I personally don't care if I am physically connected to the band by actually owning something. I am a musician and as long as I can listen to the music, that's all that matters. Yeah vinyl sounds great, but it is so bulky and causes clutter. I hate having too much stuff around, and being able to have everything on my ipod is a godsend for that. If I have to move, the last thing I want to do after moving my furniture is lug around a huge record or CD collection.
For me the purpose of having music is to listen to it and nothing more. One possible benefit of vinyl though is of course the DRM factor. You will always be able to make a recording of your material for backups. Despite the DRM of buying music from Itunes, as long as I can listen to it on demand from my music player I am still mostly happy. It would be nice to share music I enjoy with my friends but that is secondary to its main purpose for me.
It is amazing that people get so worked up about one corrupt, incompetent politician getting elected over yet another corrupt, incompetent politician. The people in power has an awful lot of say about the results, so it's no surprise what will happen with that. I'm not even sure why this is surprising anyone, and the only way I can see it would is for someone who is wearing rose colored glasses. That what happens when one person has power over another. They will obviously do whatever they can to maintain that power, and they have quite an advantage to do so. Democracy is nothing more than a wolf and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
Of course they are not going to tell you before they officially announce it. What if they did, and you go around spilling the beans to everyone? That would make life pretty difficult for them. If there really was doubt about your job, you should have just waited on the apartment until you felt more comfortable. I don't blame you for being upset though, I've been through similar situations.
If a bank goes down you have major problems, if a social networking site goes down someone might not be able to reply to a message and misses a night getting drunk
It's not about end users missing a silly message. It's about loosing millions of dollars in revenue when people aren't visiting your site.
If people are going to insist on protecting their content or IP, I personally would much rather see them DRM technology such as this than resorting to patents that are arbitrarily (and unfairly in a lot of cases) enforced by the government. This is the type of protection I could imagine coming up in a market that is free from regulation and the immoral use of force. Plus, if people are constantly nagged by "features" such as this, it will give open source all that much more of an appeal. The geeks on this website should be cheering on MSFT as they continue to implement more drastic measures. Monopolies will only exist as long as market forces will allow. Eventually it will be much too difficult for them to continue on this business model and they will be forced to change by low cost/free competitors.
Something like the concepts behind the US government that are currently falling apart
Maybe the reason this is falling apart is because this type of system doesn't work. And by that I mean, it fails to protect our basic natural rights of property and freedom from tyranny.
I don't understand why people will continue to advocate a system that has failed, as you so readily admit. They say "oh, if we could just pass these few extra laws it will fix the system". But then those few laws don't work, so we are back to square one. Rinse and repeat. People have been tweaking this system for 300 years, yet have never been quite satisfied. The inevitable result is that there is injustice done to some at the expense of others. The only solution I can see is to have everyone be the watchers. Let us learn how to set up systems that will protect freedom without having to be watched by a Police State.
I dispute that claim. I'd say that legalized drugs (as evidenced by legalized alcohol) would cause more harm to innocent people.
We'll have to agree to disagree then.
I'd also have to dispute that. Most people who use any alcohol do so irresponsibly. Drinking and driving is rampant in the USA at least. Why should those of us who don't drink have to subsidize enforcement measures, medical bills, etc caused by drunk driving accidents?
Those of you who don't drink shouldn't have to subsidize enforcement. That is exactly my point. But it is opposite of what you are proposing. The regulations you promote would only come at a great cost to non consumers such as yourself. Your argument seems contradictory. The drunk drivers themselves are the ones who should pay the medical bills.
How about just restricting the sale of high alcohol content beverages, and holding alcohol servers liable... People drinking responsibly at home and not driving would be unaffected.
This is not true, we would be affected. How would these enforcement measures be paid for? Somehow, somewhere, taxes will have to be raised, therefore shoving responsibility onto all of the non drinkers. People drinking responsibly at home would not be unaffected by your plan because they would be paying for others consumption.
Nope... suicide is illegal for a reason.
So we don't own our bodies? The implaction of this is that the government, who makes suicide illegal, is actually the owner of our bodies. Therefore, we must all be slaves to the government. Are you prepared to admit this?
Should we give up banning hard core addictive drugs because there is gang warfare surrounding those?
Yes, we should give it up, because it causes more serious consequences for innocent people who have nothing to do with the drugs than the harm done to the one person who uses them.
Just because prohibition didn't work, doesn't mean it wasn't the right thing to do.
