A boycott of the iPhone Apple Design Awards would undoubtedly send a message to Apple, but I doubt it could be pulled off. Those awards are coveted; it's such a big temptation for developers that they won't miss out on it just for a stand on principles.
If that be the case, then what they have are not principles at all.
It can also eat away at their bottom line just as easily.
Its a business risk they don't feel is worth doing.
I think that's inherently part of the problem. When you're an upstart company or at least new to a particular market (especially in a market full of established, entrenched competitors), you're more willing to take a risk like that because the very business itself is a risk that could easily fail. When your brand becomes well-known and you become more and more established, there is also a tendency to become more and more conservative because you like your current position and are interested in keeping it. I'm sure I am greatly oversimplifying things but I think this is largely responsible for the general perception that "it was great until it got really popular; now it sucks". I think what we're seeing here is something in-between, as Apple is not a Microsoft-type juggernaut but they're certainly not unknown either.
I must have missed the court decision where they were declared a monopoly. Mind showing us your reference?
Indeed. The iPhone is not the only cellphone available; it is not even the only "smart" phone available. Right now many people may feel that it's the best; in the recent past that was not the case and in the future that may or may not be the case. This is definitely not a monopoly. Hell, I wish the operating system market was more like this! I don't like what Apple is doing here, but my grounds for objection have nothing to do with monopolies.
I have stated multiple times on Slashdot and have multiple times be called a troll...
THIS is EXACTLY the same behavior Apple exhibited with the Apple and their token program!
Ah, but this is so old news (over 20 years ago) that people tend to have forgotten!
Now Apple is all good and dandy! BS!
Yeah, I know what you mean. I posted on this same story and said that a company which believes in its products isn't afraid of competition; I was almost instantly modded Redundant even though all preceding comments were about whether the iPhone can be considered a "platform". It seems that Apple is another of these near-religious subjects that weak-minded people get all upset over and of course that's your fault for saying something with which they disagree. In a society where many children don't even know who their father is, it seems that there is a lack of calm, collected, strong-minded men not given to this type of childish impulsiveness who could perhaps model a better example of how to live. Make no mistake, it is about how to live; that sort of impulsive, reactionary mentality is not at all limited to this subject or this Web site. If anyone perceives my disdain of it as being caused by a lower score on a Slashdot posting, they have missed my point entirely.
This reminds me, in one single way (and only that way; cue replies that ignore this line) of religious people who want to use law to force their beliefs on others -- such people do not believe in the power of their own message. When a company goes out of its way to forbid competition, they are saying that they don't believe their own sanctioned offerings are good enough to compete. Otherwise they would welcome competition and allow it to lead to a superior experience for their customers.
For the knee-jerk types out there (I can see it now: "but its theirs and they can do that if they want so nyaa!"), I will point out that whether Apple has the right to behave in this way is an entirely separate question; my post here is assuming that they do.
I guess I should apologize right now for how lenghty this post is. I am as surprised as anyone that I had so much to say about it. I think that is a bit more difficult for me because you and I seem to agree far more than we disagree, and so the differences are subtle and not quickly explained.
Certainly legality and morality are separate domains; but nevertheless, the law arises out of an attempt to declare what is moral (attempting to newspeak this into a "pragmatic" argument about societal stability doesn't change that fact).
My best answer here is that I believe the pragmatic concerns of what government does and why it does so should be kept separate from the (higher) concerns of morality. Government's actions need to be easy to scrutinize and based on simple explanations, not lofty moral concepts, otherwise debate is reduced and the transparency of government is eroded. This is partly because I believe we would be better off with no government if this were possible; because that is not possible, we put up with an imperfect institution but the glamor and prestige and bowing and scraping before the soverign should end there. This to me is the essence of "government by the consent of the governed".
It's not that I wouldn't like to see a moral, respectable government -- it's that we will have no such thing until we stop rewarding powerhungry liars with positions of authority; in the meantime, I don't think government should be trusted to make this sort of judgment call. It's like church and state; both institutions are better off when relatively separate. When they are one and the same, the church becomes corrupted by politics and the state becomes more like a theocracy and thus both are made worse. Morality isn't a leaf blowing about in the political winds. Slavery was immoral when it was legal; slavery remained immoral after it was abolished. This is why you can't assign a moral quality to laws that they don't have. Any overlap is a happy coincidence that suited the legislators at the time. This is not "newspeak", which is a thing I personally abhor. This is a recognition that we have a rather shitty institution (though it's the better than many others) that often fails to correctly handle far more mundane things.
The reduction I made was designed to point toward a commonality which is indicative of purpose rather than to suggest that somehow all law must therefore be moral by your or my or any objective standard (other than the standard of the law itself). Whether you believe in an objective standard of morality (in the religious sense) or believe in some theory of moral relativity, it still boggles the mind that you can truly believe that the law is anything other than an attempt by shared consensus to declare that which is moral and to enforce behavior according to that code of moral conduct.
I believe the law is a means of maintaining a stable society where there would otherwise be anarchy. If there were total anarchy, your chief concern would be whether the local warlord or the local bandits feel that you have outlived your usefulness. Only when you are not in constant fear for your life and your family can you have the time and energy to worry about what the nature of morality is and isn't. That is what I mean when I say it is a pragmatic affair, at least insofar as government is concerned, and that any moral or philosophical meaning you find in it is added onto this essence. The state maintains a monopoly on the use of force (or threat of force) to achieve its goals to prevent the anarchy that would otherwise rule. Like the "social contract" idea, this is why we give up some of our (otherwise absolute) freedom and put up with the presence of government. Like eating or drinking or urinating or defecating, we do it because it's necessary, not because it's an answer to a higher calling. There is meaning that can be found in it, but that's not the why of its existence.
