Fine. Let's skip the semantics. You think the guy lying about his commitment to not spreading around the pre-release screener is morally just fine, and I think he's not. Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass what you call it. It's unethical, it's a breach of trust, it's childishly grasping, and it's exactly what convinces artists, authors, filmakers, and everyone else that makes a living creating things with their minds that P2P and similar technologies are being widely used to avoid paying for entertainment. It's not a question of to what degree that's true. It's a fact, and events like that simply show how true it is.
You're not reading my actual words, here. If I hand you some data for you to look at, and we both agree that it's proprietary, sensitive data, and that you may not retain it any way... and then you go ahead and break your promise and make a copy anyway (bad enough), and then also go ahead and spread it online as well. That's why I cited the example I cited... it's happened. A film critic that walks away from an NDA-based review with a film he's not supposed to have has stolen it.
Except that we've seen recent court actions against P2Ps that expressly did get caught promoting their tools as pirate favorites, and the very same investigations and actions skipped over the services that were (like Xerox) loudly proclaiming that their services should be used to infringe. The all-too-obvious wink-wink tone of a lot of these services is what gets them in trouble. As it should. The BitTorrent universe remains different because of the tone that its creator has taken.
sales have dropped - it must be pirates stealing it!
And that claim (when it comes to products not selling, most likely because of poor quality in the first place), would indeed ring hollow if you couldn't immediately find hundreds or thousands of places "sharing" even the worst movies, all the time. It would be nice to say that they're BSing when it comes to the crappy movies, but the piracy is rampant on big (good) movies because lots of people don't feel like paying for their entertainment, and it's rampant on the not-very-good stuff because people think that it's not worth paying for it, so who will mind. It's too bad that the behavior you can actually see happening around in you in the P2P space does look exactly like what the content creators are complaining about. It makes them look... correct.
Re:Historical Precedent when Xerox was Outlawed
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Back in the mid-twentieth century, a company called Xerox was producing a machine which could be used to illegally copy copyrighted materials in books.
Sarcasm is a more useful rhetorical device when the truth that it (directly or indirectly) points out resonates with the sarcastic statement being made. But since Xerox didn't ever position its products as a way to "get free stuff" or spread around copyrighted works by the millions, their equipment's use in copyright infringement was despite their corporate position and publicly proclaimed admonishments. The P2P services that have found themselves in trouble have been loudly supporting piracy since the get-go. Intent is the difference, and lack of it makes your example fall flat. Maybe more fun to allude to old-style forgeries, counterfeiters, or all those other classical (and already blatantly understood as illegal) methods to make your point. Um, except the point wouldn't mean as much.
Too bad there has never been a single instance of "theft of copyrighted files" on any P2P network that has ever existed
Probably the closest thing to that would be when a filmaker sends a screener, under the terms of a strict agreement with the recipient, to critic or other party for preview. The screener stays the property of the filmaker, and the guy that takes that filmaker's data (even if they eventually return the original media) and gives it out to a couple hundred thousand special "friends" over the 'net can pretty safely be said to have stolen that material. Certainly by any reasonable person's evaluation of the situation (say, while sitting on a jury), that's not so different than running off with any other trade secret or other proprietary information. That scenario, of course, is scarcely imaginary. We've seen it many times already.
I can't *prove* sounding like a scolded child was part of the deal, but i don't think i'm out of line assuming that that statement is less than 100% voluntary
Pretty much like having people spread stolen screeners of your not-yet-released film to thousands or millions of best friends they've never met know isn't exactly 100% voluntary for the filmaker, either. I think that's the whole point.
But this is how you show how poorly you understand the difference between science and religion. You don't need to "believe" anything in science. Science is a method. It's means by which to understand the mechanisms that govern the matter and processes that we see around us. Science is not a fact, it's a means by which to determine fact. Religion, on the other hand, offers no such pursuit or framework: it fabricates an untestable mystical explanation for the matter and processes we see, and then says that you have to take it as fact, and that the act of trying to test the validity of those facts is actually sin (and is pointless because only god knows the truth, blah blah).
So, people running a religios operation tell you a set of "facts" they want you to take as true, even as they tell you that the truth isn't really knowable and that faith is required. Science, on the other hand, asks nothing of you, other than honesty. Science says, "here are the tools - try it yourself so that you don't have to believe anything without evidence." Of course, if you're too busy to try everything yourself, you can rely on trusted peer reviews and the knowledge that the underlying scientific method demands continual re-evaluation and a change of understanding whenever improved tools shine a brighter light on the fabric of the universe. Religion acts at every turn to dim that light, or when it's too bright to ignore, to pretend that they've backed that particular piece of science all along, not counting the people they've burned at the stake, etc.
Science is no more fact than religion on an individual level because we don't have the time to verify it all personally, and you can't deny that.
