"Lets not forget, the super expensive proprietary version is also 'free' to anyone with a high speed connection and some free time."
It's not even just that, all too often the expensive proprietary version is just that much better than the free version that it simply makes good business sense to splash out the cash on the proprietary version because of benefits in terms of productivity, shorter time to market and so forth.
From a business perspective, there's often no point going free if you need more or higher paid specialists to look after said system, whilst the people who use the system are less productive.
This is a fairly common problem with FOSS, and it's one of the downsides of the FOSS ideology- many FOSS projects often have great developers but tend to miss other things that proprietary vendors do not- good UI designers as well as investment into usability studies, good QA, etc. A lot of FOSS software is developed for FOSS developers, anyone else be damned. That's fine in itself, but the expectation that it can be pushed out to users is a bit unrealistic.
Some FOSS developers are refreshingly honest about it, in that they state they never intended to support or cared about end users who couldn't look after themselves, and look baffled at the idea that this should be the case- I've even seen comments to this effect here on Slashdot, but then it's impossible to reconcile that viewpoint of other members of the FOSS community that do want to try and spread the word and are willing to invest in a bit more user-centric design and development of their applications. As said above, Firefox was always a great example of this, however it seems to have lost it's way somewhat in recent releases becoming much less fun to use due to getting slower, more bloated, and more buggy.
An ADSL line is a DSL line, although a DSL line is not necessarily an ADSL line as there are many DSL implementations.
BT has announced this because they've also announced they're now getting fibre to the cabinet rolled out to 75% of the UK, and so it's off the back of that they'll likely be trying to sell it.
Unfortunately for me I'm not in that 75%, apparently the outskirts of the 3rd largest city in the UK is not financially feasible according to BT it seems, or perhaps it's because our area is already due to be fibred up by another company and BT are scared fucking shitless of competition where they can't perform price gouging, who knows, but it means I wont be able to get OnLive.
Oh well, however will I cope? I mean really, I've been so so looking forward to it, the idea of being able to have additional input latency added to all my favourite games, I mean, that's awesome.
No, really, I couldn't give a flying fuck. In fact, I'm glad it's limited to BT, because maybe that way at least less people will bother with it and more people will stick to classic console/PC gaming meaning there will be no decrease in people to play against online. Still, good luck with the business model OnLive, you'll need it.
Yeah, and I don't even think it's actually that bad a price for early adoption either.
To many the idea of going into space is unimaginable, but getting it down to 100k means many people could afford it if they were willing to really work for it and perhaps downsize their house- i.e. if it was that important a dream to them.
If going into space is your greatest dream, then at this price you don't even really need to be a millionaire anymore. It's a price that's in grasp of most middle class folks if they're willing to make some sacrifices for it, and the price is as you say only going to go down over time.
"I'm not the pope, but I'm going to have to put "intentionally giving people crabs" in the unethical column."
I think it's probably more in the illegal column. Certainly you can get jail time for knowingly infecting someone with more serious STDs, I doubt very much this would honestly be treated any differently, maybe a slightly lesser punishment, but that's about it. I suspect anyone taking advantage of this offer might find themselves at very least with a hefty fine and community service, but quite possibly serving a short jail sentence.
The only time you face fragmentation with Android is where you start using niche features that aren't available on all handsets, but things like touch screen, accelerometer, GPS and so forth are basically standard. Stick to the standard features across phones and it's easy.
"You can write very portable apps if you want to. You can write very locked-in apps if you want to. For some developers it's not a problem, and for other developers they're finding that they have to (at least) change the way they think about a lot of stuff."
I'm not sure what developers you're referring to, but any developer worth their salt should understand how to develop abstraction layers to handle differences in interchangeable components their software is dependent on. Even web developers face this issue in that their data model should be abstracted away from any specific persistent storage mechanism to make it easy to switch between database servers, or even switch from say flat file to SQL, or vice versa, or something different altogether. That's not to say it's always the case that abstraction is required of course, but it's something every developer should understand, and know how to use when it's needed. Any developer that needs to change the way they think about things to deal with different cases is either not a professional developer, or if they are, they are outright incompetent and are not fit for the role because you can be rest assured, the code they've written will be a major problem one day in that everything that's been hard coded to a specific interchangeable component, is going to need to be untangled, rather than simply have a new implementation for an abstract class or interface written or whatever to support the new component.
Effectively there's nothing in Android that acts as a block for writing portable software to someone who is a professional developer other than as I say, the afformentioned case where the software being developed intentionally targets a few niche features, but again, that's the same for any platform.
"Nothing I've seen indicates that the Android marketplace is that bad. But it's also not "write once, run everywhere, even without putting any design effort into making that come to pass, regardless of the kind of app you're writing"."
I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here, but it sounds like you're either complaining that an application has to be planned to cater to hardware differences, or you can't ever write write once, run everywhere Android software. If it's the former then well, no shit, software development takes skill and planning, just as an architect can't build a fancy new building without planning it and simply hope it wont then fall down. If it's the latter, then you're simply wrong. In the fact majority of cases there will be no issue writing write once run everywhere software, because even features like GPS are I believe standard in every Android handset- there's very few features people would want to use in the majority of apps that are niche features. About the only common difference is screen resolution, but again, that's something developers have been dealing with for decades, and with the various iPhone incarnations including the 4G and the iPad as well it's something even iPhone developers will have to deal with. It's just not something that should phase any professional developer- even HTML jockeys who don't even know much about real software development tend to understand their site might not look the same in every resolution and have to cater to that.
Going beyond Android good software should easily be portable- there's a reason you see some apps on every platform under the sun, and it's because they're written in such a manner where certain components can be swapped out, but the main core stays the same. Most classes in an Android app for example will be reusable in any Java app, you might have to write a new implementation for your abstraction layers again on the new platform, or replace the UI modules, but it'll still be portable.
Or simply put, dealing with hardware/software differences is a long solved problem and one any developer worthy of the title should know how to deal with by now.
So what would be the point in the constitution if it's not interpreted and enforced to be representative of the way most Americans live other than as a tool for a minority to oppress "most Americans"?
Or they're only interested in the technology behind the product and just want to integrate the technology team into the rest of the company without having to fuck about supporting, and selling a product that in itself is of no interest to them?
I'm not sure this is a big deal, they probably just don't see any value in selling and supporting the software as a standalone product, only in using the technology behind the product in their own software.
I think you failed to follow the thread to this point because your comment doesn't make any sense in the context of it.
The last few posts have been specifically about New Zealand and whether PR works there, not whether you could extrapolate whether PR would or wouldn't be a success elsewhere from this.
Clearly New Zealand is a very good nation by just about all important metrics, this demonstrates that at very least PR isn't doing them any harm like the AC seems to imply, but suggests counter to the AC that New Zealand is actually working very well under PR.
Yeah, serves me right for trying to remember the figures off the top of my head. I'm sure I recall reading the figures I stated on Wikipedia sometime last year, but I can't be bothered to look all the way through Wikipedia's change logs to see if it's my memory that sucks or if Wikipedia had the wrong data on it!
