of this technology (probably ruining many ecosystems in some poorer countries as a side effect). The oil processing multinationals (not the well owners, these are mostly state-owned in feudal countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia) have been considering the "peak oil" and what it means to them long before it became a fashionable topic on the internets. They realize that the less oil there is, the more vulnerable they are.
They got a taste of it after the oil rose significantly after certain events from 2003 onwards. Many oil-exporting countries started to re-evaluate their contracts with the big oil multinationals. Competition for the wells from companies from rising developing countries is increasing, and control of technology may not be a very viable option.
So, everyone in the field seems to have some alternative strategy. Some have invested heavily in shale oil, some in underwater extraction, some in biomass, some in totally unrelated stuff. You can fully expect that if this thing shows promise beyond an article on physorg.com many will look into it.
Working conditions in Taiwan 10 or 15 years ago were much better than China today IMHO. In 1997, the Taiwanese had already had their first truly democratic elections, working conditions were tolerable mostly everywhere, there was already a national medical insurance plan and some social security in place, there were rather strict labor safety laws, environment pollution laws, etc.
DNRTFA, but in Japan there would be a market niche for this kind of hardware, maybe to use with a stored value card of the kind that is used to ride the train. There are many establishments - cafes and small restaurants - that will not let customers plug a computer on the account of the outrageous electricity bills they believe they will incur.
Also, some Sony computers there come with the hardware and software to use such cards, so I presume they demo a kit that links those two (or a similar kit) together.
So, I would not read too much into it, it is just a demo of a niche application.
I hope that other companies take notice and start doing the same, and that the number of people abused in the name of capitalism decreases worldwide. The gadgets may become a tad more expensive, but hey, it may out to be worth it in the long run for everyone.
The problem is that there are people out there who believe this, and who worship this idea.
True, and "The Network" was precisely about them. We can only hope that they are not the majority, and that the old saying that you can fool some people all the time, many people for awhile, but you can't fool everybody forever is true. And keep shooting the satire at them, I think that still works.
However if the trend continues this attitude will have to change. There must be jobs and income in order to buy these goods. There will always be the elite who can buy this junk but there will be a huge and growing number of laborers in this country who will need jobs and they will be a powerful voting block that will insist upon domestic jobs, and the elites will insist that they get jobs instead of handouts as well. It is unsustainable
I have covered the reasons this will not work already, but there is one more angle to it.
What you describe is only part of the real problem. The full problem is that the concept of unlimited growth with good life for everyone is unrealistic and unsustainable, given the current combination of amount of resources, expectations, social organization and distribution of capital and technology.
Those rather unrealistic expectations of what is desirable, both in terms of lifestyle and social organization were set during the past 70 or so years, in which period the US has had more than its fair share of growth. This growth was mostly due to historical circumstances that are unlikely to repeat- the emergence of the US as the dominant world power after WWII that has allowed the US to reshape world resources usage largely to her own benefit.
As resources grow scarcer and its position wanes, the US will find it even costlier to impose its resource requirements abroad, and as costs go up, your proposal will become even more difficult to realize.
The only real way to solve your problem is to work for a real leveling of the "playing field", and that must include a corrective for the historical circumstances from the previous paragraph. I somehow don't think most in the US will look warmly to such a proposal.
This isn't going to work though, not in a society like the US, whose value system is based on the notion that individuals live with the liberty to pursue happiness for themselves, and whose concept of happiness is mostly measured by the level of consumption you can afford.
The problem with your position is that as long technology is lowering transaction and transportation costs, there will be a powerful incentive for companies to use the cheapest sources of labor and capital and a powerful incentive for consumers to choose the cheaper output. These will generate enormous legislative pressures against you, and your position will be voted out.
Your position is based on your view of what is valuable in the long term, based on your ideas of what the national interest is. Okay. But can you define this national interest in terms of money and a time frame, like a company that says to its shareholders "next year we will move output to China and allow for profit increase of 50%"? No, you can't. You can make an argument that leveling the playing field is beneficial long-term, but long-term is heavily discounted against, and so is your argument.
It is the same on the consumer side. The business will say "we can give you 20% cheaper X in 6 months, 25% cheaper in 12 months". What can you say to that? "In 20 years you will be out of jobs"? Again, almost nobody will care until that time comes.
Moreover, those that do care today on either side will try to get prepared when the time comes anyway, so for them it will make more sense to get the cheaper goods/make the extra profits now and use the saved resources for preparation. In other words, even people who think like you may not vote for you.
Also, can you guarantee that anyone in your audience will benefit from your proposal? The distribution of benefits from cheaper production are immediately obvious, both to companies and to consumers. The distribution of gains from your long-term ideological plan are not. In 20 years, US may well be better off, but that doesn't mean the particular shareholders and consumers who will benefit from the short-term low labor will make any gains from that. So, you cannot appeal to many specific voters, and you will not have support at the polls.
His position is obviously against maximizing corporate profits. As such, it is undeniably dangerous, abhorrent, anti-capitalist and utterly unjustifiable, as I already explained. It is also very bad for you, although you probably cannot realize it now. By supporting this position, it looks like you may benefit, but this is most assuredly a delusion. And here's why.
