All information can be codified as a number. As much as I disklike copyrights themselves,saying it's just a number doesn't change the issue one bit.
Sure it does. There's a difference between something codified as a number, when the significance of that something lies elsewhere.
In this case, the significance of the number is the fact that it IS that number -- i.e., it has no other significance other than how it's used. Kind of like pi.
Whereas, this post was codified as a number when it was transmitted to slashdot; however, it has significance (and/or meaning) outside of the literal value of that number. The post is copyrighted; the number used to codify the post is not.
To get back to the pi example, can you imagine if they HAD used pi as the key? That'd set us back a bit.
It seems your opinions are shaded by the subset of music downloaders you interact with.
I don't know many people who care about [legality]. People know where their music-purchasing dollar goes (whether CD, ITunes, or otherwise) and they know it isn't to the artists.
You don't think the RIAA scare tactics and FUD are working? Sure, the people who are knowleadgeable or have been downloading music for a long time don't care. But I know many people who use iTunes because they've heard the horror stories of those persecuted by the RIAA, and factor that risk (illogically, probably) into their purchase decision.
Again, I've never heard people say they couldn't find stuff on Bittorrent.
Oh? How about the people who've never used Bittorrent? They plug in their iPod and are good to go, it's inconvenient to find another source for music -- especially for those less technologically apt.
That sounds like an MS or RIAA press release. Do you work for a PR firm? If not, you should.
I don't. But, it's common knowledge that RIAA cos. have seeded crap torrents to annoy people. The malware problem is overstated (sorry), but some people avoid Bittorrents for the same reason they avoid generic medicines, because the perceived quality is lower, even when it's not.
Are you taking marketing at a community college or something?
No. Some people use economic decision-making theory to explain problems that are explainable via economic decision-making theory. This ihas nothing to do with marketing. I've had similar discussions with dada21 in the past, so I know he understands what I'm talking about, even if you don't.
We do have a "parallel ITMS with free songs", dickhead, it's called bittorrent. And despite it's availability, people still use ITunes.
No need for name-calling, especially since you didn't bother to think about why I was making a distinction. I'll spell out why BT is not an equivalent to ITMS.
1. Legality of copyrighted content. This alone distinguishes the two in the minds of potential users, many of whom are concerned about potential liability. 2. Convenience. For most people, it's far easier to use ITMS than to find torrents of a song they are looking for. 3. Dependability. One can trust that songs on ITMS are what you're looking for. Not so with bittorrents, which can be seeded with malware, etc.
There are more reasons, as well, but I'm not going to bother since it's obvious you didn't bother reading what I wrote.
Some people use ITMS because when they make their purchase decision, they make price adjustments based on factors outside of the good they are actually receiving for their money.
If you weren't such a blithering dolt, maybe you'd bother trying to understand concepts, instead of making kneejerk response posts when the point of your response was addressed in the OP.
At any rate, online "crimes" in a game should not be dealt with in real life. There should be an in-game mechanism just like there's an in-life mechanism. Have an in-game jail or just simply ban the offender -- this should be decided by the community.
Hmm. What about other media besides online games? If I write a book where you are a main character, and you get raped, does that mean I should only be punished in a book? And is the punishment based on using your likeness without permission, or is it based on having you get raped?
Most countries have privacy laws against using someone's likeness in print without their permission (exceptions such as satire etc wrt public figures excluded). In an online game/world, isn't raping an avatar like using someone's likeness without permission, since the owner of the avatar is not "writing" the event? It's not like game combat, which is part of the implied allowed usage in a game like WoW. Of course, this depends on the virtual world -- is control of your avatar by another to be expected in the course of the game?
I've got to think this through some more, but my basic idea right now is that it's not rape, but it might violate privacy considerations depending on the context of the game world and whether the act is "published" or not.
Hmm. I do manually what you're suggesting when searching. Enter my search terms, and if most of the results are for something different than what I'm looking for, I'll add terms to remove the extraneous results. This is based on the couple lines of content info returned by Google (of course, those lines aren't 100% fresh with Google).
So, I think what you're suggesting is that the search engine prompt those terms to help people narrow their search? Didn't Ask Jeeves try this and miserably fail -- and if so, is that because of execution or concept?
Also, a free society is one where an individual can make any decision they want, as long as they do not directly harm the physical property or body of another individual.
