I'm somewhat skeptical. I sell an iOS app at the usual App Store rock bottom prices. 90+% of my downloads are still attributed to pirates. I can't really drop the price any lower without giving it away for free.
I'm not sure if that confirms or denies anything. All you've confirmed is that the iOS App Store's "rock bottom prices" aren't able to placate a large percentage from piracy. Unless your app is selling for $0.01 currently, then an inability to sell at a lower price without giving it away for free sounds like a failure of the market--aka the App Store.
Pirates are going to pirate no matter what the cost is.
I agree. Market forces inherently encourage relatively low prices on highly consumed goods, like entertainment and apps, but some people see no value in a legitimate channel to purchase a product, even if it were sold for $0.01 and was trivial to pay for.
The reason wealth concentrates more and more is because of the Federal Reserve system, where the banks (NOT the government) create the money supply by making loans.
I think you're right about this, but I think your reasoning is off a bit. The Federal Reserve system's main function is to maintain a relatively low but positive inflationary rate. This is done chiefly in an attempt to maintain economic stability by avoiding sporadic deflation/inflation swings (look at the late 19th century for examples) and to encourage continuous financial investment by the wealthy (more on this below). Both of these actions would, if anything, seem to hurt wealth concentration by forcing continuous positive action to even maintain one's effective wealth, but the real problem is the situation is so easily game-able.
The issue is, if inflation is fixed around 2% by the Federal Reserve and the safest forms of investment guarantees a rate of return greater than 2% then anyone with a sufficiently large amount of starting capital is effectively set for life with only the most marginal amount of work necessary. Yet, over the years those with relatively little wealth have discovered that the same system that produces such strong economic stability also produces a system in which diversifying over the whole economy (mutual funds), while not as safe as the safest form of investment, guarantees a much greater return.
All the talk about corporate tax rates, companies cutting corners, etc are really irrelevant to this--that is, even if companies/corporations were well taxed, well regulated, and well managed without nefarious greedy intent there'd be a minor economic "drain" as a result but it wouldn't effect the wealth redistribution issue. So too is government debt except as necessary to correct for bubbles or other anomalies in the market--that is, bubbles themselves are the problem and government correction or debt while a gross manipulation of the market only effect the rate of wealth redistribution, not its existence.
In essence, the Federal Reserve has made the economy into a generally well-regulated casino where the house favors the player. In the long term this benefits the high rollers most even as it nearly forces the high rollers to play the game. Of course without the Federal Reserve, the economy would be a non-regulated casino which may favor the house or player and for which the high rollers would still have the advantage of choosing when to play or not.
It is precisely for this reason, the freedom not to play when it's detrimental, that any system that wishes to prevent such wealth accumulation would have to use force (say, taxes) to combat such an issue. Personally, I'm less concerned about the wealth accumulation and more concerned about the more crass corporation taxation, regulation, etc since that seems a much clear issue of fairness in a game that "takes a cut" on players it has granted an edge. Certainly, arguments about the evilness or unfairness of government influence seem absurd taken with this knowledge, unless such an argument is actually calling for an end to that granted edge as well.
Wow, ya think so? So you're saying that the people above the engineers actually make more money and benefits than the people they're above? Get outta here *gay hand wave, cheesy smile*.
Just like the NBA, the NFL, etc. Oh, wait.. Yea, it'd almost seem like in some industries it's recognized that just because you're above someone else doesn't inherently mean you should be paid more. It's almost like, oh, experience, importance, and replace-ability also factor into it. For white collar workers, there's plenty of superstars which are pretty irreplaceable with plenty of experience and importance to the future of a department or a whole company. In the mean time, a newly hired manager might very well be rather replaceable even if he's above those superstars.
In short, why should it be presumed that a manager who is paid reasonable well and has the chance to be promoted in the future as he/she builds experience, importance, and proves his/her irreplaceableness should be paid more than his subordinates? Maybe it makes sense in blue collar work (although even there, I'd tend to disagree at times because in some industries the product sold has plenty of profit and the managers are as much or even more replaceable than a trained blue collar worker), but I can't see how one can presume it in white collar work, especially when the boss and subordinate are in different job classifications. Now, if it were one engineer and a subordinate engineer or one manager and a subordinate manager, I can see more room to presume. But, it's still always down to a case-by-case basis.
Haven't all the FOSS guys said 'if MSFT has patents lets see them"? Well here you go, now it is up to the courts to ultimately decide.
No, all the FOSS guys have said 'if <open source project> has <proprietary copyrighted code>, lets see it'. That's the thing about copyright vs patents. With patents, it's all about protecting a concept for which anyone who implements has to be able to use the patent or they can be sued. That's why there's been such fuss about software patents, the GPLv3 having stronger patent nullification protection, etc. Copyright is a different matter; unless it's a very simple work, programmers will make things different so the FOSS guys, the various proprietary guys, etc will all produce similar but different code and it'll all be okay. Of course, if it's simple enough--like, say, the base structure you'd find in a header file--it's probably not copyrighted anyways, so copyright doesn't enter into it there either.
In short, you're confusing patents with copyright. Patents seem very evil in a rapidly evolving industry, as you note. And it used to be that MS wouldn't even go after companies over patents (although they might use their patents in self-defense). I guess that's just a sign of new management.:/
PS - The whole reason for the FOSS talking about asking for proof of proprietary code in OSS code is precisely because they didn't believe there was. Look at the Linux kernel, look at Apache, etc. It's clear that tons of code has been created without the need for importing "magical", proprietary code and it's offensive to those who work on such projects to have such implied. And OSS is very much about being open, transparent, truthful, and frank. In short, it was a call to quickly clear their names. And I think the talk was about SCO, anyways.
As a PS3 owner, I am getting a bit tired of all the jail-breaking. I get that people want to mess around with the hardware, but almost none of this work goes towards something new and useful. I've yet to see any work on some killer applications or games the PS3. I went through the same stuff with the Wii. Everybody talking about the great homebrew scene was but there was barely anything more than emulators. Sure, there were a few new games, but they weren't anything that fantastic.
Well, that's mostly true. Very few people make nice, big games for free. That's true on the PC as much as it is on any console. And once money is involved, then you're left to either follow Sony's/MS's/Nintendo's guidelines on publishing or risk putting yourself in a position where you'll quite possibly be sued for encourage/endorsing jail-breaking which even if legal, it isn't clearly legal (thanks in part to the DMCA) so doesn't absolve one of having to pay all the court fees to prove such; after all, Sony/MS/Nintendo make a good deal of money that way not only in selling development kits but also in the publication.
