The cost of our 'war on terror' is far outstripping any harm that those 'terrorist' groups could have done to us. We have sacrificed the lives of young men and women to war than were lost on 9/11, by a long shot. We have likely spent, or at least will spend, far more money than we lost in that attack. We have lost our faith in our leadership's ability to keep us safe and happy at the same time. We're losing our civil liberties and are devolving into a police state.
Of course. However, you have to ask yourself why 9/11 is enough to mount a large "war on terror" spending billions around the globe and what Iraq has to do with 9/11. The answer is kind of staring us all in the face. 9/11 provides a great excuse for military spending and filtering of contracts and dough to certain people in positions of power in certain corporations. Someone wanted us to go to war before 9/11, a whole lot of people wanted us to. 9/11 is the *excuse* for the killing of the young men, but it's definitely not the reason they are dying. 9/11 is the excuse for the domestic spying, but it's not the reason why it's being done. People in power love to create wars and police states if they have the stomach for it. It's clear that our present leaders do indeed have the stomach for it. It's been said before by someone, and again I'm probably misquoting, that if Bush didn't have 9/11 he would've had to make one. I'm not saying 9/11 was fake or anything (those 9/11 conspiracy people are nuts), but it was certainly very convenient for him and his cronies.
Maybe you're just finally paying attention to it? I'm finding more and more people who couldn't have cared less pre-9/11 are now up in arms about the smallest movement within government that is questionable.
Now here's my real question: Are you same people going to be so scrutinising and demanding when the next guy takes office?
So much of this just seem like political spin to get a Democrat in office that, frankly, I'm concerned that most people are going to turn a blind eye once they get "their boy" in office. What's worse yet is the people who don't think this kind of stuff doesn't go on under nearly every administration. As I see it Bush just finally took off the gloves and gave this kind of thing a face.
Or do you really think Bush was the first one to come up with stuff like the PATRIOT Act off the cuff?
Damn straight, both parties are big government, big nanny and big brother nowadays, if that wasn't the case since the parties originally got their names. Cindy Sheehan, the former leader of the anti-war movement was greeted graciously and shared stages with ranking democrats as the face and voice of the anti-Iraq movement until the Democrats took majorities in both houses of Congress. Cindy continued her fight, because hey, she was actually anti-war, who would've thought it! And when she started to question the Democrats about why they weren't withdrawing funding to end the war that party turned on her as well. It's amazing, anti-war while you aren't in office, get into office and well, we just wanted to be anti-war to score political points. And then just a little while ago she resigned, which was barely covered in the mainstream media. She had her message on her site that both parties in the end are the same and simply use human lives to score political points in order to gain seats of power, but the message wasn't really covered that well in the media and the debate goes on. Nobody stops the war, people keep dying and.gov keeps spying. Both parties are corrupt pieces of shit and both should promptly be out on their asses, but people can never seem to find an alternative.
1. Can we really blame Google and Yahoo for following the law of the land ? What gives an American (or any foreign) company the right to decide which laws are fair in China ? Even democratic countries have different opinions on what exactly freedom of speech is. Should google decide whether it agrees with German holocaust-denial laws, or Indian laws against whipping up religious hate ? Also, isn't it a bit arrogant to assume that American laws are the moral optimum ? Shouldn't Google also refuse to honour DMCA take down requests ?
People always speak about corporations like they are people, and I guess in one way it's an accurate way to see it cuz after all "corporations are people too" as far as the saying goes (and the law too btw). I can't blame a company for anything. Everyone's hand is forced in some way or another in the affair. The CEO of the publicly traded company who stands up to the shareholders ends up out on the street for not fulfilling his legal obligations which say kill every puppy imaginable if it'll generate a profit... I get it, peoples' hands are forced by the system.
What I do not and will not ever understand is why the government (other than because they are on the payroll) doesn't limit this almost criminal activity. Following the "law of the land" in China, what exactly does that mean? By exploiting Chinese workers for cheap goods we essentially shop ourselves into unemployment while continuing slave-like labor overseas. I understand multiculturalism, but eventually you do have to draw the line somewhere. Do you find making 8 year olds work 80 hour weeks for 1 dollar an hour justified here? Well then why China? People are not that different. We shouldn't tolerate corporations pushing slavery and censorship overseas just because "that's the law of the land." It leads for the ability for public corporations (which are just groups of people forced to continue to make more and more money regardless of human or other costs) to exploit the wild wild west countries around the globe and use people as inputs in a giant equation that will lead in the end to the stock price bouncing up a few pennies.
Honestly, voting with the dollar doesn't work in this case. The only way that we can possibly stop this runaway train from ruining our economy, lives and then country (probably in that order) is to draw a line in the sand. Corporations who commit "legal" sins overseas should be held to a standard at home. If they want to be a Chinese corporation, have fun, but if you want to be multinational and do business in the U.S. you should have to follow standards or get the hell out. The question is whether or not we will ever find a politician or judge or anyone in power with the good will to ever draw this line in the sand.
You must remember that the "free market" doesn't take into account some important things: the environment, human rights violations, and loss of employment due to outsourcing. People are an input in an equation, the environment becomes something to be exploited and politicians become business tactics. Laissez Faire doesn't work for a reason, and people need to stop turning a blind eye to what those reasons are.
