I did too, until I read some of his stuff. And then I learned that I just wanted to kick Wesley Crusher in the nuts repeatedly, and bore no ill will whatsoever to his doppleganger Wil Wheaton.
Its not really Wil's fault he played the most annoying kid in Star Trek (and most other franchises for that matter). And if he hadn't done it someone else would have played the part, and we would have hated it just as much.
In other words: blame Roddenberry and his writers for inflicting us with Wesley Crusher, not Wil Wheaton.
Having worked with several groups that are committed (and some should be) to the search of ET I'm less convinced than ever. Twenty years ago I was certain, now, not so much....
Consider humanity, we've only been broadcasting significant amounts of radio for maybe 60 years, meaning our earliest signals are a mere 60 ly out. If aliens were listening for us, we'd still be invisible to 99.9% of the galaxy, even if they looked right at our sun with their best radio telescopes.
And look how fast civilization here has advanced. 250 years ago electricity was still a novelty. 2500 years ago we were discovering the number 0. Even if we'd been broadcasting radio for that entire time we'd still be invisible to most of the galaxy.
And how long are we going to continue broadcasting radio? 100 years? 200 years? 1000 years? Assuming we don't wipe ourselves out or get wiped out, where will technology be in 250 years? in 2500? Maybe we'll have some sort of quantum based communicator, or maybe the bulk of communication will be via lasers and fiber optics. Or maybe we'll use radio but the signal will be be so reused, encoded, and encrypted that our radio output, as seen from 600 light years away would just be continuous white noise.
No. SNO is directly legally obligated to make the source available, and providing a link to an external service probably would not meet that requirement.
If the external source is hosting for -you- and has an arrangement to host it for -you-, then yes it would meet that requirement. SNO has met its obligation because it has taken steps to ensure it is available. It may be an external link, but its an external link to a party who has agreed to host it for -you-.
It would be different if you just hosted a couple files you changed and deep linked to an external site, and said, the rest of over there. Because the link might not work tomorrow, and -you- have taken no responsibility for ensuring it will, you have no agreement with that external site.
The practice of bundling two products or services together like this and forcing the consumer into 'take none or both' decisions has a dubious history at best, and while its often legal, its often not. Most people agree the laws preventing tying are justifiable, and for the good of the market, even if it is impossible to define precisely exactly where the line should be drawn between legal bundling, and illegal tying.
Yes, but there was never really much doubt in anyones eyes whether -that- woman convicted in -that- case was guilty in my eyes at least. And I doubt the FSF thinks she should have gotten off. (The only real dispute there is how high her damages should be - and $220,000 is stupid/absurd/injust no matter how you look at it.)
But expert testimony at the right stage about the right point might force the rest of the evidence to become inadmissible, or create justification for a solid countersuit against the RIAA for how they obtained evidence. That sort of stuff might force them to settle for less, on terms more favorable to you, or even back off entirely.
It also might help in -other- cases, where the RIAA is arguing that your open FTP server is illegal distributing music. But the user was just using it to access his files from work and/or let his friends listen to his music as well under fair use, and the fact that other people could make copies for themselves with it, was simply not something you were concerned with, and you could have experts that would testify that an open ftp server is really no different than leaving your front door unlocked with your computer on. If someone walks in, tells your computer to send them copies of your files, and then leaves, who in their right mind would convict YOU for the 'crime'.
I don't have a problem with the RIAA shutting down people running ftp servers to distribute music, but they should have to prove more than "it exists". They should have to prove that you are posting the ip to blogs or usenet, and genuinely 'making it available' to the public, for example...
Experts could also help provide legitimate defense to people who host torrents, etc. After all, if I tell someone where a music file is, and they go and make a copy of it, why should I be found guilty of anything? If I had said there is a copy at the library would that also be illegal? Because they might go to the library and make a copy of it, and I told them where it was?! Experts can provide these sorts of explanations to help the jury understand the technology, and how it works, so they can make better decisions.
If the RIAA tells them the defendant was stealing the movie and broadcasting it all over the internets! The jury might side with a 'broadcasting and distributing without a license'... but if a defense expert says no, the defendant simply left a copy sitting on a computer, and people from around the world may have tresspassed onto his network, told his computer what to do without authorisation, and then helped themselves to a copy. (Oh and its hypothetical, the RIAA didn't actually even show that anybody actually even did this...)
the individuals don't necessarily need to work toward the good of the swarm. In fact they usually just act selfish, but the resulting emergent behavior is good for the whole swarm.
The point is that emergent behaviour results because the members of the swarm are all behaving a certain way.
Imagine a botnet of locusts that DIDN'T behave like other locusts, and instead were maliciously intent on disrupting the swarm. Perhaps they'd NEVER eat, and ONLY chase other locusts around in order to get the swarm to move long before all the food was good, leading it to expend more energy moving than it should be, making it operate much less efficiently. Or maybe they'd even be able to divert the swarm in the 'wrong' direction.
It may be for the good of the swarm however there is still several behaviors to observe.. such as when we observe ants, generally each ant is involved with a specific "job", and they are required to do for the good of the hive...
Have you ever heard of ant slavery? Where one species of ants enslaves another colony to feed its own queen. They do this by copying and disrupting the enslaved ant colonies pheromone markers to 'trick' the ants into working for them.
This would not the a good foundation to build the internet on. You think the bot nets are a problem now? Just wait until you build an internet that uses 'swarm' principles to self optimize. They'll deliberately poison the network, and cause routers and servers to make the LEAST optimal choices.
Honeybees, and swarm intelligence in general assumes that the other members are working towards the good of the swarm. That is the polar opposite of what we need for a robust internet.
