It's not just about Best Buy, it's about how he was treated at that Best Buy and why. I'm not one to go off about racism lightly, but it still exists, and is still a factor in society, your denial of that fact notwithstanding. And, in cases like this, racism doesn't have to be an explicit ideology or creed of racial superiority, but the fact that some (white) people will get the benefit of the doubt while others will be treated with suspicion from the outset.
Hey, it's like a bumper sticker that says "Take Mass Transit!" Every driver I know wants everyone else to take mass transit, may be this guy wants everyone else to boycott Slashdot comments.
It's only wrong because right now writers and musicians are expecting royalties on each and every copy that gets read/heard. I think that belief is naive, and I expect to someday see a world in which writers and musicians produce with the expectation and assumption that personal copying will happen, and negotiate their deals accordingly.
One idea that occurs to me is distinguishing between the right to copy for personal/research reasons, and a distinct right of distribution for sale. Make the latter the object of law.
Music must become a verb again, not a noun. It's a service, not the production of a good. If we don't realize this soon, we are going to have more and more draconian efforts to enforce the fiction that a "copy" of a song is a unit for sale.
Musicians should get paid - before they start playing. Not everytime someone new hears it.
It's not an attitude. It's a fact. If you really want to give 3rd parties a chance, you'll change the structure of the legislature and government to something on a European model. I used to vote Green. I've learned my lesson. I speak my conscience, but I vote for results. Consciences don't pass laws, elected officials do. And I realize that the majority of the population of this country does not share my beliefs. I can communicate them by a variety of channels, but frankly, most peoples' beliefs are the result of their interests as they perceive them, not just differences of opinion. (Is it any accident that laissez-faire economics are popular among the class of people who feel they have the most leverage in the job market? Unpopular among classes of people who do not?)
The fantasies of anarcho-capitalists have been so pervasive that some (US geek) people actually do think there's an intrinsic dichotamy between government and capital. When by definition capital depends on government: at the very, very mininum, to create a currency, to enforce contracts, and to enforce property laws. The nation state as we know it largely grew from the burgeoning merchant class' need to create institutions for commerce.
I'll vote for whomever is running against him, even if he's a cross burning pedophile member of the KKK who stands against everything I believe in. I'll vote for him no matter repulsive he is as a person, or how insane he is mentally. Why? Because it sends a message.
You don't elect a message. You elect an individual, who will then go to a legislature and pass legislation that you and 400 million-odd other people have to live under.
Plus, you're going to have right-wing support and the support of the NRA in getting rid of Feinstein.
You really arent getting this, are you? Feinstein never had the right-wing votes. And if the anti-Feinstein vote starts to look TOO NRA and TOO right-wing, then a lot of nose-holders will vote for Feinstein (heck, I'd vote for Feinstein against a right-wing nut if he were bad enough - I know that contradicts what I said before, but I'm not going to single-issue myself to death.) What works is a moderate that can run against her, and that the most obvious difference between her and her opponent be their stand on the issues that we care about as a bloc.
Look, I like the Green party, and I even understand the Nader vote (although anyone who votes Green in the next Presidential election is an idiot - if the Bush victory isn't enough of a lesson in the nature of compromise, maybe the LePen victory should be), and you may like the Libertarians, but that's not what politics are about. Politics are realizing that there are lots of different groups of people with different interests, beliefs and goals, and that you have to unite with enough of them to win. Democracy is always about the lesser of evils, the art of compromise, and scratching-of-backs. By saying that you won't vote against the one person who could unseat Feinstein, you have neutered yourself politically. Because if Valenti's goons win, then your middle finger is meaningless. A threat to vote 3rd party is a threat to do nothing - it doesn't scare anybody.
Personally, I believe that a Campbell would probably switch to the Dems once elected.
What other people have hinted at, I'll say out loud: a Pacific Coast or New England Republican would be tolerable. A Bible Belt Republican would be just a step to the right of the Ayatollah. I'd rather have Mickey Mouse tattooed on my forehead than vote for the encroaching Theocracy.
Reading the extraordinary combination of naivete and arrogance that this thread betrays, plus the wide array of partisan agendas and chips-on-shoulders that gets revealed here, it's no wonder at all. The entertainment industry is used to working crowds, used to working together, knows how to talk to people in ways that people like, knows how to be sexy, is used to working across class boundaries. I've known film producers who can quite comfortably talk with sound engineers and technical staff - the geek contempt for anyone who isn't a geek is overwhelming and obvious.
There is a "tech lobby." They are the corporations of Silicon Valley. Sometimes, as in the case of the hardware manufacturers who are sick of Hollywood's insane demands, they are on the same side as the "GeekPAC." Sometimes, when it comes to preventing reverse engineering and other forms of open research, they are not. In any case, they take care of themselves.
