I still wonder if those who attended basic wordprocessor courses are being taught to use the right feature to achieve what was desired.
No. The secretaries need to spend as little time as possible formatting a document and so they're told to hit the fat G (my localization's "bold") and the slanted I and hit return freely. So the document is ready in 5 minutes. Then when the time comes to move a single word around and it blows up in their face, their boss is not smart enough to realize this is due to the stupid way things are done. That's because he himself couldn't do it right, so he does not know where the problems arise from.
That's usually when I am called in and I make a scene (ok, not quite) about using styles and maybe some brainz. But really, by now all hope is lost.
And then, people ask me why I use Word 6. Go figure.
This argument is flawed. Logging to Slashdot now from my house and two hours from now from my friend's house should count for two visits, and so it rightfully does. The article writer seemed to have a problem with this? ZOMG 2 different IPs...
And if my IP has changed but I'm still here... that's because I haven't surfed for many hours at least otherwise the lease will be renewed and the address will stay the same. So it should still count for two visits. Duh.
Actually, in my country all providers offer per-minute packages along with always-on packages. They are mostly aimed at noobs and people who only spend a little time on the net (and would be better off with dialup but hey, everybody has ADSL so they must have it too). But anyway that's some freedom of choice, isn't it?
I beg to disagree. centrally planned economies [...] lead to the same kind of imbalances in economic and political power as capitalism only with different groups of people accumulating power is simply not true. They lead to *much worse* imbalances: the only way to become wealthy (or simply more than barely surviving) in such systems is to be part of influential groups (militay, politicians, bankers) whereas in capitalist country you *do* stand a chance to become wealthy even if you are not. Of course, having that kind of connections will make you rich here, too, but it's not the only way. I just need to look at the people around me who were born "normal" and later got wealthy because they worked their asses off. And I am trying to be like them. a democratic participatory economy that ensures that people have [something] is based on the premise of the need to achieve some greater good and that everything can be sacrificed in order to get closer to it - this cannot be achieved without resorting to a police state where everything is controlled and monitored and you are not free to do anything at all. Welcome, quite literally, to Soviet Russia. It is the reason why all communist countries have turned into dictatorships, one by one. I will give the devil his due and don't like painting false pictures that give too much credit to capitalism. Well, of course it's not perfect. Mainly due to the misunderstanding that we can have "half"-capitalist systems where market freedom is only guaranteed up to a certain point - then the country steps in and starts regulating it. This completely destroys the system and leaves the bad points (failure for those who deserve it) while taking away the good ones (success for those who deserve it)! the Soviet Union was not as wasteful as modern capitalist economies it was *much more* wasteful then modern capitalism. We strive to get lower costs and this leads to reduced waste. In Soviet Russia, oftentimes a manufacturing complex was stopped (ie: nobody there was working for weeks) while waiting for supplies to arrive from another one. Other times, if the produced good exceeded the set quota for the month, what was left was *thrown away*. These are both consequences of a centrally planned economy. And the fact that every worker was given a job (no, almost no choice - it was given) that would last him his whole life encouraged slacking a lot - here, you just need to ask anyone who's been in Russia during the 70's.
PS I think this is the first time that differences between communism and capitalism have been discussed on/. without hysteria and lots of screaming:D
Competition... is... wasteful?
Sure enough, when many companies compete, some resources are wasted (duplicate efforts, etc). But there are so many more advantages to competition that such waste becomes irrelevant. And there are ways to get around waste, as well (e.g.: the patent system, if it actually worked).
If you really believe competition is wasteful, you should learn more about communist economic systems such as 70's Russia and see the kind of waste that goes (went) on there. There really is no match.
Whereas in communist countries people enjoy terabytes/sec speeds?
Wake up man, in my capitalist country I spend 30 euros/month and I have 12mbps (and real ones at that). That's due to... guess what... competition. But hey, you're free to move to Cambodia any time you want. See you.
How comes you're not there yet?
How comes such an important right as free speech is promptly trampled over when it comes to publishing Mein Kampf or giving out hate speech in Germany or Austria? How comes the neo-nazi are not allowed to use the roman salute in some countries in "libertarian" Europe? Wake up man, we're not any better than them. Actually... they can burn their flag if they want because that's free speech. Here I would go to jail if I did the same.
If he sees a sign saying "candy shop" and enters and asks for candies and they give him pr0n, I think he's got some rights to complain and leave. He said in his post that he would LIKE people to behave sensibly, not that people who trick you should be shot on sight.
Besides... if you wanna step into the "individuals' rights" territory: how about my right to do what I want with my voice (and scream at them) or email server (and email flood them) or botnet (and DDOS them)? It's my property, you know?
