The people who create these schemes to regulate the internet are the same people who create the schemes that regulate health care, the enviornment, education, buisness, safety, etc.
Most of the regulations that govern every aspect of our lives nowadays are just as crude and misguided as attempts to regulate the internet. The only different is people on Slashdot have the expertise in internet technology to understand how stupid the laws governing the internet are - where as they don't have the expertise in other fields to understand the flaws in those kinds of laws.
For the average voter, the majority of whom don't understand how the technology works, these laws seem totally reasonable. These laws seem as reasonable to them as some law governing education sounds to you.
You need to understand that the law is a pretty slow and crude tool, and there is no way a lawmaker can be an expert in every subject they are supposed to regulate (let alone your average voter who selects the lawmaker). If you are the type that thinks society needs significant regulation, then the internet being regulated in this way is the price you pay for a regulated society. You accept these kinds of restrictions being put on you in the same way you are willing to place greater restrictions on doctors, or teachers, or whoever, despite their expertise. Every field of human endeavor has to deal with some pretty stupid laws once in a while, why do you imagine your thing is immune. Either become an Anarchist or Libertarian, or suck it up and charge it to the game.
Radiation and "toxic cancer causing chemicals" (huh ?) will kill stuff much, much more often than producing any kind of viable mutation. And to be viable, that mutation has to work with the rest of the biochemistry in the plant, which usually means that only small changes from the original are allowed. The mutations, or direct genetic modification, work by the same rules. No matter if the changes are intentional, or random, in both cases they need to work with the biochemistry of the plant. Direct genetic modification is essentially non-random mutation. The fundamental biology of both actions are the same. The only difference is the randomness.
But in regards to mutations being lethal, mutations in plants are far less lethal than you think. Unlike say humans, plants don't have a set of highly specialized organs that are easily disrupted to cause death. Mutations are not the problem for plants as they are for complex animals.
In any case, I am not saying there are no risks to GM crops. I am saying that the risks from GM crops are significantly less than the more traditional and widely accepted mutation breeding. If you think that both GM crops, AND mutation breeding should be highly regulated, I could accept that as a consistant, viable belief system (although you would be hard pressed to find a crop that wasn't the result of some sort of mutation breeding). But in reality, the movement against GM crops has more to do with fighting the "big evil corporations" than with the actual risks of GM crops. If it was Cuba promoting GM crops instead of Montanto or ADM, people wouldn't have a problem with it. People don't have a problem with mutation breeding, despite the very significant dangers, because it is not very capital intensive and so it isn't being done exclusivly by big corporations.
Mutation breeding, at least, still has natural selection as a check. Direct DNA manipulation does not have this check. Direct DNA manipulation doesn't have natural selection as a check? What are you talking about? Are you saying that geneticly modified plants are somehow immune to natural selection when they are released into the wild?
I was going to tear into your arguement, but frankly what you are saying so defies any logic that perhaps you mispoke? You can't clearly believe that natural selection is somehow doesn't work on directly geneticly modified organisms? There is no special magic to GM crops that make them defy the laws of nature.
But there's a big difference between breeding and direct gene manipulation and any comparison is ingenious. NO!!! There is virtually no difference between mutation breeding and direct gene manipulation. In both cases the DNA is being intentionally modified by human beings, in ways that would not happen in nature. The only difference is that in direct gene manipulation, the genetic modification is predetermined, where as in mutation breeding the genetic modification is completly random.
The only difference between mutation breeding and gene manipulation is the consequences of mutation breeding are widely unpredictable. All the dangers of genetic modification exist in mutation breeding! All of them! Because mutation breeding IS genetic modification.
When you take a plant, bombard it with massive amounts of radiation, until you get wild mutations that cannot occur in nature - or when you take a plant, soak it in toxic cancer causing chemicals until you get wild mutations that cannot occure in nature, the results are as every bit as dangerous as manipulating the DNA in a lab. The DNA has been significantly altered from it's natural form in both cases. The results in the composition of the plants, and there effect on the ecosystem are completly unknown in both cases. In fact, with mutation breeding it is MORE dangerous, as a completly harmful mutation is just as likely as a benign mutation. Yet you can plant those mutated plants out in the wild, with no government approval or regulation, and there is no "green" movement to ban mutation breeding!
Mutation breeding is more dangerous that the type of genetic modification that people are getting upset about.
