I am so sick of hearing this kind of argument. This way of voting is exactly why so many people are dissatisfied with our government. Each individual should vote for who ever they feel is the best choice, for all elected positions. Voting for one of the two major party candidates rarely leads to the "best outcome."
People should vote for what ever candidate they feel is the best possible choice, regardless of party. And if you are not knowledgeable enough to know which you feel is best then you should cast a "no vote" (assuming your state has such a vote as they all should). If all people voted for the actually candidate they really wanted then we might actually get a candidate for the majority.
We would also do well to change our election system so that we can actually get the candidate the true majority wants, but that's another topic
Many questions are not answered in the film, and left to the imagination of the viewer, but yours are answered
Are programs sentient beings or not?
No, programs are not sentient in the same since that a human is. In context of the grid they may appear sentient, but ultimately they follow their programming (which can be changed). It was not entirely clear if Isos are sentient or not.
Was Flynn's destruction of them genocide or not?
I don't recall there every being talk of complete destruction of the grid or the programs, so I would say it was certainly not genocide. But it was clear that Flynn did not consider programs to be life (a general requirement fro genocide). This is why he differentiated between programs, users and Isos.
Why was Flynn being left alone in exile?
Depends on which Flynn you are talking about and in which world. The Flynn in the computer world was left alone because he was outside the grid, but the programs could not go outside the grid (only he and the Iso), though I admit that doesn't explain why the light car and cycle work while outside the grid, since they are presumably programs (but you would probably have to have seen the first Tron to figure that out).
What the hell is up with Rinzler/Tron?
Clu was an artificial intelligence capable or reprograming existing programs (I forget what Flynn called it). Rinzler was Tron after being reprogramed to fight for the programs, but clearly his reprograming was not complete (actually a common occurrence when a program or piece of hardware is re-commissioned for some other use).
So sure, as a fantasy, but I think answers to most the questions people have had, are in the film, in one way or another.
Or maybe the movie simply wasn't very imaginative, or at least was less imaginative than the original...It was just another "problem in fantasyland" movie
I think this is the problem. There is nothing original about the movie, and clearly it wasn't intended to be. But when three episodes of the same old trite story comes out containing Hobbits and Wizards, then it's "magnificent." The problem is not the story or the setting, it's that some people just can't see passed the technology to recognize it for for what it is, a simple adventure film.
Some people don't get that Tron is a classic fantasy story, set in a technical setting. It's not a science fiction film trying to create some realist believable technology. People don't question "The Force" or Hobbits, but the do question "User Power" and Isos. As soon as you find yourself asking "Why does Flynn age?" or "Why does Flynn eat?" you've already decided that you were not going to watch the film for it's storyline, but instead for some preconceived idea about the technology is should portray.
Allow me to reiterate. Tron is a fantasy story. It's a simple adventure, about getting from point a to point b and being betrayed along the way. Heck it damn near parallels the Lord of the Rings, if you can accept the Flynns disk (or Tron's in the first film) is the ring and the I/O tower (or MCP in the first film) is the volcano, or what every they throw the ring into.
The difference will be that those of us who lack faith in your treaties and your laws will have the means to opt out. Since our existing societies are not based on voluntary consent, they are worthless and deserve their inevitable destruction.
There is nothing about our current societal contracts that is any less voluntary than it would be in the society you are proposing. If the people who control the land get together and form a contract you will still have no rights on that land. When all the land is controlled by people who have formed contracts that you disagree with then you will have no more options than you have today.
Since today you chose to live on the land controlled by a prior existing group with a previously agreed upon social contract you have voluntarily agreed to that social contract. You still have the option to opt out today. You just have to acquire a tract of land that is not under a societal contract (be it land that is unclaimed or by agreement of the owner that the land will no longer be under there domain). Take a look at some of the micronations if you want a idea on how to go about opting out.
And that's the problem with straight anarchy, it will eventually evolve (or devolve if you prefer) into large groups congregating together to create societal contracts, and effectively form governments. This is why most who truly support anarchy does so with additional stipulations, such as anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, or libertarian-socialists.
See, while he did show up a tiny bit in the early 2D sections as "real" Flynn, the majority of his appearances were as the construct, right? Where better to see an uncanny valley version of Flynn than in his imperfect mirror image? That slight creepiness was perfect for the role.