Spam isn't a bigger deal than junkmail
YES, IT IS. It wastes YOUR ISP's hard-drive, it wastes YOUR time, and it wastes YOUR ISP's BANDWIDTH.
In snail mail at least the junkmailers pay for the mail. With SPAM, they're using YOUR resources to do business. Not to mention promoting the use of botnets and viruses and spyware. They're disrupting the whole e-mail system, don't you get it? About 90% of e-mail I get is spam. That's 10-to-1 ratio. If you don't consider that a big deal, then you've gotten so close to garbage that you forgot how "clean" smells.
Telemarketers call you on cell phones, and I would assume that they pay a phone bill. Same thing. You aren't going to prevent e-mail spam by even charging a nominal amount for e-mailing, you are just going to maybe lose the less profitable spammers. If people have to pay to annoyingly advertise now over existing mediums with established and real costs and still do it, do you really think you'll be able to prevent all spam? Obviously not, as is with other mediums. Bits are cheap, that's why there's more of it. So what?
People talk about ISP costs, obviously they are still in business so I guess they must be covering costs. By charging ordinary customers to send e-mail you are essentially double-dipping them to "save" them from spam, something that most certainly will NOT happen anyway. You'll still get, maybe just a little less spam from "preferred" visa offerings and trips you've already won. We don't see this same crackdown on any other type of spamming, including fax spamming, which uses your own toner, etc, so why must we molest email in order to "fix" it?
But when it comes to profit vs. principle, it seems to hit a wall. Is this the reason markets can't stop human trafficing and a gov't has to step in. Any of you collije edumacated E-conomists want to correct me here?
I'm not an economist, but this is why you can't have laissez faire capitalism to begin with. Letting the market take over human rights is precisely where the government should step in. To me if you are a multi-national corporation that operates and sells goods in the US, you should have to follow certain standards. Outsourcing should meet human rights standards, and any dealings in other companies should have to be held up to a standard. If given the choice between morality and money the corporation will always pick money as has been shown time and time again, the idea is that it's the government that has to force the corporation's hand in doing the "right thing."
Someone said it before and I'm probably misquoting them, but it comes down to I don't give a shit what the CEO of Ford thinks about emissions or his record on environmentalism, just like I don't give a shit what the CEO of Yahoo! thinks about human rights. I'm sure that some of these people are great people with great intentions, but regulation of the environment and human rights should be the government's job, because these things don't have pricetags, and the "free market" can't solve these problems. We shouldn't be expected to accept moral "handouts" from CEOs who decide that they will no longer do the wrong thing, we should be able to tell them to do the right thing, or quit doing business with us, without dollars and cents being the measurement.
I don't get the big deal about spam. Honestly, you get more junkmail than regular mail on a daily basis, but yet there's no big call to outlaw regular postage and allow only confirmed 3rd parties to send you mail. Why the hell should e-mail be any different? If you want my opinion they should make Internet access a utility just like phone, electric and other things and regulate the piss out of ISPs so they can't start payola practices such as "send us $100 dollars or the e-mail gets it." Spam isn't a bigger deal than junkmail, it's actually less costly, so why do we care so much that we'd let them ruin e-mail?
You know the usage of the term "revolution" to describe a cell phone device just makes me sad as a 21st century man. The fact that this is what we apply the term to nowadays shows our supreme lack of imagination or want for something better. If we could have the type of revolution our forefathers had for silly import taxes for health coverage, worker's rights,the ability for criminal corporations to poison our environment, politicians that adhere to big business's needs more than the will of the people, that'd be really doing something, but no, we'd rather have a phone "revolution." How far we've fallen.
I'm not saying this is retailatory... But this wouldn't be the first time Apple has gone out of it's way to punish partners for making preemptive announcements about Apples products. One may recall not too many years ago ATI making a show about Apple using their video cards just before another WWDC (maybe it was Macworld, I forget). Apple proceeded to spend the night pulling ATI's cards from their ready to ship Macs. In keynote the following morning Steve Jobs announced (surely with ATI execs in the front row) that nVidia was their premier partner for Mac video. It has been said that it was 6 monts before ATI execs could get even an executive secretary on the phone.
If this is simply retaliatory and not a readiness issue, then Apple is seriously undermining its own products in favor of PR. The truth of the matter is that it doesn't much matter if Samsung coded solutions for Apple or someone else did it, and it didn't particularly matter if ATI made the video cards or Nvidia, these companies can be switched out rather interchangeably. However, ZFS is a giant step forward in file systems and has loads more features than anything else, ripping it out just because they "spilled the beans" would be babyish and hostile. Any logical mind would reason that this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison of retaliation as there's no similar vendor. It's most likely a readiness issue.
This post is likely going to go straight to -1, troll or flamebait, but it gets tiresome to see people keep pointing and saying "bad" without ever proposing a solution that takes the big picture into account. China's human rights record is pretty shitty, nobody will disagree. But doing business with China, raising the standard of living and raising the education level along with a host of other things, just might be better than trying to cut them off from the world economy.
