The trouble is that the international entity that people want to turn over control to is even more rabidly totalitarian than the United States.
I mean look at the critism that most Europeans have over the U.S.... it is too easy to get guns, there aren't enough laws to restrict buisnesses, taxes are too low, "hate speech" is not punished, health care should be nationalized and controlled by a central authority, etc., etc. They are not complaining for the most part that the U.S. restricts freedoms, they are complaining that the U.S. is too free and a "cowboy culture" (actually, there are many European countries that are more free-market and laize faire than the U.S., like Switzerland... but that is not the stereotype that Europeans generally have about themselves and the United States... many Europeans consider being free-market liberals a bad thing, and so would take it an insult instead of a compliment when I call Switzerland free market).
The trouble is, as bad as U.S. starting to regulate the Internet would be, the people who want U.N. control want it because they feel the U.S. has been neglecting the Internet. It is not that they don't like U.S. regulations, it is that they don't feel the U.S. has been doing enough to regulate. In fact many think this drive by the U.S. government to regulate the Internet more is being done as a concession to ease the fears of the people who want the U.N. in control of the Internet... that this is a plan to make big reforms to highly control the internet, allowing cencorship, eliminating anonymity, and showing the world community that the U.S. government agrees with their plans to censor, centralize, and control. It is a sort of peace offering if you will.
Show us the truly international entity that have a deep and abiding love for Anarchy and freedom, and those of us against U.N. control would likely fully support an international system (or, more likely, a truly decentralized system where no-one is in control). But the U.N. is not promising to keep the Internet free, the U.N. is promising the strict controls they feel that the U.S. is negligent in providing.
So while we will work to stop the U.S. government from controlling the Internet, we have no illusions that the U.N. is going to be any better.
I have seen blogs advocate just that (not the lynching, but the killing of Dick & George and police). In fact there was a syndicated cartoon published in a bunch of newspapers in the U.S. calling for G. W. Bush to be assasinated. And it exists in music too (ever listened to Paris's album "Sleeping with the Enemy" with the hit song "Bush Killa"?:) ).
It is not really a crime to advocate violence in the U.S., so long as it is in the abstract (For example, you can say "Someone should kill the President if the President is corrupt and evil"... but you cannot say "You, John Smith, are going to kill the President today at 4PM with a rocket launcher").
mainstream France does not harbor any noticible racism for black Africans. They have been and continue to be integrated into mainstream french society. Come on man, what is with the propoganda fantasy of the "racism free Europe"? If you would have read CNN and the many other news sites who did clearly explain the riots. According to all the people interviewed, there is extreme segragation, racism, bigotry and oppression for muslims and North Africans in France. Operha Winphry, the multi-billionare, was denied shopping at a department store in paris because they "thought she was North African", if a multi-billionare superstar like Oprah is mistreated, can you imagine how it must be like for poor people? A former French president can openly declare in France that "Europe must always be Christian!" and in no way is it questioned in French media (can you imagine the outrage if Bush said "America must always be Christian!"? People were accusing Bush of racism when he was worshiping at Mosques and declaring "Islam is the religion of peace!".). France recently placed a ban on head scarfs, bindi, yamulkes, and any outward expressions of religions in public employment... which effectivly bans minorities who require such things as a religious requirement from public employment (and in socialist France, that is like half the economy).
I can tell you first hand that when a company I worked for had to send a bunch of people to France, only white people were granted work permits.
I won't go into other things in the rest of Europe (like property confiscation and forced prison camps for Romani in a bunch of EU countries, including western European countries... more racist attacks on Muslims in Holland, the heart of European tolerance, after one single Dutch filmmakers was murdered by muslims, than in the U.S. after thousnads were killed in 9/11... Recent genocides in the balkans and the utter unwillingness for the rest of Europe to get involved... Millions killed in the Russian attacks in Chechnia... race riots in British cities, etc.). But don't believe the propoganda that Europe is somehow the "enlightened racism free utopia" that Europeans love to claim. Most of Europe is probably closer to the 1950s deep south America, than it would be to a typical American city of today.
1. A purely subjective system will be put in place, where the government has great leeway in deciding what is "adult" and what isn't. Because of the inconsistancy, companies will lobby (and bribe) government officials to get the lowest ratings possible. Soon, only people with lots of money and lobbying power will be able to get their game approved. (This same thing happens in almost any industry and regulation were the government has vauge undefined rules).
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2. A set of very strict objective criteria will be set, and two thing will happen with it. Companies will "game" the criteria, figuring out ways to push the limits of violence and sex and still meet the criteria (like gritty crime dramas do on television... a construction worker passes out, falls 20 feet on an electrical box, and is burned to a crisp: but no violence is show, the murder is done by poison!). Also, games that pretty much do meet the criteria, will get rejected, because in some way something will be interpreted as violence (Mario gloriefies violence and animal torture, because he jumps on animals and squishes them. Parker Brothers Clue is a violent game, because someone was brutally murdered by a candlestick, a lead pipe, a rope, etc).
Sorry, but the government can't take your place as a parent. And you, as a parent, are going to have to deal with the fact that little Jimmy may occasionally be exposed to things you don't approve of. Your child will probably be exposed to more exlicity sexual information and glorification of violence as part of their public school curriculum than seeing a video game at their friends house, so just lighten up.
Come on man, most Magna is inane soap opera mass-produced crap anyway. The stuff is disposable pulp entertainment dumped onto newstands by the truckfull in Japan. Complaining about the Americanization of Magna would be like complaining about the Francoization of "The Nanny Diaries"... or complaining that "Baywatch" loses it's charm when translated to German. If you enjoy Magna, that is fine, I have met some intelligent people whome I respect that enjoy the sitcom "Friends" and I don't hold it against them... as long as they don't pretend that people who don't like it are unsophisticated philistines and not able to grasp it.
"Boo hoo, the American version doesn't include the shower scene with a bunch of pre-pubecent big-eyed blue haired girls giggling and soaping themselves... Those plebeian Americans dont appreciate true art!"