Sure we can deny that. Science is just one big invitation to test each other's findings and prove them wrong. Religion is exactly the opposite. Pointing out where religion has it wrong just gets you kicked out of that religion. But pointing out where a previous scientist was wrong just makes the person who got it right... a scientist with better tools and insight working in a time when more information is available. Science demands to be proven wrong if it's wrong, and religion demands that you believe no matter how wrong it is.
And you can't deny that the case of ID is what human science is attempting to make true by inter-galactic colonisation.
No, I'd say that we'll have to deny that. "Inter-galactic colonisation" is of course nonsense - we've only barely managed to put probes down on nearby planets, let alone attempt any such effort outside of our solar system to a star lightyears away. Never mind other galaxies, billions of lightyears farther away. You want an example of intelligent design? How about purebred horses, fancy roses, or poodles? We use our intelligence all the time to introduce accelerated or otherwise unlikely evolutionary pressure into the lifecycle of animals and plants. Otherwise we wouldn't have large scale crops or domestic animals. That's intelligent design at work. But unlike the religious idiots who think everything came from magic, I can tell you exactly (without any magic required!) how we get miniature horses, Siamese cats, and insect-resistent corn plants. The ID people - showing their limited personal understanding of basic biology, even as they eat food that results from evolution - say that things are just too complicated to be anything but magic. So much like children that it's really quite embarassing.
You just insist on no evidence that these humans on this planet are the first, which is a fantastic claim, and you won't consider evidence to the contrary on grounds of faith.
It's not at all clear what you're actually talking about here. But since you seem to suggest that there's evidence to the contrary of something, it might be helpful if you were to actually say what that evidence is, and how you are able to evaluate that evidence without using... reason, logic, and repeatable tests. You know, science.
don't agree with someone? go after them personally
Don't get it do you? It's who they are (personally) that we're talking about here. The ID crowd is made up of individual persons (no matter how much they act like idealogical sheep). The irrational, superstitious nonsense they spout is spouted by them as individual people whether or not they also say it as a group to make it sound more credible to their fan base.
The comment you're complaining about referred to people who are willing to close their eyes to what's right in front of them, to willfully turn off their capacity for logic and reasoned pursuit of causality. He called them, "jackasses." You refer to that as "verbal assault," while I prefer the common usage (outside the livestock world):
jackass Pronunciation: 'jak-"as
Function: noun
1 : DONKEY; especially : a male donkey
2 : a stupid person : FOOL
And, indeed, "fool" is exactly the right word for it. Because the only other possible interpretation of the motives for the ID proponents is one of malicious deceit. They know it's BS, but they are pounding that drum loudly because it's the nearest they think they'll ever be to having the leverage required to get religion back into public schools. They're willing (ironically) to be liars so that they can preach Christian (no other!) truth in a public educational framework. Filtering out the ones that think like that, the only ones left are those that have been fooled into actually believing the mythology. It doesn't matter why they were fooled, but the mechanism that, as they grow up, allowed them to let go of Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny just never quite completely kicked in when it comes to other imaginary powers. Oh well.
I feel sorry for them, but I truly don't care what they think. I do, though, care when they attempt to corrupt science classrooms and squash critical thinking in young people. It's embarassing, really, but it's also damaging to the intellects that will eventually grow up and run the country. Leave them alone! If those kids become adults and feel then like they want to regress back to the dark ages and imagine that all-powerful beings are running the universe, then so be it. But at least give them a chance to go into the world with a clear head. Calling someone a jackass for wanting otherwise is hardly "verbal assault." It's calling it like it is, and the truth is never an assault (though it may feel like one if you've been closing your eyes to it for most of your life).
We need to start stockpiling canned goods, fresh water and shotgun shells now! If we wait until the first reports of infection, it may already be too late!
How do you say "evil zombies" in French? "Malfaiteurs de Zombi?" I bet some people are wondering that right now (since they can't get to work this morning, what with their cars having been torched by nocturnal zombie throngs). Le *sigh*.
Actually, from a functioning-network-IT perspective, the Ivory Tower guys are almost better than the build-it-from-a-Pringles-can types. Meaning, if an organization is depending on their network to do what they do, the "I'll just build something myself and bolt it on - those morons in IT don't need to know" guy is far more likely to introduce major problems.
I understand your point, but that doesn't make him any less shorsighted (or ill-informed) about "IT monkeys." In fact, if he's the guy that has learned by building, he should know how complex a modern IT infrastructure is - both technically and politically/finacially (though the solder-your-own crowd usually throw up their hands when faced with the latter, though someone has to do it).
I'm guessing that the reason you have such a condescending take on the people that "make sure the network is up" is that they know you're an insufferable CS elitist type, you act that way, and they treat you pretty much like you seem to be deserving. Those IT simpletons that you think should just be dealing with the toner are also the ones who have to actually understand how to make the best use of Bayesian filtering, contend with a wide range of protocols, devices, budget issues, politics, emergencies, security threats, and so on. "IT" may just be the application of technology to a purpose, but you can't apply it well, or with any sort of rational vision, unless you're pretty hip to the underlying technologies.