You realize that virtually all crops have been geneticly modified through mutation breeding, right? That mutation breeding, which is 100% "organic" (in the hippie sense of the word), produces more potentially dangerous unwanted consequences than direct genetic modification (where there is at least some vauge idea of what will happen)? Modifying the DNA of plants, in a way that cannot happen in natural selective breeding, has been happening for centuries - that ancient Incan scientists/priests were soaking their seeds in caustic brine, or planting gardens on high altitude mountain peaks in order to get more mutation causing radiation, to induce genetic modification? You realize, that virtually all the crops we use to survive today are the product of genetic modification, even the ones that have been around for thousands of years?
You realize that nowadays, people do the same thing... bombard seeds with radiation, or soak the seeds in carcinogenic substances, to induce random genetic modification - and then plant those plants and see what happens!!!? And those plants are considered 100% natural and organic and are pretty much what you buy when you purchase food at your local organic food market? You realize that there are no regulations regarding mutation breeding at all, and you can create all sorts of mutations and plant them in the wild immediatly? You do realize that genetic manipulation was designed to be a SAFE ALTERNATIVE to the traditional way of breeding plants?
Do you propose banning virtually all food crops while we see if they are dangerous? They are all geneticly modified. Nothing, absolutly nothing like modern corn, potatos, or wheat exists in nature or is possible from selective breeding. Most demosticated crops are genetic monstrocities!
When it comes to China vs Cuba, there's just as much schizophrenia on the Right. It's the reverse question - why is it ok to trade with China but not with Cuba? They're both Communist countries with a history of human rights violations. It is not my job to defend the right - they are pretty much bastards... but since Slashdot leans to the left, bashing the right on Slashdot isn't much fun... everyone is likely to agree with me and that defeats the point of posting. And I don't think it is schizophrenia with the right, so much as it is just plain greed. Look at right wing websites and you will find plenty of China fearmongering... the right are pretty damn anti-China, it is just that the right pretty much sell out the second it hurts them as consumers. The right hate China, up until the point it means they can't get cheap electronics at Walmart. Another example would be the total fear of middle eastern countries that people on the right have, yet they essentially subsidize those middle east countries by driving big stinkin SUVs. It isn't inconsistancy, so much as moral weakness. The right have consistant views on China and Cuba, it is just that there is nothing in Cuba that they want to buy. The day they discover oil in Cuba the Republicans will be foaming at the mouth to drop the embargo.
My understanding is that the ACLU tends to identify more with the left, but maybe that's just in New York. The ACLU became associated with the Left to some right-wing people back in the days of Communist paranoia, because the ACLU was one of the few groups that would stick up for Communists right to free speech. People mistakenly thought that because the ACLU defended Communists, that they must be Communists. But the ACLU defending the rights of Communists isn't an endorcement of their ideology, as the ACLU also defended the rights of KKK members and neo-Nazis and Satanists and I definitly don't consider the ACLU to be Nazi or Satanic.
I am not confusing different opinions. I personally know people who have the contradictory belief system that I mentioned. Click on the names of some of the people posting on Slashdot and view their posting history and you will see the contradiction. Not all leftists believe the way I mentioned, of course, but the people with contradictory beliefs certainly make up the loudest voices.
But aside from that, your statement had flaws. The ACLU is not a leftist group... they are civil libertarians and have no official political stance outside of civil liberty issues. Nowadays, the ACLU is just as likely to be attacked by leftwing groups as they are by rightwing groups.
Michael Moore and Ralph Nadar both attack American companies for doing buisness with countries like China, and attack American companies for not doing buisness with countries like Cuba or for pulling investment out of Venezuala, which is essentially the same contradiction that I am talking about.
Ralph Nadar openly supports lifting all sactions on Cuba under the pretense that the U.S. shouldn't "force" its values on other countries and trade embargos are "economic imperialism", yet at the same time wants a whole new set of trade restrictions (which pretty much amounts to an embargo) on China over human rights issues and control of labor prices by the government (the same issues that exist with Cuba). http://www.counterpunch.org/cuba0715.html http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/nad-j24. shtml
Ralph Nadar is a popular and mainstream figure on the left, and it is perfectly reasonable to assume that his view match those of many people on the left.
Well, you could argue that "Don't Be Evil" is stupidly vauge, so much so to be absolutly meaningless. But you are really taking things out of context in trying to paint Google as evil.
I mean, wouldn't it be "evil" for Google to break the laws of a country it is doing buisness in - Laws that were designed to prevent race riots, ethnic cleansing, and the like? Laws that Google honors in Germany, France, and many other countries without being accused of being "evil"? I mean, unless you are a hardcore libertarian and are completly against any sort of censorship (which is pretty unlikely you are), most people would consider Google evil if they didn't follow those rules!