Then, Nintendo felt it necessary to update the bootloader for the Wii, bricking people's unhacked consoles. The PS3 isn't looking much different.
I'm not really sure how that relates to people jail-breaking their console. If Nintendo, Sony, or MS were to brick an unhacked consoles, then that seems more a PR nightmare for the company; blaming others for it seems rather absurd.
All of this talk about being free to do what you want with the console, but people end up just getting their games for free.
No doubt that is true. Very few people are interesting in actually hacking anything--very few people are hackers or programmers. So, yes, the ratio of pirates is almost certainly much higher than the hacker/enthusiasts. But, that line of argument amounts to saying it's acceptable and reasonable to lock-up PCs as much as consoles. That seems rather absurd as well. Of course, since Sony/MS/Nintendo made their own system and people have generally adopted them as closed, it's not like one should expect them to be open by choice. That still would seem to reasonable leave room, though, for people to open them on their own just as hardware/drivers on the PC have been reverse engineered sufficiently to function.
If you are going to hack the console, at least make it look like you are doing it for a worthwhile reason.
In all honesty, what "worthwhile"-ness is there in any console? It's a game system. Even making games for it wouldn't be very worthwhile. Talk of chaining PS3s together to form a supercomputer is only mildly worthwhile as I don't believe that application is cost-effective anymore. If anything, hacking a PS3 or a Wii or an X-Box 360 would seem to be done for the novelty of it, to see if it's possible, and generally to better understand something that someone else is trying to hide in the open. Once that's done, though, a console is just another computer and there's plenty of computer options already so there's not a lot of reason to target a console for anything.
In short, I don't really disagree with what you're saying about it looking very much like a mad-grab by many for piracy which I'm sure it is. But, I don't think your standards for trying to prove otherwise really match up to the reality of any computer system that's available, especially considering that the "worthwhile" stuff usually involves money and few people or companies want to go to court to avoid the accepted practice of releasing on a platform since such is only likely to cut into profits in the short term with little advantage in the long-term. The finally group that is left are more ideological and care more about "access" and "openness" but in a way that's probably not very worthwhile to most people.
It's really not strange to lump pro-lifers in with those anti-science nutters. They frequently take the position that a fetus is a person complete with all that entails and that a fetus exists from conception. Such a clumping of cells isn't any more a person than that wart I had removed was.
The issue is, abortion and the morning after pill are both efforts specifically intent on preventing that "clump of cells" from becoming a clearly recognized person. Further, various crimes such as simple assault can be treated as murder if the intent of that assault is to prevent that "clump of cells" from becoming a clearly recognized person. The obvious issue is, at what point do we start considering that "clump of cells" worthy of being protected from the intentional act of others. The current standard seems to based in part on size and recognizability to humans. I do not believe there is any science to back that position as a dividing line.
A person is entitled to have an opinion on that issue, but rewriting our knowledge to suit somebody that's probably too stupid to recognize that IVF results in far more embryos being disposed of than abortion on a per instance basis.
Funny you say that as I personally have a problem with IVF precisely for this reason; I'm more ambiguous when it comes to embryonic stem cells derived incidentally from IVF as its an unintended side-effect. Adoption seems a better option in any case.
Ogg Theora is technically highly inferior to H.264. All it has going for it is religion and ideology.
And? Windows comes bundled with tons of old, obsolete, and inferior codecs, many of which never were mainstream in any reasonable sense of the word. Either Microsoft is for giving more choices or its for technological superiority. Yes, it's not black and white, but it's also the case that Theora being free makes the lack of inclusion either a sign of a choice on their part or a belief that Theora is so underused that it ranks below a ton of old codec; that's a little hard to believe.
Why should Microsoft support your particular belief system over the beliefs of anyone else? Why, especially, should they want their users to have a much worse experience watching internet video?
Because they said they were for choice and choice inherently involves trade-offs? Or are you suggesting Microsoft should drop support for everything but H.264? I mean, if it's all about quality per bit, then H.264 is the current best technology.
How about adopting (or adapting) a belief system that leads to better products instead of worse ones?
The second I see Microsoft chose and endorse a competitor's product because it's superior, we'll talk. As it stands, Microsoft's action seems more an attempt to ingratiate themselves with H.264 supporters while simultaneously mocking Google and Chrome. That's certainly their right and choice. But, it's not about generally giving more choice to the user. I'd be happier if Microsoft would just be honest and say they believe Google made a bad choice.
For experiments where the physicists believe they understand them this is unacceptable, because it actually means the pysics of at least one method of both is not well enough understood, i.e. you have a systematic error. If the physics is not well understood then you don't know if the systematic error will be constant.
And that's the crux of the issue. Both results should be the same within the margin of error. The fact that they're not either indicates that the methodology is off or we simply don't understand the underlying physics well enough. I'd imagine it might be a bit of both (that a lack of understanding on the underlying physics results in incorrect methodology).
To that end, the fact that a scientist is trying to sort of whitewash the discussion to get out a set definition of a kilogram is disturbing to me. It'd be, in my opinion, possibly in the same vein as redefining light to avoid the clear particle/wave duality. If anything, I would hope that this discrepancy of results would spark even more research because it opens up a great opportunity to better understand our universe. Worrying about setting the definition of a kilogram seems a bit more moot, especially if it turns out that such a thing is impossible using the tools being suggested (ie, that one of the metrics isn't cosmologically fixed).
I'd worry more about the thermal expansion of ocean water; once the ice all melts it's gone, but the oceans will keep expanding so long as the global temperature increases.
It's far simpler to improve performance... by QOS for traffic to specific destinations
And on a saturated line, QoS translates into special-group A having their traffic get through while neutral-group B having their traffic dropped, even if there's inherently as many requests for A as B (inherently in that if A or B were alone, they'd both generate the same amount of traffic).
that the user would want improved access for anyway...
Users can already get what they want with a neutral, best-effort packet network. Such a network of user desired is already reenforced through regular router reconfigurations and companies buying up use of caching networks. The latter of which, btw, already places enough of an advantage and self-feeding loop that the idea that content providers can or should buy even further lock-in to maintain their position or effective lock-out to take bandwidth that would otherwise have gone to extant user demand is disgusting, at best. At worst, it's tantamount to rigging the self-correcting free-market nature of the internet. How is that remotely acceptable?
Before everybody goes all gung-ho against G-S for this move, think of how many of you would also comment along the lines of "Who would invest in Facebook? It is just another bubble waiting to burst."
Two points.
One, inherent to a bubble is a certain amount of deception about the value of an item. That is, one buys into a bubble to resell within that bubble under the presumption that the stated worth will go up either because it was undervalued when you first bought it or it will increase in worth by the time you sell it. Usually, this is colored with greed, as a bubble tends to last quite a while so there's plenty of time for most sane people who care to stand back and analyze the situation to recognize it for what it is.
