It's not perfect, as pretty much nothing is. But insulting the mainstream just because it's the mainstream is what make you elitist. I'm sure any plan you could come up with wouldn't automatically make everyone happy, loving and peaceful.
Reminds me of people who stop liking a band because its achieved commercial success or stop drinking a craft brew because it's starting to catch on with many people. Pointless, self-defeating, and yes elitist.
Well, you've already decided that you know enough about me to make judgments about my character. You've also decided to make this into a personal matter rather than telling me why you think my statements are incorrect. There's nothing arrogant about those two, right? I won't hold my breath waiting for you to discover for yourself that ad-hominem attacks are the mark of a weak position, nor will I hold my breath waiting for you to admit that you are judging someone you don't know the first thing about rather than discussing what was said. So I seriously doubt you'll listen to any explanation. But again, what the hell.
I was referring to the results of those beliefs, as evidenced by the society that they produce when they are put into practice. If those beliefs could only be found in a small village at a remote location, then I would have said the exact same thing, only I would not have called them mainstream because in that case they would not represent the majority of people in this society. So we have beliefs and political opinions which have been put into practice with little resistence and mostly token dissent, and those beliefs have given us a far-less-than-ideal world that is substantially worse than what would otherwise be achievable or has been achieved in the past. Yet despite their many flaws, they are commonly-held beliefs. If this isn't a definition of "lowest common denominator" then I am not sure what is.
To assume that my problem with them is just that they are common, when in fact I have specifically told you that the results of those beliefs are why I don't like them, is frankly rather asinine. If the mainstream beliefs led to an enlightened society where people loved freedom and had true agape love for one another, I would have no problem with it at all. You seem to honestly think that I'd actually want to change that scenario. It's like you're eager to make judgments about somebody and were just waiting for an excuse to do so. If so, you have much company, for that too is a common path.
I don't see any injustice here, however, because there is no way that anyone who is that trigger-happy or needs to feel "right" that badly is a very happy and fulfilled individual. Even the ones who think they are happy can become upset and angry with just a few words, a few insults, or a few rude gestures and that's because they don't have the strength that patience and compassion require. If they did, they wouldn't be so eager to judge others or to make everything into a personal matter. So you see, water seeks its own level one way or another.
Whenever I see the term "mainstream" used, I wish it were replaced with "lowest common denominator" instead. It'd be a better world.
Whenever I see the user "causality" commenting, I wish the user name were replaced with "elitist douche" instead. It'd be a better world.
Because the public opinion and political power wielded by that majority which, by definition, adheres to "mainstream" views has led us to such a delightful society full of happy, loving, peaceful people . Surely anyone who thinks otherwise is an elitist, and a douche. Right?
After all, they like to brag about having the most viewers. I think that makes them pretty damn mainstream.
(Lying to themselves that they are not MSM doesn't mean jack.)
Whenever I see the term "mainstream" used, I wish it were replaced with "lowest common denominator" instead. It'd be a better world.
That's one thing you have to realize: Scientology encourages fraudulent behavior, whereas Christianity (as taught by the New Testament) does precisely the opposite. It is the behavior that is being attacked in court, not the beliefs.
For many people, it's just not good enough that they can choose not to believe in anything that doesn't suit them. They have to also hate the fact that other people would choose to believe in something that they would not. You can see this in the contempt that they show towards others, and their need to hold themselves up as a paragon of rationality and harmlessness whenever they think anyone is looking. I have met atheists who respect the right of others to believe whatever they wish, who certainly disagree with religious folks but could do so without having contempt for them or judging them as a bunch of superstitious idiots. It was a privilege to know them, in fact.
I appreciated that they could enjoy their freedom of belief without the condemnation of others who would use that freedom differently. Unfortunately, I have not known many, nor have I heard from many online. Either they are rare or they are less vocal than their counterparts who practice their own, non-religious version of a self-congratulatory "holier than thou." Personally, I suspect that they are less vocal because they don't have an axe to grind. This is generally true of anyone who wants to live their lives without undue concern about how others choose to live, whether they are atheistic or devoutly religious.
This is, of course, equally true of religious people who had contempt for those who practice a different religion (or for atheists and agnostics). These are more well-known, however. They are often portrayed as such in the media, and they are generally more likely to have someone call their BS. Perhaps for that reason, the fact that atheists are just as human as anyone else and are not automatically protected from irrational or arrogant behavior merely because they are non-religious seems to be forgotten from time to time.
I think that's why your correction was necessary. It was good that you point out that this is about alleged criminal behavior. If the governments of modern industrialized nations started prosecuting people merely because of their beliefs alone, this would be a dangerous and disturbing precedent. You can read a good history book to find out how much damage this can do. As much as anyone may dislike a particular religion, or all religions in general, they should still be very glad that this isn't what happened here.
We already have enough problems with people running into walls, other people, walking into intersections and getting run over by buses -- and that's with just iPods and bluetooth ear leeches. People go driving off bridges, across corn fields, etc., with navsat equipment... And before we solve the human interface problems here, we're talking about immersing people further?
We've already addressed this problem. It's called the Darwin Award!
"If scent made such a noticable difference, then you can safely say that these folks were not terribly committed to doing the Right Thing. They needed an external motivation. That's hardly as good as doing the best you can, all the time, because you seriously believe in and want to adhere to sound, timeless principles that have a solid ethical or moral foundation. "
That sounds like the distinction between Perfect and Imperfect Contrition in the Catholic Catechism. Perfect Contrition is when you are repentant of your sins because you love God and are sorry you have broken His agreement with you. Imperfect Contrition is when you are repentant because you don't want to go to Hell.
Guess what - either gets you into Heaven. Likewise, I'm not sure anyone should care WHY someone does the right thing, as long as they do it.