Unless they've freely agreed to give up the right to do so. The state is created with the consent of the people; the people agree to abide by the rules created by the state. This can (and has) gotten out of hand, but the rule of law is considered necessary by most people, since actions, even if nearly harmless in the singular, can prove disastrous in the aggregate.
Speech can not do physical harm, so speech can not be criminal, no matter how repulsive it is.
Not so. Speech can cause physical harm, by inducing stress. I don't think that's a valid reason for limiting speech, but it does cause problems with your physical harm criteria for criminality -- because if speech can cause harm, but cannot be limited, why should other actions that cause harm be limited? Is it a matter of degree, a matter of intent, or a matter of arbitrary guidelines?
Provide me with a process to reimburse the authors/distributors/producers of a given content, and also allow me to put that content into a system that works with my life, and I will pay AND continue to be a customer
That's great, but countless others won't take the high road. I think I understand your idealism, but in practice, that's not how it works. Economics applies here, and people generally will not pay a premium out of goodwill when they don't have to.
Currently, some people pay full price for content because they factor in adjustments when comparing prices, such as the risk of being caught pirating the content. Your philosphy includes an adjustment of goodwill towards the content producers; if you could choose between paying zero for a song and rewarding no one, and paying $1 for a song with $1 going to the creator, you'd choose the $1 option. This is because your goodwill towards the producer is worth $1 or more.
Whether this works out in the long run, though, is questionable -- and it depends on your opinion of human nature. My belief is that most people will not make a goodwill adjustment. People don't use ITMS just because they prefer to get songs legally; they use iTunes because it's convenient (another adjustment). If we had parallel ITMS, one with free songs, and one with $1 songs (same library), my belief is people would almost exclusively use the free one -- enough so that the people who actually created the content could not see a liveable return on their investments (creative, time, capital). But that's just me, with my cynical view of human nature.
However, I think contextural disambiguation questions like what you're suggesting are already served by "search within results" queries. Proposing likely criteria for narrowing down the results would be, I think, a disservice. It pigeonholes sites, but worse than that, pigeonholes searches. This leads to easy gaming of the search system -- SEO would cause pretty much every site to make sure it's associated with the typical disambiguation terms, thus removing the utility of those terms.
RDF could do very useful things, like throwing up a disambiguation question at the top os the results page when you've not made it clear what you want
It looks like you're trying to search for tentacle porn. Would you like help?
No thanks, I don't need Clippy in my search engine.
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
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Er, no. Not at all. You're still making a lot of assumptions.
You have the outward attitude of a slave master, you see everything you do as having an effect on everyone around you, as if the world revolved around your action
What does recognizing that my actions have effects have to do with slavery? You're really reaching for something to attack there. Almost every action you take affects other people. The bigger the impact, the more important it is to think about the consequences of your actions. You imply that you shouldn't examine how your actions affect others, rather you should just do whatever fits your predetermined moral code -- this opens you up to two very negative things. One, that despite an action of your fitting into your moral code, it has serious ill effects on others. This is the primary weakness of moral absolutism -- that your blinders cause your actions to have a net evil effect even though it fits into your moral code. Two, it is the height of hubris to think that your moral code supercedes the impact of your actions on others. It is not hubris to acknowledge that my actions impact others -- it is hubris for you to dismiss those impacts as immaterial.
My code drives my actions, your code evidently drives others actions.
No. You still have no understanding of what we're discussing, and your making things up to support your untenable position -- which doesn't work, since a strwaman doesn't actually support your argument. Go read about moral relativism and absolutism at wikipedia.
You, are an enabler, a part of the problem, and not part of the solution. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
A couple trite phrases don't help support your point at all. Working to prevent evil actions is not enabling evil actions. Saying "I don't support evil", and then allowing it to happen simply because you're not the one doing the evil is enabling. Still, you claim moral superiority when you tacitly allow evil to continue. Oh boy, you terminated a support contract. Good going. Did that make any difference in the end? No. That evil company simply hired someone else. You washed your hands of it, but did nothing to make a difference. Your position is self-serving and tolerant of evil.
As to your mention of slavery wrt moral relativism, that's bullshit. Though actions must be interpreted through a cultural lens, the actions must still be judged according to my moral code, which is independent of that culture.
Also, you should note that I'm not a moral relativist. I've been trying to explain to you what it is, since you have no understanding of the topic. Regardless, the actions we're discussing have nothing to do with relativism or absolutism -- what they have to do with is what actions we take based upon our evaluation of evil.
