The old version of Amazon's agreement stated that developers would receive 20% of the original price when an app was given away for free. Then they changed it, and they didn't make it clear to developers. For many of them it was a nasty surprise. Unfortunately I can't find the original, but the new version is here https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/mobile-apps/devportal/pdf/Appstore_Distribution_Agreement.pdf with the added sentence "No Royalty is payable for Apps with a List Price of $0.00." in Section 2(a).
It's amazing how many problems and complaints would be solved if every ToS, EULA, and online agreement required some kind of electronic signature to be valid. It should be something that would take more than a quick mouse-click to apply. Also if any amendments to existing agreements had to come with a statement to the effect of, "The amended agreement is identical to the previous one in every way, except the following:" which could be covered in a couple of paragraphs, rather than reading tens of pages of legalese to find what has changed.
The entire notion of a contract or agreement is that both parties fully understand it and both parties voluntarily agree to it. The fact that most people neither read nor understand most agreements and EULAs and ToS's means that this system is failing and needs to be changed. Unless of course we are prepared to reject the idea of informed, voluntary consent to mutually satisfying agreements. Anyone who wants to reject that notion should understand that your alternative is the law of the jungle.
Most of these people are frustrated authoritarians.
It's how they can justify imposing their view of the legality of their actions on their victims.
I am curious about what makes you see it this way.
Almost all of the targets of Anonymous and Lulzsec have been large corproations who not only are never going to be seriously punished by the law, but in fact have the power to buy whatever laws they want to have on the books It is the corporations themselves who work to destroy the whole notion of "rule of law" and undermine the legitimacy of law. We are not all equal under the law if a few of us can remake the laws at will at the expense of the majority, all without ever running for election or holding a political office.
You may not like the vigilante actions. I find them distasteful myself. However, I see them as effects. Whenever I want a situation to change, I don't bother looking at effects. I examine causes. Sony and others thought they could be asshats with impunity. The punity finally caught up to them, it just didn't happen in the more legitimate form of government law enforcement.
But if your concern is "imposing their view of the legality of their actions on their victims", to whom does that more strongly apply? The corporations with politicians in their pockets who buy whatever laws they find convenient that never get repealed that everyone else has to live under for generations afterward? Or a couple of online groups who produced a handful of high-profile incidents in retaliation? At least Anonymous hasn't rewritten the law to make their tactics legal. That would place them on equal footing with the real authoritarians.
NSA wouldn't run a counterintelligence operation against Americans. That would be illegal and easy to beat.
If they did, how would you ever prove it?
A FOIA request? Denied - national security.
A lawsuit? Denied - national security.
Asking nicely? Denied - "we can neither confirm nor deny..."
Without proof, well then, you'd just be a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy nutter (and for major events like 9/11 you'll be called such names even with lots of proof). This is a roundabout, indirect way of saying that you're foolish and something is wrong with you if you don't blindly trust the goodwill of unaccountable government agencies with nearly unlimited budgets who certainly have the capability of spying on Americans and running operations against Americans.
Not because it's true or might be true or would fit in with the long history of past abuses, mind you, but because people who are in denial want to feel comfortable about their denial and your doubts make that more difficult. When faced with such a situation, small-minded people will attack your character.
At any rate, yes it would be "illegal" but without accountability and transparency that really doesn't mean anything. How would it be easy to beat? How would you ascertain that without intimate knowledge of the actual methods used? If you somehow attained such knowledge, why wouldn't they change the methods?
There is a huge difference between hackers â" who tread the line of legality regularly and often step over, but not with the intent of doing great harm â" and criminals who happen to work online, Moss said.
One group you can train or encourage to focus on solving problems that affect national security, and trust to the same extent you would experts in other fields.
It seriously doesn't help that most of the legitimate private-sector jobs available to those with strong computer/networking skills are thankless, offer little job security, tend to expand in scope with no matching expansion of pay, tend to demand overtime while paying salary, are dominated by managers who don't understand technology and (worse) refuse to listen to underlings who do, often require dealing with literate adults who fail to follow the simplest of instructions then blame the IT guy when it doesn't work, and don't treat their employees with anything resembling the amount of respect that should be due to people without whom the entire operation would grind to a halt.
If anything, it's a miracle that there is not more criminal activity from the numbers of people who have strong skills and few legitimate places in which to express it.
In a way it's like the highly intelligent kids who are bored to death in the public schools and start becoming disruptive "behavioral problems". Well yeah, no shit, you set up a situation that amounts to a formula for producing this. Shockingly, that's the result you obtained; be sure to act surprised! If this is analogous to the talent the NSA is reaching out for, this may be a good thing, assuming they really want to work for one of the more notorious government agencies.
I bet lucrative incentives are more cost effective than fighting legal and political opposition.
Indeed. It's a wonder the federal government isn't using the usual "consent-based" approach to usurp powers that fall to the states, such as setting drinking age and speed limits: threaten to withhold a significant portion of the state's federal funding, which most states are quite reliant on for one service or another.
Or maybe this is a new strategy meant to avoid offending honorable Senator Leghorn when that old trick is used against his state.
Just make sure the wealth keeps rising to the top and there'll be an endless supply of impoverished communities around the country lining up to take this "consent-based" salvation.
Like hed p.e. explains... there is a war on the middle class. In many nations, a prosperous middle class and the economic independence that goes with it is what displaced various forms of dictatorship. It works in reverse, too. To convert a "democratic" nation to a dictatorship, you must first make the people poor and needy and desperate. It will be even more effective if you can also make them fat and stupid, for obvious reasons.
Naturally those who want to form another dictatorship must view the middle class as their enemy.
Holy fuck no. I mean, I realize you Americans are scared of shit of plutonium thanks to your rabid environmentalists, and carter. But hey, if you want to cut your nuclear fuel supplies in half. Please keep sending your waste to Canada, S.Korea and Japan so we can have cheap, inexpensive fuel. I mean we all really like it.
Or you can grow a fucking pair and jump all over the environmentalists and nimby's for being fucking idiots.
The purpose of the environmentalism is to enforce a kind of soft tyranny. Cheap, abundant, easily accessible energy means fewer people crying out for government to do something about energy, something that everyone uses and everyone needs. The general concept is that government is never going to voluntarily endorse and encourage something that gives people one less thing to worry about. They enjoy appearing to do so because that appeals to the masses, but they do not wish to actually do it. The larger and less local the government, the more true this is. Thus, the local and state governments are not nearly so bad as the federal government with respect to this tendency.
This is from Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince":
Therefore a wise prince will seek means by which his subjects will always and in every possible condition of things have need of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him.
Unlike 1984, The Prince actually was intended to be something like a manual.
The problem is that nobody in their right mind would agree to this as the Federal Government is already being sued for failure to clean currently used sites. They're way behind schedule on work at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and I have no particular faith that this would change in the future.
That's the real problem. There is a track record. People who might otherwise be open to this idea can see how poorly it has been handled in the past. Now they're not so open to this idea. If you want cooperation, the trick is to not create these situations in the first place.
OTOH if we can get a site in a red state perhaps we can at least get some social justice out of this.