It wasn't right thing to do, because most people use alcohol responsibly, and they shouldn't have to pay the higher costs associated with the bans to cover those who are irresponsible.
I certainly believe alcohol should be banned to the same extent as other addictive, destructive drugs that render the user a danger to those around them. I certainly wouldn't mind accomplishing it in a more effective way than immediate prohibition.
If there is a way to do this that doesn't interfere with my causual beer consumption (in higher costs or otherwise), I would be welcome to any suggestions. Or, are you trying to tell me that I should be forced to abstain from enjoying a couple of my favorite brews after a hard days work?
given the health harm it causes to the user and its addictive qualities, it would also be reasonable for society to consider an eventual complete ban.
Why should anyone be allowed to dictate what people should be allowed to put into their own bodies? Do we not own our own body? If we do, don't we have a right to cause it harm if we so desire? If we don't, then who does? The government? A super size happy meal from McDonald's also causes serious health problems for much of the population. Should those also be banned?
No, ya ripe bastard. Yer slowing down us heavy renters by keeping the high value movies out of circulation. Think of your fellow man, man.:)
You can be sure the movies I currently have probably aren't exactly "high value", hehe. And netflix seems to do a pretty good job of keeping enough of the popular movies on hand for everyone.
I've had the exact problem mentioned in the summary. I am on the three movie a month plan, and my three movies have been sitting on the shelf gathering dust for over a month now. Basically, I am wasting my money on this service as we speak. My problem is that I also have high definition digital cable, and spend more time watching that than I do my movies. For me it seems to be either one or the other - cable or movies. For awhile I cancelled my cable and just did Netflix. When I moved I got cable back with a promotional plan, and it looks like I should probably just cancel that and start doing only netflix again. Plus netflix costs less than half as much, so there is also that benefit.
The argument goes that offering gambling to a gambling addict (and by this taking his money) takes advantage of the force offered by neurological addiction, thus forcible harm.
Same argument for offering addictive drugs.
You're on a slippery slope my friend. Your argument can (and has) been used for alcohol and cigarettes. I believe the eighteenth amendment aptly demonstrated that prohibition does not work, and indeed causes more harm than good in the form of organized crime and gang warfare.
What this amounts to is that Americans have no concept of freedom or property rights such as they claim. If I have $10 and wish to wager it on the outcome of an event that has a certain chance of success or failure, I am not hurting anyone other than myself. The irony is that if they would have paid taxes (which I consider to be nothing more than extortion) on their earnings to the federal government it sounds like they would have been allowed to survive unmolested. It just goes to show the lengths to which our government will go to stomp on our natural rights. The only moral right we have as humans is to proceed with the course of our action as long as it doesn't forcibly harm anyone else. We are denied this every day in multiple ways. I fear that we have been conditioned to accept this as a legitimate cost of being in society. All the while, the fat cats in charge are laughing at how easy it is for them to earn a living at others expense.
Probably convert them into their local currency, I would imagine.
And what is going to happen to those US dollars that are exchanged for local ones? They are still going to have to be spent somehow. Why else would someone exchange their own currency for it? They are going to invest it back into the US economy. No matter how you want to slice it, the trade deficit props up massive US debt. Once the foreign demand for US dollars stops, we will no doubt have an economic crisis on our hands, to say the least.
It is quite unfortunate that you, as well as many others, have no respect for someone's property. Yes, that money is mine. I earned it with my own two hands. If you don't like it, too fuckin bad. And guess what, nobody is asking you either. Or any of the other hundreds of posters on this story for that matter.:)
I don't have a problem with human space colonization, but I do have a problem with the government using my stolen tax dollars to fund it. Perhaps Hawking should start his own space colonization company if he really thinks this is important. Otherwise, please keep your grimy hands out of my wallet!
Good points. It's people like me they are going after. I think you are forgetting the most unjust and ironic thing about this. That is the government stealing my own money via taxes and using it to suppress me. Kind of flies in the face of the normal justifications people use for government's existence. I.e. mutual protection from foreign invasion, etc. Guess I should go remove all my anti government quotes from my facebook profile now...
Slashdot Mirror
Shed no tears for these guys, with the laws as they currently are, they may have crossed from free speech to illegal speech.
um... did you miss the part of the summary that said this site was legal?
Sweet! This would leave me more time to read slashdot at work.
