The Australian proposal is simply upping the energy efficiency standards to the point where incandescent bulbs no longer qualify.
Per TFA, this is intended to reduce greenhouse gas production, but does so by regulating what kind of light bulbs you can have, rather than by regulating where your energy is sourced.
What if I run my house on non-carbon-sourced electricity and happen to want better light than is available from compact fluorescent bulbs? Am I going to become a black-market halogen-flood criminal?
I applaud any effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but I'm not sure this is really the environmental victory it purports to be. If we wanted to stop polluting, we should... well, regulate the emission of greenhouse gases maybe, instead of regulating each individual possible way of consuming 'black' power. Mandating more efficient light bulbs just means that with the savings on his electricitiy bill, joe consumer can now run another appliance. Until there's price pressure on the consumer to limit consumption, things will stay the same.
You can get any temperature CFL. From pure white to nasty yellow that old-timers like.
They may exist, but where? I tried, wanted to use more efficient lights, and did not find CFLs that worked for me in local hardware stores- and not for want of trying different bulbs. I didn't do a lot of research at the time, and although I now know the difference, when I was doing my buying I didn't- I just had the afternoon to finish my project and worked with what was available at the hardware store. I expect that most people will operate this way.
I recently re-did much of the lighting in my house, and found that none of the CFLs I found in the hardware stores produced suitable light for my purposes. I do use CFLs in the garage, on the front porch, and in the office- but for the kitchen, my bedroom, my wife's vanity, and the dining room, (think: places we spend the bulk of our time) my wife and I rejected CFLs and used either incandescents or mini-halogen floods.
One thing that made CFLs a non-starter in the kitchen and dining room was the fact that my wife wanted to be able to dim the lights for meals. No CFL will work on a dimmer, unless you're willing to tolerate loud, scary buzzing noises coming from your fixtures.
Undaunted, I started shopping- and in the process, really started paying attention to the quality of light they produce. Compared side by side, the differences in quality of light between CFL, Incandescent, and mini-halogens are dramatic.
Having grown up in Alaska, where it's dark in the winter much of the day and all night long, I appreciate the value of good lighting, not just for the health benefits involved in avoiding too much time under standard fluorescents, but also simply as a quality-of-life thing. As a result, I (and I expect most people to do some form of this) tried several varieties of CFLs, determined that the light they produce sucks despite the branding that says 'like sunlight' and 'full spectrum', then gave up and installed lights I actually liked.
We (the USA) needs to scrap legal jargon and rewrite the laws plainly, then let a judge decide if the law applies to an act and let the jury decide if they're guilty.
This reminds me a little of the push toward 'natural language' programming- someone had the great idea that if programming languages were more like 'plain english', that anybody could then program. To make a long story short, the problem was never that the language was too difficult to learn (tho to be certain, it was a hurdle) it was that people aren't explicit in their speaking or writing. The problem was never that people didn't know the right words, it's that they didn't think in ways that work. There's more to programming than just syntax; there are design principles, evolving technologies, patterns, best practices, and more.
Jargons exist for good reason- expediency, accuracy. They allow us to 'chunk' large concepts into usable mouthfuls, and they allow us to distinguish concepts that for most people are indistinct. Don't blame the jargon; that's just an indicator that there's a whole world in there that regular people almost never need to know about.
Windows Vista's security model: really quite similar to sudo, except that it doesn't prompt for passwords if you're already logged in as a user that has the privileges you need.
There, fixed that for you.
On Vista, if you're a member of the Administrators group, you don't need to prove you've got the privilege, you just have to assert that privilege explicitly. No need to authenticate you as you, you're logged in already. It's a different story if you're logged in to an account that does not have the requisite privs- then you need to provide creds for an account that does have elevated privilege in order to assert it.
Unless you're running as the Built-in Administrator, you run with a limited user token- even if your account is a member of the Administrators group. You can read here for more details.
And, I believe you meant to just insult pressesc.com, not claim I accused them to driving site hits with suffering. And yes, sadly, it does look as though they and I are the only ones trying to get people to think of those suffering.
You're right on that. The article is biased, inaccurate, and misleading, but to the best of my knowledge you have not been. If I've mischaracterized your views, I apologize, I know how annoying that can be. It seems pretty clear we've been talking past each other. That said, I've honestly been trying to both understand and respond to your points.