It's very rare I see anyone advocate their notion of "social justice" by any means other than some kind of force or threat of force. That's a shame. Persuasion based on sound reason is a far nobler path. Certainly the things that could go wrong with nuclear waste represent force. Nuclear radiation is not going to have abstract debate with anyone. If that's a joke, well, there are more amusing ones.
That has to be what you meant, too. Otherwise you could call it "justice" when people knowingly take a risk and it doesn't work out so well for them. They're definitely not victims because they made a conscious, informed decision and reaped the results. And only a very petty and childish mentality would want to separate adults from the consequences of their actions. No victim means no injustice. However, that would apply to all states. Even the "blue" ones.
Incidentally, the color red has been associated with leftist thought, particularly its more extreme forms such as communism, for about a century. It seems like the "red state = Republicans" is therefore misnamed, or some kind of intentional newspeak. They're definitely assholes, but they are not leftist assholes. Not that it matters much to me. I'd like to see a US federal government that is about 20% the size and power of the one we know today, with any remaining slack being picked up by the states as intended by the whole notion of federalism. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans intend to do that. Compared to that, the issues they squabble over are trivial and useless.
and they can't be stopped by anything known to man
Well, yeah, they can be stopped. It would require less effort than our current policies, in fact. But sometimes asking people to not do something they really don't have to do is incredibly difficult.
All it would take is for the US to stop meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations. Particularly since they don't do this openly and honestly, but covertly and deceitfully via intelligence agencies. One example is the 1953 overthrow of Iran's democratically elected government and its replacement with a dictator. That's just one example. There are many.
That incident happened a long time ago, the people who perpetrated it passed away a long time ago, etc., so it's openly acknowledged that this happened. You'd be a fool to think nothing like that goes on today. You'd also be a fool to think the citizens who have to live under such dictators don't hate us for that. Some of them surely are crazy or desperate, or both. All of them understand they would stand zero chance in conventional warfare against a world superpower. Thus terrorism is bred.
A bit more plausible than the whole "they hate us for our freedoms" bullshit theater for the masses, to make a gross understatement.
Anyway, the idea that our leaders would have the wisdom, humility, decency, and self-respect to admit that this is wrong and never do things like this again... well, that's a much bigger (though far less amusing) joke than your tongue-in-cheek post.
> Joe Sixpack will start to see them as little more than greedy thugs.
You need to end your sentence with "but nothing will change." Joe Sixpack will read about all of this "Neat Piraty Stuff" and Google "Where to Download Harry Potter and the Prisoner of the Six Hour Movie." He'll click to download it, get an email from his ISP that will scare the crap out of him and he'll pray to the Lord of Hycones that if they don't come to get him in the middle of the night he'll never do it again. So then he'll go back to his regularly scheduled, over-priced cable bill and maybe, if he wants to be brave, he'll try this "Hulues" thing the kids at work talk about. At least until he starts getting emails threats about that, too.
It is hard to find someone with less faith in the capabilities of the average person than I. It's not that I don't want to have such faith, it's that trying to maintain it is a certain path to disappointment and heartache. It is better dealt with by letting go and learning to accept, which fits in quite well with my general attitude of "live and let live". Having said that...
At its most extreme, a "War on Piracy" is going to stop people from obtaining copyrighted material about as well as the War on (some) Drugs has stopped people from obtaining illicit substances. That is, not at all. Consider also that the laws dictating to consenting adult people what substances they are allowed to put into their own bodies and/or what ways they are allowed to alter their consciousness are criminal laws, with the full force of the police power of government behind them. Still they are utter failures according to any and all of their stated goals. A civil tort is even less likely to be vigorously enforced.
The copyright cartels ultimately have no choice at all other than to learn to love the Information Age, to become as easy to do business with as possible like most other industries that don't rely on government-granted monopolies have to do, and to give their customers what they want in the format that it is wanted. Until then they can waste lots of money and political influence trying to delay the inevitable with all of the terrible side effects that implies.
" will likely not have central trackers of any kind (perhaps it will rely on something like DHT), and will generally make it much more difficult to identify individual users. "
IIRC DHT uses a bootstrap node too. If MPAA can't find the users, then the users can't find each other either.
"...but it's too much trouble to do it ourselves. You do it for us."
If they keep pushing this, the result will be predictable enough.
It will eventually result in a new distributed peer-to-peer protocol. This new protocol will have mandatory strong encryption, will be obfuscated, will likely not have central trackers of any kind (perhaps it will rely on something like DHT), and will generally make it much more difficult to identify individual users. In turn, the pirates, who already feel quite bold, will likely share even more copyrighted material as a result of the reduced risk.
If they really want to drive it even more underground, they can, but they will regret the results. Meanwhile, the more unreasonable they become the more likely it is that Joe Sixpack will start to see them as little more than greedy thugs. Right now a lot of people who don't keep up with these developments have at least some sympathy for them. There are still many who will entertain arguments claiming that infringement of copyright is exactly the same thing as theft of tangible goods (which it is not) and the like, but the copyright cartels are on a certain path towards changing that.
Unreasonable asshats with control complexes who have politicians in their back pockets are a recipe for lawlessness, both of the unprincipled type that just wants a new movie/game/mp3 and of the civil-disobedience type who promote and support what the cartels are trying to stop as an act of protest. Exactly how many thousands of examples are needed for this to become something obvious that "everybody knows" and no longer wants to try?
I would also like to see accurate measurements of the damages, with reliable data and unbiased analysis. I do not think I will get that from anyone with ties to corporations, which are motivated solely by profit, and will benefit by shifting the costs to someone else. Nor do I think I will get that from anyone trying to sell popular bestselling books or films, with a different sort of profit motive.
Unfortunately you are also unlikely to get that from anyone with ties to government grants. That's true of much more rigorous sciences than climatology. It's particularly true of climatology because it has had the misfortune of becoming tied to left-right politics.
Even without such useless baggage, the way government grants for science work is easy to understand. The amount of grant money is finite. Therefore, it is allocated to those research projects which are viewed as reasonably likely to obtain useful results. The criteria for this boils down to whether the research is based on a mainstream theory for which there is significant consensus among scientists. When multiple theories all explain the data, or when there is debate about how to interpret a theory, this ends up being a sophisticated popularity contest. Even this is not a "pure" popularity contest, but is strongly influenced by what the scientists were taught when attaining their degrees and whether their training included a desire to be open to new ideas.
If the mainstream consensus happens to be faulty, this is why it can take a long time for this to become well-known and appreciated. It is why it can take a long time for something better to replace it. Often, the investments in a given status quo are such that the "old guard" has to die of old age and be replaced by new thinkers in the form of a sudden paradigm shift. There is no logical or factual reason why these changes have to take so long. It is entirely a political and social problem. Should the cost of this be measurable, it would be quite high.
Collecting data and performing basic reasoning is relatively easy. Integrating this into a framework of understanding that has both explanatory and predictive power is the truly difficult part. Even more difficult still is to do so while remaining aware of the dangers of entrenchment. I am reminded of the following quote:
My message is not that biological determinists were bad scientists or even that they were always wrong. Rather, I believe that science must be understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of robots programmed to collect pure information. I also present this view as an upbeat for science, not as a gloomy epitaph for a noble hope sacrificed on the altar of human limitations.