I think they should have used this to their advantage when making the movie and should have made all the Programs CGI and leave the Users as real people. It would have added some realism, if that word even applies, to the ideas it was trying to portray. Then take away the flamboyant personality of certain Programs and you have a nice clear division between the Programs and the Users.
Add to that the fact that Olivia Wilde's personality is somewhere between that of a CGI construct and an actual human and you see she makes a perfect ISO.
Re:I loved the original, but..
on
Tron: Legacy
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· Score: 2
Why would you age, physically, when you've been digitized?
You explain to me the scientific basis for digitization of a physical object, and why it would require the actual physical raw material of the original object, and how, if that object had consciousness, that it's consciousness would remain intact in digital form, then I'll be happy to explain why that digitization aged and ate. But since there is no scientific basis for the entire concept it remains in the realm of fantasy, and in this particular fantasy digitized humans age, and eat.
Look I wanted to be as infuriated about the situation as you, but then I realized, what I was watching was actually a fun movie regardless of the questionable science.
And seriously, using "Star Trek" as the basis for your argument does not exactly lend credence to it in any way.
The programmer's job is to take a description of some functionality and write code that implements that functionality, but there are lots of other criteria for good code besides meeting the functional requirements.
This is because system design and implementation is a much broader subject than programing. Ultimately though, system development has its corollaries in the field of structural engineering.
Interface Design, and I mean how the interface works not pretty graphics, is related mostly to architecture. System Design, is a matter of Engineering. Programing is equivalent to trade or craft work, such as pluming, welding, etc. Sure the plumbing has to work correctly but it should also be easy to maintain. And lastly you have your graphic designers, who are your painters.
When we talk about programing though, we are usually talking about the whole picture. In software there really are not separate paths for engineers, architects, and crafts men. In most cases which role you play depends on the project and where in the project you are. Even if you are lucky enough to work in an environment where the lines are clearly defined, you probably have had to work your way "up" from implementation to architecture (unlike structural engineering where it is common to find an engineer that can't handle a wrench let alone weld).
Re:I loved the original, but..
on
Tron: Legacy
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· Score: 1
So even a computer simulated Flynn ages visibly, but Clu does not?
Flynn is not a computer simulation, he is a digitization of a real living being. A laser was used to decompose his physical form and put that resulting energy into the machine in a form that could interact with the programs within. If you can buy that premise at all you should be able to accept that he could age.
Does he get hungry?
I have issues with this part to, not so much that he gets hungry, but that he still did after being on the grid for 20 years. See the thing is the human mind was not designed to work in a purely digital world. The fact that he's able to visualize programs as people and live days worth of memory in seconds would be enough to drive the average person insane. With that in mind you can easily understand why he would have to hold on to physical concepts such as eating a sleeping, if only as a means to maintain what remains of a fragile psyche.
Or you can accept that it's a work of fantasy and not try to over analyze it.
Re:Saw it Sunday
on
Tron: Legacy
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· Score: 5, Insightful
It captured the feelings I got from books like Snow Crash and (especially) Neuromancer of a virtual world. The towers of darkness and light.
Could this be because it was based on the look of the original Tron movie which was released no less than 2 years before Neuromancer and 10 years before snow crash? Tron had a very clear influence on all cyberpunk writers, and many others in the cybernet arena.
Nice straw-man, no rational person is saying governments should have no secrets.
There are plenty of people that believe that governments should have no secrets. I would argue that most people believe that no organization should withhold information from those that it is beholden to. Direct democracy and many other forms of government, work only if the constituency are fully informed of the actions of the government.
Argumentum ad hominem and argumentum ad populum, are just as much logical fallacy as the straw man, so you may do wise to shy away from them next time you are trying to debunk someone else.
Sorry.. what race of people did Wikileaks free from bondage?
If all goes well, every race that composes the citizenry of the United States of America, and even other countries around the world. Many people have died due to the actions of world governments, through war, starvation, and other means. If it can be shown that these situations could and can be avoided then the people affected will be freed from bondage, the bondage of fear. The fact that you don't realize that you are a victim in this case does not make it any less real.
Exposing the atrocities of a world government to the people is certainly a path to free people from bondage. Whether it will work or not remains to be seen.