Let's say I am a general, in command of an army that is about to go to war. All other things being completely equal between the opposing armies, let's say that my army is entirely composed of volunteer, professional soldiers who truly believe in what we're fighting for. They believe in it so much that they are willing to lay down their lives and die for this cause with no coercion of any kind. The opposing army is composed entirely of conscripts who had to be threatened with imprisonment to get them to join the armed forces. They are otherwise equal in every way; equal amount of training, equal supplies, and equally good strategy is used by both sides.
If I were to place bets, I know which army I would bet for. There is a strength that comes from right motive that is unobtainable otherwise. While things are going well and everything is peachy, people who don't have much insight won't notice much difference between the person who fears Hell and the person who loves God. When the shit hits the fan, however, one of those is going to crumble first. One of those will panic and lose their heads first. It won't be the person with love, not if their love is real.
A lot of the good things that people try to do don't have the full effectiveness that they could have had. They don't really reach the recipients, don't really get them to look at their lives and their values differently the way they could have done. That's because many people who do good deeds do them for less-than-pure reasons. They want to be thought of as good by others, they want to impress others, or they want some kind of recognition or favor in return. They give in order to get. This deprives them of the chance to do something truly self-less, which is its own reward, and it deprives the recipients of seeing what it looks like when such a self-less act takes place. It's business as usual, just a bit more favorable.
The whole problem I have with most organized religions and most of the people in them is that they do things because they think they're supposed to. They fear hell or they fear the condemnation of others. They operate out of that fear and it is the energy which fuels their actions. So you can go to most churches and you find people who judge you by how you dress, whether you're "clean-cut", and other superficial meaningless things, but you don't see very much that really resembles unconditional love. There is a universe of difference between acting out of a fear of negative consequences and acting out of a real delight of having done the right thing, for both the giver and the receiver. I mourn the fact that we live in a society that is so blind and superficial that every last person doesn't consider this to be obvious.
You certainly do have a point, though I question the merits of a study like this one.
You don't question it based on the fact that it might have been set up wrong. Or that they interpreted the results correctly. You don't attack the science based on facts and reason. No. You decide the study is without merit because, apparently, it doesn't fit with your worldview. That's irrational. It's also an excellent example of one of the true ills of society today: The unwillingness of people to see the world for what it is, instead preferring to filter and bend fact to fit their own ideas of how the world actually works.
Actually the meaning of the results is precisely where I differ with this study. To me, they mean that most people are operating on a sort of auto-pilot and I have already explained why I believe so. Also, not once did I say it was without merit. Re-read my posts; you will not find me saying that anywhere. I said I question the merits. "Questioning" denotes uncertainty; it does not constitute a claim of either merit or lack thereof. This means you were dead wrong about what I said, and it also means that the application of the same rationality you demand could have revealed that to you before you responded to me.
Perhaps this is a reading comprehension issue. Or perhaps it pleases you to put words in my mouth and then attack those words. Either way, please don't try to pass this off as quality discourse. It most definitely isn't. Now if you really want to do something decent, just admit that you saw what I said and decided to read things into it that clearly weren't there.
I question many things and I consider that a healthy trait. I'll question whatever I feel like questioning. This includes both those things that are within the scope of science and those things which are not. That you would see that as errant behavior in need of correction is truly baffling to me. I don't usually encounter that, except from some of the more closed-minded religious people.
Incidentally, you've never demonstrated that I am failing to see the world as it is. That would be a vast, general, sweeping claim. A few paragraphs from a stranger is not enough data to make this claim. Demonstrating beyond a doubt, with adequate data, that I fail to see the world as it is would be the rational thing to do before touting me as an example of one of the "true ills of society today." No, I think the harshness of that baseless assumption is designed to make me get upset, emotional, and less rational, because right now I am providing a contrast against your methods. You have egg on your face, and there's no way you don't know it.
It's a bit like those people who assume you don't understand something merely because you take a different position on it than they would. The message is "agreeing with me, doing as I do, questioning only what I would question, that is the only path away from ignorance." There's a lot of arrogance in it.
It doesn't take a great deal of insight to realize that you have a strong need for me to be wrong so you can be right. Right from the start you've taken a belligerent tone when nothing I said was malicious or inflammatory. It's as though you are offended that I would dare to approach this from an angle that you would not. It's a shame, because conversations like these are so much better when egos don't get so involved. That is precisely one of the "default settings" I was talking about.
Isn't it amazing the venom that comes out of people when you make the simplest of observations? Yours is milder than most.
So, what, you're going to assume the study is invalid and/or useless because it doesn't fit with your naively rosy view of human behaviour? Well, no offense, but tough shit.
I said that most people aren't terribly committed to doing good and that they operate on a sort of auto-pilot, meaning they are not thinking beings who perform deliberate action, though potentially they could be. This isn't so rosy. In fact it's rather disappointing.
And I take it as further evidence that humans are, despite our fancy intellect, often little more than opportunistic animals. And personally, I'd rather we just admit that fact and use it as the starting point for improving ourselves, rather than living with the delusion that we're somehow inherently noble creatures. 'course, we should already realize this... if the Milgram experiment taught us anything, it's that human morals are things easily set aside given the right circumstances.
Nothing I said disagrees with this. In fact, I proposed the "auto-pilot" as an explanation for it. It happens to be an explanation that, if true, means that this is not set in stone, that people are not actually forced to be this way. For that reason, I view it as a "default" setting -- the way things are if the person doesn't consciously work to change them.
Is that what bothers you so? Because it implies that people bear some personal responsibility for whether or not they are trying to become better (by that I mean more ethical) people? I suppose that's one way to view it. Another way to view it is that if you really are responsible for who you are and what you do, then this is proof positive that it is within your power to change those things for the better. This is excellent news, in fact it is a message of hope.
Unfortunately the actual effect this is going to have is that every store that can get away with it will now treat air fresheners like fratboys treat axe.
Which will probably end up having an opposite effect. I know that whenever I smell highly excessive air freshener, or a highly excessive amount of perfume/cologne/etc on a person, I sometimes wonder what it is that they're trying so hard to cover up. Particularly that extremely potent lotion or perfume that some of the women at the office would use; seems like a few drops of that stuff will cover a square mile.