As you say, and as I pointed out to the other guy that responded to me, it still demonstrates the point, it's far too big a disparity between proportion of vote, and proportion of power.
Yet New Zealand remains the least corrupt country in the world according to the Corruption Perceptions Index, one of the nicest countries in the world to live according to the UN Human Development Index, and one of the top 30 countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita, and is in the top 15 countries by life expectancy.
So I guess it's not working too badly after all then and you're in fact completely wrong about the reality of New Zealand's parliament, because by just about every measure, New Zealand is doing pretty well, particularly considering it's in a pretty remote part of the world far away from most of it's natural allies and trade partners apart from Australia which puts it in a tough position to begin with. PR seems to be working pretty damn well for it in fact.
If 30% are against, then you go to war, because 70% aren't, and hence the vote to go to war will pass a PR parliament easily.
If 40% are against, then the same goes.
There's only really contention when you have say 51% for, and 49% against in terms of popular support, and a fringe party holds the balance of power, but in this case the solution is generally quite simple. The parties requiring support of the fringe party have to ask themselves if it's a party they want the support of, if it's a far right party, is it worth taking the risk and gaining their support knowing this'll destroy their support come next election?
Of course, even FPTP risks this exact situation, so it's not a PR problem, it's a problem with democracy in general. It can happen more often under PR, but it's still quite infrequent, and again, the decision is far easier than you seem to think- how far do you have to go to gain the support of the fringe party? if it's too far, don't do it, let the law fail to pass, if it's not too big a deal, go for it and accept the consequences of dealing with the fringe come next election.
PR hasn't stopped countries like Germany and so forth being extremely successful and for a nation that has a rather nasty history with the far right- more so than any other country in fact, it still hasn't allowed the far right to gain any real ground.
I'm not sure you understand how the system works in the UK as it basically works how you seem to think it should.
The camera doesn't automatically send off a letter demanding payment of a speeding fine and issuing points, the film is collected by the police who then choose whether to issue a speeding fine. Just as with any notice of offence from the police you can choose to either pay it, or challenge it in court, in this respect it's no different from if the police issue you a warning or similar for dangerous driving and no camera or anything is involved.
Some speeding fines have in fact been overturned in court if there was good reason, for example if you believe your life is in danger as someone dangerous is chasing you and you can prove such then a court will overturn the fine.
So there are cases where mitigating circumstances come into play, and speed cameras don't change that but there has to be good reason. Collecting fines in the case of speed cameras isn't just about appearing tough on crime, when an area has 5 car accidents a year, has a speed camera installed, and that drops to 0 accidents a year, it's hard to suggest that it wasn't the camera helping make the roads safer. These are the sort of statistics we seen in the UK from a lot of cameras- a massive decrease in traffic accidents and hence a decrease in the resulting injuries/deaths when cameras are used.
You're right, those numbers were off a bit, I was going by figures I thought I'd read on Wikipedia some months back, but probably mis-remembered them. Either way it's pretty irrelevant, because it still represents a massive disparity between the actual support, and the power granted.
"But you're making an assumption that anyone who votes for X is against Y. Not so. He might just prefer X. He might be against Z..."
But this works both ways. Say someone votes Tory because they like most their policies, but disagree with the anti-ID card stance of them, then sure that doesn't mean all Tory supporters are against ID cards, but in contrast, it also doesn't mean all Labour supporters are for them either. On average though, in the context of per-issue polls, it tends to balance out quite well, so it's really not that relevant in practice.
"Make a lib-con coalition from the 2005 election figures. 78%[1] are against the LDs. 68% are against the Tories. So presumably 146% of people would be against that coalition?"
This makes no sense, for obvious reasons. A coalition assumes compromise, meaning no one gets their full way, hence why your numbers add up to a nonsensical figure. People accepting compromise for the sake of a coalition doesn't mean they're no longer against the policies they disagree with from the other side of the coalition however, it just means they're willing to put up with them for the sake of the coalition, or in some cases, some people wont support the coalition of course. Effectively whilst they still disagree, they're willing to put that disagreement aside because the alternative of a broken parliament would be worse.
Just to add one of the largest idiocies of the system and the latest election.
The Liberal Democrats, in 2005, got 22% of the popular vote, and had 9% of the seats at 62 seats. This year, they got 23% of the popular vote, but lost 5 seats and now only have 8% of the seats.
So despite the fact the Lib Dems have gone up 1% in terms of votes gained, they've gone down 1% in terms of the amount of power they have in parliament.
I just don't know how people can justify keeping the FPTP system like this, it's so utterly broken- under no circumstance should an increase in support lead to a decrease in power like that.
Sorry, but your entire final paragraph is just complete and utter bollocks.
"There's almost no situation where a proportional representation system would beat out a FPTP system, in terms of keeping the people in charge in a democracy"
Wrong. In the UK I live in an area known as a safe seat, it has been held by Labour since 1918, and they currently have a majority of around 10,000. This means that because I do not support Labour, and the MP in the safe seat does not represent my views (i.e. he's pro-ID card etc.) I do not have a representative. Worse, no matter how I vote, unless I support Labour, my vote is completely and utterly irrelevant because it'll still lead to a Labour candidate gaining power regardless as there simply aren't enough people in this area willing to overturn that.
What's ironic is I actually have more say in the running of Britain for my European parliamentary vote, because it's proportional and whilst it's 1 vote in 535,000,000, that's still 1/535,000,000 more than my UK vote which has zero worth or effect.
For people in safe seats who vote against the safe seat which was around 19 million people in the UK in 2005, more now, FPTP does not give these people any real worthwhile democratic vote. PR however does. If you think FPTP keeps people in charge of democracy you're completely and utterly delusional- it keeps a very small group of people in charge- those in marginal seats, and no one else. The majority of the population has no democratic say under FPTP, whilst under PR everyone would have an equal say. Your suggestion that over 19 million people in a country of 60 million having no say at all, whilst far more have a say, but only because they agree with the results of the marginals in a voting population of around 44 million, is somehow more democratic than everyone having an equal say is mind blowingly nonsensical.
In 2005, Labour won the election in the UK with only 33% of popular vote, yet they had 60% of seats in parliament. This meant that they were able to pass laws, and even change prime minister against the will of 67% of the population. I just can't comprehened how someone can suggest that system is more accountable when you have a minority dictating against the majority.
A suspect part of your misunderstanding comes from the fact that Canada's consistuent boundaries are much better laid out and work better right now, but they're far from perfect, and over time you can be rest assured, that like the UK, they will become much worse.
"I think a proportional representation system is only appealing because people don't really grasp all the concepts involved in a solid, democratic Parliamentary system."
It's appealing because it's the only fair way of selecting ministers, whilst some are better than others, every other method is prone to some arbitrary fudging that can benefit some parties over others and mean that government does not represent the people. It is still wrong to call FPTP democratic as it is barely that when large swathes of the population have no real say in the running of the country.
"Proportional representation falls short on so many aspects that it's just not worth any serious consideration."
