Maybe I would have thrived there, instead of ultimately getting the hell out, getting my GED, and putting in time at community college before going on to uni. I certainly don't like the fact that only those wealthy enough were able to go, but I think that this is what our public high schools should be. Innovative, creative, and fun, with the chance to implement what is being learned. I believe that it would go a long way to getting rid of the, "Why do I need to learn this?" attitude that even I was guilty of at the time.
Unfortunately, K-12 education isn't exactly where the government's priorities are. Maybe one day.
They're already doing quite well with virtual WMDs and virtual terrorism defense. I just wish that it really was virtual money that they were using for all of it.
It doesn't mean anything that these documents have been subpoenaed. When the White House refuses to release them, which they will most definitely do, will this Congress have the intestinal fortitude to fight back? Or will they pass more "non-binding" resolutions and whine about it while doing nothing? Judging from the past, I'm going to fully expect them to continue to let the constitution crumble and civil liberties die. I think that the big picture here is that we, as the common people of this country, no longer have anyone fighting for us, whether democrat, republican, third party, or otherwise.
Thank god that the vast majority of society has, until this point at least, not evolved into your little social-darwinist wet dream. The human race would have died out a long, long time ago. You can be a selfish, stingy asshole all you want, but in the end, what does all of your accumulated wealth and money amount to? I'll tell you one thing, when I'm dead and gone, the last thing that I want people to remember me by is my selfishness and stingyness.
You right libertarians consistently prove to me that you have the morals of a two year old child. You're all the same: couldn't make it to the rung of the ladder that you so desperately wanted to, and so you blame it on everyone and everything except for yourselves. Just go on thinking that it's those damn black people and rednecks, "sitting on their asses" and scooping up all of your "hard-earned" money. There exists not one single thing that will change your mind, and I'm fine with that. I just wish that I could be around when, at some point down the road, you end up homeless, or unemployed, or disabled, or too old to work.
Keep wishing for your little narcissistic dream world, dude.
It is Christian beliefs upon which the US was founded
That is entirely untrue. I take it that you are a Christian, because you've got some really nice religious blinders on. The most glaringly obvious evidence that our country was not "founded on Christianity" are the First Amendment and the seperation of church and state. Besides these, however, here are some other tidbits to enlighten you (or make you tighten your blinders and cover your ears):
"As the Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the law, religion or tranquility of Musselmen; and as the states never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mohometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever produce an interruption of harmony existing between the two countries."
-John Adams, the Treaty with Tripoli, 1797
"I do not find in Orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
"The Christian god is cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust."
"Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies."
-Thomas Jefferson
"What has been Christianity's fruits? Superstition, bigotry, and persecution."
-James Madison
The founding fathers were not the ones to put "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency. This was added in 1864.
The "pledge of allegiance" was first written in 1892, and originally consisted of nothing more than the following:
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"
The words "under god" were added to the pledge in 1954, during the height of the McCarthy scapegoating.
"in god we trust" was declared the "national motto" of the United States by an act of Congress in 1956. It would probably not have been well received at all by our founding fathers, who conceived the original "motto" of "Out of many, One."
Our country was not "founded upon Christianity" by any means. It was founded upon the writings of John Locke and the philosophes of the Enlightenment, aspects of ancient Greece and Rome, and the ideas of our founding fathers. It was undoubtebly meant to be a secular country, as is readily apparent from the First Amendment to the constitution, which explicitly states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
I absolutely abhor it when people try to mold the history of our country into something that it is not. The government has certainly become much more religious, and the line between church and state is being continuously blurred, but our founding fathers would likely be disgusted with this aspect.
And, just for the record, I certainly do believe that all organized religion is a scourge that has resulted in untold death and destruction rather than the altruism and brotherhood that it is said to foster.
The only thing that makes me more uncomfortable than the democrats or republicans is the burgeoning popularity of libertarianism. Libertarianism is fascism cloaked in the garb of "personal freedom." The fact that these people honestly believe that having no market regulation whatsoever will result in more freedom for the individual is laughable. Corporations already have way too much sway in politics and worker's lives. How exactly is doing away with the few remaining market regulations going to result in anything good? As a country, we should be, economically speaking, moving toward the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. Deregulating the market will only lead to corporate fascism and an even worse oligarchy than the one that is currently developing. To top it all off, the class disparity, which is extremely bad as it is, will be positively astounding.
Social libertarianism is a good thing. I am a social libertarian, and everyone should be. Homosexuals having sex and marrying one another doesn't hurt you or I in any way, abortions are no one's decision but the woman who is considering one, and your right to practice your religion and its corresponding "morality" ends where my civil liberties begin. All of this I agree with. I think that this is actually one of the main reasons that otherwise rational, left-leaning, liberal people are getting caught up in it. The economic side of things is just disgusting. The Ayn Rand objectivist, social Darwinist, selfish ideas that these people have will not make our country a better, more egalitarian, and equal place for everyone. And make no mistake, that is exactly what these people don't want to happen. The last thing they want is equality or egalitarianism. Food for all people, equal healthcare, social security, subsidies, handicapped-accessibility, homeless shelters, soup kitchens? Many of these aspects are certainly lacking in our country right now, but in a libertarian world, we would have none, unless it was specifically in a private corporation's self-interest to provide.