For what it's worth, during those years that I've worn an IT hat, some of the worst users (in terms of trashing machines, letting malware run amok, hogging storage through lousy habits, needing to be rescued by backups, and being stumped by things like getting a printer to work) were the computer science PhD crowd.
"use it, and agree to the terms without thinking." might that be classified as "trickery"?
Actually, my point was that it's more like "not thinking." Or, "not reading." Or, "assuming that, generally, people are good and nice, and that they want to give me something for free with no strings attached because I'm also nice."
Action is needed to reverse this, but I doubt we'll see it while Bush is still in power.
While I think the notion of patented storylines is the height of nonsense (and hopefully, this applied-for patent will not actually come to pass), I don't think the current (or any) administration is what you should be bitching about. The Patent Office is a creature of the US Congress. Congress impacts its charter, and its funding. While the USPTO is an agency of the Department of Commerce (and thus, is always under the direction of a political appointee), the DoC still has to actually do what congress has said it has to do. Congress approves the DoC's spending and programs at a pretty granular level. Don't like all this crap? Talk to your congressional delegation about it. No president can dictate a change in IP law (thank goodness). Can you imagine if either Bush or Kerry (or Gore! yikes!) could hand down instructions on how to evaluate such things? No, it's something that needs to be handled more thoughtfully, and in a less politicized form - not by edict.
Seems like the feds could clean all of this up by launching a quick investigation into *every* affiliate of the spyware/adware companies. The only way an affiliate can get someone to load this junk is by trickery or exploit.
Not so. Plenty of fine-print boilerplate associated with online games or other things will do the same. For example... you offer a free Java-based garden or room design program. Then you make sure that people running web sites for interior decorators or garden clubs know that they can link to it for free. People use it, and agree to the terms without thinking. Presto, you've got permission to drop a litte proxy or tool bar or other naughtiness on their machine. They've asked you to, without thinking about the consequences. People looking to play a free game of poker or do a crossword puzzle are easily seduced that way.
Of course, that all takes some work, and most sleazy affiliates are way too lazy to do it the "honest" way. And the ones that do it fine-print-loophole way are still facing lawsuits because the tactics, while literally OK, are still clearly attempting to fool people.
I should have been clearer. Contact, at the time it was released in theaters, and for what it cost to make, was considered a flop (relative to the hype) by those on the business side of things. It was definately profitable, just not in the way that they were hoping (and hyping). Why? Because they really couldn't run any ads that showed attacking aliens and whatnot... since there weren't any. A lot of the peer-to-peer fan buzz at the time was not positive, or least, didn't appreciate the somewhat more cerebral aspects of the film.
To call NPR biased and to ignore my statements about various news stations because they don't agree with your bias is ludacris - go look up the specific study i was referencing for my statistics
I'm not ignoring your stats, I'm pointing out that they don't mean anything in the larger context. How about this: let's, for sake of argument, say that every single viewer of Fox is a useless Republican drone, and that every single NPR listener takes everything that's presented there with a grain of salt and researches it entirely on their own against multiple sources before forming any sort of opinion. Better? That still leaves all of the other major broadcast networks, staffed by people that overwhelmingly lean towards one political camp, and viewed rather uncritically by a large national audience. Citing how many Fox watchers think what is like pulling three similar people out of a mix of 100 people and then finding that 100% of those three select people think the same thing. Shocking! Also meaningless.
It's been proven my repeated indepenant studies that Fox News is so biased and mixes opinion and news so freely [intentionally] that they have engendered inaccurate knowledge in 80% of their viewers.
And, even allowing for that statistic, I'm saying that 80% of their viewers is still a tiny minority of the other networks' collective viewers. CBS still gets more people watching it, and if they had their way, a presidential election would have been altered by their anchors obviously insane clutching to a bogus story based on poorly forged MS Word documents pretending to be memos from decades ago.
Infact ABC/CBS/NBC aren't too much better than Fox - and you know all the factually inaccuracies they push off favor the administration's positions.
No, they're also very poor at journalism... but their biases absolutely do not favor the administration. Most importantly, their airtime biases tilt the most extremely during the critical few weeks before an election, which is what we're talking about (since that's when the law would most crack down on non-"journalist" rights to free speech).
For example in one quite pointed study about misconceptions and support of the Iraq war three questions were asked - and the more of them they got wrong the more likely they were to be the following
A) Supporters of the war
B) Fox news viewers
And? "More likely to be..." doesn't add up to "and thus we shouldn't let people write what they want on their web sites because that's the same as paid media support."
