Yeah. That's kind of what I was getting at in my post up there that got moderated down to -1 Troll. Dammit, I was making a point (though a slightly angry drunken point) about first posters being childlike enough to get a kick out of getting a "First Post!".
Sure does. I just wonder whether we'll see the death "Internet Edge", or the rise of the Internet into something new and better. There's plenty of times that a new invention/idea caused a huge restructuring of scientific and societal norms and ideas, but there's also plenty of times where that new invention/idea was struck down, destroyed, and the originator(s) banished or killed (remember that fool who said the Earth moves around the Sun? No one liked that idea very much....) Sure that idea came back around, but not until more than a few people started realizing that Galileo was right. We have no guarantee that the Internet will not be struck down like Galileo's theory, and we have even less of a guarantee that if it is struck down, it'll arise again in some new form. There are plenty of people and corporations which are pissed off at the Internet, and would love to see new laws destroy it forever. It could happen. So how can we make sure that the Internet keeps growing? How can we make sure it doesn't get destroyed before we can make something much better out of it?
I was thinking about that myself. I had to wade through all that buzzword bullshit just to gain a slight understanding of what in the hell the author was talking about. I'm still pretty confused as to what exactly was the reason for writing the article. It seemed to say that the Internet and computers as we know them are going to be destroyed just because a few of the "fathers" have changed political views. Did they even change their political views anyways? It seems more to me that they figured out a new angle on how to get what they want. But I could easily be wrong - the article did not much but confuse the hell outta me.
I'd assume they'd be programmed to clean out tar & that's it. Then they'd just be coughed out or something.... Either that, or they'd stick around & you could smoke and not have to worry about tar ever again.
I've always wanted nanites to be available to normal people. It'd be a whole hell of a lot easier to have somewhat intelligent nanites inside your bloodstream and to have dumbassed chemicals just doing their thing. It'd be pretty damn cool, too. Now, all they need to do is figure out how to get nanites to scrape tar off lungs. Now that would be a great invention.....cough....hack.
Umm, I hope you're being sarcastic, but if you're not.... You've picked the immoral/unethical "job" of each one of these workers. None of these things is what the person gets paid to do, except maybe the teacher. Engineers get paid to make better and more efficient technologies, and though this includes weapons, that's not it. Soldiers get paid to defend their country, and if this includes killing people, so be it. Teachers get paid to teach the curiculum. Whether they get paid to question its value or not depends on who they work for (which school system). Needless to say, they should question its value, but I won't get into that problem.
some decisions can be financially correct but morally wrong
True, but then the company will get screwed in the end. Dumping in rivers may be cheap, but it causes global environmental problems that could end up killing us all. Even if it doesn't go that far, if it kills a sufficient amount of wildlife that people notice, the company is going to end up getting sued or put in a position where they have to pay for the dumping, whether through cleanup duties, or a governmental/environmental agency breathing down their necks. Exploiting child/third-world labor can't go unnoticed forever. Eventually, someone will complain, and the company will have an international incident on their hands. (Of course, someone needs to determine if they're actually exploting the workers or not - that's where the difficulty comes in here.) The other problem with companies getting bit by their own illegal/immoral choices is the damn government and all its red tape. Not to mention the judicial system.
Donating the resultant profits to charity is not a reasonable substitute for making consciencious decisions in the first place.
Agree completely. Giving to charities is fine, but they're not the solution to the world's problems, and donating ill-gotten money is no charity.
I must say that Atlas Shrugged seems to be the most controversial book ever written. There's always someone arguing one way or another for or against it - saying it's genious, saying it's crap. Ayn Rand may be right or wrong, but she sure as hell knew how to write a book that would get noticed.
Not a bad thought. Actually, it's probably the best thought on this page so far. It's the only one that made me think.
Social Responsibility is complete bullshit.
Well, maybe not complete bullshit, but it shouldn't be the basis of deciding if a company is "moral" or not. It's more the result of individuals and companies making the best product possible. If the product is created to be the most useful and well-built product of its kind and if it produces a benefit to society greater than the cost of creating it, then IMO it's the best product of its kind, and the company producing it is socially responsible in the moral and ethical sense.
There's no motive to live in a polluted environment.
Very true. The problem nowadays is that companies seem to forget this fact. They try to get their product out to the public as quick and easily as possible with the least amount of immediate cost to themselves. If this means dumping toxic waste in a river instead of paying to have it cleaned correctly, they'll do it. If this means cutting time & a half overtime out, they'll do it. If it means beating Indonesian children so they work faster, the companies will do it. What companies don't seem to realize is that what they do has an impact on the world as a whole. They seem to forget that the toxic waste they dump can cause an ecological disaster that could wipe us off the face of the earth, they seem to forget that beating the hell out of their employees can cause race, gender, and international problems. They forget that what you give out comes back eventually.
The most moral and ethical thing a person can do is work hard and get the most from your money.
Sounds like Ayn Rand to me, but then I always did agree with her basic points concerning business. If a business wants to create the best product out there, if they research ways of making the product better, if they implement those ways and indeed make their product better than anything else on the market, it's a damn good product. Then they need to sell their product in the way which will generate as much profit for the company itself, without screwing consumers out of anything. If the product is too pricey, no one will buy it - that's economincs. If it's too cheap, it'll screw the company out of money, and may not sell as well as it should have because consumers may think that it's an inferior product. Companies shouldn't be so worried about how they're going to sell their product. They should be much, much more worried about how they're going to produce their product and how they're going to inform the public of its existence and benefits. If it's a good product and people know enough about it to make informed decisions, the product should sell itself. The only reason it wouldn't is if there's no use for it in the market.