I make it a point to inform everyone I know who is on the fence about libertarianism about everything that it entails, and I encourage others to do the same. It is not a path that our country should follow. It will only result in the citizens, as a whole, being worse off than we are now.
The bottom line here is that the only reason for the existance of the terminator gene in the first place is to squeeze more money out of farmers and control crops with their "intellectual property rights" bullshit. The only reason that the Agriculture Minister would be supporting this is because he is a Monsanto shill. This is really one case where what is good for the people and what is good for the corporations can be drawn in black and white. There is absolutely no other reason for the terminator gene to exist.
They've already declared music, writing, artwork, and source code to be "intellectual property." Next up will be genes and molecules, followed by plants and animals, air, water, you name it. Everything will have a monetary value and a corresponding license. Don't you just love commoditization?
This is actually one of the main problems with corporations. Ironically, it is also the reason they exist in the first place. Lack of liability results in some truly disgusting acts, and no one in particular seems to feel the weight on their conscious due to the diffusion of responsibility. In my opinion, we should not, by any means, anthropomorphize corporations. Microsoft is not a person, and does not have free will. It is an entity comprised of many people, with managers and owners who make the decisions. Being that private corporations closely resemble tyrannies in structure, it stands to reason that the owners and managers should be ultimately responsible for its actions.
In brief, yes, I believe that the CEO, along with the other managers and owners, of a corporation should be held responsible for its actions, and should be dealt with accordingly when it is found to be engaging in illegal activity. Because, as I said, the corporation was not breaking the law. The people holding the reins to the corporation were the ones breaking the law.
Ballmer should have been prosecuted for the actions of Microsoft. Of course, he wasn't, and now we've got "presidential" candidates singing his praises and offering him a cabinet position. It only serves as further evidence that the country has turned into a corporate oligarchy comprised of rich, middle-aged (and overwhelmingly white) back-scratchers. I won't go into exactly what I think about businessmen who make technological decisions, but suffice it to say that I have strong views in that particular area as well.
I agree completely, though I don't view it as 'authority.' It is respect. When a child is very young, he or she is dependent upon the parent for everything. As the child grows, however, and reaches teenage years, that dependence begins to give way. The child also starts to develop personal opinions and beliefs, which may or may not coincide with those of their parents. What keeps the child open to the parent's advice and guidance is respect, and the respect must be mutual. Fear of an authoritarian parent is only going to cause conflict, and the adult that the child grows into may very well end up with psychological issues.
The simple fact that someone has brought another human being into the world does not give them some sort of 'divine right of Kings' over that child. Bringing that child into the world isn't exactly a tough thing to do, at least on part of the father. I should know, I've done it. Hell, people conceive while shitfaced drunk all the time. The child does not owe the parent anything, but the parent owes the child a livelihood.
You're misconstruing my logic. With regard to evidence that police gather for possible prosecution, there are already laws covering the situation. Also, while the public does pay the salary of the police department, the evidence they gather in the course of investigation is not said to be under copyright. You won't hear of a police department invoking the DMCA to keep people quiet. They will (or should, at least) use the laws that already protect ongoing investigations.
If there is a valid reason to keep this video under wraps for the time being, then the NJTP Authority should invoke the laws that are in place for that type of situation. The incident took place on a public road, and was captured by a public camera. It is not covered by any copyright, it is public domain. If there is no agreeable reason (that is, a reason that would be covered by current law and upheld by a court) to censor this information, such as an ongoing investigation, then there is no justification for the attempted censorship, and the NJTP Authority certainly has no right to claim copyright over it, regardless of the circumstance.
Who pays for the cameras on the NJTP? The government. Where do they get their great pile of money from? The public. Which means that anyone should have the right to post or view that video along with any others whenever and wherever they see fit. This reactionary stupidity by NJ is rather weird, and makes it seem like they have something to gain by the censoring of that particular video. Why else would they care enough to invoke the fucking DMCA?
The fact is, though, that the footage of the crash, whether it was captured by an NJTP camera or not, is property of no one but the public who pays for it all.
Your moral compass does not lead the way for the rest of us, dude. Free speech is not "free until a small subset of the population is offended" for good reason.