I don't know why people have to constantly mention karma like it's a source of anything except over-inflated egos, but I digress. Your point is that doing business in China might make China a better place. Tell that to the man who used Yahoo's services. His life is not better for it. Just because Yahoo is a multi-national corporation that does relative good in the US does not mean it will become less evil than the Chinese officials when operating under Chinese law. From the pending court case we see the truth without any waviness: Yahoo in China is prepared to be as evil as the Chinese government in acting to censor its own citizens. You might have relativist arguments over whether or not censorship is evil in China and whether or not violating Chinese law is a bad thing, but some things are very obvious. 1) This man's life has not been bettered by Yahoo's dealings in China, 2) Yahoo's operations haven't "westernized" China, but in fact "communized" Yahoo's operations, as might have been predicted here and other places. You can bend over backwards to provide an excuse for these companies, but the fact remains that they are about the all-mighty dollar, and if local law means they can/have to trounce all over human rights, they can and will. China is better for having Yahoo? Maybe to the Chinese government, as it gains yet another way to spy on its citizens.
After suffering a total hard drive failure, I tried to obtain a factory-restore CD from IBM (this was before they sold the PC business to Lenovo). They told me I couldn't have one without paying because *Microsoft* forbids them from giving them away.
I actually got a disk with my computer, when it worked to simply wipe out all partitions without first prompting and I called tech support they said something like "you are lucky you got a disk at all" about my experience. It's definitely a valid point that MS has gotten less friendly about install disks, leading to bad end user experiences, and with Ubuntu, not only is the disk free online, but they'll send you a batch. My next computer is going to be Ubuntu only as to avoid the dreadful Vista, which I did try before hating I'll have you know. But I'd rather go linux than run that OS, and at least I know I'll get an install disk. I actually have bought a low end linux PC for a second box from Dell...Seeds of the end? I certainly hope so.
The FOSS end of Linux on the desktop nowadays just seems like bonus cookies, because MS's 6-year half baked Vista pales in comparison to Ubuntu's offerings, which, btw, are free.
It's a nice way to generate controversy. Fox is basically a giant paradox. They have the art of controversy down to a fine science. Fox the regular TV station makes the "outrageous" and "immoral" television series and then viewers, after tuning into the immoral series, can turn to Fox News to become outraged about the programming.
Nothing sells quite as well as horseshit and outrage.
9 out of 10 fox news correspondents agree, "THE END IS NIGH! JANET JACKSON SHOWED A TIT!"
Wouldn't ROT6 be more appropriate to music? And wouldn't any ROT just transpose it?
ROT6 would move it up 6 semi-tones, transposing a tune in say, A major to D major, a noticeable change, but yes, still the same sound. Most music is based on relativity to most people as even karaoke bars sometimes offer "transpose" options so singers can sing in a key more suited to their voice. ROT-13 would effectively move the piece up an octave and a semi-tone, making it up a key and a lot higher sounding.
This stuff is neither here nor there though. All that would be needed is to ROT-13 the titles of things, as that's the only way people are able to identify this stuff as their own work. DMCA takedown notice issuers probably aren't real musicians 99% of the time and wouldn't even play the tab before declaring it infringing. Masking the titles would be all that would be needed to get rid of the RIAA monkey on their back. Or you could require some type of registration in order to search and have it appear on the public front as if there are no infringing tabs.
Is listing the chords infringing? Even if they are the wrong chords? What's infringing at one point? The title and artist name? The RIAA has simply gone too far with attacking tab sites and I hope they burn for it.
Why would OBL want that? OBL's direct aim is not to bring peace and prosperity to Palestine. It's not to ensure oppressed Muslims in Saudi Arabia worship on their own terms rather than the Saudi Royal Family's. It's not to make Afghanistan a modern, wealthy, state able to take care of its citizens. OBL's aim, as expressed repeatedly, is to create an Arab superstate, overthrowing the local governments there, and creating instead a single Islamic nation.
I'm sure this is the conclusion you were reaching for, however, you didn't really spell it out and it definitely brought something to mind for me. If the US does do as you say, and continues to do a "bull in a china shop" job in the middle east, effectively destabilizing all stable governments in the region, I would guess then that OBL would hope to one day unite these previously separate countries. That being the case, the US intrusion actually provides the perfect catalyst. Not only does the US ripping down stable governments cause chaos, but it also makes them to blame, giving all of these previously stable countries a common goal and enemy. Even if this doesn't mean that the newly established state can defeat the US directly, it gives them a flag to fly and possibly, a chance at a better organized conflict with Israel.
Cassandra said...
this is awesome Dan thanks!! you OBVIOUSLY have way too much time on your hands...lol but i'm glad to benefit from it!
In other words, DENIED! Sorry, man, we've all been there.
Yep, it's good that you have time on your hands, cuz you are gonna both need that time and your hands, most importantly.
If it's so "basic" to the brain then why is it the exception in human society and not the rule?
Sure you've got the basic need as a parent to provide for the family and to others of your pack/tribe. But "altruism" in its known sense as just giving to somebody you don't even know? If it's so "basic" we'd all be in the homeless kitchens in Thanksgiving (in the US) instead of at home.
