"It's targeted at vandalism, social disorderly conduct, theft" That might be the intention, but the reality is that it's targeted against anyone who can hear it.
"You seem to be under the impression that youths are harmless. Fortunately many aren't so ignorant." You seem to be under the impression that you can deprive someone else of their human rights without your own human rights being weakened. This kind of device sets a very worrying precedent - for what is the right to assemble worth, if you're unable to hear? (apologies to the matrix)
"Unfortunately when trying to do something about it, adult males are being beaten to death by teenagers infront of there kids." That sucks - and those kids should have the book thrown at them. But for fuck's sake - I don't want to live in a police state because of a few dickheads.
"The climatologists keep tweaking the models until they get what they expect and are then smug because the models "prove" their predictions."
That is a load of crap. If you don't know the difference between a priori and post hoc analysis, then please refrain from speaking as if you do. There's enough mis-information regarding climate change already without people like you contributing.
To digress, this attitude that climate scientists' results are due to such well understood logical fallacies is like saying that the theory of evolution is rubbish because the past has already happened. You don't believe that, do you? The alternative is accepting that the majority of climate scientists are intelligent people who know what they're doing - but that would be rather more inconvenient, wouldn't it?
So please explain to me how you would attempt to claim the moral high-ground when you are deliberately providing your own noise-pollution.
Personally, I would feel like vandalising any such system that existed in my neighbourhood (and I'm a law-abiding citizen). I'd certainly be lodging formal complaints with the local council, and writing letters to the owner.
The whole reason that there is an outcry against this is because it isn't targeted at criminals but at young people. As for going from that to your other assertions - seems to me dodgy at best. I don't want to live in a police state, but that doesn't mean I don't support the rule of law and personal responsibility. Who are these people defending themselves from - young people? This kind of attitude is as indicative of a "nightmare dystopia" as anything.
Finally, this is noise-pollution, nothing more. Imagine how these shop-owners would feel if I was next door and had my guitar amp cranking - I bet they'd be calling the cops.
I realise you're joking, and it's a very funny, clever and original joke, but...
Since when did the term tree-hugger become a pejorative? If, I had the choice between knowing a "tree-hugger" and knowing a person whose only governing motive was greed and avarice... I know which I'd choose.
"Surely they'll have to prove what is it that I'm downloading?"
It's quite simple really: 1. you provide a small blood sample to the computer to verify your identity (this is transmitted to your ISP to allow internet access) 2. all your keystrokes are sent to your ISP (they promise not to steal your passwords) 3. random screen-shots are transmitted to your ISP 4. your PC will analyse video data from your webcam, seeking signs of guilt on your face.
It is vital that we protect people's intellectual property. I'm sure that no one will object to these minor inconveniences when the future of music is at stake!
(Unfortunately this system won't work with Linux or Mac, but we're working closely with MS for integration in future releases. Linux and Mac users unfortunately will not be able to access the internet.)
You're talking about people who've shown up - on the street - to make their voices heard. This doesn't sound like the behaviour of an anon chaos group to me - it sounds like a group of citizens who care.
Jeez man - enough of the blatant racism. There are dickheads in China. There government sucks. There are dickheads in the US too. The US government sucks. There are dickheads in most countries, and governments in general suck.Your one-eyed assessment of the situation is so naive it's laughable. Even if this particular anecdote is true, it doesn't imply a government scale program to displace US students from US universities.
"They don't even qualify as neutral" - WTF? In the last half-century the US has covertly funded coups, assasinations, invaded multiple countries, etc. You're whinging about someone stealing technology? I personally think this spying isn't so great. At the same time I wonder if more international technological parity would be a stabilizer.
"the effect they're having on our economy" - what about the affect that endless wars and corruption are having on the US economy? Or is it simpler to just find a scapegoat?
"since we don't have tens of thousands of American engineers and students flooding Chinese companies and schools." - that could be because we still consider ourselves to be inherently better than other races, and don't accept that they can be just as smart and enterprising as we can be.
"I think we should start doing the same thing for foreign students," - this shows that you have no idea of the contribution that foreign students and academics make to the US. The number of asian students that come to the US, and decide to stay there is large. This is especially true in an age when Western schooling is falling apart (I recently read that ~60% of British schoolchildren want to be celebrities when they grow up).
Seriously, chill out. Yes, this espionage is fairly dodgy, but nobody's clean there. Some of China's economic activity is definitely designed to bring the US down a peg or two - but it wouldn't be so effective if the US's economy wasn't so badly mismanaged in the first place. If you're a US citizen, I suggest you get your own house in order, before you advocate burning down someone else's.
do unto others?
on
Ethics In IT
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think a better approach is do unto others as you think they would want done to them
That helps avoid the "well, I'd want to be killed if I was gay" rationale...
It's interesting, these days, to hear someone say something like "Oh, Linux is no good - it doesn't even have a good multi-track music recording program. Linux will never replace [closed source platform]".
Remarks about Audacity and Ardour aside, it's come a hell of a long way in 10 years, when priorities were things like drivers, windowing systems and text editors.
