Bad example. Apple goes out of their way these days to make sure people realize that you can plug ANY mouse into a Mac (as long as the plug fits) and it will work.
Actually, I think that makes it an even better example. Microsoft also goes out of their way to make sure that all sorts of vendors are able to loudly trumpet the compatibility of their hardware with their OS, which gets along with vastly more hardware (so far) than Apple does.
But my point is, countering the comment I first replied to, that just like some people are going to walk into a store and, while seeing a shelf labeled something like "PC Accessories" with dozens of keyboards and mice all bearing MS compatability logos, will still grab the MS product (I actually happen to like their keyboards and mice - full disclaimer)... but other people will walk into the store and grab an Apple peripheral because they think that's probably best or least likely to give them trouble with their Mac. It doesn't matter how right they are - the effect is very similar. It's just simple brand identity, and Apple probably pitches it even harder than MS does, because more of Apple's revenue depends upon it than at MS.
How long until people are unwilling to write about horrifying business experiences due to fears of a lawsuit?
But this hasn't changed in decades, if not centuries. People have been writing letters to local (and national) newspapers, picketing storefronts, sending out mailings, and doing a all sors of things to express both their rational/righteous/deserved and irrational/malicious/undeserved scorn of some company, individual, church, politician, or other entity. The concept of libel law, and of defamation of character, goes back WAY before blogs, and people have been using the courts on both sides of this issue all along.
The difference, now, is that you don't even have to bother using a stamp and an envelope to say what you think, and a wider audience is right at your fingertips. And where a newspaper would look at certain claims and say "can you prove this, or at least give me the name of the crappy car salesman at the dealer you dealt with," the web server you're posting to doesn't ask - and Google will just pick it right up.
The standards (of libel) haven't changed, and the lawyers for the person taking offense will have to mention to their client that if they're not able to satisfy a jury that they've been unjustifiably harmed, they're wide open for a countersuit that they'll almost certainly lose. That hasn't changed one bit.
I think what has changed is that a lot of twits post things online thinking that it's essentially a game. They confuse MMORPGs with reality, and vice versa. They think that ranting to some other enthusiasts in their tiny little corner of the blogosphere will earn them street cred, and don't consider that they're subject to the same libel issues that writers in every media have always been subject to.
The question of whether or not other people posting to your site make you liable for their libel... that's an interesting one. Hence the many disclaimers on most sites that get any traffic. The issue there would be, probably, whether or not you edit people's comments. If the plaintiff can show that you remove certain comments from your blog's responses (say, to kill spam, etc), then they can show that you're making editorial decisions... and that probably opens you up for a libel defense.
If you really think about it, in our litigious society, you're better to keep your mouth shut - or some company with deep pockets can take everything you own for the simple fact that they don't like what you said. That's not right.
Frivalous lawsuits are a fantastic drain on our economy - all of them are. Look at the woman who just won $250 million from a drug company because her husband (already dying of various cardio problems) took Vioxx. There isn't a single indication that what killed him had anything to do with his pain meds, but because they had pulled the drug off the market for potential risks in some (unrelated to his) cardio problems, a dimwitted jury decided that (as usual) all coportions are evil, and that she deserved a quarter of a billion dollars. Or the idiot woman (now $20 million richer) who dumped her McDonald's coffee in her lap while driving. The medical suits are certainly the worst, though. People can't stand the thought of their own mortality, and the fashion now is to blame doctors and hospitals for, essentially, not being gods. Oh well - too off topic. You get my drift, though - I agree that we're too litigious. But I don't think we're seeing a rash of libel suits in the way that we're seeing suits in other areas.
The people filing this lawsuit are nothing more than schoolyard bullies
Unless they're right. In which case they're making sure that another party isn't abusing the first amendment and BSing while presenting nonsense as fact. It could be done by either party, for any reason, and the only issue is whether or not the person posting his comments, or allowing the other comments to stay up on his web site, are truthful.
The truth may indeed be extremely negative, but who cares, as long as it's the truth. But a lot of people post demonstrable lies in blogs, hoping that the search engines will pick up on it, etc. The person being lied about should have recourse, whether large or small.
In this case, how have you made your determination about the truthfullness (and thus, non-libelous) nature of the web content in question? I didn't see enough to go on, so you must know more.
Is ScionLife liable? Am I? Is Slashdot liable now that I've put it up here?
I think the main question you should be asking is whether or not your comments were factually correct. If you're not BSing, you're not libeling. That doesn't stop you from getting sued, of course, but it hopefully stops them from winning, and helps you to successfully counter-sue for your costs if they're being jerks about it.
And finally, if someone spray paints a swastica on my garage door while I'm out of town and unable to remove it, am I liable for a hate crime?
No. Um, unless you're in one of those countries where not acting to remove someone else's nazi artwork is a crime... and there are some countries with really odd rules about that sort of thing.
From TFA: The Lunar Penguin, originally intended to land on the south pole of the moon to search for ice, is based on tactical weapons technologies, which should make it much more affordable, Raytheon said
Just curious what booster-powered hopping weapons system Raytheon has been working on lately, and if they have lasers strapped to their heads or what.
have heard people in shops debating over buying a mouse for instance and plumped for the MS one because it was Microsoft and therefore would be compatible with their PC.
Yeah, that would never happen to Mr. and Mrs. Hip Urban Genius stopping into the Mac store at their local suburban mall, would it? No way. Why, Steve Jobs surely runs in-store workshops to make sure that people realize there are other, non-Apple products that are just as good, or superior, and perfectly compatible...
Corps here in the USA are constantly allowed to "push the bar" as far as they can
Beyond which, they're acting illegally.
And it's up to state and federal legislatures to redefine what is and is not legal for companies to do. Recent legislation like Sarbanes-Oxley places enormously more scrutiny and burden on large companies. Why? Because a very small number of them pulled some dumb shit, and now everyone who forms a corporation is "evil" until proven otherwise (or, from your perspective, evil no matter what). Presumbly that also includes, say, a band that incorporates to handle their recording expenses and t-shirt revenue, too. Evil, so evil!
Why is is OK for a "capitalistic" company to personally allowed to cost you money/time, yet if a private person does it, it is a "crime"?
Maybe you'll get a lucid answer if you ask a more relevent question. A corporation costs me money when I elect to do business with them, or when I elect public figures that contract with them. They don't really have any other legal vectors by which to "cost" me money. Sort of like the guy deploying worms on the net doesn't have a legal way to waste my time.
Why should a corp be allowed to commit a crime and only get fined yet, if a private "citizen" committed the _same_ crime would get jail time?
Specifically what crime are you referring to? You can certainly cost everyone in a company their jobs, and cost all of the company's investors all of the college-fund money they had tied up in the company's stock... good enough for you? Check with Enron, or Arthur Anderson. People working at those companies, but which had nothing to do with the bad acts of a few people, paid the price. Good enough for you? Other people did go to jail. Good enough for you?