Please RTFA before declaring the end of the world!
on
How Microsoft Takes a Name
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· Score: 3, Insightful
If people would RTFA, they would see that:
1. "he had stopped working on his Windows Defender program nearly a year before that point."
2. "he said in an interview Monday that he would have given the name to Microsoft just the same had he known the company wanted to use it.... He said it's actually good, in some ways, to see the name of his discontinued product put to use by Microsoft in such a prominent way."
3. "it's common for companies not to disclose that type of information in such cases."
Or rather, the big conspiracies are not secret, and we have just been conditioned to think the situation is normal. (Two party political system in America? Come on, that is a conspiracy! It is just a conspiracy that is visible and commited in the open without apologies or excuses...)
It is not that "the rest of the world doesn't trust the U.S.", it is more that that governments can rely on knee-jerk anti-Americanism and petty nationalism to remove any critical thought on the issue. If you give people FUD like "The U.S. controls the Internet", which isn't true, most people will be caught up in petty nationalism and won't pay attention to the rest of the issue: the drive by countries to exercise greater control over the Internet, allowing for easier site blocking, stopping anonymity, and more centralized control.
The U.N. just passed a resolution with almost unanimous support endorsing mass censorship, cultural "reeducation" centers for immigrants and minorities as well as mass deportation on non-nationals, banning foriegn news and media, and a whole slew of other repressive policies, in the name of "protecting national cultures from the negative effects of globalism". When such backwards, repressive, and possibly racist policies gets almost total support from the U.N., I don't think it is that the world doesn't trust the U.S. to control the internet (as in the U.S. will control the Internet badly), but they don't trust the U.S. to control the Internet (as in they don't trust that the U.S. will control the Internet).
Except that telephony is an easily controlled and tracked technology that all central governments aprove of.
Part of the problem that most governments have with the Internet, is that people who connect are anonymous, there is no central way to block access, there is no simple way to carry out spying and survailence. Most countries openly admit that they want to make it easier to block sites, track users, charge taxes etc. They want to make the Internet a carefully government controlled technology LIKE the telephone, television, radio.
U.N. control of the Internet will work effectivly if you want the Internet to be a highly controlled system like telephone... but it will not work if you want the Internet to continue in it's present state of Anarchy.
How you feel about U.N. control of the Internet usually falls in how you feel about government control of the Internet: Thos who want more censorship and control tend to favor U.N. control... those who want less censorship and control tend to be sceptical about the U.N.
If the U.S. shut out Chinese websites, all China would have to do is set up their own internal DNS server to server their government sites (I suspect this is what they probably do already for government sites), and there is no way the U.S. could restrict access.
And China and EU CAN shut off www.whitehouse.gov, at least to their own citizens, by passing a law. They would just have to reconfigure their DNS servers. I suspect that they do this already, although not with www.whitehouse.gov.
The absence of labour laws leads to union-busting. Union-busting is violence, and has nothing to do with "labor laws". Laws against busting heads is good enough. And you statement ignores that through most of history, it was the government and the boys in blue doing the union busting.
No worker protection ALWAYS means that those with the most money screw the workers. No. In fact most of the worker protection and rights "garanteed" in laws were already commonplace before the laws were created. Unions won the 40 hour work week, ended child labor, etc., then the government came in and made what was already pretty commonplace into a law, thereby stealing credit for it.
And countries like India have some of the strictest labor laws in the world, but that doesn't mean they work... because there was never a mass labor movement to win those rights. Those policies exist only on paper.
Unemployment is purposefully kept high to insure that the workers can be threatened with firing and bear unsatisfactory work conditions. Then why is unemployment highest in "Socialist" nations, and relatively low in "Capitalist" nations? Why does France usually have double the unemployment of the U.S., if the "Socialist" government is keeping the "Capitalists" in check? Shouldn't "Capitalist" countries have the highest unemployment?
The fact is that people consistently have said that they want NONE of the private for-profit US health-system that those morons want instituted. The latest CBC poll I have seen showed that 51% of Canadians would like to be able to suplement government health care with private care.
Like Canada, too, who, unlike Sweden or Switzerland is a member of the G-7 (like France)? Canada is comparable to the U.S. in government policy. The government of Canada is actually more fiscally conservative that the U.S, and spends less both in %GDP and in dollars than the U.S. on "social spending".. Does that make it "Socialist", or "Capitalist"?
And it becomes the mess that public education has become in the USA. Why do you point out a bad government program to prove that government is wonderful? The U.S. actually doesn't have as much private education as most countries. Countries like Germany give tax credit for private education and activly encourage it. The U.S. has some of the best funded schools in the world. Why is a failure of socialistic schooling supposed to be an endorsement of Socialism?
Without laws protecting the consumers, those advocating boycotts will be sued into oblivion by corporations. Sued into oblivion by corporations? That is an act of government intervention. Of course a big, powerful government acts on behalf of corporations! If you are trying to make the point that government is good, and personal freedom is bad, using the court system is a bad example. It is the epitome of government power.
The history of Humanity has well proven that voluntary cooperation will NEVER go towards social justice. Libertarians are woefully deficient on the understanding of History. Are you crazy? History has shown that governments are the most bloodthirsty and destructive force on earth. Governments have directly killed at least 170 million people in the 20th century... look at the bloody history of warfare, imperialism, genocide, oppression that was carried out by governments. I highly doubt that anything a few individuals can do can compare to the sheer destruction perpetrated by governments in the 20th Century. Take all the tainted meat and cars without seatbelts you want, and no lapse of the free market even begins to come close to the bloodshed of WWII!
No, we want a system where everyone has the same opportunity, and where no one can harm others while enriching himself. This is social justice. Who decides what "the same opportunity" is? Who decides what "harming others" is? Stalin claimed to support these same very principles. So did Mao. So did Pol Pot. So did countless others
Regardless if it was defending Christianity, or offending Christianity... the social elite felt that the factory worker in Ohio, the dock worker in Jersey, the single mother waiting on tables in Detroit should be compelled to provide a portion of their income to subsidize a crucifix in a jar of urine.