I think it's worth bearing in mind that most of these people are not artists, they're entertainers* - there's a big difference. IMO (as a broad generalisation) the people who support the RIAA are the big-name musos, and they're the entertainers. Most of the artistic musicians have already left the big labels for independent labels or self-distribution.
*I don't mean this as a pejorative, but bands like Metallica, Britney Spears and U2 (deliberately lumped together) are not pushing the musical envelope. There is a place for entertainers, of course!
While I agree with you in principle I see a problem in your reasoning:
What about nanotechnological machines? Where is the line drawn between a complex "chemical" (like DNA), and a machine? It's very arguable that DNA is (at minimum) software (in which case copyright is more applicable than patents - except in countries with crap governments), but it's also arguable that DNA is a machine.
"difficult for a computer to interpret, but doable for a human."
V1agra is used for what condition? If you "make your girlfriend really happy" what are you doing? What are p1lls and ph@rma? Where do I go for a j0b, paying $3000/month and all I need to do is use the intenet at home?
Seems to me like someone's got it worked out already...
But if other people have contributed to the code - anything at all - then won't the code forevermore be GPL - even future versions? I thought that was the point of the GPL..
ie. to get away from it, he'd have to reimplement everything from scratch..
Yeah, I agree. I'm not really defending OLPC, cause I don't know the ins and outs.
However, I thought the GGP was rather harsh in the comment. It seems to me that people are whinging not about the charitable org not doing what they promised with the $$ (ie. delivering XOs to kiddies), but rather that they don't have their shiny new toy...
"If you don't like a company's service, you can always choose another."
That's a good point, and it's true that one can't pick and choose governments, except by moving country.
Having said that, it seems to me that many (medium to large) companies are in such a position of power that they show almost complete disregard for their customers (and that this is quite consistent across companies). Does this really provide choice either?
In my mind, capitalism is just like democracy, except the strength of your vote is dictated by the depth of your pocket.
Point taken - I should not have made an ad hominem comment - I expressed myself poorly.
What I was trying to say is that there are a lot of people trumpeting the virtues of the invisible hand of the market as solving all problems, and that government is inherently useless. I think some of those people have an agenda.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, I didn't even know you could navigate to yahoo.com any more. I don't think I've typed that in since about 1995...
"It's targeted at vandalism, social disorderly conduct, theft"
That might be the intention, but the reality is that it's targeted against anyone who can hear it.
"You seem to be under the impression that youths are harmless. Fortunately many aren't so ignorant."
You seem to be under the impression that you can deprive someone else of their human rights without your own human rights being weakened. This kind of device sets a very worrying precedent - for what is the right to assemble worth, if you're unable to hear? (apologies to the matrix)
"Unfortunately when trying to do something about it, adult males are being beaten to death by teenagers infront of there kids."
That sucks - and those kids should have the book thrown at them. But for fuck's sake - I don't want to live in a police state because of a few dickheads.
"I was very, very tempted to ignore you." Are you implying that my post contains "intelligent untruths"? If so, please clarify your position.
If you think that then you obviously have no understanding of probability. Please educate yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_distribution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_variable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics
"The climatologists keep tweaking the models until they get what they expect and are then smug because the models "prove" their predictions."
That is a load of crap. If you don't know the difference between a priori and post hoc analysis, then please refrain from speaking as if you do. There's enough mis-information regarding climate change already without people like you contributing.
To digress, this attitude that climate scientists' results are due to such well understood logical fallacies is like saying that the theory of evolution is rubbish because the past has already happened. You don't believe that, do you? The alternative is accepting that the majority of climate scientists are intelligent people who know what they're doing - but that would be rather more inconvenient, wouldn't it?
"Why not just hire a psychologist?"
did you mean an astrologer? a psychologist is a scientist...
So please explain to me how you would attempt to claim the moral high-ground when you are deliberately providing your own noise-pollution.
Personally, I would feel like vandalising any such system that existed in my neighbourhood (and I'm a law-abiding citizen). I'd certainly be lodging formal complaints with the local council, and writing letters to the owner.
The whole reason that there is an outcry against this is because it isn't targeted at criminals but at young people. As for going from that to your other assertions - seems to me dodgy at best. I don't want to live in a police state, but that doesn't mean I don't support the rule of law and personal responsibility. Who are these people defending themselves from - young people? This kind of attitude is as indicative of a "nightmare dystopia" as anything.
Finally, this is noise-pollution, nothing more. Imagine how these shop-owners would feel if I was next door and had my guitar amp cranking - I bet they'd be calling the cops.
...although it might slow the adoption of music downloads. ;-)
I realise you're joking, and it's a very funny, clever and original joke, but...
Since when did the term tree-hugger become a pejorative? If, I had the choice between knowing a "tree-hugger" and knowing a person whose only governing motive was greed and avarice... I know which I'd choose.
uhuh, and my 486 SX33 is a Turing machine - so it's Vista capable too.
"Surely they'll have to prove what is it that I'm downloading?"
It's quite simple really:
1. you provide a small blood sample to the computer to verify your identity (this is transmitted to your ISP to allow internet access)
2. all your keystrokes are sent to your ISP (they promise not to steal your passwords)
3. random screen-shots are transmitted to your ISP
4. your PC will analyse video data from your webcam, seeking signs of guilt on your face.
