9/11 was undoubtedly a humiliation, but not on the same level as the treaty of Versailles. The treaty symbolised the hatred of Germany by the entire world. Germans felt downtrodden and humiliated in a much greater sense than the US with terrorism. Sure the US is angry right now, but it'll work out. I don't actually think that the administration has what it takes to change the US into a police state. The guts or the time (don't forget the term limits).
Google's do-no-evil strategy is in progress here. While lesser companies like Symantec and McAfee are desperately trying to (relatively justifiably) sue Microsoft, Google would rather stand down. When a company as big as Google/Symantec/McAfee sues their product's platform, they make a sacrifice in their reputation among certain demographics. Is/. one of those demographics? Put it this way: do you prefer RIAA/SCO or Google/Apple?
Advertisers over here (Australia) have already wisened to the fact that ads with sparse, softer audio grabs attention just as well as the traditional shoutfest ad. I'm not sure such a test would help.
A sentence that (I think) neatly points up the big problem with the USA's legal system...
It depends what you're referring to. If it is that commercials should be able to be skipped, then that is ridiculous. It amounts to stealing (hey, if file sharing and format shifting music are stealing...) broadcasted content. If your comment refers to the fear of including such a feature (and I suspect it does), I'm not sure that's correct either. The law has always run on fear. The fear of being caught and paying the consequences. I'm also not sure that the DVR manufacturers are afraid to include ad-skipping for legal reasons. Perhaps they recognise the need for commercials to support free-to-air commercial TV? Perhaps, despite the success of Myth-TV, they are worried about false positives generating dissatisfaction among the public? Perhaps it's simply that the added processing power and memory needed (read: more expensive devices) was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back?
America seems to be steadily drifting towards Fascism, or a dictatorship at the very least.
Name one country that has irreparably changed into a dictatorship with a history of solid democracy/relative liberalism, such as the US. That has a constitution with such a high regard by its citizens that has failed enough for the country to be radically changed politically.
Germany is the closest I can think of, but it still doesn't exactly count. The humiliation brought on by the treaty of Versailles played a huge part in the rise of Hitler, and there is no equivalent in the US.
For some weird reason, the parent post reminds me of the title of this movie. Somehow, I doubt these cultural learnings will make benefit any glorious nations (including the US).
It's good. Good idea. Should cut out much of the copyrighted content posted on MySpace.
Oh wait, this is/. What about false positives? How can they be accurate? Why do the RIAA think the world revolves around them (at the inconvenience of others)?
I'm altering my end of the deal too. I'll stop dual-booting the latest version of Windows, rather an older, previously purchased version. I'll stop recommending non-pirated versions of Windows and other Microsoft products to anyone, including, but not limited to, my most technically inept friends. I'll also do whatever I can to support efforts to undermine some of their most valuable technologies: their DRM.
You're partially right. We have the natural right to do whatever we want with what we purchase. But then again, since when has a society ever based itself around what are or aren't natural rights?
Technically, it's not our right to exist; A predator could just pick us off without fear of reprisal. Ownership in general is not a natural right; I could easily justify stealing someone's car by saying "'cause I could".
The fact is, that is what society is for. It gives us certain rights and takes certain ones away, largely based upon the balance of positive/negative effects on not just you, but other people. The government has the sense to see that most entertainment would be virtually non-existent without copyright. The entertainment industry gets money as opposed to no money (good for them), and the consumer gets a fantastic array of entertainment (good for you).
Copyright and patents are comparable. They are similar in that they both grant monopolies over a certain period of time in the hope that they encourage growth of that industry. They are different in that patents define something more general than music. Since the patents are defined for a concept rather than a product, there is less ground for diversity between practical instances of any certain patent. Copyright, however, is applied to a product, and the product basically has to be quoted for it to count as infringement. You can't sue if two pieces of music has the same chord progression. Creative, for example, can sue Apple for infringing their patent on storing digital music in a directory tree style that they applied in the iPod, even though the iPod and the Zen are different products.
Whenever a Republican brings up the "you want the terrorists to win" talking point, I usually ask them "would you want Hillary Clinton to declare anyone an enemy combatant and detain them indefinately?"
I have yet to receive a response to that question.
"I'd prefer the terrorists not to win." I wonder what had all those republicans tounge-tied?