A small, tasteful amount is a different story, of course.
If a place smells like a moose just died in it, especially if its also visibly dirty, then I just sort of get the impression that it doesn't actually matter what I do in there. On the other hand, when a place is spotless, smells lemony fresh and everything appears in order then I'm not going to be the one to put my feet on the coffee table, no matter how tempting it might be. Smell ties into taste and is one of the more powerful senses we have, so it makes sense that it would play a large part in determining our impression of what is or isn't acceptable in a given location, every bit as much as it tells us what foods seem OK to eat.
You certainly do have a point, though I question the merits of a study like this one. If scent made such a noticable difference, then you can safely say that these folks were not terribly committed to doing the Right Thing. They needed an external motivation. That's hardly as good as doing the best you can, all the time, because you seriously believe in and want to adhere to sound, timeless principles that have a solid ethical or moral foundation.
For that reason, I take this to be further evidence that most people operate on a sort of auto-pilot.
It'd be nice if the author made it more clear what OS this is claimed to apply to. For example, Solaris 10 has/usr/bin/ldd as an ELF. I don't have my HP-UX or AIX test systems handy, nevermind recent releases of RHEL.
Also, what efforts has the coder gone to in order to notify the appropriate security groups so that a fix can be produced quickly? I'm not disputing the potential security issues, but there is a reason for first disclosing to a vendor on non-public channels. Give the vendor/coder the chance to do the right thing and produce a fix.
Notify the vendor/coder first? I use Linux on my desktop computer and I really don't feel threatened by this. At all. They can 0-day all they like.
Now, if they find a remotely exploitable vulnerability that can be used to run code or gain a root shell without my active assistance, and that didn't first require me to receive and then choose to work with an untrusted binary, well then I would understand your concern.
There's already a secure PDF format which publishers could use. Why you'd want to read a book on an LCD or CRT I have no idea, though.
Real question: what's so terrible about a good LCD screen? I frequently hear people complain about the idea of reading books on an LCD screen, yet I have done this myself and didn't think it was bad at all.
The CRTs I think I can understand. I'm one of those people who can detect the flicker even at reasonably high refresh rates, so they will eventually tire my eyes if I don't make it a point to look away from the screen from time to time. Even at the very best refresh rates, the scanned CRT is not regarded by the eyes as a solid image like a wall or a sheet of paper and they have to do a little extra work to give the illusion of a steady image.
I believe LCDs don't have this problem because they can independently and simultaneously control each pixel, and lighting one pixel doesn't cause the previous one to stop being lit so there is no concept of continuously scanning lines. However, I make no claims of having any expertise in this area, so please correct me if I am wrong about that.
The story is almost full of comments about the closed-source nature of the spotify library. I do also use Linux myself, not on my primary desktop, but on servers and time-to-time messing around in Linux desktop too. Based on your nick I suspect you love the philosophy of Linux and GPL, which you guessed right, I dont that much as it's beside my area.
But the point here is that while Linux has less than 0.5% desktop market share, it still the bitchiest one and while *demanding* software, libraries and drivers from companies, goes into huge "fuck off" mode when they provide such as closed source for whatever reason (providing them as open source, free for all to use GPL'd may hurt their business, or it may violate their licenses with other companies).
It's great that even on Slashdot many Linux users see this issue and understand why companies dont support Linux more, but then theres the other growth who have got the whole GPL thing too much into their head without understanding the real issue.
There's another side to this, though.
If I am a company and I know that a portion of my customers strongly value software freedom, and then I release software (at no cost or any cost) that does not support such software freedom, and then I receive a backlash, that's my fault. That would be my own failure to understand the market I intended to reach. It would be like an automaker who only manufactures blue cars and expects that to work well in a market that overwhelmingly wants red cars. If the automaker blamed the market for that, it would be quite arrogant of them.
Now, I might decide that this market is not reachable, and decide that I won't bother producing anything for it. That'd be my prerogative. But if I am to try to reach them at all, I need to do that correctly by giving them what they want the way that they want it. A half-assed effort to do that which backfires is not the community's fault. What would I expect, exactly? For that community to give up ideals and principles which are very dear to it just to use my product? The scenario you mention above was not just a failure, it was a predictable failure.
If we are truly honest, and cut through all the marketing and bullshit, there's only one real reason why every IT-related company would ever use proprietary formats instead of open standards. They are afraid of competing in an open market, with a level playing field, on the basis of who can produce the best implementation of those open standards. As a customer or a potential customer, their fear of doing this doesn't interest me. In fact, if they were forced to do this, the result would be lower prices and better interoperability for everyone. So why, again, should I feel sorry for a company that doesn't want to do things this way and caught a little flak for it?
Really, the loyalty, benefit of doubt, and sympathy that is shown to corporations that would not hesitate to exploit or take advantage of you in any way that they can is staggering (ever heard of vendorlock?). I for one am not buying it.
DRM isn't there to stop piracy completely. It's there to make it much-too-work for the ordinary user, so they would rather buy the real product than waste time to try to get it to work.
Slashdot is full of technically-capable people so it's not surprise DRM stuff always comes up here, but in the "real world" nobody really cares that much about the underlying technology or philosophy. It still works like they would except it to.
I don't believe you have thought this through, so I'll explain why that doesn't work.
The "too much work" only needs to be done once, by the pirates. They have plenty of motivation to do this, not the least of which is that their status in that community is based on what they can crack and how quickly they can crack it. Then infinite perfect copies of the cracked/DRM-free item can easily be distributed worldwide. The ordinary user needs no more work or expertise than what is necessary to run a BitTorrent client, or failing that, all they need to do is ask for a copy from a friend who does know how to run a BitTorrent client.
Some of the reasons given for DRM look good on paper. However, none of the reasons given for DRM stand up to examination under commonly observed real-world conditions.