There's room to reasonably disagree on this. My view is that something is indeed better than nothing, and that as a general rule, trying to "get people to think of the suffering children" is a stratagem that makes no difference- my experience says that more often than not, it stops people giving, stops them from even listening. If people can't give on their terms, if they don't get what they're looking for out of the bargain, they won't. As someone who's worked with charities, I'll tell you- donors aren't interested in the suffering kids, they're interested in the opportunity to make a difference. Give them an opportunity to make a difference and they will, every single time. People hunger for this opportunity.
By the same token, if you try to jerk on their heartstrings and sell them a sob story about the poor, suffering children, they'll shut down, close their checkbooks, and walk away- nobody likes being manipulated, especially when their heart was already in the right place to begin with.
You've said repeatedly that "the ends don't justify the means", but my serious question is this: why do the means need to be justified if there's no harm being done and the net result is beneficial to everyone? Who are you and I to get sanctimonious about how someone else gives their money? And if the ends don't justify the means, then how can we condone the publishing of misleading stories designed to shame donors into being more generous, or designed to make them give differently? I can see the good intentions, but isn't that hypocrisy too?
I read the article you cited. It is misleading and crap.
It generally proceeds from its premise (that MS is ransoming the welfare of the children for its own profit), omits facts (like that MS is guaranteeing $100k minimum donation) that don't support this premise, and spews outright misinformation. For example, it says that "The website will try to automatically install a downloadable 'gadget' on each visitor's computer.", which is false but might deter you from visiting the site and learning more about the story.
I did discover this:
The company will guarantee a minimum donation of US$100,000 to UNHCR based on the number of queries that are generated from the search site. The rate for each query will be US$0.01. The maximum donation payable by Microsoft will be US$250,000, which would be equivalent to 25 million search queries.
"Driving awareness is critical to finding lasting solutions for the millions of refugees and displaced people worldwide," said Nick Van Praag, director of UNHCR's Division of External Relations. "Through Microsoft, utilising the MSN network on behalf of ninemillion.org, we are able to generate consumer awareness that we hope will result in donations to support this important cause, giving hope to refugee youth and children."
So there you have it: the UNHCR gets a guaranteed $100k, no "ransom" required. They stand to receive as much as $250k in direct giving, and in the package they get something even more valuable: broad exposure and visibility, plus a public endorsement from one of the most philanthropic organizations in the history of the world.
They are driving site hits with human suffering.
Who, these hacks? They (and you) are the only ones banging the drum and imploring people to think about the poor suffering children here.
If you visit the promotion site you're talking about, you'll note a conspicuous absence of such ham-handed exploitation: rather, there's a direct appeal to your desire to spend a little of MS's money for a worthy cause while hopefully getting something useful for yourself in the deal. From the site, here's the pitch: "Searching for a way to help? You've found it.". This creates a win:win:win scenario- you get your search result, UNHCR gets cash and visibility, MS gets hits and visibility. This is hardly sinister; it's sustainable, smart philanthropy that accomplishes more good than just the money it delivers.
The goal is profit. That's the actual problem. And, yes, its worth criticizing.
Is it? Profit may be made via any number of methods, yet MS chose to partner with a charity and give some part of the proceeds (anybody know how much MS earns per search? Is MS taking a loss for the duration of the promotion? Does anybody know?) to the charity. Does this put the charity ahead of where it would be in net terms if Microsoft had elected to market its search product in some different way? Yes, absolutely. They're getting direct cash and broad exposure they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. So what's the problem?
You've said that no profit should ever be made by using a charity, because of some notion of conflict of interest- that if it's profitable to give to charity, MS will have an interest in creating or perpetuating the conditions that make the charity necessary- but that's put-on-your-tinfoil-hat illogical. If it's profitable to work with charities, MS will continue to do so- and there's an inexhaustible supply of worthy causes to give to- meaning that your theory (that MS will be profit-motivated to cause more children to suffer) is implausible at best. Even if 9Million.org's mission is fulfilled, there will be no want of other worthy charities to p
Then forbid people with criminal records from carrying guns, let people without criminal records carry them (is the current law like this?)
