I don't trust Microsoft running software on my computer and to be honest, after what happened with China, I don't trust Google to store my information online. This isn't tin-foil hat paranoia, I am simply very aware that data is vital to modern free speech (given the advances made in propaganda by those that would deny us the ability to voice our opinions), and its only going to get moreso as time goes on.
Are you located in the PRC? Since when does the right of free speech have anything to do with the government other than that they can't touch it? I thought that right (like all others) stemmed from self-ownership.
It's the basis for free speech. You don't have to protect speech that conforms with the government line, you have to protect speech that differs from it. Thats basic civics, come on.
How will you know I'm acting on the behalf on the corporation? I'm just a great big flaming fanboy
Since when is freedom of speech suspended for people hired in publicly traded companies? The persons working for a corp is not the same as the "legal construct" (I don't know the correct word in English) itself.
Since corporations use their wealth to finance candidates that will exercise political power on their behalf (this is not questioned by sane members of society) their line is essentially the government line, because the government does what they are told by their corporate backers.
Since speech in a public space is exclusive, and the loudest wins, flooding public space with the messages of the authorities effectively restricts dissenting points of view.
It wasn't meant to be humorous. I was just stating the fact that humor has inoculated me from someone crying about the corporations being all corporation-y.
The word intellectual is synonym with someone educated beyond their abilities for me so I'm taking that as a compliment.
How wonderful for you. A sneering disdain for intellectuals is part of what allowed the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Khmer Rouge to achieve such remarkable increases in the quality of life for their citizens.
The right of free speech is the right of citizens to petition their government with grievances. You can't argue for intrusive advertising on that basis. And, once again, corporations are not citizens and those acting on behalf of corporations are not exercising personal rights.
Oh, and the fact you use a bloody comedy as an excuse to avoid discussing the very real issues regarding corporate personhood is deeply anti-intellectual.
Slashdotters find this concept deeply offensive, and thereby assume it must be an invasion of privacy because thats what normally rubs them up the wrong way. That isn't it though.
The problem is the claiming of public space for private purposes. If there were advert booths where you walked in and got some marketing blasted at you, it wouldn't be so bad, but these pricks are polluting a public space for their own asinine purposes. No, it doesn't count as free speech because corporations are not people and therefore do not have such a right. Furthermore, it isn't a petition against the government, its an annoyance to individuals.
Be aware of the concept of public space. Its vital to civilisation but is seen by the elites as merely space the private sector hasn't got a use for. Yet.
If a government wanted to stop people sending embarrasing e-mails (Hey, they are using OUR telecoms infrastructure!) then you would call them tyrannical. But hey, if a government ran eveyr aspect of life on its territory through an autocratic, undemocratic heiracrhy you would probably cry foul too. Apparantly theres two sets of rules.
And before you inevitably say that people are free to leave a corporation - the fact is that in a world of massive debt and no safety net, your only other option is jumping to another, identically evil environment.
Is that a good deal of it doesn't get where it is supposed to be. The same goes for medicine, clean water and such. Its a major headache for aid agencies to identify quickly what is needed and where, especially during a crisis.
Wouldn't it be nice if the poorest regions of the world had large numbers of machines that could store, process, and communicate such information?
Honestly, I was logging on to my university Windows XP domain about a week ago and was saying to one of my friends about how it made me nostalgic for how quick a C64 could load up.
I got through 2 C64s, and both of them were plagued with reliability problems - in terms of build quality, my Acorn Electron was far superior. I first had the traditional brown one, then the Amiga-style model they released when my first one broke. Both models had an annoying tendency to blow an internal fuse, and I remember it was a funny glass one I had trouble finding in shops, and both broke down beyond the scope of simple repairs after a couple of years. Don't even get me started on the power packs.
So if my experience is anything to go by, you'ld have to be a real enthusiast and pretty handy with a soldering gun to have one still working after all this time.
These days, Americans seem intent on politicising every damn thing, so its no surprise a project contributed to largely by Americans devolves into petty politics.
Southern farmers say that emancipation costs them $6 billion annually
Dear MPAA prick, we do not owe you or your corporate buddies a living. Our freedoms are not contingent on your business model. Stop being evil, and get a proper job instead of living off corporate welfare.
Space shouldn't a nationalistic endeavour, and to be brutally honest America is becoming increasingly hostile to scientists and science compared with the rest of the world. Japanese space scientists aren't asked to falsify their results on climate change. Russian scientists are harassed by creationists. European space scientists aren't put off international collaboration by idiotic export rules. If you are involved in the space industry and you think your countries approach to it is stupid (which it is), then vote with your feet.