After all, he was looking out for "share holders best interests" to MAKE MONEY
Do you even think about the words you use? MAKING money means producing something, and in a market economy, doing so in a way that finds a willing buyer at a mutually agreed price. Someone sneaking spyware onto an unwitting person's machine sure as hell isn't participating in a market economy, he's a parasite.
I'd say there's a huge difference between a handful of drunk, ignorant idiots stalking and killing a gay guy and the government doing it.
It actually is interesting to see the same idealogical camp that condemns a killing like Shepard's (as anyone should) preaching non-involvement in "other cultures" and celebrating "diversity." The point, of course, is that there are plenty of "diverse" other cultures that, as a matter of course, would have killed Sheppard and anyone he ever interacted with. There actually are some objectively wrong ways for a culture to carry on. It's that simple. So... why the constant drumbeat for "tolerance" for everything, but intolerance for certain attitudes domestically? Doesn't make those attitudes right, but it makes similar attitudes elsewhere also wrong.
First of all: its irritating that you discount the canadian and british fores (and when involved frensh forces) as having less good or less powerfull weaponary.
But I didn't say, or imply that at all. I'm talking about the number of people, operations, planes, ships, and rounds fired. This has nothing to do with the quality of the people, equipment, or tactics. The point is that friendly fire happens, and it's going to happen more to the people that have many times more the share of the action. There are area where the Brits, for example, have had most of the men on the ground (Basra, as I recall, was at one point more or less entirely theirs to deal with). They did a great job - that's not even what we're talking about.
When you get 100 kills by friendly fire you would assume that you have:
5 dead amoung the troups of A, 10 dead amoun the troups of B and 85 among the troupsof C.
Apples and oranges. It depends on the type of engagement. In the event that half a dozen, say, Canadian troops are in a trench approaching an insurgent stronghold, and in that theatre, there are only a few dozen of their peers... when one US-dropped air-to-ground weapon goes astray, or is called into the wrong coordinates and kills those six guys... one friendly fire incident has just hugely skewed the numbers. But the same incident might have taken out 6 US troops, and barely registered against the overall number of US troops in that field.
The friendly fire we're hearing most about is the type that involves heavy weapons, vehicle-fired ordinance, and stuff falling out of the sky. The US is going most of that work, since it's mostly US aircraft, armor, and artillery in place. That's going to make those friendlies killed statistically much uglier when they happen to be attached to a smaller allied force in the country. Hell, one ill-placed round from an M1A might have taken out 5% of the Polish contingent in the whole country. Then the US would be "cowboys slaughtering Poles," even though same damage done to the same number of US troops would go unreported in most European countries.
"They?" You mean, of course, guys like Zarqawi? You know, the Jordanian head-remover and his boys, most of whom are not from Iraq, but are from Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
Fighting back? Is that what they call blowing up markets, driving car bombs into crowds of kids, shooting politicians working on the constitution, and loading up houses on the Syrian boarder with fake Iraqi police cars and ambulence full of Iranian-made exposives?
You'll recall the millions of people in that country that participated in the recent election, and will be doing the same when they act to democratically ratify their new constitution. This despite the daily killings of Iraqi civilians by other Muslims operating under the influence (and with cash channeled through) swell fellows like Zarqawi. His most recent public communications are a reminder of what he's all about: a pan-Arab caliphate, a la the Taliban, ruling (as the first stop!) the entire Middle East. His take on democracy? "Evil" and "un-Islamic."
To the extent that ordinary Iraqis are backing democracy, he's trying to scare them away from it by killing them, as capriciously as possible. To the extent that places like Egypt are recognizing the parliment and transitional government in Iraq? They too are having their civilians bombed, killing and injuring hundreds just in one recent event. Which part of that Jordanian "resistance" fighter's creed is it that you think most of the people in Iraq are likely to support? How many more shops or sidewalks, or gatherings of kids do you think he'll have to blow up in order for a typical resident of Baghdad to suddenly realize that his view of the world is the rational one? How many Iraqis do you think will love that foreign, wahabiist perspective only after he... what, kills the guy from their neighborhood that they just elected to represent them in parliment?
The only "resistence" in Iraq is that offered up by pissed off Sunni tribe-mates of S.H. who lost their ethnic minority thugocracy and cash meal ticket, and the resistence of the most extreme fundamentalist jihaddis who are traveling into Iraq expressly to get in the way of democratic evolution and a more open society, lest that evil cultural development show up in even more places. They really didn't like what just happend in Lebannon, so there's even more pressure to make sure that Syria, Iran, and others don't get polluted by expectations of democracy, a free press, and elected officials that serve at the pleasure of the the votors.
If you're so worried about the feelings of a small, Tikrit-based Sunni minority because of their sense that they've been invaded, where were you on that same group's war against Iran, or invasion of Kuwait? You know, the episode following which Hussein agreed not to do things like shoot at the planes enforcing the no-fly zone he agreed to? Of course, he continued shooting at them several times a week for years, even as he cheated his own people out of the food he was supposed to be buying them with the oil he was selling in order to (as it turns out) build more palaces, empower his soccer-team-torturing, drug-addled, woman-raping, psycopathic, murderous sons, and continue to pointlessly regroup his military for even more conflict.
If you're one of those that saw, in Hussein's brutal, mass murdering dictatorship, some cheery, idyllic, "why can't we all just get along" wonderland, then it makes sense that you'd find anyone trying to kill Zarqawi and prevent another Taliban-like infestation as somehow the bad guys.
Bonus points for presentation, but nothing extra on rhetorical work, I'm afraid.
Hell, to the degree that techy-nerd things inteface with pretty much every aspect of our culture and daily affairs, slashdot is a good venue for discussing, well, pretty much everything.
But it's the spin, and the unspoken understanding that merely sprinkling a post with those words is somehow the same as intelligently putting together, say, an argument that corporations are inherently (and actually) evil, or that profiting from your investment somehow isn't fair.
I'm always amused by the habit, as seen here, of bending about the meaning of words that actually mean specific things because by doing so, one can get extra preaching-to-the-choir karma... but that if someone slightly misuses a word which, due to vagueness, might cloud a discussion about, say, WiFi network topography or Java classes, well... flame on!
I'm thinking that if people want to use "evil" and "profit" in the same sentence, they should link to a page that explains the underlying premises upon which they form their value judgements. Having to actually explain the foundation of one's system of thought will usually expose the built-in contradictions. If those are substantial enough, they are at some level driving your every conversation and even your choice of tortured vocabulary. When it reaches that point, the only place where it's safe (or, comfortable) to gab is in a space populated by people who have the same foundational contradictions, or at least those that manifest themselves in a similar way.
When you suffer from mixed premises, you must tolerate contradictions (even though nature does not). Once that little bit of low-level mental trouble has really set its roots, it informs things like language usage, and leads to an embrace of both moral and linguistic relativism.
