How about split it off and run it solo... That said, have you considered that DT might be interested in having T-Mobile purchased for the terms AT&T offered and is willing to make statements in support of the transaction?
What?! Perish the thought!
You can tell someone "you know, there are street criminals who would actually shoot someone for the $50 in their wallet" and they will readily believe you. Despite that, everyone knows that businessmen would never, ever use deception when millions of dollars are at stake. I mean, for fuck's sake, they wear suits. No one who dresses nicely would do bad things. You're a paranoid raving lunatic tin-foil hatter if you don't agree.
I miss the days when their (then?) CEO was still in the news. Your garden variety tax-dodging and securities fraud are boring; but a CEO who secretly builds a sex dungeon under his mansion while his wife is out of town, or is accused of drugging drinks during business meetings, that is almost enough to make me forgive the state of BCM linux drivers...
Collectively, in an almost unconscious, hypnotic, not-deliberately-planned sort of manner... there is a strong tendency to train, nurture, and greatly reward the sociopaths we breed in numbers. It makes said fevered egos think they are completely invincible and may do anything they please, confident their wealth and connections and status will get them out of any real trouble. Until, of course, we are finally sickened or outraged and decide in a sudden way that they may not. That boundary determines what such people think they may get away with, either by hiding it or by all the times they got away with things for which "regular people" receive jail sentences.
They certainly don't decide not to indulge a temptation because of a standard of taste, decency, civility, compassion, or other concern for their fellow humans. That particular CEO just thought he'd never get caught. Others, like officials in high places who don't even pay their taxes, rely on the confidence that they'll never be held accountable for what they otherwise make no secret about.
The reason so many people tolerate this is that so many of them aspire to be like this. You have to let the existing power do what it wants, else you can't do what you want when you become the new existing power. There are precedents to consider, but otherwise it's entirely ego.
You miss it because it's novel, unusual, maybe even shocking. It's something other than "garden variety" to you and thus a little beyond what you are accustomed to tolerating and accepting as normal. It's a strange reason to miss something when you (really) think about it. Contrast that with missing something because it is inherently virtuous in a way that you really appreciate and consider a privilege to know and you'll see what I mean.
What are you worried about the government setting you up for? Seems to me they already have more powers than they should and if they want to render you to Iraq for interrogation they will. I'm heartened by the pushback against these powers, and also by court victories that are likely to affirm we have the right to videotape police. Abusive police are on the decline and our right and ability to tape them will frustrate and limit those that remain. In general, government corruption in many states is declining.
I think my chances are much higher that I'll be the victim of ordinary criminals than of the government. Not to mention my chance of being hit by a car. I think in ten years the good, defensive drivers will have wide angle cameras on the dash and out the rear window recording the last five minutes in a loop. Soon enough drivers will have them that many accidents are caught on tape along with plates and faces. Bad drivers will have to shape up or be reported and caught. If the loop is longer, like 30 minutes, police will have an app for smartphones. The app could check every fifteen minutes to see if there's been a police request for video footage from people driving on certain sections of streets where a crime just happened. Then the car cameras could help convict criminals for what they're doing along side the roads. So it's possible the public, wanting to defend themselves and help catch criminals, will set up a surveillance system of its own.
By suggesting that the public and not the government would run a makeshift surveillance system, you are implicitly admitting that this is better than the government doing so for all of the reasons (re: power) I have already outlined. You are trying to say it without saying it that your original position was quite far from ideal.
Another big difference between your private dash-cam and a government-monitored surveillance system is key: you probably aren't going to forever archive and store and data-mine the five minutes of video you record. You probably don't have a state-sized budget to throw at storing all the data, building databases around it, and you probably can't link that yourself with the DMV records to identify who owns which license plate. You probably aren't going to feel tempted to sell this massive archive of everyone's comings and goings and identities to marketers. You probably won't go on fishing expeditions.
Yet another important difference: you probably won't send your five-minute-loop video to anyone until and unless you are materially wronged in some way, for example maybe by a hit-and-run driver. Then and only then is there a reason for the authorities to peruse said video. Oh, you almost certainly won't be looking to bust people for adminsitrative violations and victimless crimes like the government would love to do because these are a steady revenue stream for state budgets. You personally have no such incentive.
Like I said, by suddenly changing your position concerning who would run a system, the nature of that system, and what it would be used for, you are saying it without saying it. You are admitting that your support of novel methods of government monitoring of private citizens is ill-founded. Perhaps you thought doing it subtly would save face? Nah. I have more respect for someone who comes out and straight-up says they have reconsidered.
Our species survived without fingerprints and DNA testing, but they've done great things for solving crimes. Plate readers and facial recognition cameras will make getting away with crime even more difficult. Wearing latex masks won't fool an intelligent system either that identifies a face with odd infrared or UV coloring and is walking a number of blocks to put distance between an owned or stolen vehicle and the criminals destination.
While it's only fiction, as Captain Picard said to the holographic Moriarty, "Professor, I feel it necessary to point out that criminal behavior is as unacceptable in the 24th century as it was in the nineteenth - and very much harder to get away with."
This technology could nearly stop carjackings, burglaries, identify suspects near the scene of arsons, rapes and murders, and catch all those and muggings on camera. We as a society lament spending more on police and dealing with crime than we do on education. Imagine if crime becomes so difficult to get away with, that many criminals give it up? Then we really could spend freed up resources on education, rehabilitation, and job training to turn our society around.
I don't believe you appreciate that every restriction on freedom and privacy always has the justification of safety. Yes, we can catch more criminals this way. I don't believe anyone is disputing that.
We could also catch more criminals if 1984-style telescreens were watching everyone at all times. Including in their homes, in the bathroom, in the bedroom, etc. We'd be really safe then!
At some point you have to decide whether a rational, dispassionate, unbiased observation of our government and the people who run it leads you to believe that they are trustworthy, that they have treated with respect and used wisely the power they already have, that abuses of power are minimal and are punished severely in proportion to the betrayal of trust they represent, that these people have done so well with the power they already have that they have shown it is a good idea to trust them with more. You then have to compare that to how often you have ever been the victim of a car thief or other criminal this system is designed to catch. Honestly, I am much more worried about a nanny-state government than I have ever been afraid of a street criminal. At least I could defend myself against the street criminal, if it came to that. At least I could avoid high-crime areas and otherwise not get the attention of criminals.
Besides, if you really wanted to reduce crime, the single most effective thing you could do is to legalize all drugs and regulate them the same way we do with alcohol. That would reduce property and violent crime much more than any car-tracking system could ever hope to do.
And hypothetical complaints about a mysterious, nefarious "some entity" using the system to "back me into a corner" isn't pushing some sort of agenda?
Not all surrender of privacy and anonymity amounts to being treated like a criminal; not all systems will inevitably and automatically be used in most seditious, conspiracy-oriented ways.
The "complete truth" you want me to speak is not an objective, independent truth; it's a personal, hypothetical fear of yours, and every bit as much of an "agenda" as what I'm talking about.
How do you continue to justify this system in the face of facts which are very clear and objective: we as a species have managed to survive without this, and shopping malls have continued to be relatively safe and profitable places of business for all of this time without such systems? In light of this, why do you think the risks are worthwhile and should be disregarded?
I say the burden of proof is on the person who supports new methods of tracking people. The sane default isn't "why not?", it's "why?".
No analysis of the movie, or any new analysis of copyright law will occur.
To be fair, the flaws in the latter are well-known and have been for quite some time. Naturally no explanation of this would be complete without an understanding of how political power works and thus, how it got to be so flawed in the first place and what must first be corrected before the laws will change.
I suppose the movie is open to novel forms of analysis... but the second half of that statement may as well be a tautology.