"More likely they were to be..." doesn't, by the way, indicate that one news channe's counter-balancing editorial position even comes close to countering the overt bias of organizations like NPR (which even uses your tax dollars), or the major new networks. CNN alone is so demonstrably oriented against the administration that it and Fox essentially cancel each other out. What's left are all the other broadcasters and networks, the majority of which overwhelmingly left-leaning in their personal politics and their editorial decisions.
Why not read a serious poli-sci paper on the subject. You'll see specific references to hard stats on the people involved. For every reporter that contributed to the Bush campaign, 93 contributed to Kerry... and many other such instructive tidbits. You can bitch about Fox all you want, but they're only a tiny slice of the media pie.
But you know what? I don't care if they're biased, as long as my person right to free speech isn't limited. And that's exactly what the legislation in question was designed to prevent, and which the Dems just went to a lot of trouble to shoot down. Nice.
is my understanding of u.s. politics so backwards? i would have expected the party breakdown to be 180degrees opoistite this...
Interesting, isn't it? Despite the common association between left/liberal politics and liberty (to do/be anything), it's the left that usually acts to restrict or condemn speech. It's common on college campuses and is apparent in this congressional vote.
There's another dimension to this, as well. Because much of the mainstream news media, as people, lean to the political left, there's a built-in advantage for leftier politicians in the way they are covered. When exposure for a politician comes in the form of "reporting" (or op-eds in a newspaper), it's not subject to the campaign laws. If personal/group expression is limited by law, then the democratic candidates benefit by getting more "free" journalistic exposure. People will whine about Fox being a more right-leaning news outlet, but that scarcely puts a dent in the coverage from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR and the majority of big city newspapers and local broadcasters. So, the Democrats, in limiting free speech in this way, are morally bankrupt, but are working to improve their odds of winning elections.
I mean, why go to all that trouble to screw with my freedom to talk? Wasn't McCain-Feingold bad enough as is? Surely the Dems could just inspire better bloggers, and then not feel so insecure about the impact of non-liberal bloggers on elections? Because the measure in question was, I think, absolutely central to free expression (my right to post things on my own damn web site, or even to pay someone to help me write that content, or even to pay people to help me get traffic to that web site)... and whatever those opposing the measure were thinking, they sure weren't thinking "First Amendment."
I can't stand (and thus, don't read) the wingnut blogs from the far end of either party... but if I want to catch up on how a pending election is going to realistically impact something I actually care about, I want to be able to read what some people would certainly consider political blogs, and right up until I cast a vote. And considering my ecclectic interests, I know that the people posting meaningful content covering what I can't see through the normal media sure as hell can't afford to do what they do and even begin to think about whether they are or aren't compliant with election bookkeeping rules. Blocking this measure was stupid, counter-constitutional, and just objectively the wrong thing to do.
Re:Libraries are terrible, terrible institutions.
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This joke only works if your UID is lower.
You must be new here. Lame jokes that make no contextual sense are part of the game (um, apparently).
Re:Libraries are terrible, terrible institutions.
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So you do pay for the libraries, whether you use them or not.
You must be new here. It's not polite to remind slashdot users that everything their city, state, and federal governments fund for their use is actually paid for with tax dollars that are coming out of someone's pocket (possibly, your grandhildren's pockets). Now please keep your irritating logic and causality and high-falutin' eco-nomics to yourself, OK? Otherwise, people will start wanting to have a say in how their money is spent, and start resenting when it's given to someone who doesn't pay in as much as they do, and that sort of thing. Shhh!
this is just once again proof on MS's crooked business "strategies"....
How is this "crooked?" They make the device. It's theirs. This is not some natural resource that only they have access to. They don't have to let anybody profit from selling it. There's no burden on retailers for this - those stores make money when people stand in line at their stores to buy things. If they don't want to be part of that process, they sure don't have to. They can sell plenty of competing products from other companies (providing, as they sign contracts with Sony or Nintendo, that they like the rules that those manufacturers expect them to follow - and don't think they're not just as restrictive).
But just like book stores that know they'd be foolish (despite a tightly controlled marketing/release plan from the publishers) not to sell the next Harry Potter book, or movie theaters that only have so many seats and have to wait until midnight to sell tickets for a new release, XBox retailers can either work with the product's manufacturer or not. They can agree to terms, and make the money, or not agree to the terms, and find another way to make money. Crooked? Crooked is telling a game manufacturer that they have to deliver a product according to your demands, and not their own wishes. It's so simple: if you don't like MS or how they deal with a product debut, then don't buy their game product as a form of entertainment. If everyone does that, then MS's wishes don't mean anything. But then, no one gets the cool toy, either. But let's try to keep a little perspective, here. It's a toy. You're getting cranky about a toy debut marketing plan.
The way I see it, people should pay income tax in the state that they earn the income, not the state in which they reside.
What? How about you pay taxes in the state where you use the resources provided by the state? You know - roads, emergency services, schools, etc? If you commute to an employer in another state, the employer is using that other state's resources/facilities, and corporate/property/sales taxes collected as that business does business in that state cover those expenses.