You're right that all cultural affairs should be discussed, and to the extent that some company is actually "evilly" making a profit (by which I have to assume you mean "illegally" rather than "contrary to how I'd personally do it if I ran a company") then sure, talk about it. But if the tone is simply, "Any large enough group of people working together to make a profit is a corporation and thus evil," (whether you mean that, or simply don't care to modify that connotation enough to disuade many people from drawing that inference from how you phrase things), then the discussion you recommend is no discussion at all.
Are you kidding me? The numbers are shouted from the rooftop on every damn newscast. The more so by broadcasters idealogically anxious to trumpet casualties.
death counts (on both sides as required by the Geneva Convention)?
Are you talking about armed conflict between the uniformed soldiers of nations that are parties to the GC? Or, are you talking about the number of foreign nationals killed in their role as jihaddi insurgents blowing up Iraqi civilians and occasionally getting taken out when we hit a homebrew bomb factory? The sensibilities that shaped the GC are very removed from the scenario where a rich kid from Jordan hops out of his car with four buddies in a suburban Baghdad schoolyard, sets up mortar tube, lobs a few rounds randomly into a neighborhood, and then races back to their adopted safe house a mile away, where an armed Predator takes them and their supplies out of the picture entirely. I mean, that beats the hell out of having to send a bunch of grunts in on the ground for a house-to-house firefight that ends up impacting everyone in the area, but it makes it harder to know, right that minute, how many IED factory workers were just removed. Never the less, it's not like you're going to find a bunch of combatants with their dog tags and name, rank, serial number. They're not soldiers, and they're sure as hell not acting like them (however much they may think that capriciously blowing up non-Sunni civilians is a soldierly thing to do), and they sure as hell aren't working for a command structure that thinks the GC is anything but a joke.
step out of line and you get sent home with all access rights (interviews, White House Press Room etc) suspended permanmently
What's "out of line" to you? A live broadcast that identifies what street they're standing on, and what people are in which vehicle as they head to a specific street in an insurgent-infected neighborhood? Or, reporting, as we've seen, that shows what the conflict looks like, sounds like, and actually does to the people on the receiving end of both friendly and enemy fire. Maybe you're not watching enough BBC or other coverage that is decidely, and continually scolding in its tone and content.
Seriously, the American military has a big problem with friendly fire. Just ask the Canadians, British or whomever else the Americans have ever gone to war/battle with.
No, the Americans have a big problem with doing the vast majority of the fighting, equipping, logistics, and, of course, shooting. When you're doing almost all of the work, more of what goes wrong in the chaos of combat (and even in the complexity of live fire exercises) is going to be laid at the feet of the people carrying/flying/driving/shooting the most weapons. Every single injury or death of this type is a tragedy, but the number that are avoided through the use of the US's stunningly effective (by historical standards) command and control systems is not to be trivialized. It's terrible when an ally dies fighting with the US, and it's just as terrible when we shoot up one of our own. But what we have now is better stats, embedded reporters, and an changed ethic about a lot of this. Can you imagine how much of this happened (on all sides) during the Vietnam, or World wars?
Why not. Perhaps it's better if all of the Googleness, including all of the breathless press coverage, could be confined to a stand-alone network. All of those that have been Touched By The Googly Appendage will live blissfully within a completely self-containted universe where all news is about, and reported by Google. CommanderToogle's new site, slashdot.goo, will have new and improved moderation choices:
1) Completely About Google
2) Mostly About Google
3) At Least Somewhat About Google
4) Funny, But Not At Google's Expense
5) Troogle
6) Undergoogled
7) Overgoogled (very rare - can there be too much Google?)
New to slashdot, are you? Though you can hardly read a comment without tripping over links to idealogical wikipedia articles, you'll rarely see links off to dictionary.com or m-w.com. Hence, you rarely see words like "proprietary," "evil," "corporate," or "profit," etc., used in any sort of useful context. Words, as used on slashdot, have so much spin and baggage tied to them, that you have to go meta in order to discern what someone is actually trying to say. That's bad enough in the comments, but when it infects the main article summaries, it sure sets the tone, doesn't it.
Look at your clothes, computer, TV, video, car labels.
Well, 20 years ago, you'd have said the exact same thing about Japan. They themselves were banking on their demonstrably superior manufacturing ingenuity, efficiencies, and focus to make them dominant. They then totally overextended themselves, and their economy has been more or less in the tank ever since.
Now, the difference between them and the Chinese situation (also sitting on top of an economic bubble they won't be able to sustain) is that the Chinese, having not been aggressors in WWII, don't have any of the politically correct inhibitions about using force to prop up the weak spots in their system. Taiwan would certainly be their first target, and that will cause a wretched mess. But the whole southeast Asia area will feel their influence as they look, themselves, for more resources.
I'd like to say that the currency float you mentioned was a good thing, but there isn't a single economist who sees it as anything other than an empty political gesture. All they did was let it "float" within very narrow bounds, defined by them, with essentially no impact whatsoever on the real underlying exchange mechanics.
The real issue here is going to be energy. Probably the most alarming development is the Chinese coziness with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. They're taking a lot of their cash surplus (um, that would be the cash we're spending on their inexpensive products) and pumping a lot of it into investments in that oil producing country. That's fine with Chavez, because China is the nearest thing to an idealogical opposite to the US he can find (well, one that isn't clearly a broken-down mess, like Cuba).
My guess is that Venezuela will become, is essence, a Chinese outpost. And a huge foothold, economically, in Central/South America. Just in time for the economies in Brazil and Argentina to start looking ripe for more investment.
So, we may see Wal-Mart eventually filling up with "Made in Brazil" goods, but made by firms operated by Chinese interests.
I'd not, though, call them the next "superpower" any more than one could refer to the Soviets in that sense. They were, in that they had the military and the nukes to be hugely influential, but it was a house of cards. That won't be as true of the Chinese, in that their businesses are tilting capitalist despite the (now mostly smoke) communist creed of their heavy-handed government. But as long as they are to a large degree centrally managed, they're going to make a lot of the tone-deaf mistakes that the Soviets did. And this time, a whole lot of Chinese citizens are going to be a whole lot quicker to step up and try to prevent the economic flushing that happened in Russia after the USSR tanked. It's going to be fascinating. In the meantime, I'd vote for policies that encourage more US investment in central and south America, and policies that ask the same thing of China that the US must do to do business in their country.
Are you sying that the only way to grow a company is by violating the law, being unethical and overhanded?
No, I'm saying that Google will have to be profitable, not tip their hands about what they're doing, be merciless with the competition, continue to expand into new business areas at what will appear to some to be a breathless pace... all that "evil corporate stuff." Because they're talented and flush with investmentors' money, they will be very succesful, and before long, they'll be getting the same loathing treatment as MS.