Thats a valid view, but voting with your wallet has one big flaw that I see. I don't think the failure of the Kindle would have told publishers that DRM for e-books is a loser -- it would have told them that e-books are losers. And like the poster you're responding to, I find e-books very convenient.
If they did a little market research they would learn the reason for any wallet-voting, though I acknowledge that for political reasons there may be little incentive for them to do so. For that reason, perhaps it should be accompanied by some kind of form letter advising them of why the product was not purchased.
I agree that e-books are extremely convenient. I just don't want that convenience to be the bait at the end of a hook to cause the acceptance of something that is profoundly anti-customer and really needs to go the way of the dinosaur.
Personally, I'm hoping that competition and publisher discomfort with a dominant distributor will eventually bring an end to DRM here, just as it did for digital music.
Now that's a really good argument. Not only is it abundantly plausible, it might end up being the best way to deal with this issue particularly in the absence of conscientious customers. I also wish that the posters in this thread who assume that no DRM will destroy the e-book industry would take a hard look at the music industry as you have done.
What does everyone suggest as a replacement for DRM? Do you honestly believe that people can be trusted on an "honor system" to purchase books honestly when they could download them for free in seconds? If there was a place to download all the latest releases, nicely formatted, in the correct format and all, I know that I'd probably download them for free more often than pay.
If DRM actually stopped piracy then you'd have a point. It doesn't. The pirates just see it as a challenge, something they can use to prove their "eliteness" by breaking the DRM scheme. The result is that paying customers bear any inconvenience caused by DRM while people who pirate do not. This has proven to be the case with music, movies, and video games. There is absolutely no reason to think e-books will be different (if anything they are easier to pirate as they are smaller than movies and games). The consistent, predictable creation of situations where the pirate has a better, more usable, less restricted product than the paying customer should tell you something about the effectiveness of DRM.
Imagine if you were a writer, trying to make a living at it, as hard as it is already, and you had no control over what you created. It wouldn't sit well with you either.
While I appreciate the emotional appeal, the assumption of what I would do in a hypothetical situation, and the assumption that all writers unanimously feel the same way about this topic, this isn't valid reasoning.
There's another option entirely - we know the limitations and are OK with it.
I own a Kindle, and was well aware of the DRM restrictions before I bought it. Sure, there are lots of people who have plenty of perfectly legitimate gripes about the DRM, and it *will* restrict them from doing things that they want to do. So they don't purchase it... fine. No problem.
I like the Kindle, and the DRM doesn't prevent me from doing anything I want to do. I wanted an easy way to buy and carry books with me when I travel, and the Kindle does that for me. I don't tend to re-read books when I'm done with them, so if the Kindle service suddenly died, I wouldn't be too broken up about it. Sure there was the initial investment in the reader - but at least for me, the cost was reasonably trivial. I mean, I spend more on bar tabs in a month than I did on the Kindle. The fact that the books I purchase and read are a bit cheaper in electronic version, I've probably saved 25% of the cost of the reader in the few months I've owned it. After a year, it's a break even proposition if you're only looking at the total costs. But for that initial investment, I got the convenience of the reader and the opportunity to read a whole lot more than I would have otherwise. Win-win, in my book.
I just want DRM to die. It's a failed concept, and like all failed concepts it deserves to die. It's also a particularly asinine one, based on the automatic assumption that the person who is buying from you wants to infringe your copyrights even though that person has given no such indication. Only sociopathic assholes celebrate the idea of "guilty until proven innocent," and that's even if their customers are willing to put up with it.
I don't want my dollars to support a DRM scheme even if that DRM scheme is perfect in every way and never interferes with anything I could ever want to do with the device. There are both abstract and pragmatic reasons for that. I thought I'd focus on the pragmatic reasons since most people seem unable to care about much else. In a way, the reasoning here is similar to why you don't give broad, sweeping, unnecessary powers to a government and then complain when they are abused. The mild/agreeable DRM schemes are like the nicer politicians who probably won't abuse the power. There is no guarantee that their successors will be so benevolent.
So yes, Amazon might be using an agreeable DRM scheme right now. They do, after all, want to establish marketshare and get this to catch on, and right now Kindles are far from ubiquitous. It's in their interests to play nice right now. They have enough business sense to understand that pissing off their (relatively) early adopters will doom this product. However, they have not signed any written agreements stating that they will perpetually be this way into the future. In fact, it's a safe assumption that they reserve the right to change their system or its software at any time, and probably without notice (this is standard fare for commercial EULAs). Strictly in terms of business decisions, the bigger and more widespread the Kindle becomes, the more tempting it will be for them to add restrictions. This is not in my interests.
Additionally, this company has already demonstrated with the 1984 deal that they have no qualms about allowing a publisher's mistake to become the customer's problem. I'm a philosopher, so I did not actually need to see a demonstration; just that they had the technical and legal ability to do this was enough for me, for that guarantees it was only a matter of time. In other words, you don't carefully design technical (remote control) and legal (EULAs/agreements) powers like that for the hell of it. You do it because you intend to use them. This is not in my interests either.
I'll say this much about my abstract reasons: my freedom and autonomy are extremely precious to me. They are certainly more precious to me than saving a few bucks. I won't tra
Now you can use your DRM-laden "books" from Amazon on your Windows computer!
Why do so many fawn over Kindle and other like devices with DRM in text, IN TEXT!@, after spending years railing (often against the wrong targets) against DRM in music?
-- maybe this will mean a more useful crack for said DRM --
No shit. To anyone in marketing who might be reading this, I'll fill you in. How to make sure I never, ever buy your product for any reason:
Use any sort of DRM scheme.
Unilaterally and remotely exercise control over the hardware that I have paid for, such as when the book 1984 was forcibly removed from Kindles after its purchase in order to shift some of the cost of the publisher's mistakes onto the end-users.
Use a proprietary or encumbered file format when a widely-supported standard file format is available.
Attempt to track/data-mine my activities so you can send me unsolicited advertisements for items I will make it a point to never buy if you somehow manage to successfully send me the unsolicited advertisements.