Now let me say something about "sweatshops". The "moral and ethical" people always piss me off about this subject. If a company goes into, say India, and starts a manufacturing plant that costs the company less than if they started the plant in the US, people always label that foreign-located plant as a sweatshop. It may be, it may not be. People always bitch because companies are paying their workers in India $5/day (I don't know if this is the actual wage, I just made it up to make my point). Well, think about this for a second. If everyone else in the industry in India is getting paid $5/day, then those workers are just as well off as any other Indian who works in that industry. A company can't go into India and pay their workers $10/day, or all hell will break loose. Indians will flood that plant looking for jobs due to the money, and some will leave the other plants for that extra $5/day. So now this new company has to pay its workers twice what the other companies are paying their workers, so if this new company can't cut costs somewhere, they're not going to do well selling their product - it'll be too expensive and no one will buy it. They'll eventually go out of business, leaving many Indians without jobs and worse off than they were when they were getting paid $5/day. Besides, in a country with widespread poverty, people would be storming that plant trying to get jobs, beating up the workers in that plant for some extra cash, and in general, causing havoc. The company who tried to pay its Indian workers the higher wages ends up doing nothing but destroying itself and hurting many of its former employees. Does this sound like a moral company? And would you buy their product at twice the price just because they pay their workers a little more? Would you even know that they paid their workers more? Then don't bitch about companies not paying employees enough - if they pay them more, problems arise.
What is needed is for companies to start in India, be based in India, and be working to make India a better place to live. Outside companies can't do that - they'll be resented and won't understand the Indian community well enough in order to make it better. If enough Indian-based companies start up, keep their pay rates similar and slowly raise them, while at the same time working for a better India, then things might begin to pick up. The only problem with that is, there's not enough people in India to sell computers to. The industry needs to make a product that Indians need and can afford, like food, clothing and shelter. Outside companies don't want to go into India and produce houses - it's not profitable for them. If Indian companies did this, however, they'd have a product they could sell and make a profit on, as well as help their country at the same time. Well, there's another problem with that - starting up companies in India can be problematic due to lack of funds. Thus, Indians go to other countries to get knowledge and money, then either return to their country to help out, or stay in the other country and forget their homeland.
Third-world countries can't be "helped" into becoming first-world countries through charity. They need to be taught to work for themselves, to make things better in their own homeland. They need to work their way up slowly. Throwing money and food at people will help for a while, but what happens when the money & food are gone? Starving people again. Teach them how to grow food, build houses, make clean water, and have them do it themselves, and they'll be on their way to becoming a first-world country with no more problems than other first-world countries.
If you use Napster, there is a greater than 99.9% chance that you are a thief.
I agree with you. I have used Napster, and think it's a great program - I also realize that it was created for the illegal trading of MP3s. What I don't understand, however, is why trading MP3s has to be illegal.
There's no reason why the music industry can't move to accept MP3s, the way the movie industry moved to accept VCRs. I don't know too much about the introduction of VCRs and their impact on the motion picture industry, but I do know that now VCRs are a great source of revenue for production houses. Why can't the music industry do the same? Is it that difficult to change from CDs to MP3s? I understand that MP3s can be gotten and traded for free, which makes it difficult for the music industry to make any money this way, but can't someone think of a way to generate revenue from MP3s? It can't be that difficult....
Napster & Gnutella & other similar programs are used now to trade illegal MP3s - no one can deny that. The RIAA or MPAA or someone else in the industry should work with people from Napster/Gnutella/etc to come up with a new program. By using this program, you can find an MP3 of every single song ever recorded, but which makes you pay, say $1 per MP3. With something like this, I think they'd have a much better chance at combatting illegal MP3 trading than they do by attempting to destroy the programs that make this trading possible. I'm not saying that something like this would gain widespread acceptance, but I do believe that it's a much better approach than suing the hell out of anyone who crosses the music industry.
OK, so since I got 2 responses to this slightly off-topic post, I suppose I should explain myself: Heiniken = good beer (green bottle gets plusses) you can drink & get drunk off easily enough Corona = good beer for sitting outside bullshitting on a warm sunny day Olde English 800 = best in the bullet 40oz bottles. great malt liquor for a roudy-ass drunk. good music to listen to during drinking - rap Steel Reserve = great in 36oz cans & 40oz bottles. another great malt liquor as OE 800
I think for the beer hike, however, something else should be drank. A lighter beer that doesn't weigh down the stomach but gets you fucked up.
I don't know how you Americans can drink that crap you dare call the same name
Neither can I, and I'm an American. Most Amer. beer is crap. Guiness, however, tastes like tar. Corona, Heiniken - these are good beers. Of course, nothing can beat hard liquor, Olde English 800, or Steel Reserve. Plus, there's something to be said for having a beer bottle/can that you can use to beat the hell outta someone when it's empty.
Hiking, drinking beer, talking about shit - this sounds like one hell of a way to spend some time. However, I suppose I'd get sick of walking around with people talking in script kiddie speak or about stuff I have no idea about/understand/care about. I'd guess if I went with a few friends, it'd be fun as hell. Eruantalon
But if you don't want people deep-linking to your website, why not use technical means to keep them out?
Well, I figure that most people/companies suing the hell out of each other over stuff like this either don't know or care about using technical means to serve their ends. They'd rather sue and get both publicity and money from the suit. The best means of protecting a site's contents is the Referrer info. (OK, so maybe not protecting contents, but at least it's the best means of protecting against deep-linking, if you consider that harmful to your site/advertisers. People can always go through your site the long way & steal your articles. They just won't be able to deep-link to them on your site.) If this is used, then the person/company will not have to go through with expensive suits. They won't get as much publicity, either.... Stupid fuckin corporate USA. Whatever happened to the time when people running this country knew things?