If the social elite were truly in touch with the common man and working class as they claim, they would realize how outragous that is!
This is precisely what I mean. Libertarians want no labour laws, no social protection, no government intervention but protection from retribution by the people they screw. They don't want minimum wages law, so they can con and/or coerce poor people to work for them at slave wages.
No labor laws != No labor protection. The rights of workers can better be protected by labor unions, consumer unions, professional groups, and other non-government organizations. People should be allowed to form voluntary agricultural or industrial communes, and organize their own social protection infrastructure as they see fit. There are any number of models of collectivism and social protection that doesn't involve the government enforcing THE ONE TRUE WAY on everyone with a gun to people's head. There are many people who cannot be helped by the "socialist" one-size-fits-all model of centralized control, because a nation of 300 million people don't all have the same social need. People would have a choice in their social protection, and groups of people would be allowed to choose the level of collectivism that is right for them.
Government "worker protection" laws tend to hurt workers rights, by putting worker welfare in the hands of a single beurocratic monopoly with absolute power which can easily be bribed or corrupted by those with the most most money... and by raising the cost of doing buisness through regulation, ensuring that only the largest corporations are able to deal with regulation and hence do buisness.
A socialist government who uphold the worker's rights frees them from the tyranny of a boss who can no longer fire them if they stand-up for their rights. Socialism simply makes the boss the central government monopoly authority stucture. If a person is dissatisfied with an employer, they can quit (or join with other workers and form a union for collective bargaining)... if a person is dissatisfied with the government, they can't quit. The only way to quit when the government is to die, or to flee the country.
You anglo-saxons should get your head out of your arse, and notice that there are many different cultures who, free from the mental shackles of the magna-carta, do not believe that all that comes from the State/Government is evil. And in many places, the State/Government does an excellent job of managing things, like providing universal health-care (at a lower per-capita cost than the for-profit system in the US) or electrical power (cheapest in the world, too!). I live with "universal health care" (Canada, along with North Korea and Cuba, are amoung the only countries that ban all private paid medical care, and is one of the most socialized systems in the world)... and I can tell you that "universal medical care" isn't what they call it. It should be called "state run monopoly" health care, because millions of people are going without the medical care they need (ironicly, medical care was pretty much so cheap as to be almost universal before "universal health care" came around). The "socialist" success stories are usally in countries that aren't really "socialist" (for example, Sweden actually is ranked in the top 15 for economic freedom and has a thriving capitalist economy, Switzerland is damn near the top and far more free-market than the U.S., despite the reputation both have for being "socialist")... Or countries that are so small and mono-cultural that the government is still a tiny government despite being "socialist"... or, are actually deeply troubled and not a country most would want to emulate (like France).
By destroying Government, by seeding doubt about the Democratic process by discrediting politicians, the libertarians are precisely shoving down their no-government religion on everyone. No, we don't want to take away any of your rights to collectivism. If you want to pool your property with other people to form a collectivist commune, we support you 100%. If you want to form a national program to provide free health care to everyone, t
The whole "Intelligent Design" issue that you see in the United States is more about social class and political power than about religion.
For a long time now, the cultural and social elite in the U.S. have had a terrible disdain for religion, the nuclear family, and the traditional working class who value such things. While the social elite tend to consider themselves "progressive" or "socialist", they are almost exclusivly upper middle class to extremly rich bougiouse. They dislike religion because A) strong religion is a tradion of the working class, and therefore declasse and distastful to the upper class. B) The elite control the state and the media, but not religion and familu, and therefore it is a challenge to their power structure.
For years, the elite in New York, Hollywood, etc., have been leading a cultural war on the working class. They have forced the strongest anti Judeo-Christian bigotry into schools and universities (I am an athiest by the way, so don't accuse my of being some religious zealot and imagining it)... the government can use tax money to fund artwork like "piss on christ", or to show pictures of the virgin mary covered in dung in publicly funded meusums, or art installations glorifying the destruction of Judiasm, where if the same kind of depictions were made of Mohomed, or Bhudda, or calling for the destruction of any other religion besides the Jewish faith or Christianity, it would be considered a hate crime. The ACLU supports the right of high school students to wear satanists t-shirts or t-shirts proclaiming their homosexuality (which is good, the ACLU SHOULD do that, the students SHOULD have that right), but at the same time doing nothing when students are expelled for wearing a Christian t-shirt... the ACLU will defend a graduates right to make an anti-war speech at comencement (which is good, they should be allowed), but not defending a student's right to say a prayer during a speech at commencement (which is just as much a valid form of speech).
In nearly every aspect of education, entertainment, etc., real working class culture is being attacked.
So naturally, the working class, now that they have a leader who is a Christian zealot and not part of the traditional social elite, are able to mount a political counter offensive against the elite that have been so long degrading and oppressing them. It is sad that mythology is being adopted by the state, and we are having stuff like "Intelligent Design" being promoted in schools, and things like stem cell research being banned.
But to stop the trend, you have to admit and understand what the trend REALLY is. What is happening is that the real working class are standing up to the Bougiouse "progressive/socialist" who claim to want to help the working class while at the same time trying to destroy them. Until the leftist elite admit their own arrogancy and bigotry, and their real disconnect with the true working class in America, it will be a matter of pride to spit in the face of their social goals.
So, therefore, the government should not check that anyone drives on the road with a haywire jalopy, and if it breaks down, crashes and kills a widow driving her three orphans to soccer practice, it's though luck for the widow? This is a truly idiotic analogy. Zombie machines cause no physical harm to anyone, and it is easy to protect yourself from becoming a zombie machine, it is easy enough for ISPs to deal with (many already do). While the government getting involved in the issue has terrible civil liberty implications (will the government add people to a "zombie" black-list based on some political criteria, will the government provide you a court hearing and provide you with an free lawyer like in a criminal case - or are we supposed to trust the government will be infailable and 100% effective without redress, what will the government do to prevent false positives, how do we know that in intercepting data packets for monitoring zombie machines the government will not be spying on us?).