For what? For peacefully working within the political process to support leaders whom they believe represent their interests? That makes them terrorists? Oh right, they don't agree with you.
It's already becoming a trend in the media to label as "terrorist" anyone who disagrees with you. It's the new "racist" just as "racist" was the new "communist", "communist" was the new "uppity dark-skinned person" and that was the new "witch".
Congratulations. You are a useful idiot who is taking his place as a part of a system of oppression. I know you didn't arrive at the conclusion that "Tea Partiers are terrorists" by your own independent examination of the actions of Tea Party supporters. I know that because it isn't possible. Their peaceful participation in the political process is the exact opposite of blowing things up and murdering civilians in order to advance a political agenda. That means you are the recipient of some carefully crafted brainwashing, propaganda, whatever you want to call it. Like all such recipients, you will excuse and defend what you now consider your own original idea. Again, congratulations.
You really have no idea the forces that are behind your passionate beliefs or just how dangerous this really is. Once the label of "terrorist" is applied so carelessly, you are now in a world where anyone can be considered a terrorist. Once that happens, you're only a baby step away from suspending their civil liberties at will. As long as you get the childish satisfaction of making someone look bad because you disagree with them it'll all be worth it, right? At least until you become the next terrorist. But don't worry, whoever calls you that will enjoy it as much as you did when you imagined the tables could never be turned on yourself.
That saying "first they came for the Jews, but since I was not a Jew I did not stand up...... then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me" was written for people like you. It was intended for the early stages of this kind of monstrosity, when it looks innocent enough, when you can still comfortably call "tin-foil hatter" instead of "prophet" anyone who can see what's coming, when it's embryonic and could still be easily stopped. After that time, it's too late and must run its course. Not that this means anything to you, I'm sure.
Going by your own angle, I wonder if that's really true; after all, politicians are still humans and just as capable of human failings as everyone else. Yet the way you are talking of them makes them seem like they were exempt from this, and instead had perfect internal clarity, rather than just deceiving themselves that they are doing the right thing, just like everyone else does according to yourself.
I'll give you a contemporary example.
Right now there are politicians in the US with a Democrat political viewpoint who advocate raising taxes on the wealthy in order to fix the deficit. The deficit is measured in trillions of dollars. So let's say you raised the income tax rate to 100% for everyone who makes $250k/year or more. Assume that no one changes their behavior as a result of this (a very big assumption). You would raise additional revenues measured in the tens of billions, in the ballpark of $50-75 billion.
$75 billion in more revenue is obviously not going to fix a deficit measured in trillions. So why would any politician continue to advocate it? Especially, why would they continue to advocate it once someone points this out to them (which has been done, repeatedly, assuming their own advisors didn't do it first)? That's easy. Because taxing wealthy people is a tenet of this political philosophy. They are merely trying to exploit a crisis to advance an agenda they had long before it was a crisis.
I won't get into whether I think progressive taxation is a good idea or whether it is justified to hate the wealthy. What I will get into is the fact that if you want to do it, this is a dishonest way to go about it. They are liars. They know they are lying. They are doing it anyway. This is just one example.
Sure, human foibles happen. Since you know that and I know that, it obviously isn't what I was talking about. I never understood the "discussion" style where you bring up things that don't fit the description given and ask me if that's what I meant by the description. It doesn't deserve its popularity.
Also, I can't help but notice that this "element of betrayl not present in little white lies" stuff sounds an awful lot like an attempt to excuse said "white" lies.
I didn't excuse anything. I mentioned small lies in the context of a quote from Mein Kampf. You don't have questions like this when you don't isolate something and take it out of the context with which it was presented.
Having said that, yes I recognize a distinction between a relatively innocent false statement and a deliberate, planned, intentional effort to deceive for personal or corporate gain. If you don't, that's your prerogative.
In fact, the very way you use the term "white lie" here seems to differ from the usual usage: you use it for self-deception, while the usual meaning is about lies told in situations where telling the truth would cause unneccessary pain or be otherwise morally wrong
Most of them are told to avoid offense. While there is a big difference between deliberately being a dick and merely being honest, I don't recognize anyone's right to never be offended. If telling the straight truth in a non-inflammatory non-malicious way causes pain, the right way to deal with that is to work on the situation until that thing is no longer true.
(like the classic "Gestapo comes asking if you have Jews hidden in your basement and you do" -scenario).
As Sun Tzu explained, all war is based on deception. Make no mistake, what Hitler conducted was a war on the Jewish people. Hitler's war was wrong and he did not deserve support. The one time it is absolutely acceptable to use deception, the time I will make no apologies whatsoever for doing so, is when I am confronted with a malicious adversary who cannot be reasoned with and wants to make war against me. This has nothing to do with "little white lies" however.
This is why sociopaths feel so justified in their deceptions.
Isn't the defining trait of sociopathy not caring about justifications, but simply doing whatever you want and think you can get away with?
That could be rephrased as: "the fact that they get away with it means it was justified." In that way your answer is in your question.
But they always have a justification even if not for their own consumption. They recognize a need for one even if they do not personally desire one. No dictator ever came into power by saying "I want to be a ruthless dictator and rule over you with an iron fist and oppress you as much as possible." It's always for the children, to fight a national enemy, to deal with a failed economy, etc.
I don't think it has to do with big and small lies. I think most people deep down want to believe that other people are good, or that they have the potential to be good (The Vader Effect). Of course, there are limits to this optimism. But a politician hoodwinking his or her constituents is no different than a grifter tricking an old woman out of her pension. They both rely on a psychology that may be instinctual to humans due to our species' predilection for social structure; we by default want to trust that people will act in ways that benefit the society and not harm it, and us.
This is the denial of which I was speaking. The urge to trust someone who is manifestly not trustworthy (governments, shady businesses, etc) is a product of denial. It's an inability to see that there are red flags.
The "big lie vs. small lie" was an analogy. The point was that people want to relate to themselves something that may be relatively alien to them. There is a self-centeredness inherent in this that is the opposite of objectivity.
The solution is to neither trust nor distrust, but instead to completely ignore the words and look at what the actions tell you about the person. Those who are not trustworthy also suffer from that self-centeredness and once you understand what it is, you can identify it immediately. They will give themselves away, but not if you are too caught up in your own mind to observe.
Also I would add that people are born inherently good. The problem is that long before they reach adulthood or even their teenage years, they are corrupted with the phony choices offered to them. Be it media, schooling, peers, society, you name it... the options they are left with boil down to two wrong choices. They can be a bully or they can be a pushover. So they find a place for themselves in a social hierarchy of some kind. It may be "jocks vs. nerds" etc in school or it may be the corporate ladder in adult life. Either way, there is someone they can push around who is expected to take it and in turn, there is someone to whom they are expected to be subservient.
Be it giving or receiving, it is always about domination and control and the struggle to achieve them. This is why sociopaths feel so justified in their deceptions. They perceive themselves as "having what it takes" to rise to the top and they regard it as a virtue they have earned. The result is that noble people with integrity who do not look for ways to control others, who want to live and let live whenever possible, who regard force as an option of last resort only after reason fails, those people are kept out of leadership positions and we inhereit the fucked up world we know today. It's an asylum, the inmates are running it, and all of the wrong things have lots of forces cooperating to make them happen, such as draconian copyright law. That's where the political clout is found.
If we had a perfect meritocracy then perhaps those at the top would have legitimately earned it. The problem is, we don't. It's not about how good you are, how skilled you are, how wisely you would govern, or how much you respect the rights of others. It's about being in the right clubs, knowing the right people, being one of the good ol' boys, and climbing to the top by climbing over the bodies of anyone who stood in your way. Sociopathy isn't just tolerated. It's actively encouraged and rewarded.