I personally don't care if I am physically connected to the band by actually owning something. I am a musician and as long as I can listen to the music, that's all that matters. Yeah vinyl sounds great, but it is so bulky and causes clutter. I hate having too much stuff around, and being able to have everything on my ipod is a godsend for that. If I have to move, the last thing I want to do after moving my furniture is lug around a huge record or CD collection.
For me the purpose of having music is to listen to it and nothing more. One possible benefit of vinyl though is of course the DRM factor. You will always be able to make a recording of your material for backups. Despite the DRM of buying music from Itunes, as long as I can listen to it on demand from my music player I am still mostly happy. It would be nice to share music I enjoy with my friends but that is secondary to its main purpose for me.
It is amazing that people get so worked up about one corrupt, incompetent politician getting elected over yet another corrupt, incompetent politician. The people in power has an awful lot of say about the results, so it's no surprise what will happen with that. I'm not even sure why this is surprising anyone, and the only way I can see it would is for someone who is wearing rose colored glasses. That what happens when one person has power over another. They will obviously do whatever they can to maintain that power, and they have quite an advantage to do so. Democracy is nothing more than a wolf and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
(On a side note, HTML really needs a sarcasm tag.)
[sarcasm]
Oh, you mean like this? What a clever observation!
[/sarcasm]
Of course they are not going to tell you before they officially announce it. What if they did, and you go around spilling the beans to everyone? That would make life pretty difficult for them. If there really was doubt about your job, you should have just waited on the apartment until you felt more comfortable. I don't blame you for being upset though, I've been through similar situations.
Don't worry, that happened to me 6 months ago.
So this sounds kind of like slashvertisements, except on news stations. Hmm interesting concept...
If a bank goes down you have major problems, if a social networking site goes down someone might not be able to reply to a message and misses a night getting drunk
It's not about end users missing a silly message. It's about loosing millions of dollars in revenue when people aren't visiting your site.
If people are going to insist on protecting their content or IP, I personally would much rather see them DRM technology such as this than resorting to patents that are arbitrarily (and unfairly in a lot of cases) enforced by the government. This is the type of protection I could imagine coming up in a market that is free from regulation and the immoral use of force. Plus, if people are constantly nagged by "features" such as this, it will give open source all that much more of an appeal. The geeks on this website should be cheering on MSFT as they continue to implement more drastic measures. Monopolies will only exist as long as market forces will allow. Eventually it will be much too difficult for them to continue on this business model and they will be forced to change by low cost/free competitors.
Something like the concepts behind the US government that are currently falling apart
Maybe the reason this is falling apart is because this type of system doesn't work. And by that I mean, it fails to protect our basic natural rights of property and freedom from tyranny.
I don't understand why people will continue to advocate a system that has failed, as you so readily admit. They say "oh, if we could just pass these few extra laws it will fix the system". But then those few laws don't work, so we are back to square one. Rinse and repeat. People have been tweaking this system for 300 years, yet have never been quite satisfied. The inevitable result is that there is injustice done to some at the expense of others. The only solution I can see is to have everyone be the watchers. Let us learn how to set up systems that will protect freedom without having to be watched by a Police State.
You're missing the point.
1. Get your article posted on Slashdot
2. Link to the page with ads
3. ???
4. Profit
while (drunk == false) { getMeABeer(); }
I dispute that claim. I'd say that legalized drugs (as evidenced by legalized alcohol) would cause more harm to innocent people.
We'll have to agree to disagree then.
I'd also have to dispute that. Most people who use any alcohol do so irresponsibly. Drinking and driving is rampant in the USA at least. Why should those of us who don't drink have to subsidize enforcement measures, medical bills, etc caused by drunk driving accidents?
Those of you who don't drink shouldn't have to subsidize enforcement. That is exactly my point. But it is opposite of what you are proposing. The regulations you promote would only come at a great cost to non consumers such as yourself. Your argument seems contradictory. The drunk drivers themselves are the ones who should pay the medical bills.
How about just restricting the sale of high alcohol content beverages, and holding alcohol servers liable ... People drinking responsibly at home and not driving would be unaffected.
This is not true, we would be affected. How would these enforcement measures be paid for? Somehow, somewhere, taxes will have to be raised, therefore shoving responsibility onto all of the non drinkers. People drinking responsibly at home would not be unaffected by your plan because they would be paying for others consumption.
Nope ... suicide is illegal for a reason.
So we don't own our bodies? The implaction of this is that the government, who makes suicide illegal, is actually the owner of our bodies. Therefore, we must all be slaves to the government. Are you prepared to admit this?