Two, this won't inherently be an industry-wide bubble. It doesn't necessarily involve many buyers and many sellers. It involves one seller (with probably future resellers). One main reason that bubbles don't result in many fraud lawsuits or convictions is that at some level it's hard to prove that any one person had enough information to be engaging in deception; ie, one can claim to be an innocent victim of the bubble. However, Goldman Sachs would clearly not be a victim if their selling becomes a bubble as they presumably have information that the general public doesn't have. In essence, they're very inherently culpable to their investors and possibly society at large.
Now, given that you, I, and others are saying that this $50 Billion seems to be an over-valuation and given that it seems clearly possibly it could lead to a bubble and fraud and given the scope of the possible damage, even if the original investors are non-American (although if some French investor buys up stakes and US investors have stakes in the French investor, that's a somewhat untrue statement), it seems that minimally an investigation should be done to verify that no actually deception is taking place and maximally Facebook and Goldman Sachs should be forced to open up their records to the public. This is especially true given the recent law passed that are designed to combat possible systemic risk.
I'm not qualifying anything there doing, I'm just sayin...
A bubble of one is different than a bubble of many just like the persecution of one is different than the persecution of a group. It doesn't mean one is better or worse. It doesn't mean punishment/relief shouldn't apply in both cases. But it does mean it should probably be handled differently.
...that didn't stop her, like a lot of liberals, from blaming this on Sarah Palin and some cliche political map.
A relative few liberals blame Sarah Palin (although raw numbers may be a lot). Several on the political spectrum talk about if not outright blame violent political rhetoric in general. The media reports about that as well as concerns about gun ownership regulations and the signs of mental illness (without poking too much into violent mental illness, since apparently the experts can't tell if a mentally ill person will become violent). Almost no one talks about Nietzsche, period.:/
This means they do 100% have spys inside of Iran's nuclear systems and gives a butt load more credit to the statements made by Israel and America about Iran's nuclear goals.
I don't think there was every a lot of doubt about Iran's nuclear goals. Just like there's little doubt Saddam had goals of creating and possessing chemical weapons. The real question is, how likely is it that they'll succeed or even go through with it? If Saddam had created chemical weapons, would it have stopped the US from invading? Likely not; instead, it would have almost certainly mean he'd be minimally deposed and at worst killed. Similarly, a nuclear weapon wouldn't be much deterrent to bombing Iran; the threat of a sudden drop off in oil supply from any sort of military attack on Iran is enough of a deterrent already. And nuking Israel would just remove the excuse/distraction the Iranian government uses for their oppression. No, the ability to make a nuclear weapon would be bragging rights (just like North Korea). Making one would just make them a further target for sanctions and leave them to worry that someone in their own regime might steal and use the nuke on Iran (as the heavy crackdowns in Iran after the election showed, it's not one big happy family or even well controlled family). Overall, I think it's very unclear if Stuxnet did any real good at all, except further cement animosity towards the West.
Re:Article doesn't live up to expectations
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Carbon dioxide is a trace gas, a tiny gas, part of this huge system. You're trying to tell me that's going to control the system and influence the energy of the system? When you have things like the sun, which is obviously the greatest contributor to the world's energy? It almost defies common sense.
I started to lose confidence at this point. It's a standard argument from incredulity: I don't understand this, therefore it can't be true.
It also reeks of a bit of ignorance. It's well understood that as powerful an output of energy as the sun is, the Earth only receives a rather small cross-section of that energy. Specifically, our distance from the sun is a major contributing factor to the average surface temperature. However, without any greenhouse gases, we'd have an average surface temperature around -17C. Meanwhile, the real average surface temperature is around 15C. Yet, all greenhouse cases account for less than 1% of Earth's Atmosphere.
Just recognizing that, it's hard to see how one can be so dismissive of "trace amounts" of CO2, water vapor, or whatever.
The maximum bite for an encoder/decoder is 20 cents a unit.
And with a maximal of 6 billion units, that works out to around 1.2 billion (ignoring things like having multiple units (one on the computer, one on the smart phone, one on the game system, etc)). Care to pay that for everyone?
MPEG LA is geared for licensing production and distribution of H.264 video on a commercial scale. They don't give a damn about your wedding videos until you become a national franchise.
Ie, if I put my wedding video on youtube in H.264 and it becomes popular and gets 2 million page views, I'll risk having to pay $40,000? Golly, I wonder why anyone would have a problem with that.
They don't give a damn about the geek's freely distributed Star Trek fan-flick.
Unless the website hosting it has ads of any sort; then it's commercial.
The Enterprise Cap for H.264 in 2011 is $6.5 million a year. H.264 is deeply entrenched in theatrical production. Broadcast, cable and satellite distribution. Industrial and military applications. Home video.
Which begs the question, why isn't licensing such that Google, Firefox, etc don't have to pay? It's certainly not like MPEG LA is getting insufficient money. The simple point is, MPEG LA wants the chance to spread into the online world to make even more money. I can appreciate this. But, when you start counting the possibly millions or even billions of units to be sold in the future, that "dirt cheap" is no longer dirt cheap--why else would the per unit rate be so low, anyways?
The simple truth is, allowing H.264 to effectively tax all internet-video devices is one of those anti-free market things that will only slow down innovation and growth. It's no different than any other pervasive fee in a system.
You constantly see people that claim they're libertarians while preaching that the free market will fix 'everything'. On another forum I saw a person claim that "All" regulation is "Evil", no exceptions
You also constantly see people on the left claim that all corporations are "Evil"
True. It'd be more accurate to say all corporations are amoral (not immoral), so one has to judge their actions on the net effect, not on some presumption of good/evil of their actions.
and that the free market never works.
I don't think I've ever heard that said from anyone on the left. Now, I've heard things like capitalism is evil, but that's not quite the same thing. There's plenty of evil in the heart of man, so when capitalism is doing evil, it might well be the intent. Meanwhile, communism is at least framed from the perspective that evil is inherently against the design. Of course, given that there's plenty of evil in the heart of man, it's rather silly to think you can force communism on people to make them non-evil, but then I digress.
The truth is that some of the time the free market works best when left alone, and some of the time it works best when regulated. The trick is in figuring out which is which, and not under-regulating nor over-regulating.