It's not just governments - it's people in general. Same goes for relationships, business and since government is made of people, that too. There's nothing you can do about it. Well, except put computer algorithms to handle it, but even then the algorithm designers would try to cheat and get some advantage towards them. People in general are full of shit.
The kind of "full of shit" that most people experience is denial. Usually of their personal weaknesses, insecurities, shortcomings, etc. They protect and excuse these things because they are identified with them. Identification with them means that letting them go would feel like a sort of death. Mostly they mean well, they just don't objectively see themselves or understand that their motivations for doing most things are a lot less wholesome than what they imagine them to be. Believe it or not, most people who are manipulative don't realize it. They only know that people respond to them when they behave that way and it seems to get them what they want so it must be "correct".
A lot of people would, in fact, be horrified to actually realize the daze they are in that prevents them from seeing how selfish they really are. A side-effect is that almost nothing is done for its own sake because it is good to do. There is always a secondary motive. The saying is "most people have two reasons for what they do: the good reason, and the real reason." Usually the closest the average person comes to understanding this is to realize that they have a lot of inner conflict and have grave difficulty being at peace with themselves, truly relaxing, or being content without some kind of entertainment or distraction.
That's bad enough, and goes a long way towards explaining why they are so willing to tolerate liars and portray it as normal ("eh he's a congressman what do you expect, of course he lies"). Yet it's different from actively, knowingly and deliberately trying to deceive. There's a plan and a purpose combined with an awareness of what one is doing. It's perpetrated by people who are sworn to do what is best for the nation and entrusted with a lot of power with which to do it. There's an element of betrayal here that isn't present in the "little white lies" most people tell.
It's part of why, perhaps surprisingly, telling a really big lie to masses of people tends to work out more successfully than telling a small one. Hitler was quite explicit about this in Mein Kampf:
The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one.
Even there you can see a hint of ego perspective or selfishness. The people assume their leaders must be just like them. Therefore if they would be ashamed to tell a big lie, there leaders must be also. The inability to perceive that other people don't function anything like the way you do and would do things you would not do is part of what makes people vulnerable to this kind of deception.
The only justification for interference is when they directly and unambiguously threaten us. The whole problem with the US is that it loves to meddle.
This "meddling" you abhor is intended to head off the germination of groups and governments that can eventually "directly and unambiguously threaten us." And by "threaten" I mean militarily, politically, or economically. The alternative is to allow a potential threat to grow unchallenged until it's so big that it can't be stopped without massive casualties, consequences, or costs (or all three). The last time everybody sat around and let a threat grow unchallenged, about 60 million people died in a war that lasted the better part of six years. Isolationism's been tried before. It doesn't work very well for the defender. It does, however, work very, very well for those planning to do harm to others.
Yes, that's the fear-based orthodoxy preached by those who wish to justify the imperialism err I mean meddling. You make this mistake of thinking I don't understand it when in fact I simply disagree with it.
And naturally we're either complete meddlers who have no respect for anyone else, or we're totally isolationist and have no input towards the rest of the world at all. You know why isolationism failed? Because it was practiced in its extreme form. All I want is for us to stop bullying other nations, to stop using the CIA to overthrow democratically elected governments, to stop things like the mass murder of South Americans so we can have a fucking fruit company, and to understand that there is a definite, positive connection between treating other nations as playthings and having lots of people who desperately want to harm you.
Wanting to trade with other nations in an equitable fashion, having ambassadors and engaging in diplomacy with them to try to reach mutually satisfying agreements, and respecting their decision when they tell you "no" is not isolationist, at least not the definition of it you seem to have been taught. It's really amazing the way you can go a whole decade without a pointless overseas war when you do things this way. You know what really harms others? When you actively create your own enemies just so you can justify continuing to feed your military-industrial complex.
You know why so much of the world hates Americans? They think the American government represents the wishes of the American people. It's hard to blame them. We definitely like to preach about how our government is "by the people, of the people, for the people".
No company has shown more contempt for its customers than MS
You don't get around much do you?
You don't look around much, do you?
That wasn't my line. I was quoting the person to whom I was responding. I failed to make that more clear because I didn't properly close the quote tags. 'Tis what happens sometimes when I'm inebriated and it's late at night...
Yes, they are. Have you actually lived there? It's the same thing here on slashdot always when talking about countries little bit different than US. I've lived many times and many years in Thailand, yet every time there's some slashdot news about internet censorship in there, whole slashdot goes on a knee-jerk reaction telling how the government is being abusive. The truth is that the people want it. Same thing when talking about how it's unlawful to talk badly about the Thai King. Somehow in slashdot it's viewed somehow as that he made the law. It was the people who wanted it.
Do whatever you want in your own country, but don't go telling other countries how they should be. Let their people choose. If you want to comment about it, do get some actual own experience.
Sure, and a crackhead quite sincerely wants more crack. That doesn't mean this is good for him to have. Sometimes people want things that aren't good for them to have and don't serve their best interests. This is nothing new. There is nothing wrong with being opposed to this in principle.
Having said that, I agree that sovereign nations should be left alone as much as possible. The only justification for interference is when they directly and unambiguously threaten us. The whole problem with the US is that it loves to meddle. All or nearly all problems the US has ever had with terrorism or with attacks against Americans who are overseas or with its terrible reputation in many parts of the world is because we simply refuse to leave other nations alone. The US is a domineering empire that tries very hard not to call itself that.
Can you imagine how the US would react to a foreign nation that wants to establish a military presence within its borders and dictate how it should be governed? Or a foreign nation that uses its secret agencies (CIA equivalent) to try to cause chaos and disrupt its election processes? I have the funny feeling they wouldn't like it one bit. Why, they might even want to get back at anyone who tries it.
The Romans already knew that there really was no point arguing about subjective things. Yet here we are 2000 years later doing the same damned thing.
Tell me about it. I almost wish our species had some kind of ancestral memory that was an easily-accessible part of our everyday waking consciousness. Then maybe, just maybe we could actually learn from the past instead of repeating the same mistakes and the same useless tendencies.
Of course the only bad thing is, you'd have no privacy at all. At least not from your offspring. They'd know all about that dishonest thing you did 3 years before they were born. It'd be interesting, to say the least.
Well, there's your first and second problem with this theory.
The problem with yours is that drugs are here to stay and planned, coordinated, well-funded large-scale efforts to eradicate them measure their progress in terms of reducing their growth. Since they aren't going away we need a different plan. What do you do with a situation you cannot stop? You find responsible ways to manage it instead.
Not everyone that uses drugs is an adult
For that reason the legal drug, alcohol, is age-restricted. Do those who are underage still obtain and consume it? You bet. There is not and has never been a substitute for actually being a parent. This again is nothing new. What's really amusing is that for those under 21, illegal drugs are actually easier to obtain than alcohol because dealers only care about cash. There is no ID check to circumvent.
nor are they usually properly functioning, healthy individuals capable of good decision making.
That's a rare creature in any arena. Lots of people who fail that description vote, drive, form strong opinions about things they don't understand, etc. That they might also do drugs is no surprise to any realist. This fact means it is useless to talk about whether people do drugs. But it is useful to talk about which model of use we should encourage.
It's farmville, dude.
Have you ever heard the saying (dating back to ancient Hermetic thought), "as above, so below"? Or the notion of a fractal self-similar universe, if you like the abstract method? These games of ours are so often microcosms of more significant real-life patterns. That's the point.
How does any of this have anything to do with what we're talking about? I still don't think microtransactions in shitty games are the same as dealing drugs.
You should ask that question to the person who brought up drugs. I will offer my best guess as to how it came into the discussion.