"it is not the province of the State to declare what is moral"
You sir, are a moron. If one looks at the canon of US law and reduces it to just those things that a majority of the population agrees are good and just laws, you will find that almost all of them very much revolve around declaring what is moral.
There is a great deal of overlap, yes. But let's take an example like the fact that murder is illegal. There is certainly a moral argument for this, both from an ethics standpoint and also a religious one (i.e. "Thou shalt not kill"). The argument could also be made on a purely pragmatic basis, in that you cannot have a stable society where people can freely do business if that society is like a warzone.
There are also areas where there is little or no overlap. For example, I believe that a person's body is their own, to do with as they please. It is not a thing that another man or an organization can rightfully own. Yet, the government uses laws to tell you what you may or may not do with your body, or specifically what you may or may not ingest; we call this the War on Drugs. I own my car; therefore I can allow you to drive it or I can forbid you from driving it. If I allow you to drive it, I can tell you where you may or may not drive and how many passengers you may take. If you don't like that, too bad -- the car is owned by me and your option is to buy your own car. The government cannot tell you what you may or may not do with your body without also implying ownership of your body. To me, this is immoral. Yet it is perfectly legal and has been for quite some time now.
So with murder, there is a great deal of overlap between morality and legality. With other things, there is not. That's because they are two separate issues. One of them, legality, is the rightful province of the State. The other, morality, is not. While you may find it convenient to look at the law and "reduce it to just those things that a majority of the population agrees are good and just laws", the fact is that the law is a package deal. You cannot just pick and choose the parts of it that you feel are moral and ignore the parts of it which are not. This again is because legality and morality often overlap but are actually separate concerns. While I find your name-calling to be amusing, it doesn't change this fact.
I agree with you about the media thing. The "infinity+" copyrights are a horrible abomination on the public.
The other thing is that the US isn't a democracy, especially at the federal level, so it really doesn't matter what "the people" want. Just look at the War on Drugs.
The form of government isn't really at issue here. There are many non-governmental ways to solve this problem, a widespread boycott being one idea. If enough people got pissed off enough, this is not outside the realm of possibility -- my question relates more to why people are laying down and accepting this instead of getting pissed off and doing something about it. I think we forget sometimes that we are the *aa's customers, that they are nothing without us, that they will go bankrupt and disappear in a hurry except that we purchase their products. The law is just one way to resist them.
Also you don't really need a democracy; a constitutional republic is just fine for there to be such a thing as the will of the people, assuming that such people are principled and not easily dissuaded. It's when such people only care about immediate convenience and short-term gain (like the "pseudoadults" i.e. overgrown children that they are) that they gradually become powerless, which is what's happening now.
You also mentioned the War on (some) Drugs. This is largely a propaganda effort. There actually (sadly) are plenty of people who think that drugs should be illegal. This is for two major reasons. One, they see it as a question of whether drugs should be legal or illegal and not a question of whether it's the government's role to dictate what you may or may not do with your own body. Two, they've been told over and over again, from a very young age (D.A.R.E. and other programs), that inanimate objects are the root of our problems and that an arms race between economic forces and governmental police power is the only solution. I don't think I have ever met anyone who believes in the War on (some) Drugs who independently arrived at that conclusion by means of careful critical analysis of all available alternatives.
I have met lots of people who support the War on (some) Drugs because they have been indoctrinated by the likes of D.A.R.E. I've met people who support it for irrational emotional reasons, like they have known someone who died of a drug overdose and they want to blame that person's poor decision-making on a chemical inanimate object (denial, as they say, is not just a river in Egypt). Probably worst of all are the people who appear to be quite reasonable except that they come from the assumption that all adults should be treated like children by a Big Daddy government that knows what's good for them, and so they will talk quite calmly about which drugs should be legalized (like marijuana) and which drugs should remain illegal because they're too dangerous (like heroin). In so doing they entirely miss the point that no healthy adult person needs anyone to decide what's good for them, that the insistence on doing so by those who desire power means that almost no one can both follow the law and be a complete adult human being who is something more than a victim of circumstance.
If 1 and 2 give different answers than the law should be updated.
They will always give different answers. (legal, illegal) doesn't match (right, wrong).
And, on a serious note, nor should they. The question of what is "right" or "wrong" differs between a lot of people. Things like the first amendment address the right to say things that others might consider wrong. Should the law be updated so people can't say "wrong" things? I didn't think so. This simple test may be pithy, but it's not sufficient.
To me this is much simpler than what you're presenting. To me the First Amendment is a recognition that trying to determine what speech is right and wrong is, in itself, far more wrong (dangerous) than anything that anyone could say. Wherever possible the law should work this way since you are correct, morality and legality are two entirely separate issues. Handling things this way wherever possible recognizes not only that they are separate issues, but also that it is not the province of the State to declare what is moral.
Haha that's a good answer. But still. That only explains the source of this madness. It does not explain why we (collectively) would ever put up with it for one minute. The cynic in me thinks that the average American doesn't have a single thought in their head that the media didn't put there, and you can rest assured that such messages are bought and paid for. I really think that many years from now, this will be considered a Dark Age because it represents the near-death of critical thinking and independent inquiry and the importance of those two things cannot be overstated. Still, I don't see this situation as inevitable or immutable in any way.
Maybe we should sue Craftsman for making hammers and chainsaws, since those might be used as murder weapons. Or perhaps Raid for making bug spray, since it could conceivably be used to poison someone. Or architects for designing tall buildings since a suicidal person might jump off of them. How about manufacturers of ropes or chains, since those might be used to hang somebody?
