A poor man gets a parking ticket, it costs him $20. A multimillionaire gets the same ticket, because of his wealth it ends up costing him $20,000 -- more than the poor man's entire car. Is that fair?
A poor person pays a few thousand dollars in taxes, while a rich person may pay hundreds of thousands in taxes. Is that fair?
As I said, that depends on the desired effect. It also depends on what perspective you're measuring fairness from.
From the point of view of the recipient of the money, the difference might not be fair, because a different dollar value is being received depending on the wealth of the individual. But for that to be true, the measurement of fairness would have to hinge on the value of the fine itself. In short, it makes the measure of fairness essentially a self-referent thing, something which begs the question rather than answers it.
If the goal (in your parking ticket example) is to discourage people from parking, then clearly the penalty would have to be related in some way to the amount of money the person being penalized has, because that's almost certainly a big factor in that person's evaluation of whether or not it's worth it to him to pay the fine and ignore the "no parking" rule.
Or a company loses a case and is penalized 20% of their worth. Suddenly, unemployment jumps, stock value plummets, and everyone involved with the company loses out (whether they had anything to do with the act being penalized or not).
This is a danger whenever a nontrivial judgement is entered against a company. And I would argue that some of the effects, such as the hit on the company's stock price, are very desirable. Companies always hide behind the claim that they do what they do in order to "maximize shareholder value". If that's so, then it's right and proper for the company's stock value to suffer greatly when that company is found guilty of intentionally harming others in the name of "maximizing shareholder value", because it's the only way to make shareholders pay for the misdeeds done in their name.
The alternative is to enter a trivial judgement. Is that what you would really prefer? You would prefer to see a judgement entered against Microsoft that does nothing significant to them? If that's so, then what's the point of taking them to court to begin with?
No, it's much better for a judgement against a corporation to be nontrivial when that corporation has been found guilty of harming others. How else do you propose to change a company's behavior? The whole purpose of lawsuits such as the one we're discussing is to change a company's behavior, to make it clear to the company that they will lose more from their improper actions than they will gain.
Notice how often a judgement is either outrageously high or outrageously low?
Seems to me that the real problem is that the judgements are always in terms of dollar amounts. $200 million is a big chunk of cash to almost everyone -- except Microsoft. To Microsoft, $200 million is nothing, half a percent of the amount of money they have in the bank.
Similarly, the little guys often get judgements against them that are tiny in comparison to $200 million, but which easily bankrupt them because they aren't Microsoft -- they're just normal people with normal incomes (if that).
None of this would be a problem if judgements (and settlements) were forced to be expressed in terms of the percentage of the worth of the target. An individual who is forced to pay, say, 20% of their total worth in a judgement or settlement would be hurt pretty badly by it, but they'd almost certainly survive. And the same is true of a huge entity like Microsoft. But the dollar values would be much different. $20K (for instance) against the individual, and something like $20 billion against Microsoft. But those amounts would yield roughly the same effect, and it's the effect that's important in any judgement or settlement.
The bottom line is that, in my opinion, the people who judge these settlements or who create these judgements simply don't think properly about the problem. They're focused on the amounts and not the effects.
That's to be expected in a money-driven society, I suppose...
However, in this case Linksys may just be careless, sloppy or ignorant of its obligations. I think it would be a mistake to assume that they are blatantly defying the GPL.
Perhaps. But do you think Linksys would be equally forgiving if they found someone who was defying whatever agreements they might have with Linksys? They might be, of course, but given the sheer number of cases out there of people (and small companies) being sued by corporations for various kinds of IP violations, both real and imagined, I don't think there's much reason to believe that Linksys will be what would appear to be an exception to the rule.
I'm normally inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt, but corporations have screwed others over so many times, so badly, and for so long that I can no longer give them the benefit of the doubt.
What goes around comes around. If corporations want to be treated fairly then they must treat others equally fairly. They haven't been doing that, so what do you expect people to do?
Human nature lets such things happen, for a while. But eventually it revolts and the further it has been pushed one way, the more aggressive and reactionary the revolt.
Except now, that's no longer an option. Because the people who are in control of the system wield weapons far more powerful than anything mankind has ever seen, and the people who would revolt simply don't have them and can't get them in enough numbers to matter -- they're too expensive and it's too easy to control their distribution.
At least during the Roman times (and the American Revolution, for that matter), the firepower of the average person was roughly equivalent to the firepower of the average soldier, certainly within an order of magnitude. That means that at least people could win against their oppressors with sheer numbers if nothing else. But today the balance is between hundreds and millions to one in favor of the average soldier, depending on which weapons you want to include in the balance. Your average group of people with handguns or maybe even assault rifles is simply no match for a soldier with artillery and air support, and we haven't even talked about nukes yet.