Spending money on a pink hat for your character in an MMO is a frivolous vanity purchase of something you don't really need. You could characterize casual drug use the same way. I believe that's why the comparison was made.
Just as the more stupid drug users get addicted and find themselves at a disadvantage compared to the dealer, people in online games often feel a need to belong and feel part of a crowd. I'll probably catch flak for this but I'll go ahead and say that the dumber, more naive, less-wise sort of person is the one who cares about following a crowd more than they care about being an individual and remaining true to themselves.
The point is they have a reason other than genuine need or utility to purchase something. When everyone else has their little useless vanity items it creates pressure on those who don't. It makes them stand out. It is a powerful drive not to be underestimated. The only real winner here is the gaming company. They get to extract real wealth (legal tender) in exchange for something of little or no intrinsic value. That's a nice racket if you can get it, but most of the rest of us have to perform useful work to get our living.
I was referring to the buying part. There are lots of reasons people turn to addictive drugs, even beside addiction itself. Drug dealers prey on serious physiological and mental weaknesses.
You only feel that way because those drugs are illegal, therefore only those willing to become branded as "criminals" use them. The only ones you know about are the ones who either get caught or have to do crazy things to feed their addiction. The responsible drug users look just like people who don't do drugs at all. You won't see them high in public for the same reason you won't see a responsible drinker drunk in public.
Lots of people are addicted to alcohol; we call them alcoholics. This doesn't mean you and I couldn't responsibly enjoy a beer and get on with our lives. The important question then is what makes one person use these things responsibly while the other cannot be trusted with them?
I don't think that's really the case with people that make video games, aside from capitalizing on people with mild impulse control problems... but you could say the same of someone that makes cupcakes.
I tend to look at the problem/weakness instead of the temptation it creates to exploit it. If I really think Microsoft makes terrible products, for example, then I don't blame Microsoft for that, I blame a market that so greatly rewards terrible products. With a market like that it's only a matter of time until someone meets that demand. You have to identify which is the cart and which is the horse.
The fact is, being a responsible adult who is not impulsive or hyper-emotional or reactive, who is not easily diverted from one's goals, just isn't cool anymore. The only people still doing it are those who never gave a damn about how trendy or popular something is. They have always been a minority. The rest think they can instantly gratify every possible little desire they will ever have and can't comprehend the disappointment they are building. In the meantime, plenty of companies will make lots of money promising instant satisfaction by saying you can have this frivolous thing and you can have it RIGHT FUCKING NOW. This is nothing new.
that is some serious shit that involves conscious, subconscious and alternative personalities.
I was thinking something like that myself. This is far more mysterious than the way it is being presented. We don't even know what "everyday" consciousness is let alone how to explain something like this.
Well, except that it's wholly voluntary. I don't see a problem with it really, though I usually choose not to get in to things utilizing that model. With the genuinely nasty drugs, otoh, the seller leverages your addiction... where the buyer has less of a choice in the matter.
Is there any adult person who doesn't realize things like crack and heroin are addictive? I consider that voluntary too. You choose to put yourself into a position where you have a weakness that can so easily be leveraged. It really gets old watching people play the victim when they do things like this. You really don't want the kind of society and government they would create. Openly stated evil is much easier to recognize and correct than misguided good intentions.
From the summary:
The negative reputation these systems have comes from factors that are tuned to maximize profit and abuse players for their money. But that's not an inherent trait in the system; you could just as easily use it to ensure your own bankruptcy!
You could say that the formation of plutocracies and the concentration of wealth and political influence is not an inherent trait in the system of unregulated or poorly regulated (think: regulatory capture) capitalism. But left unchecked this is exactly what tends to happen. It's repeatable.
The problem with microtransactions in games is they provide so many different ways to milk the customers. There are many more opportunities to do that with this arrangement than there would be with a flat monthly fee.
The question then is how much faith you have in average people to immediately abandon the game, in droves, the moment it starts becoming abusive. That's what you would need, for the first undeniable sign of abuse to be suddenly and severely punished. Otherwise it becomes entrenched and it becomes like government's game of incrementing by tiny little baby steps, each one justified and excused by various mouthpieces.
To continue the analogy to offline commerce... do companies that abuse their customers worry and live in fear of drastic severe boycotts from masses of people who just aren't going to take it? No, instead the "consumers" (a degrading term) find that it isn't perfectly convenient to maintain a boycott, that they might have to actually go a few days or weeks without some frivolous luxury they don't really need, that no one else is doing it anyway, etc. So companies do more or less whatever they want knowing that people will continue doing business with them.
If I had to sum it up with a single word, the word that comes to mind is "circlejerk".
Isn't that the basis of all peer bonding? Find a low common denominator and repeat it ad infinitum?
Why would slashdot be any different in that respect? We talk about Windows vs. Mac instead of Ford vs. Chevy, Bud vs. Miller, Redsox vs. Cowboys... but it's all the same thing underneath.
At least slashdotters don't use "gay" or "faggot" in every sentence. Give them that much.
If by "peer bonding" you mean "superficial contact with people who will forever remain strangers" then ok. Honestly I don't see the point.
I question the desire for this kind of thing and how healthy it is. I really doubt someone with a healthy offline social life needs to come here and repeat MS jokes ad nauseum to feel "bonded" to something.
But then, to be honest with you, most of the things that most people do most of the time make no goddamned sense to me whatsoever. Particularly when they insist on doing everything the hard way.
No company has shown more contempt for its customers than MS
My personal internally-consistent solution to that is simple. I have a Microsoft keyboard about which I have no complaints. Other than that, I haven't used a product of theirs in over ten years.
but yet they retain lots of masochistic geeky love.
The thing about repeatedly bashing your head against a wall is that it feels so good when you stop. If you have sense enough to stop and realize that there are alternatives...
Can you spot the bitter Windows Phone developer? Look carefully. They may look like an Android or iPhone developer, but if you approach them slowly and flip them over quickly you can identify them by their long umbilical cord stretching back to MSDN colony mother.
I don't develop for any phone. I can tell you that the most obvious, least clever, most repetitive, least novel jokes constantly get rewarded with a +5 visibility around here. And naturally if you don't think this is the epitome of humor, if you want something better like original creative humor that makes you laugh instead of making you roll your eyes, you either "don't get the joke" or you're "from the enemy tribe", in this case that would be MSDN. It's sort of like watching robots increment their humor variable.
If I had to sum it up with a single word, the word that comes to mind is "circlejerk". It's some kind of circle or feedback cycle. Repetition branded as "humor" gets rewarded here so as a result we get more of it. Maybe this is what trolls with mod points do when they run out of GNAA posts, like a very subtle kind of crapflood. If so, I salute their cleverness and the effectiveness of the tactic. Unlike the pro-lifers who murder doctors or the politicians who come up with new restrictions for the "land of the free", I do have a sense of irony, so you could regard this post as me having taken the bait if you like.
Occasionally I'll see a joke here that's not a repetitive meme and wasn't trivially predictable. Even more occasionally they get modded up. I think they're the only reason I don't configure this account to display "+5 Funny" as "-1". Well, that and I browse at -1 so it'd make no material difference.
Anyway, I'll make at least a feeble effort to remain on-topic. I think this lawsuit is great. If anything that even looks like perhaps it might possibly be unsolicited tracking/spying/etc results in tons of legal headaches for the companies involved, this can only be a good thing. I hope it makes them afraid to do anything that even looks like it might invade privacy. I would call that a better world.
If that's the only way to get companies to start respecting their customers, that's a shame but I consider that their choice. They want to do it the hard way, so be it. They could have done it voluntarily, out of respect, but force (i.e. of law) is the only thing they seem to understand. Finally the lust for money and status of the trial attorneys can be put to good use.