While a dangerous vehicle: A) presents a real physical danger to the public B) there is no real way to avoid dealing with them for the general public C) Is not a communication medium, and so it does not effect political discourse if the government in overzealous in enforcement D) There is a whole set of explicit legal protections that the accused are garanteed E) The government does not need to monitor private communications to enforce the law, the roads are public spaces where there is no assumption of privacy (unlike email, or voice-IP, or whatever).
Remember kids: libertarians want a minimal state whose sole function is to protect them from the wrath of their slaves. Oh god, spare me the "freedom = slavery" pro big brother advocacy.
According to wordnet, here is the definition of slavery: 1. the state of being under the control of another person 2. the practice of owning slaves 3. work done under harsh conditions for little or no pay
Cleary garanteeing legal protection for the accused, defending freedom of speech, protecting people's privacy, allowing people to keep the fruits of their labor, (the premises of libertarianism) does not fall under any of those categories.
However, the legally enforced government zombie blacklist that you are advocating, meets definition 1 and 3 (1 - you are under control of the government beurocrat who can arbitrarily order you disconnected from the internet, without any trial, without any warning, without any garantees of protect or legal counsil provided... 3 - The ISPs are forced to do extra work to comply without any compensation).
You want to make everyone slaves to a totalitarian government. You worship the government, and believe it infailable like a god. And so you believe that being without your supreme infailable god is "slavery", the same way Christians consider being non-Christian "slavery". But for those who don't accept your blind faith in the glorious state, we see your rigid authoritarianism as slavery. If you want to pray to G. W. Bush or whoever, that is fine, I don't want to stop you... but don't try to push your religion on the rest of us!
It isn't nessicarily censorship, but it can be censorship, and probably will be censorship!
Who is overseeing and investigating the government black-list of Internet users? What recourse will a person have if there has been an "error" in identifying you as a "Zombie"? What techniques does the government use to identify Zombies, and how do we know they won't get a bunch of false positives?
Normally, in a court of law, the government has to prove you guilty beyond any reasonable doubt before they can take sanction against you. There is a clear legal process you can take in order to redress any mistakes or take any greivances with the system. When you are arrested (well, in most countries), it is a requirement that they inform you of your legal rights, and also to provide you with a laywer free of charge if they cannot afford one.
This, however, is a "black-list"... the government decides to shut you down, and you are shut down, end of story. What is to stop them from adding certain people it dislikes politically from the "black-list"? What happens if your legit activity appears "zombielike", and you are constantly being shut down and can no longer carry out your legit activity? Are they going to pay for a lawyer so you can defend yourself? Is there a list of garanteed rights you have?
Seriously, the whole system depends on the government being 100% error free, and 100% uncorrupt. Anything less than that, and there is serious civil liberty problems. Are Zombie machines so dangerous, that we are willing to eliminate the legal protections and procedure that we demand for murderers, terrorists, child molestors, etc? Why does everyone think that the solution to every problem is "give more power and control to the government"?
One of the things Microsoft is doing that is cool is that have an idie developer program. There are a lot of shareware PC titles that are going to be orderable and downloadable via xbox live. It isn't as nice as having a fully DRM-free machine, but orders of magnitude better than the Sony machine.
Yes... of course it will be enforced like traffic tickets: Using racial profiling, setting up quotas for the amount of people who need to be fined every day, using the system as a form of income instead of enforcing for safety... Yeah, I can't wait until cities start enforcing computer laws like they enforce traffic laws!
Many believe the "long view" isn't very effective. There is the view that reality has so many layers of complexity, and that the further in the future you plan the orders of magnitude more complex calculating the posibilites are, that planning for the future beyond a certain threshold has diminishing returns. We have neither the information we need, nor the computing power to process that information, to really predict and plan for the future beyond a certain point.
Witness the highly controlled and long term planned control economies of the U.S.S.R. and old China, which crumbled under their own weight... and the high chaotic, unplanned economies of the West far surpassing them. And then look at China, abandoning it's highly central planned economy for a market economy (a decentralized, non planned system), and now is thriving... while the U.S. is becoming more and more a centrally planned economy, and it is slowly declining.
It suprises me that people who would laugh at "intelligent design" as the way life systems developed, want so much to believe that "inteligent design" is the way societies and economies arise, as opposed to evolution and natural selection.
I, for one, don't put much faith in the Chinese "long view" of things. However, I have high hopes for Chinese, as they are moving out of that centrally planned "long view", towards the free society that we are working to get rid of.
U.S. doesn't control the Internet!!! The U.S. controls it's own root DNS servers, which others countries have chosen to use as their root DNS servers as well because of historical reasons. The U.S. has absolutly no control over the Internet outside of the U.S.! None. Ziltch. Nada. At any time any country can choose not to use the U.S. root servers and to use their own (actually, most DO use their own).
NO ONE CONTROLS THE INTERNET!!! Which is the big problem with most governments... most governments want to carefully censor, control, tax, and carry out detailed survailence on it's population, which it cannot do with the current decentralized system. So you spread some FUD about "America controlling the Internet", let the anti-American hate patrol take up the issue, and rebuild the Internet as the top-down state controlled media like television or radio!
Shame on you people! Willing to detroy the first truly decentralized, bottom up, egalitarian, truly free medium the world has ever seen, just to promote hate and fear.
Yeah... Great idea... And word has it cars wouldn't be so expensive if we didn't pay the engineers and assembly line workers. Think how safe the streets would be if we hired 1,000,000 more cops! How will we afford that? We will pay them next to nothing!
Why, there is no end to the cheap goods we would have if we just used slave labor!
I would be willing to pay quite a bit for a digital download movie... If the movie was something obscure, hard to find, or out of print.
The determiner of success will not be if they get all the new and top movies available, it will be if I can order and download virtually any movie ever made, with no concern for availability, obscurity, or nationality of the movie.
Slashdot Mirror
The trouble is that the international entity that people want to turn over control to is even more rabidly totalitarian than the United States.
