I'm sure it will straighten itself out when more folks moderate. Most good comments eventually get modded up.
No, most good comments taking particular stances on certain issues will be modded up. I've seen utterly countless excellent posts been modded down that disagreed with every other highly moderated comment.
It also frightens me slightly that between you, betterunixthanunix, and k6mfw, not one of you can conceive of a person disagreeing with the/. groupthink for any reason other than being paid to do so, or "smoking crack". It goes to show how narrow the/. groupthink can make a mind through extended exposure.
I don't know about you guys but this game and the map-packs (usually what...2-4 maps and a gun) that will roughly cost half of the original game sounds a big 'fuck you' to your player base and to gamers in general.
Not here in Australia! On Steam, MW2 and Black Ops were (and still are) priced at 89.99 USD, with all DLC priced at 14.99 USD. We only pay one sixth of the price of the game for MW DLC! Activision is just screwing over everyone but us.
So, what you're saying, in a nutshell, is that we would be worse off if the government, not corporations, regulated the internet? I have some questions:
1) How could government conceivably manage to turn regulations preventing the blocking or rerouting of traffic based on its content into the power to block or reroute traffic based on its content, let alone censorship? 2) Exactly what kind of homework should I be doing to convince me that private business is more trustworthy than government? 3) What benefit is there to whom in the government to censoring the internet anyway? Who receives the pay-off within their term? Perhaps if the media companies bribed them to censor the internet, but quashing net neutrality is not a useful step in this process, and it would be easier for media companies to contact the ISPs directly. Where is the motivation here?
For an individual making some kind of personal choice, maybe. For a group/committee/government, or anyone trying to organise an event, not even close. I have both organised events and been part of committees in the past (often at the same time), and making stupid decisions, or failing to correctly predict something important, is not just difficult to avoid, it's part and parcel to the job.
I think what most likely happened was that whatever committee is responsible decided to send out invitations to various groups and political parties, but one of which is the pirate party. They didn't think particularly about weeding out particular parties for any controversial views, or names. They contacted these political parties to tell them that they're invited, and the political parties naturally spread the word that they'd be making an appearance. The big game studios caught wind, and pressured the organisers to ban them. The organisers, realising that the big game studios are necessary to the success of the event, decided to kowtow and bear the controversy.
You can make just about anything obvious if you decide to cherry-pick out the inconvenient possibilities. Consider this similar line of reasoning:
"What a stupid move by the organisers! Inviting the pirate party was always going to piss the exhibitors off. It would just attract the file-sharing crowd and make the event hostile towards big game studios. Basically, by inviting the pirate party, they would have jeopardised the exhibitors' contributing to this and all subsequent events, and irreparably damaged any currency or legitimacy they had with game developers.
But, that could have all been salvaged a little if they actually went ahead with the invite. At least then they get the file sharing crowd, and other pirate party supporters, which is no small consolation prize! But, they've turned around and banned them instead, which is just a giant 'fuck you' to all supporters of the pirate party, not to mention anyone in favour of free political speech. Now, the whole debacle is in the news, and the organisers have turned away both the exhibitors and the general public. They'll be lucky if they see half the attendance they had last year."
Science is about provable results. Psychology, not so much.
It would seem that controversy about inventing data would falsify this theory. As you are clearly fan of science, I would imagine this will be the last time you'll spread this opinion.
By declaring the bank bailouts as evidence, then debating with the GP over the merits, or lack thereof, of bank bailouts, you demonstrate my point. We don't have evidence. Instead we have observations about which we say "Surely there's no legit reason for doing this" until we start debating one.
Also, remember that in order for a government to be ignoring its citizens, they have to be speaking out, not just quietly resenting, so "Surely nobody wants this" is not sufficient alone to prove a corrupt government.
how much proof do we need that they do not care about our needs or wants or even justice??