It is vital that we protect people's intellectual property. I'm sure that no one will object to these minor inconveniences when the future of music is at stake!
(Unfortunately this system won't work with Linux or Mac, but we're working closely with MS for integration in future releases. Linux and Mac users unfortunately will not be able to access the internet.)
I think your troll mod is a bit unfair, but..
You're talking about people who've shown up - on the street - to make their voices heard. This doesn't sound like the behaviour of an anon chaos group to me - it sounds like a group of citizens who care.
Jeez man - enough of the blatant racism. There are dickheads in China. There government sucks. There are dickheads in the US too. The US government sucks. There are dickheads in most countries, and governments in general suck.Your one-eyed assessment of the situation is so naive it's laughable. Even if this particular anecdote is true, it doesn't imply a government scale program to displace US students from US universities.
"They don't even qualify as neutral" - WTF? In the last half-century the US has covertly funded coups, assasinations, invaded multiple countries, etc. You're whinging about someone stealing technology? I personally think this spying isn't so great. At the same time I wonder if more international technological parity would be a stabilizer.
"the effect they're having on our economy" - what about the affect that endless wars and corruption are having on the US economy? Or is it simpler to just find a scapegoat?
"since we don't have tens of thousands of American engineers and students flooding Chinese companies and schools." - that could be because we still consider ourselves to be inherently better than other races, and don't accept that they can be just as smart and enterprising as we can be.
"I think we should start doing the same thing for foreign students," - this shows that you have no idea of the contribution that foreign students and academics make to the US. The number of asian students that come to the US, and decide to stay there is large. This is especially true in an age when Western schooling is falling apart (I recently read that ~60% of British schoolchildren want to be celebrities when they grow up).
Seriously, chill out. Yes, this espionage is fairly dodgy, but nobody's clean there. Some of China's economic activity is definitely designed to bring the US down a peg or two - but it wouldn't be so effective if the US's economy wasn't so badly mismanaged in the first place. If you're a US citizen, I suggest you get your own house in order, before you advocate burning down someone else's.
I think a better approach is do unto others as you think they would want done to them
That helps avoid the "well, I'd want to be killed if I was gay" rationale...
It's interesting, these days, to hear someone say something like "Oh, Linux is no good - it doesn't even have a good multi-track music recording program. Linux will never replace [closed source platform]".
Remarks about Audacity and Ardour aside, it's come a hell of a long way in 10 years, when priorities were things like drivers, windowing systems and text editors.
Go Free Software!
I think it's worth bearing in mind that most of these people are not artists, they're entertainers* - there's a big difference. IMO (as a broad generalisation) the people who support the RIAA are the big-name musos, and they're the entertainers. Most of the artistic musicians have already left the big labels for independent labels or self-distribution.
*I don't mean this as a pejorative, but bands like Metallica, Britney Spears and U2 (deliberately lumped together) are not pushing the musical envelope. There is a place for entertainers, of course!
"But if you count the good and the bad that science brings us, we're unquestionably much better off because of science."
So you say _now_. What will the answer be in 20 years, I wonder?
(I am a scientist)
While I agree with you in principle I see a problem in your reasoning:
What about nanotechnological machines? Where is the line drawn between a complex "chemical" (like DNA), and a machine? It's very arguable that DNA is (at minimum) software (in which case copyright is more applicable than patents - except in countries with crap governments), but it's also arguable that DNA is a machine.
Seems like a quagmire to me...
"difficult for a computer to interpret, but doable for a human."
V1agra is used for what condition?
If you "make your girlfriend really happy" what are you doing?
What are p1lls and ph@rma?
Where do I go for a j0b, paying $3000/month and all I need to do is use the intenet at home?
Seems to me like someone's got it worked out already...
Why the hell was the parent moderated "troll"? Are there phone-company lackeys disguised as libertarians here?
But if other people have contributed to the code - anything at all - then won't the code forevermore be GPL - even future versions? I thought that was the point of the GPL..
ie. to get away from it, he'd have to reimplement everything from scratch..
Yeah, I agree. I'm not really defending OLPC, cause I don't know the ins and outs.
However, I thought the GGP was rather harsh in the comment. It seems to me that people are whinging not about the charitable org not doing what they promised with the $$ (ie. delivering XOs to kiddies), but rather that they don't have their shiny new toy...
"If you don't like a company's service, you can always choose another."
That's a good point, and it's true that one can't pick and choose governments, except by moving country.
Having said that, it seems to me that many (medium to large) companies are in such a position of power that they show almost complete disregard for their customers (and that this is quite consistent across companies). Does this really provide choice either?
In my mind, capitalism is just like democracy, except the strength of your vote is dictated by the depth of your pocket.
"Yes, and whoever disagrees with me is a moron."
Point taken - I should not have made an ad hominem comment - I expressed myself poorly.
What I was trying to say is that there are a lot of people trumpeting the virtues of the invisible hand of the market as solving all problems, and that government is inherently useless. I think some of those people have an agenda.