Rogue nodes would be able to disrupt the swarm in the same way that scientists are able to wreak havoc on hives, ants, and other 'swarms' by deliberately injecting fake disruptive markers/signals etc.
This technology sounds about as bright as cooperative multitasking. Suitable for a closed system (e.g. a single application) but an utter disaster if applied in an environment where some threads are just defective, or worse, hostile.
You are telling me that if I made a compelling invention (say antigravity or true cold fusion) as an individual I couldn't raise enough capital to develop it unless I incorporated first? I suspect that I would get a lot of people who would give me money to build a factory to build products making use of the invention or idea.
Not likely. You think a bank is going to give you a multi-billion dollar personal loan?
Sure, if we didn't have "corporations" people would figure out some complex partnership relationship to secure their interests, force you to hire an accountant, prepare audited statements, maintain separate bank accounts, with joint signing authority with an elected board representing all the stakeholders/investors... etc, etc, etc.
But hey, guess what, that's pretty much a corporation.
That's why they exist.
An individual owner could hire a super good manager. In such a case, the death of the owner wouldn't affect the business that much either. Maybe the owner did not even participate much in the business before.
Nope, the death of a proprietor triggers all sorts of tax implications, because the business just him and his assets and his debts, the business itself doesn't exist separately. The money he owes on his car is no different than the billion dollars he owes his investors. And his socks and factories are both part of his estate.
If you had a partnership its -still- messy (in most cases its MORE MESSY). The corporation doesn't exist independantly of the proprieter(s), in a very real sense, it ends when the owner dies. Sure it can continue under a new owner, but the transfer is non-trivial, to say the least. Its often easier to just close and re-open it. Toss in a thousands of creditors (people who lent you money), and it becomes a royal nightmare.
Even for corporations, if the one running it dies, can mean large loss.
Yes losing an effective charismatic leader can be a huge loss for a corporation. But the corporation itself isn't directly and automatically thrown in legal limbo, its very existence threatened. It exists separately from its shareholders and employees.
Of course should all criminal activity be punished. Put the guilty persons involved in prison, but don't punish their families by making them destitute welfare cases.
If you kill someone in a car accident you can be sued by the family for wrongful death, it can exceed what your insurance company will cover, and you and your family can end up destitute. For a car ACCIDENT. If you get cancer and your treatment costs more than insurance will cover (assuming you are even covered) you and your family can end up destitute. I'm not sure why you'd protect criminals from destitution when everyday citizens who made a bad judgement at a left turn, or just rolled cancer on the wheel of fortune are forced into destitution without a 2nd thought.
That said, I agree with you. None of the above should be forced into destitution.
But we can stop short of destitution. If buddy wiped out the pension and saving of 5000 employees as a result of CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE OR CRIMINAL ACTIVITY, then buddy doesn't get to live in a mansion with a boat anymore. They can live in the subburbs and drive a beater while they worry about how to pay for the kids university like the average american. Leave them with the same assets and debt the average american family in their age demographic. No more. No less.
Whether something works "in theory" is completely irrelevant to, you know, fact.
Not when the subject of discussion is the difference between criciticms of democracy (which are essentially problems with implementation, and problems with people), and criticisms of capitalism (which is genuinely flawed even in theory irrespective of implementation or people).
What was the point of talking about capitalism? I never even mentioned capitalism. Talk about changing the subject...
Try reading some of the grand parent posts above where you got involved. The entire context of this discussion is the way pure capitalism is inherently evil, while pure democracy is inherently good but can still lead to issues because people are flawed.
hence why they keep coming back, because they know the jobs offered by the western companys are a better deal.
Yet we have laws against these sorts of practices here in the West. We would consider it illegal and immoral to round up beggars and homeless people and give them 'jobs' that pay them with a McDonald's lunch. So what if they keep coming back in because its better than rooting through garbage.
That would be illegal exploitation.
Why won't we tolerate corporations doing it HERE, but allow them to do it there?
Do you think we should abolish all workers rights in the US? And let the free market determine the line where 'workers will show up for work because it beats selling their children into the sex trade'? Forget safety equipment, forget breaks, forget overtime, forget paying them wages, just give them product that didn't pass QA and let them hawk it on the street for whatever they can get. Sooner or later they'll be desperate enough to come crawling into work, because that 'deal' your offering them beats out starving in a mud puddle.
ok i have to call bullshit on this. just how are we drawing wealth out of countries by investing in their local economy building factories and creating jobs?
Those factories all belong to US. And all the profits those factories bring go to US.
i suppose you think all those call centers in india have made the indian's poorer? oh no wait india is rising just like china is.
-sigh-
Those countries are rising because they control their own resources. They are rising because WE are borrowing money from THEM. They own many of their factories. They own many of their mineral rights. They own many of their call centers. Yes, we own -some- of them. But they own a lot. Venezuaela's Hugo Chavez for example prevented the privitization (read: foreign ownership) of oil resouces, and brought relative prosperty to the poor of that country by effectively seizing oil revenues for the public good (and his own political good too), but the point is that the nations that are 'rising' are doing so by controlling their own resources, factories, and assets.
They are offering the West a competitive advantage by offering to -exchange- cheaper labour for foreign money. But in this money and profits flow INTO the country.
In the frequent cases where the west obtains control over the foreign resources by, say, bribing a corrupt official, the west ends up controlling the resources, exploiting the poor and desperate as labour, while the corrupt official lives in luxury... but the country as a whole suffers terribly in those transactions.
They're one and the same. The flaw of pure democracy would be that it does not account for the fact that a lot of people are ignorant.