Yes, current law is like this already, except that many places will not allow anyone not in law enforcement or security to carry, regardless of their clean record.
This sounds like a simple problem to solve at first- hey, make it illegal [whatever 'it' may be] and that'll show 'em! The problem is that this rarely works in reality. It's illegal to use a gun in the commission of a crime, but that crime was illegal to begin with, and the simple fact of it being illegal didn't stop it happening....so is the commission of a crime with a gun *twice* as illegal? Sure. Are we better off with gun control laws on the books? Not sure.
Legislative approaches like this seem to fall into the sort of 'feel-good' category of 'being tough on crime', never mind that tough and effective are not the same thing.
The same problem applies with the "war on drugs"- instead of enforcing existing laws against theft or violence or driving impaired, they decided to try to proscribe drugs, and here's how well that worked: this year, the number one cash crop in the united states is pot.
In the end, defining more things as illegal (guns, drugs, whatever) rather than enforcing the laws we've already got seems stupid. After all, making something illegal doesn't stop the crime, it merely defines a new class of criminal.
The issue is that by using the suffering of others as an opportunity to cash in, you have a vested interest in said human suffering.
Ridiculous, on two counts:
1) What MS is cashing in on in this case is their search ad system, not on the suffering of anybody. They can cash in on this product regardless of whether or not they donate part of the proceeds to charity.
2) No vested interest in "the perpetuation of human suffering" applies- what MS has a vested interest in is potential customers knowing about their product and considering paying MS for its use. They could hire people to walk around with sandwich boards on street intersections to get the word out, they could buy newsprint ads, they could do a number of similar things to acccomplish this end. This doesn't mean they have a vested interest in having people carry sandwich boards around, or in the continued readership of newspapers- it means they're buying visibility in whatever way made sense to their marketing wonks. In this case, they gave to a charity. To try to twist that into "profiting from human suffering" not only defies logic, it is bizarre.
"This is sick," one UNHCR official told Press Esc on the condition of anonymity. "These guys have billions of dollars to spare, but they are still trying to drive website traffic by holding these unfortunate people to ransom."
Making money from the suffering of others means that they have a vested interest and benefit from the suffering of others. If perpetuating human suffering is the goal, then that's fine. If relieving human suffering is the goal, then its both counter productive and hypocritical.
OK, first of all, it's time for a reality check: nobody is holding anybody for ransom here.
Second, nobody, save possibly for the charity in question, is making money from the suffering of others.
Third, to attempt to make the charitable donor responsible for the suffering of the poor is plain backwards.
If you're going to give, just give and don't make a game out of it.
That might be how you would do it, and that would be a valid way to do it, but that's my point: you're not the one giving- they are. They have the right to give away their money in the manner in which they see fit, don't they? How is it anyone's business but theirs?...and if in the end they are among the most philanthropic of organizations in the world, how is there any value to be had in criticizing the way in which they do their charitable giving?
It's easy to look at this very wealthy company and decide that you would spend that money differently, but don't forget that that's what you're doing: you're deciding that you know better how to spend someone else's money than they do, and you're making them wrong for not spending their money in accord with your opinion. This never accomplishes what you want it to accomplish.
All the truly good charity they engage in is great, but to hold criticism back for something that deserves it doesn't really make sense.
Out of curiousity, how does this deserve a single shred of criticism?
By any rational measure, Microsoft goes well beyond the norm with respect to charity. Let's put this in some real-world context: No for-profit entity is ever obligated to give anything to anybody, except to the extent that it is in their interest to do it. Yet they give, a lot, even absent a profit motive.
It's one thing to bash them for the quality or design of their products, or for their business practices; many rational arguments can be made to support doing so. Their charitable giving, however, is not something they deserve flack for.
Wow, that link should read 'charity attempts to extort money from Microsoft', instead. From your link:
Microsoft will only donate money towards refugee children only if Internet users use their search engine, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced today.
Under the scheme, funds that go towards promoting educational and sports activities for millions of refugee children around the world under the ninemillion.org campaign will be tied to the number Internet searches performed at the software giant's click4thecause.live.com using Microsoft's Live Search facility will result in a financial donation to ninemillion.org.