Millions, actually. Hunting doesn't even make a dent in their population, and they cause a lot of damage to farmers and ranchers. I'm talking about ground squirrels, not about tree squirrels - the latter are game species. I had more than a hundred ground squirrels last summer near my house alone, running everywhere like rats, eating my plums right off the tree, and such. Don't know how many will be there next March. I had to work on their numbers because their burrows are eroding the hillside, and because I like plums very much:-)
In 2010 I expect to use those 17HMR, and a good deal of high velocity 22LR, in Modoc County starting in March, and later, during whole summer, in Central Valley (Carrizo Plain.)
If it helps, they absolutely love peanut butter. They can't seem to resist it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not perfect, as pretty much nothing is. But insulting the mainstream just because it's the mainstream is what make you elitist. I'm sure any plan you could come up with wouldn't automatically make everyone happy, loving and peaceful. Reminds me of people who stop liking a band because its achieved commercial success or stop drinking a craft brew because it's starting to catch on with many people. Pointless, self-defeating, and yes elitist.
Well, you've already decided that you know enough about me to make judgments about my character. You've also decided to make this into a personal matter rather than telling me why you think my statements are incorrect. There's nothing arrogant about those two, right? I won't hold my breath waiting for you to discover for yourself that ad-hominem attacks are the mark of a weak position, nor will I hold my breath waiting for you to admit that you are judging someone you don't know the first thing about rather than discussing what was said. So I seriously doubt you'll listen to any explanation. But again, what the hell.
I was referring to the results of those beliefs, as evidenced by the society that they produce when they are put into practice. If those beliefs could only be found in a small village at a remote location, then I would have said the exact same thing, only I would not have called them mainstream because in that case they would not represent the majority of people in this society. So we have beliefs and political opinions which have been put into practice with little resistence and mostly token dissent, and those beliefs have given us a far-less-than-ideal world that is substantially worse than what would otherwise be achievable or has been achieved in the past. Yet despite their many flaws, they are commonly-held beliefs. If this isn't a definition of "lowest common denominator" then I am not sure what is.
To assume that my problem with them is just that they are common, when in fact I have specifically told you that the results of those beliefs are why I don't like them, is frankly rather asinine. If the mainstream beliefs led to an enlightened society where people loved freedom and had true agape love for one another, I would have no problem with it at all. You seem to honestly think that I'd actually want to change that scenario. It's like you're eager to make judgments about somebody and were just waiting for an excuse to do so. If so, you have much company, for that too is a common path.
I don't see any injustice here, however, because there is no way that anyone who is that trigger-happy or needs to feel "right" that badly is a very happy and fulfilled individual. Even the ones who think they are happy can become upset and angry with just a few words, a few insults, or a few rude gestures and that's because they don't have the strength that patience and compassion require. If they did, they wouldn't be so eager to judge others or to make everything into a personal matter. So you see, water seeks its own level one way or another.
Whenever I see the term "mainstream" used, I wish it were replaced with "lowest common denominator" instead. It'd be a better world.
Whenever I see the user "causality" commenting, I wish the user name were replaced with "elitist douche" instead. It'd be a better world.
Because the public opinion and political power wielded by that majority which, by definition, adheres to "mainstream" views has led us to such a delightful society full of happy, loving, peaceful people . Surely anyone who thinks otherwise is an elitist, and a douche. Right?
In many Christian sects, the obedience is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how good a person you are (or aren't), only faith will save you.
In Christian doctrine, the requirement that you have a certain kind of faith before you can have salvation can be construed as a rule.
After all, they like to brag about having the most viewers. I think that makes them pretty damn mainstream. (Lying to themselves that they are not MSM doesn't mean jack.)
Whenever I see the term "mainstream" used, I wish it were replaced with "lowest common denominator" instead. It'd be a better world.
For many people, it's just not good enough that they can choose not to believe in anything that doesn't suit them. They have to also hate the fact that other people would choose to believe in something that they would not. You can see this in the contempt that they show towards others, and their need to hold themselves up as a paragon of rationality and harmlessness whenever they think anyone is looking. I have met atheists who respect the right of others to believe whatever they wish, who certainly disagree with religious folks but could do so without having contempt for them or judging them as a bunch of superstitious idiots. It was a privilege to know them, in fact.
I appreciated that they could enjoy their freedom of belief without the condemnation of others who would use that freedom differently. Unfortunately, I have not known many, nor have I heard from many online. Either they are rare or they are less vocal than their counterparts who practice their own, non-religious version of a self-congratulatory "holier than thou." Personally, I suspect that they are less vocal because they don't have an axe to grind. This is generally true of anyone who wants to live their lives without undue concern about how others choose to live, whether they are atheistic or devoutly religious.
This is, of course, equally true of religious people who had contempt for those who practice a different religion (or for atheists and agnostics). These are more well-known, however. They are often portrayed as such in the media, and they are generally more likely to have someone call their BS. Perhaps for that reason, the fact that atheists are just as human as anyone else and are not automatically protected from irrational or arrogant behavior merely because they are non-religious seems to be forgotten from time to time.
I think that's why your correction was necessary. It was good that you point out that this is about alleged criminal behavior. If the governments of modern industrialized nations started prosecuting people merely because of their beliefs alone, this would be a dangerous and disturbing precedent. You can read a good history book to find out how much damage this can do. As much as anyone may dislike a particular religion, or all religions in general, they should still be very glad that this isn't what happened here.
email me at tonyzmadmodz@gmail.com and I can get you a free nintendo DS.
So what did Tony do to piss you off?
We've already addressed this problem. It's called the Darwin Award!
They have Honorable Mentions, too.