Why do we collectively accept this madness when it's copyright that we don't accept otherwise? There are legitimate reasons to rip a DVD, and there are also uses of a DVD ripper that violate copyright. A hammer can help to build a house to shelter a family, or it can be used by a criminal to bludgeon someone to death. In principle, I see no fundamental difference here.
Haha actually that won't work on my system. I set resource limits to prevent that, so when I try it it'll just give errors like "resource temporarily unavailable" instead of bringing the machine to its knees. Same thing with a program that tries to eat up all available RAM -- it just gets killed off. I don't care what operating system you're using, anything that can take all physical RAM and fill up swap is going to render the machine unusable. I had that happen once or twice and decided it wasn't happening again (eating up all RAM that is -- I set a limit on the number of processes to prevent a forkbomb just to be thorough).
Real question: on Windows is there a way for the administrator to set resource limits like this? I'm not aware of a way to do this but I would be surprised if it simply could not be done.
That certainly is true, but then, why should so many user applications have the ability to affect the rest of the operating system? Either they don't and whether they are shit quality is moot, or they do and this is rightfully considered a shortcoming in the overall design of Windows. I don't see any third options here.
I call trolling. If I install an app on any OS which integrates itself into the browser, runs as a background task consuming enormous amounts of RAM and network bandwidth and otherwise misbehaves, it's going to make the experience shitty. And no, this isn't a "shortcoming in the overall design." Any app needs to be allowed to do everything I just described (for RAM and CPU, see Photoshop, for network usage, see BitTorrent, etc.). Blaming MS for vendors loading shitty software onto a machine and claiming its a design flaw is bullshit.
No, you misinterpreted what I was saying and that's at least partly my fault. I was referring to the impact on the overall stability of the system. The overall performance of the system is a completely different metric. First I discussed how this applies to third-party drivers, then I said a bit about how this applies to OEM-supplied crapware. I said further that if the crapware doesn't affect the rest of the system, then whether they are shit quality is moot. I was referring to the stability of the rest of the system (i.e. BSODs), not every possible effect that poor-quality software could conceivably have (that'd be quite a lot to cover in only a couple of small paragraphs, don't you think?). You found a possible effect that it could conceivably have, which is that being a resource hog might bog everything down.
So yeah, a process consuming a large amount of resources (RAM, bandwidth, CPU) will definitely bog down the system. It will reduce performance and slow things down. I really thought that this was so utterly obvious that it went without saying, so my first thought was not that someone would assume, contrary to the focus of every other part of my post, that I was referring to anything other than system stability with those three sentences. This really is the only ambiguous part of my entire post, and your entire response hinges on it:
That certainly is true, but then, why should so many user applications have the ability to affect the rest of the operating system?
If I had said "have the ability to affect the stability of the rest of the operating system" you could not have misunderstood me. That much was my fault, I should have more clearly said what I meant. But, you read into that one sentence a meaning that was inconsistent with what I was saying prior to it and this did not make you hesitate for a moment to wonder if I really meant what you thought I meant. The mods followed your example in their own way, and so did several who also responded (apparently I'm a shill now -- more namecalling to follow, I'm sure). Is it really that hard not to knee-jerk? I increasingly feel like I have to idiot-proof my posts against every possible misinterpretation, which is effort better spent expressing ideas, because certainly whenever there are multiple potential interpretations the one that makes the weakest argument for the other guy is the most appealing to you, the one that you just know he had to have meant, right? Isn't that how it works for most of you? I wonder how much time that could be spent in productive debate is wasted guarding against this low-hanging fruit "haha, gotcha!" type of shit.
The only negativity I feel about this at all is that I honestly expected better from this group. If I were doing a presentation about Windows design vs. Linux design for a national TV news show, I'd have had no such expectations and would feel that the misinterpretation is 100% my fault.
Microsoft has no control over the shit quality of drivers released by hardware manufacturers.
I'm not sure I would go so far as to say they have zero control over that situation. Apple would not be a fair comparison since they control both the hardware and the software. So, I have to compare the Windows approach to the Linux approach since I am most familiar with it.
With the one exception of the nVidia proprietary driver (which I use over the open-source driver for performance reasons, not stability reasons), every last driver on my machine came with the kernel. I don't need to trust the quality of anything produced by any hardware manufacturer. I can use drivers that I know will work and that I know will be extremely stable. I'm sure someone out there is using some strange hardware combination and this is his cue to pipe up that this was not his experience, but I believe the vast majority of desktop Linux users can say the same thing. The Windows approach is demonstrably inferior in this case, and I just don't believe that Microsoft is the pitiful helpless victim that's powerless to change this.
They have no control over the shit quality of apps loaded by OEMs.
That certainly is true, but then, why should so many user applications have the ability to affect the rest of the operating system? Either they don't and whether they are shit quality is moot, or they do and this is rightfully considered a shortcoming in the overall design of Windows. I don't see any third options here.
I mean, the nature of a thing doesn't change just because you place an A HREF tag around it.
Yes, it does. Without the A HREF tag, it's covered by the First Amendment. With the A HREF tag, it's not. Accoring to the Second Circuit Court of Appeal, anyway.
Is there some kind of rule that if it's in a hyperlink, it's spelled 'DCMA', but if it's plain text, it's 'DMCA'?
And good on YouTube for reposting the content.
It's the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, so I assume that anyone spelling the acronym as DCMA couldn't be bothered to do some basic proofreading. I mean, the nature of a thing doesn't change just because you place an A HREF tag around it...