You are a man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no Third Worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems. One vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-varied, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rands, rubles, pounds and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today.
You get up here on Slashdot howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Google and Apple. Those are the nations of the world today.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr AC. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bye-laws of of business. The world is a business, Mr AC. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.
And our children will live, Mr AC, to see that perfect world, in which there is no war nor famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common profit. In which all men will hold a share of stock.
Too bad the captains of the industry already decided it cannot work. To paraphrase the best one of them, workers in your home country/state are no longer flexible enough, smart enough and diligent enough to contribute enough to your shareholders' returns.
Also, you're not a common radical, you're a delusional and dangerous communist.
The problem with the civilized world is that it depends on the dipshits for its freedoms (or at least the freedoms to travel, use plastics and fertilizers). So, the civilized world is treading a very careful path between standing up for its ideals and protecting those freedoms.
That is why you get paradoxical situations like the civilized world sponsoring a war against a regime in one country and supporting the regime in another, although both regimes are equally abhorrent.
Slashdot Mirror
ORLY? Please, one gifted with reading comprehension, read the charges and tell me, which crime in the list is assault, battery or murder.
then yes, it is an assault (psychological)
In, like, your opinion. Assault is a crime in which a victim is at least threatened with violence, and this is clearly not the case. I know it is fashionable to brand anything "psychological abuse", but I've had a lot worse in school than this guy, and I somehow managed to survive. I know many people like myself. Calling the experience in the article an "assault" is ridiculous.
As a reasonable adult, particularly one who is aware of the situation with gay rights in the US, can you possibly tell me straight-faced that this couldn't possibly have had anything to do with the suicide?
As a reasonable adult, I can tell you with a high degree of confidence that it is premature to conclude that the person who jumped off the bridge did so solely because of the webcam incident. In my experience, it takes a lot more for a reasoning individual to jump off a bridge. There seems to be a lot of background missing about the person who killed himself to say anything with any degree of certainty.
Also, there is a lot of background to consider when you judge the charges. I think, for example, that it is quite possible that most of the outrage of the gay communities in New Jersey is not related to the case itself, but to the recent veto on a certain bill by a certain Republican governor.
Alas, I am not really that much interested in this case, except to point out the obvious -- that the usage of the "hate crime" laws is very obviously not appropriate here. That's why I'll stop here.
You should have read the second paragraph: A hate crime is a legal category used to described bias-motivated violence: "assault, injury, and murder". The "crimes" that are alleged to have occured are not violent. The person who jumped from the bridge did so by himself and, apparently, voluntarily, hence his death is classified as "suicide". There was no violence or threat of violence involved, hence no hate crime.
Last time I heard, the fucking Chinese courts are the only courts widely available in China. So, unscrupulous, dishonest and imperfect as they may be, they are still have the last word in this case.
This is only true if you equal "invasion of privacy" with "assault", and if you can show clearly that the intent of the spying was to effect violence, or fear of violence on the gay person. From the article in New Yorker I can't see either. All I see is a bigot taping a gay guy for the lulz. It is irresponsible, bigoted and stupid, but it is very far from a hate crime.
Depends on how you're measuring it. Since at the moment there is at least one court in China that has decided that Apple is in the wrong, this is a very strong indication that Apple used "intellectual property" over there illegally, i.e. stole it.
If and when this decision is reversed, I'll review my opinion on the matter ;)
Are you implying that it is wrong for a company in possession of valuable "intellectual property" to sue the thieves of the sad property and recover damages? What will happen if a Chinese company tries to sell something called "IPAD" in the US I wonder?
Texas?
If this is profitable, "the petroleum industry" will most likely not fight it, but adapt and probably become large investor and user of this technology (probably ruining many ecosystems in some poorer countries as a side effect). The oil processing multinationals (not the well owners, these are mostly state-owned in feudal countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia) have been considering the "peak oil" and what it means to them long before it became a fashionable topic on the internets. They realize that the less oil there is, the more vulnerable they are.
They got a taste of it after the oil rose significantly after certain events from 2003 onwards. Many oil-exporting countries started to re-evaluate their contracts with the big oil multinationals. Competition for the wells from companies from rising developing countries is increasing, and control of technology may not be a very viable option.
So, everyone in the field seems to have some alternative strategy. Some have invested heavily in shale oil, some in underwater extraction, some in biomass, some in totally unrelated stuff. You can fully expect that if this thing shows promise beyond an article on physorg.com many will look into it.
I know three.
measurement while drilling (on your asshole, asshole)?
Working conditions in Taiwan 10 or 15 years ago were much better than China today IMHO. In 1997, the Taiwanese had already had their first truly democratic elections, working conditions were tolerable mostly everywhere, there was already a national medical insurance plan and some social security in place, there were rather strict labor safety laws, environment pollution laws, etc.
DNRTFA, but in Japan there would be a market niche for this kind of hardware, maybe to use with a stored value card of the kind that is used to ride the train. There are many establishments - cafes and small restaurants - that will not let customers plug a computer on the account of the outrageous electricity bills they believe they will incur.
