Why does this seem like one of those "feel good" laws that politicians pass to get brownie points with their followers, rather than to actually address and fix a problem?
Possibly that is what it is designed to be. The politicians who voted for it might have wanted to raise the money for their next election campaign from the MPAA without closing off their kids access to free content.
I don't mean that you are a racist and I wasn't trying to indicate that you are.
My comment, like yours, was an example. I wasn't personally offended.
My interpretation of your comment was that you meant that a company should have the right to refuse to do business with anybody for pretty much whatever reason they want. That reason could in extreme examples be because they had the wrong skin color or because they have the wrong religion, political opinion etc.
There are already anti discrimination laws in place. Except they break those laws, a company should have the right to refuse to do business with anybody for pretty much whatever reason they want. I thought it could be assumed that was qualified with "unless they break the law" otherwise every comment about a companies activities needs that exclusion specifically stated. It will make discussing such things laborious and boring.
Yes the newspapers sued Google and won and Google interpreted the court order as broadly as possible in order to punish said newspapers
Withdrawing the help of google's free services is certainly detrimental, however they did demand it. The difficulty I have is that the lawsuit seems to be a money grab, not a principled stand. If it were about the principle, they'd be happy to just buy advertising from google now. They want to use google's services for nothing to benefit their business, but only if google can't use their service for nothing. Why should it all be one way? They have established in their lawsuit that payment is required for their material, let them also pay for the use of google's servers if they wish to use them.
From the article: "We regret having to do so," he said. "We would be happy to re-include Copiepresse if they would indicate their desire to appear in Google Search and waive the potential penalties." It seems google is not taking a hard line on this.
First of all, that is exactly the same as saying "I can't fathom a world where stores are forced to provide service to anybody they don't wish to." an argument that was used by racism apologists for decades.
I do not think "people with a different skin colour" and "companies that sue us" are analogous groups.
I do some contracting. I will work for and/or with people of any nationality. Sue me for any reason and it's unlikely that I will do business with you again. I do not think that this makes me in any way equivalent to a racist.
These newspapers sued google. If they now want to be listed on google's pages it is appropriate for them to buy advertising, not whine and bitch about the results of their own lawsuit.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Wanting to travel is not probable cause and no warrants are issued anyway. Seems pretty clearly illegal to me.
Evil and idiocy can be very difficult to distinguish from each other and can have identical results. I'm not convinced that stupidity is a valid moral excuse for any given action.
There really is no such thing as a free market when it comes to currency, unless you wanna go back to beaver pelts and shiny rocks.
Currency is an enabler of the free market, just like the court system and police force. The free market system relies on conditions created by the government, such as contracts being enforceable and theft being punishable. A free market banking system should be viewed in much the same light as a free market court system or free market police force. It is corruption.
There is enough bias in favour of the rich in the courts as it is, imagine a system where court judgements were openly sold at auction. Our banking system now is the financial equivalent of that, IMO. Deregulating the banks is destructive to the free market. It is not an example of a failure of the free market, it is sabotage of the free market.
Socialism has worked well in big parts of Europe for longer than your country has been around.
I'm not well versed in history, but I thought Europe was mainly controlled by monarchy when the US was founded. Which parts of Europe had socialist governments in 1788?
You're just afraid of equality because it's the antithesis of wealth. There's nothing wrong with earning your keep and getting paid according to your job, but once you no longer have to work you're about as productive and useful to society as the poor slob begging in the streets.
If I make something I should own it. Justice demands it. So if I build a house, it should be my house. If my neighbour works harder than me and builds a better house, we no longer have equality but we do have justice. If he continues to work while I am enjoying relaxing and entertaining in my house and builds another house the inequality is greater, but still just. Now if another neighbour doesn't want to build a house, perhaps because he plans to move cities in a few years, he can pay rent to the first neighbour. If he continues to build houses, the inequality continues to increase but with no injustice to anyone. Eventually the rent will enable him to retire. That his greater productivity obligates him to donate his work to "society" is incomprehensible to me.
Equality of opportunity is good, equality of outcome is gross injustice.
Yeah, right. Like Bush did. He (and Clinton too) took the "nanny-state yoke from around the neck" of the bankers and they fucked the system for all it was worth
I do not view banking as the same as private enterprise, since the currency they trade in is government created. While I am generally in favour of as little regulation as practical (note: that's not NO regulations, just keep it minimal) I think that a government created service such as banking should have a high degree of government control.
If an individual could offer their services and employ a few others with little or no government interference it would be very different than giving the banks a free pass to do anything. I would like to see tax taken some other way than personal income tax, so that individuals did not need to report income.