I'm going to address "lead, follow, or get out of the way" again, since I don't think you've thought that through either. When faced with evil, you choose to get out of the way of those who would oppose it. Fine, it's a valid choice, though one that I think is morally irresponsible. But, you need to acknowledge that is what you are doing, and not think you're leading some fight against evil while you walk away.
Basically, and I bring this up because your sig mentions cowardice, you oppose immorality in a coward's manner. You choose to let others fight if they want to, but you yourself won't fight, you'll just withdraw support while you continue your selfish actions. Not that selfish actions are inherently wrong, but they need to be recognized as selfish.
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
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Unfortunately, you don't even know what moral relativism is. It doesn't mean my morals are inconstant; it means that the morals of others need to be viewed through the lens of their culture.
My morals predicate that actions I take must be considered in terms of their net negative and positive effects.
Absolutism doesn't require anything of others. It requires everything of myself, and only myself.
Apparently you don't understand what moral absolutism is, either. It doesn't mean one's own morals are constant; it means that one views the actions of everyone else under the lens of your own absolute moral code that is independent of other people. By definition, moral absolutism is about other people.
Before you discuss moral relativism and moral absolutism, I suggest you get a clue and learn what they are.
but there's a distinction to be made between what you do at home and being professional at work. No one has to know what you get upto at home, and so the risk is more controlled, however at work any number of your users could cash in on that $1000 software piracy report reward or whatever. Furthermore, I'd imagine the penalties for what would probably be commercial copyright infringement would be much more harsh than for home copying also.
There's another distinction too -- at home you're exposing yourself to risk; you get caught, you face the consequences. At work you're exposing your employer as well as yourself.
I think it's a lot more wrong to expose others than to expose just myself.
Err, I probalby could phrase that a bit better... I think it's bad to expose others to risk than to just expose myself to risk.
I thought about that, but also I don't think it'll be cheap to set up shop on Mars or other planets. Plus, I thought the acronym pretty fitting for how we treat planetary environments (well, the one we have access to) in general.
I received a big 1099-C from three advertisers bases, and tossed it in the pile with my other 1099-C for my accountant.
If you received a 1099C from someone, that means you welched on a debt to them and they wrote off the debt as uncollectable -- the 1099C shows that debt writeoff, which you need to claim as incme on your taxes.
That's semi-ridiculous -- if you do ANYTHING for money, incorporate as a S-corp. Don't do anything on your own, otherwise your tax incentives are lost. I've never been a W9 employee, because it reduces my ability to provide tax write-offs and deductions.
Depends on the situation, also depends on the employment status. There are laws governing whether a company can treat certain employees as independent contractors or not; just because you've yet to run afoul of enforcement of those laws doesn't mean your employer and you aren't breaking them.
If you're concerned, post anonymously. Sure, the government may go after a few bloggers annually, but what is the risk ratio? 10 out of 1 million? 5 out of 10 million?
That risk ratio rises with the impact of your blogging. If you're not reaching anyone, your risk approaches zero. If you are getting your message out, that risk climbs. Your statistics are also quite a bit off, since that risk ratio should really only include blogs that have material that would attract official attention (whether independently, or upon request of another entity). You should still take precautions not to implicate others who you don't want to be forced to give up later, if you're blogging about legally sensitive things.
Windows and doors that lock aren't inherently "impenetrable", though. If you want to go beyond that, you call ADT or someone similar and let them take it to the next level.
So you go get aftermarket security for your windows and doors. What Schneier is saying is that for IT, the ADT-equivalent in your analogy will be introduced into products pre-market. It's like the builders of your home automatically installed ADT and Sloman and you just know that you're secure without knowing what ADT and Sloman are. I.e. security will be a non-issue to people actually buying tech products; only producers will need to be concerned about it.
A major problem with this is that we'll never be inherently secure, and a false sense of security makes adverse events much nastier. I think it's a pipe dream (should I say tube dream?) to think that security infiltration will not keep advancing -- and the advance of infiltration tools is what requires us to get aftermarket security products.
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
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I advocate not helping evil.
You advocate taking the moral high ground while actually doing nothing.
A corporation like google is too large to change from the inside.
So the better solution is to ignore it? Extremely weak -- you advocate giving up and letting evil live.