... it is too easy to get guns, there aren't enough laws to restrict buisnesses, taxes are too low, "hate speech" is not punished, health care should be nationalized and controlled by a central authority, etc., etc. They are not complaining for the most part that the U.S. restricts freedoms, they are complaining that the U.S. is too free and a "cowboy culture" (actually, there are many European countries that are more free-market and laize faire than the U.S., like Switzerland... but that is not the stereotype that Europeans generally have about themselves and the United States... many Europeans consider being free-market liberals a bad thing, and so would take it an insult instead of a compliment when I call Switzerland free market).
I mean look at the critism that most Europeans have over the U.S.
The trouble is, as bad as U.S. starting to regulate the Internet would be, the people who want U.N. control want it because they feel the U.S. has been neglecting the Internet. It is not that they don't like U.S. regulations, it is that they don't feel the U.S. has been doing enough to regulate. In fact many think this drive by the U.S. government to regulate the Internet more is being done as a concession to ease the fears of the people who want the U.N. in control of the Internet... that this is a plan to make big reforms to highly control the internet, allowing cencorship, eliminating anonymity, and showing the world community that the U.S. government agrees with their plans to censor, centralize, and control. It is a sort of peace offering if you will.
Show us the truly international entity that have a deep and abiding love for Anarchy and freedom, and those of us against U.N. control would likely fully support an international system (or, more likely, a truly decentralized system where no-one is in control). But the U.N. is not promising to keep the Internet free, the U.N. is promising the strict controls they feel that the U.S. is negligent in providing.
So while we will work to stop the U.S. government from controlling the Internet, we have no illusions that the U.N. is going to be any better.
While tin isn't used much anymore food wrapping, tin is the prefered metal. They only tested aluminum in the experiment!
I have seen blogs advocate just that (not the lynching, but the killing of Dick & George and police). In fact there was a syndicated cartoon published in a bunch of newspapers in the U.S. calling for G. W. Bush to be assasinated. And it exists in music too (ever listened to Paris's album "Sleeping with the Enemy" with the hit song "Bush Killa"? :) ).
It is not really a crime to advocate violence in the U.S., so long as it is in the abstract (For example, you can say "Someone should kill the President if the President is corrupt and evil"... but you cannot say "You, John Smith, are going to kill the President today at 4PM with a rocket launcher").
mainstream France does not harbor any noticible racism for black Africans. They have been and continue to be integrated into mainstream french society.
Come on man, what is with the propoganda fantasy of the "racism free Europe"? If you would have read CNN and the many other news sites who did clearly explain the riots. According to all the people interviewed, there is extreme segragation, racism, bigotry and oppression for muslims and North Africans in France. Operha Winphry, the multi-billionare, was denied shopping at a department store in paris because they "thought she was North African", if a multi-billionare superstar like Oprah is mistreated, can you imagine how it must be like for poor people? A former French president can openly declare in France that "Europe must always be Christian!" and in no way is it questioned in French media (can you imagine the outrage if Bush said "America must always be Christian!"? People were accusing Bush of racism when he was worshiping at Mosques and declaring "Islam is the religion of peace!".). France recently placed a ban on head scarfs, bindi, yamulkes, and any outward expressions of religions in public employment... which effectivly bans minorities who require such things as a religious requirement from public employment (and in socialist France, that is like half the economy).
I can tell you first hand that when a company I worked for had to send a bunch of people to France, only white people were granted work permits.
I won't go into other things in the rest of Europe (like property confiscation and forced prison camps for Romani in a bunch of EU countries, including western European countries... more racist attacks on Muslims in Holland, the heart of European tolerance, after one single Dutch filmmakers was murdered by muslims, than in the U.S. after thousnads were killed in 9/11... Recent genocides in the balkans and the utter unwillingness for the rest of Europe to get involved... Millions killed in the Russian attacks in Chechnia... race riots in British cities, etc.). But don't believe the propoganda that Europe is somehow the "enlightened racism free utopia" that Europeans love to claim. Most of Europe is probably closer to the 1950s deep south America, than it would be to a typical American city of today.
The trouble is that this is how it will work:
1. A purely subjective system will be put in place, where the government has great leeway in deciding what is "adult" and what isn't. Because of the inconsistancy, companies will lobby (and bribe) government officials to get the lowest ratings possible. Soon, only people with lots of money and lobbying power will be able to get their game approved. (This same thing happens in almost any industry and regulation were the government has vauge undefined rules).
or
2. A set of very strict objective criteria will be set, and two thing will happen with it. Companies will "game" the criteria, figuring out ways to push the limits of violence and sex and still meet the criteria (like gritty crime dramas do on television... a construction worker passes out, falls 20 feet on an electrical box, and is burned to a crisp: but no violence is show, the murder is done by poison!). Also, games that pretty much do meet the criteria, will get rejected, because in some way something will be interpreted as violence (Mario gloriefies violence and animal torture, because he jumps on animals and squishes them. Parker Brothers Clue is a violent game, because someone was brutally murdered by a candlestick, a lead pipe, a rope, etc).
Sorry, but the government can't take your place as a parent. And you, as a parent, are going to have to deal with the fact that little Jimmy may occasionally be exposed to things you don't approve of. Your child will probably be exposed to more exlicity sexual information and glorification of violence as part of their public school curriculum than seeing a video game at their friends house, so just lighten up.
Come on man, most Magna is inane soap opera mass-produced crap anyway. The stuff is disposable pulp entertainment dumped onto newstands by the truckfull in Japan. Complaining about the Americanization of Magna would be like complaining about the Francoization of "The Nanny Diaries"... or complaining that "Baywatch" loses it's charm when translated to German. If you enjoy Magna, that is fine, I have met some intelligent people whome I respect that enjoy the sitcom "Friends" and I don't hold it against them... as long as they don't pretend that people who don't like it are unsophisticated philistines and not able to grasp it.
"Boo hoo, the American version doesn't include the shower scene with a bunch of pre-pubecent big-eyed blue haired girls giggling and soaping themselves... Those plebeian Americans dont appreciate true art!"