True enough. I'd add that the real issue, at least in the discourse of the US, is that plenty of Republicans speak in libertarian ideals (ie, more free market to solve things) when it's often more about pushing for under-regulating an industry even after it's shown to be abusive. Then it reverts to talk about corruption/misfeasance/malfeasance, without mentioning those words, in government failing to act even when regulation allows or requires them to. Of course, running on a platform that government fails so you can take over government is a great way to place even more people who will engage in misfeasance.
In short, I think the problem is too many people think too uncritically about what is going on. Waving "left", "neo-con", or "libertarian" to label people doesn't really help. I'm not sure what will, though, since it's not like you can make people think critically.:/
'Nanny state' is a teabagger code word for Democratic lead government. Republicans get a free pass from you'all as God puts them in power to extend his justice (or so you'all would seem to claim).
And... Using the word "teabagger" in an argument is liberal code for, "I think Anderson Cooper is really hot and maybe I'll come out of the closet."
So...the worst we have to worry about liberals is having some sort of concern over governing power and maybe being gay... And the worst we have to worry about teabaggers is they're all talk about concern over uneconomic governing power, but they're really just a delusional group who think Republicans represent God on Earth. I think you can guess which group I'd rather be incorrectly labeled as. But, then, I'm not so insecure about my sexual identity and I am concerned about actual governance, not a bunch of empty rhetoric.
On Slashdot? Because we're well versed in the Broken Window Fallacy. Not so much when it comes to economics more generally, unfortunately.
Or perhaps he was arguing that if a corporation in the US benefits from US law and causes thousands of people to become jobless, they should be willingly taxed to pay for retraining and support those thousands of people? Certainly, they shouldn't simultaneously use US Patent law to charge an extra $2/item above what the free market would charge while dodging tax obligations or lobbying for their tax burden to decrease, no matter how more efficiently that money might be hypothetically spent if done through the private markets; such corporations have well demonstrated that given the chance, they'd not only not do such work "more efficiently", but they'd fire thousands of people and leave it to every other charity, company, or tax payer to handle the burden those thousand families will face.
In that context, one can almost see the calls for not being so quick to jump to the call of "efficiency" without the real-world ramifications of those decisions.
That's because a lot of folks can't stomach the idea that their country was founded on the very intentional and institutionalized genocide of one group of people and the enslavement of another.
What country wasn't founded on institutionalized genocide? Almost every 'civilized' country in history had a dominant culture that killed off or otherwise suppressed a whole bunch of others, and even those that didn't (as much) only didn't due to accident of geography (say, the Japanese, not that it made them any less prone to doing the same thing to others).
But don't you see: the USA is different. We're the bastion of freedom, founded by God to spread democracy just as the Bible and Jesus intended.
I'm not saying that your point about people not wanting to think poorly of themselves or their country is wrong, because it's quite clearly right. But I don't think that the US is any more prone to it than any other country. It's a human condition, not exclusively or even particularly American.
Perhaps. And no doubt various countries are quite guilty of covering up, glossing over, or outright ignoring the atrocities their country/government has done (Rape of Nanking by Japan comes to mind). But the answer to that isn't to simply nod one's head and say "it's the human condition". The answer is to call those people out who try to cover up history.
The desire to censor something is more often than not precisely because it makes someone uncomfortable with the truth of a situation. Such should always be dealt with, by pointing out the why and how of that discomfort so they may not simply ignore it. Anything less, and as pointed out there's the serious risk of repeating such mistakes. That means not only knowing the mistakes of the US, but also those of Russia, Afghanistan, France, etc. By bringing attention to the racism of the past in the US, not only can the US but people from other countries can learn to not repeat those mistakes. I believe that is one major reasons why Mark Twain chose the language he did. To truly deal with a problem, one has to confront it, and sometimes storytellers are best capable of presenting those problems to you.
Most importantly of all, one should be taught when one is young. Why else do you think we teach children fairy tales or stories from the Bible? It certainly isn't because they're all feel-good, political correct crap.
For someone that is pushing a very libertarian philosophy that sounds like some pretty strict regulation.
I'd say that's an example of where the market can fail and regulation (direct or indirect) would be appropriate. After all, the general idea is that one can increase the pay in an area and it'll increase the supply. But there's only a fixed amount of money one can spend on healthcare. And, quite honestly, the worth of healthcare is basically equivalent to one's whole net assets (plus future possible assets, which one can borrow against to a point), so there's very little elasticity of demand. And supply generally can't differentiate themselves (either you're a surgeon or you're not; being "top" in your field doesn't mean nearly as much as being "bottom" in your field, but how likely are you to find out someone is "bottom" in their field and how much does it really effect outcomes?).
Oh, and of course, the whole rate-controlled licensing thing doesn't help at all. I can understand possible non-nefarious desires, like making sure that the top n% (where n can keep shrinking as more applicants apply) are the only people licensed so they can project very high quality in their field, but it's probably better to have less skilled surgeons working on less complex tasks than requiring top surgeons to work 16 hour shifts.
YOU have satisfied your obligation if you provide a means of to obtain it.
That's the critical point, though. If someone else is hosting the code, they could take it down at any time. The reason for the difference between provision 3(b) and 3(c) is clearly to grant noncommercial bodies to release programs without having to necessarily host (or pay to host) the source code. But a tablet maker is commercial. When they release an Android-based tablet, they're the licensee (ie, the "You" in the GPLv2). They're the ones responsible for providing the means to the code. They can't simply rely upon Google or whoever to host the code, not simply because they might not be around in three years hosting the code but because the license is very explicit that it's the licensee that's responsible directly. No third party can be the host (although I'm not sure if you could use a wholly owned subsidiary to host the code).
In simple terms, if a contract or license says I have to provide something, then I have to provide it. A simple analogy is if I said I'd provide water to a person, then I couldn't simply point them to a community tap. I'd at least minimally have to be a proxy and fetch/provide the water.
Well, any tobacco is "too much tobacco". Beyond that, you don't actually need tobacco but fats are needed in the body.
or drinking too much beer,
Yet you can readily drink beer daily without ill effect if consumed in small enough quantities. In fact, it might even be healthy for you. That's not true for tobacco.
or driving your car over a cliff,
Which is outright misuse of a car. Is smoking a cigarette outside the advertised purpose of a cigarette?
is an act of suicide.
Right, in the same vein as lighting up a cigarette and using the burning edge to cause repetitive trauma to the body to induce death. That's not really what's being talked about.
The corporation didn't kill these people - they didn't force them to walk into gas chambers or stand in front of a firing squad.
No. They just lied for decades that tobacco was safe. So, if a corporation tells you those gas chambers are perfectly safe to stand in and let you turn on the valve, they're not at all at fault for killing you. Oh, and yes, once it becomes apparently they're lying, then it does move much more into the realm of suicide. But, that doesn't explain all the still extant corporations and their management which lied for years and still hasn't been punished (and taking a cut of their money doesn't count; that just really makes the government a complicit party).