Your suggestion sounds noble, but it's just an absolutely stupid sisyphean task
As opposed to your solution, which is defeatism? You've already lost the fight against evil because you believe it's unwinnable. Preventing Google or any other entity from taking one evil action is infinitely better than ignoring the problem because you feel it's out of your reach. Furthermore, there is power in numbers. One small contribution each by 10,000 people can add up to a huge impact. If we were to extend your defeatist logic further, you are suggesting that ince the amount of evil in the world is insurmountable by one individual, it is pointless to try.
Your moral relativity is what's wrong with the world today. Moral relativity, or more specifically "grey area's", allow you to justify your directly evil actions.
Your moral absolutism is exactly what's wrong with the world today. Your intolerance of others is why we're fighting a misguided war in Iraq, why tens of thousands of innocents are killed in the name of righteousness. The enforcement of moral absolutism results in evil, time and again throughout history.
Also, "grey area's [sic]" of morality have nothing to do with moral relativism. They exist in absolutist systems as well -- what happens when you take an action that has both positive and negative effects? Is it a good act or an evil act? It's a grey area in either system, and your inability to see this implies that you don't consider the full impacts of your actions.
Absolutism requires that you force your value system on others, thereby depriving them of freedom. That's an evil act.
WRT Google, your passivity in the face of their evil actions means that you support their actions, according to your logic. What have you done to bring down Google and supplant it with a "good" organization?
Damn socialist countries with their regulations that cause market inefficiencies and lead to poorer-quality and overpriced goods and a lack of innovation...
Oh. Oh wait. This would be good for me.
Hooray Socialist Countries with thier consumer protections!
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
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Slashdot here is a duality of bullshit. On one hand there are a lot of people here that like to bad mouth corporations, but they'd sign that NDA without reading it because it's 'google'.
On the other hand, there are people that construct sweeping false dichotomies about others who post on Slashdot.
I've yet to see anyone advocate signing that NDA without reading it, or say that they'd do so. So where is your belief that they'd do so coming from? Just because you want something to be true so you can rail against it doesn't mean it's true -- you've made a strawman.
One of the other dualities are the pagans that like to bad mouth christianity even though paganism is just as stupid.
What? I've never seen someone badmouth Christianity on Slashdot who professes to be a Pagan. Or are you lumping all non-Christian faiths (plus agnosticism & atheism) together as pagan?
kdawson didn't write the summary. If you're going to give a Webby for snarkiest headline, it should at least go to theodp, who wrote the damn thing. But theodp should give props to his producer, kdawson, in his acceptance speech.
Admittedly, EBay has problems. But EBay didn't shoot anyone in Virginia.
Furthermore, they didn't cause Cho to go haywire. The fact that they made it easy for him to get magazines is not a problem -- it's a sign of how the internet has changed how people interact with eachother -- which is exactly the reason why EBay got a webby.
Mediums for exchange of information and property are not bad. People who use them for bad purposes are bad.
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
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Not everyone shares the same value set as you, and not everyone who has a different value set is evil.
This is a trait of the weak.
No. It's a trait of those who choose to apply their strength to a different application.
No, no red herring there. Everyone that stayed with google after that, and those that wish to join google after that, implicitly agree with what google did. Evil companies are staffed by evil people
Nothing is as black-and-white as you make it out to be. You've a very simplistic view that must make it hard for you to do anything in life, since everything you do has a negative impact somewhere and is therefore evil, if by inaction you could have prevented the negative impact. Did a friend of yours ever do anything wrong? Did you maintain a friendship with that person, even though by doing so you implicitly agreed with their action? How about a child? If an adult does something wrong, are their parents evil because they did not disown their child?
Categorizing everything into binary black-and-white good and evil is an admission of weakness -- it's admitting that you don't have the ability to weigh relative merits and demerits against eachother.
Not working for an ambiguous company simply because they are ambiguous is also a sign of weakness -- a sign of strength would be to change the company from within.
There will be no shortage of people willing to work for Google. What you are advocating is to ignore evil, rather than working to change it. This is real weakness.
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
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People pick their battles, and the simple fact of the matter is that an NDA just doesn't matter to a lot of people who are interested in working for Google. It has nothing to do with not standing up for themselves; it has to do with them choosing not to fight something completely tangential to their objectives.