I have a part time contracting business in addition to my full time job. I could give someone a day's work from time to time but the paperwork to do so legally is prohibitive. That's the problem I'd like to see solved. Once my business is going well enough to support me full time, I'll probably end up employing people, but I will delay that until it's absolutely necessary because of the complexity it adds to my record keeping.
It's easy to continue a semi-rant on this, but I suppose the bottom line is that it's really silly to consider your spouse a traitor for seeking or achieving sexual fulfillment.
It's about the trust and security. If my wife wants more sexual fulfilment, she can speak to me and I'll do whatever it takes, provided it involves just me and her.
Sometimes I'm attracted to other women, perhaps I would find sex with them "fulfilling" but I don't do it because I would be breaching trust. It would also be risking disease contamination. How would my wife feel if I gave her herpes contracted by "fulfilling" my sexual desires? If you both agreed the risk was acceptable then fine, but neither she nor I feel that way.
The thing to trust, however, is that each partner trusts that their relationship is not defined by sexual exclusivity.
Our relationship is certainly defined (partly) by sexual exclusivity. If not for sex, we'd just be friends, we wouldn't have entered an agreement where all our property is shared property.
Was Anthony Weiner somehow less capable as a legislator overnight because we suddenly knew more about who and how he liked to fuck?
Not less capable, less trustworthy. Seriously, if a legislator "caught" in those activities was single and admitted to them, even boasted about them, I wouldn't care. If they were married and their wife made a statement to the effect that they had an open relationship and it was all above board, I wouldn't care. If they've betrayed their spouse, they'll betray their constituents just as willingly.
What a horrible thing to promise. you shall forsake all others so you need to renounce your family, and turn away from your children in need.
To the extent that my relationship with my wife requires it, that is exactly the situation. I do not choose anyone over her and if they want continued relationship with me they have to respect that.
Thats not the artist's problem; the radios, pubs etc need to refuse to pay and fight it out if theyre being extorted. EIther way, its is not directly the artist's problem.
It destroys part of the competitive edge of indie music. "If you play our music instead of major label music, you won't have to pay the ASCAP royalties" except you still do have to pay.
Theoretically, we could nuke the earth from orbit, destroying all botnets. (and life) It's always a question whether it's worth it not.
The claim made is that "no botnet is indestructible, any botnet can be taken down". You appear to have misread that as "we can take down all botnets, eliminating them so that there are no botnets in existence. These are very different claims.
It is an underhanded tactic. It is an exploit of the idiocy that you point out. Manipulative behaviour does not become OK simply because the person you manipulate is less intelligent than you.
US law should apply to citizens of the US and visitors to the US. There is no reason a citizen of another country who is not in the US should be expected to act in the interest of the US, or keep US secrets.
We (Australia) shouldn't have rolled over when you kept David Hicks for five years without trial. We should extract Julian Assange from any country that agrees to send him to the US by any means necessary.
It won't happen but we should have our own nuclear weapons so we could break our military ties with the US.
This suggests that the game market today is most easily accessible and liked by a certain type of people who happens to be 37-41 years old.
My guess?
That's an age where you start to cut back hours on the job and start earning real money.
Hmmm, yes, I'm making more money but my real reason is that we got a console for the kids. Now we play console games together instead of board games and TV like when I was a kid.
I enjoyed games as a child, didn't have much time for them for many years as an adult, now my kids have reached the age they like computer games. So now perhaps I'm a "gamer". I play console games with my kids regularly, the way my parents played board games or watched TV with me. I'm 39.
I think that games were seen as a kids thing not because of any intrinsic quality but that's they way they entered the market. Within 40 years computer/console games will be popular in retirement homes and will become something you do with your grandkids.
This isn't a revolution. This is crime. Simple as that. We live in a society of laws. Criminals should be arrested and prosecuted. If you don't like the laws, press to have them changed.
The Sony executives who made the decision to install a rootkit on their customers computers will never be charged although if you or I got caught doing such a thing we would likely do time in prison.
When your adversary can effectively lobby for laws to favour them and disadvantage you, and the laws that criminalise their behaviour are not enforced then you are faced with the choice of accepting oppression or operating outside the law. While widespread criminal activity and vigilantism is unacceptable, sometimes the justice system and law is so corrupt that submission to it is even more unacceptable. We have arguably reached that point now.
The Robin Hood legend is about the robbers who were different.
The Robin Hood legend is about individuals trying to punish tyrany
The Robin Hood legend is about the supporters of one tyrant (Richard the Lionheart) opposing the rise of a different tyrant (his brother John) while the first tyrant was off waging a "holy war". I'm sure the strategy of gaining popular support by giving the money of the rulers to the poor ceased quickly when the first tyrant was restored to power.
