I wasn't aware that the 1st amendment had a fairness doctrine attached to it.
It doesn't, but it wasn't written with monolithic corporations as people, unions, or mass media in mind, either.
Note, I'm not arguing what the law actually is, only what it should be if you don't want to be living in a cyberpunk novel minus the cool technology in twenty years.
Maybe your hypothetical individual should group with like minded people to convey his message more effectively?
So you'd like America to be run as an Asian MMO. If you don't have more people and more money, who cares what you think?
To me, that's not only a terrible idea, it's actually unAmerican.
Because in this case, it equals power and has a tremendous impact on elections.
Let me loop this back around to nerd territory:
In Asian-style MMOs, it's standard and accepted that whoever has the most people to gank everyone with will (and should!) always win. You've just started the game for the first time two minutes ago? Too bad, a gang of 40 teenagers playing in the same cybercafe together with max-level characters saw you and decided to make a grease spot of you, and can keep doing it as long as they want, until an even bigger gang of teenagers happens along and does the same thing to them. Culturally, this works for that market.
Not coincidentally, those games do terribly in the American market, and MMOs built here aren't on that same model -- because we, as a people, believe in the individual and (even though in some ways, yes, our system does piss on this) have the ideal that you shouldn't need a thousand of your best friends to make a difference.
An individual's right to political free speech, in practical terms, is marginalized and ultimately ceases to exist if giant groups of people (corporations/unions/etc.) can wield that same power on a much, much larger/louder scale without the corresponding limits and drawbacks of individuality.
People acting as a group should get to keep their individual rights to the same degree that they're liable/responsible for the exercise of those rights.
If you and another person get together to put an ad out, and that ad's found to be slanderous or otherwise illegal, and that means you both go to prison or are both individually fined, then I'm happy to let you get together to put out the ad. If, on the other hand, acting as a group exempts you from individual responsibility, then you don't get to have the powers of individuals.
Not true. We also track public opinion via Citizens' calls to the Congressional representatives.
We could track things that way, but since people will always be more fired up and likely to call against rather than for something, that would be a stupid way of doing it.
Elections have worked for America (for some value of worked) for over 200 years. It's good enough for anyone who doesn't hate the Constitution.
First off, you can put the people who work for a corporation in prison if they break the law. Just ask Jeff Skilling about the possibility of getting away with a crime just because you did so for the benefit of a corporation.
I can't decide if you're deliberately missing the point or if you somehow genuinely believe that's the same thing.
The problem isn't even direct donations to a candidate, really.
It's that, for example, Microsoft could set up a shell group called "Concerned Citizens for Software Freedom" and funnel money into it to buy a million political ads that trashed a candidate running against a candidate they liked.
The Supreme Court needs to concerns itself with protecting the rights of the corporation, not the good of the general population.
Frankly, I wish they'd used that case to slap down the idea of corporate personhood. Until I can put a corporation in a big-ass orange jumpsuit and stick them in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison if they break the law, it's not fair for them to have all of the advantages of being a person and few of the drawbacks.
How about we dismantle the welfare state like Europe is being forced to do?
Because most of Medicare and Social Security -- the only entitlements large enough to put a dent in the budget -- are collected disproportionately by retired people, who in turn are A) a growing demographic and B) vote very reliably, relative to just about any other demographic.
Well, let's be honest. The Rs and Ds would keep each other off the ballot and run unopposed if they could, too.
It's not that they're conspiring against third-party candidates, exactly -- it's that no politician wants to have to compete for votes and in the case of a third party candidate, they actually can get it done sometimes, whereas the other national party has too much clout for them to muscle out.
Technically, the Community Edition is, but I think it's pretty fair to call that on par with the free version of Visual Studio. You're getting different kinds of extra features with the professional versions of one vs. the other as are appropriate to their respective target frameworks but in terms of what you're getting/need I think calling them on about an even keel with each other is fair.
I am genuinely amazed that no one has yet responded that Eclipse is free and the greatest IDE ever created.
(I rarely encounter someone who spends most of their time writing Java code and is neutral about Eclipse -- it's very love/hate with not much in between. Myself, I prefer IDEA or NetBeans to it.)
I don't think anyone is having doubts as to what kind of cheating the player was punished for. Single. Player. Right? So I just don't see how anyone could see this as a plus.
It makes it easy to get the game's achievements, which a lot of players (not me) take very seriously.
There's lots of cheats built into the single player game already -- it's just that using one makes it so you can't get achievements for that mission in a game where you've used the cheats. Thus, cheating to get the achievements is actually the main reason for the cheat in single player.
You and I don't care, but I'd be willing to bet that the number of people who bought Starcraft 2 and would want someone to get busted for cheating achievements is at least ten times the number of people who bought Starcraft 2 and are upset that someone was busted for this.