Or, should Google refuse to do buisness in India? You expect ethical companies in the United States to essentially declare an embargo on India? You realize that the U.S. has been accused of "economic imperialism" for its embargo on Cuba, or Saddam era Iraq... that embargos have been blamed for the economic hardships and even many deaths in those countries. If Google refused to do buisness in India, they would be accused of leveraging their economic power to push "American values" against the government policies of a democratic India. They would be accused of being evil.
So, if you want to argue that "Don't Be Evil" is so subjective as to be meaningless, well yeah, OK. If you want to argue that in many cases it is impossible to act without being evil, well then, OK. But to imply that Google has made some sort of decision to pursue profit over not being evil is false. No-matter what Google does, even if it desided to do nothing and to completly disband altogether, people would be calling those actions evil.
A left-wing socialist government creates a bunch of speech codes, in order to "promote social justice" and "stop hate" and a bunch of other vague progressive sounding goals, not dissimilar to laws that are in effect in Western Europe, Canada, etc.
An American company then obeys those laws, as they are required to do by the laws in those countries as well as the laws in the United States (which require U.S. companies obey the laws in the countries they do business).
So then leftists in America blame the "evil corporation" for following the laws of India - while at the same time praising those laws and demanding those same sort of "social justice" and "anti-hate" laws to be passed in the United States.
And you know, if American companies didn't follow the laws in India, the Slashdot news story would be "American company breaks Indian laws to protect hate criminals!!!" and the same people would be just as outraged.
Now, I can respect people who have radically different world views from myself - but I expect that even those who disagree with me have some sort of internal consistency to their ideology. I understand that they might have a different viewpoint from me, but I expect them to not have a paradoxical viewpoint. I would say that since the fall of the Soviet Union, and resulting unpopularity of Marxism, that the left isn't really an ideological position - pretty much they are completely ideology free - they are more a purely emotional counter-reaction to anything in reality that they find emotionally disturbing. The left is becoming less and less of an ideology, and more and more of a neurosis.
I mean, get your shit straight. Either hate speech laws are good, and companies should follow government regulations, and American companies should respect the sovereignty of the countries where they are doing business... Or hate speech laws are bad, companies should ignore regulations they don't agree with, and U.S. companies should use their economic power to influence those countries. If you feel one way, or another, I might disagree with you - but we can rationally discuss your ideas, and I can respect your ideas. They have value to everyone in a democratic society, even if everyone doesn't agree with you. But the vast majority of the new left flip back and forth on issues like some weird political schizophrenia.
They are NOT a foreign company... they are moving their headquarters outside the U.S., but they are still registered and traded inside the U.S. and pay U.S. taxes.
Homebrew software is not piracy though - As far as I am concerned, the video game console buisness model works very well in North America - Unless you play an aweful lot of games and have lots of free time but have little or no income (such as a teenager whose parents provide the broadband connection and console), or unless you find hacking your console to be a fun activity in itself (i.e. homebrew software), piracy is way more expensive than the legal purchase.
I haven't pirated a PC game in years, but I am pretty sure it would take me 5 or 10 minutes to find the download and to find whatever patch or exploit is nessicary to run it on my machine. People actually do pirate PC games in North America to save money. Pirating PC games is an economical prospect.
Therefore, it is totally reasonable that releasing games for console as well as PC helps reduce loss to piracy.
But I can also pirate console games. It just takes a little more work.
And for many people, the additional work of pirating a console game makes it cheaper to just buy the game. I can do two hours of work for a client, or spend two hours tracking down a pirated version, downloading, burning it to DVD, etc. Unless pirating is a hobby you enjoy for its own sake, it is more expensive to pirate console games than to buy them.
That is assuming it is using military style nuclear weapons as propulsion. It is reasonable to assume that if Orion was actually politically viable, that some sort of system with negligable contamination could be developed. However, it would illegal to even put together a think-tank to explore the possibility, even for the sake of showing how flawed it would be. That is the trouble with treaties like this.
I think wiretapping is pretty much done by all police forces, without any restrictions. The whole legal process for getting wiretaps has to do with using information collected during a wiretap as evidence in court. But if the police tap phones and they don't plan to make the evidence collected known outside their small internal group, no one will ever be the wiser. It is like requiring people to have a warrant in order to have oral sex: yeah, good luck enforcing that!