Then there are some clear and concise laws that no one seems to understand. Like the 4th Amendment. "Well they wrote about papers and effects, surely they don't mean that the government shouldn't tap everyone's phones and net connections or backdoor everyone's computers and encryption. Don't they know we've got a war on terror to fight (even though even a poor study of history will show that your own government is far, far more dangerous than any terrorist)? Why if they didn't want the government doing that, they'd have specifically said so, even though those things weren't invented back then! Yes, let's ignore the principle of what was stated by getting caught up in details. More government police power, please!" Mod me off-topic now, I don't care.
The Surface of the Sun. Viewed using a 171 angstrom filter, the sun appears to actually have a solid surface beneath the gas layers. It also seems to be electrically active. This is one of the more fascinating astronomy sites I've seen, mainly because they don't seem to start with a bias of "what we know can't be so". That always appeals to me, especially since "what we know is 100% impossible" is something that's been proven wrong, again and again, although that doesn't seem to stop anyone from asserting that this time we really have it right.
So both candidates say they will keep politics out of science, but what about religion?
Then both are liars. As long as so much of scientific research depends on grants from "public" (government*) money, somebody will have to make decisions as to who receives money and who doesn't. This is politics. Now perhaps Obama/McCain themselves won't personally make these decisions, which is about as true as what you said could be, but someone whom they can fire or at least influence will be doing so. Therefore, politics will very much affect science although this has been the case for some time now.
Stem cell research for example is one of those field of research which is being blocked because of politics.. "well, because of religious groups, which uses politics as a tool to achieve their goals of blocking the research".
I wonder if each candidate is willing to tell the religious groups to grow up and let science be?, especially McCain's party
I think a better long-term solution to that is to simply declare that once you retire and leave the workforce and start collecting Social Security, you surrender the right to vote (this would be far more effective than trying to get more of the youngest potential voters to start voting -- they can't and won't take the interest in this that a retiree can afford to). Let the right to vote be for those who are currently net producers, not currently net consumers.
To prevent other vote-buying schemes (other than Social Security), perhaps anyone on welfare or other public assistance should not vote either so long as they are receiving such benefits, because what they will vote for is rather predictable (anyone who will increase their benefits without regard to the cost, of course). The idea here is that there should not be anything resembling a profit motive behind your choice of candidate, that such a motive has proven to be a greater corrupting influence than any indignation someone might feel at being told not to vote (just look at what happens to any politician who mentions reforming Social Security -- it's political suicide and it shouldn't be). Perhaps then suffrage would actually count for something instead of being given to you because you have a pulse and have managed not to get caught committing a felony. I don't know of a more fair way to arrange this.
You'd really be amazed at how many political issues like this would be solved once the politicians can no longer count on a couple of very large, over-represented voting blocs in the country to always vote a certain way as though their interests were more important than everyone else's. They'd be reduced to doing a crazy thing like actually looking at how the rest of the country feels about an issue. Will any of this happen? Hah, I strongly doubt it. But this is an unwinding of how we got to where we are, of why religion is making scientfic decisions and why people who struggle with finances are making what amount to business decisions, all in the name of feeling good and being inclusive at that. It's alright though; what we are doing now is unsustainable and will be forced to change at some point. It's just a matter of whether we will realize that or whether we the talking heads on the news will sound amazed and surprised at the next serious crisis because we cared more about being politically correct. Speaking of political correctness, cue the people who will get their panties in a bunch now that I've dared to identify two of the stronger reasons behind the status quo (the strongest of all, of course, is the government control of the education system -- just ask John Taylor Gatto).
* Public money = that which is in the wallets and bank accounts of the people walking down the street.
* Government money = that which has been taken from the people walking down the street by force or threat of force due to confiscatory taxes, the spending of which the people have only marginal control, at best.
So you see, there is a difference. Most of the time that people say "public" they really mean "government", especially in reference to the schools or the airwaves.
So these Olympics has really been a show case for China.
It shows that they will say one thing like agreeing to freedom of the press and then do something totally different.
And that they will cheat at the Government level even for something so trivial as winning a game.
Oh and that they think clean air is just not all that important.
Good show.
I think the most valuable realization to be made is that all governments are liars and would love to behave the way the government of China is behaving. Given half a chance, they would and in fact they do. You can chalk it up to the type of personality that is attracted to positions of power in the first place, the fact that lying is so easy and so well-tolerated in politics, or whatever -- it doesn't really matter. George Washington was unique; he's the only person in history, to my knowledge, who could have been a king or a dictator or otherwise very powerful and he refused. I don't think it realistic to expect that sort of example to be followed as all the rest seem to operate on a Machiavellian principle of "if you can grab power, DO IT!". In the US people often speak of China as some foreign, alien example of something that "can't happen here" while ignoring the fact that such a state-controlled way of life is the wet dream of almost every USA politician at the national level.
Uh huh. It's plain that the first few words of that second paragraph triggered your "oh jeeze this is anti-Bush!" filter, and out tumbled your standard "fucking conspiracy moon-bats!!" rant.
Just as an aside, I wanted to say that this is a very good observation. People who are not entirely honest with themselves (because if you did this and were aware of it, you couldn't continue doing it) really do "think" this way and it seems like most people sorely need to understand this. This is not thinking at all; this is mechanically applying a rule and we have machines that can do that. People tend to make a faulty assumption that if they don't set out to do something deliberately, then they're not doing it at all. Thus, when you point out that they are "thinking" this way, they decide whether they were trying to "think" this way, conclude that they were not, and decide you're either full of shit or trying to antagonize them.