"This is sick," one UNHCR official told Press Esc on the condition of anonymity. "These guys have billions of dollars to spare, but they are still trying to drive website traffic by holding these unfortunate people to ransom."
So, Microsoft ran a promotion and gave a share of the proceeds to charity, and they're the bad guys here because they didn't give enough to satisfy some unnamed UNHCR official? Wow. I can see the UNHCR folks being passionate about their cause and I'm sure their cause is worthwhile, but this is amateur hour: in order for anybody to give, a) they must first show a profit to have something to give, and b) there's got to be something in it for the donor. For the press to run a headline saying "Microsoft holds refugee children to ransom" is equally misleading.
I wonder if some of the good press ratings MS got in this poll have anything to do with the credibility (or want thereof) of detractors like these.
perhaps your username is inaccurate; the 'recovering' part, in particular.
I agree with the parent; people are generally good, they're just insanely bad at judging how to fulfill their good commitments. For example, you're willing to tear down the idealistic in order to prevent them having their feelings hurt later on. That's a laudable commitment, (i.e., you're basically a good person) but in a certain sense, it accomplishes the very harm you'd like for them not to be heartbroken by (you've diminished the parent, but 'for their own good').
I hope you don't find out the truth the hardway.
The truth is that nobody knows the truth; they've only got their own particular view. There's a lot of valid angles from which to behold the same thing, and each one presents a different, but valid view. Please, don't preach the brand of 'truth' that renders its believers into paranoid, cynical haters. It's just annoying.
For whatever definition of "altruism" you want to use, my claim holds true as long as you carry the same meaning through.
Does it? In that case, you either meant that she placed a low value on [thuggery|caving in to thuggery] or she placed a low value on doing stuff that benefits others. One of these is accurate, the other is not. Rand placed a very high value on liberty, and regarded true altruism (that is, the variety that is freely chosen) to be an expression of integrity, which she also valued highly.
Actually, I'm just implying that Ayn Rand, rightly or wrongly, placed a low value on altruism
This is an interesting conclusion to draw, and not the one I came to in my reading of Rand. She did say good things about being 'selfish' and bad things about being 'selfless', but she did so in a very particular context, in which their meanings were (in her view) perversely inverted. Unfortunately, Rand was not as adept as her contemporary, George Orwell (who called it 'doublespeak' in his book 1984) at providing quotable, simple pithy catch phrases- she instead favored long and somewhat dramatic exposition to convey her points, and her message is generally poorly understood as a result.
In a 'Randian' view, the productive and inventive are the ones whose effort and ingenuity create the rising tide that floats all boats. She describes their behavior as 'selfish', in the sense that they deliver to the market what people value the most, and are paid accordingly. In other words, there's an intersection of mutual interest between buyer and seller and the free market will signal how best to serve humanity.
In the same context, she articulated 'selflessness' as a cynical meme designed to induce the wealthy to give up their their wealth and power to its authors, in exchange for not being chased out of town by a pitchfork-waving mob, or having their wealth/power appropriated 'for the common good'. In other words, the advocates of 'selflessness', in a Randian view, are not the champions of the common man they style themselves to be; they are parasites, racketeers, and thugs willing to ransom civil behavior and freedom for wealth and power (without, of course, having had to create any real contribution to society of their own).
To imply that Rand "placed a low value on altruism" without noting the context in which she wrote is arguably to fall prey to the very doublespeak she and Orwell decried.
So why isn't this happening? (1) It's not an issue for politicans. I want to see Obama/Hillary/McCain arguing about Spam!!! and so... (2) The money isn't budgeted for law enforcement.
...and 3) Law enforcement's arm doesn't reach to where a lot of spam comes from, so even if Obama/Hillary/McCain jumped up and down about it, what they could do about it will be somewhat limited. A good portion of the spam I've traced has its roots (as near as I can tell) in ISPs registered in places like North Korea and old Soviet-bloc countries where a bribe to the right official gets you all the immunity in the world.
The stock market is just a particularly effective and efficient means by which to do commerce- mutually beneficial, voluntary trade.
It might be rife with (perish the thought) other people making money for doing things that you may think aren't worth that much money, but it's no cancer- not by a long shot. To the contrary, it's a structured institution that makes it possible to make wealth liquid- to make it possible to trade iron for grain, grain for fuel, ownership of a company for a down payment on a house.