Let's leave this sort of shit to human judgment instead of relying on cameras all the time. We really don't need to be going down this road.
Wait, wait, wait. I've got it.
Imagine this. Thousands and thousands of zombie-like people sitting in front of separate computers, observing daily life in a never-ending monotonous routine.
Oh shit. I just had a disturbing image of an MSN chat room.
Hell, I never even agreed to be any citizen of any country. Show me a signature where I did. So therefore, how do any laws apply to him, or me? As far as I'm concerned, if you have no say so in the making of a law, then you have no obligation whatsoever to have to abide by it.
I'll show you a signature. It's called the police. Let me put it this way: you have a choice. You can accept the law and enjoy protection of your most essential rights, primarily, your right to exist. Or, You could reject the law. Nothing wrong with that, you just have to endure police trying to lock you up/kill you. But hey, you don't belong to society, so they can do it to you without fear of reprise.
Kind of like your neighbors down the street getting together and making an assinine aggreement, that all windows in the neighborhood must be left open in the winter time. And then enforcing that law on you.
Yeah, also kinda like some stupid neighbours making some crappy law against murder and having the gall to expect you to abide by it.
Tell me the US version of representational democracy / republic isn't a total crock of ****
I won't touch that one. I agree. I put the problem down to the sheer size of democratic groups. I vote for more focus on localised groups, rather than a national or international focus.
Further, if you're under 18, you have no say so whatsoever. If you're over 18, your say so is generally limited to the joke of a vote. Which is nothing but a weak concession to undermine your primary right, which is the right to riot.
But you can have a say. You only don't have a right to vote. While that is significant, you can riot, you can protest. The only problem is that under 18s are often prejudiced against and what they say usually is usually ignored. The law about voting simply formalises this.
As for your comment about voting, you are right. They very craftily undermined your right to riot. They realised that people riot when they really, really don't like the figures of authority (in this case the government), and the sneakily created a system that makes people less unhappy and gives them alternatives to rioting! Those bastards!
After recently buying a 720p display (for the picture quality, not resolution), and watching HD broadcasts, I've decided that it is simply a waste of money. I have great trouble telling the difference between upscaled DVD and HD broadcasts. I suspect that many of the broadcasts are upscaled anyway.
One channel here (in Australia) is called SC10, and they have an HD channel that is entirely devoted to HD content. i.e. they constantly show HD demonstrations at 1080i, unless they are showing a natively HD program (which is very rare). I saw one such program, and I noticed that the HD looked very visibly worse than the SD broadcast. You could see the visual noise very clearly, whereas the SD broadcast had scaled it out. The scaled down then scaled up version looked better. Trust me, HD is not worth it.
You're looking at drugs completely the wrong way. Drugs are something that many people simply don't want in society. It doesn't matter that you do it to yourself, they see other effects besides the ones on yourself.
1) A bad example for children 2) Supporting drug dealers 3) If enough support is shown, it may *gasp* become socially acceptable and legal. Who will then protect the kids? 4) Loss of control based on using drugs
And while I appreciate that you are against copyright, surely you can see that many of these copyright/counterfeit crimes can be seen as crimes with victims?
Not strictly on topic here, but I want to pose a question. I realise that many/.ers dislike the privacy issues (as I do to), but I also like the idea of RFID-supported checkout-less shopping. Y'know, where people pick up their goods and just walk out the door, with the money charged to your account. Would you go for a RFID prepaid card that stores nothing but the account number and possibly balance? Would you trust a company who claimed something like this to store only this information, and not shopping habits, etc? Is there something I'm missing that could turn this into a very bad idea?
You have one very important and valid point: being rude about this serves no purpose whatsoever, it is insulting and not going to convince anyone of anything. However, jumping to conclusions is about as bad as being rude, and that really does include jumping to the conclusion that everyone who disagrees is automatically an enemy.
I apologise. I honestly thought you were the AC who posted the 10 reasons. I find that people so have such a strong opinion about things (read: they are rude) need a strong reply. I also think you misread my tone somewhat.
Speak for yourself and not for others please. I don't blame them for exporting their culture, I blame them for supporting a government that is failing to live up to their own standards, yet attacking anyone else who they can claim to not comply with those standards. And obviously I only blame those who actually do this, not every American out there.