Slashdot Mirror
Fine. Let's skip the semantics. You think the guy lying about his commitment to not spreading around the pre-release screener is morally just fine, and I think he's not. Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass what you call it. It's unethical, it's a breach of trust, it's childishly grasping, and it's exactly what convinces artists, authors, filmakers, and everyone else that makes a living creating things with their minds that P2P and similar technologies are being widely used to avoid paying for entertainment. It's not a question of to what degree that's true. It's a fact, and events like that simply show how true it is.
You're not reading my actual words, here. If I hand you some data for you to look at, and we both agree that it's proprietary, sensitive data, and that you may not retain it any way... and then you go ahead and break your promise and make a copy anyway (bad enough), and then also go ahead and spread it online as well. That's why I cited the example I cited... it's happened. A film critic that walks away from an NDA-based review with a film he's not supposed to have has stolen it.
Except that we've seen recent court actions against P2Ps that expressly did get caught promoting their tools as pirate favorites, and the very same investigations and actions skipped over the services that were (like Xerox) loudly proclaiming that their services should be used to infringe. The all-too-obvious wink-wink tone of a lot of these services is what gets them in trouble. As it should. The BitTorrent universe remains different because of the tone that its creator has taken.
sales have dropped - it must be pirates stealing it!
And that claim (when it comes to products not selling, most likely because of poor quality in the first place), would indeed ring hollow if you couldn't immediately find hundreds or thousands of places "sharing" even the worst movies, all the time. It would be nice to say that they're BSing when it comes to the crappy movies, but the piracy is rampant on big (good) movies because lots of people don't feel like paying for their entertainment, and it's rampant on the not-very-good stuff because people think that it's not worth paying for it, so who will mind. It's too bad that the behavior you can actually see happening around in you in the P2P space does look exactly like what the content creators are complaining about. It makes them look... correct.
Back in the mid-twentieth century, a company called Xerox was producing a machine which could be used to illegally copy copyrighted materials in books.
Sarcasm is a more useful rhetorical device when the truth that it (directly or indirectly) points out resonates with the sarcastic statement being made. But since Xerox didn't ever position its products as a way to "get free stuff" or spread around copyrighted works by the millions, their equipment's use in copyright infringement was despite their corporate position and publicly proclaimed admonishments. The P2P services that have found themselves in trouble have been loudly supporting piracy since the get-go. Intent is the difference, and lack of it makes your example fall flat. Maybe more fun to allude to old-style forgeries, counterfeiters, or all those other classical (and already blatantly understood as illegal) methods to make your point. Um, except the point wouldn't mean as much.
Too bad there has never been a single instance of "theft of copyrighted files" on any P2P network that has ever existed
Probably the closest thing to that would be when a filmaker sends a screener, under the terms of a strict agreement with the recipient, to critic or other party for preview. The screener stays the property of the filmaker, and the guy that takes that filmaker's data (even if they eventually return the original media) and gives it out to a couple hundred thousand special "friends" over the 'net can pretty safely be said to have stolen that material. Certainly by any reasonable person's evaluation of the situation (say, while sitting on a jury), that's not so different than running off with any other trade secret or other proprietary information. That scenario, of course, is scarcely imaginary. We've seen it many times already.
I can't *prove* sounding like a scolded child was part of the deal, but i don't think i'm out of line assuming that that statement is less than 100% voluntary
Pretty much like having people spread stolen screeners of your not-yet-released film to thousands or millions of best friends they've never met know isn't exactly 100% voluntary for the filmaker, either. I think that's the whole point.
you just "believe" what your friends "believe"
But this is how you show how poorly you understand the difference between science and religion. You don't need to "believe" anything in science. Science is a method. It's means by which to understand the mechanisms that govern the matter and processes that we see around us. Science is not a fact, it's a means by which to determine fact. Religion, on the other hand, offers no such pursuit or framework: it fabricates an untestable mystical explanation for the matter and processes we see, and then says that you have to take it as fact, and that the act of trying to test the validity of those facts is actually sin (and is pointless because only god knows the truth, blah blah).
So, people running a religios operation tell you a set of "facts" they want you to take as true, even as they tell you that the truth isn't really knowable and that faith is required. Science, on the other hand, asks nothing of you, other than honesty. Science says, "here are the tools - try it yourself so that you don't have to believe anything without evidence." Of course, if you're too busy to try everything yourself, you can rely on trusted peer reviews and the knowledge that the underlying scientific method demands continual re-evaluation and a change of understanding whenever improved tools shine a brighter light on the fabric of the universe. Religion acts at every turn to dim that light, or when it's too bright to ignore, to pretend that they've backed that particular piece of science all along, not counting the people they've burned at the stake, etc.
Science is no more fact than religion on an individual level because we don't have the time to verify it all personally, and you can't deny that.
