Absolutely the right attitude, IMHO! A lot of the stuff in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep would be impossible to film in anything like a mainstream movie, I suspect. Mercerism? Buster Friendly? C'mon, it would either have to be camp or experimental. The book and the novel are totally different beasts. In this case, we have a brilliant novel and a brilliant movie. 'Nuff said.
When did things like compromise, flexibility, willingness to be convinced by arguments, etc., become bad things? Equated with "backing down" or "flip-flopping"? I'm guessing probably around the time the Bush administration convinced Americans that thought and rational decision-making is a bad thing, and that being steadfast is better than being right.
It seems to me that the accumulation of capital through the purchasing of labour power is the driving force of capitalism. All those corporations you mentioned wouldn't exist without the premise that workers sell their labour and do not retain ownership of the product of that labour. Capitalism is fundamentally a set of social relations. All wealth is, in the final analysis, the product of human labour (NOT some abstract, metaphysical category like "competitive advantage" or "the market").
It looks to me like the illegal immigrant "debate" focuses very little on the corporate complicity that runs the whole thing -- mostly it's just "Learn English!" and complaints about the use of social services. It would be uncomfortable for Bush and other elites if *too* much attention was paid to how much large corporations benefit from how things are going now.
And btw, regarding your sig: there's nothing new about that aspect of US foreign policy! It's been like that for the entirety of the post-War (WWII, that is) era.
Well, the reality historically has usually been that the contentment of the "yuppies" (or their *rough* historical economic analogues) is much more important to propping up any given regime than that of the lowest classes. As a "yuppie", the individual in question represents a class of people who collectively wield tremendous wealth and influence. When measures taken to repress the plebes start to piss *them* off, you have the makings of societal tensions and pressures that can fuck all sorts of shit up. Think about it this way: China is trying really really hard to produce lots of people like the subject of TFA -- people who are well educated, technologically literate, affluent, and so on. Yang Zhou would at first blush seem to be a major benefactor of the current direction of Chinese society and government -- and yet the very forces and culture that produced him are now, from his point of view, restricting and limiting him! Contradiction...and pressure.
Of course, I'm not saying this represents the beginnings of some sort of middle-class uprising against the evil Party! Tensions are tensions, and change is change: who knows where this sort of thing will lead? To greater freedom; greater repression; or something that doesn't fit neatly into either of those paradigms. But I do believe stories like this one are significant.
Ideally. However, it seems like various US courts since the 80s or so have severely weakened the obviousness and enablement portions of the patent-granting procedures. Without enablement, for example, you are basically patenting features. Have a look at all the business method patents being granted and tell me that those are patenting specific implementations, rather than concepts. Things are even worse with patent lawyers being trained to write the patents so as to abuse the system by being as vague as possible.
Goddamnit. So I guess I can assume you're vegan, right? And that you only consume things you've grown and produced yourself? Otherwise shut the fuck up and stop acting like a fool hippocrite. I can almost guarantee you that your actions and lifestyle have a far greater negative impact on the environment and on other living things than these Inuit.
IAmostcertainlyNAL, but I think you are incorrect. Patents are an absolute monopoly (unlike copyright, where independent creation is a legitimate defense).
Still, a rational judge should still throw this out! I think the idea of a buy it now function is exceedingly obvious, and I am no auctioneer!
...nearly all of what the US defense and intelligence infrastructure does day-in, day-out is focused on protecting the people of the United States
...says somebody exposed to a lifetime of US militaristic and jingoistic propaganda? I wonder how anyone can *assume* the good-nature of the army. Didn't the Kent State Massacre wake people up to attitudes like that?
I think the argument is that the code itself is subject to copywrite law. So I can't copy your code verbatim without your consent. Fair enough -- the GPL, for example, relies on copyright protection. Patents are a whole different beast, though -- if a programme is patentable, not only can't I copy your code, but I can't even independently implement whatever it is that it does. Which is pretty silly.