-sigh-
Pure Democracy works in theory. If you fix people, so they aren't ignorant, pure democracy would work fine. In practice, of course, we don't know how to fix people so they aren't ignorant. So yes, a pure democracy might not work in practice due to ignorance, but we can argue in circles forever where the fault lies. But the bottom line is that pure democracy works *in theory*.
Pure capitalism doesn't work EVEN in theory. Even a hypothetical perfect pure capitalism would result in people dying in the streets for lack of medical attention.
A corporation is far more than an insulation from personal liability.
The key value of corporations are that they can raise large amounts of capital, and they have aggregate ownership - potentially millions of owner/investors. They are also, because of aggregate ownership, less vulnerable to being thrown into chaos if 'the owner' dies or something.
I don't think corporations should be abolished, it would be nearly impossible for businesses like Telcos, Auto manufacturer, or an airlines, to exist without some framework like a corporation, to allow massive aggregate ownership.
Corporations arose precisely to insulate those who work and run an enterprise from personal liability.
No, they arose to raise large amounts of capital. Protection from liability was a distant second.
Directors, CEOs etc. are basically employees of the owners. Employees can be fired for doing a poor job, but you cannot take away their personal possessions and those of their families.
A poor job no. A criminally negligent job yes. If a McDonald's employee steals from the till, he can be charged with theft. If a CEO steals from the till by more indirect means, or decides to pump radioactive goo into some kids playground he can be charged as well. Its just that corporations are usually content to simply fire their criminal employees and won't press charges. This needs to be fixed.
Prosecuting the corporation is meaningless, its only money, and its money that belongs to the shareholders not the person who comitted the crime. We MUST prosecute criminal individuals, in addition to and separately from the corporation.
If you start a business and get into debt, you are personally liable for that debt, even to the extent that the creditors can sell your house out from under you and put you in the street to satisfy the debt...Don't throw the baby out with the bath-water.
I agree, but the shield from liability should ONLY cover honest debt, not criminal activity.
Democracy has a few too, like the tyranny of the majority aka "two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner".
Nope. That's a flaw of the consituents not democracy. No system of government real or imagined can prevent tyranny of the majority.
Imagine a modified democracy with a law banning the eating of minority sheep. And the wolves eats him anyway. What happens? Nothing. The sheep is gone, and the wolves are happy.
Imagine a fascist dictatorship with the sheep in charge. And the wolves gang up and eat him anyway. What happens? The sheep is gone, and the wolves are happy.
A society can never be better than its people. That's not a flaw of democracy.
Your entire tirade on cheap labour is horseshit. what you are suggesting would take jobs away from poor people in countries which desperately need them, and who's ONLY competitive advantage is that they can under cut competing labour markets.
Spoken like a true capitalist. Its not merely that they can undercut competing labor markets.
Its that they are willing to send their children to work 20 hour days in your coal mines without safety equipment while you give them just enough to keep them coming back. That's not opportunity. That's evil.
There was a fantastic documentary called "The Yes Men" iirc, that had a 'presentation' made by the yes-men posing as the WTO to a group on how outsourcing was superior to slavery from a business perspective because slaves cost more. They had a whole presentation with charts, and graphs. It was sickening. And the audience barely batted an eye.
Face it, while you can justify that your feeding them, and that this job is better than no job, but the end result is that wealth always flows FROM the exploited nation, making it even poorer than when it started.
a populace decided to vote to ban all religious minorities oe how about a populace that votes a very popular ruler in as dictator for life
Those aren't flaws of democracy. Those are flaws of people, in aggregate.
A pure democracy is only as good as its people.
It only needs checks and balances, to prevent the mob from doing something evil with it. Democracy doen't create evil, but it can't prevent it if the populace decides on it.
And while checks and balances help, they don't help much. If the MAJORITY of a society decides to eliminate religious minorities, it WILL. What's to stop them? The massively outnumbered police or army, who are mostly sympathetic to the cause? Judges who are mostly sympathetic to the cause? Juries who are mostly sympathetic to the cause?
But democracy itself isn't evil. The very worst you can say is that it allows the mob to rule. But really. The mob ALWAYS has THAT power. And as long as people are generally good, a democracy will be generally good.
In contrast, a pure capitalism is inherently evil. Capitalism needs checks and balances to ensure it never becomes a perfect capitalism, because that would be evil, even if everyone in it were impeccably good. (Of course, if everyone were impeccably good they would never tolerate living in a pure capitalism!!)
Except that your long post goes on about an entity that currently does not exist. The free industrialized world nations that you know today are representative republics.
True. But its semantics. The the terms are synonomous in the real world. When people are accused of criticising an implementation of democracy, one can pretty much take that to mean they are criticising the implementations of 'representative republics' because that's what all the implentations of 'democracy' look like.
I mean, Bush isn't spouting about his desire to bring a 'representative republic' to Iraq is he? The two terms are essentially equivalent in this context, and your comment is reduced to a dispute of semantics.
no one expects pure capitalism or pure democracy to ever be able to exist
The former would be a BAD thing, the latter (probably) a GOOD thing. The point is criticising the defects of democracy so far invariably point to defects in the real world implementation. The defects of capitalism are built right into pure capitalism, we'd be horrified with perfect capitalism.
all you did is enunciate standard real world checks and balances on the ideas
Seeing as I specifically indicated that i thought the ideal 'capitalsm' would be a hybrid of capitalism and something else, those 'checks and balances' serve to hybridize it. So 'all I did' was exactly what I said I'd do.