Slashdot Mirror
How about split it off and run it solo... That said, have you considered that DT might be interested in having T-Mobile purchased for the terms AT&T offered and is willing to make statements in support of the transaction?
What?! Perish the thought!
You can tell someone "you know, there are street criminals who would actually shoot someone for the $50 in their wallet" and they will readily believe you. Despite that, everyone knows that businessmen would never, ever use deception when millions of dollars are at stake. I mean, for fuck's sake, they wear suits. No one who dresses nicely would do bad things. You're a paranoid raving lunatic tin-foil hatter if you don't agree.
I miss the days when their (then?) CEO was still in the news. Your garden variety tax-dodging and securities fraud are boring; but a CEO who secretly builds a sex dungeon under his mansion while his wife is out of town, or is accused of drugging drinks during business meetings, that is almost enough to make me forgive the state of BCM linux drivers...
Collectively, in an almost unconscious, hypnotic, not-deliberately-planned sort of manner ... there is a strong tendency to train, nurture, and greatly reward the sociopaths we breed in numbers. It makes said fevered egos think they are completely invincible and may do anything they please, confident their wealth and connections and status will get them out of any real trouble. Until, of course, we are finally sickened or outraged and decide in a sudden way that they may not. That boundary determines what such people think they may get away with, either by hiding it or by all the times they got away with things for which "regular people" receive jail sentences.
They certainly don't decide not to indulge a temptation because of a standard of taste, decency, civility, compassion, or other concern for their fellow humans. That particular CEO just thought he'd never get caught. Others, like officials in high places who don't even pay their taxes, rely on the confidence that they'll never be held accountable for what they otherwise make no secret about.
The reason so many people tolerate this is that so many of them aspire to be like this. You have to let the existing power do what it wants, else you can't do what you want when you become the new existing power. There are precedents to consider, but otherwise it's entirely ego.
You miss it because it's novel, unusual, maybe even shocking. It's something other than "garden variety" to you and thus a little beyond what you are accustomed to tolerating and accepting as normal. It's a strange reason to miss something when you (really) think about it. Contrast that with missing something because it is inherently virtuous in a way that you really appreciate and consider a privilege to know and you'll see what I mean.
What are you worried about the government setting you up for? Seems to me they already have more powers than they should and if they want to render you to Iraq for interrogation they will. I'm heartened by the pushback against these powers, and also by court victories that are likely to affirm we have the right to videotape police. Abusive police are on the decline and our right and ability to tape them will frustrate and limit those that remain. In general, government corruption in many states is declining.
I think my chances are much higher that I'll be the victim of ordinary criminals than of the government. Not to mention my chance of being hit by a car. I think in ten years the good, defensive drivers will have wide angle cameras on the dash and out the rear window recording the last five minutes in a loop. Soon enough drivers will have them that many accidents are caught on tape along with plates and faces. Bad drivers will have to shape up or be reported and caught. If the loop is longer, like 30 minutes, police will have an app for smartphones. The app could check every fifteen minutes to see if there's been a police request for video footage from people driving on certain sections of streets where a crime just happened. Then the car cameras could help convict criminals for what they're doing along side the roads. So it's possible the public, wanting to defend themselves and help catch criminals, will set up a surveillance system of its own.
By suggesting that the public and not the government would run a makeshift surveillance system, you are implicitly admitting that this is better than the government doing so for all of the reasons (re: power) I have already outlined. You are trying to say it without saying it that your original position was quite far from ideal.
Another big difference between your private dash-cam and a government-monitored surveillance system is key: you probably aren't going to forever archive and store and data-mine the five minutes of video you record. You probably don't have a state-sized budget to throw at storing all the data, building databases around it, and you probably can't link that yourself with the DMV records to identify who owns which license plate. You probably aren't going to feel tempted to sell this massive archive of everyone's comings and goings and identities to marketers. You probably won't go on fishing expeditions.
Yet another important difference: you probably won't send your five-minute-loop video to anyone until and unless you are materially wronged in some way, for example maybe by a hit-and-run driver. Then and only then is there a reason for the authorities to peruse said video. Oh, you almost certainly won't be looking to bust people for adminsitrative violations and victimless crimes like the government would love to do because these are a steady revenue stream for state budgets. You personally have no such incentive.
Like I said, by suddenly changing your position concerning who would run a system, the nature of that system, and what it would be used for, you are saying it without saying it. You are admitting that your support of novel methods of government monitoring of private citizens is ill-founded. Perhaps you thought doing it subtly would save face? Nah. I have more respect for someone who comes out and straight-up says they have reconsidered.
Our species survived without fingerprints and DNA testing, but they've done great things for solving crimes. Plate readers and facial recognition cameras will make getting away with crime even more difficult. Wearing latex masks won't fool an intelligent system either that identifies a face with odd infrared or UV coloring and is walking a number of blocks to put distance between an owned or stolen vehicle and the criminals destination.
While it's only fiction, as Captain Picard said to the holographic Moriarty, "Professor, I feel it necessary to point out that criminal behavior is as unacceptable in the 24th century as it was in the nineteenth - and very much harder to get away with."
This technology could nearly stop carjackings, burglaries, identify suspects near the scene of arsons, rapes and murders, and catch all those and muggings on camera. We as a society lament spending more on police and dealing with crime than we do on education. Imagine if crime becomes so difficult to get away with, that many criminals give it up? Then we really could spend freed up resources on education, rehabilitation, and job training to turn our society around.
I don't believe you appreciate that every restriction on freedom and privacy always has the justification of safety. Yes, we can catch more criminals this way. I don't believe anyone is disputing that.
We could also catch more criminals if 1984-style telescreens were watching everyone at all times. Including in their homes, in the bathroom, in the bedroom, etc. We'd be really safe then!
At some point you have to decide whether a rational, dispassionate, unbiased observation of our government and the people who run it leads you to believe that they are trustworthy, that they have treated with respect and used wisely the power they already have, that abuses of power are minimal and are punished severely in proportion to the betrayal of trust they represent, that these people have done so well with the power they already have that they have shown it is a good idea to trust them with more. You then have to compare that to how often you have ever been the victim of a car thief or other criminal this system is designed to catch. Honestly, I am much more worried about a nanny-state government than I have ever been afraid of a street criminal. At least I could defend myself against the street criminal, if it came to that. At least I could avoid high-crime areas and otherwise not get the attention of criminals.
Besides, if you really wanted to reduce crime, the single most effective thing you could do is to legalize all drugs and regulate them the same way we do with alcohol. That would reduce property and violent crime much more than any car-tracking system could ever hope to do.
And hypothetical complaints about a mysterious, nefarious "some entity" using the system to "back me into a corner" isn't pushing some sort of agenda? Not all surrender of privacy and anonymity amounts to being treated like a criminal; not all systems will inevitably and automatically be used in most seditious, conspiracy-oriented ways. The "complete truth" you want me to speak is not an objective, independent truth; it's a personal, hypothetical fear of yours, and every bit as much of an "agenda" as what I'm talking about.
How do you continue to justify this system in the face of facts which are very clear and objective: we as a species have managed to survive without this, and shopping malls have continued to be relatively safe and profitable places of business for all of this time without such systems? In light of this, why do you think the risks are worthwhile and should be disregarded?
I say the burden of proof is on the person who supports new methods of tracking people. The sane default isn't "why not?", it's "why?".
No analysis of the movie, or any new analysis of copyright law will occur.
To be fair, the flaws in the latter are well-known and have been for quite some time. Naturally no explanation of this would be complete without an understanding of how political power works and thus, how it got to be so flawed in the first place and what must first be corrected before the laws will change.