It seems that not even Slashdot is safe from censorship.
Comments seems to dissapear, and a test gives the message "This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...".
No, that's not Slashdot censoring. They don't find it objectionable that there are duplicate comments; it's just that it interferes with their backup method. The key point to know is, they backup sets of comments.
What the government cares about is vigilante disclosure of controlled-access information.
The problem is that "controlled-access information" wasn't apparently controlled well enough. That's a major fault of the US government in many ways (I mean, one person accessing 250,000 cables should have been stopped/investigated well before it got into Wikileaks' hands). And I can understand the US government raising hackles of how such information might cause harm. But the only "vigilante"s really out there are journalists (and perhaps Manning (if he's the leaker), but that just puts the onus on him to filter out personal and irrelevant stuff and not to just dump 250,000 cables on Wikileaks' lap).
I am all in favor of rules that mean the government should be less active in a lot of areas, and that it should be more transparent in the rest of what it does, but those rules need to be known in advance.
Granted, but the problem is that a lot of those rules are sort of well understood (people in the US don't generally like torture being conducted in their name). The problem is those rules aren't "laws" and the abuse of those unwritten rules are readily broken. The fact that torture is actually illegal just means word play, trying to rewritten those unwritten rules, and a hope that not enough outrage comes to actually care out the law.
Without clear rules, concerns about disclosure and retroactive blame will impair communication, aggregation and analysis by making them less honest and up-front.
Yes, but we already have clear rules. The rules are that the government is supposed to protect diplomatic cables. Those rules failed. People already knew that was hypothetically possible; all Wikileaks has done is prove they actually do fail. But, then, the Pentagon Papers already proved that. So, I wouldn't say we don't need those rules to protect secrets or those rules shouldn't be followed. But, I don't think the claim of harm is particularly compelling.
Leaks to the public should be reserved for gross negligence and abuse, not for observations like a tinpot dictator running around with hot nurses. The problem with Wikileaks is that it refuses to make that distinction.
Perhaps so. That's generally the problem with a group having an agenda that's focused on some ideology and not an agenda focused on specific change. Of course, that sort of proves that if anything Wikileaks is not a vigilante organization. They're just as willing to post rather boring stuff along with the juicy and damaging stuff. It all comes down to the point, I think, that Wikileaks can only function with leaks and the leaks themselves may or may not be legally obtained in the first place, but that really speaks little about the fact that I think Wikileaks itself is at least legally in the clear (or in the realm of being sued in civil court, like for trade secrets). As for the unwritten rules, I'm a bit more leery especially since cutting out the more irrelevant stuff might bring more focus on important things and effect more positive change. But, then, I don't really think Wikileaks is qualified to tell that narrative. Thankfully, though, we have journalists for that and Wikileaks does provide a valuable service as a rather unbiased source.
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I'm not sure if that confirms or denies anything. All you've confirmed is that the iOS App Store's "rock bottom prices" aren't able to placate a large percentage from piracy. Unless your app is selling for $0.01 currently, then an inability to sell at a lower price without giving it away for free sounds like a failure of the market--aka the App Store.
I agree. Market forces inherently encourage relatively low prices on highly consumed goods, like entertainment and apps, but some people see no value in a legitimate channel to purchase a product, even if it were sold for $0.01 and was trivial to pay for.
Well, this little plan was already tried in Serial Experiments Lain. And we all know how that worked out.
I think you're right about this, but I think your reasoning is off a bit. The Federal Reserve system's main function is to maintain a relatively low but positive inflationary rate. This is done chiefly in an attempt to maintain economic stability by avoiding sporadic deflation/inflation swings (look at the late 19th century for examples) and to encourage continuous financial investment by the wealthy (more on this below). Both of these actions would, if anything, seem to hurt wealth concentration by forcing continuous positive action to even maintain one's effective wealth, but the real problem is the situation is so easily game-able.
The issue is, if inflation is fixed around 2% by the Federal Reserve and the safest forms of investment guarantees a rate of return greater than 2% then anyone with a sufficiently large amount of starting capital is effectively set for life with only the most marginal amount of work necessary. Yet, over the years those with relatively little wealth have discovered that the same system that produces such strong economic stability also produces a system in which diversifying over the whole economy (mutual funds), while not as safe as the safest form of investment, guarantees a much greater return.
All the talk about corporate tax rates, companies cutting corners, etc are really irrelevant to this--that is, even if companies/corporations were well taxed, well regulated, and well managed without nefarious greedy intent there'd be a minor economic "drain" as a result but it wouldn't effect the wealth redistribution issue. So too is government debt except as necessary to correct for bubbles or other anomalies in the market--that is, bubbles themselves are the problem and government correction or debt while a gross manipulation of the market only effect the rate of wealth redistribution, not its existence.
In essence, the Federal Reserve has made the economy into a generally well-regulated casino where the house favors the player. In the long term this benefits the high rollers most even as it nearly forces the high rollers to play the game. Of course without the Federal Reserve, the economy would be a non-regulated casino which may favor the house or player and for which the high rollers would still have the advantage of choosing when to play or not.
It is precisely for this reason, the freedom not to play when it's detrimental, that any system that wishes to prevent such wealth accumulation would have to use force (say, taxes) to combat such an issue. Personally, I'm less concerned about the wealth accumulation and more concerned about the more crass corporation taxation, regulation, etc since that seems a much clear issue of fairness in a game that "takes a cut" on players it has granted an edge. Certainly, arguments about the evilness or unfairness of government influence seem absurd taken with this knowledge, unless such an argument is actually calling for an end to that granted edge as well.
Just like the NBA, the NFL, etc. Oh, wait.. Yea, it'd almost seem like in some industries it's recognized that just because you're above someone else doesn't inherently mean you should be paid more. It's almost like, oh, experience, importance, and replace-ability also factor into it. For white collar workers, there's plenty of superstars which are pretty irreplaceable with plenty of experience and importance to the future of a department or a whole company. In the mean time, a newly hired manager might very well be rather replaceable even if he's above those superstars.
In short, why should it be presumed that a manager who is paid reasonable well and has the chance to be promoted in the future as he/she builds experience, importance, and proves his/her irreplaceableness should be paid more than his subordinates? Maybe it makes sense in blue collar work (although even there, I'd tend to disagree at times because in some industries the product sold has plenty of profit and the managers are as much or even more replaceable than a trained blue collar worker), but I can't see how one can presume it in white collar work, especially when the boss and subordinate are in different job classifications. Now, if it were one engineer and a subordinate engineer or one manager and a subordinate manager, I can see more room to presume. But, it's still always down to a case-by-case basis.