In this way, such errors are self-protecting. You could say that they're cloaked in a form of denial. They're reinforced by repetition and bandwagon appeal because bad examples are everywhere. They're also learned behavior (that is, communicated from person to person). For this reason I consider them a sort of "thought-virus," a mental pathogen with no real life of its own that reproduces and expresses itself by means of a host. They are to thoughts what viruses are to DNA. I would further venture that emotional trauma (especially fear-based) is to this pathogen what piercing the cell membrane is to a virus, because there are few if any other ways to shut down or de-emphasize the kind of mindfulness and critical thinking that would otherwise reject it.
Slashdot Mirror
A boycott of the iPhone Apple Design Awards would undoubtedly send a message to Apple, but I doubt it could be pulled off. Those awards are coveted; it's such a big temptation for developers that they won't miss out on it just for a stand on principles.
If that be the case, then what they have are not principles at all.
It can also eat away at their bottom line just as easily.
Its a business risk they don't feel is worth doing.
I think that's inherently part of the problem. When you're an upstart company or at least new to a particular market (especially in a market full of established, entrenched competitors), you're more willing to take a risk like that because the very business itself is a risk that could easily fail. When your brand becomes well-known and you become more and more established, there is also a tendency to become more and more conservative because you like your current position and are interested in keeping it. I'm sure I am greatly oversimplifying things but I think this is largely responsible for the general perception that "it was great until it got really popular; now it sucks". I think what we're seeing here is something in-between, as Apple is not a Microsoft-type juggernaut but they're certainly not unknown either.
I must have missed the court decision where they were declared a monopoly. Mind showing us your reference?
Indeed. The iPhone is not the only cellphone available; it is not even the only "smart" phone available. Right now many people may feel that it's the best; in the recent past that was not the case and in the future that may or may not be the case. This is definitely not a monopoly. Hell, I wish the operating system market was more like this! I don't like what Apple is doing here, but my grounds for objection have nothing to do with monopolies.
I have stated multiple times on Slashdot and have multiple times be called a troll...
THIS is EXACTLY the same behavior Apple exhibited with the Apple and their token program!
Ah, but this is so old news (over 20 years ago) that people tend to have forgotten!
Now Apple is all good and dandy! BS!
Yeah, I know what you mean. I posted on this same story and said that a company which believes in its products isn't afraid of competition; I was almost instantly modded Redundant even though all preceding comments were about whether the iPhone can be considered a "platform". It seems that Apple is another of these near-religious subjects that weak-minded people get all upset over and of course that's your fault for saying something with which they disagree. In a society where many children don't even know who their father is, it seems that there is a lack of calm, collected, strong-minded men not given to this type of childish impulsiveness who could perhaps model a better example of how to live. Make no mistake, it is about how to live; that sort of impulsive, reactionary mentality is not at all limited to this subject or this Web site. If anyone perceives my disdain of it as being caused by a lower score on a Slashdot posting, they have missed my point entirely.
This reminds me, in one single way (and only that way; cue replies that ignore this line) of religious people who want to use law to force their beliefs on others -- such people do not believe in the power of their own message. When a company goes out of its way to forbid competition, they are saying that they don't believe their own sanctioned offerings are good enough to compete. Otherwise they would welcome competition and allow it to lead to a superior experience for their customers.
For the knee-jerk types out there (I can see it now: "but its theirs and they can do that if they want so nyaa!"), I will point out that whether Apple has the right to behave in this way is an entirely separate question; my post here is assuming that they do.
My best answer here is that I believe the pragmatic concerns of what government does and why it does so should be kept separate from the (higher) concerns of morality. Government's actions need to be easy to scrutinize and based on simple explanations, not lofty moral concepts, otherwise debate is reduced and the transparency of government is eroded. This is partly because I believe we would be better off with no government if this were possible; because that is not possible, we put up with an imperfect institution but the glamor and prestige and bowing and scraping before the soverign should end there. This to me is the essence of "government by the consent of the governed".
It's not that I wouldn't like to see a moral, respectable government -- it's that we will have no such thing until we stop rewarding powerhungry liars with positions of authority; in the meantime, I don't think government should be trusted to make this sort of judgment call. It's like church and state; both institutions are better off when relatively separate. When they are one and the same, the church becomes corrupted by politics and the state becomes more like a theocracy and thus both are made worse. Morality isn't a leaf blowing about in the political winds. Slavery was immoral when it was legal; slavery remained immoral after it was abolished. This is why you can't assign a moral quality to laws that they don't have. Any overlap is a happy coincidence that suited the legislators at the time. This is not "newspeak", which is a thing I personally abhor. This is a recognition that we have a rather shitty institution (though it's the better than many others) that often fails to correctly handle far more mundane things.
I believe the law is a means of maintaining a stable society where there would otherwise be anarchy. If there were total anarchy, your chief concern would be whether the local warlord or the local bandits feel that you have outlived your usefulness. Only when you are not in constant fear for your life and your family can you have the time and energy to worry about what the nature of morality is and isn't. That is what I mean when I say it is a pragmatic affair, at least insofar as government is concerned, and that any moral or philosophical meaning you find in it is added onto this essence. The state maintains a monopoly on the use of force (or threat of force) to achieve its goals to prevent the anarchy that would otherwise rule. Like the "social contract" idea, this is why we give up some of our (otherwise absolute) freedom and put up with the presence of government. Like eating or drinking or urinating or defecating, we do it because it's necessary, not because it's an answer to a higher calling. There is meaning that can be found in it, but that's not the why of its existence.
