No, we "accept" the law because we don't have the resources to avoid getting thrown in jail or financial penalized if we violate it. There are some laws that I might violate on principle, of course, if the violation itself was morally good (saving a life, helping someone in need, preserving a truth) rather than morally neutral (burning a mix CD, taking a drug, reverse engineering a product.) But those cases are far and few between.
Because Microsoft will not be able to "undo" Ogg and MP3 and Linux. You always have that option. However, if AOL controls your pipe, they can decided to block your content if it competes with theirs - and since there are far fewer cables coming into your house than ways to assemble the bits in you computer, you would have far less of a chance to do much about it.
Of course, one bad flu would wipe out the nation. And all ten women would get pretty tired of being chased around. Also, who would work in the espresso bar? Geeks are notoriously cheap for anything that isn't a geek-fetish.
It looks to me like it was substantially scaled back as a release (in terms of promotion and distribution.) I think I understand why: it is incongruous and awkward, now, for American audiences, to watch a film which celebrates, as a climax, the destruction of the Tallest Building, Symbol of Hegemony, of an American city. Of course the film was made before 9/11, which only makes the effect eerier.
The entire audience I saw it with squirmed uncomfortably when they saw what was going on.
<flame>You don't get it, do you? You are so myopically obsessed with the stupid little OS market, that you don't realize that it is *far* easier to route around Microsoft that to route around AOL. That's because Microsoft is seeking to dominate a few standards, and it is fairly easy to route around them. Sure, there may be a couple file formats that are harder to read, maybe we need the Crossover plug-in or equivalent, but there are enough players in the software/IT market to keep things fluid.
With AOL, they are controlling the *pipe* and the *content.* There is often no way to route around the pipe. And when the majority of content (news shows, movies, television show, music) is owned by a handful of people, the difficulty of getting alternative sources is *far* greater than the difficulty of getting an alternative OS.
But no, you were taught to hate Microsoft because that's the only industry you know, because you stare at a computer screen for hours on end and now think that what you're staring it is the Most Important Thing in the World and the Future of Civilization, all the while failing to realize that the substructure of that screen experience is being taken over from elsewhere.</flame>
Ah, but ThinkGeek is paying an advertising budget that the other store isn't. I'm pretty much dead-sure that the discount warehouses I got my stuff at wasn't owned by ThinkGeek. Check out PriceScan in action and see how it works. You get a ranking of 10 to 20 odd outlets for each product - you can shop for out-of-state resellers and avoid sales tax, you can factor in shipping options, and can decide to trade off a couple bucks in price for a somewhat more "polished, institutional" feel from the vendor if you feel like it.
Remember, there's a difference between the 'aura' (in Walter Benjamin's sense) of the product and that of the reseller. If Advertised Sexy Brand X is available from Not-advertising Unsexy Reseller A at half the price of Advertising Sexy Reseller B, then I 'enjoy' (or am manipulated by) the aura of X by purchasing from B, and the cost of the Sexiness is picked up by A. This is an advantage the only the internet consumer enjoys -it's been demonstrated that poor people are likely to pay more for the same goods - like cars - as rich people, and it has been hypothesized that internet access is a primary factor in that fact.
Twenty years ago, that would be a valid statistic: advertising was useful as information about prices. Now, most advertisement is about building impressions, not about moving information. And there is a far, far more effective medium for moving information about price: the internet. One of the ironies of internet-based comparison shopping is that a retailer can advertise a product, and the consumer can them instantly comparison-shop and then buy from a competitor.
I know, because I do that with ThinkGeek products all the time: ThinkGeek will advertise a cool product, I'll go to pricescan.com and find the same product for a fraction of the price, so ThinkGeek's advertising actually cost them a sale.
Yes, it's funny how the TANSTAAFL crowd ignores advertising costs. Advertising is the hemoragging wound of capitalism: the only way to compete with advertising is to advertise in response. The net result is higher prices without value, a completely useless sector of the economy, and a lot of cultural pollution.
Maybe he enjoys the banter on the topics at hand. That's what Slashdot has to offer: as a clipping service, it is unreliable, often late, incomplete, and usually without a lot of depth. As a place to chat about news stories with a geek slant, and often get more background in the process, it's fun.
