For instance, you might loan your car to a friend, a family member, or a neighbor. You might do so on many different occasions and for different lengths of time. But you are unlikely to leave the car out front of your house with the keys in it and a sign on it saying, "Take me!" If you did, you might never see the vehicle again. It's that ability to lose control over property that is central to the DPP system.
and come up with a response like this: "but if I could make an infinite number of perfect copies of my car while retaining my own copy, at low or no cost, what would be my incentive to use a system designed to make me lose control over my car or any other property?"
You made me think of universal assemblers just there. I wonder what it would be like once *everything* is just information... from your car and house to donor organs. I wonder what those far distant future people would think of digital personal property....
The advent of universal assemblers would probably be actively resisted for the purpose of preserving an outdated economic model based on scarcity. Rather than celebrate the new era of plenty that this would achieve, many of our most powerful economic and political forces would fight it tooth and nail before they would adapt to the new world it would represent. That this is so likely almost makes me ashamed to be a member of this species.
"Currently we tend to think of any sort of information as something to be shared freely. It's what we as a species do. I think that tendency to swap data among ourselves is what led us to amass the information that makes up our present culture and technology. It's a pretty basic thing in human beings. "
Not exactly. Your statement most definitely doesn't apply to private information. Or else what would we talk about the other half of the time on Slashdot?
Since he did not specify what sort of information, and did not say "each and every possible form of information", I'm wondering what the use is of pointing this out. Hell I don't know, people often point out lots of things that were clearly implied or at least allowed for by the original text, and why they feel a need to do so is something of a mystery to me. I can't think of a good reason for it. Some less-than-good potential reasons include an inability to deal with any amount of subtlety, or perhaps a careless use of language that leaves loose ends which can easily be misinterpreted without such redundant clarifications. Still, I prefer to think that if the GP meant "every and all possible forms of information, with no exceptions" then he would have said so, in which case saying "wait, that doesn't apply to THIS form of information" would make a lot more sense.
Okay, pedantic mode off. Even private information is routinely shared. You're just careful about with whom it is shared, preferring to restrict it to people you trust or to people who have a legitimate need to know. If you read the GP's text and immediately thought only of "gee I sure wouldn't want my credit card numbers plastered all over the WWW" then you're taking a deliberately narrow interpretation of a much broader point.
surely after years of being beaten to a pulp they MUST have learned that any attempt at controlling is more than futile?
They keep trying for the same reason that politicians who push for shitty laws keep trying: they know that they only need one major victory and everyone will be stuck with it forever. That's why they don't read something like this:
For instance, you might loan your car to a friend, a family member, or a neighbor. You might do so on many different occasions and for different lengths of time. But you are unlikely to leave the car out front of your house with the keys in it and a sign on it saying, "Take me!" If you did, you might never see the vehicle again. It's that ability to lose control over property that is central to the DPP system.
and come up with a response like this: "but if I could make an infinite number of perfect copies of my car while retaining my own copy, at low or no cost, what would be my incentive to use a system designed to make me lose control over my car or any other property?"
Microsoft always gives you exactly what they promised to give you. If you're the one exception in the entire world, feel free to sue them. Oh, and please let me know exactly how they failed to deliver on which promise - I'm quite curious. Thanks.
Perhaps it's not technically a "promise" but calling WGA a "security update" is pretty damned close. I mean, a user who sees "security update" is going to think "if I don't install this, then I will be vulnerable to malware" and that just wasn't the case here. Yeah, I suppose it would be cute to say "but WGA is for Microsoft's security!" but that still doesn't negate the fact that all the other security updates really were bugfixes to the OS. Microsoft knows damned well that if they called it "Phone-home software" or "Software to make you prove to us that you didn't pirate Windows" then far fewer users would have accepted it. The message here is quite clear - "we will mislead you whenever it's in our interests to do so."
I personally don't care for Windows, but even if I liked it very much, seeing this kind of shit would make me disinclined to use it because using Windows would mean having to deal with Microsoft and would mean having to support them with my money. However, the average person doesn't give a damn and they know it, so these practices continue.
I think otherwise the complaint of MS not delivering what they promise has more to do with standard marketing language that most companies use. For example, they often claim their software is "so easy to use!" but if that's the case, why are there so many books written and courses taught and Web sites devoted to helping users with basic everyday usage of their software? Why do average users tend to be so ignorant about basic care and maintainence of their Windows machines, not to mention security issues?
Now that's not really uncommon in marketing, unfortunately. When a toothpaste company says "4 out of 5 dentists recommend our product!" they don't specify whether they offered those four dentists thousands of dollars to say so. If another five dentists had unanimously recommended a competitor's product, they would omit that from their commercials. To me, Microsoft's marketing exaggerations are in the same ballpark, but that still doesn't make them right.
Perhaps if the GP's system was implemented before MS got to be so big there would have been more incentive for a) MS to act more ethically, b) other businesses to choose a software supplier with a better reputation for ethical behaviour and c) businesses to source their software from a variety of vendors to spread their risk around.
Thank you. Those "network" or secondary effects are actually the entire point of the idea I was proposing. I think you may be the only person who really understood where I was going with that.
Collectively, we are voting with our feet each time we purchase or support anything in any way. We don't think of it that way, however. We just carelessly go for whatever is cheapest or most convenient. By doing that, we are supporting practices and ideas that deserve to fail. Often, we are also enriching and equipping people who do not have our interests at heart and who already have undue influence over our society and political systems. A reason to think a little more carefully about who you do business with, and in turn, a reason for that business to think a little more carefully about the effects and implications of its decisions, is something that may improve the situation.
And lets execute the corporation when it kills people. Just line up the employees and shoot them. After a proper trial.