If people would RTFA, they would see that:
... He said it's actually good, in some ways, to see the name of his discontinued product put to use by Microsoft in such a prominent way."
1. "he had stopped working on his Windows Defender program nearly a year before that point."
2. "he said in an interview Monday that he would have given the name to Microsoft just the same had he known the company wanted to use it.
3. "it's common for companies not to disclose that type of information in such cases."
Another sensationalist crap story on Slashdot.
Or rather, the big conspiracies are not secret, and we have just been conditioned to think the situation is normal. (Two party political system in America? Come on, that is a conspiracy! It is just a conspiracy that is visible and commited in the open without apologies or excuses...)
It is not that "the rest of the world doesn't trust the U.S.", it is more that that governments can rely on knee-jerk anti-Americanism and petty nationalism to remove any critical thought on the issue. If you give people FUD like "The U.S. controls the Internet", which isn't true, most people will be caught up in petty nationalism and won't pay attention to the rest of the issue: the drive by countries to exercise greater control over the Internet, allowing for easier site blocking, stopping anonymity, and more centralized control.
The U.N. just passed a resolution with almost unanimous support endorsing mass censorship, cultural "reeducation" centers for immigrants and minorities as well as mass deportation on non-nationals, banning foriegn news and media, and a whole slew of other repressive policies, in the name of "protecting national cultures from the negative effects of globalism". When such backwards, repressive, and possibly racist policies gets almost total support from the U.N., I don't think it is that the world doesn't trust the U.S. to control the internet (as in the U.S. will control the Internet badly), but they don't trust the U.S. to control the Internet (as in they don't trust that the U.S. will control the Internet).
Except that telephony is an easily controlled and tracked technology that all central governments aprove of.
Part of the problem that most governments have with the Internet, is that people who connect are anonymous, there is no central way to block access, there is no simple way to carry out spying and survailence. Most countries openly admit that they want to make it easier to block sites, track users, charge taxes etc. They want to make the Internet a carefully government controlled technology LIKE the telephone, television, radio.
U.N. control of the Internet will work effectivly if you want the Internet to be a highly controlled system like telephone... but it will not work if you want the Internet to continue in it's present state of Anarchy.
How you feel about U.N. control of the Internet usually falls in how you feel about government control of the Internet: Thos who want more censorship and control tend to favor U.N. control... those who want less censorship and control tend to be sceptical about the U.N.
If the U.S. shut out Chinese websites, all China would have to do is set up their own internal DNS server to server their government sites (I suspect this is what they probably do already for government sites), and there is no way the U.S. could restrict access.
And China and EU CAN shut off www.whitehouse.gov, at least to their own citizens, by passing a law. They would just have to reconfigure their DNS servers. I suspect that they do this already, although not with www.whitehouse.gov.
The absence of labour laws leads to union-busting.
Union-busting is violence, and has nothing to do with "labor laws". Laws against busting heads is good enough. And you statement ignores that through most of history, it was the government and the boys in blue doing the union busting.
No worker protection ALWAYS means that those with the most money screw the workers.
No. In fact most of the worker protection and rights "garanteed" in laws were already commonplace before the laws were created. Unions won the 40 hour work week, ended child labor, etc., then the government came in and made what was already pretty commonplace into a law, thereby stealing credit for it.
And countries like India have some of the strictest labor laws in the world, but that doesn't mean they work... because there was never a mass labor movement to win those rights. Those policies exist only on paper.
Unemployment is purposefully kept high to insure that the workers can be threatened with firing and bear unsatisfactory work conditions.
Then why is unemployment highest in "Socialist" nations, and relatively low in "Capitalist" nations? Why does France usually have double the unemployment of the U.S., if the "Socialist" government is keeping the "Capitalists" in check? Shouldn't "Capitalist" countries have the highest unemployment?
The fact is that people consistently have said that they want NONE of the private for-profit US health-system that those morons want instituted.
The latest CBC poll I have seen showed that 51% of Canadians would like to be able to suplement government health care with private care.
Like Canada, too, who, unlike Sweden or Switzerland is a member of the G-7 (like France)?
Canada is comparable to the U.S. in government policy. The government of Canada is actually more fiscally conservative that the U.S, and spends less both in %GDP and in dollars than the U.S. on "social spending".. Does that make it "Socialist", or "Capitalist"?
And it becomes the mess that public education has become in the USA.
Why do you point out a bad government program to prove that government is wonderful? The U.S. actually doesn't have as much private education as most countries. Countries like Germany give tax credit for private education and activly encourage it. The U.S. has some of the best funded schools in the world. Why is a failure of socialistic schooling supposed to be an endorsement of Socialism?
Without laws protecting the consumers, those advocating boycotts will be sued into oblivion by corporations.
Sued into oblivion by corporations? That is an act of government intervention. Of course a big, powerful government acts on behalf of corporations! If you are trying to make the point that government is good, and personal freedom is bad, using the court system is a bad example. It is the epitome of government power.
The history of Humanity has well proven that voluntary cooperation will NEVER go towards social justice. Libertarians are woefully deficient on the understanding of History.
Are you crazy? History has shown that governments are the most bloodthirsty and destructive force on earth. Governments have directly killed at least 170 million people in the 20th century... look at the bloody history of warfare, imperialism, genocide, oppression that was carried out by governments. I highly doubt that anything a few individuals can do can compare to the sheer destruction perpetrated by governments in the 20th Century. Take all the tainted meat and cars without seatbelts you want, and no lapse of the free market even begins to come close to the bloodshed of WWII!
No, we want a system where everyone has the same opportunity, and where no one can harm others while enriching himself. This is social justice.
Who decides what "the same opportunity" is? Who decides what "harming others" is? Stalin claimed to support these same very principles. So did Mao. So did Pol Pot. So did countless others
Regardless if it was defending Christianity, or offending Christianity... the social elite felt that the factory worker in Ohio, the dock worker in Jersey, the single mother waiting on tables in Detroit should be compelled to provide a portion of their income to subsidize a crucifix in a jar of urine.