For example, if the police want to determine if person x is engaged in some criminal activity, they don't need a warrant (technically, according to the law they might need a warrant, but not in reality). They just tap the phone line - If they hear via the phone that the person is engaged in some criminal activity, they then claim they recieved "an anonymous tip", get a search warrent, and collect further evidence, and just keep the information collected from the illegal phone tap off the books. If the phone tap doesn't turn anything up, then everyone is none-the-wiser anyway, no big deal.
The only time that a warrant is nessicary, is if you plan on using recordings of phone conversations as evidence. In those cases, then yes they must get a warrant.
Sweden, like every government on the planet, engages in widespread wiretapping. All states are police states, and engage in police state tactics to the extent that they have the resources to do so. The only way to prevent police state tactics is to limit the size and scope of government itself, something that very few people want to do.
In fact I see next to no reason for users to be interested either. Unless you own a 360 already and therefore get Windows Live Gold for free, where is the incentive. What is so compelling about the MS service to justify forking out $50 to use it when the same can be had for free elsewhere? What Xbox Live offers is not available for free anywhere else. It is not available for money anywhere else!
If I play a game with someone that I like, I can instantly get a list of the games they play online cross references with the games that I play online, tag them as a friend - I can be notified in-game when they log on and log off, And with in 3 seconds invite them to the game I am hosting while I am still playing. Or, when I log in, I can go to my list of friends, see what they are playing right now, and instantly join their game sessions if they have open slots. All of this functionality is integrated with the game itself.
If I don't like a person I am playing with, I can tag them as someone I don't like, and when I search for game sessions, the games that they are playing in won't show up in my list (nor will they be able to join the games I am hosting). And if they are being assholes, yelling racist slurs or whatever (which is super common in online play on the PC), I can report them - and a microsoft employee will investigate, listen to audio to see if the person was actually saying stuff that violates the TOS, and ban the player (and that account is tied to their credit card and xbox serial number, so it is no small thing to create another account).
And, voice chat is a standardized part of online play. Everyone on xbox live is expected to have voice chat hardware, and the functionality is integrated with the game and the system. Everyone playing is able to communicate via voice, the voice settings are part of the game session settings (I can set if I want dead players to be allowed to speak with live players in the same menu where I set respawns, for example... in some games you can set if opposing teams are allowed to communicate or if all communications are in-team).
I gave up online gaming on the PC for online gaming with xbox live, because there is nothing like xbox live on the PC. If I had to go back to online gaming PC style, I would just give up online gaming. I would pay $100 a year for xbox live, never mind $50 a year.
1. Dates. 2. Teenagers who want to get out of the house. 3. People who want to get together and watch a movie with a bunch of friends, and don't have a $3000+ entertainment system and a living room that seats 20+ people comfortably. 4. New movies that aren't on DVD yet. 5. Art films and foriegn films that aren't available on DVD. 6. Imax.
First of all, I have flown through Charles de Gaulle airport several times in the recent past, and wasn't asked a single question by anyone. In fact, I accidently bypassed one of their security checks. I wasn't trying to avoid the security check, I just didn't notice it and walked right by, not being stopped or noticed by anyone. So what you are saying about the security at Charles de Gualle just isn't true. The security was pretty half-assed (which is fine by me, because it made things faster).
However, assuming it was true for the sake of arguement, the whole questioning people thing is a pretty lame security measure. Not only is it totally subjective and so prone to abuses (like racial profiling), but any terrorist worth their salt will take the time to create an impecable cover story, and it will be the jet-lagged guy who has been plane-hopping for the last 18 hours who gets taken in custody who is harrassed by security. Given that there are probably thousands or tens of thousands of people taken aside for giving suspicious answers each year, and virtually none of them are terrorists - With that kind of false-positive rate I would say it is nothing but security theater.
But I agree with you on one thing, an ID card is junk security too.
Reading it off the front would require a lot of time and effort... with the labor cost for data entry, it would be cost prohibitive. However, if the bar simply scans the card in a fraction of a second, it IS cost effective to sell the data to a database.
Well, the technology is more about not having to create body animations for every action, than a control scheme. It is basicly like ragdoll physics, except instead of being completly limp the bodies can actually physically move around.
It is actually not illegal to advertise false claims... although you can be punished for fraud if you are doing something like intentionally selling a non-functional product.
For example:
I could advertise that apples cure cancer, and it would be fine...
However, if an apple orchard were to advertise that their apples cure cancer, and the apples didn't cure cancer they would be guilty for fraud... The crime is not claiming that apples cure cancer, but selling people apples with the understanding that they cure cancer.