The only thing that's needed here is some sense in both the pr0n distributors and those who dislike pr0n. To the latter: you don't wanna see it, ok, but don't censor it. To the former: they don't want to see it, but you want to make it accessible, ok, but don't go scrubbing it in their face! Otherwise it will simply degenerate in yet another war, fought by means of regulations and laws and trials and public campaigns and blocking software and circumventing popups and DNS poisoning and...
Well, not to be a prick but... what other way is there to ensure evidence is not destroyed? ISP logs are not evidence and if they notify you in advance you're going to delete everything. So... assuming that copyright infringement needs to be punished, seizing your disks (maybe not the whole PC) is the right way to do it.
There's also the terms which state: * If the software doesn't work, you can't sue us. We never claimed it would work.
Unbelievable! I went and checked and sure enough it is there:
The copyright holders and/or other parties provide the program "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. the entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program is with you. should the program prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction.
It's right there... in the GPL! OMG! So, seeing as you "laugh at or ignore these kinds of agreements", I take it you employ no GPL software at all, right?
Thanks for taking the time to read and understand thoroughly what I wrote, and for insulting me while reinforcing my very same idea. Which was to *refuse* this idea of there being a Greater Good.
Oh and fuck you too. Have a nice day, dumbass.
Just like you cannot buy alcohol and give it to minors or drive a car around without a license even if you bought it, you are not allowed to do certain things with software you licensed.
Modern societies go out of their way to restrict one's freedom, get over it. Either you accept it and get bent or refuse this idea of society being more important than the individuals it's made up of... but if you do, you'd better refuse it in bulk, not only when it suits your political agenda. In this case, you apply the idea to "consumer rights", but you should apply it to just about anything else.
OK, I used a shortcut. I should have said "when you try to regulate a market but everybody knows that people who want it bad enough will get around its regulations and the law-abiding citizens will be the ones to pay, as usual, and good men need no law to tell them what is right and bad men will evade them anyway, and then you only have two choices: either brutally repress those who try to escape restrictions (yay dictatorship) or let everybody free and at least the 'good guys' won't be the only ones left behind".
There:D
But competition is not welcome in a capitalist system. Mature markets evolve to a duopoly/monopoly because the market winners actively supress competition and thereby foster inefficient markets.
True. Until they reach such dimensions and become so slow and bloated (can a company be "bloated"?) that their competitors can leverage their agility and quickness-to-market (yay marketspeech) to gain more power and little by little displace them. That's why I say an unregulated market is a self-regulating market. And a healthy one.
I assure you I consider my own opinions critically and I have pondered over the various different systems and options: I know some, though obviously not all of them. And I still see that unregulated markets are the best ones.
... but this is what happens when you regulate a market. Yes it looked like a good idea on the surface. But it failed miserably. Markets NEED to be unregulated, people!
Well, at least I have no interest in these ridiculous domains.
the responsibility for the crime will always remain with the criminal
and if, after being the victim, you start being the criminal, you will be held responsible for your crimes. for example: if you get HIV while being raped (btw... that's sad in so many ways I cannot count them) and you later go around merrily spreading it, you are certainly not responsible for being raped but you are for spreading the disease.
I don't think it's as insane as you think. It's quite akin to hold passengers responsible for whatever some ill-intentioned guy put in their luggage without their knowledge. After all, it's your duty to know the dangers of the machine you're operating: people are responsible for the damage if they drive at 150 km/h into a building and lose control of the car, even if they "did not know" that it was dangerous to do so.
Besides... responsible people are always the ones who have to pay for everyone else. If I keep my machine clean and safe, why do I have to suffer because you can't keep yours as mine? Is it my fault if you're stupid/misinformed/uninterested? Clearly it is not. On the contrary, I will think you are responsible for any damage (probably just some wasted bandwidth, but still) your machine is causing.
Do you know anything about me? No? That's why you're using projection to try and understand what I think/know/do. That says nothing about who I actually am, but speaks volumes about what YOU do - pull things from your ass.
For your information, yes, even two days ago I was talking to a girl who ran away from a communist regime and discussing the relative advantages/disadvantages of living in either of the opposing systems. And that's just anecdotal... I might quote many more *actual people* I have talked to and discussed this issue with. But I guess it wouldn't change the mind of an armchair communist who thinks everybody behaves as childishly as he does.
Slashdot Mirror
I still wonder if those who attended basic wordprocessor courses are being taught to use the right feature to achieve what was desired.
No. The secretaries need to spend as little time as possible formatting a document and so they're told to hit the fat G (my localization's "bold") and the slanted I and hit return freely. So the document is ready in 5 minutes. Then when the time comes to move a single word around and it blows up in their face, their boss is not smart enough to realize this is due to the stupid way things are done. That's because he himself couldn't do it right, so he does not know where the problems arise from.