That means that once the bad guys have control over the governments around the world (we're really close to that now -- look at how much "influence" the U.S. has over the nations in the rest of the world), such that changes from the inside are essentially impossible due to the selection criteria used and the internal inertia involved, the situation can last for many thousands of years. You can't get change from the outside when there is no outside, and for the first time in history that situation (no "outside" to worry about) is actually achievable.
This is why I think humanity is going to be totally screwed, and that we're likely to see this occur within the century.
Well, Americans voted for the politicians that made the laws.
Americans voted for the politicians from the list of politicians that was available to them and that they knew something about. The information most of those Americans had available to them was determined by the American media. The American media is owned by a few large corporations which, not coincidentally, have a vested interest in the laws in question (either because they directly want them or because they are "friends" with other corporations that do). And so, in the majority of cases, the realistic candidates people can choose from will all support the laws in question. The media simply will not give favorable exposure to any other candidate.
That basically means that the average American voter can be held blameless -- he's playing a rigged game and has no real control over the fact that it's rigged.
...usability without having to have a monster machine. I use Mozilla, but damn is it slow for even the most mundane of pages. If you want to load a plugin, forget it.
I'd much rather see stability in the face of stupid plugins, and saner memory management under Unix (open a bunch of web pages and then close all but one of them -- none of the memory used gets released to the OS. You have to exit Mozilla for that to happen).
Stability in the face of idiotic plugins, in particular, is really important. What idiot decided that plugins should run in the same process space as the browser? Plugins should run in their own process space and be forced to interact with the browser through a well-defined API.
As a result of the plugin stupidity, Mozilla freezes solid if the Java plugin does something stupid (which happens frequently), or crashes if there's a bug in the plugin (as is frequently the case with Flash). I'm sorry, but that's simply unacceptable.
The lottery of trial by jury, abolished for good reason in almost all other western democracies, means that SCO could actually win this case in the U.S., while the rest of the world tells them to go jump in a lake.
The problem isn't the trial by jury. In the U.S. it's widely believed that it's supposed to be a trial by a jury of your peers. To me, that means people you interact with regularly, or who are likely to have shared similar experiences to you, so that they have the capacity to judge you appropriately based in part on the insight their experiences bring.
But the Constitution calls for an impartial jury, and as a result the concept of a jury of one's "peers" has completely disappeared, to be replaced by a lottery system that almost guarantees that the people sitting on the jury will almost certainly be unable to properly judge you.
I think trial by jury may well be a sound concept when done right, but unfortunately it's not done properly at all here in the U.S.
There are a few places where you can't practically outsource a job. Ever tried outsourcing your car repair to India to fix its air conditioning? Fixing things like air conditioning can be very labor intensive, easily a full day in some cases. It was 105 degrees here in CA today, if my A/C was broken it'd be winter by the time someone in India could have in fixed and back to me. (Including the ocean voyage.)
Another case is health care, if you're sick in a hospital in San Francisco, does it matter that there are nurses in a 3rd World Country? Nope, all the matters is that we don't have enough nurses HERE.
Yeah, but name one -- just one -- activity that involves the production of something (whether it's a computer program or a widget or a vehicle or a part, or anything at all like that), that can't be outsourced.
I'll bet there is no such thing.
You can't provide services to someone who can't afford to pay for those services, and those who provide a service must eventually get their money from someone who provides goods, someone who manufactures something.
And I don't know of any manufacturing activity of any kind that can't be done remotely.
I really can't feel too sorry for people who lived outside of their means, and now lost their job, without having sufficient savings or sufficient skills to find a new one.
Yeah? And how do you feel about those people who didn't live outside of their means, lost their jobs, and have now burned through all of their savings because there are no jobs to be had no matter how good their skills are?
Unemployment is still rising. After all this time. It may be a temporary thing, but I don't believe there was a serious move to ship jobs out of the country in the last recession as there is in this one. Think through the implications of that before you spout off.
In the end, it does no good to argue with me. This is going to happen, just like it did in the 70's. You can spend you time whining about capitalism, globalization and the evil multinational corporations... OR you can deal with the situation by making yourself irreplaceable. Not by working harder, or taking less money, but by thinking ahead.
In other words, you have to gamble. Bigtime.
Because everyone else around you is going to be looking for the same thing you are: something they can do that can only be done here.
And when you and they find that thing, you will compete against them in order to provide that thing. But you know what? Chances are, someone's already providing it right now. Because it's exceedingly rare that people need something completely new that can only be provided locally.
The end result of all of this? Fewer things that can be done here but no decrease in the population. And that means greater competition for those jobs that can only be done here. Which means lower wages. Which lowers the amount of money people here can spend on goods and services. And you know what else that means? People, and therefore companies that provide goods and services to those people, will have less money to spend on anything other than the bare necessities of life. And that means that it will be even more unlikely that you'll find something new to provide that can only be provided here. Because the bare necessities have been needed and thus supplied for millions of years.