If "sex" is so "basic" to the brain then nobody would willingly choose not to have sex. If "hunger" is so "basic" to the brain then nobody would go without food willingly. We often ignore our altruistic impulses in the same way we ignore our impulses to go to the bathroom or eat or drink. We aren't prone to have to obey these things because we have tolerance. A modern man can control his/her impulses. If being altruistic means that you can't accomplish some other, higher goal at the moment you might choose otherwise, despite its pleasurable effects.
Do something good for someone else and tell me it doesn't have any pleasurable effect on the brain at all. It definitely does. People who do volunteer work are often some of the happiest people, this maybe being one of the reasons. Saying if x then y without any proof isn't going to prove much of anything. These people have done the research, and it certainly agrees with what I've found. Just because you ignore a basic source of pleasure doesn't mean that it isn't a source.
Viva laissez faire capitalism! (Wow, I just used a French term outside of a joke.)
That should've been a joke. Fuck laissez faire capitalism, if we had free reign capitalism there would be murder inc, and I'm not talking about the crappy rap label.
Since no one I know besides my oldest brother (who happens to have a knack for buying things that become duds) runs the OS or is even planning to upgrade.
Or, we could copyright the list, and claim it as intellectual property that can't be distributed anywhere except where we originally stored it! Then when MS tries to get it, we can have copyright nazi lawyers go after them!
HBO is understandably worried that if their most popular content is available for free, some customers will stop paying for it. Based on prior experience with people "pirating" cable, I can't say that they're wrong. People used to regularly break into our cable company's distribution boxes and strip off the notch filters back in the days of analog cable, and there's a brisk business out there on the internet for devices to help people to cheat cable & satellite TV channel restrictions.
Okay, I have a question for you, why the hell does the cable company have to charge so damn much money for "premium" channels? If there were options between cable companies, etc. maybe these costs would drop. But since cable companies are practically a monopoly per area with the exception of satellite TV, they feel they can charge 80 dollars a month for HBO and skinemax. Maybe these people ripping off the cable companies didn't want to pay the price, a lot of others (such as myself if I ever even buy cable) would just do without the content. But why oh why does it cost so much more?
The entertainment industry needs a slim down. Their corporate fat cats and their pompous "actors" and "artists" need a reality check on how much they are actually worth. Every one of these fuckers needs a pay cut immediately. DRM and the rest of the schemes is just an attempt to walk around the inevitable. It's too bad, entertainment guys, you don't control all the ways your content can be dispersed anymore. But fucking deal with it.
TV shouldn't be all that expensive, but it ends up like that so someone needs to pay up Someone needs to pay for the exorbitant salaries sportstars and popular actors make. And that person is the one watching it
If you could subscribe to channels at the actual cost it took to make a show we would pay pennies per month we could all afford it. But if when you need to cover Katie Couric's million dollar salary we're in trouble.
It's the system that is broken...
Oh please, like studios really need to pay this money for these losers. The truth is that for most of it, it's the camera that makes the star, not the star that makes the show. There are cases of certain people who make or break a show but for the most part it's the writing, direction, etc. There's probably a half dozen people that can be put in the roles that the shows offer if its written, directed and produced correctly. The sooner studios realize that the more quickly they fire these dime a dozen TV "personalities" and hire people who are willing to work for an actual wage, instead of the amount of money it takes to run two separate private jets per family member plus buy a small island nation.
Haven't the studios been taught anything by the advent of reality television? Appearing in front of a camera isn't that hard of a skill to really learn and the supply for onscreen talent is overwhelming. If they'd stop appealing to gimmicks ("this guy who starred in that good movie 3 years ago, remember? Now he has a TV show") and instead started looking at the other creative departments for reasons why shows fail and succeed, they wouldn't have to pay these morons any longer.
Need an example, "the office" is mostly staffed by a bunch of no namers except for a couple guys from the Daily Show. This show made them stars through excellent writing and good production. The actors themselves had a little to do with it, sure, but with a decent casting director you can find a million people to do a decent job in a role.
As far as katie couric is concerned, I can't believe people actually think she's a good anchor. Why the hell do people continue to obsess over this sort of cute host and pay her entirely too high salary so she can get a botox injection every week? It's easy enough to find a cute face to read a teleprompter.
Actors need to give up the ghost. There's lots of good actors in overabundance. It's the writing and other areas that need help.
Apparently you don't understand the distinction between a single device doing a single thing well (appliance) and a general purpose computing device's OS that has certain anti competitive and lock in/lock out mechanisms and the implied threat that if you create anything actually useful, that the manufacturer of the OS might come in and either compete directly or even give away a competing applications.
Oh I get it, it's just I thought analogies were supposed to make a complicated example *less* confusing.
Okay, not sure I can explain it to you in a way that you can understand. But heck, let me try, in baby terms you might understand.
Okay there is this Sandbox, made by SoftyMicro and there are a whole bunch of toys one can play with in the sandbox.
WTF, I mean, just because it's a sandbox analogy doesn't make it any more applicable or easy to understand. Just because babies use something doesn't make an analogy good or easy, or fitting in this case.
I say take your analogy and shove it up your SoftyMicro sandbox!