Is all over my campus. Every single door has a built-in electromotor that, with the press of a button on the wall next to it, slowly opens the door for you. It is obviously meant to make the campus much more handicapped-accessible, and I agree with the premise. If you have ever seen someone in a wheelchair going through the motions of opening a heavy glass door, you would too. There is one thing that makes this "feature" an absolute pain in the ass, though. The electromotor, for some fucking reason, makes the door about three times as hard to open for those of us who don't need to do it automatically. It's like the hinges have been bathed in molasses and honey, and rusted over for a century or two. You would imagine that, with this in mind, everyone should just press the damn button on the side of the wall, but I don't like that at all. It just feels wrong. It's redundant as fuck for the people who don't need it, and it makes me feel like a fat, lazy-ass convenience-trumps-everything type of person. Besides the moral quandry, though, there is also the fact that, when the button is pressed, the door opens just about as fast as it would if you sat there and pulled on the thing anyway, maybe even slower. I've been going over this situation in my mind, and there has got to be something wrong with the setup. It just doesn't make any sense that all doors equipped such as these are would have this same, aneurysm-inducing effect. If anyone knows whether this little "feature" is unique to my campus or not, it'd be nice to have some sort of explanation for it.
scaled down a 1995 exhibit of the restored Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, after veterans complained it focused too much on the damage and deaths.
Exactly what else was that exhibit supposed to focus on? It was a war. Contrary to what our mass media and politicians would like us to believe, people actually do die in war, and it normally doesn't happen as movies and television like to dramatise. That plane dropped an atomic bomb, the first of its kind and one of only two to ever be dropped, that was responsible for the most deaths ever from a single explosive. If it didn't have that distinction, no one would care. It would just be yet another bomber from World War II. Personally, I think the exhibit should have been far more detailed than it was. Maybe a few shots of the barren wasteland that was once Hiroshima, or victims' fucking shadows etched into the sand from the detonation. The after-effects of the radiation, perhaps.
All exhibits, however, regardless of how important they seem, should be as detailed as possible. We should absolutely strive to put them in the correct context, and present the facts, unabashed, to the best of our knowledge. Kowtowing to any particular group or person does a grave disservice to society as a whole, because it will only result in the dissemination of misinformation, or at the very least only partial information. We can all digest the facts and come to our own conclusions, but the facts themselves are essential to the process.
This is completely pointless. I already support the troops. By and large, they are just doing what they have been told to do. I also have no doubt that Abu Ghraib and others all began at the top of the chain of command and worked their way downward, providing plausible deniability to the people who were actually responsible for it all.
The only way that this is about the troops at all is in the sense that they are even there in the first place. This is about the U.S. invading a sovereign nation on false pretences. It is about our soldiers dying not for our safety, to keep the country free, or to liberate an oppressed people, but simply for oil interests. It is about the Iraqi families which have been torn apart, killed, and subjected to death and destruction every day, caused by both extremist groups and U.S. forces. It is about placing the security of the country in the hands of NATO, aggressive multinational diplomacy, and rebuilding the infrastructure of a decimated country.
Showing us that the U.S. troops are performing their given tasks is going to accomplish absolutely nothing at all.
I will say right now that I am vehemently anti-corporate, anti-corporatization, and anti-consumer, so you know my bias beforehand.
Now, if you really want to learn the history of corporations, and how they went from being chartered by the state, rather heavily regulated, and with very few rights, to the monstrosities we have today that exert control over governments and individuals, ransack our earth, place profits over people, and, due to diffusion of responsibility, can care for nothing but a bottom-line for their shareholders, I suggest these sources as good starting points:
Prof. Noam Chomsky on Microsoft and corporations. Chomsky is interviewed by Corp-Watch. He expounds on Microsoft and the anti-trust cases levelled against it, but he also goes into some depth regarding the history of corporations in America. I highly recommend Chomsky, of course because I by and large agree with his assessments, but also because he always includes his sources. He actually spends much of his time scouring over declassified government documents in order to back his assertions up. Also check out his website for an absolute wealth of information.
The Corporation. An excellent documentary, directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, based on a book written by Joel Bakan. The corporation is examined, as if it were an individual (as it is seen to be in the eyes of the law), from a psychological standpoint. Not very surprisingly, corporations are diagnosed as psychopathic. Many interviews with CEOs, marketers, capitalist "think tanks," labor groups, and intellectuals. Rightly enough, the documentary can be downloaded freely via Bittorrent. I believe there is a link at the site.
Hopefully I've helped you out a bit, despite the obvious bias involved on my part.
Looks like a moderator has a difference of opinion. Instead of skewing the moderation system even more by modding based on that opinion, I would suggest foregoing the privileges for this discussion in order to reply and make your case.
I do not believe that the school system's repeated failure to renew on time is the most important issue here. The disturbing thing is that these educational systems have been forced to generate revenue by leasing portions of the spectrum to corporations. When educational departments are driven to things like this, what message does it send - scream, even - to the people? Right now, I am thinking it is along the lines of:
"We do not give two shits about education for the masses. We would rather funnel all of the money that we receive from taxpaying people into bombs, missiles, tanks, warplanes, weapons of mass destruction, et cetera."