The anti-segregation movements did not fundamentally change society immediately. They worked towards a fundamental change. Wikileaks is also a tool for working towards a fundamental change, namely open government, freedom of information, and the tools necessary for a true democracy.
Like any engineering process you have to update the specification when the specification actually changes. If you manual is the specification, as it should be, then before you implement a change you update the manual (specification).
There is no need to "go back and clean up" anything. You implement what the manual/specification says. If it turns out the the manual/specification is incorrect then you fix the manual/specification and then implement the change.
So next time your boss says, can you change that from saying "email address" to "user name" and your manual/specification says "email address" just tell them that you would be happy to do that once the manual/specification is updated to reflect the change.
According to Fredrick Brooks, in the mid 60's, the manual is the specification. All you need in a specification is the details that one would need to use the system. Then both the Engineers and the Testers can do their respective tasks based on the manual. If you have to turn the specification into a manual then the specification is either too verbose, or lacking in detail.
That's not to say that there are not other documents along the way, just that the end result, before implementation, is a manual that explains how the application is used. This also keeps you from designing systems that require screen shots in the manual for even the most rudimentary tasks.
Way to go ahead and prove my obviously way to subtle sarcastic comment. You used two examples that are so riddled with governmental involvement that it's hard to even say there was a free market involved.
The technology research that has allowed the most major improvements in computer performance (beyond the obvious die shrinking) was funded almost entirely by public funds granted by governmental involvement. This was through both research grants to universities, and governmental contracts for organizations such as the Department of Defense. Mind you I see that you accept that this was highly influenced by public money and not a free market.
HDTV on the other hand is so far removed from the free market it's laughable. HDTV exists outside of the homes of the ultra rich for one reason and one reason only. Governmental mandate, and redistribution of wealth in the form of government granted rebates. The cost of entry would have been too high to consider if the switch was not mandated by the government.
I'm sure I could easily pick apart the other examples as well, but no mater what my original questions still stands, "Could you please provide verifiable real world examples of the free market working to the benefit of the consumer?"
it is not preferable to set up a situation where individuals are expected to always second guess their superiors
Actually this is preferable. Good leaders want followers that question their every action and not just follow them blindly. If any member of my team followed my direction without second guessing my actions I would replace them with someone that might actually be of use. Second guessing does not necessarily mean that the superior is wrong or that you won't agree with them on many things, but by all means please question every directive you are ever given.
But you seemed to understand that in your follow up comparison to war crimes, so I'm not even sure why you made the statement in the first place.
stealing is when I take something away from you so that you no longer have it.
In this case "something" is being taken away, namely secrecy. those involved are taking away the governments ability to manipulate it's constituency and other world governments. Now I'm not saying it's stealing, since after all, the actions, including words, of a democratic government, are the property of the people. I'm just saying you might want to be clearer on your definition of sealing (maybe use a word less vague than "something").
The whole point of the Google change is to not include bad reviews in the page ranking. I actually means that you can't destroy a competitor with bad reviews because those bad reviews will not affect page ranking. Previously both bad and good reviews increased the page ranking. This caused products that where poorly reviewed to be at the top of the page rankings. Now it will take more positive reviews to move to the top of the page ranking, while negative reviews will have no affect on the page ranking at all.
Now this does not stop a competitor from creating negative reviews and increasing the page ranking of the review it self so it shows up above the actual product in the rankings, but that's nothing new with this change, that possibility has always been there.
This just stops all the links from [yourproduct]sux.com from actually making your product show up higher in the page rankings.
How can a competitor utilize poor reviews to destroy their competitor when Google is ignoring links from poor reviews. The positive reviews will still boost the page ranking while poor reviews, rightful or astroturf, will be ignored. So yes their competitor could create bad reviews that Google will ignore, but that seems like a big waste when they could just write no reviews and Google can ignore those as well. At worst some of those bad reviews would get included in the page ranking and actually improve the position of their competitor.
Clearly you don't understand what this change does, and you just want to make wild claims that are completely invalid.
So, do you tell your wife she "looks fat in that outfit"? Or Equivalent? Even if she is? Do you tell someone you just met that their "breath stinks", because it does?