Congratulations. By moving all of these jobs overseas, you've managed to kill the U.S. economy. Or, more precisely, to weaken it to the point that it's just average, more or less.
Why? Because like it or not, the global economy is a zero-sum game. It has to be, because aside from changes in the size of the population and the advance of technology, the total amount of available human labor, which is what money represents, is fixed. The sooner you people who support globalization realize this, the sooner you'll understand the true implications of globalization: it will move every economy that participates towards the average of all of the economies now, after adjusting for population growth and technological progress.
That means that if the U.S. participates in the globalization process, its economy will decline. It must, because its economy is currently far above average.
But even worse, it means that for any country to outcompete the others, it must minimize the total cost of labor, which means minimizing the cost of living, the cost of labor, and the cost of doing business. That means eliminating most laws governing pollution, labor, and business. That's because competition is darwinian. It doesn't give a shit about fairness, only about winning. Fairness is more expensive, because to provide it you have to eliminate actions and situations that might otherwise make things less costly, like slave ownership.
And that means that the countries that are the worst places to live will be the countries that will win the competition to provide labor for the cheapest amount possible. Because ultimately, the cost of labor is determined by the cost of living, and the cost of living is determined by the things people buy during the course of their lives: food, clothing, and shelter are the bare necessities, and everything else is a luxury. The country with the cheapest labor will be the country that minimizes the luxuries, the one in which the amount of money people make is barely enough to pay for the barest of necessities. This is what's known as the "race to the bottom", and it's real, not just some fantasy.
Is that what you supporters of globalization really want?
youre stupid. anyone can mistype a key or two here or there. get a real gripe.
The error happens often enough (so often, in fact, that it seems that most people here on Slashdot who mean to say "lose" end up typing "loose" instead -- often enough that I do a double-take when someone actually gets it right) that I don't think it's a question of mistyping anything.
Especially since the author of the message in question managed to "mistype" it in both the subject line and the body.
If there is one constant in this world, it's people's stupidity and i know that most people have clicked those at least once, twice, maybe even a few times.
You mean like the stupidity of those people who can't for the life of them figure out the difference between "loose" and "lose"?
Yeah, thought so.
Better take a good look at yourself, buddy, before you start calling other people "stupid"...
Yeah, he should know better, but English is so fucked up you have to memorize spellings.
You mean kinda like how you have to memorize (i.e., "just know") all of the attributes of a valid system message versus one of these ads we've been talking about?
If you can sympathize with someone who can't be bothered to properly learn his own damned language, then you can just as easily sympathize with someone who isn't familiar enough with managing his own computer to recognize the difference between a valid system error message popup and one of these ads!
Who decided it would be a good idea to have Mozilla be totally exposed to the whims of a plugin?
A plugin should be sent mouse and keyboard events and be given an API to use to draw things into a "window" defined by the browser, and perhaps an API to retrieve data via an URL, and that's it. Mozilla might get that part right. But the plugin should also run in its own address space, so that if it decides to crash or otherwise do something stupid it won't take the browser with it. Mozilla definitely does not get that right.
Mozilla needs to be stable even in the face of crappy plugins. Right now, it's not, and that's something that badly needs to change.
Boot machine for first time with DVD in drive. It boots from DVD.
Agree to be Bill Gates' towel boy, click "okay"
System them uses Windows equivalent of "dd" to copy image from DVD to hard drive, overwriting anything on the drive.
What you'd end up having to do is install Win first, then resize the partition and install Linux afterwards.
Most people here will believe that this is evidence of Microsoft being anticompetitive, that it's done to make more money for Microsoft.
But that's not what's going on at all!
No, the real reason you have to go through all of the above is so that you'll be forced to agree to be Bill Gates' towel boy.
Hey, you try finding a good towel boy when you have a mansion as big as his. Then you'll understand. If there's anyone who needs towel boys en masse, it's Bill Gates.
I see your point, but in this case, I think the public is MUCH more against the RIAA than they were against Microsoft. This might pursuade politicians to back the lawsuit.
That's possible, of course. But to be honest, I'm not convinced that the general public even cares about the RIAA (or even knows who they are).
And even if I agreed with you on that, I'm not convinced that it'll make any difference. We invaded Iraq over the opposition of a lot more people than are against the RIAA, so for what reason would we believe that the government will side against the RIAA even if a large percentage of the general public does? Especially given the rather large amounts of money the politicians receive from the RIAA.
No, sorry, but the U.S. government is no longer of, by, or for the people, and I don't think it ever will be again.