Should we give up banning hard core addictive drugs because there is gang warfare surrounding those?
Yes, we should give it up, because it causes more serious consequences for innocent people who have nothing to do with the drugs than the harm done to the one person who uses them.
Just because prohibition didn't work, doesn't mean it wasn't the right thing to do.
It wasn't right thing to do, because most people use alcohol responsibly, and they shouldn't have to pay the higher costs associated with the bans to cover those who are irresponsible.
I certainly believe alcohol should be banned to the same extent as other addictive, destructive drugs that render the user a danger to those around them. I certainly wouldn't mind accomplishing it in a more effective way than immediate prohibition.
If there is a way to do this that doesn't interfere with my causual beer consumption (in higher costs or otherwise), I would be welcome to any suggestions. Or, are you trying to tell me that I should be forced to abstain from enjoying a couple of my favorite brews after a hard days work?
given the health harm it causes to the user and its addictive qualities, it would also be reasonable for society to consider an eventual complete ban.
Why should anyone be allowed to dictate what people should be allowed to put into their own bodies? Do we not own our own body? If we do, don't we have a right to cause it harm if we so desire? If we don't, then who does? The government? A super size happy meal from McDonald's also causes serious health problems for much of the population. Should those also be banned?
You can be sure the movies I currently have probably aren't exactly "high value", hehe. And netflix seems to do a pretty good job of keeping enough of the popular movies on hand for everyone.
I've had the exact problem mentioned in the summary. I am on the three movie a month plan, and my three movies have been sitting on the shelf gathering dust for over a month now. Basically, I am wasting my money on this service as we speak. My problem is that I also have high definition digital cable, and spend more time watching that than I do my movies. For me it seems to be either one or the other - cable or movies. For awhile I cancelled my cable and just did Netflix. When I moved I got cable back with a promotional plan, and it looks like I should probably just cancel that and start doing only netflix again. Plus netflix costs less than half as much, so there is also that benefit.
The argument goes that offering gambling to a gambling addict (and by this taking his money) takes advantage of the force offered by neurological addiction, thus forcible harm. Same argument for offering addictive drugs.
You're on a slippery slope my friend. Your argument can (and has) been used for alcohol and cigarettes. I believe the eighteenth amendment aptly demonstrated that prohibition does not work, and indeed causes more harm than good in the form of organized crime and gang warfare.
What this amounts to is that Americans have no concept of freedom or property rights such as they claim. If I have $10 and wish to wager it on the outcome of an event that has a certain chance of success or failure, I am not hurting anyone other than myself. The irony is that if they would have paid taxes (which I consider to be nothing more than extortion) on their earnings to the federal government it sounds like they would have been allowed to survive unmolested. It just goes to show the lengths to which our government will go to stomp on our natural rights. The only moral right we have as humans is to proceed with the course of our action as long as it doesn't forcibly harm anyone else. We are denied this every day in multiple ways. I fear that we have been conditioned to accept this as a legitimate cost of being in society. All the while, the fat cats in charge are laughing at how easy it is for them to earn a living at others expense.
And all your 2/7 off, AK suited, etc...
When is there not useless legislation from our politician-overlords? I would say never...
Probably convert them into their local currency, I would imagine.
And what is going to happen to those US dollars that are exchanged for local ones? They are still going to have to be spent somehow. Why else would someone exchange their own currency for it? They are going to invest it back into the US economy. No matter how you want to slice it, the trade deficit props up massive US debt. Once the foreign demand for US dollars stops, we will no doubt have an economic crisis on our hands, to say the least.
It is quite unfortunate that you, as well as many others, have no respect for someone's property. Yes, that money is mine. I earned it with my own two hands. If you don't like it, too fuckin bad. And guess what, nobody is asking you either. Or any of the other hundreds of posters on this story for that matter. :)
guess who's opinion we won't be asking?
Obviously it must be yours.
I don't have a problem with human space colonization, but I do have a problem with the government using my stolen tax dollars to fund it. Perhaps Hawking should start his own space colonization company if he really thinks this is important. Otherwise, please keep your grimy hands out of my wallet!
Good points. It's people like me they are going after. I think you are forgetting the most unjust and ironic thing about this. That is the government stealing my own money via taxes and using it to suppress me. Kind of flies in the face of the normal justifications people use for government's existence. I.e. mutual protection from foreign invasion, etc. Guess I should go remove all my anti government quotes from my facebook profile now...