There IS a type of corporate death penalty. That would be the revocation of the corporate charter. It practically never happens, however, because we collectively care a lot more about the inconvenience this would cause than we care about justice.
Ah, now we get to it. You don't like executives and think they should go to jail when a large group of people all get together and make an agreement to undertake a risky venture and said venture goes south.
I can't speak for the person to whom you were replying but I can give you my response to this. I'm rather indifferent to executives. There is one thing I really don't like about them, however. I really don't like that they can either get away with, or receive only a slap on the wrist, for doing things that would cause the average person to be locked up for a very long time if he/she did the same.
Some people are a bit petty, so they will call that jealousy or envy because that's the only way they can understand it, but really it's an issue of rule of law. If the concept of rule of law is tossed out, so that the law doesn't apply equally to everyone, then the society we know and many of the freedoms it protects get tossed out with it. It's a slow process of erosion that can take generations to happen, but I see something like that beginning to happen here and it really should be recognized for what it is.
Yes, that's how it used to be before incorporation, and the trouble with that system is that no one will take charge of those risky ventures because they'd be afraid of going to jail.
Not sure about the GP, but my original post accounted for this and I don't believe there is a flaw in it (as in, if there is one I don't see it). Keep the limited liability nature of a corporation, that way if a venture fails or an accident happens then the members of the corporation are not personally liable. However, if they make decisions that they know will result in real harm to real people, and if it can be proven that they knew this would happen, then you remove the "corporate veil" and you personally prosecute every member of management who was a part of the decision-making.
You talk about class and rights, but really you're just feeling vengeful and envious of people you don't even know, and I think you're pretty hypocritical in feigning concern for the little guy when under your system he'd be mired in poverty right now.
I don't believe that prosecuting people who knowingly and intentionally cause harm to unwilling third parties threatens anyone's rights in any way. In fact, I believe it strengthens them, specifically it strengthens the rights of those third parties to not be harmed against their will. The only thing I am personally calling for is the removal of one technique for intentionally harming other people with impunity. Do you believe that your objection to the GP applies here? I don't think it does but if I am overlooking something I would be glad to have it pointed out.
Except that MS has to hand out vouchers for more MS products, giving them an even bigger market share.
[see Sony Rootkit settlement for details]
Yeah, and that's what's broken about the way the law handles corporations.
Corporations should face jailtime for any crime or activity that would result in a person being incarcerated. Jail for a person means the loss of most freedoms and it also means they are separated from the rest of society. "Jail" for a corporation should mean that all assets are frozen and all business activities are forced to halt for the same number of days that a real person would have been incarcerated. If the lost sales result in bankruptcy, that's too bad, just like if a person with a few years to live commits a violent crime and gets locked up for a long time and dies in prison, that's also too bad.
This to me would be the proper treatment of "corporations have the same rights as real individuals." A good alternative might be to keep the limited liability nature of a corporation for any failures or accidents, but to remove it and allow for personally prosecuting and imprisoning any and all members of upper management who knowingly support an illegal action wherever intent can be proven.
I just found the prose horribly ugly. The basic fantasy world was so derivative of Tolkien that I just wanted to barf, but if it had at least been well written, maybe I could have got past that, but it was trash. I'm a bit of a fantasy fan, particularly Tolkien and Moorcock, and Jordan was the toilet paper of fantasy fiction.
Personally I liked the series. My worst objection to it is that while I was about 4 books into it, this thought kept occurring to me: "as a plot device, just how many times is he going to have main characters get captured while travelling?" It felt like anytime anyone was on the road to any village or any city, their capture and subsequent rescue was going to occupy the next several chapters. That got old. I never did finish the Wheel of Time series but otherwise I enjoyed the books I have read.
It's not unlike a similar feeling I had when reading King's Dark Tower series (which I truly enjoyed - it's an amazing work). I got a little tired of hearing about New York City, as I greatly preferred to hear about strange new worlds, not concrete jungles. That could be because I don't live in a large city and wouldn't want to, as I personally find them to be nerve-wracking and suffocating. They're the kind of place I wouldn't mind briefly visiting but living there is extremely unappealing to me. The hustle and bustle never inspired me the way the outdoors always does, so I may have a bias that kept me from fully appreciating this part of the series.
I appreciate this explanation. Sometimes opposites are exactly equal. Thus, I suppose the only thing I would add is that whether the corporation takes over the government, or whether the government takes over the corporation, either way their interests become one and the same. I consider the end result of both scenarios to be indistinguishable (as you said about the general public being screwed either way).
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
The words "corporate" and "corporatism" had very different meanings back then. For Fascists specifically, this meant something closer to Medieval professional guilds, and not at all what we today call "corporations".
I'll be honest with you, this looks like splitting hairs for no good reason. Whether it's a modern corporation or a guild, this is how it works: $NON-GOVERNMENTAL-ENTITY ($NGE) acquires undue influence over the state, to the point that the state begins to represent the interests of $NGE more than it represents the interests of its general public. The state and $NGE learn to work together, so that anytime $NGE needs to get something done that it is not authorized to do, it knows it can grease a few palms and get the state to take care of it. Or, it knows that it can do those things itself and the state will look the other way. Likewise, if the state needs to get something done and wants to avoid scrutiny by not going through official channels, then the state turns to $NGE. Working together, as a duopoly of sorts, they can make sure that the people have no voice in politics anymore, though to prevent a revolution before their power is fully consolidated, they might allow the illusion that the people still have any degree of control. When this is complete, both of them view the people as a dehumanized resource to be mined and exploited as much as possible, like so much oil or lumber. The $NGE will do this by amassing wealth, while the state will often do this by amassing armies and fighting pointless aggressive wars, often against nations that were never a threat to it.