The sad truth is that most people, when not being actively watched, are assholes.
Well, I want to agree and disagree with you here.... I think I'll have to disagree in relation to linking, though. I don't think most people "don't give a damn about whether or not you want them to link to a particular page" - I think most people don't think about possible repercussions of doing so. Sure, there are plenty of assholes out there who don't give a damn. However, I think that most people, after seeing that you have a copyright notice on a page, or a notice saying please email me if you want to use/link to this page, will email you and ask permission. I've never had a problem with my site, nor any sites I've linked to (granted, I don't get/. hit quantity, but I get enough visitors that it could be a problem).
America, the land of the frivolous lawsuit, the land of laws against driving without a seatbelt or selling alcohol on Sunday, the land where morality and intelligence are expected to come from legislators, not ourselves. I love this country!!
I hear you there. If I may say so, I think this country needs to get its head out of its own collective ass. That's all I'll say about that subject, however.
I've two thoughts on this topic. Linking serves a useful purpose for any website. It allows readers to gain information that you may not deal with directory on your site, but they are interested in nonetheless. Therefore, it's a good thing. The problems lie in how you link, IMO.
Linking to someone else's homepage, I see no problem with whatsoever. It's the homepage, any banner ads will be viewed, and the reader knows that the information contained there is not on your site. There is no reason why this type of linking should be illegal. It's the purpose of the Internet.
Deep-linking, however, can be problematic. This is where webmasters have to be cautious. Every time I've deep-linked on my website, I've first dropped an email to the webmaster of the site I wanted to link to asking permission to do so. In every case, I've been granted permission to use a deep-link. Now, I've never tried to link to any commercial sites such as Apple or ZDNet, but I assume you won't get so quick and kind a reply as you would from an individual. On the whole, however, people (and companies, I assume) aren't really bothered by deep-linking, as long as they know who's doing so and what.
I like the idea of using a CGI to protect specific materials from being freely distributed net-wide. I do not, however, think that most people should worry about doing this. Most of the information on the Internet isn't the type of information that needs to be protected from viewers. If so, I'd think a secure site would be the better choice. Articles that are copyrighted by a site, however, should be protected to a point. No one should be able to take your article and post it on their site as their own work. That's plagiarism. What I do and have seen done is to place a copyright notice below each article saying it's my work, and if you want to use it, email and ask me. This usually serves its purpose - either people don't link to/copy your article, or they ask you for permission. If they do, you can nail them for breaking a copyright. That's how I think the Internet should operate, anyways.
do you think anyone anywhere will be able to figure out what the code does? Or fix the bugs? Or make the system workable with any reasonable amount of work? Bah. They're "Open Sourcing" it because it seems like a good move to their PR department. "Hey - look! We support Open Source! See our code? See how big it is?" Yeah, I'd love to see Windows source code - I don't know if it would be readable by me, but I'd still love to see it.
And how about we all get together and strive to resist ? I think we all have the knowlegde, opportunity, and now the moral obligation to become an awful thorn in their foot.
Well, of course, this is what we should do. The problem is getting a significant number of us to agree on what we should do, then how and where and who. I'd love to be part of a group responsible for taking down these greed-filled corporations, but I won't be part of a group that wants to and splinters because it can't decide how to work together. I just don't know what we could do that would work. If we could decide on that, I think we'd stand a pretty good chance of changing things around here for the better.
You state that these products "deprive artists of...revenue." This is only true if mp3s affect people's buing habbits.
Damn right. I've got about 600 mp3s sitting on my computer at home that I've downloaded from various sources. Now, of these 600, I probably have 200 of them on CDs that I bought after getting the mp3 and deciding "Hell, I love this song, I'm buying the CD." Mp3s aren't stealing money away from artists - they're not even stealing money from music producers/record labels/etc. CDs don't cost $15 - they cost $5 tops. And don't tell me music producers have to pay for the recording of the CD. Sure they do, but you think they don't make that money back hundreds of times over? The only ones making money off CDs are the CD mfgrs, music producers, record labels, whatever else there is out there - but artists don't make squat. Artists make money off concerts, as someone mentioned earlier. Mp3s aren't hurting artists. Corporations just think they can make more $$ if mp3s weren't around.
Yet another move by AOL in its own best interest, and screw everyone elses'. Of course, most corporations nowadays do the same thing, but AOL seems to be trying to create a world monopoly on all goods. The hell is going on? Everyone's so worried about M$, they forget Amazon & AOL. Maybe it's time to create a new internet where Open Source can thrive, as well as projects like Gnutella, Napster and DeCSS. Well, maybe that's not such a good idea - it wouldn't be long before corporations started moving in on that too.
So, AOL shuts down Gnutella because it could conflict with their future interests in the music world, MPAA shuts down DeCSS for the same reason, what's next? Amazon shutting down libraries because Amazon sells books and libraries rent them out???
Shit, we obviously need to do something before the Net is completely overrun by pointy-haired corporations sucking every penny they can out of the Internet and consumers. Not that I know what. Open letters are pretty much useless, as we saw with the MCSEs' yesterday, marches don't seem to do anything but clog up streets and tire out the marchers, boycotts don't work because not enough people know/care about them (Amazon), voting isn't effective enough because not enough people vote/care and there's this thing called the Electoral College, so what's left? How about we all get together, build a space shuttle, and head for the Moon?