I wasn't referring to you specifically. But nevertheless, that's what they do. Whether it means exporting their entertainment culture, or exporting their conservative war culture, the world gets fed up. That's why so many people dislike the US. If they weren't so dominant, people wouldn't care. It doesn't matter if it's a country, a person, a religion, if it's constantly in the spotlight, there will always a culture against them.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Slow down with the finger pointing! I'm not American, and I'm guessing you're not either. Can we carry on a little more civilised?
- being dismissed as anti-american.
This is really stupid, your enemies won't point out your mistakes, they will abuse them.
When you are criticising someone's country, especially their citizens (let's not forget point number 10), it helps to be a bit constructive with the criticisms. Rather than say "I hate the US because they blah, blah, blah...", say "I don't like the way the US handles this, and would rather them handle it this way". Anti-Americanism can often be hating America for hating Authority's sake. They export the culture, we get resentful of it and blame them for more than they deserve. So when you start to rant on about everything you hate about them, people shut it out. They've heard it all before, and they know that as soon as they point out anything good about their country or something bad about your's (whatever that is), they've fed the troll and all they'll get is accusations of changing subject or ignoring problems. What exactly do you expect them to do? Rise into a revolution?
One of your biggest problems is that you launched right in to criticise America without considering that not everyone shares your values. If everyone did, why are so many countries trying to keep good relations with the US? They obviously value the power that the US has, that the US has amasses with its current attitude to defense and the poor starving people in Africa. Don't forget that a significant portion of Americans support the war in Iraq. They obviously value the lives of the people potentially killed by terrorism over the lives of those who died or will die in Iraq. And don't forget that America isn't the only country that supports the war in Iraq. I don't think you can claim that "everyone hates America".
If America instantly listened to criticism, they would have to deal with every single knee-jerk reaction. They would have to deal with the consequences of other people with other viewpoints complaining about the changes. That's why the government is left in office for four years. So that people get a chance to choose someone with their values and not have to have the constant swing. Little do you seem to know, but Americans do listen to (constructive) criticisms, and they will affect how they vote.
I misunderstood the title too! It's just that I thought some group of WoW widows were trying for some big bonfire of WoW CDs. That's kinda sad for a/. reader, instinctively taking "burning" literally.
1. The US has started (and "encouraged") more wars and murdered more humans in a 50 year period than anyone else before in recorded history.
What about the oh-so-many genocides that have occured over the ages? What about Germany? Wan't millions of jews/two world wars enough?
2.The world constantly watches images of starving children whilst in the US people are dying of over eating.
Many (most? all?) people who can watch "images" of starving children probably are well-fed themselves. Those who aren't, well, let's just say they have more important things to worry about than US obesity epidemic.
The rest of your arguments can grouped into two categories:
1. Problems with capitalism 2. Problems with countries at war
No. 1. is an inherent problem with many countries. But we ignore them, right? Anything to go after the perceived "authority figure". No. 2. is more serious and unique to the US.
The real problem here is not that your arguments are invalid (some are), or that your arguments are reptitive (most are), it's that you refuse to see anything good about the US. No-one is perfect. Hell, I bought this computer and am buying this bandwidth from my ISP at the expense of some poor starving African Kid. I give to charity, but I don't go overboard. Does buying my computer and my internet access define "me" (or even my capacity for charity)?
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9/11 was undoubtedly a humiliation, but not on the same level as the treaty of Versailles. The treaty symbolised the hatred of Germany by the entire world. Germans felt downtrodden and humiliated in a much greater sense than the US with terrorism. Sure the US is angry right now, but it'll work out. I don't actually think that the administration has what it takes to change the US into a police state. The guts or the time (don't forget the term limits).
Google's do-no-evil strategy is in progress here. While lesser companies like Symantec and McAfee are desperately trying to (relatively justifiably) sue Microsoft, Google would rather stand down. When a company as big as Google/Symantec/McAfee sues their product's platform, they make a sacrifice in their reputation among certain demographics. Is /. one of those demographics? Put it this way: do you prefer RIAA/SCO or Google/Apple?
Advertisers over here (Australia) have already wisened to the fact that ads with sparse, softer audio grabs attention just as well as the traditional shoutfest ad. I'm not sure such a test would help.