When you take thirty seconds and look up government expenditures, it is actually plain as day. Here are the figures for defense versus education in 2004:
Defense: totalled $456 billion.
Education: totalled $88 billion.
source (warning: there may be some flash nasties at this site, but the figures are likely elsewhere on the 'net as well.)
If that does not anger the average person, I honestly do not know what will. While I was perusing the figures, I thought these two were also rather telling:
Also from 2004, cumulative, the amount that our government took in from taxes:
Individual Income Taxes: totalled $809 billion.
Corporate Income Taxes: totalled $189.4 billion.
I would say that there is a bit of a disparity there. I will leave it up to everyone to draw their own conclusions as to why.
I agree that lawyers are not to blame for this. Lawyers are normally hired by an organization, and assigned to whatever issue it is that the organization hired them for. Hacking at the branches of the tree will not solve anything.
Other than that, however, I have to disagree. As far as I can tell, there is no "reasonable" DRM. "Reasonable" DRM is a paradox. It would defeat its own purpose. No, I believe all DRM, no matter how cute and cuddly it may seem to be (*ahem* FairPlay), should be completely outlawed. It serves only one purpose: the circumvention of fair use, yet it is cloaked as an "anti-piracy" measure. In my mind, the only solution to the problem is to ban it, and prosecute those companies that do not comply.
The mods must be on crack tonight. The GP was not saying by any means that there should be no debates. That is just ridiculous. He was stating that the debates have become absolutely pointless stage shows, and I agree. It is very telling that they are now scripted, with candidates knowning beforehand what they will be asked. As for your Dukakis example, do you actually think that would even be an allowed question today? The mic would probably be cut, and the questioner escorted out of the building.
The moderation of the parent is horrible. How do these people keep getting mod points? I hope someone meta-mods the hell out of whoever is responsible for that one.
Nice knee-jerk. The GP's point was that, notwithstanding the fact that the presidential debates being available to everyone is a Good Thing (TM), it does not actually matter, if those debates are shallow and pointless (and they will be). Presidential candidates have become nothing more than actors. It is all about "talking points" and grand-standing. The actual issues are just glossed over. The important thing is how a candidate is perceived. People, by and large, don't vote for or against a candidate based on his or her stance on issues (if they even really have one). They vote for or against them based on two things:
1. Is this person toeing my chosen party's line well enough?
2. Do I "perceive" ("gut feeling," truthiness, et cetera) this person properly?
The GP is absoultely correct in his statement. In this case, I think that there are two root causes. Firstly, our government and the career politicians who comprise it do not want an informed public, by any means. An informed majority would be disastrous for these people. However, it is rather difficult to suppress information within a country that is supposed to be democratic. Dissidents do not just disappear without a trace (yet), and journalists aren't thrown in jail for articles which are critical of the government. A delicate balance must be maintained: the majority must believe that they are informed and conscious, and the information must be ladled out "properly," i.e. dumbed down to "talking points," presented as black and white, with no grey areas, and so on. In traditional totalitarian or dictatorial states, the public is left completely uninformed. That method will not work in the United States. In ours and other pseudo-democratic states, the goal is to have a misinformed public.
The second cause, I believe, is affected somewhat by the first one. The majority get their news on the run, and from the humongous conglomerates such as CNN or Fox. They do not research anything that they are exposed to further. They see the latest "Left vs. Right: Smackdown!" show on CNN, watch it for awhile, take one side or the other, and call it a day. This is how the majority establish their stances politically. When the option of further research and the establishment of a view based on the facts instead of the opinion of a talking head on a "news-er-tainment" network are given (and I have experienced this firsthand, many times), they claim that they are just "too busy" to worry about things like that. While I realize that it does take a bit more time and effort to become an informed individual, is it really too much? I also think that it might have a lot to do with the fact that policy-makers decisions, as opposed to one hundred years ago or more, do not appear to affect a great deal of our lives. The policy may be a ticking timebomb, but the majority do not realise it.
All of this amounts to what we have today: debates that are, in reality, nothing more than popularity contests. As for a solution, I honestly do not know if there is one in the short term. The majority in this country cannot be forced to care enough to become informed; they must choose to do so themselves. I have never had much faith in most people when it comes to things like this, but then again, I am a devout pessimist. Maybe I will be proven wrong at some point, who knows?
Funny that you mention it. If you're a student stuck on a Windows machine (like I am, half of the time):
1. Register for Ruckus.com
2. Download their (piece of complete shit) proprietary "Ruckus Player."
3. Search and download whatever music you want using the service.
4. Strip the DRM from your songs with FairUse4WM
5. Convert them to.mp3 format and put them on your iPod with iTunes.
6. Don't worry about things like this affecting you.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I would have thrived there, instead of ultimately getting the hell out, getting my GED, and putting in time at community college before going on to uni. I certainly don't like the fact that only those wealthy enough were able to go, but I think that this is what our public high schools should be. Innovative, creative, and fun, with the chance to implement what is being learned. I believe that it would go a long way to getting rid of the, "Why do I need to learn this?" attitude that even I was guilty of at the time.