Honestly, whether $NGE is an LLC, a sole proprietorship, a non-profit organization, or a medieval guild makes no difference to me whatsoever. The process is the same because it's a very general and time-tested process that has occurred more than once throughout history.
"No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any concise definition."
Of late, it has become the pejorative de jour for any system the speaker dislikes.
People would listen to you and buy you beers if you couched your criticisms in terms understood by those at the far.
For this reason I sometimes call it statism. It's a nice, simple, easily-understood word that does the job and comes with none of the confusion that's built into many similar terms. It also sums up what fascism, communism, national socialism, and all similar systems have in common: the expansion of state power at all costs, the subordination of all significant aspects of life (such as economic and personal liberties) to an authoritarian state, and the devaluing of human life which must necessarily take place before anyone can believe that the people exist to serve the state rather than the other way around.
Honestly, if another totalitarian state should occur anywhere on the planet during my lifetime, the exact name of its political machinery will make little or no difference to me. I think for that reason, "fascism" is often understood to be interchangable with "statism" even though this is not technically correct. That's particularly true for those who have studied a little Latin and are familiar with the word "fasces" (a bundle of rods with an axe protruding) which was often touted as a symbol of (Roman) state power, with the implication being that state power for its own sake was considered desirable or "glorius." For the original fasces, the rods represented corporal punishment while the protruding axe represented execution by beheading, and it was meant to symbolize the state's power over life and limb. A similar sentiment is demonstrated by any politician who dreams of being your master, under any political system, which is probably why it's so difficult to come up with a single concise definition of "fascism."
Now if you want a deeper mystery, just think about how fucked up a person must be to actually want to live in an environment that is as thoroughly saturated with misery and human suffering as a modern totalitarian state. Even if you could be in charge of it, why the hell would you want to live there in such a poisonous environment?
Funny, I thought conservatism always meant valuing traditions and status quo and that's what republicans are mostly doing.
The PATRIOT Act is an excellent example of something that was not the status quo. We haven't seen that kind of power grab in this country since Abraham Lincoln decided to suspend habeus corpus, jailed 18,000 or so "Confederate sympathizers" without trial, and spent money that Congress had not appropriated. Yet the Republicans who support the PATRIOT act call themselves "conservative." So, I must conclude that they are using the same word but the meaning has changed drastically. Perhaps for just that reason some refer to this relatively new generation as "neo-conservatives." Too bad that has become such a loaded word.
I'm not sure you absolutely have to register with the city hall - I believe sometimes other documents like an IDP (or even credit card) will be recognized. Either way, "confirming identity" is a common bureaucratic procedure for service...
It just makes you wonder why they need to do that, or why the government even cares about which payment plan you use for your wireless phone. Generally speaking, the sale of a good or of a service goes like this: you give money, you receive good or service. To insert "government butts in and confirms your ID" between those two steps, there really should be a very good overriding reason explaining why this is absolutely necessary. Are there nations which have fallen apart and descended into anarchy because private citizens may be able to make anonymous telephone calls? That's about what it would take for this to have real merit.
However, eventually everyone must learn to compete in the real game where there are winners and losers and ignorance has a price tag attached. If you don't like a deal or believe that the other side is holding out or obfuscating then threaten to walk away and follow through if you aren't satisfied. People get poor deals on telephone service, mortgages and financial services because they are ignorant and lazy not because they are unable to do better if they put some effort into the negotiations.
Part of the problem is that the price tag is not high enough. I say that because it obviously has not provided the necessary incentive to render self-correcting all of this widespread ignorance. To put it simply, that's because a good parasite does not kill its host. That's why major corporations accommodate, encourage, and coddle various forms of ignorance. They rarely or never refuse a sale on the basis of the customer not understanding what he or she is buying. At the same time, they know that if the price tag for such ignorance became too high, that if they abused it too much, there would be a severe customer backlash and a public effort to prevent a reoccurrence. They would be killing their own cash cow if they allowed that to happen.
The only real solution I know is to act on principle. A principled person doesn't want to be ignorant and will take steps to prevent it, whether or not a high price tag is attached to it. It's simply the right thing to do. A principled person doesn't care to be taken advantage of, whether the perpetrator stands to gain millions of dollars or a single penny. For that matter, a principled person does not sign something like a mortgage contract without fully understanding it first. Such people are not known for complaining about things like "predatory lending."
And sounds a lot like what was being accomplished by Bush. Unpatriotic was the charge leveled repeatedly. The insane spending was initiated by Bush. The only howls are because a few different groups are getting the payouts and bribes than the Republicans would have given. Many of the payouts are the same under either party. The key to recognize is that the corporations don't care which party is in charge as long as they have been thoroughly bought. In fact, by having 2 and only two parties, the parties can fight over 'issues' and make voting seem important, when the (big) corporations still win. And having small companies die is great for the big corporations because they get them for a song. And it's not stockholders who make out like bandits, it's the actual bandits, CEO's, CFO's and cronies, who have the SEC in their back pocket.
Please pardon how I put this, but it's a real pleasure to hear from someone who doesn't have his head up his ass. The two party duopoly is one of the pillars of our current situation, and there is unfortunately a shortage of people who can realize that on their own as you have done. As you seem to understand, the general naivete and encouraged ignorance has become so widespread that few people personally know the sharp insight and intuitive brightness which are not only available to human beings, but are in fact our birthright.
Naturally the ability to realize your own inner genius is the first thing that must be stolen from the members of the public in order to promote the kind of stupidity that would have ever allowed our status quo to happen. That, to me, makes this a different kind of evil far beyond the mere desire to be in charge and control others.