I disagree. I think that it's money and power (power being the root, money it's most common and forceful expression); religion is almost always just a tool to those ends. Look at a religious conflict long and hard enough, and usually you'll find a fundamentally economic struggle.
Where does this myth of Japan being prejudiced against non-Japanese companies come from? From what I understand, with many young Japanese it's actually the opposite: a bit of a fetish for things seen as Western. And it doesn't explain at all the dominance of say, the iPod in Japan. The reality of the Xbox's failures in Japan are certainly much simpler: they just don't design the product with any understanding of the Japanese market (the first Xbox in particular).
Interesting link, thanks for that. I hadn't come across that term before. Still, it seems to me like Americans should be pushing for the establishmet of an arms-length organization to draw electoral boundaries, administer polls, and so forth. It just seems crazy to me that party hacks are in charge of stuff like that. Although it's hard to imagine the two parties (Demopublicans?) giving up the power that control of the electoral apparatus gives them without a *major* public movement developing.
I've always found things like that strange about America. So many aspects of the basic political apparatus seem to be directly under the control of just two political parties. Up here in Canada, for example, federal elections are run by Elections Canada, a non-partisan, arms-length organization that draws riding boundaries and administers elections. The whole "hanging chad" thing, for example, can't really happen where people are working with a neutral, standardized ballot. Another consequence of having the system controlled by party hacks seems to be Gerrymandering,which from what I can tell is a pretty serious problem in the US.
Likewise, if you're going to publicly act like a self-important righteous asshole, be prepared to to be called on it. If you ask me, going around harassing people on the Internet is a much, much more ridiculous fucking hobby than just about anything else I can think of
See, this is why nerds never get laid. A regular guy would, oh, you know -- *talk* to the cute girl. Walking over to her cube with iPod (or whatever) in hand, talking to her face to face -- that's a great opportunity to present yourself as sociable and attractive. Trying to "squirt" a file over is anonymous and antisocial -- why would anybody be attracted to that?
The mere fact that you identify leftist politics solely with identity-politics and abortion rights shows how utterly skewered to the right American political discourse is. I mean, seriously. Holy shit, buddy. Is your conception of political debate so limited that the poles are defined by pro-abortion and anti-abortion?
Yes, but we observe on November 11th due to the First World War ("the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month"). Plus, the poem "In Flander's Fields", from which we derived the symbolism of the poppy, is a poem from the Great War.
Good points! I knew about the need for a given app to know to use a KPart (since, for example, non-KDE apps can't make use of spellchecking), but hadn't realized how transparent OS X's ability to share functionality was. Sounds like neat stuff.
By the way, your reference-formatting service sounds incredibly handy!
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely the right attitude, IMHO! A lot of the stuff in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep would be impossible to film in anything like a mainstream movie, I suspect. Mercerism? Buster Friendly? C'mon, it would either have to be camp or experimental. The book and the novel are totally different beasts. In this case, we have a brilliant novel and a brilliant movie. 'Nuff said.
When did things like compromise, flexibility, willingness to be convinced by arguments, etc., become bad things? Equated with "backing down" or "flip-flopping"? I'm guessing probably around the time the Bush administration convinced Americans that thought and rational decision-making is a bad thing, and that being steadfast is better than being right.
Hey, the One Big Union lives on. Thanks for your story!
It seems to me that the accumulation of capital through the purchasing of labour power is the driving force of capitalism. All those corporations you mentioned wouldn't exist without the premise that workers sell their labour and do not retain ownership of the product of that labour. Capitalism is fundamentally a set of social relations. All wealth is, in the final analysis, the product of human labour (NOT some abstract, metaphysical category like "competitive advantage" or "the market").
And btw, regarding your sig: there's nothing new about that aspect of US foreign policy! It's been like that for the entirety of the post-War (WWII, that is) era.