"Overhanded?" What does that even mean? Do you mean that they'll use their hard-won market advantages to press for even more market advantages? They'll have to, as they are already doing.
"Unethical?" As in... what? Not caring if a competitor that doesn't have the same resources, timing, luck, investment, etc., feels like they should have been able to beat Google in some area, but didn't, and gee that's not fair, blah blah? Exactly - they won't, and shouldn't care. Even when those competitors inevitably turn away from trying to compete in the marketplace, and just start suing for a living, instead. Happens all the time, it's happened to MS, and it's going to happen to Google. And no one here will care, until the company that lost its market share to Google's bigger brand is perceived as being the slashdot-cool-rated underdog, and then the whole group think will immediately shift to Google = Evil.
"Violating the law?" Please. Netscape was roadkill because of their lousy marketing, poor partnership decisions, and mysterious lack of foresight about how a browser is a perfectly reasonable thing to include in an operating system. That they found sympathetic political sponsorship for their position doesn't make MS any more heavy handed than Apple, Sony, Novell, Disney, Starbucks, etc. Considering MS to be operating as some sort of evil James Bond Villain style organization says more about who is commenting on them than what the company actually does. They have more auditors climbing up their ass than most any other business in the country. Their deals are subject to more foul-mooded contract baggage than many defense contracts. You might consider Bill a moron, but the milllions of people in this country that have invested in his company think otherwise. This isn't a comment on whether or not every piece of software they've produced is perfect or unrivaled by some other solution - but it is recognition that MS was in the right place at the right time to be successful, just as Google is now. And they will pillaried for it, as well.
So, your point is that people in the Carolinas (pick your north or south, it doesn't matter) are worth describing as a single, homogenous crowd? My point is that it's no more appropriate to describe Carolinians as KKK members as it is to describe Washintonians or Oregonians as SUV-burners. It's just BS to paint with that broad a brush.
The Government makes decisions that favour big business, since big business is the government's paymaster
Or, you could say that organizations like those run by trial lawyers, teachers' unions, labor unions, retired people, etc., are the "paymasters" since they also spend a lot of money backing candidates. In the last election, backers of the current administration spent less on the election than those backing the losing side did.
Sometimes these decisions involve sending us to war and getting us killed
Yup, even in places like Europe, the Pacific, and Africa. Check in with the people who were getting "ethnically cleansed" in Croatia and Bosnia, and ask if they think it was a good idea. Or ask our substantial trading partners in Germany and Japan if they think they're better off now, being liberal democracies, than they were in the throws of fascism and imperial fuedalism.
Why don't we just bribe the government directly?
It's called taxes.
On an international scale you would have many billions of dollars in the bribe kitty! How can we go about pulling this off?
Leaving aside for a moment the fact that using foreign dollars (and a lot of domestic dollars) to influence an election is wildly illegal (even Bill Clinton's and the dem party's campaign aparati had to return some "donations" demonstrably tied to Chinese interests), you're assuming that people can't vote their consciences. If it were all about money, why didn't the millions upon millions that George Soros poured into the recent election get him what he was trying to buy? Some of the wealthiest people (entertainers, etc) and organizations (large labor unions, professional associations, etc) raised and spent more money on the election than the winners' backers did. What happened? People didn't like the (lack of a) message, and didn't like the candidates those dollars were trying to push.
Besides, there's other forms of influence peddling in exchange for cash... like the family that ponied up a large donation for the previous presiden't library in Arkansas - and found that their fugitive financier familiy member got a glorious last-minute presidential pardon on his way out of office. You make it sound like the only party or politicians that you think need (even more) financial influencing are the ones who happen to pursue foreign policies you don't like. Well, a lot of people didn't like the policies of the last administration, either, and voted (rather than paid for) a change in orientation on that front. I would save your would-be bribe money and buy a nicer hat, perhaps made of some other, non-tinfoil material.
Yup. I live in a POS townhouse in Gaithersburg. It's a three hour round trip to the corporate office I sometimes visit, 30 miles away in northern VA. The worse townhouse across the parking lot from me just sold for $350k.
Looks like South Dakota or something is the only hope. It's all about the broadband.
Yeah, but I don't expect to see any burning crosses in my front yard or clinic bombings in Seattle.
And in South Carolina, you run less of a risk of idiot anarchist protestors trashing your favorite coffee shop, and eco-terrorist burning the SUV you use to haul around your kids. What, the stereotype's not fair? How about that.
Re:If, so this would be a huge boon for slashdot..
on
Has Google Peaked?
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· Score: 1
Sounds like a little projection of your own there, chap.
I can see how it might have come across that way... except that you can't swing a dead cat around Slashdot without hitting someone who refers to "M$", curses the evil Bill Gates, actually burns up sig space with their personal MS-bashing jihad, etc. Of particular note, I'm seeing more and more people here actually bitch and joke when they see nerd news about Google - a sign that I think I'm on to something, and am not the only person noticing it.
It's just a matter of time before we see people spelling Google like "GOOG£E" (since you used "chap" I thought I'd go Brit there for a second - hope the symbol displays correctly on your browser so I don't look, to you, like even more of an ass!).
Anyhow, my "disdain" is really just more of a simple observation. If you pay attention to those comments, they're pretty much self-disdaining, if you know what I mean.
If, so this would be a huge boon for slashdot...
on
Has Google Peaked?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
... because even the most virulent (ahem) MS-loathers have to be aware that they're sounding a little stale these days. The sheer drama of a once-romantic company like Google making the transition from dewey-cheeked lass to, well, a grown-up company will fuel slashdot rants for years. This is mostly due to the dislike, on the part of so many users here, of the realities of what it takes to be a large, publicly-held, growing tech company (i.e., make money for the people who invested so much cash, solidify the brand, beat or absorb competition, and show that you have what it will take to continue to grow indefinately). The real drama comes from Google's original "no evil" clause, coupled with the completely rudderless definition of "evil" as used by slashdotters. Thus will Google simply become a canvas on which to paint every argument about capitalism, openess, income disparity, regulation, monopolism, liberalism, conservatism, and operating system religions.
It's not so much the fun we'll have watching certain G-accolytes feeling betrayed. It's the fun we'll have watching so many people realize they've simply been projecting their own notions onto a company that's now so large and visible that the disconnect will be obvious, even to those addled enough to have thought that there could be something that big, "free," and still beyond the reach of normal economic realities. We're not seeing Google "peak," we're seeing the Google fanboy fantasy peak. I use their tools dozens of times every day. As a surfer, as a consultant, as a merchant, as a consumer, as a driver, as a communicator... but for some reason, as much as I'm impressed with pretty much everything they do, I've not ever quite heard the siren song that so many others seem to hear. I'm always impressed, but not so much seduced. Perhaps it's because I don't have the abiding hatred for Google's competition found in so many others - that makes the whole issue less emotional, I think.