Yes, because only aspiring dictators use bombastic rhetoric.
Are you really that shallow? Serious. Fucking. Question. Because if you can't tell the difference between that, and what I was talking about, then there's really no point in discussing this with you. For the more perceptive folks who happen to read this thread, this is an educational opportunity. This, folks, is what denial looks like. Its most distinguishing feature is that it immediately dismisses the valid points I raised while making absolutely no effort to refute it, and does so while attempting to appear superior as evidenced by the overall smugness.
There's something even more dangerous than a wannabe dictator or a government that is heading in the wrong direction. That would be the many people with their heads in the sand who want so badly to believe that "it can't happen here" that they create the excuses, dismiss the warning signs, and ridicule the aware to the point that they virtually guarantee that it WILL happen here. If it doesn't happen here, that will be no thanks to these myrmidons.
Folks, this is so simple it's absurd. Government is not a perfect institution, which we know for a fact because there are no perfect institutions. We also know for a fact that no institution lasts forever. Because it is not perfect, and cannot last forever, government has a failure mode. Be it a military dictatorship or a police state, the failure mode of modern Western government is the totalitarian state. In order to share the parent poster's naive attitude, you would have to believe that both of these are true:
That no government has ever failed, therefore your government cannot fail
That when government begins to fail, there are absolutely no warning signs whatsoever that could give an alert, vigilant public the chance to correct the damage before it becomes systemic and leads to total failure.
God damn it, both of those are false and you know it. You know it even if you won't admit it.
When a corporation can shut down a government Web site because it contains factual information that the corporation does not want people to know, that is one of your early warning signs. Go ahead and make excuses for it and tell me it's perfectly harmless; your reasoning will be limp-wristed and and your justifications will be half-hearted because you know deep down that I am speaking the truth.
So, really, we need Press that isn't owned by the politicians that they are reporting on?
It's not so much that the press is owned by the politicians. It isn't. It's that both the press and the politicians are owned by similar (and sometimes identical) monied interests, many of which operate through various think tanks, front groups, and foundations because they have much to hide. Behind these fronts you often find various "old-money" families which are also openly active in politics. In that way, the aristocracy is alive and well in (North) America. In the cases where it is not outright ownership of the media, it is instead that the advertising-driven media could not survive for very long if it pissed off the deep pockets which purchase airtime.
The word is a combination of confusion and monopoly (or rather oligopoly), defining it as "a group of companies with similar products who intentionally confuse customers instead of competing on price". Examples of industries in which confusopolies exist (according to Adams) include telephone service, insurance, mortgage loans, banking, and financial services.
In other words, things about which the general public is largely ignorant. I suspect that the only reason why the software industry is not included in this list of examples is because the Microsoft monopoly and the Windows monoculture greatly negate the "group of companies" portion of that definition.
Pit bulls--the real ones--are notoriously illegal in Ontario
I generally oppose such restrictions, viewing them as the government's way of telling us that it needs to have its size and power reduced because it has run out of real problems to address. However, I will tell you why I don't care much (either way) about this one. By and large, people seem to want to own pit bulls because they think it's cute or flattering to have a creature that is kind to them (the owner) and aggressive or potentially aggressive towards everything else. I guess it makes them feel special, and people engage in such ego gratification with things like cars and job titles so it's not really absurd that they would do so with their pets. After all, unlike a car, the pet seems like it is choosing to adore its master.
You know how you never or almost never heard about pit bulls or pit bull attacks in the news media until a few years ago? It's because they became something of a trend, and consequentially their greater numbers have lead to more visibility. Just consider, for what other reason would it suddenly become trendy to desire as a household pet a creature whose breed is optimized for fighting? When something becomes a trend, do you ever wonder, "of all possible things, why that thing?"
And to any would-be Captain Obvious, I know that there are non-aggressive pit bulls which are gentle because they were raised to be that way. I also know that if I wanted to have a dog that I could trust to not make unprovoked attacks against other animals and people, I would not start with a breed that has this reputation.
This sounds like the platform of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Isn't it amazing how "conservative" once meant something like "reluctant to expend governmental resources" and has now come to mean "eager to increase the size and power and involvement of government, but for reasons different from the ones used by those who are called liberals?" Really, that's a neat trick.
Sorry to burst your conspiracy theory, but it all comes down to profit margins, and general corporate laziness.
Canada has a pretty low population (and even lower population density) than most of the places you mentioned. The retailers know that the marketplace won't sustain high profits if there is a lot of aggressive competition, so the companies generally don't enter into aggressive competition with each other. If I'm selling widget X and you're selling thingie Y, I'm not going to start selling thingie Y, because it won't be profitable to have half of a small pie.
And a price war in a small market leads to mutually assured destruction.
But that actually IS a conspiracy theory. It's a valid one, too. When all or most of the companies in a market collude together to produce a situation that benefits them at the potential expense of everyone else, like what you just described, they are indeed conspiring. That they do it out of mutual self-interest and not on behalf of a more abstract agenda doesn't change this. That they do it by means of business decisions and not by secret meetings in smoky back rooms doesn't change this either.
We really need to get over the term "conspiracy theory." "Conspiracy theory" does not mean "instant way to halt all debate by stigmatizing your opponent," nor does it mean "instant excuse for dismissal without examination." It means "theory concerning people who work together in certain ways." There's nothing magical about the word "conspiracy" either. If you work at a company that makes widgets, you and all of your coworkers are conspiring to make widgets.