DUDE! Star Control II is damn easy! Try "The Ur-Quan Masters". It's everything from Star Control II (minus the main title, and the cut scenes from one version) turned open source and it's wonderful. http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
It is. I've played (and beaten it) which I never did do with the original, partly because i upgraded hardware before beating it, and found it a nightmare to get it working on newer computers.
UrQuan Masters is awesome. But the ship battles, while close, are not quite authentic to the original in how the ships feel and move. Its a very good remake, and in some ways its actually better. But its not quite the same. Turning speed and responsiveness is a little different, the timing just isn't quite right. And the re-sampled graphics has issues too during the battles.
By the way, the remake of Privateer is rapidly approaching full usability too, I just need a new joystick...
people are fond of pointing out democracy's many failures too
The failures of democracy aren't democracy itself, but rather of the fact that our implementation of democracy is poor in that it doesn't actually give people the representation in government that they should have. Its too easy to get re-elected, its too hard to break into politics without vast amounts of cash and/or support from existing politicians, its too hard to remove someone who is doing a shitty job, its not nearly transparent enough, the voters don't have more than a token say in most issues as elections are only 'big issue items', and too infrequent to give voters real voices in more mundane items, like patent reform, whether the RIAA should be allowed to sue children, etc. And its too hard to vote. (seriously, the cost and organization to run an election or referendum are an obstacle to effective democracy). First past the post elections wipe prevent minority views from having any voice at all.
There is nothing wrong with democracy. We just don't have a good implementation of one.
Capitalism on the other hand has many REAL flaws, even if implemented perfectly. And a hybrid of capitalism and something else is the only way of fixing it, short of a completely new paradigm like the star-trek-economy where scarcity of resources is pretty much a non-issue.
so please, criticize capitalism. but unless you can enunciate a superior alternative, your criticism means absolutely nothing
Bullshit. The first step in fixing a problem is to identify what the problem is.
But you want solutions to capitalism? Sure, close the borders with any other country that doesn't implement capitalism the same way we do, so that we can compete under a fair system. A great deal of capitalisms problems stem from the comparative advantages of -exploiting- foreign economies that don't have the level of protection of human rights, wages, environment, etc. Or alternatively to closing the borders, treat foreign assets and employees as local ones -- and ensure wages and working conditions and environmental practices are compliant with local standards regardless of where the plant is. Its one thing for there to be a competitive advantage by refining your oil closer to the source, or taking advantage of high unemployment and locating a call centre in its epicenter -- but its something else entirely to exploit a 2nd or 3rd world country to get labour at a fraction of its real value to you.
Second, re-design corporations - make directors accountable personally, make ceos accountable personally.
Third, re-design the stock market so that its focussed on serving INVESTORS not TRADERS. If corporations were interested in satisfying INVESTORS they would take a longer view, but right now all that matters is tomorrows share price and this quarters sales. Only traders care about that.
Third, institute separation of commerce and state. Business should have NO ability to affect or impact on government at all. The biggest problem of capitalism is that its a corrupting force on democracy. Separate them.
OTOH if you've got a fast modern PC and DOSBox, your old DOS games will run quite well.
Some of them will. A pile of them won't, or will run with 'issues'. And throwing more hardware at the problem doesn't help.
DOSBox still presents all kinds of glitches ranging from minor to unplayable. Some games work flawlessly, like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D... but then games like Mechwarrior II, or Destruction Derby 2 are practically unplayable, while games from the Wing Commander series all seem to require tweaking dosbox settings left and right to get the joystick and sound responding right...
For me, dropping a few bucks on some 'vintage' hardware resulted in a better overall experience than any and all of the emulators and virtualization products I've tried. I like the convenience of DosBox like products and use them with games that work well with them, but nothing beats real hardware on those old games, especially the picky ones or the ones dosbox has gotten around to sorting out the issues with.
I'd keep my eyes on the adult industry and study how they have adapted to the new business environment.
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Yeah, the world needs more enterprises with vision like this.
Actually, they are right smack dab in the sweet spot for classic PC gaming, which are notoriously difficult to get running under windows or in emulation programs because they heavily direct access to video hardware, dos interupts, and required as much of that 640kb main memory as you could possibly give it [I recall having autoexec/config setups that dropped support for the CDrom, and used an 8kb mouse driver to run a particular game that actually came on CD. I had to do a full install of the game from CD, and then run the game without CD support in order to have enough RAM. These games were also pretty cpu clock sensitive.
I keep series of early PCs around for precisely this reason. Getting games like XCOM, Masters of Orion II, Might and Magic IV, Star Control II, Echelon, Privateer I/II, Wing Commander I/II/III, etc, etc can excruciatingly hard to get going without sound issues, with the proper framerate, with multiplayer (null modem) support etc...
I can be almost impossible unless running on real hardware from the era.
A P166 would make a good platform for late dos era games, and early win95 games.
They know it's accurate because the voice translation told them it was! It then said something about "robotic voice translator overlords..." We're not sure about that bit. (:
Yes, I have an ipod (5th gen), and my wife has a nano (5th gen). On both, I can differentiate by texture the center area of the clickwheel surface, from the ring, making it easy to position my finger on the center button, or any of the ring buttons, or rotate within the ring. The ipod and center button are slick, while the ring itself has some texture... about the difference between glossy photo paper and regular matt paper. I find it very easy to feel the transition between the two.
I admit I haven't played with the new ipod nano video, but it -looks- like one should still be able to feel the ring and center.
I'm not so sure how easy it would be to operate the ipod touch blind.
Slashdot Mirror
I still want to kick him in the nuts repeatedly.