And things being fun are not correlated with how much one is willing to pay for them. I enjoy playing frisbee in the park. A lot. I go often to the park to play frisbee - I could do it for hours. But the fact that I do it for hours doesn't translate into my willingness to pay, say, a dollar an hour for the "right" to play frisbee, or a willingness to "pay" for my frisbee rights by playing in a field lined with billboards if I can help it.
I frankly think I have every right to block ads if they become to invasive (I don't block Slashdot banner ads, because 1. they often are for products that are at least interesting and 2. they aren't invasive), just as I have a right to browse with a text-browser, a browser that kills pop-ups or doesn't enable them, or to use a braille- or voice- browser if I'm blind. Slashdot's - or anyone's - business model is *not my responsibility.*
Incidentally, I *did* pay for a premier service at Salon because I wanted the added content, not to get rid of the ads. I am very much *not* interested in a rate-based fee based on how many pages I load - this way lies madness.
What the telecommunications bill did was create a market opportunity for ISP's.
Let me make this simple for you: have you tried to get reverse DNS from PacBell DSL? Last I checked, you couldn't. I can with my ISP. That's because the ISP is staffed by ISP guys, while PacBell DSL is staffed by the people who flunked out of telecom training.
Insofar as so much of the telecommunications infrastructure goes through public land, was built with public money and under the auspices of public service, I think we should treat the wires like rivers: no one has the right to block passage on a navigable river, as far as I know (I'd assume, anyway), I'd like to see that attitude extended to the wire.
What would the anti-environmentalist camp's perspective on it be? That trees generate more waste circuit boards and plastics than disposed computers do? Or that discarded electronics make great fertilizer for trees?
We're always complaining about how deep corporate pockets can be, but if we have a probem with it - then don't buy it - we're the ones giving them that money.
I don't believe that "conscientious consumption" is either necessary or sufficient for things like this: this is ultimately a
political problem that requires a political solution. It's easy to berate people for being products made under unjust pretexts, but let's face it: most people pretty much have to buy footware made by sweatshops, music made by RIAA participants, food products made by Monsanto, and films made by MPAA members. Boycotts are seldom effective, especially when an entire industry is at fault.
More effective than kvetching about how we are all buying the products that life in modern world consists of, would be starting by creating a firewall between the corporate deep pockets and the policy makers. Supporting campaign finance reform would go a long way towards ending this nonsense, far more than simply not going to a movie and not buying a CD.
Grand Theft Auto London. Ska, mod pop, and DJ's from the swingin' 60's. Any game soundtrack that features the Upsetters wins, hands down. Sadly, not available at VGMix.com.
I will note that since the heyday of Napster, the diversity of available files has gone down. More obscure/fringe acts aren't as available as they used to be, and this actually means a reduction in my CD buying patterns - previously, I had used Napster as a method of discovery for new and unusual music, often by browsing the collections of people who had music that I liked. I would say the RIAA had shot itself in the foot, except that they never represented those less mainstream acts to begin with: they just want to maximize the number of people who buy Brittney Spears and Garth Brooks CD's.
The left has less money. The right doesn't need to hit up folks for cash as much, they've got the Exxons, Monsantos, and Fords of the world keeping them flush.
If you applied that thinking to an individual, you'd essentially be saying that there's not much point in fighting cancer if the treatments are uncomfortable, since you're gonna die anyway, and someday the universe will end.
(Heh, my parents have a picture of their grandkid as the wallpaper.)
The home market isn't all that relevant. It's the enterprise desktop that's the real prize, because it has a much shorter sell-cycle, because you get lock-down without a lock-down by moving to a *nix desktop, and because it's only necessary to train to specific work-related tasks, not how to install driver X or game Y or cutesy-apps Z.
One other thing that should be recalled about Marx is that Marx actually wrote precious little about Communism per se, aside from the Manifesto. He wasn't in the business of creating a blueprint for utopia. By far, the majority of his writings were 1. analyses of capitalism as it was working in his time, 2. discussions of current political events, and 3. the development of Hegel's theory of dialectics into a theory of history based on class struggle. He was not as teleological as many subsequent Marxists were.
The American justice system is itself broken. The number of innocent people being *executed* - when capital cases have the most oversight - is disturbing enough. Just think how many innocent people are being imprisoned, particularly if they can't muster funds for a defense.