No Open Source OS will ever die. As far as I can tell, that's the biggest strength of Open Source. It changes all the time, better OSes are built from older ones, some distros die off, some outlive their usefulness; but they never die. Sure, maybe Unix won't stay around forever as the Unix we know, but that's the point, isn't it? It's always changing anyways, so if you're going to predict that Unix will die, the only way to be right about that is to say the Unix is already dead. We may not even call it Unix, eventually, but it'll still be Unix at its core.
The only way Unix could ever be said to be dead is if someone creates an OS that isn't based on Unix, but performs the functions of Unix better than Unix itself. I don't see this happening now (though if I'm wrong, I'd love to know about it), and it's not too likely to happen in the future. Unless we completely change the basic structure & function of computing (which would cause a complete rethinking of computers in general), Unix will always be around.
yeah right. But seriously, something needs to be done about the USPTO. Amazon's going crazy with patents (I like the User Friendly cartoon on this topic), and no one seems to care about stopping them. Other companies are doing the same, although examples seem to escape me at this moment. Maybe I'll go out and patent the 1-click Reply button (unless someone else has already done that...). While I'm at it, why not patent the 1-Click Submit button as well. Just imagine how much $ I'd get from/. alone.
But seriously again, how could the patent office be fixed? There's not too many people who's dream is to read through patent submissions all day e'er' day (as Outkast would say). They need more people, less stupid patent requests, and (better?) divisions into patent areas. Now that companies are getting onto the Net at full force, it seems they're making the Net into just another arm of the corporate labyrinth.
Well, this seems to be just another dumb move by M$. I've got a few friends who are MCSE's and I have a feeling they're gonna be pretty pissed off about this one. One of them just finished the MCSE this winter, and I know for sure he's not going to want to get recertified already for something he's not going to use (Win2K). So, since there was just a story up about M$ treating its certified folks better than RedHat, does this change all that?
Well, I must thank King for being ther first author I've heard of to do this e-text thing, and I hope others will follow. I'm not sure if reading books via the computer screen would be that comfortable though, unless there's a Palm-sized unit with lots of battery power and an easy-to-look-at-for-long-time-periods screen. I just can't see sitting at a desk reading an e-text, nor sitting a laptop on your lap while you're laying out on a couch/bed reading.
And to that first poster (J23SE), where'd you pick up e-texts of Tolkien? I've never heard of a legal Tolkien e-text, but if they are legal, where'd you find them (i.e. gimme more info, please).
OK, I'm going to reply to two people here, so I'll try to keep this straight.
Yes, I'm aware of the fact that people pay for their internet access, and of the fact that spam costs those people money, and of the fact that spam costs the mail servers & their owners/caretakers money. I also realize that circulars are paid for by companies/people that send them out. My question is, how much spam does the average dial-up user get in one day? (I'm leaving spam to business places for below.)
I belong to 6 mid- to high-traffic mailing lists (and several more low-traffic lists), have an account at many on-line havens for email-gathering spammers (deja, lycos, tripod, etc.), post to/. semi-frequently, have both an icq and aolim account, and have at least 10 different email addresses that I use frequently - basically, if people want my email address(es) for spamming purposes, it's not too hard to find. Still, I get about 1-5 spam messages per week. I don't find that number at all excessive. On the other hand, I get at least 3 circulars (other than for stores & such - counting these, I don't want to know) a day.
For me, at least, spam is not near as big a problem as are circulars - at least in the realm of how many I receive per day. For others, I'm sure this is a different situation. But how different is it? How many people are bombarded with spam each day? Who are these people that (as someone somewhere on/. today commented) get 10 spams for each email? I'm not saying they don't exist: I'm wondering who they are, how they got targeted for this much spam, and how much they actually get charged for spam.
Just to make this clear, I do hate spammers, get annoyed each time I find a spam in my inbox, and do sympathize with those who receive spam more frequently than I. However, how much of a problem is it for individuals?
Businesses, on the other hand, I can understand having a huge problem with spam. A fair-sized business has what - 100 workers average? And if the spam is going to each one of those workers, that's a lot of spam that the business' mail servers have to deal with. Spam hurts businesses - this I can see. That, there should be strict laws for. I don't know legal jargon, so I can't think up a fairly-easy-to-uphold law, but I'm sure someone could.
Raunchola: First off, you're assuming that people don't recycle. Even if they do, this costs them money as well. Probably more $ than if they didn't recycle. Recycling costs money too. Is the cost of recycling worth the cost of saving the environment and landfill space? I don't know, but I figure it depends on the person in question.
Kyrrin: Perhaps the best/.-centric analogy is if each reader had to pay Rob & co. for each comment viewed. I'll bet that if that happened, there'd be a whole lot more anger directed towards the Naked and Petrified folks -- why should we have to pay to see their garbage? True. I see your point, but I'm trying to figure out for myself how much of a problem spam is in the community at large. I'm also trying to find good arguments for spamming, or at least good arguments that say spam isn't as bad as people make it out to be.
Kyrrin: Why should I have to subsidize someone else's advertising budget with my mail servers? You shouldn't. But how much of a problem is it, unless you run a business that has many employees who all get spammed frequently?
Raunchola: Now what sounds like less of a problem? I'm not sure, that's what I'm trying to figure out. They're both problems, I think we need laws to govern both (spam & circulars), and I think those laws should be well-defined enough to uphold in court. Now what those laws would say, I just don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. That's kind of what I was getting at in my post up there that got moderated down to -1 Troll. Dammit, I was making a point (though a slightly angry drunken point) about first posters being childlike enough to get a kick out of getting a "First Post!".
Eruantalon
...this makes for some interesting years ahead.