Actually, there's no real aspects it falls short on unless you're in support of laws that only benefit you and a minority, and want them pushed through to the detriment of the majority. I suspect you don't actually understand the details of PR or the different implementations of PR or partial PR, as FPTP is weaker than most PR systems. The main criticisms of it, and the counter points are:
Argument: PR removes local representation Wrong, under a PR system you can still have local representatives, this is how votes in the European parliament work for example. What's more, under PR you can communicate with the local representative that actually represents you, under FPTP you can only contact one that doesn't represent you if you voted against him, this is often the same as having no representation because if you di
It's worth pointing out that the pound is at an almost one year low against the dollar, and is sitting below it's natural level against the dollar and has been for months because of the political uncertainty.
Should we get a coalition government or similar that takes decisive action in cutting the UK's deficit which has been put off in the run up to the electon, you can add a good 10% minimum onto those percentages as the pound returns back up towards it's natural level against the dollar over the next 6 months to a year.
The fact that there's a markup at all when the pound is so weak against the dollar is quite inexcusable particularly as Apple has a history of taking years to rectify pricing issues by which time they've usually gotten away with it even when they accept that it's wrong in the face of an anti-trust case such that it's too late, and a few percent adds up to a notable chunk of money on not exactly cheap devices like this. Make no mistake, ripping off British consumers has long been part of Apple's business model.
It's worth pointing out of course that it's not just Apple that does this, however there are some notable exceptions, from places we perhaps least expect them. Microsoft points for XBox Live / Games for Windows Live are actually cheaper in the UK than the US thanks to current exchange rates when you factor in VAT for example, however they certainly weren't when things were riding at $2 USD to £1 GBP. Microsoft puts a massive markup on other goods too however such as Windows, Office and so forth but it's commendable they haven't used it as an excuse to up prices like some companies.
Companies upping costs in the face of weakened exchange rates is fine normally, but when we already pay much more to start with? They can fuck off, I wont buy anything that's severely marked up. To give some examples of when the pound was strong, I bought a Nintendo DS for my girlfriend and an iPod nano for myself, but I didn't buy them in the UK where they were both around the £120 mark, I bought them when we went to Canada where they were the equivalent of £65- almost half price. It was around $2.10 USD and $2.30 CAD to £1 GBP at the time. That's why I have little sympathy for companies that raise prices when the pound is weak, because they're more than happy to charge us nearly double rather than reduce prices when it's strong.
"It would be strange if the technology and acceptability of camera traffic enforcement were not linked to surveillance applications."
Possibly, but not in the way being suggested. Most people hate speed cameras, and so if anything, surveillance technology actually suffers negatively through being associated with speed cameras. In this respect, they make people hate cameras, because even though speed cameras are far less harmful to freedom, people associate the negativity cameras cause when they get caught with surveillance.
"anti-speeding laws actually target pre-criminals. These aren't people who have caused accidents or even broken "reckless driving" statutes. If you really don't think this issue involves freedom"...and we should drop anti-stalking laws, because they target pre-criminals who haven't actually murdered or raped anyone yet, right? Obviously, following this logic, there should be a freedom to stalk people, and stalking laws are a freedom issue. Sorry, but these laws don't target pre-criminals, they target criminals because both of these things are against the law. Don't like the law? seek to get that changed and make the likes of stalking and speeding legal, don't pretend breaking the law isn't actually breaking the law though because obviously that's a logical fallacy.
Why would I support cars that can limit their speed in specific areas? this certainly does require a constant surveillance network, it's far worse than speed cameras, which only take photos of people actually breaking the law. That's far better and protects freedom far more than everyone's position being tracked, whilst still being effective in cutting dangerous driving and saving lives.
"Just look at the folks across the ocean. They used to be a proud empire, now even their most fervent US-mockers recognize the extent to which their freedom has been curtailed."
4,000 of the UK's speed cameras are Gatsos which are stationary, are not networked, do not monitor in real time, and are only trigged to take still images when they detect someone speeding. There's no real freedom issue here if you agree that it's acceptable to capture individual still images of people breaking the law as evidence for court and nothing else. The remaining speed cameras are mobile cameras, and so have police officers present with them anyway, so the only difference here is that the police are using automated tools to gather evidence rather than a separate speed gun and standard camera or something old fashioned like that.
I fully accept the UK has a surveillance problem, and that really stems back to the use of CCTV in UK cities, as well as ANPR at service stations, in some city centres, and on motorways, but again, this is irrelevant to the discussion of speed cameras.
The point is that you can fix the UK's surveillance society problem without ever removing or disabling a single speed camera because they're not part of the surveillance equation. I suspect the problem mostly stems from the fact people assume that speed cameras are permanently monitored or something, but that's simply not the case here. The issue with the UK's CCTV network is that it films everyone, innocent or criminal, all the time, it doesn't discriminate, but the speed cameras here don't do that, they can only catch people if they do actually break the law in front of the camera.
It's also worth pointing out that in the UK, by law, people have to be warned of upcoming speed cameras too. So even in this respect it's not as if they're used to catch people out of the blue, because you get warning that a speed camera is coming up somewhere ahead, so effectively not only do they catch speeding motorists, they have to also not be paying attention. The system isn't perfect, sometimes signs aren't put up for mobile cameras for example, but people have also had their speeding fines overturned when this isn't the case too, so the law works. In this respect they really do just do what they're designed to, they warn people not to speed in areas where they are placed (which are determined as dangerous areas by high incident rates etc.), and if people do ignore the warnings in such an area, and do speed, then they are caught on camera. I really struggle to have much hatred for this system, I'll admit myself I speed sometimes, but I'm not stupid enough to do it where it's dangerous, and especially not where there's a camera.
The issue is, nearly everyone speeds at some point or another, some just don't pay attention, get caught, and are angry they got caught, but you shouldn't really be driving if you can't pay attention to the road. That's most commonly the real reason there's backlash against speed cameras, not because they somehow infringe on any freedoms as again, breaking the law isn't a real freedom. I do agree sometimes speed cameras are put in stupid places, often for political reasons, and this is a problem, but again even then, only if you do actually break the speed limit- often the fundamental issue in these cases is not the camera itself, but the fact the speed limit in such an area is simply lower than it should be for people to drive safe, for example, long open roads with no activity near the sides of the road, but that are limited to 30mph - 40mph when 60mph would be perfectly safe. Sometimes even this can be explained though- i.e. the area is prone to flooding, or black ice, but because those are uncommon occurances, most people don't realise that's the reason, but to play it safe the speed limit is low for that reason, to avoid accidents when those events do in fact occur.
So yep, I suppose you could say I'm anti-surveillance state, but pro-speed camera, I do not believe the two things need be related quite frankly, and if they are, I believe it's the government for doing so that's the problem, not the cameras which have in fact been contributory in making a massive impact in decreasing road deaths and injuries in the UK.
The common factor is that it's all Murdoch media- Fox, The Sun, The New York Post etc.
Yes, it's scary as fuck that the most succesful news corporation world wide is the one that's most full of shit globally.