No, all the FOSS guys have said 'if <open source project> has <proprietary copyrighted code>, lets see it'. That's the thing about copyright vs patents. With patents, it's all about protecting a concept for which anyone who implements has to be able to use the patent or they can be sued. That's why there's been such fuss about software patents, the GPLv3 having stronger patent nullification protection, etc. Copyright is a different matter; unless it's a very simple work, programmers will make things different so the FOSS guys, the various proprietary guys, etc will all produce similar but different code and it'll all be okay. Of course, if it's simple enough--like, say, the base structure you'd find in a header file--it's probably not copyrighted anyways, so copyright doesn't enter into it there either.
In short, you're confusing patents with copyright. Patents seem very evil in a rapidly evolving industry, as you note. And it used to be that MS wouldn't even go after companies over patents (although they might use their patents in self-defense). I guess that's just a sign of new management. :/
PS - The whole reason for the FOSS talking about asking for proof of proprietary code in OSS code is precisely because they didn't believe there was. Look at the Linux kernel, look at Apache, etc. It's clear that tons of code has been created without the need for importing "magical", proprietary code and it's offensive to those who work on such projects to have such implied. And OSS is very much about being open, transparent, truthful, and frank. In short, it was a call to quickly clear their names. And I think the talk was about SCO, anyways.
Well, that's mostly true. Very few people make nice, big games for free. That's true on the PC as much as it is on any console. And once money is involved, then you're left to either follow Sony's/MS's/Nintendo's guidelines on publishing or risk putting yourself in a position where you'll quite possibly be sued for encourage/endorsing jail-breaking which even if legal, it isn't clearly legal (thanks in part to the DMCA) so doesn't absolve one of having to pay all the court fees to prove such; after all, Sony/MS/Nintendo make a good deal of money that way not only in selling development kits but also in the publication.
I'm not really sure how that relates to people jail-breaking their console. If Nintendo, Sony, or MS were to brick an unhacked consoles, then that seems more a PR nightmare for the company; blaming others for it seems rather absurd.
No doubt that is true. Very few people are interesting in actually hacking anything--very few people are hackers or programmers. So, yes, the ratio of pirates is almost certainly much higher than the hacker/enthusiasts. But, that line of argument amounts to saying it's acceptable and reasonable to lock-up PCs as much as consoles. That seems rather absurd as well. Of course, since Sony/MS/Nintendo made their own system and people have generally adopted them as closed, it's not like one should expect them to be open by choice. That still would seem to reasonable leave room, though, for people to open them on their own just as hardware/drivers on the PC have been reverse engineered sufficiently to function.
In all honesty, what "worthwhile"-ness is there in any console? It's a game system. Even making games for it wouldn't be very worthwhile. Talk of chaining PS3s together to form a supercomputer is only mildly worthwhile as I don't believe that application is cost-effective anymore. If anything, hacking a PS3 or a Wii or an X-Box 360 would seem to be done for the novelty of it, to see if it's possible, and generally to better understand something that someone else is trying to hide in the open. Once that's done, though, a console is just another computer and there's plenty of computer options already so there's not a lot of reason to target a console for anything.
In short, I don't really disagree with what you're saying about it looking very much like a mad-grab by many for piracy which I'm sure it is. But, I don't think your standards for trying to prove otherwise really match up to the reality of any computer system that's available, especially considering that the "worthwhile" stuff usually involves money and few people or companies want to go to court to avoid the accepted practice of releasing on a platform since such is only likely to cut into profits in the short term with little advantage in the long-term. The finally group that is left are more ideological and care more about "access" and "openness" but in a way that's probably not very worthwhile to most people.
The issue is, abortion and the morning after pill are both efforts specifically intent on preventing that "clump of cells" from becoming a clearly recognized person. Further, various crimes such as simple assault can be treated as murder if the intent of that assault is to prevent that "clump of cells" from becoming a clearly recognized person. The obvious issue is, at what point do we start considering that "clump of cells" worthy of being protected from the intentional act of others. The current standard seems to based in part on size and recognizability to humans. I do not believe there is any science to back that position as a dividing line.
Funny you say that as I personally have a problem with IVF precisely for this reason; I'm more ambiguous when it comes to embryonic stem cells derived incidentally from IVF as its an unintended side-effect. Adoption seems a better option in any case.
And? Windows comes bundled with tons of old, obsolete, and inferior codecs, many of which never were mainstream in any reasonable sense of the word. Either Microsoft is for giving more choices or its for technological superiority. Yes, it's not black and white, but it's also the case that Theora being free makes the lack of inclusion either a sign of a choice on their part or a belief that Theora is so underused that it ranks below a ton of old codec; that's a little hard to believe.
Because they said they were for choice and choice inherently involves trade-offs? Or are you suggesting Microsoft should drop support for everything but H.264? I mean, if it's all about quality per bit, then H.264 is the current best technology.
The second I see Microsoft chose and endorse a competitor's product because it's superior, we'll talk. As it stands, Microsoft's action seems more an attempt to ingratiate themselves with H.264 supporters while simultaneously mocking Google and Chrome. That's certainly their right and choice. But, it's not about generally giving more choice to the user. I'd be happier if Microsoft would just be honest and say they believe Google made a bad choice.
And that's the crux of the issue. Both results should be the same within the margin of error. The fact that they're not either indicates that the methodology is off or we simply don't understand the underlying physics well enough. I'd imagine it might be a bit of both (that a lack of understanding on the underlying physics results in incorrect methodology).
To that end, the fact that a scientist is trying to sort of whitewash the discussion to get out a set definition of a kilogram is disturbing to me. It'd be, in my opinion, possibly in the same vein as redefining light to avoid the clear particle/wave duality. If anything, I would hope that this discrepancy of results would spark even more research because it opens up a great opportunity to better understand our universe. Worrying about setting the definition of a kilogram seems a bit more moot, especially if it turns out that such a thing is impossible using the tools being suggested (ie, that one of the metrics isn't cosmologically fixed).
I'd worry more about the thermal expansion of ocean water; once the ice all melts it's gone, but the oceans will keep expanding so long as the global temperature increases.
And on a saturated line, QoS translates into special-group A having their traffic get through while neutral-group B having their traffic dropped, even if there's inherently as many requests for A as B (inherently in that if A or B were alone, they'd both generate the same amount of traffic).