Hmm, I'm not sure about anyone else, but I would want something more than just speculation from a foregone conclusion. Show us some actual evidence that the US government is not listening to US citizens as a whole (rather than evidence that they're just not listening to you). Until then, feel free to mount whatever revolution you want with whatever support you can muster. Just don't be surprised if you meet insurmountable resistance from your fellow man, and you end up with your ass in jail.
I'm still not seeing how this isn't screwing the poor people. The hard drives they need for their own 'productivity' are being redistributed to the rich. This potentially makes them poorer, and nullifies attempts at being more productive. Even by your twisted goals, as stated, this is not desirable. Instead, it reinforces a system whereby the productive stay productive, and the unproductive become a further drain.
really we want productivity to be rewarded, not moral indignations based on ideology of what's 'fair' or not.
Why? Why is it not important whether something is fair or not? Why is morality to be excluded, or more precisely, why should it be homogenised into this utilitarian system of morality, where productiveness is considered morally good? Why is it that productiveness trumps these things?
Well, for the most part, I guess, productiveness doesn't trump these things. Most democratic governments are willing to add caveats to their capitalist system in order to it to the morality of its people.
this is artificial scarcity that you are talking about, because most of the problems in places like that are government (or whatever passes for a government) created.
Regardless, the GP makes a fine point. Raising prices over artificial rationing screws over the poor people, regardless of what the government is like wherever they live.
I'm a bit of a fan of ABC. For a government-funded institution, they're surprisingly willing to present unpopular opinions. As someone who is a firm supporter of copyright and decrier of piracy, I do still applaud the issue being brought out into the open like this, on mainstream media. This issue must be talked about, because marginalising it does no favours for either side. May the best logic win!
To be fair, this is not a carpenter doing a job for a single person. To change this would change it for everyone, not just for the vocal minority who post on the thread. Perhaps Google has evidence that more people prefer it the other way, e.g. focus groups, etc?
You can break any analogy by stretching it too far.
That's a pretty lousy excuse for a broken analogy. I'm not pushing it to the fringes. The correspondence (or more specifically, the lack thereof) between how the ranches treat their cattle and how the social networks treat their customers is the one and only important feature of your analogy. Without that, your analogy has nothing.
Cattle have to be kept in with fences. People require subtler means to keep them in the corral.
That difference doesn't change the fact that Facebook has an incentive to keep their product happy enough not to go wandering off.
That's true. On the other hand, the positive incentive and freedom to leave is a lot more in line with, for example, a hotel or a cafe with regular customers, or really anything else where people are repeatedly served and have the option to stop any time. This requires a lot less stretching than comparing with a ranch.
But, in your analogy, the cattle are free to leave at any time! I have never heard of ranching like this! I have heard of serving customers in this way though.
Yeah, but if you start stripping away these things, it starts to lose the essence of being a "product". If you remove the requirement to be owned or controlled by the people trying to sell a product, in what sense is it a product? More relevantly, in what sense are you not a client? And besides, if products do not have this requirement, then does the word "product" deserve the negative stigma it receives?
You noticed something small and superficial about me, and fallaciously leapt from it to the conclusion most convenient to your viewpoint. Along the way, of course, you conveniently sidestep all my arguments, as though they are somehow less valid given the name of the person who said them.
In a conversation about leaping to conclusions, I suppose this is a pretty fitting end!
Yeah. Bunch of whiners. Everyone who has had their identity copied is a dinosaur, and should just learn to adapt, rather than trying to hide behind legislation.
Let's just say I've seen a lot of experts in other areas get coopted by corporate interests.
The next natural question is, have you actually seen them coopted by corporate interests, i.e. have actual reasonable confirmation that their opinions were changed illegitimately (i.e. not through honest persuasion), or have you simply shared in more baseless speculation?
I apologise if you do have something actual. It's just that most of the people I talk to have little more than speculation building on speculation all the way down to nothing. When you pull them up on their latest speculation, they cite previous speculations as evidence! Only, they don't actually tell you that it's speculation, and they act like it's verifiable fact.