Slashdot Mirror
Bad example. Apple goes out of their way these days to make sure people realize that you can plug ANY mouse into a Mac (as long as the plug fits) and it will work.
Actually, I think that makes it an even better example. Microsoft also goes out of their way to make sure that all sorts of vendors are able to loudly trumpet the compatibility of their hardware with their OS, which gets along with vastly more hardware (so far) than Apple does.
But my point is, countering the comment I first replied to, that just like some people are going to walk into a store and, while seeing a shelf labeled something like "PC Accessories" with dozens of keyboards and mice all bearing MS compatability logos, will still grab the MS product (I actually happen to like their keyboards and mice - full disclaimer)... but other people will walk into the store and grab an Apple peripheral because they think that's probably best or least likely to give them trouble with their Mac. It doesn't matter how right they are - the effect is very similar. It's just simple brand identity, and Apple probably pitches it even harder than MS does, because more of Apple's revenue depends upon it than at MS.
How long until people are unwilling to write about horrifying business experiences due to fears of a lawsuit?
But this hasn't changed in decades, if not centuries. People have been writing letters to local (and national) newspapers, picketing storefronts, sending out mailings, and doing a all sors of things to express both their rational/righteous/deserved and irrational/malicious/undeserved scorn of some company, individual, church, politician, or other entity. The concept of libel law, and of defamation of character, goes back WAY before blogs, and people have been using the courts on both sides of this issue all along.
The difference, now, is that you don't even have to bother using a stamp and an envelope to say what you think, and a wider audience is right at your fingertips. And where a newspaper would look at certain claims and say "can you prove this, or at least give me the name of the crappy car salesman at the dealer you dealt with," the web server you're posting to doesn't ask - and Google will just pick it right up.
The standards (of libel) haven't changed, and the lawyers for the person taking offense will have to mention to their client that if they're not able to satisfy a jury that they've been unjustifiably harmed, they're wide open for a countersuit that they'll almost certainly lose. That hasn't changed one bit.
I think what has changed is that a lot of twits post things online thinking that it's essentially a game. They confuse MMORPGs with reality, and vice versa. They think that ranting to some other enthusiasts in their tiny little corner of the blogosphere will earn them street cred, and don't consider that they're subject to the same libel issues that writers in every media have always been subject to.
The question of whether or not other people posting to your site make you liable for their libel... that's an interesting one. Hence the many disclaimers on most sites that get any traffic. The issue there would be, probably, whether or not you edit people's comments. If the plaintiff can show that you remove certain comments from your blog's responses (say, to kill spam, etc), then they can show that you're making editorial decisions... and that probably opens you up for a libel defense.
If you really think about it, in our litigious society, you're better to keep your mouth shut - or some company with deep pockets can take everything you own for the simple fact that they don't like what you said. That's not right.
Frivalous lawsuits are a fantastic drain on our economy - all of them are. Look at the woman who just won $250 million from a drug company because her husband (already dying of various cardio problems) took Vioxx. There isn't a single indication that what killed him had anything to do with his pain meds, but because they had pulled the drug off the market for potential risks in some (unrelated to his) cardio problems, a dimwitted jury decided that (as usual) all coportions are evil, and that she deserved a quarter of a billion dollars. Or the idiot woman (now $20 million richer) who dumped her McDonald's coffee in her lap while driving. The medical suits are certainly the worst, though. People can't stand the thought of their own mortality, and the fashion now is to blame doctors and hospitals for, essentially, not being gods. Oh well - too off topic. You get my drift, though - I agree that we're too litigious. But I don't think we're seeing a rash of libel suits in the way that we're seeing suits in other areas.
The people filing this lawsuit are nothing more than schoolyard bullies
Unless they're right. In which case they're making sure that another party isn't abusing the first amendment and BSing while presenting nonsense as fact. It could be done by either party, for any reason, and the only issue is whether or not the person posting his comments, or allowing the other comments to stay up on his web site, are truthful.
The truth may indeed be extremely negative, but who cares, as long as it's the truth. But a lot of people post demonstrable lies in blogs, hoping that the search engines will pick up on it, etc. The person being lied about should have recourse, whether large or small.
In this case, how have you made your determination about the truthfullness (and thus, non-libelous) nature of the web content in question? I didn't see enough to go on, so you must know more.
Is ScionLife liable? Am I? Is Slashdot liable now that I've put it up here?
I think the main question you should be asking is whether or not your comments were factually correct. If you're not BSing, you're not libeling. That doesn't stop you from getting sued, of course, but it hopefully stops them from winning, and helps you to successfully counter-sue for your costs if they're being jerks about it.
And finally, if someone spray paints a swastica on my garage door while I'm out of town and unable to remove it, am I liable for a hate crime?
No. Um, unless you're in one of those countries where not acting to remove someone else's nazi artwork is a crime... and there are some countries with really odd rules about that sort of thing.
From TFA: The Lunar Penguin, originally intended to land on the south pole of the moon to search for ice, is based on tactical weapons technologies, which should make it much more affordable, Raytheon said
Just curious what booster-powered hopping weapons system Raytheon has been working on lately, and if they have lasers strapped to their heads or what.
have heard people in shops debating over buying a mouse for instance and plumped for the MS one because it was Microsoft and therefore would be compatible with their PC.
Yeah, that would never happen to Mr. and Mrs. Hip Urban Genius stopping into the Mac store at their local suburban mall, would it? No way. Why, Steve Jobs surely runs in-store workshops to make sure that people realize there are other, non-Apple products that are just as good, or superior, and perfectly compatible...
Corps here in the USA are constantly allowed to "push the bar" as far as they can
Beyond which, they're acting illegally.
And it's up to state and federal legislatures to redefine what is and is not legal for companies to do. Recent legislation like Sarbanes-Oxley places enormously more scrutiny and burden on large companies. Why? Because a very small number of them pulled some dumb shit, and now everyone who forms a corporation is "evil" until proven otherwise (or, from your perspective, evil no matter what). Presumbly that also includes, say, a band that incorporates to handle their recording expenses and t-shirt revenue, too. Evil, so evil!
Why is is OK for a "capitalistic" company to personally allowed to cost you money/time, yet if a private person does it, it is a "crime"?
Maybe you'll get a lucid answer if you ask a more relevent question. A corporation costs me money when I elect to do business with them, or when I elect public figures that contract with them. They don't really have any other legal vectors by which to "cost" me money. Sort of like the guy deploying worms on the net doesn't have a legal way to waste my time.
Why should a corp be allowed to commit a crime and only get fined yet, if a private "citizen" committed the _same_ crime would get jail time?
Specifically what crime are you referring to? You can certainly cost everyone in a company their jobs, and cost all of the company's investors all of the college-fund money they had tied up in the company's stock... good enough for you? Check with Enron, or Arthur Anderson. People working at those companies, but which had nothing to do with the bad acts of a few people, paid the price. Good enough for you? Other people did go to jail. Good enough for you?