I suppose the movie is open to novel forms of analysis... but the second half of that statement may as well be a tautology.
Sorry Tea Partiers are more like terrorists.
For what? For peacefully working within the political process to support leaders whom they believe represent their interests? That makes them terrorists? Oh right, they don't agree with you.
.. .. .. then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me" was written for people like you. It was intended for the early stages of this kind of monstrosity, when it looks innocent enough, when you can still comfortably call "tin-foil hatter" instead of "prophet" anyone who can see what's coming, when it's embryonic and could still be easily stopped. After that time, it's too late and must run its course. Not that this means anything to you, I'm sure.
It's already becoming a trend in the media to label as "terrorist" anyone who disagrees with you. It's the new "racist" just as "racist" was the new "communist", "communist" was the new "uppity dark-skinned person" and that was the new "witch".
Congratulations. You are a useful idiot who is taking his place as a part of a system of oppression. I know you didn't arrive at the conclusion that "Tea Partiers are terrorists" by your own independent examination of the actions of Tea Party supporters. I know that because it isn't possible. Their peaceful participation in the political process is the exact opposite of blowing things up and murdering civilians in order to advance a political agenda. That means you are the recipient of some carefully crafted brainwashing, propaganda, whatever you want to call it. Like all such recipients, you will excuse and defend what you now consider your own original idea. Again, congratulations.
You really have no idea the forces that are behind your passionate beliefs or just how dangerous this really is. Once the label of "terrorist" is applied so carelessly, you are now in a world where anyone can be considered a terrorist. Once that happens, you're only a baby step away from suspending their civil liberties at will. As long as you get the childish satisfaction of making someone look bad because you disagree with them it'll all be worth it, right? At least until you become the next terrorist. But don't worry, whoever calls you that will enjoy it as much as you did when you imagined the tables could never be turned on yourself.
That saying "first they came for the Jews, but since I was not a Jew I did not stand up
Going by your own angle, I wonder if that's really true; after all, politicians are still humans and just as capable of human failings as everyone else. Yet the way you are talking of them makes them seem like they were exempt from this, and instead had perfect internal clarity, rather than just deceiving themselves that they are doing the right thing, just like everyone else does according to yourself.
I'll give you a contemporary example.
Right now there are politicians in the US with a Democrat political viewpoint who advocate raising taxes on the wealthy in order to fix the deficit. The deficit is measured in trillions of dollars. So let's say you raised the income tax rate to 100% for everyone who makes $250k/year or more. Assume that no one changes their behavior as a result of this (a very big assumption). You would raise additional revenues measured in the tens of billions, in the ballpark of $50-75 billion.
$75 billion in more revenue is obviously not going to fix a deficit measured in trillions. So why would any politician continue to advocate it? Especially, why would they continue to advocate it once someone points this out to them (which has been done, repeatedly, assuming their own advisors didn't do it first)? That's easy. Because taxing wealthy people is a tenet of this political philosophy. They are merely trying to exploit a crisis to advance an agenda they had long before it was a crisis.
I won't get into whether I think progressive taxation is a good idea or whether it is justified to hate the wealthy. What I will get into is the fact that if you want to do it, this is a dishonest way to go about it. They are liars. They know they are lying. They are doing it anyway. This is just one example.
Sure, human foibles happen. Since you know that and I know that, it obviously isn't what I was talking about. I never understood the "discussion" style where you bring up things that don't fit the description given and ask me if that's what I meant by the description. It doesn't deserve its popularity.
Also, I can't help but notice that this "element of betrayl not present in little white lies" stuff sounds an awful lot like an attempt to excuse said "white" lies.
I didn't excuse anything. I mentioned small lies in the context of a quote from Mein Kampf. You don't have questions like this when you don't isolate something and take it out of the context with which it was presented.
Having said that, yes I recognize a distinction between a relatively innocent false statement and a deliberate, planned, intentional effort to deceive for personal or corporate gain. If you don't, that's your prerogative.
In fact, the very way you use the term "white lie" here seems to differ from the usual usage: you use it for self-deception, while the usual meaning is about lies told in situations where telling the truth would cause unneccessary pain or be otherwise morally wrong
Most of them are told to avoid offense. While there is a big difference between deliberately being a dick and merely being honest, I don't recognize anyone's right to never be offended. If telling the straight truth in a non-inflammatory non-malicious way causes pain, the right way to deal with that is to work on the situation until that thing is no longer true.
(like the classic "Gestapo comes asking if you have Jews hidden in your basement and you do" -scenario).
As Sun Tzu explained, all war is based on deception. Make no mistake, what Hitler conducted was a war on the Jewish people. Hitler's war was wrong and he did not deserve support. The one time it is absolutely acceptable to use deception, the time I will make no apologies whatsoever for doing so, is when I am confronted with a malicious adversary who cannot be reasoned with and wants to make war against me. This has nothing to do with "little white lies" however.
Isn't the defining trait of sociopathy not caring about justifications, but simply doing whatever you want and think you can get away with?
That could be rephrased as: "the fact that they get away with it means it was justified." In that way your answer is in your question.
But they always have a justification even if not for their own consumption. They recognize a need for one even if they do not personally desire one. No dictator ever came into power by saying "I want to be a ruthless dictator and rule over you with an iron fist and oppress you as much as possible." It's always for the children, to fight a national enemy, to deal with a failed economy, etc.
It's okay. There are plenty more where those came from. PLENTY more.
This is the denial of which I was speaking. The urge to trust someone who is manifestly not trustworthy (governments, shady businesses, etc) is a product of denial. It's an inability to see that there are red flags.
... the options they are left with boil down to two wrong choices. They can be a bully or they can be a pushover. So they find a place for themselves in a social hierarchy of some kind. It may be "jocks vs. nerds" etc in school or it may be the corporate ladder in adult life. Either way, there is someone they can push around who is expected to take it and in turn, there is someone to whom they are expected to be subservient.
The "big lie vs. small lie" was an analogy. The point was that people want to relate to themselves something that may be relatively alien to them. There is a self-centeredness inherent in this that is the opposite of objectivity.
The solution is to neither trust nor distrust, but instead to completely ignore the words and look at what the actions tell you about the person. Those who are not trustworthy also suffer from that self-centeredness and once you understand what it is, you can identify it immediately. They will give themselves away, but not if you are too caught up in your own mind to observe.
Also I would add that people are born inherently good. The problem is that long before they reach adulthood or even their teenage years, they are corrupted with the phony choices offered to them. Be it media, schooling, peers, society, you name it
Be it giving or receiving, it is always about domination and control and the struggle to achieve them. This is why sociopaths feel so justified in their deceptions. They perceive themselves as "having what it takes" to rise to the top and they regard it as a virtue they have earned. The result is that noble people with integrity who do not look for ways to control others, who want to live and let live whenever possible, who regard force as an option of last resort only after reason fails, those people are kept out of leadership positions and we inhereit the fucked up world we know today. It's an asylum, the inmates are running it, and all of the wrong things have lots of forces cooperating to make them happen, such as draconian copyright law. That's where the political clout is found.
If we had a perfect meritocracy then perhaps those at the top would have legitimately earned it. The problem is, we don't. It's not about how good you are, how skilled you are, how wisely you would govern, or how much you respect the rights of others. It's about being in the right clubs, knowing the right people, being one of the good ol' boys, and climbing to the top by climbing over the bodies of anyone who stood in your way. Sociopathy isn't just tolerated. It's actively encouraged and rewarded.
It's not just governments - it's people in general. Same goes for relationships, business and since government is made of people, that too. There's nothing you can do about it. Well, except put computer algorithms to handle it, but even then the algorithm designers would try to cheat and get some advantage towards them. People in general are full of shit.