Sure we can deny that. Science is just one big invitation to test each other's findings and prove them wrong. Religion is exactly the opposite. Pointing out where religion has it wrong just gets you kicked out of that religion. But pointing out where a previous scientist was wrong just makes the person who got it right... a scientist with better tools and insight working in a time when more information is available. Science demands to be proven wrong if it's wrong, and religion demands that you believe no matter how wrong it is.
And you can't deny that the case of ID is what human science is attempting to make true by inter-galactic colonisation.
No, I'd say that we'll have to deny that. "Inter-galactic colonisation" is of course nonsense - we've only barely managed to put probes down on nearby planets, let alone attempt any such effort outside of our solar system to a star lightyears away. Never mind other galaxies, billions of lightyears farther away. You want an example of intelligent design? How about purebred horses, fancy roses, or poodles? We use our intelligence all the time to introduce accelerated or otherwise unlikely evolutionary pressure into the lifecycle of animals and plants. Otherwise we wouldn't have large scale crops or domestic animals. That's intelligent design at work. But unlike the religious idiots who think everything came from magic, I can tell you exactly (without any magic required!) how we get miniature horses, Siamese cats, and insect-resistent corn plants. The ID people - showing their limited personal understanding of basic biology, even as they eat food that results from evolution - say that things are just too complicated to be anything but magic. So much like children that it's really quite embarassing.
You just insist on no evidence that these humans on this planet are the first, which is a fantastic claim, and you won't consider evidence to the contrary on grounds of faith.
It's not at all clear what you're actually talking about here. But since you seem to suggest that there's evidence to the contrary of something, it might be helpful if you were to actually say what that evidence is, and how you are able to evaluate that evidence without using... reason, logic, and repeatable tests. You know, science.
Don't get it do you? It's who they are (personally) that we're talking about here. The ID crowd is made up of individual persons (no matter how much they act like idealogical sheep). The irrational, superstitious nonsense they spout is spouted by them as individual people whether or not they also say it as a group to make it sound more credible to their fan base.
The comment you're complaining about referred to people who are willing to close their eyes to what's right in front of them, to willfully turn off their capacity for logic and reasoned pursuit of causality. He called them, "jackasses." You refer to that as "verbal assault," while I prefer the common usage (outside the livestock world):
And, indeed, "fool" is exactly the right word for it. Because the only other possible interpretation of the motives for the ID proponents is one of malicious deceit. They know it's BS, but they are pounding that drum loudly because it's the nearest they think they'll ever be to having the leverage required to get religion back into public schools. They're willing (ironically) to be liars so that they can preach Christian (no other!) truth in a public educational framework. Filtering out the ones that think like that, the only ones left are those that have been fooled into actually believing the mythology. It doesn't matter why they were fooled, but the mechanism that, as they grow up, allowed them to let go of Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny just never quite completely kicked in when it comes to other imaginary powers. Oh well.
I feel sorry for them, but I truly don't care what they think. I do, though, care when they attempt to corrupt science classrooms and squash critical thinking in young people. It's embarassing, really, but it's also damaging to the intellects that will eventually grow up and run the country. Leave them alone! If those kids become adults and feel then like they want to regress back to the dark ages and imagine that all-powerful beings are running the universe, then so be it. But at least give them a chance to go into the world with a clear head. Calling someone a jackass for wanting otherwise is hardly "verbal assault." It's calling it like it is, and the truth is never an assault (though it may feel like one if you've been closing your eyes to it for most of your life).
We need to start stockpiling canned goods, fresh water and shotgun shells now! If we wait until the first reports of infection, it may already be too late!
How do you say "evil zombies" in French? "Malfaiteurs de Zombi?" I bet some people are wondering that right now (since they can't get to work this morning, what with their cars having been torched by nocturnal zombie throngs). Le *sigh*.
Actually, from a functioning-network-IT perspective, the Ivory Tower guys are almost better than the build-it-from-a-Pringles-can types. Meaning, if an organization is depending on their network to do what they do, the "I'll just build something myself and bolt it on - those morons in IT don't need to know" guy is far more likely to introduce major problems.
I understand your point, but that doesn't make him any less shorsighted (or ill-informed) about "IT monkeys." In fact, if he's the guy that has learned by building, he should know how complex a modern IT infrastructure is - both technically and politically/finacially (though the solder-your-own crowd usually throw up their hands when faced with the latter, though someone has to do it).
I'm guessing that the reason you have such a condescending take on the people that "make sure the network is up" is that they know you're an insufferable CS elitist type, you act that way, and they treat you pretty much like you seem to be deserving. Those IT simpletons that you think should just be dealing with the toner are also the ones who have to actually understand how to make the best use of Bayesian filtering, contend with a wide range of protocols, devices, budget issues, politics, emergencies, security threats, and so on. "IT" may just be the application of technology to a purpose, but you can't apply it well, or with any sort of rational vision, unless you're pretty hip to the underlying technologies.