Users can already get what they want with a neutral, best-effort packet network. Such a network of user desired is already reenforced through regular router reconfigurations and companies buying up use of caching networks. The latter of which, btw, already places enough of an advantage and self-feeding loop that the idea that content providers can or should buy even further lock-in to maintain their position or effective lock-out to take bandwidth that would otherwise have gone to extant user demand is disgusting, at best. At worst, it's tantamount to rigging the self-correcting free-market nature of the internet. How is that remotely acceptable?
Two points.
One, inherent to a bubble is a certain amount of deception about the value of an item. That is, one buys into a bubble to resell within that bubble under the presumption that the stated worth will go up either because it was undervalued when you first bought it or it will increase in worth by the time you sell it. Usually, this is colored with greed, as a bubble tends to last quite a while so there's plenty of time for most sane people who care to stand back and analyze the situation to recognize it for what it is.
Two, this won't inherently be an industry-wide bubble. It doesn't necessarily involve many buyers and many sellers. It involves one seller (with probably future resellers). One main reason that bubbles don't result in many fraud lawsuits or convictions is that at some level it's hard to prove that any one person had enough information to be engaging in deception; ie, one can claim to be an innocent victim of the bubble. However, Goldman Sachs would clearly not be a victim if their selling becomes a bubble as they presumably have information that the general public doesn't have. In essence, they're very inherently culpable to their investors and possibly society at large.
Now, given that you, I, and others are saying that this $50 Billion seems to be an over-valuation and given that it seems clearly possibly it could lead to a bubble and fraud and given the scope of the possible damage, even if the original investors are non-American (although if some French investor buys up stakes and US investors have stakes in the French investor, that's a somewhat untrue statement), it seems that minimally an investigation should be done to verify that no actually deception is taking place and maximally Facebook and Goldman Sachs should be forced to open up their records to the public. This is especially true given the recent law passed that are designed to combat possible systemic risk.
A bubble of one is different than a bubble of many just like the persecution of one is different than the persecution of a group. It doesn't mean one is better or worse. It doesn't mean punishment/relief shouldn't apply in both cases. But it does mean it should probably be handled differently.
A relative few liberals blame Sarah Palin (although raw numbers may be a lot). Several on the political spectrum talk about if not outright blame violent political rhetoric in general. The media reports about that as well as concerns about gun ownership regulations and the signs of mental illness (without poking too much into violent mental illness, since apparently the experts can't tell if a mentally ill person will become violent). Almost no one talks about Nietzsche, period. :/
I don't think there was every a lot of doubt about Iran's nuclear goals. Just like there's little doubt Saddam had goals of creating and possessing chemical weapons. The real question is, how likely is it that they'll succeed or even go through with it? If Saddam had created chemical weapons, would it have stopped the US from invading? Likely not; instead, it would have almost certainly mean he'd be minimally deposed and at worst killed. Similarly, a nuclear weapon wouldn't be much deterrent to bombing Iran; the threat of a sudden drop off in oil supply from any sort of military attack on Iran is enough of a deterrent already. And nuking Israel would just remove the excuse/distraction the Iranian government uses for their oppression. No, the ability to make a nuclear weapon would be bragging rights (just like North Korea). Making one would just make them a further target for sanctions and leave them to worry that someone in their own regime might steal and use the nuke on Iran (as the heavy crackdowns in Iran after the election showed, it's not one big happy family or even well controlled family). Overall, I think it's very unclear if Stuxnet did any real good at all, except further cement animosity towards the West.
It also reeks of a bit of ignorance. It's well understood that as powerful an output of energy as the sun is, the Earth only receives a rather small cross-section of that energy. Specifically, our distance from the sun is a major contributing factor to the average surface temperature. However, without any greenhouse gases, we'd have an average surface temperature around -17C. Meanwhile, the real average surface temperature is around 15C. Yet, all greenhouse cases account for less than 1% of Earth's Atmosphere.
Just recognizing that, it's hard to see how one can be so dismissive of "trace amounts" of CO2, water vapor, or whatever.
And with a maximal of 6 billion units, that works out to around 1.2 billion (ignoring things like having multiple units (one on the computer, one on the smart phone, one on the game system, etc)). Care to pay that for everyone?
Ie, if I put my wedding video on youtube in H.264 and it becomes popular and gets 2 million page views, I'll risk having to pay $40,000? Golly, I wonder why anyone would have a problem with that.
Unless the website hosting it has ads of any sort; then it's commercial.
Which begs the question, why isn't licensing such that Google, Firefox, etc don't have to pay? It's certainly not like MPEG LA is getting insufficient money. The simple point is, MPEG LA wants the chance to spread into the online world to make even more money. I can appreciate this. But, when you start counting the possibly millions or even billions of units to be sold in the future, that "dirt cheap" is no longer dirt cheap--why else would the per unit rate be so low, anyways?
The simple truth is, allowing H.264 to effectively tax all internet-video devices is one of those anti-free market things that will only slow down innovation and growth. It's no different than any other pervasive fee in a system.
True. It'd be more accurate to say all corporations are amoral (not immoral), so one has to judge their actions on the net effect, not on some presumption of good/evil of their actions.
I don't think I've ever heard that said from anyone on the left. Now, I've heard things like capitalism is evil, but that's not quite the same thing. There's plenty of evil in the heart of man, so when capitalism is doing evil, it might well be the intent. Meanwhile, communism is at least framed from the perspective that evil is inherently against the design. Of course, given that there's plenty of evil in the heart of man, it's rather silly to think you can force communism on people to make them non-evil, but then I digress.
True enough. I'd add that the real issue, at least in the discourse of the US, is that plenty of Republicans speak in libertarian ideals (ie, more free market to solve things) when it's often more about pushing for under-regulating an industry even after it's shown to be abusive. Then it reverts to talk about corruption/misfeasance/malfeasance, without mentioning those words, in government failing to act even when regulation allows or requires them to. Of course, running on a platform that government fails so you can take over government is a great way to place even more people who will engage in misfeasance.
In short, I think the problem is too many people think too uncritically about what is going on. Waving "left", "neo-con", or "libertarian" to label people doesn't really help. I'm not sure what will, though, since it's not like you can make people think critically. :/
So...the worst we have to worry about liberals is having some sort of concern over governing power and maybe being gay... And the worst we have to worry about teabaggers is they're all talk about concern over uneconomic governing power, but they're really just a delusional group who think Republicans represent God on Earth. I think you can guess which group I'd rather be incorrectly labeled as. But, then, I'm not so insecure about my sexual identity and I am concerned about actual governance, not a bunch of empty rhetoric.