I did too, until I read some of his stuff. And then I learned that I just wanted to kick Wesley Crusher in the nuts repeatedly, and bore no ill will whatsoever to his doppleganger Wil Wheaton.
Its not really Wil's fault he played the most annoying kid in Star Trek (and most other franchises for that matter). And if he hadn't done it someone else would have played the part, and we would have hated it just as much.
In other words: blame Roddenberry and his writers for inflicting us with Wesley Crusher, not Wil Wheaton.
Having worked with several groups that are committed (and some should be) to the search of ET I'm less convinced than ever. Twenty years ago I was certain, now, not so much....
Consider humanity, we've only been broadcasting significant amounts of radio for maybe 60 years, meaning our earliest signals are a mere 60 ly out. If aliens were listening for us, we'd still be invisible to 99.9% of the galaxy, even if they looked right at our sun with their best radio telescopes.
And look how fast civilization here has advanced. 250 years ago electricity was still a novelty. 2500 years ago we were discovering the number 0. Even if we'd been broadcasting radio for that entire time we'd still be invisible to most of the galaxy.
And how long are we going to continue broadcasting radio? 100 years? 200 years? 1000 years? Assuming we don't wipe ourselves out or get wiped out, where will technology be in 250 years? in 2500? Maybe we'll have some sort of quantum based communicator, or maybe the bulk of communication will be via lasers and fiber optics. Or maybe we'll use radio but the signal will be be so reused, encoded, and encrypted that our radio output, as seen from 600 light years away would just be continuous white noise.
No. SNO is directly legally obligated to make the source available, and providing a link to an external service probably would not meet that requirement.
If the external source is hosting for -you- and has an arrangement to host it for -you-, then yes it would meet that requirement. SNO has met its obligation because it has taken steps to ensure it is available. It may be an external link, but its an external link to a party who has agreed to host it for -you-.
It would be different if you just hosted a couple files you changed and deep linked to an external site, and said, the rest of over there. Because the link might not work tomorrow, and -you- have taken no responsibility for ensuring it will, you have no agreement with that external site.
Read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)
The practice of bundling two products or services together like this and forcing the consumer into 'take none or both' decisions has a dubious history at best, and while its often legal, its often not. Most people agree the laws preventing tying are justifiable, and for the good of the market, even if it is impossible to define precisely exactly where the line should be drawn between legal bundling, and illegal tying.
Yes, but there was never really much doubt in anyones eyes whether -that- woman convicted in -that- case was guilty in my eyes at least. And I doubt the FSF thinks she should have gotten off. (The only real dispute there is how high her damages should be - and $220,000 is stupid/absurd/injust no matter how you look at it.)
But expert testimony at the right stage about the right point might force the rest of the evidence to become inadmissible, or create justification for a solid countersuit against the RIAA for how they obtained evidence. That sort of stuff might force them to settle for less, on terms more favorable to you, or even back off entirely.
It also might help in -other- cases, where the RIAA is arguing that your open FTP server is illegal distributing music. But the user was just using it to access his files from work and/or let his friends listen to his music as well under fair use, and the fact that other people could make copies for themselves with it, was simply not something you were concerned with, and you could have experts that would testify that an open ftp server is really no different than leaving your front door unlocked with your computer on. If someone walks in, tells your computer to send them copies of your files, and then leaves, who in their right mind would convict YOU for the 'crime'.
I don't have a problem with the RIAA shutting down people running ftp servers to distribute music, but they should have to prove more than "it exists". They should have to prove that you are posting the ip to blogs or usenet, and genuinely 'making it available' to the public, for example...
Experts could also help provide legitimate defense to people who host torrents, etc. After all, if I tell someone where a music file is, and they go and make a copy of it, why should I be found guilty of anything? If I had said there is a copy at the library would that also be illegal? Because they might go to the library and make a copy of it, and I told them where it was?! Experts can provide these sorts of explanations to help the jury understand the technology, and how it works, so they can make better decisions.
If the RIAA tells them the defendant was stealing the movie and broadcasting it all over the internets! The jury might side with a 'broadcasting and distributing without a license'... but if a defense expert says no, the defendant simply left a copy sitting on a computer, and people from around the world may have tresspassed onto his network, told his computer what to do without authorisation, and then helped themselves to a copy. (Oh and its hypothetical, the RIAA didn't actually even show that anybody actually even did this...)
The Jury might see things entirely differently.
the individuals don't necessarily need to work toward the good of the swarm. In fact they usually just act selfish, but the resulting emergent behavior is good for the whole swarm.
The point is that emergent behaviour results because the members of the swarm are all behaving a certain way.
Imagine a botnet of locusts that DIDN'T behave like other locusts, and instead were maliciously intent on disrupting the swarm. Perhaps they'd NEVER eat, and ONLY chase other locusts around in order to get the swarm to move long before all the food was good, leading it to expend more energy moving than it should be, making it operate much less efficiently. Or maybe they'd even be able to divert the swarm in the 'wrong' direction.
It may be for the good of the swarm however there is still several behaviors to observe.. such as when we observe ants, generally each ant is involved with a specific "job", and they are required to do for the good of the hive...
Have you ever heard of ant slavery? Where one species of ants enslaves another colony to feed its own queen. They do this by copying and disrupting the enslaved ant colonies pheromone markers to 'trick' the ants into working for them.
This would not the a good foundation to build the internet on. You think the bot nets are a problem now? Just wait until you build an internet that uses 'swarm' principles to self optimize. They'll deliberately poison the network, and cause routers and servers to make the LEAST optimal choices.