If I felt it was appropriate to think, then it's appropriate to say. If I felt that my wife was fat I would tell her, but I have never felt that way, either when she weighed 100lbs or 200lbs. If I thought someones breath stank I would be helpful and let them know. The important thing is that in neither case would I say one thing openly and another in secret, or even in thought. Good diplomacy requires believing what you say and not just paying lip service.
Just a little advice. When you do get married, if you ever feel that your wife is old, fat and ugly, please whatever you do, let her go and find someone that actually appreciates her, and not someone that would lie to her just to get his way.
Rosalynn Carter: "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be."
Rosalynn Carter may have been married to a great leader, and reasonably respected person herself, she certainly has much to learn about leadership if that quote sums up her opinion.
Leadership is a matter of inspiration, and one can not inspire if they hold there actions in secret. People follow good leaders by choice, not by force or coercion. If you are hiding your true actions then you are using coercion.
To quote an actual leader:
"If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates,' then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny." - Dee Hock
Shivetya is right, just look at the huge success that was the National Opt-Out Day for body scanners. It was the same crowd./ calling for NOOD that is now calling for Amazon's head. What happened on Nov. 24th? Nothing.
I gather that by "nothing" you mean "near universal use of traditional metal detectors in place of more intrusive scans and searches." National opt out day worked exactly as it should have. Further follow up Opt out days, on major travel days, will cause the same effect, and should be continued.
Even if I were to agree with the basis for taking pitchforks to Amazon's HQ (which I don't), the pure ratio of talk vs action here is approaching pathetic levels.
All this shows is that we need to increase the amount of talk so that those small percentages taking action will likewise increase.
Jumping on the "get the pitchforks!" bandwagon every time during a controversy dilutes calls to action that might actually matter, weakens any valid points made by your party, and destroys any diplomatic solution to the matter at hand.
And this is exactly why the US is a society where corporations have more rights than people, and that politically we have been stuck with right wing and far right wing being the choice of the majority for decades (where most other western countries are centrist to left wing).
...But it's also a job many wouldn't like to exercise...
What kind of exercise would you possibly get anyway, laying on your back the whole time?
Unlike most of those providing these services without pay, professionals actually do some physical effort in there job. For the right price most would actually do all the work. Or so I have read.
Slashdot Mirror
I am so sick of hearing this kind of argument. This way of voting is exactly why so many people are dissatisfied with our government. Each individual should vote for who ever they feel is the best choice, for all elected positions. Voting for one of the two major party candidates rarely leads to the "best outcome."
People should vote for what ever candidate they feel is the best possible choice, regardless of party. And if you are not knowledgeable enough to know which you feel is best then you should cast a "no vote" (assuming your state has such a vote as they all should). If all people voted for the actually candidate they really wanted then we might actually get a candidate for the majority.
We would also do well to change our election system so that we can actually get the candidate the true majority wants, but that's another topic
Are programs sentient beings or not?
No, programs are not sentient in the same since that a human is. In context of the grid they may appear sentient, but ultimately they follow their programming (which can be changed). It was not entirely clear if Isos are sentient or not.
Was Flynn's destruction of them genocide or not?
I don't recall there every being talk of complete destruction of the grid or the programs, so I would say it was certainly not genocide. But it was clear that Flynn did not consider programs to be life (a general requirement fro genocide). This is why he differentiated between programs, users and Isos.
Why was Flynn being left alone in exile?
Depends on which Flynn you are talking about and in which world. The Flynn in the computer world was left alone because he was outside the grid, but the programs could not go outside the grid (only he and the Iso), though I admit that doesn't explain why the light car and cycle work while outside the grid, since they are presumably programs (but you would probably have to have seen the first Tron to figure that out).
What the hell is up with Rinzler/Tron?
Clu was an artificial intelligence capable or reprograming existing programs (I forget what Flynn called it). Rinzler was Tron after being reprogramed to fight for the programs, but clearly his reprograming was not complete (actually a common occurrence when a program or piece of hardware is re-commissioned for some other use).
So sure, as a fantasy, but I think answers to most the questions people have had, are in the film, in one way or another.