It's not even the trendiness factor that's the real problem that they're up against.
To most of the people who play games like this, attempting to bust on people who cheat at the game (as they would see it) is a much greater good than allowing you to do whatever you want with software you bought. In other words, the very actions that make Blizzard evil to much of Slashdot are seen as a plus to most of their customers.
It's not that people are stupid, uninformed, or apathetic (although each of those are true often enough), it's that they value different things.
I forget exactly what the details were, but it's something along the lines that Fox runs up FCC fines on purpose with its offensive programming to funnel money... somewhere.
For example, do you think that people as right wing as you think FoxNews is would play Family Guy, American Dad the Simpsons and even Married with Children?
Ironically, the Simpsons itself provided a (joke) conspiracy theory about why this is the case a few years ago.
Nor do you as a software business make money by treating developers of your platform like shit. Oracle is foolhardy doing so.
Ordinarily I would say you're right, except Oracle's been treating people who use its database and other products (PeopleSoft, I'm looking at you) like shit for decades and they're still making money hand over fist.
Mostly, because they make it so hard for you to do shit that if you want to get anything done you have to pay for Oracle support or consultants -- but you don't figure that out until you're already committed.
As someone who primarily makes his living writing both Java and.NET code for enterprise applications and knows better, let me be the first to say, excellent trolling, sir.
Slashdot Mirror
Claim without proof has no value.
I consider your statement "null" and meaningless. Like if I said, "The grass is pink."
3 billion dollars will be spent on election ads this year.
When people spend 3 billion dollars in a year on products to bring out the pinkness of their lawns, you'll have a point.
I wasn't aware that the 1st amendment had a fairness doctrine attached to it.
It doesn't, but it wasn't written with monolithic corporations as people, unions, or mass media in mind, either.
Note, I'm not arguing what the law actually is, only what it should be if you don't want to be living in a cyberpunk novel minus the cool technology in twenty years.
Maybe your hypothetical individual should group with like minded people to convey his message more effectively?
So you'd like America to be run as an Asian MMO. If you don't have more people and more money, who cares what you think?
To me, that's not only a terrible idea, it's actually unAmerican.
Yeah, so? Why are you so worried about speech?
Because in this case, it equals power and has a tremendous impact on elections.
Let me loop this back around to nerd territory:
In Asian-style MMOs, it's standard and accepted that whoever has the most people to gank everyone with will (and should!) always win. You've just started the game for the first time two minutes ago? Too bad, a gang of 40 teenagers playing in the same cybercafe together with max-level characters saw you and decided to make a grease spot of you, and can keep doing it as long as they want, until an even bigger gang of teenagers happens along and does the same thing to them. Culturally, this works for that market.
Not coincidentally, those games do terribly in the American market, and MMOs built here aren't on that same model -- because we, as a people, believe in the individual and (even though in some ways, yes, our system does piss on this) have the ideal that you shouldn't need a thousand of your best friends to make a difference.
An individual's right to political free speech, in practical terms, is marginalized and ultimately ceases to exist if giant groups of people (corporations/unions/etc.) can wield that same power on a much, much larger/louder scale without the corresponding limits and drawbacks of individuality.
Same answer, really:
People acting as a group should get to keep their individual rights to the same degree that they're liable/responsible for the exercise of those rights.
If you and another person get together to put an ad out, and that ad's found to be slanderous or otherwise illegal, and that means you both go to prison or are both individually fined, then I'm happy to let you get together to put out the ad. If, on the other hand, acting as a group exempts you from individual responsibility, then you don't get to have the powers of individuals.
By the time he has that kind of experience, we'll secretly have to kill him for being so old!
Oh crap. I shouldn't have said it was for being so old.
Oh crap. I shouldn't have said it was a secret.
Oh crap. I certainly shouldn't have said we'll have to kill him.
Ah, it's too hot here.
What part of "Contributions may only come from registered voters", did you not understand?
I understood all of it; what you didn't understand (even though I spelled it out) is that contributions are not the sole problem.
Not true. We also track public opinion via Citizens' calls to the Congressional representatives.
We could track things that way, but since people will always be more fired up and likely to call against rather than for something, that would be a stupid way of doing it.
Elections have worked for America (for some value of worked) for over 200 years. It's good enough for anyone who doesn't hate the Constitution.
First off, you can put the people who work for a corporation in prison if they break the law. Just ask Jeff Skilling about the possibility of getting away with a crime just because you did so for the benefit of a corporation.
I can't decide if you're deliberately missing the point or if you somehow genuinely believe that's the same thing.
The problem isn't even direct donations to a candidate, really.