After all, he was looking out for "share holders best interests" to MAKE MONEY
Do you even think about the words you use? MAKING money means producing something, and in a market economy, doing so in a way that finds a willing buyer at a mutually agreed price. Someone sneaking spyware onto an unwitting person's machine sure as hell isn't participating in a market economy, he's a parasite.
Ask Enron. It's dead. Ask Arthur Anderson: dead.
Dunno...why don't you ask Matthew Sheppard?
I'd say there's a huge difference between a handful of drunk, ignorant idiots stalking and killing a gay guy and the government doing it.
It actually is interesting to see the same idealogical camp that condemns a killing like Shepard's (as anyone should) preaching non-involvement in "other cultures" and celebrating "diversity." The point, of course, is that there are plenty of "diverse" other cultures that, as a matter of course, would have killed Sheppard and anyone he ever interacted with. There actually are some objectively wrong ways for a culture to carry on. It's that simple. So... why the constant drumbeat for "tolerance" for everything, but intolerance for certain attitudes domestically? Doesn't make those attitudes right, but it makes similar attitudes elsewhere also wrong.
First of all: its irritating that you discount the canadian and british fores (and when involved frensh forces) as having less good or less powerfull weaponary.
But I didn't say, or imply that at all. I'm talking about the number of people, operations, planes, ships, and rounds fired. This has nothing to do with the quality of the people, equipment, or tactics. The point is that friendly fire happens, and it's going to happen more to the people that have many times more the share of the action. There are area where the Brits, for example, have had most of the men on the ground (Basra, as I recall, was at one point more or less entirely theirs to deal with). They did a great job - that's not even what we're talking about.
When you get 100 kills by friendly fire you would assume that you have: 5 dead amoung the troups of A, 10 dead amoun the troups of B and 85 among the troupsof C.
Apples and oranges. It depends on the type of engagement. In the event that half a dozen, say, Canadian troops are in a trench approaching an insurgent stronghold, and in that theatre, there are only a few dozen of their peers... when one US-dropped air-to-ground weapon goes astray, or is called into the wrong coordinates and kills those six guys... one friendly fire incident has just hugely skewed the numbers. But the same incident might have taken out 6 US troops, and barely registered against the overall number of US troops in that field.
The friendly fire we're hearing most about is the type that involves heavy weapons, vehicle-fired ordinance, and stuff falling out of the sky. The US is going most of that work, since it's mostly US aircraft, armor, and artillery in place. That's going to make those friendlies killed statistically much uglier when they happen to be attached to a smaller allied force in the country. Hell, one ill-placed round from an M1A might have taken out 5% of the Polish contingent in the whole country. Then the US would be "cowboys slaughtering Poles," even though same damage done to the same number of US troops would go unreported in most European countries.
they are fighting back
"They?" You mean, of course, guys like Zarqawi? You know, the Jordanian head-remover and his boys, most of whom are not from Iraq, but are from Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
Fighting back? Is that what they call blowing up markets, driving car bombs into crowds of kids, shooting politicians working on the constitution, and loading up houses on the Syrian boarder with fake Iraqi police cars and ambulence full of Iranian-made exposives?
You'll recall the millions of people in that country that participated in the recent election, and will be doing the same when they act to democratically ratify their new constitution. This despite the daily killings of Iraqi civilians by other Muslims operating under the influence (and with cash channeled through) swell fellows like Zarqawi. His most recent public communications are a reminder of what he's all about: a pan-Arab caliphate, a la the Taliban, ruling (as the first stop!) the entire Middle East. His take on democracy? "Evil" and "un-Islamic."
To the extent that ordinary Iraqis are backing democracy, he's trying to scare them away from it by killing them, as capriciously as possible. To the extent that places like Egypt are recognizing the parliment and transitional government in Iraq? They too are having their civilians bombed, killing and injuring hundreds just in one recent event. Which part of that Jordanian "resistance" fighter's creed is it that you think most of the people in Iraq are likely to support? How many more shops or sidewalks, or gatherings of kids do you think he'll have to blow up in order for a typical resident of Baghdad to suddenly realize that his view of the world is the rational one? How many Iraqis do you think will love that foreign, wahabiist perspective only after he... what, kills the guy from their neighborhood that they just elected to represent them in parliment?
The only "resistence" in Iraq is that offered up by pissed off Sunni tribe-mates of S.H. who lost their ethnic minority thugocracy and cash meal ticket, and the resistence of the most extreme fundamentalist jihaddis who are traveling into Iraq expressly to get in the way of democratic evolution and a more open society, lest that evil cultural development show up in even more places. They really didn't like what just happend in Lebannon, so there's even more pressure to make sure that Syria, Iran, and others don't get polluted by expectations of democracy, a free press, and elected officials that serve at the pleasure of the the votors.
If you're so worried about the feelings of a small, Tikrit-based Sunni minority because of their sense that they've been invaded, where were you on that same group's war against Iran, or invasion of Kuwait? You know, the episode following which Hussein agreed not to do things like shoot at the planes enforcing the no-fly zone he agreed to? Of course, he continued shooting at them several times a week for years, even as he cheated his own people out of the food he was supposed to be buying them with the oil he was selling in order to (as it turns out) build more palaces, empower his soccer-team-torturing, drug-addled, woman-raping, psycopathic, murderous sons, and continue to pointlessly regroup his military for even more conflict.
If you're one of those that saw, in Hussein's brutal, mass murdering dictatorship, some cheery, idyllic, "why can't we all just get along" wonderland, then it makes sense that you'd find anyone trying to kill Zarqawi and prevent another Taliban-like infestation as somehow the bad guys.
Bonus points for presentation, but nothing extra on rhetorical work, I'm afraid.
Hell, to the degree that techy-nerd things inteface with pretty much every aspect of our culture and daily affairs, slashdot is a good venue for discussing, well, pretty much everything.
But it's the spin, and the unspoken understanding that merely sprinkling a post with those words is somehow the same as intelligently putting together, say, an argument that corporations are inherently (and actually) evil, or that profiting from your investment somehow isn't fair.
I'm always amused by the habit, as seen here, of bending about the meaning of words that actually mean specific things because by doing so, one can get extra preaching-to-the-choir karma... but that if someone slightly misuses a word which, due to vagueness, might cloud a discussion about, say, WiFi network topography or Java classes, well... flame on!
I'm thinking that if people want to use "evil" and "profit" in the same sentence, they should link to a page that explains the underlying premises upon which they form their value judgements. Having to actually explain the foundation of one's system of thought will usually expose the built-in contradictions. If those are substantial enough, they are at some level driving your every conversation and even your choice of tortured vocabulary. When it reaches that point, the only place where it's safe (or, comfortable) to gab is in a space populated by people who have the same foundational contradictions, or at least those that manifest themselves in a similar way.