Or maybe the movie simply wasn't very imaginative, or at least was less imaginative than the original...It was just another "problem in fantasyland" movie
I think this is the problem. There is nothing original about the movie, and clearly it wasn't intended to be. But when three episodes of the same old trite story comes out containing Hobbits and Wizards, then it's "magnificent." The problem is not the story or the setting, it's that some people just can't see passed the technology to recognize it for for what it is, a simple adventure film.
Some people don't get that Tron is a classic fantasy story, set in a technical setting. It's not a science fiction film trying to create some realist believable technology. People don't question "The Force" or Hobbits, but the do question "User Power" and Isos. As soon as you find yourself asking "Why does Flynn age?" or "Why does Flynn eat?" you've already decided that you were not going to watch the film for it's storyline, but instead for some preconceived idea about the technology is should portray.
Allow me to reiterate. Tron is a fantasy story. It's a simple adventure, about getting from point a to point b and being betrayed along the way. Heck it damn near parallels the Lord of the Rings, if you can accept the Flynns disk (or Tron's in the first film) is the ring and the I/O tower (or MCP in the first film) is the volcano, or what every they throw the ring into.
The difference will be that those of us who lack faith in your treaties and your laws will have the means to opt out. Since our existing societies are not based on voluntary consent, they are worthless and deserve their inevitable destruction.
There is nothing about our current societal contracts that is any less voluntary than it would be in the society you are proposing. If the people who control the land get together and form a contract you will still have no rights on that land. When all the land is controlled by people who have formed contracts that you disagree with then you will have no more options than you have today.
Since today you chose to live on the land controlled by a prior existing group with a previously agreed upon social contract you have voluntarily agreed to that social contract. You still have the option to opt out today. You just have to acquire a tract of land that is not under a societal contract (be it land that is unclaimed or by agreement of the owner that the land will no longer be under there domain). Take a look at some of the micronations if you want a idea on how to go about opting out.
And that's the problem with straight anarchy, it will eventually evolve (or devolve if you prefer) into large groups congregating together to create societal contracts, and effectively form governments. This is why most who truly support anarchy does so with additional stipulations, such as anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, or libertarian-socialists.
See, while he did show up a tiny bit in the early 2D sections as "real" Flynn, the majority of his appearances were as the construct, right? Where better to see an uncanny valley version of Flynn than in his imperfect mirror image? That slight creepiness was perfect for the role.
I think they should have used this to their advantage when making the movie and should have made all the Programs CGI and leave the Users as real people. It would have added some realism, if that word even applies, to the ideas it was trying to portray. Then take away the flamboyant personality of certain Programs and you have a nice clear division between the Programs and the Users.
Add to that the fact that Olivia Wilde's personality is somewhere between that of a CGI construct and an actual human and you see she makes a perfect ISO.
Why would you age, physically, when you've been digitized?
You explain to me the scientific basis for digitization of a physical object, and why it would require the actual physical raw material of the original object, and how, if that object had consciousness, that it's consciousness would remain intact in digital form, then I'll be happy to explain why that digitization aged and ate. But since there is no scientific basis for the entire concept it remains in the realm of fantasy, and in this particular fantasy digitized humans age, and eat.
Look I wanted to be as infuriated about the situation as you, but then I realized, what I was watching was actually a fun movie regardless of the questionable science.
And seriously, using "Star Trek" as the basis for your argument does not exactly lend credence to it in any way.
The programmer's job is to take a description of some functionality and write code that implements that functionality, but there are lots of other criteria for good code besides meeting the functional requirements.
This is because system design and implementation is a much broader subject than programing. Ultimately though, system development has its corollaries in the field of structural engineering.
Interface Design, and I mean how the interface works not pretty graphics, is related mostly to architecture. System Design, is a matter of Engineering. Programing is equivalent to trade or craft work, such as pluming, welding, etc. Sure the plumbing has to work correctly but it should also be easy to maintain. And lastly you have your graphic designers, who are your painters.
When we talk about programing though, we are usually talking about the whole picture. In software there really are not separate paths for engineers, architects, and crafts men. In most cases which role you play depends on the project and where in the project you are. Even if you are lucky enough to work in an environment where the lines are clearly defined, you probably have had to work your way "up" from implementation to architecture (unlike structural engineering where it is common to find an engineer that can't handle a wrench let alone weld).
So even a computer simulated Flynn ages visibly, but Clu does not?