Thats not such a problem for certain applications. Fellow physicists who have known the joys of carrying around Tipler would probably consider a Kindle to be compact.
The western world is not in ascendency, it is in decline. The fact that Orion, a project with the same capabilities on paper as Apollo had, is set to take longer than it did in the 1960s is proof of this. Given the escalating costs of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon Iran, I can't see how NASA can maintain enough of a budget for 25 years.
Modern politicians seem aware of the dire state of things, and their attitude towards public services is to make as much money for themselves and their friends out of them, before everything implodes. Why would NASA be any different?
I'm doing a physics degree. Half my core modules are mathematics. Why can't I just learn the cool stuff about bowling balls on rubber sheets and get someone else to do all the equations?
Everyone needs some knowledge about what they are doing - because rotes are notoriously fragile and when they do inevitably fail productivity is lost while the helpless automaton sits there waiting for tech support to come up.
Copyright law is generally *civil*, not criminal. In general, this means that a lot of wrongs are ignored by potential plaintiffs, just as a matter of tradition, convenience and politeness, just as they are with a lot of other civil wrongs -- nuisance, trespass, assault** (especially among children), etc..... Nobody goes around saying "Look at how many acts of trespass you committed today. We need to fix trespass law."
ORLY? (Darn, just violated someones copyright straight off) Tell that to the guy who ran tv-links.co.uk
Under pressure from our native copyright brownshirts, the police are starting dawn raids against copyright infringers. This is the treatment they normally reserve for people who commute with C4. Next thing you know someone will get shot in the head 7 times for torrenting.
How can you quote Ayn Rand in a discussion about the immense power corporations wield in modern society? I'd rather take my pithy quotes on liberty from someone who wasn't an ideological attack dog for the very elite that lobbies for copyright law and then uses it aggressively against those too poor to defend themselves in court.
I'm currently taking a nanophysics module as part of my physics degree, and we have been required to read a UK government report on the development of nanotechnology, and there is plenty in there to worry me even as an unqualified scientist.
Public awareness of nanotechnology is low. 29% of Britons (who, no offense, are likely to be more informed than Americans) have heard of the term and only 19% could offer a definition. Of those who knew what it was, 68% thought it would improve life whilst 4% thought it would make life worse
I've read stuff in this report though, that if it were widely known could well cause widespread panic, and leave nanotechnology about as trusted as GM crops. Nanoparticles, by virtue of their vastly increased surface area and the beginnings of quantum effects, can have very different properties than their bulk material counterparts. Bulk copper, for example, is soft and malleable. Copper particles less than 50nm or so across are very hard crystals.
Toxicity can change too - http://www.physorg.com/news63466994.html - there are some indications that substances which are benign in bulk are dangerous as nanoparticles. Of course, nobody knows because the people using these nanoparticles in products like suncreen haven't bothered to test them properly. They haven't bothered because its expensive, and the legislation hasn't caught up with the technology yet. Bulk and nanoparticles are for the most part treated as identical.
When the oh so trusting public I mentioned before find out about this, and find out that the people who knew about it didn't do enough to inform them, and the people using these substances in products didn't bother to do any real testing on them, they are going to be really pissed off. People will tolerate greedy corporations, corrupt politicians and idiotic media - but they have been known to get off their arses and complain when they discover they could've been rubbing carcinogens on their children's skin.
Even if net neutrality isn't compromised, you are going to see a two-tier internet in America. From my limited knowledge of the US, most of the richest people there live in cities. Its easy rolling out the latest connections to them because lots of them live close to an exchange, and there is an incentive to finance such infrastructure because such people are likely to spend a lot of money online.
If someone is poorer, and further from an exchange/sharing it with fewer people, getting new technology out to them costs more and is going to reap less benefit for the guys with all the money and power, because the poorer you are the less money you have to spend at Amazon.
Here in Europe we are slightly more fortunate, with a denser population and poiticians who still occasionally spend money for the public good instead of just handing it out to their friends companies, but I expect we shall as always follow the US in this matter
Never forget; your government and the online sector see the Internet purely as a way for them to market to you. This whole 'global community' crap is just a side effect for them. They believe the net should only exist to communicate between corporations and desirable consumers. They dislike any kind of relation between people that does not involve themselves.