Sure does. I just wonder whether we'll see the death "Internet Edge", or the rise of the Internet into something new and better. There's plenty of times that a new invention/idea caused a huge restructuring of scientific and societal norms and ideas, but there's also plenty of times where that new invention/idea was struck down, destroyed, and the originator(s) banished or killed (remember that fool who said the Earth moves around the Sun? No one liked that idea very much....) Sure that idea came back around, but not until more than a few people started realizing that Galileo was right. We have no guarantee that the Internet will not be struck down like Galileo's theory, and we have even less of a guarantee that if it is struck down, it'll arise again in some new form. There are plenty of people and corporations which are pissed off at the Internet, and would love to see new laws destroy it forever. It could happen. So how can we make sure that the Internet keeps growing? How can we make sure it doesn't get destroyed before we can make something much better out of it?
Eruantalon
I was thinking about that myself. I had to wade through all that buzzword bullshit just to gain a slight understanding of what in the hell the author was talking about. I'm still pretty confused as to what exactly was the reason for writing the article. It seemed to say that the Internet and computers as we know them are going to be destroyed just because a few of the "fathers" have changed political views. Did they even change their political views anyways? It seems more to me that they figured out a new angle on how to get what they want. But I could easily be wrong - the article did not much but confuse the hell outta me.
Eruantalon
I'd assume they'd be programmed to clean out tar & that's it. Then they'd just be coughed out or something.... Either that, or they'd stick around & you could smoke and not have to worry about tar ever again.
Eruantalon
I've always wanted nanites to be available to normal people. It'd be a whole hell of a lot easier to have somewhat intelligent nanites inside your bloodstream and to have dumbassed chemicals just doing their thing. It'd be pretty damn cool, too. Now, all they need to do is figure out how to get nanites to scrape tar off lungs. Now that would be a great invention.....cough....hack.
Eruantalon
Umm, I hope you're being sarcastic, but if you're not....
You've picked the immoral/unethical "job" of each one of these workers. None of these things is what the person gets paid to do, except maybe the teacher. Engineers get paid to make better and more efficient technologies, and though this includes weapons, that's not it. Soldiers get paid to defend their country, and if this includes killing people, so be it. Teachers get paid to teach the curiculum. Whether they get paid to question its value or not depends on who they work for (which school system). Needless to say, they should question its value, but I won't get into that problem.
Eruantalon
some decisions can be financially correct but morally wrong
True, but then the company will get screwed in the end. Dumping in rivers may be cheap, but it causes global environmental problems that could end up killing us all. Even if it doesn't go that far, if it kills a sufficient amount of wildlife that people notice, the company is going to end up getting sued or put in a position where they have to pay for the dumping, whether through cleanup duties, or a governmental/environmental agency breathing down their necks. Exploiting child/third-world labor can't go unnoticed forever. Eventually, someone will complain, and the company will have an international incident on their hands. (Of course, someone needs to determine if they're actually exploting the workers or not - that's where the difficulty comes in here.) The other problem with companies getting bit by their own illegal/immoral choices is the damn government and all its red tape. Not to mention the judicial system.
Donating the resultant profits to charity is not a reasonable substitute for making consciencious decisions in the first place.
Agree completely. Giving to charities is fine, but they're not the solution to the world's problems, and donating ill-gotten money is no charity.
Eruantalon
I must say that Atlas Shrugged seems to be the most controversial book ever written. There's always someone arguing one way or another for or against it - saying it's genious, saying it's crap. Ayn Rand may be right or wrong, but she sure as hell knew how to write a book that would get noticed.
Eruantalon
Not a bad thought. Actually, it's probably the best thought on this page so far. It's the only one that made me think.
Social Responsibility is complete bullshit.
Well, maybe not complete bullshit, but it shouldn't be the basis of deciding if a company is "moral" or not. It's more the result of individuals and companies making the best product possible. If the product is created to be the most useful and well-built product of its kind and if it produces a benefit to society greater than the cost of creating it, then IMO it's the best product of its kind, and the company producing it is socially responsible in the moral and ethical sense.
There's no motive to live in a polluted environment.
Very true. The problem nowadays is that companies seem to forget this fact. They try to get their product out to the public as quick and easily as possible with the least amount of immediate cost to themselves. If this means dumping toxic waste in a river instead of paying to have it cleaned correctly, they'll do it. If this means cutting time & a half overtime out, they'll do it. If it means beating Indonesian children so they work faster, the companies will do it. What companies don't seem to realize is that what they do has an impact on the world as a whole. They seem to forget that the toxic waste they dump can cause an ecological disaster that could wipe us off the face of the earth, they seem to forget that beating the hell out of their employees can cause race, gender, and international problems. They forget that what you give out comes back eventually.
The most moral and ethical thing a person can do is work hard and get the most from your money.
Sounds like Ayn Rand to me, but then I always did agree with her basic points concerning business. If a business wants to create the best product out there, if they research ways of making the product better, if they implement those ways and indeed make their product better than anything else on the market, it's a damn good product. Then they need to sell their product in the way which will generate as much profit for the company itself, without screwing consumers out of anything. If the product is too pricey, no one will buy it - that's economincs. If it's too cheap, it'll screw the company out of money, and may not sell as well as it should have because consumers may think that it's an inferior product. Companies shouldn't be so worried about how they're going to sell their product. They should be much, much more worried about how they're going to produce their product and how they're going to inform the public of its existence and benefits. If it's a good product and people know enough about it to make informed decisions, the product should sell itself. The only reason it wouldn't is if there's no use for it in the market.