There are plenty of countries with virtually no firearms in public hands that have (much) lower homicides per capita than the US.
England, for example, has a lower murder rate than the US. However, in the past England had a much higher rate of gun ownership. In fact, the 2nd amendment to the US constitution is based on English law (the Bill of Rights 1689). During the time firearms were common and freely available in both England and the US, the murder rate in England was still much lower. To the best of my knowledge, the current difference in availability of firearms is not significant in the difference in murder rates between these countries.
Anything I have seen that claims a reduced murder rate from firearms bans only claims reduced "firearms murders", not murder rates overall, which seems pretty pointless unless you would be distressed at a murder committed with a gun but ok with murder committed in some other way. The exception is my country, Australia, which has had a decreasing murder rate, but we already had a decreasing murder rate before the gun laws were introduced. It seems difficult to demonstrate that gun restrictions have actually contributed to the decreased murder rate.
Most Australians seem ok with how our laws are, it is not an election issue, for example (well, not mainstream, there is a shooters party but it is pretty small). I grew up in a rural area where everyone had guns and nobody thought anything about it. There were no militia types, all very ordinary, just a tool of the trade in farming and of course you would use it for self defence if that ever came up, but it never did for anyone I knew.
Most "information" from both sides of the gun debate is just propaganda and emotional hype. Your neighbours are probably not murderous villains stopped only by their inability to legally purchase a firearm and you are not a rugged individualist who will overthrow your oppressive government or fight off a horde of attackers.
Nevertheless, we do have some court cases where women have been found not guilty after killing people with guns based on self defence, yet self defence is not a legal reason to acquire a firearm here. That is clearly a legal absurdity. Either firearms must be available for self defence or people who use them for self defence should be convicted even if they are women.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does this seem like one of those "feel good" laws that politicians pass to get brownie points with their followers, rather than to actually address and fix a problem?
Possibly that is what it is designed to be. The politicians who voted for it might have wanted to raise the money for their next election campaign from the MPAA without closing off their kids access to free content.
I don't mean that you are a racist and I wasn't trying to indicate that you are.
My comment, like yours, was an example. I wasn't personally offended.
My interpretation of your comment was that you meant that a company should have the right to refuse to do business with anybody for pretty much whatever reason they want.
That reason could in extreme examples be because they had the wrong skin color or because they have the wrong religion, political opinion etc.
There are already anti discrimination laws in place. Except they break those laws, a company should have the right to refuse to do business with anybody for pretty much whatever reason they want. I thought it could be assumed that was qualified with "unless they break the law" otherwise every comment about a companies activities needs that exclusion specifically stated. It will make discussing such things laborious and boring.
Yes the newspapers sued Google and won and Google interpreted the court order as broadly as possible in order to punish said newspapers
Withdrawing the help of google's free services is certainly detrimental, however they did demand it. The difficulty I have is that the lawsuit seems to be a money grab, not a principled stand. If it were about the principle, they'd be happy to just buy advertising from google now. They want to use google's services for nothing to benefit their business, but only if google can't use their service for nothing. Why should it all be one way? They have established in their lawsuit that payment is required for their material, let them also pay for the use of google's servers if they wish to use them.
From the article: "We regret having to do so," he said. "We would be happy to re-include Copiepresse if they would indicate their desire to appear in Google Search and waive the potential penalties." It seems google is not taking a hard line on this.
Part of the rules is that you get notified of the result. Getting a false positive notification is most definitely unfair.
First of all, that is exactly the same as saying "I can't fathom a world where stores are forced to provide service to anybody they don't wish to." an argument that was used by racism apologists for decades.
I do not think "people with a different skin colour" and "companies that sue us" are analogous groups.
I do some contracting. I will work for and/or with people of any nationality. Sue me for any reason and it's unlikely that I will do business with you again. I do not think that this makes me in any way equivalent to a racist.
These newspapers sued google. If they now want to be listed on google's pages it is appropriate for them to buy advertising, not whine and bitch about the results of their own lawsuit.
The choice, the 3d porno scanner, can't detect underwear bombs. It sees right through them and shows your junk instead.
MY junk IS a weapon!
How many people have been touched under duress for the sake of "security" in airports?
How many people have had their throats cut by terrorists on aircraft?
That's not all: what happens to you if you successfully resist a TSA officer? What happens to you if you successfully resist a terrorist?
TSA actions are not clearly illegal.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Wanting to travel is not probable cause and no warrants are issued anyway. Seems pretty clearly illegal to me.