It's sort of like the word "sanction" in that it does not necessarily indicate a bad or undesirable activity, it's just often used that way and has taken on a connotation which excludes other things that it can mean. This is particularly true in the minds of people who don't really understand the words they are using. If you do a good deed and are rewarded for it, you have been sanctioned. However, if you read a headline which says "U.N. sanctions $NATION" it's assumed that $NATION was punished in some way. Something similar has happened to the concept of a conspiracy theory and all of the well-meaning yet not very courageous people who tiptoe around that phrase when it really is the one that applies.
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
What I think is unappreciated or underappreciated about abominations like Mussolini is that nothing they did was a chance, coincident, or accident. They understood very well what they were working for and where it was leading and accomplished it by a series of carefully planned maneuvers, each one of which had its own excuse, its own official story. Usually that story says that this is necessary, good for the country, designed to safeguard the people, intended to stop a national enemy, or that lack of patriotism is the only reason to oppose it. Above all, there is a distinctive pattern to it and once recognized, it is easy to spot, even in its early stages.
Slashdot Mirror
and come up with a response like this: "but if I could make an infinite number of perfect copies of my car while retaining my own copy, at low or no cost, what would be my incentive to use a system designed to make me lose control over my car or any other property?"
You made me think of universal assemblers just there. I wonder what it would be like once *everything* is just information... from your car and house to donor organs. I wonder what those far distant future people would think of digital personal property....
The advent of universal assemblers would probably be actively resisted for the purpose of preserving an outdated economic model based on scarcity. Rather than celebrate the new era of plenty that this would achieve, many of our most powerful economic and political forces would fight it tooth and nail before they would adapt to the new world it would represent. That this is so likely almost makes me ashamed to be a member of this species.
Not exactly. Your statement most definitely doesn't apply to private information. Or else what would we talk about the other half of the time on Slashdot?
Since he did not specify what sort of information, and did not say "each and every possible form of information", I'm wondering what the use is of pointing this out. Hell I don't know, people often point out lots of things that were clearly implied or at least allowed for by the original text, and why they feel a need to do so is something of a mystery to me. I can't think of a good reason for it. Some less-than-good potential reasons include an inability to deal with any amount of subtlety, or perhaps a careless use of language that leaves loose ends which can easily be misinterpreted without such redundant clarifications. Still, I prefer to think that if the GP meant "every and all possible forms of information, with no exceptions" then he would have said so, in which case saying "wait, that doesn't apply to THIS form of information" would make a lot more sense.
Okay, pedantic mode off. Even private information is routinely shared. You're just careful about with whom it is shared, preferring to restrict it to people you trust or to people who have a legitimate need to know. If you read the GP's text and immediately thought only of "gee I sure wouldn't want my credit card numbers plastered all over the WWW" then you're taking a deliberately narrow interpretation of a much broader point.
what are they trying to achieve?
surely after years of being beaten to a pulp they MUST have learned that any attempt at controlling is more than futile?
They keep trying for the same reason that politicians who push for shitty laws keep trying: they know that they only need one major victory and everyone will be stuck with it forever. That's why they don't read something like this:
and come up with a response like this: "but if I could make an infinite number of perfect copies of my car while retaining my own copy, at low or no cost, what would be my incentive to use a system designed to make me lose control over my car or any other property?"
I do not (repeat do NOT) use the "home keys"
I can understand getting away with not using the ';', but this post itself contains all the home keys.
You must be some kind of savant.
Maybe he's holding down ALT while using the numeric keypad to input ASCII/ANSI codes?
Microsoft always gives you exactly what they promised to give you. If you're the one exception in the entire world, feel free to sue them. Oh, and please let me know exactly how they failed to deliver on which promise - I'm quite curious. Thanks.
Perhaps it's not technically a "promise" but calling WGA a "security update" is pretty damned close. I mean, a user who sees "security update" is going to think "if I don't install this, then I will be vulnerable to malware" and that just wasn't the case here. Yeah, I suppose it would be cute to say "but WGA is for Microsoft's security!" but that still doesn't negate the fact that all the other security updates really were bugfixes to the OS. Microsoft knows damned well that if they called it "Phone-home software" or "Software to make you prove to us that you didn't pirate Windows" then far fewer users would have accepted it. The message here is quite clear - "we will mislead you whenever it's in our interests to do so."
I personally don't care for Windows, but even if I liked it very much, seeing this kind of shit would make me disinclined to use it because using Windows would mean having to deal with Microsoft and would mean having to support them with my money. However, the average person doesn't give a damn and they know it, so these practices continue.
I think otherwise the complaint of MS not delivering what they promise has more to do with standard marketing language that most companies use. For example, they often claim their software is "so easy to use!" but if that's the case, why are there so many books written and courses taught and Web sites devoted to helping users with basic everyday usage of their software? Why do average users tend to be so ignorant about basic care and maintainence of their Windows machines, not to mention security issues?
Now that's not really uncommon in marketing, unfortunately. When a toothpaste company says "4 out of 5 dentists recommend our product!" they don't specify whether they offered those four dentists thousands of dollars to say so. If another five dentists had unanimously recommended a competitor's product, they would omit that from their commercials. To me, Microsoft's marketing exaggerations are in the same ballpark, but that still doesn't make them right.
Perhaps if the GP's system was implemented before MS got to be so big there would have been more incentive for a) MS to act more ethically, b) other businesses to choose a software supplier with a better reputation for ethical behaviour and c) businesses to source their software from a variety of vendors to spread their risk around.
Thank you. Those "network" or secondary effects are actually the entire point of the idea I was proposing. I think you may be the only person who really understood where I was going with that.