Hell, they even look possibly set to be getting their own way and putting David Cameron into power in the UK today, fingers crossed things don't quite go entirely Rupert's way and we get a hung parliament now.
News Corporation papers are unfortunately responsible for more than just getting beaver stories wrong. Honestly, the best thing that could happen to the Western world would be the bankruptcy of Murdoch and the fall of all his papers etc. Him getting hit by a large truck would be nice too, because ultimately his love of spreading bullshit is responsible for more misery and problems globally through the spread of lies, ignorance, and bad government than some of the worlds worst dictators in history. If you look at the influence Fox had on getting Bush elected for example (even if you don't believe Fox's call was what gave him the election, all pre-election slandering of opposition makes a differences) then you can really link him to the fact the US went into Iraq in the first place even though it had nothing to do with 9/11. The actions of his news outlets have real, serious, knock on effects that can set off chains of events that cause tens, possibly hundreds of thousands to die.
Of course, Murdoch isn't unique, others are as bad, he's just the king of evil in this respect. It's quite sad really. What makes it worse is that his offspring are just as bad and are taking over the reigns from him, so it's not as if we'll get rid of him that way either.
"Liberals, on the one hand, oppose the new Arizona law against illegal immigrants (no race specified in the law itself) because it is "racist", but on the other hand, they love to have all sorts of other laws that specifically account for race (Affirmative Action)."
Perhaps it's because they're capable of seeing the difference between what a law actually specifies and how it should work in theory, and how the law will end up actually being used in practice?
It's just like the stop and search powers in the UK, the police are allowed to stop and search anyone, but they're used to target people from asia and the middle east massively disproportionately. Just as people said would happen when arguing against the laws when they were created. This is despite the fact that statistically, asians and people from the middle east are no more likely to be a terrorist threat than white Western people due to the fact we have had everything from the IRA, to a nutcase who was pissed off at the DVLA, through to white extremists also attempting terrorist attacks in recent history.
Similarly it would seem these people know that sometimes the law does in fact work- in the case of companies who find it much harder to avoid legally binding discrimination laws for example. Essentially, sometimes the law does work and in balance decreases discrimination, other times it doesn't, and increases it.
I don't see how this is hypocritical in any way whatsoever, the people you're referring to as "Liberals" seem to be merely pushing for equality using the law where it will work fairly, and talking down new laws where it clearly wont work fairly.
You may call these "Liberals" with this standpoint twits, or hypocrits, or whatever else you want, but at the end of the day it would appear they at least have a better grasp of how the world actually works in practice than you do. Your view on marriage for example is great in theory, but wont necessarily work in practice.
I use the term Liberals in quotes because it's a very American concept that you can pidgeon hole people into precisely one very narrow political leaning and suggest they all have exactly the same viewpoint. I suspect that again, in reality things are quite different and that people all across the political spectrum fit into some of your points, but it makes them neither truly Liberal or truly Conservative, but either way, certainly doesn't make them hypocritical.
That's an interesting way of justifying it to yourself, but it still doesn't change the fact that if you pay for a film with the likes of Travolta or Cruise in it then you are funding those people, and whatever they spend their money on still depends on them receiving money as a result of the likes of you purchasing your products.
As for your other points, I'm not sure how they're relevant, you're mostly right:
"If you buy goods that have parts made in China you are funding the communists."
Absolutely, because tax on those business profits from your purchase go to the communist parties tax coffers, hence you are certainly funding that regime.
"If you buy opiates/oil you are funding the terrorists"
Opiates yes, oil no, because companies like Shell, BP and so forth aren't actually terrorists, nor do they give any money to terrorists.
"If you IT services you are funding Hindu religions"
Possibly yes, if your paying for a service such that money gets back to someone in India, who then spends their wage on some element of the Hindu religion, such as a charity contribution for a new temple then indeed you're correct.
"If you buy cotton you are funding the right wing christians"
I'm not sure what you're on about here as I don't know the ins and outs of the cotton trade. If the cotton trade is owned by Christians who use any profits gained from their industry to pay for their religions needs then yes, you're correct.
You really summed it up best in your later comments- that you feel Scientologists aren't a big enough deal to inconvenience yourself over which is fair enough, if that's your viewpoint then fine, but it also means you have no real right to complain about their actions as you ultimately support them, so it would just make you a hypocrit. The rest of what you said though really just seems to be a typical case of trying to justify to yourself how you can see the latest Cruise/Travolta movie whilst pretending your conscience is clear, when in the case of Scientology it's really not.
You can't have it boths ways that's all, if you accept you're happy to fund Scientology by supporting it's two most well known proponents so you can see their latest films then fair enough, there's no problem with that. If you want to pretend you're not supporting scientology though by some obscure justification that because you don't pay them directly your money is never a part of whatever reaches them, then you're simply wrong. If you do want to stick with the latter situation though, it's still hard to criticise you because that kind of attitude is fairly rampant- you only have to look at the amount of people here on Slashdot who cry constantly about DRM and then go and buy the latest Valve/Microsoft DRM encumbered game on Steam/Live, or the latest Apple DRM encumbered product. A lot of people are hypocrits, it's just better to not be one, so you at least have the moral high ground when arguing against such things.
"3. You even care what his religious/political stance of an actor is?"
So I take it you'd happily fund Scientologists like Cruise and Travolta by paying for their shit?
Personally, I see nothing wrong in caring what the religious or political stance of an actor is if you want to avoid supporting the lives of people like that. I agree with you on the other points though.
What pisses me off is the way this has spread to the UK.
It used to be that every network carried every phone pretty much, some got them a few months later, but they all generally tended to get them with a few exceptions.
Nowadays, if you want say an Android handset it defines your carrier. I can't go Orange and get an HTC Magic, I can't go Vodafone and get an HTC Hero, unless of course I buy the handset on it's own.
Why the fuck has the UK gone down the US route of every damned handset being an exclusive? It's just stupid.
Why do handset manufacturers even allow it? they shoot themselves in the foot because they're literally cutting their potential userbase down massively. I wont change away from Vodafone to Orange ever for example, even if Orange has the handset I want, why? Because I get zero reception from Orange in my house, making it useless as a carrier, so any exclusive handset release to Orange is simply a lost sale for the manufacturer of the handset, no matter how much I like that handset.
Is it the carriers forcing it, demanding exclusivity? Whose fault is it?
The guy who I got the invite off had e-mail address 1, which was not my MSN address, he did not have my MSN address.
The person it listed from my MSN list was on an MSN list using e-mail 2, yet this person and account has never had e-mail 1.
So how can that be reconciled without external data mining from other sources that have other personal data that they cross referenced? There's no link between either of the two contacts, there's no place where both e-mails are stored together such that they can be linked directly, yet they were. The only way this is possible is using other data like my address which might be tied against both e-mails separately, or perhaps even more scary- the prospect that MS, who has a large share in Facebook mines my MSN conversations where I have mentioned the other address to other people in the past.
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"Lets not forget, the super expensive proprietary version is also 'free' to anyone with a high speed connection and some free time."