It's that, for example, Microsoft could set up a shell group called "Concerned Citizens for Software Freedom" and funnel money into it to buy a million political ads that trashed a candidate running against a candidate they liked.
Hey, he's not saying we should kill the old people. More maybe that's impolite to vote for something you probably won't live to see the effects of.
Except in this case, what that really means is:
The Supreme Court needs to concerns itself with protecting the rights of the corporation, not the good of the general population.
Frankly, I wish they'd used that case to slap down the idea of corporate personhood. Until I can put a corporation in a big-ass orange jumpsuit and stick them in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison if they break the law, it's not fair for them to have all of the advantages of being a person and few of the drawbacks.
We already have a commander-in-chief and a Congress that doesn't give a shit about public opinion.
Would that be the same commander-in-chief who campaigned very clearly on doing pretty much all the things he's done?
Because see, the way we actually track public opinion in this country is by having elections.
How about we dismantle the welfare state like Europe is being forced to do?
Because most of Medicare and Social Security -- the only entitlements large enough to put a dent in the budget -- are collected disproportionately by retired people, who in turn are A) a growing demographic and B) vote very reliably, relative to just about any other demographic.
Well, let's be honest. The Rs and Ds would keep each other off the ballot and run unopposed if they could, too.
It's not that they're conspiring against third-party candidates, exactly -- it's that no politician wants to have to compete for votes and in the case of a third party candidate, they actually can get it done sometimes, whereas the other national party has too much clout for them to muscle out.
But then IDEA isn't free, either.
Technically, the Community Edition is, but I think it's pretty fair to call that on par with the free version of Visual Studio. You're getting different kinds of extra features with the professional versions of one vs. the other as are appropriate to their respective target frameworks but in terms of what you're getting/need I think calling them on about an even keel with each other is fair.
I am genuinely amazed that no one has yet responded that Eclipse is free and the greatest IDE ever created.
(I rarely encounter someone who spends most of their time writing Java code and is neutral about Eclipse -- it's very love/hate with not much in between. Myself, I prefer IDEA or NetBeans to it.)
I don't think anyone is having doubts as to what kind of cheating the player was punished for. Single. Player. Right? So I just don't see how anyone could see this as a plus.
It makes it easy to get the game's achievements, which a lot of players (not me) take very seriously.
There's lots of cheats built into the single player game already -- it's just that using one makes it so you can't get achievements for that mission in a game where you've used the cheats. Thus, cheating to get the achievements is actually the main reason for the cheat in single player.
You and I don't care, but I'd be willing to bet that the number of people who bought Starcraft 2 and would want someone to get busted for cheating achievements is at least ten times the number of people who bought Starcraft 2 and are upset that someone was busted for this.
It's the trendy thing and they're gonna buy it.
It's not even the trendiness factor that's the real problem that they're up against.
To most of the people who play games like this, attempting to bust on people who cheat at the game (as they would see it) is a much greater good than allowing you to do whatever you want with software you bought. In other words, the very actions that make Blizzard evil to much of Slashdot are seen as a plus to most of their customers.
It's not that people are stupid, uninformed, or apathetic (although each of those are true often enough), it's that they value different things.
I forget exactly what the details were, but it's something along the lines that Fox runs up FCC fines on purpose with its offensive programming to funnel money... somewhere.
For example, do you think that people as right wing as you think FoxNews is would play Family Guy, American Dad the Simpsons and even Married with Children?
Ironically, the Simpsons itself provided a (joke) conspiracy theory about why this is the case a few years ago.
(I'm amazed this made Slashdot.)
But, being Slashdot, no one is amazed you didn't RTFA.
Must be part of the republican conspiracy to steal elections.
Oh wait! Harry Reid is a (D)... so that is okay. Never mind. /sarcasm
Presumably more people in Nevada speak English than Spanish, so in that case you'd have been right the first time.
That being said, I think this issue is more about incompetence than conspiracy. Just like the candidates!
Reid's opponent is Sharron Angle, not Sharron Reid.
I wrote some C++ code that leaked memory once.
Therefore, by your (bad) logic, all C++ code leaks memory, there's nothing you could ever do about it, and it's certainly not operator error.
Nor do you as a software business make money by treating developers of your platform like shit. Oracle is foolhardy doing so.
Ordinarily I would say you're right, except Oracle's been treating people who use its database and other products (PeopleSoft, I'm looking at you) like shit for decades and they're still making money hand over fist.
Mostly, because they make it so hard for you to do shit that if you want to get anything done you have to pay for Oracle support or consultants -- but you don't figure that out until you're already committed.
As someone who primarily makes his living writing both Java and .NET code for enterprise applications and knows better, let me be the first to say, excellent trolling, sir.