That's usually when I am called in and I make a scene (ok, not quite) about using styles and maybe some brainz. But really, by now all hope is lost.
And then, people ask me why I use Word 6. Go figure.
This argument is flawed. Logging to Slashdot now from my house and two hours from now from my friend's house should count for two visits, and so it rightfully does. The article writer seemed to have a problem with this? ZOMG 2 different IPs...
And if my IP has changed but I'm still here... that's because I haven't surfed for many hours at least otherwise the lease will be renewed and the address will stay the same. So it should still count for two visits. Duh.
Actually, in my country all providers offer per-minute packages along with always-on packages. They are mostly aimed at noobs and people who only spend a little time on the net (and would be better off with dialup but hey, everybody has ADSL so they must have it too). But anyway that's some freedom of choice, isn't it?
On the other hand, some people (almost always males) are insecure, and crapping on others tends to be a learned behaviour
I take it you have never spent some time in a group with lots of girls...
I beg to disagree. /. without hysteria and lots of screaming :D
centrally planned economies [...] lead to the same kind of imbalances in economic and political power as capitalism only with different groups of people accumulating power is simply not true. They lead to *much worse* imbalances: the only way to become wealthy (or simply more than barely surviving) in such systems is to be part of influential groups (militay, politicians, bankers) whereas in capitalist country you *do* stand a chance to become wealthy even if you are not. Of course, having that kind of connections will make you rich here, too, but it's not the only way. I just need to look at the people around me who were born "normal" and later got wealthy because they worked their asses off. And I am trying to be like them.
a democratic participatory economy that ensures that people have [something] is based on the premise of the need to achieve some greater good and that everything can be sacrificed in order to get closer to it - this cannot be achieved without resorting to a police state where everything is controlled and monitored and you are not free to do anything at all. Welcome, quite literally, to Soviet Russia. It is the reason why all communist countries have turned into dictatorships, one by one.
I will give the devil his due and don't like painting false pictures that give too much credit to capitalism. Well, of course it's not perfect. Mainly due to the misunderstanding that we can have "half"-capitalist systems where market freedom is only guaranteed up to a certain point - then the country steps in and starts regulating it. This completely destroys the system and leaves the bad points (failure for those who deserve it) while taking away the good ones (success for those who deserve it)!
the Soviet Union was not as wasteful as modern capitalist economies it was *much more* wasteful then modern capitalism. We strive to get lower costs and this leads to reduced waste. In Soviet Russia, oftentimes a manufacturing complex was stopped (ie: nobody there was working for weeks) while waiting for supplies to arrive from another one. Other times, if the produced good exceeded the set quota for the month, what was left was *thrown away*. These are both consequences of a centrally planned economy. And the fact that every worker was given a job (no, almost no choice - it was given) that would last him his whole life encouraged slacking a lot - here, you just need to ask anyone who's been in Russia during the 70's.
PS I think this is the first time that differences between communism and capitalism have been discussed on
Competition... is... wasteful?
Sure enough, when many companies compete, some resources are wasted (duplicate efforts, etc). But there are so many more advantages to competition that such waste becomes irrelevant. And there are ways to get around waste, as well (e.g.: the patent system, if it actually worked).
If you really believe competition is wasteful, you should learn more about communist economic systems such as 70's Russia and see the kind of waste that goes (went) on there. There really is no match.
Whereas in communist countries people enjoy terabytes/sec speeds?
Wake up man, in my capitalist country I spend 30 euros/month and I have 12mbps (and real ones at that). That's due to... guess what... competition. But hey, you're free to move to Cambodia any time you want. See you.
How comes you're not there yet?
... are a real paranoid :D
Thanks for the ride, though. Food for thought!
How comes such an important right as free speech is promptly trampled over when it comes to publishing Mein Kampf or giving out hate speech in Germany or Austria? How comes the neo-nazi are not allowed to use the roman salute in some countries in "libertarian" Europe? Wake up man, we're not any better than them. Actually... they can burn their flag if they want because that's free speech. Here I would go to jail if I did the same.
Since people started paying them such sums.
If he sees a sign saying "candy shop" and enters and asks for candies and they give him pr0n, I think he's got some rights to complain and leave. He said in his post that he would LIKE people to behave sensibly, not that people who trick you should be shot on sight.
Besides... if you wanna step into the "individuals' rights" territory: how about my right to do what I want with my voice (and scream at them) or email server (and email flood them) or botnet (and DDOS them)? It's my property, you know?