The laws don't restrict speech, they restrict selling something under false pretenses. As long as there is no money changing hands for product, you can pretty much say whatever the hell you want (at least in theory).
i can't wait for them to do this them selves.. i mean really.. that means they woln't procreate.. right???? I think you misunderstand them... It means that they will only do the naughty things in order to procreate, strictly as their duty and never to have fun. But having no children would deprive them of having the pleasure of saying "won't someone think of the children"?
Hmm, maybe its time our world leaders started thinking more effectively on how to curb our fatal overconsumption lifestyle. And maybe the rest of us should put up mason bee homes to do our part to help See, this is why you so-called enviornmentalists make so many enemies... "curb our fatal overconsumption lifestyle"? What? You are attaching a whole bunch of moralistic and philisophical bullshit to the problem to promote your own social and political agenda.
There is absolutly nothing wrong with consumption. Consuming things makes people happy. Consumerism is good. What we need to do is stop CO2 emmisions - we can still consume all we like assuming that we use solar, nuclear, wind, or geothermal energy and properly recycle our waste materials.
If you guys would stop exploiting Global Warming to promote your agenda which has nothing to do with enviornmentalism, you would discover that virtually everyone is for protecting the enviornment (it is the one issue that pretty much effects everyone). Instead you alienate anyone who doesn't agree that forsaking capitalism and living on centrally planned communes is a desirable state of affairs.
Parent groups prepare to label real life as "violent and filled with adult-related content."....seriously, folks. Access isn't the issue in the modern era; teaching kids good judgment is. Yes, but in the eyes of the nannie state facists, that just means that the government needs to eliminate all adult-content from real life.
No, they will most definitly shut down B&H because they supply professional photographers with incandescent flash lights. A prosecutor's performance is based on the number of convictions they get - and so they will always go after an easy conviction.
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The people who create these schemes to regulate the internet are the same people who create the schemes that regulate health care, the enviornment, education, buisness, safety, etc.
Most of the regulations that govern every aspect of our lives nowadays are just as crude and misguided as attempts to regulate the internet. The only different is people on Slashdot have the expertise in internet technology to understand how stupid the laws governing the internet are - where as they don't have the expertise in other fields to understand the flaws in those kinds of laws.
For the average voter, the majority of whom don't understand how the technology works, these laws seem totally reasonable. These laws seem as reasonable to them as some law governing education sounds to you.
You need to understand that the law is a pretty slow and crude tool, and there is no way a lawmaker can be an expert in every subject they are supposed to regulate (let alone your average voter who selects the lawmaker). If you are the type that thinks society needs significant regulation, then the internet being regulated in this way is the price you pay for a regulated society. You accept these kinds of restrictions being put on you in the same way you are willing to place greater restrictions on doctors, or teachers, or whoever, despite their expertise. Every field of human endeavor has to deal with some pretty stupid laws once in a while, why do you imagine your thing is immune. Either become an Anarchist or Libertarian, or suck it up and charge it to the game.
But in regards to mutations being lethal, mutations in plants are far less lethal than you think. Unlike say humans, plants don't have a set of highly specialized organs that are easily disrupted to cause death. Mutations are not the problem for plants as they are for complex animals.
In any case, I am not saying there are no risks to GM crops. I am saying that the risks from GM crops are significantly less than the more traditional and widely accepted mutation breeding. If you think that both GM crops, AND mutation breeding should be highly regulated, I could accept that as a consistant, viable belief system (although you would be hard pressed to find a crop that wasn't the result of some sort of mutation breeding). But in reality, the movement against GM crops has more to do with fighting the "big evil corporations" than with the actual risks of GM crops. If it was Cuba promoting GM crops instead of Montanto or ADM, people wouldn't have a problem with it. People don't have a problem with mutation breeding, despite the very significant dangers, because it is not very capital intensive and so it isn't being done exclusivly by big corporations.
I was going to tear into your arguement, but frankly what you are saying so defies any logic that perhaps you mispoke? You can't clearly believe that natural selection is somehow doesn't work on directly geneticly modified organisms? There is no special magic to GM crops that make them defy the laws of nature.
The only difference between mutation breeding and gene manipulation is the consequences of mutation breeding are widely unpredictable. All the dangers of genetic modification exist in mutation breeding! All of them! Because mutation breeding IS genetic modification.