I think that the Chinese behaviour in Tibet was unconscionable and the occupation of Tibet should end, that Tienamen was barbaric, and that they are being repressive towards the Falun Gong. The American "Tibet," of course, occurred in the 19th century, in the settlement of the west, the war against Mexico, and the doctrine of "Manifest Destiny," so we feel that the US today isn't as culpable. But I daresay that a case could be made that, in day to day terms, their system of justice, as a rule, is fairer than the US system, that fewer true innocents suffer.
1.2 billion Chinese people say that this may become less true over time, once enough of those 1.2 billion Chinese people start playing with source. The "english" in source itself is minimal.
That's the Salon model. Banner ads became pop-ups, interstitials, and pop-unders, and some content became subscriber-exclusive. I pay for Salon, because Salon has a large staff of very good writers who create original material, and some good investigative journalism. Slashdot has, um.
Eighty percent of Harvard students graduate "with honors." Eighty percent. Please remember that when you're looking at resumes from Harvard alums. Grade inflation is so rampant that C's are very rare. Meanwhile, I graduated - without honors, and with lumps -from an affordable public university with an attrition rate of over 40% (OK, it's still a top-tier school, but it *is* a state school.) And still Harvard gets the hot rep - and we still end up working for the Harvard boys. It's just not fair, I tell ya.
Slashdot Mirror
No, we "accept" the law because we don't have the resources to avoid getting thrown in jail or financial penalized if we violate it. There are some laws that I might violate on principle, of course, if the violation itself was morally good (saving a life, helping someone in need, preserving a truth) rather than morally neutral (burning a mix CD, taking a drug, reverse engineering a product.) But those cases are far and few between.
In fairness to the Trillian developers, it was the user-base that cried "foul": they just coded a fix.
Because Microsoft will not be able to "undo" Ogg and MP3 and Linux. You always have that option. However, if AOL controls your pipe, they can decided to block your content if it competes with theirs - and since there are far fewer cables coming into your house than ways to assemble the bits in you computer, you would have far less of a chance to do much about it.
Of course, one bad flu would wipe out the nation. And all ten women would get pretty tired of being chased around. Also, who would work in the espresso bar? Geeks are notoriously cheap for anything that isn't a geek-fetish.
The entire audience I saw it with squirmed uncomfortably when they saw what was going on.
With AOL, they are controlling the *pipe* and the *content.* There is often no way to route around the pipe. And when the majority of content (news shows, movies, television show, music) is owned by a handful of people, the difficulty of getting alternative sources is *far* greater than the difficulty of getting an alternative OS.
But no, you were taught to hate Microsoft because that's the only industry you know, because you stare at a computer screen for hours on end and now think that what you're staring it is the Most Important Thing in the World and the Future of Civilization, all the while failing to realize that the substructure of that screen experience is being taken over from elsewhere.</flame>
Remember, there's a difference between the 'aura' (in Walter Benjamin's sense) of the product and that of the reseller. If Advertised Sexy Brand X is available from Not-advertising Unsexy Reseller A at half the price of Advertising Sexy Reseller B, then I 'enjoy' (or am manipulated by) the aura of X by purchasing from B, and the cost of the Sexiness is picked up by A. This is an advantage the only the internet consumer enjoys -it's been demonstrated that poor people are likely to pay more for the same goods - like cars - as rich people, and it has been hypothesized that internet access is a primary factor in that fact.
I know, because I do that with ThinkGeek products all the time: ThinkGeek will advertise a cool product, I'll go to pricescan.com and find the same product for a fraction of the price, so ThinkGeek's advertising actually cost them a sale.
Yes, it's funny how the TANSTAAFL crowd ignores advertising costs. Advertising is the hemoragging wound of capitalism: the only way to compete with advertising is to advertise in response. The net result is higher prices without value, a completely useless sector of the economy, and a lot of cultural pollution.
And things being fun are not correlated with how much one is willing to pay for them. I enjoy playing frisbee in the park. A lot. I go often to the park to play frisbee - I could do it for hours. But the fact that I do it for hours doesn't translate into my willingness to pay, say, a dollar an hour for the "right" to play frisbee, or a willingness to "pay" for my frisbee rights by playing in a field lined with billboards if I can help it.