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
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What, people can't prioritize differently than you? The ability to make public statements just doesn't matter to most people who are just interested in working on awesome (to them, anyway) projects and being rewarded for their hard work. It doesn't make them sheep, it doesn't make them weak.
hence, the China debacle
Whoa, complete red herring there. The China policy decision by Google is unrelated to this; those policy decisions are not made by the rank-and-file.
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
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Or populated by the strong who happen to be not bothered by the NDA. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Slashdot Mirror
In this case, the significance of the number is the fact that it IS that number -- i.e., it has no other significance other than how it's used. Kind of like pi.
Whereas, this post was codified as a number when it was transmitted to slashdot; however, it has significance (and/or meaning) outside of the literal value of that number. The post is copyrighted; the number used to codify the post is not.
To get back to the pi example, can you imagine if they HAD used pi as the key? That'd set us back a bit.
You don't think the RIAA scare tactics and FUD are working? Sure, the people who are knowleadgeable or have been downloading music for a long time don't care. But I know many people who use iTunes because they've heard the horror stories of those persecuted by the RIAA, and factor that risk (illogically, probably) into their purchase decision.
Oh? How about the people who've never used Bittorrent? They plug in their iPod and are good to go, it's inconvenient to find another source for music -- especially for those less technologically apt.
I don't. But, it's common knowledge that RIAA cos. have seeded crap torrents to annoy people. The malware problem is overstated (sorry), but some people avoid Bittorrents for the same reason they avoid generic medicines, because the perceived quality is lower, even when it's not.
No. Some people use economic decision-making theory to explain problems that are explainable via economic decision-making theory. This ihas nothing to do with marketing. I've had similar discussions with dada21 in the past, so I know he understands what I'm talking about, even if you don't.
1. Legality of copyrighted content. This alone distinguishes the two in the minds of potential users, many of whom are concerned about potential liability.
2. Convenience. For most people, it's far easier to use ITMS than to find torrents of a song they are looking for.
3. Dependability. One can trust that songs on ITMS are what you're looking for. Not so with bittorrents, which can be seeded with malware, etc.
There are more reasons, as well, but I'm not going to bother since it's obvious you didn't bother reading what I wrote.
Some people use ITMS because when they make their purchase decision, they make price adjustments based on factors outside of the good they are actually receiving for their money.
If you weren't such a blithering dolt, maybe you'd bother trying to understand concepts, instead of making kneejerk response posts when the point of your response was addressed in the OP.
Most countries have privacy laws against using someone's likeness in print without their permission (exceptions such as satire etc wrt public figures excluded). In an online game/world, isn't raping an avatar like using someone's likeness without permission, since the owner of the avatar is not "writing" the event? It's not like game combat, which is part of the implied allowed usage in a game like WoW. Of course, this depends on the virtual world -- is control of your avatar by another to be expected in the course of the game?
I've got to think this through some more, but my basic idea right now is that it's not rape, but it might violate privacy considerations depending on the context of the game world and whether the act is "published" or not.
Hmm. I do manually what you're suggesting when searching. Enter my search terms, and if most of the results are for something different than what I'm looking for, I'll add terms to remove the extraneous results. This is based on the couple lines of content info returned by Google (of course, those lines aren't 100% fresh with Google).
So, I think what you're suggesting is that the search engine prompt those terms to help people narrow their search? Didn't Ask Jeeves try this and miserably fail -- and if so, is that because of execution or concept?
Not so. Speech can cause physical harm, by inducing stress. I don't think that's a valid reason for limiting speech, but it does cause problems with your physical harm criteria for criminality -- because if speech can cause harm, but cannot be limited, why should other actions that cause harm be limited? Is it a matter of degree, a matter of intent, or a matter of arbitrary guidelines?
That's great, but countless others won't take the high road. I think I understand your idealism, but in practice, that's not how it works. Economics applies here, and people generally will not pay a premium out of goodwill when they don't have to.
Currently, some people pay full price for content because they factor in adjustments when comparing prices, such as the risk of being caught pirating the content. Your philosphy includes an adjustment of goodwill towards the content producers; if you could choose between paying zero for a song and rewarding no one, and paying $1 for a song with $1 going to the creator, you'd choose the $1 option. This is because your goodwill towards the producer is worth $1 or more.