The only thing that's needed here is some sense in both the pr0n distributors and those who dislike pr0n. To the latter: you don't wanna see it, ok, but don't censor it. To the former: they don't want to see it, but you want to make it accessible, ok, but don't go scrubbing it in their face! Otherwise it will simply degenerate in yet another war, fought by means of regulations and laws and trials and public campaigns and blocking software and circumventing popups and DNS poisoning and...
Well, not to be a prick but... what other way is there to ensure evidence is not destroyed? ISP logs are not evidence and if they notify you in advance you're going to delete everything. So... assuming that copyright infringement needs to be punished, seizing your disks (maybe not the whole PC) is the right way to do it.
There's also the terms which state: * If the software doesn't work, you can't sue us. We never claimed it would work.
Unbelievable! I went and checked and sure enough it is there:
The copyright holders and/or other parties provide the program "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. the entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program is with you. should the program prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction.
It's right there... in the GPL! OMG! So, seeing as you "laugh at or ignore these kinds of agreements", I take it you employ no GPL software at all, right?
Thanks for taking the time to read and understand thoroughly what I wrote, and for insulting me while reinforcing my very same idea. Which was to *refuse* this idea of there being a Greater Good.
Oh and fuck you too. Have a nice day, dumbass.
Just like you cannot buy alcohol and give it to minors or drive a car around without a license even if you bought it, you are not allowed to do certain things with software you licensed.
Modern societies go out of their way to restrict one's freedom, get over it. Either you accept it and get bent or refuse this idea of society being more important than the individuals it's made up of... but if you do, you'd better refuse it in bulk, not only when it suits your political agenda. In this case, you apply the idea to "consumer rights", but you should apply it to just about anything else.
And if the mission fails to confirm it, it will be because FSM has changed the results with His Noodly Appendage! Sweet!
Not really, seeing as how it has ALL to do with market regulation.
And I am not going to substantiate this, as you didn't with your statement, either.
OK, I used a shortcut. I should have said "when you try to regulate a market but everybody knows that people who want it bad enough will get around its regulations and the law-abiding citizens will be the ones to pay, as usual, and good men need no law to tell them what is right and bad men will evade them anyway, and then you only have two choices: either brutally repress those who try to escape restrictions (yay dictatorship) or let everybody free and at least the 'good guys' won't be the only ones left behind". :D
There
But competition is not welcome in a capitalist system. Mature markets evolve to a duopoly/monopoly because the market winners actively supress competition and thereby foster inefficient markets.
True. Until they reach such dimensions and become so slow and bloated (can a company be "bloated"?) that their competitors can leverage their agility and quickness-to-market (yay marketspeech) to gain more power and little by little displace them. That's why I say an unregulated market is a self-regulating market. And a healthy one.
I assure you I consider my own opinions critically and I have pondered over the various different systems and options: I know some, though obviously not all of them. And I still see that unregulated markets are the best ones.
Exactly. Welcome to the real world.
Oh and would you like some cheese with that whine?
... but this is what happens when you regulate a market. Yes it looked like a good idea on the surface. But it failed miserably. Markets NEED to be unregulated, people!
Well, at least I have no interest in these ridiculous domains.
the responsibility for the crime will always remain with the criminal
and if, after being the victim, you start being the criminal, you will be held responsible for your crimes. for example: if you get HIV while being raped (btw... that's sad in so many ways I cannot count them) and you later go around merrily spreading it, you are certainly not responsible for being raped but you are for spreading the disease.
I don't think it's as insane as you think. It's quite akin to hold passengers responsible for whatever some ill-intentioned guy put in their luggage without their knowledge. After all, it's your duty to know the dangers of the machine you're operating: people are responsible for the damage if they drive at 150 km/h into a building and lose control of the car, even if they "did not know" that it was dangerous to do so.
Besides... responsible people are always the ones who have to pay for everyone else. If I keep my machine clean and safe, why do I have to suffer because you can't keep yours as mine? Is it my fault if you're stupid/misinformed/uninterested? Clearly it is not. On the contrary, I will think you are responsible for any damage (probably just some wasted bandwidth, but still) your machine is causing.
Do you know anything about me? No? That's why you're using projection to try and understand what I think/know/do. That says nothing about who I actually am, but speaks volumes about what YOU do - pull things from your ass.
For your information, yes, even two days ago I was talking to a girl who ran away from a communist regime and discussing the relative advantages/disadvantages of living in either of the opposing systems. And that's just anecdotal... I might quote many more *actual people* I have talked to and discussed this issue with. But I guess it wouldn't change the mind of an armchair communist who thinks everybody behaves as childishly as he does.
You clearly haven't been living in a capitalist country for long if you think that companies give a damn about what the consumer wants.
Whereas in a communist country they certainly do.