It's not even just that, all too often the expensive proprietary version is just that much better than the free version that it simply makes good business sense to splash out the cash on the proprietary version because of benefits in terms of productivity, shorter time to market and so forth.
From a business perspective, there's often no point going free if you need more or higher paid specialists to look after said system, whilst the people who use the system are less productive.
This is a fairly common problem with FOSS, and it's one of the downsides of the FOSS ideology- many FOSS projects often have great developers but tend to miss other things that proprietary vendors do not- good UI designers as well as investment into usability studies, good QA, etc. A lot of FOSS software is developed for FOSS developers, anyone else be damned. That's fine in itself, but the expectation that it can be pushed out to users is a bit unrealistic.
Some FOSS developers are refreshingly honest about it, in that they state they never intended to support or cared about end users who couldn't look after themselves, and look baffled at the idea that this should be the case- I've even seen comments to this effect here on Slashdot, but then it's impossible to reconcile that viewpoint of other members of the FOSS community that do want to try and spread the word and are willing to invest in a bit more user-centric design and development of their applications. As said above, Firefox was always a great example of this, however it seems to have lost it's way somewhat in recent releases becoming much less fun to use due to getting slower, more bloated, and more buggy.
An ADSL line is a DSL line, although a DSL line is not necessarily an ADSL line as there are many DSL implementations.
BT has announced this because they've also announced they're now getting fibre to the cabinet rolled out to 75% of the UK, and so it's off the back of that they'll likely be trying to sell it.
Unfortunately for me I'm not in that 75%, apparently the outskirts of the 3rd largest city in the UK is not financially feasible according to BT it seems, or perhaps it's because our area is already due to be fibred up by another company and BT are scared fucking shitless of competition where they can't perform price gouging, who knows, but it means I wont be able to get OnLive.
Oh well, however will I cope? I mean really, I've been so so looking forward to it, the idea of being able to have additional input latency added to all my favourite games, I mean, that's awesome.
No, really, I couldn't give a flying fuck. In fact, I'm glad it's limited to BT, because maybe that way at least less people will bother with it and more people will stick to classic console/PC gaming meaning there will be no decrease in people to play against online. Still, good luck with the business model OnLive, you'll need it.
Yeah, and I don't even think it's actually that bad a price for early adoption either.
To many the idea of going into space is unimaginable, but getting it down to 100k means many people could afford it if they were willing to really work for it and perhaps downsize their house- i.e. if it was that important a dream to them.
If going into space is your greatest dream, then at this price you don't even really need to be a millionaire anymore. It's a price that's in grasp of most middle class folks if they're willing to make some sacrifices for it, and the price is as you say only going to go down over time.
"I'm not the pope, but I'm going to have to put "intentionally giving people crabs" in the unethical column."
I think it's probably more in the illegal column. Certainly you can get jail time for knowingly infecting someone with more serious STDs, I doubt very much this would honestly be treated any differently, maybe a slightly lesser punishment, but that's about it. I suspect anyone taking advantage of this offer might find themselves at very least with a hefty fine and community service, but quite possibly serving a short jail sentence.
The only time you face fragmentation with Android is where you start using niche features that aren't available on all handsets, but things like touch screen, accelerometer, GPS and so forth are basically standard. Stick to the standard features across phones and it's easy.
"You can write very portable apps if you want to. You can write very locked-in apps if you want to. For some developers it's not a problem, and for other developers they're finding that they have to (at least) change the way they think about a lot of stuff."
I'm not sure what developers you're referring to, but any developer worth their salt should understand how to develop abstraction layers to handle differences in interchangeable components their software is dependent on. Even web developers face this issue in that their data model should be abstracted away from any specific persistent storage mechanism to make it easy to switch between database servers, or even switch from say flat file to SQL, or vice versa, or something different altogether. That's not to say it's always the case that abstraction is required of course, but it's something every developer should understand, and know how to use when it's needed. Any developer that needs to change the way they think about things to deal with different cases is either not a professional developer, or if they are, they are outright incompetent and are not fit for the role because you can be rest assured, the code they've written will be a major problem one day in that everything that's been hard coded to a specific interchangeable component, is going to need to be untangled, rather than simply have a new implementation for an abstract class or interface written or whatever to support the new component.
Effectively there's nothing in Android that acts as a block for writing portable software to someone who is a professional developer other than as I say, the afformentioned case where the software being developed intentionally targets a few niche features, but again, that's the same for any platform.
"Nothing I've seen indicates that the Android marketplace is that bad. But it's also not "write once, run everywhere, even without putting any design effort into making that come to pass, regardless of the kind of app you're writing"."
I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here, but it sounds like you're either complaining that an application has to be planned to cater to hardware differences, or you can't ever write write once, run everywhere Android software. If it's the former then well, no shit, software development takes skill and planning, just as an architect can't build a fancy new building without planning it and simply hope it wont then fall down. If it's the latter, then you're simply wrong. In the fact majority of cases there will be no issue writing write once run everywhere software, because even features like GPS are I believe standard in every Android handset- there's very few features people would want to use in the majority of apps that are niche features. About the only common difference is screen resolution, but again, that's something developers have been dealing with for decades, and with the various iPhone incarnations including the 4G and the iPad as well it's something even iPhone developers will have to deal with. It's just not something that should phase any professional developer- even HTML jockeys who don't even know much about real software development tend to understand their site might not look the same in every resolution and have to cater to that.
Going beyond Android good software should easily be portable- there's a reason you see some apps on every platform under the sun, and it's because they're written in such a manner where certain components can be swapped out, but the main core stays the same. Most classes in an Android app for example will be reusable in any Java app, you might have to write a new implementation for your abstraction layers again on the new platform, or replace the UI modules, but it'll still be portable.
Or simply put, dealing with hardware/software differences is a long solved problem and one any developer worthy of the title should know how to deal with by now.
So what would be the point in the constitution if it's not interpreted and enforced to be representative of the way most Americans live other than as a tool for a minority to oppress "most Americans"?
Or they're only interested in the technology behind the product and just want to integrate the technology team into the rest of the company without having to fuck about supporting, and selling a product that in itself is of no interest to them?
I'm not sure this is a big deal, they probably just don't see any value in selling and supporting the software as a standalone product, only in using the technology behind the product in their own software.
I think you failed to follow the thread to this point because your comment doesn't make any sense in the context of it.
The last few posts have been specifically about New Zealand and whether PR works there, not whether you could extrapolate whether PR would or wouldn't be a success elsewhere from this.
Clearly New Zealand is a very good nation by just about all important metrics, this demonstrates that at very least PR isn't doing them any harm like the AC seems to imply, but suggests counter to the AC that New Zealand is actually working very well under PR.
Yeah, serves me right for trying to remember the figures off the top of my head. I'm sure I recall reading the figures I stated on Wikipedia sometime last year, but I can't be bothered to look all the way through Wikipedia's change logs to see if it's my memory that sucks or if Wikipedia had the wrong data on it!