When you take a plant, bombard it with massive amounts of radiation, until you get wild mutations that cannot occur in nature - or when you take a plant, soak it in toxic cancer causing chemicals until you get wild mutations that cannot occure in nature, the results are as every bit as dangerous as manipulating the DNA in a lab. The DNA has been significantly altered from it's natural form in both cases. The results in the composition of the plants, and there effect on the ecosystem are completly unknown in both cases. In fact, with mutation breeding it is MORE dangerous, as a completly harmful mutation is just as likely as a benign mutation. Yet you can plant those mutated plants out in the wild, with no government approval or regulation, and there is no "green" movement to ban mutation breeding!
Mutation breeding is more dangerous that the type of genetic modification that people are getting upset about.
You realize that virtually all crops have been geneticly modified through mutation breeding, right? That mutation breeding, which is 100% "organic" (in the hippie sense of the word), produces more potentially dangerous unwanted consequences than direct genetic modification (where there is at least some vauge idea of what will happen)? Modifying the DNA of plants, in a way that cannot happen in natural selective breeding, has been happening for centuries - that ancient Incan scientists/priests were soaking their seeds in caustic brine, or planting gardens on high altitude mountain peaks in order to get more mutation causing radiation, to induce genetic modification? You realize, that virtually all the crops we use to survive today are the product of genetic modification, even the ones that have been around for thousands of years?
You realize that nowadays, people do the same thing... bombard seeds with radiation, or soak the seeds in carcinogenic substances, to induce random genetic modification - and then plant those plants and see what happens!!!? And those plants are considered 100% natural and organic and are pretty much what you buy when you purchase food at your local organic food market? You realize that there are no regulations regarding mutation breeding at all, and you can create all sorts of mutations and plant them in the wild immediatly? You do realize that genetic manipulation was designed to be a SAFE ALTERNATIVE to the traditional way of breeding plants?
Do you propose banning virtually all food crops while we see if they are dangerous? They are all geneticly modified. Nothing, absolutly nothing like modern corn, potatos, or wheat exists in nature or is possible from selective breeding. Most demosticated crops are genetic monstrocities!
I am not confusing different opinions. I personally know people who have the contradictory belief system that I mentioned. Click on the names of some of the people posting on Slashdot and view their posting history and you will see the contradiction. Not all leftists believe the way I mentioned, of course, but the people with contradictory beliefs certainly make up the loudest voices.
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But aside from that, your statement had flaws. The ACLU is not a leftist group... they are civil libertarians and have no official political stance outside of civil liberty issues. Nowadays, the ACLU is just as likely to be attacked by leftwing groups as they are by rightwing groups.
Michael Moore and Ralph Nadar both attack American companies for doing buisness with countries like China, and attack American companies for not doing buisness with countries like Cuba or for pulling investment out of Venezuala, which is essentially the same contradiction that I am talking about.
Ralph Nadar openly supports lifting all sactions on Cuba under the pretense that the U.S. shouldn't "force" its values on other countries and trade embargos are "economic imperialism", yet at the same time wants a whole new set of trade restrictions (which pretty much amounts to an embargo) on China over human rights issues and control of labor prices by the government (the same issues that exist with Cuba).
http://www.counterpunch.org/cuba0715.html
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/nad-j24
Ralph Nadar is a popular and mainstream figure on the left, and it is perfectly reasonable to assume that his view match those of many people on the left.
Well, you could argue that "Don't Be Evil" is stupidly vauge, so much so to be absolutly meaningless. But you are really taking things out of context in trying to paint Google as evil.
I mean, wouldn't it be "evil" for Google to break the laws of a country it is doing buisness in - Laws that were designed to prevent race riots, ethnic cleansing, and the like? Laws that Google honors in Germany, France, and many other countries without being accused of being "evil"? I mean, unless you are a hardcore libertarian and are completly against any sort of censorship (which is pretty unlikely you are), most people would consider Google evil if they didn't follow those rules!
Or, should Google refuse to do buisness in India? You expect ethical companies in the United States to essentially declare an embargo on India? You realize that the U.S. has been accused of "economic imperialism" for its embargo on Cuba, or Saddam era Iraq... that embargos have been blamed for the economic hardships and even many deaths in those countries. If Google refused to do buisness in India, they would be accused of leveraging their economic power to push "American values" against the government policies of a democratic India. They would be accused of being evil.
So, if you want to argue that "Don't Be Evil" is so subjective as to be meaningless, well yeah, OK. If you want to argue that in many cases it is impossible to act without being evil, well then, OK. But to imply that Google has made some sort of decision to pursue profit over not being evil is false. No-matter what Google does, even if it desided to do nothing and to completly disband altogether, people would be calling those actions evil.