Whether this works out in the long run, though, is questionable -- and it depends on your opinion of human nature. My belief is that most people will not make a goodwill adjustment. People don't use ITMS just because they prefer to get songs legally; they use iTunes because it's convenient (another adjustment). If we had parallel ITMS, one with free songs, and one with $1 songs (same library), my belief is people would almost exclusively use the free one -- enough so that the people who actually created the content could not see a liveable return on their investments (creative, time, capital). But that's just me, with my cynical view of human nature.
I know, I was just making a joke.
However, I think contextural disambiguation questions like what you're suggesting are already served by "search within results" queries. Proposing likely criteria for narrowing down the results would be, I think, a disservice. It pigeonholes sites, but worse than that, pigeonholes searches. This leads to easy gaming of the search system -- SEO would cause pretty much every site to make sure it's associated with the typical disambiguation terms, thus removing the utility of those terms.
No thanks, I don't need Clippy in my search engine.
What does recognizing that my actions have effects have to do with slavery? You're really reaching for something to attack there. Almost every action you take affects other people. The bigger the impact, the more important it is to think about the consequences of your actions. You imply that you shouldn't examine how your actions affect others, rather you should just do whatever fits your predetermined moral code -- this opens you up to two very negative things. One, that despite an action of your fitting into your moral code, it has serious ill effects on others. This is the primary weakness of moral absolutism -- that your blinders cause your actions to have a net evil effect even though it fits into your moral code. Two, it is the height of hubris to think that your moral code supercedes the impact of your actions on others. It is not hubris to acknowledge that my actions impact others -- it is hubris for you to dismiss those impacts as immaterial.
No. You still have no understanding of what we're discussing, and your making things up to support your untenable position -- which doesn't work, since a strwaman doesn't actually support your argument. Go read about moral relativism and absolutism at wikipedia.
A couple trite phrases don't help support your point at all. Working to prevent evil actions is not enabling evil actions. Saying "I don't support evil", and then allowing it to happen simply because you're not the one doing the evil is enabling. Still, you claim moral superiority when you tacitly allow evil to continue. Oh boy, you terminated a support contract. Good going. Did that make any difference in the end? No. That evil company simply hired someone else. You washed your hands of it, but did nothing to make a difference. Your position is self-serving and tolerant of evil.
As to your mention of slavery wrt moral relativism, that's bullshit. Though actions must be interpreted through a cultural lens, the actions must still be judged according to my moral code, which is independent of that culture.
Also, you should note that I'm not a moral relativist. I've been trying to explain to you what it is, since you have no understanding of the topic. Regardless, the actions we're discussing have nothing to do with relativism or absolutism -- what they have to do with is what actions we take based upon our evaluation of evil.
I'm going to address "lead, follow, or get out of the way" again, since I don't think you've thought that through either. When faced with evil, you choose to get out of the way of those who would oppose it. Fine, it's a valid choice, though one that I think is morally irresponsible. But, you need to acknowledge that is what you are doing, and not think you're leading some fight against evil while you walk away.
Basically, and I bring this up because your sig mentions cowardice, you oppose immorality in a coward's manner. You choose to let others fight if they want to, but you yourself won't fight, you'll just withdraw support while you continue your selfish actions. Not that selfish actions are inherently wrong, but they need to be recognized as selfish.
My morals predicate that actions I take must be considered in terms of their net negative and positive effects.
Apparently you don't understand what moral absolutism is, either. It doesn't mean one's own morals are constant; it means that one views the actions of everyone else under the lens of your own absolute moral code that is independent of other people. By definition, moral absolutism is about other people.
Before you discuss moral relativism and moral absolutism, I suggest you get a clue and learn what they are.
I think it's a lot more wrong to expose others than to expose just myself.
Err, I probalby could phrase that a bit better... I think it's bad to expose others to risk than to just expose myself to risk.
I thought about that, but also I don't think it'll be cheap to set up shop on Mars or other planets. Plus, I thought the acronym pretty fitting for how we treat planetary environments (well, the one we have access to) in general.
Depends on the situation, also depends on the employment status. There are laws governing whether a company can treat certain employees as independent contractors or not; just because you've yet to run afoul of enforcement of those laws doesn't mean your employer and you aren't breaking them.
That risk ratio rises with the impact of your blogging. If you're not reaching anyone, your risk approaches zero. If you are getting your message out, that risk climbs. Your statistics are also quite a bit off, since that risk ratio should really only include blogs that have material that would attract official attention (whether independently, or upon request of another entity). You should still take precautions not to implicate others who you don't want to be forced to give up later, if you're blogging about legally sensitive things.