For what it's worth, during those years that I've worn an IT hat, some of the worst users (in terms of trashing machines, letting malware run amok, hogging storage through lousy habits, needing to be rescued by backups, and being stumped by things like getting a printer to work) were the computer science PhD crowd.
"use it, and agree to the terms without thinking." might that be classified as "trickery"?
Actually, my point was that it's more like "not thinking." Or, "not reading." Or, "assuming that, generally, people are good and nice, and that they want to give me something for free with no strings attached because I'm also nice."
Action is needed to reverse this, but I doubt we'll see it while Bush is still in power.
While I think the notion of patented storylines is the height of nonsense (and hopefully, this applied-for patent will not actually come to pass), I don't think the current (or any) administration is what you should be bitching about. The Patent Office is a creature of the US Congress. Congress impacts its charter, and its funding. While the USPTO is an agency of the Department of Commerce (and thus, is always under the direction of a political appointee), the DoC still has to actually do what congress has said it has to do. Congress approves the DoC's spending and programs at a pretty granular level. Don't like all this crap? Talk to your congressional delegation about it. No president can dictate a change in IP law (thank goodness). Can you imagine if either Bush or Kerry (or Gore! yikes!) could hand down instructions on how to evaluate such things? No, it's something that needs to be handled more thoughtfully, and in a less politicized form - not by edict.
Seems like the feds could clean all of this up by launching a quick investigation into *every* affiliate of the spyware/adware companies. The only way an affiliate can get someone to load this junk is by trickery or exploit.
Not so. Plenty of fine-print boilerplate associated with online games or other things will do the same. For example... you offer a free Java-based garden or room design program. Then you make sure that people running web sites for interior decorators or garden clubs know that they can link to it for free. People use it, and agree to the terms without thinking. Presto, you've got permission to drop a litte proxy or tool bar or other naughtiness on their machine. They've asked you to, without thinking about the consequences. People looking to play a free game of poker or do a crossword puzzle are easily seduced that way.
Of course, that all takes some work, and most sleazy affiliates are way too lazy to do it the "honest" way. And the ones that do it fine-print-loophole way are still facing lawsuits because the tactics, while literally OK, are still clearly attempting to fool people.
I should have been clearer. Contact, at the time it was released in theaters, and for what it cost to make, was considered a flop (relative to the hype) by those on the business side of things. It was definately profitable, just not in the way that they were hoping (and hyping). Why? Because they really couldn't run any ads that showed attacking aliens and whatnot... since there weren't any. A lot of the peer-to-peer fan buzz at the time was not positive, or least, didn't appreciate the somewhat more cerebral aspects of the film.
To call NPR biased and to ignore my statements about various news stations because they don't agree with your bias is ludacris - go look up the specific study i was referencing for my statistics
I'm not ignoring your stats, I'm pointing out that they don't mean anything in the larger context. How about this: let's, for sake of argument, say that every single viewer of Fox is a useless Republican drone, and that every single NPR listener takes everything that's presented there with a grain of salt and researches it entirely on their own against multiple sources before forming any sort of opinion. Better? That still leaves all of the other major broadcast networks, staffed by people that overwhelmingly lean towards one political camp, and viewed rather uncritically by a large national audience. Citing how many Fox watchers think what is like pulling three similar people out of a mix of 100 people and then finding that 100% of those three select people think the same thing. Shocking! Also meaningless.
It's been proven my repeated indepenant studies that Fox News is so biased and mixes opinion and news so freely [intentionally] that they have engendered inaccurate knowledge in 80% of their viewers.
And, even allowing for that statistic, I'm saying that 80% of their viewers is still a tiny minority of the other networks' collective viewers. CBS still gets more people watching it, and if they had their way, a presidential election would have been altered by their anchors obviously insane clutching to a bogus story based on poorly forged MS Word documents pretending to be memos from decades ago.
Infact ABC/CBS/NBC aren't too much better than Fox - and you know all the factually inaccuracies they push off favor the administration's positions.
No, they're also very poor at journalism... but their biases absolutely do not favor the administration. Most importantly, their airtime biases tilt the most extremely during the critical few weeks before an election, which is what we're talking about (since that's when the law would most crack down on non-"journalist" rights to free speech).
For example in one quite pointed study about misconceptions and support of the Iraq war three questions were asked - and the more of them they got wrong the more likely they were to be the following A) Supporters of the war B) Fox news viewers
And? "More likely to be..." doesn't add up to "and thus we shouldn't let people write what they want on their web sites because that's the same as paid media support."
"More likely they were to be..." doesn't, by the way, indicate that one news channe's counter-balancing editorial position even comes close to countering the overt bias of organizations like NPR (which even uses your tax dollars), or the major new networks. CNN alone is so demonstrably oriented against the administration that it and Fox essentially cancel each other out. What's left are all the other broadcasters and networks, the majority of which overwhelmingly left-leaning in their personal politics and their editorial decisions.