If the social elite were truly in touch with the common man and working class as they claim, they would realize how outragous that is!
This is precisely what I mean. Libertarians want no labour laws, no social protection, no government intervention but protection from retribution by the people they screw. They don't want minimum wages law, so they can con and/or coerce poor people to work for them at slave wages.
No labor laws != No labor protection. The rights of workers can better be protected by labor unions, consumer unions, professional groups, and other non-government organizations. People should be allowed to form voluntary agricultural or industrial communes, and organize their own social protection infrastructure as they see fit. There are any number of models of collectivism and social protection that doesn't involve the government enforcing THE ONE TRUE WAY on everyone with a gun to people's head. There are many people who cannot be helped by the "socialist" one-size-fits-all model of centralized control, because a nation of 300 million people don't all have the same social need. People would have a choice in their social protection, and groups of people would be allowed to choose the level of collectivism that is right for them.
Government "worker protection" laws tend to hurt workers rights, by putting worker welfare in the hands of a single beurocratic monopoly with absolute power which can easily be bribed or corrupted by those with the most most money... and by raising the cost of doing buisness through regulation, ensuring that only the largest corporations are able to deal with regulation and hence do buisness.
A socialist government who uphold the worker's rights frees them from the tyranny of a boss who can no longer fire them if they stand-up for their rights.
Socialism simply makes the boss the central government monopoly authority stucture. If a person is dissatisfied with an employer, they can quit (or join with other workers and form a union for collective bargaining)... if a person is dissatisfied with the government, they can't quit. The only way to quit when the government is to die, or to flee the country.
You anglo-saxons should get your head out of your arse, and notice that there are many different cultures who, free from the mental shackles of the magna-carta, do not believe that all that comes from the State/Government is evil. And in many places, the State/Government does an excellent job of managing things, like providing universal health-care (at a lower per-capita cost than the for-profit system in the US) or electrical power (cheapest in the world, too!).
I live with "universal health care" (Canada, along with North Korea and Cuba, are amoung the only countries that ban all private paid medical care, and is one of the most socialized systems in the world)... and I can tell you that "universal medical care" isn't what they call it. It should be called "state run monopoly" health care, because millions of people are going without the medical care they need (ironicly, medical care was pretty much so cheap as to be almost universal before "universal health care" came around). The "socialist" success stories are usally in countries that aren't really "socialist" (for example, Sweden actually is ranked in the top 15 for economic freedom and has a thriving capitalist economy, Switzerland is damn near the top and far more free-market than the U.S., despite the reputation both have for being "socialist")... Or countries that are so small and mono-cultural that the government is still a tiny government despite being "socialist"... or, are actually deeply troubled and not a country most would want to emulate (like France).
By destroying Government, by seeding doubt about the Democratic process by discrediting politicians, the libertarians are precisely shoving down their no-government religion on everyone.
No, we don't want to take away any of your rights to collectivism. If you want to pool your property with other people to form a collectivist commune, we support you 100%. If you want to form a national program to provide free health care to everyone, t
The whole "Intelligent Design" issue that you see in the United States is more about social class and political power than about religion.
For a long time now, the cultural and social elite in the U.S. have had a terrible disdain for religion, the nuclear family, and the traditional working class who value such things. While the social elite tend to consider themselves "progressive" or "socialist", they are almost exclusivly upper middle class to extremly rich bougiouse. They dislike religion because A) strong religion is a tradion of the working class, and therefore declasse and distastful to the upper class. B) The elite control the state and the media, but not religion and familu, and therefore it is a challenge to their power structure.
For years, the elite in New York, Hollywood, etc., have been leading a cultural war on the working class. They have forced the strongest anti Judeo-Christian bigotry into schools and universities (I am an athiest by the way, so don't accuse my of being some religious zealot and imagining it)... the government can use tax money to fund artwork like "piss on christ", or to show pictures of the virgin mary covered in dung in publicly funded meusums, or art installations glorifying the destruction of Judiasm, where if the same kind of depictions were made of Mohomed, or Bhudda, or calling for the destruction of any other religion besides the Jewish faith or Christianity, it would be considered a hate crime. The ACLU supports the right of high school students to wear satanists t-shirts or t-shirts proclaiming their homosexuality (which is good, the ACLU SHOULD do that, the students SHOULD have that right), but at the same time doing nothing when students are expelled for wearing a Christian t-shirt... the ACLU will defend a graduates right to make an anti-war speech at comencement (which is good, they should be allowed), but not defending a student's right to say a prayer during a speech at commencement (which is just as much a valid form of speech).
In nearly every aspect of education, entertainment, etc., real working class culture is being attacked.
So naturally, the working class, now that they have a leader who is a Christian zealot and not part of the traditional social elite, are able to mount a political counter offensive against the elite that have been so long degrading and oppressing them. It is sad that mythology is being adopted by the state, and we are having stuff like "Intelligent Design" being promoted in schools, and things like stem cell research being banned.
But to stop the trend, you have to admit and understand what the trend REALLY is. What is happening is that the real working class are standing up to the Bougiouse "progressive/socialist" who claim to want to help the working class while at the same time trying to destroy them. Until the leftist elite admit their own arrogancy and bigotry, and their real disconnect with the true working class in America, it will be a matter of pride to spit in the face of their social goals.
So, therefore, the government should not check that anyone drives on the road with a haywire jalopy, and if it breaks down, crashes and kills a widow driving her three orphans to soccer practice, it's though luck for the widow?
This is a truly idiotic analogy. Zombie machines cause no physical harm to anyone, and it is easy to protect yourself from becoming a zombie machine, it is easy enough for ISPs to deal with (many already do). While the government getting involved in the issue has terrible civil liberty implications (will the government add people to a "zombie" black-list based on some political criteria, will the government provide you a court hearing and provide you with an free lawyer like in a criminal case - or are we supposed to trust the government will be infailable and 100% effective without redress, what will the government do to prevent false positives, how do we know that in intercepting data packets for monitoring zombie machines the government will not be spying on us?).