When you suffer from mixed premises, you must tolerate contradictions (even though nature does not). Once that little bit of low-level mental trouble has really set its roots, it informs things like language usage, and leads to an embrace of both moral and linguistic relativism.
You're right that all cultural affairs should be discussed, and to the extent that some company is actually "evilly" making a profit (by which I have to assume you mean "illegally" rather than "contrary to how I'd personally do it if I ran a company") then sure, talk about it. But if the tone is simply, "Any large enough group of people working together to make a profit is a corporation and thus evil," (whether you mean that, or simply don't care to modify that connotation enough to disuade many people from drawing that inference from how you phrase things), then the discussion you recommend is no discussion at all.
Where are these stats?
Are you kidding me? The numbers are shouted from the rooftop on every damn newscast. The more so by broadcasters idealogically anxious to trumpet casualties.
death counts (on both sides as required by the Geneva Convention)?
Are you talking about armed conflict between the uniformed soldiers of nations that are parties to the GC? Or, are you talking about the number of foreign nationals killed in their role as jihaddi insurgents blowing up Iraqi civilians and occasionally getting taken out when we hit a homebrew bomb factory? The sensibilities that shaped the GC are very removed from the scenario where a rich kid from Jordan hops out of his car with four buddies in a suburban Baghdad schoolyard, sets up mortar tube, lobs a few rounds randomly into a neighborhood, and then races back to their adopted safe house a mile away, where an armed Predator takes them and their supplies out of the picture entirely. I mean, that beats the hell out of having to send a bunch of grunts in on the ground for a house-to-house firefight that ends up impacting everyone in the area, but it makes it harder to know, right that minute, how many IED factory workers were just removed. Never the less, it's not like you're going to find a bunch of combatants with their dog tags and name, rank, serial number. They're not soldiers, and they're sure as hell not acting like them (however much they may think that capriciously blowing up non-Sunni civilians is a soldierly thing to do), and they sure as hell aren't working for a command structure that thinks the GC is anything but a joke.
step out of line and you get sent home with all access rights (interviews, White House Press Room etc) suspended permanmently
What's "out of line" to you? A live broadcast that identifies what street they're standing on, and what people are in which vehicle as they head to a specific street in an insurgent-infected neighborhood? Or, reporting, as we've seen, that shows what the conflict looks like, sounds like, and actually does to the people on the receiving end of both friendly and enemy fire. Maybe you're not watching enough BBC or other coverage that is decidely, and continually scolding in its tone and content.
Seriously, the American military has a big problem with friendly fire. Just ask the Canadians, British or whomever else the Americans have ever gone to war/battle with.
No, the Americans have a big problem with doing the vast majority of the fighting, equipping, logistics, and, of course, shooting. When you're doing almost all of the work, more of what goes wrong in the chaos of combat (and even in the complexity of live fire exercises) is going to be laid at the feet of the people carrying/flying/driving/shooting the most weapons. Every single injury or death of this type is a tragedy, but the number that are avoided through the use of the US's stunningly effective (by historical standards) command and control systems is not to be trivialized. It's terrible when an ally dies fighting with the US, and it's just as terrible when we shoot up one of our own. But what we have now is better stats, embedded reporters, and an changed ethic about a lot of this. Can you imagine how much of this happened (on all sides) during the Vietnam, or World wars?
Excellent Blue Oyster Cult / SNL / Christopher Walken reference. That is one of the best bits ever.
Why not. Perhaps it's better if all of the Googleness, including all of the breathless press coverage, could be confined to a stand-alone network. All of those that have been Touched By The Googly Appendage will live blissfully within a completely self-containted universe where all news is about, and reported by Google. CommanderToogle's new site, slashdot.goo, will have new and improved moderation choices:
1) Completely About Google
2) Mostly About Google
3) At Least Somewhat About Google
4) Funny, But Not At Google's Expense
5) Troogle
6) Undergoogled
7) Overgoogled (very rare - can there be too much Google?)
Words have meanings
New to slashdot, are you? Though you can hardly read a comment without tripping over links to idealogical wikipedia articles, you'll rarely see links off to dictionary.com or m-w.com. Hence, you rarely see words like "proprietary," "evil," "corporate," or "profit," etc., used in any sort of useful context. Words, as used on slashdot, have so much spin and baggage tied to them, that you have to go meta in order to discern what someone is actually trying to say. That's bad enough in the comments, but when it infects the main article summaries, it sure sets the tone, doesn't it.
Look at your clothes, computer, TV, video, car labels.
Well, 20 years ago, you'd have said the exact same thing about Japan. They themselves were banking on their demonstrably superior manufacturing ingenuity, efficiencies, and focus to make them dominant. They then totally overextended themselves, and their economy has been more or less in the tank ever since.
Now, the difference between them and the Chinese situation (also sitting on top of an economic bubble they won't be able to sustain) is that the Chinese, having not been aggressors in WWII, don't have any of the politically correct inhibitions about using force to prop up the weak spots in their system. Taiwan would certainly be their first target, and that will cause a wretched mess. But the whole southeast Asia area will feel their influence as they look, themselves, for more resources.
I'd like to say that the currency float you mentioned was a good thing, but there isn't a single economist who sees it as anything other than an empty political gesture. All they did was let it "float" within very narrow bounds, defined by them, with essentially no impact whatsoever on the real underlying exchange mechanics.
The real issue here is going to be energy. Probably the most alarming development is the Chinese coziness with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. They're taking a lot of their cash surplus (um, that would be the cash we're spending on their inexpensive products) and pumping a lot of it into investments in that oil producing country. That's fine with Chavez, because China is the nearest thing to an idealogical opposite to the US he can find (well, one that isn't clearly a broken-down mess, like Cuba).
My guess is that Venezuela will become, is essence, a Chinese outpost. And a huge foothold, economically, in Central/South America. Just in time for the economies in Brazil and Argentina to start looking ripe for more investment.
So, we may see Wal-Mart eventually filling up with "Made in Brazil" goods, but made by firms operated by Chinese interests.
I'd not, though, call them the next "superpower" any more than one could refer to the Soviets in that sense. They were, in that they had the military and the nukes to be hugely influential, but it was a house of cards. That won't be as true of the Chinese, in that their businesses are tilting capitalist despite the (now mostly smoke) communist creed of their heavy-handed government. But as long as they are to a large degree centrally managed, they're going to make a lot of the tone-deaf mistakes that the Soviets did. And this time, a whole lot of Chinese citizens are going to be a whole lot quicker to step up and try to prevent the economic flushing that happened in Russia after the USSR tanked. It's going to be fascinating. In the meantime, I'd vote for policies that encourage more US investment in central and south America, and policies that ask the same thing of China that the US must do to do business in their country.
Are you sying that the only way to grow a company is by violating the law, being unethical and overhanded?