"If scent made such a noticable difference, then you can safely say that these folks were not terribly committed to doing the Right Thing. They needed an external motivation. That's hardly as good as doing the best you can, all the time, because you seriously believe in and want to adhere to sound, timeless principles that have a solid ethical or moral foundation. "
That sounds like the distinction between Perfect and Imperfect Contrition in the Catholic Catechism. Perfect Contrition is when you are repentant of your sins because you love God and are sorry you have broken His agreement with you. Imperfect Contrition is when you are repentant because you don't want to go to Hell.
Guess what - either gets you into Heaven. Likewise, I'm not sure anyone should care WHY someone does the right thing, as long as they do it.
Let's say I am a general, in command of an army that is about to go to war. All other things being completely equal between the opposing armies, let's say that my army is entirely composed of volunteer, professional soldiers who truly believe in what we're fighting for. They believe in it so much that they are willing to lay down their lives and die for this cause with no coercion of any kind. The opposing army is composed entirely of conscripts who had to be threatened with imprisonment to get them to join the armed forces. They are otherwise equal in every way; equal amount of training, equal supplies, and equally good strategy is used by both sides.
If I were to place bets, I know which army I would bet for. There is a strength that comes from right motive that is unobtainable otherwise. While things are going well and everything is peachy, people who don't have much insight won't notice much difference between the person who fears Hell and the person who loves God. When the shit hits the fan, however, one of those is going to crumble first. One of those will panic and lose their heads first. It won't be the person with love, not if their love is real.
A lot of the good things that people try to do don't have the full effectiveness that they could have had. They don't really reach the recipients, don't really get them to look at their lives and their values differently the way they could have done. That's because many people who do good deeds do them for less-than-pure reasons. They want to be thought of as good by others, they want to impress others, or they want some kind of recognition or favor in return. They give in order to get. This deprives them of the chance to do something truly self-less, which is its own reward, and it deprives the recipients of seeing what it looks like when such a self-less act takes place. It's business as usual, just a bit more favorable.
The whole problem I have with most organized religions and most of the people in them is that they do things because they think they're supposed to. They fear hell or they fear the condemnation of others. They operate out of that fear and it is the energy which fuels their actions. So you can go to most churches and you find people who judge you by how you dress, whether you're "clean-cut", and other superficial meaningless things, but you don't see very much that really resembles unconditional love. There is a universe of difference between acting out of a fear of negative consequences and acting out of a real delight of having done the right thing, for both the giver and the receiver. I mourn the fact that we live in a society that is so blind and superficial that every last person doesn't consider this to be obvious.
Are you two married?
That made me laugh!
No. What bothers me is this exact phrase:
You don't question it based on the fact that it might have been set up wrong. Or that they interpreted the results correctly. You don't attack the science based on facts and reason. No. You decide the study is without merit because, apparently, it doesn't fit with your worldview. That's irrational. It's also an excellent example of one of the true ills of society today: The unwillingness of people to see the world for what it is, instead preferring to filter and bend fact to fit their own ideas of how the world actually works.
Actually the meaning of the results is precisely where I differ with this study. To me, they mean that most people are operating on a sort of auto-pilot and I have already explained why I believe so. Also, not once did I say it was without merit. Re-read my posts; you will not find me saying that anywhere. I said I question the merits. "Questioning" denotes uncertainty; it does not constitute a claim of either merit or lack thereof. This means you were dead wrong about what I said, and it also means that the application of the same rationality you demand could have revealed that to you before you responded to me.
Perhaps this is a reading comprehension issue. Or perhaps it pleases you to put words in my mouth and then attack those words. Either way, please don't try to pass this off as quality discourse. It most definitely isn't. Now if you really want to do something decent, just admit that you saw what I said and decided to read things into it that clearly weren't there.
I question many things and I consider that a healthy trait. I'll question whatever I feel like questioning. This includes both those things that are within the scope of science and those things which are not. That you would see that as errant behavior in need of correction is truly baffling to me. I don't usually encounter that, except from some of the more closed-minded religious people.
Incidentally, you've never demonstrated that I am failing to see the world as it is. That would be a vast, general, sweeping claim. A few paragraphs from a stranger is not enough data to make this claim. Demonstrating beyond a doubt, with adequate data, that I fail to see the world as it is would be the rational thing to do before touting me as an example of one of the "true ills of society today." No, I think the harshness of that baseless assumption is designed to make me get upset, emotional, and less rational, because right now I am providing a contrast against your methods. You have egg on your face, and there's no way you don't know it.
It's a bit like those people who assume you don't understand something merely because you take a different position on it than they would. The message is "agreeing with me, doing as I do, questioning only what I would question, that is the only path away from ignorance." There's a lot of arrogance in it.
It doesn't take a great deal of insight to realize that you have a strong need for me to be wrong so you can be right. Right from the start you've taken a belligerent tone when nothing I said was malicious or inflammatory. It's as though you are offended that I would dare to approach this from an angle that you would not. It's a shame, because conversations like these are so much better when egos don't get so involved. That is precisely one of the "default settings" I was talking about.
I said that most people aren't terribly committed to doing good and that they operate on a sort of auto-pilot, meaning they are not thinking beings who perform deliberate action, though potentially they could be. This isn't so rosy. In fact it's rather disappointing.
Nothing I said disagrees with this. In fact, I proposed the "auto-pilot" as an explanation for it. It happens to be an explanation that, if true, means that this is not set in stone, that people are not actually forced to be this way. For that reason, I view it as a "default" setting -- the way things are if the person doesn't consciously work to change them.
Is that what bothers you so? Because it implies that people bear some personal responsibility for whether or not they are trying to become better (by that I mean more ethical) people? I suppose that's one way to view it. Another way to view it is that if you really are responsible for who you are and what you do, then this is proof positive that it is within your power to change those things for the better. This is excellent news, in fact it is a message of hope.
Unfortunately the actual effect this is going to have is that every store that can get away with it will now treat air fresheners like fratboys treat axe.
Which will probably end up having an opposite effect. I know that whenever I smell highly excessive air freshener, or a highly excessive amount of perfume/cologne/etc on a person, I sometimes wonder what it is that they're trying so hard to cover up. Particularly that extremely potent lotion or perfume that some of the women at the office would use; seems like a few drops of that stuff will cover a square mile.