If your comment refers to the fear of including such a feature (and I suspect it does), I'm not sure that's correct either. The law has always run on fear. The fear of being caught and paying the consequences. I'm also not sure that the DVR manufacturers are afraid to include ad-skipping for legal reasons. Perhaps they recognise the need for commercials to support free-to-air commercial TV? Perhaps, despite the success of Myth-TV, they are worried about false positives generating dissatisfaction among the public? Perhaps it's simply that the added processing power and memory needed (read: more expensive devices) was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back?
Germany is the closest I can think of, but it still doesn't exactly count. The humiliation brought on by the treaty of Versailles played a huge part in the rise of Hitler, and there is no equivalent in the US.
For some weird reason, the parent post reminds me of the title of this movie. Somehow, I doubt these cultural learnings will make benefit any glorious nations (including the US).
It's good. Good idea. Should cut out much of the copyrighted content posted on MySpace.
/. What about false positives? How can they be accurate? Why do the RIAA think the world revolves around them (at the inconvenience of others)?
Oh wait, this is
I'm altering my end of the deal too. I'll stop dual-booting the latest version of Windows, rather an older, previously purchased version. I'll stop recommending non-pirated versions of Windows and other Microsoft products to anyone, including, but not limited to, my most technically inept friends. I'll also do whatever I can to support efforts to undermine some of their most valuable technologies: their DRM.
You're partially right. We have the natural right to do whatever we want with what we purchase. But then again, since when has a society ever based itself around what are or aren't natural rights?
Technically, it's not our right to exist; A predator could just pick us off without fear of reprisal. Ownership in general is not a natural right; I could easily justify stealing someone's car by saying "'cause I could".
The fact is, that is what society is for. It gives us certain rights and takes certain ones away, largely based upon the balance of positive/negative effects on not just you, but other people. The government has the sense to see that most entertainment would be virtually non-existent without copyright. The entertainment industry gets money as opposed to no money (good for them), and the consumer gets a fantastic array of entertainment (good for you).
Copyright and patents are comparable. They are similar in that they both grant monopolies over a certain period of time in the hope that they encourage growth of that industry. They are different in that patents define something more general than music. Since the patents are defined for a concept rather than a product, there is less ground for diversity between practical instances of any certain patent. Copyright, however, is applied to a product, and the product basically has to be quoted for it to count as infringement. You can't sue if two pieces of music has the same chord progression. Creative, for example, can sue Apple for infringing their patent on storing digital music in a directory tree style that they applied in the iPod, even though the iPod and the Zen are different products.
I posted a story a week ago about Firefox 2.0 reporting its own default start-up page as a phishing operation. And did they take it? No!
/. has a glaring anti-Firefox agenda.
Sometimes I think
Maybe we will see peak-of-the-cold-war conditions, but then again, judging by history, we will probably see our way back through it.
I'm not surprised. I believe that down here, in Australia, DVB-T doesn't support 1080p. Maybe I'm wrong...
Imagine this. Thousands and thousands of zombie-like people sitting in front of separate computers, observing daily life in a never-ending monotonous routine.
Oh shit. I just had a disturbing image of an MSN chat room.
Yeah, also kinda like some stupid neighbours making some crappy law against murder and having the gall to expect you to abide by it.
I won't touch that one. I agree. I put the problem down to the sheer size of democratic groups. I vote for more focus on localised groups, rather than a national or international focus.
But you can have a say. You only don't have a right to vote. While that is significant, you can riot, you can protest. The only problem is that under 18s are often prejudiced against and what they say usually is usually ignored. The law about voting simply formalises this.
As for your comment about voting, you are right. They very craftily undermined your right to riot. They realised that people riot when they really, really don't like the figures of authority (in this case the government), and the sneakily created a system that makes people less unhappy and gives them alternatives to rioting! Those bastards!
...but HD is simply not worth it.
After recently buying a 720p display (for the picture quality, not resolution), and watching HD broadcasts, I've decided that it is simply a waste of money. I have great trouble telling the difference between upscaled DVD and HD broadcasts. I suspect that many of the broadcasts are upscaled anyway.