Unfortunately, K-12 education isn't exactly where the government's priorities are. Maybe one day.
They're already doing quite well with virtual WMDs and virtual terrorism defense. I just wish that it really was virtual money that they were using for all of it.
Opera is a standards-compliant browser. It's not Opera that is "broken." Whoever built that website didn't code to standards.
It doesn't mean anything that these documents have been subpoenaed. When the White House refuses to release them, which they will most definitely do, will this Congress have the intestinal fortitude to fight back? Or will they pass more "non-binding" resolutions and whine about it while doing nothing? Judging from the past, I'm going to fully expect them to continue to let the constitution crumble and civil liberties die. I think that the big picture here is that we, as the common people of this country, no longer have anyone fighting for us, whether democrat, republican, third party, or otherwise.
Thank god that the vast majority of society has, until this point at least, not evolved into your little social-darwinist wet dream. The human race would have died out a long, long time ago. You can be a selfish, stingy asshole all you want, but in the end, what does all of your accumulated wealth and money amount to? I'll tell you one thing, when I'm dead and gone, the last thing that I want people to remember me by is my selfishness and stingyness.
You right libertarians consistently prove to me that you have the morals of a two year old child. You're all the same: couldn't make it to the rung of the ladder that you so desperately wanted to, and so you blame it on everyone and everything except for yourselves. Just go on thinking that it's those damn black people and rednecks, "sitting on their asses" and scooping up all of your "hard-earned" money. There exists not one single thing that will change your mind, and I'm fine with that. I just wish that I could be around when, at some point down the road, you end up homeless, or unemployed, or disabled, or too old to work.
Keep wishing for your little narcissistic dream world, dude.
It is Christian beliefs upon which the US was founded
That is entirely untrue. I take it that you are a Christian, because you've got some really nice religious blinders on. The most glaringly obvious evidence that our country was not "founded on Christianity" are the First Amendment and the seperation of church and state. Besides these, however, here are some other tidbits to enlighten you (or make you tighten your blinders and cover your ears):
"As the Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the law, religion or tranquility of Musselmen; and as the states never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mohometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever produce an interruption of harmony existing between the two countries."
-John Adams, the Treaty with Tripoli, 1797
"I do not find in Orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
"The Christian god is cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust."
"Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies."
-Thomas Jefferson
"What has been Christianity's fruits? Superstition, bigotry, and persecution."
-James Madison
The founding fathers were not the ones to put "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency. This was added in 1864.
The "pledge of allegiance" was first written in 1892, and originally consisted of nothing more than the following:
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"
The words "under god" were added to the pledge in 1954, during the height of the McCarthy scapegoating.
"in god we trust" was declared the "national motto" of the United States by an act of Congress in 1956. It would probably not have been well received at all by our founding fathers, who conceived the original "motto" of "Out of many, One."
Our country was not "founded upon Christianity" by any means. It was founded upon the writings of John Locke and the philosophes of the Enlightenment, aspects of ancient Greece and Rome, and the ideas of our founding fathers. It was undoubtebly meant to be a secular country, as is readily apparent from the First Amendment to the constitution, which explicitly states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
I absolutely abhor it when people try to mold the history of our country into something that it is not. The government has certainly become much more religious, and the line between church and state is being continuously blurred, but our founding fathers would likely be disgusted with this aspect.
And, just for the record, I certainly do believe that all organized religion is a scourge that has resulted in untold death and destruction rather than the altruism and brotherhood that it is said to foster.
The only thing that makes me more uncomfortable than the democrats or republicans is the burgeoning popularity of libertarianism. Libertarianism is fascism cloaked in the garb of "personal freedom." The fact that these people honestly believe that having no market regulation whatsoever will result in more freedom for the individual is laughable. Corporations already have way too much sway in politics and worker's lives. How exactly is doing away with the few remaining market regulations going to result in anything good? As a country, we should be, economically speaking, moving toward the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. Deregulating the market will only lead to corporate fascism and an even worse oligarchy than the one that is currently developing. To top it all off, the class disparity, which is extremely bad as it is, will be positively astounding.
Social libertarianism is a good thing. I am a social libertarian, and everyone should be. Homosexuals having sex and marrying one another doesn't hurt you or I in any way, abortions are no one's decision but the woman who is considering one, and your right to practice your religion and its corresponding "morality" ends where my civil liberties begin. All of this I agree with. I think that this is actually one of the main reasons that otherwise rational, left-leaning, liberal people are getting caught up in it. The economic side of things is just disgusting. The Ayn Rand objectivist, social Darwinist, selfish ideas that these people have will not make our country a better, more egalitarian, and equal place for everyone. And make no mistake, that is exactly what these people don't want to happen. The last thing they want is equality or egalitarianism. Food for all people, equal healthcare, social security, subsidies, handicapped-accessibility, homeless shelters, soup kitchens? Many of these aspects are certainly lacking in our country right now, but in a libertarian world, we would have none, unless it was specifically in a private corporation's self-interest to provide.