A small, tasteful amount is a different story, of course.
If a place smells like a moose just died in it, especially if its also visibly dirty, then I just sort of get the impression that it doesn't actually matter what I do in there. On the other hand, when a place is spotless, smells lemony fresh and everything appears in order then I'm not going to be the one to put my feet on the coffee table, no matter how tempting it might be. Smell ties into taste and is one of the more powerful senses we have, so it makes sense that it would play a large part in determining our impression of what is or isn't acceptable in a given location, every bit as much as it tells us what foods seem OK to eat.
You certainly do have a point, though I question the merits of a study like this one. If scent made such a noticable difference, then you can safely say that these folks were not terribly committed to doing the Right Thing. They needed an external motivation. That's hardly as good as doing the best you can, all the time, because you seriously believe in and want to adhere to sound, timeless principles that have a solid ethical or moral foundation.
For that reason, I take this to be further evidence that most people operate on a sort of auto-pilot.
It'd be nice if the author made it more clear what OS this is claimed to apply to. For example, Solaris 10 has /usr/bin/ldd as an ELF. I don't have my HP-UX or AIX test systems handy, nevermind recent releases of RHEL.
Also, what efforts has the coder gone to in order to notify the appropriate security groups so that a fix can be produced quickly? I'm not disputing the potential security issues, but there is a reason for first disclosing to a vendor on non-public channels. Give the vendor/coder the chance to do the right thing and produce a fix.
Notify the vendor/coder first? I use Linux on my desktop computer and I really don't feel threatened by this. At all. They can 0-day all they like.
Now, if they find a remotely exploitable vulnerability that can be used to run code or gain a root shell without my active assistance, and that didn't first require me to receive and then choose to work with an untrusted binary, well then I would understand your concern.
There's already a secure PDF format which publishers could use. Why you'd want to read a book on an LCD or CRT I have no idea, though.
Real question: what's so terrible about a good LCD screen? I frequently hear people complain about the idea of reading books on an LCD screen, yet I have done this myself and didn't think it was bad at all.
The CRTs I think I can understand. I'm one of those people who can detect the flicker even at reasonably high refresh rates, so they will eventually tire my eyes if I don't make it a point to look away from the screen from time to time. Even at the very best refresh rates, the scanned CRT is not regarded by the eyes as a solid image like a wall or a sheet of paper and they have to do a little extra work to give the illusion of a steady image.
I believe LCDs don't have this problem because they can independently and simultaneously control each pixel, and lighting one pixel doesn't cause the previous one to stop being lit so there is no concept of continuously scanning lines. However, I make no claims of having any expertise in this area, so please correct me if I am wrong about that.
The story is almost full of comments about the closed-source nature of the spotify library. I do also use Linux myself, not on my primary desktop, but on servers and time-to-time messing around in Linux desktop too. Based on your nick I suspect you love the philosophy of Linux and GPL, which you guessed right, I dont that much as it's beside my area.
But the point here is that while Linux has less than 0.5% desktop market share, it still the bitchiest one and while *demanding* software, libraries and drivers from companies, goes into huge "fuck off" mode when they provide such as closed source for whatever reason (providing them as open source, free for all to use GPL'd may hurt their business, or it may violate their licenses with other companies).
It's great that even on Slashdot many Linux users see this issue and understand why companies dont support Linux more, but then theres the other growth who have got the whole GPL thing too much into their head without understanding the real issue.
There's another side to this, though.
If I am a company and I know that a portion of my customers strongly value software freedom, and then I release software (at no cost or any cost) that does not support such software freedom, and then I receive a backlash, that's my fault. That would be my own failure to understand the market I intended to reach. It would be like an automaker who only manufactures blue cars and expects that to work well in a market that overwhelmingly wants red cars. If the automaker blamed the market for that, it would be quite arrogant of them.
Now, I might decide that this market is not reachable, and decide that I won't bother producing anything for it. That'd be my prerogative. But if I am to try to reach them at all, I need to do that correctly by giving them what they want the way that they want it. A half-assed effort to do that which backfires is not the community's fault. What would I expect, exactly? For that community to give up ideals and principles which are very dear to it just to use my product? The scenario you mention above was not just a failure, it was a predictable failure.
If we are truly honest, and cut through all the marketing and bullshit, there's only one real reason why every IT-related company would ever use proprietary formats instead of open standards. They are afraid of competing in an open market, with a level playing field, on the basis of who can produce the best implementation of those open standards. As a customer or a potential customer, their fear of doing this doesn't interest me. In fact, if they were forced to do this, the result would be lower prices and better interoperability for everyone. So why, again, should I feel sorry for a company that doesn't want to do things this way and caught a little flak for it?
Really, the loyalty, benefit of doubt, and sympathy that is shown to corporations that would not hesitate to exploit or take advantage of you in any way that they can is staggering (ever heard of vendorlock?). I for one am not buying it.
DRM isn't there to stop piracy completely. It's there to make it much-too-work for the ordinary user, so they would rather buy the real product than waste time to try to get it to work.
Slashdot is full of technically-capable people so it's not surprise DRM stuff always comes up here, but in the "real world" nobody really cares that much about the underlying technology or philosophy. It still works like they would except it to.
I don't believe you have thought this through, so I'll explain why that doesn't work.
The "too much work" only needs to be done once, by the pirates. They have plenty of motivation to do this, not the least of which is that their status in that community is based on what they can crack and how quickly they can crack it. Then infinite perfect copies of the cracked/DRM-free item can easily be distributed worldwide. The ordinary user needs no more work or expertise than what is necessary to run a BitTorrent client, or failing that, all they need to do is ask for a copy from a friend who does know how to run a BitTorrent client.
Some of the reasons given for DRM look good on paper. However, none of the reasons given for DRM stand up to examination under commonly observed real-world conditions.