Evil and idiocy can be very difficult to distinguish from each other and can have identical results. I'm not convinced that stupidity is a valid moral excuse for any given action.
There really is no such thing as a free market when it comes to currency, unless you wanna go back to beaver pelts and shiny rocks.
Currency is an enabler of the free market, just like the court system and police force. The free market system relies on conditions created by the government, such as contracts being enforceable and theft being punishable. A free market banking system should be viewed in much the same light as a free market court system or free market police force. It is corruption.
There is enough bias in favour of the rich in the courts as it is, imagine a system where court judgements were openly sold at auction. Our banking system now is the financial equivalent of that, IMO. Deregulating the banks is destructive to the free market. It is not an example of a failure of the free market, it is sabotage of the free market.
Socialism has worked well in big parts of Europe for longer than your country has been around.
I'm not well versed in history, but I thought Europe was mainly controlled by monarchy when the US was founded. Which parts of Europe had socialist governments in 1788?
You're just afraid of equality because it's the antithesis of wealth. There's nothing wrong with earning your keep and getting paid according to your job, but once you no longer have to work you're about as productive and useful to society as the poor slob begging in the streets.
If I make something I should own it. Justice demands it. So if I build a house, it should be my house. If my neighbour works harder than me and builds a better house, we no longer have equality but we do have justice. If he continues to work while I am enjoying relaxing and entertaining in my house and builds another house the inequality is greater, but still just. Now if another neighbour doesn't want to build a house, perhaps because he plans to move cities in a few years, he can pay rent to the first neighbour. If he continues to build houses, the inequality continues to increase but with no injustice to anyone. Eventually the rent will enable him to retire. That his greater productivity obligates him to donate his work to "society" is incomprehensible to me.
Equality of opportunity is good, equality of outcome is gross injustice.
Yeah, right. Like Bush did. He (and Clinton too) took the "nanny-state yoke from around the neck" of the bankers and they fucked the system for all it was worth
I do not view banking as the same as private enterprise, since the currency they trade in is government created. While I am generally in favour of as little regulation as practical (note: that's not NO regulations, just keep it minimal) I think that a government created service such as banking should have a high degree of government control.
If an individual could offer their services and employ a few others with little or no government interference it would be very different than giving the banks a free pass to do anything. I would like to see tax taken some other way than personal income tax, so that individuals did not need to report income.
I have a part time contracting business in addition to my full time job. I could give someone a day's work from time to time but the paperwork to do so legally is prohibitive. That's the problem I'd like to see solved. Once my business is going well enough to support me full time, I'll probably end up employing people, but I will delay that until it's absolutely necessary because of the complexity it adds to my record keeping.
It's easy to continue a semi-rant on this, but I suppose the bottom line is that it's really silly to consider your spouse a traitor for seeking or achieving sexual fulfillment.
It's about the trust and security. If my wife wants more sexual fulfilment, she can speak to me and I'll do whatever it takes, provided it involves just me and her.
Sometimes I'm attracted to other women, perhaps I would find sex with them "fulfilling" but I don't do it because I would be breaching trust. It would also be risking disease contamination. How would my wife feel if I gave her herpes contracted by "fulfilling" my sexual desires? If you both agreed the risk was acceptable then fine, but neither she nor I feel that way.
The thing to trust, however, is that each partner trusts that their relationship is not defined by sexual exclusivity.
Our relationship is certainly defined (partly) by sexual exclusivity. If not for sex, we'd just be friends, we wouldn't have entered an agreement where all our property is shared property.
Was Anthony Weiner somehow less capable as a legislator overnight because we suddenly knew more about who and how he liked to fuck?
Not less capable, less trustworthy. Seriously, if a legislator "caught" in those activities was single and admitted to them, even boasted about them, I wouldn't care. If they were married and their wife made a statement to the effect that they had an open relationship and it was all above board, I wouldn't care. If they've betrayed their spouse, they'll betray their constituents just as willingly.
What a horrible thing to promise. you shall forsake all others so you need to renounce your family, and turn away from your children in need.
To the extent that my relationship with my wife requires it, that is exactly the situation. I do not choose anyone over her and if they want continued relationship with me they have to respect that.
Thats not the artist's problem; the radios, pubs etc need to refuse to pay and fight it out if theyre being extorted. EIther way, its is not directly the artist's problem.
It destroys part of the competitive edge of indie music. "If you play our music instead of major label music, you won't have to pay the ASCAP royalties" except you still do have to pay.
I found your video to be too slow so I didn't watch it. I read much faster than that, do you have a text version?
Theoretically, we could nuke the earth from orbit, destroying all botnets. (and life) It's always a question whether it's worth it not.