-- S.J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man
And yet another:
It's not easy being seen if you find information that does not support the accepted views because the supporters of the accepted views have publicity, money and power to grant degrees. Going along is how proponents of the accepted view obtained their degrees, how they obtained funding and how they obtained their publicity. So how could so many smart people have got it so wrong? A few got it wrong; the rest went along. Self interest, not science, ensured the status quo.
mod parent up please. It is amazing how few people understand this concept. It makes perfect sense when you see it this way, it it just never explained. At least, nobody ever explained it to me growing up in the States...
That's because the US is the epitome of a society based on Prussian-style schooling. General principles like the law of diminishing returns are not taught. The best you could hope for is to have this mentioned in some kind of automotive shop class, but then it would be explained only in an isolated reductionist fashion and not as a widely-applicable principle.
Most people you'd regard as "stupid" are not actually mentally deficient. Their thinking is fragmented. They cannot see how one thing is related to other things from different subjects. The classic example is a doctor or other highly educated person who is suddenly completely helpless when placed in front of a computer, rendered unable to figure out even the most basic procedures. It is not because the doctor is stupid. It is because he has seldom thought in a dynamic way, using general knowledge to reason through a new and unfamiliar problem.
It's the same reason end-users in an office need "retraining" when the version of MS Office is upgraded. They don't understand i.e. word processing as an abstract concept. If they did, a few minutes acquainting themselves with the new interface would be all the adjustment needed. Instead, they understand word processing as a memorized list of steps, down to the micro level of "move pointer to this thingy, click on that icon". That's why replacing a menu with a ribbon is enough to confuse them. The "retraining" replaces the old set of memorized steps with a new set of memorized steps. Nowhere is any kind of dynamic understanding transmitted.
Not intuitively understanding the miles-per-gallon deal is one of the most minor ways in which you have been short-changed by this.
it really sucks. i for one would love to see most SUVs off the road. the vast majority of SUV owners do not haul cargo, do not drive off-road, and do not frequently carry more than 3 passengers. they have none of the requirements that would necessitate this type of vehicle. they just had to leap on the bandwagon.
If increasing overall vehicle energy efficiency is a serious goal, this part does need to be addressed. The problem is, the most likely way government would do so is to tell you what kind of car you may buy, and/or to attach absurdly high taxes to vehicles they wish to discourage.
I'd rather they try persuasion but that doesn't seem to be their strong suit. On the plus side, getting more of the gas guzzlers off the road may lower the price of gasoline and reduce dependency on foreign oil. At least, so long as we adamantly refuse to use our own domestic natural resources...
Express it in amount per distance, it's easier to deal with. (It's also easier in daily life. People want to know how much fuel / money it will take to drive a certain distance, rather than how far they can drive with $20 of fuel.)
I'll use L/100km, as that's the normal measurement in metric countries (and what I'm more familiar with).
10 (miles per US gallon) = 24 litres per (100 km)
20 (miles per US gallon) = 12 litres per (100 km)
30 (miles per US gallon) = 8 litres per (100 km)
40 (miles per US gallon) = 6 litres per (100 km)
I think it's now clear. From 20mpg to 40mpg saves 6L, but from 10mpg to 20mpg saved 12L.
Thank you for providing figures. It was not something I had looked into before.
The more general explanation is that there is a law of diminishing returns. Still, energy efficiency is always a good thing.
As for me I imagine all-electric cars that store energy via banks of supercapacitors that can be charged quickly at "gas" stations in 3-5 minutes. The stations will be specially equipped with large electrical capacity. The cars can also have regenerative braking, perhaps also with solar panels on the roofs to supplement their range and help provide auxillary power for things like air conditioning. The range will be at least 500 miles. Oh yeah, the electricity can come from thorium nuclear reactors designed with passive safety so they can't melt down. And Google can perfect their automated system so the cars can drive themselves, making drinking and "driving" perfectly legal. And these cars will be affordable...... somehow. Yeah.
Hey, one can dream. At least I didn't start talking about how government can be staffed entirely with noble, honorable people who have our best interests at heart and never bow to corporate money and political pressure. That would just be absurd.
http://tubegator.com/content/uploads/obama-care.jpg
Explain anything other than racism, and an appeal to racial bigotry, that could possibly lie behind this political image. Of course all Tea Partiers aren't racists, but the racists seem to be drawn to that movement.
Looks to me like someone said "screw it -- if I disagree with his political position I am going to be called a racist anyway; may as well give them a reason to get their panties in a wad." If so, in a roundabout way I say good for them. The only reason to scream "RACISM!" at someone without some damned solid evidence is to intimidate them into being silenced. The best remedy for this is a little systematic desensitization, at least until we regain some perspective on what racism actually is and isn't.
Although I cannot help but wonder how your own logic applies to your statement. Is there something wrong with traditional African tribal dress? In your mind, does dressing that way make someone look less sophisticated, less intelligent, less effective? If so, is that an inherent property of the clothing or is that a property of how you view African people? Do you see how easily even your concern could be construed as a racist notion? There's nothing in the world that is easier than to point fingers and twist things around in order to label someone, and "racist" is a particularly terrible label that should not be thrown about so carelessly. Would you be so quick to call someone a "murderer" because "he looks like the type" or would you feel a need to come up with serious evidence first?
I am saying, if you look hard enough and you are determined enough, you can look under a rock and "find" something racist about the earth underneath, it doesn't make it real. Without actual evidence of racism, I assume the African tribal dress comes from the disputes over Obama's birth certificate, the way such a simple matter was turned into a big deal, and the amount of time during which people (at least those who care about things like whether our President is legitimate - a decreasing minority) wondered if he was really an American citizen or was really a Kenyan national. There's nothing wrong with natural-born Kenyans, however traditional or modern, except of course that they wouldn't qualify for the office of President according to the US Constitution.
Obama actually is of Kenyan descent. So this photo shows him in traditional African dress. You say this must be racist. Suppose we have a President of Scottish descent and a photo shows him wearing a kilt and a set of bagpipes. Would you call that "racism" (actually bigotry)? To me it's just Scottish traditional dress. If you would call that bigotry of some kind, would you still call that "racism" if it took an unnecessarily long time to publically verify that this imaginary President is in fact an American citizen and not a Scottish national?
This hypersensitivity concerning race needs to be rejected as the insanity that it truly is. It's just another entry in a very long list of techniques used (both knowingly and unwittingly) to distract attention away from the message and towards the messenger, ad-hominem style.
>"racist" is one of the worst stains on your reputation available these days.
Not exactly. One of the more recent and thriving, Fox News sponsored political movements is chocked full of them. You'd almost think they wore it as a badge of honor.
I know it's easy to just make blanket statements (I seriously don't like Murdoch either) but could you try substantiating this please?
This is the problem with constitutionally guaranteed free speech - not only that this kind of speech is deemed okay, but the fact that the guy didn't feel the need to stop and think before (metaphorically) opening his mouth.
It's deemed legal, meaning it's not the state's role to add a consequence to it. Often, that's all this means.
That isn't the same thing as "okay". I am sorry if you really believe that legal and okay are the exact same thing. There are higher modes of moral/ethical reasoning than that.
Though it has been deemed legal, there definitely are consequences. This man is now famous for wishing violence and making racist statements. Though we often glorify violence, "racist" is one of the worst stains on your reputation available these days. It is a great way to make sure that decent people don't want to have anything to do with you. Since he did not actually victimize anyone, this is sufficient.