Also, some Sony computers there come with the hardware and software to use such cards, so I presume they demo a kit that links those two (or a similar kit) together.
So, I would not read too much into it, it is just a demo of a niche application.
If it is galactic in origin, probably it doesn't - the cosmic background has a different origin.
I hope that other companies take notice and start doing the same, and that the number of people abused in the name of capitalism decreases worldwide. The gadgets may become a tad more expensive, but hey, it may out to be worth it in the long run for everyone.
The problem is that there are people out there who believe this, and who worship this idea.
True, and "The Network" was precisely about them. We can only hope that they are not the majority, and that the old saying that you can fool some people all the time, many people for awhile, but you can't fool everybody forever is true. And keep shooting the satire at them, I think that still works.
However if the trend continues this attitude will have to change. There must be jobs and income in order to buy these goods. There will always be the elite who can buy this junk but there will be a huge and growing number of laborers in this country who will need jobs and they will be a powerful voting block that will insist upon domestic jobs, and the elites will insist that they get jobs instead of handouts as well. It is unsustainable
I have covered the reasons this will not work already, but there is one more angle to it.
What you describe is only part of the real problem. The full problem is that the concept of unlimited growth with good life for everyone is unrealistic and unsustainable, given the current combination of amount of resources, expectations, social organization and distribution of capital and technology.
Those rather unrealistic expectations of what is desirable, both in terms of lifestyle and social organization were set during the past 70 or so years, in which period the US has had more than its fair share of growth. This growth was mostly due to historical circumstances that are unlikely to repeat- the emergence of the US as the dominant world power after WWII that has allowed the US to reshape world resources usage largely to her own benefit.
As resources grow scarcer and its position wanes, the US will find it even costlier to impose its resource requirements abroad, and as costs go up, your proposal will become even more difficult to realize.
The only real way to solve your problem is to work for a real leveling of the "playing field", and that must include a corrective for the historical circumstances from the previous paragraph. I somehow don't think most in the US will look warmly to such a proposal.
This isn't going to work though, not in a society like the US, whose value system is based on the notion that individuals live with the liberty to pursue happiness for themselves, and whose concept of happiness is mostly measured by the level of consumption you can afford.
The problem with your position is that as long technology is lowering transaction and transportation costs, there will be a powerful incentive for companies to use the cheapest sources of labor and capital and a powerful incentive for consumers to choose the cheaper output. These will generate enormous legislative pressures against you, and your position will be voted out.
Your position is based on your view of what is valuable in the long term, based on your ideas of what the national interest is. Okay. But can you define this national interest in terms of money and a time frame, like a company that says to its shareholders "next year we will move output to China and allow for profit increase of 50%"? No, you can't. You can make an argument that leveling the playing field is beneficial long-term, but long-term is heavily discounted against, and so is your argument.
It is the same on the consumer side. The business will say "we can give you 20% cheaper X in 6 months, 25% cheaper in 12 months". What can you say to that? "In 20 years you will be out of jobs"? Again, almost nobody will care until that time comes.
Moreover, those that do care today on either side will try to get prepared when the time comes anyway, so for them it will make more sense to get the cheaper goods/make the extra profits now and use the saved resources for preparation. In other words, even people who think like you may not vote for you.
Also, can you guarantee that anyone in your audience will benefit from your proposal? The distribution of benefits from cheaper production are immediately obvious, both to companies and to consumers. The distribution of gains from your long-term ideological plan are not. In 20 years, US may well be better off, but that doesn't mean the particular shareholders and consumers who will benefit from the short-term low labor will make any gains from that. So, you cannot appeal to many specific voters, and you will not have support at the polls.
His position is obviously against maximizing corporate profits. As such, it is undeniably dangerous, abhorrent, anti-capitalist and utterly unjustifiable, as I already explained. It is also very bad for you, although you probably cannot realize it now. By supporting this position, it looks like you may benefit, but this is most assuredly a delusion. And here's why.
You are a man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no Third Worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems. One vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-varied, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rands, rubles, pounds and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today.
You get up here on Slashdot howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Google and Apple. Those are the nations of the world today.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr AC. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bye-laws of of business. The world is a business, Mr AC. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.
And our children will live, Mr AC, to see that perfect world, in which there is no war nor famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common profit. In which all men will hold a share of stock.
Too bad the captains of the industry already decided it cannot work. To paraphrase the best one of them, workers in your home country/state are no longer flexible enough, smart enough and diligent enough to contribute enough to your shareholders' returns.
Also, you're not a common radical, you're a delusional and dangerous communist.
The problem with the civilized world is that it depends on the dipshits for its freedoms (or at least the freedoms to travel, use plastics and fertilizers). So, the civilized world is treading a very careful path between standing up for its ideals and protecting those freedoms.
That is why you get paradoxical situations like the civilized world sponsoring a war against a regime in one country and supporting the regime in another, although both regimes are equally abhorrent.
That was in the 80s, man. Big Oil was still trying hard to kill the electric car back then.
What, pray, these might be, and does a land exist that respects them?
You say it like standing in line for anything is a good thing.
Did they use it on him in the dark room behind the customs counter?