I frankly think I have every right to block ads if they become to invasive (I don't block Slashdot banner ads, because 1. they often are for products that are at least interesting and 2. they aren't invasive), just as I have a right to browse with a text-browser, a browser that kills pop-ups or doesn't enable them, or to use a braille- or voice- browser if I'm blind. Slashdot's - or anyone's - business model is *not my responsibility.*
Incidentally, I *did* pay for a premier service at Salon because I wanted the added content, not to get rid of the ads. I am very much *not* interested in a rate-based fee based on how many pages I load - this way lies madness.
If your taxes were lower, so would everyone else in your tax bracket and above - and your housing cost would now likely be that much higher.
Let me make this simple for you: have you tried to get reverse DNS from PacBell DSL? Last I checked, you couldn't. I can with my ISP. That's because the ISP is staffed by ISP guys, while PacBell DSL is staffed by the people who flunked out of telecom training.
Insofar as so much of the telecommunications infrastructure goes through public land, was built with public money and under the auspices of public service, I think we should treat the wires like rivers: no one has the right to block passage on a navigable river, as far as I know (I'd assume, anyway), I'd like to see that attitude extended to the wire.
What would the anti-environmentalist camp's perspective on it be? That trees generate more waste circuit boards and plastics than disposed computers do? Or that discarded electronics make great fertilizer for trees?
Grand Theft Auto London. Ska, mod pop, and DJ's from the swingin' 60's. Any game soundtrack that features the Upsetters wins, hands down. Sadly, not available at VGMix.com.
I will note that since the heyday of Napster, the diversity of available files has gone down. More obscure/fringe acts aren't as available as they used to be, and this actually means a reduction in my CD buying patterns - previously, I had used Napster as a method of discovery for new and unusual music, often by browsing the collections of people who had music that I liked. I would say the RIAA had shot itself in the foot, except that they never represented those less mainstream acts to begin with: they just want to maximize the number of people who buy Brittney Spears and Garth Brooks CD's.
The left has less money. The right doesn't need to hit up folks for cash as much, they've got the Exxons, Monsantos, and Fords of the world keeping them flush.
If you applied that thinking to an individual, you'd essentially be saying that there's not much point in fighting cancer if the treatments are uncomfortable, since you're gonna die anyway, and someday the universe will end.
(Heh, my parents have a picture of their grandkid as the wallpaper.)
The home market isn't all that relevant. It's the enterprise desktop that's the real prize, because it has a much shorter sell-cycle, because you get lock-down without a lock-down by moving to a *nix desktop, and because it's only necessary to train to specific work-related tasks, not how to install driver X or game Y or cutesy-apps Z.
One other thing that should be recalled about Marx is that Marx actually wrote precious little about Communism per se, aside from the Manifesto. He wasn't in the business of creating a blueprint for utopia. By far, the majority of his writings were 1. analyses of capitalism as it was working in his time, 2. discussions of current political events, and 3. the development of Hegel's theory of dialectics into a theory of history based on class struggle. He was not as teleological as many subsequent Marxists were.
The American justice system is itself broken. The number of innocent people being *executed* - when capital cases have the most oversight - is disturbing enough. Just think how many innocent people are being imprisoned, particularly if they can't muster funds for a defense.
I think that the Chinese behaviour in Tibet was unconscionable and the occupation of Tibet should end, that Tienamen was barbaric, and that they are being repressive towards the Falun Gong. The American "Tibet," of course, occurred in the 19th century, in the settlement of the west, the war against Mexico, and the doctrine of "Manifest Destiny," so we feel that the US today isn't as culpable. But I daresay that a case could be made that, in day to day terms, their system of justice, as a rule, is fairer than the US system, that fewer true innocents suffer.
1.2 billion Chinese people say that this may become less true over time, once enough of those 1.2 billion Chinese people start playing with source. The "english" in source itself is minimal.
That's the Salon model. Banner ads became pop-ups, interstitials, and pop-unders, and some content became subscriber-exclusive. I pay for Salon, because Salon has a large staff of very good writers who create original material, and some good investigative journalism. Slashdot has, um.
Eighty percent of Harvard students graduate "with honors." Eighty percent. Please remember that when you're looking at resumes from Harvard alums. Grade inflation is so rampant that C's are very rare. Meanwhile, I graduated - without honors, and with lumps -from an affordable public university with an attrition rate of over 40% (OK, it's still a top-tier school, but it *is* a state school.) And still Harvard gets the hot rep - and we still end up working for the Harvard boys. It's just not fair, I tell ya.