I make it a point to inform everyone I know who is on the fence about libertarianism about everything that it entails, and I encourage others to do the same. It is not a path that our country should follow. It will only result in the citizens, as a whole, being worse off than we are now.
The bottom line here is that the only reason for the existance of the terminator gene in the first place is to squeeze more money out of farmers and control crops with their "intellectual property rights" bullshit. The only reason that the Agriculture Minister would be supporting this is because he is a Monsanto shill. This is really one case where what is good for the people and what is good for the corporations can be drawn in black and white. There is absolutely no other reason for the terminator gene to exist.
They've already declared music, writing, artwork, and source code to be "intellectual property." Next up will be genes and molecules, followed by plants and animals, air, water, you name it. Everything will have a monetary value and a corresponding license. Don't you just love commoditization?
This is actually one of the main problems with corporations. Ironically, it is also the reason they exist in the first place. Lack of liability results in some truly disgusting acts, and no one in particular seems to feel the weight on their conscious due to the diffusion of responsibility. In my opinion, we should not, by any means, anthropomorphize corporations. Microsoft is not a person, and does not have free will. It is an entity comprised of many people, with managers and owners who make the decisions. Being that private corporations closely resemble tyrannies in structure, it stands to reason that the owners and managers should be ultimately responsible for its actions.
In brief, yes, I believe that the CEO, along with the other managers and owners, of a corporation should be held responsible for its actions, and should be dealt with accordingly when it is found to be engaging in illegal activity. Because, as I said, the corporation was not breaking the law. The people holding the reins to the corporation were the ones breaking the law.
Ballmer should have been prosecuted for the actions of Microsoft. Of course, he wasn't, and now we've got "presidential" candidates singing his praises and offering him a cabinet position. It only serves as further evidence that the country has turned into a corporate oligarchy comprised of rich, middle-aged (and overwhelmingly white) back-scratchers. I won't go into exactly what I think about businessmen who make technological decisions, but suffice it to say that I have strong views in that particular area as well.
I agree completely, though I don't view it as 'authority.' It is respect. When a child is very young, he or she is dependent upon the parent for everything. As the child grows, however, and reaches teenage years, that dependence begins to give way. The child also starts to develop personal opinions and beliefs, which may or may not coincide with those of their parents. What keeps the child open to the parent's advice and guidance is respect, and the respect must be mutual. Fear of an authoritarian parent is only going to cause conflict, and the adult that the child grows into may very well end up with psychological issues.
The simple fact that someone has brought another human being into the world does not give them some sort of 'divine right of Kings' over that child. Bringing that child into the world isn't exactly a tough thing to do, at least on part of the father. I should know, I've done it. Hell, people conceive while shitfaced drunk all the time. The child does not owe the parent anything, but the parent owes the child a livelihood.
You're misconstruing my logic. With regard to evidence that police gather for possible prosecution, there are already laws covering the situation. Also, while the public does pay the salary of the police department, the evidence they gather in the course of investigation is not said to be under copyright. You won't hear of a police department invoking the DMCA to keep people quiet. They will (or should, at least) use the laws that already protect ongoing investigations.
If there is a valid reason to keep this video under wraps for the time being, then the NJTP Authority should invoke the laws that are in place for that type of situation. The incident took place on a public road, and was captured by a public camera. It is not covered by any copyright, it is public domain. If there is no agreeable reason (that is, a reason that would be covered by current law and upheld by a court) to censor this information, such as an ongoing investigation, then there is no justification for the attempted censorship, and the NJTP Authority certainly has no right to claim copyright over it, regardless of the circumstance.
Who pays for the cameras on the NJTP? The government. Where do they get their great pile of money from? The public. Which means that anyone should have the right to post or view that video along with any others whenever and wherever they see fit. This reactionary stupidity by NJ is rather weird, and makes it seem like they have something to gain by the censoring of that particular video. Why else would they care enough to invoke the fucking DMCA?
The fact is, though, that the footage of the crash, whether it was captured by an NJTP camera or not, is property of no one but the public who pays for it all.
Your moral compass does not lead the way for the rest of us, dude. Free speech is not "free until a small subset of the population is offended" for good reason.