Now let me say something about "sweatshops". The "moral and ethical" people always piss me off about this subject. If a company goes into, say India, and starts a manufacturing plant that costs the company less than if they started the plant in the US, people always label that foreign-located plant as a sweatshop. It may be, it may not be. People always bitch because companies are paying their workers in India $5/day (I don't know if this is the actual wage, I just made it up to make my point). Well, think about this for a second. If everyone else in the industry in India is getting paid $5/day, then those workers are just as well off as any other Indian who works in that industry. A company can't go into India and pay their workers $10/day, or all hell will break loose. Indians will flood that plant looking for jobs due to the money, and some will leave the other plants for that extra $5/day. So now this new company has to pay its workers twice what the other companies are paying their workers, so if this new company can't cut costs somewhere, they're not going to do well selling their product - it'll be too expensive and no one will buy it. They'll eventually go out of business, leaving many Indians without jobs and worse off than they were when they were getting paid $5/day. Besides, in a country with widespread poverty, people would be storming that plant trying to get jobs, beating up the workers in that plant for some extra cash, and in general, causing havoc. The company who tried to pay its Indian workers the higher wages ends up doing nothing but destroying itself and hurting many of its former employees. Does this sound like a moral company? And would you buy their product at twice the price just because they pay their workers a little more? Would you even know that they paid their workers more? Then don't bitch about companies not paying employees enough - if they pay them more, problems arise.
What is needed is for companies to start in India, be based in India, and be working to make India a better place to live. Outside companies can't do that - they'll be resented and won't understand the Indian community well enough in order to make it better. If enough Indian-based companies start up, keep their pay rates similar and slowly raise them, while at the same time working for a better India, then things might begin to pick up. The only problem with that is, there's not enough people in India to sell computers to. The industry needs to make a product that Indians need and can afford, like food, clothing and shelter. Outside companies don't want to go into India and produce houses - it's not profitable for them. If Indian companies did this, however, they'd have a product they could sell and make a profit on, as well as help their country at the same time. Well, there's another problem with that - starting up companies in India can be problematic due to lack of funds. Thus, Indians go to other countries to get knowledge and money, then either return to their country to help out, or stay in the other country and forget their homeland.
Third-world countries can't be "helped" into becoming first-world countries through charity. They need to be taught to work for themselves, to make things better in their own homeland. They need to work their way up slowly. Throwing money and food at people will help for a while, but what happens when the money & food are gone? Starving people again. Teach them how to grow food, build houses, make clean water, and have them do it themselves, and they'll be on their way to becoming a first-world country with no more problems than other first-world countries.
Those are my beliefs, anyways.
Eruantalon
If you use Napster, there is a greater than 99.9% chance that you are a thief.
I agree with you. I have used Napster, and think it's a great program - I also realize that it was created for the illegal trading of MP3s. What I don't understand, however, is why trading MP3s has to be illegal.
There's no reason why the music industry can't move to accept MP3s, the way the movie industry moved to accept VCRs. I don't know too much about the introduction of VCRs and their impact on the motion picture industry, but I do know that now VCRs are a great source of revenue for production houses. Why can't the music industry do the same? Is it that difficult to change from CDs to MP3s? I understand that MP3s can be gotten and traded for free, which makes it difficult for the music industry to make any money this way, but can't someone think of a way to generate revenue from MP3s? It can't be that difficult....
Napster & Gnutella & other similar programs are used now to trade illegal MP3s - no one can deny that. The RIAA or MPAA or someone else in the industry should work with people from Napster/Gnutella/etc to come up with a new program. By using this program, you can find an MP3 of every single song ever recorded, but which makes you pay, say $1 per MP3. With something like this, I think they'd have a much better chance at combatting illegal MP3 trading than they do by attempting to destroy the programs that make this trading possible. I'm not saying that something like this would gain widespread acceptance, but I do believe that it's a much better approach than suing the hell out of anyone who crosses the music industry.
Eruantalon
OK, so since I got 2 responses to this slightly off-topic post, I suppose I should explain myself:
Heiniken = good beer (green bottle gets plusses) you can drink & get drunk off easily enough
Corona = good beer for sitting outside bullshitting on a warm sunny day
Olde English 800 = best in the bullet 40oz bottles. great malt liquor for a roudy-ass drunk. good music to listen to during drinking - rap
Steel Reserve = great in 36oz cans & 40oz bottles. another great malt liquor as OE 800
I think for the beer hike, however, something else should be drank. A lighter beer that doesn't weigh down the stomach but gets you fucked up.
Eruantalon
I don't know how you Americans can drink that crap you dare call the same name
Neither can I, and I'm an American. Most Amer. beer is crap. Guiness, however, tastes like tar. Corona, Heiniken - these are good beers. Of course, nothing can beat hard liquor, Olde English 800, or Steel Reserve. Plus, there's something to be said for having a beer bottle/can that you can use to beat the hell outta someone when it's empty.
Eruantalon
Hiking, drinking beer, talking about shit - this sounds like one hell of a way to spend some time. However, I suppose I'd get sick of walking around with people talking in script kiddie speak or about stuff I have no idea about/understand/care about. I'd guess if I went with a few friends, it'd be fun as hell.
Eruantalon
But if you don't want people deep-linking to your website, why not use technical means to keep them out?
Well, I figure that most people/companies suing the hell out of each other over stuff like this either don't know or care about using technical means to serve their ends. They'd rather sue and get both publicity and money from the suit. The best means of protecting a site's contents is the Referrer info. (OK, so maybe not protecting contents, but at least it's the best means of protecting against deep-linking, if you consider that harmful to your site/advertisers. People can always go through your site the long way & steal your articles. They just won't be able to deep-link to them on your site.) If this is used, then the person/company will not have to go through with expensive suits. They won't get as much publicity, either.... Stupid fuckin corporate USA. Whatever happened to the time when people running this country knew things?