While a dangerous vehicle: A) presents a real physical danger to the public B) there is no real way to avoid dealing with them for the general public C) Is not a communication medium, and so it does not effect political discourse if the government in overzealous in enforcement D) There is a whole set of explicit legal protections that the accused are garanteed E) The government does not need to monitor private communications to enforce the law, the roads are public spaces where there is no assumption of privacy (unlike email, or voice-IP, or whatever).
Remember kids: libertarians want a minimal state whose sole function is to protect them from the wrath of their slaves.
Oh god, spare me the "freedom = slavery" pro big brother advocacy.
According to wordnet, here is the definition of slavery:
1. the state of being under the control of another person
2. the practice of owning slaves
3. work done under harsh conditions for little or no pay
Cleary garanteeing legal protection for the accused, defending freedom of speech, protecting people's privacy, allowing people to keep the fruits of their labor, (the premises of libertarianism) does not fall under any of those categories.
However, the legally enforced government zombie blacklist that you are advocating, meets definition 1 and 3 (1 - you are under control of the government beurocrat who can arbitrarily order you disconnected from the internet, without any trial, without any warning, without any garantees of protect or legal counsil provided... 3 - The ISPs are forced to do extra work to comply without any compensation).
You want to make everyone slaves to a totalitarian government. You worship the government, and believe it infailable like a god. And so you believe that being without your supreme infailable god is "slavery", the same way Christians consider being non-Christian "slavery". But for those who don't accept your blind faith in the glorious state, we see your rigid authoritarianism as slavery. If you want to pray to G. W. Bush or whoever, that is fine, I don't want to stop you... but don't try to push your religion on the rest of us!
It isn't nessicarily censorship, but it can be censorship, and probably will be censorship!
Who is overseeing and investigating the government black-list of Internet users? What recourse will a person have if there has been an "error" in identifying you as a "Zombie"? What techniques does the government use to identify Zombies, and how do we know they won't get a bunch of false positives?
Normally, in a court of law, the government has to prove you guilty beyond any reasonable doubt before they can take sanction against you. There is a clear legal process you can take in order to redress any mistakes or take any greivances with the system. When you are arrested (well, in most countries), it is a requirement that they inform you of your legal rights, and also to provide you with a laywer free of charge if they cannot afford one.
This, however, is a "black-list"... the government decides to shut you down, and you are shut down, end of story. What is to stop them from adding certain people it dislikes politically from the "black-list"? What happens if your legit activity appears "zombielike", and you are constantly being shut down and can no longer carry out your legit activity? Are they going to pay for a lawyer so you can defend yourself? Is there a list of garanteed rights you have?
Seriously, the whole system depends on the government being 100% error free, and 100% uncorrupt. Anything less than that, and there is serious civil liberty problems. Are Zombie machines so dangerous, that we are willing to eliminate the legal protections and procedure that we demand for murderers, terrorists, child molestors, etc? Why does everyone think that the solution to every problem is "give more power and control to the government"?
One of the things Microsoft is doing that is cool is that have an idie developer program. There are a lot of shareware PC titles that are going to be orderable and downloadable via xbox live. It isn't as nice as having a fully DRM-free machine, but orders of magnitude better than the Sony machine.
I am just curious how urbanized of an area do you live in?
Yes... of course it will be enforced like traffic tickets: Using racial profiling, setting up quotas for the amount of people who need to be fined every day, using the system as a form of income instead of enforcing for safety... Yeah, I can't wait until cities start enforcing computer laws like they enforce traffic laws!
Many believe the "long view" isn't very effective. There is the view that reality has so many layers of complexity, and that the further in the future you plan the orders of magnitude more complex calculating the posibilites are, that planning for the future beyond a certain threshold has diminishing returns. We have neither the information we need, nor the computing power to process that information, to really predict and plan for the future beyond a certain point.
Witness the highly controlled and long term planned control economies of the U.S.S.R. and old China, which crumbled under their own weight... and the high chaotic, unplanned economies of the West far surpassing them. And then look at China, abandoning it's highly central planned economy for a market economy (a decentralized, non planned system), and now is thriving... while the U.S. is becoming more and more a centrally planned economy, and it is slowly declining.
It suprises me that people who would laugh at "intelligent design" as the way life systems developed, want so much to believe that "inteligent design" is the way societies and economies arise, as opposed to evolution and natural selection.
I, for one, don't put much faith in the Chinese "long view" of things. However, I have high hopes for Chinese, as they are moving out of that centrally planned "long view", towards the free society that we are working to get rid of.
U.S. doesn't control the Internet!!! The U.S. controls it's own root DNS servers, which others countries have chosen to use as their root DNS servers as well because of historical reasons. The U.S. has absolutly no control over the Internet outside of the U.S.! None. Ziltch. Nada. At any time any country can choose not to use the U.S. root servers and to use their own (actually, most DO use their own).
NO ONE CONTROLS THE INTERNET!!! Which is the big problem with most governments... most governments want to carefully censor, control, tax, and carry out detailed survailence on it's population, which it cannot do with the current decentralized system. So you spread some FUD about "America controlling the Internet", let the anti-American hate patrol take up the issue, and rebuild the Internet as the top-down state controlled media like television or radio!
Shame on you people! Willing to detroy the first truly decentralized, bottom up, egalitarian, truly free medium the world has ever seen, just to promote hate and fear.
Yeah... Great idea... And word has it cars wouldn't be so expensive if we didn't pay the engineers and assembly line workers. Think how safe the streets would be if we hired 1,000,000 more cops! How will we afford that? We will pay them next to nothing!
Why, there is no end to the cheap goods we would have if we just used slave labor!
You can do the work and live anywhere. But you can only request work if you are a legal entity in the U.S according to the tax code...
I would be willing to pay quite a bit for a digital download movie... If the movie was something obscure, hard to find, or out of print.
The determiner of success will not be if they get all the new and top movies available, it will be if I can order and download virtually any movie ever made, with no concern for availability, obscurity, or nationality of the movie.