People will judge him accordingly and he will have to live with that for some time to come. It's not something easily forgotten. This is what free speech is all about. You say what you like and then accept the way it will change how you are perceived and treated. A law regulating speech is not only a wrong-headed desire to control disguised in "save the children" type packaging, it's also unnecessary. It appeals only to those who recognize no authority and no consequence other than that enforced by government.
What does it matter if RIM is holding Encrypted emails that they don't have the key to decrypt?
They don't overlook it, because there's nothing to overlook. The government doesn't have the keys to decrypt those messages either. Hence RIMs problems in middle east countries.
That whole affair with service in India proved that if they really want to, they can indeed decrypt the e-mails.
Is my business the only one ever to realise that blackberry stores your emails on their servers, and that the patriot act gives US government the right to read it? I don't understand why so many businesses overlook that.
I wish the problem were simple ignorance as you describe. That may be going on as well, of course, but the real problem is much worse than the kind of ignorance that could be remedied with a couple minutes' explanation. The problem is denial.
The problem is that the average person doesn't recognize the danger that represents. They think, "well *I* have nothing to hide" and "well, *I* haven't done anything illegal". Of course, both of those assume that government thugs would only ever go after real criminals after finding real evidence that crimes have been committed and would always respect the privacy of everyone else. Both of those assume that government agents never, ever, never, ever, ever, not once, ever, abuse their authority.
Any thinking person who even slightly paid attention to history can see the problem with that. The probem is, they're outnumbered thousands-to-one by everyone else. Time and time again it has been shown that extraordinary surveillance powers will be extraordinarily abused, but to appreciate that, you must first admit that we're not the very first exception. The attitude that police states only occur in those foreign countries, that "it can't happen here" so we can all go back to sleep, well that's the one thing most certain to guarantee that it does.
The other thing that history has repeatedly shown is that runaway government which never stops expanding is a far greater threat than any foreign enemy has ever been. It happens this way every single time it's tried. I suppose those who are really in denial would find fault with me for seeing that two and two added together equals four, every time you try it, and concluding that it will equal four the next time you try it, too.
That was my first reaction as well. But think about it. Why would Netflix intentionally bad-mouth the very people they're trying to negotiate lower prices with? That would accomplish nothing except even HIGHER prices for the content.
Because unlike the copyright cartels, Netflix is actually trying to bring content to people the way people want to have it, in an online form where much of it is at their fingertips, without having to resort to piracy to achieve same? A legitimate service that's about as good as what the pirates enjoy is a good thing for everyone. It's something the cartels should be encouraging. If they had any sense at all or any ability to think beyond the next quarter, they'd remove as many obstacles as possible and become as easy to deal with as possible in order to help this happen.
Netflix is bringing them a lot of business they may not have enjoyed otherwise. That should be a decent bargaining position. If not, someone at Netflix needs to learn how to negotiate...
Their hands were tied. Sure, what they ended up saying didn't sound good at all, but there's no way they could have blamed the real reason for the increase.
I think they'd be celebrated if that's the reason and they were actually honest about it. The standard corporate practice is to insult your customers by giving them a line of bullshit, as though they were too stupid to read between the lines. They'd distinguish themselves from most other corporations by choosing to do otherwise.
That's a high compliment -- thank you. It'd have to be true of you as well, for you have to cherish reason yourself to appreciate the same in someone else. It's a type of resonance.
Of course, others see reason as a pesky obstacle to what they are trying to assert. It's exactly the same way that a lot of politicians see the Bill of Rights as a nuisance to be worked around, rather than something sacred to be honored and protected that they were fortunate enough to inherit. The AC is like this; in fact he is probably reinforced by the way most don't know how to deconstruct and counter his assertions.
GP is trying to connect a celebrity's choice of some product as a legit recommendation when it's obvous it has been paid for. Be it a brand of toilet roll, make up or hairspray. A choice of said product has no bearing on the skills and abilities of that singer. You might trust the celebrity but that probably makes you an idiot. (If you trust a celebrity, on a commercial television show or commercial network advert or on commercial radio or commercial interview, you are naive and gullible.
The entire celebrity deification culture depends on the naive and gullible. To that I would add, it depends also on the emotionally immature. Have you ever watched a show like Entertainment Tonight and witnessed the petty, frivolous, insignificant things that are treated as though they mattered? The mark of such people is that their feelings are placed above whatever reason they have, making them easy prey for the manipulations of marketing. What marketers and deceivers understand well is that manipulation is done through the emotions. That's why there always has to be some big excitement over everything, why there is so little dispassionate inquiry.
Of course this suits the marketers, PR types, and politicians just fine. Therefore it is not viewed as a problem to be solved by those who could do something about it on any sort of large scale. In many ways, it is encouraged through repeated examples portraying it as normal merely because it is common. It also exploits the human tendency to feel part of something greater than oneself by redefining "greater" in terms of "greater numbers" rather than "greater sophistication" or "greater understanding".
The "trick" is to have emotions and value them as another way of experiencing life without being ruled by them. It is about putting them in their proper place. Just as a working car does not have the stereo where the spark plugs should be, a healthy person does not have emotion where reason should be.
I too can see that you might want to know what films an actor or actress likes, perhaps they drew inspiration from it. But if they were recommending a mobile phone or some jeans, that is just product placement and absolutely without credibility.
Marketers do these things because they work. I doubt they have much more knowledge than that, else most of them would be horrified at their own profession. Compared to anyone who can sing, dance, become an athlete, or act, the doctor who finally cures cancer will be an anonymous figure. Ever think about why that might be?
"We" love our entertainers the way an addict loves his drug. There is a tremendous discontentment with life, many people feel it, and entertainers temporarily make it feel better by amusing or impressing us. For that dubious "service" we place them on pedestals and pretend they are better and more worthy of adoration than the scientists who created telecommunications so we even know who they are, the farmers who raise our food, etc.
The real pathology is that if so many didn't engage in this sort of escapism, there would be a large amount of excess time and energy that could be put towards actually addressing the political, social, and personal problems that made escapism seem so appealing in the first place. It's your classic feedback loop. I'm convinced that all psychological pathologies take the form of a feedback loop or self-sustaining cycle.
I'm all about being an individual but it's silly to dismiss anything you don't like or don't understand as 'other people are sheep and I'm so above that'.
Likewise, it's silly to dismiss every opinion you don't share as arrogance. I gave my reasons for why I disagree with celebrity endorsements in general. If you can find an error in my reasoning, feel free to tell me. This hand-waving of yours is a sign that you don't like what I said, which is your problem, but cannot actually tell me what's wrong with it. That's quite weak.
My point was, Google+ is a computer and network-based system. It required technical know-how to put it together. How well it works as a system to enable people to communicate depends on how well it was designed for this purpose. Otherwise why would people who want this kind of site leave Facebook where all their other friends already are? There has to be some superior offering to convince people to jump ship.
If someone likes an actor it makes sense that they would be interested in their movies. Same with singers and songs.
This is where you say something that actually is reasonable and try to tie it into your personal dislike of what I said, as though that lends credibility to what is really just your opinion. This is either very weak or it's deceptive, the difference of course being whether you know this is what you are doing.