Is all over my campus. Every single door has a built-in electromotor that, with the press of a button on the wall next to it, slowly opens the door for you. It is obviously meant to make the campus much more handicapped-accessible, and I agree with the premise. If you have ever seen someone in a wheelchair going through the motions of opening a heavy glass door, you would too. There is one thing that makes this "feature" an absolute pain in the ass, though. The electromotor, for some fucking reason, makes the door about three times as hard to open for those of us who don't need to do it automatically. It's like the hinges have been bathed in molasses and honey, and rusted over for a century or two. You would imagine that, with this in mind, everyone should just press the damn button on the side of the wall, but I don't like that at all. It just feels wrong. It's redundant as fuck for the people who don't need it, and it makes me feel like a fat, lazy-ass convenience-trumps-everything type of person. Besides the moral quandry, though, there is also the fact that, when the button is pressed, the door opens just about as fast as it would if you sat there and pulled on the thing anyway, maybe even slower. I've been going over this situation in my mind, and there has got to be something wrong with the setup. It just doesn't make any sense that all doors equipped such as these are would have this same, aneurysm-inducing effect. If anyone knows whether this little "feature" is unique to my campus or not, it'd be nice to have some sort of explanation for it.
scaled down a 1995 exhibit of the restored Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, after veterans complained it focused too much on the damage and deaths.
Exactly what else was that exhibit supposed to focus on? It was a war. Contrary to what our mass media and politicians would like us to believe, people actually do die in war, and it normally doesn't happen as movies and television like to dramatise. That plane dropped an atomic bomb, the first of its kind and one of only two to ever be dropped, that was responsible for the most deaths ever from a single explosive. If it didn't have that distinction, no one would care. It would just be yet another bomber from World War II. Personally, I think the exhibit should have been far more detailed than it was. Maybe a few shots of the barren wasteland that was once Hiroshima, or victims' fucking shadows etched into the sand from the detonation. The after-effects of the radiation, perhaps.
All exhibits, however, regardless of how important they seem, should be as detailed as possible. We should absolutely strive to put them in the correct context, and present the facts, unabashed, to the best of our knowledge. Kowtowing to any particular group or person does a grave disservice to society as a whole, because it will only result in the dissemination of misinformation, or at the very least only partial information. We can all digest the facts and come to our own conclusions, but the facts themselves are essential to the process.
This is completely pointless. I already support the troops. By and large, they are just doing what they have been told to do. I also have no doubt that Abu Ghraib and others all began at the top of the chain of command and worked their way downward, providing plausible deniability to the people who were actually responsible for it all.
The only way that this is about the troops at all is in the sense that they are even there in the first place. This is about the U.S. invading a sovereign nation on false pretences. It is about our soldiers dying not for our safety, to keep the country free, or to liberate an oppressed people, but simply for oil interests. It is about the Iraqi families which have been torn apart, killed, and subjected to death and destruction every day, caused by both extremist groups and U.S. forces. It is about placing the security of the country in the hands of NATO, aggressive multinational diplomacy, and rebuilding the infrastructure of a decimated country.
Showing us that the U.S. troops are performing their given tasks is going to accomplish absolutely nothing at all.
I will say right now that I am vehemently anti-corporate, anti-corporatization, and anti-consumer, so you know my bias beforehand.
Now, if you really want to learn the history of corporations, and how they went from being chartered by the state, rather heavily regulated, and with very few rights, to the monstrosities we have today that exert control over governments and individuals, ransack our earth, place profits over people, and, due to diffusion of responsibility, can care for nothing but a bottom-line for their shareholders, I suggest these sources as good starting points:
Prof. Noam Chomsky on Microsoft and corporations. Chomsky is interviewed by Corp-Watch. He expounds on Microsoft and the anti-trust cases levelled against it, but he also goes into some depth regarding the history of corporations in America. I highly recommend Chomsky, of course because I by and large agree with his assessments, but also because he always includes his sources. He actually spends much of his time scouring over declassified government documents in order to back his assertions up. Also check out his website for an absolute wealth of information.
The Corporation. An excellent documentary, directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, based on a book written by Joel Bakan. The corporation is examined, as if it were an individual (as it is seen to be in the eyes of the law), from a psychological standpoint. Not very surprisingly, corporations are diagnosed as psychopathic. Many interviews with CEOs, marketers, capitalist "think tanks," labor groups, and intellectuals. Rightly enough, the documentary can be downloaded freely via Bittorrent. I believe there is a link at the site.
Hopefully I've helped you out a bit, despite the obvious bias involved on my part.
Looks like a moderator has a difference of opinion. Instead of skewing the moderation system even more by modding based on that opinion, I would suggest foregoing the privileges for this discussion in order to reply and make your case.
Your comment is definitely funny, but insightful moreso. I hope someone gives you a proper karma-affecting moderation for that.
I do not believe that the school system's repeated failure to renew on time is the most important issue here. The disturbing thing is that these educational systems have been forced to generate revenue by leasing portions of the spectrum to corporations. When educational departments are driven to things like this, what message does it send - scream, even - to the people? Right now, I am thinking it is along the lines of:
"We do not give two shits about education for the masses. We would rather funnel all of the money that we receive from taxpaying people into bombs, missiles, tanks, warplanes, weapons of mass destruction, et cetera."