Why not read a serious poli-sci paper on the subject. You'll see specific references to hard stats on the people involved. For every reporter that contributed to the Bush campaign, 93 contributed to Kerry... and many other such instructive tidbits. You can bitch about Fox all you want, but they're only a tiny slice of the media pie.
But you know what? I don't care if they're biased, as long as my person right to free speech isn't limited. And that's exactly what the legislation in question was designed to prevent, and which the Dems just went to a lot of trouble to shoot down. Nice.
That's no "dirty secret." Any money collected through those channels still must be reported, and must still comply with campaign finance laws.
is my understanding of u.s. politics so backwards? i would have expected the party breakdown to be 180degrees opoistite this...
Interesting, isn't it? Despite the common association between left/liberal politics and liberty (to do/be anything), it's the left that usually acts to restrict or condemn speech. It's common on college campuses and is apparent in this congressional vote.
There's another dimension to this, as well. Because much of the mainstream news media, as people, lean to the political left, there's a built-in advantage for leftier politicians in the way they are covered. When exposure for a politician comes in the form of "reporting" (or op-eds in a newspaper), it's not subject to the campaign laws. If personal/group expression is limited by law, then the democratic candidates benefit by getting more "free" journalistic exposure. People will whine about Fox being a more right-leaning news outlet, but that scarcely puts a dent in the coverage from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR and the majority of big city newspapers and local broadcasters. So, the Democrats, in limiting free speech in this way, are morally bankrupt, but are working to improve their odds of winning elections.
I mean, why go to all that trouble to screw with my freedom to talk? Wasn't McCain-Feingold bad enough as is? Surely the Dems could just inspire better bloggers, and then not feel so insecure about the impact of non-liberal bloggers on elections? Because the measure in question was, I think, absolutely central to free expression (my right to post things on my own damn web site, or even to pay someone to help me write that content, or even to pay people to help me get traffic to that web site)... and whatever those opposing the measure were thinking, they sure weren't thinking "First Amendment."
I can't stand (and thus, don't read) the wingnut blogs from the far end of either party... but if I want to catch up on how a pending election is going to realistically impact something I actually care about, I want to be able to read what some people would certainly consider political blogs, and right up until I cast a vote. And considering my ecclectic interests, I know that the people posting meaningful content covering what I can't see through the normal media sure as hell can't afford to do what they do and even begin to think about whether they are or aren't compliant with election bookkeeping rules. Blocking this measure was stupid, counter-constitutional, and just objectively the wrong thing to do.
This joke only works if your UID is lower.
You must be new here. Lame jokes that make no contextual sense are part of the game (um, apparently).
So you do pay for the libraries, whether you use them or not.
You must be new here. It's not polite to remind slashdot users that everything their city, state, and federal governments fund for their use is actually paid for with tax dollars that are coming out of someone's pocket (possibly, your grandhildren's pockets). Now please keep your irritating logic and causality and high-falutin' eco-nomics to yourself, OK? Otherwise, people will start wanting to have a say in how their money is spent, and start resenting when it's given to someone who doesn't pay in as much as they do, and that sort of thing. Shhh!
this is just once again proof on MS's crooked business "strategies"....
How is this "crooked?" They make the device. It's theirs. This is not some natural resource that only they have access to. They don't have to let anybody profit from selling it. There's no burden on retailers for this - those stores make money when people stand in line at their stores to buy things. If they don't want to be part of that process, they sure don't have to. They can sell plenty of competing products from other companies (providing, as they sign contracts with Sony or Nintendo, that they like the rules that those manufacturers expect them to follow - and don't think they're not just as restrictive).
But just like book stores that know they'd be foolish (despite a tightly controlled marketing/release plan from the publishers) not to sell the next Harry Potter book, or movie theaters that only have so many seats and have to wait until midnight to sell tickets for a new release, XBox retailers can either work with the product's manufacturer or not. They can agree to terms, and make the money, or not agree to the terms, and find another way to make money. Crooked? Crooked is telling a game manufacturer that they have to deliver a product according to your demands, and not their own wishes. It's so simple: if you don't like MS or how they deal with a product debut, then don't buy their game product as a form of entertainment. If everyone does that, then MS's wishes don't mean anything. But then, no one gets the cool toy, either. But let's try to keep a little perspective, here. It's a toy. You're getting cranky about a toy debut marketing plan.
The way I see it, people should pay income tax in the state that they earn the income, not the state in which they reside.
What? How about you pay taxes in the state where you use the resources provided by the state? You know - roads, emergency services, schools, etc? If you commute to an employer in another state, the employer is using that other state's resources/facilities, and corporate/property/sales taxes collected as that business does business in that state cover those expenses.