If I think a person is a great actor, of course it makes sense to be interested in what other movies they star in. If I think someone is a talented singer, it makes sense to look for other songs they perform. But Lady Gaga could be the very best singer in the world; that doesn't make Google+ any more or less useful for me. That's the fallacy of this kind of endorsement. How much simpler does the point have to be?
I know the fantasy is that because someone is famous it's as if you know them the same way you know your friends with whom you actually spend quality time. I don't know why that fantasy has so much appeal but that's what it's all about. The fact of the matter is, none of us is likely to have any one-on-one time with any celebrity, not even if they use the same social network. Lady Gaga has her own actual friends (i.e. people she actually does know personally and does spend time with) and has her own family members. For all the rest of us, any communication from her will be one-to-many, exactly like her songs. Again this is not a compelling reason to use a social network.
Now if you have something substantive to add other than a long-winded "I don't feel the same way you do about this opinion-based issue, therefore you're wrong", please chime in any time you want. Otherwise there are plenty of good conversations you can ruin with your pseudo-logic.
Slashdot Mirror
The old version of Amazon's agreement stated that developers would receive 20% of the original price when an app was given away for free. Then they changed it, and they didn't make it clear to developers. For many of them it was a nasty surprise. Unfortunately I can't find the original, but the new version is here https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/mobile-apps/devportal/pdf/Appstore_Distribution_Agreement.pdf with the added sentence "No Royalty is payable for Apps with a List Price of $0.00." in Section 2(a).
It's amazing how many problems and complaints would be solved if every ToS, EULA, and online agreement required some kind of electronic signature to be valid. It should be something that would take more than a quick mouse-click to apply. Also if any amendments to existing agreements had to come with a statement to the effect of, "The amended agreement is identical to the previous one in every way, except the following:" which could be covered in a couple of paragraphs, rather than reading tens of pages of legalese to find what has changed.
The entire notion of a contract or agreement is that both parties fully understand it and both parties voluntarily agree to it. The fact that most people neither read nor understand most agreements and EULAs and ToS's means that this system is failing and needs to be changed. Unless of course we are prepared to reject the idea of informed, voluntary consent to mutually satisfying agreements. Anyone who wants to reject that notion should understand that your alternative is the law of the jungle.
Most of these people are frustrated authoritarians.
It's how they can justify imposing their view of the legality of their actions on their victims.
I am curious about what makes you see it this way.
Almost all of the targets of Anonymous and Lulzsec have been large corproations who not only are never going to be seriously punished by the law, but in fact have the power to buy whatever laws they want to have on the books It is the corporations themselves who work to destroy the whole notion of "rule of law" and undermine the legitimacy of law. We are not all equal under the law if a few of us can remake the laws at will at the expense of the majority, all without ever running for election or holding a political office.
You may not like the vigilante actions. I find them distasteful myself. However, I see them as effects. Whenever I want a situation to change, I don't bother looking at effects. I examine causes. Sony and others thought they could be asshats with impunity. The punity finally caught up to them, it just didn't happen in the more legitimate form of government law enforcement.
But if your concern is "imposing their view of the legality of their actions on their victims", to whom does that more strongly apply? The corporations with politicians in their pockets who buy whatever laws they find convenient that never get repealed that everyone else has to live under for generations afterward? Or a couple of online groups who produced a handful of high-profile incidents in retaliation? At least Anonymous hasn't rewritten the law to make their tactics legal. That would place them on equal footing with the real authoritarians.
NSA wouldn't run a counterintelligence operation against Americans. That would be illegal and easy to beat.
If they did, how would you ever prove it?
A FOIA request? Denied - national security.
A lawsuit? Denied - national security.
Asking nicely? Denied - "we can neither confirm nor deny..."
Without proof, well then, you'd just be a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy nutter (and for major events like 9/11 you'll be called such names even with lots of proof). This is a roundabout, indirect way of saying that you're foolish and something is wrong with you if you don't blindly trust the goodwill of unaccountable government agencies with nearly unlimited budgets who certainly have the capability of spying on Americans and running operations against Americans.
Not because it's true or might be true or would fit in with the long history of past abuses, mind you, but because people who are in denial want to feel comfortable about their denial and your doubts make that more difficult. When faced with such a situation, small-minded people will attack your character.
At any rate, yes it would be "illegal" but without accountability and transparency that really doesn't mean anything. How would it be easy to beat? How would you ascertain that without intimate knowledge of the actual methods used? If you somehow attained such knowledge, why wouldn't they change the methods?
No. Just try to double-cross the devil. These kids won't know that hit em if they get out of line.
No shit. These are seriously the wrong people to screw with.
The mafia would be more likely to show mercy.
Or as they put it in TFA.
There is a huge difference between hackers â" who tread the line of legality regularly and often step over, but not with the intent of doing great harm â" and criminals who happen to work online, Moss said.
One group you can train or encourage to focus on solving problems that affect national security, and trust to the same extent you would experts in other fields.
It seriously doesn't help that most of the legitimate private-sector jobs available to those with strong computer/networking skills are thankless, offer little job security, tend to expand in scope with no matching expansion of pay, tend to demand overtime while paying salary, are dominated by managers who don't understand technology and (worse) refuse to listen to underlings who do, often require dealing with literate adults who fail to follow the simplest of instructions then blame the IT guy when it doesn't work, and don't treat their employees with anything resembling the amount of respect that should be due to people without whom the entire operation would grind to a halt.
If anything, it's a miracle that there is not more criminal activity from the numbers of people who have strong skills and few legitimate places in which to express it.
In a way it's like the highly intelligent kids who are bored to death in the public schools and start becoming disruptive "behavioral problems". Well yeah, no shit, you set up a situation that amounts to a formula for producing this. Shockingly, that's the result you obtained; be sure to act surprised! If this is analogous to the talent the NSA is reaching out for, this may be a good thing, assuming they really want to work for one of the more notorious government agencies.
I bet lucrative incentives are more cost effective than fighting legal and political opposition.
Indeed. It's a wonder the federal government isn't using the usual "consent-based" approach to usurp powers that fall to the states, such as setting drinking age and speed limits: threaten to withhold a significant portion of the state's federal funding, which most states are quite reliant on for one service or another.
Or maybe this is a new strategy meant to avoid offending honorable Senator Leghorn when that old trick is used against his state.
Just make sure the wealth keeps rising to the top and there'll be an endless supply of impoverished communities around the country lining up to take this "consent-based" salvation.
Like hed p.e. explains... there is a war on the middle class. In many nations, a prosperous middle class and the economic independence that goes with it is what displaced various forms of dictatorship. It works in reverse, too. To convert a "democratic" nation to a dictatorship, you must first make the people poor and needy and desperate. It will be even more effective if you can also make them fat and stupid, for obvious reasons.
Naturally those who want to form another dictatorship must view the middle class as their enemy.
Holy fuck no. I mean, I realize you Americans are scared of shit of plutonium thanks to your rabid environmentalists, and carter. But hey, if you want to cut your nuclear fuel supplies in half. Please keep sending your waste to Canada, S.Korea and Japan so we can have cheap, inexpensive fuel. I mean we all really like it.
Or you can grow a fucking pair and jump all over the environmentalists and nimby's for being fucking idiots.