The US attempts to eliminate socialism wherever it finds any. The real reason there were so many authoritarian socialist regimes in the 20th century is that those are the only ones that can survive the assaults of the US (and to be fair, plenty of other states including the USSR) are the highly militaristic ones.
I don't think its outrageous to suggest big corporations can see potential profits in everything, especially ones already making a killing (pun intended) from warfare.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't trust Microsoft running software on my computer and to be honest, after what happened with China, I don't trust Google to store my information online. This isn't tin-foil hat paranoia, I am simply very aware that data is vital to modern free speech (given the advances made in propaganda by those that would deny us the ability to voice our opinions), and its only going to get moreso as time goes on.
Otherwise people would have no choice in where they bought their services. And they would have to queue for food.
Ain't capitalism great!
The right of free speech is the right of citizens to petition their government with grievances. You can't argue for intrusive advertising on that basis. And, once again, corporations are not citizens and those acting on behalf of corporations are not exercising personal rights.
Oh, and the fact you use a bloody comedy as an excuse to avoid discussing the very real issues regarding corporate personhood is deeply anti-intellectual.
Slashdotters find this concept deeply offensive, and thereby assume it must be an invasion of privacy because thats what normally rubs them up the wrong way. That isn't it though.
The problem is the claiming of public space for private purposes. If there were advert booths where you walked in and got some marketing blasted at you, it wouldn't be so bad, but these pricks are polluting a public space for their own asinine purposes. No, it doesn't count as free speech because corporations are not people and therefore do not have such a right. Furthermore, it isn't a petition against the government, its an annoyance to individuals.
Be aware of the concept of public space. Its vital to civilisation but is seen by the elites as merely space the private sector hasn't got a use for. Yet.
If a government wanted to stop people sending embarrasing e-mails (Hey, they are using OUR telecoms infrastructure!) then you would call them tyrannical. But hey, if a government ran eveyr aspect of life on its territory through an autocratic, undemocratic heiracrhy you would probably cry foul too. Apparantly theres two sets of rules.
And before you inevitably say that people are free to leave a corporation - the fact is that in a world of massive debt and no safety net, your only other option is jumping to another, identically evil environment.
Is that a good deal of it doesn't get where it is supposed to be. The same goes for medicine, clean water and such. Its a major headache for aid agencies to identify quickly what is needed and where, especially during a crisis.
Wouldn't it be nice if the poorest regions of the world had large numbers of machines that could store, process, and communicate such information?
Honestly, I was logging on to my university Windows XP domain about a week ago and was saying to one of my friends about how it made me nostalgic for how quick a C64 could load up.
I got through 2 C64s, and both of them were plagued with reliability problems - in terms of build quality, my Acorn Electron was far superior. I first had the traditional brown one, then the Amiga-style model they released when my first one broke. Both models had an annoying tendency to blow an internal fuse, and I remember it was a funny glass one I had trouble finding in shops, and both broke down beyond the scope of simple repairs after a couple of years. Don't even get me started on the power packs.
So if my experience is anything to go by, you'ld have to be a real enthusiast and pretty handy with a soldering gun to have one still working after all this time.
These days, Americans seem intent on politicising every damn thing, so its no surprise a project contributed to largely by Americans devolves into petty politics.
KGB boss makes case for samizdat filtering
Southern farmers say that emancipation costs them $6 billion annually
Dear MPAA prick, we do not owe you or your corporate buddies a living. Our freedoms are not contingent on your business model. Stop being evil, and get a proper job instead of living off corporate welfare.
Leave the United States.
Space shouldn't a nationalistic endeavour, and to be brutally honest America is becoming increasingly hostile to scientists and science compared with the rest of the world. Japanese space scientists aren't asked to falsify their results on climate change. Russian scientists are harassed by creationists. European space scientists aren't put off international collaboration by idiotic export rules. If you are involved in the space industry and you think your countries approach to it is stupid (which it is), then vote with your feet.
Dick Cheney bought a cottage there.
Thats not such a problem for certain applications. Fellow physicists who have known the joys of carrying around Tipler would probably consider a Kindle to be compact.
College students are known for being heavy drinkers. Japanese people have a bit of a reputation for the same.
Either that or the Japanese education system isn't quite the world-beater we were told it was.
The western world is not in ascendency, it is in decline. The fact that Orion, a project with the same capabilities on paper as Apollo had, is set to take longer than it did in the 1960s is proof of this. Given the escalating costs of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon Iran, I can't see how NASA can maintain enough of a budget for 25 years.