"it is not the province of the State to declare what is moral"
You sir, are a moron. If one looks at the canon of US law and reduces it to just those things that a majority of the population agrees are good and just laws, you will find that almost all of them very much revolve around declaring what is moral.
There is a great deal of overlap, yes. But let's take an example like the fact that murder is illegal. There is certainly a moral argument for this, both from an ethics standpoint and also a religious one (i.e. "Thou shalt not kill"). The argument could also be made on a purely pragmatic basis, in that you cannot have a stable society where people can freely do business if that society is like a warzone.
There are also areas where there is little or no overlap. For example, I believe that a person's body is their own, to do with as they please. It is not a thing that another man or an organization can rightfully own. Yet, the government uses laws to tell you what you may or may not do with your body, or specifically what you may or may not ingest; we call this the War on Drugs. I own my car; therefore I can allow you to drive it or I can forbid you from driving it. If I allow you to drive it, I can tell you where you may or may not drive and how many passengers you may take. If you don't like that, too bad -- the car is owned by me and your option is to buy your own car. The government cannot tell you what you may or may not do with your body without also implying ownership of your body. To me, this is immoral. Yet it is perfectly legal and has been for quite some time now.
So with murder, there is a great deal of overlap between morality and legality. With other things, there is not. That's because they are two separate issues. One of them, legality, is the rightful province of the State. The other, morality, is not. While you may find it convenient to look at the law and "reduce it to just those things that a majority of the population agrees are good and just laws", the fact is that the law is a package deal. You cannot just pick and choose the parts of it that you feel are moral and ignore the parts of it which are not. This again is because legality and morality often overlap but are actually separate concerns. While I find your name-calling to be amusing, it doesn't change this fact.
I agree with you about the media thing. The "infinity+" copyrights are a horrible abomination on the public.
The other thing is that the US isn't a democracy, especially at the federal level, so it really doesn't matter what "the people" want. Just look at the War on Drugs.
The form of government isn't really at issue here. There are many non-governmental ways to solve this problem, a widespread boycott being one idea. If enough people got pissed off enough, this is not outside the realm of possibility -- my question relates more to why people are laying down and accepting this instead of getting pissed off and doing something about it. I think we forget sometimes that we are the *aa's customers, that they are nothing without us, that they will go bankrupt and disappear in a hurry except that we purchase their products. The law is just one way to resist them.
Also you don't really need a democracy; a constitutional republic is just fine for there to be such a thing as the will of the people, assuming that such people are principled and not easily dissuaded. It's when such people only care about immediate convenience and short-term gain (like the "pseudoadults" i.e. overgrown children that they are) that they gradually become powerless, which is what's happening now.
You also mentioned the War on (some) Drugs. This is largely a propaganda effort. There actually (sadly) are plenty of people who think that drugs should be illegal. This is for two major reasons. One, they see it as a question of whether drugs should be legal or illegal and not a question of whether it's the government's role to dictate what you may or may not do with your own body. Two, they've been told over and over again, from a very young age (D.A.R.E. and other programs), that inanimate objects are the root of our problems and that an arms race between economic forces and governmental police power is the only solution. I don't think I have ever met anyone who believes in the War on (some) Drugs who independently arrived at that conclusion by means of careful critical analysis of all available alternatives.
I have met lots of people who support the War on (some) Drugs because they have been indoctrinated by the likes of D.A.R.E. I've met people who support it for irrational emotional reasons, like they have known someone who died of a drug overdose and they want to blame that person's poor decision-making on a chemical inanimate object (denial, as they say, is not just a river in Egypt). Probably worst of all are the people who appear to be quite reasonable except that they come from the assumption that all adults should be treated like children by a Big Daddy government that knows what's good for them, and so they will talk quite calmly about which drugs should be legalized (like marijuana) and which drugs should remain illegal because they're too dangerous (like heroin). In so doing they entirely miss the point that no healthy adult person needs anyone to decide what's good for them, that the insistence on doing so by those who desire power means that almost no one can both follow the law and be a complete adult human being who is something more than a victim of circumstance.
They will always give different answers. (legal, illegal) doesn't match (right, wrong).
And, on a serious note, nor should they. The question of what is "right" or "wrong" differs between a lot of people. Things like the first amendment address the right to say things that others might consider wrong. Should the law be updated so people can't say "wrong" things? I didn't think so. This simple test may be pithy, but it's not sufficient.
To me this is much simpler than what you're presenting. To me the First Amendment is a recognition that trying to determine what speech is right and wrong is, in itself, far more wrong (dangerous) than anything that anyone could say. Wherever possible the law should work this way since you are correct, morality and legality are two entirely separate issues. Handling things this way wherever possible recognizes not only that they are separate issues, but also that it is not the province of the State to declare what is moral.
The hammer lobby in DC isn't big enough.
Haha that's a good answer. But still. That only explains the source of this madness. It does not explain why we (collectively) would ever put up with it for one minute. The cynic in me thinks that the average American doesn't have a single thought in their head that the media didn't put there, and you can rest assured that such messages are bought and paid for. I really think that many years from now, this will be considered a Dark Age because it represents the near-death of critical thinking and independent inquiry and the importance of those two things cannot be overstated. Still, I don't see this situation as inevitable or immutable in any way.
Maybe we should sue Craftsman for making hammers and chainsaws, since those might be used as murder weapons. Or perhaps Raid for making bug spray, since it could conceivably be used to poison someone. Or architects for designing tall buildings since a suicidal person might jump off of them. How about manufacturers of ropes or chains, since those might be used to hang somebody?