The claim made is that "no botnet is indestructible, any botnet can be taken down". You appear to have misread that as "we can take down all botnets, eliminating them so that there are no botnets in existence. These are very different claims.
I'm sorry, I just don't see how the fact that idiots don't read, even though they can, makes Google evil.
Some of us view it as similar to Fine print
It is an underhanded tactic. It is an exploit of the idiocy that you point out. Manipulative behaviour does not become OK simply because the person you manipulate is less intelligent than you.
US law should apply to citizens of the US and visitors to the US. There is no reason a citizen of another country who is not in the US should be expected to act in the interest of the US, or keep US secrets.
We (Australia) shouldn't have rolled over when you kept David Hicks for five years without trial. We should extract Julian Assange from any country that agrees to send him to the US by any means necessary.
It won't happen but we should have our own nuclear weapons so we could break our military ties with the US.
My local video store started to requiring a password to rent movies. I tell them "Idontwantapasswordtorentmovies".
And that's where I get stuck - trying to figure out what is profitable to smuggle into China. Milk products made from milk?
Religious texts and other restricted or forbidden items or material, drugs. Whatever is illegal and has demand and sometimes it isn't about profit.
This suggests that the game market today is most easily accessible and liked by a certain type of people who happens to be 37-41 years old.
My guess?
That's an age where you start to cut back hours on the job and start earning real money.
Hmmm, yes, I'm making more money but my real reason is that we got a console for the kids. Now we play console games together instead of board games and TV like when I was a kid.
I enjoyed games as a child, didn't have much time for them for many years as an adult, now my kids have reached the age they like computer games. So now perhaps I'm a "gamer". I play console games with my kids regularly, the way my parents played board games or watched TV with me. I'm 39.
I think that games were seen as a kids thing not because of any intrinsic quality but that's they way they entered the market. Within 40 years computer/console games will be popular in retirement homes and will become something you do with your grandkids.
This isn't a revolution. This is crime. Simple as that. We live in a society of laws. Criminals should be arrested and prosecuted. If you don't like the laws, press to have them changed.
The Sony executives who made the decision to install a rootkit on their customers computers will never be charged although if you or I got caught doing such a thing we would likely do time in prison.
When your adversary can effectively lobby for laws to favour them and disadvantage you, and the laws that criminalise their behaviour are not enforced then you are faced with the choice of accepting oppression or operating outside the law. While widespread criminal activity and vigilantism is unacceptable, sometimes the justice system and law is so corrupt that submission to it is even more unacceptable. We have arguably reached that point now.
The Robin Hood legend is about the robbers who were different.
The Robin Hood legend is about individuals trying to punish tyrany
The Robin Hood legend is about the supporters of one tyrant (Richard the Lionheart) opposing the rise of a different tyrant (his brother John) while the first tyrant was off waging a "holy war". I'm sure the strategy of gaining popular support by giving the money of the rulers to the poor ceased quickly when the first tyrant was restored to power.
There are plenty of countries with virtually no firearms in public hands that have (much) lower homicides per capita than the US.
England, for example, has a lower murder rate than the US. However, in the past England had a much higher rate of gun ownership. In fact, the 2nd amendment to the US constitution is based on English law (the Bill of Rights 1689). During the time firearms were common and freely available in both England and the US, the murder rate in England was still much lower. To the best of my knowledge, the current difference in availability of firearms is not significant in the difference in murder rates between these countries.
Anything I have seen that claims a reduced murder rate from firearms bans only claims reduced "firearms murders", not murder rates overall, which seems pretty pointless unless you would be distressed at a murder committed with a gun but ok with murder committed in some other way. The exception is my country, Australia, which has had a decreasing murder rate, but we already had a decreasing murder rate before the gun laws were introduced. It seems difficult to demonstrate that gun restrictions have actually contributed to the decreased murder rate.
Most Australians seem ok with how our laws are, it is not an election issue, for example (well, not mainstream, there is a shooters party but it is pretty small). I grew up in a rural area where everyone had guns and nobody thought anything about it. There were no militia types, all very ordinary, just a tool of the trade in farming and of course you would use it for self defence if that ever came up, but it never did for anyone I knew.
Most "information" from both sides of the gun debate is just propaganda and emotional hype. Your neighbours are probably not murderous villains stopped only by their inability to legally purchase a firearm and you are not a rugged individualist who will overthrow your oppressive government or fight off a horde of attackers.
Nevertheless, we do have some court cases where women have been found not guilty after killing people with guns based on self defence, yet self defence is not a legal reason to acquire a firearm here. That is clearly a legal absurdity. Either firearms must be available for self defence or people who use them for self defence should be convicted even if they are women.