The purpose of the environmentalism is to enforce a kind of soft tyranny. Cheap, abundant, easily accessible energy means fewer people crying out for government to do something about energy, something that everyone uses and everyone needs. The general concept is that government is never going to voluntarily endorse and encourage something that gives people one less thing to worry about. They enjoy appearing to do so because that appeals to the masses, but they do not wish to actually do it. The larger and less local the government, the more true this is. Thus, the local and state governments are not nearly so bad as the federal government with respect to this tendency.
This is from Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince":
Therefore a wise prince will seek means by which his subjects will always and in every possible condition of things have need of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him.
Unlike 1984, The Prince actually was intended to be something like a manual.
That's the real problem. There is a track record. People who might otherwise be open to this idea can see how poorly it has been handled in the past. Now they're not so open to this idea. If you want cooperation, the trick is to not create these situations in the first place.
It's very rare I see anyone advocate their notion of "social justice" by any means other than some kind of force or threat of force. That's a shame. Persuasion based on sound reason is a far nobler path. Certainly the things that could go wrong with nuclear waste represent force. Nuclear radiation is not going to have abstract debate with anyone. If that's a joke, well, there are more amusing ones.
That has to be what you meant, too. Otherwise you could call it "justice" when people knowingly take a risk and it doesn't work out so well for them. They're definitely not victims because they made a conscious, informed decision and reaped the results. And only a very petty and childish mentality would want to separate adults from the consequences of their actions. No victim means no injustice. However, that would apply to all states. Even the "blue" ones.
Incidentally, the color red has been associated with leftist thought, particularly its more extreme forms such as communism, for about a century. It seems like the "red state = Republicans" is therefore misnamed, or some kind of intentional newspeak. They're definitely assholes, but they are not leftist assholes. Not that it matters much to me. I'd like to see a US federal government that is about 20% the size and power of the one we know today, with any remaining slack being picked up by the states as intended by the whole notion of federalism. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans intend to do that. Compared to that, the issues they squabble over are trivial and useless.
Well, yeah, they can be stopped. It would require less effort than our current policies, in fact. But sometimes asking people to not do something they really don't have to do is incredibly difficult.
All it would take is for the US to stop meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations. Particularly since they don't do this openly and honestly, but covertly and deceitfully via intelligence agencies. One example is the 1953 overthrow of Iran's democratically elected government and its replacement with a dictator. That's just one example. There are many.
That incident happened a long time ago, the people who perpetrated it passed away a long time ago, etc., so it's openly acknowledged that this happened. You'd be a fool to think nothing like that goes on today. You'd also be a fool to think the citizens who have to live under such dictators don't hate us for that. Some of them surely are crazy or desperate, or both. All of them understand they would stand zero chance in conventional warfare against a world superpower. Thus terrorism is bred.
A bit more plausible than the whole "they hate us for our freedoms" bullshit theater for the masses, to make a gross understatement.
Anyway, the idea that our leaders would have the wisdom, humility, decency, and self-respect to admit that this is wrong and never do things like this again... well, that's a much bigger (though far less amusing) joke than your tongue-in-cheek post.
> Joe Sixpack will start to see them as little more than greedy thugs. You need to end your sentence with "but nothing will change." Joe Sixpack will read about all of this "Neat Piraty Stuff" and Google "Where to Download Harry Potter and the Prisoner of the Six Hour Movie." He'll click to download it, get an email from his ISP that will scare the crap out of him and he'll pray to the Lord of Hycones that if they don't come to get him in the middle of the night he'll never do it again. So then he'll go back to his regularly scheduled, over-priced cable bill and maybe, if he wants to be brave, he'll try this "Hulues" thing the kids at work talk about. At least until he starts getting emails threats about that, too.
It is hard to find someone with less faith in the capabilities of the average person than I. It's not that I don't want to have such faith, it's that trying to maintain it is a certain path to disappointment and heartache. It is better dealt with by letting go and learning to accept, which fits in quite well with my general attitude of "live and let live". Having said that...
At its most extreme, a "War on Piracy" is going to stop people from obtaining copyrighted material about as well as the War on (some) Drugs has stopped people from obtaining illicit substances. That is, not at all. Consider also that the laws dictating to consenting adult people what substances they are allowed to put into their own bodies and/or what ways they are allowed to alter their consciousness are criminal laws, with the full force of the police power of government behind them. Still they are utter failures according to any and all of their stated goals. A civil tort is even less likely to be vigorously enforced.
The copyright cartels ultimately have no choice at all other than to learn to love the Information Age, to become as easy to do business with as possible like most other industries that don't rely on government-granted monopolies have to do, and to give their customers what they want in the format that it is wanted. Until then they can waste lots of money and political influence trying to delay the inevitable with all of the terrible side effects that implies.
" will likely not have central trackers of any kind (perhaps it will rely on something like DHT), and will generally make it much more difficult to identify individual users. "
IIRC DHT uses a bootstrap node too. If MPAA can't find the users, then the users can't find each other either.
"Something like" != "exactly alike in every way".
"...but it's too much trouble to do it ourselves. You do it for us."
If they keep pushing this, the result will be predictable enough.
It will eventually result in a new distributed peer-to-peer protocol. This new protocol will have mandatory strong encryption, will be obfuscated, will likely not have central trackers of any kind (perhaps it will rely on something like DHT), and will generally make it much more difficult to identify individual users. In turn, the pirates, who already feel quite bold, will likely share even more copyrighted material as a result of the reduced risk.
If they really want to drive it even more underground, they can, but they will regret the results. Meanwhile, the more unreasonable they become the more likely it is that Joe Sixpack will start to see them as little more than greedy thugs. Right now a lot of people who don't keep up with these developments have at least some sympathy for them. There are still many who will entertain arguments claiming that infringement of copyright is exactly the same thing as theft of tangible goods (which it is not) and the like, but the copyright cartels are on a certain path towards changing that.
Unreasonable asshats with control complexes who have politicians in their back pockets are a recipe for lawlessness, both of the unprincipled type that just wants a new movie/game/mp3 and of the civil-disobedience type who promote and support what the cartels are trying to stop as an act of protest. Exactly how many thousands of examples are needed for this to become something obvious that "everybody knows" and no longer wants to try?
Unfortunately you are also unlikely to get that from anyone with ties to government grants. That's true of much more rigorous sciences than climatology. It's particularly true of climatology because it has had the misfortune of becoming tied to left-right politics.
Even without such useless baggage, the way government grants for science work is easy to understand. The amount of grant money is finite. Therefore, it is allocated to those research projects which are viewed as reasonably likely to obtain useful results. The criteria for this boils down to whether the research is based on a mainstream theory for which there is significant consensus among scientists. When multiple theories all explain the data, or when there is debate about how to interpret a theory, this ends up being a sophisticated popularity contest. Even this is not a "pure" popularity contest, but is strongly influenced by what the scientists were taught when attaining their degrees and whether their training included a desire to be open to new ideas.
If the mainstream consensus happens to be faulty, this is why it can take a long time for this to become well-known and appreciated. It is why it can take a long time for something better to replace it. Often, the investments in a given status quo are such that the "old guard" has to die of old age and be replaced by new thinkers in the form of a sudden paradigm shift. There is no logical or factual reason why these changes have to take so long. It is entirely a political and social problem. Should the cost of this be measurable, it would be quite high.