Can someone inform me here as to why blind speculation (with immeasurable false certainty) about the private reasoning of someone that nobody here knows is considered anything other than a flamebait, let alone insightful? Anyone?
Slashdot Mirror
No, most good comments taking particular stances on certain issues will be modded up. I've seen utterly countless excellent posts been modded down that disagreed with every other highly moderated comment.
It also frightens me slightly that between you, betterunixthanunix, and k6mfw, not one of you can conceive of a person disagreeing with the /. groupthink for any reason other than being paid to do so, or "smoking crack". It goes to show how narrow the /. groupthink can make a mind through extended exposure.
Not here in Australia! On Steam, MW2 and Black Ops were (and still are) priced at 89.99 USD, with all DLC priced at 14.99 USD. We only pay one sixth of the price of the game for MW DLC! Activision is just screwing over everyone but us.
So, what you're saying, in a nutshell, is that we would be worse off if the government, not corporations, regulated the internet? I have some questions:
1) How could government conceivably manage to turn regulations preventing the blocking or rerouting of traffic based on its content into the power to block or reroute traffic based on its content, let alone censorship?
2) Exactly what kind of homework should I be doing to convince me that private business is more trustworthy than government?
3) What benefit is there to whom in the government to censoring the internet anyway? Who receives the pay-off within their term? Perhaps if the media companies bribed them to censor the internet, but quashing net neutrality is not a useful step in this process, and it would be easier for media companies to contact the ISPs directly. Where is the motivation here?
Wow. I think you just made my day.
For an individual making some kind of personal choice, maybe. For a group/committee/government, or anyone trying to organise an event, not even close. I have both organised events and been part of committees in the past (often at the same time), and making stupid decisions, or failing to correctly predict something important, is not just difficult to avoid, it's part and parcel to the job.
I think what most likely happened was that whatever committee is responsible decided to send out invitations to various groups and political parties, but one of which is the pirate party. They didn't think particularly about weeding out particular parties for any controversial views, or names. They contacted these political parties to tell them that they're invited, and the political parties naturally spread the word that they'd be making an appearance. The big game studios caught wind, and pressured the organisers to ban them. The organisers, realising that the big game studios are necessary to the success of the event, decided to kowtow and bear the controversy.
You can make just about anything obvious if you decide to cherry-pick out the inconvenient possibilities. Consider this similar line of reasoning:
"What a stupid move by the organisers! Inviting the pirate party was always going to piss the exhibitors off. It would just attract the file-sharing crowd and make the event hostile towards big game studios. Basically, by inviting the pirate party, they would have jeopardised the exhibitors' contributing to this and all subsequent events, and irreparably damaged any currency or legitimacy they had with game developers.
But, that could have all been salvaged a little if they actually went ahead with the invite. At least then they get the file sharing crowd, and other pirate party supporters, which is no small consolation prize! But, they've turned around and banned them instead, which is just a giant 'fuck you' to all supporters of the pirate party, not to mention anyone in favour of free political speech. Now, the whole debacle is in the news, and the organisers have turned away both the exhibitors and the general public. They'll be lucky if they see half the attendance they had last year."
Yes that's true. But how much of the populace is behind it, and how do you know the government has ignored the people since they made that decision?
It would seem that controversy about inventing data would falsify this theory. As you are clearly fan of science, I would imagine this will be the last time you'll spread this opinion.
By declaring the bank bailouts as evidence, then debating with the GP over the merits, or lack thereof, of bank bailouts, you demonstrate my point. We don't have evidence. Instead we have observations about which we say "Surely there's no legit reason for doing this" until we start debating one.
Also, remember that in order for a government to be ignoring its citizens, they have to be speaking out, not just quietly resenting, so "Surely nobody wants this" is not sufficient alone to prove a corrupt government.
And if it's not, should we be illegalising other legal substances?