But you have to understand, people like these aren't idiots. They have only heard the sound bites just like the vast majority of corporate world that isn't in IS/IT. They lack the background knowledge of the issue as well as the technical knowledge to be able to make an informed judgment.
That's precisely why they are idiots -- they refuse to learn what they need to know to make a sound decision, instead preferring to make those decisions based on sound bites and media bullshit. And worse, they refuse to delegate the decision to someone who is willing to put in the time to figure things out.
I could excuse them if they weren't actually making decisions about this stuff.
People like that are a marketer's dream, and have no business making company-wide decisions of any kind.
Can the states get in on this, like they did in the Microsoft anti-trust case?
Perhaps with a good number of states backing it they could pull it off.
Pull it off with backing of the states? Like they did with Microsoft? Oh, wait...
A lawsuit against the RIAA is likely to fare at most as well as the antitrust action against Microsoft. The Webcaster Alliance doesn't stand a chance in hell of winning.
Really? So you should be able to write a Harry Potter novel, using in your favour the huge success of JK Rowling's work to boost the acceptability and profit potential of your derivative?
Do you think JK Rowling should be able to write a Harry Potter novel, using in her favor the huge success of all the stories that came before that talk about magic, witchcraft, good, evil, etc., to boost the acceptability and profit potential of her derivative? Well?
Do you really think JKR should have to suffer a loss of sales when someone reads your miserable derivative and decides that they don't really like Harry Potter?
If JK Rowling is concerned about that possibility, then she has a means of dealing with it: it's called a trademark.
That is what we're really talking about here: a name that confers meaning and expectation.
Use the right tool for the job.
You can prattle on about "should" and "shouldn't" all you like, but this IS the state of Copyright, this IS how it works, and in my not particularly humble opinion you are not only WRONG but a leech that doesn't understand the true source of value or just wants to sit on your arse and have society give you everything you deserve for being such a magnificent gift to this planet.
Keep the name calling to yourself, please.
And remember the entire reason for copyright in the U.S.: "to promote progress in the sciences and useful arts". Not to make the originators of the works a boatload of money. Not to confer status. To make the world a better place.
Now, interpreting copyright the way it apparently has been may accomplish that, but I doubt it, considering all of the good stories (as an example) that certainly haven't been published because of this particular interpretation of copyright.
And as to the characters, settings, etc. all being so incredibly important that they deserve special protection, remember this: almost everything is built upon that which has come before. If you're going to confer special protection upon something then there has to be a special reason for doing so. Because otherwise, you had better be prepared to do the same for things like the concept of spacecraft, warp drive, hyperspace, etc., etc. -- the very things that are the foundation of most modern science fiction.
So you may continue to believe that the things protected by copyright truly deserve to be, but you might want to give the overall implications of that protection a little more thought before declaring it good and just.
YOU:
The legal system has no business protecting people from their own idiocy, especially when it's at the expense of others.
REALITY:
Coffee that causes 3rd degree burns is dangerous. period.
No shit. And anyone with a brain knows that. They also know that if coffee is too hot to drink then it's dangerous.
The question isn't whether or not something is dangerous. There's plenty of dangerous things out there. The question is whether or not someone who knowingly handles something dangerous is within reason to expect compensation when they get bitten.
Nothing you wrote contradicts what I've said. Yes, she got burned badly. Yes, McDonald's was a dick about the whole thing. But none of that changes the simple fact that people should be responsible for their own well being and for the consequences of the actions they knowingly take.
If she had never purchased McDonald's coffee before, or if most McDonald's coffee weren't served as hot as hers was, then I'd be more than happy to side with her, because it would mean that McDonald's screwed up. But when someone has been providing the same product the same way for years in a climate where the customer can, without any significant consequences to themselves, vote with their wallet, there's no excuse for a repeat customer to suddenly launch a lawsuit just because the product they'd been buying for who knows how long suddenly caused them injury due to a trait that they already knew (or that anyone with any brains would have known) about. Like I said: if it bothers you that McDonald's coffee is served too hot then buy it somewhere else -- it's not like you don't have tons of options to choose from. Or accept the consequences of handling something you know to be potentially dangerous. But don't go crying to the government just because you weren't smart enough to put 2 (really hot coffee) and 2 (significant chance of serious injury) together.
If you want to live in a world where Big Brother Government protects you from every little manmade danger out there in the world, if you don't want to bother taking responsibility for your own life and your own actions, then just say so and be done with it. But I'd rather live in a world where I'm free to do any damned thing I please so long as I don't intentionally cause harm to others (which can either be through positive action, like intentionally spilling hot coffee on someone, or through negative action, like intentionally withholding important information about the coffee that can't be obtained through easy inspection). I don't want to live in a world where I'm severely limited in what I can do just because there are a bunch of morons out there that want to be completely protected from the consequences of their own stupidity.