Honeybees, and swarm intelligence in general assumes that the other members are working towards the good of the swarm. That is the polar opposite of what we need for a robust internet.
Rogue nodes would be able to disrupt the swarm in the same way that scientists are able to wreak havoc on hives, ants, and other 'swarms' by deliberately injecting fake disruptive markers/signals etc.
This technology sounds about as bright as cooperative multitasking. Suitable for a closed system (e.g. a single application) but an utter disaster if applied in an environment where some threads are just defective, or worse, hostile.
You are telling me that if I made a compelling invention (say antigravity or true cold fusion) as an individual I couldn't raise enough capital to develop it unless I incorporated first? I suspect that I would get a lot of people who would give me money to build a factory to build products making use of the invention or idea.
Not likely. You think a bank is going to give you a multi-billion dollar personal loan?
Sure, if we didn't have "corporations" people would figure out some complex partnership relationship to secure their interests, force you to hire an accountant, prepare audited statements, maintain separate bank accounts, with joint signing authority with an elected board representing all the stakeholders/investors... etc, etc, etc.
But hey, guess what, that's pretty much a corporation.
That's why they exist.
An individual owner could hire a super good manager. In such a case, the death of the owner wouldn't affect the business that much either. Maybe the owner did not even participate much in the business before.
Nope, the death of a proprietor triggers all sorts of tax implications, because the business just him and his assets and his debts, the business itself doesn't exist separately. The money he owes on his car is no different than the billion dollars he owes his investors. And his socks and factories are both part of his estate.
If you had a partnership its -still- messy (in most cases its MORE MESSY). The corporation doesn't exist independantly of the proprieter(s), in a very real sense, it ends when the owner dies. Sure it can continue under a new owner, but the transfer is non-trivial, to say the least. Its often easier to just close and re-open it. Toss in a thousands of creditors (people who lent you money), and it becomes a royal nightmare.
Even for corporations, if the one running it dies, can mean large loss.
Yes losing an effective charismatic leader can be a huge loss for a corporation. But the corporation itself isn't directly and automatically thrown in legal limbo, its very existence threatened. It exists separately from its shareholders and employees.
Of course should all criminal activity be punished. Put the guilty persons involved in prison, but don't punish their families by making them destitute welfare cases.
If you kill someone in a car accident you can be sued by the family for wrongful death, it can exceed what your insurance company will cover, and you and your family can end up destitute. For a car ACCIDENT. If you get cancer and your treatment costs more than insurance will cover (assuming you are even covered) you and your family can end up destitute. I'm not sure why you'd protect criminals from destitution when everyday citizens who made a bad judgement at a left turn, or just rolled cancer on the wheel of fortune are forced into destitution without a 2nd thought.
That said, I agree with you. None of the above should be forced into destitution.
But we can stop short of destitution. If buddy wiped out the pension and saving of 5000 employees as a result of CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE OR CRIMINAL ACTIVITY, then buddy doesn't get to live in a mansion with a boat anymore. They can live in the subburbs and drive a beater while they worry about how to pay for the kids university like the average american. Leave them with the same assets and debt the average american family in their age demographic. No more. No less.
Whether something works "in theory" is completely irrelevant to, you know, fact.
Not when the subject of discussion is the difference between criciticms of democracy (which are essentially problems with implementation, and problems with people), and criticisms of capitalism (which is genuinely flawed even in theory irrespective of implementation or people).
What was the point of talking about capitalism? I never even mentioned capitalism. Talk about changing the subject...
Try reading some of the grand parent posts above where you got involved. The entire context of this discussion is the way pure capitalism is inherently evil, while pure democracy is inherently good but can still lead to issues because people are flawed.
hence why they keep coming back, because they know the jobs offered by the western companys are a better deal.
Yet we have laws against these sorts of practices here in the West. We would consider it illegal and immoral to round up beggars and homeless people and give them 'jobs' that pay them with a McDonald's lunch. So what if they keep coming back in because its better than rooting through garbage.
That would be illegal exploitation.
Why won't we tolerate corporations doing it HERE, but allow them to do it there?
Do you think we should abolish all workers rights in the US? And let the free market determine the line where 'workers will show up for work because it beats selling their children into the sex trade'? Forget safety equipment, forget breaks, forget overtime, forget paying them wages, just give them product that didn't pass QA and let them hawk it on the street for whatever they can get. Sooner or later they'll be desperate enough to come crawling into work, because that 'deal' your offering them beats out starving in a mud puddle.
ok i have to call bullshit on this. just how are we drawing wealth out of countries by investing in their local economy building factories and creating jobs?
Those factories all belong to US. And all the profits those factories bring go to US.
i suppose you think all those call centers in india have made the indian's poorer? oh no wait india is rising just like china is.
-sigh-
Those countries are rising because they control their own resources. They are rising because WE are borrowing money from THEM. They own many of their factories. They own many of their mineral rights. They own many of their call centers. Yes, we own -some- of them. But they own a lot. Venezuaela's Hugo Chavez for example prevented the privitization (read: foreign ownership) of oil resouces, and brought relative prosperty to the poor of that country by effectively seizing oil revenues for the public good (and his own political good too), but the point is that the nations that are 'rising' are doing so by controlling their own resources, factories, and assets.
They are offering the West a competitive advantage by offering to -exchange- cheaper labour for foreign money. But in this money and profits flow INTO the country.
In the frequent cases where the west obtains control over the foreign resources by, say, bribing a corrupt official, the west ends up controlling the resources, exploiting the poor and desperate as labour, while the corrupt official lives in luxury... but the country as a whole suffers terribly in those transactions.