Collectively, we are voting with our feet each time we purchase or support anything in any way. We don't think of it that way, however. We just carelessly go for whatever is cheapest or most convenient. By doing that, we are supporting practices and ideas that deserve to fail. Often, we are also enriching and equipping people who do not have our interests at heart and who already have undue influence over our society and political systems. A reason to think a little more carefully about who you do business with, and in turn, a reason for that business to think a little more carefully about the effects and implications of its decisions, is something that may improve the situation.
And lets execute the corporation when it kills people. Just line up the employees and shoot them. After a proper trial.
There IS a type of corporate death penalty. That would be the revocation of the corporate charter. It practically never happens, however, because we collectively care a lot more about the inconvenience this would cause than we care about justice.
I can't speak for the person to whom you were replying but I can give you my response to this. I'm rather indifferent to executives. There is one thing I really don't like about them, however. I really don't like that they can either get away with, or receive only a slap on the wrist, for doing things that would cause the average person to be locked up for a very long time if he/she did the same.
Some people are a bit petty, so they will call that jealousy or envy because that's the only way they can understand it, but really it's an issue of rule of law. If the concept of rule of law is tossed out, so that the law doesn't apply equally to everyone, then the society we know and many of the freedoms it protects get tossed out with it. It's a slow process of erosion that can take generations to happen, but I see something like that beginning to happen here and it really should be recognized for what it is.
Not sure about the GP, but my original post accounted for this and I don't believe there is a flaw in it (as in, if there is one I don't see it). Keep the limited liability nature of a corporation, that way if a venture fails or an accident happens then the members of the corporation are not personally liable. However, if they make decisions that they know will result in real harm to real people, and if it can be proven that they knew this would happen, then you remove the "corporate veil" and you personally prosecute every member of management who was a part of the decision-making.
I don't believe that prosecuting people who knowingly and intentionally cause harm to unwilling third parties threatens anyone's rights in any way. In fact, I believe it strengthens them, specifically it strengthens the rights of those third parties to not be harmed against their will. The only thing I am personally calling for is the removal of one technique for intentionally harming other people with impunity. Do you believe that your objection to the GP applies here? I don't think it does but if I am overlooking something I would be glad to have it pointed out.
Except that MS has to hand out vouchers for more MS products, giving them an even bigger market share.
[see Sony Rootkit settlement for details]
Yeah, and that's what's broken about the way the law handles corporations.
Corporations should face jailtime for any crime or activity that would result in a person being incarcerated. Jail for a person means the loss of most freedoms and it also means they are separated from the rest of society. "Jail" for a corporation should mean that all assets are frozen and all business activities are forced to halt for the same number of days that a real person would have been incarcerated. If the lost sales result in bankruptcy, that's too bad, just like if a person with a few years to live commits a violent crime and gets locked up for a long time and dies in prison, that's also too bad.
This to me would be the proper treatment of "corporations have the same rights as real individuals." A good alternative might be to keep the limited liability nature of a corporation for any failures or accidents, but to remove it and allow for personally prosecuting and imprisoning any and all members of upper management who knowingly support an illegal action wherever intent can be proven.
Realism?
Just kidding. Mostly.
I just found the prose horribly ugly. The basic fantasy world was so derivative of Tolkien that I just wanted to barf, but if it had at least been well written, maybe I could have got past that, but it was trash. I'm a bit of a fantasy fan, particularly Tolkien and Moorcock, and Jordan was the toilet paper of fantasy fiction.
Personally I liked the series. My worst objection to it is that while I was about 4 books into it, this thought kept occurring to me: "as a plot device, just how many times is he going to have main characters get captured while travelling?" It felt like anytime anyone was on the road to any village or any city, their capture and subsequent rescue was going to occupy the next several chapters. That got old. I never did finish the Wheel of Time series but otherwise I enjoyed the books I have read.
It's not unlike a similar feeling I had when reading King's Dark Tower series (which I truly enjoyed - it's an amazing work). I got a little tired of hearing about New York City, as I greatly preferred to hear about strange new worlds, not concrete jungles. That could be because I don't live in a large city and wouldn't want to, as I personally find them to be nerve-wracking and suffocating. They're the kind of place I wouldn't mind briefly visiting but living there is extremely unappealing to me. The hustle and bustle never inspired me the way the outdoors always does, so I may have a bias that kept me from fully appreciating this part of the series.
I appreciate this explanation. Sometimes opposites are exactly equal. Thus, I suppose the only thing I would add is that whether the corporation takes over the government, or whether the government takes over the corporation, either way their interests become one and the same. I consider the end result of both scenarios to be indistinguishable (as you said about the general public being screwed either way).
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
The words "corporate" and "corporatism" had very different meanings back then. For Fascists specifically, this meant something closer to Medieval professional guilds, and not at all what we today call "corporations".
I'll be honest with you, this looks like splitting hairs for no good reason. Whether it's a modern corporation or a guild, this is how it works: $NON-GOVERNMENTAL-ENTITY ($NGE) acquires undue influence over the state, to the point that the state begins to represent the interests of $NGE more than it represents the interests of its general public. The state and $NGE learn to work together, so that anytime $NGE needs to get something done that it is not authorized to do, it knows it can grease a few palms and get the state to take care of it. Or, it knows that it can do those things itself and the state will look the other way. Likewise, if the state needs to get something done and wants to avoid scrutiny by not going through official channels, then the state turns to $NGE. Working together, as a duopoly of sorts, they can make sure that the people have no voice in politics anymore, though to prevent a revolution before their power is fully consolidated, they might allow the illusion that the people still have any degree of control. When this is complete, both of them view the people as a dehumanized resource to be mined and exploited as much as possible, like so much oil or lumber. The $NGE will do this by amassing wealth, while the state will often do this by amassing armies and fighting pointless aggressive wars, often against nations that were never a threat to it.