What you have a legitimate complaint with is fraud and the people who commit it. Don't try to pin this on the market. Although it's not perfect by a long shot, it's also arguably the best solution we've ever seen for solving the problem of how to trade one thing of value for another.
You're labouring under the erroneous assumption 'distributed media' gives a rat's ass about some alien concept called fairness.
Actually, I'm not. I'm just answering the prior question: "Do you want republicans to have this power to alter radio and tv science content? Do you want democrats to have this power to alter radio and tv economic content?"
What the media care about in this context is irrelevant- my point is simply that the content and analysis they carry is (and should be) their prerogative, not that of the state.
The only reason we don't use l/km (litre per kilometre) because the numbers are far below zero and would make results like : 0.085 (my gaz consumption on moterways running over the limites, oups...) !
The same thing would be true if we measured mileage in terms of gallons per mile, only more so....which is why I asked why we don't measure efficiency in terms of kilometers per liter, (after the fashion of miles per gallon). Distance divided by fuel unit is how I'm used to expressing fuel efficiency. Dividing fuel unit by distance and then multiplying by 100 seems (given what I'm used to) slightly silly.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
What if I run my house on non-carbon-sourced electricity and happen to want better light than is available from compact fluorescent bulbs? Am I going to become a black-market halogen-flood criminal?
I applaud any effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but I'm not sure this is really the environmental victory it purports to be. If we wanted to stop polluting, we should... well, regulate the emission of greenhouse gases maybe, instead of regulating each individual possible way of consuming 'black' power. Mandating more efficient light bulbs just means that with the savings on his electricitiy bill, joe consumer can now run another appliance. Until there's price pressure on the consumer to limit consumption, things will stay the same.
I recently re-did much of the lighting in my house, and found that none of the CFLs I found in the hardware stores produced suitable light for my purposes. I do use CFLs in the garage, on the front porch, and in the office- but for the kitchen, my bedroom, my wife's vanity, and the dining room, (think: places we spend the bulk of our time) my wife and I rejected CFLs and used either incandescents or mini-halogen floods.
One thing that made CFLs a non-starter in the kitchen and dining room was the fact that my wife wanted to be able to dim the lights for meals. No CFL will work on a dimmer, unless you're willing to tolerate loud, scary buzzing noises coming from your fixtures.
Undaunted, I started shopping- and in the process, really started paying attention to the quality of light they produce. Compared side by side, the differences in quality of light between CFL, Incandescent, and mini-halogens are dramatic.
Having grown up in Alaska, where it's dark in the winter much of the day and all night long, I appreciate the value of good lighting, not just for the health benefits involved in avoiding too much time under standard fluorescents, but also simply as a quality-of-life thing. As a result, I (and I expect most people to do some form of this) tried several varieties of CFLs, determined that the light they produce sucks despite the branding that says 'like sunlight' and 'full spectrum', then gave up and installed lights I actually liked.
Jargons exist for good reason- expediency, accuracy. They allow us to 'chunk' large concepts into usable mouthfuls, and they allow us to distinguish concepts that for most people are indistinct. Don't blame the jargon; that's just an indicator that there's a whole world in there that regular people almost never need to know about.
you don't get a prompt when launching task manager on RTM.
On Vista, if you're a member of the Administrators group, you don't need to prove you've got the privilege, you just have to assert that privilege explicitly. No need to authenticate you as you, you're logged in already. It's a different story if you're logged in to an account that does not have the requisite privs- then you need to provide creds for an account that does have elevated privilege in order to assert it.
Unless you're running as the Built-in Administrator, you run with a limited user token- even if your account is a member of the Administrators group. You can read here for more details.
There's room to reasonably disagree on this. My view is that something is indeed better than nothing, and that as a general rule, trying to "get people to think of the suffering children" is a stratagem that makes no difference- my experience says that more often than not, it stops people giving, stops them from even listening. If people can't give on their terms, if they don't get what they're looking for out of the bargain, they won't. As someone who's worked with charities, I'll tell you- donors aren't interested in the suffering kids, they're interested in the opportunity to make a difference. Give them an opportunity to make a difference and they will, every single time. People hunger for this opportunity.