They're one and the same. The flaw of pure democracy would be that it does not account for the fact that a lot of people are ignorant.
-sigh-
Pure Democracy works in theory. If you fix people, so they aren't ignorant, pure democracy would work fine. In practice, of course, we don't know how to fix people so they aren't ignorant. So yes, a pure democracy might not work in practice due to ignorance, but we can argue in circles forever where the fault lies. But the bottom line is that pure democracy works *in theory*.
Pure capitalism doesn't work EVEN in theory. Even a hypothetical perfect pure capitalism would result in people dying in the streets for lack of medical attention.
A corporation is far more than an insulation from personal liability.
The key value of corporations are that they can raise large amounts of capital, and they have aggregate ownership - potentially millions of owner/investors. They are also, because of aggregate ownership, less vulnerable to being thrown into chaos if 'the owner' dies or something.
I don't think corporations should be abolished, it would be nearly impossible for businesses like Telcos, Auto manufacturer, or an airlines, to exist without some framework like a corporation, to allow massive aggregate ownership.
Corporations arose precisely to insulate those who work and run an enterprise from personal liability.
No, they arose to raise large amounts of capital. Protection from liability was a distant second.
Directors, CEOs etc. are basically employees of the owners. Employees can be fired for doing a poor job, but you cannot take away their personal possessions and those of their families.
A poor job no. A criminally negligent job yes. If a McDonald's employee steals from the till, he can be charged with theft. If a CEO steals from the till by more indirect means, or decides to pump radioactive goo into some kids playground he can be charged as well. Its just that corporations are usually content to simply fire their criminal employees and won't press charges. This needs to be fixed.
Prosecuting the corporation is meaningless, its only money, and its money that belongs to the shareholders not the person who comitted the crime. We MUST prosecute criminal individuals, in addition to and separately from the corporation.
If you start a business and get into debt, you are personally liable for that debt, even to the extent that the creditors can sell your house out from under you and put you in the street to satisfy the debt...Don't throw the baby out with the bath-water.
I agree, but the shield from liability should ONLY cover honest debt, not criminal activity.
Democracy has a few too, like the tyranny of the majority aka "two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner".
Nope. That's a flaw of the consituents not democracy. No system of government real or imagined can prevent tyranny of the majority.
Imagine a modified democracy with a law banning the eating of minority sheep. And the wolves eats him anyway. What happens? Nothing. The sheep is gone, and the wolves are happy.
Imagine a fascist dictatorship with the sheep in charge. And the wolves gang up and eat him anyway. What happens? The sheep is gone, and the wolves are happy.
A society can never be better than its people. That's not a flaw of democracy.
Your entire tirade on cheap labour is horseshit. what you are suggesting would take jobs away from poor people in countries which desperately need them, and who's ONLY competitive advantage is that they can under cut competing labour markets.
Spoken like a true capitalist. Its not merely that they can undercut competing labor markets.
Its that they are willing to send their children to work 20 hour days in your coal mines without safety equipment while you give them just enough to keep them coming back. That's not opportunity. That's evil.
There was a fantastic documentary called "The Yes Men" iirc, that had a 'presentation' made by the yes-men posing as the WTO to a group on how outsourcing was superior to slavery from a business perspective because slaves cost more. They had a whole presentation with charts, and graphs. It was sickening. And the audience barely batted an eye.
Face it, while you can justify that your feeding them, and that this job is better than no job, but the end result is that wealth always flows FROM the exploited nation, making it even poorer than when it started.
a populace decided to vote to ban all religious minorities
oe how about a populace that votes a very popular ruler in as dictator for life
Those aren't flaws of democracy. Those are flaws of people, in aggregate.
A pure democracy is only as good as its people.
It only needs checks and balances, to prevent the mob from doing something evil with it. Democracy doen't create evil, but it can't prevent it if the populace decides on it.
And while checks and balances help, they don't help much. If the MAJORITY of a society decides to eliminate religious minorities, it WILL. What's to stop them? The massively outnumbered police or army, who are mostly sympathetic to the cause? Judges who are mostly sympathetic to the cause? Juries who are mostly sympathetic to the cause?
But democracy itself isn't evil. The very worst you can say is that it allows the mob to rule. But really. The mob ALWAYS has THAT power. And as long as people are generally good, a democracy will be generally good.
In contrast, a pure capitalism is inherently evil. Capitalism needs checks and balances to ensure it never becomes a perfect capitalism, because that would be evil, even if everyone in it were impeccably good. (Of course, if everyone were impeccably good they would never tolerate living in a pure capitalism!!)
See the difference?
Except that your long post goes on about an entity that currently does not exist. The free industrialized world nations that you know today are representative republics.
True. But its semantics. The the terms are synonomous in the real world. When people are accused of criticising an implementation of democracy, one can pretty much take that to mean they are criticising the implementations of 'representative republics' because that's what all the implentations of 'democracy' look like.
I mean, Bush isn't spouting about his desire to bring a 'representative republic' to Iraq is he? The two terms are essentially equivalent in this context, and your comment is reduced to a dispute of semantics.
no one expects pure capitalism or pure democracy to ever be able to exist
The former would be a BAD thing, the latter (probably) a GOOD thing. The point is criticising the defects of democracy so far invariably point to defects in the real world implementation. The defects of capitalism are built right into pure capitalism, we'd be horrified with perfect capitalism.
all you did is enunciate standard real world checks and balances on the ideas
Seeing as I specifically indicated that i thought the ideal 'capitalsm' would be a hybrid of capitalism and something else, those 'checks and balances' serve to hybridize it. So 'all I did' was exactly what I said I'd do.