One channel here (in Australia) is called SC10, and they have an HD channel that is entirely devoted to HD content. i.e. they constantly show HD demonstrations at 1080i, unless they are showing a natively HD program (which is very rare). I saw one such program, and I noticed that the HD looked very visibly worse than the SD broadcast. You could see the visual noise very clearly, whereas the SD broadcast had scaled it out. The scaled down then scaled up version looked better. Trust me, HD is not worth it.
You're looking at drugs completely the wrong way. Drugs are something that many people simply don't want in society. It doesn't matter that you do it to yourself, they see other effects besides the ones on yourself.
1) A bad example for children
2) Supporting drug dealers
3) If enough support is shown, it may *gasp* become socially acceptable and legal. Who will then protect the kids?
4) Loss of control based on using drugs
And while I appreciate that you are against copyright, surely you can see that many of these copyright/counterfeit crimes can be seen as crimes with victims?
Not strictly on topic here, but I want to pose a question. I realise that many /.ers dislike the privacy issues (as I do to), but I also like the idea of RFID-supported checkout-less shopping. Y'know, where people pick up their goods and just walk out the door, with the money charged to your account. Would you go for a RFID prepaid card that stores nothing but the account number and possibly balance? Would you trust a company who claimed something like this to store only this information, and not shopping habits, etc? Is there something I'm missing that could turn this into a very bad idea?
I wasn't referring to you specifically. But nevertheless, that's what they do. Whether it means exporting their entertainment culture, or exporting their conservative war culture, the world gets fed up. That's why so many people dislike the US. If they weren't so dominant, people wouldn't care. It doesn't matter if it's a country, a person, a religion, if it's constantly in the spotlight, there will always a culture against them.
When you are criticising someone's country, especially their citizens (let's not forget point number 10), it helps to be a bit constructive with the criticisms. Rather than say "I hate the US because they blah, blah, blah...", say "I don't like the way the US handles this, and would rather them handle it this way". Anti-Americanism can often be hating America for hating Authority's sake. They export the culture, we get resentful of it and blame them for more than they deserve. So when you start to rant on about everything you hate about them, people shut it out. They've heard it all before, and they know that as soon as they point out anything good about their country or something bad about your's (whatever that is), they've fed the troll and all they'll get is accusations of changing subject or ignoring problems. What exactly do you expect them to do? Rise into a revolution?
One of your biggest problems is that you launched right in to criticise America without considering that not everyone shares your values. If everyone did, why are so many countries trying to keep good relations with the US? They obviously value the power that the US has, that the US has amasses with its current attitude to defense and the poor starving people in Africa. Don't forget that a significant portion of Americans support the war in Iraq. They obviously value the lives of the people potentially killed by terrorism over the lives of those who died or will die in Iraq. And don't forget that America isn't the only country that supports the war in Iraq. I don't think you can claim that "everyone hates America".
If America instantly listened to criticism, they would have to deal with every single knee-jerk reaction. They would have to deal with the consequences of other people with other viewpoints complaining about the changes. That's why the government is left in office for four years. So that people get a chance to choose someone with their values and not have to have the constant swing. Little do you seem to know, but Americans do listen to (constructive) criticisms, and they will affect how they vote.
I misunderstood the title too! It's just that I thought some group of WoW widows were trying for some big bonfire of WoW CDs. That's kinda sad for a /. reader, instinctively taking "burning" literally.
That's...that's like saying you can't post properly on /. without RTFA! Shocking! Horrible!
Many (most? all?) people who can watch "images" of starving children probably are well-fed themselves. Those who aren't, well, let's just say they have more important things to worry about than US obesity epidemic.
The rest of your arguments can grouped into two categories:
1. Problems with capitalism
2. Problems with countries at war
No. 1. is an inherent problem with many countries. But we ignore them, right? Anything to go after the perceived "authority figure". No. 2. is more serious and unique to the US.
The real problem here is not that your arguments are invalid (some are), or that your arguments are reptitive (most are), it's that you refuse to see anything good about the US. No-one is perfect. Hell, I bought this computer and am buying this bandwidth from my ISP at the expense of some poor starving African Kid. I give to charity, but I don't go overboard. Does buying my computer and my internet access define "me" (or even my capacity for charity)?
So, lemme get this straight...
People complaining == good?
No people complaining == bad?
Whoa.