Or perhaps he was arguing that if a corporation in the US benefits from US law and causes thousands of people to become jobless, they should be willingly taxed to pay for retraining and support those thousands of people? Certainly, they shouldn't simultaneously use US Patent law to charge an extra $2/item above what the free market would charge while dodging tax obligations or lobbying for their tax burden to decrease, no matter how more efficiently that money might be hypothetically spent if done through the private markets; such corporations have well demonstrated that given the chance, they'd not only not do such work "more efficiently", but they'd fire thousands of people and leave it to every other charity, company, or tax payer to handle the burden those thousand families will face.
In that context, one can almost see the calls for not being so quick to jump to the call of "efficiency" without the real-world ramifications of those decisions.
PS - And I'm not even against globalization.
But don't you see: the USA is different. We're the bastion of freedom, founded by God to spread democracy just as the Bible and Jesus intended.
Perhaps. And no doubt various countries are quite guilty of covering up, glossing over, or outright ignoring the atrocities their country/government has done (Rape of Nanking by Japan comes to mind). But the answer to that isn't to simply nod one's head and say "it's the human condition". The answer is to call those people out who try to cover up history.
The desire to censor something is more often than not precisely because it makes someone uncomfortable with the truth of a situation. Such should always be dealt with, by pointing out the why and how of that discomfort so they may not simply ignore it. Anything less, and as pointed out there's the serious risk of repeating such mistakes. That means not only knowing the mistakes of the US, but also those of Russia, Afghanistan, France, etc. By bringing attention to the racism of the past in the US, not only can the US but people from other countries can learn to not repeat those mistakes. I believe that is one major reasons why Mark Twain chose the language he did. To truly deal with a problem, one has to confront it, and sometimes storytellers are best capable of presenting those problems to you.
Most importantly of all, one should be taught when one is young. Why else do you think we teach children fairy tales or stories from the Bible? It certainly isn't because they're all feel-good, political correct crap.
I'd say that's an example of where the market can fail and regulation (direct or indirect) would be appropriate. After all, the general idea is that one can increase the pay in an area and it'll increase the supply. But there's only a fixed amount of money one can spend on healthcare. And, quite honestly, the worth of healthcare is basically equivalent to one's whole net assets (plus future possible assets, which one can borrow against to a point), so there's very little elasticity of demand. And supply generally can't differentiate themselves (either you're a surgeon or you're not; being "top" in your field doesn't mean nearly as much as being "bottom" in your field, but how likely are you to find out someone is "bottom" in their field and how much does it really effect outcomes?).
Oh, and of course, the whole rate-controlled licensing thing doesn't help at all. I can understand possible non-nefarious desires, like making sure that the top n% (where n can keep shrinking as more applicants apply) are the only people licensed so they can project very high quality in their field, but it's probably better to have less skilled surgeons working on less complex tasks than requiring top surgeons to work 16 hour shifts.
That's the critical point, though. If someone else is hosting the code, they could take it down at any time. The reason for the difference between provision 3(b) and 3(c) is clearly to grant noncommercial bodies to release programs without having to necessarily host (or pay to host) the source code. But a tablet maker is commercial. When they release an Android-based tablet, they're the licensee (ie, the "You" in the GPLv2). They're the ones responsible for providing the means to the code. They can't simply rely upon Google or whoever to host the code, not simply because they might not be around in three years hosting the code but because the license is very explicit that it's the licensee that's responsible directly. No third party can be the host (although I'm not sure if you could use a wholly owned subsidiary to host the code).
In simple terms, if a contract or license says I have to provide something, then I have to provide it. A simple analogy is if I said I'd provide water to a person, then I couldn't simply point them to a community tap. I'd at least minimally have to be a proxy and fetch/provide the water.
Well, any tobacco is "too much tobacco". Beyond that, you don't actually need tobacco but fats are needed in the body.
Yet you can readily drink beer daily without ill effect if consumed in small enough quantities. In fact, it might even be healthy for you. That's not true for tobacco.
Which is outright misuse of a car. Is smoking a cigarette outside the advertised purpose of a cigarette?
Right, in the same vein as lighting up a cigarette and using the burning edge to cause repetitive trauma to the body to induce death. That's not really what's being talked about.
No. They just lied for decades that tobacco was safe. So, if a corporation tells you those gas chambers are perfectly safe to stand in and let you turn on the valve, they're not at all at fault for killing you. Oh, and yes, once it becomes apparently they're lying, then it does move much more into the realm of suicide. But, that doesn't explain all the still extant corporations and their management which lied for years and still hasn't been punished (and taking a cut of their money doesn't count; that just really makes the government a complicit party).
No, that's not Slashdot censoring. They don't find it objectionable that there are duplicate comments; it's just that it interferes with their backup method. The key point to know is, they backup sets of comments.
The problem is that "controlled-access information" wasn't apparently controlled well enough. That's a major fault of the US government in many ways (I mean, one person accessing 250,000 cables should have been stopped/investigated well before it got into Wikileaks' hands). And I can understand the US government raising hackles of how such information might cause harm. But the only "vigilante"s really out there are journalists (and perhaps Manning (if he's the leaker), but that just puts the onus on him to filter out personal and irrelevant stuff and not to just dump 250,000 cables on Wikileaks' lap).
Granted, but the problem is that a lot of those rules are sort of well understood (people in the US don't generally like torture being conducted in their name). The problem is those rules aren't "laws" and the abuse of those unwritten rules are readily broken. The fact that torture is actually illegal just means word play, trying to rewritten those unwritten rules, and a hope that not enough outrage comes to actually care out the law.
Yes, but we already have clear rules. The rules are that the government is supposed to protect diplomatic cables. Those rules failed. People already knew that was hypothetically possible; all Wikileaks has done is prove they actually do fail. But, then, the Pentagon Papers already proved that. So, I wouldn't say we don't need those rules to protect secrets or those rules shouldn't be followed. But, I don't think the claim of harm is particularly compelling.
Perhaps so. That's generally the problem with a group having an agenda that's focused on some ideology and not an agenda focused on specific change. Of course, that sort of proves that if anything Wikileaks is not a vigilante organization. They're just as willing to post rather boring stuff along with the juicy and damaging stuff. It all comes down to the point, I think, that Wikileaks can only function with leaks and the leaks themselves may or may not be legally obtained in the first place, but that really speaks little about the fact that I think Wikileaks itself is at least legally in the clear (or in the realm of being sued in civil court, like for trade secrets). As for the unwritten rules, I'm a bit more leery especially since cutting out the more irrelevant stuff might bring more focus on important things and effect more positive change. But, then, I don't really think Wikileaks is qualified to tell that narrative. Thankfully, though, we have journalists for that and Wikileaks does provide a valuable service as a rather unbiased source.