As you say, and as I pointed out to the other guy that responded to me, it still demonstrates the point, it's far too big a disparity between proportion of vote, and proportion of power.
Yet New Zealand remains the least corrupt country in the world according to the Corruption Perceptions Index, one of the nicest countries in the world to live according to the UN Human Development Index, and one of the top 30 countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita, and is in the top 15 countries by life expectancy.
So I guess it's not working too badly after all then and you're in fact completely wrong about the reality of New Zealand's parliament, because by just about every measure, New Zealand is doing pretty well, particularly considering it's in a pretty remote part of the world far away from most of it's natural allies and trade partners apart from Australia which puts it in a tough position to begin with. PR seems to be working pretty damn well for it in fact.
If 30% are against, then you go to war, because 70% aren't, and hence the vote to go to war will pass a PR parliament easily.
If 40% are against, then the same goes.
There's only really contention when you have say 51% for, and 49% against in terms of popular support, and a fringe party holds the balance of power, but in this case the solution is generally quite simple. The parties requiring support of the fringe party have to ask themselves if it's a party they want the support of, if it's a far right party, is it worth taking the risk and gaining their support knowing this'll destroy their support come next election?
Of course, even FPTP risks this exact situation, so it's not a PR problem, it's a problem with democracy in general. It can happen more often under PR, but it's still quite infrequent, and again, the decision is far easier than you seem to think- how far do you have to go to gain the support of the fringe party? if it's too far, don't do it, let the law fail to pass, if it's not too big a deal, go for it and accept the consequences of dealing with the fringe come next election.
PR hasn't stopped countries like Germany and so forth being extremely successful and for a nation that has a rather nasty history with the far right- more so than any other country in fact, it still hasn't allowed the far right to gain any real ground.
I'm not sure you understand how the system works in the UK as it basically works how you seem to think it should.
The camera doesn't automatically send off a letter demanding payment of a speeding fine and issuing points, the film is collected by the police who then choose whether to issue a speeding fine. Just as with any notice of offence from the police you can choose to either pay it, or challenge it in court, in this respect it's no different from if the police issue you a warning or similar for dangerous driving and no camera or anything is involved.
Some speeding fines have in fact been overturned in court if there was good reason, for example if you believe your life is in danger as someone dangerous is chasing you and you can prove such then a court will overturn the fine.
So there are cases where mitigating circumstances come into play, and speed cameras don't change that but there has to be good reason. Collecting fines in the case of speed cameras isn't just about appearing tough on crime, when an area has 5 car accidents a year, has a speed camera installed, and that drops to 0 accidents a year, it's hard to suggest that it wasn't the camera helping make the roads safer. These are the sort of statistics we seen in the UK from a lot of cameras- a massive decrease in traffic accidents and hence a decrease in the resulting injuries/deaths when cameras are used.
You're right, those numbers were off a bit, I was going by figures I thought I'd read on Wikipedia some months back, but probably mis-remembered them. Either way it's pretty irrelevant, because it still represents a massive disparity between the actual support, and the power granted.
"But you're making an assumption that anyone who votes for X is against Y. Not so. He might just prefer X. He might be against Z..."
But this works both ways. Say someone votes Tory because they like most their policies, but disagree with the anti-ID card stance of them, then sure that doesn't mean all Tory supporters are against ID cards, but in contrast, it also doesn't mean all Labour supporters are for them either. On average though, in the context of per-issue polls, it tends to balance out quite well, so it's really not that relevant in practice.
"Make a lib-con coalition from the 2005 election figures. 78%[1] are against the LDs. 68% are against the Tories. So presumably 146% of people would be against that coalition?"
This makes no sense, for obvious reasons. A coalition assumes compromise, meaning no one gets their full way, hence why your numbers add up to a nonsensical figure. People accepting compromise for the sake of a coalition doesn't mean they're no longer against the policies they disagree with from the other side of the coalition however, it just means they're willing to put up with them for the sake of the coalition, or in some cases, some people wont support the coalition of course. Effectively whilst they still disagree, they're willing to put that disagreement aside because the alternative of a broken parliament would be worse.
Just to add one of the largest idiocies of the system and the latest election.
The Liberal Democrats, in 2005, got 22% of the popular vote, and had 9% of the seats at 62 seats. This year, they got 23% of the popular vote, but lost 5 seats and now only have 8% of the seats.
So despite the fact the Lib Dems have gone up 1% in terms of votes gained, they've gone down 1% in terms of the amount of power they have in parliament.
I just don't know how people can justify keeping the FPTP system like this, it's so utterly broken- under no circumstance should an increase in support lead to a decrease in power like that.
Sorry, but your entire final paragraph is just complete and utter bollocks.
"There's almost no situation where a proportional representation system would beat out a FPTP system, in terms of keeping the people in charge in a democracy"
Wrong. In the UK I live in an area known as a safe seat, it has been held by Labour since 1918, and they currently have a majority of around 10,000. This means that because I do not support Labour, and the MP in the safe seat does not represent my views (i.e. he's pro-ID card etc.) I do not have a representative. Worse, no matter how I vote, unless I support Labour, my vote is completely and utterly irrelevant because it'll still lead to a Labour candidate gaining power regardless as there simply aren't enough people in this area willing to overturn that.
What's ironic is I actually have more say in the running of Britain for my European parliamentary vote, because it's proportional and whilst it's 1 vote in 535,000,000, that's still 1/535,000,000 more than my UK vote which has zero worth or effect.
For people in safe seats who vote against the safe seat which was around 19 million people in the UK in 2005, more now, FPTP does not give these people any real worthwhile democratic vote. PR however does. If you think FPTP keeps people in charge of democracy you're completely and utterly delusional- it keeps a very small group of people in charge- those in marginal seats, and no one else. The majority of the population has no democratic say under FPTP, whilst under PR everyone would have an equal say. Your suggestion that over 19 million people in a country of 60 million having no say at all, whilst far more have a say, but only because they agree with the results of the marginals in a voting population of around 44 million, is somehow more democratic than everyone having an equal say is mind blowingly nonsensical.
In 2005, Labour won the election in the UK with only 33% of popular vote, yet they had 60% of seats in parliament. This meant that they were able to pass laws, and even change prime minister against the will of 67% of the population. I just can't comprehened how someone can suggest that system is more accountable when you have a minority dictating against the majority.
A suspect part of your misunderstanding comes from the fact that Canada's consistuent boundaries are much better laid out and work better right now, but they're far from perfect, and over time you can be rest assured, that like the UK, they will become much worse.
"I think a proportional representation system is only appealing because people don't really grasp all the concepts involved in a solid, democratic Parliamentary system."
It's appealing because it's the only fair way of selecting ministers, whilst some are better than others, every other method is prone to some arbitrary fudging that can benefit some parties over others and mean that government does not represent the people. It is still wrong to call FPTP democratic as it is barely that when large swathes of the population have no real say in the running of the country.
"Proportional representation falls short on so many aspects that it's just not worth any serious consideration."