A left-wing socialist government creates a bunch of speech codes, in order to "promote social justice" and "stop hate" and a bunch of other vague progressive sounding goals, not dissimilar to laws that are in effect in Western Europe, Canada, etc.
An American company then obeys those laws, as they are required to do by the laws in those countries as well as the laws in the United States (which require U.S. companies obey the laws in the countries they do business).
So then leftists in America blame the "evil corporation" for following the laws of India - while at the same time praising those laws and demanding those same sort of "social justice" and "anti-hate" laws to be passed in the United States.
And you know, if American companies didn't follow the laws in India, the Slashdot news story would be "American company breaks Indian laws to protect hate criminals!!!" and the same people would be just as outraged.
Now, I can respect people who have radically different world views from myself - but I expect that even those who disagree with me have some sort of internal consistency to their ideology. I understand that they might have a different viewpoint from me, but I expect them to not have a paradoxical viewpoint. I would say that since the fall of the Soviet Union, and resulting unpopularity of Marxism, that the left isn't really an ideological position - pretty much they are completely ideology free - they are more a purely emotional counter-reaction to anything in reality that they find emotionally disturbing. The left is becoming less and less of an ideology, and more and more of a neurosis.
I mean, get your shit straight. Either hate speech laws are good, and companies should follow government regulations, and American companies should respect the sovereignty of the countries where they are doing business... Or hate speech laws are bad, companies should ignore regulations they don't agree with, and U.S. companies should use their economic power to influence those countries. If you feel one way, or another, I might disagree with you - but we can rationally discuss your ideas, and I can respect your ideas. They have value to everyone in a democratic society, even if everyone doesn't agree with you. But the vast majority of the new left flip back and forth on issues like some weird political schizophrenia.
They are NOT a foreign company... they are moving their headquarters outside the U.S., but they are still registered and traded inside the U.S. and pay U.S. taxes.
Homebrew software is not piracy though - As far as I am concerned, the video game console buisness model works very well in North America - Unless you play an aweful lot of games and have lots of free time but have little or no income (such as a teenager whose parents provide the broadband connection and console), or unless you find hacking your console to be a fun activity in itself (i.e. homebrew software), piracy is way more expensive than the legal purchase.
I haven't pirated a PC game in years, but I am pretty sure it would take me 5 or 10 minutes to find the download and to find whatever patch or exploit is nessicary to run it on my machine. People actually do pirate PC games in North America to save money. Pirating PC games is an economical prospect.
Therefore, it is totally reasonable that releasing games for console as well as PC helps reduce loss to piracy.
But I can also pirate console games. It just takes a little more work.
And for many people, the additional work of pirating a console game makes it cheaper to just buy the game. I can do two hours of work for a client, or spend two hours tracking down a pirated version, downloading, burning it to DVD, etc. Unless pirating is a hobby you enjoy for its own sake, it is more expensive to pirate console games than to buy them.
That is assuming it is using military style nuclear weapons as propulsion. It is reasonable to assume that if Orion was actually politically viable, that some sort of system with negligable contamination could be developed. However, it would illegal to even put together a think-tank to explore the possibility, even for the sake of showing how flawed it would be. That is the trouble with treaties like this.
I think wiretapping is pretty much done by all police forces, without any restrictions. The whole legal process for getting wiretaps has to do with using information collected during a wiretap as evidence in court. But if the police tap phones and they don't plan to make the evidence collected known outside their small internal group, no one will ever be the wiser. It is like requiring people to have a warrant in order to have oral sex: yeah, good luck enforcing that!
For example, if the police want to determine if person x is engaged in some criminal activity, they don't need a warrant (technically, according to the law they might need a warrant, but not in reality). They just tap the phone line - If they hear via the phone that the person is engaged in some criminal activity, they then claim they recieved "an anonymous tip", get a search warrent, and collect further evidence, and just keep the information collected from the illegal phone tap off the books. If the phone tap doesn't turn anything up, then everyone is none-the-wiser anyway, no big deal.
The only time that a warrant is nessicary, is if you plan on using recordings of phone conversations as evidence. In those cases, then yes they must get a warrant.
Sweden, like every government on the planet, engages in widespread wiretapping. All states are police states, and engage in police state tactics to the extent that they have the resources to do so. The only way to prevent police state tactics is to limit the size and scope of government itself, something that very few people want to do.