DUDE! Star Control II is damn easy! Try "The Ur-Quan Masters". It's everything from Star Control II (minus the main title, and the cut scenes from one version) turned open source and it's wonderful. http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
It is. I've played (and beaten it) which I never did do with the original, partly because i upgraded hardware before beating it, and found it a nightmare to get it working on newer computers.
UrQuan Masters is awesome. But the ship battles, while close, are not quite authentic to the original in how the ships feel and move. Its a very good remake, and in some ways its actually better. But its not quite the same. Turning speed and responsiveness is a little different, the timing just isn't quite right. And the re-sampled graphics has issues too during the battles.
By the way, the remake of Privateer is rapidly approaching full usability too, I just need a new joystick...
people are fond of pointing out democracy's many failures too
The failures of democracy aren't democracy itself, but rather of the fact that our implementation of democracy is poor in that it doesn't actually give people the representation in government that they should have. Its too easy to get re-elected, its too hard to break into politics without vast amounts of cash and/or support from existing politicians, its too hard to remove someone who is doing a shitty job, its not nearly transparent enough, the voters don't have more than a token say in most issues as elections are only 'big issue items', and too infrequent to give voters real voices in more mundane items, like patent reform, whether the RIAA should be allowed to sue children, etc. And its too hard to vote. (seriously, the cost and organization to run an election or referendum are an obstacle to effective democracy). First past the post elections wipe prevent minority views from having any voice at all.
There is nothing wrong with democracy. We just don't have a good implementation of one.
Capitalism on the other hand has many REAL flaws, even if implemented perfectly. And a hybrid of capitalism and something else is the only way of fixing it, short of a completely new paradigm like the star-trek-economy where scarcity of resources is pretty much a non-issue.
so please, criticize capitalism. but unless you can enunciate a superior alternative, your criticism means absolutely nothing
Bullshit. The first step in fixing a problem is to identify what the problem is.
But you want solutions to capitalism? Sure, close the borders with any other country that doesn't implement capitalism the same way we do, so that we can compete under a fair system. A great deal of capitalisms problems stem from the comparative advantages of -exploiting- foreign economies that don't have the level of protection of human rights, wages, environment, etc. Or alternatively to closing the borders, treat foreign assets and employees as local ones -- and ensure wages and working conditions and environmental practices are compliant with local standards regardless of where the plant is. Its one thing for there to be a competitive advantage by refining your oil closer to the source, or taking advantage of high unemployment and locating a call centre in its epicenter -- but its something else entirely to exploit a 2nd or 3rd world country to get labour at a fraction of its real value to you.
Second, re-design corporations - make directors accountable personally, make ceos accountable personally.
Third, re-design the stock market so that its focussed on serving INVESTORS not TRADERS. If corporations were interested in satisfying INVESTORS they would take a longer view, but right now all that matters is tomorrows share price and this quarters sales. Only traders care about that.
Third, institute separation of commerce and state. Business should have NO ability to affect or impact on government at all. The biggest problem of capitalism is that its a corrupting force on democracy. Separate them.
I could go on...
OTOH if you've got a fast modern PC and DOSBox, your old DOS games will run quite well.
Some of them will. A pile of them won't, or will run with 'issues'. And throwing more hardware at the problem doesn't help.
DOSBox still presents all kinds of glitches ranging from minor to unplayable. Some games work flawlessly, like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D... but then games like Mechwarrior II, or Destruction Derby 2 are practically unplayable, while games from the Wing Commander series all seem to require tweaking dosbox settings left and right to get the joystick and sound responding right...
For me, dropping a few bucks on some 'vintage' hardware resulted in a better overall experience than any and all of the emulators and virtualization products I've tried. I like the convenience of DosBox like products and use them with games that work well with them, but nothing beats real hardware on those old games, especially the picky ones or the ones dosbox has gotten around to sorting out the issues with.
I'd keep my eyes on the adult industry and study how they have adapted to the new business environment.
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Yeah, the world needs more enterprises with vision like this.
Actually, they are right smack dab in the sweet spot for classic PC gaming, which are notoriously difficult to get running under windows or in emulation programs because they heavily direct access to video hardware, dos interupts, and required as much of that 640kb main memory as you could possibly give it [I recall having autoexec/config setups that dropped support for the CDrom, and used an 8kb mouse driver to run a particular game that actually came on CD. I had to do a full install of the game from CD, and then run the game without CD support in order to have enough RAM. These games were also pretty cpu clock sensitive.
I keep series of early PCs around for precisely this reason. Getting games like XCOM, Masters of Orion II, Might and Magic IV, Star Control II, Echelon, Privateer I/II, Wing Commander I/II/III, etc, etc can excruciatingly hard to get going without sound issues, with the proper framerate, with multiplayer (null modem) support etc...
I can be almost impossible unless running on real hardware from the era.
A P166 would make a good platform for late dos era games, and early win95 games.
They know it's accurate because the voice translation told them it was! It then said something about "robotic voice translator overlords..." We're not sure about that bit. (:
Hence the 80%.
Yes, I have an ipod (5th gen), and my wife has a nano (5th gen). On both, I can differentiate by texture the center area of the clickwheel surface, from the ring, making it easy to position my finger on the center button, or any of the ring buttons, or rotate within the ring. The ipod and center button are slick, while the ring itself has some texture... about the difference between glossy photo paper and regular matt paper. I find it very easy to feel the transition between the two.
I admit I haven't played with the new ipod nano video, but it -looks- like one should still be able to feel the ring and center.
I'm not so sure how easy it would be to operate the ipod touch blind.
-Dave