Actually, there's no real aspects it falls short on unless you're in support of laws that only benefit you and a minority, and want them pushed through to the detriment of the majority. I suspect you don't actually understand the details of PR or the different implementations of PR or partial PR, as FPTP is weaker than most PR systems. The main criticisms of it, and the counter points are:
Argument: PR removes local representation
Wrong, under a PR system you can still have local representatives, this is how votes in the European parliament work for example. What's more, under PR you can communicate with the local representative that actually represents you, under FPTP you can only contact one that doesn't represent you if you voted against him, this is often the same as having no representation because if you di
It's worth pointing out that the pound is at an almost one year low against the dollar, and is sitting below it's natural level against the dollar and has been for months because of the political uncertainty.
Should we get a coalition government or similar that takes decisive action in cutting the UK's deficit which has been put off in the run up to the electon, you can add a good 10% minimum onto those percentages as the pound returns back up towards it's natural level against the dollar over the next 6 months to a year.
The fact that there's a markup at all when the pound is so weak against the dollar is quite inexcusable particularly as Apple has a history of taking years to rectify pricing issues by which time they've usually gotten away with it even when they accept that it's wrong in the face of an anti-trust case such that it's too late, and a few percent adds up to a notable chunk of money on not exactly cheap devices like this. Make no mistake, ripping off British consumers has long been part of Apple's business model.
It's worth pointing out of course that it's not just Apple that does this, however there are some notable exceptions, from places we perhaps least expect them. Microsoft points for XBox Live / Games for Windows Live are actually cheaper in the UK than the US thanks to current exchange rates when you factor in VAT for example, however they certainly weren't when things were riding at $2 USD to £1 GBP. Microsoft puts a massive markup on other goods too however such as Windows, Office and so forth but it's commendable they haven't used it as an excuse to up prices like some companies.
Companies upping costs in the face of weakened exchange rates is fine normally, but when we already pay much more to start with? They can fuck off, I wont buy anything that's severely marked up. To give some examples of when the pound was strong, I bought a Nintendo DS for my girlfriend and an iPod nano for myself, but I didn't buy them in the UK where they were both around the £120 mark, I bought them when we went to Canada where they were the equivalent of £65- almost half price. It was around $2.10 USD and $2.30 CAD to £1 GBP at the time. That's why I have little sympathy for companies that raise prices when the pound is weak, because they're more than happy to charge us nearly double rather than reduce prices when it's strong.
"It would be strange if the technology and acceptability of camera traffic enforcement were not linked to surveillance applications."
Possibly, but not in the way being suggested. Most people hate speed cameras, and so if anything, surveillance technology actually suffers negatively through being associated with speed cameras. In this respect, they make people hate cameras, because even though speed cameras are far less harmful to freedom, people associate the negativity cameras cause when they get caught with surveillance.
"anti-speeding laws actually target pre-criminals. These aren't people who have caused accidents or even broken "reckless driving" statutes. If you really don't think this issue involves freedom" ...and we should drop anti-stalking laws, because they target pre-criminals who haven't actually murdered or raped anyone yet, right? Obviously, following this logic, there should be a freedom to stalk people, and stalking laws are a freedom issue. Sorry, but these laws don't target pre-criminals, they target criminals because both of these things are against the law. Don't like the law? seek to get that changed and make the likes of stalking and speeding legal, don't pretend breaking the law isn't actually breaking the law though because obviously that's a logical fallacy.
Why would I support cars that can limit their speed in specific areas? this certainly does require a constant surveillance network, it's far worse than speed cameras, which only take photos of people actually breaking the law. That's far better and protects freedom far more than everyone's position being tracked, whilst still being effective in cutting dangerous driving and saving lives.
"Just look at the folks across the ocean. They used to be a proud empire, now even their most fervent US-mockers recognize the extent to which their freedom has been curtailed."
4,000 of the UK's speed cameras are Gatsos which are stationary, are not networked, do not monitor in real time, and are only trigged to take still images when they detect someone speeding. There's no real freedom issue here if you agree that it's acceptable to capture individual still images of people breaking the law as evidence for court and nothing else. The remaining speed cameras are mobile cameras, and so have police officers present with them anyway, so the only difference here is that the police are using automated tools to gather evidence rather than a separate speed gun and standard camera or something old fashioned like that.
I fully accept the UK has a surveillance problem, and that really stems back to the use of CCTV in UK cities, as well as ANPR at service stations, in some city centres, and on motorways, but again, this is irrelevant to the discussion of speed cameras.
The point is that you can fix the UK's surveillance society problem without ever removing or disabling a single speed camera because they're not part of the surveillance equation. I suspect the problem mostly stems from the fact people assume that speed cameras are permanently monitored or something, but that's simply not the case here. The issue with the UK's CCTV network is that it films everyone, innocent or criminal, all the time, it doesn't discriminate, but the speed cameras here don't do that, they can only catch people if they do actually break the law in front of the camera.
It's also worth pointing out that in the UK, by law, people have to be warned of upcoming speed cameras too. So even in this respect it's not as if they're used to catch people out of the blue, because you get warning that a speed camera is coming up somewhere ahead, so effectively not only do they catch speeding motorists, they have to also not be paying attention. The system isn't perfect, sometimes signs aren't put up for mobile cameras for example, but people have also had their speeding fines overturned when this isn't the case too, so the law works. In this respect they really do just do what they're designed to, they warn people not to speed in areas where they are placed (which are determined as dangerous areas by high incident rates etc.), and if people do ignore the warnings in such an area, and do speed, then they are caught on camera. I really struggle to have much hatred for this system, I'll admit myself I speed sometimes, but I'm not stupid enough to do it where it's dangerous, and especially not where there's a camera.
The issue is, nearly everyone speeds at some point or another, some just don't pay attention, get caught, and are angry they got caught, but you shouldn't really be driving if you can't pay attention to the road. That's most commonly the real reason there's backlash against speed cameras, not because they somehow infringe on any freedoms as again, breaking the law isn't a real freedom. I do agree sometimes speed cameras are put in stupid places, often for political reasons, and this is a problem, but again even then, only if you do actually break the speed limit- often the fundamental issue in these cases is not the camera itself, but the fact the speed limit in such an area is simply lower than it should be for people to drive safe, for example, long open roads with no activity near the sides of the road, but that are limited to 30mph - 40mph when 60mph would be perfectly safe. Sometimes even this can be explained though- i.e. the area is prone to flooding, or black ice, but because those are uncommon occurances, most people don't realise that's the reason, but to play it safe the speed limit is low for that reason, to avoid accidents when those events do in fact occur.
So yep, I suppose you could say I'm anti-surveillance state, but pro-speed camera, I do not believe the two things need be related quite frankly, and if they are, I believe it's the government for doing so that's the problem, not the cameras which have in fact been contributory in making a massive impact in decreasing road deaths and injuries in the UK.
I was going to ask how you manage to resist and remain celibate for life, now I know.
The common factor is that it's all Murdoch media- Fox, The Sun, The New York Post etc.
Yes, it's scary as fuck that the most succesful news corporation world wide is the one that's most full of shit globally.