Collecting data and performing basic reasoning is relatively easy. Integrating this into a framework of understanding that has both explanatory and predictive power is the truly difficult part. Even more difficult still is to do so while remaining aware of the dangers of entrenchment. I am reminded of the following quote:
-- S.J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man
And yet another:
-- C. J. Ransom.
mod parent up please. It is amazing how few people understand this concept. It makes perfect sense when you see it this way, it it just never explained. At least, nobody ever explained it to me growing up in the States...
That's because the US is the epitome of a society based on Prussian-style schooling. General principles like the law of diminishing returns are not taught. The best you could hope for is to have this mentioned in some kind of automotive shop class, but then it would be explained only in an isolated reductionist fashion and not as a widely-applicable principle.
Most people you'd regard as "stupid" are not actually mentally deficient. Their thinking is fragmented. They cannot see how one thing is related to other things from different subjects. The classic example is a doctor or other highly educated person who is suddenly completely helpless when placed in front of a computer, rendered unable to figure out even the most basic procedures. It is not because the doctor is stupid. It is because he has seldom thought in a dynamic way, using general knowledge to reason through a new and unfamiliar problem.
It's the same reason end-users in an office need "retraining" when the version of MS Office is upgraded. They don't understand i.e. word processing as an abstract concept. If they did, a few minutes acquainting themselves with the new interface would be all the adjustment needed. Instead, they understand word processing as a memorized list of steps, down to the micro level of "move pointer to this thingy, click on that icon". That's why replacing a menu with a ribbon is enough to confuse them. The "retraining" replaces the old set of memorized steps with a new set of memorized steps. Nowhere is any kind of dynamic understanding transmitted.
Not intuitively understanding the miles-per-gallon deal is one of the most minor ways in which you have been short-changed by this.
If increasing overall vehicle energy efficiency is a serious goal, this part does need to be addressed. The problem is, the most likely way government would do so is to tell you what kind of car you may buy, and/or to attach absurdly high taxes to vehicles they wish to discourage.
I'd rather they try persuasion but that doesn't seem to be their strong suit. On the plus side, getting more of the gas guzzlers off the road may lower the price of gasoline and reduce dependency on foreign oil. At least, so long as we adamantly refuse to use our own domestic natural resources...
Express it in amount per distance, it's easier to deal with. (It's also easier in daily life. People want to know how much fuel / money it will take to drive a certain distance, rather than how far they can drive with $20 of fuel.)
I'll use L/100km, as that's the normal measurement in metric countries (and what I'm more familiar with).
10 (miles per US gallon) = 24 litres per (100 km) 20 (miles per US gallon) = 12 litres per (100 km) 30 (miles per US gallon) = 8 litres per (100 km) 40 (miles per US gallon) = 6 litres per (100 km)
I think it's now clear. From 20mpg to 40mpg saves 6L, but from 10mpg to 20mpg saved 12L.
Thank you for providing figures. It was not something I had looked into before.
... ... somehow. Yeah.
The more general explanation is that there is a law of diminishing returns. Still, energy efficiency is always a good thing.
As for me I imagine all-electric cars that store energy via banks of supercapacitors that can be charged quickly at "gas" stations in 3-5 minutes. The stations will be specially equipped with large electrical capacity. The cars can also have regenerative braking, perhaps also with solar panels on the roofs to supplement their range and help provide auxillary power for things like air conditioning. The range will be at least 500 miles. Oh yeah, the electricity can come from thorium nuclear reactors designed with passive safety so they can't melt down. And Google can perfect their automated system so the cars can drive themselves, making drinking and "driving" perfectly legal. And these cars will be affordable
Hey, one can dream. At least I didn't start talking about how government can be staffed entirely with noble, honorable people who have our best interests at heart and never bow to corporate money and political pressure. That would just be absurd.
http://tubegator.com/content/uploads/obama-care.jpg Explain anything other than racism, and an appeal to racial bigotry, that could possibly lie behind this political image. Of course all Tea Partiers aren't racists, but the racists seem to be drawn to that movement.
Looks to me like someone said "screw it -- if I disagree with his political position I am going to be called a racist anyway; may as well give them a reason to get their panties in a wad." If so, in a roundabout way I say good for them. The only reason to scream "RACISM!" at someone without some damned solid evidence is to intimidate them into being silenced. The best remedy for this is a little systematic desensitization, at least until we regain some perspective on what racism actually is and isn't.
Although I cannot help but wonder how your own logic applies to your statement. Is there something wrong with traditional African tribal dress? In your mind, does dressing that way make someone look less sophisticated, less intelligent, less effective? If so, is that an inherent property of the clothing or is that a property of how you view African people? Do you see how easily even your concern could be construed as a racist notion? There's nothing in the world that is easier than to point fingers and twist things around in order to label someone, and "racist" is a particularly terrible label that should not be thrown about so carelessly. Would you be so quick to call someone a "murderer" because "he looks like the type" or would you feel a need to come up with serious evidence first?
I am saying, if you look hard enough and you are determined enough, you can look under a rock and "find" something racist about the earth underneath, it doesn't make it real. Without actual evidence of racism, I assume the African tribal dress comes from the disputes over Obama's birth certificate, the way such a simple matter was turned into a big deal, and the amount of time during which people (at least those who care about things like whether our President is legitimate - a decreasing minority) wondered if he was really an American citizen or was really a Kenyan national. There's nothing wrong with natural-born Kenyans, however traditional or modern, except of course that they wouldn't qualify for the office of President according to the US Constitution.
Obama actually is of Kenyan descent. So this photo shows him in traditional African dress. You say this must be racist. Suppose we have a President of Scottish descent and a photo shows him wearing a kilt and a set of bagpipes. Would you call that "racism" (actually bigotry)? To me it's just Scottish traditional dress. If you would call that bigotry of some kind, would you still call that "racism" if it took an unnecessarily long time to publically verify that this imaginary President is in fact an American citizen and not a Scottish national?
This hypersensitivity concerning race needs to be rejected as the insanity that it truly is. It's just another entry in a very long list of techniques used (both knowingly and unwittingly) to distract attention away from the message and towards the messenger, ad-hominem style.
Put that on a sandwhich at eat it all up !! Costs you nothing so why not believe it ?!
If it turns out to be wrong (specifically the "no one ever will" part) then it costs me my chance to know the real answer.
If "no one knows" then you don't really know whether or not it's truly knowable, so by your own rules, please shut up.
The rest of us will find purpose in searching.
>"racist" is one of the worst stains on your reputation available these days. Not exactly. One of the more recent and thriving, Fox News sponsored political movements is chocked full of them. You'd almost think they wore it as a badge of honor.
I know it's easy to just make blanket statements (I seriously don't like Murdoch either) but could you try substantiating this please?
It's deemed legal, meaning it's not the state's role to add a consequence to it. Often, that's all this means.
That isn't the same thing as "okay". I am sorry if you really believe that legal and okay are the exact same thing. There are higher modes of moral/ethical reasoning than that.
Though it has been deemed legal, there definitely are consequences. This man is now famous for wishing violence and making racist statements. Though we often glorify violence, "racist" is one of the worst stains on your reputation available these days. It is a great way to make sure that decent people don't want to have anything to do with you. Since he did not actually victimize anyone, this is sufficient.