Eruantalon
The sad truth is that most people, when not being actively watched, are assholes.
/. hit quantity, but I get enough visitors that it could be a problem).
Well, I want to agree and disagree with you here.... I think I'll have to disagree in relation to linking, though. I don't think most people "don't give a damn about whether or not you want them to link to a particular page" - I think most people don't think about possible repercussions of doing so. Sure, there are plenty of assholes out there who don't give a damn. However, I think that most people, after seeing that you have a copyright notice on a page, or a notice saying please email me if you want to use/link to this page, will email you and ask permission. I've never had a problem with my site, nor any sites I've linked to (granted, I don't get
America, the land of the frivolous lawsuit, the land of laws against driving without a seatbelt or selling alcohol on Sunday, the land where morality and intelligence are expected to come from legislators, not ourselves. I love this country!!
I hear you there. If I may say so, I think this country needs to get its head out of its own collective ass. That's all I'll say about that subject, however.
Eruantalon
I've two thoughts on this topic. Linking serves a useful purpose for any website. It allows readers to gain information that you may not deal with directory on your site, but they are interested in nonetheless. Therefore, it's a good thing. The problems lie in how you link, IMO.
Linking to someone else's homepage, I see no problem with whatsoever. It's the homepage, any banner ads will be viewed, and the reader knows that the information contained there is not on your site. There is no reason why this type of linking should be illegal. It's the purpose of the Internet.
Deep-linking, however, can be problematic. This is where webmasters have to be cautious. Every time I've deep-linked on my website, I've first dropped an email to the webmaster of the site I wanted to link to asking permission to do so. In every case, I've been granted permission to use a deep-link. Now, I've never tried to link to any commercial sites such as Apple or ZDNet, but I assume you won't get so quick and kind a reply as you would from an individual. On the whole, however, people (and companies, I assume) aren't really bothered by deep-linking, as long as they know who's doing so and what.
I like the idea of using a CGI to protect specific materials from being freely distributed net-wide. I do not, however, think that most people should worry about doing this. Most of the information on the Internet isn't the type of information that needs to be protected from viewers. If so, I'd think a secure site would be the better choice. Articles that are copyrighted by a site, however, should be protected to a point. No one should be able to take your article and post it on their site as their own work. That's plagiarism. What I do and have seen done is to place a copyright notice below each article saying it's my work, and if you want to use it, email and ask me. This usually serves its purpose - either people don't link to/copy your article, or they ask you for permission. If they do, you can nail them for breaking a copyright. That's how I think the Internet should operate, anyways.
Eruantalon
do you think anyone anywhere will be able to figure out what the code does? Or fix the bugs? Or make the system workable with any reasonable amount of work? Bah. They're "Open Sourcing" it because it seems like a good move to their PR department. "Hey - look! We support Open Source! See our code? See how big it is?" Yeah, I'd love to see Windows source code - I don't know if it would be readable by me, but I'd still love to see it.
Eruantalon
And how about we all get together and strive to resist ? I think we all have the knowlegde, opportunity, and now the moral obligation to become an awful thorn in their foot.
Well, of course, this is what we should do. The problem is getting a significant number of us to agree on what we should do, then how and where and who. I'd love to be part of a group responsible for taking down these greed-filled corporations, but I won't be part of a group that wants to and splinters because it can't decide how to work together. I just don't know what we could do that would work. If we could decide on that, I think we'd stand a pretty good chance of changing things around here for the better.
Eruantalon
You state that these products "deprive artists of...revenue." This is only true if mp3s affect people's buing habbits.
Damn right. I've got about 600 mp3s sitting on my computer at home that I've downloaded from various sources. Now, of these 600, I probably have 200 of them on CDs that I bought after getting the mp3 and deciding "Hell, I love this song, I'm buying the CD." Mp3s aren't stealing money away from artists - they're not even stealing money from music producers/record labels/etc. CDs don't cost $15 - they cost $5 tops. And don't tell me music producers have to pay for the recording of the CD. Sure they do, but you think they don't make that money back hundreds of times over? The only ones making money off CDs are the CD mfgrs, music producers, record labels, whatever else there is out there - but artists don't make squat. Artists make money off concerts, as someone mentioned earlier. Mp3s aren't hurting artists. Corporations just think they can make more $$ if mp3s weren't around.
Eruantalon
Yet another move by AOL in its own best interest, and screw everyone elses'. Of course, most corporations nowadays do the same thing, but AOL seems to be trying to create a world monopoly on all goods. The hell is going on? Everyone's so worried about M$, they forget Amazon & AOL. Maybe it's time to create a new internet where Open Source can thrive, as well as projects like Gnutella, Napster and DeCSS. Well, maybe that's not such a good idea - it wouldn't be long before corporations started moving in on that too.
So, AOL shuts down Gnutella because it could conflict with their future interests in the music world, MPAA shuts down DeCSS for the same reason, what's next? Amazon shutting down libraries because Amazon sells books and libraries rent them out???
Shit, we obviously need to do something before the Net is completely overrun by pointy-haired corporations sucking every penny they can out of the Internet and consumers. Not that I know what. Open letters are pretty much useless, as we saw with the MCSEs' yesterday, marches don't seem to do anything but clog up streets and tire out the marchers, boycotts don't work because not enough people know/care about them (Amazon), voting isn't effective enough because not enough people vote/care and there's this thing called the Electoral College, so what's left? How about we all get together, build a space shuttle, and head for the Moon?