Hell, they even look possibly set to be getting their own way and putting David Cameron into power in the UK today, fingers crossed things don't quite go entirely Rupert's way and we get a hung parliament now.
News Corporation papers are unfortunately responsible for more than just getting beaver stories wrong. Honestly, the best thing that could happen to the Western world would be the bankruptcy of Murdoch and the fall of all his papers etc. Him getting hit by a large truck would be nice too, because ultimately his love of spreading bullshit is responsible for more misery and problems globally through the spread of lies, ignorance, and bad government than some of the worlds worst dictators in history. If you look at the influence Fox had on getting Bush elected for example (even if you don't believe Fox's call was what gave him the election, all pre-election slandering of opposition makes a differences) then you can really link him to the fact the US went into Iraq in the first place even though it had nothing to do with 9/11. The actions of his news outlets have real, serious, knock on effects that can set off chains of events that cause tens, possibly hundreds of thousands to die.
Of course, Murdoch isn't unique, others are as bad, he's just the king of evil in this respect. It's quite sad really. What makes it worse is that his offspring are just as bad and are taking over the reigns from him, so it's not as if we'll get rid of him that way either.
"Liberals, on the one hand, oppose the new Arizona law against illegal immigrants (no race specified in the law itself) because it is "racist", but on the other hand, they love to have all sorts of other laws that specifically account for race (Affirmative Action)."
Perhaps it's because they're capable of seeing the difference between what a law actually specifies and how it should work in theory, and how the law will end up actually being used in practice?
It's just like the stop and search powers in the UK, the police are allowed to stop and search anyone, but they're used to target people from asia and the middle east massively disproportionately. Just as people said would happen when arguing against the laws when they were created. This is despite the fact that statistically, asians and people from the middle east are no more likely to be a terrorist threat than white Western people due to the fact we have had everything from the IRA, to a nutcase who was pissed off at the DVLA, through to white extremists also attempting terrorist attacks in recent history.
Similarly it would seem these people know that sometimes the law does in fact work- in the case of companies who find it much harder to avoid legally binding discrimination laws for example. Essentially, sometimes the law does work and in balance decreases discrimination, other times it doesn't, and increases it.
I don't see how this is hypocritical in any way whatsoever, the people you're referring to as "Liberals" seem to be merely pushing for equality using the law where it will work fairly, and talking down new laws where it clearly wont work fairly.
You may call these "Liberals" with this standpoint twits, or hypocrits, or whatever else you want, but at the end of the day it would appear they at least have a better grasp of how the world actually works in practice than you do. Your view on marriage for example is great in theory, but wont necessarily work in practice.
I use the term Liberals in quotes because it's a very American concept that you can pidgeon hole people into precisely one very narrow political leaning and suggest they all have exactly the same viewpoint. I suspect that again, in reality things are quite different and that people all across the political spectrum fit into some of your points, but it makes them neither truly Liberal or truly Conservative, but either way, certainly doesn't make them hypocritical.
That's an interesting way of justifying it to yourself, but it still doesn't change the fact that if you pay for a film with the likes of Travolta or Cruise in it then you are funding those people, and whatever they spend their money on still depends on them receiving money as a result of the likes of you purchasing your products.
As for your other points, I'm not sure how they're relevant, you're mostly right:
"If you buy goods that have parts made in China you are funding the communists."
Absolutely, because tax on those business profits from your purchase go to the communist parties tax coffers, hence you are certainly funding that regime.
"If you buy opiates/oil you are funding the terrorists"
Opiates yes, oil no, because companies like Shell, BP and so forth aren't actually terrorists, nor do they give any money to terrorists.
"If you IT services you are funding Hindu religions"
Possibly yes, if your paying for a service such that money gets back to someone in India, who then spends their wage on some element of the Hindu religion, such as a charity contribution for a new temple then indeed you're correct.
"If you buy cotton you are funding the right wing christians"
I'm not sure what you're on about here as I don't know the ins and outs of the cotton trade. If the cotton trade is owned by Christians who use any profits gained from their industry to pay for their religions needs then yes, you're correct.
You really summed it up best in your later comments- that you feel Scientologists aren't a big enough deal to inconvenience yourself over which is fair enough, if that's your viewpoint then fine, but it also means you have no real right to complain about their actions as you ultimately support them, so it would just make you a hypocrit. The rest of what you said though really just seems to be a typical case of trying to justify to yourself how you can see the latest Cruise/Travolta movie whilst pretending your conscience is clear, when in the case of Scientology it's really not.
You can't have it boths ways that's all, if you accept you're happy to fund Scientology by supporting it's two most well known proponents so you can see their latest films then fair enough, there's no problem with that. If you want to pretend you're not supporting scientology though by some obscure justification that because you don't pay them directly your money is never a part of whatever reaches them, then you're simply wrong. If you do want to stick with the latter situation though, it's still hard to criticise you because that kind of attitude is fairly rampant- you only have to look at the amount of people here on Slashdot who cry constantly about DRM and then go and buy the latest Valve/Microsoft DRM encumbered game on Steam/Live, or the latest Apple DRM encumbered product. A lot of people are hypocrits, it's just better to not be one, so you at least have the moral high ground when arguing against such things.
"3. You even care what his religious/political stance of an actor is?"
So I take it you'd happily fund Scientologists like Cruise and Travolta by paying for their shit?
Personally, I see nothing wrong in caring what the religious or political stance of an actor is if you want to avoid supporting the lives of people like that. I agree with you on the other points though.
What pisses me off is the way this has spread to the UK.
It used to be that every network carried every phone pretty much, some got them a few months later, but they all generally tended to get them with a few exceptions.
Nowadays, if you want say an Android handset it defines your carrier. I can't go Orange and get an HTC Magic, I can't go Vodafone and get an HTC Hero, unless of course I buy the handset on it's own.
Why the fuck has the UK gone down the US route of every damned handset being an exclusive? It's just stupid.
Why do handset manufacturers even allow it? they shoot themselves in the foot because they're literally cutting their potential userbase down massively. I wont change away from Vodafone to Orange ever for example, even if Orange has the handset I want, why? Because I get zero reception from Orange in my house, making it useless as a carrier, so any exclusive handset release to Orange is simply a lost sale for the manufacturer of the handset, no matter how much I like that handset.
Is it the carriers forcing it, demanding exclusivity? Whose fault is it?
But that's the issue here, the data isn't linked.
The guy who I got the invite off had e-mail address 1, which was not my MSN address, he did not have my MSN address.
The person it listed from my MSN list was on an MSN list using e-mail 2, yet this person and account has never had e-mail 1.
So how can that be reconciled without external data mining from other sources that have other personal data that they cross referenced? There's no link between either of the two contacts, there's no place where both e-mails are stored together such that they can be linked directly, yet they were. The only way this is possible is using other data like my address which might be tied against both e-mails separately, or perhaps even more scary- the prospect that MS, who has a large share in Facebook mines my MSN conversations where I have mentioned the other address to other people in the past.