The kind of "full of shit" that most people experience is denial. Usually of their personal weaknesses, insecurities, shortcomings, etc. They protect and excuse these things because they are identified with them. Identification with them means that letting them go would feel like a sort of death. Mostly they mean well, they just don't objectively see themselves or understand that their motivations for doing most things are a lot less wholesome than what they imagine them to be. Believe it or not, most people who are manipulative don't realize it. They only know that people respond to them when they behave that way and it seems to get them what they want so it must be "correct".
A lot of people would, in fact, be horrified to actually realize the daze they are in that prevents them from seeing how selfish they really are. A side-effect is that almost nothing is done for its own sake because it is good to do. There is always a secondary motive. The saying is "most people have two reasons for what they do: the good reason, and the real reason." Usually the closest the average person comes to understanding this is to realize that they have a lot of inner conflict and have grave difficulty being at peace with themselves, truly relaxing, or being content without some kind of entertainment or distraction.
That's bad enough, and goes a long way towards explaining why they are so willing to tolerate liars and portray it as normal ("eh he's a congressman what do you expect, of course he lies"). Yet it's different from actively, knowingly and deliberately trying to deceive. There's a plan and a purpose combined with an awareness of what one is doing. It's perpetrated by people who are sworn to do what is best for the nation and entrusted with a lot of power with which to do it. There's an element of betrayal here that isn't present in the "little white lies" most people tell.
It's part of why, perhaps surprisingly, telling a really big lie to masses of people tends to work out more successfully than telling a small one. Hitler was quite explicit about this in Mein Kampf:
The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one.
Even there you can see a hint of ego perspective or selfishness. The people assume their leaders must be just like them. Therefore if they would be ashamed to tell a big lie, there leaders must be also. The inability to perceive that other people don't function anything like the way you do and would do things you would not do is part of what makes people vulnerable to this kind of deception.
The only justification for interference is when they directly and unambiguously threaten us. The whole problem with the US is that it loves to meddle.
This "meddling" you abhor is intended to head off the germination of groups and governments that can eventually "directly and unambiguously threaten us." And by "threaten" I mean militarily, politically, or economically. The alternative is to allow a potential threat to grow unchallenged until it's so big that it can't be stopped without massive casualties, consequences, or costs (or all three). The last time everybody sat around and let a threat grow unchallenged, about 60 million people died in a war that lasted the better part of six years. Isolationism's been tried before. It doesn't work very well for the defender. It does, however, work very, very well for those planning to do harm to others.
Yes, that's the fear-based orthodoxy preached by those who wish to justify the imperialism err I mean meddling. You make this mistake of thinking I don't understand it when in fact I simply disagree with it.
And naturally we're either complete meddlers who have no respect for anyone else, or we're totally isolationist and have no input towards the rest of the world at all. You know why isolationism failed? Because it was practiced in its extreme form. All I want is for us to stop bullying other nations, to stop using the CIA to overthrow democratically elected governments, to stop things like the mass murder of South Americans so we can have a fucking fruit company, and to understand that there is a definite, positive connection between treating other nations as playthings and having lots of people who desperately want to harm you.
Wanting to trade with other nations in an equitable fashion, having ambassadors and engaging in diplomacy with them to try to reach mutually satisfying agreements, and respecting their decision when they tell you "no" is not isolationist, at least not the definition of it you seem to have been taught. It's really amazing the way you can go a whole decade without a pointless overseas war when you do things this way. You know what really harms others? When you actively create your own enemies just so you can justify continuing to feed your military-industrial complex.
You know why so much of the world hates Americans? They think the American government represents the wishes of the American people. It's hard to blame them. We definitely like to preach about how our government is "by the people, of the people, for the people".
No company has shown more contempt for its customers than MS
You don't get around much do you?
You don't look around much, do you?
That wasn't my line. I was quoting the person to whom I was responding. I failed to make that more clear because I didn't properly close the quote tags. 'Tis what happens sometimes when I'm inebriated and it's late at night...
Yes, they are. Have you actually lived there? It's the same thing here on slashdot always when talking about countries little bit different than US. I've lived many times and many years in Thailand, yet every time there's some slashdot news about internet censorship in there, whole slashdot goes on a knee-jerk reaction telling how the government is being abusive. The truth is that the people want it. Same thing when talking about how it's unlawful to talk badly about the Thai King. Somehow in slashdot it's viewed somehow as that he made the law. It was the people who wanted it. Do whatever you want in your own country, but don't go telling other countries how they should be. Let their people choose. If you want to comment about it, do get some actual own experience.
Sure, and a crackhead quite sincerely wants more crack. That doesn't mean this is good for him to have. Sometimes people want things that aren't good for them to have and don't serve their best interests. This is nothing new. There is nothing wrong with being opposed to this in principle.
Having said that, I agree that sovereign nations should be left alone as much as possible. The only justification for interference is when they directly and unambiguously threaten us. The whole problem with the US is that it loves to meddle. All or nearly all problems the US has ever had with terrorism or with attacks against Americans who are overseas or with its terrible reputation in many parts of the world is because we simply refuse to leave other nations alone. The US is a domineering empire that tries very hard not to call itself that.
Can you imagine how the US would react to a foreign nation that wants to establish a military presence within its borders and dictate how it should be governed? Or a foreign nation that uses its secret agencies (CIA equivalent) to try to cause chaos and disrupt its election processes? I have the funny feeling they wouldn't like it one bit. Why, they might even want to get back at anyone who tries it.
accepted standards of morality
The Romans already knew that there really was no point arguing about subjective things. Yet here we are 2000 years later doing the same damned thing.
Tell me about it. I almost wish our species had some kind of ancestral memory that was an easily-accessible part of our everyday waking consciousness. Then maybe, just maybe we could actually learn from the past instead of repeating the same mistakes and the same useless tendencies.
Of course the only bad thing is, you'd have no privacy at all. At least not from your offspring. They'd know all about that dishonest thing you did 3 years before they were born. It'd be interesting, to say the least.
Well, there's your first and second problem with this theory.
The problem with yours is that drugs are here to stay and planned, coordinated, well-funded large-scale efforts to eradicate them measure their progress in terms of reducing their growth. Since they aren't going away we need a different plan. What do you do with a situation you cannot stop? You find responsible ways to manage it instead.
Not everyone that uses drugs is an adult
For that reason the legal drug, alcohol, is age-restricted. Do those who are underage still obtain and consume it? You bet. There is not and has never been a substitute for actually being a parent. This again is nothing new. What's really amusing is that for those under 21, illegal drugs are actually easier to obtain than alcohol because dealers only care about cash. There is no ID check to circumvent.
nor are they usually properly functioning, healthy individuals capable of good decision making.
That's a rare creature in any arena. Lots of people who fail that description vote, drive, form strong opinions about things they don't understand, etc. That they might also do drugs is no surprise to any realist. This fact means it is useless to talk about whether people do drugs. But it is useful to talk about which model of use we should encourage.
It's farmville, dude.
Have you ever heard the saying (dating back to ancient Hermetic thought), "as above, so below"? Or the notion of a fractal self-similar universe, if you like the abstract method? These games of ours are so often microcosms of more significant real-life patterns. That's the point.
How does any of this have anything to do with what we're talking about? I still don't think microtransactions in shitty games are the same as dealing drugs.
You should ask that question to the person who brought up drugs. I will offer my best guess as to how it came into the discussion.
Spending money on a pink hat for your character in an MMO is a frivolous vanity purchase of something you don't really need. You could characterize casual drug use the same way. I believe that's why the comparison was made.