By the same token, if you try to jerk on their heartstrings and sell them a sob story about the poor, suffering children, they'll shut down, close their checkbooks, and walk away- nobody likes being manipulated, especially when their heart was already in the right place to begin with.
You've said repeatedly that "the ends don't justify the means", but my serious question is this: why do the means need to be justified if there's no harm being done and the net result is beneficial to everyone? Who are you and I to get sanctimonious about how someone else gives their money? And if the ends don't justify the means, then how can we condone the publishing of misleading stories designed to shame donors into being more generous, or designed to make them give differently? I can see the good intentions, but isn't that hypocrisy too?
I read the article you cited. It is misleading and crap.
It generally proceeds from its premise (that MS is ransoming the welfare of the children for its own profit), omits facts (like that MS is guaranteeing $100k minimum donation) that don't support this premise, and spews outright misinformation. For example, it says that "The website will try to automatically install a downloadable 'gadget' on each visitor's computer.", which is false but might deter you from visiting the site and learning more about the story.
I did discover this:
The company will guarantee a minimum donation of US$100,000 to UNHCR based on the number of queries that are generated from the search site. The rate for each query will be US$0.01. The maximum donation payable by Microsoft will be US$250,000, which would be equivalent to 25 million search queries. "Driving awareness is critical to finding lasting solutions for the millions of refugees and displaced people worldwide," said Nick Van Praag, director of UNHCR's Division of External Relations. "Through Microsoft, utilising the MSN network on behalf of ninemillion.org, we are able to generate consumer awareness that we hope will result in donations to support this important cause, giving hope to refugee youth and children."
So there you have it: the UNHCR gets a guaranteed $100k, no "ransom" required. They stand to receive as much as $250k in direct giving, and in the package they get something even more valuable: broad exposure and visibility, plus a public endorsement from one of the most philanthropic organizations in the history of the world.
Who, these hacks? They (and you) are the only ones banging the drum and imploring people to think about the poor suffering children here.
If you visit the promotion site you're talking about, you'll note a conspicuous absence of such ham-handed exploitation: rather, there's a direct appeal to your desire to spend a little of MS's money for a worthy cause while hopefully getting something useful for yourself in the deal. From the site, here's the pitch: "Searching for a way to help? You've found it.". This creates a win:win:win scenario- you get your search result, UNHCR gets cash and visibility, MS gets hits and visibility. This is hardly sinister; it's sustainable, smart philanthropy that accomplishes more good than just the money it delivers.
Is it? Profit may be made via any number of methods, yet MS chose to partner with a charity and give some part of the proceeds (anybody know how much MS earns per search? Is MS taking a loss for the duration of the promotion? Does anybody know?) to the charity. Does this put the charity ahead of where it would be in net terms if Microsoft had elected to market its search product in some different way? Yes, absolutely. They're getting direct cash and broad exposure they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. So what's the problem?
You've said that no profit should ever be made by using a charity, because of some notion of conflict of interest- that if it's profitable to give to charity, MS will have an interest in creating or perpetuating the conditions that make the charity necessary- but that's put-on-your-tinfoil-hat illogical. If it's profitable to work with charities, MS will continue to do so- and there's an inexhaustible supply of worthy causes to give to- meaning that your theory (that MS will be profit-motivated to cause more children to suffer) is implausible at best. Even if 9Million.org's mission is fulfilled, there will be no want of other worthy charities to p
This sounds like a simple problem to solve at first- hey, make it illegal [whatever 'it' may be] and that'll show 'em! The problem is that this rarely works in reality. It's illegal to use a gun in the commission of a crime, but that crime was illegal to begin with, and the simple fact of it being illegal didn't stop it happening.
Legislative approaches like this seem to fall into the sort of 'feel-good' category of 'being tough on crime', never mind that tough and effective are not the same thing.
The same problem applies with the "war on drugs"- instead of enforcing existing laws against theft or violence or driving impaired, they decided to try to proscribe drugs, and here's how well that worked: this year, the number one cash crop in the united states is pot.
In the end, defining more things as illegal (guns, drugs, whatever) rather than enforcing the laws we've already got seems stupid. After all, making something illegal doesn't stop the crime, it merely defines a new class of criminal.