Oh, and as to frivolous lawsuits: those are lawsuits that have no real validity to them. Given the facts of the McDonald's case, I think it qualifies.
Does the US have a concept of inalienable rights? (i.e. rights that can't be taken away, for those who don't speak such good English)
It has the concept. But given how things have been going here in the last 10-20 years or so, I'd say that "inalienable rights" are only a concept, even though there are some explicitly listed in the Constitution.
Not even those are "inalienable" in a country where the letter of the law, and not the intention of the law, is the only thing that counts in court (well, that and how big your pocketbook is).
You have to remember that Copyright covers the original work as well as derivatives.
[...]
Back to the issue of derivative works. If the characters and setting of a novel are protected (in and of themselves) by Copyright...
If you're right about how "derivative works" is interpreted as regards copyright law, then I have to ask: who the fuck came up with the brilliant notion that characters, settings, etc., which are all ideas and not specific expressions, are protected under copyright law instead of trademark law?
The entire purpose of copyrights, specifically, is to protect specific works from being copied. It doesn't make sense to define "derivative work" in any terms other than as it relates to the specific content being protected. So if I take someone's novel and change the character names but keep the wording identical, I have created a derivative work, as would be the case if I had added something new to the original work and attempted to distribute the new whole work (as opposed to just the additions).
But to call something a "derivative work" simply because it makes use of some of the characters and ideas within someone else's work is sheer lunacy.
Put another way: I should be able to write a brand spanking new novel set in the Star Wars universe and involving some of the characters within it, without that novel being declared a "derivative work" and thus a violation of copyright. Why? Because I didn't copy anything except ideas.
If someone wants to protect a name, they can get a trademark. If they want to protect an idea, they can get a patent. And if they want to prevent people from making unauthorized copies of their works, then and only then should they be allowed to use copyright.
Slashdot Mirror
Erm, shouldn't there be a *RIM shot* somewhere in there?
Ahem, anyway, back to reading Slashdot...
A poor person pays a few thousand dollars in taxes, while a rich person may pay hundreds of thousands in taxes. Is that fair?
As I said, that depends on the desired effect. It also depends on what perspective you're measuring fairness from.
From the point of view of the recipient of the money, the difference might not be fair, because a different dollar value is being received depending on the wealth of the individual. But for that to be true, the measurement of fairness would have to hinge on the value of the fine itself. In short, it makes the measure of fairness essentially a self-referent thing, something which begs the question rather than answers it.
If the goal (in your parking ticket example) is to discourage people from parking, then clearly the penalty would have to be related in some way to the amount of money the person being penalized has, because that's almost certainly a big factor in that person's evaluation of whether or not it's worth it to him to pay the fine and ignore the "no parking" rule.
This is a danger whenever a nontrivial judgement is entered against a company. And I would argue that some of the effects, such as the hit on the company's stock price, are very desirable. Companies always hide behind the claim that they do what they do in order to "maximize shareholder value". If that's so, then it's right and proper for the company's stock value to suffer greatly when that company is found guilty of intentionally harming others in the name of "maximizing shareholder value", because it's the only way to make shareholders pay for the misdeeds done in their name.
The alternative is to enter a trivial judgement. Is that what you would really prefer? You would prefer to see a judgement entered against Microsoft that does nothing significant to them? If that's so, then what's the point of taking them to court to begin with?
No, it's much better for a judgement against a corporation to be nontrivial when that corporation has been found guilty of harming others. How else do you propose to change a company's behavior? The whole purpose of lawsuits such as the one we're discussing is to change a company's behavior, to make it clear to the company that they will lose more from their improper actions than they will gain.
Seems to me that the real problem is that the judgements are always in terms of dollar amounts. $200 million is a big chunk of cash to almost everyone -- except Microsoft. To Microsoft, $200 million is nothing, half a percent of the amount of money they have in the bank.
Similarly, the little guys often get judgements against them that are tiny in comparison to $200 million, but which easily bankrupt them because they aren't Microsoft -- they're just normal people with normal incomes (if that).
None of this would be a problem if judgements (and settlements) were forced to be expressed in terms of the percentage of the worth of the target. An individual who is forced to pay, say, 20% of their total worth in a judgement or settlement would be hurt pretty badly by it, but they'd almost certainly survive. And the same is true of a huge entity like Microsoft. But the dollar values would be much different. $20K (for instance) against the individual, and something like $20 billion against Microsoft. But those amounts would yield roughly the same effect, and it's the effect that's important in any judgement or settlement.
The bottom line is that, in my opinion, the people who judge these settlements or who create these judgements simply don't think properly about the problem. They're focused on the amounts and not the effects.