When you take thirty seconds and look up government expenditures, it is actually plain as day. Here are the figures for defense versus education in 2004:
Defense: totalled $456 billion.
Education: totalled $88 billion.
source (warning: there may be some flash nasties at this site, but the figures are likely elsewhere on the 'net as well.)
If that does not anger the average person, I honestly do not know what will. While I was perusing the figures, I thought these two were also rather telling:
Also from 2004, cumulative, the amount that our government took in from taxes:
Individual Income Taxes: totalled $809 billion.
Corporate Income Taxes: totalled $189.4 billion.
I would say that there is a bit of a disparity there. I will leave it up to everyone to draw their own conclusions as to why.
I agree that lawyers are not to blame for this. Lawyers are normally hired by an organization, and assigned to whatever issue it is that the organization hired them for. Hacking at the branches of the tree will not solve anything.
Other than that, however, I have to disagree. As far as I can tell, there is no "reasonable" DRM. "Reasonable" DRM is a paradox. It would defeat its own purpose. No, I believe all DRM, no matter how cute and cuddly it may seem to be (*ahem* FairPlay), should be completely outlawed. It serves only one purpose: the circumvention of fair use, yet it is cloaked as an "anti-piracy" measure. In my mind, the only solution to the problem is to ban it, and prosecute those companies that do not comply.
The mods must be on crack tonight. The GP was not saying by any means that there should be no debates. That is just ridiculous. He was stating that the debates have become absolutely pointless stage shows, and I agree. It is very telling that they are now scripted, with candidates knowning beforehand what they will be asked. As for your Dukakis example, do you actually think that would even be an allowed question today? The mic would probably be cut, and the questioner escorted out of the building.
The moderation of the parent is horrible. How do these people keep getting mod points? I hope someone meta-mods the hell out of whoever is responsible for that one.
Nice knee-jerk. The GP's point was that, notwithstanding the fact that the presidential debates being available to everyone is a Good Thing (TM), it does not actually matter, if those debates are shallow and pointless (and they will be). Presidential candidates have become nothing more than actors. It is all about "talking points" and grand-standing. The actual issues are just glossed over. The important thing is how a candidate is perceived. People, by and large, don't vote for or against a candidate based on his or her stance on issues (if they even really have one). They vote for or against them based on two things:
1. Is this person toeing my chosen party's line well enough?
2. Do I "perceive" ("gut feeling," truthiness, et cetera) this person properly?
The GP is absoultely correct in his statement. In this case, I think that there are two root causes. Firstly, our government and the career politicians who comprise it do not want an informed public, by any means. An informed majority would be disastrous for these people. However, it is rather difficult to suppress information within a country that is supposed to be democratic. Dissidents do not just disappear without a trace (yet), and journalists aren't thrown in jail for articles which are critical of the government. A delicate balance must be maintained: the majority must believe that they are informed and conscious, and the information must be ladled out "properly," i.e. dumbed down to "talking points," presented as black and white, with no grey areas, and so on. In traditional totalitarian or dictatorial states, the public is left completely uninformed. That method will not work in the United States. In ours and other pseudo-democratic states, the goal is to have a misinformed public.
The second cause, I believe, is affected somewhat by the first one. The majority get their news on the run, and from the humongous conglomerates such as CNN or Fox. They do not research anything that they are exposed to further. They see the latest "Left vs. Right: Smackdown!" show on CNN, watch it for awhile, take one side or the other, and call it a day. This is how the majority establish their stances politically. When the option of further research and the establishment of a view based on the facts instead of the opinion of a talking head on a "news-er-tainment" network are given (and I have experienced this firsthand, many times), they claim that they are just "too busy" to worry about things like that. While I realize that it does take a bit more time and effort to become an informed individual, is it really too much? I also think that it might have a lot to do with the fact that policy-makers decisions, as opposed to one hundred years ago or more, do not appear to affect a great deal of our lives. The policy may be a ticking timebomb, but the majority do not realise it.
All of this amounts to what we have today: debates that are, in reality, nothing more than popularity contests. As for a solution, I honestly do not know if there is one in the short term. The majority in this country cannot be forced to care enough to become informed; they must choose to do so themselves. I have never had much faith in most people when it comes to things like this, but then again, I am a devout pessimist. Maybe I will be proven wrong at some point, who knows?
Funny that you mention it. If you're a student stuck on a Windows machine (like I am, half of the time):
.mp3 format and put them on your iPod with iTunes.
1. Register for Ruckus.com
2. Download their (piece of complete shit) proprietary "Ruckus Player."
3. Search and download whatever music you want using the service.
4. Strip the DRM from your songs with FairUse4WM
5. Convert them to
6. Don't worry about things like this affecting you.