They have the same value they've always had, no more no less. If it creates enjoyment for society, it has value. Just because we can now listen to an artist work whenever we want without compensating them doesn't mean we should. I'd argue there's a social contract to support them if they are providing enjoyment for us (and thus providing a service). That doesn't have to mean rich and famous, but just because we now have the ability to get it for free doesn't mean we should take advantage of that to their detriment. We should support each other on a societal level instead of simply basing society on what technology lets us get away with.
I'd beg to differ. Nowadays there are more people. More people = more artists, more artists = more selection. This wouldn't be such a factor if we were geographically isolated, however, since there are substantially more artists in the world, there are more artists overall, since you can listen to just about any artist in the world. As the supply goes up, the demand, and the price is supposed to decrease. The only reason it hasn't is because a bunch of media companies formed a cartel and attempted to fix prices, as they are attempting again with the digital market. Only now, they can no longer control distribution.
Do I owe anything to an artist whose album I download and it doesn't entertain me? Because the RIAA and such think I do. I have no problem buying merchandise, attending concerts and compensating artists. What I do have a problem with is the price fixing 15 dollars a CD crap for pompous artists who put one single on it and 10 tracks of garbage. In the past, we had no choice but to swallow it or listen to only local artists (which, I must say is almost a better choice), but now we have a widespread alternative.
This is just a continuation of the trend towards higher prices for music, in spite of plummeting costs for media and distribution. Wax cylinders -> Lps -> tapes -> Cds -> downloads - it just gets easier to move the data, but the price never goes down!
Prices will go down, when they have to to attract customers. The music industry is about to get real interesting. Album sales are down 11% from last year. There is a shaking up that's about to occur. These relics won't have any say in how it occurs and the consumers will end up benefiting more overall from the downfall of the industry (I predict) than they would from its continuation.
Maybe if you could concentrate on your art full time instead of working a separate full time job you would be able to create spectacular works of art for our entire culture to enjoy. It sounds like you enjoyt he art aspect of your life, wouldn't it be nice if you could contribute to society by making great art and making a living off that (note: by making a living I'm not saying making millions of dollars).
They can. There are a great load of things a person who wants to make the musical arts their career can do. The fact of the matter is that the majority of people that practice their craft for their profession probably aren't even recording artists. Many of them are teachers, teaching others the craft, performers in local bands, and cover bands. It is not as if by free copying there is no income to the music industry. There still is. Perhaps I would be better. Perhaps not. Perhaps the blues would be better if the slaves were allowed to just play their banjos all day, but that wasn't reality. It's not to say that I embrace the idea that artists should struggle in order to create art. Mozart, I'm sure, was relatively well off in his day and made some of the greatest works of art. However, the artist adapts to his own time and place and location in life. To be a full time performing artist isn't always in the cards for everyone. But the dedication doesn't vanish. People will create music whether or not they are directly compensated for the dispersement of its recordings is my point. Whether that music will be better or worse is a guess, but it will be created. To pretend that it won't is ridiculous. And nothing is stopping you from compensating the artists you enjoy currently and I suspect nothing will stop you in the future either. But to pretend like musical recordings have the same value nowadays that they once had is ridiculous. No amount of foot stamping is going to change the industry shakedown that's about to occur, the people that stand in the way of the stampede will likely be its first casualties.
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Of course. However, you have to ask yourself why 9/11 is enough to mount a large "war on terror" spending billions around the globe and what Iraq has to do with 9/11. The answer is kind of staring us all in the face. 9/11 provides a great excuse for military spending and filtering of contracts and dough to certain people in positions of power in certain corporations. Someone wanted us to go to war before 9/11, a whole lot of people wanted us to. 9/11 is the *excuse* for the killing of the young men, but it's definitely not the reason they are dying. 9/11 is the excuse for the domestic spying, but it's not the reason why it's being done. People in power love to create wars and police states if they have the stomach for it. It's clear that our present leaders do indeed have the stomach for it. It's been said before by someone, and again I'm probably misquoting, that if Bush didn't have 9/11 he would've had to make one. I'm not saying 9/11 was fake or anything (those 9/11 conspiracy people are nuts), but it was certainly very convenient for him and his cronies.
Damn straight, both parties are big government, big nanny and big brother nowadays, if that wasn't the case since the parties originally got their names. Cindy Sheehan, the former leader of the anti-war movement was greeted graciously and shared stages with ranking democrats as the face and voice of the anti-Iraq movement until the Democrats took majorities in both houses of Congress. Cindy continued her fight, because hey, she was actually anti-war, who would've thought it! And when she started to question the Democrats about why they weren't withdrawing funding to end the war that party turned on her as well. It's amazing, anti-war while you aren't in office, get into office and well, we just wanted to be anti-war to score political points. And then just a little while ago she resigned, which was barely covered in the mainstream media. She had her message on her site that both parties in the end are the same and simply use human lives to score political points in order to gain seats of power, but the message wasn't really covered that well in the media and the debate goes on. Nobody stops the war, people keep dying and .gov keeps spying. Both parties are corrupt pieces of shit and both should promptly be out on their asses, but people can never seem to find an alternative.