Why do we collectively accept this madness when it's copyright that we don't accept otherwise? There are legitimate reasons to rip a DVD, and there are also uses of a DVD ripper that violate copyright. A hammer can help to build a house to shelter a family, or it can be used by a criminal to bludgeon someone to death. In principle, I see no fundamental difference here.
try this in bash: :(){ :|:& };:
just as powerful and it doesn't even need perl :)
Haha actually that won't work on my system. I set resource limits to prevent that, so when I try it it'll just give errors like "resource temporarily unavailable" instead of bringing the machine to its knees. Same thing with a program that tries to eat up all available RAM -- it just gets killed off. I don't care what operating system you're using, anything that can take all physical RAM and fill up swap is going to render the machine unusable. I had that happen once or twice and decided it wasn't happening again (eating up all RAM that is -- I set a limit on the number of processes to prevent a forkbomb just to be thorough).
Real question: on Windows is there a way for the administrator to set resource limits like this? I'm not aware of a way to do this but I would be surprised if it simply could not be done.
That certainly is true, but then, why should so many user applications have the ability to affect the rest of the operating system? Either they don't and whether they are shit quality is moot, or they do and this is rightfully considered a shortcoming in the overall design of Windows. I don't see any third options here.
I call trolling. If I install an app on any OS which integrates itself into the browser, runs as a background task consuming enormous amounts of RAM and network bandwidth and otherwise misbehaves, it's going to make the experience shitty. And no, this isn't a "shortcoming in the overall design." Any app needs to be allowed to do everything I just described (for RAM and CPU, see Photoshop, for network usage, see BitTorrent, etc.). Blaming MS for vendors loading shitty software onto a machine and claiming its a design flaw is bullshit.
No, you misinterpreted what I was saying and that's at least partly my fault. I was referring to the impact on the overall stability of the system. The overall performance of the system is a completely different metric. First I discussed how this applies to third-party drivers, then I said a bit about how this applies to OEM-supplied crapware. I said further that if the crapware doesn't affect the rest of the system, then whether they are shit quality is moot. I was referring to the stability of the rest of the system (i.e. BSODs), not every possible effect that poor-quality software could conceivably have (that'd be quite a lot to cover in only a couple of small paragraphs, don't you think?). You found a possible effect that it could conceivably have, which is that being a resource hog might bog everything down.
So yeah, a process consuming a large amount of resources (RAM, bandwidth, CPU) will definitely bog down the system. It will reduce performance and slow things down. I really thought that this was so utterly obvious that it went without saying, so my first thought was not that someone would assume, contrary to the focus of every other part of my post, that I was referring to anything other than system stability with those three sentences. This really is the only ambiguous part of my entire post, and your entire response hinges on it:
If I had said "have the ability to affect the stability of the rest of the operating system" you could not have misunderstood me. That much was my fault, I should have more clearly said what I meant. But, you read into that one sentence a meaning that was inconsistent with what I was saying prior to it and this did not make you hesitate for a moment to wonder if I really meant what you thought I meant. The mods followed your example in their own way, and so did several who also responded (apparently I'm a shill now -- more namecalling to follow, I'm sure). Is it really that hard not to knee-jerk? I increasingly feel like I have to idiot-proof my posts against every possible misinterpretation, which is effort better spent expressing ideas, because certainly whenever there are multiple potential interpretations the one that makes the weakest argument for the other guy is the most appealing to you, the one that you just know he had to have meant, right? Isn't that how it works for most of you? I wonder how much time that could be spent in productive debate is wasted guarding against this low-hanging fruit "haha, gotcha!" type of shit.
The only negativity I feel about this at all is that I honestly expected better from this group. If I were doing a presentation about Windows design vs. Linux design for a national TV news show, I'd have had no such expectations and would feel that the misinterpretation is 100% my fault.
I'm not sure I would go so far as to say they have zero control over that situation. Apple would not be a fair comparison since they control both the hardware and the software. So, I have to compare the Windows approach to the Linux approach since I am most familiar with it.
With the one exception of the nVidia proprietary driver (which I use over the open-source driver for performance reasons, not stability reasons), every last driver on my machine came with the kernel. I don't need to trust the quality of anything produced by any hardware manufacturer. I can use drivers that I know will work and that I know will be extremely stable. I'm sure someone out there is using some strange hardware combination and this is his cue to pipe up that this was not his experience, but I believe the vast majority of desktop Linux users can say the same thing. The Windows approach is demonstrably inferior in this case, and I just don't believe that Microsoft is the pitiful helpless victim that's powerless to change this.
That certainly is true, but then, why should so many user applications have the ability to affect the rest of the operating system? Either they don't and whether they are shit quality is moot, or they do and this is rightfully considered a shortcoming in the overall design of Windows. I don't see any third options here.
Because it has a cooler name than the boring sounding WebKit. Besides, it'll save you 15% on car insurance.
Yeah, their commercials often say that a 15 minute call will save me 15% on my car insurance. So what happens if I give them a 100 minute call?
Yes, it does. Without the A HREF tag, it's covered by the First Amendment. With the A HREF tag, it's not. Accoring to the Second Circuit Court of Appeal, anyway.
That's pretty scary, but all too believable.
Is there some kind of rule that if it's in a hyperlink, it's spelled 'DCMA', but if it's plain text, it's 'DMCA'? And good on YouTube for reposting the content.
It's the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, so I assume that anyone spelling the acronym as DCMA couldn't be bothered to do some basic proofreading. I mean, the nature of a thing doesn't change just because you place an A HREF tag around it ...