I do want to add one more thing about DRM. Beware politician's logic, which goes "we must do something. This is something, so it must be done!"
If they did a little market research they would learn the reason for any wallet-voting, though I acknowledge that for political reasons there may be little incentive for them to do so. For that reason, perhaps it should be accompanied by some kind of form letter advising them of why the product was not purchased.
I agree that e-books are extremely convenient. I just don't want that convenience to be the bait at the end of a hook to cause the acceptance of something that is profoundly anti-customer and really needs to go the way of the dinosaur.
Now that's a really good argument. Not only is it abundantly plausible, it might end up being the best way to deal with this issue particularly in the absence of conscientious customers. I also wish that the posters in this thread who assume that no DRM will destroy the e-book industry would take a hard look at the music industry as you have done.
If DRM actually stopped piracy then you'd have a point. It doesn't. The pirates just see it as a challenge, something they can use to prove their "eliteness" by breaking the DRM scheme. The result is that paying customers bear any inconvenience caused by DRM while people who pirate do not. This has proven to be the case with music, movies, and video games. There is absolutely no reason to think e-books will be different (if anything they are easier to pirate as they are smaller than movies and games). The consistent, predictable creation of situations where the pirate has a better, more usable, less restricted product than the paying customer should tell you something about the effectiveness of DRM.
While I appreciate the emotional appeal, the assumption of what I would do in a hypothetical situation, and the assumption that all writers unanimously feel the same way about this topic, this isn't valid reasoning.
There's another option entirely - we know the limitations and are OK with it.
I own a Kindle, and was well aware of the DRM restrictions before I bought it. Sure, there are lots of people who have plenty of perfectly legitimate gripes about the DRM, and it *will* restrict them from doing things that they want to do. So they don't purchase it... fine. No problem.
I like the Kindle, and the DRM doesn't prevent me from doing anything I want to do. I wanted an easy way to buy and carry books with me when I travel, and the Kindle does that for me. I don't tend to re-read books when I'm done with them, so if the Kindle service suddenly died, I wouldn't be too broken up about it. Sure there was the initial investment in the reader - but at least for me, the cost was reasonably trivial. I mean, I spend more on bar tabs in a month than I did on the Kindle. The fact that the books I purchase and read are a bit cheaper in electronic version, I've probably saved 25% of the cost of the reader in the few months I've owned it. After a year, it's a break even proposition if you're only looking at the total costs. But for that initial investment, I got the convenience of the reader and the opportunity to read a whole lot more than I would have otherwise. Win-win, in my book.
I just want DRM to die. It's a failed concept, and like all failed concepts it deserves to die. It's also a particularly asinine one, based on the automatic assumption that the person who is buying from you wants to infringe your copyrights even though that person has given no such indication. Only sociopathic assholes celebrate the idea of "guilty until proven innocent," and that's even if their customers are willing to put up with it.
I don't want my dollars to support a DRM scheme even if that DRM scheme is perfect in every way and never interferes with anything I could ever want to do with the device. There are both abstract and pragmatic reasons for that. I thought I'd focus on the pragmatic reasons since most people seem unable to care about much else. In a way, the reasoning here is similar to why you don't give broad, sweeping, unnecessary powers to a government and then complain when they are abused. The mild/agreeable DRM schemes are like the nicer politicians who probably won't abuse the power. There is no guarantee that their successors will be so benevolent.
So yes, Amazon might be using an agreeable DRM scheme right now. They do, after all, want to establish marketshare and get this to catch on, and right now Kindles are far from ubiquitous. It's in their interests to play nice right now. They have enough business sense to understand that pissing off their (relatively) early adopters will doom this product. However, they have not signed any written agreements stating that they will perpetually be this way into the future. In fact, it's a safe assumption that they reserve the right to change their system or its software at any time, and probably without notice (this is standard fare for commercial EULAs). Strictly in terms of business decisions, the bigger and more widespread the Kindle becomes, the more tempting it will be for them to add restrictions. This is not in my interests.
Additionally, this company has already demonstrated with the 1984 deal that they have no qualms about allowing a publisher's mistake to become the customer's problem. I'm a philosopher, so I did not actually need to see a demonstration; just that they had the technical and legal ability to do this was enough for me, for that guarantees it was only a matter of time. In other words, you don't carefully design technical (remote control) and legal (EULAs/agreements) powers like that for the hell of it. You do it because you intend to use them. This is not in my interests either.
I'll say this much about my abstract reasons: my freedom and autonomy are extremely precious to me. They are certainly more precious to me than saving a few bucks. I won't tra
Now you can use your DRM-laden "books" from Amazon on your Windows computer!
Why do so many fawn over Kindle and other like devices with DRM in text, IN TEXT!@, after spending years railing (often against the wrong targets) against DRM in music?
-- maybe this will mean a more useful crack for said DRM --
No shit. To anyone in marketing who might be reading this, I'll fill you in. How to make sure I never, ever buy your product for any reason:
This list is not intended to be exhaustive.
You must have a lot of squirrels in your area.
Millions, actually. Hunting doesn't even make a dent in their population, and they cause a lot of damage to farmers and ranchers. I'm talking about ground squirrels, not about tree squirrels - the latter are game species. I had more than a hundred ground squirrels last summer near my house alone, running everywhere like rats, eating my plums right off the tree, and such. Don't know how many will be there next March. I had to work on their numbers because their burrows are eroding the hillside, and because I like plums very much :-)
In 2010 I expect to use those 17HMR, and a good deal of high velocity 22LR, in Modoc County starting in March, and later, during whole summer, in Central Valley (Carrizo Plain.)
If it helps, they absolutely love peanut butter. They can't seem to resist it.
You must have a lot of squirrels in your area.
> I doubt I'd actually be in a foxhole (that sort of implies you're fighting by > the other side's rules)...
Having dirt between you and the bullets is good.
"You may find me one day, dead in a ditch somewhere. But by God, you'll find me in a pile of brass."
-- Trooper M. Padgett