People always speak about corporations like they are people, and I guess in one way it's an accurate way to see it cuz after all "corporations are people too" as far as the saying goes (and the law too btw). I can't blame a company for anything. Everyone's hand is forced in some way or another in the affair. The CEO of the publicly traded company who stands up to the shareholders ends up out on the street for not fulfilling his legal obligations which say kill every puppy imaginable if it'll generate a profit... I get it, peoples' hands are forced by the system.
What I do not and will not ever understand is why the government (other than because they are on the payroll) doesn't limit this almost criminal activity. Following the "law of the land" in China, what exactly does that mean? By exploiting Chinese workers for cheap goods we essentially shop ourselves into unemployment while continuing slave-like labor overseas. I understand multiculturalism, but eventually you do have to draw the line somewhere. Do you find making 8 year olds work 80 hour weeks for 1 dollar an hour justified here? Well then why China? People are not that different. We shouldn't tolerate corporations pushing slavery and censorship overseas just because "that's the law of the land." It leads for the ability for public corporations (which are just groups of people forced to continue to make more and more money regardless of human or other costs) to exploit the wild wild west countries around the globe and use people as inputs in a giant equation that will lead in the end to the stock price bouncing up a few pennies.
Honestly, voting with the dollar doesn't work in this case. The only way that we can possibly stop this runaway train from ruining our economy, lives and then country (probably in that order) is to draw a line in the sand. Corporations who commit "legal" sins overseas should be held to a standard at home. If they want to be a Chinese corporation, have fun, but if you want to be multinational and do business in the U.S. you should have to follow standards or get the hell out. The question is whether or not we will ever find a politician or judge or anyone in power with the good will to ever draw this line in the sand.
You must remember that the "free market" doesn't take into account some important things: the environment, human rights violations, and loss of employment due to outsourcing. People are an input in an equation, the environment becomes something to be exploited and politicians become business tactics. Laissez Faire doesn't work for a reason, and people need to stop turning a blind eye to what those reasons are.
Telemarketers call you on cell phones, and I would assume that they pay a phone bill. Same thing. You aren't going to prevent e-mail spam by even charging a nominal amount for e-mailing, you are just going to maybe lose the less profitable spammers. If people have to pay to annoyingly advertise now over existing mediums with established and real costs and still do it, do you really think you'll be able to prevent all spam? Obviously not, as is with other mediums. Bits are cheap, that's why there's more of it. So what?
People talk about ISP costs, obviously they are still in business so I guess they must be covering costs. By charging ordinary customers to send e-mail you are essentially double-dipping them to "save" them from spam, something that most certainly will NOT happen anyway. You'll still get, maybe just a little less spam from "preferred" visa offerings and trips you've already won. We don't see this same crackdown on any other type of spamming, including fax spamming, which uses your own toner, etc, so why must we molest email in order to "fix" it?
I'm not an economist, but this is why you can't have laissez faire capitalism to begin with. Letting the market take over human rights is precisely where the government should step in. To me if you are a multi-national corporation that operates and sells goods in the US, you should have to follow certain standards. Outsourcing should meet human rights standards, and any dealings in other companies should have to be held up to a standard. If given the choice between morality and money the corporation will always pick money as has been shown time and time again, the idea is that it's the government that has to force the corporation's hand in doing the "right thing."
Someone said it before and I'm probably misquoting them, but it comes down to I don't give a shit what the CEO of Ford thinks about emissions or his record on environmentalism, just like I don't give a shit what the CEO of Yahoo! thinks about human rights. I'm sure that some of these people are great people with great intentions, but regulation of the environment and human rights should be the government's job, because these things don't have pricetags, and the "free market" can't solve these problems. We shouldn't be expected to accept moral "handouts" from CEOs who decide that they will no longer do the wrong thing, we should be able to tell them to do the right thing, or quit doing business with us, without dollars and cents being the measurement.
I don't get the big deal about spam. Honestly, you get more junkmail than regular mail on a daily basis, but yet there's no big call to outlaw regular postage and allow only confirmed 3rd parties to send you mail. Why the hell should e-mail be any different? If you want my opinion they should make Internet access a utility just like phone, electric and other things and regulate the piss out of ISPs so they can't start payola practices such as "send us $100 dollars or the e-mail gets it." Spam isn't a bigger deal than junkmail, it's actually less costly, so why do we care so much that we'd let them ruin e-mail?
You know the usage of the term "revolution" to describe a cell phone device just makes me sad as a 21st century man. The fact that this is what we apply the term to nowadays shows our supreme lack of imagination or want for something better. If we could have the type of revolution our forefathers had for silly import taxes for health coverage, worker's rights ,the ability for criminal corporations to poison our environment, politicians that adhere to big business's needs more than the will of the people, that'd be really doing something, but no, we'd rather have a phone "revolution." How far we've fallen.
If this is simply retaliatory and not a readiness issue, then Apple is seriously undermining its own products in favor of PR. The truth of the matter is that it doesn't much matter if Samsung coded solutions for Apple or someone else did it, and it didn't particularly matter if ATI made the video cards or Nvidia, these companies can be switched out rather interchangeably. However, ZFS is a giant step forward in file systems and has loads more features than anything else, ripping it out just because they "spilled the beans" would be babyish and hostile. Any logical mind would reason that this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison of retaliation as there's no similar vendor. It's most likely a readiness issue.