Eruantalon
No Open Source OS will ever die. As far as I can tell, that's the biggest strength of Open Source. It changes all the time, better OSes are built from older ones, some distros die off, some outlive their usefulness; but they never die. Sure, maybe Unix won't stay around forever as the Unix we know, but that's the point, isn't it? It's always changing anyways, so if you're going to predict that Unix will die, the only way to be right about that is to say the Unix is already dead. We may not even call it Unix, eventually, but it'll still be Unix at its core.
The only way Unix could ever be said to be dead is if someone creates an OS that isn't based on Unix, but performs the functions of Unix better than Unix itself. I don't see this happening now (though if I'm wrong, I'd love to know about it), and it's not too likely to happen in the future. Unless we completely change the basic structure & function of computing (which would cause a complete rethinking of computers in general), Unix will always be around.
Now, Windows, on the other hand....
Eruantalon
yeah right. But seriously, something needs to be done about the USPTO. Amazon's going crazy with patents (I like the User Friendly cartoon on this topic), and no one seems to care about stopping them. Other companies are doing the same, although examples seem to escape me at this moment. Maybe I'll go out and patent the 1-click Reply button (unless someone else has already done that...). While I'm at it, why not patent the 1-Click Submit button as well. Just imagine how much $ I'd get from /. alone.
But seriously again, how could the patent office be fixed? There's not too many people who's dream is to read through patent submissions all day e'er' day (as Outkast would say). They need more people, less stupid patent requests, and (better?) divisions into patent areas. Now that companies are getting onto the Net at full force, it seems they're making the Net into just another arm of the corporate labyrinth.
Eruantalon
Well, this seems to be just another dumb move by M$. I've got a few friends who are MCSE's and I have a feeling they're gonna be pretty pissed off about this one. One of them just finished the MCSE this winter, and I know for sure he's not going to want to get recertified already for something he's not going to use (Win2K). So, since there was just a story up about M$ treating its certified folks better than RedHat, does this change all that?
Eruantalon
Well, I must thank King for being ther first author I've heard of to do this e-text thing, and I hope others will follow. I'm not sure if reading books via the computer screen would be that comfortable though, unless there's a Palm-sized unit with lots of battery power and an easy-to-look-at-for-long-time-periods screen. I just can't see sitting at a desk reading an e-text, nor sitting a laptop on your lap while you're laying out on a couch/bed reading.
And to that first poster (J23SE), where'd you pick up e-texts of Tolkien? I've never heard of a legal Tolkien e-text, but if they are legal, where'd you find them (i.e. gimme more info, please).
Eruantalon
OK, I'm going to reply to two people here, so I'll try to keep this straight.
/. semi-frequently, have both an icq and aolim account, and have at least 10 different email addresses that I use frequently - basically, if people want my email address(es) for spamming purposes, it's not too hard to find. Still, I get about 1-5 spam messages per week. I don't find that number at all excessive. On the other hand, I get at least 3 circulars (other than for stores & such - counting these, I don't want to know) a day.
/. today commented) get 10 spams for each email? I'm not saying they don't exist: I'm wondering who they are, how they got targeted for this much spam, and how much they actually get charged for spam.
/.-centric analogy is if each reader had to pay Rob & co. for each comment viewed. I'll bet that if that happened, there'd be a whole lot more anger directed towards the Naked and Petrified folks -- why should we have to pay to see their garbage?
Yes, I'm aware of the fact that people pay for their internet access, and of the fact that spam costs those people money, and of the fact that spam costs the mail servers & their owners/caretakers money. I also realize that circulars are paid for by companies/people that send them out. My question is, how much spam does the average dial-up user get in one day? (I'm leaving spam to business places for below.)
I belong to 6 mid- to high-traffic mailing lists (and several more low-traffic lists), have an account at many on-line havens for email-gathering spammers (deja, lycos, tripod, etc.), post to
For me, at least, spam is not near as big a problem as are circulars - at least in the realm of how many I receive per day. For others, I'm sure this is a different situation. But how different is it? How many people are bombarded with spam each day? Who are these people that (as someone somewhere on
Just to make this clear, I do hate spammers, get annoyed each time I find a spam in my inbox, and do sympathize with those who receive spam more frequently than I. However, how much of a problem is it for individuals?
Businesses, on the other hand, I can understand having a huge problem with spam. A fair-sized business has what - 100 workers average? And if the spam is going to each one of those workers, that's a lot of spam that the business' mail servers have to deal with. Spam hurts businesses - this I can see. That, there should be strict laws for. I don't know legal jargon, so I can't think up a fairly-easy-to-uphold law, but I'm sure someone could.
Raunchola: First off, you're assuming that people don't recycle.
Even if they do, this costs them money as well. Probably more $ than if they didn't recycle. Recycling costs money too. Is the cost of recycling worth the cost of saving the environment and landfill space? I don't know, but I figure it depends on the person in question.
Kyrrin: Perhaps the best
True. I see your point, but I'm trying to figure out for myself how much of a problem spam is in the community at large. I'm also trying to find good arguments for spamming, or at least good arguments that say spam isn't as bad as people make it out to be.
Kyrrin: Why should I have to subsidize someone else's advertising budget with my mail servers?
You shouldn't. But how much of a problem is it, unless you run a business that has many employees who all get spammed frequently?
Raunchola: Now what sounds like less of a problem?
I'm not sure, that's what I'm trying to figure out. They're both problems, I think we need laws to govern both (spam & circulars), and I think those laws should be well-defined enough to uphold in court. Now what those laws would say, I just don't know.
Eruantalon