1) What MS is cashing in on in this case is their search ad system, not on the suffering of anybody. They can cash in on this product regardless of whether or not they donate part of the proceeds to charity.
2) No vested interest in "the perpetuation of human suffering" applies- what MS has a vested interest in is potential customers knowing about their product and considering paying MS for its use. They could hire people to walk around with sandwich boards on street intersections to get the word out, they could buy newsprint ads, they could do a number of similar things to acccomplish this end. This doesn't mean they have a vested interest in having people carry sandwich boards around, or in the continued readership of newspapers- it means they're buying visibility in whatever way made sense to their marketing wonks. In this case, they gave to a charity. To try to twist that into "profiting from human suffering" not only defies logic, it is bizarre.
Second, nobody, save possibly for the charity in question, is making money from the suffering of others.
Third, to attempt to make the charitable donor responsible for the suffering of the poor is plain backwards.
It's easy to look at this very wealthy company and decide that you would spend that money differently, but don't forget that that's what you're doing: you're deciding that you know better how to spend someone else's money than they do, and you're making them wrong for not spending their money in accord with your opinion. This never accomplishes what you want it to accomplish.
Out of curiousity, how does this deserve a single shred of criticism?
By any rational measure, Microsoft goes well beyond the norm with respect to charity. Let's put this in some real-world context: No for-profit entity is ever obligated to give anything to anybody, except to the extent that it is in their interest to do it. Yet they give, a lot, even absent a profit motive.
It's one thing to bash them for the quality or design of their products, or for their business practices; many rational arguments can be made to support doing so. Their charitable giving, however, is not something they deserve flack for.
I wonder if some of the good press ratings MS got in this poll have anything to do with the credibility (or want thereof) of detractors like these.
(I get how it works :-). I agree, dumb saying. We're all brilliant for saying so! Woo woo!
Actually, you MUST have your cake, or you can't eat it. It's tough to eat cake you don't have. :-)
Mod parent up
I agree with the parent; people are generally good, they're just insanely bad at judging how to fulfill their good commitments. For example, you're willing to tear down the idealistic in order to prevent them having their feelings hurt later on. That's a laudable commitment, (i.e., you're basically a good person) but in a certain sense, it accomplishes the very harm you'd like for them not to be heartbroken by (you've diminished the parent, but 'for their own good').
The truth is that nobody knows the truth; they've only got their own particular view. There's a lot of valid angles from which to behold the same thing, and each one presents a different, but valid view. Please, don't preach the brand of 'truth' that renders its believers into paranoid, cynical haters. It's just annoying.
In a 'Randian' view, the productive and inventive are the ones whose effort and ingenuity create the rising tide that floats all boats. She describes their behavior as 'selfish', in the sense that they deliver to the market what people value the most, and are paid accordingly. In other words, there's an intersection of mutual interest between buyer and seller and the free market will signal how best to serve humanity.
In the same context, she articulated 'selflessness' as a cynical meme designed to induce the wealthy to give up their their wealth and power to its authors, in exchange for not being chased out of town by a pitchfork-waving mob, or having their wealth/power appropriated 'for the common good'. In other words, the advocates of 'selflessness', in a Randian view, are not the champions of the common man they style themselves to be; they are parasites, racketeers, and thugs willing to ransom civil behavior and freedom for wealth and power (without, of course, having had to create any real contribution to society of their own).
To imply that Rand "placed a low value on altruism" without noting the context in which she wrote is arguably to fall prey to the very doublespeak she and Orwell decried.
The stock market is just a particularly effective and efficient means by which to do commerce- mutually beneficial, voluntary trade.
It might be rife with (perish the thought) other people making money for doing things that you may think aren't worth that much money, but it's no cancer- not by a long shot. To the contrary, it's a structured institution that makes it possible to make wealth liquid- to make it possible to trade iron for grain, grain for fuel, ownership of a company for a down payment on a house.
What you have a legitimate complaint with is fraud and the people who commit it. Don't try to pin this on the market. Although it's not perfect by a long shot, it's also arguably the best solution we've ever seen for solving the problem of how to trade one thing of value for another.
that's probably the intention of FUD in the first place
What the media care about in this context is irrelevant- my point is simply that the content and analysis they carry is (and should be) their prerogative, not that of the state.