The last Republican to run against Dianne Feinstein was Tom Campbell. He was a Republican I could vote for: against the war on drugs, fiscally moderate, very secular - he's farther left than a bunch of Democrats I could mention. I'm no DLC-type Democrat, either: I vote Green when I don't vote Dem. But Feinstein has got to go: she's the kind of Democrat we just don't need. It would definitely put the fear of God (or of Geek) into both parties.
The problem is that Senator Disney's consituency is in South Carolina. We will never get enough critical mass together to threaten his lock on his voter base - not enough of the right demographic is there (and please, all 5 of you in Columbus and Charleston, don't take umbrage.)
The person whose cage we should be rattling is in California. Dianne Feinstein. I'm a Democrat, yet I don't vote for her. She's generally vulnerable on civil liberties issues. If we could threaten her seat, it would make a lot of people sit up and take notice.
There's a chicken/egg situation here. A politician that kowtows to corporate interest gets access to a nice fat warchest. With which they can go out and purchase expensive television ads that allow them to spin their record appropriately (as defenders of the economy, friends of the artist, warriors against crime, etc.) Public perception costs money.
There will always be a place for independent or academic research institutions that aren't subjected to the vicissitudes of corporate politics and moneygrubbing (insofar as it was intellectual property anxieties that killed a sale of the lab to Intel, I think it's fair to say that moneygrubbing and the corporate fuck-you instinct was at work here). The Santa Fe Institutes, MIT * Labs, Berkeley Labs, and the like couldn't be replaced by corporate entities. While it makes sense, then, that there's cooperation between those entities and the private sector, I think it needs to be emphasized how important it is that the ethic of sharing of scientific knowledge and open research be maintained.
It's likely that they won't let the public actually play the games. Wear-and-tear on machinery, cabinets and artwork, fan-boy monopolization (can you really call an unkempt, overweight 45 year old man a "fan-boy"? Maybe we should say "fan-man" or "otaku-san" or something) and such would probably compromise the exhibit.
MAME and its kin rock so very, very much. And I don't know of a single video-game historian or theorist ("ludologist") who doesn't use it. An interesting exercise in black-market 'fair use.'
People don't like to be reminded that Supply and Demand giveth, Supply and Demand taketh away.
I was just reading a history of the potato that made an interesting observation: how rare and new wages that allow one to get more than just food and a tiny bit extra really are. The debates during the 17th through 19th centuries in England and Ireland about the potato involved questions of morality: by introducing a subsistance crop that was cheaper to produce and had little market value, it drove down the price of labor to where the peasants had less market clout than before. The enclosure act already had reduced the food-gathering options of the peasantry.
The realities of the situation were pretty complicated: there were landlords, reformers, Irish, and English on both sides of the potato debate; it ended up involving Malthus and Ricardo, for whom the potato had symbolic force (for Malthus, it represented the minimal human, the man of appetites who would, despite all enculturation, follow those appetites to the detriment of the common good; for Ricardo, it represented a breakdown of the market economy by being a foodstuff outside the market.) Actually, I don't know what this has to do with the post I'm replying to. I'm kind of delerious: I just got Virtua Fighter 4 and Pac-Man World 2, and haven't been sleeping much. But it was a very interesting article.
Did you read the part about utility value? Do you know or understand what utility value is? Do you think Bill Gates would be as personally inconvienced by a loss of fifty percent of his wealth as I would? Would you be as will as he might be to risk, say, eighty percent of your wealth in the chance of doubling it? Study utility value and then get back to me.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just about Best Buy, it's about how he was treated at that Best Buy and why. I'm not one to go off about racism lightly, but it still exists, and is still a factor in society, your denial of that fact notwithstanding. And, in cases like this, racism doesn't have to be an explicit ideology or creed of racial superiority, but the fact that some (white) people will get the benefit of the doubt while others will be treated with suspicion from the outset.
Because they gave the product to the white guys, and called the cops on the brown guy. That makes it pretty fucking relevant.
Hey, it's like a bumper sticker that says "Take Mass Transit!" Every driver I know wants everyone else to take mass transit, may be this guy wants everyone else to boycott Slashdot comments.
One idea that occurs to me is distinguishing between the right to copy for personal/research reasons, and a distinct right of distribution for sale. Make the latter the object of law.
Musicians should get paid - before they start playing. Not everytime someone new hears it.
Considering how much money the US throws into elections in countries like Russia and Venezuela, this policy is so hypocri - I mean, "ironic."
It's not an attitude. It's a fact. If you really want to give 3rd parties a chance, you'll change the structure of the legislature and government to something on a European model. I used to vote Green. I've learned my lesson. I speak my conscience, but I vote for results. Consciences don't pass laws, elected officials do. And I realize that the majority of the population of this country does not share my beliefs. I can communicate them by a variety of channels, but frankly, most peoples' beliefs are the result of their interests as they perceive them, not just differences of opinion. (Is it any accident that laissez-faire economics are popular among the class of people who feel they have the most leverage in the job market? Unpopular among classes of people who do not?)