Flynn is not a computer simulation, he is a digitization of a real living being. A laser was used to decompose his physical form and put that resulting energy into the machine in a form that could interact with the programs within. If you can buy that premise at all you should be able to accept that he could age.
Does he get hungry?
I have issues with this part to, not so much that he gets hungry, but that he still did after being on the grid for 20 years. See the thing is the human mind was not designed to work in a purely digital world. The fact that he's able to visualize programs as people and live days worth of memory in seconds would be enough to drive the average person insane. With that in mind you can easily understand why he would have to hold on to physical concepts such as eating a sleeping, if only as a means to maintain what remains of a fragile psyche.
Or you can accept that it's a work of fantasy and not try to over analyze it.
It captured the feelings I got from books like Snow Crash and (especially) Neuromancer of a virtual world. The towers of darkness and light.
Could this be because it was based on the look of the original Tron movie which was released no less than 2 years before Neuromancer and 10 years before snow crash? Tron had a very clear influence on all cyberpunk writers, and many others in the cybernet arena.
Nice straw-man, no rational person is saying governments should have no secrets.
There are plenty of people that believe that governments should have no secrets. I would argue that most people believe that no organization should withhold information from those that it is beholden to. Direct democracy and many other forms of government, work only if the constituency are fully informed of the actions of the government.
Argumentum ad hominem and argumentum ad populum, are just as much logical fallacy as the straw man, so you may do wise to shy away from them next time you are trying to debunk someone else.
Sorry.. what race of people did Wikileaks free from bondage?
If all goes well, every race that composes the citizenry of the United States of America, and even other countries around the world. Many people have died due to the actions of world governments, through war, starvation, and other means. If it can be shown that these situations could and can be avoided then the people affected will be freed from bondage, the bondage of fear. The fact that you don't realize that you are a victim in this case does not make it any less real.
Exposing the atrocities of a world government to the people is certainly a path to free people from bondage. Whether it will work or not remains to be seen.
Wikileaks is...not fundamentally changing society.
The anti-segregation movements did not fundamentally change society immediately. They worked towards a fundamental change. Wikileaks is also a tool for working towards a fundamental change, namely open government, freedom of information, and the tools necessary for a true democracy.
Like any engineering process you have to update the specification when the specification actually changes. If you manual is the specification, as it should be, then before you implement a change you update the manual (specification).
There is no need to "go back and clean up" anything. You implement what the manual/specification says. If it turns out the the manual/specification is incorrect then you fix the manual/specification and then implement the change.
So next time your boss says, can you change that from saying "email address" to "user name" and your manual/specification says "email address" just tell them that you would be happy to do that once the manual/specification is updated to reflect the change.
According to Fredrick Brooks, in the mid 60's, the manual is the specification. All you need in a specification is the details that one would need to use the system. Then both the Engineers and the Testers can do their respective tasks based on the manual. If you have to turn the specification into a manual then the specification is either too verbose, or lacking in detail.
That's not to say that there are not other documents along the way, just that the end result, before implementation, is a manual that explains how the application is used. This also keeps you from designing systems that require screen shots in the manual for even the most rudimentary tasks.
Way to go ahead and prove my obviously way to subtle sarcastic comment. You used two examples that are so riddled with governmental involvement that it's hard to even say there was a free market involved.
The technology research that has allowed the most major improvements in computer performance (beyond the obvious die shrinking) was funded almost entirely by public funds granted by governmental involvement. This was through both research grants to universities, and governmental contracts for organizations such as the Department of Defense. Mind you I see that you accept that this was highly influenced by public money and not a free market.
HDTV on the other hand is so far removed from the free market it's laughable. HDTV exists outside of the homes of the ultra rich for one reason and one reason only. Governmental mandate, and redistribution of wealth in the form of government granted rebates. The cost of entry would have been too high to consider if the switch was not mandated by the government.
I'm sure I could easily pick apart the other examples as well, but no mater what my original questions still stands, "Could you please provide verifiable real world examples of the free market working to the benefit of the consumer?"
it is not preferable to set up a situation where individuals are expected to always second guess their superiors
Actually this is preferable. Good leaders want followers that question their every action and not just follow them blindly. If any member of my team followed my direction without second guessing my actions I would replace them with someone that might actually be of use. Second guessing does not necessarily mean that the superior is wrong or that you won't agree with them on many things, but by all means please question every directive you are ever given.