Modern politicians seem aware of the dire state of things, and their attitude towards public services is to make as much money for themselves and their friends out of them, before everything implodes. Why would NASA be any different?
I'm doing a physics degree. Half my core modules are mathematics. Why can't I just learn the cool stuff about bowling balls on rubber sheets and get someone else to do all the equations?
Everyone needs some knowledge about what they are doing - because rotes are notoriously fragile and when they do inevitably fail productivity is lost while the helpless automaton sits there waiting for tech support to come up.
ORLY? (Darn, just violated someones copyright straight off) Tell that to the guy who ran tv-links.co.uk
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/23/tv_links_trademark_law/Under pressure from our native copyright brownshirts, the police are starting dawn raids against copyright infringers. This is the treatment they normally reserve for people who commute with C4. Next thing you know someone will get shot in the head 7 times for torrenting.
How can you quote Ayn Rand in a discussion about the immense power corporations wield in modern society? I'd rather take my pithy quotes on liberty from someone who wasn't an ideological attack dog for the very elite that lobbies for copyright law and then uses it aggressively against those too poor to defend themselves in court.
I'm currently taking a nanophysics module as part of my physics degree, and we have been required to read a UK government report on the development of nanotechnology, and there is plenty in there to worry me even as an unqualified scientist.
Public awareness of nanotechnology is low. 29% of Britons (who, no offense, are likely to be more informed than Americans) have heard of the term and only 19% could offer a definition. Of those who knew what it was, 68% thought it would improve life whilst 4% thought it would make life worse
I've read stuff in this report though, that if it were widely known could well cause widespread panic, and leave nanotechnology about as trusted as GM crops. Nanoparticles, by virtue of their vastly increased surface area and the beginnings of quantum effects, can have very different properties than their bulk material counterparts. Bulk copper, for example, is soft and malleable. Copper particles less than 50nm or so across are very hard crystals.
Toxicity can change too - http://www.physorg.com/news63466994.html - there are some indications that substances which are benign in bulk are dangerous as nanoparticles. Of course, nobody knows because the people using these nanoparticles in products like suncreen haven't bothered to test them properly. They haven't bothered because its expensive, and the legislation hasn't caught up with the technology yet. Bulk and nanoparticles are for the most part treated as identical.
When the oh so trusting public I mentioned before find out about this, and find out that the people who knew about it didn't do enough to inform them, and the people using these substances in products didn't bother to do any real testing on them, they are going to be really pissed off. People will tolerate greedy corporations, corrupt politicians and idiotic media - but they have been known to get off their arses and complain when they discover they could've been rubbing carcinogens on their children's skin.
http://www.nanotec.org.uk/finalReport.htmIts long, but its nicely bulletpointed so it isn't difficult to get through
Most people with 'CEO' before their name lean Republican. He probably thinks government should get off his back, and on to everyone elses.
Even if net neutrality isn't compromised, you are going to see a two-tier internet in America. From my limited knowledge of the US, most of the richest people there live in cities. Its easy rolling out the latest connections to them because lots of them live close to an exchange, and there is an incentive to finance such infrastructure because such people are likely to spend a lot of money online.
If someone is poorer, and further from an exchange/sharing it with fewer people, getting new technology out to them costs more and is going to reap less benefit for the guys with all the money and power, because the poorer you are the less money you have to spend at Amazon.
Here in Europe we are slightly more fortunate, with a denser population and poiticians who still occasionally spend money for the public good instead of just handing it out to their friends companies, but I expect we shall as always follow the US in this matter
Never forget; your government and the online sector see the Internet purely as a way for them to market to you. This whole 'global community' crap is just a side effect for them. They believe the net should only exist to communicate between corporations and desirable consumers. They dislike any kind of relation between people that does not involve themselves.
One word: Socialism.
The US attempts to eliminate socialism wherever it finds any. The real reason there were so many authoritarian socialist regimes in the 20th century is that those are the only ones that can survive the assaults of the US (and to be fair, plenty of other states including the USSR) are the highly militaristic ones.
Seeing as how my first thought on reading the summary was 'who is gene simmons', I think its fairly safe to say the final score is:
College Kids 1, Retarded Old Drag Queen 0.
I don't think its outrageous to suggest big corporations can see potential profits in everything, especially ones already making a killing (pun intended) from warfare.