Then there are some clear and concise laws that no one seems to understand. Like the 4th Amendment. "Well they wrote about papers and effects, surely they don't mean that the government shouldn't tap everyone's phones and net connections or backdoor everyone's computers and encryption. Don't they know we've got a war on terror to fight (even though even a poor study of history will show that your own government is far, far more dangerous than any terrorist)? Why if they didn't want the government doing that, they'd have specifically said so, even though those things weren't invented back then! Yes, let's ignore the principle of what was stated by getting caught up in details. More government police power, please!" Mod me off-topic now, I don't care.
I wish I could mod you up. The anti-knee-jerk is another thing I always appreciate.
The Surface of the Sun. Viewed using a 171 angstrom filter, the sun appears to actually have a solid surface beneath the gas layers. It also seems to be electrically active. This is one of the more fascinating astronomy sites I've seen, mainly because they don't seem to start with a bias of "what we know can't be so". That always appeals to me, especially since "what we know is 100% impossible" is something that's been proven wrong, again and again, although that doesn't seem to stop anyone from asserting that this time we really have it right.
We're waiting for Bill Clinton to work out what the definition of "is" is. First thing's first.
I almost wish I hadn't posted, just so I could have modded you up myself. I salute your grasp of reality.
Then both are liars. As long as so much of scientific research depends on grants from "public" (government*) money, somebody will have to make decisions as to who receives money and who doesn't. This is politics. Now perhaps Obama/McCain themselves won't personally make these decisions, which is about as true as what you said could be, but someone whom they can fire or at least influence will be doing so. Therefore, politics will very much affect science although this has been the case for some time now.
I think a better long-term solution to that is to simply declare that once you retire and leave the workforce and start collecting Social Security, you surrender the right to vote (this would be far more effective than trying to get more of the youngest potential voters to start voting -- they can't and won't take the interest in this that a retiree can afford to). Let the right to vote be for those who are currently net producers, not currently net consumers.
To prevent other vote-buying schemes (other than Social Security), perhaps anyone on welfare or other public assistance should not vote either so long as they are receiving such benefits, because what they will vote for is rather predictable (anyone who will increase their benefits without regard to the cost, of course). The idea here is that there should not be anything resembling a profit motive behind your choice of candidate, that such a motive has proven to be a greater corrupting influence than any indignation someone might feel at being told not to vote (just look at what happens to any politician who mentions reforming Social Security -- it's political suicide and it shouldn't be). Perhaps then suffrage would actually count for something instead of being given to you because you have a pulse and have managed not to get caught committing a felony. I don't know of a more fair way to arrange this.
You'd really be amazed at how many political issues like this would be solved once the politicians can no longer count on a couple of very large, over-represented voting blocs in the country to always vote a certain way as though their interests were more important than everyone else's. They'd be reduced to doing a crazy thing like actually looking at how the rest of the country feels about an issue. Will any of this happen? Hah, I strongly doubt it. But this is an unwinding of how we got to where we are, of why religion is making scientfic decisions and why people who struggle with finances are making what amount to business decisions, all in the name of feeling good and being inclusive at that. It's alright though; what we are doing now is unsustainable and will be forced to change at some point. It's just a matter of whether we will realize that or whether we the talking heads on the news will sound amazed and surprised at the next serious crisis because we cared more about being politically correct. Speaking of political correctness, cue the people who will get their panties in a bunch now that I've dared to identify two of the stronger reasons behind the status quo (the strongest of all, of course, is the government control of the education system -- just ask John Taylor Gatto).
* Public money = that which is in the wallets and bank accounts of the people walking down the street.
* Government money = that which has been taken from the people walking down the street by force or threat of force due to confiscatory taxes, the spending of which the people have only marginal control, at best.
So you see, there is a difference. Most of the time that people say "public" they really mean "government", especially in reference to the schools or the airwaves.
I think the most valuable realization to be made is that all governments are liars and would love to behave the way the government of China is behaving. Given half a chance, they would and in fact they do. You can chalk it up to the type of personality that is attracted to positions of power in the first place, the fact that lying is so easy and so well-tolerated in politics, or whatever -- it doesn't really matter. George Washington was unique; he's the only person in history, to my knowledge, who could have been a king or a dictator or otherwise very powerful and he refused. I don't think it realistic to expect that sort of example to be followed as all the rest seem to operate on a Machiavellian principle of "if you can grab power, DO IT!". In the US people often speak of China as some foreign, alien example of something that "can't happen here" while ignoring the fact that such a state-controlled way of life is the wet dream of almost every USA politician at the national level.
Just as an aside, I wanted to say that this is a very good observation. People who are not entirely honest with themselves (because if you did this and were aware of it, you couldn't continue doing it) really do "think" this way and it seems like most people sorely need to understand this. This is not thinking at all; this is mechanically applying a rule and we have machines that can do that. People tend to make a faulty assumption that if they don't set out to do something deliberately, then they're not doing it at all. Thus, when you point out that they are "thinking" this way, they decide whether they were trying to "think" this way, conclude that they were not, and decide you're either full of shit or trying to antagonize them.
In this way, such errors are self-protecting. You could say that they're cloaked in a form of denial. They're reinforced by repetition and bandwagon appeal because bad examples are everywhere. They're also learned behavior (that is, communicated from person to person). For this reason I consider them a sort of "thought-virus," a mental pathogen with no real life of its own that reproduces and expresses itself by means of a host. They are to thoughts what viruses are to DNA. I would further venture that emotional trauma (especially fear-based) is to this pathogen what piercing the cell membrane is to a virus, because there are few if any other ways to shut down or de-emphasize the kind of mindfulness and critical thinking that would otherwise reject it.