Blech. I'm sure even Martians don't put ice in their beer.
A major problem with this is that we'll never be inherently secure, and a false sense of security makes adverse events much nastier. I think it's a pipe dream (should I say tube dream?) to think that security infiltration will not keep advancing -- and the advance of infiltration tools is what requires us to get aftermarket security products.
So the better solution is to ignore it? Extremely weak -- you advocate giving up and letting evil live.
As opposed to your solution, which is defeatism? You've already lost the fight against evil because you believe it's unwinnable. Preventing Google or any other entity from taking one evil action is infinitely better than ignoring the problem because you feel it's out of your reach. Furthermore, there is power in numbers. One small contribution each by 10,000 people can add up to a huge impact. If we were to extend your defeatist logic further, you are suggesting that ince the amount of evil in the world is insurmountable by one individual, it is pointless to try.
Your moral absolutism is exactly what's wrong with the world today. Your intolerance of others is why we're fighting a misguided war in Iraq, why tens of thousands of innocents are killed in the name of righteousness. The enforcement of moral absolutism results in evil, time and again throughout history.
Also, "grey area's [sic]" of morality have nothing to do with moral relativism. They exist in absolutist systems as well -- what happens when you take an action that has both positive and negative effects? Is it a good act or an evil act? It's a grey area in either system, and your inability to see this implies that you don't consider the full impacts of your actions.
Absolutism requires that you force your value system on others, thereby depriving them of freedom. That's an evil act.
WRT Google, your passivity in the face of their evil actions means that you support their actions, according to your logic. What have you done to bring down Google and supplant it with a "good" organization?
Although, it should be said that Redundant Array of Planetary Environments doesn't acronymize as well as Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives.
Damn socialist countries with their regulations that cause market inefficiencies and lead to poorer-quality and overpriced goods and a lack of innovation...
Oh. Oh wait. This would be good for me.
Hooray Socialist Countries with thier consumer protections!
I've yet to see anyone advocate signing that NDA without reading it, or say that they'd do so. So where is your belief that they'd do so coming from? Just because you want something to be true so you can rail against it doesn't mean it's true -- you've made a strawman.
What? I've never seen someone badmouth Christianity on Slashdot who professes to be a Pagan. Or are you lumping all non-Christian faiths (plus agnosticism & atheism) together as pagan?
kdawson didn't write the summary. If you're going to give a Webby for snarkiest headline, it should at least go to theodp, who wrote the damn thing. But theodp should give props to his producer, kdawson, in his acceptance speech.
Holy crap, that is a pretty trollish summary.
Admittedly, EBay has problems. But EBay didn't shoot anyone in Virginia.
Furthermore, they didn't cause Cho to go haywire. The fact that they made it easy for him to get magazines is not a problem -- it's a sign of how the internet has changed how people interact with eachother -- which is exactly the reason why EBay got a webby.
Mediums for exchange of information and property are not bad. People who use them for bad purposes are bad.
No. It's a trait of those who choose to apply their strength to a different application.
Nothing is as black-and-white as you make it out to be. You've a very simplistic view that must make it hard for you to do anything in life, since everything you do has a negative impact somewhere and is therefore evil, if by inaction you could have prevented the negative impact. Did a friend of yours ever do anything wrong? Did you maintain a friendship with that person, even though by doing so you implicitly agreed with their action? How about a child? If an adult does something wrong, are their parents evil because they did not disown their child?
Categorizing everything into binary black-and-white good and evil is an admission of weakness -- it's admitting that you don't have the ability to weigh relative merits and demerits against eachother.
Not working for an ambiguous company simply because they are ambiguous is also a sign of weakness -- a sign of strength would be to change the company from within.
There will be no shortage of people willing to work for Google. What you are advocating is to ignore evil, rather than working to change it. This is real weakness.
People pick their battles, and the simple fact of the matter is that an NDA just doesn't matter to a lot of people who are interested in working for Google. It has nothing to do with not standing up for themselves; it has to do with them choosing not to fight something completely tangential to their objectives.
Whoa, complete red herring there. The China policy decision by Google is unrelated to this; those policy decisions are not made by the rank-and-file.
Or populated by the strong who happen to be not bothered by the NDA. The two aren't mutually exclusive.