I bet that sounded really badass when it was said for the first time...
Hmm, I'm not sure about anyone else, but I would want something more than just speculation from a foregone conclusion. Show us some actual evidence that the US government is not listening to US citizens as a whole (rather than evidence that they're just not listening to you). Until then, feel free to mount whatever revolution you want with whatever support you can muster. Just don't be surprised if you meet insurmountable resistance from your fellow man, and you end up with your ass in jail.
I'm still not seeing how this isn't screwing the poor people. The hard drives they need for their own 'productivity' are being redistributed to the rich. This potentially makes them poorer, and nullifies attempts at being more productive. Even by your twisted goals, as stated, this is not desirable. Instead, it reinforces a system whereby the productive stay productive, and the unproductive become a further drain.
Why? Why is it not important whether something is fair or not? Why is morality to be excluded, or more precisely, why should it be homogenised into this utilitarian system of morality, where productiveness is considered morally good? Why is it that productiveness trumps these things?
Well, for the most part, I guess, productiveness doesn't trump these things. Most democratic governments are willing to add caveats to their capitalist system in order to it to the morality of its people.
I'm a bit of a fan of ABC. For a government-funded institution, they're surprisingly willing to present unpopular opinions. As someone who is a firm supporter of copyright and decrier of piracy, I do still applaud the issue being brought out into the open like this, on mainstream media. This issue must be talked about, because marginalising it does no favours for either side. May the best logic win!
To be fair, this is not a carpenter doing a job for a single person. To change this would change it for everyone, not just for the vocal minority who post on the thread. Perhaps Google has evidence that more people prefer it the other way, e.g. focus groups, etc?
That's a pretty lousy excuse for a broken analogy. I'm not pushing it to the fringes. The correspondence (or more specifically, the lack thereof) between how the ranches treat their cattle and how the social networks treat their customers is the one and only important feature of your analogy. Without that, your analogy has nothing.
That's true. On the other hand, the positive incentive and freedom to leave is a lot more in line with, for example, a hotel or a cafe with regular customers, or really anything else where people are repeatedly served and have the option to stop any time. This requires a lot less stretching than comparing with a ranch.
But, in your analogy, the cattle are free to leave at any time! I have never heard of ranching like this! I have heard of serving customers in this way though.
Yeah, but if you start stripping away these things, it starts to lose the essence of being a "product". If you remove the requirement to be owned or controlled by the people trying to sell a product, in what sense is it a product? More relevantly, in what sense are you not a client? And besides, if products do not have this requirement, then does the word "product" deserve the negative stigma it receives?
Not really. Just like with a client, they have to keep you satisfied, otherwise you'll stop dealing with them, and they'll get no money.
Um, no? Did you not read the wikipedia article, or did you just fail to comprehend the situation and consequently misapplied the term?
You noticed something small and superficial about me, and fallaciously leapt from it to the conclusion most convenient to your viewpoint. Along the way, of course, you conveniently sidestep all my arguments, as though they are somehow less valid given the name of the person who said them.
In a conversation about leaping to conclusions, I suppose this is a pretty fitting end!
Yeah. Bunch of whiners. Everyone who has had their identity copied is a dinosaur, and should just learn to adapt, rather than trying to hide behind legislation.
The next natural question is, have you actually seen them coopted by corporate interests, i.e. have actual reasonable confirmation that their opinions were changed illegitimately (i.e. not through honest persuasion), or have you simply shared in more baseless speculation?
I apologise if you do have something actual. It's just that most of the people I talk to have little more than speculation building on speculation all the way down to nothing. When you pull them up on their latest speculation, they cite previous speculations as evidence! Only, they don't actually tell you that it's speculation, and they act like it's verifiable fact.
Can someone inform me here as to why blind speculation (with immeasurable false certainty) about the private reasoning of someone that nobody here knows is considered anything other than a flamebait, let alone insightful? Anyone?