No, I'm saying that Google will have to be profitable, not tip their hands about what they're doing, be merciless with the competition, continue to expand into new business areas at what will appear to some to be a breathless pace... all that "evil corporate stuff." Because they're talented and flush with investmentors' money, they will be very succesful, and before long, they'll be getting the same loathing treatment as MS.
"Overhanded?" What does that even mean? Do you mean that they'll use their hard-won market advantages to press for even more market advantages? They'll have to, as they are already doing.
"Unethical?" As in... what? Not caring if a competitor that doesn't have the same resources, timing, luck, investment, etc., feels like they should have been able to beat Google in some area, but didn't, and gee that's not fair, blah blah? Exactly - they won't, and shouldn't care. Even when those competitors inevitably turn away from trying to compete in the marketplace, and just start suing for a living, instead. Happens all the time, it's happened to MS, and it's going to happen to Google. And no one here will care, until the company that lost its market share to Google's bigger brand is perceived as being the slashdot-cool-rated underdog, and then the whole group think will immediately shift to Google = Evil.
"Violating the law?" Please. Netscape was roadkill because of their lousy marketing, poor partnership decisions, and mysterious lack of foresight about how a browser is a perfectly reasonable thing to include in an operating system. That they found sympathetic political sponsorship for their position doesn't make MS any more heavy handed than Apple, Sony, Novell, Disney, Starbucks, etc. Considering MS to be operating as some sort of evil James Bond Villain style organization says more about who is commenting on them than what the company actually does. They have more auditors climbing up their ass than most any other business in the country. Their deals are subject to more foul-mooded contract baggage than many defense contracts. You might consider Bill a moron, but the milllions of people in this country that have invested in his company think otherwise. This isn't a comment on whether or not every piece of software they've produced is perfect or unrivaled by some other solution - but it is recognition that MS was in the right place at the right time to be successful, just as Google is now. And they will pillaried for it, as well.
So, your point is that people in the Carolinas (pick your north or south, it doesn't matter) are worth describing as a single, homogenous crowd? My point is that it's no more appropriate to describe Carolinians as KKK members as it is to describe Washintonians or Oregonians as SUV-burners. It's just BS to paint with that broad a brush.
The Government makes decisions that favour big business, since big business is the government's paymaster
... like the family that ponied up a large donation for the previous presiden't library in Arkansas - and found that their fugitive financier familiy member got a glorious last-minute presidential pardon on his way out of office. You make it sound like the only party or politicians that you think need (even more) financial influencing are the ones who happen to pursue foreign policies you don't like. Well, a lot of people didn't like the policies of the last administration, either, and voted (rather than paid for) a change in orientation on that front. I would save your would-be bribe money and buy a nicer hat, perhaps made of some other, non-tinfoil material.
Or, you could say that organizations like those run by trial lawyers, teachers' unions, labor unions, retired people, etc., are the "paymasters" since they also spend a lot of money backing candidates. In the last election, backers of the current administration spent less on the election than those backing the losing side did.
Sometimes these decisions involve sending us to war and getting us killed
Yup, even in places like Europe, the Pacific, and Africa. Check in with the people who were getting "ethnically cleansed" in Croatia and Bosnia, and ask if they think it was a good idea. Or ask our substantial trading partners in Germany and Japan if they think they're better off now, being liberal democracies, than they were in the throws of fascism and imperial fuedalism.
Why don't we just bribe the government directly?
It's called taxes.
On an international scale you would have many billions of dollars in the bribe kitty! How can we go about pulling this off?
Leaving aside for a moment the fact that using foreign dollars (and a lot of domestic dollars) to influence an election is wildly illegal (even Bill Clinton's and the dem party's campaign aparati had to return some "donations" demonstrably tied to Chinese interests), you're assuming that people can't vote their consciences. If it were all about money, why didn't the millions upon millions that George Soros poured into the recent election get him what he was trying to buy? Some of the wealthiest people (entertainers, etc) and organizations (large labor unions, professional associations, etc) raised and spent more money on the election than the winners' backers did. What happened? People didn't like the (lack of a) message, and didn't like the candidates those dollars were trying to push.
Besides, there's other forms of influence peddling in exchange for cash
Yup. I live in a POS townhouse in Gaithersburg. It's a three hour round trip to the corporate office I sometimes visit, 30 miles away in northern VA. The worse townhouse across the parking lot from me just sold for $350k.
Looks like South Dakota or something is the only hope. It's all about the broadband.
Yeah, but I don't expect to see any burning crosses in my front yard or clinic bombings in Seattle.
And in South Carolina, you run less of a risk of idiot anarchist protestors trashing your favorite coffee shop, and eco-terrorist burning the SUV you use to haul around your kids. What, the stereotype's not fair? How about that.
Sounds like a little projection of your own there, chap.
I can see how it might have come across that way... except that you can't swing a dead cat around Slashdot without hitting someone who refers to "M$", curses the evil Bill Gates, actually burns up sig space with their personal MS-bashing jihad, etc. Of particular note, I'm seeing more and more people here actually bitch and joke when they see nerd news about Google - a sign that I think I'm on to something, and am not the only person noticing it.
It's just a matter of time before we see people spelling Google like "GOOG£E" (since you used "chap" I thought I'd go Brit there for a second - hope the symbol displays correctly on your browser so I don't look, to you, like even more of an ass!).
Anyhow, my "disdain" is really just more of a simple observation. If you pay attention to those comments, they're pretty much self-disdaining, if you know what I mean.
... because even the most virulent (ahem) MS-loathers have to be aware that they're sounding a little stale these days. The sheer drama of a once-romantic company like Google making the transition from dewey-cheeked lass to, well, a grown-up company will fuel slashdot rants for years. This is mostly due to the dislike, on the part of so many users here, of the realities of what it takes to be a large, publicly-held, growing tech company (i.e., make money for the people who invested so much cash, solidify the brand, beat or absorb competition, and show that you have what it will take to continue to grow indefinately). The real drama comes from Google's original "no evil" clause, coupled with the completely rudderless definition of "evil" as used by slashdotters. Thus will Google simply become a canvas on which to paint every argument about capitalism, openess, income disparity, regulation, monopolism, liberalism, conservatism, and operating system religions.
It's not so much the fun we'll have watching certain G-accolytes feeling betrayed. It's the fun we'll have watching so many people realize they've simply been projecting their own notions onto a company that's now so large and visible that the disconnect will be obvious, even to those addled enough to have thought that there could be something that big, "free," and still beyond the reach of normal economic realities. We're not seeing Google "peak," we're seeing the Google fanboy fantasy peak. I use their tools dozens of times every day. As a surfer, as a consultant, as a merchant, as a consumer, as a driver, as a communicator... but for some reason, as much as I'm impressed with pretty much everything they do, I've not ever quite heard the siren song that so many others seem to hear. I'm always impressed, but not so much seduced. Perhaps it's because I don't have the abiding hatred for Google's competition found in so many others - that makes the whole issue less emotional, I think.