That's to be expected in a money-driven society, I suppose...
Perhaps. But do you think Linksys would be equally forgiving if they found someone who was defying whatever agreements they might have with Linksys? They might be, of course, but given the sheer number of cases out there of people (and small companies) being sued by corporations for various kinds of IP violations, both real and imagined, I don't think there's much reason to believe that Linksys will be what would appear to be an exception to the rule.
I'm normally inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt, but corporations have screwed others over so many times, so badly, and for so long that I can no longer give them the benefit of the doubt.
What goes around comes around. If corporations want to be treated fairly then they must treat others equally fairly. They haven't been doing that, so what do you expect people to do?
Except now, that's no longer an option. Because the people who are in control of the system wield weapons far more powerful than anything mankind has ever seen, and the people who would revolt simply don't have them and can't get them in enough numbers to matter -- they're too expensive and it's too easy to control their distribution.
At least during the Roman times (and the American Revolution, for that matter), the firepower of the average person was roughly equivalent to the firepower of the average soldier, certainly within an order of magnitude. That means that at least people could win against their oppressors with sheer numbers if nothing else. But today the balance is between hundreds and millions to one in favor of the average soldier, depending on which weapons you want to include in the balance. Your average group of people with handguns or maybe even assault rifles is simply no match for a soldier with artillery and air support, and we haven't even talked about nukes yet.
That means that once the bad guys have control over the governments around the world (we're really close to that now -- look at how much "influence" the U.S. has over the nations in the rest of the world), such that changes from the inside are essentially impossible due to the selection criteria used and the internal inertia involved, the situation can last for many thousands of years. You can't get change from the outside when there is no outside, and for the first time in history that situation (no "outside" to worry about) is actually achievable.
This is why I think humanity is going to be totally screwed, and that we're likely to see this occur within the century.
Americans voted for the politicians from the list of politicians that was available to them and that they knew something about. The information most of those Americans had available to them was determined by the American media. The American media is owned by a few large corporations which, not coincidentally, have a vested interest in the laws in question (either because they directly want them or because they are "friends" with other corporations that do). And so, in the majority of cases, the realistic candidates people can choose from will all support the laws in question. The media simply will not give favorable exposure to any other candidate.
That basically means that the average American voter can be held blameless -- he's playing a rigged game and has no real control over the fact that it's rigged.
I'd much rather see stability in the face of stupid plugins, and saner memory management under Unix (open a bunch of web pages and then close all but one of them -- none of the memory used gets released to the OS. You have to exit Mozilla for that to happen).
Stability in the face of idiotic plugins, in particular, is really important. What idiot decided that plugins should run in the same process space as the browser? Plugins should run in their own process space and be forced to interact with the browser through a well-defined API.
As a result of the plugin stupidity, Mozilla freezes solid if the Java plugin does something stupid (which happens frequently), or crashes if there's a bug in the plugin (as is frequently the case with Flash). I'm sorry, but that's simply unacceptable.
The problem isn't the trial by jury. In the U.S. it's widely believed that it's supposed to be a trial by a jury of your peers. To me, that means people you interact with regularly, or who are likely to have shared similar experiences to you, so that they have the capacity to judge you appropriately based in part on the insight their experiences bring.
But the Constitution calls for an impartial jury, and as a result the concept of a jury of one's "peers" has completely disappeared, to be replaced by a lottery system that almost guarantees that the people sitting on the jury will almost certainly be unable to properly judge you.
I think trial by jury may well be a sound concept when done right, but unfortunately it's not done properly at all here in the U.S.
Yeah, but name one -- just one -- activity that involves the production of something (whether it's a computer program or a widget or a vehicle or a part, or anything at all like that), that can't be outsourced.
I'll bet there is no such thing.
You can't provide services to someone who can't afford to pay for those services, and those who provide a service must eventually get their money from someone who provides goods, someone who manufactures something.
And I don't know of any manufacturing activity of any kind that can't be done remotely.
Yeah? And how do you feel about those people who didn't live outside of their means, lost their jobs, and have now burned through all of their savings because there are no jobs to be had no matter how good their skills are?
Unemployment is still rising. After all this time. It may be a temporary thing, but I don't believe there was a serious move to ship jobs out of the country in the last recession as there is in this one. Think through the implications of that before you spout off.
Exactly right. Every corporation operates as if its actions have no impact on the environment they operate in.
Well, reality will catch up with most of them sooner or later. It always does.
In other words, you have to gamble. Bigtime.
Because everyone else around you is going to be looking for the same thing you are: something they can do that can only be done here.
And when you and they find that thing, you will compete against them in order to provide that thing. But you know what? Chances are, someone's already providing it right now. Because it's exceedingly rare that people need something completely new that can only be provided locally.