But you seemed to understand that in your follow up comparison to war crimes, so I'm not even sure why you made the statement in the first place.
stealing is when I take something away from you so that you no longer have it.
In this case "something" is being taken away, namely secrecy. those involved are taking away the governments ability to manipulate it's constituency and other world governments. Now I'm not saying it's stealing, since after all, the actions, including words, of a democratic government, are the property of the people. I'm just saying you might want to be clearer on your definition of sealing (maybe use a word less vague than "something").
Could you please provide verifiable real world examples of the free market working to the benefit of the consumer?
The whole point of the Google change is to not include bad reviews in the page ranking. I actually means that you can't destroy a competitor with bad reviews because those bad reviews will not affect page ranking. Previously both bad and good reviews increased the page ranking. This caused products that where poorly reviewed to be at the top of the page rankings. Now it will take more positive reviews to move to the top of the page ranking, while negative reviews will have no affect on the page ranking at all.
Now this does not stop a competitor from creating negative reviews and increasing the page ranking of the review it self so it shows up above the actual product in the rankings, but that's nothing new with this change, that possibility has always been there.
This just stops all the links from [yourproduct]sux.com from actually making your product show up higher in the page rankings.
How can a competitor utilize poor reviews to destroy their competitor when Google is ignoring links from poor reviews. The positive reviews will still boost the page ranking while poor reviews, rightful or astroturf, will be ignored. So yes their competitor could create bad reviews that Google will ignore, but that seems like a big waste when they could just write no reviews and Google can ignore those as well. At worst some of those bad reviews would get included in the page ranking and actually improve the position of their competitor.
Clearly you don't understand what this change does, and you just want to make wild claims that are completely invalid.
So, do you tell your wife she "looks fat in that outfit"? Or Equivalent? Even if she is? Do you tell someone you just met that their "breath stinks", because it does?
If I felt it was appropriate to think, then it's appropriate to say. If I felt that my wife was fat I would tell her, but I have never felt that way, either when she weighed 100lbs or 200lbs. If I thought someones breath stank I would be helpful and let them know. The important thing is that in neither case would I say one thing openly and another in secret, or even in thought. Good diplomacy requires believing what you say and not just paying lip service.
Just a little advice. When you do get married, if you ever feel that your wife is old, fat and ugly, please whatever you do, let her go and find someone that actually appreciates her, and not someone that would lie to her just to get his way.
Rosalynn Carter: "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be."
Rosalynn Carter may have been married to a great leader, and reasonably respected person herself, she certainly has much to learn about leadership if that quote sums up her opinion.
Leadership is a matter of inspiration, and one can not inspire if they hold there actions in secret. People follow good leaders by choice, not by force or coercion. If you are hiding your true actions then you are using coercion.
To quote an actual leader: "If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates,' then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny." - Dee Hock
Shivetya is right, just look at the huge success that was the National Opt-Out Day for body scanners. It was the same crowd ./ calling for NOOD that is now calling for Amazon's head. What happened on Nov. 24th? Nothing .
I gather that by "nothing" you mean "near universal use of traditional metal detectors in place of more intrusive scans and searches." National opt out day worked exactly as it should have. Further follow up Opt out days, on major travel days, will cause the same effect, and should be continued.
Even if I were to agree with the basis for taking pitchforks to Amazon's HQ (which I don't), the pure ratio of talk vs action here is approaching pathetic levels.
All this shows is that we need to increase the amount of talk so that those small percentages taking action will likewise increase.
Jumping on the "get the pitchforks!" bandwagon every time during a controversy dilutes calls to action that might actually matter, weakens any valid points made by your party, and destroys any diplomatic solution to the matter at hand.
And this is exactly why the US is a society where corporations have more rights than people, and that politically we have been stuck with right wing and far right wing being the choice of the majority for decades (where most other western countries are centrist to left wing).
You say that like being a whore is a bad thing.
...But it's also a job many wouldn't like to exercise...
What kind of exercise would you possibly get anyway, laying on your back the whole time?
Unlike most of those providing these services without pay, professionals actually do some physical effort in there job. For the right price most would actually do all the work. Or so I have read.