Of course, I'm not saying this represents the beginnings of some sort of middle-class uprising against the evil Party! Tensions are tensions, and change is change: who knows where this sort of thing will lead? To greater freedom; greater repression; or something that doesn't fit neatly into either of those paradigms. But I do believe stories like this one are significant.
Ideally. However, it seems like various US courts since the 80s or so have severely weakened the obviousness and enablement portions of the patent-granting procedures. Without enablement, for example, you are basically patenting features. Have a look at all the business method patents being granted and tell me that those are patenting specific implementations, rather than concepts. Things are even worse with patent lawyers being trained to write the patents so as to abuse the system by being as vague as possible.
Goddamnit. So I guess I can assume you're vegan, right? And that you only consume things you've grown and produced yourself? Otherwise shut the fuck up and stop acting like a fool hippocrite. I can almost guarantee you that your actions and lifestyle have a far greater negative impact on the environment and on other living things than these Inuit.
Still, a rational judge should still throw this out! I think the idea of a buy it now function is exceedingly obvious, and I am no auctioneer!
I think the argument is that the code itself is subject to copywrite law. So I can't copy your code verbatim without your consent. Fair enough -- the GPL, for example, relies on copyright protection. Patents are a whole different beast, though -- if a programme is patentable, not only can't I copy your code, but I can't even independently implement whatever it is that it does. Which is pretty silly.
You're just a fuckin' bigot.
I disagree. I think that it's money and power (power being the root, money it's most common and forceful expression); religion is almost always just a tool to those ends. Look at a religious conflict long and hard enough, and usually you'll find a fundamentally economic struggle.
Where does this myth of Japan being prejudiced against non-Japanese companies come from? From what I understand, with many young Japanese it's actually the opposite: a bit of a fetish for things seen as Western. And it doesn't explain at all the dominance of say, the iPod in Japan. The reality of the Xbox's failures in Japan are certainly much simpler: they just don't design the product with any understanding of the Japanese market (the first Xbox in particular).
Interesting link, thanks for that. I hadn't come across that term before. Still, it seems to me like Americans should be pushing for the establishmet of an arms-length organization to draw electoral boundaries, administer polls, and so forth. It just seems crazy to me that party hacks are in charge of stuff like that. Although it's hard to imagine the two parties (Demopublicans?) giving up the power that control of the electoral apparatus gives them without a *major* public movement developing.
I've always found things like that strange about America. So many aspects of the basic political apparatus seem to be directly under the control of just two political parties. Up here in Canada, for example, federal elections are run by Elections Canada, a non-partisan, arms-length organization that draws riding boundaries and administers elections. The whole "hanging chad" thing, for example, can't really happen where people are working with a neutral, standardized ballot. Another consequence of having the system controlled by party hacks seems to be Gerrymandering,which from what I can tell is a pretty serious problem in the US.
...but I hear it's still missing a text editor. :(
No, actually, "she" isn't.
/disgusted at military fetishism
Likewise, if you're going to publicly act like a self-important righteous asshole, be prepared to to be called on it. If you ask me, going around harassing people on the Internet is a much, much more ridiculous fucking hobby than just about anything else I can think of
See, this is why nerds never get laid. A regular guy would, oh, you know -- *talk* to the cute girl. Walking over to her cube with iPod (or whatever) in hand, talking to her face to face -- that's a great opportunity to present yourself as sociable and attractive. Trying to "squirt" a file over is anonymous and antisocial -- why would anybody be attracted to that?
I'm sorry, I had assumed that could be taken for granted. :)
The mere fact that you identify leftist politics solely with identity-politics and abortion rights shows how utterly skewered to the right American political discourse is. I mean, seriously. Holy shit, buddy. Is your conception of political debate so limited that the poles are defined by pro-abortion and anti-abortion?
Yes, but we observe on November 11th due to the First World War ("the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month"). Plus, the poem "In Flander's Fields", from which we derived the symbolism of the poppy, is a poem from the Great War.
OBJECTION!!!
By the way, your reference-formatting service sounds incredibly handy!
Tschüss,
-dh