The end result of all of this? Fewer things that can be done here but no decrease in the population. And that means greater competition for those jobs that can only be done here. Which means lower wages. Which lowers the amount of money people here can spend on goods and services. And you know what else that means? People, and therefore companies that provide goods and services to those people, will have less money to spend on anything other than the bare necessities of life. And that means that it will be even more unlikely that you'll find something new to provide that can only be provided here. Because the bare necessities have been needed and thus supplied for millions of years.
Congratulations. By moving all of these jobs overseas, you've managed to kill the U.S. economy. Or, more precisely, to weaken it to the point that it's just average, more or less.
Why? Because like it or not, the global economy is a zero-sum game. It has to be, because aside from changes in the size of the population and the advance of technology, the total amount of available human labor, which is what money represents, is fixed. The sooner you people who support globalization realize this, the sooner you'll understand the true implications of globalization: it will move every economy that participates towards the average of all of the economies now, after adjusting for population growth and technological progress.
That means that if the U.S. participates in the globalization process, its economy will decline. It must, because its economy is currently far above average.
But even worse, it means that for any country to outcompete the others, it must minimize the total cost of labor, which means minimizing the cost of living, the cost of labor, and the cost of doing business. That means eliminating most laws governing pollution, labor, and business. That's because competition is darwinian. It doesn't give a shit about fairness, only about winning. Fairness is more expensive, because to provide it you have to eliminate actions and situations that might otherwise make things less costly, like slave ownership.
And that means that the countries that are the worst places to live will be the countries that will win the competition to provide labor for the cheapest amount possible. Because ultimately, the cost of labor is determined by the cost of living, and the cost of living is determined by the things people buy during the course of their lives: food, clothing, and shelter are the bare necessities, and everything else is a luxury. The country with the cheapest labor will be the country that minimizes the luxuries, the one in which the amount of money people make is barely enough to pay for the barest of necessities. This is what's known as the "race to the bottom", and it's real, not just some fantasy.
Is that what you supporters of globalization really want?
The error happens often enough (so often, in fact, that it seems that most people here on Slashdot who mean to say "lose" end up typing "loose" instead -- often enough that I do a double-take when someone actually gets it right) that I don't think it's a question of mistyping anything.
Especially since the author of the message in question managed to "mistype" it in both the subject line and the body.
Nice try, though.
You mean like the stupidity of those people who can't for the life of them figure out the difference between "loose" and "lose"?
Yeah, thought so.
Better take a good look at yourself, buddy, before you start calling other people "stupid"...
You mean kinda like how you have to memorize (i.e., "just know") all of the attributes of a valid system message versus one of these ads we've been talking about?
If you can sympathize with someone who can't be bothered to properly learn his own damned language, then you can just as easily sympathize with someone who isn't familiar enough with managing his own computer to recognize the difference between a valid system error message popup and one of these ads!
A plugin should be sent mouse and keyboard events and be given an API to use to draw things into a "window" defined by the browser, and perhaps an API to retrieve data via an URL, and that's it. Mozilla might get that part right. But the plugin should also run in its own address space, so that if it decides to crash or otherwise do something stupid it won't take the browser with it. Mozilla definitely does not get that right.
Mozilla needs to be stable even in the face of crappy plugins. Right now, it's not, and that's something that badly needs to change.
Most people here will believe that this is evidence of Microsoft being anticompetitive, that it's done to make more money for Microsoft.
But that's not what's going on at all!
No, the real reason you have to go through all of the above is so that you'll be forced to agree to be Bill Gates' towel boy.
Hey, you try finding a good towel boy when you have a mansion as big as his. Then you'll understand. If there's anyone who needs towel boys en masse, it's Bill Gates.
That's possible, of course. But to be honest, I'm not convinced that the general public even cares about the RIAA (or even knows who they are).
And even if I agreed with you on that, I'm not convinced that it'll make any difference. We invaded Iraq over the opposition of a lot more people than are against the RIAA, so for what reason would we believe that the government will side against the RIAA even if a large percentage of the general public does? Especially given the rather large amounts of money the politicians receive from the RIAA.
No, sorry, but the U.S. government is no longer of, by, or for the people, and I don't think it ever will be again.
That's precisely why they are idiots -- they refuse to learn what they need to know to make a sound decision, instead preferring to make those decisions based on sound bites and media bullshit. And worse, they refuse to delegate the decision to someone who is willing to put in the time to figure things out.
I could excuse them if they weren't actually making decisions about this stuff.
People like that are a marketer's dream, and have no business making company-wide decisions of any kind.
Pull it off with backing of the states? Like they did with Microsoft? Oh, wait...
A lawsuit against the RIAA is likely to fare at most as well as the antitrust action against Microsoft. The Webcaster Alliance doesn't stand a chance in hell of winning.