I don't know why people have to constantly mention karma like it's a source of anything except over-inflated egos, but I digress. Your point is that doing business in China might make China a better place. Tell that to the man who used Yahoo's services. His life is not better for it. Just because Yahoo is a multi-national corporation that does relative good in the US does not mean it will become less evil than the Chinese officials when operating under Chinese law. From the pending court case we see the truth without any waviness: Yahoo in China is prepared to be as evil as the Chinese government in acting to censor its own citizens. You might have relativist arguments over whether or not censorship is evil in China and whether or not violating Chinese law is a bad thing, but some things are very obvious. 1) This man's life has not been bettered by Yahoo's dealings in China, 2) Yahoo's operations haven't "westernized" China, but in fact "communized" Yahoo's operations, as might have been predicted here and other places. You can bend over backwards to provide an excuse for these companies, but the fact remains that they are about the all-mighty dollar, and if local law means they can/have to trounce all over human rights, they can and will. China is better for having Yahoo? Maybe to the Chinese government, as it gains yet another way to spy on its citizens.
I actually got a disk with my computer, when it worked to simply wipe out all partitions without first prompting and I called tech support they said something like "you are lucky you got a disk at all" about my experience. It's definitely a valid point that MS has gotten less friendly about install disks, leading to bad end user experiences, and with Ubuntu, not only is the disk free online, but they'll send you a batch. My next computer is going to be Ubuntu only as to avoid the dreadful Vista, which I did try before hating I'll have you know. But I'd rather go linux than run that OS, and at least I know I'll get an install disk. I actually have bought a low end linux PC for a second box from Dell...Seeds of the end? I certainly hope so.
The FOSS end of Linux on the desktop nowadays just seems like bonus cookies, because MS's 6-year half baked Vista pales in comparison to Ubuntu's offerings, which, btw, are free.
It's a nice way to generate controversy. Fox is basically a giant paradox. They have the art of controversy down to a fine science. Fox the regular TV station makes the "outrageous" and "immoral" television series and then viewers, after tuning into the immoral series, can turn to Fox News to become outraged about the programming.
Nothing sells quite as well as horseshit and outrage.
9 out of 10 fox news correspondents agree, "THE END IS NIGH! JANET JACKSON SHOWED A TIT!"
ROT6 would move it up 6 semi-tones, transposing a tune in say, A major to D major, a noticeable change, but yes, still the same sound. Most music is based on relativity to most people as even karaoke bars sometimes offer "transpose" options so singers can sing in a key more suited to their voice. ROT-13 would effectively move the piece up an octave and a semi-tone, making it up a key and a lot higher sounding.
This stuff is neither here nor there though. All that would be needed is to ROT-13 the titles of things, as that's the only way people are able to identify this stuff as their own work. DMCA takedown notice issuers probably aren't real musicians 99% of the time and wouldn't even play the tab before declaring it infringing. Masking the titles would be all that would be needed to get rid of the RIAA monkey on their back. Or you could require some type of registration in order to search and have it appear on the public front as if there are no infringing tabs.
Is listing the chords infringing? Even if they are the wrong chords? What's infringing at one point? The title and artist name? The RIAA has simply gone too far with attacking tab sites and I hope they burn for it.
I'm sure this is the conclusion you were reaching for, however, you didn't really spell it out and it definitely brought something to mind for me. If the US does do as you say, and continues to do a "bull in a china shop" job in the middle east, effectively destabilizing all stable governments in the region, I would guess then that OBL would hope to one day unite these previously separate countries. That being the case, the US intrusion actually provides the perfect catalyst. Not only does the US ripping down stable governments cause chaos, but it also makes them to blame, giving all of these previously stable countries a common goal and enemy. Even if this doesn't mean that the newly established state can defeat the US directly, it gives them a flag to fly and possibly, a chance at a better organized conflict with Israel.
Yep, it's good that you have time on your hands, cuz you are gonna both need that time and your hands, most importantly.
If "sex" is so "basic" to the brain then nobody would willingly choose not to have sex. If "hunger" is so "basic" to the brain then nobody would go without food willingly. We often ignore our altruistic impulses in the same way we ignore our impulses to go to the bathroom or eat or drink. We aren't prone to have to obey these things because we have tolerance. A modern man can control his/her impulses. If being altruistic means that you can't accomplish some other, higher goal at the moment you might choose otherwise, despite its pleasurable effects.
Do something good for someone else and tell me it doesn't have any pleasurable effect on the brain at all. It definitely does. People who do volunteer work are often some of the happiest people, this maybe being one of the reasons. Saying if x then y without any proof isn't going to prove much of anything. These people have done the research, and it certainly agrees with what I've found. Just because you ignore a basic source of pleasure doesn't mean that it isn't a source.
That should've been a joke. Fuck laissez faire capitalism, if we had free reign capitalism there would be murder inc, and I'm not talking about the crappy rap label.
Since no one I know besides my oldest brother (who happens to have a knack for buying things that become duds) runs the OS or is even planning to upgrade.