The fantasies of anarcho-capitalists have been so pervasive that some (US geek) people actually do think there's an intrinsic dichotamy between government and capital. When by definition capital depends on government: at the very, very mininum, to create a currency, to enforce contracts, and to enforce property laws. The nation state as we know it largely grew from the burgeoning merchant class' need to create institutions for commerce.
Personally, I believe that a Campbell would probably switch to the Dems once elected.
What other people have hinted at, I'll say out loud: a Pacific Coast or New England Republican would be tolerable. A Bible Belt Republican would be just a step to the right of the Ayatollah. I'd rather have Mickey Mouse tattooed on my forehead than vote for the encroaching Theocracy.
Reading the extraordinary combination of naivete and arrogance that this thread betrays, plus the wide array of partisan agendas and chips-on-shoulders that gets revealed here, it's no wonder at all. The entertainment industry is used to working crowds, used to working together, knows how to talk to people in ways that people like, knows how to be sexy, is used to working across class boundaries. I've known film producers who can quite comfortably talk with sound engineers and technical staff - the geek contempt for anyone who isn't a geek is overwhelming and obvious.
There is a "tech lobby." They are the corporations of Silicon Valley. Sometimes, as in the case of the hardware manufacturers who are sick of Hollywood's insane demands, they are on the same side as the "GeekPAC." Sometimes, when it comes to preventing reverse engineering and other forms of open research, they are not. In any case, they take care of themselves.
The last Republican to run against Dianne Feinstein was Tom Campbell. He was a Republican I could vote for: against the war on drugs, fiscally moderate, very secular - he's farther left than a bunch of Democrats I could mention. I'm no DLC-type Democrat, either: I vote Green when I don't vote Dem. But Feinstein has got to go: she's the kind of Democrat we just don't need. It would definitely put the fear of God (or of Geek) into both parties.
The person whose cage we should be rattling is in California. Dianne Feinstein. I'm a Democrat, yet I don't vote for her. She's generally vulnerable on civil liberties issues. If we could threaten her seat, it would make a lot of people sit up and take notice.
I feel dirty.
There's a chicken/egg situation here. A politician that kowtows to corporate interest gets access to a nice fat warchest. With which they can go out and purchase expensive television ads that allow them to spin their record appropriately (as defenders of the economy, friends of the artist, warriors against crime, etc.) Public perception costs money.
There will always be a place for independent or academic research institutions that aren't subjected to the vicissitudes of corporate politics and moneygrubbing (insofar as it was intellectual property anxieties that killed a sale of the lab to Intel, I think it's fair to say that moneygrubbing and the corporate fuck-you instinct was at work here). The Santa Fe Institutes, MIT * Labs, Berkeley Labs, and the like couldn't be replaced by corporate entities. While it makes sense, then, that there's cooperation between those entities and the private sector, I think it needs to be emphasized how important it is that the ethic of sharing of scientific knowledge and open research be maintained.
MAME and its kin rock so very, very much. And I don't know of a single video-game historian or theorist ("ludologist") who doesn't use it. An interesting exercise in black-market 'fair use.'
And the girl in The Crying Game is a guy, "rosebud" is the sled, and Bruce Willis is actually a ghost in "Sixth Sense!" Anyone else?
I was just reading a history of the potato that made an interesting observation: how rare and new wages that allow one to get more than just food and a tiny bit extra really are. The debates during the 17th through 19th centuries in England and Ireland about the potato involved questions of morality: by introducing a subsistance crop that was cheaper to produce and had little market value, it drove down the price of labor to where the peasants had less market clout than before. The enclosure act already had reduced the food-gathering options of the peasantry.
The realities of the situation were pretty complicated: there were landlords, reformers, Irish, and English on both sides of the potato debate; it ended up involving Malthus and Ricardo, for whom the potato had symbolic force (for Malthus, it represented the minimal human, the man of appetites who would, despite all enculturation, follow those appetites to the detriment of the common good; for Ricardo, it represented a breakdown of the market economy by being a foodstuff outside the market.) Actually, I don't know what this has to do with the post I'm replying to. I'm kind of delerious: I just got Virtua Fighter 4 and Pac-Man World 2, and haven't been sleeping much. But it was a very interesting article.
Did you read the part about utility value? Do you know or understand what utility value is? Do you think Bill Gates would be as personally inconvienced by a loss of fifty percent of his wealth as I would? Would you be as will as he might be to risk, say, eighty percent of your wealth in the chance of doubling it? Study utility value and then get back to me.