Do you think JK Rowling should be able to write a Harry Potter novel, using in her favor the huge success of all the stories that came before that talk about magic, witchcraft, good, evil, etc., to boost the acceptability and profit potential of her derivative? Well?
If JK Rowling is concerned about that possibility, then she has a means of dealing with it: it's called a trademark.
That is what we're really talking about here: a name that confers meaning and expectation.
Use the right tool for the job.
Keep the name calling to yourself, please.
And remember the entire reason for copyright in the U.S.: "to promote progress in the sciences and useful arts". Not to make the originators of the works a boatload of money. Not to confer status. To make the world a better place.
Now, interpreting copyright the way it apparently has been may accomplish that, but I doubt it, considering all of the good stories (as an example) that certainly haven't been published because of this particular interpretation of copyright.
And as to the characters, settings, etc. all being so incredibly important that they deserve special protection, remember this: almost everything is built upon that which has come before. If you're going to confer special protection upon something then there has to be a special reason for doing so. Because otherwise, you had better be prepared to do the same for things like the concept of spacecraft, warp drive, hyperspace, etc., etc. -- the very things that are the foundation of most modern science fiction.
So you may continue to believe that the things protected by copyright truly deserve to be, but you might want to give the overall implications of that protection a little more thought before declaring it good and just.
No shit. And anyone with a brain knows that. They also know that if coffee is too hot to drink then it's dangerous.
The question isn't whether or not something is dangerous. There's plenty of dangerous things out there. The question is whether or not someone who knowingly handles something dangerous is within reason to expect compensation when they get bitten.
Nothing you wrote contradicts what I've said. Yes, she got burned badly. Yes, McDonald's was a dick about the whole thing. But none of that changes the simple fact that people should be responsible for their own well being and for the consequences of the actions they knowingly take.
If she had never purchased McDonald's coffee before, or if most McDonald's coffee weren't served as hot as hers was, then I'd be more than happy to side with her, because it would mean that McDonald's screwed up. But when someone has been providing the same product the same way for years in a climate where the customer can, without any significant consequences to themselves, vote with their wallet, there's no excuse for a repeat customer to suddenly launch a lawsuit just because the product they'd been buying for who knows how long suddenly caused them injury due to a trait that they already knew (or that anyone with any brains would have known) about. Like I said: if it bothers you that McDonald's coffee is served too hot then buy it somewhere else -- it's not like you don't have tons of options to choose from. Or accept the consequences of handling something you know to be potentially dangerous. But don't go crying to the government just because you weren't smart enough to put 2 (really hot coffee) and 2 (significant chance of serious injury) together.
If you want to live in a world where Big Brother Government protects you from every little manmade danger out there in the world, if you don't want to bother taking responsibility for your own life and your own actions, then just say so and be done with it. But I'd rather live in a world where I'm free to do any damned thing I please so long as I don't intentionally cause harm to others (which can either be through positive action, like intentionally spilling hot coffee on someone, or through negative action, like intentionally withholding important information about the coffee that can't be obtained through easy inspection). I don't want to live in a world where I'm severely limited in what I can do just because there are a bunch of morons out there that want to be completely protected from the consequences of their own stupidity.
Oh, and as to frivolous lawsuits: those are lawsuits that have no real validity to them. Given the facts of the McDonald's case, I think it qualifies.
It has the concept. But given how things have been going here in the last 10-20 years or so, I'd say that "inalienable rights" are only a concept, even though there are some explicitly listed in the Constitution.
Not even those are "inalienable" in a country where the letter of the law, and not the intention of the law, is the only thing that counts in court (well, that and how big your pocketbook is).
If you're right about how "derivative works" is interpreted as regards copyright law, then I have to ask: who the fuck came up with the brilliant notion that characters, settings, etc., which are all ideas and not specific expressions, are protected under copyright law instead of trademark law?
The entire purpose of copyrights, specifically, is to protect specific works from being copied. It doesn't make sense to define "derivative work" in any terms other than as it relates to the specific content being protected. So if I take someone's novel and change the character names but keep the wording identical, I have created a derivative work, as would be the case if I had added something new to the original work and attempted to distribute the new whole work (as opposed to just the additions).
But to call something a "derivative work" simply because it makes use of some of the characters and ideas within someone else's work is sheer lunacy.
Put another way: I should be able to write a brand spanking new novel set in the Star Wars universe and involving some of the characters within it, without that novel being declared a "derivative work" and thus a violation of copyright. Why? Because I didn't copy anything except ideas.
If someone wants to protect a name, they can get a trademark. If they want to protect an idea, they can get a patent. And if they want to prevent people from making unauthorized copies of their works, then and only then should they be allowed to use copyright.