Honestly, whether $NGE is an LLC, a sole proprietorship, a non-profit organization, or a medieval guild makes no difference to me whatsoever. The process is the same because it's a very general and time-tested process that has occurred more than once throughout history.
That is because fascist is the least understood and most often misused description of all political systems.
Nobody has a clear understanding of what exactly it means, in theory, or in practice.
Even the all inclusive, if not overly pedantic Wikipedia admits there is no common definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist
"No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any concise definition."
Of late, it has become the pejorative de jour for any system the speaker dislikes.
People would listen to you and buy you beers if you couched your criticisms in terms understood by those at the far.
For this reason I sometimes call it statism. It's a nice, simple, easily-understood word that does the job and comes with none of the confusion that's built into many similar terms. It also sums up what fascism, communism, national socialism, and all similar systems have in common: the expansion of state power at all costs, the subordination of all significant aspects of life (such as economic and personal liberties) to an authoritarian state, and the devaluing of human life which must necessarily take place before anyone can believe that the people exist to serve the state rather than the other way around.
Honestly, if another totalitarian state should occur anywhere on the planet during my lifetime, the exact name of its political machinery will make little or no difference to me. I think for that reason, "fascism" is often understood to be interchangable with "statism" even though this is not technically correct. That's particularly true for those who have studied a little Latin and are familiar with the word "fasces" (a bundle of rods with an axe protruding) which was often touted as a symbol of (Roman) state power, with the implication being that state power for its own sake was considered desirable or "glorius." For the original fasces, the rods represented corporal punishment while the protruding axe represented execution by beheading, and it was meant to symbolize the state's power over life and limb. A similar sentiment is demonstrated by any politician who dreams of being your master, under any political system, which is probably why it's so difficult to come up with a single concise definition of "fascism."
Now if you want a deeper mystery, just think about how fucked up a person must be to actually want to live in an environment that is as thoroughly saturated with misery and human suffering as a modern totalitarian state. Even if you could be in charge of it, why the hell would you want to live there in such a poisonous environment?
Funny, I thought conservatism always meant valuing traditions and status quo and that's what republicans are mostly doing.
The PATRIOT Act is an excellent example of something that was not the status quo. We haven't seen that kind of power grab in this country since Abraham Lincoln decided to suspend habeus corpus, jailed 18,000 or so "Confederate sympathizers" without trial, and spent money that Congress had not appropriated. Yet the Republicans who support the PATRIOT act call themselves "conservative." So, I must conclude that they are using the same word but the meaning has changed drastically. Perhaps for just that reason some refer to this relatively new generation as "neo-conservatives." Too bad that has become such a loaded word.
It just makes you wonder why they need to do that, or why the government even cares about which payment plan you use for your wireless phone. Generally speaking, the sale of a good or of a service goes like this: you give money, you receive good or service. To insert "government butts in and confirms your ID" between those two steps, there really should be a very good overriding reason explaining why this is absolutely necessary. Are there nations which have fallen apart and descended into anarchy because private citizens may be able to make anonymous telephone calls? That's about what it would take for this to have real merit.
Part of the problem is that the price tag is not high enough. I say that because it obviously has not provided the necessary incentive to render self-correcting all of this widespread ignorance. To put it simply, that's because a good parasite does not kill its host. That's why major corporations accommodate, encourage, and coddle various forms of ignorance. They rarely or never refuse a sale on the basis of the customer not understanding what he or she is buying. At the same time, they know that if the price tag for such ignorance became too high, that if they abused it too much, there would be a severe customer backlash and a public effort to prevent a reoccurrence. They would be killing their own cash cow if they allowed that to happen.
The only real solution I know is to act on principle. A principled person doesn't want to be ignorant and will take steps to prevent it, whether or not a high price tag is attached to it. It's simply the right thing to do. A principled person doesn't care to be taken advantage of, whether the perpetrator stands to gain millions of dollars or a single penny. For that matter, a principled person does not sign something like a mortgage contract without fully understanding it first. Such people are not known for complaining about things like "predatory lending."
And sounds a lot like what was being accomplished by Bush. Unpatriotic was the charge leveled repeatedly. The insane spending was initiated by Bush. The only howls are because a few different groups are getting the payouts and bribes than the Republicans would have given. Many of the payouts are the same under either party. The key to recognize is that the corporations don't care which party is in charge as long as they have been thoroughly bought. In fact, by having 2 and only two parties, the parties can fight over 'issues' and make voting seem important, when the (big) corporations still win. And having small companies die is great for the big corporations because they get them for a song. And it's not stockholders who make out like bandits, it's the actual bandits, CEO's, CFO's and cronies, who have the SEC in their back pocket.
Please pardon how I put this, but it's a real pleasure to hear from someone who doesn't have his head up his ass. The two party duopoly is one of the pillars of our current situation, and there is unfortunately a shortage of people who can realize that on their own as you have done. As you seem to understand, the general naivete and encouraged ignorance has become so widespread that few people personally know the sharp insight and intuitive brightness which are not only available to human beings, but are in fact our birthright.
Naturally the ability to realize your own inner genius is the first thing that must be stolen from the members of the public in order to promote the kind of stupidity that would have ever allowed our status quo to happen. That, to me, makes this a different kind of evil far beyond the mere desire to be in charge and control others.
Yes, because only aspiring dictators use bombastic rhetoric.
Are you really that shallow? Serious. Fucking. Question. Because if you can't tell the difference between that, and what I was talking about, then there's really no point in discussing this with you. For the more perceptive folks who happen to read this thread, this is an educational opportunity. This, folks, is what denial looks like. Its most distinguishing feature is that it immediately dismisses the valid points I raised while making absolutely no effort to refute it, and does so while attempting to appear superior as evidenced by the overall smugness.