Just as the more stupid drug users get addicted and find themselves at a disadvantage compared to the dealer, people in online games often feel a need to belong and feel part of a crowd. I'll probably catch flak for this but I'll go ahead and say that the dumber, more naive, less-wise sort of person is the one who cares about following a crowd more than they care about being an individual and remaining true to themselves.
The point is they have a reason other than genuine need or utility to purchase something. When everyone else has their little useless vanity items it creates pressure on those who don't. It makes them stand out. It is a powerful drive not to be underestimated. The only real winner here is the gaming company. They get to extract real wealth (legal tender) in exchange for something of little or no intrinsic value. That's a nice racket if you can get it, but most of the rest of us have to perform useful work to get our living.
I was referring to the buying part. There are lots of reasons people turn to addictive drugs, even beside addiction itself. Drug dealers prey on serious physiological and mental weaknesses.
You only feel that way because those drugs are illegal, therefore only those willing to become branded as "criminals" use them. The only ones you know about are the ones who either get caught or have to do crazy things to feed their addiction. The responsible drug users look just like people who don't do drugs at all. You won't see them high in public for the same reason you won't see a responsible drinker drunk in public.
Lots of people are addicted to alcohol; we call them alcoholics. This doesn't mean you and I couldn't responsibly enjoy a beer and get on with our lives. The important question then is what makes one person use these things responsibly while the other cannot be trusted with them?
I don't think that's really the case with people that make video games, aside from capitalizing on people with mild impulse control problems... but you could say the same of someone that makes cupcakes.
I tend to look at the problem/weakness instead of the temptation it creates to exploit it. If I really think Microsoft makes terrible products, for example, then I don't blame Microsoft for that, I blame a market that so greatly rewards terrible products. With a market like that it's only a matter of time until someone meets that demand. You have to identify which is the cart and which is the horse.
The fact is, being a responsible adult who is not impulsive or hyper-emotional or reactive, who is not easily diverted from one's goals, just isn't cool anymore. The only people still doing it are those who never gave a damn about how trendy or popular something is. They have always been a minority. The rest think they can instantly gratify every possible little desire they will ever have and can't comprehend the disappointment they are building. In the meantime, plenty of companies will make lots of money promising instant satisfaction by saying you can have this frivolous thing and you can have it RIGHT FUCKING NOW. This is nothing new.
God dammit... anyone else remember when we could get on with the discussion instead of wasting dozens of posts on the meanings of dictionary words?
that is some serious shit that involves conscious, subconscious and alternative personalities.
I was thinking something like that myself. This is far more mysterious than the way it is being presented. We don't even know what "everyday" consciousness is let alone how to explain something like this.
Well, except that it's wholly voluntary. I don't see a problem with it really, though I usually choose not to get in to things utilizing that model. With the genuinely nasty drugs, otoh, the seller leverages your addiction... where the buyer has less of a choice in the matter.
Is there any adult person who doesn't realize things like crack and heroin are addictive? I consider that voluntary too. You choose to put yourself into a position where you have a weakness that can so easily be leveraged. It really gets old watching people play the victim when they do things like this. You really don't want the kind of society and government they would create. Openly stated evil is much easier to recognize and correct than misguided good intentions.
From the summary:
The negative reputation these systems have comes from factors that are tuned to maximize profit and abuse players for their money. But that's not an inherent trait in the system; you could just as easily use it to ensure your own bankruptcy!
You could say that the formation of plutocracies and the concentration of wealth and political influence is not an inherent trait in the system of unregulated or poorly regulated (think: regulatory capture) capitalism. But left unchecked this is exactly what tends to happen. It's repeatable.
... do companies that abuse their customers worry and live in fear of drastic severe boycotts from masses of people who just aren't going to take it? No, instead the "consumers" (a degrading term) find that it isn't perfectly convenient to maintain a boycott, that they might have to actually go a few days or weeks without some frivolous luxury they don't really need, that no one else is doing it anyway, etc. So companies do more or less whatever they want knowing that people will continue doing business with them.
The problem with microtransactions in games is they provide so many different ways to milk the customers. There are many more opportunities to do that with this arrangement than there would be with a flat monthly fee.
The question then is how much faith you have in average people to immediately abandon the game, in droves, the moment it starts becoming abusive. That's what you would need, for the first undeniable sign of abuse to be suddenly and severely punished. Otherwise it becomes entrenched and it becomes like government's game of incrementing by tiny little baby steps, each one justified and excused by various mouthpieces.
To continue the analogy to offline commerce
If I had to sum it up with a single word, the word that comes to mind is "circlejerk".
Isn't that the basis of all peer bonding? Find a low common denominator and repeat it ad infinitum?
Why would slashdot be any different in that respect? We talk about Windows vs. Mac instead of Ford vs. Chevy, Bud vs. Miller, Redsox vs. Cowboys ... but it's all the same thing underneath.
At least slashdotters don't use "gay" or "faggot" in every sentence. Give them that much.
If by "peer bonding" you mean "superficial contact with people who will forever remain strangers" then ok. Honestly I don't see the point.
I question the desire for this kind of thing and how healthy it is. I really doubt someone with a healthy offline social life needs to come here and repeat MS jokes ad nauseum to feel "bonded" to something.
But then, to be honest with you, most of the things that most people do most of the time make no goddamned sense to me whatsoever. Particularly when they insist on doing everything the hard way.
No company has shown more contempt for its customers than MS
My personal internally-consistent solution to that is simple. I have a Microsoft keyboard about which I have no complaints. Other than that, I haven't used a product of theirs in over ten years.
but yet they retain lots of masochistic geeky love.
The thing about repeatedly bashing your head against a wall is that it feels so good when you stop. If you have sense enough to stop and realize that there are alternatives...
tl;dr
Then my advice is: don't read it.
You're welcome.
Can you spot the bitter Windows Phone developer? Look carefully. They may look like an Android or iPhone developer, but if you approach them slowly and flip them over quickly you can identify them by their long umbilical cord stretching back to MSDN colony mother.
I don't develop for any phone. I can tell you that the most obvious, least clever, most repetitive, least novel jokes constantly get rewarded with a +5 visibility around here. And naturally if you don't think this is the epitome of humor, if you want something better like original creative humor that makes you laugh instead of making you roll your eyes, you either "don't get the joke" or you're "from the enemy tribe", in this case that would be MSDN. It's sort of like watching robots increment their humor variable.
If I had to sum it up with a single word, the word that comes to mind is "circlejerk". It's some kind of circle or feedback cycle. Repetition branded as "humor" gets rewarded here so as a result we get more of it. Maybe this is what trolls with mod points do when they run out of GNAA posts, like a very subtle kind of crapflood. If so, I salute their cleverness and the effectiveness of the tactic. Unlike the pro-lifers who murder doctors or the politicians who come up with new restrictions for the "land of the free", I do have a sense of irony, so you could regard this post as me having taken the bait if you like.
Occasionally I'll see a joke here that's not a repetitive meme and wasn't trivially predictable. Even more occasionally they get modded up. I think they're the only reason I don't configure this account to display "+5 Funny" as "-1". Well, that and I browse at -1 so it'd make no material difference.
Anyway, I'll make at least a feeble effort to remain on-topic. I think this lawsuit is great. If anything that even looks like perhaps it might possibly be unsolicited tracking/spying/etc results in tons of legal headaches for the companies involved, this can only be a good thing. I hope it makes them afraid to do anything that even looks like it might invade privacy. I would call that a better world.
If that's the only way to get companies to start respecting their customers, that's a shame but I consider that their choice. They want to do it the hard way, so be it. They could have done it voluntarily, out of respect, but force (i.e. of law) is the only thing they seem to understand. Finally the lust for money and status of the trial attorneys can be put to good use.