If I play a game with someone that I like, I can instantly get a list of the games they play online cross references with the games that I play online, tag them as a friend - I can be notified in-game when they log on and log off, And with in 3 seconds invite them to the game I am hosting while I am still playing. Or, when I log in, I can go to my list of friends, see what they are playing right now, and instantly join their game sessions if they have open slots. All of this functionality is integrated with the game itself.
If I don't like a person I am playing with, I can tag them as someone I don't like, and when I search for game sessions, the games that they are playing in won't show up in my list (nor will they be able to join the games I am hosting). And if they are being assholes, yelling racist slurs or whatever (which is super common in online play on the PC), I can report them - and a microsoft employee will investigate, listen to audio to see if the person was actually saying stuff that violates the TOS, and ban the player (and that account is tied to their credit card and xbox serial number, so it is no small thing to create another account).
And, voice chat is a standardized part of online play. Everyone on xbox live is expected to have voice chat hardware, and the functionality is integrated with the game and the system. Everyone playing is able to communicate via voice, the voice settings are part of the game session settings (I can set if I want dead players to be allowed to speak with live players in the same menu where I set respawns, for example... in some games you can set if opposing teams are allowed to communicate or if all communications are in-team).
I gave up online gaming on the PC for online gaming with xbox live, because there is nothing like xbox live on the PC. If I had to go back to online gaming PC style, I would just give up online gaming. I would pay $100 a year for xbox live, never mind $50 a year.
Movie theaters are good for:
1. Dates.
2. Teenagers who want to get out of the house.
3. People who want to get together and watch a movie with a bunch of friends, and don't have a $3000+ entertainment system and a living room that seats 20+ people comfortably.
4. New movies that aren't on DVD yet.
5. Art films and foriegn films that aren't available on DVD.
6. Imax.
Of course, the real election is decided by those who select the eligable candidates for the election.
"You have a choice of getting a root canal, or mowing my lawn! See, you have a choice, isn't Democracy great!"
First of all, I have flown through Charles de Gaulle airport several times in the recent past, and wasn't asked a single question by anyone. In fact, I accidently bypassed one of their security checks. I wasn't trying to avoid the security check, I just didn't notice it and walked right by, not being stopped or noticed by anyone. So what you are saying about the security at Charles de Gualle just isn't true. The security was pretty half-assed (which is fine by me, because it made things faster).
However, assuming it was true for the sake of arguement, the whole questioning people thing is a pretty lame security measure. Not only is it totally subjective and so prone to abuses (like racial profiling), but any terrorist worth their salt will take the time to create an impecable cover story, and it will be the jet-lagged guy who has been plane-hopping for the last 18 hours who gets taken in custody who is harrassed by security. Given that there are probably thousands or tens of thousands of people taken aside for giving suspicious answers each year, and virtually none of them are terrorists - With that kind of false-positive rate I would say it is nothing but security theater.
But I agree with you on one thing, an ID card is junk security too.
Reading it off the front would require a lot of time and effort... with the labor cost for data entry, it would be cost prohibitive. However, if the bar simply scans the card in a fraction of a second, it IS cost effective to sell the data to a database.
Well, the technology is more about not having to create body animations for every action, than a control scheme. It is basicly like ragdoll physics, except instead of being completly limp the bodies can actually physically move around.
It is actually not illegal to advertise false claims ... although you can be punished for fraud if you are doing something like intentionally selling a non-functional product.
For example:
I could advertise that apples cure cancer, and it would be fine...
However, if an apple orchard were to advertise that their apples cure cancer, and the apples didn't cure cancer they would be guilty for fraud... The crime is not claiming that apples cure cancer, but selling people apples with the understanding that they cure cancer.
The laws don't restrict speech, they restrict selling something under false pretenses. As long as there is no money changing hands for product, you can pretty much say whatever the hell you want (at least in theory).
There is absolutly nothing wrong with consumption. Consuming things makes people happy. Consumerism is good. What we need to do is stop CO2 emmisions - we can still consume all we like assuming that we use solar, nuclear, wind, or geothermal energy and properly recycle our waste materials.
If you guys would stop exploiting Global Warming to promote your agenda which has nothing to do with enviornmentalism, you would discover that virtually everyone is for protecting the enviornment (it is the one issue that pretty much effects everyone). Instead you alienate anyone who doesn't agree that forsaking capitalism and living on centrally planned communes is a desirable state of affairs.
No, they will most definitly shut down B&H because they supply professional photographers with incandescent flash lights. A prosecutor's performance is based on the number of convictions they get - and so they will always go after an easy conviction.