There's something even more dangerous than a wannabe dictator or a government that is heading in the wrong direction. That would be the many people with their heads in the sand who want so badly to believe that "it can't happen here" that they create the excuses, dismiss the warning signs, and ridicule the aware to the point that they virtually guarantee that it WILL happen here. If it doesn't happen here, that will be no thanks to these myrmidons.
Folks, this is so simple it's absurd. Government is not a perfect institution, which we know for a fact because there are no perfect institutions. We also know for a fact that no institution lasts forever. Because it is not perfect, and cannot last forever, government has a failure mode. Be it a military dictatorship or a police state, the failure mode of modern Western government is the totalitarian state. In order to share the parent poster's naive attitude, you would have to believe that both of these are true:
God damn it, both of those are false and you know it. You know it even if you won't admit it.
When a corporation can shut down a government Web site because it contains factual information that the corporation does not want people to know, that is one of your early warning signs. Go ahead and make excuses for it and tell me it's perfectly harmless; your reasoning will be limp-wristed and and your justifications will be half-hearted because you know deep down that I am speaking the truth.
So, really, we need Press that isn't owned by the politicians that they are reporting on?
It's not so much that the press is owned by the politicians. It isn't. It's that both the press and the politicians are owned by similar (and sometimes identical) monied interests, many of which operate through various think tanks, front groups, and foundations because they have much to hide. Behind these fronts you often find various "old-money" families which are also openly active in politics. In that way, the aristocracy is alive and well in (North) America. In the cases where it is not outright ownership of the media, it is instead that the advertising-driven media could not survive for very long if it pissed off the deep pockets which purchase airtime.
In other words, things about which the general public is largely ignorant. I suspect that the only reason why the software industry is not included in this list of examples is because the Microsoft monopoly and the Windows monoculture greatly negate the "group of companies" portion of that definition.
I generally oppose such restrictions, viewing them as the government's way of telling us that it needs to have its size and power reduced because it has run out of real problems to address. However, I will tell you why I don't care much (either way) about this one. By and large, people seem to want to own pit bulls because they think it's cute or flattering to have a creature that is kind to them (the owner) and aggressive or potentially aggressive towards everything else. I guess it makes them feel special, and people engage in such ego gratification with things like cars and job titles so it's not really absurd that they would do so with their pets. After all, unlike a car, the pet seems like it is choosing to adore its master.
You know how you never or almost never heard about pit bulls or pit bull attacks in the news media until a few years ago? It's because they became something of a trend, and consequentially their greater numbers have lead to more visibility. Just consider, for what other reason would it suddenly become trendy to desire as a household pet a creature whose breed is optimized for fighting? When something becomes a trend, do you ever wonder, "of all possible things, why that thing?"
And to any would-be Captain Obvious, I know that there are non-aggressive pit bulls which are gentle because they were raised to be that way. I also know that if I wanted to have a dog that I could trust to not make unprovoked attacks against other animals and people, I would not start with a breed that has this reputation.
This sounds like the platform of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Isn't it amazing how "conservative" once meant something like "reluctant to expend governmental resources" and has now come to mean "eager to increase the size and power and involvement of government, but for reasons different from the ones used by those who are called liberals?" Really, that's a neat trick.
Sorry to burst your conspiracy theory, but it all comes down to profit margins, and general corporate laziness. Canada has a pretty low population (and even lower population density) than most of the places you mentioned. The retailers know that the marketplace won't sustain high profits if there is a lot of aggressive competition, so the companies generally don't enter into aggressive competition with each other. If I'm selling widget X and you're selling thingie Y, I'm not going to start selling thingie Y, because it won't be profitable to have half of a small pie. And a price war in a small market leads to mutually assured destruction.
But that actually IS a conspiracy theory. It's a valid one, too. When all or most of the companies in a market collude together to produce a situation that benefits them at the potential expense of everyone else, like what you just described, they are indeed conspiring. That they do it out of mutual self-interest and not on behalf of a more abstract agenda doesn't change this. That they do it by means of business decisions and not by secret meetings in smoky back rooms doesn't change this either.
We really need to get over the term "conspiracy theory." "Conspiracy theory" does not mean "instant way to halt all debate by stigmatizing your opponent," nor does it mean "instant excuse for dismissal without examination." It means "theory concerning people who work together in certain ways." There's nothing magical about the word "conspiracy" either. If you work at a company that makes widgets, you and all of your coworkers are conspiring to make widgets.
It's sort of like the word "sanction" in that it does not necessarily indicate a bad or undesirable activity, it's just often used that way and has taken on a connotation which excludes other things that it can mean. This is particularly true in the minds of people who don't really understand the words they are using. If you do a good deed and are rewarded for it, you have been sanctioned. However, if you read a headline which says "U.N. sanctions $NATION" it's assumed that $NATION was punished in some way. Something similar has happened to the concept of a conspiracy theory and all of the well-meaning yet not very courageous people who tiptoe around that phrase when it really is the one that applies.
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
What I think is unappreciated or underappreciated about abominations like Mussolini is that nothing they did was a chance, coincident, or accident. They understood very well what they were working for and where it was leading and accomplished it by a series of carefully planned maneuvers, each one of which had its own excuse, its own official story. Usually that story says that this is necessary, good for the country, designed to safeguard the people, intended to stop a national enemy, or that lack of patriotism is the only reason to oppose it. Above all, there is a distinctive pattern to it and once recognized, it is easy to spot, even in its early stages.