People will judge him accordingly and he will have to live with that for some time to come. It's not something easily forgotten. This is what free speech is all about. You say what you like and then accept the way it will change how you are perceived and treated. A law regulating speech is not only a wrong-headed desire to control disguised in "save the children" type packaging, it's also unnecessary. It appeals only to those who recognize no authority and no consequence other than that enforced by government.
What does it matter if RIM is holding Encrypted emails that they don't have the key to decrypt? They don't overlook it, because there's nothing to overlook. The government doesn't have the keys to decrypt those messages either. Hence RIMs problems in middle east countries.
That whole affair with service in India proved that if they really want to, they can indeed decrypt the e-mails.
Is my business the only one ever to realise that blackberry stores your emails on their servers, and that the patriot act gives US government the right to read it? I don't understand why so many businesses overlook that.
I wish the problem were simple ignorance as you describe. That may be going on as well, of course, but the real problem is much worse than the kind of ignorance that could be remedied with a couple minutes' explanation. The problem is denial.
The problem is that the average person doesn't recognize the danger that represents. They think, "well *I* have nothing to hide" and "well, *I* haven't done anything illegal". Of course, both of those assume that government thugs would only ever go after real criminals after finding real evidence that crimes have been committed and would always respect the privacy of everyone else. Both of those assume that government agents never, ever, never, ever, ever, not once, ever, abuse their authority.
Any thinking person who even slightly paid attention to history can see the problem with that. The probem is, they're outnumbered thousands-to-one by everyone else. Time and time again it has been shown that extraordinary surveillance powers will be extraordinarily abused, but to appreciate that, you must first admit that we're not the very first exception. The attitude that police states only occur in those foreign countries, that "it can't happen here" so we can all go back to sleep, well that's the one thing most certain to guarantee that it does.
The other thing that history has repeatedly shown is that runaway government which never stops expanding is a far greater threat than any foreign enemy has ever been. It happens this way every single time it's tried. I suppose those who are really in denial would find fault with me for seeing that two and two added together equals four, every time you try it, and concluding that it will equal four the next time you try it, too.
Because unlike the copyright cartels, Netflix is actually trying to bring content to people the way people want to have it, in an online form where much of it is at their fingertips, without having to resort to piracy to achieve same? A legitimate service that's about as good as what the pirates enjoy is a good thing for everyone. It's something the cartels should be encouraging. If they had any sense at all or any ability to think beyond the next quarter, they'd remove as many obstacles as possible and become as easy to deal with as possible in order to help this happen.
Netflix is bringing them a lot of business they may not have enjoyed otherwise. That should be a decent bargaining position. If not, someone at Netflix needs to learn how to negotiate...
I think they'd be celebrated if that's the reason and they were actually honest about it. The standard corporate practice is to insult your customers by giving them a line of bullshit, as though they were too stupid to read between the lines. They'd distinguish themselves from most other corporations by choosing to do otherwise.
That's a high compliment -- thank you. It'd have to be true of you as well, for you have to cherish reason yourself to appreciate the same in someone else. It's a type of resonance.
Of course, others see reason as a pesky obstacle to what they are trying to assert. It's exactly the same way that a lot of politicians see the Bill of Rights as a nuisance to be worked around, rather than something sacred to be honored and protected that they were fortunate enough to inherit. The AC is like this; in fact he is probably reinforced by the way most don't know how to deconstruct and counter his assertions.
The entire celebrity deification culture depends on the naive and gullible. To that I would add, it depends also on the emotionally immature. Have you ever watched a show like Entertainment Tonight and witnessed the petty, frivolous, insignificant things that are treated as though they mattered? The mark of such people is that their feelings are placed above whatever reason they have, making them easy prey for the manipulations of marketing. What marketers and deceivers understand well is that manipulation is done through the emotions. That's why there always has to be some big excitement over everything, why there is so little dispassionate inquiry.
Of course this suits the marketers, PR types, and politicians just fine. Therefore it is not viewed as a problem to be solved by those who could do something about it on any sort of large scale. In many ways, it is encouraged through repeated examples portraying it as normal merely because it is common. It also exploits the human tendency to feel part of something greater than oneself by redefining "greater" in terms of "greater numbers" rather than "greater sophistication" or "greater understanding".
The "trick" is to have emotions and value them as another way of experiencing life without being ruled by them. It is about putting them in their proper place. Just as a working car does not have the stereo where the spark plugs should be, a healthy person does not have emotion where reason should be.
Marketers do these things because they work. I doubt they have much more knowledge than that, else most of them would be horrified at their own profession. Compared to anyone who can sing, dance, become an athlete, or act, the doctor who finally cures cancer will be an anonymous figure. Ever think about why that might be?
"We" love our entertainers the way an addict loves his drug. There is a tremendous discontentment with life, many people feel it, and entertainers temporarily make it feel better by amusing or impressing us. For that dubious "service" we place them on pedestals and pretend they are better and more worthy of adoration than the scientists who created telecommunications so we even know who they are, the farmers who raise our food, etc.
The real pathology is that if so many didn't engage in this sort of escapism, there would be a large amount of excess time and energy that could be put towards actually addressing the political, social, and personal problems that made escapism seem so appealing in the first place. It's your classic feedback loop. I'm convinced that all psychological pathologies take the form of a feedback loop or self-sustaining cycle.
Likewise, it's silly to dismiss every opinion you don't share as arrogance. I gave my reasons for why I disagree with celebrity endorsements in general. If you can find an error in my reasoning, feel free to tell me. This hand-waving of yours is a sign that you don't like what I said, which is your problem, but cannot actually tell me what's wrong with it. That's quite weak.
My point was, Google+ is a computer and network-based system. It required technical know-how to put it together. How well it works as a system to enable people to communicate depends on how well it was designed for this purpose. Otherwise why would people who want this kind of site leave Facebook where all their other friends already are? There has to be some superior offering to convince people to jump ship.
This is where you say something that actually is reasonable and try to tie it into your personal dislike of what I said, as though that lends credibility to what is really just your opinion. This is either very weak or it's deceptive, the difference of course being whether you know this is what you are doing.
If I think a person is a great actor, of course it makes sense to be interested in what other movies they star in. If I think someone is a talented singer, it makes sense to look for other songs they perform. But Lady Gaga could be the very best singer in the world; that doesn't make Google+ any more or less useful for me. That's the fallacy of this kind of endorsement. How much simpler does the point have to be?
I know the fantasy is that because someone is famous it's as if you know them the same way you know your friends with whom you actually spend quality time. I don't know why that fantasy has so much appeal but that's what it's all about. The fact of the matter is, none of us is likely to have any one-on-one time with any celebrity, not even if they use the same social network. Lady Gaga has her own actual friends (i.e. people she actually does know personally and does spend time with) and has her own family members. For all the rest of us, any communication from her will be one-to-many, exactly like her songs. Again this is not a compelling reason to use a social network.
Now if you have something substantive to add other than a long-winded "I don't feel the same way you do about this opinion-based issue, therefore you're wrong", please chime in any time you want. Otherwise there are plenty of good conversations you can ruin with your pseudo-logic.