Or, we could copyright the list, and claim it as intellectual property that can't be distributed anywhere except where we originally stored it! Then when MS tries to get it, we can have copyright nazi lawyers go after them!
Okay, I have a question for you, why the hell does the cable company have to charge so damn much money for "premium" channels? If there were options between cable companies, etc. maybe these costs would drop. But since cable companies are practically a monopoly per area with the exception of satellite TV, they feel they can charge 80 dollars a month for HBO and skinemax. Maybe these people ripping off the cable companies didn't want to pay the price, a lot of others (such as myself if I ever even buy cable) would just do without the content. But why oh why does it cost so much more?
The entertainment industry needs a slim down. Their corporate fat cats and their pompous "actors" and "artists" need a reality check on how much they are actually worth. Every one of these fuckers needs a pay cut immediately. DRM and the rest of the schemes is just an attempt to walk around the inevitable. It's too bad, entertainment guys, you don't control all the ways your content can be dispersed anymore. But fucking deal with it.
Oh please, like studios really need to pay this money for these losers. The truth is that for most of it, it's the camera that makes the star, not the star that makes the show. There are cases of certain people who make or break a show but for the most part it's the writing, direction, etc. There's probably a half dozen people that can be put in the roles that the shows offer if its written, directed and produced correctly. The sooner studios realize that the more quickly they fire these dime a dozen TV "personalities" and hire people who are willing to work for an actual wage, instead of the amount of money it takes to run two separate private jets per family member plus buy a small island nation.
Haven't the studios been taught anything by the advent of reality television? Appearing in front of a camera isn't that hard of a skill to really learn and the supply for onscreen talent is overwhelming. If they'd stop appealing to gimmicks ("this guy who starred in that good movie 3 years ago, remember? Now he has a TV show") and instead started looking at the other creative departments for reasons why shows fail and succeed, they wouldn't have to pay these morons any longer.
Need an example, "the office" is mostly staffed by a bunch of no namers except for a couple guys from the Daily Show. This show made them stars through excellent writing and good production. The actors themselves had a little to do with it, sure, but with a decent casting director you can find a million people to do a decent job in a role.
As far as katie couric is concerned, I can't believe people actually think she's a good anchor. Why the hell do people continue to obsess over this sort of cute host and pay her entirely too high salary so she can get a botox injection every week? It's easy enough to find a cute face to read a teleprompter.
Actors need to give up the ghost. There's lots of good actors in overabundance. It's the writing and other areas that need help.
Oh I get it, it's just I thought analogies were supposed to make a complicated example *less* confusing.
WTF, I mean, just because it's a sandbox analogy doesn't make it any more applicable or easy to understand. Just because babies use something doesn't make an analogy good or easy, or fitting in this case.
I say take your analogy and shove it up your SoftyMicro sandbox!
I'd beg to differ. Nowadays there are more people. More people = more artists, more artists = more selection. This wouldn't be such a factor if we were geographically isolated, however, since there are substantially more artists in the world, there are more artists overall, since you can listen to just about any artist in the world. As the supply goes up, the demand, and the price is supposed to decrease. The only reason it hasn't is because a bunch of media companies formed a cartel and attempted to fix prices, as they are attempting again with the digital market. Only now, they can no longer control distribution.
Do I owe anything to an artist whose album I download and it doesn't entertain me? Because the RIAA and such think I do. I have no problem buying merchandise, attending concerts and compensating artists. What I do have a problem with is the price fixing 15 dollars a CD crap for pompous artists who put one single on it and 10 tracks of garbage. In the past, we had no choice but to swallow it or listen to only local artists (which, I must say is almost a better choice), but now we have a widespread alternative.
Prices will go down, when they have to to attract customers. The music industry is about to get real interesting. Album sales are down 11% from last year. There is a shaking up that's about to occur. These relics won't have any say in how it occurs and the consumers will end up benefiting more overall from the downfall of the industry (I predict) than they would from its continuation.
They can. There are a great load of things a person who wants to make the musical arts their career can do. The fact of the matter is that the majority of people that practice their craft for their profession probably aren't even recording artists. Many of them are teachers, teaching others the craft, performers in local bands, and cover bands. It is not as if by free copying there is no income to the music industry. There still is. Perhaps I would be better. Perhaps not. Perhaps the blues would be better if the slaves were allowed to just play their banjos all day, but that wasn't reality. It's not to say that I embrace the idea that artists should struggle in order to create art. Mozart, I'm sure, was relatively well off in his day and made some of the greatest works of art. However, the artist adapts to his own time and place and location in life. To be a full time performing artist isn't always in the cards for everyone. But the dedication doesn't vanish. People will create music whether or not they are directly compensated for the dispersement of its recordings is my point. Whether that music will be better or worse is a guess, but it will be created. To pretend that it won't is ridiculous. And nothing is stopping you from compensating the artists you enjoy currently and I suspect nothing will stop you in the future either. But to pretend like musical recordings have the same value nowadays that they once had is ridiculous. No amount of foot stamping is going to change the industry shakedown that's about to occur, the people that stand in the way of the stampede will likely be its first casualties.